Date 07-01-2009
GMTime 04:42:02
Christianity Revealed
Paul, Friend of the Romans 1
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, November 30, 1998
Abstract
Saul and Barnabas in Antioch
The association in Acts of the admission of gentiles with Barnabas (Acts 11:22) and Saul (Acts 11:25) implies that these two were closely involved with the acceptance of uncircumcized gentiles right from the beginning, and the mysterious people from Cyprus and Cyrene were introduced because Paul was supposed to be an orthodox Nazarene whom the Hellenists wanted to kill. This he could hardly be, if he had started to recruit gentiles uncircumcized.
Saul had gone to Tarsus, which was less than 100 miles from Antioch by sea in the same corner of the Mediterranean. Saul might easily have stopped off at Antioch on his way to Tarsus and realized his true vocation. He enthusiastically told his stories about a new dying and resurrected god like Attis and Adonis with whom the gentiles were familiar and found they were gladly received.
These gods were called “Lord” and it is possible that this is where Jesus’s title “Lord” stems from, for it is hard to believe that Jews, perhaps even Hellenised ones, would give a name of God to a man however distinguished he might have been. Certainly no Essene or Nazarene of the Jerusalem church led by James could have called Jesus “Lord” because they expressly “called no man Lord but God”. By calling Jesus “Lord ”the gentiles were deifying him.
In Galatians 2:1, Paul says he was in Syria and Cilicia 14 years. Now Tarsus is the main town of Cilicia, and Antioch is the main town of coastal Syria. Part of the 14 years must have been in Antioch, and the association of Paul with the first point of growth of gentile Christianity cannot be coincidental. Paul not Jesus was the founder of Christianity.
Agabus, who came from Jerusalem to Antioch, in Acts 11:27, prophesies a famine but it is a spurious prophecy. Luke shows the gentile churches sending relief to the Jerusalem Church in the famine, which must be that of 46-48 AD, giving us a date for the time when the church of Antioch supported the church of Jerusalem. Luke is writing decades later and can easily claim that the famine was prophesied. The Western Text has here the first “we” passage, apparently implying that Luke was present with Paul. Since the Western Text is manifestly “improved”, it is reasonable to judge this a pious addition meant to confirm the prophecy.
Later Paul is shown carrying large sums of money for “the Poor” in Jerusalem, and also turns out to be very rich himself.
The “elders” of Acts 11:30 must mean the leaders of the Nazarene church. Later, the church is led by James the brother of Jesus, even though Luke has given the impression all along that Peter was the leader. Peter was never the leader and Luke has been hyping up his role because James was thoroughly orthodox and consistently opposed the baptizing of gentiles without circumcision. Clergymen like to argue that Peter had given up the leadership to pursue his true calling, evangelizing among the gentiles. But, if this is true, it is amazing that Luke does not tell us, especially since he earlier explained the replacement of Judas though it had no real bearing on the story. The truth is that James was always the successor of Jesus.
Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers.Acts 13:1
For Christians, from the Acts of the Apostles, the earliest bogus sign of the Holy Ghost was an ability to prophesy, and Christians gullibly accept that in those holy days it was quite natural for Christian converts to be prophets. So, we find at the church of Antioch, there were “prophets and teachers”. The rational person seeks a rational explanation. The Essenes had righteous teachers whom they called “mebaqqers” and considered themselves prophets. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, Paul even lists these as ranks in the church below apostles—prophets above teachers, and it looks assured that the rank of mebaqqer in the Essene hierarchy who guided initiates corresponded with the rank of bishop in the hierarchy of the Christians. Few shepherds tell their gullible sheep these things. They prefer them to think in terms of the supernatural.
Antioch, being easily accessible from Mesopotamia where Essenism apparently started—and continued independent of Palestinian developments until modern times as the Qaraites—will have had an Essene population subject to the Damascus Rule. Some of these will have succoured the fleeing Nazarenes and might have been persuaded into Christianity.
Interestingly, the word “Cyrene”, which appears in the gospels as the surname of that Simon who carried the cross, appears again here. It popularly means someone from Libya in north Africa but could be a Greek rendering of an Aramaic word—perhaps “qara” from which the word “Qaraite” might have derived.
And Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.Acts 13:2
Revealingly, among the Nazarenes at Antioch appears a Herodian, one Manaen (Menahem?) who was apparently brought up as a royal prince as a companion of Herod, the tetrarch, presumably Antipas. The scriptural king Menahem was, interestingly, an idolator.
Several Septuagint expressions are used by the editor here in Acts 13:1-3 to give a bogus scriptural authority to the ordination of Barnabas and Saul as apostles. From now on, in Acts, Saul is an apostle, but Saul himself (Gal 1:1) does not ascribe his apostleship to this occasion.
Saul and Barnabas leave Antioch via its port, Seleucia, Antioch being somewhat further up the river Orantes. At Salamis (Acts 13:5) the missionaries are preaching to Jews only, implying that, in the original work, Luke had not yet related the conversion of gentiles when he wrote this.
Next is the curious story (Acts 13:6-12) about the conversion of a Roman governor (though not a pro-Consul) which required the miraculous refutation of a wise man (not a sorcerer), Elymas, who was by a remarkable coincidence called Barjesus, son of Jesus, and was for the readers of Acts, a false prophet and a Jew. It seems he was a Nazarene, a follower of Jesus (son of Jesus) in the tradition of the Jerusalem church and therefore an opponent of Paul. Evidently the Roman governor was a godfearer or was, at least, leaning towards Judaism under the influence of Barjesus, his Essene or Nazarene mentor. Elymas is propbably a Greek rendering of a pejorative which in Hebrew means “Tempter of God”.
Paul makes the wise man blind, a miracle in reverse. For Paul, the man was metaphorically blind anyway, in Nazarene terms, being an opponent of the Hellenistic faction of the Nazarene movement, the Christians. The story makes the metaphorical blindness real. Elymas would have required the Roman to undergo circumcision to join the Jewish faith, but Paul will have told him it was not necessary, and therefore easily won him over after, presumably, Elymas had put in all the hard work. The truth, which some travellers would have known, had to be subtly disguised by the Christian bishops without grossly changing the essence of the story.
Paul at Lystra is Mistaken for Mercury
When Paul and his company left Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John (Mark) returned to Jerusalem (Acts 13:13). Luke composes a long speech for Paul which echoes Stephen’s in reviewing Jewish history. In Acts 13:23, Paul says Jesus was of the seed of David, a belief which accompanied the acceptance of the messiahship of Jesus, but which was untrue according to the words of Jesus himself as recorded in Mark. Jesus seemed to believe that messiahship was a responsibility given by God to a man “in the mould of David”, not of his seed. However, the general belief that David would return, or one of his descendants would be the messiah, prevailed.
Both Peter and Paul are keen to show that the messiah could not have been David returning because he was dead and buried and corrupted but Jesus, the seed of David according to them, had arisen because he was incorruptible. Luke seems to be using Mark’s gospel but changing its intent, apparently believing he is correcting it.
The speech is in a synagogue, but gentile godfearers are present because, at Acts 13:16 and Acts 13:26, Paul addresses both groups, “Brethren, children of the stock of Abraham and those among you who fear God”, addressing adults as children as Jesus frequently did because it was used commonly to mean God’s children, Abraham’s children, and so on when referring to the Jews, but “sons” would have been more correct.
Luke makes Paul blame the whole of the population of Jerusalem in Acts 13:27 for condemning Jesus and demanding his death, a plain lie even on the evidence of the gospels. Jesus broke the Roman law and was punished under Roman law.
Note that Luke does not put anything into Paul’s speech about the empty tomb, but only the appearances, as proof of resurrection. The appearance to Paul which is recorded in 1 Cor 15:8 is not mentioned here though, three times in Acts, Luke relates Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, an event which Paul himself seems to know nothing about. It was made up later to boost Paul.
God’s promise (Acts 13:33) was made to “the children” meaning the children of Israel, but Luke realised it omitted gentiles, so altered it to “their” or “our children” making it into nonsense. God made no promise to “our children” and the “children” of the fathers were Jews not gentiles.
Paul’s quotation from Habakkuk (Acts 13:41) is interpreted in the Habakkuk Pesher of Qumran. It means that the Liar and his fellow traitors did not believe the words of the Righteous One, that traitors to the law and the New Covenant defiled God’s Holy name, that traitors to the last days who were violent men and breakers of the covenant did not believe the prophecies of the Righteous One whom God had given the ability to interpret the prophets, thereby showing what would happen to His people. Whether Paul knew of the pesher we cannot be sure but, if his three years in Arabia were spent as an Essene novice, he must have done. If so, he was quoting Habakkuk with his tongue firmly in his cheek.
In Acts 13:42-52, the message is contradictory, as it often is. Many of the people in the synagogues, whether men of Israel or proselytes, follow Paul (Acts 13:43). Yet Paul is suddenly addressing a multitude and “the Jews” are jealous, speaking against Paul and getting them evicted (Acts 13:44). Then the evangelists are so unsuccessful (Acts 13:51) that they “shook off the dust of their feet”. The truth must have been that they were generally unsuccessful recruiting in synagogues and the initial success recorded is merely a puff for the Pauline churches—it is fiction.
In Iconium (Acts 14:1-10), Paul and Barnabas enter another synagogue and persuade many Jews and Greeks to join their new religion. Presumably, the Greeks are again godfearers and synagogues, at that time, had many godfearers attached to them, easy prey to Paul and his followers who told them the laws of Moses had been repealed for gentiles. It is hardly surprising that those presiding at synagogues should be getting annoyed, losing supporters whom they felt might convert and losing them to these travelling preachers who they saw as apostates.
Again they are evicted, apparently because the gentile population was aroused by the Jews. But can anyone believe that the Jews in these gentile cities were so influential that the mass of the Greek citizenry were bothered about what they thought about a pair of Syrian evangelists. A different story comes from the non-canonical books. Gentiles were angered because these preachers were persuading impressionable young people, presumably initially among the godfearers, that they should remain chaste and celibate. Consequently young women were calling off their engagements, and their fiancés and parents were getting incensed.
The story is told in The Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla, the virgin, is captivated by Paul’s sermons on chastity, and indeed the men of the city of Icomium are concerned that many women listen to his message—paraphrased as:
There is for you a resurrection in no other way, unless you remain chaste, and pullute not the flesh, but keep it chaste,
and they fear they will have no wives. It is interesting that the premise is that Paul apparently considered chastity an absolute virtue, though even in this work he seems to make a narrow allowance for marriage. The implication is that it is a poor second, if it is not an insertion. Paul seems to be arguing for chastity as the perfect state as the Essenes apparently believed. The citizens have the entirely sensible view that:
The resurrection of which this man speaks has taken place, because it has already taken place in the children which we have. We rose again when we came to the knowledge of the true God.
Thecla, enamoured of Paul’s teaching, was condemned to be burnt but a miraculous hailstorm saves her. Later, she is also saved from arenas of wild beasts. Released, she dressed as a man to follow Paul and lived in a cave for 72 years effecting cures. Eventually, driven out by jealous physicians, she went seeking Paul to Rome but he was dead. She died too and was buried only two or three stadia from Paul.
Incidentally, in the same work is a description of Paul which is not physically flattering, so possibly true. It describes him as:
A man small in size, bald-headed, bandy-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed, full of grace, for sometimes he seemed like a man, and sometimes he had the countenance of an angel.
In The Acts of Peter and Paul, he is also described as bald-headed, and another bald man is mistaken for him and killed.
At Lystra, Paul is shown performing a Christ-like miracle, making a lame man walk, as Peter did—harmonisation, now between the two main apostles as well as with Jesus.
In an interesting revelation, Paul is called Mercury and Barnabas Jupiter (Acts 14:12). Acts does not explain why Barnabas should have seemed to the Greeks the more important of the two, though it implies, of course, that he was, and suggests that Acts is not being quite honest in depicting Paul as the senior person. Luke explains that Paul was seen as Mercury because he was the chief speaker, Mercury being Jupiter’s messenger. In Galatians 4:14, Paul admits that the Galatians welcomed him as the “messenger of the gods”.
If this is true, the citizens of Lystra were being sarcastic. Mercury was always depicted as a good looking young man. Paul was never good looking and by now he was certainly over thirty and probably looked older. More important is that Mercury was the god of lies and thieves! The apparent compliment must surely have been the Greek crowd’s jeering reference to what they thought of these travelling preachers, and might even have been a direct reference to Paul’s admitted deceitfulness.
Ignoring these implications, Luke tells us that the crowd want to sacrifice to them as gods, rather like the heroes of Kipling’s tale, The Man Who Would Be King, but, unlike Kipling’s heroes, they refuse to accept deification. Nevertheless, the Jews of Antioch and Lystra arrive, declare Paul a fraud and persuade the citizens of Lystra to stone him almost to death outside the city walls. They had clearly come to their own conclusions without any advice.
These sudden reversals simply do not ring true for anyone except a Christian, and even for Christians not from any assessment of the situation critically but because they accept this Munchausen fantasy as God’s word. That Paul and his companions converted some godfearers seems credible and probable, but in so doing they offended Jews of the law and many Greeks too who thought their message of chastity uncivil. So they repeatedly got thrown out.
At Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appoint elders in every church. Possibly elders were also called “fathers” and junior members “sons”, usage which continues in the church until today, but which possibly originated as Essene ranks. The heroes then return to Antioch where, some scholars believe Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians, the churches which he had just founded.
