SCORE 5/5

My thanks to Cambridge for providing me with a review copy of this book.

PREAMBLE: LETTER TO PROFESSOR VINZENT

Hi Prof Vinzent,

My name is John MacDonald and I am president of the Secular Web. I recently posted a review of Prof Nina Livesey’s new book on the thesis of a fictional Paul and pseudonymous Pauline letters HERE: The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship by Nina E. Livesey .  Cambridge University Press kindly sent me a review copy.  After I posted my review I encountered your interview with Jacob Berman on History Valley podcast where you mention Livesey and discuss related issues.  After hearing you I made some additions to the review (resulting in a less fluid piece).  I would like to share with you an important reason I think Paul was a fictional character as Livey contends. You are obviously a towering figure in innovative New Testament studies and would love to know if you think I’m on the right track?  Here is my thought:

First, Paul appears legendary, e.g., if the Pauline letters are pseudonymous Paul might just be an idealized figure representing the Old Testament prediction that at the end of days a prophet would bring the message of God to the pagans (echoing the apocalyptic overtones of the Bar Kokhba revolt); also, Paul is cast as a chief persecutor of the church, who later becomes its hero second only to heroic Jesus: what an amazing apologetic about the truth and converting power of the Christian faith, lol!.  I take seriously Livesey’s  historical analogy of the Pauline letters and the  pseudonymous letters of Plato and Hugo Mendez’s analysis of the forged epistles of John.

Second, I’m still curious as Livesey is as to whether the pseudonymous letters of Paul were first or Acts was first.  I note her point that Pseudonymous collections are usually based on a prior known figure (real or fictive), and so we have for instance the pseudonymous letters of Plato.  I think we may have a clue in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.  Scholarship doesn’t usually compare Parallel Lives to the gospels because a first century date of the gospels is assumed.  If we rather see them as second century gospels, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Plutarch called his work Parallel Lives because it pairs biographies of notable Greeks and Romans to compare their virtues, vices, and contributions, drawing moral and philosophical insights from their parallel experiences. For example, he juxtaposes figures like Alexander the Great with Julius Caesar to highlight shared traits and differences, using their lives as case studies for ethical reflection.  Unlike earlier biographers like Xenophon or Suetonius, who focused on single figures or chronological accounts, Plutarch’s paired narratives allowed for direct comparison, emphasizing moral and psychological contrasts over mere historical recounting.,  Plutarch infused his biographies with ethical analysis, aiming to instruct readers on virtue and vice. This differed from the often laudatory or factual focus of prior works, which prioritized glorification or documentation.

And so in the gospels we see such internal parallelism with how the various New Testament stories are typologically referred back through haggadic midrash and mimesis to prior Septuagint, and Greek poetry figures e.g., Mark portrays John the Baptist in the guise of Elijah, Matthew presents Jesus as the new and greater Moses, the Cana wine miracle recapitulates the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17:8-24 LXX, etc.  But to Paul:

The Gospels’ idea of a crucified figure facilitating a change of mind (metanoia) and belief in the soldier looking up at him seems to obviously comes from Plutarch’s Parallel lives and the account of the crucified Cleomenes III:

And a few days afterwards those who were keeping watch upon the body of Cleomenes where it hung, saw a serpent of great size coiling itself about the head and hiding away the face so that no ravening bird of prey could light upon it. 2 In consequence of this, the king was seized with superstitious fear, and thus gave the women occasion for various rites of purification, since they felt that a man had been taken off who was of a superior nature and beloved of the gods. And the Alexandrians actually worshipped him, coming frequently to the spot and addressing Cleomenes as a hero and a child of the gods (Plutarch, Parallel life of Cleomenes, 39:1-2).

It thus seems impossible to date Mark in the first century: In Mark the soldier sees Jesus as a paradigmatic soldier following orders despite terror (“truly this was God’s son;” the cry of dereliction, Gethsemane).  In Matthew, the soldier is terrified at God’s might – “truly this was God’s son.”  In Luke, the soldier notes his culpability in executing an innocent man (“this man was innocent”).   In John, the  soldier serves a different function and dispels swoon death interpretations by showing Jesus was really dead: the presence of water indicates living water but also it was the pericardium that was pierced. The pericardium is the sack in which the heart sits.

This seems precisely how we get the creation of Paul.  Luke has revised the internal parallelism of Mark and Matthew to also reflect a Plutarch-like external parallelism between Luke and Acts.  The death of Jesus in Luke is paralleled with the death of forgiving Stephen in Acts and so the realization of the enemy of Jesus soldier in Luke that he was complicit in killing an innocent man parallels arch Christian enemy Saul/Paul in Acts who comes to realize he is complicit in working to kill the innocent Christian movement (“Saul, why do you persecute me?” following Stephen’s forgiving death).  

That’s how and why I think Paul was invented.  . 

Does this seem like sound historical reasoning to you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts

Happy (secular) Easter,

John MacDonald,

President, The Secular Web

Two Short Background Videos On The Book

SUMMARY

The modern use of the Pauline letters to establish historical information about Paul or Jesus (like the James the brother of the lord passage or the seed of David passage used contra Jesus mythicism) with issues such as authenticity of the letters was not the original way the letters were interpreted. They were understood as authoritative and scripture like.  Whether their writer was pseudonymous or didn’t exist or if they were genuine correspondence were not issues.

“Later in the enlightenment period questions of the authenticity of Pauline authorship came into view.  The Enlightenment scholar de Wette’s concerns differed radically from the older readers… While scholars such as Evanson and de Wette represent a shift in the understanding of the Pauline letters from authoritative teachings to that of historically relevant documents, Ferdinand Christian Baur – described as “the most important NT scholar of his time” and as one of “the most resolute advocates of the development of historical-critical research in the nineteenth century”– significantly advanced and seemingly entrenched the understanding of Pauline letters as historically reliable. (43)”

Baur’s circular reasoning brings the result that he “posits a great rift between Judaism and Christianity from reading the Hauptbriefe, and then relies on those same letters to confirm his historical reconstruction.” (46)  For Bauer, the differences between what he saw as the four authentic letters of Paul and Acts was the epistles were reliable and Acts wasn’t, which is the perspective still today except with seven authentic letters.

Later commenters who looked at the letters often authenticated them through the general lens of a rift between Judaism and Christianity.  Scholars have also appealed to what they saw as Paul’s style, “scholars assessed Pauline style subjectively, according to what they thought it was and according to their particular preferences…  Whether or not statements were sincere is, of course, a matter of authorial intent, something that is unknown to later readers. Moreover, similarities of style and language across letters do not provide evidence of the Apostle Paul as author (52).” Another criteria appealed to is later citations by authors like Clement, though this does not point to authenticity.  A final questionable lens is deeming a letter authentic when confirmed by Acts, “Thus, Hilgenfeld assessed Thessalonians and Philippians historically reliable due to confirmation of Paul’s journeys into those regions as found in Acts (53).” Parallel with this research was the quest to determine if the letters of Paul were genuine correspondence and not literary, employing such techniques of comparing Paul’s letters to other known ancient letters, though the result was Paul’s letters did not conform to those other letters, for example Philemon – e.g., “While ancient Greco-Roman letters evince standard opening and closing formulae– as Exler’s findings confirmed none of the extant Pauline letters conform to that standard (69).”

Livesey further contends against a historical Paul:

“there is no evidence of the historical Paul. That the historical Paul was active in the mid-first century is likewise a characterization found largely in Acts and Pauline letters. Similarly, there is a distinct lack of archaeological evidence of ancient Pauline communities. The chapter argues that internal references to communities in home settings within well-known regions are best assessed rhetorically rather than historically. With the letters read together as a collection, distantly spaced regions function effectively to signify the far-reaching spread of the message into prominent areas. The lack of extant evidence for and references to Pauline letters as unities, as one would expect in the case of genuine correspondence, casts doubt on their status as genuine correspondence. In addition, sightings of Pauline letters in later sources indicate a mid-second century date of the collection. These combined arguments add to the thesis that the letters were from the start pseudonymous and fictional.”

The Pauline communities are likely interesting fiction correspondence partners to provide the reader with a lively context for experiencing the letter.  The earliest collection of Paul’s letters is Marcion in the mid second century, which is odd: “While scholars have offered various collection theories to account for how the letters– addressed to communities widely dispersed among regions of the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor– managed to be found together as a collection, many strain the realm of historical likelihood (74).”  It is odd our earliest sources are collections of Paul’s letters and not individual letters given the great distance between the supposed destinations of the letters. The historicity too of Paul is in question because Acts is historically unreliable and the fact that the declared writer of a letter is Paul does not imply he actually was the writer: We have, for instance, the pseudonymous letters of Plato.

Paul’s autobiographical claims need not be authentic due to how such statements functioned in ancient letters, “The major interest of most ancient biographers and autobiographers was not historical reality but human potentiality and idealization. (George Lyons).”  The voice of the author doesn’t necessarily point back to the author, but “Epistolary discourse entails the construction of a self based on an assumption of what might interest the intended addressee, not on some unchanging vision of one’s ‘true’ self. (Patricia Rosenmeyer).”

There is reason to think Paul is Fictional.  The argument here is Acts precedes the letters, and so “his absence from contemporaneous Hebraic, Greek, and Roman sources is nonetheless telling. The Roman name “Paulus,” from which the name “Paul” likely derives is also largely unattested as a cognomen (a nickname) in the ancient world. As a nomen gentilicium (family name), it belongs to noble patrician families inside Italy.  From the way in which we come to know Paul in canonical sources, there is reason to believe that he, like other characters named in Acts, is fictional (83).”  Fictive letters as a genre suppose the pseudonymous writer is known, like the pseudonymous letters of Plato, and where do we know the character of Paul from?  Acts.

There are extensive parallels between the letters and Acts, which suggests borrowing, but the antagonism between Paul and Judaism in the letters suggests a later Christian writer, and pseudonymous letter collections usually followed on what was already thought about an ancient character.  The Paul of Acts adhered to Judaism and its beliefs: “the topics Pauline letters address, namely, negative assessments of Jewish law and circumcision, appear for the first time only in the second century (91).”  This gives us a new sense of dating the letters of Paul.

2 Cor 11:32-33 and Acts  18:1-18 have traditionally been used to establish Paul at particular places and times in history, but Livesey argues they are literary fiction: “By contrast, when understood as literary fiction rather than history, references to known historical figures function effectively for narrative effect, adding a sense of importance and verisimilitude. (99).”  We see something similar with apologists who argue a gospel story is real because it includes real people and places, and hence ignore the possibility of historical fiction.

With the overall content of Paul’s letters “the topics adopted in Pauline letters make better sense in a social setting in which the Jerusalem Temple is no longer standing, in a post-Bar Kokhba era. (101).”  Also, Paul’s churches as taking place in homes likewise reflects a literary device: “That “Christian” disciples gather in homes for safety and rituals, and that special knowledge and insight takes place in homes suggests that the author of Acts was likewise exploiting positive associations related to the home for persuasive purposes, and to advance the narrative. (106).”

The places listed in the letters also occur in Acts as regions Paul traveled to, suggesting intertextuality.  The places were well known and far apart, suggesting a literary device indicating the far reach of the message. Though the letters were supposedly sent far and wise, we have no letter transmitted to us individually, but only in collections.  We have early attestations to the Pauline letters such as 1 Clement, the Ignatian letters, The Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, and 2 Peter, but recent research has reimagined these sources to be in the mid second century: “A mid-second century date of these early witnesses allows for the assessment that the collected Pauline letters themselves emerge only later, with Marcion’s 144 CE Apostolikon (128).”

The writer of the Pauline epistles leaves clues to their fictional letter genre, such as Paul claiming to be able to argue as a Jew to win the Jews, and as a pagan to win the pagans (1 Corinthians 9:20-22; of course staying within the spectrum of Paul’s gospel such as with no circumcision requirements1 Corinthians 1:12). This will be key when we come to see the polysemy of the cross,

“Fictional or literary letters– our interest here– grew in popularity from approximately 100 BCE to 250 CE , a period marked by the presence of sophists, rhetors, and professional teachers. Fictional letters and the rise in freestanding pseudonymous letters collections appear to be “the product of sophistic schools.” C. Costa comments that fictional letters were “extremely popular” in the Greco-Roman world. Their popularity is attributed to early educational methods, as rhetors and their students practiced rhetorical exercises using the letter form. Michael Trapp comments that “the composition of stylish and/or contentful ‘fictitious’ letters was felt both as a stimulating challenge to a writer’s abilities and as a source of educated pleasure to the knowledgeable reader.” Patricia Rosenmeyer reviews in detail the late-second and early-third centuries  collected fictional letters of Alciphron, Aelian, and Philostratus. The letters of these collections sketch short emotive scenes, invent scenarios, and provide “brief glimpses into the lives of (mostly) ordinary people dealing with momentary crises.” Philostratus, for instance, indicates that he can argue two sides of an issue, one of the hallmarks of the sophistic enterprise (138).”

We will see the brilliant ambiguity of salvation in the epistles gives way to the multiple paths saving the soldiers at the cross for different reasons in the gospels.

Livesey notes the fictional letter format is common to Seneca and Paul’s authors, and is an ideal teaching tool, which is why it’s being employed:

“the letter genre is in many ways an ideal medium for the advancement of disciplinary teachings by an authoritative instructor. The benefits of adopting the letter genre for persuasive teachings include its friendly and trustworthy domain, its appeal to external readers naturally drawn to incidents seemingly meant for others, and that it easily permits and even anticipates the promotion of self. It likewise highlights the versatility of the genre, its historic use in philosophical teachings, and its easy accommodation to a wide range of subgenres, including biography, autobiography, dialog, and narrative. Similarity in the use of epistolary features across the two collections contributes to the book’s thesis that Pauline authors, like Seneca’s (Moral Epistles to Lucilius), exploited the genre for teachings to secondary readers (Ch 3 Summary).”

The historical analogy of the authors of Paul’s literary fiction epistles with Seneca’s is a powerful argument provided by Livesey and so nudges us to update our historical probabilities in favor of her thesis.  Rather than oral discussions, Seneca wants his letters to inform not only current readers but later philosophical communities.  The context of friendship in letters provides a context from which to narrow focus on something more important than friendship:

“letter components– addressee, letter content, and addressor– … show ways in which Seneca and the authors of Pauline letters exploit many of the known characteristics of the genre for the advancement of their teachings. I indicate how these authors fashion, deploy, and maintain sender–recipient engagement, construct plausible and engaging situational scenarios, and strategically employ the discourse of self for the promotion of their teachings (144).”

“Like Seneca who with enargeia brings Lucilius to life (Ep. 49.1), the Pauline author of Philippians likewise deploys the same rhetorical technique, reifying the community with a vivid image of the Apostle and the Philippians holding each other in their hearts (Phil 1.7). (155)”  There is also literary cohesion between the communities by referring to members as brothers and the body of Christ, and the re-emergence of characters across long divides such as Timothy, Barnabas and Titus: “These instances of intertextuality, found by way of reference to a collection, instantiate a network of communities (157).” The occasional nature of the letters seemingly crafted to address specific needs and issues of the communities actually “appear instead to be cleverly crafted hooks and springboards for theological teachings. (158).”  Romans, though, is highly impersonal and thus represents poor use of a fictive letter for teaching.  The letters are not by Paul but are him incarnate, reflecting especially Plato’s use of the term Parousia.  And as for the communities, for instance “Like Seneca’s treatment of Lucilius in Letter 32, the “Galatian community” is instantiated as an exemplum of improper behavior (182)… That Pauline letters are primarily occasional in content– an underlying assumption that signals genuine correspondence– is a mistaken notion, a desiratum, that is not borne out by evidence of the letters (183). … Rosenmeyer notes that the inscribed sender functions as a hero character: “The epistolary genre implies a focus on the inner life of the ‘hero,’ and the reader is then invited to identify with the ego of the letter (184).” 

The Apostle suffers in imitating Christ just as the community is to suffer imitating the Apostle: “As mentioned, the discourse of self attracts external readers, who are drawn to the sender as a hero figure. In Pauline letters, the hero figure’s status is augmented, to make him more attractive to receptive readers (192).”  Given his fame and ability, Seneca speaks self-deprecatingly as a teaching exemplar, and “It merits mention that the majority (if not all) of Seneca’s teachings of Stoic philosophy and all Pauline theological teachings are conducted through letters. (196).”

Livesey notes it is in the wake of the Bar Kokhba revolt that the issues Paul addresses and the takes he has on them make the most sense:

“The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE) had tremendous social and political consequences for Jews and Romans…During this period, writer-intellectuals immigrated to Rome, established schools, and produced various religious writings, some of which directly reflected on the consequences of the recent Jewish revolt. Marcion’s Evangelion, considered by some as the first gospel, stems from this social-political context. At this same time, political and religious discourse attests to the reassessment of the Jewish rite of circumcision. The devaluation and non-necessity of circumcision for gentiles found within Pauline letters parallels discussions in writings of the post-Bar Kokhba period. Marcion is known in sources for having a singular interest in the Apostle Paul. He is also credited with the earliest known collection of ten Pauline letters (the Apostolikon). These combined factors contribute to the sense in which Marcion’s second-century Roman school is the likely location of the origination of Pauline letters.”

Livesey zeroes in on the context for the Pauline letters most likely being mid second century. “Van Manen had thought the Pauline letters were the product of a Pauline school following the 70CE revolt, but Livesey argues Paul’s letters with such themes as necessity of Jewish law and practices  reflect the later Bar Kokhba revolt period.  There is no evidence of a school focusing on Marcion prior to the last revolt, and “Christian” teachers and schools emerge in Rome around the mid-second century CE, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, and as a consequence of it (200).”  A climate of animosity to the Jewish scriptures and circumcision flourished after 100 CE:  “Comparably dismissive and/or derogatory assessments of circumcision and Jewish law do not surface in texts dated prior to the end of the first century. Discussions of the rite of circumcision dated at or after the Bar Kokhba revolt parallel those found in Pauline letters. (202-203).”

Galatians vehemently argues against a group who wants to adopt Jewish Law, especially circumcision: “According to the arguments in Galatians, justification/righteousness comes from faith/trust (ἐκ πίστεως), construed as hierarchically superior and positively, and not from works of law (ἐξ ἔργων νóμου; Gal 2:15-16), assessed consistently negatively. The assessment of Jewish law found in Galatians finds no parallels in primary sources dated up through Josephus. (100 CE)” Circumcision is overwhelmingly seen as favorable in the Hebrew Bible and central to the covenant between man and God.  Things change significantly in Christian writings post Bar Kokhba where circumcision is debased such as with Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho: “Among these writings, Justin’s assessment is the most incendiary. According to him, circumcision is a sign (σημεῖον) of suffering and alienation, whose purpose was to separate Israelites from other nations. The reference to the land becoming desolate and cities ruined by fire unproblematically pertains to the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Justin is clearly aware of the revolt, as he alludes to it here and elsewhere. Moreover, according to Justin, Jews suffer justly. It was “predicated by Scripture” and took place “by divine providence…. In Barnabas and the Dialogue a metaphorical circumcision of the heart is assessed as superior to a literal circumcision of the flesh (219) ”  The authors of Paul argue against circumcision and devalues Abrahams circumcision, indicating circumcision to be a form of slavery: “The devaluation of circumcision found in the later writings resonates in a Bar-Kokhba context, in which Jews sorely suffered the loss of their lives, their temple, and their territory; when many were sold into captivity; and, importantly, when Roman legislation prohibited the practice of circumcision. (223).”  Having later writers put this on Paul’s lips echoes Mark putting the destruction of the temple on Jesus’ lips.

It seems during the Antonine period circumcision would be a liability.  Christian schools emerged in Rome post revolt and Paul’s letters and the gospels likely had their origination there.  The Christian schools were understood as philosophical schools.  Justin’s work employs the strategy of friendly exchange noted earlier.  Livesey thinks Paul’s letters come from the school of Marcion.  The Bar Kokhba revolt played a significant role in Marcion’s relocation to Rome.  Marcion published a gospel similar to Luke and 10 letters of Paul as our first New Testament.  “Marcion’s Evangelion, while very similar to the Gospel of Luke, lacks the latter’s birth narrative and begins only at canonical Luke 3:1, “In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, when Pilate was governing Judaea. (243)”  Luke is generally seen as the basis for Marcion’s gospel.  But there is no evidence of earlier gospels and so Vinzent points to post revolt Rome:  “oldest firm witnesses for the first Christian writings we can attain surface during the time after that war [Bar Kokhba]– Marcion’s collection of Paul’s letters, his Gospel, and with it those gospels ‘that have been ascribed to Apostles and disciples of Apostles,’ hence Matthew and John, Mark and Luke.”(245).  Marcion did not receive earlier gospels but created the first one.  There is no evidence for a Pauline Collection prior to Marcion’s in 144, “If, as argued, Marcion created a gospel, anew literary genre, he– with the help of those in his school– could certainly have crafted and overseen the composition of mock letters in the name of the Apostle Paul, deploying a known and popular literary genre (248).”

APPLICATION

Paul

Part of the difficulty in assessing Livesey’s book is it is a paradigm shift.  This is not unlike what is going on with Prof Hugo Mendez of the University of North Caroline Chapel Hill, whereas most Johannine scholars are trying to derive history from the gospel of John and the three Johannine epistles, Mendez is arguing John and the epistles are forged to try to convince the reader they are the product of the beloved disciple. 

Perhaps the best way is to pick an angle and dive in and see how explanatory the new paradigm is.  Let’s try that. What if the New Testament writings were not primarily based on oral sources, but are literary as Robyn Faith Walsh also directs us …

As we noted above with Philostratus, one of the examples of the kind of literature we seem to be dealing with is authors conveying their skill at arguing both sides of an argument like a sophist.  Paul, from the birthplace of the stoic enlightenment, makes the same claim, changing his arguments to persuade both Jews and Pagans (1 Corinthians 9:20-22).  We can unpack this relating to Paul (perhaps a fictional figure), in terms of his supposed teacher Gamaliel.

Gamaliel was named as a member of the Sanhedrin in the fifth chapter of Acts and the teacher of Paul the Apostle in Acts 22:3.  Gamaliel encouraged his fellow Pharisees to show leniency to the apostles of Jesus in Acts 5:34.  This characterization seems at odds with Saul/Paul as an arch persecutor of Christians, but maybe something deeper is going on here.

In the broad and rich biblical tradition of literal and figurative Polysemy and Homonymy, showing the skill and creativity of the writers, we have one of the few literary pieces known to come from Gamaliel given that the Hillelian school of thought is presented collectively.

Gamaliel’s fish analogy, preserved in Jewish tradition (specifically in Avot de-Rabbi Natan), categorizes students as follows:

Ritually impure fish: One who memorizes but lacks understanding, from poor parents.

Ritually pure fish: One who learns and understands, from rich parents.

Fish from the Jordan River: One who learns but can’t respond effectively.

Fish from the Mediterranean Sea: One who learns and can respond adeptly.

So, if this is applied to Paul as teacher, there are going to be different messages to reach different kinds of students.  Let’s consider

Paul’s understanding of the core of the faith is supposedly clear and well known, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor 15:3-6).”  But as soon as we try to focus in on the creed/poetry here, meaning starts to shift and change. 

Does dying for our sins mean substitutionary atonement as some think?  Clearly, we understand the ancient idea of sacrifice appeasing the wrath of a god.  We see similar logic in 4 Maccabees.  Still, how does it serve justice for an innocent child in Africa to be punished for the crimes of a murderer in Chicago?  On the other hand, maybe the statement reflects the biblical Adamic notion of eyes being opened that Acts also relates to Paul’s conversion and so “Christ died for our sins,” not to pay our sin debt, but the world wrongly turning on God’s agapetos Jesus causes our inconspicuous sins to become conspicuous so that we fully see them and have a transformation of mind (metanoia).  Christ died for our sins: for our sin debt to be paid, or for our inconspicuous sins to be made conspicuous? On the other hand, Christ died for our sins could mean Christ died because of our sins (we killed him), like we say I can’t sleep “for” the heat.  Or does Paul intend all of these? We know Paul wanted to cast the widest net possible making conversion as easy as possible within the confines of his gospel: “because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9).”

And what about “According to the scriptures?”  Does it mean scripture prophesied Christ’s death.  Or does it mean Christ’s death agrees with what we find in scripture.  Or does it mean the NT writers were allegorizing scripture like Matthew invented his Jesus infancy narrative to recapitulate the story of Moses.  Cleary, modern critical scholars may allow that Mark crafted his crucifixion narrative out of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, and yet still hold on to the historicity of the crucifixion.  But Livesey’s thesis allows us to push the argument even further.  To begin with, the cross serves a highly rhetorical function in the New Testament:

“Crucified with Christ” 

Reference: Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

Meaning: Paul uses this to describe a believer’s identification with Christ’s death, signifying the end of the old self-centered life and the beginning of a new life empowered by Christ.

“Crucify the Flesh” 

Reference: Galatians 5:24 – “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” 

Meaning: This refers to putting to death sinful desires and the selfish nature, likening it to the decisive act of crucifixion, as a result of belonging to Christ.

“Pick Up Your Cross and Follow Me” 

Reference: Matthew 16:24 (also Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23) – “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’” 

Meaning: Jesus calls for self-denial and willingness to endure suffering or sacrifice, using the cross as a symbol of the cost of discipleship and following His example.

“The World Has Been Crucified to Me” 

Reference: Galatians 6:14 – “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” 

Meaning: Paul describes a mutual separation—through the cross, worldly values and pursuits are “dead” to him, and he is “dead” to their influence, emphasizing a transformed allegiance.

“Enemies of the Cross” 

Reference: Philippians 3:18-19 – “For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” 

Meaning: Here, the cross represents the sacrificial life Christ modeled. Living in opposition to its values (e.g., indulgence instead of self-denial) makes one an “enemy” of its transformative power.

“Bearing the Cross” 

Reference: Implied in Luke 14:27 – “And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” 

Meaning: Similar to “take up your cross,” this emphasizes enduring hardship or persecution as part of discipleship, with the cross as a metaphor for personal sacrifice.

Moreover, normally, typology as an outgrowth of form criticism suggests we would bracket the historicity of events that have a literary origin.  But this is exactly what Paul does with the crucifixion.  In Galatians 3:13, Paul refers to the Old Testament passage in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, stating that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”—.  Again, when we try to narrow in on the meaning it shifts and changes.  Does it mean Christ took on our sins in substitutionary atonement?  But Daniel Street and others note Paul says “curse” not “accursed.”  So, what it could mean is people see the person hung on the tree to be like one cursed.  Clearly, Deuteronomy didn’t mean God cursed someone simply by virtue of them being hung on a tree.  If the letters are mid second century and Paul never existed, Livesey’s book encourages us to think beyond a literal crucifixion to an allegorizing of Psalms, Second Isaiah, and Deuteronomy. 

As I said, contemporary biblical typology theory (e.g., mimesis, haggadic midrash) says we should bracket the historicity of the literary units that allude to prior sources such as when Jesus crucifixion is created out of Psalms, 2^nd Isaiah and Deuteronomy.  Isn’t it interesting Paul presents himself as the one predicted in scripture who would bring the message of God to the pagans at the end of the age (e.g., Isaiah 42:6 or 49:6 about a servant bringing light to the nations), in fact making himself typological if Livesey is right and he never existed.  And this would well situate Paul in Acts:  “Nearly all the many characters in Acts 13:6-12– including Paul– are historically unverifiable. The sole exception, Sergius Paulus, known to Galen as prefect or governor of the City of Rome and trained in Aristotelian philosophy, appears to function as Paul’s namesake. (133).”

The Apostle is made to remark that the law (νóμος) was added because of transgressions (τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν προσετέθη; With the coming of Christ, the Jewish law has fulfilled its purpose.  The law was meant to have “sin become sinful beyond measure (Romans 7:13).”  So, for example, the law could be interpreted as the polysemy word of the law bent to the will of the Jewish elite, while ignoring the spirit of the law.  It is well known Mark uses satire to make a point.  Society was seen as dystopian so we have the culpability of the Jewish elite contravening many Jewish customs and laws to create the trial of Jesus, yet with loophole after loophole emerging to give surface credibility to the trial though they knew it was not God’s will for them to kill Jesus – and so they tricked the Romans into doing it.  Analogously Jesus’ temple tantrum story is absurd as the temple was huge and had guards to prevent just such a disturbance.  The temple incident is just a way of connecting Jesus to the death by Rome as an enemy of the state because the Jewish leaders weren’t allowed to kill him.

Paul, who “taught nothing among us but Christ and him crucified,” made a major qualification that should leap out at the reader and said if Christ is not raised your faith is in vain and you are still in your sin (1 Cor 15:17).  But how could that be if the cross paid the sin debt in full?  Paul means something else here, which makes sense because nowhere in the Old Testament does it speak of inherited sin.  Paul obviously means Christ in you/the mind of Christ etc. being welcomed as a holy possession to help you battle Satan’s temptations (Christ being the resistor of Satan par excellence), but then Paul doesn’t have in mind sin as sin-debt paid in full by substitutionary atonement.

Just as Luke-Acts show the parallel deaths of “Jesus-Forgiving Stephen,” and “soldier at the cross (“this man was innocent”)-Paul’s conversion” as seeing the condemned innocent, each Gospel also has internal parallel lives connecting the life of Jesus to figures using Hebrew Scripture Haggadic Midrash and mimesis of Greek poetry.  See Price HERE.  This is part of the reason to hear Plutarch’s Parallel Lives here, but I will talk more of that below. So, if Paul’s conversion is invented in Acts and prior to the account in the epistles, here is a possible model (Price on Paul’s conversion):

4. Paul’s Conversion (9:1-21)

As the great Tübingen critics already saw, the story of Paul’s visionary encounter with the risen Jesus not only has no real basis in the Pauline epistles but has been derived by Luke more or less directly from 2 Maccabees 3’s story of Heliodorus. In it one Benjaminite named Simon (3:4) tells Apollonius of Tarsus, governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia (3:5), that the Jerusalem Temple houses unimaginable wealth that the Seleucid king might want to appropriate for himself. Once the king learns of this, he sends his agent Heliodorus to confiscate the loot. The prospect of such a violation of the Temple causes universal wailing and praying among the Jews. But Heliodorus is miraculously turned back when a shining warrior angel appears on horseback. The stallion’s hooves knock Heliodorus to the ground, where two more angels lash him with whips (25-26). He is blinded and is unable to help himself, carried to safety on a stretcher. Pious Jews pray for his recovery, lest the people be held responsible for his condition. The angels reappear to Heliodorus, in answer to these prayers, and they announce God’s grace to him: Heliodorus will live and must henceforth proclaim the majesty of the true God. Heliodorus offers sacrifice to his Saviour (3:35) and departs again for Syria, where he reports all this to the king. In Acts the plunder of the Temple has become the persecution of the church by Saul (also called Paulus, an abbreviated form of Apollonius), a Benjaminite from Tarsus. Heliodorus’ appointed journey to Jerusalem from Syria has become Saul’s journey from Jerusalem to Syria. Saul is stopped in his tracks by a heavenly visitant, goes blind and must be taken into the city, where the prayers of his former enemies avail to raise him up. Just as Heliodorus offers sacrifice, Saul undergoes baptism. Then he is told henceforth to proclaim the risen Christ, which he does.

Luke has again added details from Euripides. In The Bacchae, in a sequence Luke has elsewhere rewritten into the story of Paul in Philippi (Portefaix, pp. 170), Dionysus has appeared in Thebes as an apparently mortal missionary for his own sect. He runs afoul of his cousin, King Pentheus who wants the licentious cult (as he views it) to be driven out of the country. He arrests and threatens Dionysus, only to find him freed from prison by an earthquake. Dionysus determines revenge against the proud and foolish king by magically compelling Pentheus to undergo conversion to faith in him (“Though hostile formerly, he now declares a truce and goes with us. You see what you could not when you were blind,” 922-924) and sending Pentheus, in woman’s guise, to spy upon the Maenads, his female revelers. He does so, is discovered, and is torn limb from limb by the women, led by his own mother. As the hapless Pentheus leaves, unwittingly, to meet his doom, Dionysus comments, “Punish this man. But first distract his wits; bewilder him with madness… After those threats with which he was so fierce, I want him made the laughingstock of Thebes” (850-851, 854-855). “He shall come to know Dionysus, son of Zeus, consummate god, most terrible, and yet most gentle, to mankind” (859-861). Pentheus must be made an example, as must poor Saul, despite himself. His conversion is a punishment, meting out to the persecutor his own medicine. Do we not detect a hint of ironic malice in Christ’s words to Ananias about Saul? “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).

The purpose of the law wasn’t to teach you right from wrong but to open your eyes by making sin sinful beyond measure to circumcise the fleshly from your heart.  God wanted a contrite heart, not animal offerings (psalm 50:8; Hosea 6:6; psalm 51:16; etc). 

So, with Gamaliel, Paul not a student in the regular sense, since Gamaliel taught tolerance of Christians while Saul/Paul converted him, but rather as masters of polysemy.  Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures meaning a spectrum from substitutionary atonement to Moral/Religious influence death like Socrates.  In this way Paul boasted he would say anything to win converts, being a Jew to the Jews and a gentile to the gentiles. 

Mark

Narrative misdirection is an ancient literary technique where the writer leads the reader along to think one event is the climax, whereas what is really going on is to be found elsewhere.  For example, in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex Oedipus’s discovery that he is the murderer of Laius (around lines 1180–1200) feels like the peak, as the prophecy seems fulfilled.  The deeper point emerges in the aftermath—his self-blinding and exile (lines 1400–1500). The play’s focus isn’t just the revelation but Oedipus’s acceptance of his fate and his transformation from king to outcast. Sophocles misdirects by letting the audience think the mystery’s solution is the end, while the real weight lies in the human cost and self-awareness that follow.  For example, Mark satirizes Paul’s claim about the importance of the resurrection, briefly mentioning it with no resurrection appearances – since the soldier at the cross is saved before the resurrection.

This technique is also utilized in the bible.  For example, in the Old Testament Jonah’s survival in the fish’s belly (Jonah 2) feels like the story’s peak, resolving the crisis of his disobedience.  The real climax is in Jonah 4, where God confronts Jonah’s anger over Nineveh’s repentance. The book ends abruptly with God’s question about compassion (v. 11), leaving the focus on Jonah’s failure to grasp divine mercy (recall Matthew’s allusion to the sign of Jonah), not his miraculous rescue.  In the New Testament with The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32): The younger son’s return and the father’s celebration (v. 24) seem to resolve the story with reconciliation.  The true focus is the older son’s resentment (v. 25–32) and the father’s plea for unity. The parable ends without resolving the older son’s response, pointing to God’s inclusive love and human reluctance to accept it.

Mark says Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many.  This is sometimes thought of as referring to substitutionary atonement.  But who is the captor?  Is it God and his wrath?  Is it Satan?  The issue is God ransoming man from man’s captivity of Satan’s influence. God historically frees his people time and again from bondage, not God holding man hostage since psalm 49:7 notes it can’t be to God: “Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life; there is no price one can give to God for it.” Sin was an evil entity to Paul.

John the Baptist, who Jesus called the greatest among men and whose humiliating death anticipates Jesus’s more humiliating death and contradicts Josephus, anticipates Jesus’ own ignoble death as a criminal because God’s especially beloved agapetos was given a more tortuous but analogous death to the arch enemy of the Jews Haman.  God gave his most beloved and righteous man and the world turned on him in the worst possible way.

In the Old Testament, the prophet Jeremiah is a strong example of this. He was called by God to speak truth to Judah’s corrupt leaders and people, warning them of impending judgment. Despite his righteousness and fidelity to God’s message, he faced relentless hostility—mocked, beaten, imprisoned, and nearly killed (Jeremiah 20:7-10, 26:8-11, 38:6). The ruling class and populace turned on him for his uncompromising stance, much like John the Baptist’s fate for condemning Herod’s sins.  God is depicted as warning the people of Judah through Jeremiah about impending judgment if they did not repent from idolatry, injustice, and disobedience. When they failed to heed these warnings, the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 587 BCE—resulting in the destruction of the Temple and the exile of many Jews to Babylon—is presented as divine punishment (Jeremiah 25:8-11, 52:12-30). The text explicitly links this catastrophe to their refusal to listen to Jeremiah and other prophets (Jeremiah 7:24-26, 44:4-6).  If you can imagine a crime so horrendous that the temple cult would be rendered of no effect in its wake, it would be the world turning on God’s beloved favorite Jesus.

In ancient Greek literature, Socrates parallels this pattern. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates describes himself as a gadfly sent to awaken Athens to moral truth. His relentless questioning of the city’s elites and exposure of their ignorance led to his trial and execution in 399 BCE. The ruling class, feeling threatened, orchestrated his death, similar to the dynamics against Jesus and John.

Each case shows a righteous figure—divinely inspired or philosophically driven—rejected and persecuted by a world unwilling to face its own flaws. If there was a sin the world shouldn’t be forgiven for, it’s what they did to Jesus, which invalidates the temple cult. 

With the Lord’s Supper, Mark has taken a story from Paul where Jesus was alone on the night he was delivered over by God and turned it into a collective meal showing he all along knew he was to die. And, Mark expanded it into a narrative of Jesus repeatedly emphasizing that he would die and be raised, but the disciples didn’t get it and so got violent at the arrest.  Mark’s Jesus comes to see he didn’t need to be brutally tortured and die in order for God’s plan of salvation to be realized (Gethsemane; Hebrews 5:7 “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”)  Jesus thought he didn’t need to fully die to fulfill God’s plan, but to “fully” show the horror the world had laid on God’s beloved, we see Jesus being condemned to death causing remorse in Judas, for instance.

The highly sophisticated literary technique of Mark contrasted with a “less educated” syntax seems to have been intentionally written in a lower Greek, a commonplace style like Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer to pay homage and be consistent with the common Greek which Mark’s OT scriptures were written in.  The Koine Greek of the Septuagint was a commonplace, everyday form of Greek, not a high literary style. It was the vernacular language of the Hellenistic world, used widely for communication, trade, and administration. While the Septuagint’s translators aimed to convey the Hebrew Scriptures accurately, their Greek reflects a practical, accessible style with some Semitic influences, rather than the polished, classical Greek of literary elites like Plato or Sophocles.

The Gospels’ idea of a crucified figuring facilitating a change of mind and belief so obviously comes from Plutarch’s Parallel lives and the account of the crucified Cleomenes III that it seems impossible to date Mark in the first century: In Mark the soldier sees Jesus as a paradigmatic soldier following order despite terror (the cry of dereliction).  In Luke, the soldier notes his culpability in executing an innocent man.  In Matthew, the soldier is terrified at God’s might.  In John, the soldier dispels swoon interpretations by showing Jesus was really dead.  Mark satirizes Paul in that the resurrection is almost an afterthought with no resurrection appearances like Paul has – the resurrection being more important than the cross for Paul.  It seems unlikely Mark is pre-Plutarch as the moral/religious influence cross of the synoptics must be mimesis from the end of Plutarch’s life of Cleomenes and in fact the gospels reflect much of Plutarch’s innovation of form: Focus on Character and Moral Example; Anecdotal and Vivid Storytelling; Non-Strict Chronology; Didactic Purpose; and in the case of Luke/Acts parallel structure (the death of Jesus parallels the forgiving death of Stephen):

And a few days afterwards those who were keeping watch upon the body of Cleomenes where it hung, saw a serpent of great size coiling itself about the head and hiding away the face so that no ravening bird of prey could light upon it. 2 In consequence of this, the king was seized with superstitious fear, and thus gave the women occasion for various rites of purification, since they felt that a man had been taken off who was of a superior nature and beloved of the gods. And the Alexandrians actually worshipped him, coming frequently to the spot and addressing Cleomenes as a hero and a child of the gods (Plutarch, Parallel life of Cleomenes, 39:1-2).

Plutarch seems to be a key figure, such as Mark’s Jesus saying there is an exoteric parable approach for the masses and an esoteric truth for the inner circle (Mark 4:11-12). Carrier comments:

Near the end of the first century, around the same time the Gospels were being written, the Greek scholar Plutarch honored Clea, a priestess of the mysteries of Isis, with a treatise about her religion entitled On Isis and Osiris. In this he explains why her cult had adopted a certain belief about the life and resurrection of Osiris, in the “true” account reserved for those who, like her, were initiated into its secrets. He said the real truth was that Osiris was never really a historical person whose activity took place on Earth, as public accounts portrayed him to be. Osiris was, rather, a celestial  being, whose trials and sufferings took place in outer space just below the moon, where death and turmoil reign. Thence Osiris descends every year, becomes incarnate by assuming a mortal body of flesh, and is killed by Set (in Greek, Typhon, the Egyptian analog to Satan). Then he is resurrected—literally undergoing, Plutarch says, an anabiôsis, a “return to life,” and a palingenesia, a “regeneration” (the same word used of the resurrection in Matthew 19:28). From there Osiris ascends back to heaven in glory. That means there were public stories that portrayed the death and resurrection of Osiris as taking place on Earth, in human history; these also imagined him descending to rule the underworld. But, Plutarch explains, those stories disguised the true teachings reserved for those of sufficient rank. “You must not think,” he says, “that any of these tales actually happened.” No, we “must not treat legend as if it were history at all.” Gods like Osiris were never really “generals, admirals, or kings, who lived in very ancient times” only to become gods after death; to the contrary, they were always celestial deities in some form, whether living as gods far above, or as demigods invisibly “in the space about us,” carrying “the prayers and petitions of men” up from Earth into outer space, and transporting divine “oracles and gifts” back from those same stellar reaches to the earth below. Accordingly, Plutarch reminds Clea, “the holy and sacred Osiris” does not rule “beneath the earth” as the ignorant public thinks, but “is far removed from the earth, uncontaminated and unpolluted and pure from all matter that is subject to destruction and death.” As Plutarch further explains in that same treatise, “that part of the world” subject to “destruction is contained underneath the orb of the moon,” whereas all the real “relations and forms and effluxes of the god abide in the heavens and in the stars” above. That’s how Osiris can become incarnate, die, and rise back from the dead every year. This wasn’t happening down here in Earth history; it was happening in the distant skies above. So those public myths were all a disguise. Osiris did not rule the dead from the underworld, but from the celestial realms above; and to maintain that reign he dies and rises cosmically every year, not once upon a time on Earth. Which means he was never really a historical pharaoh. And Egyptian records are continuous enough that we can confirm there indeed never was a historical Osiris. So we know the “gospels” of his deeds on Earth were mythical. Only his cosmic death and resurrection were “real” to his priesthood. Just as Plutarch said. Carrier, Richard. Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ (p. 31-32). Pitchstone Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The death of Socrates according to Plato is like the impaled just man in the Republic whose death is preferable to an unjust life because it makes society’s inconspicuous sinful nature conspicuous and hence is the catalyst to transform society.  Socrates’ last words in the Phaedo are to offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the poison.  On the one hand this is thankfulness for release from the prison (sema) of the body (soma), and on the other hand it is a moral influence death.  And it worked.  Civilized society no longer executes someone for being a gadfly.

This is also reflective of interpretations of Mark’s use of Isaiah 53.  For substitutionary atonement theorist it means substitution.  But there are many other readings that fit the moral influence model.  One is the nations of the world coming to see how poorly they treated Israel.  Many Jewish interpretations of Isaiah 53 support this view. The “suffering servant” as Israel could symbolize the nations of the world recognizing their mistreatment of the Jewish people, who endured suffering and persecution. In this reading, the servant’s vindication (Isaiah 53:10-12) reflects a future where the nations acknowledge Israel’s role and God’s covenant, seeing their past hostility as unjust. Verses like 53:5 (“he was wounded for our transgressions”) are often understood as Israel bearing the consequences of others’ sins, with the nations later awakening to this truth. This aligns with traditional Jewish exegesis, such as Rashi’s, emphasizing Israel’s collective suffering and eventual redemption.

The whole sacrificial system is being rethought in recent literature.  Certain Jewish scholarship has the idea that the horrific death of the scapegoat reflects getting people to consider the effects of their sin, animal sacrifice being otherwise done humanely.  Moreover as I note in my first Robyn Walsh essay, recent scholars like Andrew Rillera and Gary Anderson note the sacrificial system wasn’t substitutionary at all.

So, died for our sin debt to be paid for, or died for our sins to become conspicuous so our eyes will be opened and can repent – the world turned on God’s agapetos and gave him an analogous but worse death than the arch enemy of the Jews Haman: Jesus being God’s word/law incarnate/personified as a wonder working sinless, novel and authoritative interpreter of the law (e.g., you have heard it said, but I say …) who uses that law to refute the devil and those under the devil’s influence (eg., the devil entered Judas).

Ehrman navigates these issues calling Luke the Maverick gospel where Luke-Acts is unique in having a non-atonement repentance model, whereas Mark and Matthew are substitutionary atonement. See Ehrman here:

Breaking the law was meant to open people’s eyes, like the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened by breaking god’s one law at the time, like later the world broke the body of Jesus, the law incarnate and blinded Paul having his eyes opened to Jesus after the forgiving death of Stephen. 

The problem for Ehrman is we also see this non-atonement model in the gospel of Mark, where Jesus starts off the ministry with a call to repentance and the story of the rich young man who he told to follow the law and give everything to the poor to be saved.  Ehrman ad hoc invents sources, where literary invention and freedom of an author make more sense: as though Mark couldn’t have seen the call for repentance and the story of salvation of the rich young man at the beginning of his gospel contradicted what Ehrman wrongly sees as Mark’s substitutionary cross/resurrection bias!  And as I said this moral influence death resurfaces in the conversions of the soldiers at the cross – who is also the key to unlocking John’s gospel because there Christ’s death is shown by the soldier piercing Jesus not to be a swoon death.  The quick death of Jesus, like the hurried baking of the unleavened bread to escape Egypt is a way Jesus thanks to God escaped the prolonged brutality of the cross, and so in this way the Gethsemane prayer was answered.

SOURCE CONTEXT:

Livesey thus invites us to a literary approach to the gospels and Paul’s letters, which clears rich new pathways. Here are some elements of the context:

The “Q” source, a hypothetical document in historical Jesus studies, is thought to contain sayings of Jesus shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark. Since Q is reconstructed from these shared texts, it primarily focuses on Jesus’ teachings, such as parables and ethical instructions, rather than narrative events.

Scholars generally agree that Q does not explicitly mention Jesus’ death, crucifixion, or resurrection. It lacks clear references to these events or any theological emphasis on them being necessary for salvation. Instead, Q portrays Jesus as a wisdom teacher or prophetic figure, emphasizing his sayings and ethical demands over a passion narrative or soteriological framework.

For example, passages attributed to Q (e.g., Luke 11:2-4, Matthew 6:9-13 for the Lord’s Prayer) focus on teachings about prayer, the kingdom of God, and moral behavior, with no direct allusion to crucifixion or resurrection. Some scholars argue Q might imply an expectation of vindication (e.g., in sayings about the Son of Man), but this is vague and not explicitly tied to resurrection or salvation through death.

However, the absence of these themes in Q is debated, as it depends on how one reconstructs Q and interprets its scope. The consensus leans toward Q being a sayings collection, not a narrative of Jesus’ death or resurrection, unlike the canonical Gospels.

This is not generally considered to be thought provoking for conventional “cross-resurrection salvation” reading of the New Testament because our other generally considered oldest source, the letters of Paul, is replete with the cross and Jesus’ death (“I resolved to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified”).  On the other hand, Pauline specialist Nina Livesey’s recent book invites us to consider the possibility of a date of the Pauline letters into the second century post 2^nd Jewish revolt: The Bar Kokhba Revolt took place from 132 to 136 CE.  Mark seems to use Paul, Matthew seems to use Q and Mark, and Luke seems to use Q, Mark, and Matt. 

Dr. Markus Vinzent notes the 10 letter collection of letters perhaps pseudonymously attributed to Paul that Marcion had seem to be redacted to produce the 14 canonical letters attributed to Paul.  Irenaeus was the first to show knowledge of the pastorals and Hebrews.  Our first evidence is Marcion’s 10 letter collection because we don’t have the canonical collection by that time. There seems to be evidence of two collections Marcion was working with as earlier, the Deutero-Paulines and seven Paulines.  The order of the 7 Pauline texts seems to be the same in the canonical ones. 

The canonical redactors put a Pauline letter between each of the Deutero-Paulines to make them seem like they fit as part of the larger collection.  Marcion’s collection has one section where women are to be subjugated to men: Ephesians.  This contradicts his seven Pauline epistles, and so should be earlier than Marcion.  The canonical redactors added the idea that women should be subjugated to men into Colossians – it’s not there in Marcion.  For the Marcionite Paul, Paul says the law says women are subjugated to and should be taught by men, but the Law is no longer valid.  The canonical redactors introduce the subjugation of women into the canonical letters, and thus they invented the idea of Paul we have today.  The authenticity of the seven Pauline letters of Marcion are disputed by Livesey following the critique of such readers as the Dutch Radical School and Hermann Detering, and she shows certain Pauline attack points like the critique of circumcision more naturally fit post Bar Kokhba revolt than mid first century.  The seven-letter group of Marcion’s letter collection may pre-date Marcion, but it may not do so by very much time.  All that is really established is regarding Marcion’s ten letter collection seven form a distinct group attributable to one author, which in no way establishes by how much time this precedes Marcion or if this goes back to an historical Paul. 

And Paul seems legendary, e.g., if the Pauline letters are pseudonymous Paul might just be an idealized figure representing the Old Testament prediction that at the end of days/the age a prophet would bring the message of God to the pagans (echoing the apocalyptic overtones of the Bar Kokhba revolt); also, Paul is cast as a chief persecutor of the church who becomes its hero second only to Jesus: what an amazing apologetic about the truth and converting power of the faith!.  We should attend carefully to Livesey’s analogy of the pseudonymous letters of Plato and Hugo Mendez’s analysis of the forged epistles of John. The canonical gospels fit the canonical Paul because they were redacted that way, just as Marcion’s gospel fits Marcion’s collection of Pauline letters.     

We thought previously in this blog series how Mark, Matthew and Luke’s reference to the Olivet discourse (In Mark 13) seems to reference the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and so among other reasons would date the gospels into a hundred years after the supposed death of Jesus (if placing his death in the age of Pilate is right).  Some scholars speculate that Q might indirectly reference Roman authorities in sayings about persecution or judgment (e.g., Luke 12:11-12, Matthew 10:17-18), but these are general and do not name Pilate specifically. The consensus is that Q does not mention him.

As I noted previously, Hermann Detering and others argue for a significantly later date for the composition of the Gospel of Mark than the mainstream scholarly consensus, which typically places it around 65–75 CE. Detering proposed that Mark was written no earlier than 136 CE, after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE). His argument is primarily based on his analysis of Mark 13 (the “Synoptic Apocalypse” or “Olivet Discourse”), which he considered an independent literary unit reflecting the historical context of the Bar Kokhba Revolt rather than the First Jewish-Roman War (66–74 CE). He suggested that this chapter, and by extension the Gospel, was composed in response to the events of the early 2nd century, particularly the revolt’s aftermath.  Detering contended that there is no explicit evidence of Mark’s existence until the mid-2nd century, with the earliest clear references appearing in Irenaeus (ca. 180 CE). He questioned whether Justin Martyr (ca. 150 CE) knew the Synoptic Gospels, suggesting Justin’s “Memoirs of the Apostles” referred to other gospel-like literature, not Mark specifically

I tried previously to show how a moral-influence death of Jesus like the soldier in Luke recognizing Jesus as innocent is actually more fundamental to the New Testament message than substitutionary atonement theology. After all, how does a child in Africa being punished for a murderer in Chicago serve Justice? Price notes Luke addresses his Gospel and Acts to “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1), suggesting a person of high status, or a symbolic name (“lover of God”) for a broader audience.  Taken internally for Luke-Acts, a specific historical figure might be intended given the honorific “most excellent” (used for officials like Felix in Acts 23:26).  If Luke-Acts has a late date this could be referring to Theophilus of Antioch who was born around 120 and died 183-190 CE.    Luke’s gospel is first mentioned around 160-70 CE by Irenaeus.  No one quoted it earlier than that.  It’s common apologetic practice to identify the earliest point a gospel could be, e.g., 70 CE for Mark, and dating it as close to that date as possible since that is closest to the life of Jesus.

No gospel narrative is quoted by the apostolic fathers and some think they seem to have an apocryphal appearance and not authoritative.  The genre is similar to ancient Hellenistic romances like “Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe.”  Such novels were most prominent in the second century and had instances of character escaping and surviving the cross.  I’ve also noted previously that the Gospels are probably not earlier than the turn of the second century because the theme of the dead Jesus converting the soldier at the cross imitates the death of Cleomenes at the end of Plutarch’s parallel lives of Cleomenes.  The Gospels also seem to reflect some of the style innovations of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives.

Talbert noted that elements of Luke-Acts seem to reflect the second century apologists like Irenaeus claiming they got their sources from eyewitnesses, unlike the Gnostics who might have been hallucinating with their special revelation.  Luke’s gospel also reflects elements of the 2^nd and 3^rd century infancy gospels attesting to the “divine brat” Jesus. 

As we noted previously following Ehrman, Luke-Acts doesn’t have a substitutionary atonement theology, and so seems to be modifying previous writings such as the Pauline letters, Mark, and Matthew to make this more explicit and bring it in line with deathless Q.  For Luke Jesus’ death is exemplary moral influence theology, but doesn’t take on a life of its own and create a “sacrifice appeasing the wrath of god” theology so prevalent in the ancient world.

There is no evidence as Ehrman thinks that the material unique to Matthew was from a special source, anymore than the material unique to Luke.  It looks like the evangelists just invented them.  There are parables unique to Luke that are complete short stories – often with a central character wondering “what shall I do?  I will do so and so …”  Luke also has a tendency to interpret his parables before he tells them.  Luke Acts seems to use 2^nd Maccabees, Euripides’ Bacchae and Josephus. 

All in all, as this series of posts have shown, the Gospels and letters may be entirely too late to function as reliable sources about the historical Jesus.  Sarah Rollens shows the simplistic nature of Q may represent an early source contrasting to the sophistication of the gospels, but as she also shows we need to be skeptical because the form and content are so reflective of the job nature of the Q writers it seems particularly difficult to sort out the content from the author.

There seems to be a Q source that we find in Luke and Matthew (Luke’s being more primitive), while not necessarily overly informative about the historical Jesus at least testifies to the original climate in which materials about Jesus were circling.

Sarah Rollens notes this argument only really pertains to the Q document, as the Gospels and Acts reflect a more sophisticated production. She writes:

Regardless of where one falls on the question of the historical Jesus proper, the topic of “scribal Galilee” and the early Jesus movement is, to my mind, only relevant to Q, because when we turn to the later gospels, we are dealing with cultural expressions of a translocal movement that have lost much of their regional specificity and that have begun to show marks of more elite forms of literature. What this means, then, is that Q provides us with some of the most relevant data for understanding scribal Galilee close to the time and place of the historical Jesus and the bureaucratic perpetuation of ideas in his name.

She argues what we see in Q reflects mid-level urban administrative/bureaucratic scribal activity in both content and form:

Not only does Jesus spout numerous ethical teachings in Q, but in general his wise sayings valorize “clarity of perception,” “guidance,” “good speech,” and “moral examples,” which reflect, as one Q expert notes, “the self-consciously ‘public’ nature of the scribal pursuit [in these sorts of texts].” In other words, the content of Q reflects precisely the scribal, intellectual values that other sapiential, instructional literature does. There are other details in Q’s content that suggest a distinct kind of administrative scribal competency. In particular, many of the examples that Q uses throughout Jesus’s sayings are topoi drawn from the world of urban administration.… It is not impossible that people from a different social location would be familiar with such phenomena, but to use them so consistently and with so little reflection on their appropriateness seems to suggest we are dealing with authors who saw these sorts of situations on a day-to-day basis and who considered these scenarios the most appropriate ones with which to argue…[T]his discussion has focused on examples that reveal the unstated assumptions of the authors or the experiences that they (apparently) assume to be self-evidently persuasive. Many of these happen to be scenarios with which village scribes would have been intimately familiar… [In terms of form], Q’s authors decided to write this down, they drew on their repertoire of knowledge for what official documents and records looked like… [Bazzana] has shown that specific lexical items in Q reflect the “highly formulaic documents” that administrative officials regularly penned…The compositional techniques of the document, as we have noted, betray habits associated with mundane administrative writing: drafting petitions, creating contracts, recording inventories of storage caches, and the like.

Given the early dating of Q, we have an interesting window here into how the Jesus movement developed:

Gousopoulos finds the latter option compelling, which thus provides us with an instance of administrative figures, connected translocally to their counterparts in other towns and villages, sharing aspirations to own and (presumably) to read elite literature. Against the idealized picture of how the Jesus movement spread in the Four Gospels, Acts, and Eusebius’s idealized narrative, the collaboration, communication, and spread of ideas through preexisting scribal networks simply make more sense than any other romanticized idea of apostles transporting texts around as part of their “mission” in first-century Roman Palestine… As I have shown, Q uses a cache of imagery and literary techniques that makes sense originating among middling administrative figures. We should thus abandon the idea that illiterate peasants kept the Jesus traditions alive simply by telling stories for decades until the gospels were written. Rather, we can agree with Douglas Oakman that “Jesus of Nazareth entered the pages of history due to the work of sympathetic scribes.” …In short, village administrators truly might have been some of the most well-connected people in the social landscape of the Roman Empire—akin to the axial figures and mediating intellectuals that we often find facilitating the spread of social and political movements throughout history. The movement of ideas and people through these sorts of networks makes much more sense than simply taking over the gospel myths themselves and concluding that we are dealing with radical itinerant preachers or a cadre of charismatic wonder-workers. Yes, that is what the texts are about, but we are not obliged to accept this as a viable historical explanation for the development of the tradition.

I wonder if Jesus’ original followers were really fisherman, or if this vocation was invented for them to embody the imperative to be “fishers of men.” Rollens provides us a window into the reception history about who traditionally wanted to preserve ideas about Jesus. Recall, Q is a hypothetical lost document preserved as the material common to Matthew and Luke that does not come from Mark.

CONCLUSION

So, the question of whether Mark preceded Paul’s letters or Paul’s letters preceded Mark is not the right question. Ancient literary networks are where writings circulated and were added to and revised. Ancient literary networks existed where writings were circulated, revised, and expanded upon through collaboration, copying, and adaptation. These networks often involved scholars, scribes, philosophers, and communities who shared texts across regions, leading to dynamic textual traditions. Below are key examples of such networks in the ancient world, focusing on how texts were circulated, added to, and revised:

1. Homeric and Epic Traditions (Ancient Greece, 8th–5th Century BCE)

• Network Description: The Iliad and Odyssey, attributed to Homer, were part of an oral and later written tradition circulated by rhapsodes (professional reciters) and scribes across Greek city-states. These epics were performed at festivals, copied by scribes, and adapted in various regions.
• Circulation and Revision:
  • Oral poets modified stories based on audience preferences, local traditions, or political contexts, leading to variations in the narratives.
  • By the 6th century BCE, written versions emerged, but scribes and scholars (e.g., the Alexandrian librarians like Zenodotus and Aristarchus) edited and standardized texts, creating recensions. For example, the Alexandrian scholars collated manuscripts, removed interpolations, and annotated variants.
  • The Homeric Hymns and Cyclic Epics (e.g., the Epic Cycle) were supplementary works by different poets, expanding the Trojan War narrative, showing how the network added to the core stories.
• Evidence: Papyri fragments from Egypt (3rd century BCE) show textual variations, and ancient scholia (commentaries) document editorial interventions.

2. Ancient Philosophical Schools (Greece and Rome, 4th Century BCE–2nd Century CE)

• Network Description: Philosophical schools like the Platonic Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, and Stoic and Epicurean communities circulated texts among students, disciples, and correspondents across the Mediterranean.
• Circulation and Revision:
  • Plato’s dialogues were copied and commented on by students like Aristotle and later Platonists. Some dialogues (e.g., Timaeus) were heavily annotated, with Middle Platonists adding interpretations.
  • Aristotle’s lecture notes were edited and compiled by his successors (e.g., Theophrastus) at the Lyceum. Later, Andronicus of Rhodes (1st century BCE) reorganized Aristotle’s works, shaping the corpus we know today.
  • Epicurus’ letters and maxims were copied and circulated among Epicurean communities, with followers like Philodemus adding commentaries. Papyri from Herculaneum (e.g., the Villa of the Papyri) preserve fragments of these texts with revisions.
• Evidence: The Corpus Aristotelicum shows signs of editorial layering, and Philodemus’ scrolls (recovered from Herculaneum) include annotations and expansions.

3. Jewish Scribal and Religious Networks (Second Temple Period, 5th Century BCE–1st Century CE)

• Network Description: Jewish scribes, priests, and sects (e.g., Pharisees, Essenes) circulated texts like the Hebrew Bible, apocryphal works, and sectarian writings across Judea, Alexandria, and the Diaspora.
• Circulation and Revision:
  • The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was copied by scribes, with texts like the Torah and Prophets revised for clarity or theological emphasis. The Septuagint (Greek translation, 3rd–2nd century BCE) adapted Hebrew texts for Greek-speaking Jews, with additions like the Wisdom of Solomon.
  • The Dead Sea Scrolls (2nd century BCE–1st century CE) reveal a network of Essene scribes who copied biblical texts, wrote commentaries (pesharim), and composed new works like the Community Rule. Variants in scrolls (e.g., different versions of Jeremiah) show active revision.
  • Pseudepigrapha (e.g., 1 Enoch, Jubilees) were circulated and expanded by Jewish and later Christian communities, with new sections added over time.
• Evidence: The Dead Sea Scrolls contain multiple textual variants, and the Septuagint’s differences from the Masoretic Text highlight regional adaptations.

4. **Greco-Roman Literary and Scholastic Networks (Hellenistic and Roman Periods, 3rd Strategikon (2009) by Plutarch describes such a network in Parallel Lives:

• Network Description: Plutarch, a 1st–2nd-century CE biographer, drew on a network of historians, philosophers, and earlier biographers whose works were circulated in libraries and schools across the Roman Empire. His Parallel Lives, which includes Cleomenes III, was itself copied, read, and commented on by later scholars.
• Circulation and Revision:
  • Plutarch cites sources like Polybius, Phylarchus, and earlier accounts of Cleomenes, showing how he accessed a network of texts preserved in libraries (e.g., Alexandria, Pergamum).
  • His works were copied by scribes and circulated in Rome, Athens, and beyond. Later, Byzantine scholars (e.g., Photius) and Renaissance humanists revised and annotated his texts, adding glosses or translations.
  • The Lives inspired new works, such as Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, showing how the network extended over centuries.
• Evidence: Manuscripts of Plutarch’s Lives (e.g., 10th-century Byzantine codices) show marginalia and textual variants, indicating scribal revisions.

5. Early Christian Textual Networks (1st–4th Century CE)

• Network Description: Early Christian communities circulated letters (e.g., Paul’s epistles), gospels, and apocryphal texts across the Mediterranean, from Rome to Antioch to Alexandria.
• Circulation and Revision:
  • The New Testament texts were copied by hand, with scribes introducing variants (e.g., the longer ending of Mark 16:9–20). Some communities added apocryphal gospels (e.g., Gospel of Thomas) to their canons.
  • Church Fathers like Origen and Jerome commented on and revised texts, creating recensions (e.g., the Vulgate). Theological debates led to selective copying or suppression of certain texts.
  • Monastic scriptoria became hubs for copying and annotating texts, with monks adding scholia or harmonizing gospel accounts (e.g., Tatian’s Diatessaron).
• Evidence: Papyri like P66 (c. 200 CE) show early gospel variants, and Codex Sinaiticus (4th century) includes corrections by multiple scribes.

6. Indian and Buddhist Textual Networks (South Asia, 5th Century BCE–5th Century CE)

• Network Description: Buddhist sutras and Indian philosophical texts (e.g., Upanishads, Mahabharata) were circulated orally and later in writing by monks, scholars, and traders across India, Central Asia, and China.
• Circulation and Revision:
  • Buddhist texts like the Pali Canon were memorized and recited by monks, with regional councils (e.g., the Fourth Buddhist Council) standardizing versions. Written versions in Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese show variations.
  • The Mahabharata and Ramayana were expanded over centuries, with regional recensions adding episodes or moral teachings. Scribes and poets contributed new sections, such as the Bhagavad Gita.
  • Texts were translated and adapted as Buddhism spread (e.g., Chinese translations of sutras by Kumarajiva), with local interpretations added.
• Evidence: Palm-leaf manuscripts from Gandhara (1st century CE) show Buddhist sutras with variants, and Dunhuang cave texts include translated and annotated versions.

Common Features of Ancient Literary Networks

• Mobility of Texts: Texts traveled via trade routes, conquests, or pilgrimage (e.g., the Silk Road for Buddhist texts, Roman roads for Christian texts).
• Collaborative Authorship: Many works were collective, with scribes, commentators, or translators adding to or editing texts (e.g., scholia in Homeric manuscripts).
• Material Constraints: Papyrus, parchment, and palm leaves limited copying, but errors or intentional changes created textual diversity.
• Institutional Support: Libraries (Alexandria, Pergamum), monasteries, and schools were hubs for copying, preserving, and revising texts.
• Cultural Adaptation: Texts were revised to suit local languages, religions, or politics (e.g., Septuagint for Greek-speaking Jews, Chinese sutras for Confucian audiences).

So, when we see the multiple purposes of the soldier at the cross in the 4 gospels, this suggests the gospels were in circulation and being created and revised in relation to one another more than just “Matthew copied 90 percent of Mark.”

If the Apostle Paul were a fictional character, certain details in the Book of Acts could emphasize his fictional nature by aligning with literary tropes, exaggerated characteristics, or narrative conveniences often found in fiction rather than historical accounts. Here are some elements from Acts that could contribute to this perception:

1. Dramatic Conversion Story (Acts 9:1-19): Paul’s sudden transformation from a fierce persecutor of Christians to a devoted apostle after a blinding light and a divine encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus feels like a classic literary device. The abruptness, the supernatural elements (a voice from heaven, temporary blindness), and the complete reversal of character resemble a plot twist designed to captivate an audience rather than a nuanced, gradual change typical of real-life conversions.
2. Larger-Than-Life Resilience (Acts 14:19-20, 16:22-24, 27:41-44): Paul survives numerous extreme hardships—being stoned and left for dead, enduring shipwrecks, beatings, and imprisonments—yet continues his mission with almost superhuman endurance. For example, in Acts 14:19-20, he is stoned and presumed dead but rises and continues preaching the next day. This resilience could read like a fictional hero’s invincibility, crafted to inspire awe rather than reflect realistic human limits.
3. Convenient Escapes and Miracles (Acts 16:25-28, 12:6-11): Paul’s escapes from danger often involve miraculous or highly convenient events, such as an earthquake freeing him from prison in Philippi (Acts 16:25-28) or his survival of a shipwreck where all passengers safely reach shore (Acts 27:44). These incidents mirror literary devices where the protagonist is saved by divine intervention or improbable coincidences, enhancing the story’s drama.
4. Eloquent Speeches and Rhetorical Skill (Acts 17:22-31, 26:2-23): Paul’s speeches, like his address at the Areopagus in Athens, are polished, philosophically sophisticated, and tailored to his audience. They read like carefully crafted monologues, possibly reflecting the author’s rhetorical goals rather than spontaneous historical dialogue. A fictional Paul might be given such eloquence to serve as a mouthpiece for theological ideas.
5. Symbolic Role as a Bridge Between Jews and Gentiles (Acts 13:46-47, 15:12): Paul’s mission to unite Jewish and Gentile Christians aligns perfectly with the theological agenda of Acts. His role as a pivotal figure who consistently navigates cultural and religious divides could feel like a constructed archetype—a hero designed to embody the early church’s universalist ideals—rather than a complex, flawed historical person.
6. Vague or Missing Personal Details: Acts focuses heavily on Paul’s actions and mission but provides little about his personal life, inner struggles, or mundane details (beyond brief mentions, like his tentmaking in Acts 18:3). This selective focus could suggest a character created to serve a narrative purpose rather than a fully rounded historical figure with a documented personal history.
7. Exaggerated Influence and Reach (Acts 19:10, 28:30-31): Paul’s ability to spread Christianity across vast regions, influence entire cities (e.g., Ephesus in Acts 19:10), and preach unhindered even under house arrest in Rome (Acts 28:30-31) might seem overly idealized. A fictional character could be written with such outsized impact to symbolize the triumph of the gospel, rather than reflecting the more limited reach of a real individual.

Acts of the Apostles as a 2nd-century harmonizing narrative, not a reliable historical source. It reconciles conflicting strands of early Christianity (e.g., Pauline vs. Petrine) by creating an idealized Paul, further muddying the historical waters. This aligns with his broader thesis that early Christianity evolved from Hellenistic Judaism through Gnosticism to Catholicism, with Paul as a constructed figure to bridge these stages.

These elements could be interpreted as literary flourishes if viewed through a fictional lens. They emphasize drama, symbolism, and narrative convenience, which are common in storytelling but less so in unembellished historical records.

Richard Pervo, a biblical scholar, argues that the Book of Acts is largely fiction because he believes its primary purpose was not to record accurate history but to serve theological and ideological goals, particularly to legitimize Pauline gentile Christianity. His key arguments, drawn from works like The Mystery of Acts and Profit with Delight, include:

Literary Genre: Pervo contends that Acts resembles ancient fiction or historical novels more than historiography. Its lively narrative style, inclusion of miracles, and entertaining elements align with the conventions of ancient novels, which prioritized storytelling over factual accuracy. He notes that while ancient historians like Herodotus included entertaining or miraculous accounts, Acts lacks the critical rigor of historians like Thucydides.

Historical Inaccuracies and Contradictions: Pervo highlights discrepancies between Acts and other sources, notably Paul’s own letters. The Paul depicted in Acts often conflicts with the Paul of Corinthians or Thessalonians, suggesting Luke, the presumed author, shaped Paul’s image to fit a heroic, multicultural narrative rather than historical reality. Acts also contradicts itself (e.g., on Jesus’ ascension) and shows limited acquaintance with Paul’s letters, undermining its reliability.

Theological Agenda: Pervo argues that Luke wrote Acts to promote gentile Christianity as the legitimate heir of Israelite religion, not to document history. The text’s focus on Paul (especially in chapters 21–28) and its portrayal of a harmonious early church serve to “paper over” conflicts and justify a particular Christian identity. This agenda-driven narrative overrides historical precision.

Late Dating: Pervo dates Acts to 110–120 CE, later than traditional estimates, arguing that its reliance on Josephus and its anti-Jewish tone reflect a second-century context. This late composition suggests Luke was removed from the events described, relying on constructed narratives rather than firsthand accounts.

Lack of Corroborating Evidence: Pervo asserts that Acts displaced rival accounts, leaving no independent documents to verify its claims about early Christianity. This absence, combined with its novelistic features, leads him to conclude that Acts is more creative fiction than history.

Pervo acknowledges Acts’ literary and theological value but insists that “deriving history from Acts is an enterprise fraught with difficulty,” likening it to a “beautiful house” that historians cannot “responsibly live” in. Critics, like Marion Soards, counter that Pervo overstates the novelistic elements, as ancient histories often included entertaining or miraculous accounts, and that Luke’s preface (Luke 1:1–4) signals historical intent. Nonetheless, Pervo’s work has influenced New Testament studies, with scholars like Burton Mack noting its impact on understanding Christian origins

As for the letters, The Dutch Radical Critics, a group of 19th-century scholars primarily associated with the University of Leiden, concluded that all of Paul’s letters were pseudonymous based on a skeptical, historical-critical approach to the New Testament. Their views, articulated by figures like Allard Pierson, Abraham Dirk Loman, and Samuel Adrianus Naber, were rooted in a broader rejection of traditional Christian narratives and an emphasis on naturalistic explanations for the development of early Christianity. Here’s why they reached this conclusion:

Late Dating of the Letters: The Dutch Radicals argued that all Pauline letters were written in the second century (c. 100–150 CE), long after Paul’s supposed lifetime (c. 5–62 CE). They believed Christianity itself emerged later than traditionally thought, as a syncretistic movement blending Jewish, Hellenistic, and Gnostic elements. Since the letters reflect developed theological concepts (e.g., Christology in Colossians or ecclesiastical structure in the Pastorals), they saw them as products of a later era, not the mid-first century.

Lack of External Corroboration: The Radicals emphasized the absence of early, independent evidence for Paul’s existence or his letters outside Christian tradition. They noted that no non-Christian sources (e.g., Roman or Jewish records) mention Paul, and early Christian references (e.g., Clement of Rome, Ignatius) are either too late or ambiguous. This led them to view Paul as a legendary or fictional figure, with the letters attributed to him as later fabrications.

Literary and Theological Inconsistencies: They highlighted variations in style, vocabulary, and theology across the Pauline corpus. For example, the Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Timothy, Titus) differ markedly from Romans or 1 Corinthians in tone and content, suggesting different authors. Even the “authentic” letters (e.g., Galatians, Romans) were seen as too rhetorically polished or theologically advanced to reflect a single historical figure. The Radicals argued these differences pointed to multiple authors writing under Paul’s name to address diverse second-century issues.

Pseudepigraphy as a Common Practice: The Radicals viewed pseudepigraphy as a widespread literary convention in antiquity, where texts were attributed to authoritative figures to gain credibility. They compared Paul’s letters to other pseudonymous works, like the letters of Plato or the apocryphal writings of the early church. They argued that early Christians created a “Paul” persona to unify disparate communities and legitimize theological developments, much like other religious movements used revered names.

Mythical View of Early Christianity: The Dutch Radicals rejected the historicity of much of the New Testament, including the Gospels and Acts. They saw Paul’s dramatic conversion (Acts 9) and missionary exploits as legendary, akin to mythological hero narratives. Without a historical Paul, the letters attributed to him were necessarily pseudonymous, written by later Christians to retroactively construct an apostolic foundation for the faith.

Influence of Hellenistic and Gnostic Ideas: The Radicals noted that Pauline theology, especially in letters like Ephesians or Colossians, incorporates Hellenistic concepts (e.g., cosmic Christ, mystery religions) and proto-Gnostic ideas (e.g., knowledge as salvation). They argued these reflect second-century debates rather than the Jewish apocalyptic context of a first-century Paul, suggesting the letters were crafted to address later theological controversies.

Skepticism of Traditional Chronology: The Radicals challenged the traditional timeline of early Christianity, arguing that the rapid spread of the church and the sophistication of its literature were implausible within a few decades of Jesus’ death (c. 30 CE). They proposed that the Pauline letters were part of a gradual literary development, written by anonymous authors to create a unified Christian narrative.

Hermann Detering, a German pastor and scholar aligned with the Dutch Radical Criticism tradition, denied the historicity of Paul, arguing that the figure of Paul was a literary construct rather than a historical person. His views, articulated in works like The Fabricated Paul (1995) and Paulusbriefe ohne Paulus? (1992), extend the Dutch Radicals’ skepticism by concluding that all Pauline letters are pseudonymous and that Paul himself is a fictionalized figure. Below are the key reasons for Detering’s denial of a historical Paul, based on his writings and the Dutch Radical framework, along with critical context:

Reasons for Detering’s Denial of a Historical Paul

Inauthenticity of All Pauline Letters:

Detering argued that none of the 13 New Testament letters attributed to Paul were written by a historical Paul, building on the Dutch Radicals’ claim that they are second-century products. He pointed to internal evidence, such as variations in style, vocabulary, and theology across the letters (e.g., the Pastoral Epistles’ ecclesiastical focus versus Romans’ theological depth), as indicating multiple authors. Even the “undisputed” letters (Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) were seen as too rhetorically polished or theologically advanced for a mid-first-century figure, suggesting later composition.

He noted “literary seams” and inconsistencies, such as conflicting portrayals of Paul’s relationship with congregations or vague descriptions of opponents, which he interpreted as evidence of fictional composition rather than genuine correspondence.

Lack of External Evidence:

Detering emphasized the absence of early, non-Christian sources corroborating Paul’s existence or activities. The Dutch Radicals dismissed early Christian references like 1 Clement (c. 95 CE) and Ignatius’ letters (c. 110 CE) as either too late, inauthentic, or unreliable. Without external validation, Detering argued that the Pauline letters and Acts lack a historical anchor, making Paul’s existence questionable.

He contended that the earliest mentions of Paul’s letters (e.g., by Marcion or Irenaeus) appear in the second century, which he saw as suspiciously late for a figure supposedly active in the 50s–60s CE.

Identification with Simon Magus:

Detering proposed a radical hypothesis that “Paul” was a rebranded version of Simon Magus, a Samaritan figure described as a sorcerer and heretic in Acts 8:9-24 and later Christian texts like the Pseudo-Clementines. He argued that the Pseudo-Clementines’ attacks on Simon Magus were veiled critiques of Paul, reflecting early Christian conflicts. Detering suggested that Simon, a Gnostic teacher, was the original figure behind the Pauline tradition, later domesticated into “Paul” by Catholic editors who forged epistles to align his teachings with orthodoxy.

He supported this by noting similarities between Simon’s and Paul’s profiles in apocryphal texts (e.g., both associated with Rome, opposition to Peter), arguing that the church rehabilitated Simon’s legacy by transforming him into the apostle Paul.

Second-Century Context and Marcionite Influence:

Detering placed the composition of the Pauline letters in the second century, particularly within Marcionite or Gnostic circles. He argued that Marcion, a mid-second-century heretic who compiled a collection of Pauline letters (the Apostolikon), may have authored or heavily influenced them. The letters’ theological themes, like the rejection of the Jewish Law and emphasis on a transcendent God, align with Marcion’s teachings, suggesting they were crafted to support his theology.

He posited that the Catholic Church later redacted these letters to counter Marcionite heresy, creating a fictional Paul as a unifying apostolic figure. This explains why Galatians, for instance, emphasizes Paul’s independence from Jerusalem apostles, which Detering saw as a Marcionite polemic against Jewish-Christian authority.

Mythical Framework of Early Christianity:

Following the Dutch Radicals, Detering viewed early Christianity as a second-century syncretistic movement blending Jewish, Hellenistic, and Gnostic elements, rather than a first-century historical phenomenon. He argued that Paul, like Jesus, was a symbolic figure created to embody theological ideals, not a real person. His dramatic conversion in Acts 9 and missionary exploits were seen as legendary narratives, akin to mythological hero stories, designed to legitimize Christian origins.

He suggested that the Pauline letters served as theological propaganda, projecting a unified Christian identity onto a fictional apostolic past, possibly to counter rival sects like the Marcionites or Ebionites.

Literary and Polemical Nature of the Letters:

Detering argued that the Pauline letters exhibit characteristics of pseudepigrapha, such as abnormal length, formal structure, and rhetorical flourishes, which differ from typical ancient letters. He saw them as literary constructs, not genuine correspondence, designed to address second-century debates (e.g., circumcision, the Law) rather than first-century church issues.

He highlighted Galatians’ protest against dependence on Jerusalem apostles (Gal 1:1, 1:16) as a second-century Marcionite argument, later softened by Catholic editors, indicating a fictionalized Paul tailored to later controversies. Detering’s arguments build on the Dutch Radical School’s skepticism, particularly the works of Abraham Dirk Loman and G.A. van den Bergh van Eysinga, but take them further by denying Paul’s existence entirely.

Price proposes that the Paul of the epistles is a sanitized version of earlier figures like Simon Magus, a 1st-century gnostic teacher, whose teachings were adapted by Marcion, a 2nd-century heretic. He suggests that Marcion or his followers may have shaped or even authored epistles like Romans to align with their theology, later co-opted by emerging Catholic orthodoxy. For example, Price questions whether Romans was written to a Roman church that didn’t yet exist, implying it could be a 2nd-century Marcionite composition. This challenges the traditional timeline and authorship tied to a 1st-century Paul.

The name “Paul” (from Latin Paulus, meaning “small”) may have been symbolically chosen to represent humility or a “lesser” apostle, as seen in 1 Corinthians 15:9, where the author calls himself the “least” of the apostles. This, combined with the epistles’ alignment with later theological debates (e.g., Marcionism vs. Catholicism), supports his view that Paul may be more a literary or theological archetype than a verifiable historical person.

For further related analysis, see my Blogging Index On The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus Here!