A radically new, and phenomenally successful, version of the story of Jesus was about to arise. A man from Tarsus, the son of Jewish converts, became a Roman citizen and changed his name from the Hebrew "Saul" to the Roman equivalent "Paul". This Jewish citizen of the Roman Empire from Turkey set himself up as the scourge of the rebellious group of Jews in and around Jerusalem. It is said that Saul persecuted Christians, but this was impossible as there were no such people. The followers of Jesus and, after his death, of his brother James the Just remained Jews and did not become members of Paul's new Christian religion. Christianity was a later cult developed by Saul of Tarsus exclusively to attract pagan converts throughout the broader Roman Empire - people who were already inclined towards the nature-based dying and rising god theme.
According to the New Testament, Paul underwent a trauma after which he claimed that he alone was given special insight into the meaning of Jesus' mission directly from God. Paul claimed:
But when it pleased God ... to reveal his son in me, that I might preach it to the gentiles.
The word "gentiles" has become respectable in Christian thinking because it is taken as being a Jewish description of Christians, but it meant no such thing at the time that Paul was preaching his bizarre creed. It was a word used by the followers of Jesus and James to describe the pagans who did not believe in the God of the Jews.
Paul quickly found himself at total odds with James because the story he was telling about Jame's brother Jesus was so outrageous. It is evident that Paul was prepared to do anything to get his way; he even admits that he is happy to lie if that is what is required:
And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;
To them that are without law, as without law, that I might gain them that are without law.
To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men...
Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?
So run, that ye may obtain...
I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air.
Prof. Eisenmann writing in "James the Brother of Jesus" says that Paul became famous as a liar and had to make excuses for himself:
Paul was obviously being mocked by some - within the Church not outside it - as 'the Man of Dreams', 'Lies', or 'Lying', or what was also characterised in a parallel parlance as the 'the Enemy'.
...It is neither accidental nor incurious that exactly where he comes to speak of 'James the brother of the Lord' and in 2 Corinthians, the Hebrew 'Archapostles', that Paul feels obliged to add: 'Now before God, (in) what I write to you, I do not lie' or, again, 'I do not lie'.
The story that Paul had created was only loosely connected to he actions of the recently dead Jesus and his followers, but it did have a great deal to do with Roman tastes in theology. In Cyprus, Egypt, Turkey and Rome Paul's followers wrote the Gospels that make up the New Testament, whilst back in Israel the people that Jesus had once led became the followers of James and forceful opponents of the new religion that Paul was busily inventing.
Paul's new cult of Christianity was squarely rooted in the Canaanite peasant theology of dying and rising nature gods and only retained a few misunderstood elements of the once supreme astral cult. The Bright Morning Star that marked the birth of a Jewish messiah became just a pretty Christmas star that hovered miraculously over the stable where Jesus was born. The Sun was relegated to become a halo highlighting the heads of the righteous. Male circumcision, the great covenant with God, that was claimed to have endured from the time of Abraham, was rejected because the potential recruits of the Roman Empire were not happy to pay this particularly painful price.
The New Testament tells the story of Jesus from the perspective of Paul, and it tries to establish the idea that the followers of the crucified Jesus were Christians in their churches. They were not - they were Jews.
The Pauline version of events at this time claims that there were too, equally valid, ways forward for believers at that time - Jame's Jewish route and Paul's plan for the uncircumcised. Respected writer AN Wilson says of this:
It is clear to us today that this division was going to happen, but even at the date when Luke was writing - let us say AD 80? - it was stilla possibility that the two 'Ways' could be reconciled... The next few chapters of Acts have to be read gingerly... they are propaganda, designed to make us think that 'the early Church' was always 'Christian' - whereas in fact, of course, it belonged to an era when the word 'Christian' was simply a nickname for a sect within Judaism.
The nature cult created in the name of Jesus came less from the beliefs of his real followers than it did from Paul's own upbringing in Tarsus. Every autumn the young Saul, as he then was known, would have watched the great funeral pyre on which the local god was initially burnt. God was now dead, but he would rise again in the spring (Easter). Furthermore, it is known that Tarsians worshipped saviour gods (known as theoisoteres), so it is little wonder that Paul's 'new' religion of the 'Risen Christ' was so easy for pagans to accept - it was far from original and built upon well-established traditions.
This can be seen very clearly in Paul's attitude to blood. The idea of crucifixion was horrific to all Jews, and blood was something to be avoided at all costs, yet Paul's concept of Jesus Christ rested on the power...
...to be continued... kay gutom na... ('c',)
The cult of (st.) paul
Originally Posted by Hellblazer 2.1
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