On Paul of Tarsus and Terry Jones
by: Elizabeth Cunningham on September 9th, 2010 | 11 Comments »
Everyone from President Obama to Angela Jolie has made a pronouncement on Pastor Terry Jones’ proposed September 11th Quran burning – publicity that Paul of Tarsus, a man who knew how to stage an event, might well have envied. Paul presided over the first public burning of books by Christians. In Ephesus, recent converts burned their scrolls on magic (presumably voluntarily) as a symbolic act of penitence as well as a literal act of destruction. Knowledge was more vulnerable in those days of hand-copied scrolls. Though the content of the Quran cannot be destroyed in this proposed fire, burning the Quran is a literal as well as symbolic assault on the Islamic faithful. In both cases, the book burnings are an aggressive assertion of the absolute supremacy of one religion through the demonizing of another.
Below is a fictional rendition (edited for brevity; for the juicy version read the novel) of the book burning at Ephesus from my novel Bright Dark Madonna (Monkfish, 2009, used by permission). The narrative point of view belongs to Maeve, the feisty Celtic Mary Magdalen who is nobody’s disciple:
Intent on my own thoughts, I did not at first notice a larger than usual crowd gathering in the center of the square, until a hush fell, and a voice I could never forget rang out.
“Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, whether Jews or Gentiles, you are now one in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and heirs through Christ to eternal life. I, Paul, called from the womb to be apostle to Christ Jesus, adjure you to come forward with the emblems of your old reliance on sorcery and magic, from the time before you knew Christ Jesus, when you relied on charms and potions to work your own sinful will and satisfy your selfish desires.”
No one could ignore the strident, commanding voice of Paul of Tarsus. I was curious. Wrapping my widow’s shawl around me as a cloak of invisibility, I discovered that I still had my youthful talent for weaving my way through a crowd. No one paid much attention to me. They were all too intent on the public spectacle Paul was creating. And a spectacle it was. There, in front of Paul was a growing pile of scrolls, what were then called books, of all sizes and quality but every one of them costly in days when all writing was by hand. The equivalent of fifty thousand silver pieces was piled up in the square.
“Come forward and confess to your brothers and sisters in the Lord how you have used spells and practiced magic and how you now renounce all such foolishness and wickedness, having been redeemed by Christ Jesus through the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”
With their basic script provided for them, the new believers began to step forward and give details, sometimes lurid but mostly mundane, of their dabbling in magic and sorcery – to conceive children (or abort them as one brave woman admitted, before her husband yanked her off stage) to divine the future, to heal from sickness, to clinch business deals, to triumph over enemies, or get revenge. All the things people have always tried to control, whether through spells or appeals to gods and, yes, saints. Some people were enjoying their moment center stage while others looked bullied and shamed. Either way, there was something about the whole display that was getting on my nerves.
“What has any of this got to do with the teachings of Jesus?” A woman’s voice suddenly rang out over the din. “What does renouncing magic have to do with loving your neighbor as yourself – loving your enemy?”
To my astonishment the voice was mine and, moreover, I had stepped forward, my shawl falling away. Paul paled as he recognized me and looked for a moment as though he was going to be sick. Then he recovered and glared at me.
“Who is this woman, Apostle?” asked a man. “I do not recognize her. Is she a believer? Has she been baptized by the Holy Spirit?”
Paul was in a pickle, since he had baptized me himself, albeit against my will.
“Who has given this woman authority to speak?” people shouted. “Who has authority over her?”
“No one has authority over me!” I laughed. “I am a widow, as you see. As for who my husband was, I will tell you – ”
“Aquila! Quick, a torch!” shouted Paul. “We will make a bonfire for Christ Jesus, a bonfire of our vanities, a bonfire of our unbelief. Christ Jesus is Lord. He is our head. Only he has authority. Only he can save us from death and sin.”
As he spoke, Aquila lit the pile of scrolls on fire, the flames caught and spread rapidly, the scrolls crackling impressively, and the first recorded book burning by Christians was underway. The crowd quickly lost interest in me. An outspoken, possibly crazy, widow was no competition for a holy blaze consuming costly wicked books.
Good point. Now the jerk has the whole floor. Well done. Hopefully the reasonable will ultimately have the last laugh on Mr. Jones.
I think there’s a new book on my reading list…
Thanks, Just Jack! Yes, Paul was a media master in his time–and ours! I think you would enjoy Maeve and she you.
got cut off mid-sentence. Was going to stay Paul still packs a wallop in our time. I think you would enjoy Maeve, and she you.
I have a problem with this sort of literature. The Letter to the Ephesians is not one of the “Pauline” letters regarded by the scholarly historians of early Christianity as genuinely from Paul, so the existence of this letter does not prove that Paul was in Ephesus. Apparently, the “factual” basis of this fictional account is a passage from the book of Acts that does NOT say, if you read it carefully, that Paul urged the burning of the books in question. Now, suppose it had. Recent scholarship tells us that the Book of Acts was likely written well after the likely death of Paul in Rome in the mid 60′s CE in the aftermath of the burning of parts of Rome by Nero’s henchmen, for which the Roman Christians were blamed, between 20 and 60 years later. In favor of the later date is this: The Book of Acts shows signs of having been written to counter the growing influence of the “heretic” Marcion by adherents of proto-orthodox Christians (those who were beginning to establish the mainstream doctrines that later become codified at the time the Roman Empire took Christianity under its wing). The proto-orthodox trend already existed in the first half of the 2nd century, but not in the first century. Anyway, Acts is not a very reliable source for understanding the historical Paul. It was written for a Christian movement that faced challenges quite different from those that it faced in Paul’s time.
We know how people often take fictions to be the Gospel truth, especially when those fictions feature the same characters as the (already partly fictionalized) canonical Gospels do. The unfortunate thing is that this fiction will tend to reinforce the view that Christianity from the very beginning was into the burning of books representing rival spiritual positions. I think it’s probable that the many of the earliest Christians, Paul included, were not like that. It does the interreligious toleration spiritual progressives endorse no favor to spin tales that reinforce, even if it is not intended to do so, the right-wing Christian view that Christianity from the start had the same approach that characterizes right-wing Christianity today! It’s not only better historical scholarship to show how different the early Christians were from what Christianity later became, it’s also a good argument from precedent in favor of religious pluralism today.
Thanks very much for points of information and your thoughts on this kind of fiction. Perhaps I will hesitate to offer excerpts in the future. The novel itself includes source acknowlegdements and some explanation of why I made the choices I did and some sorting of fact from fiction. It is risky to write fiction of this sort. I take heart from the Gospels themselves, which present the same story in very different ways.
Thanks again!
My point was not to stifle creativity (I appreciate your creative abilities) but to urge caution when tempted to projections into early times of repressive phenomena that perhaps were not there. (Lord knows, plenty of them were there!) Best wishes.
By the way, Westar Institute’s publication The Fourth R and the scholars that present at its periodic functions, including Jesus Seminar on the Road, are good sources for current scholarship on early Christianity as well as the challenging question of what we can know, or reliably believe, about the historical Jesus and the context of his actual and supposed words and deeds.
Thanks very much for the word about The Fourth R and the Jesus Seminar on the Road. I have read works by many of the Seminar scholars and appreciate knowing of their ongoing pursuits.
All the best to you.
Paul was the traitor among the Apostles. He represented himself as an apostle, he was not an apostle.
He co-opted the Christian movement, reduced Peter’s position as Chief Rabbi, and assumed the position of being Jesus’s heir to the teachings, by being chosen by” GOD”
Peter is Saul, one of the most cruelest persecutors of Christians.
In his letters to John, he shows his Ego, by thanking god ( the Jewish god) for Jesus’s role in paving the way for his divine mission in spreading the word of god by accepting Jesus as the path.
Jesus was a Rabbi that denounced the god of Abraham, and introduced the True God that is in everything, who taught that the Divine is in all of us, and the way of manifesting the Divine within us was through Love Compassion and Forgiveness.
He rejected the jealous and vengeful god of his tribe.
Christianity is the evolution of Judaism. Jesus is the Messiah.
What Paul did, was to use Jesus as the way to the god of Abraham.
He eliminated the liberation theology that Jesus taught, and reintroduced the god of Abraham by representing Jesus not as the Messiah, but as a child of the same ole god, and the only path to the same ole god.
Paul was an agent of the vengeful and jealous god, who succeeded in transforming the liberation that the Messiah represented, back into allegiance to the jealous and vengeful god, by representing Jesus as the
path.to……… instead of the manifestation of…. Divinity within us all.
Thanks for your reflections. Here is to divinity and humanity within us all.
Thank you, Frank T. for your comments. I have long thought that our churches speak too much about Paul and too little about what Jesus said. We don’t need Paul to tell us what Jesus meant.
Elizabeth, I haven’t read your books, but I’ll look them up. Sound challenging.
Elsie, I would be delighted if you looked up the novels. They are challenging but also fun. http://passionofmarymagdalen.com/ .