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people of the book
[ 47 ]
Although Paul (10?-67? c.e.) wrote just a few decades after Jesus’ death, he
had never met Jesus. Based on what he wrote, he seems to have had almost no
interest in what the historical (pre-Resurrection) Jesus said or did. John, on the
other hand, who presumably wrote last among the authors of the New Testa-
ment Gospels, attributed more words and ideas to Jesus than any of the other
authors of the Gospels. Moreover, John, partly because he allowed himself the
luxury of being inventive but also because he was such a great writer, was able to
put into the mouth of Jesus some of the deepest and most gripping teachings in
all of the New Testament.
In any case, although Christianity began as a sect of Judaism, only a small frac-
tion of Jews eventually became Christians. The Jews had long awaited a Messiah,
but in the first century c.e . most of them were expecting that their Messiah, if he
appeared, would be a political
leader, who would free Israel from Roman rule
and establish Israel as a powerful kingdom in the world; if not that, then they
were expecting a spiritual king who at the end of time would appear in glory
from the heavens. One thing that they were not looking for was a messiah as apo-
litical as Jesus in the New Testament accounts seems to have been, especially not
someone who would die in humiliation, like a common criminal, on a cross.
Jews believed that their special relation to God would eventually have impor-
tant consequences for everyone. Nevertheless, they were intensely nationalistic
and separatist, almost wholly centered on the people of Israel. Many early
Christians who remained in Jerusalem saw Christianity as part of this national-
istic tradition. They continued to worship at the Temple, seeing no conflict
between their new beliefs and Jewish ritual. These early Christians, led by Peter
and James, continued to require the observance of traditional Jewish regula-
tions, which tended to diminish the appeal of the new religion to non-Jews.
Historians tend to think that Peter and James opposed bringing the new reli-
gion to gentiles at least until all of Israel had been awakened to its message.
In opposition to this early Christian faction, Paul, who spent most of his life
outside of Jerusalem, asserted that the new Christian promise of salvation was
available universally, both to gentiles, who were outside of the reach of Judaic
Law, as well as to Jews, who lived within it. As we saw in the case of the Stoics
especially, but even Philo, one of the ways in which thought in the early centu-
ries of the Christian era differed from thought in classical Greece was in its
greater tendency toward egalitarianism and inclusiveness. In Paul’s words, for
those “baptized into Christ” there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male
nor female, but all are one.
7
This difference, in nationalistic instead of universalistic tendencies, was the
first important doctrinal controversy within the emerging church. In the end,
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