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).
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 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.