Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

by Reza Aslan

  Although “Christ” is technically the Greek word for “messiah,” that is not how Paul employs the term. He does not endow Christ with any of the connotations attached to the term “messiah” in the Hebrew Scriptures. He never speaks of Jesus as “the anointed of Israel.” Paul may have recognized Jesus as a descendant of King David, but he does not look to the scriptures to argue that Jesus was the Davidic liberator the Jews had been awaiting. He ignores all the messianic prophecies that the gospels would rely on many years later to prove that Jesus was the Jewish messiah (when Paul does look to the Hebrew prophets—for instance, Isaiah’s prophecy about the root of Jesse who will one day serve as “a light to the gentiles” (11:10)—he thinks the prophets are predicting him, not Jesus). Most tellingly, unlike the gospel writers (save for John, of course), Paul does not call Jesus the Christ (Yesus ho Xristos), as though Christ were his title. Rather, Paul calls him “Jesus Christ,” or just “Christ,” as if it were his surname. This is an extremely unusual formulation whose closest parallel is in the way Roman emperors adopted “Caesar” as a cognomen, as in Caesar Augustus.

  Paul’s Christ is not even human, though he has taken on the likeness of one (Philippians 2:7). He is a cosmic being who existed before time. He is the first of God’s creations, through whom the rest of creation was formed (1 Corinthians 8:6). He is God’s begotten son, God’s physical progeny (Romans 8:3). He is the new Adam, born not of dust but of heaven. Yet while the first Adam became a living being, “the Last Adam,” as Paul calls Christ, has become “a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45–47). Christ is, in short, a comprehensively new being. But he is not unique. He is merely the first of his kind: “the first-born among many brothers” (Romans 8:29). All those who believe in Christ, as Paul does—those who accept Paul’s teachings about him—can become one with him in a mystical union (1 Corinthians 6:17). Through their belief, their bodies will be transformed into the glorious body of Christ (Philippians 3:20–21). They will join him in spirit and share in his likeness, which, as Paul reminds his followers, is the likeness of God (Romans 8:29). Hence, as “heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ,” believers can also become divine beings (Romans 8:17). They can become like Christ in his death (Philippians 3:10)—that is, divine and eternal—tasked with the responsibility of judging alongside him the whole of humanity, as well as the angels in heaven (1 Corinthians 6:2–3).

  Paul’s portrayal of Jesus as Christ may sound familiar to contemporary Christians—it has since become the standard doctrine of the church—but it would have been downright bizarre to Jesus’s Jewish followers. The transformation of the Nazarean into a divine, preexistent, literal son of God whose death and resurrection launch a new genus of eternal beings responsible for judging the world has no basis in any writings about Jesus that are even remotely contemporary with Paul’s (a firm indication that Paul’s Christ was likely his own creation). Nothing like what Paul envisions exists in the Q source material, which was compiled around the same time that Paul was writing his letters. Paul’s Christ is certainly not the Son of Man who appears in Mark’s gospel, written just a few years after Paul’s death. Nowhere in the gospels of Matthew and Luke—composed between 90 and 100 C.E.—is Jesus ever considered the literal son of God. Both gospels employ the term “Son of God” exactly as it is used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures: as a royal title, not a description. It is only in the last of the canonized gospels, the gospel of John, written sometime between 100 and 120 C.E., that Paul’s vision of Jesus as Christ—the eternal logos, the only begotten son of God—can be found. Of course, by then, nearly half a decade after the destruction of Jerusalem, Christianity was already a thoroughly Romanized religion, and Paul’s Christ had long obliterated any last trace of the Jewish messiah in Jesus. During the decade of the fifties, however, when Paul is writing his letters, his conception of Jesus as Christ would have been shocking and plainly heretical, which is why, around 57 C.E., James and the apostles demand that Paul come to Jerusalem to answer for his deviant teachings.

  This would not be Paul’s first appearance before the movement’s leaders. As he mentions in his letter to the Galatians, he initially met the apostles on a visit to the holy city three years after his conversion, around 40 C.E., when he came face-to-face with Peter and James. The two leaders were apparently thrilled that “the one who had been persecuting us is now proclaiming the message of faith he once tried to destroy” (Galatians 1:23). They glorified God because of Paul and sent him on his way to preach the message of Jesus in the regions of Syria and Cilicia, giving him as his companion and keeper a Jewish convert and close confidant of James named Barnabas.

  Paul’s second trip to Jerusalem took place about a decade later, sometime around 50 C.E., and was far less cordial than the first. He had been summoned to appear before a meeting of the Apostolic Council to defend his self-designated role as missionary to the gentiles (Paul insists he was not summoned to Jerusalem but went of his own accord because Jesus told him to). With his companion Barnabas and an uncircumcised Greek convert named Titus by his side, Paul stood before James, Peter, John, and the elders of the Jerusalem assembly to strongly defend the message he had been proclaiming to the gentiles.

  Luke, writing about this meeting some forty or fifty years later, paints a picture of perfect harmony between Paul and the council’s members, with Peter himself standing up for Paul and taking his side. According to Luke, James, in his capacity as leader of the Jerusalem assembly and head of the Apostolic Council, blessed Paul’s teachings, decreeing that thenceforth gentiles would be welcomed into the community without having to follow the Law of Moses, so long as they “abstain from things polluted by idols, from prostitution, from [eating] things that have been strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15:1–21). Luke’s description of the meeting is an obvious ploy to legitimate Paul’s ministry by stamping it with the approval of none other than “the brother of the Lord.” However, Paul’s own account of the Apostolic Council, written in a letter to the Galatians not long after it had taken place, paints a completely different picture of what happened in Jerusalem.

  Paul claims that he was ambushed at the Apostolic Council by a group of “false believers” (those still accepting the primacy of the Temple and Torah) who had been secretly spying on him and his ministry. Although Paul reveals little detail about the meeting, he cannot mask his rage at the treatment he says he received at the hands of “the supposedly acknowledged leaders” of the church: James, Peter, and John. Paul says he “refused to submit to them, not even for a minute,” as neither they, nor their opinion of his ministry, made any difference to him whatsoever (Galatians 2:1–10).

  Whatever took place during the Apostolic Council, it appears that the meeting concluded with a promise by James, the leader of the Jerusalem assembly, not to compel Paul’s gentile followers to be circumcised. Yet what happened soon afterward indicates that he and James were far from reconciled: almost immediately after Paul left Jerusalem, James began sending his own missionaries to Paul’s congregations in Galatia, Corinth, Philippi, and most other places where Paul had built a following, in order to correct Paul’s unorthodox teachings about Jesus.

  Paul was incensed by these delegations, which he viewed, correctly, as a threat to his authority. Almost all of Paul’s epistles in the New Testament were written after the Apostolic Council and are addressed to congregations that had been visited by these representatives from Jerusalem (Paul’s first letter, to the Thessalonians, was written between 48 and 50 C.E.; his last letter, to the Romans, was written around 56 C.E.). That is why these letters devote so much space to defending Paul’s status as an apostle, touting his direct connection to Jesus, and railing against the leaders in Jerusalem who, “disguising themselves as apostles of Christ,” are, in Paul’s view, actually servants of Satan who have bewitched Paul’s followers (Corinthians 11:13–15).

  Nevertheless, James’s delegations seem to have had an impact, for Paul repeatedly lambastes his congregations for a
bandoning him: “I am amazed at how quickly you have deserted the one who called you” (Galatians 1:6). He implores his followers not to listen to these delegations, or to anyone else for that matter, but only to him: “If anyone else preaches a gospel contrary to the gospel you received [from me], let him be damned” (Galatians 1:9). Even if that gospel comes “from an angel in heaven,” Paul writes, his congregations should ignore it (Galatians 1:8). Instead, they should obey Paul and only Paul: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

  Feeling bitter and no longer tethered to the authority of James and the apostles in Jerusalem (“Whatever they are makes no difference to me”), Paul spent the next few years freely expounding his doctrine of Jesus as Christ. Whether James and the apostles in Jerusalem were fully aware of Paul’s activities during this period is debatable. After all, Paul was writing his letters in Greek, a language neither James nor the apostles could read. Moreover, Barnabas, James’s sole link to Paul, had abandoned him soon after the Apostolic Council for reasons that are unclear (though it bears mentioning that Barnabas was a Levite and as such would probably have been a strict observer of Jewish law). Regardless, by the year 57 C.E., the rumors about Paul’s teachings could no longer be ignored. And so, once again, he is summoned to Jerusalem to answer for himself.

  This time, James confronts Paul directly, telling him that it has come to their attention that Paul has been teaching believers “to forsake Moses” and “not circumcise their children or observe the customs [of the law]” (Acts 21:21). Paul does not respond to the accusation, though this is exactly what he has been teaching. He has even gone so far as to say that those who let themselves be circumcised will have “cut themselves off from Christ” (Galatians 5:2–4).

  To clear up matters once and for all, James forces Paul to take part with four other men in a strict purification ritual in the Temple—the same Temple that Paul believes has been replaced by the blood of Jesus—so that “all will know there is nothing to the rumors said about you, and that you observe and guard the law” (Acts 21:24). Paul obeys; he seems to have no choice in the matter. But as he is completing the ritual, a group of devout Jews recognize him.

  “Men of Israel!” they shout. “Help! This is the man who has been teaching everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place” (Acts 21:27–28). All at once, a mob descends upon Paul. They seize him and drag him out of the Temple. Just as they are about to beat him to death, a group of Roman soldiers suddenly appears. The soldiers break up the mob and take Paul into custody, not because of the disturbance at the Temple, but because they mistake him for someone else.

  “Are you not the Egyptian who some days ago led a revolt in the wilderness of four thousand Sicarii?” a military tribune asks Paul (Acts 21:38).

  It seems Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem in 57 C.E. could not have come at a more chaotic time. One year earlier, the Sicarii had begun their reign of terror by slaying the high priest Jonathan. They were now wantonly murdering members of the priestly aristocracy, burning down their homes, kidnapping their families, and sowing fear in the hearts of the Jews. The messianic fervor in Jerusalem was at a boil. One by one, claimants to the mantle of the messiah had arisen to liberate the Jews from the yoke of Roman occupation. Theudas the wonder worker had already been cut down by Rome for his messianic aspirations. The rebellious sons of Judas the Galilean, Jacob and Simon, had been crucified. The bandit chief Eleazar son of Dinaeus, who had been ravaging the countryside, slaughtering Samaritans in the name of the God of Israel, had been captured and beheaded by the Roman prefect Felix. And then the Egyptian had suddenly appeared on the Mount of Olives, vowing to bring the walls of Jerusalem tumbling down at his command.

  For James and the apostles in Jerusalem, the turmoil could mean only one thing: the end was near; Jesus was about to return. The Kingdom of God they had assumed Jesus would build while he was alive would now finally be established—all the more reason to ensure that those espousing deviant teachings in Jesus’s name were brought back into the fold.

  In that light, Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem may have been unexpected, but considering the apocalyptic expectations in Jerusalem, it was neither ill timed nor unwelcomed. If Jesus were about to return, it would be no bad thing to have Paul waiting for him in a prison cell, where, at the very least, he and his perverse views could be contained until Jesus could judge them himself. But because the arresting soldiers assumed Paul was the Egyptian, they sent him at once to be judged by the Roman governor, Felix, who happened at the time to be in the coastal town of Caesarea dealing with a conflict that had erupted between the city’s Jews and its Syrian and Greek inhabitants. Although Felix ultimately cleared Paul of the Egyptian’s crimes, he nevertheless threw him in a Caesarean prison, where he languished until Festus replaced Felix as governor and promptly transferred Paul to Rome at his behest.

  Festus allowed Paul to go to Rome because Paul claimed to be a Roman citizen. Paul was born in Tarsus, a city whose inhabitants had been granted Roman citizenship by Mark Antony a century earlier. As a citizen, Paul had the right to demand a Roman trial, and Festus, who would serve as governor for an extremely brief and tumultuous period in Jerusalem, seemed happy to grant him one, if for no other reason than to simply be rid of him.

  There may have been a more urgent reason for Paul to want to go to Rome. After the embarrassing spectacle at the Temple, in which he was forced to renounce everything he had been preaching for years, Paul wanted to get as far as he could from Jerusalem and the ever-tightening noose of control placed around his neck by James and the apostles. Besides, Rome seemed the perfect place for Paul. This was the Imperial City, the seat of the Roman Empire. Surely the Hellenistic Jews who had chosen to make Caesar’s home their own would be receptive to Paul’s unorthodox teachings about Jesus Christ. Rome already had a small but growing contingent of Christians who lived alongside a fairly sizable Jewish population. A decade before Paul’s arrival, conflicts between the two communities had led the emperor Claudius to expel both groups from the city. By the time Paul arrived some time in the early sixties, however, both populations were once again flourishing. The city seemed ripe for Paul’s message.

  Although Paul was officially under house arrest in Rome, it appears he was able to continue his preaching without much interference from the authorities. Yet by all accounts, Paul had little success in converting Rome’s Jews to his side. The Jewish population was not just unreceptive to his unique interpretation of the messiah, they were openly hostile to it. Even the gentile converts did not appear overly welcoming toward Paul. That may be because Paul was not the only “apostle” preaching Jesus in the imperial city. Peter, the first of the Twelve, was also in Rome.

  Peter had come to Rome a few years before Paul and likely at James’s command to help establish an enduring community of Greek-speaking Jewish believers in the heart of the Roman Empire, a community that would be under the influence of the Jerusalem assembly and taught in accordance with the Jerusalem doctrine: in short, an anti-Pauline community. It is difficult to know just how successful Peter had become in his task before Paul arrived. But according to Acts, the Hellenists in Rome reacted so negatively to Paul’s preaching that he decided to cut himself off once and for all from his fellow Jews “who listen but never understand … who look but never perceive.” Paul vowed from that moment on to preach to none but the gentiles, “for they will listen” (Acts 28:26–29).

  No record exists of these final years in the lives of Peter and Paul, the two men who would become the most important figures of Christianity. Strangely, Luke ends his account of Paul’s life with his arrival in Rome and he does not mention that Peter was in the city, too. Stranger still, Luke does not bother to record the most significant aspect of the two men’s years together in the Imperial City. For in the year 66 C.E., the same year that Jerusalem erupted in revolt, the emperor Nero, reacting to a sudden surge of Christian persecution in Rome, seized Peter and Paul and executed them both
for espousing what he assumed was the same faith.

  He was wrong.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Just One

  They called James, the brother of Jesus, “James the Just.” In Jerusalem, the city he had made his home after his brother’s death, James was recognized by all for his unsurpassed piety and his tireless defense of the poor. He himself owned nothing, not even the clothes he wore—simple garments made of linen, not wool. He drank no wine and ate no meat. He took no baths. No razor ever touched his head, nor did he smear himself with scented oils. It was said he spent so much time bent in worship, beseeching God’s forgiveness for the people, that his knees grew hard as a camel’s.

  To the followers of Jesus, James was the living link to the messiah, the blood of the Lord. To everyone else in Jerusalem, he was simply “the just one.” Even the Jewish authorities praised James for his rectitude and his unshakable commitment to the law. Was it not James who excoriated the heretic Paul for abandoning the Torah? Did he not force the former Pharisee to repent of his views and cleanse himself at the Temple? The authorities may not have accepted James’s message about Jesus any more than they accepted Paul’s, but they respected James and viewed him as a righteous and honorable man. According to the early Christian historian Hegesippus (110–180 C.E.), the Jewish authorities repeatedly asked James to use his influence among the people to dissuade them from calling Jesus messiah. “We entreat you, restrain the people, for they have gone astray in regard to Jesus, as if he were the Christ,” they begged. “For we bear you witness, as do all the people, that you are just and that you do not respect persons. Persuade, therefore, the multitude not to be led astray concerning Jesus.”

  Their entreaties went unheeded, of course. For although James was, as everyone attests, a zealous devotee of the law, he was also a faithful follower of Jesus; he would never betray the legacy of his elder brother, not even when he was martyred for it.