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(2025)

The Quest for the Historical Paul with Nina Livesey (Part 4: Paul and the Q source)

1. Paul and the School
2. The Shifting Dates of Jesus and Q
3. What’s in a Name?
4. The Form of Q with Sarah Rollens
5. The Dutch Radical Critics

Appendix: Transgressing vs. Brainwashing in Romans and the Sophistication of Late Pauline Letters

ABSTRACT: In this final of four articles, John MacDonald focuses in on Paul / John and the Q source, and continues our look at the later nature of Paul, suggesting Paul’s Philippian Christ Hymn and John 1’s incarnation are well explained as homilies about Jesus in the Q source where the loving symbolic leader, and the corporate Son of Man Cynic philosophy community/school (Corporate Son of Man as “holy ones of the Most High” in Daniel 7:18, 22, 27) of aphorisms in Q1, become the judging Son of Man prophet of Q2. Jesus is the new and greater Joshua as exemplarily wise. The name “Jesus” is closely related to the name “Joshua.” Both names derive from the Hebrew name Yehoshua (יהושע), which means “Yahweh is salvation” or “God saves.”

Marcion complained that the canonical gospels plagiarized his gospel, and the supposed early attestation of early gospels by Papias is challenged by the fact that Papias talks about Marcion, which is present in all our manuscript evidence. There is some evidence that Marcion created the first gospel (which looks like a shorter Gospel of Luke) for many reasons, including, as Bart Ehrman notes, that canonical Luke seems based on an earlier form where the preface is missing and the birth narrative seems tacked on (like the longer ending of Mark).

The seven-letter group of Marcion’s “genuine” letter collection among his ten letters may pre-date Marcion, but not by very much time. Or they may represent different writer groups in Marcion’s school. As I said in an earlier installment, writing in role was an important feature of ancient education, as it is today with “RAFT” writing assignments. RAFT is a versatile writing strategy used in education that stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. Role refers to the writer’s perspective or position in the writing. Audience refers to the intended reader or recipient of the writing. Format refers to the type of writing (e.g., letter, poem, report, and so on). Topic refers to the subject matter of the writing.

All that is really established regarding Marcion’s ten-letter collection is that seven form a distinct group attributable to one viewpoint or syn-optic. This grouping tells us nothing about how far back the letters precede Marcion, or if this goes back to a single figure, let alone goes back to the historical Paul. By analogy, Q1 simply groups sayings in the Q source of a similar Cynic flavor, which need not go back to a single sage of that school—certainly not necessarily to the historical Jesus. It may just reflect pagan syncretism with the early Jesus movement, for the Cynics were the ones that we know talked about selling possessions and adopting the itinerant lifestyle of Jesus. Robert M. Price comments: “An overarching unity among the Pauline epistles means only that there is the general conformity of a school of thought, not that of a single authorship” (2012, p. 50).

1. Paul and the School

The notion of the Pauline literature emerging in a school of writers like Marcion’s makes sense of the inconsistencies in the “Pauline-like” 1 Corinthians seeming to contradict the previous page every time that you flip the paper. Ehrman also notes contradictory accounts of salvation in Paul. Salvation is understood in different ways throughout Romans. The backstory for Romans is different because Paul is supposedly writing to a Church that he did not himself create, so he is trying to be systematic about his message. In Romans, the topic is that human beings are alienated from God because of their sinful lives, and the death and resurrection of Jesus can fix the relationship. This is like a RAFT writing prompt that has been given to two different students who solve it in completely different ways. Paul in Romans has different models for expressing this, which appear to contradict each other with completely opposed views as to what constitutes sin (human transgressions vs. a cosmic power). Romans is important because it simply lays out moral influence salvation beside substitution salvation, blending the two major salvation paths in the Jesus tradition as though a Roman Church that Paul didn’t create would simply understand this as blatantly obvious:

1. There is the judicial model in Romans 1-4. God is a law giver. He also judges criminal cases. Everybody breaks God’s laws, so there is a penalty and it’s the death penalty. Everyone sins, so everyone dies. Put differently, you’ve incurred a fine and it must be paid. Jesus pays it for you. Jesus being raised from the dead shows that the penalty has been paid because he’s no longer dead. We see this kind of substitutional view in 4 Maccabees. It’s long been debated whether if Christ paid the penalty, then everyone is saved. For Paul, you have to believe in Christ and accept the payment because if you don’t agree with Christ to pay your fine, he can’t pay it. The situation is akin to your mother offering to pay your fine in court, but where you refuse the payment. Salvation comes when you believe and trust that Christ’s payment works. This fits in with the ancient notion of sacrifice satisfying a god’s wrath.
2. There is also a participation model in Romans 5-8. Sin brings about separation from God. Sin in this model is not a transgression, but a cosmic power in the universe. It has imprisoned, trapped, and enslaved people; think of Satan entering Judas in the Gospels (Luke 22:3, John 13:27), which is where Paul might have picked up this model. It controls people and forces them to do things against God’s will. In a series of blog posts I’ve tried to show how implicating readers in the world’s betrayal of Christ / Christ’s death breaks the spell of Sin and opens people’s eyes to their own vileness. Sin is a power that forces you to do wrong even if you want to do right, and the power of Sin hands you over to the power of Death. Being implicated in Jesus’ death solves the problem of alienation from God here with your metanoia/renewal of mind/repentance, but not as a payment (as it is seen in the judicial model). It’s not that you’re breaking the law, but that you’ve been enslaved, so you have to be liberated. The readers shocked at seeing themselves in the world that brought about Christ’s death interrupts the power of sin/breaks the spell, and the resurrected Christ indwells within them, uniting them with him as buried and raised when baptized, to combat Satan’s temptations. You participate in Christ’s death because when his death convicts you, your fleshly is crucified / circumcising your heart, revealing the Law written on it (Romans 2:14-15). Christ’s resurrection shows that he nullified the power of Death, which is important because the Bible says that if the dead are not raised, we might as well be gluttons and drunks, for tomorrow we die (1 Corinthians 15:32; Isaiah 22:13). By contrast, Paul urges: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Paul also says: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17).

Thus in Romans we have two models of sin. One involves consciously disobeying God, and the other involves enslavement to the power of sin, each having different paths to salvation. The apparent contradiction seems to have arisen from processes akin to those in the school setting noted earlier: different ‘students’/authors proposed different models for Christians dealing with the problem of the human condition of alienation from God because of Sin. A ‘teacher’/editor then seems to have taken these disparate images of salvation and interweaved them.

Analogously, modern biblical scholarship has proposed that the Gospel of John may have multiple layers of composition, potentially involving different authors or sources, with a final editor (or redactor) integrating them. A Pauline editor could do so here according to the pagan notion of a Sophist who tries to argue in sometimes contradictory ways and say whatever he wants to say in order to win the day (1 Corinthians 9:20-22). If Nina Livesey is right that the letters are inspired by Acts, then this all seems to reflect Paul’s teacher Gamaliel with his open-minded, flexible approach to the Law, brainstorming multiple perspectives, thereby letting God affirm His favorite choice, in cases where answers are not known. For instance, Paul’s famous advice in Acts 5:34-39, where he urged the Sanhedrin to show caution toward the apostles, reflects a pragmatic and open-ended approach: ‘If their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men.’ This suggests a willingness to consider multiple possibilities without rushing to judgment, a mindset that could align with polysemous thinking. Recall that all that Paul really “required” of a convert was “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

This fits well with Greek thought, with which Gamaliel and Paul are thought to have some connection. Plato with his school/Academy frequently employs vivid imagery and metaphors to explore complex philosophical concepts—including the nature of the mind, the soul, and human behavior—as Paul does with the competing judicial model and participation model outlined above. Plato’s dialogues often feature characters using multiple, sometimes competing images to describe the same concept, reflecting different perspectives or aspects of a single idea. This technique is particularly evident in dialogues where characters grapple with abstract notions like the soul, knowledge, or justice. This may reflect Plato incorporating ideas from Socrates, himself, and his students into the dialogues. For example, in Theaetetus, the character Socrates discusses knowledge and the mind using two distinct images, which could be seen as competing ways to understand cognition—the wax tablet and the aviary. With the wax tablet imagery (191c-e), Socrates compares the mind to a wax tablet where perceptions and thoughts leave impressions. The quality of the wax (clear or muddy) determines how well one retains knowledge. This image emphasizes memory as a passive process of imprinting. Later, with the aviary imagery (197d-e), Socrates likens the mind to an aviary filled with birds, representing pieces of knowledge. Some birds (knowledge) are caught and held, while others fly freely, symbolizing the active process of recalling or grasping knowledge. This contrasts with the wax tablet’s static nature by portraying the mind as dynamic and selective. These images are not explicitly in conflict, but Socrates uses them to highlight different problems: the wax tablet addresses perception and memory, while the aviary tackles the act of recalling knowledge. Theaetetus and Socrates explore these images sequentially, testing each to probe the nature of knowledge.

Some suggest that Paul’s teacher Gamaliel encouraged or engaged with Greek literature, which often included philosophical texts. For instance, the late Southern Baptist Convention leader Nelson L. Price claimed that Gamaliel “insisted that his pupils study the Greek poets.” While no single ancient source explicitly says that Gamaliel knew Greek thought, his education under his famous grandfather, Hillel the Elder, combined with his renowned wisdom, respected standing in the Sanhedrin (Acts 5:34), and background as a Pharisee from Tarsus (a Hellenistic city), strongly imply familiarity with Hellenistic culture and Greek philosophy, often seen in his measured, logical arguments and emphasis on divine sovereignty. Since Greek poetry was frequently intertwined with philosophical themes in Hellenistic education, this could imply exposure to philosophical ideas. Reverend Lars Haukeland states that Gamaliel “studied not only Biblical law, but also Greek literature,” setting him apart from more zealous rabbinical colleagues. Paul, Gamaliel’s student, demonstrates familiarity with Greek philosophy in his writings and speeches. In Acts 17:16-34, Paul engages with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens, quoting Greek poets like Aratus and Epimenides and using Stoic concepts (e.g., that of God as the source of all life, expressed in Acts 17:25, echoing Seneca). Paul imports the notion of pneuma/spirit from Stoicism, for instance. Paul’s ability to navigate Greek philosophical ideas suggests that his education, likely under Gamaliel, included some exposure to Hellenistic thought. Sri Lankan blogger Ramesh Desilva explicitly states that “Gamaliel’s School (which Paul was a student of), encouraged the careful study of Greek Philosophy.” So we might start to take Paul’s competing images for understanding how to overcome sin and reconcile with God in Romans, not literally, but figuratively. For example, Jesus does not literally pay a sin debt, as though the average person’s occasional naughtiness warrants the death penalty. Rather, it conveys universality: salvation is open to all, whether you tell a white lie occasionally or act as a serial murderer.

Since Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, the judicial model and justification by faith has been the main approach to Paul; the apocalyptic Death and Sin as “powers” participation model was not really understood. And there are more models. Another model in Paul is the reconciliation model, where God and man are like two estranged friends and Jesus acts as mediator. Yet another model is that of a slave, not involving paying a fine like in the judicial model, but conveying the notion of being the recipient of a ransom paid to release the slave.

2. The Shifting Dates of Jesus and Q

In The Obsolete Paradigm of a Historical Jesus (2025) Richard Carrier tries to revitalize the argument that some Christians supposed that Jesus was killed BCE. In a response to Ehrman’s critique of Jesus mythicism, Carrier notes:

Ehrman first confuses himself here. His slides correctly quote JFOS as saying 75 BC (the time of Alexander Jannaeus in which the Babylonian Talmud, and Jewish Christians in the same region according to Epiphanius, placed the execution of Jesus) is “almost a hundred years before the Romans even took control of Judea” (though Ehrman leaves out the rest of that sentence: “and a full hundred years before Pontius Pilate was put in charge of it”). Ehrman wonders if this is a typo because 75 BC + 100 would get 25 AD (actually 24 AD), but live, in the lecture, he misread the quote, skipping the word “almost.” The Romans took over Judea in 6 AD, which is over 80 years later, which is indeed “almost” 100 years, as I make clear by noting a “full” 100 years then brings us to the time of Pilate (in the 20s AD). Ehrman’s mistake here evinces a lazy carelessness that typifies his entire approach to this subject and its scholarship. Ehrman even calls this a factual mistake—but I’m the one who is correct. The factual mistake is his. That’s a trivial example, but still illustrative (he should not be making a mistake like that). But there is a far more important example: Ehrman also misstates my position as “the original Christians in Jerusalem … believed that Jesus was crucified in 75 BC,” but that’s not my position: my position (if he had ever actually read it) is that there were later Christians who believed that (we have this confirmed by two independent sources: that’s why we believe Epiphanius on this, because he describes the exact same group attacked in the Talmud, so they corroborate each other). And that does not necessarily mean the “original” Christians, but only some Christians of the second or third generation—possibly even later, but early enough to evince a liberality of when to place Jesus in history that is only likely if there was no actual history (like our revered Gospels) constraining their choice. I also have no idea why he thinks any of this involved “Jerusalem” Christians—we’re talking about Christians across the Jordan (JFOS [Carrier, 2020], p. 12). Ehrman also doesn’t know what Epiphanius said, or why historians agree the Talmud also dates Jesus to the 70s B.C., referencing the same sect as Epiphanius (ideologically and geographically). And he also does not appear to understand the difference between Jewish Christianity (Nazorianism) and Gentile Christianity (Ehrman also misspells Nazorians as Nazareans, confusing a different sect Epiphanius talks about, the Nasareans). And he does not appear to understand why the Babylonian Rabbis would be keen to debunk only an immediate Jewish threat to their faith—hence why they never mention the Gospel Jesus or its chronology, only this completely different one, because it was the one poaching their turf. (Carrier, 2025)

Carrier is not arguing in favor of dating Jesus’ death so early; he is arguing that dating it as having occurred under Pilate is conceivably just as fanciful as such a historically early death.

Perhaps Jesus is just a generic name for a God-chosen Messiah (the same as being “a” Joshua as I noted above, which is what Jesus’ name means). Then the narrative would constitute imagining what would have happened to him—since it did happen to every other messianic claimant—even if he was God’s beloved (agapetos) messenger (angelos). (Except for the fact that, as noted previously, Jesus trumped Rome not militarily, but in the words of the converted soldier at the cross and the resurrection, because what set Jesus apart was that Jesus was God’s chosen beloved.) The narrative might then have been aimed at inducing the transformative effect of seeing oneself in the world who turned against Jesus. Messianic claimants could—and some evidently did—see themselves as new Joshuas, using his biblical exploits to inspire followers toward liberation. This reflects a broader Jewish expectation of a messiah who would replicate heroic precedents to end oppression, though Roman suppression often ended such movements violently. And the messianic claimants near Jesus’ supposed time saw themselves as new Joshuas. Theudas, a self-proclaimed prophet during the Roman procuratorship of Cuspius Fadus, convinced a large number of followers (estimated to be 400 in Acts 5:36, or “the majority of the common people” by Josephus) to join him at the Jordan River. He promised to divide the waters at his command, allowing them to cross on dry ground—an explicit reenactment of Joshua’s miracle when leading the Israelites into Canaan (Joshua 3:14-17). This act symbolized a new conquest and redemption of the land from foreign rule, positioning Theudas as a Joshua-like figure who would initiate Israel’s liberation. His followers even brought their possessions, indicating a millenarian expectation of permanent relocation or transformation. Roman forces intervened, killing many and beheading Theudas, whose head was displayed in Jerusalem as a deterrent. Scholars interpret this as a messianic claim, blending Joshua’s military-redemptive role with prophetic motifs from Elijah and Elisha (who also parted the Jordan), though the core parallel is to Joshua’s entry into the Promised Land. Under Procurator Felix, an unnamed prophet known as “the Egyptian” (due to his origins or associations with Egypt) amassed a following of up to 30,000 (per Josephus) or 4,000 (per Acts 21:38). He led them from the wilderness to the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem, where he declared that at his command, the city’s walls would collapse, allowing entry and conquest—directly echoing Joshua’s feat at Jericho, where the walls fell after the Israelites shouted on divine instruction (Joshua 6:20). This promise framed him as a new Joshua (or Moses-Joshua hybrid), leading a divinely aided assault to overthrow Roman guards and establish himself as a ruler in a liberated Jerusalem. The location added apocalyptic weight, as Zechariah 14 prophesied God’s intervention from the Mount of Olives against Israel’s enemies. Roman troops dispersed the group, killing or capturing hundreds, though the prophet escaped. His actions combined militaristic intent with messianic expectations of eschatological reversal, using Joshua’s conquest narrative to legitimize his leadership. Jesus himself (Yeshua, the Aramaic form of Joshua) shares the name, meaning “Yahweh saves,” and New Testament typology often portrays him as a “new Joshua” leading believers to a spiritual promised land (e.g., Hebrews 4:8-11). Jesus as a “type” of Joshua will be important for thinking that Jesus is in the Q source (Q1, Q2, Q3), the shared source between Matthew and Luke that didn’t come from Mark.

In the Q source as a whole Jesus seems to be a Cynic sage fused together with a Jewish prophet—an ideal hero. Q contains short, memorable sayings, such as “Love your enemies” and “Do not worry about your life,” sayings which parallel the Cynic emphasis on concise, paradoxical wisdom that critiques societal values. Sayings like “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and mammon,” and the call to sell possessions, echo Cynic ideals of voluntary poverty and detachment from wealth. Q’s Jesus challenges religious and social conventions, such as in the woes against the Pharisees and the rejection of status-seeking, resembling Cynic critiques of hypocrisy and hierarchy. The mission instructions where followers are sent out with minimal possessions (“Take no purse, no bag, no sandals”) mirror the Cynic model of wandering without reliance on material support. By contrast, as a Jewish prophet, Q’s Jesus proclaims impending judgment, as in the warnings of fire and division or the coming of the Son of Man, aligning with prophetic calls for repentance in light of divine judgment. Sayings draw heavily on Jewish scriptures and themes, such as references to Jonah, Solomon, and the Queen of the South positioning Jesus within the lineage of Israel’s prophetic figures. Like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Q’s Jesus laments over Jerusalem’s rejection of God’s messengers and condemns unfaithful leaders, a hallmark of prophetic rhetoric. The temptation narrative and references to exorcisms and healings cast Jesus as a figure with divine authority, one akin to Elijah or Elisha, who performed signs to validate their prophetic role.

No Old Testament hero is explicitly framed as a Cynic sage, but figures like Elijah, Amos, Jonah, and Qoheleth exhibit traits—social critique, simplicity, provocative rhetoric—that resonate with Cynic characteristics. These parallels are limited by their firm grounding in Jewish prophetic or wisdom traditions. In contrast, Q’s Jesus more closely approximates a Cynic sage through his itinerant lifestyle and aphoristic teachings, though still retaining a strong Jewish prophetic identity, making him a unique synthesis of Jewish/pagan ideologies compared to Old Testament predecessors.

Q is divided by John Kloppenborg into three strata. Regarding Q’s oldest stratum, Q1, Earl Doherty’s review of Price’s Deconstructing Jesus helpfully summarizes:

Price gives us ten pages [151-160] of parallels between the sayings of Q1 (the apparent bedrock layer of the Q document) and Cynic-style pronouncements of famous sages like Epictetus, Seneca, or of those reporting on Cynic philosophers, such as Diogenes Laertius. There seems little doubt of the ultimate provenance of the core teachings of the Gospel Jesus—and it isn’t a Jewish one. This makes exceedingly ironic the modern appeal on the part of religious conservatives to a Christianity that preserves a so-called Judaeo-Christian tradition: something which in actuality constitutes an ethic that is Greek and a philosophy and ritual of salvation derived from the thoroughly Hellenistic ethos of the mystery cults. Price suggests that Q1, “far from allowing us access for the first time to the historical Jesus, is instead inconsistent with an historical Jesus” [p.150]. While people like Burton Mack detect (quite rightly) a pronounced character to the Q1 sayings, one of sly humor and wise common sense, supposedly implying a definite personality, the same features can equally be found in the body of Cynic sayings to which they have been compared, sayings which identifiably “stem from many different Cynic philosophers over several centuries.” If the latter sayings do not need to have come from a single person, Price reasons, neither do those attributed to Jesus…. He further observes that with virtually all other sayings collections of the ancient world attributed to a prominent figure (such as the many to Solomon or the collections of psalms ascribed to David), such attribution is fictive, the figure himself legendary. Price notes that attributing anonymous or traditional sayings to an authority figure is a fundamental shift on the part of a “canonical mindset.” Rather than let the inherent wisdom of such sayings stand on their own, self-evident and proverbially established from experience, their legitimacy becomes grounded in the fact that they were spoken by some respected or glorified figure, whose pipeline to a higher divinity is emphasized. By imposing theology, the sayings shift to the realm of revelation and prophecy. As “proverbs (that) enshrine wisdom, not revelation,” the attribution of Q1 to a Jesus is uncharacteristic of the proverb genre and suggests a later development. Price postulates that this Q Cynic root entered the Jewish Kingdom movement by way of the Godfearers, those gentiles attached to Judaism. He agrees (with myself) that the Q base of sayings had no narrative settings, no controversy stories. In the Gospels, the apparent point of a saying itself often makes a less-than-perfect fit with the set-up situation the evangelists provide for it, as though the exact significance of the original saying was lost or confused when adapted to its new milieu. The controversy stories, with Jesus as the star character, are consequently later additions, offering a singular, heroic originator who is simply an ideal figure. (Doherty, 2000)

I think that Doherty overstates the monopoly of pagan Cynic thought on Q1, ignoring how Q1 is also fused with Jewish tradition. Serge Ruzer has explored this in detail, arguing that the “love your enemy” precept emerges from Jewish exegetical trends during the Second Temple period, where interpretations of Leviticus gradually challenged community-bound ethics (as in the halakhic midrash Sifra on Leviticus 19:18, which permitted revenge against outsiders) to include outsiders or enemies. The core of these Q1 sayings is firmly grounded in Jewish ethical trajectories, making them an extension of Torah-based love and a fusion with Cynic pagan ideas.

Price additionally notes that we can demonstrate that every hortatory saying in the New Testament is so closely paralleled in contemporary Rabbinic or Hellenistic lore that there is no particular reason to be sure that this or that saying originated with Jesus. Such words commonly passed from one famous name to another, especially in Jewish circles, as Jacob Neusner has shown. Jesus might have said it, sure, but then he was just one more voice in the general choir. Is that what we want to know about him? And, as Rudolf Bultmann observed, who remembers the great man quoting somebody else?

Q1 are Sapiential (wisdom) sayings, Cynic-like, focusing on ethical instructions and social critique. Q2 are prophetic and eschatological sayings and narratives, emphasizing judgment, conflict, and Jesus’ divine authority. Q3 are biographical or theological narrative elements, often later additions framing Jesus’ identity.

Some Nietzsche scholars think that Friedrich Nietzsche may have discovered the Q1 Jesus in distinction to later Q2 and Q3 Jesuses, even though critical biblical studies wouldn’t notice it until later. Philosopher David Goicoechea notes:

This first saying of the Jesus of Q1 is momentous in that it announces the agapeic universal love that extends the command to love neighbors not only as the ones who are near or part of the chosen people, but it now includes all with special emphasis upon loving one’s enemy. This all loving Jesus of Q1 is the same Jesus that Nietzsche focused upon in the Anti-Christ as he distinguished the all loving Jesus from the judging Christ in order to center his philosophy on that Jesus. (2013, p. 11)

This fits with Nietzsche’s revaluation philosophy, where an enemy is not inherently bad, but reflects how you interpret him (that which does not kill me makes me stronger). In his notebooks Nietzsche describes his ideal Overman as Caesar with the soul of Christ.

Q1 (an earlier layer) is often characterized as containing wisdom-oriented, practical teachings—parables and sayings emphasizing love, compassion, and ethical living (e.g., the Beatitudes, love your enemies, turn the other cheek). This aligns with a “loving Jesus” who emphasizes mercy, inclusivity, and nonretaliation. Examples include sayings like “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20) or “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27).

Q2 (a later layer) is seen as introducing more apocalyptic and judgmental themes, with warnings of divine judgment, repentance, and consequences for rejecting the message (e.g., woes against the Pharisees, warnings about the coming judgment). This portrays a “judging Jesus” concerned with accountability and eschatological outcomes, as seen in sayings like the woes on Chorazin and Bethsaida (Luke 10:13-15). Some see these layers reflecting evolving community concerns, from ethical teachings to apocalyptic urgency.

Unlike Q1’s message-focused wisdom sayings and Q2’s messenger-focused prophetic and apocalyptic material, Q3 integrates Q’s teachings into a gospel-like narrative, aligning with early Christian theology. This complements the Elijah-Elisha parallel and Q2’s reinforcing Q’s Jewish prophetic context without reference to a salvific cross.

Burton Mack provides a helpful summary of transitioning from Q1 to Q2 as the loving Jesus becomes the authoritative judging Christ:

A sudden shift in tone awaits the reader of Q2. The new temperament is so strongly profiled that a comparison with the sayings in Q1 is unavoidable and the contrast in mood overwhelming. It is a shift for which one has not been prepared, and the effect is stunning. The aphoristic style of Q1 falls away almost to the point of disappearing. Aphoristic imperatives are gone, as is the sense of confidence in God’s care derived from the way in which nature provides for basic needs. In its place one hears the voice of a prophet pronouncing judgment on a recalcitrant world, a prophet who does not refrain from castigation and the sledge of apocalyptic threat. The shift in tone is matched by a panoply of new forms of speech. In contrast to Q1 the reader now encounters narratives, dialogue, controversy stories, examples taken from epic tradition, descriptive parables, warnings, and apocalyptic announcements. If one looks for corresponding changes in the rhetoric and style of discourse one is not disappointed. Instead of exhortation (“Don’t worry”), there is pronouncement (“The last will be first, and the first will be last”). Instead of imperatives (“Love your enemies”), there is direct statement (“I came to strike fire on the earth”). Indirect address (“Who then is the faithful servant”) is interspersed with direct address (“You must be ready”). Formulas of reciprocity, such as “The standard you use is the standard used against you,” are tightened and shift their setting of consequence from what happens in the public sphere to what will happen in the kingdom of God. And all of these judgments and verdicts are rendered with an authority that does not brook appeal. New ideas also are encountered. The expanded horizon introduces figures from the epic tradition. A man named John enters the picture. There is reference to the wisdom of God and the holy spirit. There are two miracle stories and warnings about what to say when put on trial. The rule of God is now spoken of as a kingdom to be fully revealed at some other place and time, presumably at the end of time. And a final judgment is described replete with thrones, court scenes, banishments, and a threatening figure called the son of man. A listing of the major blocks of material in Q2 illustrates the shift that took place and the constant presence of the theme of judgment. (1994, p. 132)

In the Bible we see composition reflecting stages like this, such as First-Isaiah/Deutero-Isaiah/Trito-Isaiah. In First Isaiah, Isaiah is the central prophetic figure, with historical figures like King Hezekiah (Isaiah 36-39) and symbolic figures like the “virgin” or “Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). No major new characters are introduced later within this section. This section reflects a unified prophetic voice, though redaction likely occurred later to organize oracles. Deutero-Isaiah introduces the “Servant” as a key figure—possibly Israel collectively, an individual, or a prophetic figure. New characters like Cyrus of Persia (Isaiah 45:1) emerge as God’s agent for restoration. Isaiah himself is not named, suggesting a shift in focus. This section is a later addition, reflecting a new historical context (exile vs. Assyrian threat). The Servant is a new thematic “character” (or role), though not necessarily a named individual. In Trito-Isaiah no single named prophet dominates; the focus is on the restored community and God’s universal reign. The Servant motif fades, and new figures like the “watchmen” (Isaiah 62:6) or personified Zion (Isaiah 60) appear. This section reflects a further stage, addressing post-exilic challenges, with a shift toward communal and eschatological themes.

Similarly, the Moses story’s staged development, with new characters (e.g., Phinehas, future prophet) introduced in later layers, parallels Q’s progression to a defined Jesus character in Q2. Later Pentateuchal layers clarify Moses’ legacy and introduce figures to expand the story’s scope. In the same manner, the stories of Elijah and Elisha likely originated as oral traditions (ca. 9th-8th century BCE) and were compiled and expanded during the Monarchic and Exilic periods (ca. 8th-6th century BCE). Redactional layers added theological depth and new figures. Early traditions focus on Elijah as a solitary prophet confronting Ahab and Baal worshippers (1 Kings 17-19). Key figures include Ahab, Jezebel, and the widow of Zarephath. Elisha is introduced as Elijah’s successor (1 Kings 19:19-21), bringing new characters like Naaman (2 Kings 5) and the “sons of the prophets” (2 Kings 2:3-15). Later redactions emphasize Elisha’s miracles and political role (2 Kings 8-9), possibly reflecting Exilic concerns about prophetic continuity. The introduction of Elisha as a new central figure in the narrative cycle mirrors Q2’s explicit development of Jesus, transitioning from Q1’s sayings to a defined prophetic identity. The Elijah-Elisha cycle’s development over time, with new characters added to expand the story, closely parallels Q’s layered growth. Likewise, the addition of the Son of Man and angelic figures in Daniel 7-12 aligns well with Q2’s apocalyptic sayings and defining of Jesus, particularly given the difference between the “Son of Man” motif in Q1 and Q2. The idea of imagining a new and greater Son of Man (which also just means “human”) pervades the early literature, such as Mark 10:45.

Sayings or traditions that were initially free-floating or communal were later placed on the lips of figures like Solomon, David, or Job to anchor them in a narrative or authoritative context. Unlike Q, however, Old Testament texts have surviving manuscripts, but their complex compositional history (evident in textual variants like the Septuagint or Dead Sea Scrolls) supports the idea of editorial attribution.

John the Baptist as a forerunner of Jesus is paralleled by Elijah giving a double portion of his power to Elisha. In Q, John’s announcement of the “mightier” one mirrors Elijah’s preparation of Elisha. Jesus’ baptism “with the Holy Spirit and fire” and his divine commissioning (“You are my Son”) parallel Elisha’s reception of Elijah’s spirit, suggesting Jesus inherits and surpasses John’s prophetic role. Q explicitly elevates Jesus’ kingdom mission above John, akin to Elisha’s greater deeds.

Just as Elisha’s role is clarified in later texts (2 Kings 2), Jesus’ identity is defined in Q2. In the Elijah-Elisha cycle, Elisha is introduced partway through (1 Kings 19:19-21), shifting the narrative focus. Similarly, John the Baptist appears in Q2 as a forerunner, with Jesus named explicitly in Q2 narratives, marking a later stage of Q’s development. Mark symbolizes this, too, to start out his Gospel saying: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ; as it is written in the prophets.” Mark immediately interprets John the Baptist as a forerunner of the Messiah (à la Elijah in 2 Kings 1:8). Mark then clothes John similar to Elijah (Mark 1:6. 2 Kings 1:8). Next he says that John ate locusts and wild honey, the food of the wilderness in which Elijah lived (and so on and so on). As Price comments: “In view of parallels elsewhere between John and Jesus on the one hand and Elijah and Elisha on the other, some [Miller & Miller, 1990, p. 48] also see in the Jordan baptism and the endowment with the spirit a repetition of 2 Kings 2, where, near the Jordan, Elijah bequeaths a double portion of his own miracle-working spirit to Elisha, who henceforth functions as his successor and superior” (Price, 2005).

In The Power of Parable (2012) John Dominic Crossan talks about fictions by Jesus becoming transformed into fictions about Jesus. Figurative crucifixion language in Q (like “take up your cross”) similarly may have later been taken up and developed into the salvific cross. The command to love your enemy in Q could transform into a literal salvific dying to save your friends and enemies in the Synoptics. We know that later writers like Matthew were allegorizing Q by taking the Q saying of the sign of Jonah, which was about preaching and repentance, and turning it into haggadic midrash about the resurrection (in Matthew 12:40). Why was Jesus specifically resurrected after three days, as stated in sources from Paul to Matthew? Jesus being dead for three days and then resurrected parallels Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish. This expansion in the Synoptics seems to be where Paul gets his claim that “Jesus was buried and raised on the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). As I said, the earlier passage in 1 Corinthians pairs with the Synoptics claiming that Christ died “according to the scriptures” referencing such passages as 2 Isaiah 16 and Psalms in Mark, Deuteronomy in Paul, and from Matthew “Wisdom of Solomon,” suggesting that Paul knew the gospels, as Livesey’s argument implies. The turning of the Jewish elite and crowd against Jesus and God’s subsequent wrath against the Jews also look like an allegorizing of Q saying QS 49 the Lament over Jerusalem:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused. Look, your house is left desolate. Now, I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'” (Mack, 1994, p. 98)

New Testament scholars regularly and routinely maintain that Q is striking in containing a list of Jesus’ sayings and no passion narrative—no account of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They conclude from this that the death of Jesus was not important to the community that produced the Q document. It has been hypothesized that Q was more like the Gospel of Thomas, another gospel that consists of sayings of Jesus without a passion narrative. For the Gospel of Thomas it is not the death and resurrection of Jesus that brings salvation; it is the correct interpretation of his “secret sayings.”

As noted earlier, the Q source is typically divided into Q1, a later Q2, and a final Q3 stratum. Paul’s/Romans’ ethic of love of enemy parallels that saying in Q1, but is more sophisticated. So Paul might have known Q. It seems absurd to Ehrman that if the Q source and Paul are both very early, Q would lack a passion narrative, as this would suggest massive contrariety between the various early communities. But it makes good sense under Livesey’s late Pauline model.

Paul’s call to bless persecutors aligns more with Q1’s ethic than with Q2’s judgment-oriented tone. The main similarities between Paul’s authentic letters and the Q source are: ethical teachings on love and nonretaliation (Romans 12:14-21); eschatological expectation (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17); kingdom of God as a transformative reality (Romans 14:17); Jewish roots with universal appeal (Romans 1:16); and community ethics and discipleship (1 Corinthians 13). Q1’s message-focused ethics closely align with that of Paul, while Q2’s messenger-focused eschatology shares Paul’s urgency, and Q3’s minimal theological framing approaches Paul’s Christology. Unlike Paul and the Gospel of John, Q lacks indwelling and salvific cross motifs, emphasizing Jesus’ teachings and prophetic role. But, as we will see, both John and Paul seem to have a homily on Q as a whole.

Akin to Jesus appearing to be a judging prophet in Q2, Paul seems to be a generic figure prophesied to bring the message of God to the pagans for the end time, Jesus being the one to bring that message to the Jews. They both function as generic figures inserted into history. In a different context Jacob Berman notes that we seem to find Paul being placed into different time periods. In his letter to the Corinthians Paul says that he fled from King Aretas in a basket, which puts him in the 30s CE. By contrast, Acts mentions that Paul was pleading with Felix and Herod Agrippa II, which would place Paul around 61 CE. Likewise, in Galatians we have Paul arguing with James, supposedly the brother of Jesus. Josephus places James’ death circa 62 CE. By contrast, Jerome identifies Saul/Paul as a young man during the events of the 70s CE and as a writer during the 90s, which would agree with the Acts of Timothy in dating Paul’s companion and writing partner Timothy’s death at the turn of the second century, rather than during the time of the Paul arguing with James.

Regarding the interpretations of Jesus as the son of man in Q1 and Q2, in the Book of Daniel, chapter 7, the vision describes “one like a son of man” (verse 13) as a singular, human-like figure who approaches the Ancient of Days on the clouds of Heaven and is granted everlasting dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all peoples and nations will serve (verse 14). This portrayal has often been interpreted as an individual entity—potentially a messianic king, an angelic being (such as Michael), or a divine-human representative—who embodies authority and victory over oppressive earthly kingdoms symbolized by the four beasts. This is close to the judging Jesus of Q2, who would later become the apocalyptic messianic claimant of Mark (if Mark knew Q).

In contrast, the angelic interpretation of the vision (verses 17-18, 21-22, 27) attributes the reception and possession of this eternal kingdom not to a single figure, but to a corporate Son of Man who are the “saints [or holy ones] of the Most High,” depicted as a collective group of faithful people (likely righteous Israel or the persecuted Jewish community) who endure warfare from the beasts but ultimately prevail and rule forever. In the Q source, what we seem to have is the figurative universalist loving sage of the Q1 aphorisms who is symbolic of a wise Cynic-Jewish school/community and their Word (aphorisms), who in Q2 incarnates into the apocalyptic Judging Christ of Q2. As the symbolic figurehead of the philosophical/religious Cynic-Jewish school, Jesus is the new and greater personification/incarnation of divine Wisdom. Philo often portrays Wisdom as a divine guide for the soul’s ascent to God, akin to Plato’s ascent to the Form of the Good or Beauty. In On the Special Laws IV (§123ff) he describes the purified soul of the wise person as being inspired and guided by the Logos (interchangeable with Wisdom), which helps it transcend material desires and achieve a virtuous life. Similarly, in On Noah’s Work as a Planter (§18-20), Wisdom is allegorically depicted as a divine principle that plants virtues in the soul, enabling it to grow toward divine understanding. In On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain (§64-68), Philo identifies Wisdom with the Logos, describing it as the divine principle through which God created the universe. He allegorically interprets Exodus 17:6, stating that Wisdom (Sophia) is the “Word” (Logos) that “stood before any created being,” echoing Proverbs 8:23, where Wisdom is present at creation. Wisdom is depicted as a divine entity that allows humans to cultivate virtue and depart from passions, acting as God’s intermediary in both cosmic and moral spheres.

Mack comments:

Mythmaking in the Jesus movement at the Q2 stage was an act of creative borrowing and the clever rearrangement of fascinating figures from several other vibrant mythologies of the time. The two figures of primary importance for constructing the mythology of Q were the wisdom of God and the son of man. These figures, together with the concept of the spirit of God, were used to link the epic traditions of Israel with an apocalyptic finale and so create a single comprehensive vision of history that put the people of Q in the right place at the right time. The role of Jesus was appropriately reconceived, and because it now had to combine the functions of a wisdom teacher with those of an apocalyptic prophet, the figure of John was introduced. Each of these important figures, wisdom, son of man, and John, enter the Q tradition at the Q2 level. Each figure is intricately related to the others and to a new significance that is given to the expanded instructions of Jesus…. The figure of the wisdom of God was created by Jewish scribes in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile. The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile (587-539 B.C.E.) canceled out the effectiveness of the scribal wisdom that had been generated during the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Scribal wisdom refers both to a body of knowledge and to the idiom in which Israel and other peoples in the ancient near east thought about life, ethics, and human relations. Scribal wisdom assumed the existence of a temple-state, and intellectuals in the scribal tradition imagined the perfect society on the temple-state model. With Jerusalem in ruins and its social structures destroyed, however, Jewish intellectuals of the post-exilic period were confronted with more questions than answers. To acknowledge the crisis, some said that wisdom was no longer to be found in the world. To keep the memory of wisdom alive while the long slow process of rebuilding a safe and sane society was undertaken in the so-called restoration of Jerusalem, the scribes imagined that wisdom was now to be found only with God. Naturally, there were poems about unsuccessful attempts to find wisdom in the world (Job 28). But then, gradually, other poems began to appear about God and wisdom together creating the world as an ordered habitation (Prov. 8:22-31), about wisdom appearing incognito at the city gates and crying out to be recognized (Prov. 1:20-33), and eventually about wisdom taking up residence again in the rebuilt temple at Jerusalem (Sir. 24). Thus a mythology of wisdom emerged. (1994, p. 150)

The Book of Proverbs frequently personifies Wisdom as a woman who offers guidance and instruction. In Proverbs 8 Wisdom is depicted as actively involved in creation, even claiming to have been present with God as his “architect” or “master workman.” In The Wisdom of Solomon the idea of Wisdom as a divine figure is developed further, describing her as the one who formed humans and whose influence reaches to all things. She is portrayed as a source of knowledge, righteousness, and immortality. Some scholars argue that the concept of personified Wisdom influenced other Jewish texts, including those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Furthermore, Wisdom is also connected to the concept of Torah (Jewish law) in some texts, such as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. Some interpretations see Wisdom as a distinct divine being or even a preincarnate form of Christ; others view her as a personification of God’s attributes or a powerful force within creation. The concept of personified Wisdom in Jewish literature influenced early Christian thought, particularly in the Gospel of John, which identifies Jesus with the “Word” (Logos) of God—an idea closely related to the Jewish concept of Wisdom.

3. What’s in a Name?

Where does the name Jesus comes from? The Old Testament explicitly associates Joshua (which is what the name Jesus means—”God saves”) with divine wisdom through the “spirit of wisdom” imparted to him. Deuteronomy 34:9 states: “Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites obeyed him, doing just as the LORD had commanded Moses.” This “spirit of wisdom” is portrayed as a divine endowment from God, enabling Joshua’s leadership and success. Similar language appears elsewhere in the Old Testament, such as in Exodus 31:3, where artisans are filled with the “Spirit of God, with wisdom,” indicating a divine gifting for tasks aligned with God’s will. This connects Joshua to the broader Old Testament theme of wisdom as a divine attribute or force, and is developed with the personified Wisdom (Hebrew Chokhmah) of Proverbs, who is depicted as an entity coexisting with God at creation (Proverbs 8:22-31). In some biblical commentaries and theological interpretations, Joshua’s reliance on God-given wisdom for conquest and governance (e.g., Joshua 1:7-8, where he is commanded to meditate on the law for prosperous wisdom) echoes the Old Testament’s portrayal of wisdom as essential for righteous rule. Jewish and Christian traditions extend this to see Joshua as embodying practical wisdom from God, though he is not Wisdom incarnate. The popularity of the Jewish hero Joshua in the early first century reflected the explosion of messianic claimants who wanted to re-enact the role of Joshua. The loving figurative Jesus personifying the community of aphorisms of the Q1 school as the new and greater Joshua has the name Jesus/Joshua in Q1, but only earns it when he becomes the judgmental prophet of Q2—and fully realizes it as the apocalyptic Davidic Messiah of Paul (Romans 1:3) and the Gospels.

So Jesus is seen in Paul initially in the form (morphe) of God in Q1, but translating to human likeness, whereafter his service/name/role is being exalted to “Lord Jesus” in Paul’s Philippians Christ Hymn. Also, with the word becoming flesh in John, both Paul and John are apparently commenting on Jesus receiving his role as a prophet when transitioning from a corporate interpretation of the new and greater Danielic Son of Man collective Cynic godly Q1 community of aphorisms (Corporate Son of Man as “holy ones of the Most High” in Daniel 7:18, 22, 27) to an actual judging apocalyptic prophet Son of Man in Q2. The Jesus of Q1 is thus symbolic, a fictive head (individual kurios) for the body (corporate), similar to how a king embodies a nation, who is translated into the literary judging Christ of the Q2 pencil.

As a synthesis of pagan Cynic and Jewish thought, the representative head of such a Q1 school/community would be the Parousia (in Plato’s sense) or incarnation/personification of Wisdom. First in Plato’s Greek, “Parousia” refers to the becoming incarnate of something; for example, the beautiful mansion may be encountered as (i) Houseness and (ii) Beauty incarnate (‘Now that’s a house!’). Plato wrote: “I hold and am assured in my own mind that nothing makes a thing beautiful but the presence (parousia) and participation of beauty in whatever way or manner obtained; for as to the manner I am uncertain, but I stoutly contend that by beauty all beautiful things become beautiful (Phaedo, 100d; see also Symposium 210a-212a). Aristotle gives the examples of morphe/form as a great painting as “Art,” or the majestic circling bird of prey as “Nature.” John 1 and Paul’s Philippian Christ Hymn are thus haggadic midrash recapitulating the twofold singular/corporate son of man imagery in Daniel. In this way John’s prologue and Paul’s Philippian Christ hymn seem to be homilies on the translation of the symbolic loving Jesus of Q1 to the flesh and blood prophet of Q2:

1. The Word Became Flesh (John 1)

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it… 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

2. Paul’s Philippian Christ Hymn (Philippians 2:6-11)

6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
10 so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

If Paul is late, it’s clear what his incarnation narrative in Philippians is doing revising John 1. John wants to stress the identity of his Word with God because there were other gospels teaching different things: “These things are said so you will believe.” However, it’s unclear how the indwelling Spirit in John will protect the believer against sin. Paul, by contrast, wants to stress the Resurrection, that if Christ is not raised your faith is futile and you’re still in your sin. What was done by God to Jesus (the Resurrection being something God did to Jesus in Paul’s Greek) would also be done to us, for if the dead are not raised we might as well be gluttons and drunks, for tomorrow we die. For Paul, the resurrected Christ in you is a refining of John’s assisting paraclete because Paul wants to stress that it is the mind of Christ in you who has a revulsion to sin (as one might have a revulsion to Brussel sprouts) occasioned by seeing ourselves implicated in Christ’s unjust death, circumcising our evil hearts to reveal the Law written on them. This goes beyond John’s “advising” indwelling spirit.

The name/title lord is only proper to Jesus after the incarnation, the Philippian Jesus is rewarded with the name, and John only names Jesus after the word becomes flesh. This reflects adoption in the ancient world and how an adopted Son is greater than a natural one and assumes a name—e.g., Octavian becoming Caesar’s adopted son and given the name Augustus by the Senate. Thus, in the Philippian Christ Hymn we have the idea of a paradigmatic servant to mankind being exalted for his service and given the designation lord (“above every name” in Philippians 2:9). “Jesus” literally means “God Saves,” and because of his service, such a figure would be adopted by God and given a new name, just as Octavian was adopted by Caesar and given the new name Augustus (“majestic,” “venerable,” or “great”) by the Roman Senate, an adopted son being more beloved than a natural son in the ancient world because adoption is a choice (Peppard, 2011). This was the primary meaning of the Resurrection before it took on a Pharisaic tint focusing on referring to humanity’s resurrection. Ehrman notes:

It was, in fact, often the case that an adopted son in the Roman world was given a greater, higher status than a child who was a son by birth. The “natural” son was who he was more or less by accident; his virtues and fine qualities had nothing to do with the fact that he was born as the child of two parents. The “adopted” son on the other hand—who was normally adopted as an adult — was adopted precisely because of his fine qualities and excellent potential. He was made great because he had demonstrated the potential for greatness, not because of the accident of his birth. This can be seen in the praise showered upon the emperor Trajan by one of his subjects, the famous author Pliny the Younger, who stated that “your merits did indeed call for your adoption as successor long ago.” That is why it was often the case that adopted sons were already adults when made the legal heir of a powerful figure or aristocrat. And what did it mean to be made the legal heir? It meant inheriting all of the adoptive father’s wealth, property, status, dependents, and clients—in other words, all of the adopted father’s power and prestige. As Roman historian Christiane Kunst has put it: “The adopted son … exchanged his own [status] and took over the status of the adoptive father.” When the earliest Christians talked about Jesus becoming the Son of God at his resurrection, they were saying something truly remarkable about him. He was made the heir of all that was God’s. He exchanged his status for the status possessed by the Creator and Ruler of all things. He received all of God’s power and privileges. He could defy death. He could forgive sins. He could be the future judge of the earth. He could rule with divine authority. He was for all intents and purposes God.” (Ehrman, 2023)

The Philippian Christ Hymn above notes that Jesus was in the form/morphe of God, but earned an exaltation and name that he didn’t previously have. We say, for example, “good form/well done” when someone is being a genuine or exemplary friend. Aristotle in Physics gives the example of a great work being Art “incarnate,” or a circling eagle being Nature incarnate. Plato speaks of the parousia or appearing of Beauty and Housensess through the magnificent mansion: now that’s a house! Plato called Beauty the ekphanestaton, the most properly appearing that lets Being scintillate at the same time.

Jesus incarnate was God in the limited sense of the Law/Word personified, exemplifying love of God above all else, shown through love of widow, orphan, alien, and enemy as more important than self—as demonstrated by his ministry and willingly going to the cross despite terror (e.g., Gethsemane). No one is sinless (e.g., Jesus’ temple tantrum that led to Roman charges of sedition/leading a revolt as King of the Jews), but he had a sinless disposition and righteous indignation where the Law had shone through. Jesus was thus seditious in the eyes of the world, but acting out of righteous indignation in God’s eyes.

Jewish thought often viewed history as cyclical, with God’s judgment and redemption recurring across generations. The destruction of the First Temple (reflected in Lamentations) and the Second Temple (70 CE), followed by the Bar Kokhba disaster, could have been seen as part of a pattern of divine punishment for sin or a testing of faith. Lamentations 4:20’s imagery of a fallen leader and a trapped people could have been applied to explain the revolt’s failure as a divine warning or judgment. It’s thus very simple to grasp our scenario. A key story in Mark (reviewed previously) was the trial of Jesus by the corrupt Jewish elite. A writer post-70 CE may have imagined that the Jewish elite back in the 30s were so vile (such as in Mark 11:17) that if God actually had sent the Messiah, they would have arranged his death. Such a corrupt leadership and slap in the face of God would explain God allowing the Romans to destroy the Temple in 70 CE and boot the Jews from the land post-Bar Kokhba. The cycle repeated with Romans killing God’s anointed Simon Bar Kokhba. As Andrew Rillera notes, terrible sin was seen as contaminating the land itself to the point where the land would expel the people.

The idea that Q1 stems from a Cynic-like school, rather than a single sage like Jesus, is plausible under the supportive view: it could reflect a communal collection of proverbs from a Hellenistic-Jewish “Q people” group, evolving over time and later attributed to Jesus, similar to how Cynic sayings were compiled and credited to figures like Diogenes. This would be a “school” of Cynic-like sages, where sayings were elaborated into chreiai by followers, but did not require an original context or single author. Price extends this suggestion, adding that Q1’s “cynical flavor” (sly humor, practical wisdom) fits multi-generational compilations, entering Judaism via Godfearers. Jesus as being in the form of God who takes on human likeness in Philippians, and the Word that becomes flesh in John, would thus be homilies expounding on Daniel’s twofold son of man as corporate (the Q1 community/school and its aphorisms) and the authoritative judging Christ of Q2.

4. The Form of Q with Sarah Rollens

Hermann Detering and others argue for a significantly later date than the mainstream scholarly consensus for the composition of the Gospel of Mark, which is typically placed around 65-75 CE. Detering proposes that Mark was written no earlier than 136 CE, after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132-136 CE). His argument is primarily based on his analysis of Mark 13 (the “Synoptic Apocalypse” or “Olivet Discourse”), which he considered an independent literary unit reflecting the historical context of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, rather than that of the First Jewish-Roman War (66-74 CE) (for example, in the Abomination of Desolation). Detering suggests that this chapter (and by extension the gospel) was composed in response to the events of the early second century, particularly the revolt’s aftermath. Detering contends that there is no explicit evidence of Mark’s existence until the mid-second century, with the earliest clear references appearing in Irenaeus (ca. 180 CE).

Price notes that Luke addresses his Gospel and Acts to “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1), suggesting a person of high status, or a symbolic name (“lover of God”) for a broader audience. Taken internally for Luke-Acts, a specific historical figure might be intended given the honorific “most excellent” (used for officials like Felix in Acts 23:26). If Luke-Acts has a late date, this could be referring to Theophilus of Antioch, who was born around 120 and died 183-190 CE. Luke’s gospel is first mentioned around 160-170 CE by Irenaeus. No surviving work quotes it earlier than that. It’s common apologetic practice to identify the earliest point a gospel could have been composed, such as 70 CE for Mark, and date that gospel as close as possible to that earliest point (since that timeframe would be closest to the life of Jesus and is most useful for the purpose of mining historical nuggets).

No gospel narrative is quoted by the Apostolic Fathers, and some think that they seem to have an apocryphal appearance and thus are not authoritative. The genre is similar to ancient Hellenistic romances like Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe. Such novels were most prominent in the second century and had instances of a character escaping and surviving the cross, as we also see in satirical Roman tales like the Satyricon and even in paradoxographical ghost stories. As previously noted, the Gospels are probably not earlier than the turn of the second century because the theme of the dead Jesus converting the soldier at the cross imitates the death of Cleomenes at the end of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of Cleomenes. The Gospels also seem to reflect some of the parallelism-style innovations of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (e.g., in the forgiving death of Jesus, the forgiving death of Steven, the humiliating death of John the Baptist, and the tortuous, humiliating death of Jesus). The most notable parallelism is how New Testament Gospel story units are silently linked to LXX Old Testament scripture (Haggadic Midrash) and Greek figures (mimesis) (Price, 2005).

Charles H. Talbert (1984) notes that elements of Luke-Acts seem to reflect the second-century apologists’ (like Irenaeus) claims that they got their sources from eyewitnesses, unlike the Gnostics who might have been divining/hallucinating with their special revelation. Luke’s gospel also reflects elements of the second- and third-century infancy gospels attesting to the “divine brat” Jesus.

According to Ehrman there is no more evidence that the material unique to Matthew was from a special source than there is evidence that the material unique to Luke was specially sourced. So it looks like the evangelists just invented this material. Price notes there are parables unique to Luke that are complete short stories—often with a central character wondering ‘What shall I do? I will do so and so…’ Luke also has a tendency to interpret his parables before he tells them. Luke-Acts seems to use 2 Maccabees, Euripides’ Bacchae, and Josephus.

The Gospels and letters may be entirely too late to function as reliable sources about the historical Jesus. We can see that they are literary-saturated when compared with Q. Sarah Rollens (2024) shows that the simplistic nature of Q may represent an early source, thus contrasting with the sophistication of the Gospels; but she also shows that we need to be skeptical because the form and content are so reflective of the job nature of the Q writers that it seems particularly difficult to sort out the content from the author. Q seems early and lacks the Temple destruction theme found in the Gospels, so it would make sense that it is pre-70 CE. Sayings like those in Luke 11:42/Matthew 23:23 (on tithing and justice) could imply a critique of religious practices associated with the Temple, as tithing was often linked to Temple offerings. Q reflects sayings common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, though some—like Harry T. Fleddermann (1995)—argue that there are passages in Mark that may reflect knowledge of Q or Q-like material. For example, certain sayings in Mark (e.g., Mark 4:21-25, the parable of the lamp under a bushel) have parallels in Q (Luke 8:16-18; Matthew 5:15). It would make sense that Mark knew Q, or Q-influenced materials/traditions, since that’s where the Jesus figure seems to have originated.

As I noted with John Hamilton in the previous installment, Mark has the corrupt trial of Jesus conducted by the Jewish elite, so the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) and the booting of the Jews from the land (post-Bar Kokhba) may have been seen as God’s judgment being poured out on the Jews, as Eusebius thought. The Q saying paralleling Luke 11:49-51/Matthew 23:34-36 mentions the blood of prophets and the judgment on “this generation.” The phrase “from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah” refers to the first and last martyrs in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), symbolizing the entirety of righteous bloodshed as the Bible’s theme. By referencing these figures, Jesus/Q is saying that the current generation will bear the cumulative guilt of all the righteous blood shed throughout history because they are repeating the same sins of rejection and violence against God’s beloved (agapetos) specially chosen messenger (angelos).

Rollens notes that her following argument about Q really only pertains to the Q document, as the Gospels and Acts reflect a more sophisticated production. She writes:

Regardless of where one falls on the question of the historical Jesus proper, the topic of “scribal Galilee” and the early Jesus movement is, to my mind, only relevant to Q, because when we turn to the later gospels, we are dealing with cultural expressions of a translocal movement that have lost much of their regional specificity and that have begun to show marks of more elite forms of literature. What this means, then, is that Q provides us with some of the most relevant data for understanding scribal Galilee close to the time and place of the historical Jesus and the bureaucratic perpetuation of ideas in his name. (Rollens, 2024, p. 392)

She also argues that what we see in Q reflects mid-level urban administrative/bureaucratic scribal activity in both content and form:

Not only does Jesus spout numerous ethical teachings in Q, but in general his wise sayings valorize “clarity of perception,” “guidance,” “good speech,” and “moral examples,” which reflect, as one Q expert notes, “the self-consciously ‘public’ nature of the scribal pursuit [in these sorts of texts].” In other words, the content of Q reflects precisely the scribal, intellectual values that other sapiential, instructional literature does. There are other details in Q’s content that suggest a distinct kind of administrative scribal competency. In particular, many of the examples that Q uses throughout Jesus’s sayings are topoi drawn from the world of urban administration…. It is not impossible that people from a different social location would be familiar with such phenomena, but to use them so consistently and with so little reflection on their appropriateness seems to suggest we are dealing with authors who saw these sorts of situations on a day-to-day basis and who considered these scenarios the most appropriate ones with which to argue…. [T]his discussion has focused on examples that reveal the unstated assumptions of the authors or the experiences that they (apparently) assume to be self-evidently persuasive. Many of these happen to be scenarios with which village scribes would have been intimately familiar…. [In terms of form], Q’s authors decided to write this down, they drew on their repertoire of knowledge for what official documents and records looked like…. [Giovanni Bazzana] has shown that specific lexical items in Q reflect the “highly formulaic documents” that administrative officials regularly penned…. The compositional techniques of the document, as we have noted, betray habits associated with mundane administrative writing: drafting petitions, creating contracts, recording inventories of storage caches, and the like. (Rollens, 2024, p. 396)

Given the early dating of Q, we have an interesting window here into how writing about the Jesus movement developed:

[Christina] Gousopoulos finds the latter option compelling, which thus provides us with an instance of administrative figures, connected translocally to their counterparts in other towns and villages, sharing aspirations to own and (presumably) to read elite literature. Against the idealized picture of how the Jesus movement spread in the Four Gospels, Acts, and Eusebius’s idealized narrative, the collaboration, communication, and spread of ideas through preexisting scribal networks simply make more sense than any other romanticized idea of apostles transporting texts around as part of their “mission” in first-century Roman Palestine…. As I have shown, Q uses a cache of imagery and literary techniques that makes sense originating among middling administrative figures. We should thus abandon the idea that illiterate peasants kept the Jesus traditions alive simply by telling stories for decades until the gospels were written. Rather, we can agree with Douglas Oakman that “Jesus of Nazareth entered the pages of history due to the work of sympathetic scribes.” …In short, village administrators truly might have been some of the most well-connected people in the social landscape of the Roman Empire—akin to the axial figures and mediating intellectuals that we often find facilitating the spread of social and political movements throughout history. The movement of ideas and people through these sorts of networks makes much more sense than simply taking over the gospel myths themselves and concluding that we are dealing with radical itinerant preachers or a cadre of charismatic wonder-workers. Yes, that is what the texts are about, but we are not obliged to accept this as a viable historical explanation for the development of the tradition. (Rollens, 2024, pp. 405-406)

Rollens provides us a window into the history about who traditionally wanted to share ideas about Jesus. There is material in Q that would later be incorporated into the Jesus portrait, like Paul’s portrait appropriated Simon Magus (discussed below), but it’s too clouded by administrative coloring to determine what was incorporated. For instance, the Q1 sayings are simply Cynical as a group, so, as Price notes, they need not lead back to a single sage, let alone the historical Jesus.

It makes sense that mid-level administrators would be interested in sharing material from a unique school that blended pagan Cynic thought with Jewish theology, as citizens probably would have found that novelty interesting and worth talking about. Likewise, it’s hardly remarkable that Q’s development through mid-level administrators echoes Paul administrating and visiting his churches, Paul perhaps imitating the form of Q. As M. David Litwa comments:

One of the striking things about Paul’s letters is they sound like Papal missives or decrees. Paul was a self-made man from Tarsus and a self-proclaimed apostle. But his long and weighty letters make him sound like a Roman provincial administrator. In fact, the letters themselves depict Paul as such an administrator who makes the rounds to his communities, keeping in touch with local leaders, sending out official embassies, solving problems, receiving deputations, and keeping the power that the faith serves at the forefront of their minds. But would the historical Paul have the time and the authority to write such stately letters? It seems that by day Paul makes tents by day but by night makes polished, almost papal correspondence.

Scholars sometimes argue that Paul influenced Mark due to their shared themes, but the occasional nature of the Pauline content reflecting Markan material seems instead to be Mark summarized by Paul, which would be opaque to a letter reader without a sophisticated understanding of Mark. We saw a short summary explaining Mark’s Gethsemane prayer in Hebrews. And we have Paul say that the commandment was given so that sin would become sinful beyond measure, which seems to summarize the corrupt trial of Jesus by the Jewish elite. Paul also summarizes that Christ was killed and raised according to the scriptures.

5. The Dutch Radical Critics

As for the Pauline letters, the Dutch Radical Critics to whom Livesey, Detering, and Price are indebted were a group of nineteenth-century scholars, primarily associated with the University of Leiden, who concluded that all of Paul’s letters were pseudonymous based on a skeptical, historical-critical approach to the New Testament. Their views, articulated by figures like Allard Pierson, Abraham Dirk Loman, and Samuel Adrianus Naber, were rooted in a broader rejection of traditional Christian narratives and an emphasis on naturalistic explanations for the development of early Christianity.

Price provides a helpful outline of the Dutch Radical case against the authenticity of the seven letters usually accepted as genuine Pauline epistles:

1. The question of their form

1. They are treatises, not letters, whether to an individual or a group. The matter of the epistle is destined for publicity. If the letter is always more or less private and confidential, the epistle is meant for the market-place…. All that is in the letter—address and so forth—[and] is of primary importance, becomes in the epistle ornamental detail, merely added to maintain the illusion of this literary form. A real letter is seldom wholly intelligible to us until we know to whom it is addressed and the special circumstances for which it was written. To the understanding of most epistles this is by no means essential.
2. They cannot have been written to the ancient churches whose names they bear since they have left no trace on the history of those churches.
3. The imaginary nature of the letters is evident from catholicizing phrases like “to all that are in Rome, called to be saints,” “to the church of God which is at Corinth, them that are sanctified in Jesus Christ, called to be saints, with all who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in all places, etc.,” “to the church of God which is at Corinth with all the saints in the whole of Achaia,” “to all the churches of Galatia.” Admittedly, one can reply that these phrases represent later, post-Pauline additions to make it easier to circulate the letter far beyond its originally intended readership. But again, how is this different from the desperate fundamentalist attempt to ascribe the Deuteronomic account of Moses’s death to a later writer in order to attribute the rest of the Pentateuch to Moses himself?
4. They have been redacted. They teem with discontinuities and internal contradictions indicating, for example, that the epistles to the Corinthians and Romans are patchwork quilts in the style of a Synoptic Gospel, while Galatians seems to have been a Marcionite document overlaid with a corrective series of orthodox interpolations. As Darrell J. Doughty points out, when we see such anomalies and anacoluthas in the Gospels, we readily recognize them as redactional seams, but when they arise in the epistles we brush the dust off our rusty harmonizations and go to work! It is just the sort of “blindness and insight” (Paul de Man) evident in the earliest days of the Higher Criticism when it simply did not occur to scalpel-wielding Old Testament critics to subject the New Testament to the same surgery.

2. Their contents

1. There is confusion over the nature of the churches and Paul’s implied relations with them. In Romans, “Paul” writes to a church ostensibly unknown to him, yet he does so with great presumption. In Galatians and Corinthians he is portrayed as writing to old friends and having to cajole, then threaten, after first boasting and flattering—none of which must be necessary if he is the authoritative oracle Romans makes him out to be. Which is the real Paul? Perhaps neither!
2. We can draw no coherent picture of the opponents Paul faces in his epistles. It seems rather that a pseudepigraphist or redactor is aiming scattershot at various heretical options current in his day, much like the later works of Irenaeus and Epiphanius who wrote “against all heresies.” This is why scholars assuming Pauline authorship have repeatedly come up with implausible chimeras combining elements of Gnostics, Judaizers, apocalyptic enthusiasts, and charismatic triumphalists as candidates for Paul’s opponents. This is like a police artist’s conception of a crook created by combining features from this and that page of the standard sketchbooks.
3. The complexity and depth of the theology and ethics betoken a time long after the days of the historical Paul, who must have lived only a few years subsequent to the crucifixion. Apologists argue that we can trace a process of development between earlier and later epistles, reflecting a deepening of Paul’s thought. Paul himself, as he is presented in these very same epistles, would hardly countenance such a view since he represents himself everywhere simply as the recipient of a prepackaged revelation from heaven, a “gospel not from man.”
4. The kind of virulent advocacy, opposition, and reinterpretation of Pauline doctrine evidenced in these writings really is more appropriate if their subject is an authority of the past. We seem to be witnessing a debate over Paulinism by the Christians of a subsequent generation, much as we see in James 2:14-26 and 2 Peter 3:15-16, only here the writers are all posing as Paul in order to correct things authoritatively from within the Paulinist ranks. Paul’s “previous” teaching to these churches (“Do you not remember that when I was with you I told you?”) smacks of intrascholastic controversy, like Lutherans arguing over Luther. Imagine the peasants and proletarians of Corinth or Iconium scratching their heads over Paul’s ratiocinations on the subtleties of justification and the Law. “How could the unphilosophic Galatians understand this letter? Loman compares it with Hegel lecturing to the aborigines of the East Indies,” says Gustaaf van den Bergh. What we actually seem to have are rebuttals of one Paulinist’s interpretations by another, pulling rank by assuming the pose of Paul himself: “And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just” (Rom. 3:8; cf. Gal. 5:11).
5. Is it really conceivable that the pronounced post-Jewish Christianity of Paulinism, which had utterly abandoned the authority of the twelve apostles, the Jewish Torah, and the nationalistic conception of the messiah for a spiritualized and internationalized religion, could have arisen only a matter of a few short years after the death of Jesus? Why do the Synoptic Gospels seem to attest a more primitive Christology than Paul? If [Willem Christiaan] Van Manen is right, it is because they are earlier than the Pauline epistles.
6. Insofar as the epistles address issues of concern to their intended readers (even if these are not the imagined readers in the Corinthian churches of 50 CE but the implied or actual readers of the next century), the concerns addressed are anachronistic for the mid-first century; they are really later concerns over celibacy (encratism) and the criteria of true apostleship.
7. There is a historical retrospective tone to the epistles. They look back on the work of the apostles as something now in the past. Note, for instance, 1 Corinthians 3:6ff, where Paul is the revered founder of the Corinthian Church and Apollos is his successor; the whole thing is now in the hands of the post-apostolic generation, which is addressed with the warning: “Let each take care how he builds!” Paul’s work is over. The writer can already assess that Saint Paul did more than the other apostles (15:8-10).
8. An advanced, post-apostolic gnosis is in view in 1 Corinthians 1:17-31; 2:6, 16 (cf. Baur on Colossians and Ephesians), though again, apologists desperately posit that Paul liked to turn his opponents’ terminology and conceptuality against them. This would surely be the strangest and most muddying of polemical techniques, distorting the clear notes of the bugle into a confusing din: if Paul sounds so much like Corinthian Gnostics, does he agree or disagree with them?
9. Romans 9-11 speaks of the rejection of Israel in a manner impossible before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Baur made the same point in the case of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16, though, as we have seen, apologists claim these verses are a later interpolation in an otherwise genuine epistle. What event can have decisively signaled that God had written off the Jewish people? What, besides the disaster of 70 C.E. (or even that of 132 C.E.), could be the event to which Romans refers? Why has their “table” (temple altar) become their downfall and a “retribution” (Rom. 11:9)? Why is a parallel drawn with Elijah lamenting, “Lord … they have demolished thy altars” (Rom. 11:3)?
10. There were apparently no persecutions in the early period in which Paul would have lived; these were the phenomena of a later period. Yet they are mentioned as a matter of present experience in the writer’s day (Rom. 5:3-5; 8:17-39; 12:12, 14; 2 Cor. 1:3-7).
11. The epistles come from a time when “traditions” can be said (by Paul!) to derive from Paul (2 Thess. 2:15). Would he have spoken in this way of his own teachings, with the palpable air of venerable antiquity? Not likely. Again, what we have here is like 2 Peter 3:2, where the writer, passing himself off as “Simeon Peter,” momentarily lets the mask slip and mentions how “your apostles” prophesied in the past of events that have now come present. Where is Peter writing this from? Heaven? Likewise, how old would Paul have to be for his teachings to be known as traditions? In 2 Thessalonians 2:5, Paul recalls the days of long ago: “when I was with you, I told you.” What makes this any different from Luke 24:44, “These are my words which I spoke to you when I was still with you”? In each case, do we not have a writer clumsily putting his own words into the mouth of an authority of the past, having him speak as if from the Great Beyond in the present, forgetting to have him speak as from his own time? He is still with them in “story time,” though someone seems to have forgotten it. “In a word,” writes Van Manen, “the church has existed for not a few years merely. The historical background of the epistles, even of the principle epistles, is a later age…. Everything points to later days—at least the close of the first or the beginning of the second century.” (Price, 2012, pp. 51-56)

Detering was a German pastor and scholar aligned with the Dutch Radical Criticism tradition in denying the historicity of Paul, arguing that the figure of Paul was a literary construct rather than a historical person. His views are articulated in works like The Fabricated Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight (originally Der gefälschte Paulus: Das Urchristentum im Zwielicht, 1995). These works extend the Dutch Radicals’ skepticism by concluding that all Pauline letters are pseudonymous, and furthermore that Paul himself is a fictionalized figure. Even the “undisputed” letters (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) were seen as too rhetorically polished or theologically advanced for a mid-first-century figure, suggesting a later composition. (For example, Paul seems to summarize Mark crafting the crucifixion out of Psalms, 2 Isaiah, and Deuteronomy with “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” with no context or explanation for his reader.)

Detering noted “literary seams” and inconsistencies, such as conflicting portrayals of Paul’s relationship with congregations or vague descriptions of opponents, which he interpreted as evidence of fictional composition rather than genuine correspondence. Detering emphasized the absence of early, non-Christian sources corroborating Paul’s existence or activities. The Dutch Radicals dismissed early Christian references like 1 Clement (traditionally c. 95 CE) and Ignatius’ letters (traditionally c. 110 CE) as either too late, inauthentic, or unreliable. Without external validation, Detering argued that the Pauline letters and Acts lack a historical anchor, making Paul’s existence questionable.

Detering proposed a radical hypothesis that “Paul” was a rebranded version of Simon Magus, a Samaritan figure described as a sorcerer and heretic in Acts 8:9-24 and later Christian texts like the Pseudo-Clementines. For example, Price notes:

What did Simon Magus conclude on the question of the Torah? According to Irenaeus, “Simon Magus said that men are saved by grace and not by just works. For actions are not just by nature, but by accident; according as they were laid down by the angels who made the world, and who desired by commandments of this kind to bring men into servitude to themselves.” Unless I am mistaken, that is exactly the teaching of the Epistle to the Galatians. (Price, 2012, pp. 237-238)

If Paul was a fictional character (as Livesey, Price, and Detering argue), there are striking similarities between Paul and Simon Magus, suggesting literary borrowing. Acts may have created a Plutarch-style “Parallel Life” between Paul and Simon. For example, Paul’s gift of money to the Jerusalem church and Simon Magus’ bribe attempt are two distinct events in the New Testament, reflecting contrasting motivations and outcomes, but serve as interesting literary contrasts and connections. (See Acts 24:17 and Romans 15:25-28 for Paul, and Acts 8:9-24 for Simon Magus). Paul’s gift was a selfless act of charity to support and unite the early Church, rooted in love and accountability. Simon Magus’s bribe was a misguided, self-interested attempt to buy spiritual power, revealing a corrupted heart. While Paul’s action strengthened the Church’s mission, Simon’s action led to rebuke and a cautionary tale against simony. The contrast highlights the difference between genuine service and manipulative ambition in the early Christian context. But we can abstract a more general syncretism between Paul and Simon. Scholars like Gerd Lüdemann (addressing what he called “a polite bribe“) argue that the delivery of the funds may have been a point of contention. The collection was meant to symbolize unity between Paul’s Gentile churches and the Jerusalem church, but it could have been perceived by some as an attempt to gain favor or influence (hence the term “polite bribe”). The tensions described in Acts 21, combined with Paul’s own concerns in Romans 15:30-31, suggest that his mission and the collection were not universally welcomed. The accusations against him in Jerusalem (Acts 21:27-29) focus on his teachings and actions among Gentiles, which could include his efforts to integrate Gentile and Jewish Christians through the collection. Additionally, some scholars point to the silence in Acts about the outcome of the collection as significant. After Paul delivers the funds (implied in Acts 21:17-26), there is no mention of whether the Jerusalem church accepted or rejected it, which could imply a lack of enthusiasm or outright rejection. This ambiguity, combined with the immediate hostility that Paul faces in the Temple, supports the idea that his visit with the collection was met with mixed or negative reactions.

Paul and Simon were both charismatic figures with supernatural claims; both had encounters with Roman authorities; both had conversion and transformation narratives; both have conflict with Peter; both have claims to divine authority; both have association with Gnostic or heretical movements; and so on. Both figures operate in a first-century context where charismatic leaders, miracle-workers, and competing religious movements (e.g., Samaritan, Jewish, and early Christian) vied for influence. Josephus’ Simon, linked to Felix and Drusilla, and Acts’ Simon, active in Samaria, may reflect a historical figure whose legacy was split into orthodox (Paul) and heretical (Simon) personas in Christian narratives.

If Paul is a fictive character, his portrayal in the ‘authentic’ epistles (e.g., Galatians, Romans, and 1 Corinthians) and Acts shares striking parallels with the portrayal of Simon Magus in Acts, Josephus, and apocryphal sources. Both are charismatic figures with supernatural claims, engage with Roman authorities (notably Felix and Drusilla), undergo conversion narratives, clash with Peter, and are linked to Gnostic or heretical ideas. Their theologies emphasize divine authority and esoteric knowledge, though Paul’s theology is framed as orthodox and Simon’s as heretical. Traditionally, critics who have investigated these similarities suggest that Simon Magus may have been constructed as a foil or caricature of Paul, reflecting early Christian debates over orthodoxy, law, and apostolic authority. Detering and Price, though, see Magus à la Josephus as the historical one and Paul as the invention. This is akin to seeing the unjust humiliating death of the historical John the Baptist and seeing it doubled in the unjust torture and even more humiliating death of the fictive Jesus. Note that John’s death account in the Gospels struggles to be reconciled with that of Josephus. The overlap in their narratives (Paul and Simon), especially in Acts and Josephus, supports the idea that they could represent divergent literary treatments of a similar historical or legendary archetype.

Detering argued that the Pseudo-Clementines’ attacks on Simon Magus were veiled critiques of Paul, reflecting early Christian conflicts. Detering suggested that Simon, a Gnostic teacher, was the original figure behind the Pauline tradition, later domesticated into “Paul” by Catholic editors who forged epistles to align his teachings with orthodoxy. He supported this by noting similarities between Simon’s and Paul’s profiles in apocryphal texts (e.g., both associated with Rome and opposition to Peter), arguing that the Church rehabilitated Simon’s legacy by transforming him into the apostle Paul.

Detering placed the composition of the Pauline letters in the second century, particularly within Marcionite or Gnostic circles. He argued that Marcion, a mid-second-century heretic who compiled a collection of Pauline letters (the Apostolikon), may have authored or heavily influenced them. The letters’ theological themes, like the rejection of the Jewish Law and emphasis on a transcendent God, align with Marcion’s teachings, suggesting that they were crafted to support his theology. Detering posited that the Catholic Church later redacted these letters to counter Marcionite heresy, creating a fictional Paul as a unifying apostolic figure. This explains why Galatians, for instance, emphasizes Paul’s independence from Jerusalem apostles, which Detering saw as a Marcionite polemic against Jewish-Christian authority.

Paul thus seems to be a composite of figures like Simon Magus and, as Berman notes, the figure Saul in Josephus. The Acts of Paul (late second century) derives its information from the character of Saul under Nero in Josephus, and the idea of Paul dying under Nero thus comes from Josephus, though Josephus doesn’t mention Saul ever becoming a Christian or writing letters. Josephus identifies Saul as a relative of Herod Agrippa II. Josephus mentions a calamity happening in Damascus and a sinking ship metaphor, just as we have with Paul. Similarly in Acts, Paul is going to see Nero, but his death is only implied, as with Josephus’ cliffhanger. Again, this suggests that the Acts of the Apostles is no earlier than Josephus, but it could be much later.

In this series of articles I’ve tried to explore Livesey’s idea that the letters are fictive epistles that depend on Acts. Such fictive letters would diverge from Acts with their own theology, as such letters did, and would also explain why Paul is not portrayed as a letter writer in Acts and why the letters seem to be making insightful summary statements about complex theological issues in the Gospels and Acts, like the crucifixion narrative being crafted out of Psalms, 2 Isaiah, and Deuteronomy, or the highly sophisticated understanding of Jewish law and tradition being present in the story of Jesus’ corrupt trial with the Jewish elite. As we’ve seen, Paul offers sophisticated one-liners (e.g., the commandment makes sin sinful beyond measure; Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures) without context or explanation for his listening church members. Hebrews 5:7 does the same, summarizing the complex theology of the Gethsemane story in Mark.

Following the Dutch Radicals, Detering viewed early Christianity as a second-century syncretistic movement blending Jewish, Hellenistic, and Gnostic elements, rather than a first-century historical phenomenon. He argued that Paul, like Jesus, was a symbolic figure created to embody theological ideals, not a real person. His dramatic conversion in Acts 9 and missionary exploits were seen as legendary narratives, akin to mythological hero stories, designed to legitimize Christian origins.

Detering argued that the Pauline letters exhibit characteristics of pseudepigrapha, such as abnormal length, formal structure, and rhetorical flourishes, which differ from typical ancient letters. He saw them as literary constructs, not genuine correspondence, designed to address second-century debates (e.g., circumcision and the Law) rather than first-century Church issues. He highlighted Galatians’ protest against dependence on Jerusalem apostles (Galatians 1:1, 1:16) as a second-century Marcionite argument, later softened by Catholic editors, indicating a fictionalized Paul tailored to later controversies. Detering’s arguments build on the Dutch Radical School’s skepticism, particularly the works of Abraham Dirk Loman and G. A. van den Bergh van Eysinga, but take them further by denying Paul’s existence entirely.

Price also proposes that the Paul of the epistles is a sanitized version of earlier figures like Simon Magus (as attested in Josephus). The death of Paul by Nero is part and parcel of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which is wholly legendary. The reference to Paul in 1 Clement (which is attributed to Clement, though there is no name on the text) seems to be a reference the death of Peter and Paul because of jealousy, which refers to the late apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’ claims of apostles being martyred for getting wives to be celibate with their husbands to receive salvation. Price suggests that Marcion or his followers may have shaped or even authored epistles like Romans to align with their theology, which was later co-opted by emerging Catholic orthodoxy. For example, Price questions whether Romans was written to a Roman church that didn’t yet exist, implying that it could be a second-century Marcionite composition. This challenges the traditional timeline and authorship tied to a first-century Paul. Analogously, we wouldn’t suppose that any of the massive amounts of literature that are ascribed to Peter are actually penned by Peter.

The name “Paul” (from Latin Paulus, meaning “small”) may have been symbolically chosen to represent humility or a “lesser” apostle, as seen in 1 Corinthians 15:9, where the author calls himself the “least” of the apostles. The wink to the reader is of course that Paul is also the apostle predicted in the Old Testament to bring the message of God to the world at the end of the age! This, combined with the epistles’ alignment with later theological debates (e.g., Marcionism vs. Catholicism), supports the view that Paul may be more a literary or theological archetype than a verifiable historical person.

Appendix: Transgressing vs. Brainwashing in Romans and the Sophistication of Late Pauline Letters

(i)

Paul has a very sophisticated approaches to Christ’s death dealing with sin reflecting the Platonic idea of revealing different aspects, such as Plato has the wax tablet and aviary models of the mind. In Romans, we have a judicial model where Jesus’ death pays our transgressions fine. We also have his death freeing us from enslavement by the evil entity Sin.

Paul’s authentic letters (generally considered to be Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) present several additional models or metaphors for how Jesus’ death addresses sin, beyond the judicial (e.g., penalty payment or justification) and liberation-from-enslavement models emphasized in Romans. These draw on themes like sacrifice, curse-redemption, reconciliation, participation, and rescue from wrath or evil powers. I’ll outline the key ones below, focusing on the non-Romans letters, with relevant verses and brief explanations. Note that Paul’s theology is interconnected, so these models often overlap rather than standing in isolation, and interpretations can vary among scholars. I’ve drawn from analyses that highlight these as distinct yet complementary ways Paul describes the cross’s role in dealing with sin.

Sacrificial Model: Paul portrays Jesus’ death as a sacrificial offering that purifies or removes sin, akin to Passover or temple rituals. This emphasizes Jesus as a victim whose blood brings forgiveness and cleansing.

• In 1 Corinthians: Christ is described as “our Passover lamb” who “has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7), linking his death to the removal of sin’s corrupting influence, like leaven in the Passover context.
• In 2 Corinthians: God “made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), implying a sin-offering where Jesus takes on sin’s consequences to make believers righteous.

Redemption from Curse Model: Here, Jesus’ death redeems people from the law’s curse (tied to sin), acting as a substitute who absorbs the penalty to free others.

• In Galatians: Christ “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), with the cross as the mechanism for this liberation from sin’s legal bondage under the law (see also Galatians 4:4-5, where Jesus is “born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law”). This has elements of substitution and reparation.

Reconciliation Model: Paul depicts sin as creating enmity or separation from God, with Jesus’ death as the means of peacemaking and restoring relationship.

• In 2 Corinthians: God “reconciled us to himself through Christ” and was “in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). This model focuses on the cross bridging the divide caused by sin, making believers ambassadors of this reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

Participation or Union Model: This involves believers mystically participating in Jesus’ death, leading to death to sin and new life, emphasizing transformation over mere transaction.

• In Galatians: Believers are “crucified with Christ” so that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), portraying union with his death as the way sin’s power is broken.
• Philippians: Though less explicit on sin, the hymn describes Jesus’ obedience “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8), inviting imitation and participation in his self-emptying as a path to exaltation and overcoming sin’s effects.
• Some scholars extend this to a “new creation” motif, where sin’s old order is replaced (e.g., 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation”).

Rescue from Wrath or Evil Age Model: Jesus’ death rescues from divine wrath or the present evil age dominated by sin, with elements of victory or deliverance.

• In 1 Thessalonians: Jesus “rescues us from the coming wrath” (1 Thessalonians 1:10) and “died for us so that… we might live with him” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10), framing the cross as averting sin’s ultimate judgment.
• Galatians: Jesus “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4), suggesting a rescue from sin’s cosmic grip.
• Philemon doesn’t explicitly develop atonement models related to sin, focusing instead on interpersonal reconciliation.

Overall, these models show Paul’s multifaceted approach: Jesus’ death isn’t just a legal fix or freedom from slavery (as in Romans) but also a sacrifice, substitute, reconciler, participatory event, and rescue operation. Some interpreters argue Paul avoids a strict “sacrificial atonement” model centered on propitiating God’s anger, emphasizing instead Jesus’ faithfulness and human participation, but the sacrificial language appears across his letters.

Paul’s letter to the Romans begins by treating Sin as human transgression dealt with by the cross, while later it looks at Sin as an evil divine entity who has enslaved mankind so the spell needs to be broken. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans exhibits this shift in its portrayal of sin, reflecting a progression in his theological argument from justification (dealing with sins as acts) to sanctification (addressing sin as an indwelling power). In the early chapters (Romans 1-4), Paul primarily treats sin in terms of human transgressions or acts—emphasizing the universality of wrongdoing among both Jews and Gentiles, where all have “sinned” (plural form in Greek, hamartiai) and fall short of God’s glory (e.g., Romans 3:23). This view frames sin as moral failures or violations of God’s law, for which humanity is accountable and condemned. The solution presented is justification by faith in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, which provides atonement, forgiveness, and redemption from these transgressions (e.g., Romans 3:24-25, where Christ’s blood propitiates for sins). However, starting in Romans 5 and continuing through chapters 6-8, Paul shifts to personifying “Sin” (singular, hamartia) as a cosmic, indwelling force or entity—almost like a tyrannical master or enslaving power that entered the world through Adam and reigns over humanity, leading to death (e.g., Romans 5:12-21, where sin “entered,” “reigned,” and made many sinners by constitution, not just action).

Here, sin is depicted as an active, hostile presence dwelling within the flesh, deceiving and producing death even through the good law (e.g., Romans 7:8-11, 17-20, where sin “seizes opportunity,” “deceives,” and “dwells” in Paul, compelling actions against his will).

Enslavement isn’t merely about individual misdeeds but a deeper bondage to a “law of sin” (Romans 7:23; 8:2), which humanity cannot escape through willpower or law-keeping alone. The “spell” is broken not just by forgiveness but by deliverance through identification with Christ’s death and resurrection: believers are crucified with Christ to annul the “body of sin” (Romans 6:6), freed from sin’s dominion (Romans 6:7, 14, 18), and liberated by the “law of the Spirit of life” (Romans 8:2), enabling a new life walking in the Spirit rather than the flesh.

This progression underscores Paul’s overall message: the cross addresses both the guilt of transgressions (early focus) and the power of the enslaving entity (later emphasis), leading to full salvation.

Could learning about the unjust torture and death of God’s especially beloved innocent, sinless Jesus help to bring about breaking the entity Sin’s spell? This would be like someone watching a video on animal cruelty and it opens their eyes and they transform into a Vegan, or someone horrified realizing what violence the traditional definition of marriage does to LGBTQ+ rights.

In Pauline theology as presented in Romans, learning about and contemplating the unjust torture and death of Jesus—God’s beloved, innocent, and sinless Son—can indeed contribute to breaking the “spell” of Sin as an enslaving power, much like the analogy of watching a video on animal cruelty that convicts someone and transforms them into a vegan. This process isn’t merely emotional but involves a profound spiritual identification and faith response that leads to deliverance. Paul emphasizes that Sin’s dominion is broken through union with Christ’s crucifixion: believers are “crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Romans 6:6).

The cross isn’t just about forgiving transgressions (as in earlier chapters) but about dying to Sin’s tyrannical rule. Contemplating Jesus’ suffering fosters this identification, where one reckons themselves “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11), shifting allegiance from Sin to righteousness.

Just as the video exposes the horror of cruelty, prompting ethical transformation, the gospel’s portrayal of Christ’s innocent agony exposes the ugliness and injustice of Sin— which “seized the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death” (Romans 7:11)—convicting the heart and opening eyes to the need for liberation. This contemplation, when met with faith, removes the “enslaving guilt” that perpetuates Sin’s hold, providing confidence in resurrection life and enabling a walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

Christian thinkers, like those in the ransom or substitutionary atonement views, echo this: Christ’s death ransoms humanity from Sin’s power, restoring relationship with God and overcoming death’s dominion.

While not every exposure guarantees transformation (faith is required), Paul’s message is that the cross’s scandalous injustice, when truly grasped, can shatter Sin’s deception and lead to freedom, akin to the vegan conversion through awakened conscience.

This seems to relate to Yom Kippur where the pure goat is killed humanely, while the brutal death of the scapegoat being driven over a cliff and dashed seems to mean to get people to consider the intended and unintended harms of our sins. We recognize ourselves in those who wrongfully killed Jesus, like the person watching the animal cruelty video sees how they are also cruel to animals and so transform into a Vegan.

This draws a compelling parallel between the Yom Kippur ritual in Leviticus 16 and its elaboration in Jewish tradition, the theology of atonement in Paul’s Romans, and the transformative power of reflecting on Jesus’ crucifixion—extending the vegan analogy to a moment of self-identification with the perpetrators of injustice, prompting repentance and change. In the biblical Yom Kippur ceremony, two goats are selected by lot: one “for the Lord” as a sin offering, which is slaughtered humanely in the Temple, its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat to purify the sanctuary and atone for the people’s impurities (Leviticus 16:15-19). The other, the scapegoat (literally “for Azazel”), has the high priest lay hands on it, confessing Israel’s sins over it, before it’s sent alive into the wilderness to bear those sins away (Leviticus 16:20-22). Rabbinic tradition in the Mishnah (Yoma 6:6-8) expands this: the scapegoat is led about 12 miles into the desert to a place called Tzuk, where it’s pushed backward off a steep cliff to dash upon the rocks below, ensuring a brutal death that prevents its return and symbolizes the complete, irreversible removal of sin’s burden.

This isn’t mere disposal; interpreters suggest the visible cruelty underscores the destructive consequences of sin—both intended (willful transgressions) and unintended (ripple effects on community and creation)—forcing observers to confront sin’s horror and gravity, much like the animal cruelty video exposes hidden harms and convicts the viewer.

Christian theology, including Paul’s in Romans, often sees Jesus fulfilling both goats’ roles in a unified way: as the sin offering whose blood provides atonement (Romans 3:25, where Christ is the “mercy seat” or hilasterion, echoing Yom Kippur’s ark covering), and as the scapegoat who bears and removes sins far away through his death (Romans 6:6-7, where believers are freed from sin’s enslavement via cocrucifixion with Christ).

The brutality of Jesus’ crucifixion—unjust torture, public humiliation, and execution—mirrors the scapegoat’s dashed fate, not as humane sacrifice but as a vivid display of sin’s viciousness, where humanity’s collective guilt (Jews and Romans alike) is implicated in killing the innocent one.

This invites self-recognition: just as the video watcher sees their complicity in animal suffering and turns vegan, contemplating the cross exposes our role in perpetuating sin’s harms—whether through direct actions or passive participation—and breaks its “spell” by awakening conscience, leading to faith, repentance, and new life in the Spirit (Romans 7:24-8:2, where the wretched self is delivered from the “body of death”).

Paul doesn’t explicitly reference Yom Kippur’s goats, but the thematic overlap in atonement, removal of sin’s power, and transformation supports this interpretive bridge, emphasizing how the cross both covers guilt and expels sin’s dominion.

This is the key to Plato’s cave: realizing the beloved traditional definition of marriage does violence to LGBTQ+ rights inspires you to deconstruct the definition in a more inclusive way—like sitting around enjoying a delicious plate of BBQ chicken wings and watching an animal cruelty video that “opens your eyes” and inspires you to become Vegan.

So, we see how Paul has a sophisticated and multifaceted approach to the cross, one that seems to have developed much later than the traditional date of Paul, as Livesey argues.

(ii)

And so to recapitulate Livesey’s ideas, Markus Vinzent has offered this helpful analysis at a recent conference:

The Core Arguments

Livesey’s three central arguments are as follows:

1. The setting: The letters preserved in the Pauline corpus, including the seven so-called authentic ones, resemble “productions in schools (haereses).” Livesey regards the school of Marcion not merely as a parallel but as the “likely origin” of these “pseudonymous, literary, and fictional, letters-in-form-only” (xii; see chapter 4).
2. The construct of authenticity: Scholarship has needed to present the Pauline letters as “unique,” written under “special circumstances,” in order to derive from this their supposed authenticity (31).
3. The non-historicity of Paul: The modern assumption of a historically existing Paul rests solely on these seven letters, treated as authentic and historically reliable—a premise that, Livesey argues, cannot be sustained (75-78). In the absence of “external evidence,” Paul is better understood “as a fictional character” (83-91). References to historical figures such as Aretas in 2 Corinthians 11:32 serve “narrative effect, adding a sense of importance and verisimilitude” (99).

Main Points of Agreement

1. The canonical Fourteen-Letter Collection of the New Testament does not consist, as over 99 percent of contemporary Pauline scholarship maintains, of half authentic and half Deutero- and Pseudo-Pauline works.
2. Even the seven so-called authentic letters are not genuine compositions of Paul.
3. All of the letters originate in a school context.
4. The earliest attested form of the material is already that of a collection, not individual letters.
5. All the letters, as we have them, derive from the second century.
6. The earliest demonstrable site and period of such a collection is Rome in the mid-second century, comprising ten Pauline epistles.
7. “Deploying the letter genre, trained authors of this school” — Marcion’s — “crafted teachings in the name of the Apostle Paul for peer elite audiences” (2).
8. I agree with Livesey’s description of the “conceptual shift from lived reality to that of a crafted and speculative realm” (2).
9. “Early ‘Christian’ writers who witness to Pauline letters valued and considered them not for their historicity but instead for their theological and ethical teachings and as evidence in support of their theological positions.” I reached the same conclusion, independently, in Resetting the Origins of Christianity: A New Theory of Sources and Beginnings (CUP 2022). While most authors of that period accepted Pauline authorship (with the exception of Hebrews), they did not treat these letters as historical sources; like Eusebius, they preferred the correspondence between Jesus and Abgar or the writings of Josephus. Livesey could not have known this, as my book appeared too late for her to engage with it. (Vinzent, 2023).
10. The use of the Pauline letters as historical documents begins only after the Reformation and, more decisively, in the nineteenth century (3).

Some Potential Counter-Arguments

Livesey herself anticipates one objection: “To be rhetorically effective, mock letters need to look and feel like actual correspondence. Otherwise put, epistolographers of the genre strive to hide the fictionality of their enterprise” (xi). If Paul’s letters are fictional, their authors or redactors ignored this principle. What they produced hardly resembles real correspondence. It was Romantic scholarship that later insisted on their authenticity.

A second point, following [Owen] Hodkinson, is that “pseudonymous letters are attributed to a known figure were by far ‘the most frequent type of Greek letter from all periods'” (Hodkinson, 2017, p. 514). Even if the Pauline letters were fictional, this would imply that Paul was already a “known figure” — real or imagined — at the time. But on what basis, and for what reason, were letters attributed to him? Forged letters under the names of Socrates, Heraclitus, Plato, Seneca, Apollonius of Tyana, Democritus, Hippocrates, or Themistocles are understandable; but why Paul? If such letters were meant to supplement “what was known of the figure” or “function as an apology,” what was known of Paul to supplement?

To address this, Livesey turns to Acts, which she uses to highlight “character differences” between its protagonist and the letter-writer — a method comparable to comparing the Plato of his dialogues with the Plato of the spurious letters (15). Yet the dating of Acts has shifted dramatically in recent decades, as she admits. Since the text is not cited before Irenaeus of Lyon and Dionysius of Corinth, it must postdate Marcion’s Ten-Letter Collection. Thus Acts can be compared only with the canonical Thirteen- or Fourteen-Letter Collection, not with Marcion’s earlier corpus.

Similarly, features of fictionality such as the “anxiety of fiction” that Livesey notes — for example, Gal 6:11; 1 Cor 16:21; 2 Thess 3:17; Col 4:18 — are absent from the Ten-Letter Collection and appear only in the Fourteen-Letter version. The same applies to passages where “Paul” refers to other letters in the collection: 1 Cor 5:9-11; 2 Cor 7:8; 10:9-11; Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27; 2 Thess 2:2, 15; 3:14. The most striking marks of fictionality therefore belong to the canonical, expanded collection.

Nevertheless, genuinely fictional features already appear in the Ten-Letter stage — for instance the expression Γνωρίζω δὲ ὑμῖν in 1 Cor 15:1, noted long ago by Bauer (19).

The Context of the Fictional Paul: Marcion’s School

Given my expertise, I shall focus on Livesey’s chapter 4, where she situates the origin of the Pauline letter collection within the milieu of Marcion’s school. On this point, my own more recent work — conducted independently but contemporaneously — converges with many of her results, while adding a few details and refinements, as mentioned before.

Livesey is right, in my judgment, to contextualize the first attested Pauline collection of ten letters in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135 CE). This was the period when debates over Jewish circumcision practices intensified — discussions that, as she notes, do not “surface in texts dated prior to the end of the first century” (202-203). What we encounter in this letter collection thus reflects controversies that flared up during and after that revolt, both within Judaism and within emerging Christian groups (208-229).

I also agree with her portrayal of the open “school” setting and culture of second-century Rome, with its masters and pupils (229-236). She reports my own earlier views accurately, though I would now supplement them. Having worked (with a team) on a reconstruction of Marcion’s Ten-Letter Collection, I can refine certain points.

The most significant correction concerns Marcion’s role as collector. He did not assemble individual letters himself, as I thought before, but drew upon two pre-existing collections: one of seven letters (those later regarded, in revised form, as “authentic”), and another of three letters (corresponding, in later redaction, to the so-called Deutero-Paulines). This finding does not disqualify Livesey’s conclusions, it rather supports it, pushes the history of the Pauline corpus beyond Marcion and shows that even before his intervention we are dealing not with individual letters but with redacted collections — still presumably fictional products of the second century. The “Deutero-Paulines” in particular stem from the canonical milieu of the Polycarp school, as evidenced in Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians.

(iii)

Thinking about Sin as a demonic entity enslaving people and forcing them to transgress against their will, Greek had several terms that could describe a person undergoing divine or demonic possession, though the concepts often overlapped since spirits (daimones) were not always strictly categorized as benevolent or malevolent in pre-Christian contexts. Divine possession typically implied inspiration, ecstasy, or being filled with a god’s presence (enthusiasmos, e.g., in prophecy, poetry, or ritual), while demonic possession leaned toward harmful or uncontrolled influence. Below, I’ll outline key words for a person in such a state, focusing on those directly tied to possession, along with their etymologies.

For divine possession: terms often carried positive or ambivalent connotations, associated with gods like Apollo, Dionysus, or the Muses.

• Entheos (ἔνθεος): An adjective meaning “possessed by a god,” “inspired,” or “having the god within.” The person could be called an entheos (one who is possessed) or, in noun form, an enthousiastēs (ἐνθουσιαστής), which directly refers to someone undergoing divine possession or enthusiasm.
  • Etymology: From en- (ἐν-, “in” or “within”) + theos (θεός, “god”). This implies the god is inside the person, inspiring them. The modern English word “enthusiasm” derives from this root via enthousiasmos (ἐνθουσιασμός, “divine inspiration”).
• Theolēptos (θεόληπτος): An adjective meaning “seized by a god,” “possessed by divinity,” or “inspired.” It could describe someone in a state of divine ecstasy or superstition.
  • Etymology: From theo- (θεο-, "god" or "divine") + lēptos (ληπτός, from lambanō [λαμβάνω], “to take” or “seize”). Literally “taken/seized by a god,” emphasizing sudden or forceful divine intervention.
• Theophorētos (θεοφόρητος) or Theophoros (θεοφόρος): Meaning “borne by a god,” “god-bearing,” or “carried by divinity,” often implying possession where the person is a vessel for the god.
  • Etymology: From theo- (θεο-, “god”) + phorētos or phoros (from pherō [φέρω], “to bear” or “carry”). It suggests the person is “carried” or “borne” by the divine force, or alternatively bears the god within them.
• Katochos (κάτοχος): Meaning “held” or “possessed” (by a god), sometimes used for individuals in a trance-like state or ritually detained in a temple due to divine influence.
  • Etymology: From kata- (κατα-, intensifier or "down") + echō (ἔχω, “to have” or “hold”). Literally “held down” or “restrained,” implying the god’s grip or control over the person.

For demonic possession: In ancient Greek, “demonic” possession wasn’t always negative; daimōn (δαίμων) referred to any supernatural spirit, which could be good (eudaimōn) or evil (kakodaimōn). Harmful possession was often described similarly to divine but with a malevolent twist, especially in later texts.

• Daimonizomenos (δαιμονιζόμενος): A participle used as a noun meaning “one who is possessed by a demon” or “demon-possessed.” This is the most direct term for someone under the influence of a (typically harmful) spirit.
  • Etymology: From daimonizomai (δαιμονίζομαι, "to be possessed by a daimōn"), derived from daimōn (δαίμων, "deity," "spirit," or "power") + -izomai (-ίζομαι, a verbal suffix indicating a state or process). The root daimōn likely comes from daiō (δαίω, “to divide” or “distribute”), suggesting a spirit that apportions fate or destinies—hence its dual good/evil nature in early usage.

These words appear in classical texts (e.g., Plato’s discussions of “divine madness” or theia mania [θεία μανία], which overlaps with possession) and later in Koine Greek (e.g., the New Testament for daimonizomai). The distinction between divine and demonic often depended on context rather than strict terminology, as ancient Greeks viewed possession as a spectrum of supernatural influence.

In Plato’s philosophy, particularly as articulated in his dialogue Phaedrus, “divine madness” or theia mania (θεία μανία) refers to a state of inspired frenzy or ecstasy induced by the gods, which elevates the human soul beyond ordinary rational constraints and leads to profound benefits, such as prophecy, creativity, purification, or philosophical insight. This idea influenced later thinkers, from Neoplatonists to Romantic poets, who saw creativity and insight as stemming from a “divine spark” rather than pure logic.

This concept is presented as a positive counterpoint to ordinary human madness, which Plato views as a harmful affliction or illness stemming from imbalance in the body or soul.

Instead, theia mania is a divine gift that bestows virtue and excellence upon humanity, often manifesting as unusual behavior attributed to supernatural intervention.

It is in this context the cross of Christ overcoming the possession of the evil entity/force Sin is located. This is the concept of Christ in You, the idea that the believer welcomes in the divine possessing spirit of Christ as the battler of satanic temptation par excellence, so it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.

I talked previously about a two-fold understanding of salvation from sin in Paul’s letter to the Romans, one of a substitutionary atonement paying a penalty for your transgressions to avert God’s wrath, and by contrast a moral influence cross where seeing ourselves in those who killed God’s especially beloved Jesus breaks the spell the powerful entity Sin has on us so we can then recognize our sinfulness and repent. In the former model God expects a fine to be paid for your transgressions, whereas in the latter model God needs you to see your hidden sinfulness, breaking the spell of Sin you are under, so your eyes will open and you can repent. For the latter model imagine a group of kids in the school yard excitedly pulling the legs off of daddy longlegs insects, while one kid looks on the scene horrified, their moral compass awakened. Or, suppose a person watching a video about the mistreatment of animals and their eyes are opened and they become a Vegan. This follows the general biblical idea of eyes being opened, such as with Adam or Saul/Paul.

The New Testament explains that a key purpose of the Old Testament law (which constitutes scripture) is to reveal or make people conscious of their sin—including hidden or unrecognized aspects—so they recognize their need for repentance and forgiveness through faith in Christ. This is not presented as the sole purpose of scripture overall, but as an essential function of the law within it. For example: Romans 3:20 states, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Romans 7:7 elaborates, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.'”

This highlights how the law discloses sin that might otherwise remain hidden or unacknowledged. Galatians 3:19-24 describes the law as added “because of transgressions” and as a “guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith,” implying it exposes sin to guide people toward repentance and forgiveness.

The Old Testament itself does not explicitly state this as a purpose of scripture, though passages like Psalm 19:7-13 imply a similar role for God’s law in warning against errors, discerning hidden faults, and leading to blamelessness through forgiveness.

(iv)

I talked about the twofold purpose of the New Testament and Christ’s death in Romans (i) as payment for our sin fine/penalty, and (ii) seeing yourself in those guilty of God’s beloved (agapetos) messenger Christ’s wrongful death, which breaks the spell that the evil powerful entity Sin has you under so as to open your eyes to your sinful disposition so you can repent. The first is traditional sacrifice to appease the deity’s wrath, while the second is helping God to forgive you (reflecting God’s forgiving nature such as in the Penitential Psalms and the story of Jonah). Though many commentators only focus on (i), (ii) is actually often addressed as a fundamental process of the human condition. For example, numerous great works of literature explore the theme of transformation through the realization of hidden faults—often via a moment of anagnorisis (a sudden recognition or discovery that shifts a character’s understanding of themselves or their circumstances). This can lead to redemption, tragedy, growth, or downfall. Below, I’ll highlight some classic examples from plays, novels, and epics, drawing from well-known literary analyses.

Anagnorisis, a term from Aristotle’s Poetics, refers to a moment of recognition or discovery in a dramatic work, often involving the revelation of true identities or hidden truths, which leads to a shift from ignorance to knowledge and frequently coincides with peripeteia (reversal of fortune). This device is central to many Greek tragedies, serving as a turning point that heightens emotional impact, drives the plot toward resolution, and evokes pity and fear in the audience. Below, I’ll compare its use in three key examples: Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Libation Bearers (part of the Oresteia trilogy) by Aeschylus, and Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. These plays illustrate variations in how anagnorisis is achieved, its integration with the plot, and its consequences for characters and themes.

Ancient Greek Tragedies

• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles: The protagonist, Oedipus, uncovers the horrifying truth that he has unknowingly killed his father and married his mother—flaws rooted in his hubris and ignorance. This revelation shatters his self-image, leading to self-inflicted blindness and exile, symbolizing a catastrophic personal transformation.
• Libation Bearers (The Choephoroi) by Aeschylus: Clytemnestra realizes her disguised son Orestes has returned to avenge his father’s murder, exposing her own moral failings in her past actions. This leads to her death, while Orestes grapples with the cycle of vengeance. Electra also recognizes her brother, transforming her despair into action.
• Iphigeneia in Tauris by Euripides: Iphigeneia discovers that the prisoners she must sacrifice are her brother Orestes and his friend, revealing hidden familial bonds and averting tragedy through reunion and escape.

Shakespearean Plays

• King Lear by William Shakespeare: King Lear comes to see his grave errors in judgment—favoring flattery over genuine love and banishing his loyal daughter Cordelia—amid madness and loss. This self-realization of his pride and folly leads to humility and partial redemption before his death.
• Othello by William Shakespeare: Othello realizes too late that his jealousy and gullibility (exploited by Iago) led him to murder his innocent wife Desdemona, exposing his tragic flaw of insecurity and transforming him into a figure of remorse and suicide.
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Macbeth recognizes the futility of his ambition and moral corruption as the witches’ prophecies unfold, leading to his downfall and a reflective acceptance of his villainy.

Modern Novels

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: Young Scout Finch gradually realizes the deep-seated prejudices and flaws in her community (and implicitly in herself), culminating in her empathetic understanding of Boo Radley, fostering her moral growth and transformation into a more compassionate person.
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Rodion Raskolnikov, after committing murder under a flawed ideology, confronts his hidden guilt and moral bankruptcy through suffering and relationships, leading to confession, repentance, and spiritual renewal.
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: Ebenezer Scrooge is forced by ghostly visions to acknowledge his selfishness, greed, and emotional isolation—hidden faults that have alienated him from others—prompting a joyful transformation into generosity and warmth.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray finally confronts the portrait that reveals his inner corruption and moral decay (hidden behind his eternal youth), leading to a desperate attempt at redemption that ends in tragedy.
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy each realize their respective flaws—her prejudice and his pride—through misunderstandings and revelations, resulting in personal growth, mutual understanding, and romantic union.
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: Pip discovers the true source of his fortune and recognizes his snobbery and ingratitude toward his humble origins, transforming him from an ambitious social climber into a humbler, more self-aware individual.

These works often use the revelation of flaws as a catalyst for character arcs, blending psychological depth with broader themes like fate, morality, and society.

Of course, the classic treatment in the New Testament is Judas who betrays Christ when Satan enters Judas, and Judas later kills himself when he truly understands what he has done. The example I like is knowing that if I was a Roman citizen thousands of years ago, I probably would have cheered on the brutality of the arena, even though today I find the needless bloodshed horrific. Similarly, the death of Socrates awakened in the ancient world an idea that resulted in civilized society no longer thinking someone should be put to death for leading a Socratic life.

In the Bible faith is not primarily a set of beliefs. We are told demons, too, believe, but are not saved. Rather, it is a special kind of trust. Jesus says faith can move mountains, which highlights the absurd because would Jesus not then move a mountain himself to drive the point home?

The paragon of faith in the Bible was Abraham who God promised a great line of descendants, but then by virtue of the absurd ordered Abraham to kill his son. Abraham’s faith was not a set of ideas, because that would require the impossible holding of two contradictory notions simultaneously, but rather trusting and following God regardless of what God commanded or even if God contradicts himself.

As I said, in Romans Paul notes faith in Christ preserves this contrariety where in one sense God sent Jesus to die to pay humans’ sin fine, while Christ was also the godly chosen Davidic messianic claimant who was viciously rejected by the world, but saved them with his moral influence death. One problem was people were accountable for sinning, but on the other hand their minds were being influenced by the demonic entity Sin, and so the spell needed to be broken, and people’s eyes opened. Jesus was like the angels in Lot’s story who were sent to test the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the people failing the test when they demanded to rape the angels. The contradiction is how can God hold mankind accountable for sin if the reason they are sinning is because of demon brainwashing? God’s beloved Jesus on the cross, when we realize the sin in our hearts was also in those who wrongfully killed Jesus, circumcises the fleshly from our hearts awakening the Law written upon them.

Paul in Romans has a dualistic interpretation of sin dealt with by Christ’s cross. On the one hand, we have substitutionary atonement to pay the fine for man’s transgressions. This balances the books, but what if someone keeps sinning? What is needed is a change/growth of moral disposition, metanoia. Paul reckoned God didn’t make a fundamental error in how man was made, so Sin as a demonic entity/force must be possessing humans and forcing humans to transgress against their will. We say “I was beside myself with rage,” for example. And so, one of Jesus’ closest followers, Judas, had Satan possess Judas, and Judas betrayed Christ, the spell being broken when Judas fully recognized what he had done.

In the Gospels:

• Satan “enters” Judas (Luke 22:3; John 13:27), prompting him to betray Jesus to the authorities for thirty pieces of silver.
• After the betrayal leads to Jesus’ arrest and condemnation, Judas realizes the harm he’s caused (contributing to the innocent Jesus’ impending death).
• Filled with remorse, he returns the money to the chief priests and elders, confessing, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). He then hangs himself in despair (Matthew 27:5; Acts 1:18 offers a variant where he falls and dies).

The text implies that the satanic influence lifted after the betrayal, enabling Judas to feel regret over the consequences. This isn’t a traditional exorcism (no external ritual), but the realization of harm coincides with the end of the possession’s control, leading to Judas’ self-inflicted punishment rather than redemption. Satan departing allows Judas’ disposition of Greed to whither, free will to return and remorse to set in.

For Paul our moral compass can be awakened when something horrific circumcises the fleshly on our hearts to reveal the law written on it, crucifying our worldly nature and revealing our spiritual nature. The exemplary case for Paul is what happens when we learn about the ones who should be the most holy, the devious Jewish elite orchestrating the corrupt torture and murder of God’s especially beloved Jesus by the Romans because God’s law would not let the Jewish elite kill Jesus themselves. We see ourselves in those who wrongfully killed Jesus, and it awakens something in us. For example, someone analogously might watch a video of cruelty to animals, and it opens their eyes (in the sense we say Adam’s or Saul/Paul’s eyes were opened) to their sinful nature and they make a decision to become Vegan.

This idea of the awakening and expansion of one’s moral compass in response to one’s terrible behavior as a result of demonic possession is an interesting facet of ancient belief. The demonic possession is overcome by the inner light of the person. For example, a lot of work has been done on seeing the influence of Euripides’ Bacchae on the Jesus story, especially Acts and the Gospel of John. In this tragedy by Euripides, the god Dionysus (also called Bacchus) induces a frenzied possession in the women of Thebes, including Agave (mother of King Pentheus), as punishment for denying his divinity. The women, known as Maenads or Bacchae, roam the mountains in ecstatic madness, performing superhuman acts like tearing animals apart with their bare hands.

• Dionysus lures Pentheus to spy on the rituals, then reveals him to the possessed women.
• Agave, in her frenzy, mistakes her son Pentheus for a wild lion and leads the Maenads in dismembering him alive (a ritual act called sparagmos).
• Agave returns to Thebes triumphantly carrying Pentheus’ severed head, still under the spell and believing it to be a trophy from the hunt.
• Her father, Cadmus, confronts her and guides her through a dialogue to recognize the head as her son’s. As she gradually realizes the horrific harm she’s caused—killing her own child—the frenzy fades, and the possession breaks. She’s left in devastated horror, leading to her exile.

This is a clear case where external prompting leads to self-realization of the harm, which in turn dispels the divine madness. The play emphasizes themes of hubris and the dangers of resisting the gods, with Agave’s awakening serving as a tragic climax.

Somewhat similarly, there is Ajax in Sophocles’ Ajax (c. 440 BCE). The goddess Athena drives the warrior Ajax into madness after he loses Achilles’ armor in a contest. He slaughters livestock, believing them to be his enemies (the Greek leaders). When the madness lifts (externally, by divine will), he realizes his actions have brought shame and failed to harm his intended targets, leading to overwhelming remorse and suicide. This is similar in aftermath but not exact—the realization follows the end of madness, rather than causing it to break. Also, there is Lycurgus in Various Myths (e.g., Homer’s Iliad and Later Sources): King Lycurgus of Thrace opposes Dionysus and is driven mad by the god. In his frenzy, he kills his son Dryas, mistaking him for a grapevine. After the act, he recovers his senses and is horrified by the harm to his child. The madness seems to end naturally post-deed, allowing realization, but it’s not explicitly broken by the remorse.

In any case, we might realize that the senseless bloodshed of the ancient Roman arena was horrific from the distance of our perspective thousands of years later, but get that if we were Roman citizens at the time we probably would have cheered along with everyone else. Similarly, Mark satirizes the corrupt trial of Jesus before the Jewish high council (e.g., meeting on Passover Eve), but if we were in the shoes of those who condemned Jesus back then, we very well might have done the same thing to Jesus—Similar case with those who killed Socrates. Paul doesn’t see the leaders as evil, but corrupted by the entity Sin.

The original Bible story was that God admitted he made a mistake in the way he created man (Genesis 6:5-8) and so had to flood the world. For the Christians, man was seemingly imperfect but had the Law hiddenly written on his heart that could be awakened by the understanding of the Jesus story, and of course in other ways.

We can thus see the roots of Gnosticism, the idea that the creator God is stupid and created a defective world and man, but there is a divine spark in humans that can be awakened put there by a greater God. The creator deity, often called the Demiurge (or Yaldabaoth in some texts like the Apocryphon of John), is depicted as an ignorant, arrogant, or flawed being—sometimes described as “blind” or foolish rather than outright “stupid,” though the implication is similar—who mistakenly believes himself to be the supreme God. He emanates from a lower aeon (such as Sophia, or Wisdom) and creates the material world and humanity in his own imperfect image, resulting in a defective cosmos full of suffering, death, and entrapment. This world is seen as a flawed prison for the soul, not the work of the true, transcendent God.

However, humans contain a “divine spark” (pneuma or spirit) that originates from the higher, ultimate God (often called the Monad or the Unknown Father), who exists beyond the Demiurge and the material realm. This spark is trapped in the body but can be awakened through gnosis (esoteric knowledge), leading to spiritual liberation and reunion with the divine source. Variations exist across Gnostic sects (e.g., Sethian, Valentinian), but this dualistic view of a false creator versus a true God, with humanity’s potential for redemption via the inner divine element, is a common thread. Paul thus notes the evil heart, when circumcised by the cross, reveals the Law written on it.

Connecting repentance with a fundamental revolution in one’s mind is a common thought in ancient Greek. The Greek word for repentance in the New Testament, “metanoia” (μετάνοια), does suggest a fundamental change of mind and perspective. It is derived from “meta” (meaning “after,” “beyond,” or “change”) and “noia” (from “nous,” meaning “mind”), literally translating to a “change of mind.” This implies not just superficial regret but a profound reorientation or transformation in one’s thinking, heart, and ultimately behavior, often described as shifting to a higher consciousness or turning away from previous ways. In biblical contexts, it conveys a Spirit-led reversal of direction in life, moving from sin toward alignment with God’s will.

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Friend of Jacques Derrida, French postmodern philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ essay “Transcendence and Evil,” which serves as the postface to Philippe Nemo’s book Job and the Excess of Evil (1998), offers a phenomenological reading of the Book of Job to explore the nature of evil, suffering, and transcendence. Rather than treating evil ontologically—as a privation or lack of good—Levinas argues that it manifests as an excess, a qualitative surplus that ruptures the order of being and cannot be assimilated, justified, or synthesized by consciousness. This excess is not quantitative but an “ex- of exteriority,” a radical alterity that interpellates the subject, awakening ethical responsibility while defying explanation. Schelling notes the capacity for evil is a defining human characteristic, as only humans can sink below brute animals in terms of depravity.

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