I highly recommend this podcast series. Since it doesn't care about current doctrine. It only analyses the text itself and puts it into the historical context of the period. It's a brave thing to do.
Here's the next interesting bit he said about the Pauline epistles. It's a lot of massaging history. Paul argues against a lot of straw men, as well as creates dichotomies where there are none. He also paper over conflicts, to create an illusion of a unified early church.
https://literatureandhistory.com/index.php/episode-079-the-pauline-epistles
Here's what I think are the highlights from this episode.
1) Ancient Judaism did not believe in heaven or a life after death. That's something introduced from Zorastrianism after the Old Testament was written. And this was something that was discussed within Judaism around the time of Jesus' birth. We don't need to speculate on which team Jesus chose to join. But it was a preexisting team. Jesus didn't start this idea.
2) Pre Christian Judaism was a collective religion without an afterlife. It didn't matter whether or not you as an individual was a good person or if you did good deeds. What mattered was the collective, and it was your responsibility (if you were a Jew) to make sure the other Jews were in line.
3) The big debate in Palestine during the life of Christ was the one between Sadjusees and Pharises
Sadducees were more cosmopolitan and liberal. They did not believe in an afterlife. They had support from the wealthy and the rabbinical/priestly class. They did NOT care what you believed. It was a religion of ritual, not faith.
Pharisees were conservative, were focused on following the Jewish commandments (all 613) as well as extra ones they'd added, they DID believe in an afterlife in heaven. These did also NOT care what you believed. It was a religion of ritual, not faith.
There was a third group, the Essenes. This was the sect of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were essentially Christian, with very similar beliefs. Albeit believed that only Jews could be saved. Except of course, no Jesus, because this group predate Jesus' birth. This group is also entirely different that what later became Christianity. Which tells us a lot about the thoughts that swirled around the time of Jesus.
The fact that Sadducees and Pharisees didn't see Essenes as a group worth debating with, inspite of having significant theological works as well as many members, also tells us what a mess, theologically, Judaism was at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadducees
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes
Worth noting is that Pharisees (as described in the Bible) didn't have the power the Bible says they had. Rome was in charge and they did their best not to get involved in theological debates between Jews. Rome forced the Jews to sort their differences themselves and get along peacefully. The story in the Bible regarding how Jesus was treated wouldn't have happened like that. It's a story tweaked to be more exciting. More importantly, during the life of Christ, the Sadducees were firmly in control over Jewish religion. Not the Pharisees. Pharisees persecuting Christians only started well after Jesus was long dead.
4) Judaism was popular in the Roman empire. Romans revered anything that was old and the Torah's size and age made it fascinating to them. So Judaism had a special status in Rome, and many gentiles followed Jewish commandments and sat in on Jewish mass. When Paul wizzed around the Mediterranean converting pagan gentiles he was doing so in Synagogues to gentiles who were already converted in practice. It was an easy sell.
5) Paul was a maverick, and early on, to a large extent operating alone. in the book of Galatians, (which by experts is considered a genuine letter by Paul) it makes it very clear that early Christians did not agree on much, and most were NOT ok with letting gentiles convert to Christianity. Since Paul was a later convert, and not part of the apostolic generation, he had low status in the early church. Paul was just very good at getting Christians to convert. This is what later lead to the many doctrinal conflicts which had to be sorted in the counciles of Nicea. It was a mess.
6) Paul's doctrine that we don't need to follow all the Jewish commandments makes no sense. If we don't need to follow some of the laws, how do we know which we should or which we shouldn't follow? This was never made clear by Paul. The personal opinion of Doug Metzger, the guy who has the podcast, is that Paul took a lot of things as obvious and natural, due to his Jewish upbringing, and somehow just assumed it would be obvious and natural to everybody. The things he saw as obvious and natural we should do. And the things he didn't, we shouldn't. But he was very much a product of his age, so this does not help us much. It's a nice theory. Either way, Paul's position on this in the Epistles is incoherent. And that's objectively true, regardless any personal opinion.
7) Paul didn't believe in personal salvation, nor did he believe we will be judged by our actions. That's lifted straight from Egypt theology, and worked itself into Christianity much later, and wasn't on Paul's mind at all. To be saved you just need to believe in Jesus Christ. If you did, Paul thought you'd automatically become a good person. But there were no rules as such. As long as you believed in Jesus no amount of mortal sinning would prevent you from going to Heaven. He certainly didn't believe in Hell. Which wasn't at all a thing in any ancient religion and didn't show up in Christianity until much later.
This is what John Calvin noticed when he gave the Pauline Epistles a bit of a closer read. And which then became Calvinism. The problem of course is that there's no incentive for the individual to be a good person in this version of Christianity. The reason for this is because that requires individualism. That wasn't a thing in the ancient worlds. These were all collectivist ways of thinking. Individualism is a product of the European Enlightenment, much much later.
These are just a couple of things that popped out at me while I read it.
It's obvious that he contacted every possible expert when writing this podcast episode due to the sensitive nature of it for our modern world. It's extremely well researched.