Many biblical scholars argue that Paul was, to a great extent, the true architect of Christianity—more than Jesus Himself. Why? Because, from the New Testament texts, it is understood that Jesus did not come to found a new religion.
Over time, the original message of the Master was interpreted and distorted—by His followers. This distortion arose, in part, from the need to make sense of the atrocious death He endured. An explanation was sought for the fact that a righteous man had been trapped the way He was and, as a consequence, suffered such a tragic death. We find that answer in Paul’s interpretation and in that of others. Although the questions were not formulated explicitly, they can be inferred from their answers: Why did Jesus die? Was His death in vain? Did it have meaning? What was it? Was something written in the Scriptures or in the Prophets about His suffering?
Some New Testament authors developed arguments to answer these questions. However, in reality, the answer could be summarized in five words—without doctrinal interpretations, religious texts, or prophecies: it was because of human evil.
In addition, Jesus did not fit perfectly into the traditional expectation of a saving Messiah. The expected king would come to occupy David’s throne—literally—and defeat Israel’s enemies. But Jesus was rejected, condemned, and executed. That demanded an explanation. After Jesus died, the idea began to take shape of a heavenly Messiah who, at the end of time, would return to subdue Israel’s enemies and establish His dominion over all nations.
But the figure of the Messiah, as we know it, did not begin with Jesus. In fact, its root lies in the moment when the people asked to have a king “like the other nations.” God warned them that by doing so they were rejecting Him as their true ruler, and He clearly announced the consequences: they would lose their freedom, they would be oppressed, and they would fall under the power of a human system that would inevitably subjugate them.
From that point on, after multiple monarchical failures, the concept of “Messiah” began to change: from being an earthly king, it came to represent a promised deliverer who would restore Israel’s glory. Over time, different messianic images emerged.
In the writings from the Second Temple period, some expected a royal Messiah descended from David; others expected a priestly Messiah who would purify the temple; others expected a celestial figure who would descend with power at the end of time. But they all agreed on one point: none of those Messiahs was supposed to die before fulfilling his mission, because the Messiah was seen as an agent of God sent to transform present reality—to free Israel from foreign domination, restore the kingdom of David, rebuild the Temple, bring peace and justice, and gather the exiles. These purposes had to be fulfilled during his lifetime as visible signs that the Messiah came from God. His premature death would have meant he was not the chosen one, because he had not fulfilled his design.
The death of the Messiah was not part of the plan—or at least not part of how they imagined it. On the contrary, it meant he had failed. That is why, when Jesus was executed, an urgent need arose to explain an outcome so opposed to the people’s hopes. Thus began to take shape the interpretation that would give birth to a new theology: that of the suffering Messiah—rejected and, finally, resurrected.
The New Testament is, to a great extent, a theological response to that apparent failure. And this can be easily verified: all its texts revolve around justifying His death, to ensure it was not in vain. The figure of Jesus crucified was reinterpreted again and again as the fulfillment of prophecies, as a sacrifice required by God, as a paradoxical victory. Every later letter, gospel, or testimony can be read as an effort to affirm that His death had meaning—and that is why He was made the center of the emerging belief.
Finally, we cannot forget that since the first creation of human religion in Sumer, religion and politics were twin sisters walking hand in hand. Think of Paul’s odyssey: detained in prison in Jerusalem, in Caesarea of Palestine, twice in Rome, and finally his death by beheading under Emperor Nero, according to Christian tradition. Why? What did Paul do that deserved prison and death according to the politics and religion of that time? Could it be that both Jesus and Paul were challenging the powerful politico-religious system that existed since times close to the fall of man? After all, Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was near. And what did that mean? It meant that the will and government of God would be done on earth. Many felt threatened by that power, because they understood they would lose the power they already had.
Some of Jesus’ followers gave a new spiritual meaning to His death, reinterpreting it as part of a divine plan. But that interpretation did not come from Jesus Himself; it came from those who spoke for Him after His death. Paul was the first to formulate this idea forcefully: that Jesus’ death had redemptive value. Paul did not explain what he based this on; he spoke as if the reader already knew the foundation of his interpretation.
The author of Hebrews turned that interpretation into a complete theology. He compared Jesus to the Levitical priests and claimed His blood replaced all previous sacrifices. Nevertheless, in my opinion, this author had a different intention than Paul—an interested intention: to protect the system, or rather, to cover up the error of having taught that the temple ritual had been ordered by God, when in reality it had been rejected by Him. The system was not divine instruction, but a human construction.
Later, the Gospels—especially the later ones—include phrases attributed to Jesus that seem to reinforce that same view. We do not know whether those phrases were truly spoken by Him, or added later to support the new interpretation.
Mark 10:45: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
John 10:17–18: “I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.”
Matthew 26:28: “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
These phrases, attributed to Jesus, are few and ambiguous. And they must be read within the broader framework of the prophetic message, which made it clear that God never commanded sacrifices or burnt offerings. If we place these sayings in dialogue with the prophets, the question remains open:
Did Jesus truly endorse sacrifice, or do these phrases respond to another intention?
For example, Jeremiah 7:22–23:
“For I did not speak to your fathers or command them, on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices…”
Amos 5:21–25:
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I look upon the peace offerings of your fattened animals.
Take away from Me the noise of your songs, for I will not listen to the melody of your instruments. But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel?”
God’s question makes it clear that sacrifices were not part of the Covenant agreed upon between Him and the people. The fact that He specifically limits it to the forty years in the wilderness strengthens even more that they were not part of the Alliance. And that Alliance consisted precisely in listening to His Voice and doing everything He would indicate. This point is key to understanding the type of relationship God wanted with His people. God would have guided them and told them what to do as they advanced and developed—but in full freedom, without structures or systems that would take that freedom away.
As for the sacrificial cult, despite being warned that it did not come from God, the people never abandoned it. They kept it until the destruction of the second temple, and later—through New Testament interpretations—this cult took another form: a spiritual one, represented in the death of Jesus. God’s words in the prophetic books leave no doubt: what He wanted was not ritual, but justice. Any theology that contradicts that voice moves away from the heart of the prophetic message, as happened.
Yet even after Jesus, many built upon His figure a religious system that contradicts what the prophets—and possibly Jesus Himself—tried to restore. God denied having ordered sacrificial rituals as they were taught. In the prophecies we find a much clearer and more direct testimony on this point—more so than the verses used to support the idea that Jesus replaced the sacrificed animal because animal blood supposedly did not satisfy divine justice.
It is astonishing to me that the New Testament uses the phrase “according to the Scriptures,” when it overlooked such important messages from God as the authorship of the ritual.
In 2 Peter 1:19–21 we read:
“We also have the more sure prophetic word, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. But know this first of all: that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, for prophecy was never brought by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
The prophetic word inspired by God said that He had not asked for nor commanded sacrifices and burnt offerings. Yet that truth was ignored and adapted within the meaning later given to the death of Jesus.
Regarding the authorship of the ritual, the clearest and most forceful word is Jeremiah’s, but we also have Amos chapters 5 and 4, which clearly indicate that sacrifices were rebellion against the voice of God; and we have Micah, Isaiah, and even the Psalms. But none of this was taken into account, despite what was said about prophecy.
The central figure of the theology that became the axis of the New Testament message was Paul, but he was not the only one. Other figures also influenced it: the author of Hebrews, John, Peter, and those who later fixed the canon and formulated the Christian creed. All of them, to one degree or another, interpreted the life and death of Jesus through the Levitical sacrificial system that God Himself had rejected as part of the Alliance.
Paul developed his interpretations on the basis of sacrifice for sins practiced in the Hebrew ritual system. Yet he did not express it directly and systematically as the author of Hebrews did. Paul spoke of Jesus as redeemer, said that we were justified by His blood and reconciled to God through Him, but he never explained clearly how that redemption occurred, on what basis forgiveness was produced, and above all, where his beliefs came from.
His language is filled with theological terms—grace, justification, faith, blood—but he does not articulate a coherent internal logic. It is an ambiguous construction: he assumes that Jesus’ sacrifice has saving value, but he does not explain how or why. There is one word that does not appear in Paul’s writings: repentance.
Why, if repentance is what the prophets, the Psalms, and even Solomon taught when dedicating the temple?
“My God, we are all sinners, and if your people sin against you, you may become so angry that you hand them over to their enemies… But if, there in captivity, your people turn back to you sincerely… and confess they have sinned and acted wickedly… hear from heaven their prayers and pleas… and forgive your people all the sins they have committed against you.”
In the Psalms:
“For You do not delight in sacrifice; if I offered a burnt offering, You would not accept it. The sacrifice to God is a broken and contrite heart; O God, You will not despise it.” (Psalm 51:18–19)
And in Ezekiel 18:
“But if the wicked turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my laws and does what is right and just, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the transgressions he committed will be remembered against him; he will live because of the righteous things he has done. I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that he turn from his ways and live. I, Yahweh the Lord, declare it.”
These are only a few passages where we are taught that forgiveness comes through reconciliation with God by means of repentance.
In contrast, Paul tells us in Romans:
“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God presented as an atoning sacrifice, so that through faith, forgiveness of sins is obtained by His blood.”
Here there is no repentance or conversion of heart, but shed blood through a human sacrifice. It is the belief that forgiveness came through the shedding of blood by means of an animal sacrifice.
Thus a doctrine of salvation was built upon a system that the prophets themselves declared—on God’s behalf—did not belong to His Law, while fundamental parts of divine teaching were set aside, such as simple repentance of heart for the cleansing of faults.
Paul belonged to the Pharisaic sect, and therefore his dogmatic construction was influenced by what he learned within that religious brotherhood. Under that view, God forgave sins through the shedding of animal blood. Within that scheme, the blood of Jesus became the central element of redemption, displacing repentance as the fundamental condition. Thus the focus moved away from the inner change of the human being and shifted to the external act of sacrifice.
Yet in New Testament times the Pharisees already held that sacrifices were only valid if offered with a contrite heart. That belief exposes a contradiction:
If there is true repentance, why keep needing a sacrifice? In other words, was repentance not enough? Was the death of an animal truly necessary as a substitute?
According to the prophetic voice, it was a cultural custom that did not please God.
Sacrifices in the Hebrew ritual were not simple offerings. They were performed to obtain expiation for sin. There were various types: for the sin of the priest, of the community, of a ruler, or of a member of the people. In the latter case, the individual had to present a blemish-free goat. He brought it to the designated place for sacrifice, laid his hand on the animal’s head, and killed it. Then the priest dipped his finger in the blood, smeared it on the horns of the altar, and poured the rest at its base. Next he removed the animal’s fat—as in the thanksgiving offering—and burned it on the altar as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Thus the priest made atonement for the person, and the person was declared forgiven.
In all this ritual, no verbal expression of repentance was required. The act of laying hands on the animal and killing it symbolically represented the transfer of sin. This same model was adopted in the New Testament when it was claimed that Jesus, as the sacrificed lamb, carried the sin of the world upon Himself.
However, it is worth remembering that the idea of a sacrifice for the remission of sins was a doctrine introduced by the scribes—as the prophet Jeremiah denounces—and not an original divine instruction. In pagan cultures, sacrifices were not tied to a moral notion of sin as they later were in Israel. New Testament interpretations were a mixture of ritual concepts inherited from the Levitical system and a new doctrine centered on the death of Jesus.
According to Paul, salvation is obtained by faith in the blood of Jesus, without works. But immediately afterward, believers are still expected to repent. This raises a fundamental incoherence: if the debt has already been paid by someone else, why must the debtor change? Perhaps forgiveness does not occur by substitution, but by transformation.
This tension between ritual sacrifice and personal repentance reveals an incompatibility in the New Testament’s theological foundation. Yet the contradiction is not new. In the Second Temple period, the Pharisaic stream taught that sacrifices were only valid if accompanied by a sincerely repentant heart. Neither sacrifice nor repentance alone was sufficient. Why? Because it had been taught that the ritual was ordered by God, and at that stage it could no longer be discarded.
Nevertheless, the author of Hebrews dared to set aside that law that was said to be perpetual. The Pharisaic view required an adequate inner disposition because it believed that determined the spiritual effectiveness of the rite. But that notion was not in the original rules of the Levitical system. If repentance had been sufficient from the beginning, it would have made sacrifice unnecessary, and thus invalidated the system itself.
The sacrificial system, at its root, did not begin from inner transformation but from a ritual transaction. It was, in fact, a pagan logic that set aside moral responsibility and conversion as the way of forgiveness. The idea that sacrifice had to be accompanied by repentance was a later evolution of religious thought, likely consolidated between the fourth and first centuries B.C., during the Persian and Hellenistic period, when the prophetic emphasis on justice and conversion of heart began to influence certain sectors of Israel more and more. In other words, it was a late adaptation, not part of the original system.
By incorporating repentance, they tried to give spiritual value to an act that had been born as a mere external ritual. That evolution, however, reveals the human character of such laws. Because if they had been dictated by God, they would not have needed to evolve: divine laws are perfect from their origin and do not change over time.
And even if one does not want to believe the prophetic voice that denounced those rituals as rebellion against the divine will, at least the fact that they required reinterpretation and correction should be enough to recognize that they did not come from an original divine instruction, but a human one.
The New Testament message—especially beginning with Paul and those who came after—carried this same logic over to the sacrifice of Jesus. He is presented as the perfect sacrifice, the final substitute. But even so, repentance is still taught as necessary for His sacrifice to have effect in each believer. In other words, the same contradiction remains: if the sacrifice was sufficient, repentance should not be required. But if repentance is indispensable, then the sacrifice was not sufficient. It is the same unresolved tension, inherited without question from the system that, according to the prophets, God had rejected.
Paul had been instructed in the priestly tradition that considered ritual the core of divine forgiveness. Although in his time that stream seemed to dominate, the Bible contains another tradition that denounced ritual and sacrifices as a human invention in Israel, not a divine instruction. This source is the prophetic voice. From that current we have the true Isaiah, chapter 1, where Yahweh speaks firmly: He wants no more sacrifices, He is weary of animal blood, and He declares that no one asked those offerings of them. He calls them to stop doing evil and learn to do good, and He promises blessing if they listen to His voice. The message is clear: God did not ask for rituals, but for justice. This categorical denunciation of ritual is softened in New Testament theology, which claims that God rejected not the ritual, but the hypocrisy of the worshiper.
But that is an interpretation foreign to the text. Yahweh was clear when He said: “Who has required this trampling of My courts?” and “bring no more futile offerings.” What the author of Hebrews later “discovers”—that sacrifices were ineffective and useless—had already been warned by God Himself through Isaiah.
Alongside this rejection, God offered a clear spiritual alternative: “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean… stop doing evil, learn to do good…,” culminating in the promise: “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best of the land.”
Thus, while the prophets called for moral transformation, later theology placed the emphasis back on blood. Ezekiel 33 does not denounce ritual as such, but it develops the concept of individual justice and personal responsibility before sin. There it is made clear that conversion of heart is what saves—not sacrifice. And yet, in Ezekiel chapters 40–48, there appears a later section, a priestly insertion, which contradicts what came before by describing the restoration of the temple and sacrifices. This not only contradicts the earlier teaching of the same book; it nullifies the spiritual message of repentance as the only path of redemption.
Many scholars agree that this section reflects a later addition, coming from the priestly environment.
The prophet Amos also denounces the validity of ritual when he states that the people maintained ritual customs—sacrifices, tithes, voluntary offerings—yet Yahweh accused them of rebelling against His Law, saying:
“Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and multiply transgression!”
He is not encouraging sin; he is ironically denouncing that their ritual system was itself a transgression, because God had already told them it was not His Law nor what He had commanded them to do, and yet they continued practicing it without listening to His Voice. Ritual without obedience to the Voice became rebellion in the name of religion.
All of this ritualistic description—which God openly rejects in the prophets—matches the religious practices inherited from Sumer and from Israel’s neighboring cultures, as I have already developed in more depth in my episodes The Ritual of Sacrifices: Divine Command or Human Mandate, The Falsification of the Law of God, and Practicing Monotheism in a Polytheistic System.
It was such a serious stumbling block that, according to the prophets, God allowed the destruction of the temple in which they had placed their trust. And one wonders whether Paul, had he immersed himself in the prophets, would have reached another conclusion regarding the value of sacrifice. What happened was that, despite divine warnings, what God called rebellion was perpetuated: continuing to present ritual laws as His mandate when He had warned they were not. In the New Testament message, that rebellion took on a new form. Thus the true path—sincere repentance for forgiveness and reconciliation—was bound to an ancient error, now clothed in new language.