douglas

I’m reading Barrie Wilson’s book “How Jesus Became a Christian (or via: amazon.co.uk)” and wanted to toss out a few of his ideas for comment. The book is written for a general audience, so I doubt there’s anything new from a scholarly perspective. Many of these points were familiar to me, but he does make some connections that intrigued my semi-knowledgeable brain:

• The four major Jewish movements that emerged after the destruction of the temple were The Jesus Movement (Ebionites), Gnosticism, Rabbinic Judaism, and the Christ Movement (Paul).
• There was an active “cover-up” by the Christ movement to snuff-out the Jesus movement beliefs, which eventually succeeded.
• Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who preached and followed Jewish law and would have been appalled by Paul’s “gospel.” The Ebionites where the rightful “heirs” to the gospel of Jesus.
• The Book of Matthew is, in some ways, a direct attack by the Jesus Movement on Paul and the Christ Movement.
• The primary role of the Book of Acts is to concoct a fictitious link between Paul and Jesus. In other words, Luke was trying to give Paul legitimacy that he otherwise did not have, nor deserve.
• There are parts of Acts that directly contradict what Paul claims in his epistles.
• The book of James is also a direct attack on Paul and his teachings.
• In general, when Paul speaks in his epistles of “some people” trying to pervert the gospel that he has taught, he is talking about representatives of the Jesus Movement.

Overall, Wilson approaches biblical history from the James Tabor “Jesus Dynasty” perspective (which probably explains Tabor’s endorsement of the book). Like I said, I doubt that any of these ideas are revolutionary to any of you, but I wonder if there’s anyone that would take issue with them? Frankly, I don’t see how you could, given the textual evidence.

douglas

Roger Pearse

Erm, textual evidence? The historical record either does not record these claims, or it contradicts them.

show_no_mercy

Since the Ebionites were still practicing Jews, they were also persecuted by the emerging Rabbinical Judaism.

This doesn't make sense. We don't know what "book of Matthew" the Ebionites used; if anything it would look closer to Mark, since our Matthew claims Jesus was born of a virgin and that Peter was the rock of the church. These two claims go against what we know about the Ebionites (Jesus got his superpowers from John's baptism, lost them on the cross, and James the Just was the true head of the church, not Peter).
This also sort of doesn't make sense. Paul met James (Galatians 1.19) personally. If what the Ebionites claim was true, then their meeting would have been a more significant event since James was the leader of the "Jesus movement".

bacht

Could you elaborate, that is, show which of Wilson's claims are contradicted by the historical record?

Transient

How do we know that this meeting ever took place or that it went as recorded?
Do we trust the info on it that we have in the bible?
Do we trust Paul or whoever wrote that stuff?
Paul sounds dodgey at best to me.

As an aside, when they were, at various times, patching the letters and books in the bible to make them more "appropriate" those doing it would have only been thinking a short distance ahead - not 2000 years with all this time and effort spent by average peasants with reading skills and fantastic communication networks.
They were fixing problems for their generation only I think and did not think that too many people would be examining their work as the vast majority would be too busy to read the originals even if they could access them which is doubtful.

douglas

I was referring to the textual evidence in the bible itself. For example, the bolded part of this section of Matthew....

... is a direct attack on Paul's position, as stated in Gallatians.

Wilson claims that this is evidence of a pissing match between the two camps.

Toto

See this thread on Barrie Wison's book.

I think that Wison and Tabor assume that the Jewish Jesus portrayed in the gospels is the original Jesus, but this is an assumption.

The alternative to this is that the Jewish elements were added or emphasized as anti-Marcionite additions or corrections to the original Christian message (whatever that was.) We can't really tell who is the rightful "heir" of Jesus, once you decide that the winners rewrote history.

Acts might have been written to give Paul legitimacy, but more likely to subordinate him to the proto-orthodox.

At one point I tried to look into the Desposynoi (also here), but quickly ran into a blank wall.

douglas

Thanks for the response. I think Wilson would argue that you only get "one side of the story" in Gal 1. Regardless, even if you take Paul's story as fact, his own description never says that James or Peter agreed with his position, just that he opposed them on the issue of Law.

show_no_mercy

As an aside, I'm always surprised when the Gospel of Thomas is not brought up in discussions about the Ebionites:

Roger Pearse

It's evidence, certainly. But Wilson would have to prove that it has the meaning he says it does before it would be evidence for his theory. At the moment it's speculation; and speculation not supported in antiquity by the holders of both texts.

Finding contradictions in a long text and then using them as 'evidence' for some theory of our own is a silly game. Try it on any long text -- you can always do it!