Posted on by abrogard

Jesus Failed Everyone ?

There is a Youtube Video about Paula Fredriksen and a book of hers and it is titled ‘Jesus Failed Everyone’.
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgD_V-_zuvI“


This would be contentious and even heartbreaking ‘news’ to many and I think it is a parlous click bait attempt to make money is all, either by her or the video maker or both.

In an attempt to make things a little clearer here is a summary of that Video so that you can quickly see what it is all about. You’ll see it is a very learned (one supposes) exposition of various facets and histories and interpretations of jews, judaism.

It appears to have no serious arguments or discussions or even particular interest in the contention that Jesus failed anyone any time.

It has little interest in the message of Jesus: ‘love one another as I have loved you’ and similar messages.

Its interest is ‘scholarly’, historical, academic. It is not about the truth of Christ’s word or message. Do not fear. Jesus says it: “I am the Truth” and the Truth really is, always with us.

The fact is that the message and experience and truth of Jesus is well documented and repeated on just about a daily basis via those people who have Near Death Experiences. (NDE’s).

It seems pretty clear that everything Jesus said was entirely true. And I’d bet he came about the knowledge via his own NDE or something very similar.

Jesus said he was/is the Way, The Truth, The LIght. That’s what NDE people today tell us: that there is only The Way, The Truth, The Light, there is nothing else. That all is One and that One is God. We are all part of the God. The God is us and we are it.

For the people of his time believing in literally superhumans struggling in the heavens and controlling fates, destinies, etc. on the basis of bribes received from humans it was necessary to put the Truth out there as plainly as possible but it couldn’t just be said as plainly as it can today.

Even today when it can be said that plainly it is massively misunderstood, disregarded, denied. People would rather believe in Superhuman carnal Gods on the one hand or deny them on the other and insist that then, they not being there, nothing is there.

So rest assured. The Truth, The Way, The Light, failed no one. It still is as it ever was and always will be. It is ‘returned’ at all times will, of course, be perfectly ‘returned’ when every last man woman and child is aware of it as being the nature of our reality.

This video is falsely represented via clickbait titles as so many are today.;

Here is the summary. I will append a transcript beneath it for the sake of completeness and so you may see the text for yourself.

Jesus Failed Everyone: He Didn’t Come Back And Never Will! | Dr. Paula Fredriksen

Main summary

Key takeaways

Educational

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

1) “Israel” as a covenantal concept (and how it compares to other cultures)

Israel is presented as an idea where a powerful God reveals divine will, chooses a particular people, and provides laws/means of communication:

  • How to stay connected to God
  • How to stay connected to others

Israel includes:

  • Covenants: legal agreements between people and God
  • A land component (“deed to the land”), described as flexible in antiquity

Key comparison: A covenant pattern exists in other cultures too (e.g., ethnoreligions), but Jews are distinctive because:

  • Jews have a book/text tradition that preserves access to covenant details.

2) Israel “among the nations” and differing “Jews” in texts vs reality

Jews appear “among the nations” because:

  • Abraham is depicted as a wanderer
  • Later there’s a unified kingdom under David and Solomon
  • Then a cyclical pattern: some Jews remain in the land, others are scattered outside it

Two categories are introduced:

  • Rhetorical Jews: Jews as portrayed in texts, used to construct an author’s message (insider/outsider identity building)
  • Historical Jews: real practices, evidenced through:
    • Inscriptions
    • Descriptions by outsiders

Overall lesson: Literary portrayals can diverge from what Jews actually did.

3) Early Christianity as internal Jewish conflict (especially Paul vs “circumcision” advocates)

A major theme is that early Christianity (first generation) is marked by infighting and competing approaches.

Core controversy discussed:

  • How to integrate non-Jews (“pagans”) into the movement

Opposing camps:

  • Paul’s opponents: full integration through conversion to Judaism, including circumcision
  • Paul: inclusion happens through apocalyptic eschatology:
    • The spirit of God will infuse bodies of former pagans (“ex-pagans”)
    • That infusion enables worship of the God of Israel without requiring circumcision

This debate is highlighted in:

  • Galatians (main focus)
  • Also referenced in 1 Corinthians

4) Paul’s self-understanding and leadership structure

Paul views himself as the right messenger to Gentiles/pagans, with others existing—but Paul claiming unique correctness.

Leadership structure in Paul’s era:

  • No “central Christian leadership” in the later sense
  • Christianity is described as a form of Second Temple Judaism
  • It does not become a clearly separate movement until late 1st / early 2nd century

5) Women in assemblies and how later “pastoral” texts change the picture

Women’s roles in Paul:

  • In Romans 16, women appear as colleagues/fellow workers and patrons who may host traveling apostles
  • In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul discusses marriage/sexual relations in Christ and encourages celibacy (“wish everybody were as I myself am”)

Later texts (“dudero-Pauline/pastoral epistles”):

  • Shift away from imminent end-times into more domesticated norms:
    • Emphasis on household structure and roles
    • “Overseer/bishop” being the husband of one wife
    • Women “redeemed through childbearing”
  • The historical Paul (as presented) is said not to emphasize childbearing because he’s not expecting a new generation.

6) How eschatology changes across letters (Thessalonians, Ephesians/Colossians, pastorals)

Paul’s apocalyptic battlefield model (Paul / 1 Thessalonians)

Expectation:

  • Jesus returns as a Davidic Messiah/warrior
  • The returning Messiah fights pagan gods
  • Cosmic battle: his god wins

Paul imagines the end as soon:

  • Phrases like “We who are alive, who are left” imply Paul expects to witness it.

2 Thessalonians reconfigures the timing/drama

  • Introduces an expanded mythological apocalyptic cycle:
    • “Man of lawlessness”
    • Terrestrial battle + cosmological/celestial battle
  • Effect described: creates a bigger gap in time by enlarging the drama

The “son of lawlessness/man of lawlessness”:

  • Not clearly identified in the speaker’s view
  • Later tradition associates it with Nero (an emperor in the 60s of the 1st century), but it fundamentally functions as “evil human” stretching the apocalyptic scenario.

Ephesians and Colossians (dudero-Pauline variations)

These letters are described as written in Paul’s name, with variations:

  • Ephesians: emphasizes cosmological struggle against superhuman powers
  • Colossians: more “domesticated” Christianity
  • 2 Thessalonians: revised eschatological scenario

Lesson: These letters negotiate eschatology with the reality that time did not end in the first generation.

7) Pastoral epistles: uncertain dating and likely “counterargument” function

  • Date: Nobody knows when 1–2 Timothy and Titus were written
  • First explicit mention: Irenaeus (around 180 CE)

Speculation offered:

  • Possibly written in response to another Gentile Christian figure, linked to Marcion
  • Marcion is discussed as promoting celibacy using 1 Corinthians 7
  • The pastorals then champion marriage instead

8) “Knowledge of God” as practical, relational know-how

  • The phrase “knowledge of God” appears across pagan, Jewish, and Christian writings.
  • Meaning in this framing:
    • Immediate acquaintance with God
    • Knowing what God wants
    • Knowing how to access/please God for favorable outcomes

Lesson: It is described as practical “information” for relationship-management with the divine.

9) Logos: an originally pagan concept appropriated in Christian theology

Logos originally:

  • Greek term can mean word/reason/speech
  • In Roman-period thought, creation could be subcontracted to a “contractor god” called Logos

Later Christian appropriation:

  • Logos is identified with Christ as pre-incarnate creator acting on behalf of the father

10) “Pre-Christian” persecutions and conflicts with Roman authorities and urban life

Conflict described as involving:

  • Pushback from Roman governing authorities
  • From synagogue authorities
  • Urban riots

Reason given:

  • Christian preaching disrupts social relations—people must remain in “good relations” with their gods
  • Telling pagans to stop worship threatens civic/social equilibrium

11) When Jesus’s second coming is expected, and how different texts imagine it

Expectations by text:

  • Paul: expected it in his own lifetime
  • 2 Thessalonians: expected it after an additional apocalyptic cycle
  • Later traditions: calculations emerge (e.g., Jesus returning in year 6000 after creation)

General method described:

  • People match prophecies to current events
  • Crises (earthquakes, plagues) can trigger intensified expectations

Text comparison:

  • Revelation: elaborate “grand opera”
  • Gospels: coming of the son of man
  • Paul: comparatively simpler “Christ is coming back”

12) Orthodoxy vs time: how what counts as heresy changes

Claim:

  • “Orthodoxy” is shaped by historical context; what’s meaningful in one era becomes heresy in another.

Example:

  • 3rd century (Origen): resurrection of the body framed as a spiritual body
  • 4th century: insisting on resurrection of flesh becomes orthodoxy
    • Spiritual-only resurrection is framed as heresy

13) Marcion and the formation of the New Testament shape

  • Marcion (implied late 2nd century): promoted a distinct specifically Christian body of texts later called the New Testament
  • Text emphasis:
    • A version of Gospel of Luke
    • A collection of authentic Pauline letters plus a few others
    • Number described as “a body of 10”
  • Influence:
    • Opponents adapt this organization into what becomes the current New Testament structure (gospel + apostolic letters)

14) Marcion vs Valentinus (cosmology and redemption)

  • Valentinus:
    • Flourishes around the 130s–140s
    • Develops an elaborate cosmology:
      • The universe is created by a lower deity ignorant of the higher God
      • Redemption of the spirit, not the flesh

Valentinus is contrasted with Marcion by emphasis on:

  • Valentinus’s two-tier/two-god cosmic framework
  • Focus on spirit redemption and “lower god” ignorance of higher God

15) Diocletian’s policy and why Christians were targeted

  • Diocletian (290s–early 300s):
    • Reforms imperial governance
    • Governance is linked with divination (coordinating political/military decisions with what heaven wants)

Issue described:

  • Divination fails because Christians are said to “gum up the works” by summoning demons

Conclusion:

  • Diocletian decides Christians must stop being Christians to preserve state operations

16) Constantine’s conversion and the Council of Nicaea (Nicaea)

Conversion stories:

  • Two mutually exclusive accounts:
    • Lactantius: dream
    • Eusebius: sign in the sky
  • Both claim proximity to “from Constantine himself,” so historians doubt certainty
  • Uncertainty includes whether the story is retrospective

Why conversion matters:

  • Allegiance to the Christian God is framed as tied to military victory (a Roman way of determining if a god supports you)

Council of Nicaea:

  • Many bishops gather to simplify theology into bullet-point style statements
  • Topics included:
    • Relationship of Christ and God the Father
    • Clerical celibacy vs married bishops:
      • “Dudero-Pauline” view: bishops must be married
      • By this time, celibacy becomes “higher order”
    • Calendar reform (Easter calculation):
      • Lunar Passover proximity vs solar calendar placement

Imperial orthodoxy:

  • The council is framed as beginning the paradigm of imperial decisions defining orthodoxy
  • Later becomes Roman policy in the 380s under Theodosius I

17) “Pagan” as a constructed legal/social category

  • “Pagan” is said to be invented in the 4th century
  • It creates categories in a religious landscape:
    • “Right” Christians
    • “Heretical” Christians
    • Jews
    • Everyone else = “pagans”
  • Legal/political function:
    • Helps imperial government decide where to direct resources and which cults receive sponsorship/tolerance

18) “Mediterranean matrix” and concluding view of Christianity’s first 500 years

“Mediterranean matrix”:

  • A shared cultural framework where people relate to gods in broadly similar relational ways
  • Jews, Christians, and most Mediterranean people are “doing it” in different forms but within the same cultural logic

Closing summary:

  • The first 500 years are described like an “Animal House” food fight:
    • Energetic diversity
    • Constant argument over “the right way”
  • Imperial policy tries to reduce variety:
    • It partially succeeds, but diverse churches continue even after Rome falls in the West

Methodology / structured content presented

A) Definitions and distinctions used by the speaker

  • Rhetorical Jews
    • How Jews are portrayed in texts
    • Serve authorial purposes (insider/outsider identity construction)
    • Often differ from real practice
  • Historical Jews
    • Actual Jewish behavior and community life
    • Evidenced via inscriptions and outsider descriptions
  • Dudero-Pauline epistles (speaker’s term)
    • Letters written by people claiming to be Paul
    • Present variations on themes
    • Often dated later than “historical Paul”

B) Paul’s theological logic as presented

  • Inclusion of Gentiles/pagans:
    • Not by circumcision / “flesh integration”
    • But by spirit infusion enabling adoption into God’s family/kingdom
  • Eschatological battle model:
    • Davidic Messiah returns
    • Fights pagan gods/hostile cosmic powers
    • Establishes kingdom after victory

C) Mechanisms of change over time (as applied to doctrine)

  • Orthodoxy shifts because what counts as acceptable meaning changes by century

Example mechanism:

  • Resurrection-body interpretation evolves:
    • “Spiritual” (3rd century) → “flesh” (4th century)
    • Reclassifying views as heresy/orthodoxy

D) Historical-formational mechanisms around canon/authority

  • Marcion’s influence:
    • Helps set up the model of a Christian “text body”
    • Opponents adapt structure → later “New Testament” shape
  • Imperial policy mechanism:
    • Define “orthodoxy” and categorize tolerated groups through terms like “pagan”
    • Link religious classification to funding/tolerance decisions

Speakers / sources featured (named)

Speakers

  • Professor Paula Fredriksen (main interviewee)
  • Host/Interview caller: “History Guide Podcast” host (name not clearly given in subtitles; referred to in parts as “Paulson” / “Paulson”)

Sources (authors/figures mentioned)

  • Paul (subject of the analysis)
  • Josephus
  • Strauss
  • Matthew Tyson Tyissson (likely garbled in subtitles)
  • Origen
  • Marcion
  • Valentinus
  • Nero
  • Diocletian
  • Constantine
  • Theodosius I
  • Lactantius
  • Eusebius
  • Irenaeus
  • Justin Martyr
  • Burgger Pearson (likely garbled in subtitles; source of an interpolation argument)
  • Angela Schend Hardinger (likely garbled in subtitles; argument about Thessalonians interpolation)

Biblical texts referenced throughout:

Acts is referenced indirectly via “stories we get in the Acts of the Apostles”

Romans, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians

Ephesians, Colossians

1–2 Timothy, Titus (pastoral epistles)

Philippians

Revelation

The Gospels generally (and Luke specifically)

TRANSCRIPT

Ancient Christianity in Its First 500 Years

A Conversation with Professor Paul Frederickson

Introduction: The Idea of Israel

Interviewer: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another History Valley podcast. Today I’m joined by Professor Paul Frederickson, and we’ll be discussing a bit about his new book, Ancient Christianity in Its First 500 Years.

So, what is the idea of Israel?

Professor Frederickson: The idea of Israel is the idea that a powerful god reveals his will and chooses a particular people. He reveals his laws, which include how to stay in communication with him and how to stay in communication with others. It talks about covenants—legal agreements between people and their god—and it also talks about a deed to the land, the land of Israel, which was a flexible category in antiquity as well.

I have to say that the idea of Israel is particular to what will become the Jewish people, but this is also a similar pattern of covenants that other gods form with other so-called pagan groups. The difference between the idea of Israel and the idea of Athens, Aphrodisias, or other ethno-religious groups is that Jews have a book. That’s why we can still access what these covenants are about—because we actually have a text.

Israel Among the Nations

Interviewer: What do we know about Israel among the nations? What do you see for us in the historical record?

Professor Frederickson: Israel starts out among the nations in a sense, because Abraham is depicted as a wanderer. He travels around in different territories, and eventually you have a united kingdom under David and Solomon. But you also have this idea—like a systole and diastole—of Jews being in the land, and then some Jews being scattered outside of it, because the land is centrally important to the idea of covenant.

Rhetorical Jews vs. Historical Jews

Interviewer: Who are the rhetorical Jews and the historical Jews?

Professor Frederickson: That’s my rubric. Rhetorical Jews are the way Jews are talked about in different texts. They are used as a way to construct the identity of the person who is speaking—whether as an insider or as an outsider. Historical Jews are what actual Jews are actually doing. So there’s a difference between how Jews are represented in literary texts versus how Jews are up to on the ground. For on-the-ground Jews—historical Jews—we have inscriptions and reports from outsiders giving descriptions. Rhetorical Jews are used as a strategy to make a particular point on the part of the author. And there’s often a gap between those two representations.

Paul’s Opposition to the Circumcision Party

Interviewer: Can you tell us a bit about Paul’s opposition to those of the circumcision in his genuine writings, such as his letters to the Corinthians and Galatians?

Professor Frederickson: One of the most interesting—and most Jewish—things about the first generation of what will become Christianity is how much infighting there is. There are quarrels between people. I mean, there can’t be that many Jews in the mid-first century who are part of this movement, and we know from Paul’s letters that they’re all arguing with each other.

One of the arguments is about how to integrate non-Jews—people we call pagans—into the movement. Paul thinks it should be one way; the people he’s arguing with, who are also Jews and also Christ-followers, argue that it should be through full conversion to Judaism, through circumcision. Paul argues instead—and Paul has a very eschatological, apocalyptic framework—that the spirit of God is going to infuse the bodies of these ex-pagans, making them into worshipers of the God of Israel. He is opposed to what his colleagues are saying, which would be to integrate them fully into the people of Israel. That’s what the fight is about in Galatians, and it’s also mentioned in 1 Corinthians.

Paul as God’s Messenger to the Gentiles

Interviewer: Does Paul see himself as God’s messenger to the Gentiles?

Professor Frederickson: He certainly does. And given the competition he has for that title—because there are lots of different messengers to Gentiles—he says he’s the only one that’s right.

Christian Leadership in Paul’s Day

Interviewer: What was Christian leadership like in Paul’s day?

Professor Frederickson: There was no Christian leadership in Paul’s day, because Christianity is a type of Second Temple Judaism in Paul’s day. It doesn’t become a movement that’s split off from what we would consider Judaism until the late first or early second century. So there is no central leadership.

Women in Paul’s Assemblies

Interviewer: Who are the women in Paul’s assemblies? And what is different about how the Pastoral Epistles portray Paul’s view of women?

Professor Frederickson: Paul says a number of different things about women. In Romans 16, he talks about them as colleagues, fellow workers. He calls them patrons of the movement—they host wandering apostles and so on. He also talks about women in the abstract in 1 Corinthians 7, where he advises that couples who are married in Christ not have sexual relations anymore. He says, “But if you absolutely have to do it, okay, but I wish everybody were as I myself am,” which is to say, celibate.

When you get to the Deutero-Pauline epistles—the earliest reference we have to the Pastoral Epistles is in the second century—that means this particular branch of the movement is no longer expecting the imminent end of the world. The second coming of Christ is something that’s still about to happen, but what they’re doing is domesticating the tradition. They say that an overseer—an episcopus, or bishop—should be the husband of one wife, and that women will be redeemed through childbearing. The historical Paul never talks about childbearing because he’s not expecting another generation.

2 Thessalonians and Pauline Eschatology

Interviewer: How did 2 Thessalonians reconfigure Pauline eschatology from 1 Thessalonians?

Professor Frederickson: “Pauline eschatology” means Paul’s ideas about what’s about to happen to wrap up history for Christ to come back. In a sense, Christ has already come back because his spirit is inside of people in the community, Paul says. But there’s going to be a historical coming back where Jesus returns as a Davidic Messiah—and Davidic messiahs are warriors. The entities that the returning Messiah Christ is going to fight are pagan gods. So Paul is expecting a battle of the gods, and of course his champion is going to win, and his god is going to win. He describes this as something that he says: “We who are alive, who are left.” He’s expecting to be alive when he sees all this happen.

When you get to 2 Thessalonians, there’s been a whole new introduction of a mythological cycle: a man of lawlessness showing up, a terrestrial battle, as well as a cosmological, celestial battle. What it does is create a bigger gap in time between the voice of the author—who is a ventriloquist, pretending to be Paul—and when the end is going to come. It pushes the end off by enlarging the drama.

Interviewer: And who exactly is the son of lawlessness?

Professor Frederickson: I don’t know. I don’t know. Traditionally, he’s eventually associated with Nero, who was emperor in the 60s of the first century. But it’s just a reference to this evil human being who will stretch out the eschatological scenario.

Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians

Interviewer: Do Ephesians and Colossians share a lot in common with 2 Thessalonians?

Professor Frederickson: Ephesians and Colossians are also what we call Deutero-Pauline letters—letters written by people claiming to be Paul, but presenting interesting variations on what Paul says. Ephesians, for example, talks a lot about cosmological struggles—that people who are Christ-followers are engaged in a cosmic struggle against superhuman powers. Colossians talks about a more domesticated form of Christianity. 2 Thessalonians is about a revised eschatological scenario. All of these letters pursue different points that negotiate eschatology with the reality that time didn’t end in the first generation of the movement.

The Pastoral Epistles

Interviewer: When were the Pastoral Epistles—1–2 Timothy and Titus—created?

Professor Frederickson: Nobody knows when the Pastoral Epistles were written. They are mentioned for the first time by Irenaeus, who writes around the year 180. There is speculation that they might have been written against another Gentile Christian we can identify from the second century: Marcion. Marcion goes with 1 Corinthians 7 and champions celibacy for Christians; the Pastorals champion marriage for Christians instead. So there’s a kind of embedded counter-argument.

The Knowledge of God

Interviewer: What is the knowledge of God?

Professor Frederickson: The knowledge of God is a phrase common to pagan, Jewish, and Christian writings. It means being in an immediate acquaintance with whatever God the person is engaged with. So “knowledge of God” means knowing what that God wants you to do, knowing how to access that God on a friendly basis, and knowing how to please the God—because if the God is pleased, things are going to go well for you. It is, in a sense, a very practical package of information.

Philo’s Logos and Paul

Interviewer: What is Philo’s Logos, and how does Paul use a similar pattern?

Professor Frederickson: The Logos is an interesting idea, originally pagan. Logos is a Greek word that can mean “word,” “reason,” or “speech.” In the early Roman period, there was an idea that the highest God is a God who’s not immediately involved in physical creation, but subcontracts it to a contractor God—and that is called the Logos, the word of God. It is his rational ability to organize matter. That’s how Philo uses the term. Of course, Logos will eventually be appropriated by Christian theologians and identified with Christ, as his pre-incarnate career as the creator of the universe—on behalf of his Father, he’s a contractor.

Pre-Christian Christian Persecutions

Interviewer: Can you tell us a bit about the pre-Christian Christian persecutions?

Professor Frederickson: What I mean by that is that Paul talks about getting pushback from Roman governing authorities, from synagogue authorities, and about causing urban riots. He’s somebody who upsets the urban ecosystem when he comes into town and starts telling pagans to stop worshipping pagan gods. He gets pressure for that because it upsets the apple cart—people are always supposed to be in good relations with their gods.

The Expected Timing of the Second Coming

Interviewer: When was Jesus’ second coming expected to happen?

Professor Frederickson: Depends on whom you ask. Paul expected it in his own lifetime. The author of 2 Thessalonians expected it after another cycle of apocalyptic struggle. Eventually, you get Christian traditions that calculate the age of the world and say that Jesus is going to come back in the year 6,000 since creation. So there’s always some kind of calculation or expectation. Sometimes an earthquake or a plague will stimulate people to think that Jesus is coming back. It’s situational as well as a prophecy event—you try to match the prophecy to what’s going on currently.

The Gospels, Revelation, and Paul

Interviewer: Do the Gospels, Revelation, and Paul share the same or different views regarding the Second Coming?

Professor Frederickson: Different views. There is a much more elaborate—I mean, it’s a grand opera in the Book of Revelation. There’s an awful lot going on. Paul is saying very simply that Christ is going to come back. The Gospels talk about the coming of the Son of Man.

Time and Orthodoxy

Interviewer: How is time the orthodoxy’s adversary?

Professor Frederickson: Orthodoxy is compromised by the passage of time because what’s meaningful to people in one historical period is heresy to people in another. For example, in the third century, an important theologian named Origen talks about the resurrection of the body—meaning just the spiritual body, not the fleshly body. The fleshly body is definitely something that is shed; it’s a spiritual body that arises. By the fourth century, that will be heresy, and there will be an insistence not only on the resurrection of the body but on the resurrection of the flesh—which would have been nonsense in the third century and already heresy in the fourth.

Marcion of Sinope

Interviewer: Who is Marcion of Sinope? And did he use an abridged version of Luke’s gospel or an earlier version?

Professor Frederickson: Marcion was one of the most important early Gentile Christian theologians we know about. He was active in the 140s of the second century. He is the one who comes up with the idea of having a specifically Christian body of texts collected—the idea will eventually be called the New Testament. The text Marcion champions is one version of the Gospel of Luke. We don’t know if it was an earlier version or a version that he edited. He also had a collection of letters: the authentic Pauline letters and a few others, a body of ten. But that core organization—Gospel plus apostolic letters—is something that will be completely adapted by Marcion’s opponents, who consider him a heretic, and that’s how we get the shape of our current New Testament.

Marcion’s Collection of Paul’s Letters

Interviewer: Is Marcion’s collection of Paul’s letters an abridged version?

Professor Frederickson: Marcion’s collection of Paul’s letters is, as far as we can tell, an expansion of Paul’s letters—just as the current New Testament is an expansion. You have the seven uncontested letters of Paul, and then all the others, according to academic consensus, are written by followers of Paul in Paul’s name. Marcion has some of those letters; our current New Testament has some of those letters.

Marcion and Valentinus

Interviewer: What are the similarities and differences between Marcion and Valentinus?

Professor Frederickson: Valentinus is another very important Gentile Christian theologian who flourished around the 130s and 140s. All of these people established very long-lived churches—they’re still flourishing in the 4th and 5th centuries because we have Orthodox Christians yelling at them. Valentinus has a much more elaborate cosmology, a cosmogonic myth about how the universe is created. He again believes in the redemption of the spirit, not the redemption of the flesh. He sees flesh as the construction of a lower god who is ignorant of the higher god—and it is the higher god who is the Father of Christ. So he has a more elaborate, two-story cosmos, and his framing of Christianity works around that.

Diocletian and the Persecution of Christians

Interviewer: How did Diocletian view Christians, and why did he persecute them?

Professor Frederickson: Diocletian was the emperor in the 290s and early 300s who reformed imperial government so that there was a kind of president-and-vice-president structure to the Eastern and Western empires. One of the ways government operated was by coordinating political and military decisions with what you thought heaven wanted you to do—that’s called divination. At one point, Diocletian was trying to solicit information from the gods, and the divination wasn’t working. People told him that was because there were Christians present, and they were gumming up the works by summoning demons. Nobody contested that there were all these different superhuman forces; it depended on how you looked at them. For the pagans, the Christians were engaged with demons; for the Christians, the pagans were. But in the interest of good government, Diocletian decided that was enough, and he was going to stop Christians from being Christians because they were gumming up the works of government.

Constantine’s Conversion and the Council of Nicaea

Interviewer: What circumstances led to Emperor Constantine converting to Christianity and eventually forming the Council of Nicaea?

Professor Frederickson: We have two mutually exclusive stories about Constantine’s conversion. The more familiar one, from Eusebius, says that just before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, he saw a sign in the sky. Lactantius, another contemporary, says he had a dream—not just before the battle—in which it was revealed that he should worship the Christian God. Both authors unfortunately say they got their story from the horse’s mouth, from Constantine himself. As historians, we have problems deciding what actually happened. It could have been that Constantine, in retrospect, looked back and said, “Just before I conquered Rome, I had this vision.” We really don’t know why he decided, except that his allegiance to the Christian God is hooked in with military victory—which is a typically Roman concept: if a god is on your side, you win a battle.

What Was Decreed at Nicaea?

Interviewer: What was decreed at the Council of Nicaea?

Professor Frederickson: Nicaea was an experiment in getting as many bishops in a room together as possible and having them simplify complicated theology into a statement that’s almost like bullet points by comparison. Part of the object was to decide on the relationship between Christ and God the Father. Another item was the status of clerical celibacy: should bishops be married? The Deutero-Pauline epistles certainly say they must be married, but by this point, a system of celibacy was becoming a higher order of Christian behavior. So there was the question of what to do with all these married bishops. Another program item was settling the calendar: When does Easter fall? Does it fall around Passover, which follows a lunar calendar, or elsewhere, following a solar calendar? Constantine was trying to get everybody on the same page. They manufactured a creedal statement that doesn’t really become Roman policy until the 380s with Theodosius I, but it begins to set the paradigm for the imperial government deciding what orthodoxy is.

The Invention of the Term “Pagan”

Interviewer: When was the term “pagan” invented?

Professor Frederickson: “Pagan” is a term for “not us” that was invented in the 4th century. It refers to majority Mediterranean culture—most people were worshipping Mediterranean gods. What it does is create a third category. There are Christians, there are heretics—I’m sorry, four categories: there are the “right” Christians, there are heretical Christians who got it wrong, there are Jews who are not Christians, and then there is this fourth group, everybody else—those are the pagans. It’s important because it becomes a legal category. Once the imperial government gets engaged in declaring orthodoxy, the emperor has to know which church to give money to and which religious cults are going to be tolerated or sponsored. “Pagans” becomes a way to say, “We’re not giving it to these people who worship those gods.”

The Mediterranean Matrix

Interviewer: What is the Mediterranean matrix?

Professor Frederickson: The Mediterranean matrix refers to traditional Mediterranean culture—the building blocks of all types of Christianity and Judaism in this period, because this is the world everybody lives in. The concept of being in relationship to a god or trying to please a god is universal. Jews do it in one particular way, Christians in other ways, and the majority of Mediterranean people in other ways—but they’re all similar because they’re all part of the same culture.

Summing Up the First 500 Years

Interviewer: In closing, how would you sum up the first 500 years of Christianity—how it ends, and how it would affect and transform later Christianity?

Professor Frederickson: Part of the first five centuries of Christianity reminds me of the food fight in Animal House. I mean, it’s just people arguing vociferously about what’s the right way to do it. And “the right way” is whatever the opinion is of the writer whose text we happen to still have. So it’s a period of energetic diversity—different Christians doing all sorts of different things. You also have diversity within ostensibly the same silo, because a bishop will be yelling at his own congregation: “Why don’t you do it like this? Do it like that! You’ve got to stop having keg parties at the graveside of the saints—you shouldn’t be doing this! And you shouldn’t be going to magicians or using amulets!” And these are people ostensibly in the same church. There’s variety all the way through. One of the goals of the imperial government is to tamp down some of that variety—and it doesn’t work, because we know we have diverse Christian churches that exist well after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

Today’s Discussion is Based on the Book

Interviewer: Today’s discussion is based on your book, Paul the Pagans’ Apostle. The link to purchase it will be in the description below and in the pinned comment. Thank you for joining me today, Paul.

Professor Frederickson: It’s a pleasure to be here.

Bonus Q&A: More on Paul

Interviewer: Before we go, I’d like to ask a few more questions. What kind of text would Paul have seen instead of a Bible, since it did not exist in his day?

Professor Frederickson: We think of the Bible as a single book, but it’s actually a library. In Paul’s day, individual books of Jewish scriptures would have been in their own scrolls. Genesis—probably the first five books—would have been in the same scroll, perhaps separately. Psalms would have been in its own scroll, Isaiah in its own, and so on.

Interviewer: Do we know about Paul’s origin—how he was raised and how he viewed Judaism prior to his conversion?

Professor Frederickson: Paul gives us a teaspoonful of autobiographical information in Philippians 3. He says he was born to Hebrew parents—Jewish parents—circumcised on the eighth day, and that as to his orientation toward interpreting Jewish scriptures, he was a Pharisee. He says, with no false modesty, that in terms of following the law, he was blameless. That implies a certain type of upbringing, and I have no reason to think he was the first Pharisee in his family.

Interviewer: When did Paul convert to become a follower of Jesus?

Professor Frederickson: I don’t like the word “convert” for Paul, because there is no such thing as Christianity in his day—”convert” implies moving from Judaism to something else. The word “Christian” doesn’t begin to appear until the early second century. I think Paul is operating inside a particularly energetic stream of messianic Judaism in the late Second Temple period. I think he “converted” probably within a few years of Jesus’ crucifixion. He mentions returning to Damascus after his experience of the risen Christ, so it was probably in Damascus that he encountered Christ-following Jews, against whom he had a negative reaction, and then he changes his mind. It’s probably within three years of the execution. But the letters we have from him are from a couple of decades after that.

Interviewer: What is Paul’s mission?

Professor Frederickson: Paul introduces himself as an apostle to Ethnē—a Greek word we can translate in at least three ways: “the nations” (other than Israel), “Gentiles,” or “pagans.” That’s why the title of my book is not Apostle to the Gentiles but specifically Paul the Pagans’ Apostle. The people he’s doing outreach to are pagans whom he is trying to make into ex-pagans, so that they make an exclusive commitment to the God of Israel. He’s doing this because he believes the kingdom of God is at hand, and he is getting as many pagans as possible to renounce their lower gods and commit to his God so they can be included in the kingdom.

Interviewer: How did Paul view the flesh?

Professor Frederickson: That’s a superlative question—libraries have been written on it. Paul usually has a negative orientation toward flesh as a philosophical position: flesh is the proximate reason for ethical failure; it fights against the mind or the soul. But at other points, “flesh” just means blood relation—as when he says that from his people, kata sarka (according to the flesh), is the Messiah. There it just means biological family connection. It depends on context.

Interviewer: What did Paul mean by “if someone was circumcised, they had to keep the whole law”?

Professor Frederickson: That sentence used to be interpreted as if there were a punch list of commandments and you had to busily tick them all off. Since the work of Matthew Thiessen, that’s changed. He takes it to mean: if you’re circumcised, you have to keep the whole law about circumcision—including being circumcised on the eighth day, which makes it impossible for Paul’s Galatian adult pagan males. So that’s another argument in Paul’s armory against having pagans be circumcised if they’re going to be followers of Christ.

Interviewer: Why did Paul frequently address his hearers as “brothers” (adelphoi)?

Professor Frederickson: Like English, the masculine plural can include females as well as males grammatically. But I think most of the time, because he talks about circumcision so much, he is talking about males. The word means “brothers.” His construction for integrating ex-pagan pagans into the “body of Christ” is that they receive the spirit of adoption. In Roman law, an adopted son has the same legal status as a biological son—meaning he can inherit. Once you’re integrated into the family, you’re a co-heir with biological members. That’s why he uses “brother” language: he’s insisting that these people, through the spirit of Christ, can also inherit the promises of God’s kingdom.

Interviewer: What did Paul mean by “faith”?

Professor Frederickson: “Faith” shows up all over English translations of Paul’s epistles. It’s pistis in Greek, fides in Latin. A more accurate translation would be not “faith” but “faithfulness” or “loyalty.” I think that’s more what Paul meant: you have to have confidence in the message of Christ and adhere to it.

Interviewer: How did Paul view the execution of Jesus? And who did he blame—the Jews in 1 Thessalonians 2:16, or the rulers in 1 Corinthians 2:8?

Professor Frederickson: 1 Corinthians 2:8 could even be cosmic rulers, not necessarily Romans. I tend to think of them as the archontes and dynameis—cosmic demonic forces. I think he’s attributing the crucifixion to those forces ranged against Paul and against Christ. 1 Thessalonians 2 is a problem. There was an excellent article in the Harvard Theological Review in the 1970s by Birger Pearson that made a strong argument that it’s an interpolation. Angela Standhartinger has argued coherently that it actually comes from the period of Justin Martyr and was copied into the letter. The trope about Jews killing all the prophets and the wrath of God coming upon them at last sounds like something that would have happened in the year 70 with the destruction of the temple. We have no manuscripts that go back to the first century; the earliest manuscripts we have are from the late second century. By that point, the trope of Jews killing the prophets and killing Christ is already in Matthew, who was written later than Paul. I’m skeptical of that passage in Thessalonians.

Interviewer: Can you tell us about Paul’s polarizing rhetoric? Is he trying to do away with Jewish law, or only some of it? And is he suggesting there is more than one God?

Professor Frederickson: Paul knows there are lots of different gods, and he’s fighting them. Christ is going to fight them when he comes back. In 1 Corinthians 8:5–6, he says that we all know there are many gods and many lords, but for us there is one God, the Father. He’s in a world congested with deities. The difference is that his God is the biggest and the truest. That’s the situation Christ will establish definitively when he returns.

He is not trying to do away with Jewish law. In Galatians, he argues to his hearers that the other apostles who came and said the men should be circumcised are wrong. Paul says Gentiles are integrated not through circumcision—a sign in the flesh—but through getting the pneuma, the spirit of Christ or the spirit of God. Only spirit, not flesh, can effect the adoption of a pagan into the family of God. That’s why he argues so strenuously. He also says that the point of receiving the spirit is so that they can fulfill the law—meaning Jewish law. So he’s hardly saying Judaism is opposed to Christianity. He’s saying only his type of Judaism works, because it’s spiritual, not fleshly.

Interviewer: Why did Paul call the Galatians “fools”? And what is meant by the allegory of Sarah and Hagar?

Professor Frederickson: He’s calling the Galatians fools because some of them are listening to the circumcising apostles. Paul says anyone who listens to any gospel other than his is a fool. The allegory with Sarah and Hagar is again about the adoption of sons. It’s Sarah’s son who is the heir of Abraham, not Hagar’s Ishmael. It fits the idea that flesh can’t fix Gentile nature. In Galatians 2, he says to Peter in Antioch: “We are Jews by nature, and not Gentile sinners”—meaning Gentiles are sinners by nature. That’s why they can’t just get cosmetic surgery (circumcision); they need the deep gene therapy of an infusion of spirit. The proofs that they have the spirit? They can work signs and wonders, discern spirits, speak in tongues, and fulfill the law.

Interviewer: What is the point of Paul saying Jesus was born of a woman, under the law?

Professor Frederickson: It emphasizes that Jesus truly had a soma psychikon—a fleshly body. The only way to get that is to be born of a woman. “Born under the law” emphasizes that Jesus was a Jew.

Interviewer: Did Paul blame the earthly death of Jesus on cosmic forces? Did he think cosmic forces controlled earthly powers to kill Jesus?

Professor Frederickson: Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that “the god of this age” is blinding the minds of unbelievers. He’s actively fighting these gods, just as Christ will when he comes back. There’s an implicit hostile relationship between these cosmic powers and the God of Israel, who is bigger and better, and who through his Son the Messiah will conquer them. That’s one reason I read “the rulers of this age” in 1 Corinthians 2 as cosmic powers. Also, in Romans 13, Paul tells his audience to obey Roman rulers, so it would be odd if he had Roman rulers in mind for the execution.

Interviewer: What did Paul mean by “the seed of David” in Romans?

Professor Frederickson: Conjuring David next to Christos (Messiah) is a way of saying that Christ has the correct messianic pedigree. In Romans 1:3, he says Christ is a Davidic Messiah, descended from David according to the flesh—another way of saying he’s Jewish. At the end, in Romans 15:12, he says the root of Jesse (Jesse being David’s father) will rise to rule the nations—again, the Davidic Messiah as conqueror.

Interviewer: Is there evidence of pre-Pauline traditions in Paul’s letters, like the Philippians hymn or Romans 1:3–4?

Professor Frederickson: If you pick up any commentary, that argument will probably be made. I’m not convinced it’s pre-Pauline. Once Paul uses it, it’s Pauline material. That’s one of those questions I don’t stay up late worrying about.

Interviewer: How did Paul view apostolic competitors?

Professor Frederickson: Paul did not like competition. He says some pretty negative things: he calls them “so-called super-apostles” (sarcastically), “false brothers,” “deceitful workmen.” In 2 Corinthians 11, he likens them to Satan, because even Satan can present himself as an angel of light. Competition did not bring out the best in Paul.

Interviewer: How did Paul view the baptism of pagans, and what did he think occurred after baptism?

Professor Frederickson: I think he sees baptism as the ritual medium through which spirit is infused into the fleshly body of the ex-pagan. Jews in the movement are baptized as well. It means there is a universal necessity for this infusion of spirit to prepare for the coming kingdom.

Interviewer: Lastly, when did Paul expect Jesus to return, and what do you think would happen once Jesus did return?

Professor Frederickson: Luckily, Paul unambiguously states in almost all his letters that the kingdom of God is about to occur and Christ is about to come back. In 1 Corinthians 7, he says the form of this world is passing away, and in view of the impending distress, don’t have sex—that’s a small window. In 1 Thessalonians 4, he describes Jesus coming back with a cry of command, the archangel’s call, and the trumpet of God. He says “we who are alive, who are left”—sounding like he expects to be alive. In 1 Corinthians 10, he says the ends of the ages have already come upon us. In Romans 11, he says the hour is late, the night is far gone, the day is at hand. All of that convinces me Paul expected Christ to come back within his own lifetime.

What does Christ do when he comes back? That’s where you get the martial imagery of the Davidic Messiah. He’s pious, but also an effective warrior. Who is he going to fight? In 1 Corinthians 15, he will fight every archon, dynamis, and exousia—every rule, authority, and power—these cosmic shells around Paul’s geocentric universe. In Philippians 2, once Christ comes back, every knee above the earth, upon the earth, and below the earth will bow to the glory of God the Father. That’s a lot of superhuman knees. Christ will have this cosmic battle with the forces that frustrate Paul and his mission, triumph, and establish the kingdom.

Closing

Interviewer: In life, remind everybody that the link to purchase Paul the Pagans’ Apostle will be in the description below and in the pinned comment. Thanks for watching this video from the History Valley YouTube channel. Please don’t forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell. If any of you wish to support this channel, please consider checking out our Patreon page, donating with PayPal, or using the Super Chat during the livestream. Thank you.

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