Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

writing his
     letters. Paul’s Christ is certainly not the Son of Man who appears in Mark’s gospel,
     written just a few years after Paul’s death. Nowhere in the gospels of Matthew and
     Luke—composed between 90 and 100 C.E .—is Jesus ever considered the literal son of God. Both gospels employ the term “Son
     of God” exactly as it is used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures: as a royal title,
     not a description. It is only in the last of the canonized gospels, the gospel of
     John, written sometime between 100 and 120 C.E ., that Paul’s vision of Jesus as Christ—the eternal
logos
, the only begotten son of God—can be found. Of course, by then, nearly half a decade
     after the destruction of Jerusalem, Christianity was already a thoroughly Romanized
     religion, and Paul’s Christ had long obliterated any last trace of the Jewish messiah
     in Jesus. During the decade of the fifties, however, when Paul is writing his letters,
     his conception of Jesus as Christ would have been shocking and plainly heretical,
     which is why, around 57 C.E ., James and the apostles demand that Paul come to Jerusalem to answer for his deviant
     teachings.
    This would not be Paul’s first appearance before the movement’s leaders. As he mentions
     in his letter to the Galatians, he initially met the apostles on a visit to the holy
     city three years after his conversion, around 40 C.E ., when he came face-to-face with Peter and James. The two leaders were apparently
     thrilled that “the one who had been persecuting us is now proclaiming the message
     of faith he once tried to destroy” (Galatians 1:23). They glorified God because of
     Paul and sent him on his way to preach the message of Jesus in the regions of Syria
     and Cilicia, giving him as his companion and keeper a Jewish convert and close confidant
     of James named Barnabas.
    Paul’s second trip to Jerusalem took place about a decade later, sometime around 50 C.E ., and was far less cordial than the first. He had been summoned to appear before
     a meeting of the Apostolic Council to defend his self-designated role as missionary
     to the gentiles (Paul insists he was not summoned to Jerusalem but went of his own
     accord because Jesus told him to). With his companion Barnabas and an uncircumcised
     Greek convert named Titus by his side, Paul stood before James, Peter, John, and the
     elders of the Jerusalem assembly to strongly defend the message he had been proclaiming
     to the gentiles.
    Luke, writing about this meeting some forty or fifty years later, paints a picture
     of perfect harmony between Paul and the council’s members, with Peter himself standing
     up for Paul and taking his side. According to Luke, James, in his capacity as leader
     of the Jerusalem assembly and head of the Apostolic Council, blessed Paul’s teachings,
     decreeing that thenceforth gentiles would be welcomed into the community without having
     to follow the Law of Moses, so long as they “abstain from things polluted by idols,
     from prostitution, from [eating] things that have been strangled, and from blood”
     (Acts 15:1–21). Luke’s description of the meeting is an obvious ploy to legitimate
     Paul’s ministry by stamping it with the approval of none other than “the brother of
     the Lord.” However, Paul’s own account of the Apostolic Council, written in a letter
     to the Galatians not long after it had taken place, paints a completely different
     picture of what happened in Jerusalem.
    Paul claims that he was ambushed at the Apostolic Council by a group of “false believers”
     (those still accepting the primacy of the Temple and Torah) who had been secretly
     spying on him and his ministry. Although Paul reveals little detail about the meeting,
     he cannot mask his rage at the treatment he says he received at the hands of “the
     supposedly acknowledged leaders” of the church: James, Peter, and John. Paul says
     he “refused to submit to them, not even for a minute,” as neither they, nor their
     opinion of his ministry, made any difference to him whatsoever (Galatians 2:1–10).
    Whatever took place during the Apostolic Council, it appears that the meeting concluded
     with a promise by James, the leader of the Jerusalem assembly, not to compel Paul’s
     gentile followers to be circumcised. Yet what happened soon afterward indicates that
     he and James were far from reconciled: almost immediately after Paul left Jerusalem,
     James began sending his own