PAUL: The Greatest Story Never Told

Synopsis

Paul was not only a religious figure of exceptional power but a maker of history.

A likely epileptic, weak in stature, poorly spoken, he carried the deep scars of an outsider. Believers claim he was the greatest of all apostles. Critics say he was a charlatan and the great distorter of Jesus’ message. Others say he was the very founder of Christianity. But no one doubts his profound impact on western civilization.

Originally, a bitter enemy of the church, Paul never met Jesus the man, but was converted and led by visions. Moments of ecstasy gave him authority, challenged by Jesus’ closest apostles in Jerusalem, Peter, and Jesus’ brother James, who tried to prevent Paul’s message from reaching the Greco-Roman world. A contemporary of Jesus, Paul composed the only letters prior to the destruction of Jerusalem’s second temple in 70 A.D., a catastrophic event that forever changed Jewish-Christian status. His account remains our only link to Jesus before Israel’s existence under Roman occupation.

Astonishingly, without power of crown or sword, Paul, a self-proclaimed prophet of the "true" gospel, in defiance of his brethren, trudged the ancient roads, littered with poverty and death, proclaiming the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom and creating a spiritual earthquake that sent shockwaves through the Roman Empire’s divergent beliefs, races, and epochs, still reverberating today. It is Paul’s initial, missionary burst that shapes the early perception of Jesus and his eternal story.

Unlike Jesus himself, strictly a Judean reformer, never intending his message to travel outside of Israel, it is Paul who risked his life, claiming Jesus’ divinity, a spiritual Messiah, threatening Rome’s Son of God, Caesar, and his Good News (gospel) of peace through war, replacing the Emperor’s promised military utopia with a heavenly kingdom. And it is Paul who entered the hornet’s nest of Jewish controversy, preaching a lawless gospel of a universal savior to Gentiles.

In the end, Paul’s success was undermined by James and the others who opposed his message of freedom. His base of support was cut off, forcing him to labor as a tentmaker. His letters bear witness to a mission on the verge of collapse. And in a final act of good will, when he brought a collection to Jerusalem, he was accused of violating temple law and handed over to Rome.

Yet, in time, this failed, visionary’s message of a crucified Jew, raised from the dead, returning to be king, would consume an empire and eventually the western world.

"No one has ever created a biography or narrative of Christianity that captures the last 200 years of Pauline studies. Just the last 30 years alone would result in a profoundly different picture of Paul than the pre 18^th-century image. While there have been many books collectively that could fashion this new Paul, it has never been done in a story. When I set out in 2003 to make Paul: The Greatest Story Never Told, it was for this purpose." – Robert Orlando

Writer / Director Robert Orlando

Picture by Glen DiCrocco