By their fruits

The dispute between Paul and disciples such as Barnabas and Peter reflects a basic difference in their approach to the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him). Barnabas held to the law of the Torah and the original teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, with its stress on tawḥīd (توحيد, “the oneness of God”). Paul introduced a new teaching that adapted the doctrine to Graeco-Roman culture, including the rejection of the Torah.

The test of a false prophet

ʿĪsā ibn Maryam gave a clear criterion for identifying a false prophet: “by their fruits ye shall know them.”⁹ The criterion demands that a prophet’s teaching lead to truth and loyalty to God, and away from adaptations that blur the concept of tawḥīd. He also warned:

24For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.¹

Miracles are therefore no sine qua non of prophethood and no proof of it, since such signs can also be used to lead people astray. Paul often made miracles the proof of his “apostleship”:

11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul: 12So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.²

Those miracles justify nothing in a doctrine that plainly contradicts the law of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. He also said:

12Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.³

Miracles should be a sign of faith and obedience to God, and never a tool for reinforcing a deviant teaching. The miracles attributed to Paul read as an effort to justify his own teaching, a teaching that contradicts the foundation of tawḥīd that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam brought.

When Paul’s teaching and conduct are tested by the criterion ʿĪsā ibn Maryam set, the “fruits” produced, Paul shows no obedience to God. His actions reflect a deviation that caused division among the early followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam.

Paul against the disciples

Paul began to level accusations at the disciples, calling them lazy, misguided and hypocritical.¹⁰ He claimed they needed constant guidance out of their ignorance by the truth of God through the “guidance” he had supposedly received from ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. Openly, Paul stated that the disciples had taught him nothing, and that every truth he delivered came solely from the “guidance” he received directly from Jesus Christ.¹¹

There is, further, no explicit record in the New Testament that Paul ever received the Holy Spirit as the ḥawāriyyūn (الحواريون, “the disciples”) did. In the Gospel of John, ʿĪsā ibn Maryam is said to have breathed the Holy Spirit directly onto the disciples,¹² and in Acts 2 the Holy Spirit descends openly upon them at Pentecost as a sign of appointment and divine authority.

Paul was absent from that event, and none of his letters says he received the Holy Spirit in any comparable form. His confession in Galatians speaks only of “the revelation of Jesus Christ,” with no revelation through the Holy Spirit¹³ as in the existing apostolic tradition.

That difference raises a serious question: how can a man who never openly received the Holy Spirit claim to be the equal, and more than the equal, of the disciples who had been confirmed directly by divine gift? Is it plausible that the disciples, who received the teaching directly from ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, would “stay silent” while witnessing the hypocrisy, deviation, falsehood and lies Paul brought?

Certainly not.

For that reason Peter and Barnabas, followed later by figures such as Arius in the third century, rose against Paul’s attempt to bring bidʿah (بدعة, “innovation”), khurāfah (خرافة, “superstition”), shirk (شرك, “associating partners with God”) and riddah (ردة, “apostasy”) into the mission of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. Many of his followers, beyond Peter and Barnabas alone, rose against Paul’s greed and cunning.

Why the East rejected Paul

Why was there such marked resistance to Paul’s teaching from the peoples of Asia, above all in the East?

One main reason is that the East, including Palestine, which belongs geographically to Asia and has traditionally been counted part of the Eastern world, had long been the birthplace and the center for the spread of the message of the prophets sent to humanity. The region had a deep religious tradition built on tawḥīd as the core of revelation. Any attempt to divert that teaching, as Paul did, was bound to meet firm rejection from a people long educated in the prophets’ legacy of monotheism.

Because of that wide exposure to the teaching of tawḥīd, the people of the East had a firm grasp of the principles of monotheism. That made it easy for them to detect and reject any deviation from the tawḥīd at the core of their belief. Paul’s doctrine was seen as a plain deviation from the foundation of tawḥīd built and upheld by the earlier prophets of the East, and as a threat to the integrity and continuity of a teaching inherited across generations.

“Them which say they are apostles, and are not”

Rejection of Paul’s standing as an apostle runs through oral history and extra-canonical tradition, and it is also implied in the text of the New Testament itself. One passage often cited is the message to the church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation,¹⁴ where the author, known as John, delivers a message attributed to Jesus:

2I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:⁴

The passage is striking because it is addressed to the church of Ephesus, a community Paul himself founded and the recipient of one of his letters, in which he calls himself an apostle of Christ. Although the verse names no one, its context leaves room to understand that claims of apostleship in the early churches were not accepted without question.

Paul himself complains that all Asia had turned away from him, including those who had once supported him.¹⁵ That coincidence has led some modern scholars to reassess Paul’s relationship with the churches of Asia, including the possibility that he was among those tested and rejected as a false apostle by the very community he had formed.

Some modern interpreters within Christian apologetics try to rule out that possibility by stressing that the statement in Revelation is plural and unspecific. The “false apostles,” they argue, could refer to other figures who appeared after the apostolic age. They add that if the Ephesian church ever rejected false teaching, it was the fruit of Paul’s own original instruction, which had built up its faith.

That is a petitio principii: Paul’s authority is assumed in order to credit him with the church’s discernment. That interpretation denies that the rebuke in Revelation carries any implication for Paul. It ignores the historical reality that the early church did not agree on accepting anyone’s authority as an apostle, least of all a figure outside the circle of ḥawāriyyūn known directly to ʿĪsā ibn Maryam.

Historians and textual scholars such as Robert Eisenman,¹⁶ James D. Tabor¹⁷ and Elaine Pagels¹⁸ have proposed that Revelation was written in a context of internal tension in the early church, above all between the original disciples and the outside influence that began to seep in through Paul’s movement. They read the rejection of false apostles in the text as an allusion to those who brought teaching that departed from the original tradition inherited by the disciples of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam.

Eisenman stresses that the movement of the disciples centered on James had firm reason to question Paul’s “apostleship”. Pagels argues that the author of Revelation opposed practices that permitted eating food offered to idols and mixing with Roman custom, two matters that connect to the flexibility of Paul’s teaching in his letters.¹⁹ Although Paul is never named, suspicion of apostolic authority from outside the circle of the ḥawāriyyūn is plain, and it shows that rejection of Paul came from within the early texts of the church as well as from outside them.

A liar by his own account

Paul also had a reputation as a liar. He himself stated that his words should be accepted even when recognized as a lie. In his letter to the Romans he admits:

7For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?⁵

The verse shows Paul’s readiness to use tactics that might be judged dishonest to reach his goal. The context makes plain that, for the spread and survival of his teaching, Paul was willing to lie on the ground that “good” could be achieved by it. The same appears when Paul says:

20And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; 21To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. 22To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.⁶

Paul was known, too, as a cunning man full of guile. He said so himself:

16But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.⁷

Without shame or concealment, Paul also stated:

18What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.⁸

So it is no surprise that Paul was fiercely opposed by the disciples, so much so that he grumbled when he recalled it.²⁰

1. Matthew 24:24 (KJV). ↩
2. Acts 19:11–12 (KJV). ↩
3. John 14:12 (KJV). ↩
4. Revelation 2:2 (KJV). ↩
5. Romans 3:7 (KJV). ↩
6. 1 Corinthians 9:20–22 (KJV). ↩
7. 2 Corinthians 12:16 (KJV). ↩
8. Philippians 1:18 (KJV). ↩
9. Matthew 7:15–20. ↩
10. See Galatians 2:11–14; 2 Corinthians 11:5, 12:11; Philippians 1:15–17. ↩
11. Galatians 1:11–12; 2:6. ↩
12. cf. John 20:22. ↩
13. cf. Galatians 1:12. ↩
14. The book of Revelation belongs to the apocalyptic genre and is composed as symbolic vision. It is no linear historical record, but carries prophetic symbolism that reflects conflict within the early church. See Elaine Pagels, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (Viking, 2012), pp. 5ff. ↩
15. 2 Timothy 1:15. ↩
16. Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus (Penguin Books, 1997), pp. 626–628. ↩
17. James D. Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2012). ↩
18. Elaine Pagels, op. cit., pp. 25–53. ↩
19. ibid., p. 30. Pagels states that John condemns figures who permitted ritual compromise with the pagan world. ↩
20. See the accounts of opposition to Paul in 2 Timothy 1:15, 4:9–16, and in Galatians 2:11–14. ↩