Initially fearful of being arrested and crucified themselves, the Apostles kept their heads down. Eventually venturing out to the border towns of Israel and on to the Roman occupied territories beyond. For the time being, forced to give up on saving Israel from itself. They put their minds to converting gentiles to their nascent new faith.
The Acts of the Apostles is filled with accounts of a succession of incendiary public speaking engagements, that inevitably come to the notice of the local authorities. Chased out of town, or arrested, put in prison, only to be released by strange 'angelic' interventions. Fleeing the area, they move on to the next town, hoping to fare better. Acts is a largely unedifying account of a hit and run style of evangelism, spread across the borderlands and backwoods of the Roman Empire.
So the post Jesus landscape, opens up with this missionary travelogue - if its Wednesday then this must be Galatia. A whole series of letters from Paul and generally minor apostles follows. One is left with the impression of hearing only half of the conversation. Paul, was a second generation follower, a convert who'd never met Jesus. Having previously been a particularly sadistic Pharisee, indeed a persecutor of the Jesus sect itself. The emotional tone of his letters demonstrates he never quite shook off an inflexible ideologically driven mind set. Nor has he overcome his guilt. He has the ardent certainty of someone trying too hard to prove, mostly to himself, that he is now a totally reformed character.
As a consequence, in his written advice, he consistently draws the steeliest of hard lines on moral issues. He deliniates issues resolutely and firmly. Ideally you control your libido, be chaste and wholly devote your life to God. If you can't do that, and really must have sex, then that has to be within marriage. Homosexual relations are not even to be considered as a valid 'outlet'. These missives are full of long winded repetitious explanations, that impart an - it's my way or the highway doctrine. But then, admittedly, he will suddenly take you off guard, with a beautiful composition on the nature of true love - divine or otherwise. Or reveal the vulnerable neuroticism that underlies his hard man persona.
Often working at some distant from the situations he's a mentor too. Paul tries, with varying degrees of success, to use the autocratic mode. The Pauline tone and declamatory style of delivery, form the mode of oratory that every subsequent evangelical minister throughout the millennia, sadly, will mimic.
However, when you habitually throw your moral weight around like that, when its you that makes a very human mistake, there can be an equally savage and unforgiving condemnation. He oscillates between apologising or justifying himself and berating the local Christian group for their laxness or inconstancy. There's are extensive discussions, across many letters to different groups, about the nature and detrimental spiritual consequences of circumcision. So, its topical.
Paul in Ist Corinthians appears boisterously confident, but by 2nd Corithians he's more down hearted, doubt filled and apologetic. There's been an upset, a misunderstanding over something he'd written in a previous communication. His authority is now being called into question, fueled by rival Christian groups who've turned up in Corinthe. Paul never goes into the fine details, but is robust in his self justification. Though the upset appears to focus attention on questions of authenticity and legitimacy.
We are only a few years after the death of Jesus, and Christian institutions as we now know them, do not exist. Everyone is making their mission up as they go along. Paul is going to be central in establishing the theological ground and the future direction of mainstream Christianity But at this time none of that has happened. He addresses them on the streets, and through his letters tries to hold on to people's hearts and minds.
With self legitimising orthodoxy being absent, being in the direct lineage of Jesus's disciples helps. And Paul's lineage, well, it was indirect, and more than a little dodgy in that regard. There were a lot of freelance Christians around, who had their own individual take on what the message of the Messiah meant. As usual, these fall roughly into two forms, the word for word literalists and the mystical 'in the spirit of' practitioners. Paul's version was just one amongst a whole range of options for the direction this new Christian faith could take. How could you discern which was the most faithful and true to the teachings of Jesus?
Faced with this contention, Paul panics, and plays what he hopes will be a trump card. He makes a revelation, that initially he does not even declare as being his own experience. Recounting an arcane mystical experience of heaven and of God, he'd had fourteen years previously. He says he doesn't want to boast, but then proceeds to do just that.
Modern scholars analysing this say the language he uses in his description, is heavily indebted to Jewish mysticism. To a particular early form of Kabbalah. This seems risky. The text does not reveal whether or not this was effective in regaining the Corinthian's confidence.
The New Testament as a whole is now beginning to resemble a Greatest Hits Album. Starting off with the famous and most popular tracks - The Gospels. To be followed by the stuff that is largely album filler - Acts, Letters, Minor Gospels. Rounding up with the last blast of an apocalyptic stomper - Revelations. Reading through to the end is getting to be a bit of a drag. Reaching its conclusion being worthy of some kind of reward for endurance.
Most Greatest Hits albums remind you of how good someone was at first, and how they failed to maintain that brilliance in later years. Even as they continue to sell out ever bigger stadiums and have increasingly million dollar record sales. The bigger and more popular they became, their vital creative spark is lost to that pursuit of greater fame and celebrity.
Ditto Christianity, once it escapes the confines of being a rebel sect of the religion of Abraham, spreading into the lands of the Gentiles, eventually to sign a distribution deal with Constantine and the Holy Roman Empire adopts it. At this point, even as it is set to conquer the known world, it has thrown its whole soul into the fray of political dogfighting. And the dead hand of institutional orthodoxy, bares down upon anyone it sees as committing 'heresies'. This usually means anyone who dares to think for themselves.
We cannot fully know what those early Christian groups believed, of what the paths not fully traveled were like, for the remaining history is sketchy. And Christian history has largely been compiled and set by the Roman Catholic victor's, which comprehensively, expunged, expelled and cleaned up that past. So effectively did Paul's interpretation of Jesus's teachings triumph in the end.
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