There is a theory going around that is confusing many lay people because the pushers of the theory are amateurs who aren’t informed themselves, or are not correctly informing the public, about any of the pertinent facts: the notion that we can “prove” Paul was a Roman agent intentionally setting Christians up to be subservient to Rome. To be absolutely clear: there is zero evidence for this conjecture; it isn’t even plausible—there is no evidence Romans ever even ran ops like this, or would be likely to. Attempts to prove otherwise always cite as “evidence” activities that bear no actual pertinent similarity. Quite simply, “the Romans used spies and agents provocateurs” does not get you “Romans sent in fake cult leaders to steer rejected microscopic fringe cult movements that they could have had no possible way of anticipating would even matter or influence their target populations at all.” And the basic fact is, every fact you might flag as supporting such nonsense, like that Paul was a Roman appeaser who strove to unify Gentile and Jewish interests into a peaceful and prosocial coexistence, are just as likely on far more common and plausible causes: countless Jews already wanted that outcome and strove for it on their own initiative (see On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 5, Elements 23-29). It was also profitable—the common incentive of every cult leader and traveling salvation show in history (see J.D.M. Derrett’s chapter on “The Financial Aspects of the Resurrection” in The Empty Tomb). If other, far more plausible and commonplace explanations produce all the same evidence, then you have no evidence left to support any alternative. Your alternative is then just another, “But maybe aliens did build the pyramids.” Sure. Maybe. But, you know, probably not.
This came up recently on Brother Garfield’s show, when Jacob Berman made a classic “conspiracy theory” style argument for it (at minute 15:20), pushing a mishmash of the bizarre (and wholly crank) speculations of Robert Eisenman and Thijs Voskuilen. Which if you examine them with care you’ll notice lack any evidence at all for any of their key assertions. Like all cranks, they declare true but irrelevant facts as if they were evidence, and then arrive at their conclusion from them wholly by non sequitur. You can see Berman falling for this, repeating one such species of argument: that Paul “admits” in Romans 16:11 to having as a family relation a member of the royal family of the Herods. Ergo, he was a Roman agent fabricating his Christian teachings to pacify the Jews (or mock them, an entirely contradictory goal; because cranks can never produce a coherent theory). Non sequitur. Even if the premise were true, it’s a non sequitur. “Anyone with any family connection whatever to the Herods is a Roman agent on the specific mission I just invented in my head” is bonkers logic. It’s just all the more face-palmingly absurd that these cranks are telling us Paul actually outed himself as a Roman agent by admitting his royal connections in an open letter! Really? Come on, people.
But it’s even worse than that. Because the premise is false. And some of these folks should know it is false. Certainly there is no excuse for Eisenman or Voskuilen (or their peer reviewers, insofar as they even really have ever had any); Berman perhaps is just being misled. So I am writing this article today to set this straight, since I’m not seeing anyone else doing it.
Please Start with the Facts
The argument Berman uses is that Paul was a Roman agent because in his letter to the Romans he tells the Christians at Rome to “greet my kinsman Herodion.” Oooh! “Herodion” sounds like “Herod.” Must be a Herod! Sigh. No. First of all, Herod is a Greek name; the word is Herodes (Hêrôdês), and it means either “Heroic” (from an old adjectival suffix –idos) or “Hero-Song” (literally “Hero” plus “Ode”); a similar name you might recognize is Herodotus (the famous historian), whose name means “Hero-Given.” And Hêrôdês was not a rare name in the region of Palestine. For example, we have a military inscription of one Herod son of Aumos, which conspicuously makes clear he is not related to the royal Herods, but only served as a commander in their army. And we know this because such an inscription would never omit so prestigious a fact as such a family relation, while naming kids after admired lords, masters, kings, and employers was a common practice back then. Such traditions could continue for generations; so someone named “Herod” could even have no connection to the royal Herods at all, beyond several generations prior (for example, a freed slave of Herod the Great’s grandfather’s household could name their kid Herod, and this continue in alternating generations for a hundred years or more).
The Herod name also doesn’t even necessarily connect to the royals at all. There was a famous Greek poet of the name Herod; no connection at all to the Palestinians. Xenophon’s Hellenica mentions a Syracusan of essentially the same name (Hêrôdas, a difference of spelling indicative of the Syracusan dialect) centuries before Herod the Great lived. And even before that Antiphon had delivered an oration on the murder of Herod the Athenian; which shows it was also a well-known Athenian name, too; and thus it’s no surprise that a century after Herod the Great, the Roman orator Herod Atticus was famously a multigenerational Athenian—with no remembered connection with the Herods of Palestine, but to the Herods of Athens, beginning with a denizen of the Athenian town of Marathon, known to Cicero centuries before, who personally knew Herod Atticus’s ancestor, Herod of Marathon, an Athenian citizen (evidently something of a literary hack whom Cicero advised to attend a particular philosopher’s lectures in Athens). And that is a continent away yet in the same era as Herod the Great. In fact several presidents of the Athenian polity bore the name Herod across hundreds of years.
We likewise know of a town leader in early Imperial Italy, a certain Herod of Ascalon, son of Aphrodisus. From Palestine then. But no connection to the royal family a continent away, though Christians later tried to fabricate one to discredit Herod the Great as a secret pagan—and modern cranks do like to swallow ancient myths whenever it suits them, although this evinces a fact obvious back then but perhaps not to us today: this myth could be contrived precisely because Herod was so common a pagan name. Likewise we have a papyrus mentioning random neighbors in northern Egypt, “Herod, son of Herod, also called Isidore,” which nickname means “Gift of Isis,” so likely no Jew. In fact, “the name Herodes is widely attested in numerous papyri from first-century” Tebtunis; for example, “Herakleides son of Didumos the younger, son of Herod” is mentioned in a surviving property contract, referring to the Greek magistrate Herakleides, likely among the “descendants of the Greek and Hellenized soldiers settled in the Arsinoite district by the Ptolemies.” Which means, so also his grandfather, Herod. And so likewise in other Greek colonies in Egypt (search “Herod” in this catalogue, for example); and this is only because vastly more documentation has survived in the sands of Egypt—had we the same for other provinces, likely we’d find countless other examples.
So we see lots of Greeks all over the Empire carrying this name across generations and even centuries. There is nothing peculiar about it. And as we saw with Herod Aumou, even a connection to the Palestinian royals entailed no family relation, nor even any connection at all once said connection fell generations in the past. Thus, “I’m related to a guy named Herod” simply does not mean “I’m related to Palestinian royalty.” It doesn’t even mean “I’m connected to Palestinian royalty.” It certainly doesn’t mean, “I’m a Roman secret agent.”
And that’s even if Paul had said “Herod.” He didn’t. In case you missed that little detail. Paul actually said “Herodion” (Hêrôdiôn). That is a diminutive; basically it means “Little Herod.” Accordingly, this is not the same name as Herodian, like the Greco-Roman historian and grammarian, as that is an adjectival, typically meaning someone whose family freedom or citizenship was granted by someone named Herod—yet again in neither of those cases a royal (nor could the recipient of the name ever have been). For example, the historian Josephus received the citizenship from the Flavius family and thus became a “Flavianus,” and so likely might his children and descendants be named. But Herodion is specifically a diminutive, which has more of a cutesy meaning, for lack of a better descriptor. No self-respecting royal would ever be so named. This kind of diminishing variant of a name is far more typical of slaves, freedmen, and servants, and thence their children (even if freeborn, or even in time wealthy); and indeed, is most to be expected among slaves, who don’t usually get to choose what they are named, or if named by their enslaved parents, then would be so named to get in good with their master, by honoring whoever their owner politically favors.
Accordingly, the most common opinion in the field now is that this Herodion was a slave—particularly because few mainstream scholars believe anymore that Paul means he is a family relative of this person or even had ever met them, but more on that in a moment (the surrounding material also implies the people Paul is naming here are all slaves). This Herodion could be a slave or freedman of a royal (which is still not being a Herod), but statistically that’s unlikely—most persons so named will have had no such connection, but will only have been named in accord with the political zeitgeist of the time; or even for no such reason at all: given that Herod was a common Greek name, and thus does not even entail any connection to the royals, and Herodion is simply a diminutive thereof, it could be acquired as a name for no reason to do with “the” Herods, particularly for someone nowhere near Palestine, as we are to presume is the case here, since Paul is not talking about someone there, but thousands of kilometers away. And yes, once again, Herodion was so common a name we find it often reported. In Egypt, one Herodion sold a donkey to his neighbor; another Herodion willed his property among his three Egyptian-named sons. And these are freemen (or at least freedmen). Neither likely Jews or connected to Palestinian royalty.
So, “Herodion” is even further removed from implying any likely connection to “the Herods,” much less (yet another step of assumption) Rome. But that isn’t all. It’s also simply not likely the case that Paul is saying this Herodion is a relative of his. Every other time Paul uses similar vocabulary, he means a fellow Jew—an Israelite. The word he uses is literally “of the same race” (syn-genê). Though that can mean “same family,” it also commonly means same people. And in Paul, that’s what it typically would signify, as that’s how Paul employs the root and its cognates everywhere else. This is thus the widest opinion now in the field, and many Bibles so translate it.
Finally, it’s an open question where this even is. The Letter now labeled “to the Romans” shows evidence of actually being pieces of several different letters mashed together and passed off as a single letter (see OHJ, p. 511 n. 4); which means not all of them may have originally been sent to Rome. And indeed, Romans 16:5 implies the audience for this section was in Asia Minor, not Rome. But we can be certain the audience wasn’t in Judea. This is in any case thousands of kilometers away on a whole other continent. Accordingly, many scholars suspect Paul is not here referring to people he knows personally, but people he knows by reputation or reference (or possibly correspondence). This Herodion could simply be, as some suggest, the lone Jewish slave in Aristobulus’s household—the others all Gentile Christians, and thus not singled out for special commendation by Paul, who may have been told of the lone Jewish Christian in the retinue of Aristobulus (whom Paul does not tell them to greet—so we know their owner was no Christian). In any event, we are given no information to know what connection Paul actually has to this guy, or where this guy lives. All we can at most infer is that he’s a fellow Israelite, probably a slave, and either in Rome or Asia Minor. That’s hell and gone from being “a member of Herodian royalty.”
No, Those Other Passages Don’t Help
There are three other passages that will be appealed to, completely unconnected with this one, yet that will be argued to somehow support their (as you can now tell) completely ignorant misreading of Romans 16. The first is Philippians 4:22, where Paul says “all the holy ones” (presumably meaning reputable Christians) send their greetings to the Christians at Philippi “especially” the holy ones “from Caesar’s household.” The ignorant assumption made is that this means the Imperial family. No. The term here, oikia, means “household” in a thoroughly abstract sense, including literally every slave owned by and freedman of the Emperor across the entire world, even people who had never even met the emperor and didn’t even work for him anymore (freedpersons could ply their own trades and only owed a “percentage” to their former owner). Though oikia might typically refer to everyone who lives in the same house or palace, in imperial political vocabulary that distinction no longer existed. It’s more like the terminology of the mafia today: if you are “in the family,” this bears no connotations as to where in the world you live or what you are doing or even if the paterfamilias knows who you are.
Consequently, “those of Caesar’s oikia” means any imperial slave or freedman. There were thousands of such persons all over the empire. They performed private functions like managing imperial lands and factories and mines, herding imperial flocks of sheep or cows, working kitchens, carrying messages and goods, and whatnot; and could also be on their own—if they had earned or bought their freedom, and only maintained a financial relationship with the “household.” Even more freedmen also continued in imperial employ, as managers and tax collectors and administrators, at every level and function of government. It’s almost the same thing as saying “employee of the Federal government” today. One would not confuse that with “a member of Joe Biden’s family.” Nor even with the White House and its policies, as if “I have a cousin who is a postal worker, therefore I am a government secret agent.” Many such persons would be Jews, and a few we can expect would eventually be Christian converts—and it is likely Paul would want to emphasize that, as it shows the “gospel” moving “toward” the circles of power (even if not really that impressively; like Scientologists boasting of a convert who is a mayor’s secretary).
So we don’t get anything out of that passage. The other two are in the far more dubious bifold of Luke-Acts:
- In Acts 13:1 we are told, “Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul,” meaning our Paul. This being Acts, we have no reason to believe any of this is true (see Chapter 9 of On the Historicity of Jesus for why). But even if it is, it conspicuously excludes Paul from having any connection with the Herods—noting only that this otherwise-unknown Manaen did. Moreover, “brought up with” (syntrophos) is vague; it can even mean as a slave raised in the same household (in this sense, meaning the same palace). But what it does not mean is “related to.” Whoever Manaen was, if this account is true, he grew up in company with Herod in some fashion, but was not his relative, and there is no reference here to being his agent either (much less Rome’s). And in any event, this isn’t Paul. So, moving on…
- In Luke 8:3 we are told that among the women attending to Jesus and his Disciples were “Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household” and “these women were helping to support them out of their own means.” Again, there is no reason to believe any of this is true (see Chapter 10 of On the Historicity of Jesus for why). But the term used here is that Chuza was an epitropos of Herod, meaning a business manager (see my discussions of the difference between a “procurator” and a “prefect” in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). That entails a position that could be in close contact with Herod’s slave household; although not necessarily: state leaders had scores of procurators attending to all manner of separate business. For example, if Herod owned a bunch of sheep in Galilee, he’d need an epitropos to manage them. And Herod’s vizier (his top ranking epitropos) might go about hiring and appointing such persons; Herod himself might never even meet them. Here again we have no connection to Herod (like Aristobulus, Chuza isn’t even involved with Jesus or his movement; nor is it said he even knew Herod or did anything beyond manage properties for him); and more to the point, no connection at all to Paul.
Needless to say, you can’t get the crank theory about Paul being an agent of Rome (or even the Herods) out of any of these verses. And we already saw you can’t get it out of Romans 16:11 either.
Conclusion
Throughout all of this, please notice what I did: rather than just believe whatever claptrap someone says, I checked. Of course, as a trained and experienced Ph.D. in this field, I already knew most of this. But to be sure, I stopped, and asked the questions any scholar and critical thinker should always have asked when posed an extraordinary claim like this. Is Herod so uncommon a name? Is Herodion even a name used by the royal Herods? Is it even likely to have been? How might someone come to be so named? What actually does Paul say his connection is to this guy? Where is this guy? And once those questions are answered, we can ask, “So, what actually can I infer now?” The answer usually will be: nothing. Which is why you don’t find this nonsense in mainstream references anywhere. There simply is no evidence that Paul had any connection at all to the Herods, filial or otherwise. Indeed, Paul tells us he had not even visited Judea until well after he became a Christian (Galatians 1:13-24; proving the author of Acts fabricated a contrary history for him); and while Acts even says Paul was from Tarsus in Asia Minor, he himself seems to imply he was from Damascus in Syria (in Galatians 1:17 he says he “returned” to Damascus without ever mentioning being there before, which implies it was then well known that’s where he resided; Paul never mentions being from anywhere else), and either way, neither of those places is Palestine. While Acts has Paul say he grew up in Jerusalem and (conveniently for the story) studied under the famous Gamaliel there, Paul conspicuously omits any mention of such facts when he boasts of his credentials himself, so they are quite unlikely. Why then would this Hellenized, foreign, Diaspora Jew, have any connection at all with Palestinian politics? It seems more evident from Paul’s own writings that he did not.
You wrote: “while Acts even says Paul was from Tarsus in Asia Minor, he himself seems to imply he was from Damascus in Syria (in Galatians 1:17 he says he “returned” to Damascus without ever mentioning being there before, which implies it was then well known that’s where he resided; Paul never mentions being from anywhere else)…”
I would like to suggest another possibility and get your feedback on it. In my working translation of Galatians 1:15-17 Paul says: “But when God… was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not consult with flesh and blood immediately, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to the apostles before me [immediately], but I departed into Arabia [immediately]; indeed, I returned back to Damascus [immediately].” This translation assumes, with Justin Martyr that “none of you can deny that Damascus was [in the time of Jesus] , and is, in the region of Arabia…” (Dialogue 78.10: 10, Cf Tertullian, Against the Jews, 9.12: 12). Since Paul says he “returned back” to Damascus (a city in Arabia) without mention, in Galatians, of having been there and departing before, it implies that the Galatians had heard a very memorable story of Paul (the persecutor) being in and departing Damascus before his call. In 2 Cor Paul tells just such a story: “In Damascus, the governor under King Aretas secured the city of the Damascenes in order to arrest me. But I was lowered in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped his grasp” (11:32-33). Notably, in this account, Damascus is under Arabian rule. Also, this flight from Damascus followed by a story that is arguably an expanded story of his initial call (12:1-10). The governor may have judged his attempt to destroy the church as a crime against orderly civil society.
As for echos in Acts, going “to Damascus immediately” after God’s son is revealed in him is has a clear parallel in 22:8-9.
‘Who are You, Lord?’ I asked.
‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ He replied…
Then I asked, ‘What should I do, Lord?’
‘Get up and go into Damascus’
I think the basket escape story from Paul’s pre-conversion is borrowed by the author of Acts and applied to a completely different post-conversion flight from Damascus.
I’m an amateur exegete and “patron” who happens to be a Christian (although not an apologist). I am asking your opinion as a professional historian (whose counter apologetic writings I happen to enjoy). What is the merit of this exegetical hypothesis?
You are right about what Acts is doing. But the rest doesn’t hold up well.
The flight from Aretas was when he was a Christian (that’s the whole point of Paul’s story: he cites it as how he suffered for the Lord), so that can’t have occurred when Paul was a persecutor; it appears to be what occurred soon after he switched sides, so it sounds more like Aretas is angry that Paul turncoated, which implies Aretas was backing the persecution (there can be any number of reasons, including disinterested ones, e.g. wealthy and influential Jewish citizens importuning him to, a la Pilate). Paul actually doesn’t say, so it’s also possible it really had nothing to do with Christianity (Aretas may have been after Paul for any number of unstated reasons, and one could even imagine some of those reasons leading to Paul’s conversion as an escape tactic; we just don’t know, and we can’t speculate our way into knowing).
There are other problems with the thesis.
The Greek in Gal. 1 says “I went away to Arabia and returned again to Damascus,” literally, turned around and went back and again, meaning he went back to where he came from, which means Damascus was not in Arabia at that time, and that Damascus is where he left from when he went to Arabia—which comports with a 50s AD date, when it never was a part of Arabia, except possibly briefly and unofficially during a military campaign, which would not have been the year Paul converted, or through a district ethnarch outside Arabia (see How Do We Know the Apostle Paul Wrote His Epistles in the 50s A.D.?).
And he says he did all that after his conversion. Which means he was converted in Damascus (not on a road to or from it as Acts depicts).
What I find so hilarious about theories like this is how obvious it is that they can’t possibly have the evidence to make their case. Like, let’s say that they proved that Paul was a Herod. So what? He could easily have been a defector from decadence, someone who despised his familial relations. It would better fit his story of having been a former persecutor who saw the light: if they wanted a spy to infiltrate the Church, why would they pick one who people would inherently be suspicious of? To prove that Paul was doing what he did intentionally, one would have to show direct evidence to that effect, like a letter to him.
I think a big part of the appeal of the conspiracy theory is the chance to play detective. That’s why they don’t care that the evidence is so threadbare and why its very existence is a problem for their theory. They noticed something, and they get to feel proud for having seen through a pattern that others missed. But of course really catching criminals is hard, even when those criminals are still alive and you can interrogate them and find forensic evidence, let alone when one has to work from evidence that is thousands of years old.
Hi Dr Carrier,
Apologies in advance for this off topic question, but in 1 Corinthians 15, I am wondering about when Paul says that Christ is buried – he doesn’t say according to the scriptures as he does with the other two items, so I’m wondering if you think that is of any significance? Thanks.
I don’t think it’s significant, no. Rhetorically it can still mean according to the scriptures, especially in the Greek, as it simply reads “I received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and that he appeared” (beginning the second source list: revelation), so “and that he was buried and that he was raised” can be a single unit (as they go together: you can’t be raised unless you were buried), and thus he is actually saying both are known from scripture. Or, as they have to go together, the “buried” part may be an inference (e.g. “he was raised acc. to the scr., and so must have been buried, so that’s also a part of the gospel tradition now”). We thus can’t tell from the structure here that any other source existed for that element.
Challenge Ehrman to address your Philo of Alexandria argument.
He would make a fool of himself.
I certainly agree with your arguments regarding conspiracy theories and intentionality, i.e. in relation to the proposition that Saul/Paul was somehow deliberately setting up Christian communities to be subservient to Rome.
Can this argument be taken a step further? Starting with some definition of Christianity (e.g. covering the assumption of a distinct identity and belief in a divine Jesus), I would be interested on your views on the case for (a) the Christian sect arising as an unintended consequence of Saul setting up ekklesiai in the diaspora disregarding rules on dietary restrictions and circumcision, as against (b) the Christian sect already being there in Judea and simply borrowed by Saul?
Sorry. I don’t understand what you are saying in the second paragraph.
Are you asking whether all extra-Judaean churches were set up by Paul? Paul’s letters indicate that isn’t the case; Peter was evangelizing in the Disapora, as were others (Apollos etc.), and there was intense competition even for control over these communities regardless of who founded them. Or are you asking whether Paul’s mission in that respect was more successful numerically and thus eventually drowned the original mission in Darwinian fashion over the ensuing fifty plus years? That is indeed almost certainly what happened (I cover this in various chapters in Not the Impossible Faith) and I think most scholars would agree with that to some extent.
Note that Paul did not preach the abandonment of Torah per se. He often said Jewish Christians should keep Torah, himself included (and only indirectly hints in many places that he was letting them drop it or waffle a bit in consistency of keeping it). Paul’s “official” line (such as he pitched to the original apostles and gaining their approval, cf. Gal. 1-2) was that Gentiles could become Christians without converting to Judaism (they could skip the Old Covenant and jump right into the New One). Whereas before that, the likes of Peter were converting Diaspora Jews and allowing Gentiles to join only if they converted to Judaism first.
So, what you might be getting at, is the fact that Paul made entry much easier for Gentiles; so his churches exploded in membership (and correspondingly, funding) in comparison to the original mission, whose over-strictness limited admission. Indeed, twice over: Jews were less inclined to adopt such a suspect sect (so the Jewish mission was very limited in success), whereas Gentiles saw mystery cults like this as all the rage, and countless were already fans of Judaism and just didn’t convert because Torah is so arduous, an obstacle Paul removed—quite possibly deliberately, seeing the enormous recruitment, influence, and financial advantage this would bring him.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that in Paul’s letters there is a lot of suspicion he has to manage that he is fleecing his churches for cash, and his defenses against that often mention that that cash was flowing to the Jerusalem church elite. One could put two and two together there and suppose a good reason why they accepted his mission as he reports in Galatians. It was a cash cow, and he was giving them satisfying kickbacks. They might even have rationalized that as a way to fund what they really wanted, their mission to fellow Jews.
But regardless, the end result was the eventual doom of their mission, and its near-total replacement over the second century by the Gentile church (which by then, after several wars, had become increasingly anti-Semitic, as it was becoming quite unpopular to be affiliated with Jews under the Roman Empire). The result was, ultimately, the Vatican and the Nicene tradition, which looked nothing at all like the original church Paul bought his way into and began to transform, yet is the basic model now for almost all modern Christendom.
Dr Carrier any chance of you sitting down and writing the definitive book on Paul? A thorough and forensic chronological journey through the 7 epistles. It could be bigger than Jesus!
Alas, that subject doesn’t interest me enough to find itself high enough on my already long list of potential projects for it to be likely something I’d do in my remaining lifetime. But I’ll add it to the list.
Hello Dr. Carrier. Love your articles.
It is fairly clear that Paul sufferers from a fairly serious seizure disorder, likely epilepsy. But more seriously, the guy was definitely on the psychosis spectrum. Between the paranoia, visions and auditory hallucinations etc.. Knowing quite a bit about psychosis, I’ve learned you can’t really trust what someone with psychosis of some type says. A lot of it is detached from reality. Wondering why this argument isn’t used more in questioning what Pauls writings say.
I’ll leave it at that.
Cheers
That isn’t actually “clear.” Nothing in Paul’s letters describes epilepsy or seizures. And nothing in Acts is credible (it’s made up, often directly to contradict Paul and the truth), so we can’t use it for symptomology.
That is only a hypothesis that “could” explain what other data there is; but many other hypotheses explain all that same data equally well. So we can’t claim to know here.
However, all those alternative hypotheses do lead to the same conclusion as yours: whether Paul is schizotypal, a practiced hallucinator, an epileptic, a mystic who thinks ordinary dreams are real experiences, or a grifter pretending to be any of these, in every case we have someone whose usual behavior is often detached from reality and fantasy-prone, so one has to take that into account. But this rarely means they are making everything up. Most things such people say will reflect reality. You need to adduce a particular reason why it wouldn’t be, on a case by case basis. And your explanatory model, whatever it is, needs to be coherent, and in line with known science.
As you know, you can never prove anything %100. To me its pretty clear. Pauls mood swings, visions and even paranoia put him comfortably on the psychosis spectrum. Give this a read for a more scientific accurate look. You will find it quite enlightening.
https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11090214
I discuss this observation already in On the Historicity of Jesus, chapter 4, Element 15.
I don’t know what relevance that has to the article you are commenting on.
Dr Carrier
I recently read Jesus from Outer Space. Great read. Many thanks.
On the topic of Paul, isn’t the first question we should all ask is who was Paul?
Was he a Jew? But not born in Judah? Or a Roman? Or a Pharisee? Or a Christian?
His writings contradict all of these descriptions.
All of these descriptions are also contradictory to the point of conflict. I fail to see how educated Pharisee could become a member of small Jewish sect. Oil and water. They just don’t mix.
And what happened to Paul? Acts leaves him in Rome under house arrest waiting for and Audience with Nero in the mid 60s.
I like to surmise that during his Audience with Nero, knowing that his chances of survival were low, he did as Josephus did with Vespasian and quickly changed his tune. Perhaps his quick mind and intelligence allowed him to pivot and offer Nero assistance with his regional knowledge to help the Romans with the Jewish uprising happening at about that time?
Maybe as Josephus was spared by Vespasian, Paul was also spared by being a turn coat on he fellow Jews?
I would value your intellectual response
kind regards
Owen
Of course. And we have to rely on his letters, and evaluate what they say critically; no other sources are reliable or trustworthy. The best scholars of Paul (e.g. Lüdemann, Segal) follow this procedure.
No, they well establish he was a Pharisaic Diaspora Jew (he never or rarely went to Judea until after his conversion), and probably a Roman citizen (he never says so; but his name is a Roman praenomen, and unlikely to have been a name he’d claim without the trinominal citizenship). They also establish he rebelled against his Pharisaic sect when he converted (there isn’t any discernible reason for him to lie about that). We cannot tell though whether he had been a Hillelite (a liberal Pharisee; whose doctrines the Gospels ignorantly depict Jesus preaching “against” the Pharisees, demonstrating they were not well informed about Pharisaic doctrine) or a Shammaite (a conservative Pharisee; disillusion with which could psychologically explain a rebellion into a liberal radical sect).
They do not. There were tons of Jews who were Roman citizens, never or rarely went to Judea, sampled different sects before settling on one or never settling on one, and who even converted from one sect to another later on. In fact most Jews in the Roman Empire did not live in Judea. And ditching conservative sects for radical ones was common enough to practically define many entrants in the most Christianity-like sects (Essenes; Qumran). And Christianity was at that time a sect of Judaism, not some distinct religion. It might even have been classified by outsiders as one of the nine or so sub-sects of Essenes (it’s similar enough to have been seen that way even if that wasn’t an accurate representation of its ideological lineage).
That’s actually credible. How many hard core conservative Christians have rebelled into liberal radicalism? It’s a common enough phenomenon to be repeatedly documented. Indeed, even its statistical rareness fits type: there is only one known Paul in his day. Exactly as this explanation would predict.
There is no way we could expect to know. As dead men don’t write letters, wherever he died, we won’t have an account of it. Our only likely contemporary source (1 Clement) says he died in Spain, without further details. Later legends have him executed by Nero in Rome, but none of those are plausible, and Clement is a more credible source and contradicts that. Acts is wholly unreliable and untrustworthy, and its closing account bears no historical plausibility. As we know Acts frequently fabricates and contradicts Paul’s own accounts to suit its own propagandistic narrative, it’s of no use here.
You’re buying into 2nd century Christian propaganda here. Fact is, there is no reason Nero would even be prosecuting Paul. That’s why that story is almost certainly bogus. At that time Paul was protected by treaty: Jews had the right of religious freedom, and were only subject in religious disputes to their own courts. Romans had no interest at all in these disputes and at that time always let Christians go (even Acts depicts this happening over and over again, whereas its trial account explaining Paul being sent to Rome makes no sense from a Roman legal perspective, as at no point is he said to have broken any Roman law).
It was only after the destruction of Judea that that treaty was nullified and Jewish radicals could end up prosecuted for illegal assembly (as we see Pliny the Younger doing; who notably has no notion even that Christians are Jews, which illustrates how far the circumstances had changed from Paul’s day). Luke-Acts looks like someone writing in that context, wholly unaware of how things were entirely different in the time of Paul.
Meanwhile, Paul was a Diaspora Jew. He would have little use as an informant on Judean affairs. And yet he could have been one without renouncing his Christian sectarian allegiance (which would have been a meaningless distinction to Romans at the time; they cared little for sectarian distinctions among the Jews), so your scenario makes no sense even on that point. Josephus did not renounce his sect when he turned coat; he remained a Pharisaic Jew. And Christians were already anti-war, so Paul wouldn’t even be betraying anyone he was aligned with (unlike Josephus, who was an actual general warring against Rome).
Beyond that, speculation is idle. Possibly never gets you to probably.