Or if that don't suit here is another view:
PAUL THE GNOSTIC OPPONENT OF PETER,
NOT AN
APOSTLE OF HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY
==================
(Fuller Egyptian and Gnostic Data, with references to the authorities, may be
found in the Author's "Natural Genesis."
==================
It has been shown in previous lectures that the matter of our Canonical Gospels is, to a large extent,
mythical, and that the Gnosis of Ancient Egypt was carried into other lands by the underground
passage of the Mysteries, to emerge at last as the literalised legend of Historic Christianity.
The mythical Christ was as surely continued from Egypt as were the mythical types of the Christ on
the Gnostic Stones and in the Catacombs of Rome! Once this ground is felt to be firm underfoot it
emboldens and warrants us in cutting the Gordian knot that has been so deftly complicated for us in
the Epistles of Paul. To-day we have to face a problem that is one of the most difficult; it is my
object to prove that Paul was the opponent and not the apostle of Historic Christianity. It is well
known to all serious students of the subject that there was an original rent or rift of difference
between the preacher Paul and the other founders of Christianity, whom he first met in
Jerusalem--namely, Cephas (or Peter), James, and John. He did not think much of them personally,
but scoffs a little at their pretensions to being Pillars of the Church. Those men had nothing in
common with him from the first, and never forgave him for his independence and opposition to the
last. But the depth of that visible rift has not yet been fathomed in consequence of false assumptions;
and my own researches and determination to look and think for myself have led me to the inevitable
conclusion that there is but one way in which it can be bottomed for the first time.
It is likewise more or less apprehended that two voices are heard contending in Paul's Epistles, to
the confounding of the writer's sense
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and the confusion of the reader's. They utter different doctrines, so fundamentally opposed as to be
for ever irreconcilable; and this duplicity of doctrine makes Paul, who is the one distinct and
single-minded personality of the "New Testament," look like the most double-faced of men;
double-tongued as the serpent. The two doctrines are those of the Gnostic, or Spiritual Christ, and
the historic Jesus. Both cannot be true to Paul; and my contention is that both voices did not
proceed from him personally.
We know that Paul and the other Apostles did not preach the same gospel; and it is my present
purpose to show that they did not set forth or celebrate the same Christ. My thesis is, that Paul was
not a supporter of the system known as Historical Christianity, which was founded on a belief in the
Christ carnalised; an assumption that the Christ had been made flesh; but that he was its unceasing
and deadly opponent during his lifetime; and that after his death his writings were tampered with,
interpolated, and re-indoctrinated by his old enemies, the forgers and falsifiers, who first began to
weave the web of the Papacy in Rome. In this way there was added a fourth pillar or corner-stone
to the original three in Jerusalem, which was turned into the chief support of the whole structure; the
firmest foundation of the fallacious faith.
The supreme feat, performed in secret by the managers of the Mysteries in Rome, was this
conversion of the Epistles of Paul into the main support of Historic Christianity! It was the very pivot
on which the total imposture turned! In his lifetime he had fought tooth and nail, with tongue and pen,
against the men who founded the faith of the Christ made flesh, and damned eternally all disbelievers;
and after his death they reared the Church of the Sarkolatr‘ above his tomb, and for eighteen
centuries have, with a forged warrant, claimed him as being the first and foremost among the
founders. They cleverly dammed the course of the natural river that flowed forth from its own
independent source in the Epistles of Paul, and turned its waters into their own artificial canal, so that
Paul's living force should be made to float the bark of Peter. Nevertheless, those who care to look
closely will see that the two waters, like those of the river Rhone, will not mingle in one colour! And
it appears to me that, whether Paul was mad or not in this life, such nefarious treatment of his
writings was bad enough to drive him frantic in the next, and make him insane there until the wrong is
righted.
It is the universal assumption that Paul, the persecutor of the early Christians, was converted by a
vision of the risen Jesus, who proved his historic nature and identity by appearing to Paul in person.
So it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The account, however, is entirely opposed to that
which is given by Paul himself in his Epistle to the Galatians. He tells how the change occurred,
which has been called his conversion. It was by revelation of the Christ within, but not by an
objective vision of a personal Jesus, who demonstrated in spirit world the reality and identity of an
historic Jesus of Nazareth, who
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had lately lived on earth. Such a version as that is rigorously impossible, according to Paul's own
words. His account of the matter is totally antipodal. He received his commission to preach the
Christ, as he declares, "when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal his Son in me," and
therefore not by an apparition of Jesus of Nazareth outside of him! His Christ within was not the
Corpus of Christian belief, but the Christ of the Gnosis. He heard no voice external to himself, which
could be converted into the audible voice of an historic Jesus; and nothing can be more instructive to
begin with, than a comparative study of these two versions, for showing how the matter has been
manipulated, and the facts perverted, for the purpose of establishing or supporting an orthodox
history. What he did hear when caught up in the spirit he tells us was unspeakable; words which it is
not lawful for a man to utter! He makes no mention of a Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, Jesus of
Nazareth is unknown to Paul! His name never once appears in the Epistles; and the significance of
the fact in favour of the present view can hardly be exaggerated. So, Jesus of Nazareth does not
appear in the Gospel of Marcion; or, as it was represented by some of the Christian Fathers,
Marcion had removed the name of Jesus of Nazareth from his particular Gospel--being so virulent a
heretic! Here we find Paul in agreement with Marcion, the Gnostic rejecter of Jesus of Nazareth,
and of historic Christianity. Moreover, Paul was the only apostle of the true Christ who was
recognised by Marcion. Now, as Marcion had rejected the human nature of the Christ, and left the
sect which ultimately became the church of historic Christianity, it is impossible that he could have
adopted or upheld the Gospel of Paul as it has come down to us in our version of the Epistles.
Hence, Iren‘us complains that Marcion dismembered the Epistles of Paul, and removed those
passages from the prophetical writings which had been quoted to teach us that they announced
beforehand the coming of the Lord! That is, Marcion, the man who knew, recognised his
fellow-Gnostic in Paul, but rejected the literalisations and the spurious doctrines which had been
surreptitiously interpolated by the founders, who were the forgers, of Historic Christianity. Further,
with regard to the Marcionites, Iren‘us says they allege that Paul alone, of all the Christian teachers,
knew the truth; and that to him the Mystery was manifested by revelation. They spoke as Gnostics
of a Gnostic. At the same time, as Iren‘us tells us, the Gnostics, of whom Marcion was one,
charged the other Apostles with hypocrisy, because they "framed their doctrine according to the
capacity of their hearers, fabling blind things for the blind according to their blindness; for
the dull, according to their dulness; for those in error, according to their errors."
Clement Alexander asserts that Paul, before going to Rome, stated that he would bring to the
Brethren (not the true Gospel history, but) the Gnosis, or Gnostic communication, the tradition of the
hidden mysteries, as the fulness of the blessings of Christ, which Clement says were revealed by the
Son of God, the "teacher who trains the Gnostic
29
by mysteries," i.e., by revelations made in the state of trance. He was going there as a Gnostic, and
therefore as the natural opponent of Historic Christianity.
The conversion of Paul, according to the Acts, is supposed to have occurred sometime after the
year 30 A.D. at the earliest; and yet if we accept the data furnished by the book of Acts and Paul's
Epistle to the Galatians, he must have been converted as early as the year 27 A.D. Paul states that
after his conversion he did not go up to Jerusalem for three years. Then after 14 more years he went
up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas. This second visit can be dated by means of the famine, which
is historic, and known to have occurred in the year 44, at which time relief was conveyed to the
brethren in Judea by Barnabas and Paul. If we take 17 years from 44, the different statements go to
show that Paul had been converted as early as the year 27. Thus, according to the dates and the
data derived from the Acts, from Paul's epistle, and the historic fact of the famine, Paul was
converted to Christianity in the year 27 of our era! This could not have been by a spiritual
manifestation of the supposed personal Jesus, who was not then dead, and had not at that time been
re-begotten as the Christ of the canonical history. This is usually looked upon (by Renan, for
example,) as such an absurdity that no credence can be allowed to the account in the Acts. On the
contrary, and notwithstanding all that has been said by those whose work it is to put a false bottom
into the Unknown, I am free to maintain that nothing stands in the way of its being a possibility and a
fact, except the assumption that it is an impossibility. You cannot date one event by another which
never occurred, or, if it did occur, is not recorded by Paul, especially when his own account offers
negative evidence of its non-occurrence. It is only using plain words justifiably to say that the
concocters of the Acts falsify whenever it is convenient, and tell the truth when they cannot help it! In
Paul's own account of his conversion he continues: "Immediately, I conferred not with the flesh
and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them who were Apostles before me; but I went
away into Arabia." He did not seek to know anything about the personal Jesus of Nazareth, his
life, his miracles, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; had no anxiety to hear anything
whatever from living witnesses or relatives about the human nature of this Divine Being, who is
supposed to have appeared to Paul in person; completely changed the current of his life, and
transformed his character; no wish even to verify the historic or possible ground-work for the reality
of his alleged vision of Jesus! When he did go up to Jerusalem, three years afterwards, and again in
fourteen years, he positively learned nothing whatever from those who ought to have been able to
teach him and tell him all things on matters of vital importance (for historic Christianity), about which
he should have been most desirous to know, but had no manifest desire of knowing. He saw James,
Peter, and John, who were the pillars of the church and persons of repute, but whatever they were it
made no matter to
30
him; they imparted nothing to him. He says these respectable persons, these pillars, who seemed to
be somewhat, communicated nothing to him; contrariwise, it was he who had a gospel of his own,
which he had received from no man, to communicate to them! He had come to bring them the
Gnosis. They privately gave him the hand of fellowship, and offered to acknowledge him if he would
keep out of their way with his other gospel--go to the Gentiles (or go to the Devil), and leave them
alone. There was a compromise, and therefore something to compromise, though not on Paul's
account; but the only point of genuine agreement between them was that they agreed to differ! On
comparing notes, he found that they were preaching quite another gospel, and another Jesus. We
know what their gospel was, because it has come down to us in the doctrines and dogmas of historic
Christianity. It was the gospel of the literalisers of mythology; the gospel of the Christ made flesh to
save mankind from an impossible fall; the gospel of salvation by the atoning blood of Christ; the
gospel that would make a hell of this life, on purpose to win heaven hereafter; the gospel of flesh and
physics, including the corporeal resurrection, and the immediate ending of the world; the gospel that
has no other world except at the end of this. Theirs was that other gospel with its doctrines of
delusion, against which Paul waged continual warfare. For, another Jesus, another Spirit, and
another gospel were being preached by these pre-eminent apostles who were the opponents of
Paul. He warns the Corinthians against those "pre-eminent apostles," whom he calls false prophets,
deceitful workers, and ministers of Satan, who came among them to preach "another Jesus" whom
he did not preach, and a different gospel from that which they had received from him. To the
Galatians he says: "If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye
received, let him be damned;" or let him be Anathema. He chides them: "O, foolish, Galatians,
who did bewitch you? Are ye so foolish: having begun in the Spirit, are ye perfected in the
flesh?" That is, in the gospel of the Christ made flesh, the gospel to those who were at enmity with
him, who followed on his track like Satan sowing tares by night to choke the seed of the spiritual
gospel which Paul had so painfully sown, and who, as he intimates to the Thessalonians, were quite
capable of forging epistles in his name to deceive his followers. It has never yet been shown how
fundamental was this feud between Paul and the forgers of the fleshly faith, because the real facts
had not been grappled with or grasped concerning the totally different bases of belief, and the
forever irreconcilable gospels of the Gnostic or spiritual Christ, and of the Christ made flesh, to be
set forth as the Saviour of mankind, according to Historic Christianity. It was impossible that Paul
and Peter should draw or pull together; the different grounds of their faith were in the beginning from
pole to pole apart. He says: "I made known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was
preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it
31
from man (or from a man), nor was I taught it, save through revelation of the Christ revealed
within."
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