Did Paul Accept the Teachings of Jesus?

Many people do not realize just how infrequently Paul mentions the sayings of Jesus himself. And scholars can't agree why he doesn't quote Jesus more. Did Paul not know what Jesus taught? How could he not know? Did he think it wasn't important? Wasn't relevant? Was ... misleading? Moreover, if we compare what Jesus taught with what Paul taught -- are we even dealing with the same religion? These are some of most important issues confronting a historical understanding of the New Testament and early Christianity.

In this episode, Megan asks Bart:

--Do we know where Paul would have got information about Jesus from?

-In any of the writings we have, does Paul refer to specific teachings, or talk about what Jesus said in any detail?

-When we manage to line up, thematically, what Jesus and Paul say, how far do they agree, and how often are there divergences of opinion?

-Did Jesus and Paul share a similar mission to the gentiles?

-There's a difference in gentiles converting

-Rather than viewing Paul as breaking with Jesus’ teachings, would it be more realistic to understand his thought as a logical continuation? Jesus anticipated the end of the world and tried to prepare people for it. Paul carried on this mission, preparing the Gentiles for the kingdom of God, and identifying Jesus as the first of many bodily resurrections.

-Is it fair to say that they’re teaching the same basic story, but their characters have some variation?

-Is it that Paul isn’t a direct continuation of Jesus, they’re both just teaching within the same religious worldview?

[caversmill]

Don't know how many other people are like this, but I'm an atheist Brit with zero connection to any form of religion or religious studies but I bloody love these podcasts.

[johnmurphy]

I trust "Paul" just as much as I trust "Donald Trump".

[ericbilodeau]

It's almost as if Christians are really Paulites

[cooperwesley]

I'm an alum of UNC-Chapel Hill (1993), and I would have loved to have sat in one of Ehrman's classes. My favorite professor was Cecil Wooten (Classics, Latin), but had I encountered Ehrman, he might have won that title. Thank you for maintaining a YouTube channel, Dr Ehrman... I'm very much enjoying it!

[RandiRain]

I love how Megan can start talking, stumble on what she's trying to say, and then pick it back up, and pull it off with grace. I would have just lost my train of thought. She's the perfect person to do these interviews.

[GravityBoy]

I don't think Paul knew or cared about the teaching of Jesus.
James the Brother of Jesus knew more than Paul did.

[murph]

How many pairs of glasses do you own Megan? Every week seems to show a new pair! 😂

[andrewfrennier]

In modern Christianity, it seems Paul is the most important, with Jesus as a reference

[sloopy]

Excellent, as always! Thanks to both of you...enjoy your holidays!

[kvn]

It’s amazing when you look at scripture outside orthodox Christian thinking. My my whole life of Christian indoctrination still molds my interpretation of scripture. My mind still tries to harmonize the teaching of Jesus and Paul. When I hear someone mention the times Jesus said you must keep the commandments, my mind immediately goes to “He’s trying to teach us we can’t be good enough to go to heaven, because we can’t keep the commandments.”

[andrewreynolds]

As an Australian atheist listening to Bart for many years I am convinced Paul’s highjacking of Jesus’s apocalyptic teachings and the resultant notion of the trinity is a total perversion of Jesus teachings and surely he and his father must be appalled at the resultant proliferation of the basically evil sects especially that of Peter…….. Roman Catholicism

[narancauk]

27:39 ''Paul says believe in death and resurrection of slightly presume that Paul also meant and be true to Jesus teachings (Not only death & resurrection and discard his

[dukegroovy]

I wish Megan would do an Audio book, her voice is so relaxing

[teddypreston]

No you are misquoting Paul. He wasn’t even an apostle. Search questioning Paul.

[PropheticPlaces-rmlp]

Although I Too Have Problems With Paul Portrayed In False Church Doctrines.

Yeshua Did Say "You Believe In God Believe Also In Me."

So Yeshua Did Command A Belief In Him.

[longcastle]

It’s almost like Paul hijacked Christianity for his own belief system.

[DavidRayBurroughs]

Paul has always struck me as the third wave of Christianity and it is only by luck we see his wrestling with the facts be was observing - that non-jews could and were as good people and christians but not jews and not "needing" circumcision and not needing to become full blown converts to the Jewish faith. For some reason, he"saw" that, and it appears to have been different from the views of Peter, et al.

[jonnyw]

What was always strange to me is Paul wrote so much theology embedded in his gospel and claimed he received it from Jesus but never says how that happened and never quotes Jesus or says, “…then Jesus told me…”

[hiramcrespo]

In his book "St Paul and Epicurus", Norman DeWitt makes many arguments saying that Paul (or whoever was writing claiming to be Paul) had studied under the Epicureans and was, in part, reacting against Epicureanism in his writings. He argues that many of the ways in which early Christian communities were organized and many of their practices were drawn from ancient Epicurean communities, including communion, confession, the tradition of writing epistles, the systematized dichotomy of vices - virtues, and many other details.

[Jayzbird]

I know that Prof. Ehrman pushes back when people say ask if Paul was the founder of christianity. However, I feel like a lot of that pushback is sort of semantic in nature, as in, well, what do you mean by "founded, " or what do you mean by the term "christianity"? The more I learn about it all though, the more I see Paul as being by far the most influential force that shaped what would become christianity, and the more I see Jesus himself as sort of incidental to it, and the reasons why have a lot to do with what Bart and Megan are talking about in this episode.

Jesus and Paul taught different messages and knew very different things. Jesus didn't know he was going to be crucified, and Paul didn't know what Jesus taught. Consequently, Jesus didn't preach a message about himself. Jesus was a Jew, and his message was to Jews and about Judaism and the Jewish law and prophets. Entrance into the kingdom being based upon hospitality seems to be a direct echo of the parable of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, rather than anything that would come to be thought of as New Testament theology. The Judaism of Jesus would have been a religion of obedience to law, even if his spin on Judaism was unorthordox, and not so much about beliefs, per se.

That's in stark contrast to Paul, who taught a message about Jesus, instead of the message that Jesus himself taught. Paul couldn't have because he didn't know Jesus, and probably knew very little about Jesus or his teachings. The one thing he did know was that Jesus was crucified, and that other christians believed he'd been resurrected. The other thing he knew was uncircumcised non-Jews were not too enthusiastic about becoming circumcised. But still, people had been converting to Judaism for hundreds of years, and they were known as "proselytes." When Paul went to James and Peter, the probably thought he was crazy. If "gentiles" wanted to convert, they could do it the same way it had always been done, by becoming "proselytes." But Paul came up with a novel solution: they didn't have to become "proselytes, " they could just become "christians." That's the key innovation. Jesus did not teach this, and the Jerusalem church doesn't seem to have approved either. It appears that the conception of James and Peter was that to be a follower of Jesus was to still be a Jew, most likely because that's who Jesus was and that's what Jesus taught. But Paul replaced that with a teaching about Jesus, about how belief in his death and resurrection, instead of obedience to law, was the key to salvation, and about how it was not necessary to be a Jew at all to be a follower of christ. In fact, if Paul was right, then it wasn't even necessary for Jesus to have taught anything at all. All he needed to do was just simply die and be resurrected, and then later inspire folks like Paul to go raise up churches of people who believed in it. Paul makes Jesus' whole ministry superfluous.

The Jerusalem church could not compete with the "gentile" churches founded by Paul, and eventually went extinct or was subsumed, leaving an increasingly anti-semitic Pauline christanity that bore little resemblance to the religion that Jesus followed and taught. It was founded upon Jesus, but arguably, no longer by him.

Was McDonalds "founded" by Richard and Maurice, or was it "founded" by Roy Crock? It's kinda the same question. You could answer it either way, and either answer could be viewed as being correct, because the restaurant they opened and operated bears no resemblance to Roy Crock's corporation that still bears their name.