The influential French theologian who was excommunicated by the Pope for his views, Alfred Loisy, concluded that there were two different “Pauls” authoring the main letters attributed to him. The reason Paul’s letters are generally considered “hard to understand” is because they intertwine two incompatible messages of the Christian faith. Loisy acknowledges that scholars of his day — as they still do today — attribute the contradictions to the fervid mind of an enthusiastic genius. But he also points out that if contradictory notions were indeed birthed in the one mind then that one mind would find a way to reconcile them before setting them down in writing.
Two theories of salvation:
The first message is simple, coherent, and supported by a typical rabbinical exegesis of the Jewish Scriptures. All Christians are promised entry into the coming Kingdom of God if they believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and was soon to come again to establish the kingdom of God. Just as God had promised Abraham that his seed (understood by Paul to refer to Christ) would inherit the earth, and just as Abraham believed God, so all who believed in Christ would be made immortal with Abraham in Christ’s kingdom. This message was grounded in a subtle interpretation of the Scriptures: e.g. interpreting the “seed” of Abraham as the single person of Christ despite its otherwise original meaning to refer to multiple descendants. Salvation comes from faith in the promise that God made to Abraham for his believing offspring. Loisy calls this the “eschatological” gospel message. Here the Law in the “Old Testament” is a blessing but not obligatory on those who believe, just as Abraham was justified by his trust in God’s promise before he was circumcised.
The second message was mystical. Abraham did not feature at all. Instead, we begin with Adam who sinned and thereby consigned all of humanity to a state of sinfulness. At the appointed time a “second Adam” came, that is, Christ, who lived a perfect life, died as a sacrifice to make amends for humanity’s sin, and was resurrected, so that all who likewise “died” with him (in the ritual of baptism) and believed in him would also “live anew” with Christ in them — so undoing the sin of Adam and offering salvation to all. Salvation comes from faith that Christ has redeemed the believer from sin. In this mystical gospel the Law found in the “Old Testament” is a curse.
For Loisy, the original letters expressed the simple and coherent eschatological message of salvation. At some point another hand had attempted to qualify and redirect that message by adding the message of the mystical gospel. This second hand preceded that of the famous arch “heretic” of the second century, Marcion. A few years ago I had asked Roger Parvus to post his investigations into the origins of the Pauline epistles on this blog and he, influenced by Loisy, also concluded that the changes to the letters were made before Marcion. (Contrast the view of Loisy’s contemporary, Joseph Turmel — discussed earlier — who saw Marcion as the primary redactor of Paul’s letters.)
Two theories of salvation are revealed to us in the body of the Epistle to the Romans; however, only one of the two authors can be easily defined. This author evokes with a profound sense of his Israelite origin and his love for his people the promise made to Abraham, which currently benefits both Gentiles and Jews. Regarding the mystical personality that opposes Paul of the eschatological theory or assimilates him to transform him into the unique apostle of the mystery, we have found barely any trace. It seems that the mystical theory initially existed independently and was later adjusted as a corrective to the eschatological theory by a disciple of its first author. However, a mystical Paul appears elsewhere, notably in the Epistle to the Galatians and in some main parts of the two Epistles to the Corinthians, where he not only titles himself the apostle of the mystery but also proclaims himself the unique apostle of this mystery of salvation, which would be the only true Gospel. (Loisy, 33 — translation)
If Loisy’s analysis is correct and the early epistles of Paul that we have in our Bibles are the product of at least two hands, each arguing for a different gospel or message of salvation, then the following implications follow for our reading of the first chapters of Galatians.
The Paul who wrote the first draft of the letters was teaching the common message being spread by other apostles of the earliest “Christian church”. However, the mystic Paul who deemed himself to be the uniquely called apostle of the only true gospel and owed nothing to any of the other leaders of the Jesus followers wrote in Galatians 1:
11I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. . . .
15But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. 17 I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.
A “proto-orthodox” devotee of Paul saw the danger of allowing that passage to stand without qualification so he added — with a strident declaration that he was not lying! — the following words to remind readers that Paul was indeed submissive to, or at least on a par with, the other apostles, just as we read in Acts:
18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.
The second Galatians chapter as we have it is another mix of two Pauline accounts. In Acts 15, which Loisy sees as essentially historical on this point, Paul was sent to Jerusalem with others to discuss and decide whether gentile converts should be circumcised. The “mystical Paul”, on the other hand, added to the letter to the Galatians that he did not go to Jerusalem at the behest of others but went up because of a divine revelation. The same mystical Paul forgot that the only reason for the Jerusalem meeting was to nut out the question of circumcision and immediately made a point, otherwise inappropriately, that he “presented his gospel” to the Jerusalem leaders. A more “historical Paul” added that he did so as an act of acknowledgement of the authority of the Jerusalem apostles. Galatians 2:
1Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2 I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. 3 Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 4 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5 We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
6 As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism—they added nothing to my message. 7 On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised. 8 For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. 9 James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.
The mystical Paul has added here a quite unrealistic scenario. It would have been quite impossible for such a neat division of audiences between Cephas/Peter and Paul. The gospel was always preached initially to both Jews and gentile attendees in the synagogues. Loisy adds that at the time of the Jerusalem council (mid 40s CE) there were no “super apostles”. That status was a later (second century) memory projected back into earlier times.
What is not natural, what is historically inconceivable, what is a pure fiction imagined long after the origins, is the very division of humanity to be converted. Never, during his lifetime, was Paul the unique Apostle, charged by Christ, to provide for the evangelization of the Gentiles. Never did Peter and the Twelve consider themselves the sole authorized missionaries to Judaism, especially since most of them probably never were missionaries. The conditions of Christian preaching in apostolic times are well known: the Gospel was not first offered to the pagan world as such; it could not be, it was first offered within the Jewish world of the Dispersion; but the Christian preaching reached, at the same time as the Jews, the pagan clientele of the synagogues, the proselytes and half-proselytes that the synagogues gathered around them throughout the Roman Empire. It is certain, not only from the consistent account in Acts but also from the Epistles as they echo Paul’s personal ministry, that he, in every locality where he brought the Gospel, spoke first in the synagogues, and consequently addressed the Jews, and when he was no longer tolerated in the synagogues, settled nearby, continuing to attract both Jews and proselytes indiscriminately. In Jerusalem in 44, there could not have been a division of the world between two apostolates, and the fiction could only have been conceived at quite a distance, invented to characterize two legendary figures for the sake of a controversy. The issue that could have been and was dealt with in the Jerusalem assembly was that of legal observances, which our author seems almost uninterested in, because, in reality, he is focused on something entirely different. Thus, the only difficulty in our current problem is to historically situate the mystical Paul. Identifying him outright with Marcion or one of his followers is a drastic solution, since the mystical Paul is not Marcionite. On the other hand, the historical Paul, much to the dismay of champions of authenticity, would have been the blindest of polemicists, the most notorious liar, or the most insane of fools if he had spoken the language attributed to him by his spokesperson. One only has to look at the text to realize this. The issue is only obscured by the very respectable prejudice of the interpreters, which we infinitely respect. (43f – translation)
Loisy, A. Remarques sur La Littérature Épistolaire Du Nouveau Testament. Librairie Emile Nourry, 1935.
Neil Godfrey
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“the historical Paul, much to the dismay of champions of authenticity, would have been the blindest of polemicists, the most notorious liar, or the most insane of fools if he had spoken the language attributed to him by his spokesperson.”
I would be very obliged if someone can explain what the author is actually arguing here!
He seems to be saying that someone like Marcion would not have been so stupid to put his own words in the mouth of Paul – am I getting that correct?
Loisy is saying that if we (he has his erstwhile peers, the orthodox theologians, in mind) accept the authenticity of Paul’s authorship of the epistle to the Galatians, if we accept the notion that the Paul embraced by the Church today (both Roman and Protestant) really wrote everything we read in Galatians, then we would have to conclude that Paul — the Paul embraced by mainstream Christianity — was a man of a hostile argumentative spirit, with no tolerance for those who thought differently in the church, and an outright liar (claiming he owed no debt to other apostles before him etc etc — which was a lie), and a bombastic fool claiming that God directly revealed the truth to him quite apart from any other human mediation.
Thanks.
BTW – did Loisy have a good argument as to why “Identifying him outright with Marcion or one of his followers is a drastic solution, since the mystical Paul is not Marcionite” ?
For Loisy, the “mystical Paul” thought of Christ as the “second Adam”, the one who was placed opposite Adam in order to undo the sin introduced by Adam — Marcion would not have held such a notion, Loisy states. Further, the idea that “God sent is Son” is not Marcionite, given that the Good God himself took on the form of Jesus. Further, in Romans, the mystical teaching links the ultimate salvation with the regeneration of the creation — something again that Loisy sees at odds with Marcionism. Loisy also finds the idea of mystical union with Christ’s death and resurrection in the ritual of baptism (dying in going under the water and resurrected in coming up from the water) would have been repugnant to Marcion. There are probably other details but those ones come most easily to hand right now.
The best witness that in “God sent his son” the “god” is the Marcion’s god is the Catholic interpolator who felt obliged to add “born by woman, born under the law” in order to reassure the readers on the identity of that god with the creator. In addition Gal 4:9 makes the point that god was unknown before the current time, which proves further that Galatians is really a marcionite epistle. Where Loisy may be right yet is in the his judgement on Romans. But even there I think that the best witness of the marcionite character of the original passage about the new Adam is again the Catholic editor who interpolated “man” in 5:15 (when “man” was absent in the similar expressions in 5:17 and in 5:19), hence betraying his fear and/or knowledge that in the original version Jesus was not a man (because he was the Marcionite Jesus).
Loisy would counter that his thesis has the advantage of fewer hypotheticals (fewer assumed interpolators for this bit and that bit). Occam’s razor. Further, Marcion was not the only one, nor the first, to preach an “unknown god”.
Typical of Loisy. Not only he was always reluctant to recognize his own debt to Joseph Turmel. Now he makes the argument of the impossibility of two apostolates without never mentioning Bruno Bauer.
Typical of Giuseppe, jumping to conclusions. Loisy, on page 6 of the book that Neil is quoting from, did indeed acknowledge his debt to Turmel and his writings.
I may quote some Turmel’s remarks where he shows his unsatisfaction for the Loisy’s reluctance to recognize fully his own debt to himself.
The question that comes to my mind is what would motivate a “mystical” person to consider such a “mundane” gospel of sufficient interest or importance, so important that they felt compelled to rewrite/edit it so it presented the mystical message in place of its original worldly gospel. Do we have comparable historical scenarios where treatises presenting one point of view were clearly edited to present another quite different point of view? What were the conditions/dynamics that made such a re-write necessary?
It seems to me that Roger Parvus has tried to give an answer to your question, when he pointed out the inclination, by Simonians, to co-opt religious figures of other cultures in their (mystical) system. Same approach found among the Naassenes, who co-opted Attis and other Pagan figures in their own system. Why did they do so? We don’t know. Yet this may be a factual pattern. What has been partially overlooked by Roger is that the pattern assumes the co-optation of foreign mythological figures (not of historical figures).
The Preacher had a penchant for books relating foreign mythology—the Phrygian Attis, the Syrian Adonis, the Egyptian Isis, and so forth. (source)
But would the religious figures and movements which you cite have known or cared about whether such figures were historical or only mythological? As far as I am aware – although I welcome correction – Attis, Adonis, and Isis were understood as having been historical figures who were also gods whom people worshipped. Attis and Adonis had become gods and Isis, at least in the standard narrative, had been born a goddess.
So, incorporating historical Paul and/or Jesus would not have been as radical a difference to them as it is to us. This was a time, after all, when it was thought by people that gods could be born within the present rather than only within the past: cf., for example, Glykon.
Personally, I think that the more common and expected form of co-optation takes the form of a degradation of the foreign figure being ‘victim’ of the process. Examples: the marcionite Jesus is degraded as Barabbas ( = “Son of an unknown Father”); Buddha is degraded as the Gerasene Demonic; John the Baptist is degraded as mere precursor; Simon Magus is degraded as Simon of Cyrene (after that the same Simonians had degraded Jesus as the mere “material” shadow of the Magus).
In my current research, I am wondering if Jesus himself has been reduced to a human status since what (in the his case) had been degraded (as perceived someway as rival) was a previous (and original) version of Jesus/Joshua heavenly revealer (indebted to Buddhistic and Therapeutae monastic mysticism). I think about the Detering’s last essay (meant to prove) that the ford-crosser Joshua had been transformed in a crucified Jesus. According to Detering, the crucifixion was originally the symbol of the ford-crossing and only later it has been “degraded” to a tool of torture (before in heaven, shortly after on the earth). The crossing of the river by Joshua/Jesus has inspired originally the form of a cross, that is also the elementary geometrical shape by which in Plato’s Timaeus the demiurgical world was shaped. I am wondering if the idea of a cosmic cross, once connected via Plato to the idea of creation, and given the anti-demiurgist hatred of the matter, implied the introduction of evil archontes as the creators of the world (when they crucified Jesus).
As to the status of the figure victim of co-optation by Simonians and Naassenes, I think that in presence of a diasporic Jewish pre-Christian Jesus/Joshua cult (I refer to Detering’s essay for evidence of a such cult), there are few doubts about the divine status of a such figure (before that he was co-opted).
From the Mahayana Buddhist side of the enterprise of fabricating religious scriptures and claiming that they are older and written by people in authority, I hope that the following 2 points may be interesting.
1. I personally am thinking that no such revision was done – rather, people who wanted to substitute a mystical message for a worldly message would write their own new scriptures and attribute the scriptures to past figures. Thus, the Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra (itself, ironically, a Mahayana forgery, albeit an early forgery), in its surviving versions, recommends that meditators seeking to become Buddhas meditate upon certain mundane topics in order to ward off fear where later Mahayana Sutras, dealing with the same topic of warding off fear, would urge devotion to some celestial Buddha or Bodhisattva.
2. But Edward Conze, the famous English Buddhist and scholar of Buddhism, was convinced, in a view which later scholars of Buddhism have disagreed with, that the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra’s effusive praise for the Buddha Akṣobhya was a later interpolation by a person more concerned with devotion to beings into an originally more purely philosophical text.
I think you are right about that. I am reminded of the cult of which I was once a part. There was a time when the leader was aged and removed from daily contact with most members worldwide, and certain changes in doctrines or ways certain past traditions and teachers were being applied and interpreted. Questions naturally arose about what version the leader himself would have supported or taught, and whether what we were hearing through intermediaries was really what the leader had once practised or not, and so forth. I can well imagine that in a less technologically advanced world that it would have been relatively easy to produce and circulate “a true or original version” of some treatise that the leader had written in parts remote from the physical headquarters, particularly after the leader’s death.
I see that you and ABuddhist are assuming the death of a historical “leader” i.e. Paul. I think that there is a difference between to see Paul as a historical figure to which epistles were attributed later and to see Paul as a fictional author who was attributed to already fabricated epistles. In the first case Paul is placed at the beginning of the process. In the second case Paul is only a final label working as a glue that holds the whole corpus together. Since I see Marcion as working on the final product (well: apart the obvious Catholic revision that was even more late) and since the name “Paul” makes a lot of sense for marcionite theology (cfr references in Bruno Bauer), then it is more probable that Paul also (as a name) was the corollary of the final product rather than the impulse to the entire process of fabrication of the epistles.
No, I’m not assuming the death of a historical leader in my point. My illustration of my point was based on my personal experience and a historical situation, but I certainly had in mind the fact that I have always stressed in all my discussions — that we are dealing with literary figures first and last. Whether those literary figures had any other personas historically is another question that I have not, or very rarely, ever addressed. My example was a historical one because it supported ABuddhist’s point. The principle applies just as much if we are dealing with literary authorities, or at least authorities known only to us as literary figures.
To clarify the principle: The (literary) figure of Paul appears in the second century At some point a particular “school” or “scribe” chose to “rewrite” Paul. The ones doing the “rewrite” are, by analogy with the historical examples, faced with a well pre-existing contrary existing tradition. But the situation is recent enough to allow for rewrites — hence the existing traditions of Paul must not long predate (if they even predate at all) the second century. If or who a figure existed behind the literary authority is something I have not addressed and would not know how to address — given the state of the evidence.
Historical examples help us to grasp the possibility and plausible explanation for what we see in the sources, irrespective of whether the sources themselves are pointers to historical figures now lost to us.
>Historical examples help us to grasp the possibility and plausible explanation for what we see in the sources, irrespective of whether the sources themselves are pointers to historical figures now lost to us.
I am so thrilled and pleased by your words, which seem to me to vindicate the methods (if not the conclusion) behind an idea which I have considered for several months but have not expressed in public because I have feared that it would be too ridiculous. I hope that you would be kind enough to allow me to email you with a brief outline of my idea – which directly addresses the historicity of Paul.
But by presenting the text as a true or original version, would such forgers not be playing better into the trope of revising a previously existing work? If they were wanting to present an orifinal work as an old work by a past master, they would, I think, be better claiming to have discovered a new text rather than an original version of another text. Or am I misunderstanding your words?
I’m not entirely sure I clearly understand the different options you are proposing, sorry, but as a general comment I can only say at this point that I am trying not to make any presuppositions about the contexts and manner of introduction of the various writings.
I am sorry.
Let me try to present the options more clearly after I present the initial scenario.
The initial scenario is that a person in a religious movement has some ideas and writes the ideas into a text. This author, though, wants to present the text as having been written by an earlier authority within the religious movement.
This author has 2 options about how to do this.
1. Claim to have discovered a new text which is really a lost old text written by an earlier authority within the movement.
2. Claim to have discovered a new, better prserved and more accurate version of a text which the earlier authority within the movement wrote into which the author has interpolated the author’s new ideas.
Does this help you?
Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately I don’t feel I understand enough about the social and literary environment of the time in order to offer any thoughts in response to your question, Bart Ehrman’s relatively recent book on Christian forgery nothwithstanding. However, here is Steck’s discussion of the introduction of the Pauline letters (384f):
But not forgetting his position as a responsible Reformed Church Pastor (and no doubt careful to avoid any suspicion of appearing to be as both flippantly and savagely cynical as Bruno Bauer), Steck adds:
Neil has written in a previous comment:
Marcion was not the only one, nor the first, to preach an “unknown god”.
Why “unknown”?
It seems to me that Loisy is postulating this anonymous inventor only in order to claim that this “mystical Paul” adored still YHWH as supreme god. Hence not at all an “unknown” god.
The Loisy’s case would become stronger if he had postulated, as Roger Parvus has done, an anti-demiurgist (a real forerunner of Marcion as to aversion against YHWH) behind this “mystical Paul”. Satornilos, for example. Or Cerdon. Since in this case it would be expected by Marcion that he had collected fragments and/or epistles that shared this common denominator: aversion to YHWH.
It was not Loisy but me, yours truly, who pointed out in my earlier reply that Marcion was not the only one, nor the first, to preach an “unknown god”.
(As for the rhetorical “unknown inventor”, all glosses and additions placed in an original text are by definition from “unknown” hands — that is why they are included. If a scribe knew that certain words were not original to Paul but by a person named “such and such” then we would expect that scribe to either copy them faithfully with their signature or omit them. The entire argument for a successful infusion of foreign words into the original text is based on a copyist either beign unsure if a gloss was original or not, or if a comment was original or not — or else the scribe is intentionally seeking to “clarify” or “change” the original himself so that it reads as if Paul wrote it or at least meant to say it.)
I might add, for what it’s worth, that I have come across things I do not like about Loisy but also I have come across things I don’t like about Turmel. (There are also things I don’t like about myself and deeply regret.) But I try to leave those flaws to one side when assessing the validity of any particular argument. Recall again the importance of being aware of the common informal logical fallacies — and our own gut reactions that too easily and subtly sway our reasoning.
At contrary, I think that (the school of) Marcion knew that, for example, 1 Cor 2:6-8 was a text fabricated by Valentinians (possibly Marcion knew even the name and surname of the Valentinian author of that fragment), but Marcion added it in the epistle of Paul because he was interested to create the myth of Paul starting from portions created entirely by him and fragments derived by other authors who derived the his attention in virtue of their shared anti-demiurgism (= aversion to YHWH). Hence we can be sure that the original authors of the fragments merged by Marcion in the final edition of the Apostolikon were all anti-demiurgists, while the differences regarded other minor details.
Why bring Valentinians or Marcionites into this? The Simonians are a much better fit. With the Simonians we at least have some pegs in the early record to hang our speculations on: “But in each heaven I changed my form,” says Simon, “in accordance with the form of those who were in each heaven, that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Thought, who is none other than her who is also called Prunikos and Holy Spirit, through whom I created the angels, while the angels created the world and men.” (Epiphanius, Panarion 21.2.4.)
Richard Carrier, in his “On the Historicity of Jesus”, suggested that the “Ascension of Isaiah”, was a co-opting and adaptation of the much earlier “Descent of Inanna” in which the goddess deliberately descends past earth to a non-earthly realm to get crucified by demons (pp 45-48). But according to Irenaeus such co-opting and adapting was just the kind of thing that the Simonians liked to do. He says they did it with Greek myths, Old Testament texts and, of course, the Jesus story. It does not appear that the examples Irenaeus brought forward were comprehensive, for he presents the Simonians as wanting their Simon to be all things to all people. So, I see no reason why the Simonians could not also have co-opted and adapted the “Descent of Inanna” (Ishtar/Astarte).
For the sake of clarity, let’s refer to this proposed Simonian text as “the Descent of Simon.” Carrier, in fact, in a footnote on page 48, says the Ascension of Isaiah may have been, in some earlier redaction, a lost Apocalypse. In my proposed scenario the lost Apocalypse would be the “Descent of Simon.” That would make the “Ascension or Isaiah” an adaptation of an adaptation. In other words, it was an adaptation of the “Descent of Simon” which was, in turn, an earlier adaptation of the “Descent of Inanna”. In this scenario 1 Cor. 2:6-8 would be a protrusion from the proposed “Descent of Simon”. And the many rough edges of the AoI would be due to its having such a convoluted origin.
I have mentioned the Valentinians because, if I remember well, in this article Arthur Droge finds among the Valentinians a similar myth:
https://www.academia.edu/43327375/_Whodunnit_Paul_s_Peculiar_Passion_and_Its_Implications_
…while H. Detering found in a Nagh Hammadi text the origin of the same myth crystallized in 1 Cor 2:6-8.
I quote Arthur Droge (p. 28-29 from the pdf, note 72):
To be clear, my point is not that 1 Cor. 2:6–16 influenced the Valentinians, but that the Valentinians “influenced” Paul. Yet this was not only true of the Valentinians. “Paul” (or better, “Pauls”) was (were) a literary fabrication of the second century, and in general assumed three separate generic forms: epistolary, commentarial, and narratival. Cf. the similar second-century creations of “Peters,” “Johns,” “Thomases,” “Jameses,” et al. Whether a historical Paul can be disentangled from any of this is a question to which I return shortly.