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Saint Saul, by Donald Harman Akenson

Outside the Four Gospels, the New Testament yields precious little about Jesus," writes John P. Meier, a prominent Catholic biblical scholar and author of A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. "Since the center of Paul's theology is the death and resurrection of Jesus, the events and sayings of the earthly Jesus simply do not play a large role in his letters." Meier claims that Paul's letters focus on interpreting Jesus's message and do not deal with his person or other details of his life.