the beginning of this project, I had thought that this was my chance to show how Paul had damaged Christianity and ruined the original, loving teaching of Jesus. Paul is an apostle whom many love to hate; he has been castigated as a misogynist, a supporter of slavery, a virulent authoritarian, and bitterly hostile to Jews and Judaism. When I started to study his writings in a first-century context, however, it did not take me long to realize that this was an untenable view.
