Attention Ben: regarding Paul the Cukoo bird

[Amergin]

Ben, as I understand it the truth is much more complex. Unfortunately the Indo-European Pagan Trinitarian version of Christianity after taking power under Theodosius I and II in 393 (approx.) The merger of Trinitarianism with the Roman Empire led to suppression of all earlier versions of Christianity or Jesus Cults. Thousands of books were burned out of fear by the Roman Church that the truth might be found. The Gnostics buried their gospels. Many documents were found at Nag Hamadi. All of those that survived and found dispute the Roman Pagan version of Christianity.

The Hellenistic Gospel writers do not claim Jesus to be a god. They all say that he was sent by God, was subordinate to God's will, was sent to do God's work (free Israel from Roman Domination.) Jesus said, only God knows but I do not know. Jesus "WAS RAISED" from the dead. He did not arise from the dead by himself. At the end of the First Century, Jesus was subordinate either as a messiah or as a created God (Arianism, and Mormonism.) There were Jesus followers in many separate cults. James and Peter competed for control of those followers. Mary Magdalene was considered by them to be either equivalent to Jesus or a usurper.

Paul worked for the Romans. He was born in Tarsus (Cilicia Province of Rome). He clearly adhered to the concept of Jesus as a subordinate created God. His writings refer to Jesus by the side of God's right. Paul had some missing years (14 I think) and suffered from some kind of infirmity. Based on his obvious seizure on the road to Damascus, I suspect Epilepsy. Epilepsy, especially Complex Partial (Temporal lobe) is strongly associated with religiosity. He may have believed in his form of Arian Christianity because of his long exposure to the Roman Mithra Cult that dominated Tarsus. Curiously, Mithra was the Sun God, and son of the High God Ormuzd, a Zoroastrian offshoot. Mithraism had a Holy Spirit called Spenta Maingu (literally Holy Spirit) long before Christianity.

Paul's form of Mithraic Jesus Cult was later called Arianism. It still exists today in Jehovah's Witnesses and Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons.) Bishop Arius preached that. Much later Athanasius and Tertullian adapted more paganism with the invention of a Trinity. Unfortunately, Constantine's mother St. Helena adopted Athanasian Trinitarianism. This led to moving the Sabbath to Sunday (day of the Sun God) and celebration of Jesus (Neo-Mithra)'s birthday on the Winter Solstice. This broke most connections to the real Jesus and Judaism. All books by rivals were burned under Theodosius II. Anti-Semitism was rife within the new Paganised "Christianity." This led directly to Lutheranism and Nazism in the Holocaust.

Paul did not invent Paganised Christianity alone. Perhaps driven by epilepsy, he did lead the way to Pagan Christianity before Arius, Athanasius, and Constantine. The ultimate triumph of Athanasian Trinitarianism (Catholicism) was not by conversion of the people but conversion of an Emperor Constantine who at Nicaea in 324 CE banned all competitive Jesus cults, permitting persecution. Theodosius I and II completed the conquest of the empire by persecution of all non-Christian Paganisms as well as intellectuals, philosophers, and scientists like Hypatia of Alexandria in a gruesome murder in 412 CE. as well as looting the Great Library of Alexandria by a mob of fanatical Monks.

Amergin, Bishop of the Matter-Energy Church

 

[radarmark]

Good post, Amergin!

Christians (for the most part) get really defensive when one talks about "early churches". The Catholic-Orthodox opinion is that they are them. Ditto with most Protestants ("we resurrected the real church"). I do not know why for it seems to me that Ebionites, Marcionists, Tewahedos might differ with all those opinions. That is a big reason why I became a Quaker... it just does not matter because all paths lead to the one.

As an aside, have you ever investigated Marcionism? It seems to me that it was the original anti-Semetic Christianity. Prices' The Evolution of Pauline Canon contains some evidence, as does www.marcionite-scripture.info (see especially the guy's reconstruction of the Thesis of Marcion). It may not be widely accepted, and may be even more "off-point" than the recent reconstuctions of Q, but it is very interesting nonetheless.

 

[Servetus]

Paul is the sphynx that troubles Thebes -the Nazarite who speaks in the riddles sometimes so characteristic of his sect.

Paul worked for the Romans ...

In that case, the question, to my mind, is: in what capacity, as its chief "Judaizer?" One thing which, to my mind, argues against the assertion that Paul worked for Rome is the immediate result of his evangelizing efforts. It would be a strange Roman employee indeed whose disciples went to such lengths to negate the Empire, its Imperial Cult and the gods, or belief therein, which provided support. Consider, for instance, this passage, from an early, now classical inquiry into the decline of Nietzsche's glorious, masculine, martial, robust, self-affirming Roman Empire:


Edward Gibbon
Source:
"… it was the first but arduous duty of a Christian [in Rome] to preserve himself pure and undefiled by the practice of idolatry ... The innumerable deities and rites of [Roman] polytheism were closely interwoven with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or of private life, and it seemed impossible to escape the observance of them, without, at the same time, renouncing the commerce of mankind, and all the offices and amusements of society [which the did] … The Christian, who with pious horror avoided the abomination of the circus or the theatre, found himself encompassed with infernal snares in every convivial entertainment … When the bride, struggling with well affected reluctance, was forced in hymnal pomp over the threshold of her new habitation, or when the sad procession of the dead slowly moved towards the funeral pile, the Christian, on these interesting occasions, was compelled to desert the persons who were the dearest to him, rather than contract the guilt inherent to those impious ceremonies. Every art and every trade that was in the least concerned in the framing or adorning of idols was polluted by the stain of idolatry …

… Such was the anxious diligence which was required to guard the chastity of the Gospel from the infectious breath of [Greco/Roman] idolatry. The superstitious observances of public or private rites were carelessly practised, from education and habit, by the followers of the established [Roman] religion. But as often as they occurred, they afforded the Christians an opportunity of declaring and confirming their zealous opposition. By these frequent protestations their attachment to the faith [of Christianity] was continually fortified; and in proportion to the increase of zeal, they combated with the more ardour and success in the holy war which they had undertaken against the empire of the daemons [i.e., Rome]."

For some years, I speculated and intuitively, if ill-advisedly, counter suspected that Paul continued to work for the Sanhedrin, despite his claims to the contrary, and that he set out to deliberately corrupt the Jesus movement, to slay it in its infancy, so that it would not endanger his bosses, the Herodian and other power elites of the Jerusalem hierarchy. In other words, that his may have been an early counter intelligence, or cointel, move. I still haven't altogether abandoned the suspicion though I admit that there is, as far as I am aware, not a shred of historical evidence to support it.

Serv