# Did Paul hijack Christianity?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 25, 2010, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342 "2010-02-25T01:48:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 6
### Author:  [@Frank\_apisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank_apisa)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2010, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/101 "2010-02-27T13:28:37Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> **Skammer** was saying that the actual direct disciples of Jesus did not leave any writings (that we know of), not that there weren’t any non-Pauline epistles.
Can’t pass up an opportunity to say “AMEN” to something you write, Diogenes.
Amen! Obviously that is where Skammer was going with what he said.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/102 "2010-02-27T16:59:57Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? Pretend that you had to describe a photograph down to every single blade of grass, just by speech. It’s not even remotely possible. It necessarily will be a simplified and quite likely be misinterpreted by your listeners to some extent. But if you do have a photograph, and hand it over to one guy, he’ll just blow away everyone else who only got the verbal description.
>
> Jesus might have _told_ the Apostles what they needed to know, but only Paul had Jesus’ teachings implanted directly into his head. There is no room for misinterpretation when the knowledge has been perfectly copied in whole. Paul wasn’t taught. He was programmed. Jesus went down, shuffled around the bits in his brain exactly how he wanted them, and set him loose. If you’re to say that Jesus fiddled with everyone else’s brain as well, then why did he have to teach them for months or years, instead of just doing it instantaneously like he did with Paul? If _everyone_ had a perfect understanding, why did they have to meet and debate Jesus’ intent after the fact? If none of them had perfect understanding, then why did Jesus instantaneously provide _incorrect_ divine revelation directly into Paul’s brain?
You seem to have ignored my suggestion to read Acts again because here you are repeating this pet theory of yours which is easily discredited if you have some knowledge of the scriptures.
Your concept that Paul had Jesus teachings programmed into his head has no basis in the scriptures concerning Paul. Your idea that the other Apostles did not have divine knowledge is directly contradicted by the scriptures
> [@](#):
>
> Matt 16: 15"But what about you?" he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
>
> 16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
>
> 17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, **for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven**.
> [@](#):
>
> Acts 1: 1In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2until the day he was taken up to heaven,\*\* after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen\*\*. 3After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5For John baptized with[a] water,\*\* but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit\*\*.”
> [@](#):
>
> Acts 2: 1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 **All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them**.
Sounds kinda miraculous and of divine origin don’t it? At least as dramatic as Paul’s experience.
There is nothing in the passages about Paul’s conversion to indicate he was programmed with full understanding of Jesus teachings and had any more knowledge or authority than the other apostles. He was struck down, blinded, and instructed to go to a specific place.
Your assumption is just that. A bogus interpretation with no basis. In fact the scriptures indicate otherwise.
> [@](#):
>
> Acts 9: 17Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
> Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. 20At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God.
Evidently after his experience on the road he still wasn’t filled with the Holy Spirit. It also says he preached {testified} that Jesus was the son of God but they all did that. There’s nothing to suggest his experience granted him any superior knowledge and understanding.
You might conclude that he was filled the Holy Spirit and that translates into divine knowledge but then we’d have to conclude that the apostles beat him to that divine knowledge on the day of Pentecost.
So please, rethink your theory, do some reading, and stop repeating what is obviously incorrect. It’s bad enough when the fundies do that sort of thing.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2010, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/103 "2010-02-27T17:25:24Z")
> [@Frank\_apisa](#):
>
> Actually, in Galatians, Paul does mention that he got his knowledge not through men…but directly form Jesus. And it does seem he is suggesting it came as a revelation…directly and quickly.
Reading the passages concerning the other apostles and the Holy Spirit you see they also had the same source of authority. Paul’s conversion was startling because he went suddenly and dramatically from persecuting the Christians to believing Jesus was the son of God. There’s nothing to indicate his knowledge and understanding had any sudden depth or understanding other than that basic belief.
> [@](#):
>
> The fact that he went to Arabia for three years does not mean that the revelation took that long to be completed…but rather that as a result of the revelation…he went to do the work of converting gentiles. He even seems to be suggesting that there was no need for him to seek out the apostles and people who had actually known Jesus…because his knowledge was complete without doing so.
>
> ASIDE: Paul got things done…and he was “into himself.”
>
> It is my experience that one of the requirements of being someone who “gets things done”…is “to be into one’s self.”
In fact in
> [@](#):
>
> 1 Cor 13:12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
Paul admits his knowledge is incomplete and seems to indicate it will always be so in this mortal life.
Paul certainly had an assertive personality but there’s still nothing to indicate he or anyone else thought his knowledge and understanding was in any way complete, superior or more divine in origin than the other apostles. Yes, he claims his knowledge comes by divine revelation. That’s also true of the other apostles and part of the whole gift of the Holy Spirit thing.
It’s easy to make certain claims based on 1 or 2 selected passages. Aren’t we annoyed when Bible literals do that? Subjects like the source and extent of divine knowledge aren’t so easily nailed down in the scriptures.
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### Author:  [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/104 "2010-03-01T17:41:54Z")
> [@appleciders](#):
>
> Huh? 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, James, and Jude are all canonical epistles, written by people who were not Paul. The authorship of all of these is hevaily disputed, but I don’t know of anyone who claims that Paul wrote them.
As has been pointed out already, I didn’t mean no one else had written epistles. In addition to the ones you mention there is Hebrews, and even some of the epistles attributed to Paul were probably not written by him. But even if you accept the authorship of Peter, James, John and Jude, they don’t measure up to Paul simply in terms of the volume and influence of their surviving texts.
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/105 "2010-03-01T17:54:49Z")
> [@Sapo](#):
>
> It seems that Christianity, as seen today couldn’t possible be farther from the teachings of Jesus (yeah, I know, fantasy, blah blah). Although it seems to me that some major changes occurred in the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church became a political and economic powerhouse, I am getting a feeling that long before that, Paul had already hijacked the Church and taken that mass of still confused early Christians and did the bait and switch on them for his own set of beliefs.
>
> His letters are packed with teachings that don’t really match Jesus’ teachings. He was a lot heavier on the morality thoushallnots and much lighter on the love and forgiveness side of it.
>
> So, was Paul a faithful follower of Jesus and spreader of his teachings or did he twist the whole thing and used Christianity to spread his own set of beliefs?.
ONLY a person who’s never paid much attention in Sunday school and never read much of the Bible could argue that Jesus was a nice, kind, loving, forgiving sweetie and that Paul was an old meanie who imposed a lot of rules and regulations.
If you DO think that, consider this:
1. Jesus always followed Mosaic law, and NEVER once suggested that his followers didn’t have to. It was the old meanie PAUL who said we didn’t have to keep kosher or have our sons circumcised.
2. Jesus NEVER preached to Gentiles. It was that old meanie PAUL who spread the Gospel far and wide, and made Christianity available to non-Jews.
3. Jesus made divorce extremely difficult, whereas it had been extremely EASY for Jews to divorce before He came along. Does that square with your notion that Jesus was a nice guy who made no tough demands, and wasn’t a stickler for rules?
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### Author:  [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/106 "2010-03-01T18:03:15Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#):
>
> As for “because they were written by women”, forget it. That it would only apply to the Gospel of Mary if it was actually written by Mary, which it wasn’t, and it’s fairly unlikey that it was written by any woman.
Hang on a mo. Surely, whether it was _actually_ written by a woman (or Mary) doesn’t actually refute the point; the question whether those who decided on which books went into the Bible _thought_ that it was written by Mary, or by a woman. After all, even if it was written by someone called Jack, if those who decided these things believed otherwise they could very well have rejected it because they thought it was written by a woman.
That said, I don’t know what they were thinking; do we have any records of them saying, for example, “We reject this work which supposedly was written by Mary but wasn’t?” Otherwise, we really can’t discount this possibility based on our own knowledge; we need to base it on _theirs_.
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/107 "2010-03-01T18:06:29Z")
I think the fact that even Paul himself acknowledges that the Jerusalem “Pillars” (Peter, James, John) saw the Jesus movement as Jewish, and Jewish law as still being in effect strongly suggests that Jesus had never told them otherwise. Not only did they know Jesus personally, one of them was actually his brother. If Jesus himself had ever told them the Law was no longer valid, I think they’d have known it.
We have very little solid historical information about Jesus, but Paul’s first hand acknowledgement of the original Jerusalem movement as still being observant to the law is about as close to saying something reliable about that movement as we have.
I know what Acts says about Peter, by the way, but Luke-Acts is hardly reliable. Paul is a primary source, and he’s the only source we have who personally knew apostles.
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### Author:  [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/108 "2010-03-01T18:31:23Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> ONLY a person who’s never paid much attention in Sunday school and never read much of the Bible could argue that Jesus was a nice, kind, loving, forgiving sweetie and that Paul was an old meanie who imposed a lot of rules and regulations.
>
> If you DO think that, consider this:
>
> 1. Jesus always followed Mosaic law, and NEVER once suggested that his followers didn’t have to. It was the old meanie PAUL who said we didn’t have to keep kosher or have our sons circumcised.
>
> 2. Jesus NEVER preached to Gentiles. It was that old meanie PAUL who spread the Gospel far and wide, and made Christianity available to non-Jews.
>
> 3. Jesus made divorce extremely difficult, whereas it had been extremely EASY for Jews to divorce before He came along. Does that square with your notion that Jesus was a nice guy who made no tough demands, and wasn’t a stickler for rules?
But then you are making an even stronger case for Paul having “hijacked” Christianity. Just not in the direction I was saying.
I do agree with you that Jesus was no “let’s all be friends” hippie. He was a “with me or against me” kinda guy (literally, in fact) that met nobody in the middle. I still find his message a lot more open and inviting than the minutia of Paul, though.
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/109 "2010-03-02T07:00:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> But, none of this bears on the core question: **Did** the early Christian Church have a body of esoteric doctrine, known to the inner circle, and not published in the Bible nor preached to the laity? Is there any reason to think so?
Another poster mentioned the gospel of Thomas. I’ll quote some passages:
> [@Gospel of Thomas](#):
>
> Here are the secret sayings which Jesus the Living spoke, and which Didymus Jude Thomas wrote down.
>
> (1) And He said : “He who penetrates the meaning of these words will not taste death.”
> …
> (5) Jesus said : “Know that what is before your face, and what is hidden from You will be revealed to You. For nothing hidden will fail to be revealed.”
> …
>
> (23) Jesus said : “I shall choose You, one from a thousand, and two from ten thousand, and they shall be as a single one.”
> …
> (49) Jesus said : “Fortunate are You, the alone and the elect, for You will find the Kingdom. Because You came from it, You will also return to it again.”
> …
> (80) Jesus said : “He who knew the world has mastered the body, but he who has mastered the body is superior to the world.”
I can’t comment on whether Thomas was gnostic or not, but I think we can say that it is esoteric.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/110 "2010-03-02T13:01:56Z")
> [@Sapo](#):
>
> But then you are making an even stronger case for Paul having “hijacked” Christianity. Just not in the direction I was saying.
>
> I do agree with you that Jesus was no “let’s all be friends” hippie. He was a “with me or against me” kinda guy (literally, in fact) that met nobody in the middle. I still find his message a lot more open and inviting than the minutia of Paul, though.
I’d say Jesus was a let’s all be friends hippie in one sense and he was a with me or against me kinda guy.
I see in his teachings that he tried to get the Jews to understand that all people had the same creator and were valued equally so their class social hierarchy and certain rules had to take a backseat to the spirit of the law. This is demonstrated by his story of the good Samaritan and his attitude toward women. In fact the whole making divorce harder thing was to protect women from prevent men from casually abusing their social status.
He said , the truth will set you free, and I think he saw no room for compromise in the truth. I believe he also saw that only a few could handle the kind of commitment and discipline it took to truly follow him but encouraging others and planting seeds of growth was worthwhile.
I think this same attitude is found in Paul. Paul was writing to those who had accepted the teachings as valid and his message to them was "you can’t claim to be a follower of Jesus and still allow petty jealousies and squabbling to flourish among you. You must always strive to live the teachings in your daily life.’
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/111 "2010-03-02T14:03:25Z")
In Mark, Jesus says, “whoever is not against us is for us.” Matthew reverses it, but Mark came first.
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/112 "2010-03-02T14:53:43Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#):
>
> In Mark, Jesus says, “whoever is not against us is for us.” Matthew reverses it, but Mark came first.
I’ve used that before when Christians talk about authority. The apostles were upset about someone doing works in Jesus name who was not officially sanctioned.
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Booker\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Booker_1)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/113 "2010-03-02T15:34:28Z")
GBS had a fun take on this question. Take a look at his foreword to “Androcles and the Lion.”
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### Author:  [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/114 "2010-03-02T15:43:28Z")
> [@Happy\_Booker](#):
>
> GBS had a fun take on this question.
Who?
Oh, Shaw. It’s a bit confusing when you identify authors who haven’t been mentioned in the thread by just initials.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/115 "2010-03-02T20:34:02Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#):
>
> Hang on a mo. Surely, whether it was _actually_ written by a woman (or Mary) doesn’t actually refute the point; the question whether those who decided on which books went into the Bible _thought_ that it was written by Mary, or by a woman. After all, even if it was written by someone called Jack, if those who decided these things believed otherwise they could very well have rejected it because they thought it was written by a woman.
>
> That said, I don’t know what they were thinking; do we have any records of them saying, for example, “We reject this work which supposedly was written by Mary but wasn’t?” Otherwise, we really can’t discount this possibility based on our own knowledge; we need to base it on _theirs_.
The understanding that I have picked up, chiefly from the work of Dr. Bruce Metzger, is that the main part of the canon of the New Testament was agreed upon by the last second/early third century, though there was some uncertainty around the edges until the fourth century. But the fact that Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were the four canonical gospels was decided by the late second century, and the early Christians accepted those because they were known to be the first ones written. Most of the gnostic gospels didn’t make the list because they weren’t even written at the time. If a few were written at the time, it was still known that they were written after the canonical gospels, and were thus less trustworthy.
As for the notion that the early Church rejected the gnostic gospels because the gnostic gospels are more feminists than the canonical gospels, that’s simply playing on the prejudices of those who want to view the church as a big, bad, misogynist bully. In truth, the canonical gospels have the instances of Jesus breaking down barriers between genders. The gnostic gospels often have misogynist statements. In the Gospel of Thomas, for instance, Peter says: “Women are not worthy of life”, and Jesus appears to agree with him, saying “a woman must make herself into a man” before entering Heaven.
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### Author:  [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/116 "2010-03-02T22:08:33Z")
I have no opinion as to the feminism or otherwise of the gnostic gospels as opposed to the canonical ones. My argument was simply that your particular argument back there doesn’t necessarily follow through. I’m guessing from your response that there aren’t any indications as to whether those who decided believed it was written by Mary or a woman? Because that would mean your prior argument is an unreasonable one.
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### Author:  [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/117 "2010-03-04T06:35:52Z")
Since Jesus never existed as a historical person, Paul couldn’t possibly have hijacked Christianity.
While Paul didn’t _invent_ Jesus or most of the teachings and parables and sayings (which had almost certainly been accumulating for at least 100 years prior to ~ 1 CE), he was a brilliant and highly educated philosopher who converted a rambling, random, inconsistent assortment of “stuff” into the formal theology known as Christianity, synthesizing it from a dazzling array of different schools of thought and putting his own stamp on every piece. It was a creation of astonishing genius!
Paul’s intellectualized, ultra-high-brow theological construction was made all the easier for the lack of a human Jesus (though I have no idea if Paul knew that Jesus had never lived). Had Jesus lived, Paul would have been constrained to conform his new theology to the historical record. But since no historical record existed, he was free to invent pretty much whatever suited his philosophical and theological predilections and beliefs. What he produced describes a Jesus who lived and acted not on earth or in heaven, but in a then-widely accepted middle realm such as that referenced by the phrase “seventh heaven” (there were other heavens besides the seventh, though).
In that realm, Paul centered his theology on a blood and flesh ritual that evoked the Jewish Scriptures but elevated them into an extremely lofty abstraction that later inventors translated into the “Last Supper”. There are layers upon layers of abstract philo-theological ruminations and syntheses there that certainly boggle _my_ mind, anyway, but also boggled the minds of most of those who read Paul from then on. Paul was **severely** misunderstood, but he’s certainly not the only extraordinarily abstruse thinker whose concepts and writings were terribly misunderstood!
Bottom line: Paul didn’t invent Jesus, but he _ **did** _ invent Christianity. As such, he couldn’t possibly have hijacked it.
-
-
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### Author:  [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2010, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/118 "2010-03-04T13:37:07Z")
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> Since Jesus never existed as a historical person, Paul couldn’t possibly have hijacked Christianity.
Well, we’re not really so positive about that are we?
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2010, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/119 "2010-03-04T14:36:03Z")
We are not. **Ambushed** is articulating the mythicist view (the one particular to Earl Doherty, from the looks of it). While it has been difficult to find truly solid, irrefutable, smoking gun evidence for a historical Jesus, it’s going way too far to say that historicity can be absolutely disproven, and the mainstream academic view is still overwhelmingly in favor of historicity.
Paul himself, as little as he said about Jesus as a person, said that James was his brother. That’s probably the strongest bit of evidence that Paul thought Jesus was a real person.
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### Author:  [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2010, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-paul-hijack-christianity/530342/120 "2010-03-04T14:47:16Z")
> [@ambushed](#):
>
> Since Jesus never existed as a historical person, Paul couldn’t possibly have hijacked Christianity.
You’re way in the minority of historians with this statement. Even [Cecil](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/518/did-jesus-really-exist-and-whats-with-the-shroud-of-turin) acknowledges that Jesus probably existed. As Diogenes points out, Paul definitely seemed to believe that Jesus was an actual historical person, and Paul was a contemporary of witnesses (notably Peter and the others).
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