Some Thoughts on the Apostle Paul and the Origins of Christianity
These somewhat random thoughts have been prompted by an invitation from Russell (here and here) to have an exchange of views on the theme of the origins of Christianity and the apostle Paul. For reasons that aren’t clear to me he thinks that, if we find the truth, this would have negative value. Surely the truth must always have a positive effect, even if it turns out to be disturbing and disconcerting either to Christians or Jews.
As Russell has noted, I believe that the origins of what became Christianity are an impenetrable mystery, whereas he believes it can be “deduced using standard methods”. As far as I can tell, he believes that once we have established whose teachings were closer to an adherence to the Law/Torah, i.e. Jesus’s rather than Paul’s, that will have settled the issue. In my opinion, that would merely be scratching the surface.
Russell obviously knows much more about Judaism and Jewish history than I do. I might therefore have misunderstood one point in his article. He says that the true Jesus movement consisted of “Torah-adherent Jews whose holy man was crucified as a martyr for the Law”. I’m only familiar with the gospel accounts, where the Jewish authorities seek Jesus’s death on grounds of blasphemy. I don’t understand why they would seek the death of an advocate for the Law. The only alternative to the gospel accounts that I can come up with is that Jesus was perceived as being hostile to the traditional Judaism of the time, in the same way that Paul persecuted the Jesus movement. In which case, what threat did Jesus pose if he was Torah-observant? That is a theme I will develop below. Perhaps Russell could clarify. What exactly does he mean by this?
It’s also worth noting that, from what I’ve read, there is hardly any mention of the figure we know as Jesus in Jewish historical records. It’s not clear therefore why Russell is convinced that this figure was so zealous for the Law. We know that Paul before his conversion was zealous for the Law, but he hated the Jesus movement known as the Way, so there must have been some significant difference between them.
One reference to this theme in the gospels springs to mind, namely Matthew 5.17–20: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished… ”.
This assumes that there is some kind of eternal Law (or laws) which should never be changed. An alternative view is that religions can evolve and change with the times, and this can also be found in the gospels. Jesus’s parable of new wine in new bottles occurs in all three synoptic gospels. Here I’ll quote primarily Matthew (9.17), since that is the gospel containing the quote above: “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved”.
Jesus here is claiming that he is new wine which, if put into an old wineskin (the Law/Torah?), will destroy it; he is some kind of new revelation. Interestingly, some ancient editions of Luke add an extra verse (5.39): “And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says ‘The old is good (or better in some versions)’ ”. Thus some people, even though they are aware of the new revelation, still stick to what preceded and prefer it. Could that be true of Russell and Judaism in general in this discussion?
Both these passages occur in Matthew, and appear to contradict each other. So which one are we to take more seriously? Russell clearly thinks that the gospel accounts reflect Pauline thinking, and I’m inclined to agree. Since they were written after Paul’s epistles, it is quite likely that they are strongly influenced by him, thus reflect his ideas about Jesus rather than what Jesus might have said himself. I am willing to concede that the new wine parable might be one such example. In which case, which of the two quotes in Matthew do we believe?
I’ll now turn my attention to Paul, who is the villain in the piece according to Russell and others. He says: “It was posed by Pemberton that the Apostle Paul had a vision of Jesus after Jesus died. In this vision information was accurately transmitted from Jesus to Paul”. I don’t think I’ve ever said that, but perhaps have given that impression. To make it clearer, and to reduce things to the simplest terms, I would say that Paul had a vision of a crucified saviour figure whom he identified with Jesus. This is the vision mentioned in Galatians 1.11–12, not the initial conversion experience. (It’s worth noting in passing that a crucified saviour figure is, or is claimed to be, a common theme in various mythologies — see The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviours: Christianity before Christ, a book by Kersey Graves. There is a wikipedia article about this; make of it what you will. A dying-and-resurrecting saviour god is also a common mythological theme.)
Paul then interpreted this vision (his word is ‘revelation’), and developed his theology on the basis of it. Whether his interpretation of his experience reflected an accurate transmission is an open question; there is no way of knowing — he intends us to take his word for it. I am therefore not suggesting that “information was accurately transmitted from Jesus to Paul”. All we know is that Paul was himself convinced.
Before continuing, let me repeat that I think that the origins of what became Christianity are an impenetrable mystery. A meaningful metaphor would be a jig-saw puzzle where the box contains pieces from several different puzzles mixed together, so that no matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to fit them together to create one single picture. So what follows is merely speculation, one line of thinking about what happened, albeit one that is based on the New Testament texts and associated material. I’m not saying that it’s the truth.
Apologies to any of my followers for repeating material from earlier articles, but here I’ll try to put together a coherent version of events as recorded in the New Testament, mixed with some of my own attempt to make sense of it, speculation which I consider reasonable in the context.
Paul was a fanatical persecutor of the Jesus movement known as the Way. He then had a conversion experience, so that he became an ardent follower. Paul himself never gives the details of this experience in his epistles, referring merely to his conversion. Acts describes it in chapter 9, the famous road-to-Damascus narrative, and the words are put into his mouth by the author(s) in two other places. In Galatians, Paul vehemently denies the account in Acts 9 from verse 10 onwards, so this casts some doubt on whether what has preceded up to verse 9 is true. Given what Paul says in Galatians, Acts 9 would seem to be a piece of propaganda, trying to persuade the reader that Paul was in complete agreement with the followers of Jesus. This is clearly untrue, as Russell argues.
Paul says that, following his conversion, he went immediately to Arabia. He doesn’t explain this decision, or how he knew he should go there, but given the context it is reasonable to assume that he went there to learn about the new religion (the Way) to which he had been converted. He doesn’t say how long he stayed there.
What does Paul himself say about his teachings? In Galatians (1.11–12) he claims that “the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ”. This obviously refers to a vision of some kind.
The other relevant passage is 2 Corinthians 12.2–4: “I know a person in Christ (generally assumed from the context to be Paul himself) who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know: God knows. And I know that such a person… was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat”. Following that (v7) he refers to “the exceptional character of the revelations”.
The figure with whom Paul believes he is communicating in the Galatians quote, and presumably in Corinthians is often called by commentators the Cosmic Christ. Russell describes him as a “supernatural Jesus” which is a “theological construct”. I assume by that he is suggesting that the figure is not real. I believe on the contrary that Paul had genuine spiritual experiences, so that we need to try to understand what actually happened. Whether the Cosmic Christ figure is actually the ascended historical Jesus is obviously an open question, but something which Christians will want to believe.
What are we to make of all this? On Medium, the very knowledgeable and thoughtful Evan LeBlanc, in the first of a series of three articles on Paul, says that he thinks that he suffered some kind of mental breakdown. This was also the speculation of Hyam Maccoby in his book The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity. He is a conventional Jew, and makes the same case as Russell’s article. It is no surprise therefore that he is prejudiced against Paul, and would dismiss his conversion as a mental breakdown. I was much more surprised that LeBlanc — a freethinking Christian — should have come to the same conclusion. I await with interest parts 2 and 3 of his series. Until persuaded otherwise, I think we have to take Paul’s experiences more seriously. I will assume that they are genuine, and not a mental breakdown.
I think it highly unlikely that either of these two passages refers to Paul’s initial conversion; even the dubious account in Acts does not suggest anything as detailed and extraordinary as this. I therefore assume that these visions/ experiences took place during his stay in Arabia.
He says specifically that he was not taught by any human the gospel he was proclaiming, so we can only assume that someone in Arabia gave him the opportunity to have such visions/revelations. What would make all this possible? As I’ve noted in previous articles, the passage in 2 Corinthians has all the appearance of an experience on a psychedelic drug, especially the reference to the experience being possibly out-of-body.
In modern times that drug would most likely be LSD. Stanislav Grof, the prolific writer and (until LSD was banned) psychedelic therapist, has reported similar experiences, even one of his own. In his book Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research he lists among other transpersonal experiences “Encounters with Suprahuman Spiritual Entities” and “Encounters with Various Deities”. This would seem to be an accurate description of Paul’s experience. Grof’s own encounter was with the Hindu god Shiva.
Another modern candidate is DMT. Under its influence people often experience such encounters. There is an article on this theme on Medium by Evan Lewis-Healey. Others can be found at www.academia.edu, notably by David Luke (here, here, and here). I actually know someone who, under the influence of DMT, was encountered by what she described as a Buddhist goddess, who gave her advice and guidance. (From what she said, I would say that the figure was more like a Bodhisattva.)
In ancient times, and given the evidence that I’ll provide below, the most likely candidate in Paul’s case is what we now know as magic mushrooms, a popular term for amanita muscaria.
To some Christians this is an outrageous claim, and they are shocked by the suggestion. This is possibly because there has been such an anti-drug attitude in modern culture (which is now gradually changing, since research into psychedelic therapy is being authorised in some countries). Most Christians are very moral and law-abiding, so we can see why they might think that. That was not how it was in ancient times, however, when psychedelics were widely used to induce mystical or visionary experiences. (For example soma in India, and the potion kykeon at the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece. See the books by Gordon Wasson, Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, and The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries.)
Let’s have a look at this possibility in more detail. I’ll begin with John Allegro’s controversial book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. I’ve written about this in more detail here. What follows is a summary:
- In 1946 (and in subsequent years) the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the caves of Qumran.
- There was concern that they might contain material damaging to Christianity.
- Father Roland de Vaux, a practising Catholic and monk, was installed as head of a team of international scholars, and technical director for subsequent excavations. At the time he had links to organisations dedicated to maintaining Catholic orthodoxy. He was therefore not the ideal person to lead a team investigating a discovery that might challenge the very foundations of Christianity.
- The team are widely suspected of editing and censorship. They awarded themselves exclusive access to the Scrolls, thus preventing other scholars from seeing them. A large proportion of the scrolls were not published for many years, the suspicion being that they contained material that might give religious offence to Jews as well as Christians.
- The Catholic scholars at the core of the international team maintained their monopoly and control, and the consensus remained unchallenged until 1987.
- In the midst of all this censorship there was one potential whistle-blower on the original team who was not willing to cooperate with the official line, namely John Allegro, a brilliant scholar, which is why he was chosen. He seemed to have what he considered explosive material. Unsurprisingly therefore, he was soon sacked from the team and replaced by John Strugnell, who was considering a career in the Church. Allegro wrote to him that “by the time I’ve finished there won’t be any Church left for you to join”.
- Allegro went on to write The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, where he “asserted that Jesus had never existed in historical reality, (but) was merely an image evoked in the psyche under the influence of an hallucinatory drug, psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms”. (That’s somewhat interesting in the context of Paul’s vision.)
We can only assume that Allegro came to this conclusion from his reading of the scrolls that he was working on. As far as I know, if any scroll or scrolls did refer to magic mushrooms, these have not found their way into any published edition.
I personally think that Allegro’s claim is an exaggeration since there probably was a historical Jesus if all evidence is taken into consideration, but the idea that early Christians took psychoactive mushrooms as a sacramental ritual is a credible claim. Relevant material on this theme is:
- The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku (which I haven’t read). There is an article on Medium about it by Marjan Krebelj, the subtitle of which is ‘The story of the psychedelic beginnings of Christianity’.
- A paper at www.academia.edu entitled Christianity and Psychedelics, A Chalcedonian Response. One quote from it is: “Psychedelic roots to Christianity were clearly there, exhibited in the European and Middle Eastern spiritual traditions with entheogenic practices that were amalgamated into early Christianity”. The author refers to the use of amanita muscaria (mushrooms) in Greece, then says: “Early Christianity incorporated Greek influences in Mithraism and Zoroastrian entheogenic practices… The Catholic Church later viciously persecuted Mithraic religions but they persisted in pagan practices and even secret sects within the Church. Entheogenic practices persisted or were re-incorporated into European Christianity, with the evidence in mushroom images in early and medieval Christian art”.
Amanita muscaria does indeed appear in much Christian art down the centuries. There is a Medium article on this theme by Kay Kirti which contains some obvious pictorial examples. In it she refers to the following book The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity by Jerry B. and Julie M. Brown, which contains more pictures. Also relevant, although it contains no pictures, is The Mushroom in Christian Art: The Identity of Jesus in the Development of Christianity by John A. Rush. All these artists must have known something about what was going on in Christianity, however much modern Christians might want to reject the claim.
On the basis of what Paul says, it is reasonable to call him not merely an apostle, rather a prophet, since the word did not originally suggest predicting the future, but meant someone who was a spokesperson for the divine. That is what he claims, but one is of course free to speculate whether Paul was a true or false prophet.
It’s interesting that he said that he “heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat”. This suggests firstly that what we find in his epistles may not be his full teaching, merely what he is permitted to say. Secondly, such an idea is typical of esoteric mystery schools, where deeper knowledge is reserved only for initiates. An obvious example would be the Lesser and Greater Mysteries at Eleusis. Paul makes this point to the Corinthians (1, 3.1-2): “I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for solid food. Even now, you are still not ready”.
Jesus also speaks in similar terms to his disciples: “Unto you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others I speak in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand” (Luke 8.10).
An interesting question arises therefore. Was Paul converted to an ancient Mystery school which used psychedelic mushrooms? If he was, then was Jesus also a teacher in such a school? He talks about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; could that be a reference to ancient Mystery schools? Such a suggestion would be anathema to Jews since it would suggest paganism, but would be reasonable in the light of the texts.
As an aside, it’s worth noting that the word Mysteries also appears in the titles of books opposed to Paul and Christianity, for example The Mysteries of Jesus by Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood — a Christian convert to Islam — and The Jesus Mysteries: Was the Original Jesus a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, who believe that no historical Jesus existed. The common element is that both believe that Christianity has been built upon pagan Mystery traditions. The main reason for thinking this is obviously Paul and his ‘gospel’.
This leads us on to a further question. Could this esoteric Mystery school have been what we would now call Gnostic? Some of what I’ve written above is evidence pointing in that direction. Further evidence is that:
- Marcion, a Gnostic Christian teacher, considered Paul to be the one true apostle
- the distinguished scholar Elaine Pagels has written a book entitled The Gnostic Paul
- Raynor C. Johnson, whom I consider to be an authority on spiritual matters, in his book The Spiritual Path says this: “the students (in Mystery schools) were bound by oaths of secrecy. Many allusions are made by Paul in some of his letters to the Mysteries of the Kingdom, and it seems likely from some of the terms that he uses that he had been admitted into one of these schools” (p164).
If this is true, then it would be a great irony if, having vehemently condemned Gnosticism as heresy, the Church chose a Gnostic teacher as the foundation stone of its theology.
Russell seems to assume that Jesus was a conventional and orthodox Jew, religiously following the Torah. Reason to doubt this, as I have suggested in previous articles, is that at the time there was a distinction between Israelites (including Samaritans), who believed that they were faithful to the original, authentic pre-exilic teaching, and Jews (thus the Judaism of the Pharisees) who followed the post-exilic version of Ezra which the Israelites considered inferior. The Qu’ran agrees, saying that the Israelites remained faithful to the original tradition, and condemns the Jews who follow Ezra, as mentioned in this previous article.
It can therefore be argued that Jesus, and Paul after his conversion, represented the earlier tradition. That would be the true Torah. What that was in detail has probably now been lost if Ezra’s revision was successful. We can speculate of course, but here is not the place to do that.
I’m not going to contest Russell’s claim that Paul’s teachings differ significantly from Judaism, for I assume that he is correct. (I assume that in his article by Judaism he is referring to the later tradition of Ezra, but am willing to be corrected.) I’ll discuss just one of his complaints. From what I’ve read in his articles he is somewhat preoccupied with the blood issue. I take this to mean that he does not believe that Jesus as a conventional Jew could have said what he is claimed to have said at the Last Supper.
That was also the assertion of Hyam Maccoby in his book mentioned above. Christians will of course believe that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, since that is what appears in the gospels. Maccoby says, however, that the words “cannot be reconciled with any variety of Judaism” — he believes that Jesus would have been a conventional Torah-observing Jew.
The gospels were of course written after Paul’s epistles, where he clearly states that he “received from the Lord”, thus in a vision or revelation, the words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper — see 1 Corinthians 11.23–25, and then compare Luke 22.19–21 where identical words are written. The only reasonable conclusion is that Luke is copying Paul’s text, not putting on paper any words he believes the historical Jesus to have said. Matthew’s version (26.26–28) uses slightly different words, but the same message is there. (See also Mark 14.22–24.) It seems clear therefore that the synoptic gospels have adopted Paul’s vision as the source of the Last Supper text. Maccoby says: “These cannot be a coincidence, but must mean that the Gospel authors had Paul’s words before them as they wrote”.
Maccoby concludes that, since the words at the Last Supper instituted a new religion, it was not Jesus who was responsible for this, rather Paul (who of course claimed this to be in a revelation from his Cosmic Christ figure). Muslims will agree with Maccoby, who further says that the ideas were “repugnant to Judaism, but well known in Paganism”. He therefore agrees with what I was arguing earlier, that Paul was converted to some kind of ‘pagan’ Mystery religion.
Maccoby adds this interesting detail, which suggests a cover-up by the Church, which further suggests that they had realised what had happened: “The term Paul uses for the Eucharist is ‘the Lord’s Supper’ (Greek kuriakon deipnon). This same expression was used in the mystery religions for the sacred meals dedicated to the saviour-god… Paul’s expression… was so redolent of mystery religion that the early Fathers of the Church became embarrassed by it, and they substituted for it the name ‘Eucharist’, which had Jewish, rather than pagan, associations. Thus the Fathers sought to align the Christian ceremony with the non-mystical, non-magical kiddush of the Jews, in which the wine and the bread were ‘blessed’ (or, more accurately, God was blessed for providing them)”.
In the book mentioned above Kersey Graves also devotes a chapter to the pagan roots of the Eucharist.
Maccoby further says that Paul had no wish to be seen as the founder of a new religion, and to cut this off from Judaism. On the contrary, he wished his doctrines to be accepted as the logical continuation of Judaism (new wine). That is why his followers, the synoptic gospel writers, put the teaching he had received into the mouth of the historical Jesus.
The next controversial question is therefore, how much more of the content of the gospels comes from Paul? That’s not a question I’m qualified to answer but, if the words at the Last Supper can be incorporated so readily, it’s probably quite a lot. At the very least we can note the various references to the kingdom of heaven and its Mysteries.
How accurate was Paul’s interpretation of his visions? On one point at least he seems to have been mistaken. He seems to have believed that the end times and Jesus’s return would occur within his lifetime — the primary relevant text is 1 Thessalonians 4.13ff. If that is what he believed, then on at least one point he got things wrong.
Whose religion would we in modern times be more inclined to follow? I am aware that Paul expressed views on various social issues that today we would find unacceptable, also that his behaviour was not always of the highest moral standards we might expect of a perfect Christian. However, no offence intended, I would rather follow a religion that offers gnosis, genuine spiritual insight, and contact with the divine through psychedelic experiences (whether or not Paul interpreted his visions accurately), than one which tells me what I can and cannot eat, and what I can or cannot do on the Sabbath. If we find some of what Paul wrote hard to believe, perhaps he is offering us only milk, and not the solid food.
Having said that, I am aware that there is a profound Jewish esoteric and mystical tradition known as Kabbalah. I’m a fan of that, especially the writings of Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi (aka Warren Kenton). I don’t know whether there is any relationship between that and the old tradition of the Israelites/Samaritans.
What was this ‘pagan’ Mystery cult into which Paul was initiated? This is obviously speculation, but a likely candidate is the Essenes, the keepers of the Dead Sea Scrolls and, if John Allegro can be believed, users of psychedelic mushrooms in their rituals. As various writers have noted, they were a secret Jewish sect that separated itself from the Jewish community at large and from the Jerusalem priesthood, whose beliefs and teachings they regarded as false. This sounds something like the distinction between Jews and Israelites that I noted above. The word Jewish here can only refer to their nationality, not to their religious beliefs since they rejected the religion of the Jewish community and priesthood.
I am aware of all the conventional reasons offered as to why Jesus could not have been an Essene, so please don’t respond with those. I’m also not prepared to engage in lengthy exchanges with conventional Christians who explain in detail how everything I’ve written is nonsense because it says something else in the Bible. Nor with anyone else coming from a different point of view; as I said above, I’m not claiming this to be the truth, merely one line of thinking. I do of course welcome thoughtful responses if they add some useful factual information to the debate.
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I assume that this was a synchronicity of some kind. Just as I was putting the finishing touches to this article in readiness for publication, an article arrived in my Medium Daily Digest by Sender Spike, who takes an extremely negative view of Paul. You may choose to read that as well. If you read both, you will probably come to the conclusion that Paul is a highly controversial figure, which is what we knew in the first place.
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