Unbelievable

[poliphilo]

There was this guy with dredlocks on TV last night saying how Christianity was a smale-scale, Jewish, do-gooding outfit until St Paul hijacked it and turned it into a Greekified mystery religion. If you want to recapture the original message of Jesus, he told us, you've got to read the Epistle of James.

James was Jesus's brother, see- his older brother (whoops)- and after Jesus died he took over leadership of the Jerusalem church. It was a nice little family run business- the spiritual equivalent of a corner shop.

Then along came  Paul with his ambitions and visions and his amazing Jacobean prose style...

So I read the Epistle of James. What it says is, be excellent to one another, dudes- and watch out because  the rich are going to hell.

Yeah, right. I'm not going to take issue with any of that but Paul is a lot more interesting.

Would Christianity have developed into a global franchise if it had all been all down to James?  I think not.

Then dredlock guy did something extraordinary. OK, he said (facing into the lens so we could taste his sincerity)) I've proved that Pauline Christianity is a massive fraud and Jesus wasn't the Son of God- just an ordinary chap who believed in being nice to people- but actually I still believe he was the Son of God and rose from the dead and all that because the Church tells me to.

Erm.......

Comments

[frsimon.livejournal.com]

He's not a professor in the theology faculty. I think he's in cultural studies or something. His research specialism is black theology. However, he has no qualification whatsoever in biblical studies/ historical Jesus research/ that sort of thing, which is what he gets booked to do TV programmes about. I assume he gets booked because the TV companies think he is more camera-friendly than most UK biblical scholars. Which is probably true.

[shullie.livejournal.com]

a friend of mine from sheffield bibs dept (though he's now in Chicago ) knew him quite well, says's he ok... though I am sure he said he was a pastor of sorts too. re more camera friendly than most bibs scholars - lol - most definably.