Robert the article is too long to be posted in its entirety. Here is part of it.
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
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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
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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
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from man (or from a man), nor was I taught it, save through revelation of the Christ revealed
within."
He did not derive his facts from history, nor his gospel from the Apostles; he was neither taught by
man nor book. He derived his gospel from direct personal revelation of the Christ within. In short,
his Christ was not that Jesus of Nazareth whom he never mentions, and whom the others preached,
and who may have been, and in all likelihood was, Joshua Ben Pandira, the Nazarene. |
