Birmingham, England, Sep 15, 2009 / 01:04 am
Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham David McGough has criticized a new book by the atheist author Philip Pullman, saying that his contention that St. Paul invented the divinity of Jesus would not be held by any respectable scholar of Scripture.
Pullman’s upcoming book, titled “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ,” claims that St. Paul transformed the character of Jesus and bestowed divine attributes to a normal man through his “fervid imagination,” the Catholic Herald reports.
Bishop McGough responded to the claim, saying that there is no evidence that Paul influenced the Gospels.
“No respectable scriptural scholar would have anything to do with [Pullman's] theory," he said. “This implication ignores the fact that there was a living Christian tradition from very early on which involved re-telling the Gospel in an oral form.”