The Faith Paul Never Left

Ask almost anyone how Christianity began, and you will hear some form of the same story. Yeshua taught grace, and the Jewish leaders rejected Him. Then Paul, a brilliant former Pharisee, carried the message to the nations, left the old religion with its temple and its law behind, and founded a new religion. Peter and James and the others in Jerusalem went on attending the temple for a while, but only because they had not yet caught up, and Paul’s letters would in time set them straight.

The story is told with sincerity, but it has a weakness that is easy to test. It claims to know what Paul believed, and Paul can still be asked.

What Paul Called It

Near the end of Acts, Paul stands on trial before the Roman governor Felix. His accusers have just called him “a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5). Paul answers:

Acts 24:14 But this I admit to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) and that is written in the Prophets;

Paul does not speak of a new religion that he founded. He speaks of “the Way which they call a sect.” The word for sect is hairesis αἵρεσις hah'-ee-res-is, and Luke uses that same word for the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Acts 15:5; 5:17). A sect, in that world, was a party inside the house of Israel, not a new house across the street. Paul’s accusers thought he belonged to a troublesome party. Paul does not argue over the word; he tells them which God he serves: “the God of our fathers.”

Then he says what he believes: “everything that is in accordance with the nomos(law) and that is written in the Prophets.” Not some of it, but everything.

Two chapters later, before King Agrippa, he says it again:

Acts 26:22 So, having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place:

“Nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place.” By Paul’s own account, his whole message was Moses and the Prophets coming true.

In the very last scene of Acts, Paul is a prisoner in Rome. People come to his lodging in large numbers, and this is how he spends the whole day with them:

Acts 28:23 When they had set a day for Paul, they came to him at his lodging in large numbers; and he was explaining to them by solemnly testifying about the kingdom of God and trying to persuade them concerning Yeshua, from both the nomos(law) of Moses and from the Prophets, from morning until hespera ἑσπέρα hes-per'-ah(evening).

“From both the nomos(law) of Moses and from the Prophets, from morning until hespera(evening).” Luke ends his book with Paul preaching Yeshua out of the Torah. If Paul had left the Torah behind, it would be a strange place for Luke to leave him.

How He Worked

Paul’s method matched his message. As we saw in Chapter 14, he went to the synagogue first, in one city after another:

Acts 17:2-3 And according to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three sabbatons(referring to every Moed of Leviticus 23) reasoned with them from the graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture)s, explaining and giving evidence that the Messiah had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, "This Yeshua whom I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah."

“According to Paul’s custom.” He went to the place where Moses was read, and there he “reasoned with them from the graphe(written-scripture)s,” showing from the Scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer and rise. The book he opened was the one the synagogue already had.

A Name Given by Others

Some will say that the word “Christian” proves a new religion was born. The name first appears in Antioch:

Acts 11:26 and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch; and for an entire year they met with the ekklesia ἐκκλησία ek-klay-see'-ah(called-out community) and taught considerable numbers, and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

“The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.” They were called by that name; it was a name other people gave them in one city. The apostles did not choose it. Peter mentions it once, as the name under which believers were made to suffer (1 Peter 4:16), but we never find the apostles using it for a religion that had replaced Israel’s faith. What they called it, as we have just heard from Paul, was “the Way.”

Look at who was walking in that Way. In Corinth:

Acts 18:8 Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing and being baptized.

“Crispus, the leader of the synagogue.” In Jerusalem, “a large group of the priests” believed (Acts 6:7). And as we saw in Chapter 16, there were tens of thousands of Jewish believers, “all zealous for the nomos(law)” (Acts 21:20). A synagogue leader, priests of the temple, and tens of thousands of believers zealous for the Torah do not look like the founding members of a religion that had abandoned the Torah.

Check the Dates

The second half of the story remains: the claim that the apostles still went to the temple only because they did not yet understand, and that Paul’s letters moved beyond the temple and the Torah.

This claim can be tested with a calendar. Every one of Paul’s letters was written while the temple was standing. Even the last of them, 2 Timothy, comes from just before his death, which tradition places under Nero around AD 64 to 67. The temple fell in AD 70.

More than that, the letters most often quoted to show that Paul was finished with the Torah had already been written before he arrived in Jerusalem in Acts 21:

We looked at Acts 21 in Chapter 6. Here the key sentence is the instruction James and the elders gave Paul:

Acts 21:24 take them and purify yourself along with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the nomos(law).

The rumor was that Paul taught Jews “to forsake Moses” (Acts 21:21). James and the elders answered by asking him to pay for the offerings of four men under a vow and to purify himself with them, “and all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the nomos(law).” Paul did just that (Acts 21:26). Later, defending himself, he described the visit in his own words:

Acts 24:17 Now after several years I came to bring alms to my nation and to present offerings;

“To present offerings.” That was why he had come.

Suppose a man writes a book that readers everywhere take to mean he has turned his back on his family’s old home and its ways. A year or two later he is seen at the family gathering in that very house, sharing in its customs and paying for the meal out of his own pocket, so that everyone will know he still honors the family. Only two explanations are possible. Either he is a hypocrite, or his book has been badly misread.

Paul was not a hypocrite. Romans had already been written when he stood in the temple. Whatever Romans means, it did not mean to Paul that the temple, the offerings, and the Torah were finished.

The Life the Apostles Lived

None of this was unusual for the apostles. From the first days, the believers were “day by day, devoting themselves with one mind in the temple” (Acts 2:46). And Luke writes:

Acts 3:1 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hora ὥρα ho'-rah(that-hour) of prayer, the ninth hour,

“The hora(that-hour) of prayer, the ninth hour.” The temple kept its hours of prayer, and Peter and John kept them with it. Decades later, Paul said that he had gone up to Jerusalem “to worship” (Acts 24:11). And the writer of Hebrews, as we saw in Chapter 21, still speaks in the present tense: “there are priests who offer doron δῶρον do'-ron(offerings, gifts) according to the nomos(law)” (Hebrews 8:4).

The timeline offers a simple test for every reading of Paul’s letters. If a reading says that the temple, the feasts and the Torah are over, it sets the letters Paul was writing against the life Paul was living in those same years. When James and the elders in Jerusalem heard the rumor that he taught people to forsake Moses, they called it groundless. We should not make that rumor true two thousand years later.

Yet many readers believe that the apostles themselves settled the question for believers from the nations. At a council in Jerusalem, they say, the apostles sent a letter with four rules in it and no more, and whatever was not on the list was not required. That council deserves a careful reading.