Jesus and Paul -- The Word and the Witness

— -- Two men sacrificed everything for the belief that God had chosen them to change the world. And they did change the world.

In a special three-hour broadcast, Peter Jennings tells the story of Jesus of Nazareth, Paul the Apostle and Christianity in its first decades — a tiny movement that against the odds survived and then triumphed over all the gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire.

The first century was barely 30 years old. Rome ruled the world from Europe to the heart of the Middle East. The Caesars were gods and most people knew nothing about a young Jewish peasant named Jesus of Nazareth who was preaching along the Sea of Gallilee, at the edge of the Empire.

When Jesus died on the cross, he left behind a small and frightened group of followers struggling to make sense of his humiliating end. Most Jews either rejected his message or ignored it.

"The idea of a crucified god really did not make sense in the first century," says Ben Witherington, a scholar of the New Testament, in Jennings' report. "It's not a message you make up if you're going to start a religion in the first century A.D."

Yet within a few decades, against all odds, the tiny Jesus movement began to spread, and in spite of ridicule, suspicion and persecution it would ultimately displace the Caesars and remains the dominant religion of the West over 2000 years later.

Many historians and New Testament scholars argue that Paul did more than anyone to make that happen, even though he never knew Jesus. After Jesus' death and resurrection, Paul becomes the main character in the Bible story about the birth of Christianity.

Paul, who according to the Bible had a sudden conversion on the road to Damascus, took the stories of the crucifixion and Jesus' resurrection and preached them in a way that was appealing to a broad audience.

If it weren't for Paul, says Karen Armstrong, a noted scholar and author of the book, The History of God, "Christianity probably would have remained a small sect within Judaism."