Paul, the Man Who Created Christianity

A History of Mankind (262)

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Paul is the great popularizer of Jesus' message: fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have been attributed to Paul; and seven of his epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder.

To some extent, Paul relates to Jesus a bit like Plato does to Socrates: like Socrates, Christ didn't espouse a doctrine, but was a provocateur who performatively staged an approach to life by means of pragmatic paradoxes; like Plato, Paul then articulated these provocations into a consistent doctrine.

He's not a man whose role has been found to be significant post-facto: in his own lifetime, he was widely seen, at least by those in the know, as a mover and shaker. This explains why, in 2 Thessalonians, Paul cheekily tells his readers not to take any notice of letters fraudulently ascribed to him: clear evidence that there was a cottage industry of fake Paul writings, some of which may have sneaked into the canon.