Paul of Tarsus has a bit of a reputation as a misogynist and a johnny come lately to the Christian cause, and it's even been suggested that his famous revelation on the road to Damascus might more likely have been an epileptic episode rather than God dropping in to have a word about, well spreading the word. All that said, early Church history interests me because it's so 'unknown', and because it is becoming increasingly apparent, so political.

The author doesn't speculate so much, but just enough to suggest that there were deep divisions between Paul and the 'Jerusalem Church', the latter being much more closely aligned to Christ as a Jewish phenomena while Paul was (by agreement with the latter) out on the fringes preaching to the Gentiles. None of this is particularly new, or controversial within Church scholarly inquiry. One of these days though I might find a book that looks at how the adherents of Paul and the Jerusalem Church shaped the policies of each, and how the Word of God was not so much conveyed as 'marketed', and was - as it were - 'poll driven' rather than divine revelation. Paul's letters were clearly about bringing into line folk who were profoundly steeped in pan-Hellenic traditions of commerce rather than Jewish mysticism, and who seemed much less inclined to define themselves by an act of genital mutilation and exclusive eating practices than by rules of social (and commercial) engagement. The unravelling of that - I suspect - might be found in a study of the language of the early Greek Gospels, and in a study of the social and religious context of those cities (and the people who lived there) where Paul was preaching.