The First Christian: Saint Paul's Impact on Christianity

#1051
Title: The First Christian: Saint Paul's Impact on Christianity
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Macmillan
Year: 1983
192 pages

Karen Armstrong's relatively early work on Paul. Armstrong usefully explains the different purposes of biography or hagiography (as she did in her life of Buddha) and articulates reasons why Paul was disinterested in the historical Jesus. She describes the role of his visions and mission to the gentiles, not neglecting his possible epilepsy but seeing it as a potential mechanism for sacred hallucination.

Useful for filling in around and at times for contrasting with Reza Aslan's Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.