Evidence · Case 10 · Islam
Paul, Letter to the Galatians, chapters 1 and 2
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Paul writes that he met with Peter and James in Jerusalem and set his gospel before the leaders there, who affirmed his ministry. His letters date to roughly twenty to thirty years after the crucifixion, within living memory. Had he radically changed Jesus’ message, the original disciples would have had every reason to oppose him, yet there is no record that they did.
Sources
Objections & responses
- “There is no record that they opposed him” is an argument from silence, and the record we have is Paul’s own account. Of course Paul says the apostles endorsed him.
The record is Paul’s, and that should be said. Two things make it more than self-serving. Paul is writing to Galatians who had contact with Jerusalem-based opponents and could check his account, and he freely reports the Antioch conflict with Peter, which he would have omitted if he were sanitizing the story. Acts, written independently of Paul’s letters, confirms the Jerusalem council’s endorsement of his Gentile mission. Silence is not the only evidence here.
- Galatians 2 records a sharp conflict between Paul and Peter at Antioch, and there was ongoing tension between Paul and the Jerusalem church over the law. Doesn’t “the first apostles endorsed his message” paper over a real dispute?
The dispute was real. It was about whether Gentile converts had to keep the Jewish law, not about whether Jesus rose or who he was; Paul says explicitly that on the gospel itself the Jerusalem leaders added nothing to him. The Muslim claim is that Paul invented the divine, risen Christ, and the Antioch dispute is evidence against that, since it shows Paul and Peter arguing about table fellowship while sharing the resurrection message. A movement that fought openly about food laws and never about the resurrection tells you which one was settled.