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This Rock Volume 20, Number 6   July-August 2009     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   Woman of the 14th Century By Christopher Check   Was Catherine a Proto-Feminist?   Is It All True?   Further Reading   Did St. Paul Invent Christianity? By Carl E. Olson   Details, Details   A Doubter Finds His Faith Again   References and Resources   Truth Demands Charity-Not Mere Tolerance By Alice von Hildebrand   Locke: The Prophet of (Limited) Tolerance   Weird Things Happen: How Catholics Should Deal with the Paranormal By Fr. Dwight Longenecker   Aquinas and the Flying Nun   God's Grandeur By Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.   Damascus Road Atheists Are Closer to God Than They Think By Jennifer Fulwiler   By the Book The Case for Mary's Perpetual Virginity By Tim Staples   Eyes to See Mirror of Man By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told The Anti-Catholic's Trump Card By Robert P. Lockwood   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

Over the past few years a number of excellent works have taken up the topic of Paul as founder of Christianity and my main article draws heavily upon those detailed studies. Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? (Eerdmans, 1995), by David Wenham, is widely acknowledged to be the most thorough of the scholarly works on this topic. What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Eerdmans, 1997), by N.T. Wright is a good introduction for readers looking for a shorter, more accessible work. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Baker Academic, 2007), by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, an impressive work of scholarship with a strong apologetic focus, contains the chapter, "The ‘Silence’ of Paul? What, If Anything, Did Paul Know About the Jesus of History?" Finally, The Paul Quest: The Renewed Search for the Jew of Tarsus (InterVarsity Press, 1998), by Ben Witherington III, is a helpful introduction that emphasizes the Jewish character of Paul’s personality and theological vision.