In a lizard the two blood streams have to enter the single ventricle where they mix just as they do in the heart of a blue baby. Lizards are like mammals with a hole in the heart.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Saul (Paul) and the Hellenist Faction 4

Saul is Converted
Paul

Abstract

The main sources of information about Paul are his epistles and the Acts of the Apostles. The epistles naturally are partially autobiographical and show him in the best light, and the Acts of the Apostles is partisan. Paul apparently spent three years as a novice Essene, but failed the novitiate because he lacked Essene humility. But, having evaded Harith’s soldiers, Paul returned to Jerusalem knowing a great deal more about Essene philosophy, and the basis of Jesus’s teaching, than did the apostles, who were not trained Essenes but converted Jews. In 15 days there, he saw only two apostles, James and Peter, implying that the Nazarenes were hard to find and not at all prominent. The church at Antioch had no trouble in supporting the church in Jerusalem, suggesting that membership of the Jerusalem church was small. Paul left and did not return for another 14 years. The true apostles wanted nothing to do with him.

Saul is Converted

Saul had an experience on the road to Damascus described three times in Acts, beginning at Acts 9:3-18. However, only Acts, not Paul himself, speaks of it, Paul implying his conversion occurred in Damascus. It is a healing miracle like those in Mark and has the same meaning. Saul was an enemy and a disbeliever but, through God’s grace, becomes a believer. In Acts 9:18-19, the scales fell from Paul’s eyes giving him his sight, he arose and was baptized and took food and was strengthened. It is a parable expressed in Essenic terms invented by Luke.

As a disbeliever, he was blind, but when he believed he recovered his sight. Saul was never really blinded physically, as we know because Paul has nothing to say about it himself in his letters, but, as an unbeliever, a sinner, a man of darkness—he was metaphorically blind. He received his sight because he had seen the errors of his ways—the miracle is a metaphor. Jesus is depicted as light, in contrast to the darkness of Saul—Essene concepts. The implication of darkness comes from Saul falling to the ground like Heliodorus (2 Macc 3:27-28) upon whom came “great darkness”. He repented and was baptized, and he received the bread and wine—the messianic meal which spiritually strengthened him. Eschew miracles and think in Essenic terms and all is clear.

The three days without his sight is an harmonization with Jesus’s stay in the tomb, and his not eating at the same time represents the fast which Christians originally undertook before their baptism, showing this is early church not Nazarene tradition.

Ananias is the agent of Saul’s conversion but when Paul relates his own history he never mentions him. He is part of the metaphor of Saul’s conversion, a construct by Luke or an even later editor. Ananias means “the grace of God”. Saul is converted by Ananias. Saul is converted by the grace of God. In Galatians 1:15, Paul tells us that God called him “through his grace”. Luke or the editor has personified Paul’s phrase and dramatized his description of his conversion.

Luke or the editor think the conversion happened in the Damascus in Syria and therefore introduce its most famous street, an attempt to add local colour and proving that all of this is composed, if Damascus was really Qumran. In Acts 9:13, Ananias refers to the “saints”, the Essenes’ name for themselves as the perfectly holy ones.

Saul immediately preached Christ in the synagogues (Acts 9:20). If Saul was at Qumran, there were no synagogues and this is composition, but “synagogue” simply means “assembly” and might be an alternative translation of the word “qahal”, used by the Essenes. Indeed, it is far from the bounds of possibility that the original use of “synagogue” meant the assemblies of the Essenes, and the usage here reflects it. Maccoby then is wrong in assuming that the syunagogues meant in the New Testament were what they became!

Paul tells us, in his own history, that he spent three years in Arabia. Acts makes no mention of a visit to Arabia even though it must have been important because, in his own account, he goes there directly after his conversion without even visiting Jerusalem. According to Galatians 1:11, Paul started his ministry in Damascus stating (Gal 1:17-18) he had already been there, but his visit to Jerusalem three years later was his first—directly contradicting the story given three times in Acts 9:1-28; 21:6ff; 26:12ff. Paul seems to say Damascus was in Arabia. Qumran was in the stretch of wilderness called Arabah and the period of initiation for an Essene was three years. Obviously, Paul served it, but for some reason that we now do not know, he was not admitted. After three years in Damascus learning the new teaching (Gal 1:18), Paul escaped (2 Cor 11:32-33):

The Jews took counsel to kill him.
Acts 9:24

If this was Damascus in Syria, it must have been a very lawless town that gangs of Jewish vigilantes could command the city’s gates. Damascus was not a Jewish town, though it would have had a considerable Jewish population, so where were the local authorities and the Roman legions? “The plot to kill him” is probably an Essene excommunication which meant eternal death, and, for a devout Essene, physical death, because he could accept no help from others without the permission of his mebaqqer. Paul was not humble enough and not honest enough to submit to the rigours of being a lifetime Essene and, having offended the community, he was excommunicated.

In 2 Corinthians 11:32, Paul says the guards at the gates were those of the governor of Harith, the Arab king, which sounds plausible if Harith had occupied or surrounded Qumran. Of course the guards would not have been set specifically for Paul but to control the access and egress of everyone in the place.

Paul says Arabia was governed by Aretas (Harith) of Petra, but on the face of it neither the Damascus in Syria nor Qumran, if that was meant, could have been governed by Aretas. We have it only from Paul, unconfirmed by other historians, that Aretas ever ruled the Syrian city of Damascus. Syria was a major Roman centre and the base of several Roman legions. It could never have been ruled, at this time, by Aretas.

The Arabia ruled by Aretas was not Syria, north east of Judaea, but Nabataea whose capital was Petra, the Rose Red City, south of the Dead Sea. The area west of the Dead Sea, extending to the plain of Jericho, was called Arabah even in Deuteronomy 1:7. Aretas possibly laid claim to this land. Nabataea was a Roman client state, and since Arabah was mainly wilderness, the Romans probably did not care whether it was formally part of Judaea or Nabataea.

We know that Aretas had a dispute with Herod Antipas over borders to the east of the Dead Sea and, when he attacked Peraea in 36 AD to punish Antipas, Aretas might have occupied most of the Dead Sea area. Vitellius, who had been sent to punish Aretas for attacking Herod Antipas, withdrew his army when Tiberius died just as Aretas had expected. Thereafter, the Romans would have been more likely to mollify Aretas than to sympathize with Antipas. Both were Roman puppets but Aretas was the more important as a buffer with Parthia, and controlling important trade routes through Petra to the east—the supply of perfumes, spices and drugs from the Arabian peninsula. Paul was converted sometime in the thirties. Paul’s Damascus must have been Qumran, and it must have been briefly under the jurisdiction of Aretas, king of Petra.

He had spent three years in Qumran as a novice, but failed to complete the novitiate because he lacked Essene humility. Having evaded Harith’s soldiers, Paul returned to Jerusalem knowing a great deal more about Essene philosophy, and therefore of the basis of Jesus’s teaching, than did the apostles who were not trained Essenes but converted Jews. After only 15 days there, according to Paul himself, he saw only two apostles (Gal 1:19), James and Peter, but no others, implying that the Nazarenes were hard to find and therefore not very prominent because there were not many of them, most having been Hellenists who had now been dispersed. In Acts 11:29, the church at Antioch has no trouble in supporting the church in Jerusalem, suggesting that membership of the Jerusalem church was small. The impression given in Acts is of a much longer stay—propaganda intended to give Paul the kudos of acceptance by the chosen apostles. He left and did not return for another 14 years (Gal 2:1). The true apostles really wanted nothing to do with him.

If our picture is correct, the year was about 36 AD, the year of Pilate’s withdrawal, leaving Judaea temporarily without a Roman governor. Harith took his chance to wage war on the Jewish king of Galilee and Peraea, Antipas, and quite probably occupied the Arabah, including Qumran.

Paul uses many Essene expressions including the word “Belial”, the Essene word for the devil, which is used nowhere in the New Testament except in 2 Corinthians 6:14-15, a purely Essene passage:

What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial?

Paul writes of a mystery and hidden wisdom in 1 Corinthians 2:7:

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory,

language we can see precisely in the Scrolls. Nevertheless, Paul wanted to be known as a Pharisee because they were better known as the philosophers of Judaism, and not as an Essene who, if known at all were considered terrorists or, at the least, mad.

According to Acts 9:29, which says he “disputed against the Grecians”, Paul began as an Hebraic Nazarene after his admission into the sect and began disputing with the Hellenists. Luke even tells us that Paul was despatched to Tarsus to escape the murderous attentions of the Hellenists, but the Hellenists had been persecuted out of Jerusalem after the death of Stephen. Had they returned in such strength that they could now threaten the life of one of the faction of Hebrews?

In fact, Paul allied with the Hellenists led originally by Stephen and Philip. He appeared to switch from being ultra-orthodox to being ultra-radical. Paul’s idea now was to let all those who believed in Jesus to become full members of the Church and blow the Mosaic Law. The author of Acts makes it appear that Paul upheld Jesus’s idea that there was now a superior Law while the Jerusalem Church of Jesus’s original followers were too stupid to understand this and upheld the old Law. Of course, Jesus was as orthodox as his brethren and he is depicted thus in the gospels. But Paul wanted to substitute the new Law of the redemption of mankind from original sin through the sacrifice of the quasi-divine being. To this the Law of Moses was a hindrance.

James the Just and the Palestinian followers of Jesus would hear nothing of it! Saul was probably sent to Tarsus by the Jerusalem church to get rid of him. The disciples were afraid of him and…

…believed not that he was a disciple.
Acts 9:26

They did not believe him or trust him. They will have thought he was a Roman agent provocateur and, since he was also a Greek speaker, they will have been relieved, if puzzled, that he was happy to leave Jerusalem to convert gentiles abroad.

It is really at about this point that Nazarene tradition ends and the tradition of Paul takes up the story.

Paul

Since the Nazarenes were still a part of Judaism, the original apostles did not trust Paul, and eventually he incensed orthodox Jews of the Diaspora so much that the they threatened to kill him and he had to be sent to Tarsus. Thankful to be rid of him the leaders of the Jerusalem Church allowed him to go on his self appointed mission to convert gentiles. The Nazarenes were still expecting Jesus to return on a cloud, and if Paul could be gotten rid of converting gentiles in foreign parts then fine. But he returned in 49 AD again to seek to persuade the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem to abrogate the Mosaic Law for gentiles.

According to Acts, Paul succeeded, but Paul’s own letters make no reference to this victory even though it would plainly have been a triumph for him. In fact, the opposite is true—James reasserted the status quo—”godfearers” could only be associates of the Church, circumcision was necessary for conversion. The Nazarene authorities, who had known Barabbas during his lifetime, were adamant that the Elect would consist of Jews or full converts to Judaism. Paul proves it himself, for off he went writing letters illustrating his contempt for the associates of Jesus. (Gal 2:6, 16, Phil 3:9). He writes of “false apostles” and “reputed” pillars sent to counter his teaching, confirming that the apostles opposed him. He berates the Galatians for accepting this “different gospel”, he refers to “another Christ whom I have not preached” showing clearly that there were two quite different and antagonistic interpretations of Jesus’s purpose. Paul acknowledged to the gentile proselytes that the Jesus of the Jerusalem Church was “another Jesus” (2 Cor 11: 3-4). Later, representatives from Jerusalem visit him in Antioch apparently to accuse Paul of backsliding in his adherence to the Law. Paul and Barnabas are ordered back to Jerusalem. The first schism in the Church had been recognised.

If the New Testament is to be believed in respect of Peter, he is unsure which of the two factions, Paul’s or James’s, to follow. Paul writes that he opposed Peter’s orthodox view at Antioch but persuades Peter of the correctness of the liberal interpretation and Peter then eats with gentiles. Faced with members of the Jerusalem Church, Peter reverts to the orthodox view. The Recognitions of Clementine speaks of a tradition that Peter tells followers at Tripolis to believe only those who bring the testimonial of Jesus’s brother, James, from Jerusalem. He warns of “false prophets, and false apostles and false teachers, who indeed speak in the name of Christ but do the work of the devil”. Peter was therefore opposed to Paul and Paul’s influence on him sounds like more Pauline fantasy aimed at boosting his prestige.

Paul left no stone unturned in deriding the true apostles. He boasts of his superiority to the apostles (2 Cor 11:5). They were merely Nazarenes, mostly converts of the simple of Ephraim, whereas he had been trained as an Essene. He denigrates them as false apostles (2 Cor 11:12-23), discredited them (Gal 2:6), ran down their speaking in tongues (1 Cor 14:4;9;11;14;18-19;21-23;33) and curses them (Gal 1:8-9). He declares the only authentic gospel is not of human origin and had not been taught him by anyone—the dead Jesus had himself supernaturally revealed it to Paul (Gal 1:11-12).

Knowing nothing about Jesus, Paul can say nothing about him, and confesses (2 Cor 12:1-4) what he does know comes from his visions. He confirms that Jesus was a descendant of David and was human (Rom 1:3) but he does not mention Jesus’s father, nor does he name Jesus’s mother in the only place he mentions her (Gal 4:4). Since Paul’s epistles are the earliest surviving Christian writings, Paul’s attestation (1 Cor 15:3-8) to the death, the resurrection and the appearances are the earliest we have. The only teaching of Jesus that Paul speaks of is that of the Eucharist (1 Cor 11:23-25), so this too is the earliest we have. Though Paul claims to be a Jew and Jews have one God only, he virtually deifies Jesus (Col 1:15-22) and he blames the Jews for Jesus Christ’s death (Thess 2:14-15), if this epistle is Paul’s. In other disputed epistles, he describes the teachings of the true apostles about Jesus as fables (1 Tim 1:4;4:7; Tit 1:14) which are unimportant because faith is all that matters. The Jerusalem Church’s answer to Paul’s teaching might have been the Epistle of James as it was addressed to the twelve tribes of the dispersion—all Jews in the wider empire.

So in 58 AD, Paul was summoned to Jerusalem by James and the Elders for propagating views contrary to the Church. Paul’s friends asked him not to go, but he determined to do so. James and the other ”Zealots of the Law” accused Paul of abrogating the Law of Moses. No reply was recorded, but Paul agreed to undergo a solemn purification proving that the Nazarene Church again imposed its will upon Paul, and that it had not abrogated the Law. James might have arranged this knowing that Paul had been teaching false doctrine, and that he could not refuse a request to undergo purification without damning himself.

Paul was known by some orthodox Jews of the diaspora and hated by them as an apostate. This is illustrated in Acts when a furious mob gave chase to Paul. They felt Paul had violated the Temple by undergoing ritual purification, as James had ordered, though he was a hypocrite who deliberately and habitually preached violation of the Law. Only the Roman soldiers saved him and escorted him to safety in the Antonia fortress. The Romans intended to give Paul a whipping, presumably for causing a public disturbance, but Paul pulled another rabbit out of the bag. He revealed that he was a Roman by birth, and could not be punished without trial. Some forty Jews then plotted to kill him, but the Roman commander found out, supposedly from Paul’s young nephew, and Paul was taken to Caesarea protected by a substantial body of troops! From Caesarea he is, after some time, taken to Rome for trial, on what charges nobody knows, and there he disappears from history after apparently living under house arrest for two years. The narrative ends suddenly.

There is much in this that is odd. Paul:

turns out unexpectedly to be a Roman
has apparent wealth
began on good terms with the Temple officials
finished on good terms with the Roman officials.

In his Epistle to the Romans 16:11, he has a companion called “Herodion” and in Acts 13:1 a member of the Antioch Church is the foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch. The Herods were the family of the puppet kings of Palestine and the Herodians were the party of supporters of the Herods. Paul seemed well in with the Romans and the Jewish collaborators. Was Paul a Roman spy or agent provocateur? Was his mission to infiltrate the messianic movement in Judaea to undermine and betray it? We do not know what became of Paul—as we noted, Acts ends suddenly—although tradition has it that he was martyred. What though of another tradition that he went to Spain? Was he pensioned off by the Emperor in a Spanish villa?

There is one independent source about Paul. The Ebionites or poor men, were suppressed by the Church as heretical but fragments of their beliefs remain in Heresies by Epiphanius. They say that Paul was not a Pharisee, his parents were gentile converts to Judaism, he went to Jerusalem as an adult, became a henchman of the High Priest and eventually sought fame by creating a new religion. Ebionites did not accept Paul’s view that Jesus was a divine sacrifice, but saw him as a human sent to begin the new era, as prophesied. They accepted the Torah, obeyed the Law of Moses and regarded themselves still as Jews. They were the remnants of the Jerusalem Church! J L Teicher of Cambridge University, who identified the Qumran Community with the Ebionites, goes further—he believes the Teacher of Righteousness was Jesus and the Liar of the Qumran Scrolls was Paul.

There are signs in the New Testament that Paul was disliked by the Nazarenes too:

I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but the synagogue of Satan.
Revelation 2:9

The author possibly means Paul specificly, but certainly means those like him who had altered Jewish beliefs to suit pagans. Elsewhere, in Revelation 13:1, the heads of the great beast which is Rome, have the name of blasphemy written on them. Revelation has been compiled from writings of different times. The implication here is that one of the earlier works was actually directed at the Hellenizers who were paganizing Nazarene beliefs.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.