Some thoughts on Paul

From the book, "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception"

by Michael Bajgent and Richard Leigh (Corgi Books, London, 1991)
"... Paul is in effect the first Christian heretic, and his teachings, which become the foundation of later Christianity, are a flagrant deviation from the 'Original' or 'pure' form extolled by the leadership. Whether James, the 'Lord's brother,' was literally Jesus' blood kin or not (and everything suggests he was), it is clear that he knew Jesus...personally. So did most of the other members of the community or 'early Church,' in Jerusalem, including of course, Peter. When they spoke, they did so with first hand authority. Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he'd begun to regard as his 'Savior.' He had only his quasi-mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a disembodied voice. For him to arrogate authority to himself on this basis is, to say the least, presumptuous. It also leads him to distort Jesus' teachings beyond recognition, to formulate, in fact, his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimize it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus."

"As things transpired, however, the mainstream of the new movement gradually coalesced, during the next three centuries, around Paul and his teachings. Thus, to the undoubted posthumous horror of James and his associates, an entirely new religion was indeed born, a religion that came to have less and less to do with its supposed founder."


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Thomas Jefferson

"Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."

From a letter to W. Short published in The Great Thoughts by George Sildes (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985, p.208).


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Albert Schweitzer

"Where possible he (Paul) avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the sermon on the mount, and had taught His disciples the 'Our Father.' Even where they are specially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord."

(The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 171)


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Jeremy Bentham
The renowned English philosopher , in his Not Paul But Jesus, declared:

"It rests with every professor of the religion of Jesus to settle within himself to which of the two religions, that of Jesus or that of Paul, he will adhere."




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Ferdinand Christian Baur
The eminent theologian, in his Church History of the First Three Centuries, wrote:

"What kind of authority can there be for an 'apostle' who, unlike the other apostles, had never been prepared for the apostolic office in Jesus' own school but had only later dared to claim the apostolic office on the basis on his own authority? The only question comes to be how the apostle Paul appears in his Epistles to be so indifferent to the historical facts of the life of Jesus....He bears himself but little like a disciple who has received the doctrines and the principles which he preaches from the Master whose name he bears."



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Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)

"Paul's words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference."

(Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 104, Harper San Francisco, 1991)


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Carl Jung (Psychologist)

"Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in."

(U.S. News and World Report, April 22, 1991, p. 55)


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Hyam Maccoby (Talmudic Scholar)

"Paul, not Jesus, was the founder of Christianity as a new religion which developed away from both normal Judaism and the Nazarene variety of Judaism."

(The Mythmaker, Barnes & Noble, p. 16)


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An Open Letter to Evangelists

By brother Jerry of Qumran Bet Community

"Is that a Jew hat?", was his introductory line...

Now, this letter is an attempt to explore the do's and don'ts of proselytizing His chosen people. Before you open your mind, your heart and commit to a dialogue designed to convert these misguided souls, it's best to check your facts. Remember two things, first, beginning four thousand years ago, they were the vessels into which HaShem poured His truth, also no other religion or nation could claim Abraham or sacred truth and it was prophesied that they would be a blessing to all nations but then, the second point to remember, nearly two thousand years ago, a new religion was conceived laying claim to the authority of the old. The foundation of Christianity must be Judaism or it has no foundation at all. In these roughly, two millennia of divorcement, the Christian religion has evolved into the epitome of the 'strange woman'. The Holy Writ of the Hebrew people forbids the inclusion of other mighty ones (gods) in their worship. If you come bringing a mighty one (god) that was not known to the Patriarchs, this same Holy Writ commands you be stoned! If you come teaching the end of the Law, this is lawlessness and you are cursed of Yah. Remember the one you call Jesus, was in fact a man called Yahushua, a law keeping Rabbi, with his twelve Talmidim as a functional Minyan. The Jews know this and also see the foreign, pagan influences that have been absorbed by your church fathers. The apostate, power hungry church leaders of the first centuries saw the wonder, the glory, the majesty, the mighty power of the G-d of Israel and lusted after its sacred fire. They, as it were, crept into the Temple, unawares, and stole it's constant feature. They contrived to contain it, to hew it's stones, to pervert it's power and to harness the very Spirit of the Most High. When they found their error, they set out to destroy the true Temple. They left not a stone upon a stone in this construction of sacred truth, instead they built up a new temple and conglomerated a new and contrived writ to seal their authority.

The marriage with the Emperor was the crowning jewel of their ascendance. Please remember these facts are well known by your Jewish brothers. Yet you who historically have been a curse to the children of HaShem, you, who have burned, sacked, beheaded and defamed His people in every conceivable way, stand before Him saying, "Brother, Jesus the g-d has suffered and died to set you free from the law". The Law? The Law He gave to Moses to set His people free? See your error before you are crushed by its guilt.

If the one you are holding up is true as you believe him to be, he must then stand your scrutiny. Dig out the man from the myth and then you may present him, whole, as the pivotal stone which the builders did reject, who himself is that stone, cut without hands, who will crush and bring to nothing all the man contrived power centers and rule over planet earth with the Law as given to Moses.

I love my Jew hat and wear it humbly.

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