Too True to Be Legendary

As the first semester of school chasing the M.Div draws toward its close, here’s another dose of “Class Notes” blog-style. In intro to Apologetics, we were recently tasked with crafting a short argument paper that would argue against some of the reasons people explain away the gospel truth. I chose to discuss the categorization of legend, and how often the world might grant the gospel the status of being legend if only we compromise then that it isn’t truth and history. Enjoy!

Introduction

Legends can be fun because they grow with time.  If a story is worth being legendary, then only patience is necessary to see increased grandiosity with every retelling.  It is as if the story as simple history starts as a balloon.  Time provides helium to stretch and grow the balloon,  give it an embellished shape, and even appear to defy gravity.  Over time, while the physical material of the initial history represented in the balloon is still present, it is fair to say the object of the balloon with new properties of size and levitation has taken on a life of its own.  Legends as such, become grand indulgences built upon an initial element of truth.  This brings to mind an attack on the veracity of the apostle Paul which I remember seeing on Facebook last year.  It hinged on the premise that Paul was a deft charlatan, responsible for selling civilization into a legend of the work of the man Jesus into the deity of Christ.  Thus the charge here might be called “legend-crafting.”  In this paper I will argue that the apostle Paul lived and wrote history, as opposed to legend, to culminate in his contributions to the church via the New Testament in support of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

Analysis of Legends

According to J.P. Moreland et al in The God Conversation: Using Stories to Explain Your Faith, “Legends are short on details, long on drama.”  The example of the Alamo is provided to show cultural adhesion toward promoting virtue and valor may pridefully rebuke arguments from history that tell another story.  Colloquially, Texans and non-Texans alike often appreciate the rallying cry of “Remember the Alamo!” to effectively mean fight to the end, against all odds.  In that moral plateau, room for equivocating details or embarrassing facts often gets removed. Historians have contended against the legend with evidence that certain heroes died less defiantly than believed (Davy Crockett) or bore the marks of moral flaws that would tarnish their enduring valor (William Travis, Sam Houston and Jim Bowie).  With allowances for drama, and prejudice against moral ambiguity, the amount of time from event to recording also becomes an important detail for arguing veracity.  Turning to a different story, but comparable in its ubiquity, many Americans are still alive to describe their vivid memory of where they were when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Though his brief tenure in the White House received the branding of “Camelot”, the 61 years that have passed still represents a short enough time to prevent this assassinated leader of the free world from being recast as a carbon copy of King Arthur.  Historian A. N. Sherwin-White argued in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament that even two generations proved to be too short a time for legend to replace historical fact.  Thus, legends are often meat and potatoes for cultural formation, but they contain intrinsic characteristics and practical limits that disqualify some stories, particularly Paul’s accounts of the resurrected Jesus Christ, as being rebranded as legends from history.  

Paul in History and as History

Paul started life as Saul, born and raised in Tarsus (Acts 9:9-12, English Standard Version).  Tarsus was no backwater, rather it was a relatively prosperous and populous city in the Roman Empire with established culture and education.  As the capital city of Cilica during Saul’s time, it attracted many university intellectuals and was known for its famous and influential Stoic philosophers.  As the dominant philosophy in Tarsus, stoicism was difficult to escape, thus Saul’s upbringing with regard to self-control, rationality, and relationship was strongly influenced by stoicism.  Rudolf Bultmann asserts that the apostle Paul’s reasoning sometimes resembles Stoics’ arguments through the use of rhetorical questions, imaginary opponents, athletics illustrations, and life in general.  That Stoicism doesn’t carry a banner for authoring legend as much as it does for contributions in philosophy credits Paul the same for use of respective argumentative techniques in his writings.  A popular example from his epistle writings is, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.” (1 Cor. 9:24-25)

Where legends’ growth often crowds out the less flattering details, Saul/Paul proves an exception as a character in history and advocate for history.  Introduced into the church narrative as a sort of coat-check-boy for a young Saul while the mob stoned Stephen (Acts 7:58), the process for generating this account of Saul as accomplice to persecution, and later leader in persecution, preserves his initial role in ministry as antagonist.  As Luke is credited as author of Acts, his process is of careful investigation through witnessesses and reports.  This conscripts the character of Saul into historical reporting inconsistent with legend embellishments.  Later in Acts, now as the apostle Paul post-conversion experience in the presence of resurrected Jesus Christ, he gives a speech to Ephesian church elders in Miletus saying, “You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews.” (Acts 20:18-19)  Here Luke records him as a church leader, rather than legend-crafter.  He wishes to instruct the future church by recounting his own ministry among both Jews and Greeks and admonishing the leaders of the church in Ephesus.  One must be willing to go out on a limb and risk their own characterization for the sake of testimony to lead in ministry the way Paul did, which certainly leaves room for those to dislike him for the testimony and work he did.

To return briefly to the balloon analogy, through Saul/Paul we see that he serves as that medium for God to author history as that balloon.  But what of the question of passage of time?  Could there be enough from which legend might be the balloon’s helium to send Paul’s testimony aloft as legend?  As referenced earlier, historians argue that two generations of time is ample for history preservation at the expense of legend creation.  Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, recorded by Luke in Acts 9, can very easily be placed in time between 33 C.E. and 62 C.E., denoting the crucifixion in the former and Paul’s house arrest in Rome in the latter.  A window of 29 years suffices, by historians’ standards, suffices as a time sufficient to allow a historian (Luke) to interview and record the testimony of the apostle Paul encountering the post-ascension Christ as he stands in closer temporal and personal proximity to the event than even the gospel writers to their works.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul lists witnesses of the resurrected Jesus in when he attests to Jesus death and resurrection and subsequent appearance to Peter, the twelve, the five hundred brothers, James, all the apostles, and then to Paul himself (1 Cor. 15:3-8)  That this letter dates to A.D. 55 places it squarely within a plausible timeline for serving as history recording tied to numerous witnesses including himself.

Conclusion

In Acts 9, on the road to Damascus, the voice said to Saul, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4)  Christ, as Lord, authored history as opposed to legend, by providing a twist upon reality.  Jesus engaged Saul, prolific in persecution, to become perhaps the most prolific early missionary as the apostle Paul.  Though a visual and aural encounter with God might be the fodder for legend in today’s culture, in fact the process for recording this event as with others where the resurrected Christ appeared, satisfies numerous standards – details, self-deprecation, and timeliness – of history making.  While time might be the helium to levitate the balloon of a legendary story, in fact it was Christ resurrected that lifted up the truth of this history balloon so that the story would tell like no other.

[1]  J.P. Moreland, Tim Muehlhoff, R. Lee Strobel. The God Conversation: Using Stories and Illustration to Explain Your Faith (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 90.

[2] Ibid., 90.

[3] Ibid., 94.

[4] Quency E. Wallace. “The Early Life and Background of Paul the Apostle.” Journal of Biblical Theology 2 (2): 141.

[5] Ibid., 144.

[6] Walter A. Elwell & Robert W. Yarbrough. Encountering the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2013), 194.

[7] John-Christian Eurell. “The Speeches in Acts and the Ideological Agenda of the Work.” Neotestamentica 55, no. 2 (2021): 316

[8] Thomas H. Olbricht. “The Apostle Paul: A Review Essay.” Restoration Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2019): 108.

[9] William Lane Craig. “The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus.” in Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Khaldoun A. Sweiss and Chad V. Meister (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2012), 363.

[10] Michael P. Middendorf and Mark Schuler. Called by the Gospel: An Introduction to the New Testament (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2007), 150.