But maybe, just maybe, their new plan might work. He goes ahead with the ritual of purification. He makes the declaration. (Those who suppose that the “real Paul,” being a good Protestant, would never have done anything like this have missed the point. Paul’s gospel did not make him opposed to the Temple and its sacrificial system. Just because he believed that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, that did not mean that following the Levitical code was now sinful.) The purificatory ritual takes a week—it must have seemed a very long week to Paul and his anxious friends—after which Paul and the
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