Two hundred years ago Jeremy Bentham wrote a tract which purported to demonstrate that the Christian religion was in effect manufactured by St Paul and not by Jesus. This was actually quite a common ploy at the time: a means by which freethinkers could assail Christian tenets without being prosecuted. And because St Paul’s writings occupy such prominence in the New Testament, and are plainly a major authority for so much Christian theology and understanding, there was reason well in excess of mere subterfuge to justify the procedure. In his restrained and in many ways compelling Introduction to his translations of the New Testament Rabbi Brichto (who died last year) adds a distinctive voice to what is therefore a fairly established debate about the place of Pauline theology. He brings to it resonances of interpretation and trajectories of judgment which many will find illuminating.
On the primary subject of Christian origins he is firmly on the side of Bentham. Jesus, he affirms, though ‘the central figure of Christianity’, was ‘not its founder.’ Again: ‘the fact of the matter is that Jesus was not the first Christian; Paul was!’ The argument is planted centrally in the disputes among the earliest Christians about the nature of the faith to be extended to the gentile world — and indeed to the Jews of the Diaspora who were distributed across cities of the Mediterranean rim. St Peter is identified as the leader of the majority party among the believers in Judea and Galilee, who adhered to Judaic principles, and St Paul as the innovator who ‘decided to reject the authority of the Apostles.’ Much is made of ‘the confusion on Jesus’s status due to the divinity ascribed to him by Paul.’ Brichto saw Christ as ‘on the path of self-discovery’ during his ministry, not actually claiming divine status and ‘not a divinely commissioned human messiah.’
The case is carefully set out and presented with sensitivity to Christian believers. But there is no attempt by Brichto to disguise the arresting conclusion that Paul usurped Peter as the main apostle, and created a divine Jesus to replace the uncertain human one apparently envisaged by the Apostles. The truth of human spiritual inventions carries greater weight than historical events is his rather questionable explanation: I would submit that the Christianity based on the metamorphosis of the man Jesus into the divine Christ is among the greatest spiritual incentives and consolations ever given to humanity. There is an assurance, applicable to Christianity and Judaism: ‘I question the historical underpinnings of both without diminishing my respect for their truths which I believe transcend the accidents of history.’ There is quite a lot here which is familiar, and can be discerned in any scrutiny of previous religious controversy over Christian origins. But it is not possible to separate Christianity — which is above all an historical religion — from the material and historical bases. Judged as a spiritual assessment of the Christian faith, however, Brichto’s analysis, and the value of his actual textual translations of the New Testament, are to be taken as important and instructive.
What is missing is a consciousness that the New Testament books do not represent a triumph of Pauline over Petrine traditions of theological interpretation but the balance of opinion among the authorities and scholars who drew up the canon of Holy Scripture some 300 years after the death of St Paul. Brichto does have one bare reference to the existence of the canon, but only to observe that before the Gospels were canonised ‘they were edited to allow the affirmation that this extraordinary human was also the son of God.’ The fact is that the works we call the New Testament were a selection made from hundreds of other texts circulating in the Early Church, many, as time advanced, of Gnostic origin. The canon of the Old Testament, as it happens, was still not fixed within Judaism itself at the time of Christ’s life (some of the so-called ‘Greek books’ were regarded as controversial). The New Testament reached its present form in two stages. The Gospels were agreed in 382 at St Damasus’s Council; the complete Testament, including St Paul’s letters, was settled by the Gelasian Decree in 495. An examination of the proceedings on both occasions might modify some of Brichto’s conclusions about the linear authority of the Pauline tradition.
It might also have been helpful to have included an assessment of the extent to which the Jewish religion had become Hellenised by the time of Christ, though this can yield only tentative conclusions, due to the absence of evidence over some points. In correctly insisting on the essentially Jewish origins of Christian thought, however, it is necessary on grounds of accuracy to recognise the differences of view which Greek ideas introduced. Once launched as a mission, the Christian religion encountered a Greek world-picture everywhere. St Paul spoke and wrote in Greek — as an educated Jewish Roman citizen would. The first conversions were made among the Hellenised Jews of the Mediterranean cities. Mature Christian theology was constructed by the Councils of the Early Church, the first of which met at Nicaea in 325. These gatherings, of bishops and scholars from the entire world, were dominated by the subtleties of Greek intellectual categorising: how else could the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity (Three Gods who were One God) have been affirmed as essential to salvation? The Councils were, if it is necessary to stake a claim, the foundation of the Christianity which was transmitted to later ages — and in this context differences between St Peter and St Paul scarcely achieve the significance attached to them.
Although some qualifications could be indicated about Brichto’s general argument, there should be no doubting the truly useful insights of his translations. They speak of an authentic tradition of Biblical understanding, and are an admirable aid in setting the teachings of Christ in a context informed by much scholarly reflection. This book is a splendid memorial to the spiritual labours of a learned and liberal mind. ‘The fact that Christianity is not the result of divine prophecies and miracles,’ Brichto ends his Introduction, ‘but due to the life and teaching of one religious genius transformed and transfigured by the genius of another need not deter our enthusiasm for its message even if it did not happen as it was told.’ Brichto’s conclusion will certainly appeal to Anglicans.
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