Here is an much expanded version of some of what I presented at the Ehrman NINT conference on Paul over the weekend. it is quite long and goes deeply into many important texts, tailor made for a group such as ours, made up of those who have searched the historical sources on the rise of Christianity for collective decades!
In this lecture Tabor situates the absolute core of Paul’s “Gospel” message in his understanding of Salvation—but what does he mean by Salvation—from What, through What, and most important, for What? Is it merely justification, that is, rescuing one from sins through grace and forgiveness? Tabor argues that is only the first stage, but that Paul’s greatest idea has to do with God actually “Saving” the entire Cosmos—birthing it into its perfected spiritual destiny. He is creating a new “genus” of spirit beings in the universe—that is human beings made of dust who are transformed into spiritual bodies—Jesus being the first of many—with their “revealing” ushering in the entire process of cosmic salvation—essentially the new “birth” of the universe.
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