The Jesus of Paul. A Contribution from the Social Sciences

     The letters of Paul speak more frequently of the resurrected and exalted Jesus than they do of the earthly Jesus. Nonetheless , this does not mean that the apostle and his addressees did not know the teachings and main events of Jesus’ life. Their insistence as to the heavenly identity of Jesus is as likely to have been motivated by contextual factors which guided the development of the primitive Christological confessions which Paul received in the years after his conversion. This paper will focus on two of these factors: the configuration of the Christian communities of the Diaspora as foreign cults in a context of religious plurality and the new revelatory experiences which triggered the formation of a binitarian faith.

Journal or Book: Hervordene Theological Studies 67 (2011), Art. #862, 6 pages. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v67i1.862.
Publication Date: 2011