The New Gospel

For almost a decade – from 48 to 56 C.E. – Paul ranged widely … preaching tirelessly about the impending changes he believed were about to sweep over the world.  He traveled through rural areas where hard-pressed peasant populations responded with joy to the prospect of a coming day of judgment when their burdens would be lifted and when ambitious landlords and cold-hearted estate stewards would finally receive their just rewards.  He preached in crowded urban streets and workshops where day laborers, slaves, and indentured craftspeople dreamed of regaining control of their own futures – assuring them that they would live to see the current imperial regime of power and economic inequality crumble before their eyes. Each of Paul’s communities could find its deepest hopes and profoundest ideals fulfilled in the particular image of Christ that it cherished — all of which were progressively drifting away from the verifiable historical facts of Jesus’ life … In its complexity and studied ambiguity, it held the new communities together.  And in that sense – in the villages, towns and cities of Galatia and Macedonia — a new kind of Christianity was born.

In the last days of the reign of Nero [54-68], no one could really be blamed for dismissing the tiny tribe of Christians as a cult of doomed dreamers and idealists … The most famous leaders of the Jesus Movement had been discredited or crushed by the power of the empire … The greatest miracle one could possibly imagine was that the dream of the Kingdom of God would survive at all.