David Wenham. DID ST. PAUL GET JESUS RIGHT? THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL

Abstract

Did the apostle to the Gentiles take the simple, ethical religion of Jesus and turn it into the complex, doctrinal faith of Christianity? Or, could it be that St Paul ‘hijacked’ early Christianity and, in effect, became the founder of an entirely new religion? The idea that the apostle to the Gentiles (and other early Christians) allegedly distorted the Jesus movement and created an entirely new and different religion from Jesus can be found in many publications today, from contemporary historical-critical academia in the critical branch of biblical studies to popular novels about Jesus and early Christianity (from Reza Aslan's book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code).