Just Makin’ Stuff Up

That’s what an awful lot of what passes for “history” these days: people with advanced degrees and over-active imaginations spending their idle hours trying to come up with something shocking to say so that the world will notice them. Case in point: the chair of the history department at VMI, who thinks St. Paul may have born a resemblance to a certain Anglo secret agent. According to WTVY-TV in Alabama:

The head of the history department at Virginia Military Institute suggests that the Apostle Paul may have been spying for the Romans.

He may also have been looking for a good pastrami sandwich.

Rose Mary Sheldon, the co-author of “Operation Messiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity,” presented her thesis last week at the International Spy Museum in Washington.

She also gave her audience a preview of her next book, tentatively entitled Camel Droppings: The Prophet Mohammad, Desert Nights, and the Extra-Terrestrial Origins of the Koran.

She suggests that Paul may have faked his conversion on the road to Damascus so he could infiltrate Christian congregations and report to Rome on suspicious elements in synagogues across the empire.

He may also have been going around listening to the singing in the hopes of finding the next Barbra Streisand.

Sheldon says Paul’s interaction with Roman officials seems to have been remarkably friendly, and she notes that in his letter to the Romans, he urges Christians to obey them.

Well, that’s that then. Paul told Christians to obey the law, and didn’t treat Roman officials the way Muntazer al-Zaidi treated George Bush, so it’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion that he was a spy for the government. I wonder why no one ever put two and two together.

(Via MCJ.)