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Based on Pauls authentic letters James Tabor in his new book Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity has isolated six major elements in Pauls Christianity that shape the central contours of his thought:
"1. A New Spiritual Body. For Paul the belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead was a primary and essential component of the Christian faith. He states emphatically: "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). His entire understanding of salvation hinged on what he understood to be a singular cosmic event, namely Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Paul’s understanding of the resurrection of Jesus, however, is not what is commonly understood today. It had nothing to do with the resuscitation of a corpse…Paul understood Jesus’ resurrection as the transformation—or to use his words—the metamorphosis, of a flesh-and-blood human being into what he calls a "life-giving spirit"
"So transformed, Jesus was, according to Paul, the first "Adam" of a new genus of Spirit-beings in the universe called "Children of God," of which many others were to follow.
2. A Cosmic Family and a Heavenly Kingdom. According to Paul this new genus of Spirit-beings of which Jesus was the "firstborn" is part of an expanded cosmic family (Romans 8:29). Paul believed that Jesus was born of a woman as a flesh-and-blood human being, descended from the royal lineage of King David, so he could qualify as an "earthly" Messiah in Jewish thinking. But for Paul such physical Davidic lineage was nothing in comparison to the glorifi¬cation of Jesus as the firstborn Son of God. ..What this means is that God, as Creator, has inaugurated a process through which he is reproducing himself—literally bringing to birth a "God-Family."
"The destiny of this cosmic heavenly family is to rule over the entire universe. .. Jesus described it in clear and simple terms in the prayer he taught his disciples: "Let your Kingdom come, let your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven" (Matthew 6:10).
"3. A Mystical Union with Christ. Paul completely transformed the practice and understanding of baptism and the Eucharist to his Greek-speaking Gentile converts…Baptism brought about a mystical union with what Paul called the "spiritual body" of Christ, and was the act through which one received the impregnating Holy Spirit.
"4. Already but Not Yet. Paul operated with a strongly apocalyptic perspective that influenced all he said or did. He was quite sure that he and his followers would live to see the re¬turn of Christ from heaven. Life in the world would go on, but not for long. Everything was soon to be transformed…Paul states emphatically that the "appointed time has grown very short" and he advised his followers not to marry, begin a new busi¬ness, or worry if they were slaves, since everything in the world was about to be turned upside down and all social relations were terminal.
5. Under the Torah of Christ. As a Jew Paul decisively turned his back on the Torah revelation given to Moses on Mount Sinai, with all of its laws, customs, and traditions. In other words, Paul abandoned his Judaism. He would have never put it that way, though, since what he advocated he called a new and true Judaism, making the first version obsolete. He maintained that the Torah had now been replaced and superseded by the new Torah of Christ (Galatians 3:23-26). He never denied that the one God of Israel, who had sent Jesus and glorified him as Son of God, had once spoken through Moses and the Prophets. What he insisted upon was that alongside the one God of Israel was an exalted heavenly Lord Jesus, to whom the whole cosmos would be in obeisance.
What Paul proposed as a replacement of the Torah of Moses he called the Torah of Christ. It was not a legal code, written in stone or on parchment, but a manifestation of the Christ-Spirit in those who had been united with Jesus through baptism, both Jews and non-Jews.
"6. The Battle of the Apostles. Paul understood his own role as an apostle, "last but not least," as he put it, as the essential and pivotal element in God’s cosmic plan to bring about the salvation of the world through unworthy even to be an apostle, he nonetheless believed that his call to be an apostle was a singular and extraor¬dinary event (1 Corinthians 15:9-10). Unlike the other apostles, who had been chosen by Jesus at the beginning of his preaching in Galilee, Paul believed that he had been set apart and called before he was even born—while still in his mother’s womb (Galatians 1:15).
"Given this perspective one might conclude that rather than being last, Paul was chosen before all the others. His "conversion," then, would just be a matter of God determining the time was right to reveal Paul as an apostle. As Paul puts it: God chose to "re¬veal his Son to me" (Galatians 1:16). This places him in a rather extraordinary position with reference to the original apostles, since he understood that his singular position as the "Thirteenth Apostle" was to take the message about Christ to the non-Jewish world. This special mission, he believed, was essential for him to complete before the end of the age could arrive. Just as Christ was sent to his own people, the Jewish nation, to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, Paul, as a kind of "second Christ," was commissioned to go to the entire world (Romans 15:8-9).