The Battle of the Apostles: Rivalry at the Heart of the Early Church

This text is an excerpt from Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, written by scholar James Tabor. The book explores how the Apostle Paul’s teachings and his conflicts with figures like Peter significantly shaped the development of early Christian beliefs and practices.

THE “BATTLE OF THE APOSTLES”

There is good evidence that the two great apostles of Christianity, Peter and Paul, ended up bitter rivals. They seem so inseparably tied together in later Christian history and tradition that the idea of a severe quarrel between them seems inconceivable.

The first time I stood in St. Peter’s Square in Rome and approached the steps leading up to St. Peter’s Basilica, I was struck by the twin colossal statues of Peter on the left and Paul on the right. Both hold scrolls in their left hands, but Peter holds a golden key in his right hand, symbolizing his authority as head of the Church, and Paul holds a sword, representing the “Word of God.”

In the center of the square, certainly more imposing, is an ancient Egyptian solar obelisk, complete with sundial and zodiac signs, towering a hundred feet. It was once inscribed to the “Divine Augustus” but now the inscription reads: “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat”—Christ Conquers, Christ Reigns, Christ Rules. It is topped with a bronze cross, said to contain a fragment of Jesus’ original wooden cross. The emperor Caligula brought the original obelisk to Rome in A.D. 37 from Heliopolis, Egypt, to stand in the Circus Maximus.

It was a silent witness to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul and other Christians during the reign of Nero. Pope Sixtus V moved it to St. Peter’s in 1585 as testimony to the triumph of the Christian Church over the worldly power of Rome, and by extension over the entire ancient world. Surrounding the square are 140 statues of saints atop the massive oval colonnades. But Peter and Paul, standing together as the patron saints of Christianity, hold center place, leading into the basilica, the world center of Roman Catholic Christianity.

All over Rome it is the same—Peter on the left, Paul on the right, standing watch over the entrance to the bridge San Angelo crossing the Tiber River, or leading up to the central altar of the Basilica San Paolo, where Paul’s tomb is located. At the Basilica of St. John Lateran, there are relics from both Peter’s and Paul’s heads—skull bones—kept inside statues in the canopy high over the altar. In countless cathedrals and churches around the world, the pair invariably and inseparably appear, whether at the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, or the famed Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, where the Russian emperors and empresses are buried.

This legendary heroic pairing hangs on a surprisingly slim historical thread. The earliest reference dates to the early second century A.D. in a letter traditionally ascribed to Clement, an early bishop of Rome:

Let us set before our eyes the good apostles: Peter, who because of unrighteous jealousy suffered not one or two but many trials, and having thus given his testimony went to the glorious place that was his due. Through jealousy and strife Paul showed the way to the price of endurance... he gave his testimony before the rulers, and thus passed from the world and was taken up into the Holy Place, the greatest example of endurance. (1 Clement 5:3–7)

This is a remarkable text. What Clement fails to say is as telling as what he seems to know, which is precious little. He mentions nothing about the manner of the deaths of either apostle: that Paul was beheaded, or that Peter was crucified. He does not even pair their deaths together in Rome, under Nero. Since Clement, as bishop of the Roman church, is presumably writing just a few decades after their deaths, one would expect some details about their martyrdom or the veneration of their tombs in Rome. One is tempted to wonder whether Clement knows any more about the deaths of Peter and Paul than one finds implied in the New Testament.

Irenaeus, the late-second-century bishop of Lyons, mentions the tradition of “the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul” as founders of the church at Rome, but he gives no details of their deaths under Nero. Eusebius, the fourth-century church historian, knows of a late-second-century source, Gaius of Rome, whom he paraphrases: “It is related that in his [Nero’s] time Paul was beheaded in Rome itself, and that Peter likewise was crucified, and the title of ‘Peter and Paul,’ which is still given to the cemeteries there, confirms the story, no less than does a writer of the church named Gaius” (Church History 2.25.5–6).

Most scholars, including leading Roman Catholic ones, are agreed that given such sparse evidence, the tradition of Peter and Paul as founders of the Roman church, much less Peter as first bishop of Rome, is more likely a fourth-century tradition overlaid on a very flimsy factual foundation:

As for Peter, we have no knowledge at all of when he came to Rome and what he did there before he was martyred. Certainly, he was not the original missionary who brought Christianity to Rome (and therefore not the founder of the church of Rome in that sense). There is no serious proof that he was the bishop (or local ecclesiastical officer) of the Roman church—a claim not made till the third century.

Most likely he did not spend any major time at Rome before 58 when Paul wrote to the Romans, and so it may have been only in the 60s and relatively shortly before his martyrdom that Peter came to the capital. The only thing we can say with any reasonable measure of possibility is that both Peter and Paul ended up in Rome during the reign of Nero and were executed, most likely following the fire that broke out in Rome the summer of A.D. 64 when Nero blamed the Christians and had many of them killed.

If they were in Rome at the same time, the evidence might well indicate, as we will see, that they were there as rivals, not as co-apostles and founders of the Roman church. There were Christians at Rome long before Paul or Peter ever set foot in the capital. When Paul writes his letter to the Romans, around the year A.D. 56, it is intended to serve as his “calling card,” as he sets forth an exposition of what he calls “my Gospel” to introduce himself formally to them. He is neither their founder nor their spiritual “father,” and the tone of the letter is more formal and much less personal than when he is writing to one of his own groups. He gives greetings at the end of the letter to various individuals by name, indicating that he has connections with a few dozen of their community (Romans 16:1–16). He does not mention Cephas or Peter. He refers to groups meeting in various homes, so we should imagine a network of cell meetings, perhaps loosely organized, likely diverse in beliefs and practices (Romans 16:4–5).

One of Paul’s main purposes in writing the letter was to make a plea for tolerance of different religious observances, including observing holy days and abstaining from certain foods—both clearly touchstone issues between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians (Romans 14:5–9). He also devotes a long section of his letter to his claim that the Jewish people, though temporarily cut off from God if they do not accept Jesus as Messiah and Lord, will soon come around to such a faith once they see the myriads of Gentiles who are turning to the God of Israel through their faith in Christ as a result of his work (Romans 9–11).

There was a sizable Jewish population in Rome with many synagogues. Suetonius, a Roman historian of the period, indicates there were heated disputes among the Jews of the city over “Chrestus,” which led to the emperor Claudius banning them from the city precincts in A.D. 49. This is likely a reference to disputes within the various Jewish communities over the newly imported messianic faith in Jesus (i.e., Chrestus = Christus), which had reached Rome by this time. According to the book of Acts, when Paul finally did arrive in Rome, around A.D. 58, under house arrest for fomenting disturbances in the Temple at Jerusalem, he set up shop in a rented house and began presenting his gospel to the local Jewish population. These encounters resulted in heated disputes, leading Paul to denounce the Jews and vow that he would preach only to non-Jews in the future (Acts 28:23–28).

In order to understand the relationship between Peter and Paul, we need to leave behind the legendary tales of their heroic co-martyrdom in Rome and examine the evidence in Paul’s genuine letters, our only contemporary sources.

A MAN CALLED PETER

We know precious little about the historical Peter, since, as we will see, he has been made over in the New Testament writings in the image of Paul—but we do have some reliable evidence to go on. His Hebrew name is Simon (Shimon), the most common Jewish male name in Palestine in that period—one of Jesus’ four brothers was also named Simon, plus there was Simon the Zealot among the Twelve. Simon had a brother named Andrew; they were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 1:16). He is called “Simon bar Jonah,” which is Aramaic for Simon son of Jonah—their father. Simon had a house in the fishing village called Capernaum (“village of Naum”) on the northwest edge of the Sea of Galilee, where he lived with his wife, who is unnamed, and possibly his brother Andrew and family as well (Mark 1:29). They, along with Philip, another of the Twelve, are originally from Bethsaida, a village further to the east, also on the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44).

Jesus moved to Capernaum, along with his mother and brothers, as he began his public work, making Simon’s house his home base and headquarters (Matthew 4:13; John 2:12). There is a site today in Capernaum called the house of Peter, which became a Byzantine church, built over a first-century dwelling.

Jesus chose Simon along with his brother Andrew, and two other fishermen brothers, James and John, as the core of his twelve apostles (Mark 3:16–17). Jesus gave Simon the surname Cephas, an Aramaic nickname meaning “rock,” which was translated into Greek as Peter—the name most familiar to us today (John 1:42).

Peter, James, and John became a triumvirate among the Twelve; Jesus deals with them separately as his core leaders on a number of occasions (Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33). Peter is always mentioned first and functions as the “lead” apostle. The half-dozen stories about him in the gospels emphasize his enthusiasm for Jesus along with his impetuousness, and of course he is known best for denying Jesus three times the night of Jesus’ arrest in order to save his own life, then repenting bitterly. According to Paul, as well as some of our gospel sources, it was Peter who first “saw” Jesus after his death, when he returned to his fishing business in Galilee. Perhaps our best clue to Peter’s religious background is that according to the gospel of John, he, along with Andrew, as well as the apostle Philip, were disciples of John the Baptizer before they joined forces with Jesus (John 1:35–41). Everything we know about John indicates that he was a fiery apocalyptic preacher, zealous for Israel’s messianic redemption, and a strict adherent to the Torah. Many scholars have associated his message and his Jewish piety with the kind of apocalyptic nationalism that we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. That Peter would have been drawn to this movement, as was Jesus, gives us a reliable profile of his zealous orientation toward his ancestral faith.

One might expect that the letters in the New Testament bearing Peter’s name might be the best indication of what he believed and taught, and what kind of Christianity he espoused. Although scholars do not think either 1 Peter or 2 Peter was actually written by Peter, it is abundantly clear that the letter we call 1 Peter is in fact a production of an early-second-century Pauline group, the same ones who produced 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The ideas in the letter are so close to those we associate with Paul in the later pseudonymous letters attributed to him that the resemblance is unmistakable. 1 Peter is a Pauline-style letter written in Peter’s name, an obvious attempt to associate Peter’s theology with that of Paul.

PAUL’S VIEW OF PETER (CEPHAS)

Paul knows Peter as Cephas, using his Greek name Peter only twice (Galatians 2:7–8). What Paul reveals is sparse but quite telling. Cephas is second next to James the brother of Jesus, along with John the fisherman as a third, in a new leadership triumvirate that Paul refers to as the “pillars” of the Jerusalem-based Jesus movement (Galatians 2:9). In Judaism this is called a bet din or “house of judgment.” That James is in charge, flanked by Peter as his chief confidant, is quite telling since James is known in all of our sources as extremely zealous for the Torah—much as John the Baptizer had been.

According to Matthew, Jesus had given Peter the “keys” of judgment, with binding and loosing power, which in Judaism means he functions as a judge over matters of Jewish law and observance for the Christian community (Matthew 16:19 and especially 18:18).

When Paul first visits Jerusalem, three years after his sojourn in Arabia and his revelatory experiences, he goes first to Peter, who then arranges for him to meet James (Galatians 1:18–19). Peter functions as a viceroy for James and is apparently sent throughout the regions of Judea, Galilee, Syria, Asia, and Greece to represent the Jerusalem leadership and make sure that things are operating smoothly among the various branches of the Jewish-Christian movement outside the Land of Israel. Paul mentions that Peter travels about with his wife, supported by the Jerusalem headquarters, and Peter has apparently even visited Paul’s group at Corinth (1 Corinthians 9:5; 1:12).

When Paul appeared before the Jerusalem Council around A.D. 50 to defend his independent preaching among the Gentiles for the previous fourteen years, he and the Jerusalem apostles apparently reached a kind of “live and let live” agreement to not interfere with one another’s work. They agreed that Paul was to preach among the Gentiles a form of the Jewish messianic faith in Jesus applicable to non-Jews as God-fearers. Peter would head the missionary work to Jews scattered throughout the world. Most importantly, the Jerusalem leadership would not support any insistence that Paul’s converts become circumcised and convert to Judaism. This is what Paul says in Galatians, and it fits well with what is reported by the author of Luke about the meeting in Acts 15.

What never came up, and what the Jerusalem apostles would never have imagined, given Paul’s devotion and training in the Jewish faith, was that Paul believed that with the coming of Christ, the Torah of Moses, which he called “the old covenant,” had been superseded and was “fading away.” That means that even Jews were no longer “under the Torah,” or obligated to observe the laws of traditions of the ancestral faith—particularly circumcision, the Sabbath, the Jewish festivals, the dietary laws, and ritual purity. We know from Paul’s letters that he went much further than this, even to the point of teaching that the Torah had been given by angels, not directly by God, and that those who were under its tutelage were slaves to these inferior cosmic powers, which was no better than serving idols (Galatians 4:8–10).

Some have maintained that Paul wrote the negative things he did about the Torah only in the context of insisting that his Gentile converts not be forced to live as Jews, but his language is quite clear in this regard. He constantly uses the first-person plural—“we,” including himself as a Jew. The Torah lasted from Moses to Christ, so we are no longer confined “under the Torah” but are released from its bondage (Galatians 3:23–4:10). According to Paul, as we have seen in previous chapters, if one is in Christ, whether Jew or Gentile, one is responsible only for the Torah of Christ.

We can be sure that Peter, James, and the Jerusalem apostles knew nothing about the full implications of Paul’s teaching, especially that Jews need no longer follow the Jewish Torah. The author of the book of Acts tries to present a picture of harmonious cooperation between Paul, Peter, and James—they were all preaching the same gospel message. At the very end of his book, when Paul visits Jerusalem for the last time, before his imprisonment in Rome, Acts reveals more—perhaps more than intended—and the truth seems to come out, at least by implication.

According to Acts, toward the end of his career Paul arrived in Jerusalem and appeared before James and all the elders of the Jerusalem church. At issue was a “rumor” that James wanted to dispel, namely that Paul was teaching Jews that they could disregard the Torah. Acts records James addressing Paul:

“You see brother how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed; they are all zealous for the Torah, and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs” (Acts 21:20–21).

James then proposes that, to let everyone know that this rumor is false and that Paul himself lives in observance of the Torah, he participate in a purification ceremony in the Jerusalem Temple, which would involve bringing an offering and entering the sacred areas within the Temple courtyard where only Jews were allowed to go.

What is striking about this scene in Acts is that Paul says absolutely nothing. He neither confirms nor denies the rumor, though he does go along with the purification ceremony. But we know from Paul’s own letters that he has established an operational policy that when he is among the Jews, he becomes as “one under the Torah,” and when he is with Gentiles, he lives as a Gentile (1 Corinthians 9:20–21).

That any scene like this ever took place seems doubtful, at least not in the way Acts reports it. We know that James and the rest of the Jewish followers of Jesus, like Jesus himself, were zealous for the Torah and their ancestral faith. One might also expect that the author of Acts would have Paul deny the truth of the rumor, but it seems he dare not do that, perhaps because he knows the picture of harmony he is trying to pass off here had no basis in fact and Paul was indeed teaching Jews and Gentiles that they were now under what he called the new covenant—the Torah of Christ. The main point we learn from Acts here is that the author felt he had to address this issue—and somehow dispel it. It was not something that could be ignored.

Since we know from Paul’s letters that he unquestionably taught the very thing that James, in this concocted scene, is satisfied he does not teach, we have to ask whether Peter, James, and the other apostles did in fact ever learn of Paul’s real modus operandi in dealing with both Gentiles and Jews, and the full implications of his Gospel, which we have examined in previous chapters.

FALSE APOSTLES, SERVANTS OF SATAN

We have seen previously that Paul refers to the Jerusalem leadership of James, Peter, and John in a rather sarcastic and dismissive manner when he recounts his initial appearance before the Jerusalem leaders around A.D. 50:

“And from those who were reputed to be something—what they were makes no difference to me! God shows no partiality—those, I say, who were of repute added nothing to me... and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas, and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised” (Galatians 2:6–9).

We can see here Paul’s approach that it does not really matter what these leaders said or might have said, since he was taking his orders and had gotten his gospel directly from Christ. Because they apparently agreed to let him be, he was content.

The first hint of a rift that we get comes at Antioch, where there was a church composed of both Jews and Gentiles that Paul had apparently used as a base of operations for his preaching in Asia Minor over the previous decade, and where he had teamed up with Barnabas, a leading Jewish member of the Antioch community. When the group gathered, they apparently had separate tables, for practical reasons, at which Jews could eat with the assurance that the food served was in keeping with Jewish dietary laws, and one where Gentiles could have any sort of food, so long as it did not include meat without the blood properly drained.

This arrangement was not viewed as discriminatory, but one that allowed the group to meet together harmoniously. Unfortunately, we only have Paul’s side of the story, but he claims that Peter was “eating with the Gentiles” until a delegation from James showed up, then he moved to the Jewish table, thus playing the hypocrite. He says that Barnabas, Paul’s partner, stood with Peter in doing the same. Paul clearly acknowledges here that James and his representatives would have insisted on strict standards of Jewish observance, including in the matter of dietary laws.

Paul says that he stood up before the entire group and publicly denounced Peter, as well as his own co-worker Barnabas: “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:14).

The charge as stated here by Paul really makes no sense, since even if Peter and Barnabas had eaten unfit food at the table of the Gentiles, they would not thereby be compelling the Gentiles to live like Jews. But the idea that Peter would have disregarded dietary laws in the first place goes against everything we know of his leadership status alongside James in an observant Jewish-Christian community following the Torah. It is possible Peter was simply sitting with the Gentiles, not actually eating with them, but that when those from James arrived, Peter joined them at their kosher table and Paul interpreted this as a kind of social shunning.

A DEEPER RIFT?

But it is likely something much more significant is going on here, something Paul would never want to let out. If Paul’s charge that Peter was “compelling the Gentiles to live like Jews” has any force at all, it must reflect Peter’s sympathy with the idea that it was a perfectly fine and good thing if Gentiles who had become followers of Jesus were subsequently drawn toward Judaism and decided to convert. The issue would not be compulsion but free choice. Since the main issue Paul is addressing in the letter of Galatians is that his Gentile converts should not, under any circumstances, convert to Judaism, but remain as they are, Paul’s denunciation of Peter and Barnabas likely reflects his consternation at their welcoming Gentiles who wanted to convert. Judaism did welcome sincere converts, and there is every reason to think that Peter, James, and the others would have done the same.

Requiring conversion and welcoming those who might choose it, however, are two entirely separate issues. Paul’s position with his Gentile converts was that they did not need to convert to Judaism or keep the Torah in order to have a right relationship with God. That is not the same as saying that those who might choose to convert, having joined the Christian community as Gentiles, should be forbidden to do so. And that is the position that Paul took with his own converts. He tells them that if they receive circumcision, they are “cut off from Christ” (Galatians 5:2–4).

That Barnabas sides with Peter is quite telling, since he had spent years loyally working with Paul as a missionary partner. According to Acts he was a Levite, a member of a group that required the strictest observance of Torah, and he had the trust of the Jerusalem apostles (Acts 4:36). Apparently, at this confrontation, Paul begins to reveal a side of his teachings about the Torah of which even Barnabas, who had worked by his side, was not aware; otherwise surely Barnabas would have supported Paul on this occasion. It is also noteworthy that Barnabas is the one, according to Acts, who first introduced Paul to the Jerusalem church and vouched for him at Antioch as well (Acts 9:27; 11:25–26). Barnabas was closely tied to James and the Jerusalem apostles. He had been sent by them to provide leadership to the newly formed group in Antioch some decades earlier (Acts 11:22). The relations between Antioch and Jerusalem were close, as evidenced by the delegation from James arriving shortly before Paul’s outburst (Galatians 2:12).

As noted, we have only Paul’s side of the story, and one should not assume that Peter and Barnabas agreed with Paul or were somehow properly rebuked and put in their place by Paul’s harsh denunciation. They might well have defended themselves quite ably against his charges, and it is very possible that given the circumstances, it was Paul who was rebuked at Antioch. If Peter had apologized or acknowledged that Paul was correct, we surely would have Paul including that fact as part of his account. The fierceness of this confrontation was likely the first crack in the façade of harmony between Paul and the Jerusalem leadership.

It is quite significant that Acts records that right after the Jerusalem meeting of A.D. 50, when Paul and Barnabas had returned to Antioch, they had a “sharp contention” and permanently split, never to work together again (Acts 15:39). Acts says the reason was whether to take Mark with them as they planned their next missionary trip—Paul objected and Barnabas wanted him along. It seems more likely that the confrontation with Peter and Barnabas over eating with the Gentiles, which Paul reports and Acts ignores, may have been the real cause of their bitter split.

What this evidence appears to indicate is that up until around A.D. 50, during the first decade of Paul’s missionary work in the cities of Asia Minor, when he was working with Barnabas, he was not expressing, at least publicly, the full implications of his views about the Torah of Moses being invalidated by the new covenant he was preaching. It is possible that Paul only gradually came to this view. In his earliest letter to his congregation at Thessalonica, probably around A.D. 51, he says nothing controversial about the Jewish Torah and seems to be expounding a fairly simple standard of ethics appropriate to the God-fearer status of his followers. It is not until around A.D. 56, with his letters to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, that we begin to get a glimpse of Paul’s full views about the implications of “his” gospel—as we have seen in previous chapters.

What apparently has changed in this time period is that delegates have visited Paul’s congregations from James, including Peter himself, and they have begun to raise questions about some of the things they are hearing. We pick up these tensions particularly in Galatians and running through the Corinthian correspondence. There is an explicit challenge to Paul’s apostleship; his emotional outburst against Peter and Barnabas at Antioch is our first hint at just how serious things could become.

QUESTIONING PAUL'S APOSTLESHIP

One point that is extremely important but seldom noted is that although Paul calls himself an apostle, there is no indication that the Jerusalem leadership had ever given him that status. By authorizing his preaching to the Gentiles, they were not thereby conferring on him any special apostolic authority. The book of Acts intends to imply that Paul and Barnabas were “apostles,” simply because they were “sent out” as missionaries, but it is more likely that this designation, at least as used by the Jerusalem church, was reserved for the Twelve. The book of Acts indicates the same when Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Jesus and killed himself, is formally replaced by the casting of lots by the Eleven, with a disciple named Matthias chosen (Acts 1:21–26). One of the requirements of such an apostle was that he had been with the group from the beginning—starting with the preaching of John the Baptizer and all through Jesus’ lifetime. Paul clearly did not qualify.

But as we have seen, in Paul’s mind he was overqualified in this regard, since he was hearing directly from the heavenly Christ, while Peter and the others were relying on what they had learned from the “earthly” Jesus during his lifetime.

Things came to a confrontation sometime around A.D. 55–56. Our first evidence of the tension is in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, but the full extent of Paul’s break with the Jerusalem leadership comes out in 2 Corinthians 10–13, a section of the letter that seems to have been written independently of the whole as the situation Paul was dealing with at Corinth deteriorated and he came to feel he had lost all power with his followers.

Scholars agree that Paul is facing a group of outside opponents who have come to Corinth in his absence and tried to take over his congregation. They have been characterized in at least a dozen different ways, though most commonly they are thought to be some kind of Palestinian Jewish-Christian “Gnostics” who were boasting about their visions and revelations and their superior credentials as “apostles” while questioning Paul’s legitimacy, power, and status.

In the early nineteenth century, the German scholar Ferdinand Christian Baur, who is the “father” of critical studies of Paul, had proposed that Paul’s opponents in 2 Corinthians 10–13 were none other than James, Peter, and the Jerusalem Twelve. His view has generally been abandoned since, though some would agree that whatever group was at Corinth claimed its authorization from the Jerusalem apostles. I believe that Baur was essentially correct. What we find in these chapters is Paul’s complete repudiation of the Jerusalem apostles and his determination to operate independently in the future, without regard to their approval or directives. PAUL’S REPUDIATION OF THE JERUSALEM APOSTLES

Paul is livid that these delegates from Jerusalem, including Peter, would dare to extend themselves into his territory and interfere with the community he had “fathered” by his own labor. As he tells the Corinthians, “even if I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 9:2). His language clearly shows that others are questioning his apostolic claims. We can put together a sketch of Paul’s opposition by collecting the responses and countercharges that he makes to defend himself and his apostleship:

“Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.” (2 Corinthians 11:22–23)

“I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.” (2 Corinthians 12:11–12)

Here we can see that this rival group is appealing to its Jewish heritage, which Paul also could muster forth from his own background. But more important, the others are claiming to be “true” apostles, as opposed to Paul’s role as “apostle to the Gentiles.” Paul resorts to bitter sarcasm, calling them the “super-apostles” but asserting that he has labored harder, suffered more, has had more extraordinary revelations, and worked greater miracles than any of them. We have seen a less heated version of Paul’s need to defend himself as “last but not least” when he compares his own apostleship with that of James, Peter, and the Twelve, declaring, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he [Christ] appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle... but I worked harder than any of them” (1 Corinthians 15:8–10).

A DIFFERENT GOSPEL?

Most telling as to the wider issues at stake is the language he uses to describe the threat to his flock:

“For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough. I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles.” (2 Corinthians 11:4–5)

This sounds almost identical to the way he opens his letter to the Galatians:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel... But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached, let him be damned!” (Galatians 1:6–8)

The entire letter to the Galatians makes clear the threat these apostles represent to Paul. They are observant of the Torah themselves, and though not requiring conversion on the part of Gentiles, they apparently present the option in a favorable light, and some of Paul’s followers have responded positively.

PAUL'S EXTREME LANGUAGE

Paul’s most extreme characterization of these apostles shows the degree to which he has given up on any possible reconciliation of their views:

“For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.” (2 Corinthians 11:13–15)

It is hard for us to imagine today that Paul might have the Jerusalem apostles in mind here—actually calling them servants of Satan. But this language should not surprise us because Paul has already written to the Galatians that anyone who preaches contrary to what he preaches is to be damned—even an angel from heaven! What he means here is not that Peter, James, and the Twelve are demonic or Satanic, but that if they are tearing down what he has built up as an apostle to the Gentiles, one empowered directly by Christ, they have served the cause of Satan, no matter what their association with Jesus might be.

We know that James, Peter, and the Twelve would have been appalled at what Paul says about the Torah and the revelation to Moses at Sinai. Although Paul’s letters, other than Romans, are written directly to his intimate personal followers, it is likely that delegates from Jerusalem visiting his congregations, including Peter himself, had learned enough to realize the implications of Paul’s gospel and his exalted claims to apostleship—namely the repudiation of the Jewish faith and its replacement with Paul’s new covenant religion, in which there is neither Jew nor Gentile any longer. It is quite telling that in his last letter to one of his churches, to his followers in Philippi, written when Paul was in prison in Rome, Paul’s language against his Jewish opponents is unbending, and if anything has become more bitter, even as he affirms once more his own status and place in the eyes of Christ. These are among the last words of Paul and they stand as testimony to all that he lived for and died for, and how he paved the way for a new religion called Christianity:

“Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the true circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” (Philippians 3:2–7)

At this point, sometime in the early 60s A.D., Paul goes silent on us. We have nothing else directly from his hand. So far we have drawn our evidence of Paul’s bitter and irrevocable repudiation of the Jerusalem leadership from his letters alone. Whether there was ever any direct confrontation between Paul and Peter after this point, we cannot be sure. Strangely, the account in Acts also ends abruptly with Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, as if nothing happened thereafter. Assuming that Luke-Acts was written at least as late as the end of the first century, we have a minimum of four decades of complete silence.

Why are the deaths of Paul, Peter, and even James, all killed in the early 60s A.D., not heroically recounted in Acts to fill out the story of the beginnings of early Christianity? There has to be a reason for this silence.

For our answer, we have to turn to sources beyond the New Testament.

THE JESUS LEGACY

We have very few sources that tell us what happened with the Jewish-Christians who were connected to Jerusalem after the death of James in A.D. 62. As we have seen, the literary victory of Paul, whose ideas dominate the writings of the New Testament, is fairly complete. The Q source and the letter of James provide two exceptions. Among the earliest Christian writings by those usually called the “Apostolic Fathers,” only the Didache lacks Paul’s influence. The rest, including the letters of Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, the Shepherd of Hermas, and Barnabas, are wholly in harmony with a Pauline perspective and decidedly anti-Jewish in outlook. In other words, Paul’s gospel, so far as it was understood, won the day.

Christians increasingly began to make the point explicitly that they were not Jewish and had nothing in common with Judaism. It was a victory of ideas as well as numbers since Gentiles quickly outnumbered Jews among the various Christian communities that began to spring up all over the Roman Empire into the second century A.D. Christian communities at Rome, Alexandria, Carthage, Ephesus, and Antioch, five central urban areas of the Roman Empire, began to dominate the Christian landscape. Greek language, philosophy, and culture prevailed in these Hellenistic–Roman Christian communities. The “Old Testament” was retained, but only in a Greek translation with the additional books of the “Apocrypha” added to what had been the Hebrew Bible.

There was also a political and military side to the triumph of Paul. Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem were devastated by two successive revolts against Rome (A.D. 66–73 and 132–35). Both Vespasian and Hadrian, the emperors who presided successively over these two Roman victories, instituted harsh measures against Jews in the Land of Israel and throughout the empire. Hundreds of thousands had been killed or taken away into slavery. The homeland was devastated and the capital of Jerusalem with its magnificent Temple was in ruins. It was increasingly unpopular to be Jewish or to identify with Jewish causes.

THE FATE OF THE JEWISH-CHRISTIANS

Tradition tells us that the Jerusalem-based Jewish-Christians, led by Simon, the successor of James, also of the dynastic bloodline of Jesus’ Davidic family, fled northeast into Transjordan, settling in areas around Pella and the district of Basan just before the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt. We have no precise records of what happened to them, and we should probably not imagine them to be a solidly monolithic group with a central organization and agenda. What seems to have happened is that the movement scattered, and to some extent shattered, left without power or influence in the West, where Paul’s Gentile churches were thriving. As a result, their Jewish-Christian perspectives played little to no part in influencing what went into the New Testament. By the second and third centuries A.D., remnants of their movement appear to be divided into various sects and factions, variously named in our sources Ebionites, Nazoreans, Elkesaites, Cerinthians, and Symmachians. Unfortunately, most of what we know about these groups comes from orthodox Pauline Christian writers from the West who were eager to expose all forms of Jewish Christianity as heresy.

Despite their diversity, there seem to be four general ideas that Jewish-Christian groups agreed upon:

The eternal validity of the Torah of Moses

The acceptance of only the gospel of Matthew in Hebrew

The complete rejection of Paul as a heretic and apostate from the Torah

The belief that Jesus was a human being, born of a mother and a father, chosen by God but not divine.

The best-known group, and the one that drew the most fire from orthodox Pauline circles, were the Ebionites. They most likely got their name from the Q teaching of Jesus: “Blessed are you poor ones [Hebrew: ‘evyonim],” a designation that appears dozens of times in the Psalms and Prophets as a description of God’s true people in the last days. Irenaeus, one of our earliest sources on the Ebionites, describes them as follows:

“They use the gospel according to Matthew only, and repudiate the apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the Torah... they practice circumcision, persevere in those customs which are enjoined by the Law, and are so Judaic in their style of life that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God.” (Against Heresies 1.26.2)

A LOST LEGACY?

The main issue that arises with regard to the Ebionites is whether their ideas represent a largely unbroken perspective and orientation stemming back to Jesus, James, and the original Jerusalem apostles, or whether they are a later sect of Jewish Christianity that radicalized itself in the second and third centuries. Given what we have seen in Paul’s own letters, including his charge that the apostles who oppose him are “servants of Satan,” it is certainly plausible to assume that the Ebionites represent a link to the Jerusalem apostles, at least in their main ideas. Their ideas also seem to fit well with our other earlier Jewish-Christian sources such as Q, the letter of James, and the Didache. Theirs was a thoroughly Jewish stance with a belief that Jesus was either a prophet or the Messiah, heralding the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God on earth.

A much more positive view of the Ebionite “gospel” is now embedded in the fourth-century documents we call the Pseudo-Clementines, which are made up of two major parts, the Homilies and the Recognitions. A document embedded in the whole called the Kerygmata Petrou, or the Preaching of Peter, is particularly valuable in this regard. This document claims to be a letter written by Peter to James the brother of Jesus. Peter complains that his letters have been interpolated and corrupted by those influenced by Paul so that they have become worthless. He urges James not to pass along any of his teachings to the Gentiles, but only to those members of the council of the Seventy whom Jesus had appointed. Paul is sharply censored as one who put his own testimony based on visions over the certainty of the direct teachings that the original apostles had from Jesus.

The argument Peter makes is quite telling. He suggests that if people follow someone like Paul, who claims to have had visions of Jesus, how might one know he was not actually communicating with a demonic spirit impersonating Jesus? In contrast, if one goes by what Jesus actually taught to the original apostles, there is no possibility of such deception.

Scholars do not consider these materials to be authentic first-century documents, but they do appear to reflect later legendary versions of the very disputes that did occur during the lifetime of Paul, Peter, and James. They preserve for us some memory of the conflicts of which Paul’s letters provide only dim and one-sided glimpses. What is particularly striking about the Pseudo-Clementines is the strong emphasis on testing everything by James: “Believe no teacher unless he brings from Jerusalem the testimonial of James the Lord’s brother” (Recognitions 4:35).

Although the voices of these Jewish-Christians were gradually muted over the centuries as they largely disappeared from view, their perspectives, still embedded behind and between the lines of Paul’s authentic letters, as well as in these scattered ancient sources, can still be heard.

The ultimate irony with regard to what Christianity became is the possibility that these voices that no longer speak might well represent something closer to the message of Jesus than do the teachings of Paul or Christianity itself. What one ultimately concludes regarding that issue still rests today, as it did in the first centuries of the Christian era, on what value one places on Paul’s visionary experiences and his resulting claims to be directly communicating with Jesus. Trying to recover as best we can by historical methods what we can know about the life and teachings of Jesus and his earliest followers is one thing, whereas entering the world of Paul’s theological interpretation of the cosmic heavenly “Christ” is quite another.

The task of a historian is to offer as clear a view of Paul’s own testimony in this regard as is possible from his own letters, while recovering to whatever extent possible those now silent voices who represented an earlier and alternative “Christianity before Paul.”