The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's…

This short book has one message: that Paul's faith centered on a nonviolent God and required distributive justice. ( )

This book offers insight into the real, historical Paul. I think that too often Paul gets a bad rap - too often he is given credit for scriptures from letters that are likely not him. The real Paul is much more radical than most of us realize. Borg and Crossan point out that Paul has been tamed to fit into the very cultural conditions that he, like Jesus, calls us out of to enter into the Kingdom of God - the sacred community that is the body of Christ. I have always felt like both Borg and Crossan write well and this book is well written and flows very well. The historical work as well as the exegesis and the theological explorations are all very well done. Both of these men are impeccable scholars as well as men of faith who seek to help us explore a deeper resonance and relationship with the Lord. They offer both pros and cons to the ways we understand Paul and to the differing theories around his time in Rome and his ultimate demise. The book is well balanced, but does offer their personal theologies as they explore the person and character of Paul. It is a great read and though deals with theological, anthropological and historical concerns it doesn't read like a text book and should be easily digested by the lay reader with enough meat to sustain the interest of the theologian, minister or historian. I recommend it for any person of faith who is seeking to both learn and grow in their understanding of God, the Bible and the historical, radical Paul. ( )

This book is my favorite among the works produced by the alliance of Borg and Crossan. What happens when you separate the original works of Paul from the later pseudonymous works? What kind of Paul emerges as the "real" Paul, the one who really walked the earth, the one who witnessed the post-resurrection Jesus as a light from heaven and whose visionary experience instilled a radical, superhuman drive to spread the message of Christ?

Of the thirteen Pauline letters in the New Testament, only seven are universally accepted as genuine. The pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus are generally accepted as not written by Paul. Scholarship waffles on the third group: Ephesians, Colossions, and 2 Thessalonians. Borg and Crossan are among those who see these three letters as post-Pauline. They break the Pauline letters into three categories: The radical Paul behind the authentic letters; the conservative Paul behind the questionable letters; and the reactionary Paul behind the pastoral letters.

Slavery: What does the radical Paul have to say? The pseudo (conservative) Paul? The anti (reactionary) Paul? Patriarchy: What do the three Pauls have to say? How about suppression of women? The meaning of the cross? The return of Jesus? Lordship and Christology?

We watch, within the New Testament's pages, the historical Paul evolve into pseudo-Paul, and finally into the anti-Paul--in many cases, a 180-degree turnaround from what Paul actually taught. The subtitle of this book is Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon, and anyone interested in first-century Christianity will be delighted by this portrayal. This is an eye-opening, controversial book you don't want to miss. ( )

Unlike many liberal Christians, I am not such a fan of Marcus Borg. However, having said that, I will say that this book was really worth reading. Borg and Crossan move us slowly enough through the various epistles and continually move us from what was happening contemporaneously with the letter and how we can read that letter today. Borg and Crossan also rescue Paul from those passages attributed to Paul which endorse slavery, silence women, and are condemnatory against homosexuality. Not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, they look at the Pauline letters and categorize them into three types.

1. The seven letters definitely written by Paul
2. Three Pastoral letters not written by Paul, but developing his message--even countering it at some points
3. Three disputed letters--ones many scholars contend were not written by Paul--Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians.

I recommend this book especially to those people who blame Paul for everything they do not like in the Christian Church today. Whether it will change your mind or not, I think it will offer food for thought.

This book tries to salvage the apostle Paul from the conservative and reactionary writing that was inserted into the New Testament under his name. The book also reclaims Paul from the burdensome theology that has piled up over 2,000 years of Christian history that supposedly was based on his writing.

This book identifies four different Pauls as listed below:

"First Paul" (The real and radical Paul) wrote:
Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians and Philemon

"Second Paul" (The conservative Paul) wrote:
1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.

"Third Paul" (The Reactionary Paul) wrote:
Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians

"Fourth Paul" is the one described by the author of Luke and Acts who probably didn't have access to the above listed letters. (At least there was no effort to synchronize his writing with them.)

This book (and many other scholars too) conclude that the writings of the second and third Paul occurred after the first Paul's death, and the writings about the fourth Paul also occurred many years after his death. The book then analyses the writing of the first three Pauls regarding the subjects of slavery and women. When viewed in this manner the letters show a definite spectrum from radical, then conservative and then to reactionary (i.e. Pro-Roman). The "First Paul" comes off looking much better to modern liberal eyes than the traditional Paul who was credited as being the author of all thirteen of the letters listed above.

This book then proceeds to attempt a rescue of the word "atonement" from the "substitutionary sacrifice" people with these opening comments:

... For many Christians today, atonement has come to be identified with a particular understanding, namely, substitutionary atonement. ... Substitutionary sacrifice was foreign to his (Paul's) thought. Indeed, seeing the cross of Jesus as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin is bad history, bad anthropology, and bad theology."

Read the book if you want to know what they consider to be the correct understanding of atonement.

Early in the book the authors provide a detailed, verse by verse, analysis of the Book of Philemon. That analysis provides an up close look at one example of a 1st Century slave-master relationship.

Later, the book also provides a less detailed analysis of the much longer Book of Romans. With regard to Romans, the authors suggest that if we can shed ourselves of the 16th Century Reformation rhetoric and place ourselves into the world of the 1st Century that it isn't that difficult to understand. The follow quote from the book refers to Phoebe who carried the letter to Rome on behalf of Paul:

"If Romans (the N.T.book) was as abstruse as commentators have made it over the centuries, Phoebe would need to have been an even greater theologian than Augustine or Aquinas, Luther or Calvin. Or, with no disrespect to Phoebe, have we made a letter that was surely intelligible to its communities into one deeply unintelligible to us?"

Hmmm, is it possible that people were smarter back in those days than we are now? Also, I doubt that the "second Paul" or "third Paul" referenced earlier would have entrusted a woman to carry their letter from Cornith to Rome. That clue alone should make it clear that the "First Paul" is not the same person as the other Pauls.

I appreciated the book pointing out the parallels between Paul's writing and Beatitudes of Jesus which I think addresses the question of how much Paul knew about the teachings of Jesus. Paul makes almost no explicit references to the teachings of Jesus. But in Romans there are parallels with the Beatitudes in the books of Matthew and Luke. Since the books of Matthew and Luke were written later than Paul that raises the question, how much did Paul influence Matthew and Luke? (The preceding question is mine, not the book's.)

The book proceeds to ramble through many of the other Pauline books in the style of a bible commentary with a liberal slant to things. I particularly enjoyed the epilogue where they speculated on what happened to Peter and Paul. I've been frustrated for many years about the fact that the writer of Acts ended the story of Paul where he did. I now have a plausible idea of why the story was ended there. If you want to know for yourself, you'll need to read the book.

The authors try to use simple language that's accessible to the non-academically trained reader. Unfortunately, I'm not sure theology can be made interesting for most people. So I'm not sure how many people will grasp the nuanced and metaphorical meanings to the New Testament books that require the reader to think in terms of First Century cultural and political settings. In general I agree with their conclusions, but one needs to be a theology wonk to get excited about it. Therefore I gave the book four stars instead of the five it probably deserves. Borg and Crossan deserve credit for providing to the layperson an alternative understanding of Christianity that is different from that of the more traditional Christian theology. ( )