How Saint Paul Created Christianity
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I think Paul, who never met Jesus, and had little respect for Jesus’ original disciples (who were Nazarenes,) was a salesman with an ambitious agenda. He hoped to sell his interpretation of Judaism to the Roman world. I think he had a plan to undermine those dangerous messianic Nazarene beliefs that roused rebellion against Roman rule.
He wrote to various groups scattered throughout the Empire, and desperately insisted they believe only his theology. He was so obsessed with snaring converts that little else in his life mattered. In Romans 15:16, he wrote that Gentiles were an offering he would bring to God.
“That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.”
Most of the people he wrote to were Gentiles (pagans) associated with Jewish synagogues, (“God-fearing Gentiles,”) although he wrote to some Jews in the diaspora too. From Paul’s perspective, his patrons were in desperate need of direction and an authoritative, charismatic leader to look up to. He considered himself just the man. He knew how to win the hearts, minds, and souls of people, as he imagined himself as one of the few god fearers (i.e. Jews) who understood Gentile cultures.
Paul’s theology probably had a long and carefully thought out gestation. He knew that in order to appeal to his customers he needed a product very different to traditional Judaism, because Judaism required obedience to cumbersome dictates. The Jews believed one had to be circumcised, a painful and embarrassing procedure, not easy to sell to an adult man. They worshipped Yahweh, who is portrayed in Jewish scripture as a thunderous and violent pro-Jewish anti-gentile God. They could only eat kosher food, marry only fellow Jews, and had to stop work on the Sabbath. Jewish heritage and history were regarded as superior, and all Jews were expected to take part in the fasts and feasts celebrating the ancient epic of Israel. Many Jews thought they were one day going to be the masters of the world. Their messianic dreams were an obstacle to the peace Rome imposed on the people of the empire. Paul knew that gentiles found all this inconvenient, irksome and out of touch with reality, so he labeled these Jewish rules and beliefs as a type of “slavery.” He had to jettison the old rules, so he did, by reinventing Judaism so that it was more to the gentile world’s liking.
According to Paul, there was now no need for circumcision or to stop work on the Sabbath. The dietary kosher rules were out; bacon was back on the breakfast menu. He downplayed the importance of the Jewish Temple, and replaced the Jews’ hope for a political messiah of their own with Christ, the spiritual savior of all mankind. The “kingdom of God,” according to Paul, became a place in heaven, not in Israel. He declared Yahweh was such a decent deity he’d sent his own precious son, the Christ, to earth. He alleged gentiles were descendants of Abraham too, and that the centuries-old Jewish Law was a “curse,” and a type of “slavery.” All that was now required was faith in his claims about Christ. Voilà! The Christ myth and Christian theology were born.
Paul was one of history’s first examples of an ambitious cult leader who, when the rules of the established religion were no longer convenient, simply invented new ones to suit himself. He replaced what he called the “old covenant” of the Jews with his entirely fabricated “new covenant.” He was trying to reinvent Judaism and I think doing his best to dampen down Jewish messianic dreams. He was bending over backwards to infiltrate Judaism with Gentiles and Gentile ideas. He had no idea he was creating an almost entirely new religion, yet that’s precisely what his writings helped do many years later.
To help realize this remodeling of belief, he undermined Yeshua’s family and disciples behind their backs. He was surprised and angry to find himself competing with them for people’s allegiance. They were treading on what he considered his turf. How dare they preach old-fashioned Jewish theology and disrupt his mission to set up communities of believers! Those annoying war-mongering Jews were full of subversive fantasies about a messiah, but God had revealed to him the real Christ, the up-to-date modern Christ! He, not them, was plugging the “good news.” He knew what the newly flexible, expansionist, less violent, less Judaic God expected in these modern, pro-Roman times. He was an educated, savvy, Greek-speaking sophisticate who knew a stack more about selling religion to the subjects of the Empire than the old fashioned anti-Roman bumpkins from the backwater of Galilee!
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ps apologies to all readers about the minor grammatical errors in the previous few posts. Unfortunately I can’t go back and correct them. I hope my meaning is still clear.
Interesting Mark. We’ll pay closer attention moving forward.
You write
“You obviously do not accept the resurrection as an historical fact!”
You’re damn right I don’t. Oh….I can feel the spirit moving in me….a blog about this is coming out soon
You write
“You seem to forget that the last chapter of the Gospel of John actually confirms that Peter died an unnatural death in the service of Jesus!”
You seem to forget that I do not accept anything written in the Gospels as conclusive history. I think that in the same way that you don’t except the story of Muhammed flying across the sky on a horse to the temple in Jerusalem as written in the Koran as history.
The gospels were written to entice people to join a religious cult. They were value driven propaganda tools that integrated the theological, philosophical, and political ideals of the cult. Each Gospel was targeted at the people of the time, not for distant future generations. They were “proclaimed” in worship services to believers, to remind people of what they should believe.
They’re not “historical” documents. A “gospel” is the “good news,” (from the Greek “euangelion.”) Not “the news.” Not the “good news and the bad news.” Just the “good news.”
Access to books was very limited and there was no mass media, so what the average person thought about the world was only what he’d learned from experience and what his parents and neighbors had told him, or maybe, if he was Jewish, what had been read to him from scripture. He had little or no understanding of science or reasoned critical thought, so believed in gods, ghosts, spirits, demons, witches, and the like. If there was sickness in a household, the local wizard or priest was called. It was an age in which myths were commonly considered truthful, and stories of magic and miracles were believed. Only some of the more educated people, who were relatively few in number, questioned belief in gods.
Modern biographies are usually based on factual accounts of a person’s life. In contrast, many ancient authors told stylized life stories. Documenting the actual thoughts, words, and actions of the character was attempted, but to do it accurately wasn’t thought of as particularly important, as biographies were written primarily to create legends and promote moral messages.
The authors and editors didn’t need to appeal to reason or common sense to sell their sort of story. The events they described had happened decades earlier in another part of the world, and their audience had neither the means nor the inclination to check out the facts. What was important was to have written works appealing enough to compete with scores of other interesting cults so that an unsophisticated audience would be impressed. They wrote stylized biographies using the standards of the time. They may not have considered themselves dishonest, but judged by modern standards, they were.
There was no such thing as a printing press, so in the first two hundred years of each gospel’s existence, translators, editors, interpreters, and interpolators altered the original writings by adding or subtracting whatever they thought might be useful. So the dates that are commonly given for the authorship of each Gospel (ranging from 70 CE to 180 CE) are only of limited usefulness, as they can only be thought of only as when the first drafts were composed. (http://www.maplenet.net/~trowbridge/NT_Hist.htm). It was only in the later fourth century that the Gospels finished evolving.
The best the historian can hope for is that the gospels contain some snippets of real history, as I’ve done in my assumptions about Jesus the zealot in chapter two.
You write…
“The OLD Covenant and sole Jewish election as Gods people only ended when Jesus died on the cross! – rejected by His own people!”
More nonsense. Ask any Jew and he or she will tell you that there is no such thing as an old covenant or a new covenant. There has only ever been one covenant… the one allegedly made between Moses and Yahweh on Mount Sinai,
Until Paul the heretic and Roman government propagandist and spy, came along.
Jesus and all his original disciples and his family were true blue Jews. They were never Christians. So to suggest that Jesus or his original followers were part of a “new covenant” is utter BALONEY.
Your damn right I don’t appreciate the importance of it. Why should I? I’m not really interested in the theological Ideas of iron age Jewish priests or Roman government public servants. It’s all fabricated nonsense. The only interest I have in it is that I see a certain percentage of my fellow men brainwashed by this bullshit. That upsets me, because I’m a humanist who cares about people. I particularly care about innocent children.
You write
“Although the gospels were only written after Paul’s letters, written portions existed long before that date, probably written shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus. These were probably already widely distributed and known.”
There is no evidence for this. I assume you’re talking about the hypothetical Q document. Q probably existed, but as to it being an accurate record of Jesus’ words, that is pure speculation. The truth is Christianity barely existed anywhere in the first century. There is almost no good incontrovertible evidence of Christians anywhere recorded by secular historians in the first century. The business about Nero executing Christians is very dubious. The stuff in Acts is not real history.
You write
“Fact is that the Kurt-Aland Greek text of the New Testament is based on internationally agreed scientific methods and the text that we have in front of us, is possibly so close to the original writings that it can be accepted as if we have the originals themselves.”
NONSENSE! We don’t know for sure when the original texts were written or who wrote them. Everyone, including myself, has got an opinion, but no one is 100% sure. End of story.
You write
“You don’t seem to appreciate the significance of the fact that the gospels were written after Paul’s letters.”
I have no idea what gave you that idea. I’m fully aware that Paul wrote before the gospels were written.
You write
“You admit that the writer’s of the gospels knew Paul’s letters.” Yes…sort of. This is what I think happened. Paul preached his nonsense from about the years 50 to 65 CE. He had a mythical son of God, the Christ, as his hero figure. He didn’t know of a Jesus, or, if he did, completely ignored him as a crucified zealot. After the first Jewish War of 66 to 70, the Flavian government decided to create the gospels as political propaganda to undermine the messianic expectations of Jews. The gospels claimed that the Jewish Messiah had already been and gone and he wasn’t a political leader but a spiritual messiah. This meant that Jews all around the Empire would not rally behind any future messiahs; that was the hope
anyway. They were hoping to dampen down Judaism with Gentile mythology. Whether there ever was a flesh and blood Jesus is debatable. I think it probably was such a character, but he was just a crucified zealot.
Much later, in the early to mid second century, after Marcion introduced Paul’s writings to Rome, Paul’s mythical Christ figure was merged with the Jesus stories in the Gospels. Jesus died and then rose again just as Paulls Christ had done. This would explain why Mark’s original Gospel never contained the resurrection story, it was only added at a much later date. It also explains why all the other first century new Testament writings say nothing about the miracles or resurrection of Jesus…. They were all based on the mystical Christ dude, the one that Paul with or without contemporaries, created.
So Paul’s writings were the Roman government’s first attempt to undermine Judaism before the war, and the gospels with the Roman government’s second attempt to use propaganda to undermine Judaism after the war. What emerged in the fourth century was a combination of the two, when Eseubius and Constantine and others created Christianity.
You write
“It is again NOT true that there is no indication that the author of Acts did not know Paul personally. If you read the book you will discover that there are chapters towards the end where the author repeatedly referred to “we” suggesting that he was at that stage a member of Paul’s travelling group.”
This carefully worded statement is ignoring a blatantly obvious fact. The author of Acts never said he knew Paul. If he did know Paul he would have said so, very clearly, and he would have explained the basis of their relationship. He didn’t. End of story. The “we” sentences are a mystery. End of story. Any guesses what they mean are pure speculation.
You write
“The Jesus that we meet in the Gospels is not only absent from Paul’s letters, He is also “absent” from all the other letters and Revelation.” BINGO! NICE OBSERVATION!
You go on…
“It is understandable! All the apostles, not only Paul, focused on the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection.”
OOPS! THINK AGAIN! It’s in fact totally bizarre that Paul doesn’t mention any of Jesus’s teachings, miracles or activities (other than for a brief section on the Last Supper which is probably an interpolation). If your hero figure, the Christ, had recently walked on water, cured leprosy, fed thousands, raised the dead, and sprouted wise anecdotes, you’d be singing his praises. Paul mentions none of this for the obvious reason that these myths hadn’t been invented yet; the gospels hadn’t been written when Paul wrote. Please take your blinkers off!
You claim to know what ” all the apostles” thought and did. You are guessing! You are assuming that the book of Acts is real history, and 95% of objective scholars know it’s nothing but fabricated nonsense. The reality is that we don’t have any convincing record of what any of you apostles said or did after Jesus is death, with the possible exception of James, who remained a devout Jew living in Jerusalem. Anything else is just wishful thinking.
You write…
“The faith that Jesus and the Father are one God is evident throughout all the NT writings.”
DISAGREED!
Jesus sometimes speaks of his father as someone else…
“For the father is greater than I” (John 14:28, NJB,) and
“For God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” (John 3:17, NJB.)
Paul quite clearly states that God the Father sent Christ the son.
You wrote…
“You do not see how you read into the text what it does not say. For example you quote Gal 1 in the exact words where Paul said that he received the gospel through a revelation from Jesus Christ.”
Um….here is the passage I quoted…
“The fact is, brothers, and I want you to realize this, the Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You must have heard of my career as a practicing Jew, how merciless I was in persecuting the Church of God, how much damage I did to it, how I stood out among other Jews of my generation, and how enthusiastic I was for the traditions of my ancestors. Then God, who had specifically chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his son in me, so that I may preach the Good News about him to the pagans” (Gal. 1:11–24, NJB.)”
It quite clearly says “of Jesus Christ,” not “from Jesus Christ”
You have accused me of the very mistake YOU have made.
You write…
“In that specific text God is not mentioned;”
Um…here is the text….
“…Then God, who had specifically chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his son in me…”
You write
“yet when you discuss the text you immediately fit “God” in and says that he claims he received it from God through a revelation by JC!”
God is specifically mentioned. God chose him (Paul) to reveal his son to.
You accuse me of a “dangerous” (whatever that means) assertion and being “not honest.” Mmmmm. You are seriously mistaken, and you owe me an apology for calling me a liar.
Hi Zagrijs, thanks for your reply. Gosh….we are poles apart. My reply is gonna be a long one….gimme a few days. I’m really keen to get back to you, but short on time. Regards, Mark
So all in all I am saying to you…
1) Christianity DID exist before Paul! The first believers didn’t want to break with Jewish religion, that is true, but they were chased out of Jewish religion by the Jews and forced into a separate reiligion BEFORE Paul arrived on the scene!
2) Paul did not create Christianity for his purpose, Jesus stopped him in his tracks for HIS (Jesus’s) purpose!
3) I have never come across any suggestion by the Jews the Paul created Christianity! If your proposition was true, one would have expected the Jews to have said it from the start!
As you should be able to deduct from what I said….
1) I know Hebrew and Greek and I can read the Bible in the original language. So I’m not dependent on translations. I am all to aware of the weaknesses of translations. Can your read it in the original languages or are you dependent on what other people tell you?
2) We did not only study text critique, the science which deals with the reconstruction of the original text, we also did a subject called “kanoniek” (canonic). It deals with the questions of author, time of origin, etc. There are only a few books of the new testament that the author of which is seriously in doubt and that does not relate to any of the pauline epistels. I did point out that the doubt about the Godpsel of John was wiped out by a single piece of papyrus.
3) Text interpretation is a science with known principles. Most of it is also used in the interpretation of laws and modern scriptures. If one is not trained in text interpretation, you should be careful to make the kind of categorical statements about how specific text should be interpreted. It is tantamount to a lay person telling a judge how he/she should interpret the law.
Mark,
1) I am NOT a catholic, I’m protestant (Reformed Religion)
2) I’m not a layman, I’m in fact a theologian with a 7 year theological study and a life time of experience behind me! So I do think I know what I’m talking about when it comes to the scripture and the interpretation thereof!
3) You do not see how you read into the text what it does not say. For example you quote Gal 1 in the exact words where Paul said that he received the gospel through a revelation from Jesus Christ. In that specific text God is not mentioned; yet when you discuss the text you immediately fit “God” in and says that he claims he received it from God through a revelation by JC! It is very dangerous and in fact not honest when you read into the text what the text does not actually say!
4) Of cause it is true that Paul uses “God” and Jesus Christ interchangeably when he refers to his calling as an apostle. It is understandable and a similar pattern is also found in other letters from the NT. The faith that Jesus and the Father are one God is evident throughout all the NT writings.
5) It is again NOT true that there is no indication that the author of Acts did not know Paul personally. If you read the book you will discover that there are chapters towards the end where the author repeatedly referred to “we” suggesting that he was at that stage a member of Paul’s travelling group.
6) The Jesus that we meet in the Gospels is not only absent from Paul’s letters, He is also “absent” from all the other letters and Revelation. It is understandable! All the apostles, not only Paul, focused on the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Although the gospels were only written after Paul’s letters, written portions existed long before that date, probably written shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus. These were probably already widely distributed and known. And even if they were not, ALL the letters are written to people who already believed. The purpose of the letters was NOT to preach the gospel of Jesus al over again, but to strengthen the faith, encourage the correct behaviour and correct wrong behaviour and believes, etc. It is very likely that Paul didn’t know the life of Jesus while He was alive, but we do not know that for a fact. He NEVER claims to be an apostle in the same meaning of the word as “The Twelve” and in fact repeatedly stated that he submitted what he preached to the other apostles for their approval.
7) You don’t seem to appreciate the significance of the fact that the gospels were written after Paul’s letters. You admit that the writer’s of the gospels knew Paul’s letters. At the same time you state that the Jesus we know from the gospels and the Jesus we meet in Paul’s writings are not anywhere the same Person. Can’t you see how you are contradicting yourself? If “Christianity” was created by Paul and the writers of the gospels knew his letters and teaching, how come they describe a Jesus so differently from the One you allege Paul preached? Wouldn’t one expected that they would have presented the kind of Jesus you allege Paul presented? – seeing that they wrote after he wrote his letters? Hoe do you explain that they seemingly were not influenced by his letters?
8) You do not appreciate the world changing significance of the cross and resurrection. The OLD Covenant and sole Jewish election as Gods people only ended when Jesus died on the cross! – rejected by His own people! The New Covenant actually only started when Jesus rose from the dead! Jesus’s ministry before his crucifixion was therefore almost completely Jewish-centred! After His resurrection, it changed and He commanded that they should go out and preached the gospels to all the nations.
9) Of cause one has to treat the catholic church tradition with caution as you correctly point out. As a protestant I simply do not attach the same value to it as the catholic church. However, it is not a source that can simply be disregarded either. The church tradition holds that the apostle John wrote the Gospel of John as well as the three letters bearing his name and the Revelation when he was a very old man, around 80 or 90 years old! The tradition was challenged by theologians like Rudoplh Bultman and Albert Schweitzer in the 19th century who proposed that it was second or third century documents written by the Gnostic philosophers. This view was accepted as scientific fact until a piece of papyrus with four verses of the Gospel of John was discovered in Egypt – reliably dated to around 100-110 after Christ which actually confirmed the church tradition.
10) I did text critics as a subject to obtain my theological degree. Fact is that the Kurt-Aland Greek text of the New Testament is based on internationally agreed scientific methods and the text that we have in front of us, is possibly so close to the original writings that it can be accepted as if we have the originals themselves. To suggest that the name “Jesus” was included into Paul’s letters sometime later in the second or third century, is laughable.
11) The tradition that the Luke who wrote the Gospel and the Acts was one of Paul’s companions is actually supported by the contents of the documents themselves. According to the tradition this Luke was a medical doctor. Luke is the only gospel who relates the parable of the Samaritan. He describes how the Samaritan used wine and oil to treat the man’s wounds; wine was used as disinfected and oil as ointment. One would expect a doctor to relate that. Luke is the only one who relates that Jesus’s perspired blood while his disciples slept because of tension! Again it supports the tradition that it was a doctor who wrote it. In 2 Tim 4 Paul asks Timothy to come to him because he is alone (in jail). Only Luke is with him; one would expect the doctor to be at his side while he awaits execution!
12) You seem to forget that the last chapter of the Gospel of John actually confirms that Peter died an unnatural death in the service of Jesus!
13) You obviously do not accept the resurrection as an historical fact! That is the crux of the matter! Christianity stands and falls with the resurrection! Now, one believes it or you don’t! It is completely inconceivable to explain the emergence and growth of Christianity that started with the resurrection in any other way. If you do away with the faith in the resurrection, one has to come up with all kinds of concoctions like the idea tha Paul created Christianity, to explain the existence of Christianity and the Christian faith and church!
14) I am aware of all the mythical stories of people who died and were resurrected! They do shake my faith in the historical Jesus and his resurrection at all. Let my tell you why. If you google Jewish burial practices you will discover that Jesus’s claim that He would be resurrected within three days, was in line with Jewish faith. The Jews believed that the spirit stayed with the body for three days and that a person may be resurrected in that period if the spirit re-enters the body! The Jewish Council understood Jesus’s claim within the framework of this believe! How did this believe originate? I think its not difficult to imagine that many of the people whom people thought were dead were not really dead and were seemingly “resurrected” within three days! With all our modern methods of determining whether a person is really dead, it still sometimes happens that somebody is taken to a morgue and are “resurrected”. So it is quite understandable that myths like that would have been doing the round!
14) I always regarded the Shroud of Turin as a fake! It took me more than 40 years to even begin to consider that it might not be a fake and actually could be the shroud that Jesus were buried in. I recently did a lot of research about it, amongst others read the book of Thomas de Wesselow “The Sign”. I think there can be very little doubt that it is indeed the burial cloth of Jesus. Does it proof the resurrection? NO!!!!! But is does proof (1) the authenticity of the accounts about his suffering and death and thereby adds a lot of weight to the gospels as reliable documents about the life and teachings of the historical Jesus. (2) It proofs that He was indeed dead as the image bears evidence of a body in rigor mortis. (3) It does suggest that something extraordinary happened to the body. What happened to the body? Why and how was the body removed from the shroud within the 48 hour period the gospels states? Why did the first Christians hide the shroud? Why is this a once off and there simply doesn’t exist anything like this anywhere else in the world and nobody has succeeded to replicate it – not even with all the modern knowledge and equipment at our disposal! Thomas de Wesselow’s suggestion that the image on the shroud actually gave rise to the resurrection stories and appearances is so far fetched that it is laughable.
Mark, you grew up in the Catholic tradition! Did you actually care to read wider that the catholic tradition and atheists’ views, before you turned your back on faith! You urged me to read wider! I think you should!
Cool your jets Zagrijs. You are making a number of incorrect assumptions.
I never said Paul preached a different theology to the Gospels.
I never said Paul hijacked Christianity for his purposes. Christianity didn’t, in fact, exist, as best we know before Paul. Jesus, if he ever existed, was a Jew, and so were his disciples, so they were, by definition, not Christians. Paul created Christianity for his purposes!
I fully agree that Paul’s letters are the oldest documents in the new Testament, I never said they weren’t.
I also agree that the definitive versions of the gospels were written by people who were well aware of Paul’s theology. I never said they weren’t.
The fact is, no one is really sure who wrote Luke. It may have been the same author or group of authors who wrote Acts, but that is uncertain. The name “Luke” was only attached to one of the Gospels circa the year 180 CE. A companion of Paul, who may have been named Luke, had nothing to do with the authorship of the gospel.
Whenever you see the term “church tradition,” you can pretty much assume that means there’s nothing historically verifiable in the accompanying claim. A good example is the ” tradition” that Peter was the first Roman pope. It’s utter nonsense, and I’m sure you’ll agree, unless you’re a catholic.
Most Christians assume Paul was restating Jesus’ teachings, but Paul never claimed he was inspired or influenced by Jesus or Jesus’ disciples. Paul held his message came from God and was about his Christ. It was not from Jesus.
Paul’s Christ was someone different from the miracle-working preacher in the Gospels, the Jesus we think we know. Amazingly, in the twenty-first century, we know more about “Jesus” than Paul did!
Paul wrote,
“Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now” (2 Cor. 5:16, NJB.) What an extraordinary statement! It only begins to make sense if we realize that Paul was only interested in the idea of a resurrected spirit, his Christ figurehead.
Someone passing himself off as Paul wrote that “Christ” was a mystery, one that he had a particularly good understanding of:
“Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3:4, KJV,) and
“Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds” (Col. 4:3, KJV.)
Paul didn’t give a fig tree about the life or teaching of a once living human Jesus. The only thing that mattered to him was that a Christ was crucified and resurrected. In fact Paul rambled on and on about the supposed significance of Christ’s death and resurrection, not about the details of Christ’s life.
Who then, was Paul’s Christ? I don’t think it was the Jesus we think we know. It was someone who Paul thought had existed in heaven since the beginning of time, yet only revealed to the world via Paul’s own peculiar interpretation of Jewish scripture. Douglas Lockhart (http://douglaslockhart.com/) and a number of other scholars (http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvEll.htm) think it could have been the “Teacher of Righteousness” written about in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are many theories as to who this character was, one of which is that he was an Essene leader, a priest, who lived perhaps a hundred years before Yeshua who had disapproved of the Hasmonean high priest. The community this teacher inspired may have been a sect that believed the teacher of righteousness would soon return from the dead. Lockhart also believes this sect may well have been the same sect Paul set out to persecute, yet ended up trying to join, and he may have spent some time in Arabia learning their teachings.
In the gentile world of the time there was competition from many dying and rising gods such as Mithras. Those gods often didn’t have a mortal life that was remembered, just like Paul’s Christ. It was only the myth of them dying and rising again that gave them significance, just like his Christ. Paul’s Christ, real identity uncertain, could have been his own Judaic myth invented to compete with these other cults. The idea that Christ would one day be equated with Jesus may not ever have been on Paul’s radar. (http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/parttwo.htm).
It is true that “Paul” mentions “Jesus” on a number of occasions, yet “Jesus” may have been edited into Paul’s writings, where he had written only “Christ.” I can’t prove this happened, yet it’s a distinct possibility given that there was a culture that encouraged “pious fraud” amongst Christians in the second, third and fourth centuries. Paul does say that Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate, yet this too would have been an easy interpolation for a second century Christian to insert.
Most Christians I have talked to about this are perplexed, and with good reason, because Paul’s lack of commentary on Jesus undermines the account about Jesus being an inspiring, insightful individual that had so impressed his disciples, someone with amazing charisma who preached wise anecdotes. This is an image created by churchmen using the gospels. Paul knew none of this. Outside of scripture he only ever acknowledged one teacher of wisdom—himself. An authoritative Jesus, recently deceased, would have focused the limelight on someone more significant than himself, and I don’t think he would have liked that.
Just who Paul thought his Christ was is a difficult concept to grasp, and in my opinion it’s not worth spending too much time on. It helps to remember that the sources of Paul’s ideas are obscure; that his writings have been tampered with; that original meaning is often lost in translations; that the Jesus stories we know so well only finished being cobbled together in the fourth century, and Paul had never read them; and that Paul had an overactive imagination and was just odd.
You claim you know what the original apostles of Jesus preached. But, there is no evidence from any secular historian that discusses anything that the original disciples of Jesus said or did. End of story. We no bugger all about them. You can choose to believe the fabricated nonsense in the book of Acts if you like, but it’s not historically verifiable. You can believe that Paul and Peter were executed in Rome but that’s just nonsense.
I hope my commentary stimulates your interest a little so that you dig into the history more for yourself.
Regards, Mark.
The article as well as comments are so full of factual mistakes that it is laughable! 1) Whoever states that Paul preached a different theology than the gospels and “hi-jacked” christianity for his purposes, forgets that his letters are the oldest documents of the New Testament. The persons who wrote the gospels most definitely knew Paul’s letters! 2) To state that the person who wrote the Acts didn’t know Paul is also mistaken. According to church tradition Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke as well as the Acts. Luke was a medical doctor and co-worker of Paul. According to the second letter of Paul to Timothy Luke was in Rome with Paul at the time Paul was awaiting his execution!
3) It is further equally not true that Paul does not refer to his personal experience meeting Jesus in his letters. He states quite emphatic in the first chapter of Galatians that he received the gospel from a personal encounter with Jesus and later submitted what he was teaching to the apostles in Jerusalem! In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians he again refers to it when he speaks about a man who was removed to heaven!
4) There is no difference between the gospel about salvation in Jesus Paul proclaimed and the gospel about salvation in Jesus that the other apostels or Jesus Himself proclaimed! There are differences in emphasis and subjects dealt with, but the essential message remains the same!
Zagrijs, i suggest you reread Galatians chapter 1. Here is my take on it.
One might assume that Paul had a legitimate and verifiable source for his hypotheses, but he didn’t. I’ve imagined going back in time to ask him what it was. He got anxious when his credibility was questioned, so his answer would be intense. He frequently wrote at length about himself, so he’d probably tell me how hard he works, how genuine he is, how he’s suffered for his beliefs, and how sure he is that what he preaches is the truth. The actual answer to the question would be a long time arriving.
Paul wrote,
“The fact is, brothers, and I want you to realize this, the Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You must have heard of my career as a practicing Jew, how merciless I was in persecuting the Church of God, how much damage I did to it, how I stood out among other Jews of my generation, and how enthusiastic I was for the traditions of my ancestors. Then God, who had specifically chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his son in me, so that I may preach the Good News about him to the pagans” (Gal. 1:11–24, NJB.)
This is from one of his best-known letters. He specifically stated that the message he preached came not from human sources, but from God, “through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
This was not the only occasion he said God inspired him;
“I, Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle” (1 Cor. 1:1, NJB) and
“But our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor. 3:5 NKJB.)
The account in Acts of Paul’s abrupt, theatrical conversion to belief in Jesus on the road to Damascus is very familiar to most Christians. It’s a fabrication. I think the author of Acts was trying to make his readers believe that Paul had received his commission – and therefore his legitimacy – directly from Jesus. The difficult fact that Jesus had died many years before Paul surfaced was glossed over by having his ghost appear to Paul. Paul was a man eager to be believed and desperate to shore up his own credibility. If he’d experienced a visit from Jesus’ ghost on the road to Damascus and been temporarily blinded, he undoubtedly would have mentioned it in his letters, and he doesn’t.
In my opinion, Acts was written sometime at least fifty-plus years after this was supposed to have happened by someone (real identity unknown) who didn’t witness this alleged conversion, (if he did he would have said so.) The author never even claimed he’d met Paul.
What Paul meant was that he thought he had a God given talent enabling him to interpret scripture. That was, after all, the job description for a Pharisee. This doesn’t trigger confidence in his credibility.
Paul took things one step further than his more traditional colleagues when interpreting scripture. He thought he alone had a divine mandate from God. Consider the opening lines of his letter to the Romans:
“From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus who has been called to be an apostle, and specially chosen to preach the Good News that God promised long ago through his prophets in the scriptures” (Rom. 1:1–3, NJB.)
Paul promoted himself as a uniquely special interpreter of scripture, and he bad-mouthed anyone who happened to disagree with him (see 1 Corinthians 15:1–3, http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+15%3A1-3&version=KJV).
Yet objective scholars and traditional Jews agree that Paul’s “good news” isn’t in scripture. (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13232-saul-of-tarsus). Moreover, Paul often changed the meaning of scripture to suit himself.
Check out “Not in His Image” by John Lamb Lash. Goes into thorough details about Paul and how the plague of salvationism was spawned and warped through the teachings of Gnostic concepts. Very close to your conclusions/theory. Some very interesting points brought up in that book that I imagine you would like to read.
Thanks Tan. Will do.
Ditto, thanks
Hi Capnmission.
I have read the New Testament many times, but not memorised it ( I have better things to do with my time.)
By “his claims,” are you referring to Paul’s? Are you aware that there was no New Testament when Paul wrote? That being the case, how could the New Testament be the source for what he wrote? Maybe you’re referring to the erroneous idea that the Jesus biographies were referring to the same Christ figure as Paul? I don’t happen to believe that Paul’s Christ was the Jesus we think we know so well, and we could launch into a very long discussion about that, but let’s not here.
If there’s any part of my blog you feel needs clarification I’ll be happy to expand. I admit I haven’t explained all the intricacies of first century Judaism and Christianity. It’s not easy containing an article such as this to 1000 words. I have, however, after over seven years of intensive research, written a book on the topic which is soon to be published.
I disagree with your wording about Paul’s rift. I happen to believe that Jesus, if he existed, and his family and disciples were fundamentalist Jews, so were never Christians. That opens up a whole can of worms which we can discuss if you’re interested. I would say they put absolutely zero effort into preaching “the Gospel” because “the gospel” is a Christian term and, what is more, none of the gospels were written until well after 70 A.D.
I do agree with you that the supposed teachings of Jesus as written in the Gospels often fundamentally disagree with Paul’s prattle. For example, the book of James in the Bible, and James the author just may have been Jesus’ brother, has obviously been written by someone who was in direct opposition to Paul.
Thanks for teaching me a new phrase. I had no idea what “no duh” meant, maybe because it’s an American term? For anyone interested here is the dictionary definition…
“A blunt reply to a statement that is obvious; sarcastic agreement–“oh really?” Synonym: no shit.”
I look forward to further discussions with you, and hope they will be cordial, regards, Mark
The current Christian canon wasn’t solidified until the late 4th century. But of course one reason Paul’s influence prevailed is that the Jerusalem group, with James as its first leader was utterly destroyed by the Romans. Another is that the teachings were tailored to appeal to a pagan audience used to sons of gods and miracles and who believ4ed in a very non-Jewish idea of souls and resurrections.
Of course the utter destruction of Jerusalem doesn’t argue well for the messianic mission either of Jesus or the dozens of others but that Paul’s pagan converts were easily fooled by forged history and impossible stories was only natural. They had no way of knowing what Jesus’ life and times were like. They didn’t speak or read Hebrew and most didn’t read anything at all much less non-existent treatises on Jewish colonial government and the way trials and executions were conducted.
What saddens me is that none of this is very controversial amongst scholars and historians. It’s down at the believer level – the bottom of the barrel so to speak, that the “oldest profession” has to fight to preserve the distortions, the lies, the fictions because it’s their livelihood.
I do recommend “Zealot” as a primer.
I totally agree.
It’s ironic that the Romans, the very people Jesus despised, adopted him as their hero some three centuries after they killed him, and then blamed his own people, the Jews, for his death.
The Romans used Paul’s fabricated theology as the foundation for Christianity, yet it would have been repugnant to Jesus and his original Jewish disciples.
If you have read and memorized the New Testament, you know the sources for most of his claims. Anything not covered in there, you can track down by looking at Enewetak’s sources. The original article is pretty shoddy if writing for a general audience. If not writing to someone with an excellent knowledge of first century christianity, then the article is a mix of “no duh” and “well, that is one way to look at it.”
There are modern day Christians who take Paul’s side (e.g. Fundies and evangelicals) regarding his rift with the rest of Christianity. They are, in a sense, willing to throw Jesus under the bus in favor of Paul. When it comes to a conflict between Paul’s epistles and the gospels, these Christians almost always accept Paul’s writings at face value and ignore the conflicting material in the gospels or twist it so that is harmony with Paul’s writings. There are, however, some Christians who favor the teachings of Christ over Paul.
The pro-Paul Christians would probably consider this article to contain a lot of “well, that is just your opinion” while the pro-Jesus Christians would probably consider the article to contain a lot of “no duh”. Do note that most pro-Paul and pro-Jesus Christians see themselves as believing the entire NT and true teachings of Christianity. It is outsiders who would categorize Christians into these two camps.
One more thing:
For those who are wondering how Paul could win out over Jesus, Paul was the one who was tirelessly evangelizing the entire world, whereas the 11 apostles did not put a lot of energy into reaching non-Jews with the Gospel. Perhaps even more important, Paul was a writer. His opponents within the church wrote less than he did, and so most of the theology in the NT ends up coming from Paul’s letters.
Thanks!
The version of Christianity created by Paul, i.e. Pauline Christianity, was created in opposition to the teachings of other early Christian groups known as the Judaizers, such as the Ebionites. Those groups insisted on adherence to Jewish laws, which would as the article points out have made it harder for the new religion to gain traction among gentiles. If the other groups had prevailed, instead, Christianity would certainly not be as widespread as it is today. Or it might not even exist today; if the other viewpoint had prevailed, Jesus of Nazareth might be just another Jewish messiah claimant known to few but religious scholars.
Paul, who never met Jesus according to his writings and knows nothing of his sayings as related by the Gospel writers, still claimed his idea regarding gentiles not needing to adhere to Mosaic law was the correct one. In his writings he relates clashes with those in the other camp, e.g. the Incident at Antioch in the Epistle to the Galatians 2:11-14.
The final outcome of the incident remains uncertain; indeed the issue of Biblical law in Christianity remains disputed to this day. The Catholic Encyclopedia states: “St. Paul’s account of the incident leaves no doubt that St. Peter saw the justice of the rebuke.”[9] In contrast, L. Michael White’s From Jesus to Christianity states: “The blowup with Peter was a total failure of political bravado, and Paul soon left Antioch as persona non grata, never again to return.”[10]
For further information on the conflict between the two camps, see Paul the Apostle and Judaism.
Hi enewetak, I agree with you.
Re “Paul the Apostle and Judaism,” can you provide a link?
It seems to me that there were many Jesuses, and Paul — and later the Catholic Church — spliced the different Jesuses together to form one Jesus, a sort of repackaging.
To me, those Epistles always had the feel of a manager trying to get the branch office under control.
Agreed.
Paul was heavily influenced by the gentile world, and was probably a government agent employed to undermine and report on problematic Jews. He took his job very seriously. He was so preoccupied with plugging propaganda he probably believed his own spiel. His job gave him power, prestige, and a platform to preach his bigoted ethics, and that was attractive to a man who was a social misfit amongst Jews. He was too obsessive about promoting his prejudices; a fact I suspect would have been obvious to most who met him. If he’d lived in modern times, he’d be given a gold watch for his time in the public service, put on a pension, ushered out the door, and the whole office would be glad to see his back.
Not a bad take on Paul – I do think he was the ‘televangelist’ of his day, not for fortune, but arguably for fame. Paul was trained in classical rhetoric and argumentation; it’s always struck me that Paul went on his crusade of proselytizing largely because he thought he was the sh*t, and knew he could do it. I do however, remain convinced the he himself remained an observant Jew. Whether he believed in the “new covenant” for Gentiles or not, he seems to have wanted to keep his own accounts with God, however he actually saw him, pretty tightly in line with his own Jewish origins. Good read, this – thanks for posting it!
Thanks for stopping by Raven.
I think Paul did meet Jesus, although Jesus was dead at the time. The famous meeting took place on the road to Damascus where a resurrected Jesus asked Paul why he was persecuting him.
Not sure if Paul could be compared to a Televangelist, those guys live a fabulously wealthy life and to my knowledge none of them have ever been beheaded or crucified upside down.
I’m wasn’t talking about Paul’s lifestyle when I compared him to a televangelist – I was talking about how he distorted one man’s message to suit his own prejudices and bigotry.
Historically, nobody knows how Paul died; it is tradition alone that maintains that he was beheaded; and it was Peter, not Paul, who was (again according to tradition) crucified upside down.
Personally, I think Saul was hallucinating on that trip to Damascus.
I have read two accounts of Paul’s execution, (if he ever lived at all), once by beheading and once by upside down crucifixion, I suppose it’s feasible that he could have endured both forms of punishment. I would probably take beheading first.
Hi Jennings. The “road to Damascus” is documented only in Acts, which was written many decades after Paul passed on, by someone who never knew Paul. It’s a fiction. If Paul had met Jesus’ ghost, and been temporarily blinded, he would have mentioned this extraordinary fact in his letters, and he doesn’t.
The author of Acts was simply trying to bolster Paul’s legitimacy, because Paul was the inventor of Christian theology (not Jesus or Jesus’ original disciples.)
The whole spiel about a cordial relationship between Paul and the Jesus’ (Jewish, not Christian) disciples is also a fiction invented by the author of Acts.
Thanks for for putting me right Mark. When people correct me, I usually say: “Thanks for your input” and I reinforce my own opinion by giving them a quick nod and half a smile, but this time I bow in your general direction.
Cheers. I’m not always right either. The important thing is that we all learn from each other. “Paul” is a difficult topic. It took me many months of reading to get my head around who he was and what he was trying to achieve.
I think the whole Jesus story is a myth created by those with agendas, like Paul. Excellent read.
I certainly agree with Paul being a televangelist. As for Jesus…if he ever even existed…that’s a whole other story. I’ll share my opinion on him in later blogs. Thanks for your comment.
Jesus was a country vicar; Paul was a televangelist.