Saint Saul : a skeleton key to the historical Jesus

by Donald H. Akenson

Hardcover, 2000

Status

Available

Publication

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2000.

Description

In this follow-up to his acclaimed Surpassing Wonder, Akenson recreates the world of Christ, a time rich with ideas, prophets, factions, priests, savants, and god-drunk fanatics. Saint Saul sheds light on Yeshua's birth and his relationship to his family, clarifies Yeshua's views on issues such as divorce and resurrection, and examines his sense of himself as Messiah. Throughout Saint Saul Akenson insistently stresses the Jewishness of Yeshua. He dismisses the traditional way of searching for facts about him by looking for parallels among the four gospels, arguing that the gospels were handed down as a unit by a later generation. In contrast Saul, although he did not know Yeshua personally, knew his most important followers and wrote immediately after his death. Saul's teachings were approved, though sometimes reluctantly, by Yeshua's brothers and other early leaders. Akenson sifts and probes the evidence for and against the historical status of Saul and Yeshua, a mystery as fascinating as a good detective story and one where readers must come to their own conclusions about the circumstances and texts that gave rise to two great world-faiths, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member stevenschroeder
If the popularity of the World Wrestling Federation is evidence of the audience for a well-orchestrated brawl, Saint Saul should have no trouble finding readers. Akenson leaps into the ring with a bravado that could obscure the academic virtuosity he shares with his primary targets-particularly
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Morton Smith and Dominic Crossan; but little doubt remains that participants in this battle have chosen to enter a public arena where entertainment and scholarship mix. Akenson argues that any quest for Jesus as an historical figure should begin with the earliest available documents-not the synoptic Gospels, but the authentic letters of Paul. Akenson counters 2000 years of Christianizing by consistently avoiding Hellenized forms when naming the objects of his inquiry: Saul, not Paul; Yacov, not James; Yeshua, not Jesus. Saul's letters constitute the one source of information about Yeshua that survived the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. (which, in Akenson's understated simile, had the impact of a nuclear explosion) more or less intact. As a result, those letters may contain information that is unfiltered by the two forms of Judahism (Christianity and rabbinic Judaism) that devised successful strategies for temple worship without a temple. Readers will be both entertained and informed. Whether they are convinced that Saul is a "skeleton key" or not, they will come away with a deeper understanding of the modern quest for the historical Jesus and of the pre-70 worlds inhabited by Yeshua and Saul.
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LibraryThing member millsge
The writer reviews everything about Paul in order to to 'create a 'skeleton key' to unlock the 'historic' Jesus.' But the author forgets or ignores one thing that undermines his thesis completely - 'Paul knows not Jesus.' This lack of recognition led Kuhn to give this title to one the chapters of
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his work 'Who is this King of Glory/', 'The Shout of Paul's Silence.' If Paul were speaking of an 'historical' Christ, his descriptions of his visit to Jerusalem would have been entirely different and completely reverential; something like, '...and the very brother of our Lord Jesus, James, himself told me how...' There is nothing like that and he has no respect for Peter at all. This should make it clear that Paul's Christ is something other than a literal incorporated God named Jesus.
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Language

Local notes

arm

Barcode

2979
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