Separating the corn from the chaff

 

Separating the corn from the chaff

Investigating the Apostle Paul

There are many churches today who are placing the Apostle Paul on a pedestal and some of them seem to give him more authority than Jesus himself. However a carefull investigation of the miraculous conversion of Paul, his calling and ministry will quickly reveal some serious discrepancies. Take for instance the Damascus Road conversion about which there are three different accounts which is given. In the one account the travelling companions see the light but do not hear the voice while in the other they hear the voice but do not see the light. Unfortunately none of these companions are later available to confirm Paul's Story. Likewise Ananias is mentioned at only this one occasion and never again. He never comes forward to testify on Paul's behalf. Frankly I no longer believe that there was any Damascus road meeting with the risen Christ and I will attempt to prove this point later on. When Paul eventually leaves Damascus we have two different accounts about what happened. In the one account he escaped over the wall of the city while in the other he escaped through a window in the wall of the City. Throughout his Ministry Paul persistently claim that he did not visit Jerusalem after his conversion but instead he went into Galatia and remained there for 14 years. Only then did he return to go to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles. This is obviously a lie because Acts 9 verse 27 say that he did go to Jerusalem after his conversion where he was introduced to the other Apostles by Barnabas and he went in and out among them for many days. When he eventually leaves that city they are once again two different stories about why he was forced to leave. In the one-story it was a captain of a certain King that wanted to kill Paul and in the other story it was the Hellenistic Jews that wanted to kill him. Why is nothing ever black and white when it comes to Paul. Why are there so many contradictions?

No apostolic blessing

None of the other Apostles ever come forward to confirm Paul's Story. We only have those two verses in the letter written by Peter which many Bible scholars say was deliberately inserted to make it appear as though Peter was speaking in favour of Paul. The Book of Acts and Paul's own letters does not count and cannot be taken as proof. The only ones Paul can call on to vindicate him is God, His Son and the Holy Spirit. This he does about ten times saying things like God is my witness, I am telling the truth in Christ and the Holy Spirit is my witness and so forth. Someone who is genuinely telling the truth does not have to do this. Psychologists say that doing this is mostly a sign that someone is lying.

Paul's treatment of the Old testament

Paul's primary doctrine is salvation by faith without any works but reading the story of Abraham quickly reveal that only one verse, Genesis 15:6 says that Abraham believed God and that was accounted to him as righteousness. In every other place God continues to mention Abraham's obedience. With the offering of Isaac all the faith in the world could not have satisfied God because God needed to see that Abraham was genuinely willing to sacrifice his own son. The only logical conclusion is that James is right and Paul is wrong, faith without works is dead. Likewise Paul saying that everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed is wrong because that is not what Moses said. The context in that portion of scripture is a corpse which is allowed to hang on a tree overnight because that would defile the land. God most definitely did not mean that everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed and this not how Old testament rabbis interpreted that verse because they knew that many innocent people were hanged. Likewise it would be unfair for God to put a curse on His sinless Son.

Paul's Roman citizenship

Many people read about Paul's Roman citizenship in the Bible and they never give it a second thought. The question remains, how did a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin manage to get Roman citizenship? The centurion who captures Paul gives us an important clue because he says, for a very large sum of money have I obtained this citizenship but Paul says, I have been born a Roman citizen. Again how did the Jew from the tribe of Benjamin became a Roman citizen? Roman soldiers had to serve in the Roman army for twenty five years before they qualified for Roman citizenship. How did Paul do it? By 400AD sixty million people lived in the Roman empire but very few of them had Roman citizenship. Some scholars say that Paul was born in a free city where everyone became a citizen by birth but others say the real reason is that Paul's family was loyal to Rome and that they preferred Roman rule over the rulership of the Maccabean priesthood and that is the real reason why Paul's family became Roman citizens. In other words Paul not only persecuted the church he also betrayed his own nation. Furthermore what Luke described as witnessing opportunities when Paul met Felix and Festus the two kings was in actual fact Paul reporting on the conditions in Palestine. Paul also met with Nero in Rome in AD 64 to report on the Palestinian situation.

Paul and James

All of the history writers between the first and third centuries say that James was the Bishop of the church in Jerusalem. They also tell us that James and Paul was constantly at odds in so much that Paul actually assaulted James. They strongly disagreed on many issues such as the faith and works issue. In his book "James the brother of Jesus" Robert Eisenman tells us that many of the earliest history writers say that Jerusalem was destroyed after the death of James. Jerusalem was destroyed because of James not because of Jesus.

The heaven and hell issue

When reading the book "Heaven and hell, a history of the afterlife" by Professor Bart D Ehrman one quickly learns that the concept of an eternal soul is something which originated with Plato the Greek philosopher. He was the first one to say that the soul was made of a finer substance than the body and therefore the soul had to be eternal. That view is not shared by Mosses or any of the major prophets. For all of the old testament saints from Adam to Solomon and beyond the grave was the end of the road. There was no afterlife or heaven or hell. This life was all they had. This becomes abundantly clear when one reads Ecclesiastes where Solomon say that a human has no advantage over an animal because both will return to the dust from which they were taken.

Ecc3:19 For the fate of humans and the fate of the beast is the same. The death of the one is like the death of the other, for both are mortal. Man has no advantage over the beast, for both are fleeting.

20 Both go to one place—both came from dust and both return to dust.

21 For no one knows whether the spirit of a human ascends to heaven and whether the spirit of the beast descends to the ground!

Verse 21 says it all, no one knows! This is the wisest man in creation speaking and if he says nobody knows then there is in my opinion a very strong possibility that he knows what he is talking about.

This is backed up by the Sadducees in the gospels and Acts who did not believe in a resurrection, spirit or angel. Why not? They were people who were serious about the scriptures and they must have had a very good reason for believing what they did.

Ecc 9:4 Whoever is joined to all the living has hope. After all, even a live dog is better than a dead lion!

5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything. They no longer have a reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.

6 What they loved and hated, as well as what they desired, has already perished. They no longer have any share in what is done under the sun.

It does not get any clearer than that, when we lay down our heads, that is the end, nothing else remains, we no longer have a part in anything happening in this world or beyond. When reading Professor Ehrman's book it becomes clear how Plato's original idea snowballed and how it grew through subsequent generations until it became the full blown doctrine which we have today.

Paul as the first New Testament writer takes this idea and transforms it into the risen Christ doctrine.

When reading "Did Jesus exist" by the same author we learn that there was indeed a historical Jesus but he is not the Jesus portrayed by the gospel writers. The real Jesus is the one speaking to us through the Q document wherein there is no miracles, resurrection, heaven or hell. So we can say with hundred percent certainty that Paul was a liar who took the life of the historical Jesus and twisted it into something which it was never intended to be.

This becomes even more interesting when we consider the fact that there are scholars who say the writing styles of Paul and Flavius Josephus is an exact match and that there is a very strong likelihood that they were one and the same person. This strengthens the suspicion that Paul was a Roman insurgent all along who faked his miraculous conversion and lied about his apostolic calling and divine revelations.

Paul and Mark

It is clear from Paul's own letters and the book of Acts that he was acquainted with Mark and this would explain where Mark get the material for his gospel. However Mark was not a Jew, he was a Greek and this can be seen in the fact that he does not know the geography of first century Israel. He is telling his readers that the demon possessed pigs ran from the region of the Gerasenes all the way to the sea of Galilee in order to drown there. According to scholars that is a distance of fifty miles. Matthew being a Jew used Mark as his primary source and realized that something is wrong and he changes the name of the town to Gadarenes. However this town is still five miles from the sea of Galilee which to me makes this whole story ridiculous and unbelievable.

The Septuagint

Something else that Mark does is that he tries to tell his readers that when Jesus was reasoning with the scribes and pharisees he quoted the Septuagint. The problem is that many of the verses which Jesus quoted in Mark's gospel has different meanings in the Hebrew. This makes it highly unlikely that the scribes and pharisees would have tolerated someone who treated their Holy scriptures in this way.

Matthew and Luke come along and they mostly used Mark as their source material but they also use other material not found in Mark. This material comes from a document now referred to as the Q document. Interestingly the Q document contains primarily the sayings of Jesus but there is no mention whatsoever of any miracles, a resurrection or heaven and hell.

Conclusion

If there is no heaven and hell and no resurrection and the grave is the end of the road then the entire risen Christ myth is a lie. I think it was Professor G A Wells who said that Christianity was created to stop the spreading of the Jewish religious system. The crucified and risen Christ story is without a doubt one of the most beautiful and inspiring stories ever told and it had a powerful impact on people for two thousand years and it would be extremely difficult to let it go but is better to know the truth than to live a lie.