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What Paul Knew About Jesus

What Paul Knew About Jesus

Last updated on: July 16, 2026 at 2:04 pm by James F. McGrath

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What Paul Knew About Jesus 2026-07-16T14:04:03-04:00 James F. McGrath

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Adam Gopnik recently published an article in the New Yorker about what Paul knew about Jesus and Paul’s influence. There was something else not long ago about Paul’s religion, playing it off against the teaching and religion of Jesus. It is about time I commented on this.

Gopnik writes, “Paul turned the heresy of a tiny sect of Messianic Jews into the dominant religious and cultural architecture of the West for the next couple of thousand years.” As stated, the claim is absolute nonsense. One could say that the Vikings turned the Irish into a people known for their red hair (as I was, back when I had hair). But the Vikings did not know or intend that, and the statement distracts more than it illuminates. Paul did not intend to turn a messianic movement into “the dominant religious and cultural architecture of the West for the next couple of thousand years.” Paul did not think history would continue beyond his generation, before witnessing the final judgment and the arrival of God’s kingdom. To be sure, had he not proclaimed that God was welcoming the uncircumcised, his message would not have been as widely embraced. But he was calling uncircumcised Gentiles to join that messianic sect and to submit to the God of Israel and the appointed and anointed Davidic king, Jesus.

The notion that Paul taught something very different from Jesus can seem plausible because we lack the core basic teaching that Paul passed along to churches he founded | Image created by the author.

The notion that Paul taught something very different from Jesus can seem plausible because we lack the core basic teaching that Paul passed along to churches he founded. Instead we have his occasional letters addressing issues that came up. Often issues came up precisely because Jesus’ teaching had not addressed a particular topic. I discussed in my Sunday school class this past week the fact that Paul had relatives involved in the Jesus movement when he was opposing it. Indeed, his opposition was undoubtedly motivated by his concern for and/or disgust with his relatives who had fallen for the claims of this messianic sect that was inadequately zealous for the identity markers and boundaries of God’s covenant people. Every new person who joins a movement reshapes it. Some do so more than others. But that Paul deliberately and actively sought to undermine the movement that he embraced is, shall we say, unlikely.

Where Gopnik Gets It Right

Gopnik’s article turned out not to be nearly as bad as the person who shared it with me had led me to believe. A lot of it is accurate and helpful. But the gaffes are there and substantial, such as when Gopnik compares Paul to Leon Trotsky, writing that they both “took a new name to lead an organization made up of Gentiles.”

And then there are the points that are so widely made as to be uninteresting, and yet nonetheless completely off target. Gopnik asks as many online skeptics do, “Why, across the tens of thousands of words of his epistles, does he never tell the story of the work and life of Jesus of Nazareth? There’s essentially no Mary, no Joseph, no Nativity (much less a virgin birth), no miracles, no mission, no overturned tables at the Temple, no Galilean ministry rendered through narrative. This silence has led a handful of scholars to insist that Paul knew no earthly Jesus at all. But it’s possible that Jesus was simply more important to Paul as a risen God than as an admirable man.”

The obvious answer is that Paul was not writing Gospels to provide information about Jesus in written form, information that he had already passed on to those who believed his message “as of first importance.”

The article mentions many of my dear academic friends, and I am not entirely sure, I confess, precisely how much my conclusions and theirs differ on anything other than minutiae. Gopnik’s article also mentions Nina Livesey’s recent argument that all of Paul’s letters are forgeries, thankfully also emphasizing the leading scholars who find Livesey’s arguments unpersuasive.

Why Everyone Wants to Reinvent Paul

Precisely because Jesus and Paul have had such an impact together on our society, without either intending or envisioning it, people want to research them. To do that, you must walk some of the most well-trodden paths and yet somehow propose something new. This field of study invites outlandish proposals, and I welcome them, and am glad when I myself manage to come up with one. Our proposals have a high probability of being wrong, and it is crucial to always remember that when reading scholarship about Jesus or Paul—including my own. Gopnik cannot quite let go of the implausible notion of a Paul invented in the second century, seemingly unaware that the proposal, if correct, would invalidate almost everything in his article prior to that point. It is extremely unlikely that someone in the second century invented material in which a first-century Paul expressed his incorrect assumption that the Parousia, the arrival of Christ in glory, would happen within the lifetime of himself and the Thessalonian readers of his letter.

Ultimately, Gopnik is appreciative of Paul, writing among other things that “Paul also offered a universalism so urgently moving that it remains powerful today.” I, in turn, am appreciative of Gopnik, whose fascination with the Bible and the history behind it draws attention time and again not only to historical matters that are truly fascinating and deserve to be widely known, but to the very important work that scholars like Paula Fredriksen and Robyn Faith Walsh do.

If you are eager to understand a figure like Paul, do not settle for a journalistic summary. Turn to these scholars themselves, who write accessibly and will help you understand both why Paul is fascinating, and why key questions about him remain not so much unanswered as the subject of ongoing debate.

For more on Paul’s relatives who were (as he puts it in his letter to the Christians in Rome) “in Christ before me” see my previous blog posts about Junia, as well as my book What Jesus Learned from Women.

Junia and Joanna, Andronicus and Chuza

What Jesus Learned from Junia

New Review of What Jesus Learned from Women

What Jesus Learned from Women: More Reviews

Jesus Learned from Women, Seriously!

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