5: “Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe” Part Two

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF ROBERT ORLANDO
AUTHOR TALK HOST: RONALD WAY
BOOK TITLE: APOSTLE PAUL: A POLITE BRIBE

TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW CLICK HERE.

 

 

 

Ron Way:

Hello everybody. This is Ron Way for Author Talk and Rising Light Media. What a pleasure it is for me to introduce to you once again, Part Two of my interview with an author that I think has written one of the most insightful and important books on the apostle Paul that has been written in the last decade. I really liked this book and I think it’s an important book and you should be reading it. His name is Robert Orlando, and the name of the book is “Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe”. The book is published by WIPF and Stock.

It is one of the finest books I’ve ever read on Paul. I’ve read a lot of scholarly works. Robert does something different because he did a movie on this whole thing. You know movie makers, they try to pull together what is a real live scenario because it has to make sense once it’s on the screen, when you’re watching the life of a human being. Paul was real. Paul was trying to spread the word of his vision of Jesus.

In Part One we talked a bit about the fact that the original apostles, followers of Jesus who walked with him and talked with him through the dusty fields et cetera, must have been just shaking their heads because Paul had a completely different vision of Jesus than they did. That caused a lot of angst amongst the original Jerusalem church, who were called the followers of the Way or, as we said in the last episode, the Poor.

Now Robert, as we ended the last segment, you explained the difference in how Paul, and James and the Jerusalem church were trying to come to some accommodation. The money coming in probably helped. He said, “Look, I want to support you guys,” and it appears that they needed the financial help, and so they kind of went along with Paul having a different vision. But, at some point that changed. I just want to follow up and move forward a decade, with what you call a “polite bribe.” Let’s jump forward those ten years, and it’s getting close to him having to bring the second installment of money back to Jerusalem and he’s having some trouble. He’s trying to organize it, and this ends up in him actually personally accompanying the money, coming to the temple with his group of Gentile Christians, and it ended his life. Pick it up about two-thirds of the way through Paul’s mission, and let’s talk about raising the money and coming back to Jerusalem that last time.

Robert Orlando:
Well we estimate that happened in the late fifties AD, maybe early sixties at the latest. We know it happened, most scholars would agree it happened, again, toward the end of his life. It raises some interesting questions, because it is at Romans 15:30-31 that the book starts on (and our film starts) as he says he has a lot of anxiety about going back to Jerusalem because he wonders whether, one, his collection will be accepted; and number two, he wonders whether he’ll survive the ordeal at all. Those two verses say a lot right there because if you date 2 Corinthians prior to that, that’s when here you could also see in print, it’s 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 where he’s again being embattled because there are other Jewish apostles who are accusing him of embezzling the collection and using it to buy the honor of the apostles back in Jerusalem.

We don’t have the time now to build this out, but the bottom line is it seems to be coming to a crescendo that he’s got to address the fact that at some point earlier a collection was in place and he feels betrayed, and though he feels betrayed and in spite of the fact he’s betrayed, he’s going to go back to Jerusalem and fulfill the mission which means bringing the collection to the temple.

If you want to give some credibility to Acts at this case, with Agabus, the prophet who actually meets him, I believe it’s in Caesarea, and has him for dinner and then warns him, “Do not go to Jerusalem. You’ll be killed.”, and Paul reacts very violently to him and says, “How dare you tempt my faith. I’m now going to go. I’m a martyr. I’m going to go to Jerusalem regardless of what the circumstances are because Christ has told me this collection is part of his plan, his mission.” I’m using my words here. “Therefore nothing will stop me.” In a way, he’s made his mind up that bringing this collection is the penultimate act of his entire life. Now again, as a dramatist and filmmaker, when you see someone taking such extreme action, your ears and eyes go right to it and say why is this of such import to this man and then you track back. He’s going back into Jerusalem to bring the collection. He doesn’t know what will happen, but he knows in any case he has to do it and we see how it plays out.

Ron Way:
I don’t want you to stop there because you have broken a lot of ground in my own mind. You intimated, or at least posed the question, whether the Jerusalem church was complicit to a degree in Paul’s arrest. I’d never thought of that. Walk me through that. What was going on in your mind that you came to that potential conclusion?

Robert Orlando:
Well, as a storyteller and a scholar combined, I raise the questions first. What makes sense here? What would be a likely outcome and who would be involved? The who, what, where’s of good storytelling. I said to myself, okay let’s look back and interpret the events that occur later. Let’s start with the result, because we know what the result is.

Ron Way:
Sure.

Robert Orlando:
He winds up going to the temple and almost being assassinated by his accusers. There’s no support, or intervention by anyone from the Jerusalem church. There’s no other apostles around saying, “Wait, wait. Paul’s a good man. We don’t agree on everything but he’s a good man.” He doesn’t have any friends. That’s number one. Number two, if we back up a little bit to an earlier point, it says that James suggested that Paul take the money, whether in part or in whole, and use it to pay the Nazarite vows for seven other men. Right there, if you don’t read too deeply into it, it means he’s not outrightly embraced the cash offering that Paul brings, but he’s looking for a way to embrace it.

Robert Jewett says in my film, he says it was kind of a… What was the term he used? Like an early laundering scheme as a way to cover up the fact that gentile money needed to be covered up to be entered into the temple. It was a way that James might have been possibly looking for a way that it would be acceptable to enter the temple. That’s another piece on the ground.

As you look back into Acts, and to answer your question from earlier, Acts later sneaks in… A lot of scholars have brought this up in my screenings and my book tour is that if you go to Acts, I believe it’s 24, you later see when Paul is speaking before the Procurator Felix and he says to him, “I only came. I wasn’t a troublemaker. I didn’t come to the temple as trouble. I was bringing an offering.” He even points to the fact that, in light of Felix, he’s trying to justify the fact that he wasn’t looking for trouble. He meant well. He was just trying to show unification. Here’s the key line when Felix says, “I kept bringing Paul in and out of my chambers hoping he would give me a bribe.”

I thought this is so tight now. I wasn’t even looking for that. This came up after the film was made and the book, but it says so many things because hidden in the language here is Felix, and he expects Paul to be capable of bribing, which means he’s not an impoverished man but a man of means, which is interesting, and the fact that he must have heard, because he was brought to prison as a result of the melee that happened in the temple just, what was it, months earlier? Or maybe a year earlier. It’s in the air, the idea that there were bribes. There’s the temple. There’s betrayal. There’s conflict still going on politically.

Ron Way:
We’re speculating here Robert, but when you envision what happened; Paul shows up at the temple and he’s probably bringing along the entourage that were gentiles, which were not allowed beyond a certain place in the temple. There are signs in Greek, in Latin, and Hebrew that say that if you pass this line you will be killed, and it’s their fault, they have been pre-warned. Yet, he brings these people into the temple grounds anyway, and it’s a large group of gentiles. He is asking for trouble. I can just see it causing a ruckus right then and there. Yet you imply that maybe the temple elite were tipped off, and perhaps even the crowd was tipped off that Paul and his entourage were coming, by maybe even the church members that didn’t like, or even hated Paul.

Robert Orlando:
I think about, let’s put ourselves in James’ place. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s trying to find a way to work this out and he’s on Paul’s team still as a fellow apostle. Why does he not just take the collection and tell Paul to go. “Quick! Get out of here. Get on a boat and get out of here.”

Ron Way:
Yeah, why didn’t he? I agree.

Robert Orlando:
I’m saying this is what… circumstantial evidence doesn’t mean it’s not true. It may be less true than being able to point to an exact date or historical fact, but it’s not less, it may be less true by degree, but it’s not not true that I’m saying why didn’t James just say, “We’re so glad you did this. We still want to be part of your ministry, but go back where you came from. There’s trouble at the temple.” James would have had to know what was going on in the temple. He was so influential in that movement. The fact that he existed as a Jewish Christian within a Jewish community meant that he had to have inroads or be accepted by the larger Jewish community.

Ron Way:
You are referring to James the Just.

Robert Orlando:
Yea, James. Both James, Peter, John, anyone who lived and worshiped there. That brings up another point. If they fundamentally agree on the essentials of Christianity, mainly the meaning of the Messiah, the coming of the Kingdom, then would it be that far out of reach for James and the others to embrace the fact that Paul was saying that there’s a movement among us that would mean that Christians don’t have to be Jews? Would that be such a stretch? They would allow him to kind of lead himself to that kind of trouble, or would they try and save him and say, “No one’s going to embrace this?” As a matter of fact, I think James says, “People hear that you’re telling them they don’t have to follow the Law of Moses.” Well, if he knows he’s in trouble, why not stand in for him? Why don’t walk with him in solidarity into the temple?

I think this raises… for me there’s the raising of the questions in these cases is important, but what I want to know, what I’m trying to point out the most is that this idea that Luke later comes up with that there’s this harmonious one faith to the other, God, to Jesus, to the apostles, to Paul. It’s just not reality when you start looking at the details of history. Even Luke’s attempt to whitewash this history or put a good face on it if you will, you still have to dig a little deeper. When you do, you start to see at every moment Paul is being confronted and they’re not agreeing with him. The question becomes how much of this is Paul’s, how much is he on his own in a sense, and how much is he really sharing with the other apostles?

One other question is, and if Jesus was around at that time, who would he have supported if he was around? Would he have supported Paul or would he have supported James and the other faction?

Ron Way:
Absolutely. It’s something you have to ask all the time. I think you say someplace in your book, I’m sure they were thinking to themselves, if Jesus was God, he must’ve known that Paul was going to be coming. How come we have to take orders from this guy? I want to read something from your book Robert before we get to a close. It’s the only quote I’ll read here, but I think it was very, very insightful. Referring to Paul…

“We might say today that he was a man driven by his own demons. He was always right. He was the number-one apostle. He did not need Jesus in the flesh because he knew him in the spirit world and his untested personal visions were what single-handedly informed his gospel. ‘The gospel I preach to you is no human invention. No man gave it to me. No man taught it to me. It came to me as a direct revelation from Jesus Christ.’ Galatians 1:11,12. The man was driven but he thought he was the super apostle.”

Robert Orlando:
If you take a step back, and I’ll try and conclude on this, but I think you have to come up with there’s two propositions you can embrace. If you’re coming more from the traditional perspective, and not this new narrative that I’ve constructed from the history, you’d have to believe that God’s intentions were either (after the generation of Jesus, moving toward his apostles), were either misguided, misunderstood or not realized, however you want to characterize that. God, Jesus, needed to go to a deeper bench, so to speak, as one person said, and find Paul to then contradict everyone else and say, “You know you guys didn’t get it right and I’m …”, that’s what you have to believe from a traditional perspective.

Ron Way:
That’s correct.

Robert Orlando:
If you’re coming more from a historical, critical perspective, which is where I’m coming from in my book. I’m not trying to sell theology. I’m just trying to make sense out of history, out of story. I’m saying you have to begin to question how much of Paul’s vision was Paul and how much was coming from the original legacy of God, Jesus, and the original apostles.

Ron Way:
Yes. I struggle with Paul. I’ll be honest with you, because what we have, in my humble opinion, what we’ve brought forward, is the surviving form of Christianity, which is Paul’s because the Jerusalem church was cleaned out. In 70 AD the Romans came through Jerusalem, and if the church still had a presence there, or a place there, they were probably killed, hauled off into slavery, or scattered to the wind. What we’re left with is Paul’s churches, which were the strong churches outside of Jerusalem. After that point, nobody wanted to be associated with the Jewish portion of the faith. I think that we’ve skewed the faith for two thousand years away from the actual elements of history, and this was done by a very, very vociferous voice for Jesus, based on his own visions, which was Paul. He says, “Even if the angels came down and said something different, it’s not true. I’m the one. I’ll tell you what to believe.” I find this so egotistical.

Robert Orlando:
I think you could also, just to broaden the conversation a little bit, you could argue that Paul is bringing Rome as much into Judaism as he’s bringing Judaism into Rome.

Ron Way:
Absolutely. Good point.

Robert Orlando:
Let’s be fair here. It’s not like the rest of the world is non-religious. It’s religions were all competing for the marketplace. The Roman roads opened the door, like the telephone, like the computer today, and it’s men like Paul who get to speak to us. First of all, they’re educated outside of the core and then they come back in with new idea. In a way, you could argue that it’s the nation idea of God, right? The ethnarch idea of God breaking out into the universals of the new world of the Greco-Roman period, and Paul is a conduit and he’s doing both. He’s working it both ways. He’s conforming of the Messiah to make sense to a Greco-Roman world with retired soldiers and poor Greeks. At the same time he’s bringing in language and things that would only fit, that could only work if you speak those languages for the new audiences.

I don’t see him as, maybe I’m being too complex here, but I don’t necessarily see him as a good guy or a bad guy but a man of his time. I do see him as the stubborn visionary, absolutely. I don’t think he’s listening to anyone. I think that’s, if you want to say a fanatic or whatever it is, but he would even tell you that. He was proud of being a fanatic. Again, as the point of the storyteller, I have no theological bones to pick. What I’m merely saying is that the theological explanation that’s been around for two thousand years is unsatisfying intellectually. I always kind of had that feeling about it and that thought about it, but it was only when I dug into it I said can I sequence something that’s more intellectually satisfying, that makes more sense from a human perspective? The human drama at the heart of the. That’s what I think I’ve accomplished.

Ron Way:
Robert, we’ve reached the end of our time. I want to thank you so terribly much for taking time out of your busy day. It was so enlightening and I do appreciate this. Folks, if you were sitting here in the studio with me, you would see that I’ve probably got thirty, forty tabs on my copy of the book that we never got to. The book is going to be a fascinating read for you because, again, he is not writing as a scholar… He is a scholar, but he’s writing in a way that you can understand it and I can understand it. He writes so clearly that you can visualize it. I really highly recommend his book.

Again, the name of the book is Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe by Robert Orlando. The book is published by WIPF and Stock. Also check out Robert’s website for his movie with the same title. Go to www.apolitebribe.com . You can even download it and watch the trailer there for free.

Thank you Robert for being with us. I am so grateful that you joined us today. Folks, this has been a fun, fun day for me. I hope you enjoyed it too. For Author Talk and Rising Light Media, have a wonderful day.