What Paul argues here is not just a multilayered interpretive meaning for a command of Torah, with a literal as well as an allegorical meaning. That was common among the rabbis, who might agree that although this command of the Torah was given to ensure the proper care of animals, how much more so, in principle, would it imply the proper care of humans. But Paul takes an opposite approach. He insists that this Torah command has nothing at all to do with the welfare of the animal—asking “Does God care for oxen?”—and asserting that this Torah command was entirely intended to support his position that he as a spiritual laborer had the right to be supported financially.
This allegory encapsulates the implications of Paul’s way of thinking, which are monumental. What he does here he does on a grander scale with the entire Torah, and with the central tenets of Judaism as a whole—moving everything from literal to allegorical, from earth to heaven. Israel is no longer the physical nation; rather, the “true Israelites” are those who are “in Christ,” having been “circumcised” in heart (Galatians 6:16; Philippians 3:3). The honored messianic Davidic bloodline means nothing, as God creates many brothers of the Messiah who will reign as “kings” with him spiritually (Romans 8:17; 1 Corinthians 4:8; 6:2–3). The kingdom of God is no longer on earth but God’s real “commonwealth” is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). Jerusalem is no longer the city blessed and chosen by God. God has cursed Jerusalem and its Jewish inhabitants; now the “true” Jerusalem is in heaven (Galatians 4:25–26). Those who were once blessed by keeping all the commandments of the Torah are now under a curse, while those who follow the “Torah of Christ” are blessed (Galatians 3:10; 6:2). All human relations, from the sexual to the social and economic, are losing importance as the “form of this world is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31). Paul’s assertion that God does not care for animals, even the lowly laboring ox, represents an entire world of Torah overthrown in the interest of the world to come. In terms of its full implications it might be the most telling sentence we have from Paul. It implies that Paul’s new “Torah of Christ” has cut itself off from any real stake in the transformation of this world into the kingdom of God, where the will of God is done on earth as in heaven. Given these perspectives on the Torah, along with their implications for Judaism more generally, it should not surprise us that Paul ended up in a bitter struggle with Peter, James, and the original apostles, who claimed to faithfully carry on the message of Jesus. We have only Paul’s side of that conflict, and his decisive break with Jerusalem is glossed over in Acts, but there is enough evidence still to piece together the story.
CHAPTER NINE
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 sun dial 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.1
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.2 The only basis upon which he pairs them at all is in a context in which he is encouraging his readers to bear up under persecution so as to receive a heavenly reward.
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.3 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). If Eusebius had had something more, or even a source that was more substantial than Gaius, a “writer of the church,” he would surely have made use of it.
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.4