In Search of Paul, 1

I’m reading John Dominic Crossan’s In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom - A New Vision of Paul’s Words & World (2004). This is one of the ways by which I’m preparing for a study tour of Turkey and Greece that will begin this Saturday, May 11.

Understandably, I’m really excited to go on this tour because this is one of the major projects of my sabbatical year. I had previously identified as one of the major lacunae of my education the fact that I have not yet visited Turkey and Greece, lands as important to earliest Christianity (my specific field of specialization) as Israel-Palestine itself. I’m grateful to the dean of our university-college for his generous support and encouragement.

Crossan’s main arguments and points in what I’ve read so far.

• “Paul opposed Rome with Christ against Caesar, not because that empire was particularly unjust or oppressive, but because he questioned the normalcy of civilization itself, since civiliazation has always been imperial, that is, unjust and oppressive.” (p. x)

• “Paul’s essential challenge is how to embody … that radical vision (of Jesus) … The Roman Empire was based on the common principle of peace through victory or, more fully, on a faith in the sequence of piety, war, victory, and peace. … Paul opposed the mantras of Roman normalcy with a vision of peace through justice or, more fully, with a faith in the sequence of covenant, nonviolence, justice, and peace.” (p. xi)

• “We argue that Paul went to Jewish synagogues not to convert Jews … but to ‘unconvert’ their pagan sympathizers. … He was, where successful, strippingg a local synagogue of some or all of its most important religious, political, social, and financial defenders, all still operating fully in the urban civic world.”  (p. xi)

/jkk