Week #11

Paul: Appealing or Appalling

I found the first chapter of "The First Paul" to be very interesting, mostly because I had very little prior knowledge of the religious figure. I had not realized the great significance that he held in the emergence of Christianity, and that next to Jesus, he is the most important person included in the New Testament. Borg even stated that there was an unspoken agreement within the Lutheran church that "Paul was more important than Jesus" (5). This idea caught me entirely off guard, a being in the bible more important than Christ? But when that question is paired with the statement, "Paul more than any other figure in the New Testament was responsible for the emergence of Christianity as a new religion that, though it included Jews, became entirely separate from Judaism" (3). There were three reasons given why people dislike Paul, two of which confused me. The first cause of confusion was that some individuals use his letters to justify slavery, condemn homosexuality, and endorse subordinate women. My concern is that these words are still being taken literally, given the number of centuries that separate the author from the believers. These were not uncommon ideals for the time period, and Paul should not be judged altogether based on them. That is just my initial, uneducated opinion on the subject.