(For more info about the first 'Snapshots - Jesus through the Lens of History', click the book on the left)
Peter, Paul . . .and Mary?
Let’s start with Peter. . .
Say two individuals are applying for a job representing a prestigious company. Both are dressed clean and neat. The first one speaks with precise, carefully enunciated words that bring to mind yachts, European vacations and the best of schools. The second mumbles, struggles with vocabulary and uses idioms and slang straight out of the inner city. The first seems upper class, the second ‘gangsta’ material. Nothing else is known about these two individuals except their appearances. Who would likely be hired?
The second individual is initially the accepted quick view of how Peter the apostle of Jesus looked to the world around him. So grab you cameras and let’s go back to the first century and catch a few shots of this man.
Here is a fisherman by profession – but is this the low end on the totum pole of career choices? The remains of a fishing boat from that time period has been found and it is made of expensive woods and need at least twelve sailors to handle it. Hmmm…maybe Peter was a business owner with income, mortgages and employees. Hold on though! New archeological finds suggest that he may have lived in a large, Roman style house with several rooms surrounding an inner courtyard. His home, in which Jesus often stayed, was in the Galilee and the city of Capernaum, a cross roads for culture and money dealings – even though the high and snooty considered this a place filled with uneducated hicks having ‘no class. His way of talking and carrying himself is colored by his home town, and follows him throughout life, causing ridicule and disbelief in others when he wants to impress and be taken seriously. Yet, Jesus chooses him as one of his disciples and trusts him with his precious teachings.
New Testament writers, like us all, love to make things pretty and just a little glorified. Yet, Peter is remembered asking questions and even arguing with Jesus. He fails and then once again pulls himself up by the saddle straps to pledge undying loyalty. These human faults are what we are asked to remember, and perhaps take heart from. Take a quick peak in our last “Snapshots’ album at the photos we took in the Garden of Gethsemane? When push came to shove, and the Temple soldiers came and took Jesus to the elders for trial, Peter really screwed up. He denied knowing Jesus, not once, but three times. How human, but how guilt shattering for Peter!
Yet, Jesus understood this humble man, loved him and even said he would be the rock on which his teachings would go forth into the world. Jesus changes his name from Saul to Paul, because Paul means ‘rock’. And so it was. After Jesus was gone, we can take some clear snapshots of Peter standing tall with renewed faith and commitment leading the apostles, the hundreds if not thousands of followers in Jerusalem, and sharing the responsibilities as an elder in this new Jewish sect that will eventually be called Christianity.
Moving forward in time we can take a few more shots of Peter helping to steer this unwieldy conglomerate of communes. We will find him at odds with a newcomer on the scene called Paul. (We will cover him in the next section.) But that is the least of his problems for the moment.
Peter is arrested and beaten by order of the Temple priest for his insistent teachings about Jesus, the healings he performs in Jesus’ name, and worst of all because of the accusations he hurls against the powers that be for taking the life of the true messiah. And with every stumbling block he faces and then conquers, large numbers of Jews continue to follow behind him. He walks a tightrope trying to help lead this burgeoning Jewish sect, and he totters frequently. There is so much for him to be concerned about – structuring a whole new concept of communes sharing fairly all their worldly goods with each other; the ugly discrimination in their ranks between Greeks and Jerusalem Jews; then the thorny issue of including gentiles and, horrors of horrors, should these adult male gentiles be circumcised as proper Jews or not?
Whew! This ain’t a pretty sight, but take a few snapshots anyway. This is just the beginning of the infighting about organizational structure and the differences in interpreting Jesus’ teachings.
By the end of Peter’s life, around 65 A.D., Peter is authoring two important letters to the Christian communes. Did he write them? Probably not with his own hand since, fisherman or not, during the first century individuals across the economic landscape naturally depend on experienced scribes to write for them. (But, more on the writing of the New Testament later.) And though the scribe’s job was to ‘pretty up’ what was dictated, Peter’s thoughts, commitment and desire to ‘stir up’ the congregations with the true memories of Jesus, by an original disciple, is clear and strong.
Peter wants to keep this staggering behemoth of a new church, struggling with doctrinal disputes, diverse religious interpretations, and the pull of a sexually loose society, on a righteous track even after his death.
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