It was interesting to have read the social, political, and religions backgrounds of the Pauline letters. I think that understating what the first followers were experiencing does change the perspective of the reader. At least, mine did because to understand what Paul wrote is necessary to have some knowledge of the context behind his writings. Also, according to Borg, next to Jesus, Paul is the most important person in the New Testament. Which implies that he is consider by many as one of the main builders of the Christian church. Paul constructed the road for the future believers, by spreading the gospel to places where not even the original disciples had gone before. One topic that I found interesting is the letter to Philemon, which relates the conflict of slavery. Onesimus who had run away from Philemon and went to ask Paul for help, come back to his “owner ” with a letter from Paul interceding for him. Two things that I think are important to mention are : Onesimus was sure that whatever Paul wrote in that letter was going to be obey by Philemon and he was not going to be punished for escaping and Paul’s power of persuasion. I think that most of his letters do use a lot of persuasion and using convincing arguments of his own experiences as a follower of Christ helps state his case of conviction in the faith. Another admirable fact was to find in the four chapters of Philippians which was written while he was incarcerated the word joy and rejoice thirteen times combined. I can even imaged the conditions that he was in but he definitely had such a strong conviction in his belief that was able to write that letter and motivated the community in Philippi to rejoice.
After reading through the rest of the Pauline letters, what really stuck out to me was the exceptional analysis and context that Borg provides before each letter which gives the reader a much deeper insight into the respective text it precedes. Putting these letters into their historical context, as well as exploring why and to whom they were written, gives insight into how Early Christianity was developing and some of the problems they encountered along the way. Questions remained well after Jesus’s death regarding the role of Jewish customs in Christian faith, the role of women in faith, and how to control variances in ideology within the increasingly growing Christian community which Paul, and others like him, were forced to answer. What surprised me most is Paul’s response, in First Corinthian, to the idea of whether newly converted Christians should keep Jewish customs, like eating kosher or getting circumcised, as he basically argues that it does not matter as long as one is faithful to Jesus and the commandments. It is also surprising that Paul is open in Galatians about his history of persecuting Christians and that he leverages this as a tool to convert people, which was a savvy move on his part. The connections between early Christianity and Judaism cannot be understated and Paul’s attempts to tie Jewish ideology into new Christian faith was interesting when he writes that if a person is a believer in Christ, then they themselves are heir to Abraham.
Corinthians was the letter that was really surprising to me because, as Borg points out in his preface, is reveals quite a lot about the communities surrounding early Christianity and highlight some key issues that they were confronted with. Issues of Factionalism, economic and spiritual equality, and variances in beliefs plagued the early Christian communities, forcing Paul to take a stance on such things. I liked his approach toward the growing factions most, as he likens them to himself and asserts that they are all trying to accomplish the same goal. His issue with them becomes who they give praise to, not the work they have done or are doing, which was a tactful way to approach this issue. Paul’s stance on divorce was also interesting, rather than surprising, as he asserts that a believer can divorce a non-believer with no reason, but two believers should not separate. The early Christian communities seemingly maneuvered through these turbulent years after Christ’s death by relying on the words of the Apostles and the tactfulness of Paul’s writing and stances. Paul’s pragmatism and direct approach with dealing with these conflicts was surprising to me in itself, as I had the preconception that the letters would be more spiritual, abstract, and dealing with ideas of God and faith rather than a somewhat mundane letter to followers. However, this approach obviously worked for early Christianity and in hindsight, might have been the only way to directly deal with these problems.
The last thing of note for me within the readings was Philemon because of its near-comical level of backhanded compliments and persuasive techniques. This letter, more than any other, shows me that Paul was a master of his craft; He is a logical, intuitive, ambassador for Christianity that uses debate and wordplay to subdue his opponents. I cannot help but draw the parallels between this strategy of Paul’s and the common practice of debate within Jewish Yeshivas. Debate and wordplay were, and remain, extremely integral to studying Jewish ideologies and Paul uses his past experience here to great effect in backing Philemon into a proverbial corner.
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