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ΣΑΥΛΟΣ Ο ΚΑΙ ΠΑΥΛΟΣ

The man

Saul of Tarsus, from persecutor of the first believers to self-appointed apostle, and the mind behind the change.

Profile
Who was Paul of Tarsus?
A Pharisee from Cilicia who hunted the first followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, then claimed to be their apostle. What the sources allow us to know about the man.
The Roman
The Roman: name, tongue and citizenship
Saul became Paulus in the house of a Roman governor, spoke Greek to officers and Hebrew to crowds, and produced his citizenship whenever the rod was raised.
The vision
The vision: from Saul to Paul
Acts records that Saul dragged men and women to prison and consented to the killing of Stephen. The Jewish tradition has a name for that hatred.
In 3 parts
The purse
The purse: the collection for Islamicjerusalem
Paul's letters say more about money than about the life of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. The trade, the wages, the great collection, the suspicion at Corinth, and the governor who waited for a bribe.
The mind
A psychological portrait of Paul
A persecutor who began to see visions, and never stopped fighting his own past. What identity theory and psychoanalysis suggest.
In 2 parts
The character
The character of Paul
What Paul's own letters add to the record of his conduct beyond the counts: a lawyer's verdict on the Temple vow, the wish of mutilation, the whited wall, the Jews as enemies of all men, and money.
In 3 parts

ΚΑΤΗΓΟΡΙΑ

Six counts against Paul, each argued from his own letters and from the record of the community that knew ʿĪsā.

Count·I
Two portraits of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam
Muslims and Christians both claim to love ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. They love two different figures, and the difference traces back to one man.
Count·II
Paul against the disciples
The Jerusalem community kept the law of Mūsā. Paul set it aside, then performed it in the Temple when it suited him.
In 2 parts
Count·III
The message remade
Salvation by faith alone and the law of Mūsā recast as a curse. How Paul rebuilt the message of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam for a Gentile audience.
In 2 parts
Count·IV
Revelation or borrowing?
Wine for the stomach, a cloak left at Troas, a ledger of beatings, and a thorn in the flesh: what the letters reveal about their author.
In 3 parts
Count·V
How Paul came to own the New Testament
Thirteen of the twenty-seven books bear Paul's name, and the canon was settled by churches that followed him. The letters themselves do not agree.
In 3 parts
Count·VI
Paul, the father of a new religion
The followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam called themselves believers. Paul's churches acquired a new name and a new faith, and Western thinkers from Jefferson onward noticed.
In 3 parts

ΟΙ ΜΑΡΤΥΡΕΣ

The Jewish followers of ʿĪsā who refused Paul, the Muslim scholars who named him, and a letter from one who once defended him.

The brother
James, the brother of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam
The man with the strongest claim to speak for ʿĪsā ibn Maryam: his brother, head of the disciples, judge at the council, author of the epistle Luther called straw, stoned in 62.
The early church
The first witnesses against Paul
The first to reject Paul were followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam who kept his law. Their own opponents in the church recorded their testimony.
The Islamic tradition
Paul in the Islamic tradition
Muslim scholars named Paul as the corrupter of the religion of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam a thousand years before Western criticism reached the same place.
In 3 parts
The region
The religion of Paul in Malaysia and Southeast Asia
The case in the twenty-first century: Christian Zionism in Southeast Asia, Penang as its laboratory, and the Malay-language literature of reply.
The revelation
The Qurʾān as witness
The revelation the Muslim scholars were reading: the verses on the crucifixion, the divinity of al-Masīḥ, lords taken besides God, the altering of scripture, and the disciples, in Arabic and English.
Testimony
An epistle to the churches of Paul
A letter in Paul's own form, written by one who once defended him, to those who still do.