Conversations with God #2

Conversations with God #2                 07/20/12

This is a summary of the study that took place last Friday

Jesus' Conversation with God

Theresa of Avila said that the only way to discover Jesus’ divinity is through his humanity. Jesus was fully a man. He had to learn the same way as us - went through everything we do. In Mt 11:25-30 we get a glimpse of how Jesus understood himself and his role. This passage has been described as “a thunderbolt from the Johannine heavens” because it seems to fit in more with the Gospel of John than with the Synoptics.

Jesus begins by thanking his Father “Because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Jesus, in addressing God as Father, already signals the trustful and intimate relationship he feels between himself and God. God’s Wisdom has been hidden from those who have been trained – from the scribes and those who have received the standard teaching. Instead it has been revealed to the illiterate and unlearned. Those like little children – the unformed. Those with already formed ideas and established ideas are not going to get it.

Jesus continues by saying “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”.

When we have a conversation with God – how do we come in to the presence of God? In our study the following responses to this question were given:

• Humble petitioner, a peanut, aware of my own smallness.
• Hopeful
• Trusting in Jesus’ love – that I will not feel put down
• Aware that I am a work in progress

Some of these responses are already conditioned by the positive relationship from Jesus, but we can still see gaps and lack in our communication with God. Jesus feels that everything has been handed over to him by God! None of us thinks anything like this.

The verses in Matthew echo key passages in the Old Testament. In Daniel 7 there is the figure of “One like a son of man” to whom all dominion is given. Jesus often refers to himself as “Son of Man”. Also in this discourse Jesus appears to identify with the person of Wisdom. (c.f Mt 11:18-19). Wisdom was with God in the beginning, before the beginning of creation (Proverbs 8:22-23). Again there is an implied intimate confidence between Jesus and the Father, signaled by the figure of Wisdom. Job 28:12-23 asks where wisdom can be found. “Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air….God understands the way to it, and he knows its place”. Wisdom extends beyond human competence and knowledge. Only God knows it intimately and completely.

At the baptism of Jesus the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus like a dove and a voice from heaven proclaims “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17). This brings to mind the Suffering/Nonviolent Servant of Isaiah 42:1, “My servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations”. The Greek word pais used in the Greek translation of Isaiah can mean both "servant" and "son. The words of love and pleasure recall the Servant verse and suggest Jesus' baptism experience was one associated with the Nonviolent Servant. (Matthew associates Jesus directly with this Servant passage at 12:18-19.)

Jesus studied the Scriptures which enabled him to appropriate for himself these motifs of Wisdom, Servant and Son of Man and gave him the language to express his relationship with God. The intimate relationship must have already have been present. This relationship represents a categorical human breakthrough. In his spirit and in his mind there is no separation or hostility from the Father. He has a consciousness free from the darkness of God that remains in the rest of us. He is the first person free of violence in his relationship with the father. A relationship totally transformed. It is into this relationship that he invites us in the Spirit.

*Note in the previous weeks to this study we contrasted the conversations with God of Jeremiah and the Suffering/Nonviolent Servant of Isaiah. It is evident that Jesus' conversations lay much closer in character to the latter's. "Morning by morning he wakens--wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward" (50:4-5).

Conversations with God #1

Here is the first Bible Study summary of a short series on the theme Conversations with God.
- Linda


Conversation with God #1                        6/22/12
Abraham

Genesis 12 is where the story of Abraham begins. It follows the first eleven chapters of Genesis which include the chapter-one creation story, and the five primeval histories (Eden, Cain & Abel, Giants, Flood, Babel). These primeval stories set out to diagnose the human problem. The first pure note of hope about a solution to the problem comes in Chapter 12.

In Genesis 11:27 – the end of a two chapter genealogy – we first hear of Abram, son of Terah, immigrants from Ur in Chaldea (modern day Iraq) who has settled in Haran (modern day Syria).

In Chapter 12:1-3 the Lord calls Abram “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”.

This promise of blessing is a pivotal contrast to the chaos of the prehistories. The idea of blessing appears first in chapter one of Genesis in the creation story. It implies fruitfulness, non-violence, life and peace. The curse in contrast is an absence of these things. The blessing is for all the people of the earth intended right from the beginning and realized in Abraham. Through Abraham all the tribes of the earth (listed already in the genealogies) will be blessed. Abraham’s name is indeed considered great today (part of the promise) in that he is held to be the father of the three main monotheistic religions of the world - Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

While the blessing is universal, the story starts with a single individual. This is a very human way of relating. It is not a call to adopt a program or manifesto - it is a call to relationship and to love. It is the blessing given to an individual that will bring love into the whole world. The United States has championed the ideal of individual freedom and self-determination. This often leads to selfishness and hedonism. The most difficult act of individual freedom is to love.

In Genesis 15 we have the continuing narrative of God’s covenant with Abram. God promises him a child after many barren years and through this child, countless descendants and the Promised Land. God tells Abram to bring him several sacrificial animals which he cuts in two and lays upon the ground. As night falls, Abraham falls into a sacred sleep – dark, deep and terrifying. A smoking pot and a flaming torch (symbols of the presence of the divine) pass between the pieces. God is symbolically saying that if his covenant with Abraham is broken he will call down the same violence visited upon the animals upon himself. This is an unbreakable covenant in which Abraham does not have to do anything but believe. But God puts himself at risk of the terrible human practice of violence.

The narrative continues in Chapter 18 with the story of the three angels (artistically represented in the Rublyev icon, The Trinity). It is this story that expresses most powerfully the heart and depth of the theology of the covenant. It begins with Abraham meeting three strangers by the oaks of Mamre. He offers them hospitality – water and food. Then they promise the birth of a son within the year, a conversation Sarah overhears. She laughs in disbelief at such an unexpected, implausible and ridiculous promise. The three men then turn towards Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom and Gomorrah were places of brutality and oppression to the stranger. The theme is a common one in the Old Testament – the outcry of the oppressed toward God and the Lord’s response. The Lord hears Abel’s blood crying from the ground and the cry of his people in the land of Egypt. The Lord has heard the cry of the victims in Sodom and Gomorrah and is seeking to bring about a violent, righteous vengeance.

The text gives us the imagined psychological process within God. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” he decides that he cannot hide his plan from Abraham because of the covenant he has just made. “No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (v.19). He tells Abraham because Abraham is the key to the universal blessing. The covenant makes God vulnerable to humanity – it opens the space that allows humans to be part of the decision making process. The Yahwist (the story’s author) presents this as indecision in God – but the reality is that it is our own understanding of God that changes. The story shows God now vulnerable to the compassion of Abraham, but God chose him precisely for this task--to plead for humanity. Thus the overall story is a subtle meditation on a deeper sense of God. God is entirely vulnerable and committed to human history. The story tells us God can only be God when we ourselves change how we are and how we see him. Full revelation comes in Jesus who says that no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom he reveals him. It is when we see Jesus who died non-violently on the cross that we begin to see the Father’s true self.

Abraham bargains with the Lord for Sodom and Gomorrah. His compassion undermines God’s vengeance so that God is willing to consider changing his actions for the sake of even ten righteous people (V.32). Abraham becomes a model to God of compassion and forgiveness. This is the reason that Abraham is our father in faith – not because he is our physical ancestor but because of what he did and believed. Meanwhile, at the end of the story, God does destroy Sodom violently because that was the dominant version of events and the writer could only subtly undermine or deconstruct it.

At its heart Abraham’s story gives us the first glimpse of a God open to compassion. It gives a window into the heart of God. Too often our understanding of God mirrors our own violence. Abraham shows us that the only way to change the way we see God is through forgiveness – anything else returns us to the old, violent vengeful God. It is this compassion that will bring about the universal blessing promised to Abraham. It is Abraham's compassion, along with his faith, that constitutes his righteousness.

The Lord's Prayer #4

In this study we re-wrote the Lord's prayer after reflecting on the previous three week's of study. Here is what we came up with...

The Lord's Prayer #4 - a Wood Hath Hope re-writing of the Lord's Prayer

Our Abba in the heavens

May everyone know you by that tender name

May your love transform this earth and the whole universe

Give us today the bread that will bring about your new tomorrow

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and

Forgive our violence to others as we forgive the violence done to us.

Protect us from being brought to our breaking point

By the trials and temptations of the world.

And set us free from the power of the accuser and the evil it brings.

The Lord's Prayer #3

This is the final part of our study of the Lord's prayer

The Lord's Prayer #3                                                                                              06/1/12

The last two petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are “And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from evil”. The first part is common to both Luke and Matthew, the final clause is found only in Matthew.

The word for trial is peirasmos which can be translated as either “temptation” or “trial”. Temptation has an element of desire, whereas trial implies suffering and struggle not necessarily connected to virtue. Temptation can be understood as a trial of your virtue, an attack on your moral self – so in this sense they are connected.

Mt uses the word peirasmos elsewhere. In Mt 26:36-41, Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane brings to mind the Lord’s prayer. “Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial” (v.41) and in v.43 “Your will be done”. Jesus is praying in a situation of extreme trial. Early in his ministry Jesus was conscious enough of the trial coming upon him that he prays in the Lord’s Prayer that his disciples not be led there.

So does God really want to lead us into trial or temptation? In the Old Testament God tests both Abraham and Job – perhaps the Lord’s Prayer reflects this. A better understanding is that God does not desire to lead us into trial or temptation, rather that we are being led by God to witness or live in ways that may lead us into times of trial or temptation. James 1:13 states “No one, when tempted, should say ‘I am being tempted by God’, for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one”.

The word peirasmos recalls the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In Mt 4: 1-11 the verb form of the same Greek word is used twice. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted/tried by the devil” (v.1). Here it is not God but the devil who tries/tempts Jesus – but the leading is done by the Spirit who leads him into the wilderness – the situation where temptation takes place.

In reply to Satan’s second temptation Jesus answers “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”. He is quoting Deut 6:16. The Exodus story tells of the people testing God with complaints and demands.

The phrase “deliver us from evil” or “deliver us from the evil one” is traditionally understood as relating to Satan – as in be careful because the devil is waiting to get you. In the Greek, however, the phrase is actually “deliver us from the evil” – with an article but no pronoun. The word evil changes from a descriptive adjective to a noun. Many translations add the word “one” after “evil” because of the existence of the article “the”. They do this because it seems to make better sense – as though Matthew forgot to finish his sentence. However, Matthew does exactly the same thing elsewhere in his Gospel. In Mt 5:33-37 “let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil”. Again the translators often add on the word “one”.

An evil one implies another enemy, adversary or rival. “The evil” is less personalized. It can be understood in terms of violence, rivalry, hostility and desire. Jesus' teaching about swearing and oaths is one in which he recognizes the mouth as a potent tool for constructing and inflicting violence. It is from this that Jesus is praying for deliverance.

Again in Mt 5:38-39 the word translated as “evil doer” is actually again “the evil”. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. But I say to you, do not resist the evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile”.

So why would Jesus teach us not to resist the evil? It is because we understand resistance in worldly terms. As soon as we try to resist we begin to act mimetically. Instead we need to break the cycle of violence. Our focus should be completely on the Kingdom. Deliverance from the evil has an apocalyptic tone which fits with the rest of the prayer – a waiting for and working towards the in-breaking of the Kingdom.

Lord's Prayer #2

Here is the next in our series on the Lord's Prayer             

The Lord's Prayer #2                                                                                        05/25/12

“Give us today our daily bread

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mt 6:11-12)

This middle part of the Lord’s Prayer meets us where we are. Bread is one of the most basic of human needs – a staple food. The translation “give us today our daily bread” is problematic. It seems to employ a redundant use of the word “daily” – if it is today’s bread then it must be daily! The actual word in Greek that is translated as “daily” is epiousion which is made up of epi which means “more than” and ousion which means “substance”. If the word is understood as “more than substantial” it could be a prayer for all of our possible needs, our complete needs, today.  But this is at variance with other gospel teachings.

Another translation of the word epiousion is “that which follows on”. Using this translation an alternate way of understanding “daily bread” would be “bread of tomorrow” or “bread to come”. This echoes the coming of the kingdom and seems to fit in better with the earlier part of the Lord’s Prayer in which Jesus asks us to pray for the coming of the Kingdom and God’s will on earth. Isaiah 25:6-10 describes a future time when “on this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; and he will swallow up death forever…” The Lord’s prayer is a prayer for the coming Kingdom, the promised Kingdom for which we hope and wait. The Kingdom in which death is finally overcome and every tear is wiped away.

The prayer is also placing the emphasis on the word “today” – that we should only pray for what we need today and not be anxious about tomorrow.  In the kingdom there is no need to store up possessions. Instead, we should trust God for all our needs.   In this it echoes the prayer for manna in the desert – when enough food was given for each day’s need. Note also that the prayer is communal – the bread is “ours” and not “my” – something to be shared. So even when prayed alone the prayer invokes community and connects us with each other.

There is a possible connection to the theme of bread in John’s Gospel. There Jesus says that “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (Jn 6:33). His disciples reply “give us this bread always”. Jesus proclaims that “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry” (v.35). Jesus is the new manna that does not leave you hungry for more. In v51 the words become Eucharistic “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh”. For John “flesh” refers to Jesus’ humanity. Jesus transforms his human life, his flesh, into bread. You are what you eat – by taking in Jesus we become Jesus in the world.

The fourth petition, to “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” is the only part of the prayer in which we are asked to do anything. This requirement is the key that unlocks the rest of the prayer, the praxis on my part that makes the prayer authentic and true. Jesus collapses our relationship with others into one practice - forgiveness. The prophets spoke of justice and external action rather than the more internal, personal practice of forgiveness.  Forgiveness figures in many of Jesus’ parables and teachings  (the parable of the unforgiving steward; Mt 5:21–24 & 43-48 for example). The prayer that begins with Abba proclaims a non-violent God who is all about forgiveness. Abba is not concerned with purity laws, Sabbath or temple. Instead if you want God to be O.K. with you, to forgive you, then forgive others. Jesus wants to tune us into a different frequency without which we cannot experience God’s forgiveness. If you don’t do it you don’t recognize it. Without this inner transformation we continue to experience and understand God in terms of wrath and violence.

In Mt 18:21-22 Peter asks Jesus “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus replies “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy times seven times”.  In other words forgiveness for Jesus is without limit.

Hanging on to violence and anger can become a poison. Forgiveness has recognized benefits in terms of mental health. Forgiveness has proven a healing force in communities with a history of structural violence – for example the truth and reconciliation initiatives in Rwanda, South Africa and Greensboro. While this is true, Jesus is more radical still. Forgiveness is an integral part of the coming of the Kingdom. We are all connected. The Kingdom will come only when all violence, hatred and anger are done away with. Only then will life and love overcome death. Forgiveness is the way to the Kingdom. The Lord’s Prayer for forgiveness is not a moral edict – it is an anthropological one.

The Lord's Prayer #1

Hi, Linda here - back in the saddle as WHH Bible Study Summary writer! Here is the first summary of a short new Bible study on The Lord's Prayer that we started last week...

The Lord’s Prayer #1                       05/18/12

The Lord’s prayer is the Christian prayer, adopted by the Christian community and common to all denominations. It had already become embedded in the first century – referenced in the early Christian writing the Didache (in which Christians are exhorted to repeat it three times a day). It is one of two extended prayers by Jesus found in the gospels (the other is in John 17). The Lord’s Prayer appears in two Gospels, Luke and Matthew.

Luke 11: 1-4, is generally considered the earlier version because it is less elaborate. In Luke the context of the prayer is that his disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus' answer  is a rabbi’s directive to his followers in line with his personal mission – “when you pray, say…”. Here is its content.

1.                   Father, Hallowed be your name

2.                   Your kingdom come

3.                   Give us each day our daily bread

4.                   And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us

5.                   And do not bring us to the time of trial.

Matthew’s version (Mt 6:5-15) is more of a guideline rather than a directive - “pray then in this way…”. It includes two extra petitions that bring the number of petitions to seven – a holy number representing completeness –e.g. the seven days of creation. The additional petitions are 3 and 7.

1.                   Our Father in  heaven, hallowed be your name

2.                   Your kingdom come

3.                   Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

4.                   Give us this day our daily bread

5.                   And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors

6.                   And do not bring us to the time of trial

7.                   But rescue us from the evil one.

In Mt the prayer is incorporated into a more extensive teaching on prayer as part of the  Sermon on the Mount. In the course of the teaching he contrasts meaningful prayer with empty phrases. He exhorts his audience not to pray ostentatiously like the hypocrites, nor to pray like the gentiles who talk too much. People tend to “blather” (battologein of verse 6:7) when they pray for different human reasons – because they don’t know what to say; because it is easier to keep talking than to listen; because they like to hear the sound of their own voice; to impose their will on God…

Jesus uses a word that underscores our relationship to the Father. Jesus’ unique use of the word abba (the Aramaic word for “daddy) as the form of address to God in the prayer embodies a simple direct relationship of trust. In Mark 14:36 Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane addresses God as abba. In the Lord’s prayer he invites his disciples into this same relationship. The fact that the original Aramaic word was incorporated into the Greek Gospels and Epistles indicates the desire of the writers to preserve this deeply evocative piece of Jesus’ practice and teaching. In Romans 8:14-16. (the heart of the letter) Paul says that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” and that “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God”.  This was written around 56-57 AD and shows that Jesus’ privileged use of the word “abba” had become characteristic of the early Christian movement.

This address transforms the tone of the prayer. It stresses the tenderness and trust implied in the relationship of parent to child. In the Lord’s prayer Jesus revolutionizes our relationship to God – he is shooting us a hot line! The prayer is also a “we” prayer. God is “our” Father. Even if a person prays alone, the prayer itself implies community with Jesus and with each other.

The first half of the Lord’s Prayer has remarkable similarities with the Kaddish used in synagogue worship. The Kaddish is taken from a conclusion found at the end of the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. This version and its ancient conclusion would have been familiar to Jesus’ followers and to Jesus himself:

“Magnified and sanctified be his great name. Amen. In the world which he has created according to his will. And may he establish his kingdom during your life and during your days and during the life of all the house of Israel, even speedily and at a near time. Amen”.

This then was a standard prayer for the Jews. It was a prayer for God’s Kingdom, understood in terms of the liberation and restoration of Israel from all of its oppressors. The first three petitions of the Lord’s prayer echo it. What distinguishes the Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ prefacing the prayer with the word “abba”.

By adding abba to the prayer Jesus alters its meaning in terms of relationship.

The first three petitions in the prayer are to do with God; the final four relate to our needs. This division brings to mind the ten commandments that are also divided in a similar fashion (the first four to do with our relationship to God, the last six on our own behavior).

The word “hallowed” is an old English word. It is a word that means “holy” and is often associated with the Latin word sacred.  According to Girard, the sacred is imbued with violence and violence becomes the sacred. Hallowing God’s name could make God dangerous – but Jesus undermines this by calling him Abba. He removes the violence from God. Another meaning of holy is being advanced by Jesus. The original meaning of holiness is to “set apart”. By placing Abba at the beginning of the prayer, Jesus reorients our frame of meaning, the "generative construct" of our lives. The thing that is to be set apart from all else so coloring all else is a nonviolent Father God..

Matthew's third petition is that the Father’s will be done  “on earth as it is I heaven”. The Hebrew understanding was that there were at least three heavens - the lower heavens where the birds fly; the highest heavens where God resides; and the third heaven where the angels are. The heavens were not perceived to be the perfect, eternal place that grew out of Greek philosophy.  Rather they were anything that was in any way transcendent. It has been the immovably perfect Greek image of heaven that has been dominant in our culture. Rather the Hebrew heavens included the rulers of darkness, the powers and principalities. Jesus saw Satan fall from heaven. There was bad stuff up there. The heavens in fact mirrored the earth. What happens in the heavens reflects what happens on earth.

There are two manuscript variations of the Matthean text. One says “on earth as it is in heaven” the second “on earth and in the heavens”. In the second version both the heavens and the earth are awaiting transformation. The prayer perhaps says that the violence has to be removed from our understanding of God and the heavens in the same way that the earth needs to be transformed.

Paul's Ground-Zero Witness to Resurrection

Here is the first study in the series, Christian Origins, Earliest Christianity in Paul & Acts.  Enjoy! 

The study followed a simple but intriguing trail of evidence in the New Testament about the date of Paul's conversion. It was very early, very close to the time of Jesus. Early enough in fact to make Paul a primary witness to the ground-zero tradition of resurrection appearances!

And here's what's critical about that. Paul was far too steeped in the Old Testament world view--and specifically the hope for national Israel's vindication from her enemies--to think in terms of any purely spiritual or mental resurrection. If the early Christian movement had intended anything ethereal like that, its claims would not have been in the same world as Paul inhabited. Resurrection for him was a divinely orchestrated physical vindication over Israel's earthly enemies, including the dead killed in earlier persecution. (See the book of Daniel.) The fact that primitive Christianity claimed the resurrection had occurred to a crucified Messianic pretender (viz. a failure), and only to him, was certainly a good reason for him to be outraged.

Paul had to have recognized in the primitive Christian movement a real claim to real resurrection to be upset. So, if we trace his conversion back to the earliest years we must hear this claim made at that primitive level.

At Acts 18:1-4 we read that Paul was in Corinth shortly after the Jews had been expelled from Rome under the Emperor Claudius. The expulsion is placed at about the year 49CE by historians, so that places Paul in Corinth in the year 50 to 51. This date is solidly confirmed by information at verses 12-15 of the same chapter. We find out there that Paul was in Corinth while Gallio was governor. From an inscription found at Delphi we know the latter was proconsul in this region from 51-52. Paul stayed in the city for an extended period so it is highly likely he was there in 51, and perhaps 50. It would have taken Paul a good year and a half to walk from Antioch to Corinth (three thousand miles), with stops along the way to evangelize (the "the second missionary journey"). Which gets us back to 50, 49 or even 48.

The second missionary journey begins at Acts 15:36 after the big meeting in Jerusalem described from the beginning of chapter 15 and known as the Council of Jerusalem. There is an indeterminate period for Paul in Antioch subsequent to the meeting ("after some days" at v. 36 probably means at least weeks if not months; see v. 35) so we can be pretty confident of a generally accepted date for this meeting as 48-49, i.e. before the journey. The meeting is absolutely crucial for the early church and Luke places it right at the center of Acts. It's possible Luke idealized the formality of the debate but he shows us James (the brother of the Lord) playing the decisive role, above Peter! And given Luke's clear acknowledgment elsewhere of Peter as leader of the apostles the contradiction has to be historical. In other words James of Jerusalem made a crucial ruling allowing the Gentile mission. And at this point Paul really needed the ruling, to make sure his interpretation of the Christian movement would not be negated from its spiritual base in Jerusalem.

According to Luke Paul was actually present for the ruling, but we don't have to rely just on him. At Galatians 2:1-10 Paul gives us his first hand description of a meeting with James, Cephas (Peter) and John which differs in some details with the description in Acts 15 but in other details is remarkably consistent (especially the core theological motivation; c.f. Acts 15:1, and Galatians 2:4). For our purposes what really grabs the attention is Paul's own note on chronology. At 2:1 he specifies "fourteen years" as the time that passed before this key visit. Passed since when? There is confusion as to whether the fourteen years is after Paul's conversion (1:13-17), or after the Paul's initial visit to Cephas and James three years following his conversion (1:18-19). In any case with these intervening years we have to say at the most conservative Paul was converted fourteen years before 48-49, i.e. 34-35 CE. If we add in the other three years it's also possible he was converted in 31-32

In conclusion therefore we are obliged to say that, depending on when Jesus was crucified (generally agreed to be either 30 or 33CE), Paul was converted between five years or one year after Jesus' death. My own instinct is to add the fourteen and three years together so Paul is converted approximately one to two years after Jesus' death in 30. The NRSV Study Bible in fact adds those two amounts together (p. 2082), probably because the Greek text leans in that direction (it can be read "through fourteen years more").

Which is all a way of placing Paul's narrative at 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 of the resurrection tradition at this extremely early period. What Paul, therefore, is talking about when he says "I passed on to you...what I in turn had received" is a tradition he received some time around 32CE. Some of it would have come from Ananias at Damascus, and the rest from Peter three years later.

The core tradition of a bodily resurrection, therefore, is captured for us by the witness of Paul within a space of one to two years after the date of Jesus' death.