Sublime

this general thrust, of a very Jewish Jesus who was nevertheless opposed to some high-profile features of first-century Judaism, seems to me the most viable one if we are to do justice, not just to the evidence of the synoptic gospels (they, after all, are easy game for any critic who wants to avoid their implications) but more particularly to the

The first was a young man called Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul.4 According to his own account, he was a Jew by birth who had been sent by the community to suppress the activities of the new sect of Christians, Jews who believed that the Messiah had come. On his way to perform his mission he experienced a conversion and became convinced that

Jesus must be understood as a comprehensible and yet, so to speak, crucifiable first-century Jew, whatever the theological or hermeneutical consequences.