The Books of Paul:

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Before we start on the analysis of Paul's Books, we must first know that Paul who's Books are believed to be inspired by GOD Almighty Himself and who is a disciple of Jesus peace be upon him never actually met Jesus in person. Jesus had 12 disciples when he was on earth. Paul was not one of them!. Paul much later after the disappearance of Jesus came and claimed that Jesus came to him and ordered him to be his disciple. Paul is really taken on faith only and not on proofs. He could be well be another smart deceiver who made his way into the world of the current corrupted Bible (sorry if I offended you).

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Historical Quotes Concerning Paul and his doctrines from Historians, Philosophers and Theologians:


Carl Sagan (Scientist; Author)

"My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly
immiscible parts--the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to
excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it
was an inspiring document." (Letter to Ken Schei [author of Christianity Betrayed])


Thomas Jefferson

"Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." (All references not listed here, can be
found in Christianity Betrayed)


Albert Schweitzer

"Where possible Paul avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had
to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the sermon on
the mount, and had taught His disciples the 'Our Father.' Even where they are specially
relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord."


Wil Durant (Philosopher)

"Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of
Christ."
"Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ."


Walter Kaufmann (Professor of Philosophy, Princeton)

"Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life."


George Bernard Shaw

"No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its
legs again in the name of Jesus."


Thomas Hardy
"The new testament was less a Christiad than a Pauliad."

Hyam Maccoby (Talmudic Scholar)

"As we have seen, the purposes of the book of Acts is to minimize the conflict between Paul and
the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, James and Peter. Peter and Paul, in later Christian
tradition, became twin saints, brothers in faith, and the idea that they were historically bitter
opponents standing for irreconcilable religious standpoints would have been repudiated with
horror. The work of the author of Acts was well done; he rescued Christianity from the
imputation of being the individual creation of Paul, and instead gave it a respectable pedigree,
as a doctrine with the authority of the so-called Jerusalem Church, conceived as continuous in
spirit with the Pauline Gentile Church of Rome. Yet, for all his efforts, the truth of the matter is
not hard to recover, if we examine the New Testament evidence with an eye to tell-tale
inconsistencies and confusions, rather than with the determination to gloss over and harmonize all difficulties in the interests of an orthodox interpretation." (The Mythmaker, p. 139,Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986)

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Jeremy Bentham (English Philosopher)

"If Christianity needed an Anti-Christ, they needed look no farther than Paul." (Paraphrased. Looking for a copy of "Not Paul, but Jesus" in order to retrieve the exact quote.)

Carl Jung (Psychologist)

"Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in." (U.S. News and World
Report, April 22, 1991, p. 55)


Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)

"Paul's words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference."
(Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 104, Harper San Francisco, 1991).

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Exposing (St.) Paul



There was an apostle, who wrote an epistle,
strange faith did he jostle, and scriptures entwistle.
His doctrines pentacostal, made GOD's people bristle,
and blasphemy colossal, led to his dismissal.
Apostle, epistle, colossal, dismissal,
His writings bescissel, make faith so afissile.

Who is the man whom Christians call (St.) Paul? Why do Christians follow the teachings of this man who not only perverted the original teachings of Jesus(P) but also mocked the Law of Moses(P) which Jesus(P) himself struggled to preserve? We shall trace the man Paul (Saul) of Tarsus, the self-claimed "apostle", and expose the reality of his preaching which no doubt can only come from Satan.

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Paul of Tarsus: The Clear-Cut Hypocrite

Tera Tak Adamar


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Introduction

We read the following teachings of the so-called "apostle" from Tarsus, Paul, written in his epistles as follows:

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." (Romans 12:18-19)

Another teaching which Paul had written is

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Col 3:13)

A summary of the above recorded statements by Paul:

Be at peace with all men.
Never take your own revenge, beloved!
Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.
We admit that these are all beautiful teachings. The question now, however, is did Paul himself put these very same teachings of his into effect? As it so happens, we beg to differ!

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Paul's Hypocrisy Revealed

We read in Acts that

And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us return and visit the brethren in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are." And Barnabas was desirous of taking John, called Mark, along with them also. But Paul kept insisting that they should not take him along who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose such a sharp disagreement that they separated from one another, and Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. (Acts 15:36-40)

It is clear that Paul and Barnabas had had a sharp disagreement and later parted company because of that same disagreement. So Paul was not following what he had preached, namely to "...be at peace with all men" (Romans 12:18).

We also observe that Paul had not forgiven John (called Mark) for having abandoned him and Barnabas at Pamphylia (Acts 15:38) and opposed Barnabas' plan to take John with him. Apparently Paul had amnesia with regard to his teaching, "forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Col. 3:13). So why did not Paul forgive John for abandoning him earlier?

Further, regarding revenge this snake taught that "Never take your own revenge, beloved!" (Romans 12:19) but yet Paul himself took his revenge against John (called Mark) by refusing to take him in the journey. So again we ask, why did Paul seek his revenge against John when he had clearly forbidden this? He is no doubt a clear-cut hypocrite, through and through!

On a related sidenote, this snake also has used Jesus'(P) name in his teachings when in reality it is not originally from Jesus(P), but from his own concoction. For example, in 1 Corinthians 15:6, Paul taught that the resurrected Christ had appeared to over five hundred breathren at one time but this episode is not available in the Gospels. Another proof is in Acts 20:35, whereby Paul cites, "remember the words of the Lord Jesus how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive". This citation is certainly not from Jesus(P) because nowhere in the Gospels is this quote to be found and attributed to Jesus(P). This same snake has also urged all the Jews amongst the Gentiles to forsake Moses(P), he told them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs (Acts 21:21), this goes against what Jesus(P) himself taught. But sadly, the Christian missionaries and Christians in general have taken this hypocrite as their "apostle" and they generally behave like him as well.

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Conclusions

It is very clear from the above exposition that Paul was a hypocrite, and hence, how can the Christian missionaries expect Muslims to accept this snake as a legitimate "follower" of the Messiah Jesus(P), son of Mary? Paul clearly told others to make peace but he himself did not practice what he had preached when he had a sharp disagreement with Barnabas and they parted company (Acts 15). This totally contradicts what he had earlier taught, namely "be at peace with all men" (Romans 12:18) and "forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." (Col. 3:13)

He had also taken his revenge upon John (called Mark) because John had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work, as recorded in Acts 15, even though he told the Romans, "Never take your own revenge, beloved!" (Romans 12:19). It seem that it was Barnabas who was more religious than Paul because he did not take his revenge upon John.

Which leads us to the question:

If Paul himself has failed to follow what he had taught, would he indeed follow what Jesus(P) had taught?

And only God knows best.

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There is an interesting observation made by a pro-Torah Christian and he has issued a "challenge" to Pauline Christians regarding Paul's (mis)understanding of the nature of Esau in the eyes of God. The issue is what Paul had written in his epistle to the Romans, as follows:

"For the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls, it was said to her, 'The older shall serve the younger.' As it is written, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated.' What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?" (Romans 9: 11-14)

The problem is that Paul had claimed that "it is written", meaning he is citing from the Old Testament, that

"The older shall serve the younger"

and

“Jacob have I loved, but Esau I have hated.”

yet these quotes came from two very different books of the Old Testament. The former quote came from Genesis 25:23, and the second comes from the very last book of the Old Testament, which is Malachi 1: 1-4. So basically, Paul had confused two different and unrelated concepts by meshing them together as proof for his doctrine of destiny

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So basically the challenge is for those who regard Paul as an "apostle" sent by Jesus(P) to show us in which Genesis passage is there any indication whatsoever that God hated Esau before he was born, as highlighted by the author.

And only God knows best!

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While Christians would prefer to allude to the notion that Paul, the self-acclaimed "apostle" of Jesus, was "inspired" when he wrote his epistles, the evidences we have researched states otherwise. We have seen how Paul had cited a verse from the 'apocryphal books of Elijah' but claimed that he was citing from the book of Isaiah. Apparantly this citing of quotations from apocryphal or Rabbinic writings was not alien to Paul, for in the epistles of Paul, there are abundant signs that he was extremely familiar with Rabbanic material and constantly refers to them. This is not surprising since Paul himself had admitted to familiarity with Jewish traditions under the tutelage of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).

Paul's Dependency on the Talmudic Writings: The Evidence

In 2 Timothy 3:8, we see that Paul traditionally names two of the Egyptian magicians who withstood Moses as Jannes and Jambres, respectively. He compares the both of them with his enemies, as the following verse records:

"Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so do these men oppose the truth, corrupt thinkers as they are and counterfeits so far as faith is concerned."

The names of these two Egyptian magicians are nowhere to be found in the Old Testament. The Midrash Rabbah on Exodus, however, makes mention of these two names as "Yochani" and "Mamre" respectively, and states:

Amru Yochani uMamre L'Moshe: "teben atah makhnis L'efrayim?" Amar Lahem "L'matah yarqa yarqa sh'qol."


Yochani and Mamre said to Moshe "Would you carry straw to Afraim?" He [Moses] said to them: "carry herbs to herb-town."[1]

The names of these Egyptian magicians also appears in Midrash Tanchuma (Parshat Ki Tisa) 19:19 as a Commentary on Exodus 32:

Forty thousand people had assembled to leave Egypt with the Israelites, and among them were two Egyptians named Jannes and Jambres, who had performed magical feats for Pharaoh.[2]

Thus it is clear that these magicians' names came from the Rabbinic traditions and had no doubt influenced Paul considerably to include these names in his epistle.

Paul also adopted the current Jewish chronologies in Acts 13:20-21. He alludes to the notion that the Adam of Genesis 1 is the ideal or spiritual, the Adam of Gen 2 the concrete and sinful Adam (1 Corinthians 15:47, also found in Philo, De Opif. Mund i.32). The conception of the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4:16) , of the giving of the Law at Sinai by Angels (Galatians 3:19), of Satan as the god of this world and the prince of the air (Ephesians 2:2) and of the celestial and infernal hierarchies (Ephesians 1:21, 3:10; 4:12; Colossians 1:16; 2:15) are all recurrent in Talmudic writings.

When Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:10 that a women ought to have a veil on her head because of the angel, as stated in the following:

"The woman, therefore, ought to have a token of authority on her head, because of the angels"

he demonstrates a very high familiarity with the Talmudic writings, as he is apparently referring to the Rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 6:2 as follows:

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Binei Elohim. B'nei ha-sarim v'ha-shoftim. Davar acher: b'nei ha-Elohim, hem ha-sarim ha-holkhim bishlichuto shel maqom, af hem hayu mitarvim bahem; kal elohim shebamiqra l'shon marut, v'zeh yokhiach: V'atah tiyeh lo lelohim, r'eh n'tatikha elohim.

THE SONS OF GOD. The sons of princes and rulers. Another explanation of B'nei Elohim is that these were princely angels who came as messengers of God, and they intermingled with the daughters of men. Wherever the word "elohim" appears in the scriptures, it signifies authority, thus the following passages: "And you shall be his master (elohim)" [Exodus 4:16] and "see, I have made you a master (elohim)." [Exodus 7:1][3]

Paul obviously believed this Rabbinic tradition which states that angels have mingled with the daughters of men to have included this in his epistle. The Targum, as quoted in the epistle of Jude (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6), clearly ascribe the Fall to the angels to their guilty love for earthly women.

The Jewish mind - a notion which is found over and over again in the Talmud, and which is still prevalent among Oriental Jews, is that they never let their women to be unveiled in the public lest the shedin, or evil spirits, should injure them or others. A headdress called khalbi is worn as a religious duty by Jewish women.

The reason why Solomon's bed was guarded by sixty valiant men with drawn swords was because of fear in the night. (Cant iii 7, 8). This is alluded to the following story in Pesachim 112b:

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"Lo yetse Y'chidi bifnei; lo b'leilei r'vi'iyot, v'lo b'leilei shabatot, mifnei she-Agrat bat Machalat, hi ushmoneh esreh ribo shel malakhei chabalah yotsin , v'kal echad v'echad yesh lo r'shut l'chaber bifnei atsmo."

"Do not go out at night. Not on Wednesday night or on Sabbath night, because Igrath (Agrat) the daughter of Mahalath (Machalat) along with 180,000 destroying angels are out, each with permission to cause destruction independently."[4]

They are called ruchin, shedin, lilin, tiharim.

Again, in Romans 4:5-12, Paul evidently accepts the tradition, also referred to by St. Stephen, that Abraham had been uncircumcised idolater when he first obeyed the call of God, and that he then received a promise - unknown to the text of the scripture - that he should be the heir of the world. (Romans 4:13, cf. Joshua 24:15). In Romans 9:9, whereby it states

"For this is the message of the promise, 'At about this time next year, I will come, and Sarah will have a son'"

it has been supposed, from the form of his quotation, that he is alluding to the Rabbinic notion that Isaac was created in the womb by a fiat of God. In Galatians 4:29, whereby it says

"But just as then the one born in a fleshly way persecuted the one born in accord with the Spirit, so too at present"

this is in accordance to the Haggadah tradition that Ishmael had not only laughed, but also jeered, insulted, and mistreated Isaac. Thus we find the following in Sanhedrin 89b:

"Rabbi Levi aamar: achar d'varaiv shel Yishma'el l'Yitschaq. Aamar lo Yishma'el l'Yitschaq: 'Ani gadol mimkha b'mitsot, she-atah malta ben sh'monat yamim, v'ani ben sh'lash esreh shanah.' Aamar lo: 'Uvever echad atah m'ghareh bi? Im omer li ha-Qadosh, baruch Hu, z'vach atsmkha l'fanay, ani zovech.' Miyad v'ha-Elohim nisah et Avraham."

Rabbi Levi said: These are the words of Ishmael to Isaac. Ishmael said to Isaac: "I am greater than you in commandments, for you were circumcised at eight days old, and I when I was thirteen years old." He [Isaac] said to him: "You tease me over one organ? If the Holy One, blessed be He, says to me 'sacrifice yourself to me,' I will sacrifice myself." Immediately God tested Abraham.[5]

In 2 Corinthians 11:14, whereby we read that

"...and no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light"

Paul adhered to the notion that the angel who wrestled with Jacob was Satan assuming the semblance of an Angel of Light. There is a remarkable resemblance to the smitten rock in the wilderness, which in 1 Corinthians 10:4 is called

"...a spiritual following rock."

To the Rabbis the rock, from which water flowed, was round and like a swarm of bees, and rolled itself up and went with them in their journeys. When the Tabernacle was pitched, the rock came and settled in its vestibule. Then Israel sang the following:

"Spring up, O well; sing ye to it!" (Numbers 21:17)

and it sprang up. Paul's instant addition of the words

"[...]which rock was Christ"

has Haggadistic elements which, in the national consciousness, had got mingled up with the great story of the wanderings in the Wilderness. Seven such current national traditions are alluded to in St. Stephen's speech.

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The Rabbinic teachings as recorded in the Talmudic writings was influential for Paul, and it is with these traditions in his mind that he had based his epistles on. Some of these stories have no basis in the Tanakh or the Old Testament, but only in the Talmud of the Jews. This clearly shows that Paul's claim of being an "apostle" of Jesus and was divinely "inspired" in his writings can certainly be cast into reasonable doubt. The evidences as shown above clearly shows that Paul had resorted to heavy borrowing from the Jewish traditions as recorded in the Talmudic writings.

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Epimenides Paradox: Was Paul "Inspired"?

In a study of logic, there is something which we call "undecidable propositions" or "meaningless sentences", which are statements that cannot be determined because there is no contextual false. One of the classic examples cited is the Epiminedes' paradox. Saul Kripke says:

Ever since Pilate asked, "What is truth?" (John XVIII, 38), the subsequent search for a correct answer has been inhibited by another problem, which, as is well known, also arises in a New Testament context. If, as the author of the Epistle to Titus supposes (Titus I, 12), a Cretan prophet, "even a prophet of their own," asserted that "the Cretans are always liars," and if "this testimony is true" of all other Cretan utterances, then it seems that the Cretan prophet's words are true if and only if they are false. And any treatment of the concept of truth must somehow circumvent this paradox.[1]

Epimenides was Cretan and he said that "Cretans always lie". Now, was that statement true or false? If he was a Cretan and he says that they always lie, is he then lying? If he is not lying then he is telling the truth and therefore Cretans do not always lie. We can see that since the assertion cannot be true and it cannot be false, the statement turns back on itself. It is like stating "What I am telling you right now is a lie", would you believe that or otherwise? This statement thus has no true content. It cannot be true at the same time it is false. If it is true then it is always false. If it is false, it is also true.

Well, in the New Testament, the writer is Paul and he is talking about the Cretans in 1 Titus, as follows:

A prophet from their own people said of them "Cretens are always liars, wicked brutes, lazy gluttons." This testimony is true. For this reason correct them sternly, that they may be sound in faith instead of paying attention to Jewish fables and to commandments of people who turn their backs on the truth. (Titus 1:12-14)

Notice that Paul says that one of their own men – a prophet - said that "Cretans are always liars" and he says that what this man say is true. It is a small mistake, but the point is that it is a human mistake. It cannot be a true statement at the same time that it is a false statement. Thus, how can Christians claim that the writers of the New Testament - in this case, Paul - had "inspiration" from God?

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Some Christians have taken the position that a strictly logical approach to Epimenides' statement can result in it not being a paradox after all. If it is not a paradox, one may argue that Paul's calling it "true" was a subtle bit of mockery with tremendous foresight regarding later developments in logic. If that is the case, then maybe Paul's statement actually was inspired. For example, while discussing Paul's comments in the epistle to Titus, one Christian theological periodical concedes that "one of the very greatest of Christian thinkers enters the logic books wearing a dunce's cap"[2] but then argues that Christians can find recourse in the fact that the statement might not be paradoxical. To back up this claim, the article calls to witness Quine, one of the greatest logicians that ever lived, thus it is important that we consider what Quine wrote:

There is the ancient paradox of Epimenides the Cretan, who said that all Cretans were liars. If he spoke the truth, he was a liar. It seems that this paradox may have reached the ears of St. Paul and that he missed the point of it. He warned, in his epistle to Titus: "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said The Cretans are always liars." Actually the paradox of Epimenides is untidy; there are loopholes. Perhaps some Cretans were liars, notably Epimenides, and others were not; perhaps Epimenides was a liar who occasionally told the truth; either way it turns out that the contradiction vanishes.[3]

The question that arises now is how Quine was able to figure out that maybe other Cretans were liars or maybe Epimenides sometimes told the truth. Epimenides is clearly saying that Cretans are always liars. Every time a Cretan speaks, he is lying, so how could the statement ever allow for a Cretan (be it Epimenides or some other Cretan) to speak the truth? The reasoning is genius, and goes as follows: the obvious assumption behind the belief that the statement is paradoxical is that if all Cretans lie, then Epimenides is lying, so if his statement is true, it is false. In that sense it seems like any other pseudomenon. From here, if we consider the statement false, we are no longer forced into the kind of paradoxical vicious circle that a true pseudomenon (like "this sentence is false") pushes us into. Commenting on a similar line of argumentation, Schoenberg writes the following:

We may feel intuitively that the argument is paradoxical; yet, from a formal logic point of view, it does not really have the look of a paradox. It looks simply like reductio ad absurdum proof of the falsity of 'All Cretans are liars.'[4]

Thus, as Quine noted, it is not inconsistent to assume that some other Cretan does not always lie, or that some other statement by Epimenides was true. Prior explains this quite well:

If we treat the Cretan's assertion as true, and so assume that nothing true is ever asserted by a Cretan, it follows immediately that the Cretan's assertion is false. If, however, we treat it as false, there is no way of deducing from this assumption that it is true. We can, therefore, consistently suppose it to be false, and this is all we can consistently suppose. But to suppose it false (considering what the assertion actually is) is to suppose that something asserted by a Cretan is true; and this of course can only be some other assertion than the one mentioned.[5]