1 PaulParadoxMetalog

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Table of Contents

• The Paul Paradox
• Peripatwmen kata taV entolaV autou! (II-(John 6)
• I
• II
• III
• Appendix: Quotations regarding Paul

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Parent:: PaulApostleOfTheHeretics

The author of this is Patterson Brown, the translator from Coptic of the NagHammadi Gospel of Philip and Gospel of Thomas.

[www.metalog.org/files/paul_p1.html] (https://web.archive.org/web/20031031035501/http://www.metalog.org/files/paul_p1.html)

The Paul Paradox

Peripatwmen kata taV entolaV autou! (II-(John 6)

I

Those who study the New Testament may well note that popular "red-letter" editions of the text, with Christ's words thus highlighted, contain virtually no such rubrics thruout the Epistles of Paul. With the sole exception of the eucharistic formula at (1Cor. 11:24-25), he does not quote any sayings of the historical Yeshua/Jesus, either as found in the written Gospels or from a contemporaneous oral tradition.¹ Indeed furthermore, he never even once alludes to the panorama of the Savior's biography, from the Nativity up to the Passion, which fills the pages of the first four books of the New Testament. This is, on the face of it, a most puzzling omission. (¹although, astonishingly, at (Acts 13:24-25) he does quote John the Baptist!; (Acts 20:35), on the other hand, is actually a citation from Thucidides' Peloponnesian War, II.97.4; while (Acts 26:14) is in fact from lines 1660-1 of Aeschylus' Agamemnon!)

Beyond this remarkable lack of historical concern, however, there is an even more enigmatic aspect of Paul's record in the New Testament. For an objective, philosophical reading of the documents would seem to reveal a number of logical contradictions, both within his biography and also between his theology and that of the Evangelists. It must be emphasized that these anomalies are conceptual rather than empirical in nature. For although they of course occur in interwoven historical, theological and normative contexts within the NT, they nevertheless present themselves as a-priori problems of analytical consistency between various texts - regardless of the truth or falsity of any factual claims being made or presumed by those texts. Furthermore, these discrepancies must be similarly distinguished from logically posterior issues concerning the ancient composition, editing, redactions or dating of the New Testament writings, all of which are factual/historical topics.

In sum, and stated more formally:

the Pauline antinomies are logical contradictions and therefore cannot
in principle be resolved by means of either historical investigation or
textual criticism, both of which are empirical methodologies.

Neither is this the place to provide a retrospective survey of the many past commentaries on these complex questions. I shall only append a series of quotations from a number of eminent figures - starting with Anselm of Laon, Peter Abelard (citing Jerome, Augustine and Origen), Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Teresa of Avila, Blaise Pascal, Erasmus and John Locke - who are in general agreement that Paul's doctrines appear to be seriously at odds with the Gospel message. These excerpts suffice to show that what might be called "the Paul paradox" has been recognized by a remarkably wide spectrum of prominent individuals across the centuries.

II

Here then is the matrix of antinomies, along with a brief statement of the apparent logical contradiction in each case (the original Greek should always be checked, at least via Adolph Knoch's superlative interlinear [Biblio.17], as modern translations often blur these very discrepancies):

1. (Acts 9:7) || (Acts 22:9) In the propositional calculus of modern logic, "p and not-q" is the truth-functional negation of "q and not-p". Thus "they heard but did not see" directly contradicts "they saw but did not hear". Yet this famous event on the Damascus road was the sole original justification for Paul's supposed commission in independence of Peter/Kefa and the other Apostles.

2. (Acts 9:26-29) || (Gal. 1:17-2:1) Did Paul then travel immediately - or seventeen years later! - from Damascus to Jerusalem in order to meet with the entire Apostolic circle?

3. (Matt. 22:41-45) || (Rom. 1:3) Paul asserts that Christ is descended from David, which Christ himself in the Gospels explicitly denies (the synoptic genealogies merely providing the OT background to this transcending self-assertion).

4. (Luke 2:49), 19:45-46 || (Acts 17:24) The Gospels endorse the OT designation of the Temple in Jerusalem as the very House of the LORD. Paul nevertheless proclaims to the Athenians that God inhabits no sanctuary made by human hands.

5. (Acts 1:15) || (1Cor. 15:6) How can Christ have appeared to over 500 Brothers at a time (prior to the ascension) when the entire Discipleship numbered only 120?

6. (Matt. 10:2)&40, 16:15-19 || (Gal. 2:11-13) The explicit designation of Simon Peter as the foremost Apostle, with all the delegated authority of the Lord himself, logically precludes any other Disciple or Apostle opposing him "to his face" and (worse yet) calling him a hypocrite.

7. (Matt. 28:16-20); (Acts 10:1-11:18), 15:7-8 and 13-18 || (Gal. 2:6-9) The Gospel doctrine is clearly that, after the resurrection, the remaining eleven Apostles were sent forth to proclaim the good news to the whole world. Paul nevertheless claims to be the one and only Apostle to the gentiles ("the" Apostle as he is often called), while Peter and the others according to this view were to be restricted to evangelizing among the Jews.

8. (Matt. 5:48); (Luke 1:6); (John 1:14), 6:53-56 || (Rom. 8:8) The incarnation of the Logos, and also the injunction to be perfect, entail that those who are in the flesh can indeed please God.

9. (Luke 24:36-43); (John 11:43-44), 20:27; (Acts 1:9-11); (Plp. 25) || (1Cor. 15:50) The evangelists proclaim an incarnate resurrection and parousia (second coming), whereas Paul on the contrary takes an anti-corporeal, frankly gnostic position.

10. (Luke 4:5-8); (John 18:36), 19:18; (Acts 4:26) (Ps. 2:2) || (Rom. 13:1-5) The celestial kingdom is described in the Gospels as of another order from the entire realm of the nations, which are ruled by Satan and whereby Christ was crucified. On the other hand, the secular authorities with all their weaponry (including (Mark 15:16) ff.??) are stated by Paul to be God's own army.

11. (Matt. 22:21) || (Acts 25:11) Christ cedes taxes to Caesar, Paul cedes his personal security to him (Nero, no less!).

12. (Deut. 23:15-16); (Matt. 23:10-12); (John 8:31-36) || (Col. 4:1); (1Tim. 6:1-2); (Phil. 1:10-19) The re-conceptualization in the Gospels promises to emancipate the believers from oppressive relationships, while Paul literally endorses slavery within the Discipleship.

13. (Matt. 12:46-50), 23:8-9; (Luke 14:25-26); (John 1:12-13), (John 3:1-8), (John 11:52) || (Col. 3:18-21); (1Tim. 5:8) Christ teaches that family ties are to be renounced in favor of - that is, replaced by - the Father/Motherhood of God together with the Brother/Sisterhood of their incarnate Sons and Daughters, whereas Paul adamantly defends the traditional family structure.

14. (Matt. 19:10-12); (Luke 14:20-26), 18:28-30, 20:34-36; (Plp. 64)! || (1Cor. 7:2-16) and 9:5(?!); (Eph. 5:22-24); (1Tim. 3:1-4:3) The Gospels stipulate that those worthy of salvation must transcend matrimony (note that (Luke 18:28-30) occurs after (Luke 4:38-39); after all, according to (Gen. 3:16), monandry was Eve's punishment for disobedience! Paul notwithstanding permits a continuation of marriage among the Disciples.

15. Num 6:5; (Lev. 19:27); (Matt. 2:23) (Jude 13:5); Tr 21 || (1Cor. 11:14) The Hebrew tradition was that long hair on male or female is a sign of holiness and special devotion to God. Indeed the word at (Matt. 2:23) is NAZWRAIOS (the LXX or Septuagint term for Nazirite), not NAZARHNOS (i.e. someone from Nazareth). Were not John the Baptist and Christ both thus consecrated from birth?

16. (Matt. 6:24-34), 10:8; (Mark 10:13-31); (Luke 10:38-42), 14:28-33; (Acts 4:32-36) || (Acts 18:1-3); (1Cor. 11:34); (2Thess. 3:6-12) Christ decrees a cessation of working for mammon, donating all private possessions to the poor, and following thereafter a lifestyle both communal and itinerant - childlike and without anxiety day-to-day like the birds and the flowers, with all shared possessions being distributed equitably among those who have need - thus lifting the curse of toil from mankind (Gen. 3:17-19). Paul's advice, on the contrary, is to "eat at home" and avoid idlers, who must either work or go hungry.

17. (Mark 7:14-23); (Luke 7:34) || (Rom. 14:21); (1Cor. 8:13) Either we ought, or we ought not, to maintain some particular diet for religious reasons. Yet Paul agrees with neither the OT's dietary rules (kashrut) nor the Savior's remarkable midrash (commentary) thereupon.

18. (Matt. 12:19) (Isa 42:2); (Luke 10:7) || (Acts 17:16-34); (Acts 20:20) Paul preaches house-to-house, as well as in the streets and squares - contrary to Christ's paradigm.

19. (Matt. 6:5-6) || (1Tim. 2:8) Paul demands the very same outspoken prayer which Christ condemns as exhibitionist; the Savior states that one should only pray in solitude and in secret, never openly.

20. (Matt. 18:1-4); (Mark 9:33-35); (Luke 14:7-11) || I(1Cor. 11:5-12:13) Paul's recounting of his travels is insubordinately boastful and rivalrous - rather than humble, respectful and obedient - toward those who preceded him in the Discipleship.

21. (Matt. 5:43-48), 7:1-5, 9:10-13, 18:21-35; (John 8:2-11) || (1Cor. 5); Gal 5:12; (Tit. 3:10-11) The Gospel attitude toward wrongdoers is merciful, yet Paul's is frankly inquisitional. Is "turning someone over to Satan for the extermination of the flesh" intended to mean delivering him to the secular authorities for execution (as in (John 19:17-18)? Are we to love our enemies or condemn and castigate them?

22. (Matt. 23:8-12) || (Acts 20:28); (1Cor. 4:15); (1Tim. 3:1-13) Paul introduces the terms "father" and "deacon" and "bishop" to designate religious leaders - the very sort of title (along with "pastor", "minister", etc.) which Christ had explicitly prohibited. Indeed, the passage in Matthew would seem to preclude any kind of hierarchy in the Discipleship other than simple seniority (thus PRESBUTEROS, "elder [in the faith]", in (Acts 21:18), (Jas. 5:14), I-Pet 5:1, II-(John 1) - by which criterion Paul was obliged to submit to the original Apostles, quite contrary to I(1Cor. 11:5) and (Gal. 2:6).

23. (Gen. 17:10); (Luke 2:21) || (Acts 16:3)(?!); (Gal. 5:2); Phlp 3:2; (Tit. 1:10-11) Saying that it is necessary "to gag (EPISTOMIZEIN) circumcisionist dogs" is conceptually inappropriate in an Apostolic context. In any event, even if Christ referred to that custom parabolically - as in (Thom. 53) - he certainly did not forbid its physical practice.

24. (Luke 11:27-28); (John 4:1-30), 11:20-35, 20:11-18; (Thom. 21) || (1Cor. 14:34-35); (1Tim. 2:11-15) Various women speak up boldly to the Savior. Later, Mariam Magdalene as first witness (!) of the resurrection is sent by Christ to "angel" (AGGELLW: p66* )* A B) his rising to the Apostles themselves. This is not a teaching of mere female submissiveness or keeping quiet in the Convocation!

25. (Luke 7:36-8:3), 10:38-42, 23:55-24:11; (John 12:1-3); (Thom. 61)b, 114; (Plp. 59) || (1Cor. 7:1-2); (Eph. 5:22-24) The Gospels represent women as an intimate part of Christ's entourage - thus rescinding the punishment of husband-domination in (Gen. 3:16). Paul emphatically opposes any liberated role for females.

26. (Matt. 3:11-17), 28:19-20; (Plp. 73), 96, 115(!) || (Rom. 6:3-4); (Col. 2:12) The Gospels endorse John's Baptism in water as signifying repentance and cleansing vis-à-vis the Torah, and which furthermore is explicitly to be undertaken "in the Name". Paul, however, sees Baptism as a metaphorical or participatory dying!

27. (Luke 23:43); (John 5:24), 8:51; (Thom. 1), 18, 19, 111; (Plp. 43) || (1Thess. 4:16-17) Christ teaches that his Disciples will not experience death, regardless of martyrdom, whereas Paul writes of "the dead in Christ".

28. (Gen. 4:1-5), (Mark 15:10) || (1Tim. 6:10) Paul claims that the love of money is the root of all evil; but in the paradigm cases of Cain killing Abel and the Chief Priests delivering up the Savior, envy is cited as the underlying ill. It would seem impossible to attribute the wrongdoing of either Cain or the Sadducees to mere avarice.

29. (Matt. 5:17-19), 19:16-19; (Luke 16:29-31); (Acts 21:17-24)(!!); 4QMMT:C.26b-31¹ || (Rom. 7:6); (Gal. 3:10); (Gal. 5:18) If the entire Torah - the Decalogue in particular, but also the remaining mitzvot (moral rules) such as (Lev. 19:18) et passim - is in effect until the sky and earth pass away, then the Mosaic Law is not an obsolete curse from which believers are absolved. This was the very topic at issue when, after Paul had completed his three missionary journeys, "all of the Elders"(!) in Jerusalem required him to take the Nazirite vow - to prove his continuing adherence to the Law of Moses. (¹"The works of the Torah ... will be reckoned to you as righteousness"; from the Dead Sea Scroll, Miqsat Ma"ase ha-Torah)

30. (Matt. 7:21), 11:2-6!, 19:16-19, 25:31-46; (John 13:34)!, 14:21, 15:10; (Jas. 2:14-26) || (Rom. 3:28); (Rom. 10:9); (1Cor. 15:35-44) Christ says that one's calling him "Lord" is not enough, but rather that the Disciple's total obedience is demanded; both the OT and the Gospels require obedience to a plenitude of divine commandments, with resultant fruitful deeds. Indeed, it was precisely by his works - and not merely by his faith - that Christ proved his own authority to John the Baptist! Paul on the other hand states that a simple confession of faith, along with a belief in Christ's (merely spiritual, not corporeal) resurrection, suffices - a thoroughly antinomian doctrine. (This subject must be carefully distinguished from that of forgiveness - both among humans and between God and humankind - as a pre-eminently innovative tenet in the Gospels. For of course absolution logically presupposes a transgression of the rules, not their abrogation; compare e.g. (Ezek. 18) with (Matt. 6:14-15).)

31. (Gen. 49); (Jude 2:16) ff.; (Matt. 19:28); (Acts 1:13-26); (Rev. 2:2), 21:14 || (1Cor. 9:1-2); I(1Cor. 11:5-13) Finally, we must observe the fact that the permanent tally of the Apostles was established by the Savior at exactly twelve (for obvious reasons of historical symbolism - note the symmetry at (Rev. 21:12-14), and moreover that Paul was never numbered in that circle (see also the Epistle of Barnabas 8:3).

III

Paul is essentially an Old Testament figure. Caught in the ethical dilemma of calling all men transgresors by the Torah, only to reject the Torah precisely for thus condemning them (Gal. 3:10), he was unacquainted with Christ's historical teachings and practice; nor was he willing to learn of them from the original Apostles (Gal. 2:6). Thus his soteriology focused entirely on the Passion, of which he was aware, interpreting Christ's mission as exclusively an OT Sacrifice. Whereas the innovating Messianic message - Christ's teachings as incarnate in his lifestyle, elaborated thruout the canonical Gospels prior to the Passion narratives - completely passed Paul by. (On the 3-valued Biblical logic of morals, See Perfect in Ph Notes)

This is not to deny that he composed some eloquently poetic passages (such as (Col. 1:15-20); but these must, in light of the aforelisted doctrinal conflicts, be considered no more than ornamentation in Paul's writings. Those documents, in their entirety, proclaim a discipleship which is fundamentally incompatible with the message of Christ himself as recorded in the historical Gospels.

Remarkably enough, prior to Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus of Lyon at the close of the second century, there is no single author who quotes from both the Gospels and from Paul's Epistles. There was thus an exceedingly long period of schism between the traditions of the Twelve and of Paul, prior to the earliest attempts at integration.

And yet the irony, of course, is that the canonical Gospels themselves, of which tradition Paul was so manifestly ignorant, were ultimately only preserved by the Pauline Church - which indeed also disseminated the very OT which Paul himself had disparaged. The Petrine/Apostolic Church, on the other hand, seems not to have survived the persecutions of the first centuries.

Paul was personally in charge of the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:58-8:1), since according to (Deut. 17:7) the "witnesses who laid their cloaks at his feet" - i.e. were under his direct authority - were obliged to cast the first stones. Might one therefore ask as to his whereabouts on the night Christ was arrested? Was he then also part of the Temple guard? (Remember that (Luke 22:63-65) takes place at their hands, not those of the Romans.) Thus perhaps the puzzling I(1Cor. 5:16), EGNWKAMEN KATA SARKA CRISTON: "We have known Christ according to the flesh." This would certainly explain his subsequent obsession with unmerited forgiveness!

My purpose here has been merely to format a set of scriptural dichotomies which exhibit the underlying logic of the ancient Messianic/Paulianity schism, as essentially a conceptual (and of course personal) rather than a factual issue. This in turn may hopefully serve to stimulate in the reader a reconsideration of the apostolic status of Saul of Tarsus. For he evidently never joined Christ's Discipleship at all - which would indisputably have meant accepting Peter's spiritual authority - much less became an Apostle.

These basic questions can no longer be papered over, nor can they be settled by institutional fiat. For their illuminating implication is that traditional Christianity - as defined by the classical NT canon including both the Gospels and Paul's Epistles - is logically self-contradictory and hence inherently unstable. Or, in a contemporary analogy, we might say that Paul's writings are like a computer virus: a surreptitious theological reprogram which, downloaded with the Gospels, changes their basic message, rendering it not gibberish but rather transmuted into another doctrine altogether - historical Church Christianity instead of the original Messianic Brotherhood.

Appendix: Quotations regarding Paul

[www.metalog.org/files/paul_p2.html] (https://web.archive.org/web/20031031195014/https://www.metalog.org/files/paul_p2.html)

(in chronological order)

• Anselm of Laon (†1117 AD), Gloss on I-Corinthians 15: ‘He was seen by Cephas’; prior to the other males, to whom, as we read in the Gospel, he appeared. Otherwise this would be contrary to the statement that he appeared first to the women.

• Peter Abelard, Sic et Non (1120 AD); Letters of Direction #5 (before 1142): Writing in reply to St. Augustine, after he had been brought to task by Augustine concerning the exposition of a certain spot in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, Jerome said (Epist.112.4),

  ‘You ask why I have said in my commentary on Paul's letter to the Galatians that Paul could not have rebuked Peter for what he himself had also done. And you asserted that the reproof of the Apostle was not merely feigned, but true guidance, and that I ought not to teach a falsehood. I respond that ... I followed the commentary of Origen.’... [Augustine] writes thus in his fourth letter to Jerome (Epist.40.iii.3): ‘In the explanation of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians, I find something that pains me deeply. For if even white lies were permitted to the Holy Scriptures, what authority would they retain?’ || We know of course that when writing to the Thessalonians the Apostle [Paul] sharply rebuked certain idle busybodies by saying that ‘A man who will not work shall not eat.’... But was not Mary sitting idle in order to listen to the words of Christ, while Martha was ... grumbling rather enviously about her sister's repose?

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, Q.103, Art.4, Reply Obj.2 (1272): According to Jerome, Peter [in (Gal. 2:6-14)] withdrew himself from the Gentiles by pretense, in order to avoid giving scandal to the Jews, of whom he was the Apostle; hence he did not sin at all in acting thus. On the other hand, Paul in like manner made a pretense of blaming him, in order to avoid scandalizing the Gentiles, whose Apostle he was. But Augustine disapproves of this solution.

• John Duns Scotus, Summa Theologica, III.55.1, Obj.2 (ed. Jerome of Montefortino, 1728-34; based on Opus oxoniense, 1298-99): The order in which Christ's resurrection is related to have been made known, seems inappropriate. For it is presented as having been revealed firstly to Mary Magdalene, and that through her the Apostles learned that Christ was alive; but the recorded command of the Apostle in (1Tim. 2) is well-known, saying: ‘I do not permit a woman to teach.’

• Teresa of Avila, Accounts of Conscience, XVI (1571): It seemed to me that, concerning what St. Paul says about the confinement of women— which has been stated to me recently, and even previously I had heard that this would be the will of God— [the Lord] said to me: ‘Tell them not to follow only one part of the Scripture, to look at others, and [see] if they will perchance be able to tie my hands.’

• Blaise Pascal, Pensées, #673 (1660): Saint Paul ... speaks of [marriage] to the Corinthians [(1Cor. 7)] in a way which is a snare.

• Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (1688): There are many things in St. Paul that thwart themselves.... I was lately myself at a theological dispute, for I am often there, where when one was demanding what authority there was in Holy Writ that commands heretics to be convinced by fire rather than reclaimed by argument; a crabbed old fellow, and one whose supercilious gravity spoke him at least a doctor, answered in a great fume that Saint Paul had decreed it, who said, ‘Reject him that is a heretic, after once or twice admonition.’

• John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695): It is not in the epistles we are to learn what are the fundamental articles of faith, where they are promiscuously and without distinction mixed with other truths.... We shall find and discern those great and necessary points best in the preaching of our Savior and the Apostles ... out of the history of the evangelists.

• Thomas Morgan, The Moral Philosopher (1737-40): St. Paul then, it seems, preach'd another and quite different Gospel from what was preach'd by Peter and the other Apostles.

• Peter Annet, Critical Examination of the Life of St. Paul (letter to Gilbert West, 1746): We should never finish, were we to relate all the contradictions which are to be found in the writings attributed to St. Paul.... Generally speaking it is St. Paul ... that ought to be regarded as the true founder of Christian theology,... which from its foundation has been incessantly agitated by quarrels [and] divisions.

• Emanuel Swedenborg, A Continuation of the Last Judgment (1763) & The True Christian Religion (1771): He seated himself at the table and continued his writing, as if he were not a dead body, and this on the subject of justification by faith alone and so on, for several days, and writing nothing whatever concerning charity. As the angels perceived this, he was asked through messengers why he did not write about charity also. He replied that there was nothing of the Church in charity, and if that were to be received as in any way an essential attribute of the Church, man would also ascribe to himself the merit of justification and consequently of salvation, and so also he would rob faith of its spiritual essence. He said these things arrogantly, but he did not know that he was dead¹ and that the place to which he had been sent was not Heaven. [¹Jas 2:26]

• Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, ‘Paul’ (Varberg edition, 1765): Paul did not join the nascent society of the Christians, which at that time was half-Jewish.... Is it possible to excuse Paul for having reprimanded Peter?... What would be thought today of a man who intended to live at our expense, he and his woman, judge us, punish us, and confound the guilty with the innocent?

• Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776): The Messiah himself, and his disciples who conversed with him on earth, instead of authorizing by their example the most minute observances of the Mosaic law,... [should, like Paul,] have published to the world the abolition of those useless and obsolete ceremonies.

• Juan Josef Hoíl, *The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel *(compiled by Hoíl in his native Mayan language 1782, 3rd Spanish edition by the UNAM 1973): Only in the crazed times, through the mad priests, did it happen that sadness entered into us, that ‘Christianity’ entered us. Because these same ‘Christians’ were those who brought here the true God; but this was the beginning of our misery, the beginning of the taxes, the beginning of ‘alms’, the cause from which arose hidden discord, the beginning of the battles with firearms, the beginning of the outrages, the beginning of the plundering of everything, the beginning of slavery for debt, the beginning of debts glued to one's back, the beginning of the continuous quarreling, the beginning of suffering,... the Antichrist upon the Earth, tiger of the villages, wildcat of the villages, leech on the poor [American] Indian. But the day will arrive when the tears of their eyes reach unto God, and the justice of God comes down upon the world in a single blow.... Brothers, little brothers, sons of servants come to the world! When the King comes and is recognized, the face of the Son of God will be crowned. And the Bishop, which is called the Holy Inquisition, will come before Saul to beg concord with the Christians, so that oppression will cease and misery will end.

• Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794): That manufacturer of quibbles, St. Paul,... [wrote] a collection of letters under the name of epistles.... Out of the matters contained in those books,... the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

• Red Jacket (Chief of the Iroquois Tribe in New York), ‘Address to a Christian Missionary’ (1805): Friend and Brother, it was the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet together this day.... Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great land. Their seats extended from the rising sun to the setting sun.... But an evil day came upon us; your forefathers crossed the great waters, and landed on this island. Their numbers were small; they found friends, not enemies; they told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and came here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat; we took pity upon them, granted their request, and they sat down among us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.... Brother, our seats were once large, and yours were very small. You have now become a great people, and we scarcely have a place left to spread our blankets. You have our country, but you are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us.... Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there be but one religion, why do you White people differ so much about it?

• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Characteristics of the Present Age (1806): [The] Christian System ... [is] a degenerate form of Christianity, and the authorship of which ... [must be] ascribed to the Apostle Paul.

• Thomas Jefferson, ‘Letter to William Short’ (1820): Paul was the ... first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.

• Jeremy Bentham, Not Paul But Jesus (1823): It rests with every professor of the religion of Jesus to settle with himself, to which of the two religions, that of Jesus or that of Paul, he will adhere.

• Ferdinand Christian Baur, ‘The Christ Party in the Corinthian Church, the Opposition between Petrine and Pauline Christianity in the Ancient Church, and the Apostle Peter in Rome’ (1831); The Church History of the First Three Centuries (1853): 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 of 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.

• George Henry Borrow, The Bible in Spain (1843): It was scarcely possible to make an assertion in their hearing without receiving a flat contradiction, especially when religious subjects were brought on the carpet. ‘It is false,’ they would say; ‘Saint Paul, in such a chapter and in such a verse, says exactly the contrary.’

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The Lord's Supper’ (1832): It does not appear that the opinion of St. Paul, all things considered, ought to alter our opinion derived from the evangelists.

• Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849); Journal (1 Jan 1858): Why need Christians be still intolerant and superstitious?... In all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things.... It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.... It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians. || There are many words which are genuine and indigenous and have their root in our natures.... There are also a great many words which are spurious and artificial, and can only be used in a bad sense, since the thing they signify is not fair and substantial— such as the church, the judiciary,... etc. etc. They who use them do not stand on solid ground. It is vain to try to preserve them by attaching other words to them [such] as the true church, etc. It is like towing a sinking ship with a canoe.

Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals (1849,'50,'54,'55): In Christ the religious is completely present-tense; in Paul it is already on the way to becoming doctrine. One can imagine the rest!... This trend has been kept up for God knows how many centuries. || When Jesus Christ lived, he was indeed the prototype. The task of faith is ... to imitate Christ, become a disciple. Then Christ dies. Now, through the Apostle Paul, comes a basic alteration.... He draws attention away from imitation and fixes it decisively upon the death of Christ the Atoner. || What Luther failed to realize is that the true situation is that the Apostle [Paul] has already degenerated by comparison with the Gospel. || It becomes the disciple who decides what Christianity is, not the master, not Christ but Paul,... [who] threw Christianity away completely, turning it upside down, getting it to be just the opposite of what it is in the [original] Christian proclamation.

• Benjamin Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans (1855): Our conception of the Apostolical age is necessarily based on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul. It is in vain to search ecclesiastical writings for further information.... Confining ourselves, then, to the original sources, we cannot but be struck by the fact, that of the first eighteen years after the day of Pentecost, hardly any account is preserved to us.... It seems as if we had already reached the second stage in the history of the Apostolic Church, without any precise knowledge of the first.

• Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857): There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with the poor child by asking him, why he was going to perdition?,... and which, for the further attraction of his infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccoughing reference as 2 Ep.Thess. c.iii v.6&7 [‘Keep away from any brother who travels about in idleness’].

• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859): The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing morality,... the Old Testament.... St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine ... of his Master, equally assumes a pre-existing morality, namely that of the Greeks and Romans;... even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery.

• Ernest Renan, Saint Paul (1869): True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the Gospels, not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology.

• Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer (1880); The Brothers Karamazov (1880): If slavery prevailed in the days of the Apostle Paul, this was precisely because the churches which originated then were not yet perfect, as we perceive from the Epistles of the Apostle himself. However, those members of the congregations who, individually, attained perfection no longer owned or could have had slaves, because these became brethren, and a brother, a true brother, cannot have a brother as his slave. || This child born of the son of the devil and of a holy woman:... they baptized him ‘Paul’.

• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn (1881): The story of one of the most ambitious and obtrusive of souls, of a head as superstitious as it was crafty, the story of the Apostle Paul— who knows this, except a few scholars? Without this strange story, however, without the confusions and storms of such a head, such a soul, there would be no Christianity.

• Leo Tolstoy, My Religion (1884): The separation between the doctrine of life and the explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul who knew not the ethical teachings set forth in the Gospel of Matthew, and who preached a metaphisico-cabalistic theory entirely foreign to Christ; and this separation was perfected in the time of Constantine, when it was found possible to clothe the whole pagan organization of life in a Christian dress, and without changing it to call it Christianity.

• James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890): If Christianity was to conquer the world, it could not do so except by relaxing a little the exceedingly strict principles of its Founder.

• Frederick Engels, ‘On the History of Early Christianity’ (1894): Attempts have been made to conceive ... all the messages [of John's Revelation/Apocalypse] as directed against Paul, the false Apostle.... The so-called Epistles of Paul ... are not only extremely doubtful but also totally contradictory.

• William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Gifford Lectures, 1901): This is the religious melancholy and ‘conviction of sin’ that have played so large a part in the history of Protestant Christianity.... As Saint Paul says: self-loathing, self-despair, an unintelligible and intolerable burden ... [—a] typical [case] of discordant personality, with melancholy in the form of self-condemnation and sense of sin.

• William Wrede, Paul (1904): The obvious contradictions in the three accounts [of Paul's conversion in Ac 9 and 22 and 26] are enough to arouse distrust of all that goes beyond this kernel.... The moral majesty of Jesus, his purity and piety, his ministry among his people, his manner as a prophet, the whole concrete ethical-religious content of his earthly life, signifies for Paul's Christology— nothing whatever.... If we do not wish to deprive both figures of all historical distinctness, the name ‘disciple of Jesus’ has little applicability to Paul.... Jesus or Paul: this alternative characterizes, at least in part, the religious and theological warfare of the present day.

• Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906); Paul and His Interpreters (1912); Out of My Life and Thought (1931); *The Mysticism of St. Paul *(1931): Paul ... did not desire to know Christ after the flesh.... Those who want to find a way from the preaching of Jesus to early Christianity are conscious of the peculiar difficulties raised.... Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded by primary Christianity. || The system of the Apostle of the Gentiles stands over against the teaching of Jesus as something of an entirely different character, and does not create the impression of having arisen out of it.... It is impossible for a Hellenized Paulinism to subsist alongside of a primitive Christianity which shared the Jewish eschatological expectations.... To the problem of Paulinism belong ... questions which have not yet found a solution:... the relation of the Apostle to the historical Jesus ... and towards the [Mosaic] Law.... He does not appeal to the Master even where it might seem inevitable to do so.... It is as though he held that between the present world-period and that in which Jesus lived and taught there exists no link of connection.... What Jesus thought about the matter is ... indifferent to him.... Critics [have] demanded of theology proof that the canonical Paul and his Epistles belonged to early Christianity; and the demand was justified. || The rapid diffusion of Paul's ideas can be attributed to his belief that the death of Christ signified the end of the [Mosaic] Law. In the course of one or two generations this concept became the common property of the Christian faith, although it stood in contradiction to the tradition teaching represented by the Apostles at Jerusalem. || What is the significance for our faith and for our religious life, of the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus?... The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority.... The fateful thing is that the Greek, the Catholic and the Protestant theologies all contain the Gospel of Paul in a form which does not continue the Gospel of Jesus, but displaces it.

• ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (son of Bahá’u’lláh), Some Answered Questions (1908): Paul permitted even the eating of strangled animals, those sacrificed to idols, and blood, and only maintained the prohibition of fornication. So in chapter 4, verse 14 of his Epistle to the Romans.... Also Titus, chapter 1, verse 15.... Now [according to Paul] this change, these alterations and this abrogation are due to the impossibility of comparing the time of Christ with that of Moses. The conditions and requirements in the latter period were entirely changed and altered. The former laws were, therefore, abrogated.

• Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth (1909); Notebooks (date?): Paul ... advised against sexual intercourse altogether. A great change from the divine view. || If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be— a Christian.

• José Ortega y Gasset, ‘A Polemic’ (1910): Between remembering Jesus as did St Peter, to thinking about Jesus as did St Paul, stands nothing less than theology. St Paul was the first theologian; that is to say, the first man who, of the real Jesus— concrete, individualized, resident of a certain village, with a genuine accent and customs—, made a possible, rational Jesus— thus adapted so that all men and not only the Jews could enter into the new faith. In philosophical terms, St Paul objectifies Jesus.

• Gerald Friedlander, The Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount (1911): Paul has surely nothing to do with the Sermon on the Mount.... The Sermon says: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves’ (Matt.vii.15). This is generally understood as a warning against untrustworthy leaders in religion.... Does the verse express the experience of the primitive Church? Might it not be a warning against Paul and his followers?

• Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913); The Agony of Christianity (1931): Paul had not personally known Jesus, and hence he discovered him as Christ.... The important thing for him was that Christ became man and died and was resurrected, and not what he did in his life— not his ethical work as a teacher. || During Christ's lifetime, Paul would never have followed him.

• George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion, Introduction (1915); Everybody’s Political What's What? (1944): There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus.... There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the Soul of Jesus.... It is now easy to understand why the Christianity of Jesus failed completely to establish itself politically and socially, and was easily suppressed by the police and the Church, whilst Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith. || A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

• Henry Louis Mencken, ‘The Jazz Webster’, A Book of Burlesques (1916): Archbishop— A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

• Martin Buber, ‘The Holy Way’ (1918); Two Types of Faith (1948): The man who, in transmitting Judaism to the peoples, brought about its breakup,... this violator of the spirit,... [was] Saul, the man from Tarsus.... He transmitted Jesus' teaching ... to the nations, handing them the sweet poison of faith, a faith that was to disdain works, exempt the faithful from realization, and establish dualism in the [Christian] world. It is the Pauline era whose death agonies we today [in World War I] are watching with transfixed eyes. || Not merely the Old Testament belief and the living faith of post-Biblical Judaism are opposed to Paul, but also the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount.... One must see Jesus apart from his historical connection with Christianity.... It is Peter [rather than Paul] who represents the unforgettable recollection of the conversations of Jesus with the Disciples in Galilee.

• Thomas Edward Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1919): Christianity was a hybrid, except in its first root not essentially Semitic.

• Carl Gustav Jung, ‘The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits’ (1919); ‘A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity’ (1940): Saul's ... fanatical resistance to Christianity,... as we know from the Epistles, was never entirely overcome. || It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.

• Herbert George Wells, The Outline of History (1920): St. Paul and his successors added to or completed or imposed upon or substituted another doctrine for— as you may prefer to think— the plain and profoundly revolutionary teachings of Jesus, by expounding ... a salvation which could be obtained very largely by belief and formalities, without any serious disturbance of the believer's ordinary habits and occupations.

• James Joyce, Ulysses (1922): Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

• Isaac Babel, ‘Sir Apolek’ (from The Red Cavalry Stories, 1923): As Saint Paul, a timorous cripple with the shaggy black beard of a village apostate.

• Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (1926); ‘The Significance of the Historical Jesus for the Theology of Paul’ (1929): The Church ... could not possibly have taken for granted the loyal adherence to the [Mosaic] Law and defended it against Paul, if Jesus had combated the authority of the Law. Jesus did not attack the Law, but assumed its authority and interpreted it... It was some time after his death when Paul and other Hellenistic missionaries preached to the Gentiles a gospel apart from the Law.... Jesus desires no ... sexual asceticism. The ideal of celibacy indeed entered Christianity early; we find it already in the churches of Paul. But it is entirely foreign to Jesus. || It is most obvious that [Paul] does not appeal to the words of the Lord in support of his strictly theological, anthropological and soteriological views.... When the essentially Pauline conceptions are considered, it is clear that there Paul is not dependent on Jesus. Jesus' teaching is— to all intents and purposes— irrelevant for Paul.

• Franz Kafka, *The Castle *(1926): Barnabas is certainly not an official, not even one in the lowest category.... One shouldn't suddenly send an inexperienced youngster like Barnabas ... into the Castle, and then expect a truthful account of everything from him, interpret each single word of his as if it were a revelation, and base one's own life's happiness on the interpretation. Nothing could be more mistaken.

• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (1927): The mystical Christ, the universal Christ of St. Paul, has neither meaning nor value in our eyes except as an expansion of the Christ who was born of Mary and who died on the cross. The former essentially draws his fundamental quality of undeniability and concreteness from the latter. However far we may be drawn into the divine spaces opened up to us by Christian mysticism, we never depart from the Jesus of the gospels.

• José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928): The missionaries did not impose the Gospel; they imposed the cult, the liturgy.... The Roman Church can consider itself the legitimate heir of the Roman Empire.... This compromise in its origin extends from Catholicism to all Christendom.

• Mahatma Gandhi, ‘Discussion on Fellowship’, Young India (1928): I draw a great distinction between the Sermon on the Mount and the Letters of Paul. They are a graft on Christ's teaching, his own gloss apart from Christ's own experience.

• Kahil Gibran, Jesus the Son of Man (1928): This Paul is indeed a strange man. His soul is not the soul of a free man. He speaks not of Jesus nor does he repeat His Words. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the Name of One whom he does not know.

• Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (vol II, 1928): Paul had for the Jesus-communities of Jerusalem a scarcely veiled contempt.... ‘Jesus is the Redeemer and Paul is his Prophet’— this is the whole content of his message.

• John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of Women (1928): It was through [St. Paul] that the offensive attitude towards women was finally expressed in the Catholic Church.

• Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929): That Saint Paul.... He's the one who makes all the trouble.

• Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (Second Series, 1933): Te-shan (780-865 [AD]) ... was very learned in the teaching of the sutra and was extensively read in the commentaries.... He heard of this Zen teaching in the south [of China], according to which a man could be a Buddha by immediately taking hold of his inmost nature. This he thought could not be the Buddha's own teaching, but [rather] the Evil-One's.... Te-shan's idea was to destroy Zen if possible.... [His] psychology reminds us of that of St. Paul.

• Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934): As far as Paul is concerned, in the Apocalypse [(Rev. 21:14)] only the names of the twelve apostles are found on the foundations of the New Jerusalem— there is no room for Paul.... For Justin [Martyr in the mid-second century], everything is based on the gospel tradition.... The name of Paul is nowhere mentioned by Justin;... not only is his name lacking, but also any congruence with his epistles.... If one may be allowed to speak rather pointedly, the apostle Paul was the only arch-heretic known to the apostolic age.... We must look to the circle of the twelve apostles to find the guardians of the most primitive information about the life and preaching of the Lord.... This treasure lies hidden in the synoptic gospels.

• Herbert A.L. Fisher, A History of Europe (1935): Paul of Tarsus ... drew a clear line of division between [the] two sects.... Christian and Jew sprang apart.

• Henry Miller, Black Spring (1936): That maniac St. Paul.

• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1980, notes from 1937): The spring which flows gently and limpidly in the Gospels seems to have froth on it in Paul's Epistles.... To me it's as though I saw human passion here, something like pride or anger, which is not in tune with the humility of the Gospels.... I want to ask— and may this be no blasphemy— ‘What might Christ have said to Paul?’... In the Gospels— as it seems to me— everything is less pretentious, humbler, simpler. There you find huts; in Paul a church. There all men are equal and God himself is a man; in Paul there is already something like a hierarchy.

• Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight (1941): We were proceeding leisurely down the main street in St. Paul when suddenly, without warning of any kind, an immense octopus wrapped his arms around our car.

• Bertrand Russell, ‘An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish’ (1943): Tobacco ... is not prohibited in the Scriptures, though, as Samuel Butler pointed out, St. Paul would no doubt have denounced it if he had known of it.

• Will Durant, Caesar and Christ (1944): Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.... Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known.... He had replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue. It was a tragic change.

• Shaw Desmond, ‘Religion in the Postwar World’ (Oxford University Socratic Club, 1946): Paul taught the opposite of Jesus.

• Paul Schubert, ‘Urgent Tasks for New Testament Research’, in H.R. Willoughby (ed.), The Study of the Bible Today and Tomorrow (1947): As regards Paul and his letters there is no notable agreement [among modern theologians] on any major issue.

• Robert Frost, A Masque of Mercy (1947): Paul: he's in the Bible too. He is the fellow who theologized Christ almost out of Christianity. Look out for him.

• Frank Harris, My Life and Loves (vol.3, 1949): Christianity, mainly because of Paul, has attacked the sexual desire and has tried to condemn it root and branch.

• Herbert J. Muller, The Uses of the Past (1952): Saul of Tarsus, who became St. Paul,... knew Jesus only by hearsay, and rarely referred to his human life.... Paul preached a gospel about Jesus that was not taught by the Jesus of the synoptic Gospels.... Setting himself against [the] other disciples,... he was largely responsible for the violent break with Judaism.... He contributed a radical dualism of flesh and spirit unwarranted by the teachings of Jesus.

• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1953): St. Paul enjoined self-effacement and discretion upon women.... In a religion that holds the flesh accursed, woman becomes the devil's most fearful temptation.

• Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1955): The door opened. A squat, fat hunchback, still young, but bald, stood on the threshold. His eyes were spitting fire.... ‘Are you Saul?’, Jesus asked, horrified.... ‘I am Paul. I was saved— glory be to God!— and now I've set out to save the world....’ ‘My fine lad,’ Jesus replied, ‘I've already come back from where you're headed.... Did you see this resurrected Jesus of Nazareth?’, Jesus bellowed. ‘Did you see him with your own eyes? What was he like?’ ‘A flash of lightning— a flash of lightning which spoke.’ ‘Liar!... What blasphemies you utter! What effronteries! What lies! Is it with such lies, swindler, that you dare to save the world?’ Now it was Paul's turn to explode. ‘Shut your shameless mouth!’, he shouted.... ‘I don't give a hoot about what's true and what's false, or whether I saw him or didn't see him.’

• Charles Seltman, Women in Antiquity (1956): This man of Tarsus, being somewhat hostile both to women and to mating, began to advocate both the repression of females and the intemperate practice of perpetual virginity,... greatly degrading women in the eyes of men.... Nonsensical anti-feminism was due, in the first instance, to Paul of Tarsus.... For Paul sex was indeed a misfortune withdrawing man's interest from heavenly things.... As the Church increased in influence within the Roman Empire, it carried along with it the corpus of Pauline writings, and the implicit subordination of the female. The dislike, even the hatred, of women grew to be pathological.... [Paul's] teaching about women as interpreted by his successors continues even today to shock thoughtful persons.... The Galilean ... was himself displaced by the Church Militant on earth, disobedient to Jesus, seeking new ways to power.... It had overthrown the precepts of Jesus. The theology of Love,... having been recast as Christendom, borrowed from the simpler nature religions Fear as the finest instrument for the attainment of power.

• G. Ernest Wright and Reginald H. Fuller, The Book of the Acts of God (1957): The earliest Church glossed over the death of Jesus and concentrated its attention on the resurrection,... [whereas] much prominence is given in the Pauline epistles to the notion that [it was] by his death [that] Christ won the decisive victory over the powers of evil. This mythological notion was not a feature of the earliest preaching.... [Furthermore,] both the theology and the practice of baptism underwent a number of changes. For the primitive Church, baptism had been performed in the name of Jesus, and its benefit defined as the remission of sins and ... the gift of the Holy Spirit,... [but] St Paul can speak of baptism as a symbolical participation in Christ's death and resurrection;... such ideas have been frequently ascribed to the influence of the mystery religions, in whose rites the initiate sacramentally shared the fate of the cult deity.... [Moreover,] the Pauline churches were the first to detach the [eucharistic] rite with the bread and cup from the common meal.... All three synoptic gospels are the products of the non-Pauline ... churches.

• William D. Davies, ‘Paul and Jewish Christianity’, in J. Daniélou (ed.), Théologie du Judéo-Chriantianisme (1958); ‘The Apostolic Age and the Life of Paul’, Matthew Black and Harold H. Rowley (eds.), Peake's Commentary on the Bible (1962): Jewish-Christians [opposing Paul] ... must have been a very strong, widespread element in the earliest days of the Church.... They took for granted that the gospel was continuous with Judaism.... According to some scholars, they must have been so strong that right up to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 they were the dominant element in the Christian movement. || Of the history of the Church at Jerusalem between AD 44 and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 we know very little.... Attempts at ... minimizing the gulf between Gentile and Jerusalem Christianity break down on the opposition which the Pauline mission so often encountered from Jewish Christians.... Acts has so elevated Paul that others who labored have been dwarfed, and any assessment of the rise of Gentile Christianity must allow for the possible distortion introduced by this concentration of Acts on Paul.... The Epistles and Acts reveal that Paul came to regard himself ... as the [one and only] Apostle to the Gentiles.

• Lawrence Durrell, Clea (1960): For a brief moment [freedom] looked possible, but St. Paul restored ... the iron handcuffs.

• Hans Joachim Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (English translation 1961): [Drawing a] stark contrast between the religion of the law and the religion of grace,... Paul had lost all understanding of the character of the Hebraic berith [covenant] as a partnership involving mutual obligations, [and thus] he failed to grasp the inner meaning of the Mosaic law.

• Max Dimont, Jews, God, and History (1962): If Paul had lived today, he might have ended up on a psychiatrist's couch. Throughout his life he was overwhelmed with an all-pervasive sense of guilt which pursued him with relentless fury.... The custom had been for non-Jewish converts to become Jews first, then be admitted into the Christian sect. Paul felt that pagans should become Christians directly, without first being converted to Judaism.... Slowly he changed early Christianity into a new Pauline Christology.... Christianity was no longer a Jewish sect, for Paul had abandoned the Mosaic tradition.

• Nils A. Dahl, ‘The Particularity of the Pauline Epistles as a Problem in the Ancient Church’, Neotestamentica et Patristica: Eine Freundesgabe, Herrn Professor Dr. Oscar Cullman (1962): The particularity of the Pauline Epistles was felt as a problem, from a time before the Corpus paulinum was published and until it had been incorporated into a complete canon of New Testament Scripture. Later on, the problem was no longer felt,... when they served as sources for reconstruction of a general ‘biblical theology’ or a system of ‘paulinism’.

• Erich Fromm, The Dogma of Christ (1963): Paul appealed ... to some of the wealthy and educated class, especially merchants, who by means of their adventures and travels had a decided importance for the diffusion of Christianity.... [This] had been the religion of a community of equal brothers, without hierarchy or bureaucracy, [but] was converted into ‘the Church’, the reflected image of the absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire.

• Sylvia Plath, *The Bell Jar *(1963): The only trouble was, Church, even the Catholic Church, didn't take up the whole of your life. No matter how much you knelt and prayed, you still had to eat three meals a day and have a job and live in the world.

• William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West (1963): A question which immediately arose in the Christian communities outside Palestine was whether or not the Mosaic law remained binding. Paul's answer was that Christ had abrogated the Old Dispensation by opening a new path to salvation. Other followers of Christ held that traditional Jewish custom and law still remained in force.... Neither Peter and James, the leaders in Jerusalem, nor Paul ... could persuade the other party.

• James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963): The real architect of the Christian church was not the disreputable, sun-baked Hebrew who gave it his name but [rather] the mercilessly fanatical and self-righteous St. Paul.

• Georg Strecker, ‘On the Problem of Jewish Christianity’, Appendix 1 to Walter Bauer, op.cit. (1964 ed.): Jewish Christianity, according to the witness of the New Testament, stands at the beginning of the development of church history, so that it is not the [pauline] gentile Christian ‘ecclesiastical doctrine’ that represents what is primary, but rather a Jewish Christian theology.

• Jorge Luís Borges, ‘The Theologians’ (1964): The Historionics ... invoked I-Corinthians 13:12 (‘For now we see through a glass, obscurely’) in order to demonstrate that everything we see is false.  Perhaps contaminated by the Monotonists, they imagined that each person is two persons and that the real one is the other, the one in Heaven.

• Gilles Quispel, ‘Gnosticism and the New Testament’, in J. Philip Hyatt (ed.), The Bible in Modern Scholarship (papers read at the 100th meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1964): The Christian community of Jerusalem ... did not accept [Paul's] views on the [Mosaic] Law.

• Helmut Koester, ‘The Theological Aspects of Primitive Christian Heresy’, in James Robinson (ed.), The Future of our Religious Past (1964); Introduction to the New Testament (1980); Ancient Christian Gospels (1990); with Stephen Patterson, ‘The Gospel of Thomas: Does It Contain Authentic Sayings of Jesus?’, Bible Review (1990): Paul himself stands in the twilight zone of heresy. || The content of Paul's speeches in Acts cannot be harmonized with the theology of Paul as we know it from his letters.... Neither is it credible that he affirmed repeatedly in his trial that he had always lived as a law- [i.e. Torah-]abiding Jew.... From the beginning of Acts to the martyrdom of Stephen, the central figure in the narrative has been Peter. At this point, however, Paul is introduced for the first time.... Peter is always presented as an apostle, since he belongs to the circle of the Twelve. But in Acts 15 Peter is mentioned for the last time, and Luke has nothing to report about his journey to Rome or his martyrdom. Even more peculiar is the presentation of Paul. He is neither an apostle nor a martyr.... Furthermore, Luke takes great care to demonstrate that the originator of the proclamation to the gentiles was not Paul (or Barnabas), but Peter. || One immediately encounters a major difficulty. Whatever Jesus had preached did not become the content of the missionary proclamation of Paul.... Sayings of Jesus do not play a role in Paul's understanding of the event of salvation.... The Epistle of James also shares with the Sermon on the Mount the rejection of the Pauline thesis that Christ is the end of the [Mosaic] law. || Paul did not care at all what Jesus had said.... Had Paul been completely successful, very little of the sayings of Jesus would have survived.

• Emil G. Kraeling, The Disciples (1966): The peculiar, unharmonized relationship between Paul and the Twelve that existed from the beginning was never fully adjusted.... Modern Biblical research in particular has made it difficult to put the religion of the New Testament (to say nothing of the Bible as a whole) into the straightjacket of Paulinism.

• Bruce Vawter, The Four Gospels (1967): We have no authentic information about the activity of most of the Twelve after the first days of the Church in Jerusalem, but it is likely enough that they remained identified with Jewish Christianity, particularly, perhaps, with the Galilean Christianity about which we know practically nothing.... This Christianity ... all but disappeared.

• Gershom Scholem, ‘The Crisis of Tradition in Jewish Messianism’ (1968): The religious strategy of Paul ... [is] downright antinomian.

• Paul Tillich, *A History of Christian Thought *(1968): The [Mosaic] law was not evaluated in the negative way in which we usually do it; for the Jews it was a gift and a joy.... The way of despair ... was the way of people like Paul, Augustine, and Luther.... Paul's conflict with the Jewish Christians did not have to be continued. Instead of that, the positive elements in the faith, which could provide an understandable content for the pagans, had to be brought out.

• Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (1968): The reign in Europe of that order of unreason, unreasoning submission to the dicta of authority:... Saint Paul himself had opened the door to such impudent idiocies.

• Günther Bornkamm, *Paul *(1969): Above all there results the chasm which separates Jesus from Paul and the conclusion that more than the historical Jesus ... it is Paul who really founded Christianity.... Already during his lifetime Paul was considered an illegitimate Apostle and a falsifier of the Christian message.... For a long time, Judeo-Christianity rejected him completely, as a rival to Peter and James, the brother of the Lord.... Paul does not connect immediately with ... [the] words ... of the earthly Jesus. Everything seems to indicate that he didn't even know them.

• David Ben-Gurion, Israel: A Personal History (1971): Jesus probably differed little from many other Jews of his generation. The new religion was given an anti-Jewish emphasis by Saul,... [who] gave Christianity a new direction. He sought to uproot Jewish law and commandments, and to eliminate Judaism as a national entity striving to achieve the Messianic vision of the Prophets.

• William Steuart McBirnie, The Search for the Twelve Apostles (1973): Why did Jesus choose only twelve chief Apostles? Obviously, to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel.... Paul stoutly maintained that he also was an Apostle.... Yet there is no evidence that he was ever admitted to that inner circle of the original Twelve.... Those who expect the Acts to be the complete early history of Christianity are doomed to disappointment.... The Bible student is soon, and perhaps unconsciously, caught up in the personal ministry of Paul. Peter, though prominent at first, is later ignored, as the Acts unfolds for the reader the story of Paul and his friends.... There is absolutely no evidence that Paul ever recognized the ‘primacy’ of Peter.

• Ronald Brownrigg, The Twelve Apostles (1974): The letters of Paul present a marked contrast to Luke's writings [in his Gospel and the Acts]. Whereas Luke suggests that the Apostles were a closed corporation of twelve governing the whole Church, Paul disagrees, claiming his own Apostleship to be as valid as any of the twelve.... Certainly Paul knew no authority of the twelve.... The qualification for Apostleship, at the election of Matthias [Ac 1:15-26], had been a divinely guided selection and a constant companionship with Jesus throughout his [active] lifetime.

• Elaine H. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul (1975); The Gnostic Gospels (1979): Two antithetical traditions of Pauline exegesis have emerged from the late first century through the second. Each claims to be authentic, Christian, and Pauline: but one reads Paul anti-gnostically, the other gnostically.... Whoever takes account of the total evidence may learn from the debate to approach Pauline exegesis with renewed openness to the text. || One version of this story [of Paul's conversion] says, ‘The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one’; another says the opposite,... ‘Those who were with me saw the light, but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me.’

• Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (1976): The Christ of Paul was not affirmed by the historical Jesus of the Jerusalem Church.... Writings ... by Christian Jews of the decade of the 50's [AD] present Paul as the Antichrist and the prime heretic.... The Christology of Paul, which later became the substance of the universal Christian faith,... was predicated by an external personage whom many members of the Jerusalem Church absolutely did not recognize as an Apostle.

• Irving Howe, World of our Fathers (1976): The view that sexual activity is impure or at least suspect, so often an accompaniment of Christianity, was seldom entertained in the [east-European Jewish] shtetl. Paul's remark that it is better to marry than to burn would have seemed strange, if not downright impious, to the Jews.

• John Morris Roberts, History of the World (1976): The reported devotional ideas of Jesus do not go beyond the Jewish observances; service in the Temple, together with private prayer, were all that he indicated. In this very real sense, he lived and died as a Jew.... Fulfillment of the [Mosaic] Law was essential.... The doctrine that Paul taught was new. He rejected the Law (as Jesus had never done),... and this was to shatter the mould of Jewish thought within which the faith had been born.

• James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Codices (1977): The New Testament Gospels present the resurrected Christ as having a body that appears to be a human body— he is taken for a gardener, or for a traveler to Emmaus; he eats; his wounds can be touched.... Paul insists again and again that, although he was not a disciple during Jesus' lifetime, he did witness a genuine appearance of the resurrected Christ. But his picture of a resurrection ‘body’ is a bright light, a heavenly ‘body’ like a sun, star or planet, not like an earthly body. So the book of Acts, while recounting in detail Paul's encounter with Jesus as a blinding light, presents it as if it were hardly more than a ‘conversion’. For the author [of Acts] places it well outside of the period of resurrection appearances, which he had limited to forty days.

• Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ (1977): There is a difference between the theology of the early Jewish Christian congregations in Jerusalem which are oriented on Jesus of Nazareth, and Pauline theology, which knows only ‘the crucified’.

• Mircea Eliade, History of Beliefs and Religious Ideas (1978): Paul would have to be seen as fatally opposed to the Judeo-Christians of Jerusalem,... a conflict of which Paul and the Acts (Gal. 2:7-10), Acts 15:29) give contradictory versions.

• Thomas Maras, The Contradictions in the New Testament (1979): In disagreement with [Matthew and Luke], who wish him to be a direct Son of God, Paul says to us [in Rom 1:3-4] that in the flesh Jesus is the descendent of David, and only in power is the Son of God.

• Patrick Henry, New Directions in New Testament Study (1979): There remains in the popular mind a strong suspicion ... that Paul corrupted Christianity (or even founded a different religion).... Jesus [was] a teacher in the mainstream of Jewish prophetic piety,... while Paul ... takes the irrevocable step away from Judaism of rejecting the [Mosaic] law.... Paul imported into the Christian community a form of religion characteristic of the ‘mysteries’,... religious movements of initiation into secret rites and esoteric knowledge.

• Juan Luis Segundo, The Person of Today confronting Jesus of Nazareth (1982): Within less than thirty years of the events narrated by the Synoptics concerning the life and proclamation, death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul permits himself to compose a long and complex exposition of what this means, retaining, apparently, only the two final specific events, the death and the resurrection. Jesus' words are not cited (with the exception of those pronounced over the bread and wine at the Last Supper), his teachings are not remembered. The key terms have disappeared which he employed to designate himself, his mission and his immediate audience: the Son of Man, the Kingdom of God, the poor.

• Abba Eban, Civilization and the Jews (WNET Heritage video #3, 1984): Those who followed the teachings of Jesus were known among other Jews as Nazarenes. In the beginning, the Nazarene sect was completely Jewish.... Although this had been a Jewish sect, Paul welcomed new followers without having them convert to Judaism.

• Jürgen Moltmann, Political Theology [&] Ethical Theology (1984): The theology of Paul and that of the Reformation interpreted the death of Jesus theologically as a victim of the law [of Israel]; and they made it very clear that the resurrection and exaltation of Christ signified the abolition of [that] law with all its demands.... [But] Jesus did not die by stoning, but rather by Roman execution.

• Yigael Yadin, ‘The Temple Scroll— the Longest Dead Sea Scroll’, Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept/Oct 1984): We must distinguish between the various layers, or strata, to use an archaeological term, of early Christianity. The theology, the doctrines and the practices of Jesus, John the Baptist and Paul ... are not the same.

• James Michener, Legacy (1987): Women ... will no longer kowtow to the fulminations of St. Paul.

• Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (1987): According to [some] scholars the presence of contradictions between New Testament books ... makes it necessary to establish a critical canon.... For example, the eschatology of Luke-Acts cannot, it is said, be harmonized with Paul's eschatology.... Again, the outlook on the Old Testament law in the Epistle to the Romans certainly appears to be different from the outlook in Matt.v.18.... Furthermore, the Epistle of James attacks the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone. For these and similar reasons, it is argued,... there [is] no unity within the canon.

• Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Insight on the Scriptures, ‘Paul’ (1988): Whose name then appears among those on the ‘twelve foundation stones’ of the New Jerusalem of John's vision— Matthias' or Paul's? (Rev. 21:2-14) ... God's original choice, namely Matthias.

• Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (1988): Scholars, their confusion facilitated by Paul's own apparent inconsistency,... do not agree even on what Paul said, much less why he said it.

• Jostein Gaarder, *Sophie's World *(1991): Was Christ a Christian? That also can certainly be debated.

• Jon Sobrino, Jesus Christ Liberator (1991): Paul's ... Christology is centered on the resurrected Lord, and he does not make a detailed theological appraisal of the life of Jesus.

• Stephen Mitchell, The Gospel according to Jesus (1991): Paul of Tarsus ... [was] the most misleading of the earliest Christian writers,... [and] a particularly difficult character: arrogant, self-righteous, filled with murderous hatred of his opponents, terrified of God, oppressed by what he felt as the burden of the [Mosaic] Law, overwhelmed by his sense of sin.... He didn't understand Jesus at all. He wasn't even interested in Jesus; just in his own idea of the Christ.

• Paulo Suess, ‘Acculturation’, in Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino (eds.), Mysterium Liberationis (1991): The allegorical exegesis of Philo (13 BC-45/50 AD), Jewish philosopher and theologian, is present in the writings of Paul,... [who] was in many respects a figure atypical of the primitive Church,... due to the transition from an agrarian context— very much present in the parables— to an urban world ... of the great cities.

• Shlomo Riskin, The Jerusalem Post International Edition (March 28, 1992): Saul of Tarsus ... broke from Jewish Law, and the religion thereby created was soon encrusted with pagan elements.

• Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy (1992): Paul makes the whole purpose of Jesus' activity rest exclusively in this dying on the Cross. Here he has little interest in the words and teachings of Jesus, but he makes everything depend on his own teaching: the salvation from sins by the vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus. Does it not seem most strange that Jesus himself did not give the slightest hint that he intended to save the entire faithful section of humanity by his death?... Although there are several most delightful passages in the texts of Paul, Christianity has his narrow-minded fanaticism to thank for numerous detrimental developments, which are diametrically opposed to the spirit of Jesus: the intolerance towards those of different views, the marked hostility to the body and the consequently low view of woman, and especially the fatally flawed attitude towards Nature.... He turns Jesus' teaching of Salvation upside down, and opposes his reforming ideas; instead of the original joyous tidings, the Pauline message of threats was developed.

• Dennis J. Trisker and Vera V. Martínez T., They Also Believe (1992): While many persons believe that Christianity was founded by Jesus Christ,... it is due to Paul that there exists the organization called Christian.... In the New Testament, we can see how Paul ... was in disagreement with the church in Jerusalem and even held in suspicion by them.... He did not emphasize the Jewish aspect of the teaching, and this brought about the first separation within the church. Across the years this separation widened, making the church more pagan and less Jewish.... Paul was no Apostle.

• Xavier Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (1993): There is absolutely no doubt that much of St. Paul's terminology derives from the Mystery Religions.

• Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (1993); The New Testament (video course, The Teaching Company, 2000): Whether seen from a social or a theological point of view,... Christianity in the early centuries was a remarkably diversified phenomenon.... Matthew and Paul are both in the canon.... Many of Paul's opponents were clearly Jewish Christians ... [who] accepted the binding authority of the Old Testament (and therefore the continuing validity of the [Mosaic] Law) but rejected the authority of the apostate Apostle, Paul. || What did the historical Jesus teach in comparison with what the historical Paul taught?... Jesus taught that to escape judgment a person must keep the central teachings of the Jewish Law as he, Jesus himself, interpreted them. Paul, interestingly enough, never mentions Jesus' interpretation of the [Mosaic] Law, and Paul was quite insistent that keeping the Law would never bring Salvation. The only way to be saved, for Paul, was to trust Jesus' death and resurrection.... Paul transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus.

• Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Supplement 1993); The Death of the Messiah (1994); An Introduction to the New Testament (1997): [Regarding] Paul's statement that Jesus ‘was descended from David according to the flesh’ (Rom 1:3),... one may ask whether the evangelists who wrote of the virgin conception would have chosen such phrasing. || Paul ... does not quote Jesus or cite his individual deeds. || One might reflect on what we would know about Jesus if we had just the letters of Paul. We would have a magnificent theology about what God has done in Christ, but Jesus would be left almost without a face.... ‘I have not come to abolish the [Mosaic] Law’ (Matt 5:17); ‘You are not under the Law’ (Rom 6:14).... Luke is particularly insistent on the reality of Jesus' [resurrection] appearance, for Jesus eats food and affirms that he has flesh and bones. In his references to a risen body, Paul speaks of one that is spiritual and not flesh and blood (1Cor. 15:44,(1Cor. 15:50).... Paul had begun a process whereby Christianity would become almost entirely a Gentile religion.... Far from being grafted on the tree of Israel, the Gentile Christians will become the tree.... Was it proper for a Christian apostle to indulge in gutter crudity by wishing that in the circumcision advocated by the [Jewish-Christian] preachers the knife might slip and lop off the male organ (Gal. 5:12)? What entitled Paul to deprecate as ‘so-called pillars of the church’ members of the Twelve who had walked with Jesus and the one [James] honored as ‘the brother of the Lord’ (Gal. 2:9)?

• Ian Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence (1996): [The] interest [in Paul's letters] lies in their apparent ignorance of any details of Jesus' earthly life.... [Paul] reflected the attitudes of contemporary society towards women rather than what we may now believe to have been Jesus' own ideas.... We seem to be faced with a straight, first-century clash of theologies: Paul's on the one hand, based on his other-worldly [Damascus Road] experience; and James' [in his epistle], based on his fraternal knowledge of the human Jesus. And, despite the authority which should be due to the latter, it would seem to be Paul's that has been allowed to come down to us.... Particularly significant is [James'] gentle but firm stance on the importance of Jesus' teaching on communal living.

• Alan F. Segal (for** Eugene Schwartz**), ‘Electronic Echoes: Using Computer Concordances for Bible Study’, *Biblical Archaeology Review *(Nov/Dec 1997): We can easily quantify allusions by measuring whether a passage in one Biblical work merely repeats a few words of another or whether it directly quotes several words running.... The results of our research seemed to confirm ... very few clear parallels between Paul and the Gospels.... [They] almost always express [even] the same ideas in completely different words.... I am unconvinced by the myriad rather weak parallels between the Gospels and Paul. Rather,... the [computer] word study seems to show that the two are definitely unrelated.

• Stephen J. Patterson, ‘Understanding the Gospel of Thomas Today’, in Stephen J. Patterson, James M. Robinson and Hans-Gebhard Bethge, The Fifth Gospel (1998): The so-called Apostles' Creed that emerged only in the second century [is] completely lacking in sayings of Jesus and focused only on his birth and death.

• John Kaltner, Ishmael Instructs Isaac—An Introduction to the Qur’an for Bible Readers (1999): Jesus acknowledges the authority of the Law of Moses while ... Paul argues that Jesus' death and resurrection has rendered the Law totally obsolete for the Christian.

• Anthony Saldarini, ‘Jewish Reform Movements: Qumran and the Gospel of Matthew’ (Biblical Archaeology Society video lecture, 1999): Jesus wasn't a Christian.... Jesus was a Jew.... To be a follower of Jesus, you don't have to leave Judaism and become a Christian. To be a follower of Jesus, you have to live Jewish life the way that Jesus taught people to live Jewish life.... Paul says that there's the Gospel and there's the [Mosaic] Law; that's Paul's polemic, that's somewhere else.

• Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, City of God (2000): I will say here of Jesus, that Jew, and the system in his name, what a monstrous trick history has played on him.... Christianity was originally a Jewish sect. Everybody knows that.... Paul— you know, Paul. Fellow had that stroke on the road to Damascus?.... Then what? In this case, a new religion.

• Daniel Boyarin, ‘The Gospel of the Memra’, Harvard Theological Review (2001): For [the Gospel of] John,... Jesus comes to fulfill the mission of Moses, not to displace it. The Torah simply needed a better exegete, the Logos Ensarkos, a fitting teacher for flesh and blood. Rather than supersession in the explicitly temporal sense within which Paul inscribes it, John's typology of Torah and Logos Incarnate is more easily read within the context of ... a prevailing assumption of Western thought, that oral teaching is more authentic and transparent than written texts.

• Mark D. Given, ‘The True Rhetoric of Romans’ (paper, Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings, 2001): Concerning the sophistic obscurity of Paul's argumentative strategies in Romans,... it is sometimes so hard to tell just what Paul really intends to say about such controversial subjects as the [Mosaic] Law, Judaism, and the Jewish people that one might ... suggest that the ambiguities are intended to keep the audience guessing what Paul really thinks.

• John Dominic Crossan, in ‘Peter and Paul and the Christian Revolution’, PBS documentary (April 2003): What is at stake in this is, if we're going to have a Gentile Christian community and a Jewish Christian community, are we going to have two Churches or one? If we're going to have one, how is it to be integrated together? That's what is at stake in this: how is the Church, with these two wings, these two divisions as it were, how is it to remain one Church? Is it going to remain one Church?