In this interview with Youtube host Derek Lambert of MythVision Podcast, I put forth my thesis that Paul created a new religion that became known as Christianity by taking these four texts from the Hebrew Bible and interpreting them in ways totally foreign to their contextual meanings.
I fully realize that interpretations of sacred texts among Jewish groups in the late 2nd Temple period vary widely–and a diversity of methods are evident that have little to do with “original” embedded narrative contexts. However, these four particular texts involve an entirely new construct in Paul’s hands–one that I believe would have been quite foreign to John the Baptizer, Jesus himself, or to his Jerusalem followers led by his brother James–the triad of founders of the movement.
In fact, in the New Testament letter we know now as “James,” these very issues are addressed explicitly. In the photo below I stand as a tiny speck in time before the towering PILLAR of Christianity, the man who changed everything for our world, yards from where his bones lie. But I am here and he is not, and given his mistaken view that the “appointed time” of the end had grown very short–and soon even marriage, gender, and our very bodies/selves–would be transformed into a new Creation, I believe he and I could sit down together and find some kind of meeting of the minds. I would be honored to speak with him about what was done in his name as a result of the failure of the apocalypse, and those with power taking his words as license for untold damage done to others over the millennia.
Comments are closed.