The First Paul: Redeeming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon by Marcus J Borg and John Dominic Crossan

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
-PRINT: © March 3, 2009; 978-0061430725; HarperOne; 240 pages; unabridged (Hardcover Info from Amazon.com)
-DIGITAL: © February 19, 2009; HarperOne; 244 pages; unabridged (Digital version info from Amazon.com)
- *AUDIO: © June 8, 2009; Tantor Audio; 8 hours, 20 minutes; unabridged (Audio info from Audible version)

-FILM: No

SERIES: No.

CHARACTERS: N/A

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-SELECTED: This is another book that Don had added to our Audible Library years ago, that I finally got to.
-ABOUT: The scripture scholars, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan discuss historically and anthropologically filtered Biblical studies of Saul / Paul. They contend that Paul’s image has been exploited and altered through multiple letters in the New Testament miss-assigned to his authorship, and sometimes doctored authentic letters. They point out contradictions between the first 7 letters thought for certain to have been authored by Paul and the six letters considered not to be.
They explain that In the ancient world it was common to write documents in the name of revered figures. Not to pretend to be that person, but to borrow their authority.
The authors state that the authentic Paul was a radical who believed in equality between men and women, did not support slavery, and held that the death of Jesus was not about dyeing in our place, not a substitution, but a demonstration in the resurrection, and an assurance that all mankind is accepted, loved, and one under, God.
They also contend that in Ancient times gender identification could only be made by physical attributes, whereas in modern times we understand that it is a combination of that, chemistry and psychology.
-OVERALL IMPRESSION: I enjoy non-standard yet studied interpretations of scripture.

AUTHOR: Marcus Joel Borg - Excerpt from Wikipedia
“(March 11, 1942 – January 21, 2015) was an American New Testament scholar and theologian.[4] He was among the most widely known and influential voices in Liberal Christianity. Borg was a fellow of the Jesus Seminar and a major figure in historical Jesus scholarship.[5] He retired as Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University in 2007. He died eight years later at the age of 72, of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at his home in Powell Butte, Oregon.[6][7][8]
Borg was born March 11, 1942, in Fergus Falls, Minnesota,[9] and raised in a Lutheran family in North Dakota. After high school he attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he double-majored in political science and philosophy. Though plagued by doubt as a young adult, after his undergraduate studies Borg accepted a Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship to study at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he became familiarized with liberal theology. A profound influence on Borg during his seminary years was the theologian W. D. Davies. After his studies at Union, he matriculated at Mansfield College, Oxford, where he earned both his Master of Theology and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.[10]”

AUTHOR: John Dominic Crossan – Excerpt from Wikipedia
“(born 17 February 1934) is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, former Catholic priest who was a prominent member of the Jesus Seminar, and emeritus professor at DePaul University. His research has focused on the historical Jesus, the theology of noncanonical Gospels, and the application of postmodern hermeneutical approaches to the Bible. His work is controversial, portraying the Second Coming as a late corruption of Jesus' message and saying that Jesus' divinity is metaphorical.[1] In place of the eschatological message of the Gospels, Crossan emphasizes the historical context of Jesus and of his followers immediately after his death.[1] He describes Jesus' ministry as founded on free healing and communal meals, negating the social hierarchies of Jewish culture and the Roman Empire.[2]

Crossan is a major scholar in contemporary historical Jesus research.[1][3] In particular, he and Burton Mack advocated for a non-eschatological view of Jesus, a view that contradicts the more common view that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher.[3] While contemporary scholars see more value in noncanonical gospels than past scholars did, Crossan goes further and identifies a few noncanonical gospels as earlier than and superior to the canonical ones.[3] The very early dating of these non-canonical sources is not accepted by the majority of biblical scholars.[4]”

NARRATOR: Mel Foster – From Tantor Media
“Mel Foster, an audiobook narrator since 2002, won an Audie Award for Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey. He has also won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. Best known for mysteries, Mel has also narrated classic authors such as Thoreau, Nabokov, and Whitman.”

GENRE: Non-Fiction; Biblical Biography; Commentaries

SUBJECTS: Biblical scripture; translations; Paul; Crucifixion; Jesus; Rome; Romans; Augustus Cesar; Greeks; Language; Religion; Jews; Gentiles; Slavery; Equality; Genders; Greek Mythology; Anthropology; Greek language; History; Christianity, Traditional, Christianity, Liberal; Culture

DEDICATION: Not found

SAMPLE QUOTATION: From “Paul: Appealing or Appalling?”
“Paul is second only to Jesus as the important person in the origins of Christianity. Yet he is not universally well regarded, even among Christians. Some find him appealing, and others find him appalling; some aren’t sure what to think of him, and others know little about him.
The cover of Newsweek for May, 2002, asked, “What Would Jesus Do?” The story inside referred to Paul as well, citing passages attributed to him on slavery, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and heterosexism:

'The Biblical defense of slavery is: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in
singleness of heart as you obey Christ.” Writes Saint Paul. Anti-Semitism was long justified by
passages like this one from I Thessalonians: the Jews “killed both the Lord Jesus and the
prophets.” Ant the subjugation of women had a foundation in I Timothy: “As in all the churches
of the saints, women should be silent in the churches . . . . If there is anything they desire to
know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
And yet in each case, enlightened people have moved on from the worldview such passages
express. . . .
And if science now teaches us that being gay may be a “natural” state, how can a reading of the
Bible, including Saint Paul’s condemnation of same-sex interaction in Romans, inarguably cast
homosexuality in “unnatural” terms?'

These are among the passages in letters attributed to Paul that many find more appalling than appealing. So we begin our story of Paul by speaking about his importance, the reasons for his mixed reputation, and the foundations for our way of seeing him.
Paul’s importance is obvious from the New Testament itself. There are twenty-seven books in the New Testament, though to call them “books” is a bit of a misnomer, for some are only a page or a few pages long. Of these twenty-seven, thirteen are letters attributed to Paul. Not all were actually written by Paul, as we sill soon report, but they bear his name. To these add the book of Acts, in which Paul is the main character in sixteen of its twenty-eight chapters. Thus half of the New Testament is about Paul.
Moreover, according to the New Testament, Paul was chiefly responsible for expanding the early Jesus movement to include Gentiles (non-Jews) as well as Jews. The result over time was a new religion, even though Paul (like Jesus) was a Jew who saw himself working within Judaism. Neither intended that a new religion would emerge in his wake.”

RATING: 5 stars.

STARTED-FINISHED
12/25/23-1/3/24 ( )

Although this book, “The First Paul” was published some twelve years ago, its thesis strikes me as very relevant to the theological controversies of today. Having differentiated the New Testament letters that most scholars agree were actually composed by the Apostle from those that, though not composed by him, are basically compatible with Paul’s perspective and then those composed much later that in some ways contradict the position of Paul, Episcopalian Marcus Borg and Catholic Dominic Crossan lay out what they consider to be the core concepts of Paul’s theology.

For me the most helpful chapters of this volume are those that those that describe the difference between the substitutionary atonement doctrine still attributed to Paul by most conservative Christians and what the authors nominate as the “participatory” understanding of atonement found in Paul’s authentic letters. This difference can be summarized by their description of the substitutionary perspective as one that sees the atonement as a vertical transaction between Jesus and his Heavenly Father. The “participatory” understanding that that the authors champion sees the atonement as a movement initiated by Jesus to be carried on by his followers that unites human beings by overcoming the various divisive forces that work in our world. Borg and Crossan also helpfully write about justification, the doctrine that was once but no longer is seen as the major cause of division between Protestants and Catholics.

I recommend this book as a good introduction for any individual or group that wishes to understand the theology that underlies the Pauline Letters of the New Testament. ( )

This book was a revelation to me. It felt like a vindication and an illumination. It is very scholarly in spots and full of grace in others. I would hope anyone who has any interest in Christianity would at least expose themselves to this analysis of one of its most important founders. ( )

Excellent exploration of the radical Christian vision of the author of the "Solid Seven." ( )

This short book has one message: that Paul's faith centered on a nonviolent God and required distributive justice. ( )