(painting by György Falkoner, ca. 1700)
Apr 26, 2021
"And he saw Paul coming, a man little of stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of grace: for sometimes he appeared like a man, and sometimes he had the face of an angel."
Saint Paul is described suchlike in the apocryphal tale of Saint Thecla (Acts of Paul, book 2). In this episode, he arrives in the Greek city of Iconium (now Konya, Turkey) and gathers a cult following of young believers in immortality through celibacy, young Thecla chief among them. Her mother, her husband-to-be, and others turn against them. Thecla, and later Paul, are repeatedly saved from execution by divine intervention, but ultimately Paul is beheaded by Emperor Nero in Rome.
This is the same man introduced in Acts 7 as Saul (his Hebrew name), a zealous young holier-than-thou Pharisee leading the persecution of Jerusalem's Christians. After they flee to syria, saul departs for Damascus to arrest these Christians refugees. Along the way Jesus appears to him in a cloud of light and tells him the gospel. Suddenly he believes, and does more than Jesus himself to spread the word of the lord to all the Gentiles in the Greco-Roman world. He has miraculously transformed from the greatest sinner against Jesus to a cornerstone of church doctrine and our favorite source of proverbs. It's the ultimate redemption arc.
Now I'm not saying the Christian religion was built on a foundation of lies... but color me cynical. With millions of people being fooled by obvious psyops in modern times, I have to wonder:
Was this guy a fed?
Well, he wasn't saying "hello, fellow Gentiles, God has finally admitted you to the ranks of the Chosen... now circumcise yourselves for Jesus!" - like Saint John, he consistently affirms that Jesus repealed the old covenant. Paul was adamantly anti-circumcision, and he didn't expect his followers to eat kosher food or observe the sabbath either. I'll say no more; you can read it in his own words. Paul's letter to the Galatians is good summary; it's 'undisputedly' written by him, he lays out all the major controversies about himself, and it's short (about 5 pages). I have a hard time believing him, but he says a lot of good things.
On the other hand, it's becoming pretty clear to me that he's the one who built the church as we know it, which goes against the main gospels (especially John) where Jesus talks about a universal church of the holy spirit with no rabbis and no priesthood at all; every member is a priest and a saint. It's almost as if pPul created a new organized religion without the superficial dogma of Judaism but all the authoritarian structures that Jesus wanted to tear down.
These are all the biblical writings by or about Paul that I'm aware of:
1. The Acts of the Apostles - written by Saint Luke, this book outlines the apostles' efforts to expand the church after Jesus's death, and ends in the mid-60's when most of the apostles were rounded up and executed. (In the aftermath, the Jews went to war with the Romans; they lost, and the Romans destroyed the temple of Solomon, which fulfilled all of Jesus's endtimes prophecies if he meant the end of the era, not the literal end of the world.) Paul plays a major role in the second half of this timeline (starting in the mid-40's) but this book is light on details and often doesn't name names.
2. The 14 'books' following 'Acts' in the new testament - these are allegedly letters from Saint Paul to the priests and members of various churches he had established in present-day Turkey and Rome. They're notable because they describe the operations of early churches. They also fill in some details missing in 'Acts', occasionally contradict it, and name names. The letter to the Romans basically contains Paul's version of the gospel, as well as a bunch of theological wrangling about what Christianity means for Jews. 1 Timothy 3 contains the only mention of bishops, presbyters, and deacons (overseers, elders, and ministers) in the new testament.
3. The Acts of Paul - an incomplete apocryphal book pieced together in the early 1900's from fragments of various ancient copies in several languages. Some of it roughly corresponds to Saint Luke's story of Paul, but not the tale of Saint Thecla, who apparently started a big feminist cult in the 50's or 60's and had a big influence on 20th-century feminism. According to this tale, Paul preaches absolute celibacy as a requirement for salvation and eternal life, gathers a huge cult following, and is persecuted for it by the degenerate Greeks and Romans. It's generally considered spurious or even heretical. Nevertheless, it's the earliest possible precedent for clerical celibacy that I'm aware of so far. [And the only canonical precedent I know of is Revelation 14.]
4. Also, Irenaeus had much to say about Paul in "Against Heresies" (~180 AD). As a random example, in book 3 chapter 14 he basically says if you don't believe Paul, you can't believe Luke, another cornerstone of Christianity - so you're left with Matthew, Mark, and John - but maybe that's enough?
Paul's canonical and apocryphal writings were also cited by various 'Gnostics' to justify all kinds of cult practices that have nothing to do with Christianity as we know it. Some were celibate, some castrated themselves just to be sure, and I suspect some were eunuchs or even transsexuals. Others were just carrying on Paganism and calling themselves Christian - as did the Roman Catholics to a limited degree.
This gets to a fundamental paradox -
Christianity is defined by the written gospels, not by priests, but we can't believe what we read.
Most of us carry around a collection of 'facts' absorbed from teachers, reading, casual conversations, headlines, the internet... many of these are lies and misunderstandings. Sometimes we mishear, misread, or misinterpret them due to other errors in our knowledge. If we're being semi-prudent we may check our facts against a bible or encyclopedia, but these are subject to all the same errors; sometimes they deepen our misunderstanding. If we're more prudent we check multiple sources including opposing viewpoints. (That's the general level of this series, by the way.) If we really care about a particular 'fact' we can read original sources or conduct scientific experiments; it's not usually possible to get to the bottom, but these 'deep dives' are useful for exposing mainstream heresies and propaganda. None of us have the time to personally verify every 'fact' that matters to us, however; objectivity is pie in the sky. That's where faith comes in.
As for the bible, I must assume that some false narratives slipped in with 'the truth' amidst all the confusion. For example, origen of alexandria was an influential church father and philosopher in the 200's who promulgated some gnostic ideas which weren't 'detected' until the 500's. That means the antenicaean church fathers failed to preserve Christ's message, or the 6th-century byzantine theocrats deliberately corrupted the message, or both.
20th-century rediscoveries of the nag hammadi codex, dead sea scrolls, etc, have brought all kinds of people out of the woodwork to translate and interpret these ancient books, often warping them to fit their own interests in feminism, neo-paganism, and especially neo-gnosticism, which is basically an offshoot of Freemasonry (more on that another time). The books themselves have helped to confirm and clarify the scriptures, but some of these people want to destroy Christian traditions.
One name that keeps coming up in Wikipedia articles on these subjects is elaine pagels, an american liberal academic who worked on the nag hammadi translation project at Harvard and wrote several books on gnosticism for which she received many awards from the rockefeller foundation and such like. I even have one of her books that a liberal relative passed along to me: "The Origin of Satan: how Christians demonized Jews, Pagans, and heretics" (1995); I've only read the introduction but the title says it all - she's demonizing Christians. Hypocrisy!
There are also innocent mistakes with serious consequences. A few weeks ago, as I often do, I saw a quote from Paul on the internet: "they won’t listen to what the bible says" (2 Timothy 4) and immediately noticed a problem with it - the bible doesn't talk about "the bible"! Bible just means book. Sure enough, every bible says "truth" here except for one, "The Living Bible" - an 'easy to read' paraphrasing of the bible popularized by Billy Graham in the 1960's, and so a whole generation of Evangelicals grew up with it. If the author (Ken Taylor) had re-translated from Greek instead of paraphrasing an English translation, he would have gotten it right - you can't mistake alethea (truth) for biblos (book). Is this how the current culture war started? It must have contributed to the schism within Christianity, and between Christians and secular leftists, and it was all because someone dumbed down the bible.
(What's a good bible? That's a whole future topic, but I started using the New International Version. The wording flows better and it's supposed to be an accurate translation from the original languages, but it has some issues with Evangelical bias and political correctness. I'm also using studybible.info to check against Greek and Hebrew versions.)
Anyway, was Paul a fed?
I have no idea. There are basically 4 possibilities - he was a legitimate miracle worker, or he was an honest huckster grifting off of Christianity, or he was a subversive plant who hijacked the movement, or he was a fictional character created by someone else. Whoever he was, I will just assume for now that he's the one who built the church as we know it, for better or worse.
One last thing while I'm on the subject of Paul and the Jewish/Gentile conflict in early Christianity: it wasn't that simple.
- The Samaritans were a neighboring tribe with their own version of the pentateuch, apparently unaltered by centuries of enslavement in Egypt and Babylon. Like the Black Hebrew Israelites today, they looked down on Jews and considered themselves to be 'the real Jews'. The gospels (Matthew 10:5 for example) portray them somewhat distinctly from both the Jews and Gentiles.
- The Sadducees ("sons of Zadok") were the establishment Jewish priesthood. I guess they were basically what Catholics or mainline protestants are to Christianity today. They were relatively moderate, and played nice with the Greeks and Romans. They only believed in the 5 books of Moses, not the whole old testament. They definitely did not accept Jesus.
- The Pharisees ("separatists") were a smaller, more devout Jewish sect. They didn't associate with Gentiles. Unlike the Saducees, they believed in the old testament prophets and the resurrection of the dead. I guess they were comparable to Christian fundamentalists today. Jesus frequently called them hypocrites because of their virtue signaling. Some of them believed Jesus could be the messiah and some (like Paul at first) believed he was a false prophet who should be put to death.
- The Essenes were an ascetic communalist Jewish sect with celibate priests. Apparently they were significant at the time, but soon went extinct. The Dead Sea Scrolls were 'probably' written and/or collected by them, by who really knows.
- The Zealots were literally Jewish supremacist rebels and terrorists. The apostle "Simon the Zealot" was apparently aligned with this movement before he joined Jesus.
- 'Hebrews' were aramaic-speaking Jews (including Jesus and most of his disciples, apparently). Aramaic was a more popular sister language of Hebrew which even the Jews began to speak around the time of their captivity in Babylon.
- 'Hellenists' were greek-speaking diaspora Jews (including Paul) who had immigrated to Judea.
- 'Hellenes' were greek-speaking Gentiles. Most bibles call them 'Greeks' (in acts 21:28 for example), confusing them with Hellenists. A few english bibles call them 'Gentiles'; the complete Jewish bible uses 'goyim', interestingly.
- 'Proselytes' were Gentiles who had fully converted to Judaism, including circumcision for the men.
- 'God-fearers' or 'god-worshippers' were Gentiles who believed in the Jewish god (or creator, or highest god) instead of the Pagan gods, but didn't observe Jewish rituals. Such people are mentioned many times in the new testament and apocrypha, but it's easy to miss the significance.
What happened to them all? Oversimplifying, the Gentile groups became Christians, some of the Jews became 'Jewish Christians' who accepted Jesus, the Zealots started a genocidal and suicidal war with the Romans, the Romans destroyed the Saducees' temple, the Pharisees replaced them, and the final Jewish-Roman war divided 'Jewish Christianity' into two separate religions 100 years after Jesus. The Samaritans were decimated by the Byzantines and Muslims later on; hundreds remain in Israel and the West Bank today.