As I was watching the musical, The Music Man, recently, it struck me that there were obvious parallels between the plot of the musical and the story of the Apostle Paul and the origins of Christianity as Paul grew it from an obscure apocalyptic sect into a widespread religion. Are these similarities deliberate? Or merely coincidental? I don’t know, but the musical sure seemed to me an allegorical and maybe even satirical take on how the apostle Paul (aka Saul) created and spread Christianity. Let me explain.*

In the musical, “Professor” Harold Hill (played brilliantly by Robert Preston) is the fictional con man who makes his living selling “boys’ bands” to people in small communities across the USA. He sells the instruments and the uniforms, with the promise he will also teach the boys how to play them. But, of course, while the instruments and uniforms arrive, Hill skips town before he has to teach anything or prove his method. Despite his claims to be a graduate of a university musical program, he is not educated and is musically illiterate.

In essence, he’s an outlaw on the run from the law — white collar crime, of course — and and from competing travelling salesmen because his con sours the towns against others salesmen. He sells his wares to the rubes, then moves on before people catch on to the con. But in the last place he tries his con he gets ensnared (in love) and it ends his voyage.

What we know of Paul is through a combination of his letters, and some rather contradictory references in biblical Christian (“New Testament”) scriptures like Acts and Thessalonians. What is known almost certainly is that Paul (whose real name was Saul) was a Jew and a Roman citizen from the city of Tarsus, which was part of  what is now modern Turkey. He claims that, before his “conversion,” he “persecuted early Christians beyond measure.” Like Harold Hill’s claims about his past, this one has some holes in it.

Paul never met Yehoshua (aka Jesus) in person, nor ever read the Gospels or other literature about him. In fact, Jesus died before Paul’s “conversion,” and Paul himself died before the first Gospel was even written.** Paul didn’t meet any or the original apostles until three years after he began his mission to convert Gentiles, and even then he only met briefly with two of them (James and Peter). There is no evidence in the New Testament that Paul encountered Jesus or his followers when he studied Jewish law in Jerusalem as a youth, and he would have left the city long before Jesus started preaching or was crucified. Paul’s knowledge of Jesus and his teachings were not based on any intimate connection with Jesus or the apostles, or from years as a follower. Paul does not explain why he was a zealous persecutor of this tiny, breakaway Jewish sect.

Like Hill, Paul/Saul saw an opportunity, and he took it. He wasn’t an apostle in the same sense of the 12 who followed Jesus around because by the time Paul joined the sect, Jesus was long dead. Some of the original apostles were still alive, though, and Paul had a rocky relationship with them, no doubt because he wanted to radically alter the message in order to convince the Gentiles (i.e. non-Jews) to climb aboard. To do so, he told them they didn’t need to obey all those onerous Jewish laws, including those about circumcision or diet (in direct contravention of what Jesus said).***

Paul, it seems, decided to spread a religion based not on personal contact, not on evidence, not on discussions with the original apostles, not even on the words of Jesus, but rather based on what he wanted it to be, and what he wanted to get from it. Well, also based on a hallucination he allegedly met on the “road to Damascus.” But let’s not digress too far. Before his conversion, Paul says, he was authorized by the high priests of Jerusalem to persecute and imprison Christian followers in Damascus and Syria. This, of course, is highly unlikely, since priests would have no legal authority over any Roman citizen, and certainly none in other parts of the Roman empire.

Similarly, Harold Hill “teaches” music (or pretends to) based on his entirely fictitious “Think System,” without any reference to having received this from actual music teachers (he invented it). Hill hummed a tune, then told his students to think of playing it and, eventually and without any formal training, they will be able to play it. While Hill claims to have graduated from  “the conservatory” of Gary, Indiana, in 1905, he fails to produce any credentials and is later proven (by the librarian) a fraud (the conservatory was not founded until ’06).

Hill promotes the joy of music and its importance in creating communal togetherness and spirit. In Ephesians 5:19, Paul says: “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord.”

Paul had a travelling companion, Silas, who accompanied Paul on his conversion tour. After a dodgy bit of magical flimflammery in the city of Philippi, both were jailed, but soon escaped from the law. Silas splits, but later they meet again in Corinth. Hill once travelled with his companion and fellow con, Marcellus Washburn (played by Buddy Hackett). They, too, split (apparently after a con) but meet again in River City.

Paul was chased out of Ephesus after a silversmith incited a large crowd against his preaching. Hill was chased by an anvil salesman (anvils are made of iron, another metal) who incited a large crowd of angry townsfolk against Hill’s “teaching, ” ready to tar and feather Hill. They caught up to Hill and dragged him to the school gymnasium for a trial. In Acts 21:21, Paul was warned by James that his reputation for being against the Law was upsetting people, and soon he was seized and dragged out of the temple by an angry mob, trundled off for a trial by the Romans.

Paul’s converts preached his bastardized version of Christianity in which its Jewish roots were barely recognizable. But his followers loved it. Hill’s students (who care “converted” to his method) performed a bastardized version of Beethoven’s Minuet in G, the tune barely recognizable, but the boys’ parents loved it.

Paul had many opponents in the cities and towns where he visited, and was often run out of town or had to escape angry mods. In the very opening scene of The Music Man, several salesmen riding the train complain about Hill, his products, his lifestyle, and how it affects their own business:

No, the fellow sells bands, Boys’ bands
I don’t know how he does it but he lives like a king
And he dallies and he gathers and he plucks and he shines
And when the man dances certainly, boys, what else?
The piper pays him! Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, yes sir
When the man dances, certainly, boys, what else?
The piper pays him!

Harold Hill and Paul are both outlaws, running from the law. Both have competitors eager to turn them in. Both keep running one step ahead of the law until the very end. true, their ends are different: Paul was possibly executed (the records are unclear and his death is not mentioned in Acts), while Hill survived the townsfolks’ anger and marches away to lead an imaginary band into the film’s credits. The audience is left to wonder if Hill remains in River City with his love, and if so, what does he do there. Or does he grab his suitcase, abandon her, and take his con back on the road? Like Paul, his end is not mentioned.

Perhaps I overthink the similarities, and I have yet to find any other reference to them online or in my books. Still, the parallel lives of two men conning their way through a gullible population and the inevitable retribution seems strong to me. But then, I’m just an old atheist with a liking for satire.

Notes:

* I first saw The Music Man in the theatre with my parents in or around 1962. My parents both loved musicals and when I was a child, the family went to the theatre to watch them together. I watched several, sitting beside them in the theatre, and learned to love them. At home we had many albums (vinyl) of soundtracks that got played in the evenings or weekends when Dad was home. I can still recall many of the lyrics and songs. I didn’t see The Music Man again until it showed up on TV sometimes in the 1970s or ’80s. I have watched (and bought on DVD) several since, but it was several decades before I would re-watch The Music Man, only after my brother sent me the DVD as an early birthday gift. If you have not seen the film version, I recommend you do so.

** In Corinthians 1, 15 3-8, Paul twice refers to “the scriptures” without clarifying which scriptures he means. Since his own letters predate the gospels by at least a decade, and up to a century before any other New Testament books, he cannot be referring to Christian writings (it is also highly unlikely that any of the apostles were even literate, or at the very least were not able to write in Greek). Paul himself died in Rome about the time the first Gospel was written (possibly written in Rome, although in Greek). He had been arrested in Jerusalem some years earlier, and for his protection was sent to Rome where he lived for two years under house arrest before his trial and possible execution between 64 and 68 CE. Other references to scripture appear in his and other early Christian writings, mostly without citation or proper reference.

*** Matthew 5:17-18: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Luke 24:44: “Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

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