Coming in 2016: The Challenge of Paul

​Most of what we’ve been taught about the Apostle Paul is wrong. In the same way  radical Jesus was tamed into a transfigured being floating in the clouds, radical Paul has been historically defamed as a woman hater, a puritan, a homophobic, and sympathetic to slavery.

Someone asked Dom Crossan once after a lecture, “So, are you saying that if I want to know about Jesus, I have to know about history?” The eminent scholar smiled and said, “Duh, yeah!” You’re saying, “C’mon, that’s legend stuff.” Actually, no, it’s not; I heard him say it.

Want to know something about Paul? Do the history. Get ready for another Crossan Tour de Force, The Challenge of Paul, the next Faith and Reason DVD curriculum series, the sequel to the 2012 groundbreaking Crossan series, The Challenge of Jesus.

Just as he recast Jesus as a real-life historical figure, Crossan recasts Paul as the itinerate teacher who invited Romans and Jews into a life of resistance against Rome’s all too familiar program of economic exploitation and occupational violence.

Dom Crossan will excavate a genuine historical figure who saw the dreams of Jesus and set about to enact them. Old line liberals taught us to look squarely at the biblical traditions that the Church has enshrined since it’s founding. Progressive biblical scholarship takes us much deeper into the life of the first century missionary who imagined human community in which all people, Jews, Gentiles, male, female, slave and free — in other words, everyone, is invited to a real life common table around which everyone has enough.