The letters of a man

One thing that casts doubt on Paul’s claim to apostleship by personal revelation is the content of his letters, which runs to personal matters and logistics, unusual for a man who receives revelation directly. A message claimed as divine teaching should hold moral principles or universal guidance for life. The content of Paul’s letters shows the opposite.

This count applies the unity of truth set out in the measure: the letters are tested as the writing of a man, against what they claim to be.

Wine, cloaks and parchments

Three of the letters that follow, to Timothy and to Titus, are held by most scholars to have been written in Paul’s name after his death. The church received them as his, and it is as scripture, the standing the church gave them, that they are weighed here.¹

Paul advises Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach:

23μηκέτι ὑδροπότει, ἀλλὰ οἴνῳ ὀλίγῳ χρῶ διὰ τὸν στόμαχον καὶ τὰς πυκνάς σου ἀσθενείας.

23Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.²

Content of this kind is personal health advice, trivial beside what a scripture ought to contain. In 2 Timothy Paul writes:

13τὸν φαιλόνην, ὃν ἀπέλιπον ἐν Τρῳάδι παρὰ Κάρπῳ, ἐρχόμενος φέρε, καὶ τὰ βιβλία, μάλιστα τὰς μεμβράνας.

13The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.³

This is neither revelation nor spiritual guidance. It is a request to bring clothing and reading matter, the stuff of private correspondence. In the same letter Paul reports that he left Trophimus sick at Miletus,⁴ a statement that carries no spiritual value and raises a question about the claim that he possessed healing powers of the kind described elsewhere.

He mentions his plan to winter at Nicopolis and asks that provision be made for Zenas and Apollos.⁵ Again, nothing of spiritual worth.

The letter to Philemon is wholly taken up with a personal matter involving a slave named Onesimus, without any exposition of faith or guidance for worship.⁶ The letter to the Romans carries a long list of greetings to particular individuals, closer to the close of a social letter than to anything else.⁷

Such material is prima facie evidence of a private correspondence. Its content is worldly, tied to personal needs, and it fails to match the character of an apostle receiving revelation directly. Read plainly, the style and content of these letters differ little from a diary or from today’s private messages, a WhatsApp text or a Facebook status, full of stomachs, clothing, winter quarters, lists of acquaintances and errands.

In form and style these letters differ sharply from the revelations of the earlier prophets, which typically open with “Thus saith the LORD” and carry moral summons and divine warning. The letter of James and 1 Peter, for instance, address a general community and are full of moral teaching and spiritual exhortation. Paul’s letters tend to focus on individuals and small matters, which makes them read as personal notes.

Set them beside the words of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,”⁸ or “Love your enemies,”⁹ and the difference in approach is plain. ʿĪsā ibn Maryam never gave instructions to fetch a forgotten item or offered health advice such as drinking wine. Paul’s writing is built on personal experience and worldly need, and it reads like daily social messaging.

A ledger of sufferings

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul lists the sufferings he has endured to prove his superiority as an apostle of Christ Jesus.¹⁰

23διάκονοι Χριστοῦ εἰσιν; παραφρονῶν λαλῶ, ὑπὲρ ἐγώ· ἐν κόποις περισσοτέρως, ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως, ἐν πληγαῖς ὑπερβαλλόντως, ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις· 24ὑπὸ Ἰουδαίων πεντάκις τεσσεράκοντα παρὰ μίαν ἔλαβον, 25τρὶς ἐραβδίσθην, ἅπαξ ἐλιθάσθην, τρὶς ἐναυάγησα, νυχθήμερον ἐν τῷ βυθῷ πεποίηκα· 26ὁδοιπορίαις πολλάκις, κινδύνοις ποταμῶν, κινδύνοις λῃστῶν, κινδύνοις ἐκ γένους, κινδύνοις ἐξ ἐθνῶν, κινδύνοις ἐν πόλει, κινδύνοις ἐν ἐρημίᾳ, κινδύνοις ἐν θαλάσσῃ, κινδύνοις ἐν ψευδαδέλφοις, 27κόπῳ καὶ μόχθῳ, ἐν ἀγρυπνίαις πολλάκις, ἐν λιμῷ καὶ δίψει, ἐν νηστείαις πολλάκις, ἐν ψύχει καὶ γυμνότητι·

23Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. 24Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. 25Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; 26In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 27In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.¹¹

The passage fails to persuade on content, and it exposes the weakness of his rhetoric and his tendency to excessive self-glorification. Claims such as “in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent” are hyperbole that adds nothing to a theological or moral system. It reads as propaganda to cover a want of basic legitimacy in his standing as a religious figure.

The disciples never itemized their trials; a fortiori, a man who claims to have learned contentment in every state had no cause to. Paul made his catalog of sufferings a tool for rivaling and outdoing the authority of the other disciples.¹²

Some may say the list serves to encourage congregations under persecution. That argument leaves unanswered the basic contradiction between the rhetoric of endurance in Philippians and the complaining, exaggerated tone of 2 Corinthians. There is no ethical continuity between a man who claims to be “content in whatsoever state” and one who in the same breath itemizes every wound and hardship at length.

Paul himself admits, “I speak as a fool,”¹³ as if aware that his rhetoric was straying from the humility he ought to teach. The argument that the account is motivational is a rationalization that covers a deep inconsistency of principle in his writing.

A style of this kind reflects a need to be believed and recognized, something often associated with people short of self-confidence or trying to build a false heroic image. Paul’s claim of “faith in Christ”¹⁴ becomes an empty phrase used to justify his ego. Though Paul tries to convey extraordinary martyrdom and endurance through the list, it loses its force once one realizes that no independent party can confirm the claims.

No historical record supports the actual number of beatings, imprisonments or threats to his life that he asserts. Did all this happen, or was it invented for rhetorical effect?

Paul’s claims in this letter should be read as an effort to build his own legitimacy, and never as proof of authentic spiritual sacrifice. They recall a satirical scene in Pendekar Bujang Lapok, a classic of Malay cinema, in which the antagonist, Tauke Sampan, produces an inflated and absurd bill:

One boat lost, 100 ringgit. Two boats drifted away, 200 ringgit. Rental money for the lost boat, 300 ringgit. Medicine for the people who fainted, 50 ringgit 50 sen. Medicine for eight people with swellings, 73 ringgit 71 sen. Total, 724 ringgit 71 sen. Payment demanded now!¹⁵

The scene shows an unreasonable, long-winded financial claim by an antagonist who tries to manipulate the situation with an implausible dramatic account. So too Paul, who uses his list of sufferings as a tool to strengthen his influence in the early church. Anyone who wants to judge a man’s honesty should not be taken in by an inflated list.

The saying “if you fear the risk, do not talk of the struggle” fits those who parade their “sacrifices” without valid ground. Paul set himself up as a religious warrior, but the weakness of his narrative shows him closer to a comic character from the Jalan Ampas studio, where the film was made, than to a true martyr.

1. Dale B. Martin, “The ‘Household’ Paul: The Pastorals,” Lecture 19, RLST 152: Introduction to New Testament History and Literature, Open Yale Courses, Yale University, Spring 2009, https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152; see also How Paul came to own the New Testament. ↩
2. 1 Timothy 5:23 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
3. 2 Timothy 4:13 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
4. See 2 Timothy 4:20. ↩
5. See Titus 3:12–13. ↩
6. Philemon 1:10–12. ↩
7. Romans 16:3–15. ↩
8. See Matthew 5:3. ↩
9. See Matthew 5:44. ↩
10. See 2 Corinthians 11:23–29. ↩
11. 2 Corinthians 11:23–27 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
12. See Philippians 4:11–13, where Paul claims to have “learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” The statement sits oddly with the tone of 2 Corinthians 11:21–23, which parades his sufferings in detail. Although in 1 Corinthians 1:31 and 4:7 he condemns self-praise, in this list he makes suffering the capital of a claim to apostolic superiority. The inconsistency shows a weakness of ethical consistency in the principles he tried to convey. ↩
13. 2 Corinthians 11:23. ↩
14. See Galatians 2:16; Philippians 3:9; Romans 3:22. ↩
15. Pendekar Bujang Lapok (“The Three Bachelor Warriors”), directed by P. Ramlee (Malay Film Productions, distributed by Shaw Brothers, 1959), is a comedy of the golden age of Malay cinema and a fixture of Malaysian and Singaporean popular memory: three penniless bachelors seek to learn the martial art of silat, and their misadventures include this scene, in which a boat-owner known only as Tauke Sampan (“the sampan boss”) presents them with an absurdly itemized bill for damage they did not cause. The joke, familiar to every Malay-speaking reader, is the inflation of a small grievance into a solemn ledger. The lines are given here in the author’s translation. See also Nur Afifah Vanitha Abdullah and Intan Zainatul Maria Zainudin, “Aspek sosiologi filem Pendekar Bujang Lapok (1959),” Jurnal Melayu, special issue, December 2021, pp. 487–504. ↩