In those days, he writes, there were no “Christians,” a term applied later, usually by their pagan opponents. Instead, followers of Jesus called themselves “brothers” or “the holy” or “the called.” There was likewise no institutional “church,” only informal “gatherings,” which took place in the name not of “Christ” but of “Messiah.” (“Christ” is a transliteration of “Khristos” — the Greek word for “Messiah” — which is a title, like “Lord,” not a proper name, which also explains why Paul did not refer to Jesus’ followers as Christians.) ....
Wills insists that Jesus and Paul both opposed “religion,” claiming that the worship of God was not something “based on external observances, on temples or churches, on hierarchies or priesthoods.” Both Jesus and Paul were, in fact, “killed by religion.”
Only in the Middle Ages, sometime before the ninth century, did the institutional church, with its “male monopoly” on “offices and honors,” decide that “a woman apostle was unthinkable.” To obscure the radical egalitarianism practiced by the founders of the faith, who believed that women could be “prophets in the gathering,” the Roman hierarchy had to engage in what Wills calls a “Soviet-style rewriting of history.” What most present-day Christians, and especially orthodox Roman Catholics, consider to be essential elements of the faith, he argues, must be understood as corruptions of Jesus’ and Paul’s intentions.
... In [the place of church institutions] he substitutes spontaneous devotion to God and neighbor — and commitment to the politically subversive view that “love is the only law.” So much for Christianity necessarily serving as a handmaiden of conservative politics.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/books/review/Linker.t.html. Retrieved 1/16/18
I will now give my opinion of the book after reading it. You can get the book at Amazon below:
The main message of Wills' book is that the apostles were emissaries (not hierarchical leaders); and prophets in New Testament times prophesied or declared a prophetic message. Prophets were not top down hierarchical leaders. Wills' also points out that their could be prophetesses in Paul’s Messiah Gatherings, and like the reviewer above points out, Paul's Jesus-follower assemblies were not "churches," as we use the term church today, but were "gatherings" and there was no official institutional church. Paul was not a Christian but a Jew with a mystical connection to Christ.
Reading chapter seven of What Paul Meant makes it clear that Paul did not intend to start a new religion and his Bible was the Old Testament, for there was no New Testament then. That alone is something most Christians today rarely think about, along with the implications of that fact.
In fact Paul might have rejected the idea of his epistles becoming scripture. He merely meant to graft the branch of the Gentiles onto the trunk of Israel. He focused on Gentiles because the mortal world was ending very soon in his mind. Paul merely formed a Christ-centered Jewish mystic sect not a new religion. Hence there is no "Christianity" (no "Church" or "Dogma") only spirit-possessed-Gentiles-Brothers/Sisters; and these Jesus-in-spirited ones met in houses or in shops, known merely as the ecclesia (meaning basically the gatherings of Christ-possessed Jews and Gentiles). These holy ones called Jesus Lord in opposition to calling Cesar Lord, and they lived a radical Christ-like lifestyle.
Wills argues that when Paul speaks of "the Jews" in a critical manner he most often means fellow Brothers in Christ, in this case Jewish Brothers (like Peter and James) who were advocating that the Gentile Brothers be circumcised. Paul was critical of the Jewish Brothers but was not anti-Judaism; as he himself was a Jew and praised Judaism and the Jewish Law as the holy trunk upon which the Gentile branches are grafted on.
The Jewish Law (Code) had merely been suspended with Christ's resurrection, and put on hold in order to inspire the Jews after seeing the Gentiles grafted in.
By location 328 of the Ebook version, Wills makes the convincing case the Paul believes he has seen the heavenly body of Jesus and longs to escape his mortal body, his flesh encasement, in order to fully embody the divine spirit-body in him that he inherited from Christ. Paul seeks to mystically disrobe from his fallible flesh to “put on” a new heavenly clothing; in other words he is seeking to join the immortal divine genus of Christ, by abandoning his Adamic-genus and fully becoming the Messiah-genus within him.
The practical implications of this is that he inspired generations of pagans/gentiles to embody a new humanity. Our modern society has benefited from Paul's vision of rising above our baser instincts and reptilian brain limitations and putting on the new human, Christ Jesus.
