38. Mark 7:15-16, cf. Matthew 15:10-11
39. Matthew 8:10; Luke 7:1-17
40. Galatians 1:11-12. NOTE: Even though the Gospels had not yet been written, if any of the material contained in them suggesting that Jesus had argued against the Mosaic Law existed (even in an oral form) at that stage, it surely would have been known both to Paul and the previous “Jewish-Christian” leadership in Jerusalem. We must wonder what, if anything, the Jewish-Christians actually believed about a person named “Jesus.” Given the dramatic liberties taken in the Gospels by inserting teachings into the mouth of Jesus, and creating from whole cloth narrative settings for those teachings, along with their use of Hebrew scriptures as a source of information, rather than recent history, we can be confident that very little, if anything, was known with clarity about a historical Jesus in the late 1st Century.
41. Galatians 2:11-13
42. Galatians 2:1-5, 11-12 NOTE: If he existed, Jesus is not likely to have been concerned with issues like Kosher diet. His was not the first mission to the Gentiles, as was Paul’s, where such issues would have naturally arisen, and the earliest Christians not only seem to have observed Kosher dietary restrictions, as a group, they fiercely opposed Paul for challenging them.
In order to claim that the Apostles ever agreed with him, Paul suspiciously says that he once “met privately” with them and “presented” to them the Gospel that he preached “among the Gentiles,” according to Galatians, Chapter 2. However, he does not assert that they agreed with him on the subject of circumcision, but only states that Titus, his uncircumcised Gentile associate, “was not forced to be circumcised.” In other words, they may have requested or demanded it, but they simply did not force it to happen. Paul seems to hang his hat entirely on the fact that they did not compel one of his disciples, named “Titus,” to undergo circumcision. Had Paul been able to say that they overtly agreed with him, surely, he would have said so explicitly. Reading Galatians carefully, Paul makes no such claim. Indeed, had the Apostles agreed with him, the later efforts of James to “spy on the freedom” of Paul’s followers, and their continued general opposition to Paul on these matters, would make no sense. Paul instead relies alone upon the fact that his companion “Titus” was allowed to keep his foreskin in order to suggest support for his anti-circumcision message that, in fact, he had supposedly already obtained. Paul also seems to rely on the fact that Peter (he can name no one else) likewise was known to “eat with Gentiles” (a rather vague claim) – that is, at least until men from James showed up. Again, rather than any agreement with Paul’s anti-Torah message, Paul cites examples of their alleged hypocrisy in act. And again, this is something rather dubious, if not laughable, coming from a man who boasted to being and acting like “all things to all men”—precisely in order to win their support.
However, in Acts, Chapter 15, we are told by a third-person narrator that James explicitly agrees with Pauclass="underline" the Gentiles should be given a pass on the matter of circumcision and the full range of Kosher dietary restrictions. If this is true, then the reason why James would later oppose Paul on these very issues is rendered completely inexplicable.
Galatians reports that the Council of Jerusalem, where Acts says that James had agreed with Paul, why, then, did James later “spy on” the freedom of Paul’s followers? Why did Paul have to oppose them so strongly? Why is Paul still arguing over these issues in his letter to the Galatians?
Stranger still, if James had explicitly endorsed Paul’s anti-Torah message, then why didn’t Paul report James’s agreement in his letter to the Galatians, even though he (reported the hypocritical behavior of Cephas), side with James in the later dispute recorded in Galatians? In turn, why doesn’t Acts report that same hypocritical behavior by Cephas? Indeed, why has Cephas, after his own vision (reported earlier in the Book of Acts), sided with James in the later dispute recorded in Galatians?
In direct contradiction to the green light Acts acclaims that James gave to Paul’s anti-Torah message, we are told that Paul himself still circumcised his own follower Timothy after the Council of Jerusalem “because of the Jews who lived in the area.” (Acts 16:3) Apparently, Paul himself contradicted his own message in his behavior. The man who was “all things to all people” was indeed something of a chameleon.
In any case, Acts dramatically amplified the claims Paul makes in Galatians, and in so doing makes entirely inexplicable any later confrontation over these same issues, a confrontation far more credibly reported in Galatians. This section of Acts seems designed to smooth over this very dispute—and it is pure fiction.
43. Romans 3:27-29
44. Galatians 1:11-24
45. Voskuilen, Thijs, and Sheldon, Rose Mary, Operation Messiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity (2008, Edgware, Middlesex, UK, and Portland, Oregon, USA: Vallentine Mitchell), and for wider context, see also, Sheldon, Rose Mary, Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome (2005, New York: Routledge) and Austin, N.I.E., and Rankov, N.B., Exploratio: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople (1995, New York: Routledge).
46. James 1:17
47. James 1:22
48. James 1:27
49. James 2:10
50. James 2:14-17
51. James 2:19
52. James 4:1
53. James 5:1-5
54. Although its Greek may have been polished by later curators, a persuasive argument that the Letter of James is among the earliest New Testament material and pre-dates the Gospels (along with the authentic letters of Paul), see, Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Real Jesus (1996, HarperOne), p. 121.
55. St. Augustine, Letters 28, 40, 72, 73
56. NOTE: There are certainly differences between the theological perspectives in Paul’s letters and the Gospels—and between the Gospels themselves—but they certainly all share with Paul the same basic position on the Mosaic Law and peace with the Roman government. Moreover, the differences are easily explicable once it is understood that each was writing for a different type of audience. In Matthew, for example, while Jesus’s defense of virtue as part of salvation, e.g., Matthew 25:31-46, is slightly different from the idea of salvation by faith alone found in Paul, both writers agree that Jewish purity laws and Kosher dietary restrictions are no longer necessary and emphasize the virtue of obedience to Roman authorities and paying taxes, instead. It does, however, seem clear that the Gospel writers preserved some of the language of the earlier “Jewish-Christian” movement that flatly contradicts many of the other assertions and actions attributed to Jesus. If the Gospel of Matthew reports that Jesus commanded obedience to the whole of the law at Matthew 5:17-20, it also reports that Jesus attacked Kosher dietary laws at Matthew 15:1-20, and that Jesus made the Pharisees angry with his liberal views on the Sabbath at Matthew 12:1-8. The Gospels may have been written by different authors, as some have surmised, or, possibly, by one author customizing his narratives for different audiences from a learned position of authority. In either case, there is little doubt that the Gospel of Matthew appears to have been aimed at a Jewish audience familiar with Hebrew scripture while Luke’s account seems to have been written to persuade the more Hellenized or Gentile reader. Compare the slight differences between the justifications given by Jesus for the commandment to “love your enemy” in each of these Gospels: