A closer look at Paul’s letter to the faithful in Galatia reveals an interesting detail. He complains that “not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.”
Paul wrote in Greek, but in Hebrew literature the term “Kittim” might denote not only Greeks but any foreigners from across the Mediterranean Sea, including, according to some scholars, Romans. So, intriguingly, it is possible that “Titus,” Paul’s Gentile convert who famously avoided circumcision was a Roman. Since Paul does not cite any other examples of converts allowed to keep their foreskins, Paul’s friend “Titus” may have been a special exception for some reason we are not told.
Paul’s complaint about Christian authorities “spy[ing] on the freedom” of his own community makes no sense if the “freedom” he spoke of was not generally opposed by the earlier “Christians.” There was, therefore, a hostile division among Christians in the 1st Century.
The implication that spies could somehow make Paul’s followers “slaves” suggests these spies were backed by the Christian leadership who could enforce their position. Paul boasts, however, that he didn’t give in to them even for a minute. It is clear that he is establishing his own oppositional Christian leadership.
Indeed, Paul fearlessly belittles the existing authorities: “As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message.”
Paul cannot explicitly say that rival “Christians” agreed with him on the subject of circumcision, but he does write that “they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.” (Paul does not tell us if it was ever agreed that they be allowed to stay uncircumcised, however.)
If Paul’s innovations had been acceptable, even theoretically, then his emotional objections and complex arguments would not have been necessary. Despite the fact that Paul himself boasts of his own chameleon-like behavior, he is frustrated that on the issue of Kosher diet, often put simply as “eating with Gentiles,” his fellow Apostles are inconsistent. Sometimes they lapse back into Kosher ways. In his letter to the Galatians, he chastises them for this:
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belong to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. (37)
Paul also admonishes Cephas for being cowed by James’s men (the circumcision advocates) to give up eating with Gentiles. Cephas feared them, Paul tells us. So, it seems, did the other “Jews,” including Paul’s associate Barnabas (Joseph).
While Paul does claim to have “presented” the “gospel” that he preached to James and the Christian leadership while “meeting privately” with them, he does not spell out precisely what he said. Significantly, Paul does not say that Cephas and James or anyone else ever agreed with him or backed down from their own positions, even after he confronted the Apostle (Peter) “to his face,” as the later Book of Acts claims.
When it comes to observing strict Jewish customs, James and Peter are clearly with the rebel Zealots’ camp and the “sectarians” who preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls at the end of the first Jewish War—the very same camp that Jesus himself denounces throughout the Gospels.
Two Old Men Disputing (St. Paul and St. Peter), by Rembrandt (1628)
How could this conflict among Christians arise so soon after Christ settled all those issues, according to the Gospels?
The writings attributed to Paul have no symbolic references to fish, as would the Gospels and other writings in the New Testament written after the Flavians’ victorious prosecution of the Jewish War.
Paul was probably writing before the Flavian dynasty, during the rule of Nero and perhaps his predecessor, Claudius. The Gospels, written in the Flavian era, are equally filled with examples of Jesus criticizing traditional Jewish practice, however, from strict Sabbath observance to Kosher diet.
In the Gospels, Jesus displays contempt for contemporary notions of religious “purity” by publicly associating himself with “unclean” persons and objects, including prostitutes, tax collectors and Roman coins, all anathema to Jews at the time. He even famously declares, in direct contradiction of Jewish Law, “Listen to me, everyone. Understand this: Nothing outside of you can make you ‘unclean’ by going into you. It is what comes out of you that makes you ‘unclean’”—a direct challenge to Kosher laws. (38)
Jesus even commends the faith of a presumably uncircumcised Roman soldier as exceeding that of any Jew. (39) And, just as in Acts’ accounts of Paul’s ministry, Jesus’s foils in the Gospels are invariably Jewish religious authorities, such as Pharisees, scribes, and priests—and never Roman authorities.
However, rather than citing any of Jesus’s words or experiences to make his point, or simply reminding his “Christian” opponents of Jesus’s own strong anti-Torah message (if it existed), Paul instead insists he learned his gospel from no man at all as he confronts the hardliner James, who, for his part, never seems to have heard of any of Jesus’s ideas on the subject, either. Paul claims to have received his own distinct “gospel” directly from personal revelation. He even goes on to stress how little contact he has had with any Christians before preaching this new radical message. (40)
In the letter Paul writes to the Galatians describing his early travels he contradicts the account given in the Book of Acts in some important ways. As a first person narrative from correspondence, however, the Galatians account should be given more historical weight, even if Paul’s own credibility is questionable.
In any case, Acts itself, as we shall see in Part II, suggests that the apostles carried on a Kosher lifestyle well after Jesus supposedly renounced it.
Had Jesus actually expressed the Pauline sentiments he is credited with saying in the Gospels, then James and the existing Christian community could never have disagreed with Paul in the first place.
Paul would not have needed to “oppose” Peter (Cephas) “to his face” (41) about such matters. Likewise, James, the Lord’s “brother,” would never have felt any need to “spy on” Paul’s “freedom in Christ,” as Galatians reports. (42) Paul would only have had to quote Jesus himself to settle the dispute. Yet he never does. Nor does his opponent, James, the supposed “brother” of Jesus, show any awareness of the revolutionary aspects of Jesus’s gospel.
Paul’s anti-Torah message is so pronounced that modern-day Protestants ascribe to the idea that faith by itself, whatever one’s sins, is enough to earn salvation, citing Paul as support for this fundamental interpretation, especially passages like this:
Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? (43)
Before he converted to “Christianity,” Paul says that he “persecuted the Church and tried to destroy it.” (44) His zeal for traditional Judaism motivated him, he says, to attack what then must have been a “Christian” movement of observant Jews. Paul’s problem with them at that point was clearly not the Kosher lifestyle, but their messianic fervor. Following his famous vision of the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, when he claims the “scales fell from his eyes,” Paul was driven to join the movement he had once fought so bitterly—something of a public relations coup for these Jewish “Christians” at the time, no doubt.