THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 4/8: Paul and the Schools)
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One thing I note in these posts on Paul is that Paul seems to be briefly summarizing complex theological themes worked out in the Gospels and Acts that would baffle an average letter reader unless they had a sophisticated understanding of the Gospel story as a background, like Gospels imitative nature of the crucifixion narrative or the sophisticated, corrupt legal presentation in the trial of Jesus by the Jewish elite. Hebrews 5:7 does the same sort of commentary with the Gethsemane story in Mark.
The theology of the resurrection is much more developed in Paul than Mark, suggesting a later date. For example, in Mark we see Jesus as the resistor of Satan par excellence, and later we see it is because Jesus is the Word incarnate, not for example with the experts at the letter of the law and word with the corrupt trial before the Jewish elite, but the spirit of the law refuting Satan with scripture. Paul develops this theme by proposing a resurrection where the mind of Christ/Christ in you indwells in the believer to supercharge you to resist sin. Paul thus has a divination base of the life of the believer.
In Matthew Satan is an expert in the word and tries to use it for his own ends, but Jesus as the word incarnate not only knows the letter of the law but also the spirit of it. Satan takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Satan quotes Psalm 91:11-12, twisting it to suggest Jesus should test God’s protection by performing a spectacular act to prove his divine favor. The Jewish elite at the corrupt trial of Jesus do the same thing. Jesus responds to Satan, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” He cites Deuteronomy 6:16, correcting Satan’s misuse of scripture by emphasizing that testing God’s faithfulness is contrary to trust and obedience. Matthew 4:5-7 is the key instance where Satan cites scripture, selectively using Psalm 91 to manipulate Jesus into a reckless act. Jesus refutes it with another scripture, clarifying that true faith does not demand God prove himself through unnecessary tests.
I noted with Luke that the theme of the cross is getting people to be brought face to face with their vileness in the unjust death of God’s beloved, which would transform your disposition from worldly/fleshly to Godly. Paul too emphasizes this theme to transform his congregation:
“For although I grieved you with my letter, I do not regret it. Although I did regret it (for I see that that letter caused you grief, though only briefly), 9 now I rejoice, not because you were grieved but because your grief led to repentance, for you felt a godly grief, so that you were not harmed in any way by us (2 Corinthians 7:8-9).”
2 Corinthians 7:8-9 highlights how godly sorrow, though painful, is “holy” because it leads to repentance and spiritual growth. This theme is woven throughout the Bible, from David’s repentance to the Ninevites’ turnaround in the Old Testament, and from Peter’s restoration to the prodigal son’s return in the New Testament. Each example shows grief as a catalyst for transformation when it aligns with God’s redemptive purposes. Price gives the example that the widow exclaims that Elijah must have come to disclose her past sins (“You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance,” 1 Kings 17:18), which is a literary backdrop for when the Samaritan admits Jesus has the goods on her as well (“He told me all that I ever did,” John 4:39).
Pointing out someone’s inconspicuous faults shames them to grow and improve, like having a reader see themselves in the people that turned on Jesus, a literary experience that functions like Aristotle’s catharsis but more like shame. Works like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) use shame as a central mechanism. Hester Prynne’s public shaming (via the scarlet “A”) and Dimmesdale’s internal shame evoke a complex emotional response in readers, who may feel both empathy and discomfort. This can lead to a reflective process, akin to catharsis, where readers confront their own moral values or societal complicity in judgment. Similarly, Franz Kafka’s The Trial or Metamorphosis elicits shame by placing characters in absurd, degrading situations, prompting readers to grapple with existential guilt or societal alienation. The emotional weight of shame may not “purge” in the same way as catharsis but can provoke a transformative reckoning.
Satirical works, such as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729), use shame strategically to expose societal flaws. By presenting a grotesque solution to poverty, Swift shames readers into recognizing their complicity in social neglect. This differs from catharsis’s emotional release but serves a parallel function in stirring moral awakening through discomfort. In theater (the core of Mark is a Passion Play, which were popular in antiquity), works like Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children employ alienation techniques to make audiences feel shame for societal complicity in war or greed, rather than just pity for characters. Brecht’s “epic theater” avoids cathartic resolution, instead using shame to provoke critical reflection and action. Public shaming rituals in drama (e.g., the pillory scene in The Scarlet Letter or the trial in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible) mirror the communal exposure of tragedy, but the emotional effect is less about purging and more about confronting moral failure.
In ancient Greek culture, shame (aidos) was a moral emotion tied to honor and social expectations, as discussed by philosophers like Plato and in Homeric epics. However, it wasn’t framed as a dramatic effect like catharsis. Instead, shame was a social regulator, encouraging adherence to norms. In medieval Europe, literature like Dante’s Inferno placed real figures in hell to shame their actions, evoking a moral response in readers. This shares catharsis’s aim of emotional impact but focuses on judgment rather than purification. Works like St. Augustine’s Confessions or modern memoirs (e.g., Tara Westover’s Educated) expose personal failings to evoke shame in both the writer and reader, encouraging reflection on shared human flaws.
The concept of shame—encompassing disgrace, moral failure, or modesty—is prevalent through terms like bosh (Hebrew) and aischynē (Greek). These reflect themes similar to aidos in classical Greek thought, such as social propriety, moral correction, or reverence. While not directly analogous to Aristotle’s catharsis, biblical shame serves a transformative role, often prompting repentance or humility rather than emotional purging. In Genesis 3:7-10 after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve feel shame because their eyes are opened (implied by their awareness of nakedness and hiding from God), which aligns with aidos as a response to violating divine norms. In Ezekiel 16:36-63 Jerusalem’s unfaithfulness is likened to a shameful act, with God promising restoration after shame (bosh). This reflects aidos as a corrective emotion. With Proverbs 13:18 “Poverty and shame (qalon, disgrace) come to him who ignores instruction.” Here, shame serves a social and moral function, similar to aidos in Greek culture. Shame in the Old Testament often contrasts honor, mirroring aidos as a virtue tied to social respectability (e.g., Job’s loss of honor in Job 19:9 evokes shame).
Shame is both a negative consequence of sin and a positive call to humility or modesty, echoing aidos. In Romans 6:21 Paul speaks of things of which believers are now “ashamed” (aischynomai), reflecting moral shame. 1 Timothy 2:9 notes aidos as modesty aligns with Greco-Roman ideals of propriety, showing cultural overlap with classical Greek thought. In Hebrew Culture, shame (bosh, qalon) was a social and moral regulator, often tied to covenant fidelity (e.g., Israel’s shame for idolatry in Hosea 10:6). This parallels aidos as a communal virtue but is more explicitly tied to divine judgment.
By the time of the New Testament, Hellenistic culture influenced Jewish thought, and terms like aidos (1 Timothy 2:9) or aischynē reflect Greco-Roman concerns with honor and shame, akin to classical aidos. Biblical shame often serves a didactic or corrective purpose, urging repentance or adherence to God’s will (e.g., 2 Chronicles 7:14: humility and repentance after shame). Another related term is entropē (ἐντροπή), meaning “respect” or “shame before others,” used in 1 Corinthians 6:5 and 15:34 to urge moral reflection.
When we think of Passion Plays such as Christ’s passion or the death of Osiris or Romulus, such plays/dramas are aimed to evoke intense emotions—grief, awe, joy, or fear—through vivid portrayals of divine struggles or triumphs. For example, the suffering and resurrection of Osiris in Egyptian rituals mirrored human experiences of loss and hope, fostering emotional release (a concept Aristotle later called catharsis in Greek tragedy). Many performances conveyed moral or cosmological lessons, illustrating the consequences of hubris, the importance of honoring the gods, or the inevitability of natural cycles. For example, Greek tragedies often explored human flaws and divine justice, prompting reflection. In some cases, audiences were encouraged to emulate the virtues or sacrifices of mythic figures. Audiences were meant to feel a shared connection to the divine narrative, purging personal sorrows or anxieties through collective experience.
A transformational story about a Jesus who was God’s most beloved (agapetos) messenger (angelos) would thus make sense with the destruction of 70CE or even later in the wake of Bar Kokhba. It would be invented/narrated “as though” God’s beloved messenger was unjustly tortured and killed by the Jews, and so God’s wrath was poured out on the temple in 70 CE and booted the Jews from their land after failed Bar Kokhba.
Price notes that the Gospel of Mark was probably written in Rome. It contains Latinisms like “centurion” even though it was written in Greek. It makes sense that it was the venerated gospel of Rome, since it is 90 percent preserved in Matthew and 60 percent preserved in Luke, so if it was not venerated by the big-time church in Rome it doesn’t make sense it was preserved unlike the Q document.
Price like Livesey thinks the original version of Mark seems to be Ur-Mark that was penned by Marcion and the gospel itself was circulated and expanded by his students into what we have today. Marcion thought some of the additions were okay so he thought it was fine for publication. Marcion’s materials often seem to be a re-write of Old Testament stories. Excluding the Torah commandments, Marcion thought a lot of the OT stories weren’t that bad and so retooled them for Jesus – which reflects the general Greco-Roman imitation practice of mimesis/ haggadic midrash.
Most think Mark is written in 70 CE citing such evidence as the Olivet Discourse in Mark 13 predicting the destruction of the temple during the Roman-Jewish war. Apocalypses which predicted the future because they were actually written after the fact were common in ancient literature. That tells us that Mark is probably not pre 70 CE, though an apocalyptic Jesus “may” have made such a prediction, and this correct prediction could have inspired post-temple Mark to write about Jesus. But while all of this suggests Mark is probably after 70 CE, it doesn’t tell us how much later, though apologists like an early date because it is closer to the historical Jesus. Apocalypses as a genre can be much later than the events predicted.
Mark can’t be later than 175-180 CE because Irenaeus is the first writer to show he knows the four gospels. Marcion was writing early in the second century. Our earliest references to Jesus by the church fathers are sayings they seem to recite from memory, not narratives. Students of Bultmann thought the gospels seemed apocryphal in nature. Detering notes that in the Olivet discourse heralding the end Mark may have taken his apocalypse by revising some leaflets (as Eusebius notes) handed out before the second fall of Jerusalem from the Bar Kokhba revolt, a Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire that took place from 132–135 CE, which Matthew also had and so revised Mark thinking the leaflets more original. They said there would be famines, pestilences, nations would go to war, earthquakes, etc. Mark and Matthew would then be late.
Price notes it’s possible that the socio-political tensions reflected in the Matthew’s Gospel could resonate with the circumstances leading to the revolt. Matthew’s emphasis on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy can be seen in light of the messianic fervor surrounding Bar Kokhba. The Gospel of Matthew contains themes of persecution (like in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:10-12), which could resonate with the experiences of Jews and Christians during and after the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The revolt led to severe repercussions for Jews, including Christians, in Judea. The failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt might have been seen by some Christians as divine judgment or as a sign pointing to Christian interpretations of eschatology and messianic prophecy, themes prevalent in Matthew.
Similarly with a late date of 1 Corinthians following Von Manen and Price, we seem to have a collection of “Pauline-sounding” ideas by different writers writing in role where each page seems to contradict the argument on the previous page,. Likewise, in Galatians, Paul says he didn’t get the core of the gospel through human sources but revelation, whereas in 1 Corinthians 15 he received the foundation of the faith (crucifixion/resurrection) from the apostles who came before him. In Corinthians, Paul seems first to be trying to prove Jesus rose from the dead, but then assumes the reader does believe that Jesus rose so what’s the problem in thinking we will rise too?
Price notes in 1 Corinthians, it is always arguing against itself: can women speak in the public assembly? Sure, as long as they’re veiled / no, they should keep quiet and ask their husbands at home. Should there be speaking in tongues? Yes, (e.g., ch 12) I (Paul) do it more than you do / no (e.g., ch 14), it’s a cause of stumbling for outsiders who think you’re crazy and is nothing much compared to love, go in that direction. Can you eat food originally sacrificed to idols? Yes, because if you’re as smart as I (Paul) am you know it’s just steak / no, even though these gods aren’t real demons are, and this food is demon steak and God killed thousands of people for doing that. Is it good to be celibate because the time is so urgent? Paul says yes, but he then says it’s good to be married. The resurrection discussion in chapter 15 seems to have 3 different agendas. Price comments
Though it is a patchwork quilt drawn from many sources and has suffered numerous interpolations and redactional glosses, the book as a whole is an attempt to provide a church order, much like the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the Nations. Titus and 2 Timothy are likewise not real letters but church manuals with Paul’s name attached. Walter Schmithals (Gnosticism in Corinth, 1971) observed how virtually everything in the document would make sense if the unifying thread of the issues addressed in 1 Corinthians was Gnosticism. Christian Gnosticism was a second-century phenomenon, but Schmithals argued that it must have begun already in Paul’s day, since 1 Corinthians seems to refer to it. But it seems more likely to me that 1 Corinthians itself stems from the late first or early second centuries. (Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (p. 324). Signature Books. Kindle Edition.)
This would make sense of letters originating in a religious school like Marcion’s. Price comments in a passage I will also address in later posts that all this reflects well the Old Testament notion of a school:
And though Schenke himself does not invoke the analogy of the schools of the Old Testament prophets, I believe the comparison is a helpful one. It invites us to understand the Pauline corpus, as Marcion did, as the private canon, the sectarian scripture, of a particular Christian body, the Pauline School in this case. This is much like the composite book of Isaiah, which contains not only the oracles of the original Isaiah of Jerusalem but also the deutero- and trito-Isaianic supplements of his latter-day heirs. As in the case of the Isaiah canon where (a la Paul D. Hanson) we find intra-canonical collisions (cf. Ernst Käsemann), so we find Pauline versus deutero-Pauline clashes here and there… Van Manen saw no reason to doubt the existence of Paul as an early Christian preacher, whose genuine itinerary he thought had been preserved in Acts, but he judged the so-called Pauline epistles to have as little direct connection to this early apostle as the so-called Johannine and Petrine writings have with their historically obscure namesakes. The epistles, Van Manen argued, display a universalizing and philosophizing tenor unthinkable for the apocalyptic sect pictured in Acts or the Gospels. Their greatest affinity was with Syrian Gnosticism. Nor did they represent the thinking of one theologian (the “Paulus Episcopus” of Pierson and Naber). Rather, in the Pauline epistles, we overhear intra-scholastic debates between different wings of Paulinism. Has God finally cast off the Jewish people or not? Does grace imply libertinism, as some hold? Do some preach circumcision in Paul’s name? Can women prophesy or not? Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (p. 77-78). Signature Books. Kindle Edition.
As I said in a previous article, Vinzent points to the sequence of Marcion’s epistles that agree with the canonical letter as being reflective of the canonical Pauline interpretation. They are not without order. In Marcion’s Galatians 5:21 we have a reference to : “the flesh is not inheriting the kingdom of heaven as I have said before.” The reference is to 1 Cor 15:50. Galatians is first in the Marcionite collection, but this reference agrees with the canonical collection as 1 Cor being earlier. This suggests Marcion has reordered a collection that reflects the traditional canonical ordering. But if Marcion altered the canonical order of the texts, why? It’s interesting Paul references Corinthians in Galatians but not saying where/that he is doing so, as though he assumes the Galatian audience would just know he is talking about the Corinthians letter. In other words, this seems to suggest an intended reader who has the entire seven letter collection of Marcion and have a sophisticated understanding of them, which points to fictive correspondence. The presence of the Paulines and Deutero Paulines, though they contradict each other at points, reflects well the Old Testament notion of a school.
Schmithals and other similarly noted that Philippians is a patchwork of three fragments, and so it would make sense as Livesey thinks the letters were born in a school and an assignment for students of writing in role as the character Paul from Acts which a teacher later circulated as a single document.
1 Corinthians also seems composite as we see what seems to be different authors writing in role as Paul. For one thing, Paul says “I decided to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2) and that the cross deals with sin (1 Cor 15:3).” But alternatively, Paul says “if Christ is not raised then your faith is futile and you are still in your sin (1 Cor 15:17).” On the one hand, the crucified Christ is the basic concept, whereas elsewhere the resurrection trumps it because if Christ is not raised God has not vindicated him against the charges of the world and more importantly the biblical idea is reflected that “if the dead are not raised we should eat, drink, and be merrily sinful for tomorrow we die (inferable from Ecclesiastes 8:15; Isaiah 22:13; Matthew 11:19 / Luke 7:34-36).” By contrast, Paul says: “So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31).” Similarly, Romans 9-11 (which Marcion lacks) seems to have 3 different themes/topics. The sermon on the mount likewise was never an individual sermon, it’s just an organizational principle.
Berman notes multiple different people seem to be conflated as Paul, and so in Philippians Paul is a Benjamite, but in Romans 16 he’s a Herodian. Paul claims to have fled from King Aretes in CE 37, but in 1 Cor 15 he says he was born out of time, perhaps not a contemporary of Cephas, James, etc. There are explicit contradictions, such as Paul in Galatians saying he learned nothing from the other apostles but through revelation from Jesus, yet in 1 Corinthians he says he received the religion from the apostles. In 1 Corinthians Paul is trying to convince people Jesus rose from the dead, but then assumes people believe that and tries to convince them they too will rise. In 1 Thessalonians we have the absurdity of Paul trying to explain to people the resurrection and life after death, as though he never taught that to them before.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16, Paul mentions the Jews who “killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets” and currently face God’s wrath, which some scholars see as alluding to their spiritual displacement or judgment, possibly linked to the destruction of Jerusalem or Bar Kokhba. This makes sense with addressing a pagan audience about the Jews Paul thought killed Jesus and agrees with Matthew’s point that Jesus’ blood is on Jewish hands and John in John 8:44 Jesus declares that the Jews have the devil as their father.
Similarly, we read:
“12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 the work of each builder will become visible, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. 14 If the work that someone has built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a wage. 15 If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple (1 Cor 3:12-17).”
As Jacob Berman notes, this idea of the temple within and setting fire to buildings seems to make the most sense if the temple is gone post 70 CE.
Next Time:
THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL PAUL (Part 5/8: Literary – Beyond the Historicism/Mythicism Debate)