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Two figures dominate the pages of the New Testament more than any others: Jesus and Paul. Few Christians ever study the New Testament Scriptures close enough to discern that these two characters and their Spiritual messages are quite different from each other in many ways. In fact, it is possible with enlightened study to discern that there are two different "Pauls" and two different Spiritual messages from two different Pauls in the New Testament. Few Christians have ever seen that two different messages regarding Christ emanate from the New Testament Paul and that these messages and teachings contradict and oppose each other completely from beginning to end. Modern Bible scholars today are alerting the masses to the fact that there exists numerous anti-gnostic passages in the Pauline corpus of writings that have been inserted and interpolated into the authentic Pauline Gnostic Scriptures and texts by someone other than the real historical St. Paul. Even Bible scholars who maintain Pauline authorship of many Epistles that carry Paul's name have noted significant differences between the world of thought in these authentic Pauline Gnostic letters and the forged and falsified anti-gnostic Pauline Epistles in the New Testament. These scholars of the Bible today tell us that there suddenly exists throughout the authentic Gnostic Pauline Epistles with their doctrine of wisdom many places where anti-gnostic texts and dogmas are dispersed among the texts in order to confuse the reader as to the Gnostic nature of the authentic Pauline Epistles. Today modern Bible scholars tell us that six of the thirteen Epistles that carry Paul's name are recognized to be forgeries of letters that definitely were not written by the Gnostic Paul himself.
Thus, there are two very different "Pauls" in the New Testament. First, there is a Gnostic St. Paul and a "Petrine" Paul which is a later attempt to portray the Gnostic Paul as being anti-gnostic by Roman Christianity which was forged by them at a later date. For almost two thousand years, Roman Christianity, and her daughter, Protestant Christianity, have read the Pauline Epistles and taught their congregates that the Apostle Paul is the opponent of Gnostic Christianity and its "Secret Wisdom." As Christians, we are told that Paul preaches a historical Christ Jesus who was crucified on an old rugged cross in I Corinthians 2:2 and proclaims a resurrection of the dead after the demise of the biological body which is used by the Soul as the vehicle for its Spiritual evolution. In other words, the St. Paul of the New Testament preaches traditional Roman Christianity along with its dogmas and doctrines which oppose the earliest expression of Gnostic Christianity that existed until the 5th century of the Common Era. Long before the four gospels were penned, it was St. Paul who supposedly, according to Roman exegesis of the Pauline Epistles, fought the good fight of faith against the Gnostic Christians who St. Paul supposedly called the "Ministers of Satan." We are led to believe by textual eisegesis by the Roman Church that the supposedly false apostles mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:13 were Gnostic Christians who deceptively passed themselves off as apostles of Christ , when the truth of the matter is that the Gnostic Paul penned that verse and intended it describe the "Petrines" of the Jerusalem Church as well as those who taught a literal and historical Jesus Christ. Of course, history reveals to us that Orthodox Roman Christianity will follow in the steps of the Jerusalem Church and teach the dogmas of the Petrine Jerusalem Church and their literal and historical interpretation of "the Christ. "One thing is for certain, a person does not have to look long or hard today to find Christian commentators that maintain from reading the Pauline corpus of Epistles that St. Paul repudiated the secret wisdom, gnosis, and knowledge that the earliest Christians Gnostics taught before the rise of Roman Christian orthodoxy. But did he really?
If this Petrine and later Roman Christian view of St. Paul is accurate, then it is hard to account for the fact that when the Gnostic gospels were uncovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1949, that most all of them claimed that St. Paul and his Epistles were the primary source of their Gnostic theology. In spite of what the Roman Church Fathers and heresy hunters said in their writings, it appears from the Gnostic gospels and writings, that Gnostic Christians and leaders, instead of repudiating St. Paul as their obstinate anti-gnostic opponent, claimed St. Paul proudly as a Gnostic initiate and as their apostle. To these earliest Gnostic Christians that existed long before the rise of Roman Christian Orthodoxy, St. Paul was their "Gnostic apostle." This description of St. Paul not made by the Gnostics as we might expect. This description of St. Paul as a Gnostic is found in the confessions of Irenaeus in his Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), a five-volume work written by St. Irenaeus opposing Christian Gnosticism in the second century who was one of the chief heresiologists who fought against the Christian Gnostics in the later part of the 2nd century and early part of the 3rd century of the Christian era. Clement of Alexandria, Egypt, an important Gnostic Church Father, declared in his Stromata that the famous Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas, and Theudas was in turn, a first-hand disciple of the Gnostic St. Paul. Archaeological discoveries reveals that Valentinus, the best known and for a time most successful early Christian gnostic theologian, alludes to St. Paul very often in his writings, calling him "the apostle." When all is said and done, the Nag Hammadi Gnostic discoveries reveals just how profound is the Pauline influence on the Christian Gnostics in the first and second century of the Christian Gnostic tradition. Central to this influence of St. Paul among the Gnostic Christians is the "mystical" themes found in Pauline theology in his Epistles where believers are said to participate in the baptism, death, and resurrection of Christ. All through these Gnostic writings discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, allusions to Pauline "mysticism" and the Pauline Epistles and Scriptures are to be found from beginning to end. This presence of Pauline Scriptures and dogmas running through the whole of these Gnostic writings discovered at Nag Hammadi is both unexplainable and perplexing, given that testimony of the Church Fathers who endeavored to paint St. Paul as being anti-gnostic. Also amazing is the fact that all through the Nag Hammadi Gnostic writings, there are to be found allusions constantly to other New Testaments Books that many attribute to Pauline authorship or possible Pauline authorship like Romans, I and 2nd Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and the Book of Hebrews. It is in these Pauline writings, or writings of others Gnostic writers who were pro-Pauline or Paulinists, we find such dogmas as immersion and baptism being described as a "dying with Christ;" Paul’s teaching on a person's resurrection with Christ, and Paul’s exhortation on participation in the body of Christ. Examination of these new archaeological discoveries involving these early Gnostic Christian writings, have revealed that it was Irenaeus who so terribly and deceitfully slandered these Gnostic Christians when he said that all Gnostic exegesis and Gnostic teaching was based upon unwritten oral traditions and sources not contained in Scriptures. The actual archaeological discoveries of these Gnostic Gospels and other Gnostic writings reveal otherwise. Christians and Christian writers who have been swayed by Irenaeus and his slanderous writings for the last eighteen hundred years, tended to accept Irenaeus’ judgment of the Gnostics without question when he characterized the Gnostic Christians being opposed to the authentic Christian "tradition" which was considered Roman Christian. Without a doubt, it was these earliest Gnostic Christians where were the authentic Christians long before the rise of Roman Christianity. The Gnostic Christians responded to such false charges by maintaining that the sources for their mystical and metaphysical religious traditions and dogmas were Paul’s own personal letters and writings that contained within them heavy amounts of Gnostic teaching, Gnostic theology, and Paul’s own secret wisdom tradition.
Before us then, is a war of exegesis of the Sacred New Testament Scriptures shared in common between both theological camps, the Gnostic Christians and the anti-Gnostic Roman Christians. This is described today by modern Bible scholars to be the war for the interpretation of Scripture, the Gnostic Paulines on one side and the Petrine Roman Christians on the other side. This war raged not only in the 2nd century of the Christian Era, but this same war over the true exegesis of the Scriptures by the Gnostic Christians who resorted to a mystical, allegorical, and metaphysical exegesis of the Sacred Scriptures, and a false literal and historical exegesis of the Scriptures by the Roman literalizers and historicizers of divine revelation, exits in our day as well. The warning from 2nd Peter 3:16-17 comes to mind where Peter cautions his fellow Christians that the "unlearned and unstable" brethren have "distorted" the letters of "our beloved brother Paul." Even at times, as seen in the admission of various Church Fathers, for example Irenaeus and Tertullian, many controversies raged between anti-Gnostic Roman Christianity and Gnostic Christianity regarding not only over Pauline pro-Gnostic exegesis of New Testament texts, but included as well the charges by Gnostic Christians that Orthodox Roman Christianity was guilty of interpolation where they added anti-gnostic Scriptures to the seven authentic Gnostic Pauline Epistles as well as altered other Scriptures from the hands of the Gnostic St. Paul. Thanks to the archaeological discoveries in the last sixty years, we can today trace the two antithetical traditions of Pauline exegesis in the New Testament that emerged from the late first century through the second century of the Christian era. Each of these traditions claim, Gnostic Christianity and later Roman Christianity, claimed to be the authentic expression of Christianity. In spite of this, with the rise and authority of Roman Christianity, orthodox Roman Christians from the 2nd century onward were taught to both interpret and understand the Pauline Epistles anti-gnostically, even thought St. Paul was a Gnostic Christian and opposed Petrine Christianity which would later be adopted by Roman Christianity as well as seen in their literal and historical exegesis of the Scriptures and teaching of the literal and historical Jesus Christ. Opposed to this, Gnostic Christians were taught to read, understand, and interpret the Pauline Epistles gnostically. Hence, we discover in New Testament two conflicting images of St. Paul in the New Testament: the Gnostic Paul who was the "apostle" to the Gnostic Christians and teacher of secret wisdom to Gnostic initiates on the one hand, and the anti-gnostic Paul familiar to most of us today from the Roman Christian tradition, on the other.
It has been hypothesized by scholars such as Hyam Maccoby in his Paul and Hellenism and Elaine Pagels, with her The Gnostic Gospels and The Gnostic Paul, as well as the mystical authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in their The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus And The Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings Of The Original Christians, that Paul of Tarsus was a Gnostic who developed the early Christian church as a mystery religion with a Jewish flavor, and that elements of this church would, over time, come to forget or misunderstand the mystery elements in the teachings and earliest New Testament writings of the Gnostic Paul. Consequently, over time these Gnostic Christians would come to largely abandon their Jewish foundation, and in so doing, come to mistakenly accept and adopt a literal and historical interpretation of the Scriptures and texts. The argument for Paul being a Gnostic is based on arguments about the authorship of the Pauline Epistles. With only seven of St. Paul's Epistles being seen by most modern Bible scholars today as authentic, the Pastoral Epistles (I and 2nd Timothy, and Titus), are generally acknowledged as being clearly anti-gnostic. In these Epistles, the Gnostic Paul is falsely portrayed as an antagonist against the "false teachers" who "set forth fables and endless genealogies." Given that the Epistles to Timothy have been forged by anti-Gnostics and are grouped with other Pauline writings in the New Testament, the typical reader of the New Testament assumes the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles, both in terms of Pauline authorship and their presentation of St. Paul as being anti-gnostic. Hence, Paul is claimed through such textual forgery as the ally of Rome against the Gnostics. This is all together rather strange given that the Gnostic Valentinus, who once in his life came close to being assigned the prestigious position of Bishop or Pope of Rome, cited the same books being of Pauline authorship as did the earliest known Pauline collection attested from Alexandria, Egypt. It needs be said that the second Epistle to the Thessalonians clearly refutes certain gnostic interpretations of the first Epistle to the Thessalonians which is one of the Gnostic Paul's authentic Epistles. Most confusing then is that some see St. Paul as being a Gnostic Christians while others see him being anti-Gnostic. What is going on? How could St. Paul have become to both theological camps, the Gnostic Christians as well as the anti-gnostic Roman Christianity, the hero of both opposing theological camps in the earliest centuries of the Christian Era? How could St. Paul be claimed to be the apostle of the Gnostic Christians who read and interpreted Sacred Scripture allegorically, mystically, and metaphysically as well as Roman Christians who read and interpreted Sacred Scripture literally and historically at the same time? Textual forgery of the earlier Gnostic Paul's writings and Epistles is the answer.
The answers for this enigma becomes clear once we realize that the Gnostic Christians taught. First of all Gnostic Christianity taught that all of humanity was divided into 3 groups of people. Human beings, consisting of flesh, Soul, and Spirit, or the Divine Spark of God within them, is divided into classes representing each of these elements. The purely corporeal, otherwise called "hylics," lived completely in the flesh of their bodies under the total sway and domination of their animal natures. These people were not destined for salvation and eternal life following the death of the animal body. Gnostics, otherwise called "pneumatics," had awakened to the divine within them in this Earthly life and knowingly nurtured the growth and evolution of God and the Divine Spark within them and their salvation and eternal life following death was certain. Lastly, there were the Christians who stood in between these two groups, otherwise called "psychics," who could attain a lesser salvation through faith. Given this designation, it is easy to see how the "Jesus Story" worked on two levels at once. First, the "Jesus Story" was to be viewed, read, and understood as an introductory story for Psychic Christians initiated into the Outer or Lesser Mysteries. It was here that the Scriptures were read literally and historically, and from them ethical and moral teachings were basically the goal to be gathered from a literal and historical rendering of the texts. This same "Jesus Story" was to be viewed, read, and understood by Pneumatic Christians who were initiated into the Inner or Greater Mysteries as a mystical allegory of the incarnation, descent, evolution, and eventual ascension of the Soul. Although the "Jesus Story" was understood in two completely different ways, the story remained the same and so did the Scriptures, or at least they were supposed to have remained the same. As we will see, that did not happen. Thus, we see, the original intention was that both the Gnostic Christians and Roman Christians could share the same Scriptures; they only read and interpreted them differently.
According to the Gnostic Christians, and characteristic of Gnostic exegesis of Scripture, Paul's Epistles were likewise designed to work and teach on two levels at once. Theodotus of Byzantium, an elementary Gnostic writer from the late 2nd century, said that "each one knows the Lord in his own way: and not all know him alike." So, on the one hand, the Gnostics taught to the Psychic Christians the "Jesus Story" where the Christ was born according to flesh and was destined to suffer and eventually become "Christ crucified." To Pneumatic Christians, those with a higher Spiritual maturity, desiring the strong meat of the Word of God, the Gnostic taught Christ "pneumatically" or "according to the Spirit." Each level of initiate would take from the teachings whatever they were wise enough to be able to hear and discern. The Gnostic Christian would say that St. Paul, when he wrote 1 Corinthians 2:14, had in view the Psychi Christian: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Thus like the later gospels, Paul's Epistles were encoded with secret teachings so that uninitiated readers, the Psychic Christians, would hear one thing and the initiated readers would hear another. Only those initiated into the secret oral teachings of the Inner Mysteries, the Pneumatic Christians, were capable of understanding Paul's deeper Spiritual meaning veiled in the texts and Scriptures. Gnostic Christians claimed that Psychic Christians, like the Petrines Peter, James, and John of the Jerusalem Church, make the mistake of reading the Sacred Scriptures only literally and historically. Only when initiated into the deeper Inner or Greater Mysteries, could a person learn to read Paul's letters on the symbolic level, as the Gnostic St. Paul intended. Gnostic Christians taught that only the pneumatic reading of the Sacred Scriptures yields "the Spiritual truth" instead of its mere outward literal and historical perception which was never the deeper or intended meaning of the Scriptures nor the intent of its writer. As we read the Pauline Epistles, it become glaringly clear that Paul displays his disappointment in wanting to give his followers a deeper Pneumatic teaching but finding them carnal, he cannot. Hence, the Gnostic Paul can only give them the most elementary and basic of Christian doctrines since they are not initiated into Christ. Instead of strong meat, or pneumatic teaching, the Gnostic Paul has to given then Sarkic (fleshly) dogma diluted down to a literal or historical rendering, otherwise know as the "milk" of the word which is equivalent to a 3rd grade level of reading of the Sacred Scriptures. Such a diluted and diminished presentation of Spiritual truth when rendered only in a literal and historical perception of the texts, only provided for its hearers moral and ethical lessons, omitting as it does, Spiritual manna for the evolution of the evolving Souls of mankind in their incarnated Earthly lives. Thus we see, there exists two levels of reading and understanding within the St. Paul Epistles, a process that is complicated by untold numbers of textual forgeries and interpolations at the hands of both the earlier Petrine Jerusalem Chruch, themselves the original literalizers and false historicizers of the "Christ Story" and "Jesus Story," as well as the later Roman Church Fathers and their monks who wish to conceal and veil, as did the Jerusalem congregation before them, the Gnosticism of St. Paul, the apostle to the non-Jews of the known world in his day.
Let us never forget that there are two levels in which the "Jesus Story" and the "Christ Story" is to be understood. We all begin to read the "Jesus Story" as if it is a literal and historical story. The literal and historical interpretation of the "Jesus Story" is compared in Scriptures to the "milk" of the Word. This infantile reading of a mystical and metaphysical Cosmic drama of the Soul that progressively evolves into a deeper Spiritual level of understanding and interpretation of Scripture, is later compared to "strong meat" in the Scripture. Historical and traditional Roman Christian exegesis of the gospels and Pauline Epistles has for 1,800 years resulted in only a literal and historical understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures and texts, hardly ever obtaining or experiencing an allegorical, mystical, or metaphysical interpretation of the Scriptures and texts. This means that as Christians, we have been led our whole lives to drink Spiritual "milk" intended for babies in Christ and never once been fed on the "strong meat" that God intended we partake during out adult lives. In so doing, we have never progressed to the true Spiritual depth of what the Gnostic Paul attempted to convey to the Gentile Churches like the Church in Corinth to which he preached. To lives our lives, never obtaining the deeper teachings of the Word of God is not the way God intended for our Souls to evolve, nor the way delineated in the Scriptures that we are to obtain Spiritual maturity. As all of nature evolves and matures, only to be reborn anew, so it is with humanity and its understanding of Sacred Scripture as well. As a child, we are given the "milk" of a literal and historical understanding of the Scriptures in the Bible. This is necessary for babies, but not the intended goal for physical maturation. Nor is it the intended goal of Spiritual maturation and evolution as well. This very same Bible tells us in I Corinthians 2: 14 that its Scriptures are to be "Spiritually discerned" or "pneumatically discerned." God never intended that we remain our whole lives Spiritual babies, never progressing beyond a carnal approach to life nor never progressing from a literal or historical understanding of the Bible and its Scriptures. We were not incarnated into this Earthly life to never progress beyond a 3rd grade level in our comprehension of the Scriptures.
With the above as a short introduction to the Paul Problem in the New Testament, a fuller exposition of the problem is necessary and mandatory before we proceed with this website. Let it be known that before we can reveal the true Paul and his Gnostic gospel and teachings concerning the indwelling Christ as opposed the false Paul of Rome's invention associated with a supposed literal and historical Jesus Christ in the New Testament, owing to the numerous forged Scriptures attributed to the false Paul at the hands of both the Petrines of Jerusalem and later Rome, we must possess the truth of the history of the early Jerusalem congregation and the Gnostic Paul who wrote seven authentic Gnostic Epistles in the New Testament which never taught a literal and historical Messiah-Christ as the later forged Epistles of Paul will be made to appear and endorse. To this true St. Paul, the apostle to the Gnostic Christians, we now turn as we confirm from the discoveries of the Gnostic Christian texts at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, that in the first century of the Christian era, the term “Gnostic” denoted a heterodox segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among early followers of Christ it appears there were groups who delineated themselves from the greater household of the Petrine Jerusalem Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a "special witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience or gnosis that set the true follower of Christ apart from those associated with the Jerusalem congregation and men like Peter, James, and John. These Christians held a conviction that a direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic Spiritual and metaphysical truths of mankind's existence is accessible to all human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such mystical knowledge regarding mankind's true reality must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life. Again, due to the most difficult task of deconstructing and dismantling the Apostle Paul before your eyes with what comes later in this Website, it is of the greatest importance that we see through the deception and lies fed us about the supposed Paul in the New Testament through textual forgery and dishonesty with the New Testament's texts. Only by exposing what is not true, can we repent of erroneous beliefs, and come to the knowledge and belief in what is true.
WHAT YOU MUST KNOW BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO STUDY THE PAUL PROBLEM WEBSITE
Now, being full convinced that there exists a second Paul in the New Testament, we move on to the other Paul problem in the New Testament; namely, contrasting the message of the Romanized Paul as contrasted with the message of Christ. According to the traditions of ant-Gnostic Roman Christianity, Jesus Christ was supposedly a historical charismatic prophetic figure from Galilee. St. Paul, according to this same anti-gnostic tradition of Roman Christianity, is a Greek-speaking intellectual and letter writer who was made at many places in the New Testament the supposed promoter of a literal and historical Jesus Christ to the non-Jewish populations of the world. As we have seen, however, having done the study above, we have come to clearly see that the anti-gnostic Paul and anti-gnostic Christ was not the the real Christ nor Paul of history. This fact brings into question the reliability of the gospels and messages put into the mouths of both Paul and Jesus by Rome in the New Testament texts which they presented to the world. We must now take interest in the various different gospels presented in the New Testament, especially the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is characterized against the gospel of the anti-gnostic Paul of Rome's theological imagination.
With the discoveries of the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient Gnostic codices containing over fifty texts in upper Egypt in 1945 and their final translation in the 1970's, a major re-evaluation of early Christian history as well as the figure of both Paul and Jesus in the New Testament has been called for by both Bible scholars and researchers alike. These scholars tell us that the very nature of the early Church and Christ as presented by traditional Roman Christian exegesis of the New Testament as well as supposed traditional Roman Church history needs a complete reevaluation given that we see today, like never before, that it was Gnostic Christianity that comprised the earliest expression of Christianity and not Roman Christianity as we have been led to believe. We must come to grips with abundant textual forgery in the New Testament, as well as the mountains of deception that exists in the New Testament, all of which was intended to promote Roman Christianity over Gnostic Christianity. With the Nag Hammadi discoveries and its texts, new perspectives and questions have arisen that has brought forth varying and different responses to similar questions asked before these more recent discoveries of these Gnostic Christians texts and gospels. The old answers given us by Roman Christianity do not work today. In fact, given what is to be learned from the Nag Hammadi Gnostic scrolls alone, today's answers to these older questions not only challenge, but overthrow all of the ancient understandings of the nature of Christ, the identity of St. Paul in the New Testament, and Christian history, which we see clearly today, has been deceptively presented to the masses by Rome over the last 1,800 years. At the heart of the Pauline Problem is the mischaracterization of the Gnostic Paul's message which was addressed above, but the substitution of a false Pauline message put into the mouth of Rome's Paul that contradicts not only the the message of salvation by the Gnostic Paul long before the rise of Roman Orthodoxy, but the gospel message of the New Testament Christ as well. Rome has "another gospel" which has replaced both the Gnostic Paul's gospel and the gospel of Christ as well. Let us not forget the unforgettable words of the Gnostic Paul in Galatians 1:8-9: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
What was the relationship between St. Paul and Christ, and was the St. Paul of the New Testament always a true follower of Jesus, or did he at times oppose what Jesus taught? Did the Paul of the New Testament given us by Rome teach the same gospel and Spiritual message as "the Christ" in the New Testament? Or, do we find in the New Testament a completely different and opposing teaching and salvation message from Rome's anti-gnostic Paul which makes us think that we have a "Romanized Paul" on our hands in many places which often contradicts and opposes the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament? Could the fraudulent misrepresentation of the true Gnostic Paul by Rome be the reason for the numerous contradictions and Scriptural alterations we find in the New Testament supposedly from the pen of this St. Paul? Could it be the culprit here is Rome and their anti-Gnostic Paul and not the true Gnostic Paul of history? Why do we find two different opposing and conflicting gospels and Spiritual messages that supposedly came from this same "one" person named Paul in the New Testament? Could this be why the New Testament Paul appears theologically schizophrenic in the New Testament and in teaches often in opposition to Jesus in many of the things that he taught and said? Could it be that the "true Paul" was more of a Gnostic and "metaphysical" believer that taught a Spiritual gospel in agreement with the message of the Christ and it is the anti-gnostic Paul of Roman creative theology that is the false Paul who opposes the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament? Is it the anti-gnostic message of Rome and their false St. Paul which opposes the teachings of Jesus and not the message of St. Paul found in the unforged texts in his seven authentic Gnostic Epistles? Is the message of the anti-gnostic Paul of Rome's creative genius a forgery and outright example of the ingenious invention of Scriptural texts? Could it be that the Romanization of the Gnostic Paul is the reason for the alterations and purposeful changes made to the New Testament and Paul's Gnostic texts? Could this textual forgery by Rome of the New Testament gospels and the Gnostic Paul's Epistles be the real reason for the foundation and creation of a new and competing world religion that comes to be called Christianity, a religion that opposes almost all of what Biblical Judaism stood for and taught along with what the Gnostic Christians also taught?
It is commonly assumed by most Christians who are only remotely familiar with the Bible and its texts, carrying the Bible as they do to Church and using it usually only one hour a week, that St. Paul's relationship to the message of Jesus as the Christ was one of a faithful follower. Not being familiar with extra-biblical history, and possessing the keys that open the Bible's texts mystically and metaphysically, they make the erroneous assumption that St. Paul was very interested in the life and teaching of a supposed historical Jesus of Nazareth. Most Christians assume that St. Paul held Jesus of Nazareth in the highest regard and tried to base his own life and teaching on what he knew of this Jesus. Such is not the case. Could such an idea and assumed picture of the historical St. Paul and the inherited normal "tradition" and "testimony" regarding the St. Paul of the New Testament be fraudulent today? Has the New Testament faithfully committed down through the ages the testimony of the Petrine Jewish Church of Jerusalem as they knew and understood St. Paul, or could the story and truth regarding the true St. Paul have been purposefully altered by the Petrines and later by Rome to make St. Paul the hero of Gentile Christianity and the promoter of a literal and historical Jesus when the truth of the matter is that he was not? Arthur Drews in his The Christ Myth maintains that the historical Paul did not know of a historical Jesus who would have supposedly lived only twenty years before his time. Arthur Drews maintains that the historical Paul, in this case not the Gnostic Paul, but the later Romanized Paul, invented the whole Christian faith by Judaizing the whole Adonis cult. Other modern scholars like R. Bultmann stated that the St. Paul was only interested in the death and resurrection of Jesus and therefore shows no knowledge of a supposed historical Jesus prior to his death. Bultmann in such a comment refers to the true Gnostic Paul. In other words, the supposed Earthly life and preaching of Jesus played no role or importance with Paul. The historical Paul never saw or heard of a literal or historical Jesus. What the historical St. Paul knew about Jesus depended either on reports and formulated traditions or on his immediate experience with the Lord through a vision. There were no written gospels in Paul's day. The collection of "sayings" of the Lord from Ancient Egypt, called the Logia of the Lord, became attributed to Christ long before the time of Paul's birth. These "sayings" in Paul's day attributed to Jesus, now called (Q) which were used by the later Gospel writers Matthew and Luke, mattered little to the Gnostic Paul. It appears that Paul says almost nothing about the crucifixion of a historical Jesus, only that it occurred. He never tell us that this crucifixion and resurrection was a historical event. In fact, it appears from his writings that these events were meant to be interpreted metaphysically. allegorically, and Spiritually than literally or historically. None of the details regarding a literal or historical crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus can be found in the authentic Pauline Epistles. None of the details that appear in the later four gospel accounts are ever found mentioned by the Gnostic Paul in his authentic Epistles. Since I Thessalonians 2:14-16, where the Jews are blamed for the crucifixion of a historical Jesus is an interpolation and a later addition to the Pauline Epistles by Rome, then we cannot say that Paul blamed either the Jews or the Romans for the crucifixion. This makes sense if the crucifixion of Christ is mystical, not literal or historical. According to 1 Corinthians 2:8, those who "crucified the Lord of glory" were the "rulers of this age," itself a reference to the invisible malign principalities and powers that were at work in this Cosmic event regarding the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ and Divine Mind in "matter," i.e., humanity. When Paul mentions "Christ, our paschal lamb" in I Corinthians 5:7, he probably reflects knowledge that Christ's death occurred Astronomically during the Passover at the Vernal Equinox, but gives no further information about the event itself. It was again at this Vernal Equinox that the Sun passed over the "cross" in the sky as it rained own its life-giving rays and energy to Mother Earth and all of its life forms. Paul never describes the Lord he saw, nor does hid ever mention a empty tomb. Nor does the list of appearance stories in 1 Corinthians 15 coincide with the appearance stories in the later gospels. Anything that this Gnostic St. Paul knew of a historical Jesus before the crucifixion is exceedingly difficult to determine, because all we know is what St. Paul mentions in his Epistles. It is a given that the Pauline Epistles would mention that Jesus is a Jew, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a son of David, and born under the law. These are not historical facts, but rather concepts attributed to every Jewish child born in Israel. More interesting for our concern is the fact that St. Paul never mentions Jesus' virgin birth, his historical baptism by John, nor any of the deeds of Jesus' Earthly ministry or presumed miracles, a literal crucifixion, a literal burial, a literal resurrection, and a literal ascension. If we only had Paul's litters, we would never know that Jesus Christ told parables or that his message was centered upon the news of the kingdom of God. Paul never mentions Jesus' teaching. This remarkable absence of Jesus' teaching and sayings from St. Paul's letters and the total neglect of his Earthly ministry and limited references to his passion are the causes of concern for New Testament believers. Modern scholars are slowing coming around in our day to admit that St. Paul, in truth, the Gnostic Paul, was not interest in "the historical Jesus." This view, advocated already by Albert Schweitzer, was developed especially by Rudolf Butlmann who saw Paul's theology is neither an extension nor an elaboration of Jesus' own message. This is not surprising, given as we have seen that much of the characterization of St. Paul in the New Testament comes to us from Petrine and later Roman textual forgery, addition, and substitution of the Bible's texts. For that reason, the message and teachings emanation from the Romanized Paul of textual forgery, is shown to have a completely different message than did the teachings and messages emanating from the mouth of the Gnostic Paul as well as Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Due to the abundant textual manipulation and forgery in the New Testament, Jesus' words along with the teachings of the Gnostic Christ did not come to comprise the bulk of the message of the New Testament and the Pauline Epistles. At the center of our current study, when the message of Jesus' words are put under the microscope of critical scrutiny, they are found to differ considerably from what the later Romanized St. Paul would teach and say in the New Testament. The gospel of St. Paul the Gnostic and the gospel of Jesus are, when compared to the gospel of the Romanized Paul in the New Testament, found often at odds, conflicting, and contradicting. In other words, again we find "another gospel" put into the mouth of the Romanized and forged St. Paul that is quite different from the complementing gospels first taught by the Gnostic Paul as well as gospel taught by the New Testament Christ when personified as Jesus. Together the present the complete divinization of mankind; the internal transformation of mankind into Christlikeness, first within, then the outward expression of this Christlikeness through obedience to the Torah and good works detailed in the mitzvoth. This explains why the Gnostic Paul was not interested in a "fleshly Christ," that is, a historical Christ of misinterpreted Scriptures as seen with the Petrines of Jerusalem. Nor would he have been interested in a later one by Orthodox Roman Christianity as well. .
Most Christians are unaware that the traditional inherited Chistianized picture of St. Paul has not gone unchallenged down through Church history. Indeed, in recent years quite a different view of St. Paul has come to the forefront of modern Biblical studies. Far from meekly being a follower of Jesus as the Christ, it has been and it suggested by many scholars of high repute, that St. Paul in the New Testament, or the Romanized Paul of Roman creative theology, was a religious innovators who brought into a Gnostic expression of Christianity all sorts of ideas and emphases that complicated and spoiled original Gnostic Christianity as it existed as far back as the Essene Christians. This view of the Romanized St. Paul has been put forth forcefully to the masses over the centuries by many who, throughout history, have enforced a religious agenda instead of the truth concerning St. Paul, a truth that the vast majority of Christendom today does not even know exits. I, as well as many other scholars, have located personally and collected vast amounts of information that has been amassed over the centuries that reveals a completely different perspective on this St. Paul who is the "apostle to the nations" and Christianity. If you begin a comprehensive study into this area of Christian history, and have the ability to go beyond the "spin doctoring" by Christians religious authorities over the ages, you can find "Earth shattering evidence" that brings the traditional Orthodox Christian understanding of St. Paul crashing to the ground. The many "true followers of Jesus" as well as scholars throughout history who have concealed the truth about St. Paul have in our day come together in a unanimous conclusion that informs the interested reader that many of the "unhealthy" and "unpleasant" aspects of Christianity "find their origin in the Romanized Paul." Among the things for which this Romanized Paul may be held partly responsible are negative attitudes toward women, sexuality and the human body, and of course the Jews. But, I must ask: "Is this the true Paul, or a false presentation of him through textual forgery?
The fullest and most forceful scholarly presentation of St. Paul over the last few years was by a well known Jewish scholar called Myam Maccoby. In his significantly entitled book The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby concluded that it was Paul, or should I say the Romanized Paul, who founded Christianity as we know it today and as it is found expressed in the New Testament today. This Romanized Paul is shown to be the invention of textual forgery and manipulation, so much so, as it gave Roman creative genius to craft for themselves the type of Christianity that they wanted and would later enforce upon the ignorant masses. Notice if you will, Christianity as it exists today could never be considered the birth-child of the Gnostic Paul, only the Romanized Paul. As well, as we will come to see when we contrast the gospel message of Jesus when contrasted with the gospel message of the Romanized Paul, Christianity in the world, for the most part, does not follow the message and teachings of Jesus, it follows the teachings of Roman and Protestant Christianity instead. Hyam Maccoby stated in his book that it was Rome that overhauled and worked-over St. Paul, and in so doing, we obtain the Paul of the anti-Gnostic Epistles and with him, a completely separate and different Spiritual message that is unlike that formerly preached and taught by the Gnostic Paul as well as the Christ in the gospels.
Let me stop right here and recommend for all interested readers that there is probably not a more earth shattering expose on the truth about the Apostle Paul and his transformation in altered Scripture ever done to my knowledge than Maccoby's book and I personally consider Hyam Maccoby's The Mythmaker: Paul And The Invention Of Christianity a "must read" for anyone wanting to know the truth behind this anti-gnostic transformation of the Gnostic Paul into the Romanized Paul in the New Testament Scriptures. This book will show you the battle of not only the competing messages in the Bible between the gospels of Jesus and the Gnostic Paul, but the Romanized Paul as well. If you would like to read and see for yourself the history of scholarly discussion of the Jesus and the 2 Pauls and the problems that these three figures present in the New Testament, then I strongly this book to you. This schism between Peter and Paul, the Petrines and the Paulines, the anti-Gnostics and the Gnostic Christians, is traceable all the way back to F. C. Baur, the influential nineteenth-century Tubingen scholar, who postulated a major divergence in the early Christian Church church between the Jerusalem apostles (the Petrines) and Paul (the Paulines).
It is not only scholars who have argued these things in Scripture. Many ordinary Christians, as well as non-Christians, have found Paul extremely difficult to read and understand, and feel that Christianity would be very much better off without some of the dogmas that "he propounds (e.g., the divinity of Jesus and Jesus' death as a blood sacrifice), not to mention his teachings on sex, women, and slaves. They would be quite happy if we could keep Jesus, but quietly lose Paul. I can add my own personal testimony of finding the same as I began a serious study of Paul many years ago and I uncovered what many before me had found existing "outside the New Testament." It never ceases to amaze me how the hundreds of different pieces of evidence, manuscripts, books, archeological evidences, and facts that exist that expose the Pauline Problem have been kept from the general populace, and in their place, we find "one book" whose forgeries are so profound as to gloss over such a theological dispute to the degree than the normal reader can read these texts and Scriptures never noticing this great division and chasm separating Gnostic and anti-Gnostic, Pauline and Petrine Christianity.
So was the Gnostic Paul or the anti-Gnostic Paul the real Paul of the New Testament? Which of these Pauls are we to follow and believe when they teach on the Christ: Rome's anti-Gnostic Paul that follows the Petrines of Jerusalem and Rome with their literal and historical Jesus Christ and interpretation of the Scriptures, or the Gnostic Paul and the early Gnostic Christians with their indwelling Christ along with their allegorical, mystical, and metaphysical interpretation of the Scriptures? Should we expect the Gnostic Paul with his Gnostic writings to be a a faithful follower of a supposed literal or historical Jesus of Nazareth as taught by the Jerusalem Church and the later Roman literalizers of Scripture? Is this why the St. Paul of the New Testament never writes of a supposed Human Jesus or ever mentions his supposed virgin birth or Earthly ministry? Or, should we expect the Gnostic Paul to oppose such a false and denounce several of his churches who were falsely misled by the false Jerusalem apostles which misunderstood the Scriptures and taught "another gospel" of a literal and historical Christ-Messiah that was limited to but one person by the Petrines of Jerusalem and later with Rome? What should the later Scriptural forgery and alteration of the Gnostic Scriptures by the Petrines, along with their later additions to the Gnostic Scriptures called interpolations, as well as their deletions of the Gnostic Scriptures in various places, teach us about who had the truth about the Christ, so much so, that out of desperation, the opposing camp, the Petrines of Jerusalem and later by Rome, had to resort to forging, adulterating, tampering, adding to and taking away from the Holy Scriptures in order to deceive the people as to what was, in their opinion and interpretation of Scripture, the truth about the Christ? Could God be pleased with such deception and destruction of His prior revelation to mankind which has stood basically unchanged for almost 10,000 years or longer? Was the real Paul in the New Testament a Gnostic believer who only taught the indwelling Christ in mankind, and in so doing, denounced the literal and historical Jesus taught by Peter, James, and John, and is this the reason he was never accepted by them as a true apostle of Christ? Will a serious and hard-nosed study of the New Testament as well as consultation of evidence outside the New Testament, help us determine the answers to the above question? Will the conflicts and contradictions involved in the presentation of St. Paul in the New Testament help us come to see that we are not dealing with one person or one voice in the New Testament, but in reality, we are dealing with two voices in the New Testament; one Gnostic and one anti-gnostic? Will examination of the Romanized Paul where we come to discover and isolate historical impossibilities, contradictions among the teachings of St. Paul, opposing dogmatic perspectives from the same man, antagonistic theologies from this same Paul, as well as opposing and contradictory gospels be convincing to the point to make a truth-seeker to seriously look at the earlier St. Paul, the Gnostic, as being the true Paul of the New Testament and any other who brings a different Christ from which St. Paul preached and taught in the beginning of his ministry in the Book of Galatians and I Corinthians is the false gospel and false Christ, even if it is the more familiar gospel today which teaches a literal or historical Jesus Christ which the Gnostic true Paul could and would never teach?
Bet Emet Ministries is devoting this website to providing such evidence in hopes that the normative Christian can learn from it and make necessary adjustments in both his religious belief system as well as his conduct. It is not my purpose to hurt anyone or their faith, nor is it my purpose to unfairly judge St. Paul, but we must come to discern which of the two different Pauls, the Gnostic Paul or the Petrine's anti-Gnostic Paul, is speaking in these texts we read and which is the true message and which is "another gospel" which were warned not to accept. Truth in these matters if of the greatest importance and we must let the evidence from the authentic Epistles of Paul speak for itself, and not the textual forgeries and interpolations that only lead us away from truth. If you have the courage and strength for such a study, then the truths in the following articles will show you the Romanized Paul is the false Paul! This false Paul, this Romanized Paul, preaching as he does a Christ come in the flesh, is the false Christ! St. Paul cries out yet today to us heed his warning in 2 Cor 13:5: "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" Notice, the Christ is "in you," out apart from you, not outside of you.
After you complete and study through this website, your life will never be the same. I will warn you before hand that you will experience every emotion possible as your study this material regarding who is the true St. Paul and who is not. You will experience grief, tears, heart brokenness, anger, indignation, etc., as you finally, possibly for the first time in your life, come to the see how many untruths have been passed off to you as supposed truths that you accepted in blind faith in your previous Christian experience. When one is finished with this website and the facts and evidences presented in it, I strongly urge the student and reader, in order to balance out what he has been shown here (the the St. Paul presented in most of the Pauline Epistles in the New Testament is a falsehood and an untruthful representation of the true historical Gnostic St. Paul), then I strongly encourage you to investigate the Gnostic Paul in-depth in order to obtain a deeper truth behind what the Gnostic Paul originally taught concerning the evolution of the "Gnostic Christ" in you. This knowledge can be found on our other Website revealing the Secret Mysteries as well as the First New Testament website.
But first things first. Let us look at this "Romanized Paul" which we have been taught our whole lives as Christians and followers of "the Christ" and let us see how Rome has destroyed and altered the earlier Spiritual truths that the real historical Gnostic Paul believed which can be found existing in mystical Judaism. We trace in this website how the St. Paul taught the earliest Christians of the "Christ within" him. Later, Rome will come and create a Romanized Paul who is made to teach "a Christ without" and apart from mankind. This is the other gospel of which we were warned by St. Paul to avoid at all costs. We will come to see how the ancient religious and Spiritual allegories were understood not only by these ancients who were given them by God and how this Spiritual Revelation was understood by the Gnostic Jews like the Essene Christians as well as the earliest Gnostic Gentiles in the earliest centuries of the emerging Church, long before Rome will come and "literalize" all of the Ancient Wisdom and give it a fictitious historical time line in the creation of the historical "Jesus Story." In so doing, we will see how the earliest New Testament expressing these allegorical Divine truths is butchered by Rome and destroyed and how we end up with the forgery we have today entitled the "New Testament." Truly, there is nothing new in it, because if correctly read and interpreted, it is nothing more than the restatement of the Ancient Wisdom and the indwelling Christ/Divine Mind in mankind which the Gnostic Paul taught. Never let it be said that archeology and hard study are not our friends, because when coupled together, the truth always shines forth. Now let us be ruthless in our search for truth as we examine the Paul of the New Testament, and in so doing, see if the Paul we have been given in the New Testament by Rome can hold up under intense scrutiny, or if he is an invention of Rome's political and religious desires. If so, then, by default, the other St. Paul is the real one and this one is the Gnostic St. Paul. Truth has finally been found after a 2,000 year absence.
Links to further articles for your study.
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