Reading the closing chapter of The First Urban Christians by Wayne A. Meeks (a work that is cited somewhere in nearly every other book I read on early Christian studies) the disconnect between Paul’s Jesus and the Galilean Jesus of the gospels was driven home to me in a way that leaves me wondering how anyone could ever suspect any relationship between the two Jesus’s if they were not bound together in the same Bible.
For all practical purposes Paul’s Jesus was nothing more and nothing less than a crucified and resurrected Son of God. All the spiritual qualities that Paul wanted his fellow-believers to live out were encapsulated in Jesus’ dying and rising act. Paul had no need to appeal to anything about Jesus other than his giving up his life and being restored again in exaltation beside God. Continue reading “Why Paul had no need for a Galilean Jesus, and no need for a body resuscitated from a tomb”