Final Essays for REL3770 Writings of Paul, taught by Dr. Peter Bekins
Final Essays for REL3770 Writings of Paul, taught by Dr. Peter Bekins
Fall 2018
One major discrepancy between Acts and Paul’s letters lies in how Peter says, in Acts 15:7, that he was the first to go to the Gentiles: “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers.” This is a chronological problem, since Paul says that he was the one to bring the gospel to the gentiles: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being” (Gal. 1:15-16).
Other chronological issues lie with Paul’s call narrative. Acts portrays Paul as traveling to the town of Damascus: “Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him” (Acts 9:3). However, Paul (a primary source) describes his whereabouts during his call as being in Damascus the whole time (and not traveling to it) as he says, in Galatians 1:17 that “I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.”
Another interesting chronological problem between Acts and Paul’s letters is that Acts describes Jerusalem as being the home base for where Paul conducted his persecution of the church: “That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem…But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house” (Acts 8:1,3). However, Paul writes in his letters that he “was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ” (Gal 1:22), which is odd if Paul was actively going from house to house persecuting Christians in Judea because this would be a very public thing with Paul’s face very visible to the (probably running) Christians.
Paul, in Acts, does not sound like he spent three years in Damscus before he went to Jerusalem. After his vision/call experience in Acts, Paul “declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea” (Acts 26:20). However, in Galatians, Paul makes a point to say that he did not “go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me” (Gal 1:17) and instead says that “after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas” (Gal 1:18). Acts makes it sound like Jerusalem was more quickly visited, not mentioning three years (a significant chunk of Paul’s missionary life).
The heart of this question lies in how Paul could be said to have had a “realized eschatology”—the idea that the “boom”/crisis even has not happened yet but that you can still realize the benefits, for all intents and purposes, of the age of peace and justice. Paul says that we should not (rather cannot) “continue in sin” so “that grace may abound” because “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Rom 6:1-3). Romans 6:4 emphasizes how we have a current benefit to our relationship with Christ, saying that we were “buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father…we too might walk in newness of life.” The “newness of life is in the present tense, like you don’t have to wait for the future to have this newness of life that one might expect in the age of peace and justice. However, you still have to wait for your eventual resurrection body (1 Cor 15:42). The idea that sin had “dominion over you” (Rom 6:14) before you were a Christian is important to Paul, as you no longer have to “obey your passions” (6:12) but can instead “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life…as instruments of righteousness” (6:13).
John has a similar realized eschatology, like in the famous John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” This says that if you believe now you will have the eternal life, like it is not part of the future anymore.
Romans 6-8 talks about being ‘righteoused by faith’ and sets up the discussion of domains. “Righteoused” is not an actual word but refers to how there is no anglo-saxon verb form of righteous (but there is a verb in the Greek, dikaisun). Therefore, the French word justify is used, but this does not capture the entire original meaning as well as “righteoused” does.
Romans 5:21 says, “so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The use of “dominion” is what prompts the discussion of a shift in domain by theologians. In the old life you are a slave to sin, but through being “justified by faith” (Rom 5:1) your one master (only one master) can be switched from sin to God (who provides eternal life). The discussion of only having one master is in Romans 6, like when Paul says, “when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness” (verse 20). The “being free in regard to righteousness” means that you were not under its identity domain.
This solves the problem with the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God by making the key determinate for salvation whether you had faith in God and were considered “righteoused.” This changes the key determinate from being by birth (that you were born into Israel, the people of God, which covenantal nomism has a strong component of) to faith. He supports this by referencing Abraham in Genesis 17 and how his faith was “reckoned” to him as “righteousness,” that “the purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them” (Rom 4:11). This plays into the idea that when you have faith in Christ you are “set free from sin…[and] have become slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:15-18), switching identity domains so that the identity of being in God’s people now does not lie in the exclusive birth-in-Israel requirement but is now open to all through the having of faith.
Early Jews who followed Jesus believed in one God (1 Cor. 8:4—"there is no God but one”), yet Jews generally despised polytheism, and the worship of Jesus and their traditional God the father would seem very close to polytheism. Also, early Jews-turned-Christian didn’t make a big deal about it in their writings. So, a solution has been proposed for how Jesus’ followers casually integrated a 2nd divine being into their Jewish monotheism, indicated by passages like Phillipians 2:6-11 that almost suggest a worship of Jesus (high view): “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited” (verse 6).
It is possible early Christians thought that Jesus wasn’t actually on the same level as God (Eisenbaum’s view) but was a chief mediator with all spiritual powers of God the Father (yet not on the same level). This is possible because “Lord” is just a word showing great respect and not inherently meaning ‘God the father.’ Paul consistently separates Jesus and the Father, saying “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:7). It is possible that messiah can refer to any king or, like David, and that Jesus is considered by Paul in a chief, divine mediator role. In Gal 1:1 it says, “Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead,” implying that God might have the power to do things while Jesus is the means and conduit. Paul’s prayers also seem to go to God and not Jesus: “I thank my God every time I remember you” (Phillip. 1:3).
The two-tablet approach is an attempt to understand Paul’s thinking in regards to how the law is now obsolete but how it is still important to behave morally (according to principles set forth in the law). Some later Christian theologians have tried to explain this in terms of a distinction between ritual and moral law (the sabbath, dietary laws, and circumcision being ritual), but this framework is quickly rejected by most scholars because this framework would just not have existed in that time.
The two tablets approach to the Torah revolves around the historical practice of making two tablets when a decree was given so that one could be public and the other kept safe. A somewhat common conception in Paul’s time was that one tablet (the first 5 listed in exodus 20:1-11) had the laws that directly related to human-divine connections and that the other had those related with human-human relations (the second five in exodus 20:12-17).
This relates to Paul in how Paul may be disregarding Torah and the first tablet but keeping the second tablet ideas he discusses in Romans 13:8-10 here: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery… murder… steal…covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Adultery, murder, stealing, and coveting are all addressed here, which would all relate to human-human interactions, and Paul explicitly says that the law is being fulfilled (so abolishing and fulfilling the law can coexist in his paradigm). So, some have said that Paul is disregarding tablet 1 (which has the Sabbath rules) and thereby no longer going by the laws of Torah.
The idea that “love one another” is a summation of the second tablet was a common Hellenistic Judaism idea, seen in Tobit: “and what you hate do not do to anyone” (4:15).
The idea that some part of God’s law is being disregarded by Paul (as in the idea that tablet 1 is no longer important) can help make sense of the very negative language Paul uses in regards to the law, saying “For ‘no human being will be justified in his sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). He also says that “a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (Rom 3:28), indicating that some part of the law is obsolete (which proponents of the tablet view would say is the first tablet). This provides some explanation, but does not do it perfectly, as the major problem with this tablet view is that “you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3) is included in the first tablet, which would be the one being discarded, but Paul certainly wants to keep this idea in his communities (1 Cor 8:4).
Purity in a Hellenistic Jew’s mind refers to the notion that the universe is, at rest, chaotic and that a purity system allows you to restore things to order again. This is separate from morality, as death, birth, and menstruation would all fit into this system (contribute to disorder). Paul talks about maintaining purity within his Christian community for the sake of being acceptable to God so that he can inhabit our presence. For example, in Romans 12:1, Paul says, “by the mercies of God…present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Without a temple in this new way of connecting with God, Paul emphasizes how our bodies are temples and that they must stay holy: “for God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1 Cor. 3:17). This is because the number one concern for purity for a Hellenistic jew was not an individual’s legal status but rather the temple and that the people needed to be pure so that God’s presence could inhabit it. Paul echoes the desire for them to be “pure and blameless” in Phillipians 1:10.
Paul uses this purity language to inspire people to be moral (to not sleep with a prostitute) so Paul does not abolish the old system of purity entirely (though some older theologians might claim that the old system of purity was superceded). In 1 Cor 6:15-20, Paul interestingly does not say that prostitution is immoral, but rather says that since you are one in Christ you are basically joining Christ with a prostitute, which is indicative of a purity mindset (not a moral one in this case).
Paul’s fundamental problem is that his own Jewish people are not flocking to this idea of Jesus being the prophesied Messiah (Rom 9:1-5), which seemed that potentially “God’s word had failed” (Rom 9:6). He solves this problem by saying that there was an age of law and an age of faith. Paul says in Romans 9:30-10:4 that if you lived within the age of law, followed the covenants, lived in God’s community, and checked all the boxes, then you were fine (in the age of law). However, “Christ is the end of the law” (Rom 10:4), so now that it is the age of faith, “there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Rom 10:4), and what would have been fine in the previous era is now not fine because it was “based on works” (9:32), a “stumbling stone” (9:32).
Paul uses supercessionism in his discussion in Romans 10 to free up the contradiction between his assertions that the law is fundamentally too hard to follow, that it is “veil[ed]” as he mentions in 2 Cor. 3:14, and a seemingly contradictory statement by Moses—“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away” (Deut 30:11). Paul uses supercessionism to make the claim that the law that the verses Deut 30:11-14 (see verse quoted at the end) said needed to be brought down from heaven and up from the abyss was actually referring to needing to “bring Christ down [emphasis added]” (Rom 10:6). Paul was saying that that passage was previously correctly interpreted, but now that the age of faith has come then those words should be interpreted in a new light (in regards to Jesus) and that faith in him takes the place of and supersedes law in this new era. With this analogy Paul admits there is righteousness in the law, something he didn’t yet do. This new paradigm is better according to Paul because it applies to all. When Paul uses “everyone who calls on the name of the lord to be saved” (Rom 10:13) he is quoting Joel 2:32 in a new light (in regards to Jesus).
Romans 9-11 may either be the climax of the Romans letter or the addendum, as his discussion in 9-11 revolves around Jews and their place in this new age and it comes right before chapters 12-15 which focus on proper behavior (the application section in a preacher’s sermon, an add-on) and chapter 16 which is a farewell. Some of the language in his personal notes suggests that some of his blood-line family is in the congregation at Rome (not a congregation he personally started), so this may suggest that he is talking to an exclusively Jewish audience (making chapter 9-11 the climax and most important part of the letter). This is the recent consensus scholarly opinion, and in support of this is how Paul uses language that suggests the gentiles are “other,” like Romans 16:4 when it says, “but also all the churches of the gentiles” (implying that the audience is not gentiles but Jews).
Deuteronomy 30:11-14: “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
The biggest piece of evidence against the pastoral epistles, in my opinion, is the varying use of vocabulary. Out of the 848 distinct words in the pastorals (1 Tim, 2 Tim, and Titus), over a third (306) are unique to the pastorals. This is not necessarily proof, though, since we talk differently to different people (as would Paul talking to pastors) and Paul used an amanuensis (so he/she could have used slightly different vocab at their discretion, though unlikely). However, 2/3 of the 306 words are used in second-century Christian works and don’t seem to belong to the first-generation Jesus movement. This still is not definitive, since we may just not have enough surviving documents from 1st century Christians who may have indeed used this vocabulary.
The problem is that when you compile the evidence it suggests the pastorals weren’t written by Paul, like with how “grammata” is used in 2 Tim 3:15-16 in a positive sense--“sacred writings that are able to instruct you”—but Romans (an undisputed Paul) uses “grammata” in a negative sense, referring to how “we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the spirit” (Rom 7:6). Also, in Paul’s writing “pistis” means “faith” as an action, like in Gal 2:15-16 where you are “justified not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ,” but in Titus 1:1 faith is tied into the knowledge of God’s truth and in Titus 1:13 you must “become sound in the faith” (referring to having good knowledge of the faith, not action like what Paul probably would have said). This knowledge of the faith implies a more developed, established Christian community that had semi-canonical letters they considered holy and could study.
Thessalonians has a glaring problem in how its author did not think that Jesus was going to come back soon, which Paul most certainly did. In 1 Thessalonians (undisputed), Paul says that “for the Lord himself…will descend from heaven…then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thess 16-17). The use of “we” and the use of “who are alive” suggests Paul thinks this event is going to happen in his lifetime, which is not what the author of 2 Thessalonians believes. In fact, this letter (2 Thess) references another letter (probably 1 Thess) sent to their church “as though from” Paul that the “day of the Lord was here” (2:2). 2 Thessalonians instead says to not be “shaken in mind or alarmed” as there are to be many events before Jesus’ coming, like an Antichrist-like “lawless one” (2 Thess 2:8) who will “take his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God” (2 Thess 2:4). This is a far cry from 1 Thessalonians’ “thief in the night” language (5:2). So, 1 Thessalonians (universally regarded as written by Paul) says the day when Jesus comes will be unexpected but the 2 Thessalonians author says that very specific signs must come to pass. Did Paul change his mind?
Probably not, as the author of 2 Thess says that Paul “told these things [about the Antichrist] when [he] was still with” them (2:5), which is very odd since Paul didn’t address and remind them of this in his first letter to their church, an authentic letter.
Bart Ehrman points out that there is also a signature issue as Paul basically says, in 2 Thess 3:17, that he had been dictating his letter to a scribe (who wrote most of it) up until the end when Paul wrote some with his own hand, signing it off. The 2 Thessalonians author goes on to say that this is “the mark in every letter of mine” (3:17), a falsity since none of his other letters end this way. The addition of this makes it seem like the author is trying to convince others that this letter is not a forgery (when in fact it is).
An honor-shame system is a concept in cultural anthropology that every community has a set of rules, like how a student and teacher should behave, where breakers of the rules get ostracized and excluded from the social group. This was the dominant system in Rome at the time of Paul, which helps explain places where Paul seems to give women an equal standing in the church as men and places where he doesn’t. For example, Phoebe is famously mentioned in the ending of Romans as a “deacon of the church” (16:1) with a male ending (even though there is a possible female word ending that could have been used in the Greek), making Phoebe a deacon that is not seen as secondary in any way. In the Roman honor-shame system, though, the norm is male dominance and female deference, so this would have brought shame upon the church for a women to be leading. However, when one interprets how Paul mentions that she was a “benefactor of many” (16:2), which means she was quite wealthy and of high social status, it becomes clear that this honor she has inherited through her birth in a socioeconomically well-off family would have offset any shame associated with her being a leader. So, in the context of an honor-shame system, Paul’s seemingly very egalitarian practice of letting a woman take a significant leadership role can be better understood as more in the context that she had a lot of money, making it allowable.
A place commonly viewed as being prohibitive of women in the church is in 1 Cor 11:2-16, which talks about how “any women who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head” (11:5). This can be better understood in terms of a honor-shame system by noting that it would have been shameful in their culture for a women to not be deferent to a man and be in a public space. Thus, Paul gives the option for women to shave their head (verse 6) and become celibate, giving them a nonbinary option that would mark herself as chaste and nonfemale (not bringing upon shame). This would have freed them to be in the public sphere since they don’t have a connection with a man (whom they would need to be deferent to). Thus, the seemingly contradictory stances Paul takes on women in regard to how some have leadership roles and others are prohibited to speak in public can be better understood in terms of an honor-shame culture.
Paul’s celibacy plays an important role in how Jesus and John the Baptist were also celibate. Paul had some personal issues with being considered relevant, especially since he did not actually walk around with Jesus while he was alive. This comes out in 2 Cor 11:5 where he says, “I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles” and where he says that “I worked harder than any of them” (1 Cor 15:10). So, being celibate, like two great idols of his and important figures in the Christian movement, would have helped him feel legitimate as an important figure in the movement, too.
One important aspect that Paul’s celibacy would have played in practical, every-day matters was that he would have been allowed more easily to stay in people’s houses while traveling. Would you allow some creepy man to live in your house if you thought he could try and assault your daughter or wife (bringing upon lots of shame in the Roman honor-shame culture)? It would be easier to let him shack up with your family if you knew he was not sexually active.
Paul seems to encourage his leaders in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 to be celibate, saying that “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided” (32-34). This language that being celibate would provide “unhindered devotion to the Lord” (1 Cor 7:35) seems to suggest that those who should have such deep devotion (his leaders) should likewise be celibate.
In later Pauline traditions, churches may have come to accept that the apocalypse was not close at hand, so it seems that marriage (something for the long-term, hopefully) is the norm within these communities. For example, in the pastorals, it is said that bishops should be “married only once” (1 Tim 3:2) and “must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way” (1 Tim 3:4). The mention of kids (preparation for the future) here is far from the language of the celibate Paul in 1 Corinthians, indicating the gradual change in later Pauline traditions (that the pastorals likely represent since they were likely written in the 2nd century). Your kids were who took care of you when you got older in the Roman world, so having kids means you may be preparing for the long haul.
Paul uses some material that very well may have been in the Q source. The strongest example is with the Lord’s supper, which Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 11:17-31. Paul recites how the supper was on the “night when he was betrayed” (verse 23) and included Jesus saying “this is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (verse 24). Also, Paul mentions that the cup is a “new covenant in [Jesus’] blood” (25). These three pieces of information are all echoed in Luke’s version of the Lord’s supper in Luke 22:19-20, which is interesting because Luke is a Gentile and would have come out of the Pauline tradition. According to the Q hypothesis, Matthew and Luke both used material from Mark’s gospel but also shared material from a Q source which Mark did not use.
One of the stronger bits of evidence for Q from Paul’s letters comes in his use of the “thief in the night” metaphor in 1 Thessalonians 5:2. Matthew and Luke both use this metaphor, but in different places. Matthew uses this saying in connection to the Olivet discourse (Matt 24:36-44) while Luke’s Olivet discourse (Luke 21:34-36) has no mention of the thief in the night. Instead Luke places it in the middle of his gospel (Luke 12:39-40). The fact that Matthew and Luke both mention this distinctive phrase in different places but Mark does not anywhere in his gospel is suggestive of a Q source existing (like the Q material had an independent existence of its own). The inclusion of the phrase in Paul’s work further corroborates a Q source, one that Paul may have known about and had access to (just didn’t mention or think of as a ‘collection’).
Paul may have used the slavery metaphor for several reasons. First, it is shocking, as slavery in the Roman world was looked down upon and was not something you wanted to be associated with. However, it would have grabbed attention in the way that Paul refers to himself quite frequently as a slave of Christ, like in Romans 1:1: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ…” Here, the word for ‘servant’ in greek is ‘doulos,’ or ‘δοῦλος,’ which means slave. A couple reasons he does this is that it implies exclusive ownership, reinforcing the idea that they are monotheistic, that they are under complete submission to God (and should then obey Paul’s moral teaching), and that they have access to the concept of the peculium, a concept in Roman society of how an owner would give a slave full access to their property to use as they please (they could do anything they wanted--they just didn’t have full ownership). Paul would corroborate this with Christians having access to the gifts of the Holy Spirit he describes in 1 Corinthians 12. Another option is that Paul describing himself as a slave of Christ shows how he is not doing his own will but God’s will and that he gives the gospel free of charge (and without a personal patron sponsoring him) because he does not want to be obligated to a man but to God. This idea is supported in 1 Cor 7:23 and Gal 1:10 where he says, respectively, “do not become slaves of human masters” and “am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval?”
Yet another reason Paul uses the metaphor is because you could pay a debt off in the Jewish world by selling yourself as a slave, so if Paul is thinking in an atonement framework (which he doesn’t reference often, just recites occasionally) then the metaphor would fit well (he now owes allegiance to God for paying for his sin).
Other traditions emphasize how Jesus was a substitution for the death they deserved. This tradition is parroted by Paul in 1 Cor 15:3: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” Mentions of an atonement idea are also in Gal 3:13, 2 Cor 5:21, and Rom 3:25, but Paul does not expound upon this idea. Paul talks extensively, though, about the domain shift previously discussed, indicating that other traditions may have emphasized the atonement idea more than Paul personally did (though Paul doesn’t disagree with this thinking since he repeats the ideas in his writings). One reason is that he may have thought that the idea of a sacrifice would not have been as well understood to the Greeks as it would be to the Israelites. Jews had extensively performed animal sacrifices for many years, and this ritual was tied into their national identity, something not true of the Greeks.
Paul and John share some significant similarities. John’s prologue and Paul’s Christology have very similar elements, as John says, “In the beginning, the Word was already there. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through him” (Jn 1:1-3). This plays into a personified idea of wisdom that was present at the time of creation in the Wisdom book (apocryphal). Wisdom 7:25 calls Lady Wisdom “a breath of the power of God” which is very similar to John’s idea that “all things were made through him” (Jn 1:3) and Paul’s own words describing Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). This suggests that John is influenced by Paul’s community (since John wrote later than Paul in the traditional dating) or that John and Paul had access to the same source document (Q?), as the synoptics do not use this Lady Wisdom reference.
Another similarity is that Paul and John both use a metaphor that involves Jesus being a life-giving entity one can be joined to. Interestingly, the synoptics do not use this metaphor. In John, Jesus says, “I am the vine. You are the branches” (Jn 15:5) while in Paul’s letter a similar horticultural analogy is used with the idea of grafting: “You are a wild olive branch. But you have been joined to the tree with the other branches. Now you enjoy the life-giving sap of the olive tree root” (Rom 11:17). This makes sense because Paul is saying that Jesus is what connects one with the true Israel, the people of God (and hence salvation).
A final similarity is that both John and Paul use the analogy of actually eating and drinking Christ’s body and blood (though Paul’s ideas are more mystical in nature than John’s). In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul talks about how the bread in the Lord’s supper is analogous to the manna the Israelites received and the cup is analogous to the water that came out of the rock. John uses the same analogy (just the bread part though, not the water) in John 6:58 when he says “this is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” The mystical sense that Paul talks about with how you become ‘righteoused’ by faith and have an identity in Christ (in the mystical sense), something Paul mentions a lot in Romans (like in Rom 6:3), has a strong parallel with John’s mystical eating and drinking of the body and blood of Jesus in John 6:53-58 (this is where the Catholic Eucharist idea comes from). This mystical sense is typically described in aspect to the Holy Spirit (pure knowledge is not enough). The mystical connection would have been much better understood in the Greco-Roman world that wasn’t as literal and post-Enlightenment as American society is today .