Who was Paul, Really?

[Dan Unterbrink]

In the Book of Acts, Paul is the great Apostle to the Gentiles. He is from Tarsus, and his views become Church teachings. Is this historically accurate or a clever smokescreen to hide uncomfortable truths? Check out the following details from Josephus:

1. Saul/Paul persecutes the church after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 9:1-2) (35 AD) while Josephus’ Saul persecutes the poor after the stoning of James, the brother of Jesus (Antiquities 20.200-214) (62 AD). Did this persecution occur before Saul joined the Jesus Movement or after his removal in 44 AD at Antioch (Galatians)?

2. Paul pleads his case before Agrippa II (Acts 25:23 – 26:32) (60 AD) while Saul leads the Peace Party in an effort to have Agrippa II’s army fight against the insurgents (War 2.418-419) (66 AD).

3. Paul is saved by the Romans (Acts 21:27 – 23:35) (60 AD) while Saul also flees to Roman protection (War 2.556-557) (66 AD).

4. Paul appeals to Caesar and then travels to Rome (Acts 26:32) (60 AD). Saul is sent to Nero in Achaia (modern-day Greece) by Cestius to plead his innocence and to lay blame for the Jewish war on Florus (War 2.558) (67 AD).

5. Since Paul/Saul never traveled to Rome, the shipwreck in Acts 27 must also be fiction. Note that Josephus is shipwrecked on his way to Rome (The Life of Flavius Josephus 14-15).

In short, was the Apostle Paul really Josephus’ Saul, a member of the Herodian royal family?

Daniel T. Unterbrink
Author of Judas of Nazareth

[2ndpillar]

In the Book of Acts, Paul is the great Apostle to the Gentiles. He is from Tarsus, and his views become Church teachings. Is this historically accurate or a clever smokescreen to hide uncomfortable truths? Check out the following details from Josephus:

1. Saul/Paul persecutes the church after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 9:1-2) (35 AD) while Josephus’ Saul persecutes the poor after the stoning of James, the brother of Jesus (Antiquities 20.200-214) (62 AD). Did this persecution occur before Saul joined the Jesus Movement or after his removal in 44 AD at Antioch (Galatians)?

2. Paul pleads his case before Agrippa II (Acts 25:23 – 26:32) (60 AD) while Saul leads the Peace Party in an effort to have Agrippa II’s army fight against the insurgents (War 2.418-419) (66 AD).

3. Paul is saved by the Romans (Acts 21:27 – 23:35) (60 AD) while Saul also flees to Roman protection (War 2.556-557) (66 AD).

4. Paul appeals to Caesar and then travels to Rome (Acts 26:32) (60 AD). Saul is sent to Nero in Achaia (modern-day Greece) by Cestius to plead his innocence and to lay blame for the Jewish war on Florus (War 2.558) (67 AD).

5. Since Paul/Saul never traveled to Rome, the shipwreck in Acts 27 must also be fiction. Note that Josephus is shipwrecked on his way to Rome (The Life of Flavius Josephus 14-15).

In short, was the Apostle Paul really Josephus’ Saul, a member of the Herodian royal family?

Daniel T. Unterbrink
Author of Judas of Nazareth

Dear Dan,
Paul like Judas Iscariot, was simply a fulfillment of the Scripture of Zechariah 11. As was with Judas, Peter, and Paul, were all influenced by Satan.(Mt 16:23 & Mt 27:9-10 & 2 Cor 12:7 & Ze 11:6-17) Peter and Paul were simply the two horns like a lamb which the beast of Rev 13 used to deceive "those who dwell on the earth". The two horned beast was the founder of the Roman church, Constantine, and his mark is on all who keep his commandments (Dt 6:8), which were instituted within his Roman church.

Constantine's law of…321 [C.E] uniting Christians and pagans in the observance of the "venerable day of the sun" It is to be noted that this official solar worship, the final form of paganism in the empire…, was not the traditional Roman-Greek religion of Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and the other Olympian deities. It was a product of the mingling Hellenistic-Oriental elements, exemplified in Aurelian's establishment of Eastern Sun worship at Rome as the official religion of the empire, and in his new temple enshrining Syrian statutes statues of Bel and the sun…. Thus at last Bel, the god of Babylon, came into the official imperial temple of Rome, the center of the imperial religion. It was this late Roman-Oriental worship of one supreme god, symbolized by the sun and absorbing lesser divinities as subordinates or manifestations of the universal deity, that competed with young Christianity. This was the Roman religion that went down in defeat but infiltrated and colored the victorious church with its own elements, some of which can be seen to this day. (Cramer 4)

On March 7, 321, Sunday was declared the official day of rest, on which markets were banned and public offices were closed,[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin ... ristianity

[ThePainefulTruth]

[Replying to post 1 by Dan Unterbrink]

There is a lot more evidence that Paul was Herodian than just Josephus. He talks in Romans about the littlest Herod; and the source of his Roman Citizenship was almost certainly due to his Herodian heritage. Jewish Roman Citizens were almost all (if not all) Herodian. My theory is that the reason the Jews were about to kill him at the Temple was because they'd just found out he was Herodian, which he'd kept to himself.

Also, Paul was hated by the early Jerusalem Christians for how he corrupted their Jesus Movement and Jewish traditions, and had to be the beast of Revelation. The number of the beast was six hundred, threescore and six (not 666 since Arabic numerals weren't in use for hundreds of years). The Jewish practice of Gematria, the translation of words into numbers, translates that number into "Tarsus". Tarsus, BTW, was the Roman center of pagan Mithraism, which has many beliefs that Paul incorporated into "Christianity"--and should rightly be called Paulism.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 1 by Dan Unterbrink]

There is a lot more evidence that Paul was Herodian than just Josephus. He talks in Romans about the littlest Herod; and the source of his Roman Citizenship was almost certainly due to his Herodian heritage. Jewish Roman Citizens were almost all (if not all) Herodian. My theory is that the reason the Jews were about to kill him at the Temple was because they'd just found out he was Herodian, which he'd kept to himself.

Also, Paul was hated by the early Jerusalem Christians for how he corrupted their Jesus Movement and Jewish traditions, and had to be the beast of Revelation. The number of the beast was six hundred, threescore and six (not 666 since Arabic numerals weren't in use for hundreds of years). The Jewish practice of Gematria, the translation of words into numbers, translates that number into "Tarsus". Tarsus, BTW, was the Roman center of pagan Mithraism, which has many beliefs that Paul incorporated into "Christianity"--and should rightly be called Paulism.

The one thing about Herod, he was a convert. That would go along the lines of the ebionites claim that Paul was a convert to Judaism.

[ThePainefulTruth]

[Replying to post 4 by Goat]

Yes, well, the descendant of a convert. Herod inherited his citizenship from his father Antipater, who received it from Julius Caesar for his assistance to Pompey in the conquest of Judea. Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I , the short 2012 version of the 90's tome, explains how Paul fits into the family tree pretty well.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 4 by Goat]

Yes, well, the descendant of a convert. Herod inherited his citizenship from his father Antipater, who received it from Julius Caesar for his assistance to Pompey in the conquest of Judea. Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I , the short 2012 version of the 90's tome, explains how Paul fits into the family tree pretty well.

Or, considering he vast lack of knowledge, he might have adopted the 'tribe of Benjamin' nomenclature because of Herod. The herodian connection is an assumption based on a few words that have multiple possibility.

[ThePainefulTruth]

[Replying to post 6 by Goat]

More than a few words. Read the book.

[Zzyzx]

.

More than a few words. Read the book.

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[Korah2]

[Replying to post 4 by Goat]

Yes, well, the descendant of a convert. Herod inherited his citizenship from his father Antipater, who received it from Julius Caesar for his assistance to Pompey in the conquest of Judea. Robert Eisenman's James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I , the short 2012 version of the 90's tome, explains how Paul fits into the family tree pretty well.

Does Robert Eisenman in his shorter 2012 version still hold that the Teacher of Righteousness was James the so-called brother of the Lord (Jesus)? Supposedly Carbon-14 dating has ruled that out. (Or were those scrolls written on very old paper?)

[ThePainefulTruth]

[Replying to post 9 by Korah2]

Let me put it this way, a qualified yes. The main point is that some of the texts are not pre-James and many of the rest are basically paleographic and contextual arguments. I could transcribe the 3 pages of small type here, but I'm not going to. Ref; pp. 31-33 for that point.

Here is a salient sentence at the heart of the matter. "So, initially, it is certainly permissible to say that the ideas in the Scrolls flow in a fairly consistent manner into the ideas associated with the Community led by Jame, regardless of the dating of the Qumran texts."

Also, let me point out that this has little or nothing to do with the arguments pointing to Paul as a Herodian, a Roman citizen, and the founder of "Christianity"--the subject of the thread. Much of the evidence against Paul comes from his and Luke's own writing.