I think you will agree that there is nothing static in the way these forums are conducted. No one can accuse us of a tightly programmed format, for we hardly know from one meeting to the next which way our path will lead. I think that is good. To illustrate, let me read a portion of a letter from a friend who has attended regularly, but prefers to remain anonymous. His question is this:
I have just finished reading Those Incredible Christians, by Hugh J. Schonfield, and I wonder how you would answer his accusation that Jesus did not found Christianity at all, that what you advocate is a distortion of the message. He charges that Jesus never once proclaimed what you claim to be the ideal of Christianity. Is it possible that the whole Christian bit is the result of cleverly contrived propaganda introduced by Paul, as a renegade Jew, and has no real basis of fact, in either the life or the teachings of Jesus? I think you ought to face up to the possibility that what you believe may be based upon fraud and deceit.
That is plain enough, isn't it? But I am perfectly willing to accept the invitation, or challenge, if it was intended to be such, to express myself regarding the implications made by Dr. Schonfield in his book. You must recognize, however, that this introduces a new dimension into our discussion. I can hardly examine charges made against Paul without referring to his writings. I have sought to avoid direct quotations from what I regard as the New Covenant Scriptures, for you do not accept them as authoritative. But it is hardly fair to review accusations without allowing the accused to testify in his own behalf. I shall consider myself free, then, to freely quote Paul and allow him to speak for himself, as long as I am replying to this question.
Before I proceed with the immediate question, I think there are two other questions that require answers. The first concerns the identity of Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield. The second concerns the thesis propounded in the book to which my esteemed friend calls attention.
Who is Hugh J. Schonfield? The answer is that Dr. Schonfield is a Jew who personally affirms that He is a Nazarene, since for him Jesus is the Messiah. He is the author of many books, not all of which are religiously oriented. One of his earlier volumes bore the title The Suez Canal. When Those Incredible Christians appeared in 1968, he resided in London, where he served as president of The Commonwealth of World Citizens, of which he was also the founder. That he is a writer of tremendous skill in the fields of history and biography there can be no doubt. Indeed, he is like God in that "he calls the things that be not as though they were."
I first became acquainted with his authorship when I read a series of three volumes which he linked together as a trilogy. The first was called Jesus-a Biography. The second was Saints Against Caesar, which purported to be the story of the first Christian community. The third was The Jew of Tarsus, a biography of Paul. In all of these, I learned many things of interest and value, because of the insights of a Jewish mind whetted to a keen edge by study and research. But I must confess that I labored under the constant conviction that the author was stating as fact certain deductions that were wholly unwarranted by his quotations and projections. He seemed to be drawing milk from imaginary cows, and trying to retail it as the pure and unadulterated product.
When he translated the New Testament into what was called The Authentic Version, I was one of the first persons in the United States to import one of these from England, and I have read it with pleasure and profit. But when The Passover Plot came from the press, I recognized that Dr. Schonfield not only read between the lines, but between the lines was the only place he did read. He did not even know the lines were there. Now this new book is advertised as one that begins where The Passover Plot left off. Book Week calls it "another shocker" and says, "The incredible Dr. Schonfield has done it again." This may be correct in a way not intended. "Incredible" means "impossible to believe." The charge made by the author against the Christians in the Roman Empire thus comes home to reflect against himself in his own publicity.
Boiled down, simmered away, and skimmed off, the idea advanced by Dr. Schonfield is that Paul developed a fictitious Christ, who was not at all like the one who was born in Bethlehem of Judea. He insists that the real Jesus was not concerned with posing as the Son of God in a unique way. Any record that indicates otherwise is not genuine, but altered and doctored to foster a growing myth. The author thinks that Jesus did not rise from the dead, but that the grief-stricken followers only imagined that they had seen and spoken with someone whom they later assumed to be the Master.
Dr. Schonfield has a "thing" about Saul of Tarsus. In his book, The Jew of Tarsus, he advances the idea that Saul was mentally ill, and fervently convinced that he was to be the Messiah. This diagnosis at this late date is that Saul suffered from megalomania. When he learned that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, Saul developed an insane rage against those who propagated this "falsehood," and thereupon resolved to stamp them from the earth. There was room for only one Messiah, and Saul thought he was that one. After he had the Damascus road experience, which Dr. Schonfield thinks may have been an epileptic seizure, Saul began to think of himself as the vice-Messiah, or medium through whom Jesus now communicated.
The idea that Paul took the faith off on such a tangent and warped it to make it acceptable to the Gentiles, whom he considered to be his special charge, always seems to have a special fascination for the Orthodox Jewish mind. It was difficult for Jews, who believed that Judaism was the final revelation of God, to accept the idea of further revelation as an enlargement of and perfection of what they had. The general idea was to make the followers of Jesus merely another sect within the Jewish fold, where sectarianism was not looked upon with disfavor at all. Those who wished to recognize Jesus as the Messiah could become proselytes by being circumcised and promising allegiance to the Torah.
Those who held this view were called Nazarenes, since the name "Christian" was not bestowed until the gospel was established in the pagan environment of Syria. The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus was preceded by the flight of many of the Nazarenes to Transjordan, where they seem to have established a colony in Pella. Here the Jewish believers in the Messianic role of Jesus came to be known as the Ebionites. The word literally means "the poor men." I choose to believe it referred to their poverty caused by having to abandon their worldly goods and chattels before the onslaught of the Roman forces.
With the passing of time they began to deny the divinity of Jesus, believing Him to be merely the son of Joseph and Mary. They also came to think of Paul as an apostate, rather than an apostle. His writings seemed to conflict with the law, which they originally hoped to keep intact while being Nazarenes. I suspect that a good many of you who are present in this audience fit into that frame of reference. Obviously that produces a sharp contrast with those, like myself, who hold that justification (a sense of right relationship with God) is by faith in Jesus, and not by works of law. It was this message that became the basis of Paul's message to the whole world, to Jews and non-Jews. When Dr. Schonfield speaks of Paul's version of Christianity, he implies that Paul drummed it up and refined it to meet the challenge of the Roman Empire, to which he was constantly being subjected.
Long before Schonfield wrote, George Bernard Shaw said in his preface to Androcles and the Lion (1912), "The conversion of Paul was no conversion at all: it was Paul who converted the religion that has raised one man above sin and death into a religion that delivered millions of men so completely into their dominion that their common nature became a horror to them, and the religious life became a denial of life." Shaw also said, "There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus."
I beg to differ with the implications of these men, and others like them, that Paul thwarted the purpose of God and invented a pseudo-Christianity which he palmed off upon an unsuspecting world as the authentic product. Dr. Schonfield candidly refers to his material contained in The Passover Plot as conjecture, and I do not think he limited his speculation to that volume.
The fact is that Paul labored constantly and tirelessly to avoid a division between Jewish and non-Jewish believers. He declared that the gospel he proclaimed was "the power of God unto salvation," to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. He affirmed that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, but all are one in Christ. What these modern authors brand as fanaticism I regard as fervency of spirit; what they label as heresy I regard as honesty.
There was not one message for Israel and another for the rest of humanity. Peter declared on the Day of Pentecost following the death of Jesus that God had raised Him up and made Him both Lord and Christ. Paul constantly declared the same thing, first in the synagogue and then in the marketplace. Dr. Schonfield speaks of fraud and forgery, and of falsified and concocted records, but he fails to build a case for his contention. His bias against the resurrection of Christ shapes his thinking. It is he who must make unjustifiable deductions to sustain a theory that would be laughed out of court, if it were not for its serious consequences in the hearts and lives of carnal and uninformed readers.
There were moss-covered skeptical speculations that the account of Jesus' resurrection was a part of the myth and folklore of the age, rife with the stories of "risen saviors." There never will be an adequate explanation of the testimony recorded by three Jews and one non-Jew. There are some facts that such speculations cannot explain, if the resurrection was a mere figment of the imagination or a vain delusion of superstitious minds.
Speculations and insinuations cannot explain the unadorned testimony of the simple men who knew Jesus best. They claimed that they saw Him, conversed with Him, touched Him, walked with Him, ate with Him, and spent forty days in earnest conversation with Him after He had risen from the dead. These witnesses were Jews.
Such insinuations cannot explain why these men, who were once frightened and intimidated by a political mob, would suddenly stand forth in public without flinching, and boldly affirm the fact that of the resurrection at the risk of incarceration or death. And these witnesses were Jews.
Such insinuations cannot explain why more than three thousand persons, in the very city where these events occurred, gave public assent to their faith by reforming their lives and submitting to baptism in the name of Jesus, fifty days after His alleged resurrection. And lest it be suggested that those who did this were members of an illiterate fringe group, remember that the number quickly multiplied to five thousand. These included many priests, the scholarly intellectuals of their day. And all of these were Jews!
Such an insinuation cannot explain the rapidity with which the message of Jesus swept over the known world, putting down roots in Rome, the city of the Caesars, and establishing itself in the very centers of Greek philosophy. If all of this was a hoax, we must admit that error is more powerful than truth, and a mental mirage is more appealing than reality. The circulation of the message was not the result of Greek philosophers witnessing to Jews, but of Jews witnessing to philosophers.
The insinuations made by enemies of the faith I cherish have been borrowed by Dr. Schonfield. He also is unable to explain how the men who carried the message, including Saul of Tarsus, freely laid down their lives, sealing their trust in that message with their own blood. It is true that submitting to the hangman's noose or to the headman's ax does not establish the validity of testimony, but it certainly proves beyond doubt the faith of the one who would prefer death to recantation.
For this reason I do not regard The Passover Plot as having originated with Jesus, but with Hugh J. Schonfield. It was not conceived by one who wanted to be the Messiah in the first century in Jerusalem. It was conceived by one whose fertile brain hatched it out in the last half of the twentieth century in London. While I would not like to launch a personal attack upon such an eminent author, there is some indication that he has become infected with the virus of sensationalism. Perhaps he likes to see such words as "explosive," "boldy original," and "another shocker," on the covers of his books. I agree that The Passover Plot was boldly original and it originated with Dr. Schonfield. There is not one iota of evidence to indicate that Jesus ever dreamed of such a crazy plot and conspiracy.
I shall now exercise the liberty Dr. Schonfield claims for himself. Twenty centuries after Paul sealed his faith by his blood, Dr. Schonfield can now sit in judgment and refer to the feverish brain of an apostle which produced a christological scheme. I have read all that was written by Paul which is available to me, and I have read all that was written by Dr. Schonfield that is available to me. Let me freely say that if Paul produced a christological scheme such as the feverish brain of Dr. Schonfield drummed up in The Passover Plot, you would have a good reason to attack the New Covenant Scriptures, and I would lead the attacking forces.
The day will come, and it is not too far distant, when the book by Dr. Schonfield will not be remembered or recognized. One day you will search for it in vain in the bookstores of our land. It will go out of print and disappear with its author, leaving no permanent mark upon the earth. The "shocker" of today will shock no one tomorrow. But the writings of the one-time Jewish rabbinical student who met Jesus on the Damascus road will live on. His poignant statement made after this momentous event, "He which persecuted us...now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed" (Galatians 1:23) will give courage to the hearts of millions yet to come, if Jesus does not return first.
I am going to suggest something now, which I fervently pray you will not misinterpret. Perhaps I should put it in the form of an entreaty rather than a suggestion. I invite and urge you, and even challenge you, to read the personal account of Saul of Tarsus, as he describes his encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. Be your own judges. Determine if this reads like the ravings of a diseased brain or a warped mind. Shall we brand as a hopeless fanatic every individual who alters his whole life as a result of the influence of one whose life was without flaw, and whose moral values are hailed as superb by His very detractors?
I know men who repeat the charges made against Saul who have never read one word written by this disciple of Jesus. They are thoroughly familiar with the writings of George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, who were implacable foes of the apostle. They can recite by rote the statement of the former: "There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus." They have never pored over one letter of the apostle and pinpointed the "monstrous imposition." Did it ever occur to you that what Paul wrote was like an icy finger pointing at the guilty hearts of these modern philosophers, whose immoral conduct is now so well known?
Shaw wrote, "No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus." The prejudiced mind will grasp at such pronouncements, but the unprejudiced mind will investigate. Surely the Jews through the centuries have been the victims of such prejudice and persecution as to make the very terms obnoxious. Shall we then perpetuate such a bias in our own hearts toward a Jew who wrote, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"? Would it not be fair to read what was written by this graduate of the original Hillel School, and allow him to testify in his own behalf?
Do not base your judgment upon the testimony of either George Bernard Shaw or myself! Examine the evidence for yourself. Ignore the frowns of friends and the criticism of contemporaries. It is one thing to know what Hugh Schonfield said about Paul. It is a wholly different thing to know what Paul said about Jesus!