Bart provided an overview for the kinds of things that will be found in the conference presentations, and I would like to share a couple of these as background on Paul, and propose some questions that these ideas raise for me.

God had made a covenant with the Jews and the Jews kept their part of the bargain by keeping God’s law.  It was thought that bad things happened like the Jews repeatedly being conquered because they were breaking the law and that was God’s punishment.  Around 200 years before Jesus, some Jewish thinkers started to think that evil forces were controlling people and opposing believers by preventing them from keeping the law, and that is why bad things were happening.  Though the world looks like God isn’t in control, apocalyptic thinking is that God will soon destroy these evil forces and set up a utopian world like Eden was. Paul and Jesus were apocalyptic thinkers.

Paul was a highly religious Greek-speaking Jew who was a scholar of scripture.  In his early life he followed the approach of the Pharisees trying to follow the law to the fullest.  He encountered Christians claiming the blasphemy that a crucified criminal was the messiah, the figure of power and grandeur predicted in scripture.  Jesus did not destroy the enemy and set up a kingdom, but was humiliated and tortured to death.   Paul thus persecuted the church for blasphemy.  It is unlikely that Paul was commissioned to do this by the high priest as Acts says since the high priest had no such jurisdiction, but Paul says himself he tried to destroy the church, whatever that means.

Paul had a vision of Jesus, and this led to him following Christ, though Paul was a Jew beforehand and remained so afterward.  He was a Jew who came to believe a correct understanding of scripture was that the messiah was to be killed and raised.  Paul thought it was part of God’s plan for Jesus to be horrifically tortured and killed.  Followers of Christ believed Jesus died, not for his own sins, but for the sins of others.  One way of understanding this is vicarious substitutionary atonement, but is another interpretation of Christ’s death as saving possible?  Did Jews have an understanding of sacrifice that was the same as the pagan notion of sacrifice which is appeasing the gods’ wrath?

Paul thought Jesus would return to destroy God’s enemies and set up God’s kingdom in Paul’s lifetime.  Paul did not invent the idea that Jesus’ death brought about salvation, but learned this from other followers of Jesus (e.g., the Corinthian creed/poetry Paul quotes). Paul’s innovation over mainstream Judaism is that Paul thought salvation did not come through following the Torah-Law and Jewish festivals, but belief in the death of the messiah.  Paul says if righteousness comes by the Law then Christ died for nothing.  The resurrection proves salvation comes through belief in Christ’s death rather than the law, ,and so gentiles don’t need to keep the Law/become Jews to be saved.  Without this key teaching, Christianity would have remained a sect of Judaism and would not have grown to what it did. But does this reading really make the best sense of the resurrection whereby: Why, then, does Paul say if the resurrection is not true then the cross is of no effect? (“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins – 1 Cor 15:17”). If the cross dealt with sin, why does Paul say you are still in your sin without the resurrection?

It’s interesting that Acts, which is 2/3 about Paul, says Jesus’ death is not atoning.  The question is then does Acts simply contradict Paul’s letters, or are we misinterpreting Paul’s letters as advocating vicarious atonement? For Ehrman, Paul believes in the vicarious atoning death of Jesus, which contrasts with the historical Jesus who taught repentance that led to forgiveness.  Again, is this a contradiction, or is Paul not being interpreted correctly here?