I’m not religious, but I think about this a lot. Like, if Jesus was real but Paul was just a grifter and not “divinely inspired” it explains away a lot of the weird new testament doctrine.
paul was an agent of rome sent to subvert and coopt jesus’ revolutionary anti-imperialist movement, beginning the process of transforming that message into one compatible with the ideological superstructure of the roman empire, a process that culminated with constantine and the council of nicaea after three centuries of murdering “heretics”
I think this theory is better if he wasn’t specifically sent, but just a guy saying tons of shit to be famous/wealthy/etc. and Rome allowed his words to spread because they were less confrontational. These things were the “systemic” defense of an existing base-superstructure system.
he started off as a pharisee, a member of the comprador regime directly persecuting the early christians before his nominal conversion. so i agree, i’m not saying paul was like a roman equivalent of a cia agent or something. but he was part of the system, as you say.
Pharisees weren’t really compradors. The actual compradors were the Sadducees. They were the ones who maintained the Second Temple and who collaborated with the Roman colonizers.
It doesn’t really work though, since Luke-Acts is very much a defense of Paul (though not without some differences) and is probably the most politicallly radical of the Gospels
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, unfortunately. I’ve read the Bible before but do not know enough about internal referencing to make any defense of my theory honestly. What does Luke defending him have to do with whether he was sent by Rome specifically or not?
I have no reason to doubt or argue any theory here, it just seems like you know something I don’t and I want to learn it.
Ok, so, what we know of Paul’s theology and life comes from 3 sources (more if we count outside the Bible with Clement 1 and the anti-Marcionite polemics (Marcion was an early Christian theologian who preached that Jesus was not the son of the Hebrew God but a “higher” god and threw out the entirety of the bible except Paul and a cut down Luke-Acts.)
Basically, what we know seems to be in direct opposition to Roman policy towards Jewish political movements of the time, and while Paul lead the Gentile church, he was himself Jewish. The Romans were not interested in co-opting Jewish millennial movements, and they were even less interested in allowing them to spread to Roman subjects or citizens. They had an uncompromising attitude to the “God Botherers” who adopted Judaism to a greater or lesser extent, confiscating their property and exiling them from cities.
This gels with Paul’s writings on the Roman Empire in his letters (It’s evil and bad and we’re gonna destroy it with the power of god, but don’t bring down the hammer on us, concentrate on building the community and keeping it unified, do a Utopian Socialism if you can but don’t get weird about it.) and the effects of his teachings, which were persecutions of the community (though not as much as later tradition might suggest) and at least one deadly riot put down by Roman Soldiers. Finally, of course, he was imprisoned, and probably executed, by Rome.
Luke is clearly a Pauline Christian, but is substantially more hostile to the Roman Empire than Paul’s muted opposition, and to the ruling classes in general. Luke is particularly hostile to the rich upper classes in the Empire, especially rich subject peoples that it clearly views as compradors. It is on the surface saying that the Empire is compatible with Christians, who are non-violent, pay taxes, are sometimes citizens etc, but then proceeds to tear apart almost every institution.
On the other hand, it’s fairly sympathetic to individual Roman officials, portraying Rome as an unjust system that even just men cannot avoid interacting with, and must do so on it’s terms, but without giving ground where rights or privilege can be demanded. Nevertheless it prepares early Christians for persecution.
You might ask, “Well maybe Paul is quieting down an already violent radical movement” but then why is he focusing on maybe a thousand already semi-pacifist Christians scattered over Asia Minor and the Levant when in Judea, which he avoids like the plague, there is a violent Zealot Revolution in the works and he is already a learned member of the specific sect it comes from. Why are you sending him to a group of people who hate him when he could march in and corrupt the guy’s that are about to fuck up an entire Roman Legion?!
There’s also the fact that most of Paul’s odder statements, like banning women from leadership, are not by him at all. Only about half his epistles are actually by him or his immediate inner circle.
FWIW, I don’t think Paul was a grifter, I think he was a former grifter who became a sincere convert after some weird shit happened to him, and unfortunately like Evrart in Disco Elysium he was just so slimy it drips off him onto the page.
personally i think the line between grifter and sincere convert is also quite blurry for this kind of thing. if someone’s paycheck depends upon a particular belief, in due time they’ll come to believe it sincerely. and then yeah, there’s paul and there’s the early paulist counterrevolutionary faction.
I’m not religious, but I think about this a lot. Like, if Jesus was real but Paul was just a grifter and not “divinely inspired” it explains away a lot of the weird new testament doctrine.
paul was an agent of rome sent to subvert and coopt jesus’ revolutionary anti-imperialist movement, beginning the process of transforming that message into one compatible with the ideological superstructure of the roman empire, a process that culminated with constantine and the council of nicaea after three centuries of murdering “heretics”
I think this theory is better if he wasn’t specifically sent, but just a guy saying tons of shit to be famous/wealthy/etc. and Rome allowed his words to spread because they were less confrontational. These things were the “systemic” defense of an existing base-superstructure system.
he started off as a pharisee, a member of the comprador regime directly persecuting the early christians before his nominal conversion. so i agree, i’m not saying paul was like a roman equivalent of a cia agent or something. but he was part of the system, as you say.
Pharisees weren’t really compradors. The actual compradors were the Sadducees. They were the ones who maintained the Second Temple and who collaborated with the Roman colonizers.
ah good point the pharisees were separatists, huh? to be fair, i didn’t really give this whole thing very much thought before i posted
It doesn’t really work though, since Luke-Acts is very much a defense of Paul (though not without some differences) and is probably the most politicallly radical of the Gospels
I’m not sure what you’re saying here, unfortunately. I’ve read the Bible before but do not know enough about internal referencing to make any defense of my theory honestly. What does Luke defending him have to do with whether he was sent by Rome specifically or not?
I have no reason to doubt or argue any theory here, it just seems like you know something I don’t and I want to learn it.
Ok, so, what we know of Paul’s theology and life comes from 3 sources (more if we count outside the Bible with Clement 1 and the anti-Marcionite polemics (Marcion was an early Christian theologian who preached that Jesus was not the son of the Hebrew God but a “higher” god and threw out the entirety of the bible except Paul and a cut down Luke-Acts.)
Basically, what we know seems to be in direct opposition to Roman policy towards Jewish political movements of the time, and while Paul lead the Gentile church, he was himself Jewish. The Romans were not interested in co-opting Jewish millennial movements, and they were even less interested in allowing them to spread to Roman subjects or citizens. They had an uncompromising attitude to the “God Botherers” who adopted Judaism to a greater or lesser extent, confiscating their property and exiling them from cities.
This gels with Paul’s writings on the Roman Empire in his letters (It’s evil and bad and we’re gonna destroy it with the power of god, but don’t bring down the hammer on us, concentrate on building the community and keeping it unified, do a Utopian Socialism if you can but don’t get weird about it.) and the effects of his teachings, which were persecutions of the community (though not as much as later tradition might suggest) and at least one deadly riot put down by Roman Soldiers. Finally, of course, he was imprisoned, and probably executed, by Rome.
Luke is clearly a Pauline Christian, but is substantially more hostile to the Roman Empire than Paul’s muted opposition, and to the ruling classes in general. Luke is particularly hostile to the rich upper classes in the Empire, especially rich subject peoples that it clearly views as compradors. It is on the surface saying that the Empire is compatible with Christians, who are non-violent, pay taxes, are sometimes citizens etc, but then proceeds to tear apart almost every institution.
On the other hand, it’s fairly sympathetic to individual Roman officials, portraying Rome as an unjust system that even just men cannot avoid interacting with, and must do so on it’s terms, but without giving ground where rights or privilege can be demanded. Nevertheless it prepares early Christians for persecution.
You might ask, “Well maybe Paul is quieting down an already violent radical movement” but then why is he focusing on maybe a thousand already semi-pacifist Christians scattered over Asia Minor and the Levant when in Judea, which he avoids like the plague, there is a violent Zealot Revolution in the works and he is already a learned member of the specific sect it comes from. Why are you sending him to a group of people who hate him when he could march in and corrupt the guy’s that are about to fuck up an entire Roman Legion?!
There’s also the fact that most of Paul’s odder statements, like banning women from leadership, are not by him at all. Only about half his epistles are actually by him or his immediate inner circle.
FWIW, I don’t think Paul was a grifter, I think he was a former grifter who became a sincere convert after some weird shit happened to him, and unfortunately like Evrart in Disco Elysium he was just so slimy it drips off him onto the page.
personally i think the line between grifter and sincere convert is also quite blurry for this kind of thing. if someone’s paycheck depends upon a particular belief, in due time they’ll come to believe it sincerely. and then yeah, there’s paul and there’s the early paulist counterrevolutionary faction.
I like this theory!
holy shit paul is the nereveraine