Recreating Christ Updates To Creating Christ With James Valliant: Paul, And The Post-War Origins Of Christianity: Season 2 Episode 3 The Pulling The Thread Podcast: Unraveling The Deeper Story! podcast

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Recreating Christ updates to Creating Christ with James Valliant: Paul, and the Post-War Origins of Christianity: Season 2 Episode 3

2d ago 1:28:22

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In this deep-dive episode of Pulling the Threads, host Jeramiah sits down with returning guest James Valliant to unpack groundbreaking updates to his controversial book Creating Christ. The conversation traces Valliant’s evolving views on the formation of early Christianity, with a particular focus on the Pauline epistles, the destruction of the Second Temple, and Rome’s role in shaping the New Testament narrative.

Valliant challenges long-held assumptions by proposing that much of Paul’s epistolary material—especially in Corinthians—was likely written after 70 CE, in the aftermath of the Jewish-Roman War. This re-dating undermines traditional mid-first-century timelines and shifts the lens through which we interpret early Christian redemptive mechanisms. If the Temple cult was still operational, a new sacrificial narrative centered on Jesus would have lacked the existential urgency that seems present in the texts. The destruction of the Temple, therefore, becomes a pivotal moment in the emergence of Christianity as distinct from Judaism.

Jeramiah brings a skeptical eye to linguistic dating methods commonly used in biblical scholarship, arguing that language is too fluid—and too easily manipulated—to serve as a reliable metric for textual chronology. Instead, both he and Valliant emphasize the primacy of physical evidence, or the glaring absence thereof, particularly from early communities like the Nazarenes and Ebionites. They argue this void may be explained by the Temple’s destruction and subsequent Roman suppression, resulting in a loss of key materials.

Valliant also reconsiders the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus’ Antiquities. Once seen as a later Christian interpolation, Valliant now believes, with support from scholars like Samuel Zinner and Ken Goldberg, that much of the passage may be original. This revision is bolstered by a stunning archaeological find: a 3rd-century mosaic referring to Jesus as God, discovered in a Roman military context. This suggests that some Christians, or at least proto-Christians, had a place in the Roman ranks before Constantine’s conversion.

Valliant explores the symbolic language of early Christianity—specifically the fish and anchor motifs. Valliant explains the anchor’s deep roots in Seleucid and Roman iconography, even tying it to Emperor Titus’ Messianic propaganda. He contends that the anchor, more than the cross, was the symbol of choice in early Christian catacombs and mosaics, a claim supported by references in Clement of Alexandria’s writings.

The two also examine the Flavian dynasty’s potential role in redacting and canonizing the New Testament in four distinct layers, each targeted toward different audiences and theological purposes. Valliant contends that the Gospels were crafted to reconcile diverging Jewish sectarian movements, while Paul’s letters laid the ideological groundwork for a break from Torah-based messianism. Jeramiah G argues that Marcion was instrumental in pushing Paul’s letters into the Christian canon, causing a rift between early Jewish followers of Jesus and the emerging Gentile church.

Hellenistic influences—including Enochian literature—also feature heavily in the discussion. Jeramiah notes that Paul’s epistles bear more in common with apocalyptic Enochian thought than with Pharisaic Judaism, indicating a theological lineage that bypassed mainstream Jewish beliefs of the time. The conversation touches on the Sadducees, the Dead Sea Scrolls community, and how each group’s eschatology may have informed early Christian doctrine.

The episode concludes with a critical look at how translation issues, missing original-language manuscripts, and interpretative biases have shaped our modern understanding of Jesus. Both Jeramiah and James agree: the historical Jesus—possibly more aligned with Torah-observant Ebionite teachings than the Greek Gospel portrayal—has been obscured by layers of redaction, theological agenda, and imperial influence.

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#Religion #Jeramiah Giehla #Historical #Jesus #Christianity #Textuality #Critics