Why not poor poor Dan; those Jesus people made up his character from myth. From the present standpoint there is no doctrinal difficulty, even about Paul being the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I do not need to call in another author here anymore than elsewhere. The
double-dealing of the interpolaters and forgers would be cause enough to account for all the difference and the difficulty. They who would have, or who had forged epistles in his own name, would not scruple to indoctrinate his writings when they got the chance; and if this epistle be not Paul's, then his name as author has been forged. Now, in this epistle, the Christ is non-historical, he is the Kronian Christ, the Æonian manifestor of the mythical, that is astronomical prophecy; he is after the order of Melchizedek, who was "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life." This was the ever-coming one who could not
become a human personage; and for that reason, I take it, Paul repudiates the genealogies of Christ.
In advising Titus to give no heed to "Jewish Fables," he tells him to "shun foolish questionings and genealogies." He counsels Timothy to warn his followers against giving heed to "fables and endless genealogies," such, for instance, as we now find in the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke." These could have no application to the Christ of the Gnosis, hence their absence from the gospel according to John. Human genealogy could not indicate the Gnostic mode of the Divine Descent; could not authenticate the "Word" of John, or Philo; nor the Christ of Marcus, or of Paul; consequently we learn that Marcus, the Gnostic, eliminated the genealogies from the gospel of Luke, and all that was written respecting the generation of the Lord.
The Docetæ who rejected the humanity of Christ had, as Epiphanius phrases it, "Cut away the genealogies in the gospel after
Matthew." Tatian, the pupil of Justin, who is called an "Apostle from the Church," also struck out the genealogies that were intended to prove the human descent of the Christ; he who had once accepted the gospel of the Christ made flesh, but rejected it when he had learned to know better.
This they did because their Christ was spiritual, not an historic Jesus; and the same reason holds good as an explanation for Paul. He repudiated the vain genealogies employed in vain by those who sought to establish a human line of descent for the Christ, because he rejected the flesh-and-blood Jesus who was preached by the advocates of Historic Christianity. This being so, it follows that the
opening passage of the Epistle to the Romans, which now looks like Paul's first utterance to all the world, begins the tale of the interpolations, and thus appears in the right place, for it stands nearly alone in the writings of Paul, with its frank or forced acknowledgment of the humanity of Jesus, by admitting the Word made flesh to be of the seed of David. But the Christ of Paul could
not, at one and the same time, have been "without genealogy" and yet be of the seed of Abraham or David. That would be a complete reversal of his teaching, who, in rejecting the genealogies, had already repudiated the descent from David. Moreover, Barnabas, the most intimate friend of Paul and fellow-teacher with him, who, as a Gnostic, denied the human nature of the Christ, and, like
Paul, spoke disrespectfully of the other Apostles--Barnabas assures us it was according to the error of the wicked that Christ was called the Son of David. Paul also tells us that no "man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 3), and therefore not through the facts of an external history, or human pedigree.
The Christ of the Gnosis was not connected with place any more than personality, or line of human descent. His only birthplace was in the mind of man. Consequently, in his gospel, Marcion, who was a Gnostic Christian, does not connect his Christ with Nazareth. His Christ is not Jesus of Nazareth. And this note of the Gnosis is apparent in the writings of Paul. His Christ is nowhere called Jesus of Nazareth, nor is he born at Bethlehem, either of the Virgin Mary, or of Mary the wife of Cleopas,who was not the Virgin. Of course, either an historic Jesus could become the Christ, as Saviour of the world, or he could not; and, as the world never was lost in any such sense as the ignorant have derived from a fable misinterpreted, why he could not, and as he could not, then he did not, and Paul who was an Adept in the mysteries, a Master of the Hidden Wisdom, could never have mistaken the fable for a fact on which to build his system of Christology; nor could he accept it from others. When once we have got the Gnostic clue to the Hidden Wisdom, we find an universal argument amongst the Gnostics concerning their tenets. Wherever we meet with them they give us the Masonic grip; and by the same sign we know that Paul was a Gnostic. This is further corroborated by his own claim to have been an Adept, a wise master-builder, one who spoke wisdom amongst the Perfected.
He was a Gnostic in the supreme degree, and all Gnostics agree that the Christ of the Gnosis could not be made flesh, and therefore all are, and must be opposed to Historic Christianity, Paul included.
It was as a Gnostic, a wise master-builder, that Paul laid the foundations which others built upon; and the superstructure they reared became the Church of Historic Christianity. The Gnostics were
Christians in an esoteric sense, but not because they explained a human history esoterically. There was no history to explain until the myth had been made exoteric by those who were ignorant, or who
cunningly converted the Gnosis into history. It was the work of Peter to make the mysteries exoteric in a human history. It was the work of Paul to prevent this being effected by explaining the Gnosis.
Hints of this appear in the Epistles when he speaks of his gospel, and the revelation of his mystery concerning the Christ, and warns his disciples against the preaching of that "other gospel" and "other Jesus," which are opposed to his own truer teaching. As when he tells Timothy to "remember Jesus Christ according to my gospel," and says to the Romans, "establish you according to my gospel;" that was the gospel of the Gnosis which he had brought to them.
We are also able to watch the interpolators of his writings at their work. The tampering with the text
of Paul's Epistles is still made apparent by a comparison of the various recensions, as the marginal
notes in the Revised version yet suffice to show; and if this remains so palpable in the latest
transcript, what must it have been in the earlier and nearest to the author's original? In some
instances, instead of a perfect join, there is a gaping gulf of doctrinal difference, too deep for the
interpolators themselves. There is a ludicrous mixture of the historical Jesus and spiritual Christ in the
First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, where Christ Jesus is spoken of as he "who, before Pontius
Pilate, witnessed the good confession;" and half a dozen lines later on Paul's Jesus is the "lord of
lords dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen, nor can see." That is the
Christ of the Gnosis who could not be made flesh to stand in the presence of Pontius Pilate. Again,
Paul speaks as a spiritualist of our transformation in death and the continuity of consciousness, when
he says: "Behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not entirely sleep, but shall all be changed in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye." This was the mystery of the Gnosis and the transformation
revealed by spiritual phenomena. Then follows the interpolated doctrine of the resurrection at the last
day: "For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised." Physically, which was
impossible to Paul. These are as opposite as yes and no, or day and night. Once more, we know
how emphatically Paul insists on the originality of his gospel. It was his very own, personally
received by revelation. He derived nothing from the supposed apostles of an historic Jesus; they
imparted nothing to him, and he received nothing from any man. Yet in face of this fatal evidence the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is assigned to Paul, is made to say, that the "salvation
first spoken through the Lord was confirmed unto us by them that heard!" And in his Epistle to
the Corinthians he is made to declare that he first of all delivered to them that which he had
received (not by subjective revelation, but according to the history externalised), "How that Christ
died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath
appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to above five hundred of the
brethren at once [this is piling it up!] then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and
last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also, for I am the least of the
apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle." But James and Cephas were those whom he
saw in Jerusalem, and who, as he expressly tells us, had imparted nothing to him! The passage belies
what Paul has
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elsewhere said, and is at war with all he was! So far from lowering himself in that way, he asserts in
the very same epistle: "In nothing was I behind these pre-eminent apostles"-therefore he was not
behind in time! "Let me speak proudly!" that was his attitude when he compared himself with
Cephas, James, and John. And if Paul ever did call himself an abortion (the true rendering of the
sense), we may be sure that he did not apply such a figure of that which is premature to the
lateness of his birth as an apostle. It cannot be made to apply. The Gnostics tell us what he did
mean. They alone could understand the allusion, which carries the Christ of the Gnosis with it. The
Christ appears to Paul, as to an abortion, just as did Horus the Christ to Sophia (or Achamoth),
when she forlornly lay outside of the pleroma as an amorphous abortion, and the Christ came and
extended himself cross-wise and gave her flowing substance form! Here the Gnostic doctrine
involves the Christ of the Gnosis, and not of the human history. Paul applies the figure to himself. If
these statements had been true, Paul must have been taught by men. This was to receive his
information from Scriptures (whatsoever they may have been!), and was not to receive his revelation
solely from the Christ, who came within, as he declares. In this way it becomes apparent how Paul's
writings were made orthodox by the men who preached another gospel than his; with whom he was
at war during his lifetime, and who took a bitter-sweet revenge on his writings by suppression and
addition, after he was dead and gone.
The Christ proclaimed by Paul is frequently designated the "first-born." He is the "first-born of all
creation" (Col. i. 16), "the first-born from the dead" (Col. i. 18), the "first-born among many
brethren." "Now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them that slept!"
But in what sense? It is impossible to apply such descriptions to any historical character. No
Historical Jesus could be the First-born from the dead.
If continuity be a natural fact, as was held by the Gnostics (and Paul was a Gnostic!), and is
maintained by all Spiritualists (and Paul was a Spiritualist!), we shall live on by a law of nature, not
by some jugglery with natural law, called a miracle, performed once upon a time! The first-born from
the dead could not have waited for the resurrection until Anno Domini; nor could our spiritual
continuity have been demonstrated at that or any previous period by a physical resurrection, such as
forms the foundation of the Christian faith! The doctrine enunciated by Paul was Egyptian, Chaldean,
Kabbalist, and Gnostic, and, as such, it can be explained.
In the Ritual the soul that rises again from the dead exults and exclaims, "I am the only one that
comes forth from the body!" that is, as the supreme soul of all the seven; the one representative of
the pleroma of powers, or as Paul has it, "the first-born of many brethren;" the first-born from the
dead, because the only one that attained immortality, as the spiritual man, or the Christ, called the
Second Adam by Paul; that celestial man referred to by Philo when he says: "There
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is the man whose name is East. A strange appellation if it had been intended to speak of a
man composed of soul and body. But if it be the Incorporeal man, who comprehends in
himself the divine Idea, it must be admitted that East is the name that suits him best;" i.e., the
re-orient man of the resurrection, or re-arising. It is the same Gnostic typology employed by Paul
when he speaks of "building up the body of Christ; till we all attain unto the unity of faith, and
of the knowledge (or Gnosis) of the Son of God; unto a full-grown man; unto the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ." The fulness of the Christ being the Egyptian, Buddhist, and
Gnostic pleroma of all the seven preceding powers that culminated in the Christhood. |
