In comparing the Jesus of Paul with the Jesus whose portrait
is drawn for us in the gospels, we find that they are not the same
persons at all. This is decisive. Paul knows nothing about a
miraculously born savior. He does not mention a single time, in all
his thirteen epistles, that Jesus was born of a virgin, or that his
birth was accompanied with heavenly signs and wonders. He knew
nothing of a Jesus born after the manner of the gospel writers. It
is not imaginable that he knew the facts, but suppressed them, or
that he considered them unimportant, or that he forgot to refer to
them in any of his public utterances. Today, a preacher is expelled
from his denomination if he suppresses or ignores the miraculous
conception of the Son of God; but Paul was guilty of that very
heresy. How explain it? It is quite simple: The virgin-born Jesus
was not yet invented when Paul was preaching Christianity. Neither
he, nor the churches he had organized, had ever heard of such a
person. The virgin-born Jesus was of later origin than the Apostle
Paul.
Let the meaning of this discrepancy between the Jesus of Paul,
that is to say, the earliest portrait of Jesus, and the Jesus of
the four evangelists, be fully grasped by the student, and it
should prove beyond a doubt that in Paul's time the story of Jesus'
birth from the virgin-mother and the Holy Ghost, which has since
become a cardinal dogma of the Christian church, was not yet in
circulation. Jesus had not yet been Hellenized; he was still a
Jewish Messiah whose coming was foretold in the Old Testament, and
who was to be a prophet like unto Moses, without the remotest
suggestion of a supernatural origin.
No proposition in Euclid is safer from contradiction than
that, if Paul knew what the gospels tell about Jesus, he would
have, at least once or twice during his long ministry, given
evidence of his knowledge of it. The conclusion is inevitable that
the gospel Jesus is later than Paul and his churches. Paul stood
nearest to the time of Jesus of those whose writings are supposed
to have come down to us, he is the most representative, and his
epistles are the first literature of the new religion. And yet
there is absolutely not a single hint or suggestion in them of such
a Jesus as is depicted in the gospels. The gospel Jesus was not yet
put together or compiled, when Paul was preaching.
Once more; if we peruse carefully critically the writings of
Paul, the earliest and greatest Christian apostle and missionary,
we find that he is not only ignorant of the gospel stories about
the birth and miracles of Jesus, but he is equally and just as
innocently ignorant of the teachings of Jesus. In the gospels Jesus
is the author of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, the
Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Story of Dives, the Good
Samaritan, etc. Is it conceivable that a preacher of Jesus could go
throughout the world to convert people to the teachings of Jesus,
as Paul did, without ever quoting a single one of his sayings? Had
Paul known that Jesus had preached a sermon, or formulated a
prayer, or said many inspired things about the here and the
hereafter, he could not have helped quoting, now and then, from the
words of his master. If Christianity could have been established
without a knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, why then, did Jesus
come to teach, and why were his teachings preserved by divine
inspiration? But if a knowledge of these teachings of Jesus is
indispensable to making converts, Paul gives not the least evidence
that he possessed such knowledge.
But the Apostle Paul, judging from his many epistles to the
earliest converts to Christianity which are really his testimony,
supposed to have been sealed by his blood, appears to be quite as
ignorant of a Jesus who went about working miracles, -- opening the
eyes of the blind, giving health to the sick, hearing to the deaf,
and life to the dead, -- as he is of a Jesus born of a virgin woman
and the Holy Ghost. Is not this remarkable? Does it not lend strong
confirmation to the idea that the miracle-working Jesus of the
gospels was not known in Paul's time, that is to say, the earliest
Jesus known to the churches was a person altogether different from
his namesake in the four evangelists. If Paul knew of a miracle-
working Jesus, one who could feed the multitude with a few loaves
and fishes -- who could command the grave to open, who could cast
out devils, and cleanse the land of the foulest disease of leprosy,
who could, and did, perform many other wonderful works to convince
the unbelieving generation of his divinity, -- is it conceivable
that either intentionally or inadvertently he would have never once
referred to them in all his preaching? Is it not almost certain
that, if the earliest Christians knew of the miracles of Jesus,
they would have been greatly surprised at the failure of Paul to
refer to them a single time? And would not Paul have told them of
the promise of Jesus to give power to work even greater miracles
than his own, had he known of such a promise. Could Paul really
have left out of his ministry so essential a chapter from the life
of Jesus, had he been acquainted with it? The miraculous fills up
the greater portion of the four gospels, and if these documents
were dictated by the Holy Ghost, it means that they were too
important to be left out. Why, then, does not Paul speak of them at
all? There is only one reasonable answer: A miracle-working Jesus
was unknown to Paul.
What would we say of a disciple of Tolstoy, for example, who
came to America to make converts to Count Tolstoy and never once
quoted anything that Tolstoy had said? Or what would we think of
the Christian missionaries who go to India, China, Japan and Africa
to preach the gospel, if they never mentioned to the people of
these countries the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, the Lord's Prayer -- nor quoted a single text from
the gospels? Yet Paul, the first missionary, did the very thing
which would be inexplicable in a modern missionary. There is only
one rational explanation for this: The Jesus of Paul was not born
of a virgin; he did not work miracles; and he was not a teacher. It
was after his day that such a Jesus was -- I have to use again a
strong word -- invented.
It has been hinted by certain professional defenders of
Christianity that Paul's specific mission was to introduce
Christianity among the Gentiles, and not to call attention to the
miraculous element in the life of his Master. But this is a very
lame defense. What is Christianity, but the life and teachings of
Jesus? And how can it be introduced among the Gentiles without a
knowledge of the doctrines and works of its founder? Paul gives no
evidence of possessing any knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, how
could he, then, be a missionary of Christianity to the heathen?
There is no other answer which can be given than that the
Christianity of Paul was something radically different from the
Christianity of the later gospel writers, who in all probability
were Greeks and not Jews. Moreover, it is known that Paul was
reprimanded by his fellow-apostles for carrying Christianity to the
Gentiles. What better defense could Paul have given for his conduct
than to have quoted the commandment of Jesus -- "Go ye into all the
world and preach the gospel to every creature." And he would have
quoted the "divine" text had he been familiar with it. Nay, the
other apostles would not have taken him to task for obeying the
commandment of Jesus had they been familiar with such a
commandment. It all goes to support the proposition that the gospel
Jesus was of a date later than the apostolic times.
That the authorities of the church realize how damaging to the
reality of the gospel Jesus is the inexplicable silence of Paul
concerning him, may be seen in their vain effort to find in a
passage put in Paul's mouth by the unknown author of the book of
Acts, evidence that Paul does quote the sayings of Jesus. The
passage referred to is the following: "It is more blessed to give
than to receive." Paul is made to state that this was a saying of
Jesus. In the first place, this quotation is not in the epistles of
Paul, but in the Acts, of which Paul was not the author; in the
second place, there is no such quotation in the gospels. The
position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the
gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is
unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel
Jesus.
Again, from Paul himself we learn that he was a zealous
Hebrew, a Pharisee of Pharisees, studying with Gamaliel in
Jerusalem, presumably to become a rabbi. Is it possible that such
a man could remain totally ignorant of a miracle worker an teacher
like Jesus, living in the same city with him? If Jesus really
raised Lazarus from the grave, and entered Jerusalem a the head of
a procession, waving branches and shouting, "hosanna" -- if he was
really crucified in Jerusalem, and ascended from one of its
environs -- is it possible that Paul neither saw Jesus nor heard
anything about these miracles? But if he knew all these things
about Jesus, is it possible that he could go through the world
preaching Christ and never once speak of them? It is more likely
that when Paul was studying in Jerusalem there was no miraculous
Jesus living or teaching in any part of Judea. |
