God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (46 page)

God, doing his best to sound like a Mafia boss. “Don’t worry my friend, the family will look after you. We take care of our own.”

With God’s protection racket in place, Paul decided to stay in Corinth for eighteen months to spread the word.

Paul’s journey by sailing boat from Corinth to Jerusalem took him to a number of stops throughout the Mediterranean including Rhodes, Tyre and Cyprus. In Caesarea, a prophet approached Paul and warned him that he would be arrested and most probably executed if he returned to Jerusalem, in reprisal for converting the Gentiles away from Moses and telling them not to circumcise their children or live their lives according to the customs of the Old Testament. Paul told the prophet that he was not concerned and would deal with whatever came his way.

The entire city instantaneously broke into riots, as mobs converged to demand the death of Paul for his blasphemy. An entire Roman regiment had to be brought into the city to calm the crowd and several centurions were required to carry Paul away to the sanctuary of the nearest prison, in part to protect him from being lynched and also to appease the rioters by formally arresting him. Once at the barracks, Paul made a request to the prison commander if he could address the crowd, to which he was given permission. During his speech to the angry mob, he gave an account as to the reasons why he chose to convert from Judaism, as Saul, to Christianity as Paul. Pointing out that Jesus had spoken to him in a vision whilst travelling to Damascus years earlier and thus he now felt responsible to carry forth the word of Christ. Then he said:

The crowd listened attentively to his speech, but his continual endorsement of Jesus as Son of God, left the Jewish crowd with no alternative but to demand his execution. “Rid the earth of him,” they shouted.

The Romans agreed to carry out a public flogging of him and he was taken to the flogging station for a good ole hometown whipping. Tied to the post and with the centurion’s whip cocked and ready to inflict its devastating pain, Paul yelled out, “Is it legal for you to whip a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?” When the commander heard this, he called for an immediate end to the punishment. A Roman would not be flogged under his watch, under any circumstances, unless proven guilty in a Roman court. Subsequently the commander handed Paul over to the Jewish high priests to determine what this prisoner had been found guilty of doing. As Paul stood before the high priest, Paul went on the verbal offensive:

The priests and elders rose in uproar that he would dare speak to the high priest with such contempt. Paul then softened his rhetoric a touch and offered:

The key word there, ‘hope’, the wish for death after life. With these words a fight broke out amongst the Pharisees against the Sadducees (another political group), as the Sadducees believe that there are no such things as angels or spirits and that it is impossible for one to be risen from the dead. Well, they were dead right on that account! With the infighting and no resolution as to what do with Paul, the Romans took him back to the barracks for the evening. Later that night, Jesus, appearing as a ghost, stood before Paul in his cell and said:

The Jews were plotting to kill Paul, however, for his treason. Forty men were assembling to storm the prison to hack him to pieces, but fortunately Paul’s sister learned of the plot. Which, based on numerous Biblical stories to now, makes me believe the Jews are possibly the worst people in the world for keeping a secret. How many times has a similar story been told in the Bible to this point? A plot to assassinate is foiled because of a leak, surely a dozen instances we have already uncovered. Anyway, Paul’s sister informs the prison commander and convinces him to relocate her brother to Caesarea with an armed escort of two hundred soldiers and seventy horsemen. The commander penned a letter to Governor Felix of Caesarea, ahead of Paul’s arrival, that read:

Five days later, Paul was brought before Governor Felix to be trialled. His accusers had travelled from Ananias to outline their accusations against Paul, which read:

Paul made his defence on the basis that he was not a trouble-maker and that he followed the same God as the Jews, but with his added belief that Jesus was the son of God, was resurrected after death and will one day return to save all believers. At the conclusion of the trial, Governor Felix was unable to determine a verdict and had Paul returned to prison, where he sat for the following two years. In this time, Governor Felix was replaced by Governor Festus.

Once Festus was in power, the Jews petitioned the Governor to have Paul transferred back to Jerusalem, so that they could carry out their plot to kill him. Festus listened to both sides and then sought the counsel of King Agrippa. Festus provided the King with an overview of the case, informing the Greek King that it was not the Roman custom to hand over any man before he had had an opportunity to face his accusers and to defend himself against their charges. The King asked Festus what exactly was the nature of the dispute, to which Festus replied:

The King then told Festus that he would like to hear from Paul himself and the next day he was summoned before the King amongst great pomp and ceremony. Paul made his appeal to the King:

Paul continued to provide the history of his conversion from Judaism to Christianity, based on his vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, to which Festus interrupted with:

Thank you, Festus! You summed it up perfectly. I couldn’t have put it better myself. When people tell me of visions and conversations they have with ghosts, I am with you, Festus. But King Agrippa, obviously a nutter, saw it differently and told Paul that he will be sent to Rome to have his case heard before Caesar.

Paul was assigned to a sailboat alongside a number of fellow prisoners, under guard from centurions of the Imperial Regiment. The total number of passengers aboard the vessel was two hundred and seventy six, for an unimaginably slow journey that would take a total of three months. The journey took them through a number of Greek Island ports, including Crete, where they encountered a storm that threatened to sink the boat. According to Paul, the men were saved by God, and the rogue Jew reassured the other passengers that The Almighty was on their side and that he’d ensure them safe passage to Rome. A few days later, however, the ship ran aground off the coast of Malta and many opted to swim to shore. The centurions, fearing that the prisoners would make a run for freedom, elected to kill all prisoners there on the spot, but Paul convinced them against this. The locals of Malta welcomed the marooned prisoners and guards and, after a few days, assisted in helping them to a cargo ship headed to Rome.

Upon arriving in Rome, Paul was allowed to reside in a home under house arrest by a single guard. A few days later he called an assembly of the city’s Jewish elders to come visit him so that he may discuss his case. He told them what he had said in earlier trials, that he denounced Jesus like the majority of Jews, until he met with the ghost of Jesus on the road to Damascus. A large proportion of the elders called him a fool, but a handful stayed to listen to his teachings of the messiah. From this point on, and for the next two years, Paul taught the principles of Christianity from his house without hindrance.

The Letters of Paul, written while he was incarcerated in Rome, are presented in the next ten books of the New Testament. Each book a different letter authored by Paul to a slightly different audience. The ten books of Paul include: Romans; Corinthians; Galathians; Ephesians; Philippians; Colossians; Thessalonians; Timothy; Titus; Philemon.

It is important to note that, in his letters, Paul makes numerous statements regarding the Christian faith that none of the Gospels had Jesus saying. One might conclude this quite a daring feat in citing conversations with a dead man he had never met. The key element here, to keep in mind, is the audience. The Gospels were written for a Jewish audience and thus they could not have the character of Jesus denouncing Old Testament laws because this would have warranted the death penalty for heresy. But Paul’s audience were the Gentiles, the non-Jewish citizens of Rome, Greece and Persia, thus Paul could position Christianity as a more appealing product for non-Jews. This making Paul the founder of Christianity, although ‘Paulanity’ is a more logical naming of the religion but doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Fred Reed

The Book of Romans is arguably the most valued book of the Holy Scriptures for the Christian faithful and, as such, has been appropriately coined the Cathedral of Christianity. It is the first of Paul’s letters and as the name suggests, this is Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, a letter that is brilliantly written and certainly the most literarily profound of all books of the Bible. In lay terms, it reads as a ‘How to Guide for Christian worship’.

As a matter of fact, Paul contributes far more insight and teachings to the way of Christianity than Jesus ever did. As we will discover there are a number of phrases, words and observances wrongly attributed to Jesus by practicing Christians today, depriving the rightful creator his due credit.

Paul’s opening declaration of his letter to Romans is:

As proven in the contradictions of Jesus’ genealogy, which renders his blood-line meaningless, Paul now has created a further problem for the fledgling Church by writing that Jesus is the descendent of David. In the New King James version of the Bible, the passage actually states that Jesus “was born of the seed of David”. This, again, is impossible if he was born to a virgin. Thus, either way the church is unable to prove Jesus’ fulfilment of messianic prophecy because if he was born of a virgin then he is not a descendent of David. And if born of the seed of Joseph, thus a descendent of David, then he is not born of a virgin. Paul just fucked up the whole story in his first letter. This is important because not only do two of the four Gospels make no mention of the virgin birth of Jesus, neither does the founder of the faith. Leaving a 3-2 jury verdict in favor of the natural laws of the universe in the case versus supernatural phenomenon.