It Quacks Just as Loud

Errors of the usual sort abound, such as the claimed rivalry between Peter and Paul and James and Paul, failure to recognize passages like 1 Cor. 14:33-35 as Paul quoting opponents [215], and the dating of the Acts 15 council after rather than before Galatians 2 (as well as numerous other errors covered in the same article). More prevalent though are Chilton's usual baseless creative readings in which he reads "between the lines" of the texts, even to the point of claiming the text covers up the truth that his rampant revisionist genius has discovered between the lines that aren't there (even as he hypocritically criticizes another scholar, Becker, for "invent[ing] readings of Paul in order to contradict Acts"! [32]). It is to this end that Chilton makes Paul a virtual outcast from the circle of Peter and James, and supposes that Barnabas and Silas were sent along with Paul to try to keep him in line, but failed. Silence in Acts again and again is taken as evidence of a coverup, silence which Chilton obligingly fills in with whatever suits his premise. For example, Paul is an Athens without Timothy and Silas, according to Chilton [158], because Silas and Timothy decided "they could not work in the same town with [Paul]" and so they "shipped him out"! How odd that Chilton's Paul, so stubborn and unmoved by others in most cases, here when it is convenient for Chilton goes without a whimper to Athens just because Silas and Timothy (a younger man, at that!) say so!

Rabbi Paul is thus like its predecessor, a work of speculative fiction and psychological quackery at best, and it is little wonder it comes from a popular press like Doubleday rather than a credentialed, scholarly press like Fortress or Eerdmans. We can only hope that by the time Chilton's next victim is set (Peter? John?) his internal organs will have gotten themselves back into their proper places.