Jerusalem: The Biography

James and the Christians in Jerusalem were understandably suspicious of this new convert, but Paul felt compelled to teach his message with all his obessional energy: ‘Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.’ Finally, ‘James, the Lord’s brother’ accepted this new colleague. For the next fifteen years, this irrepressible firebrand travelled the east, dogmatically preaching his own version of Jesus’ Gospel that fiercely rejected the exclusivity of the Jews. ‘The Apostle to Gentiles’ believed that ‘for our sake’ God had made Jesus ‘a sin offering, who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God’. Paul focused on the Resurrection, which he saw as the bridge between humanity and God. Paul’s Jerusalem was the Heavenly Kingdom, not the real Temple; his ‘Israel’ was any follower of Jesus, not the Jewish nation. He was, in some ways, strangely modern, for, contrary to the harsh ethos of the ancient world, he believed in love, equality and inclusiveness: Greeks and Jews, women and men, all were one, all could achieve salvation just by faith in Christ. His letters dominate the New Testament, forming a quarter of its books. His vision was boundless, for he wished to convert all people.

Jesus had won a few non-Jewish followers, but Paul was particularly successful among gentiles and the so-called God-fearers, those non-Jews who had embraced aspects of Judaism without undergoing circumcision. Paul’s Syrian converts in Antioch were the first to be known as ‘Christians’. Around AD 50, Paul returned to Jerusalem to persuade James and Peter to allow non-Jews into the sect. James agreed a compromise, but in the following years he learned that Paul was turning Jews against Mosaic Law.

An unmarried puritanical loner, Paul endured shipwrecks, robberies, beatings and stonings on his travels, yet nothing distracted him from his mission – to remodel the rustic Jewish Galilean into Jesus Christ, the saviour of all mankind who would imminently return in the Second Coming – the Kingdom of Heaven. Sometimes he was still a Jew himself and he may have returned to Jerusalem as many as five times, but sometimes he presented Judaism as the new enemy. In the earliest Christian text, his First Letter to the Thessalonians (Greek gentiles who had converted to Christianity), he ranted against the Jews for killing Jesus and their own prophets. He believed that circumcision, the Jewish Covenant with God, was a Jewish duty but irrelevant for gentiles: ‘Look out for the dogs! Look out for those who cut off the flesh! For we are the true circumcision who worship God in spirit and glory in Christ Jesus,’ he raged at Christian gentiles considering circumcision.

By now James and the elders in Jerusalem disapproved of Paul. They had known the real Jesus, yet Paul insisted: ‘I have been crucified with Christ. The life I live now is not my life but the life Christ lives in me.’ He claimed, ‘I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body.’ James, that respected holy man, accused him of rejecting Judaism. Even Paul could not ignore Jesus’ own brother. In AD 58, he came to make peace with the Jesus dynasty.

THE DEATH OF JAMES THE JUST: THE JESUS DYNASTY

Paul accompanied James to the Temple to purify himself and pray as a Jew, but he was recognized by some Jews who had seen him preach on his travels. The Roman centurion, charged with keeping order in the Temple, had to rescue him from lynching. When Paul again started preaching, the Romans thought he was the fugitive Egyptian ‘sorcerer’, so he was clapped in chains and marched to the Antonia castle to be scourged. ‘Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman?’ Paul asked. The centurion was dumbfounded to find that this wild-eyed visionary was a Roman citizen with the right to appeal to Nero for judgement. The Romans allowed the high priest and Sanhedrin to question Paul, watched by an irate crowd. His answers were so insulting that again he was almost lynched. The centurion calmed the mob by sending him off to Caesarea.⁵²

Paul’s exploits may have tainted the Jewish Christians. In 62, the high priest Ananus, son of Annas who had tried Jesus, arrested James, tried him before the Sanhedrin and had him tossed off the wall of the Temple, probably from the Pinnacle where his brother had been tempted by the Devil. James was then stoned and given the coup de grâce with a mallet.^* Josephus, who was living in Jerusalem, denounced Ananus as ‘savage’, explaining that most Jews were appalled: Jesus’ brother had been universally respected. King Agrippa II instantly sacked Ananus. Yet the Christians remained a dynasty: Jesus and James were succeeded by their cousin or half-brother Simon.