Ponder on it

You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free....

OP, if you know what that means?
I follow Jesus and Live the masters life.
Paul you said, is a spiritual father 'ladder' to me.

You're quoting the Scriptures out of context. You can only deceive the gullible.

Muslims are more Christian than the so called Christians...Paulinians indeed. Deceptive

Historical Quotes Concerning Paul and his doctrines from Historians, Philosophers and Theologians:


Carl Sagan (Scientist; Author)

"My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly
immiscible parts--the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to
excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it
was an inspiring document." (Letter to Ken Schei [author of Christianity Betrayed])


Thomas Jefferson

"Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." (All references not listed here, can be
found in Christianity Betrayed)


Albert Schweitzer

"Where possible Paul avoids quoting the teaching of Jesus, in fact even mentioning it. If we had
to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the sermon on
the mount, and had taught His disciples the 'Our Father.' Even where they are specially
relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord."


Wil Durant (Philosopher)

"Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of
Christ."
"Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ."


Walter Kaufmann (Professor of Philosophy, Princeton)

"Paul substituted faith in Christ for the Christlike life."


George Bernard Shaw

"No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its
legs again in the name of Jesus."


Thomas Hardy
"The new testament was less a Christiad than a Pauliad."

Hyam Maccoby (Talmudic Scholar)

"As we have seen, the purposes of the book of Acts is to minimize the conflict between Paul and
the leaders of the Jerusalem Church, James and Peter. Peter and Paul, in later Christian
tradition, became twin saints, brothers in faith, and the idea that they were historically bitter
opponents standing for irreconcilable religious standpoints would have been repudiated with
horror. The work of the author of Acts was well done; he rescued Christianity from the
imputation of being the individual creation of Paul, and instead gave it a respectable pedigree,
as a doctrine with the authority of the so-called Jerusalem Church, conceived as continuous in
spirit with the Pauline Gentile Church of Rome. Yet, for all his efforts, the truth of the matter is
not hard to recover, if we examine the New Testament evidence with an eye to tell-tale
inconsistencies and confusions, rather than with the determination to gloss over and harmonize all difficulties in the interests of an orthodox interpretation." (The Mythmaker, p. 139,Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986)


Jeremy Bentham (English Philosopher)

"If Christianity needed an Anti-Christ, they needed look no farther than Paul." (Paraphrased. Looking for a copy of "Not Paul, but Jesus" in order to retrieve the exact quote.)

Carl Jung (Psychologist)

"Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in." (U.S. News and World
Report, April 22, 1991, p. 55)


Bishop John S. Spong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark)

"Paul's words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference."
(Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 104, Harper San Francisco, 1991).

The Mystery of Mithraism―solved!
PAUL AND THE PAGAN RELIGION OF MITHRAISM


Though scholars at the turn of the 20th century understood that Christianity was heavily influenced by Mithraism, there is a recent trend among Christian apologists and revisionist academics to deny this historical debt to paganism. As a case in point, Christian historian Justo Gonzales makes the following remark to refute earlier scholarship on the subject in his 1970 book “A History of Christian Thought”, Volume I:

"Concerning the relationship between the mystery cults and Christianity, scholarly opinion has varied. During the first two or three decades of the twentieth century, it was thought that the mystery religions constituted a unity based on a common 'mystery theolgoy,' and that Christianity was simply one of them, or at most, a distinct religion is which the influence of the mysteries was greatly felt. According to the scholars of that time [e.g., W. Bousset, A. Loisy and R. Reitzenstein], Christianity had taken from the mysteries its rites of initiation----baptism, its sacramental meals---communion; its ascending stages of initiation----the orders; and a multitude of details needless to enumerate. But since then, a careful study has been made of the mysteries, and the conclusion reached by almost all scholars is that there was no such thing as a common 'mystery theology'---at least in the first century of our era. Quite the contrary, the mystery cults differed one from another so much that it is difficult even to explain the term 'mystery religion.' Moreover, the mysteries seem not to have reached their full development until the second and third centuries, which is the time when the majority of their characteristics in common with Christianity appear. It follows that such traits can be more easily explained as the influence of Christianity on the mysteries than the opposite, the more so when we learn that already in this period the pagan cults tried to imitate some of the characteristics of the dynamic new faith.”

Gonzales based his refutation on a chronological argument. It is a common belief that Mithraism did not enter the Roman world until well after Paul’s lifetime. Alison B. Griffith, for example, says that “the evidence also indicates that at least some inhabitants(or Rome and its port city Ostia) knew about Mithraism as early as the late first century CE, but that the cult did not enjoy a wide membership in either location until the middle of the second century CE.” Similarly, the Britannica observes that “there is little notice of the Persian god in the Roman world until the beginning of the 2nd century, but, from the year AD 136 onward, there are hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions to Mithra.” Even much earlier, in the beginning of the 20th century, Albert Schweitzer argued that Apostle Paul could not possibly have had contact with what we know as the Roman mystery religion of Mithraism since it did not flourish until after his death around 67 AD.
TRAVELER23 has also argued in this forum that “therefore, it is historical nachronism to argue that Paul took his understanding of the Eucharist from Mithraism.”

However, this line of argument breaks down completely when we realize that the mystery religion that Paul was exposed to in his hometown Tarsus, in the province of Celicia, was NOT Roman Mithraism but Persian Mithraism. Celicia was at the outskirts of the former Persian Empire, right at the border of the Greco-Roman world and the Persia world. In fact, Encyclopedia Britannica provides support of this thesis of mine. For it explains how Mithraism was marginalized in its native land, Persia, because of its central ceremony, the sacrifice of the bull. Since Zoraster denounced bull sacrifice, it became an abhorrence for every Zoroastrian. In fact, according to Britannica, by the time Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire around 330 BC, the worship of Mithra could no longer be found in Persia. Effectively, Mithraism was forced to migrate due to pressure from Zorastrianism. Britannica says that “local aristocrats in the western part of the former Persian Empire(the region around Tarsus) retained their devotion to Mithra. The kings and nobles of the border region between the Greco-Roman and the Iranian world still worshipped him.”

This would explain why the center for Mithra worship moved from Persia to Paul’s birthplace, Tarsus, which was a thriving intellectual hub and a melting-pot of religions in the first century BC.

To conclude, while it is historically true that Mithraism did not flourish in Rome until the beginning of the second century AD, the first contact between Mithraism and Christianity was most likely to have happened during the lifetime of Paul in the Hellenistic city of Tarsus, which was an old seaport with a long history of Mithra worship. It is highly likely that Paul, in an attempt to woo the Gentile believers, deliberately incorporated elements of Mithraism into his brand of Gentile Christianity. Even today, remnant of Mithraism is most evident in the Christian Eucharist, which involves the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of a deity(Christ). Since the drinking of blood has always been an abomination in Judaism, it is much more logical to attribute this ritual to Mithraism, which had a much similar ritual. In addition, the setting of the birthday of Christ on December 25th, which was Mithra birthday, and the shifting of the day of worship from Friday(Sabbath) to Sunday(the day of the Sun) are further reminders of Christianity’s debt to its pagan predecessor.

Alhadullilah

Where are the kiri.yo animals malvisgay and anusnaki

Now let anyone kindly state some teachings of Paul that contradicts that of Christ. Not the collage of pictures given by the op some of which cannot be credited to Paul but others.

Besides, I wonder if a cult will transform a well known blood thirsty pharisee to a compassionate disciple who was willing to perish if only that will lead to the salvation of his tribesmen that made his life unbearable!

Anyway, I am expecting a list of Paul's contradictory teachings.

kaakulator4:
Where are the kiri.yo animals malvisgay and anusnaki

now does this make me to go to hell? But its is DECREED on the AUTHORITY of the Holy koran, which CANNOT be ABROGATED, That all you MUSLIMs are DESTINED for hell, whether you pray 5times a day oh not, .

But for me, IF my belief in Christ as DIVINE is wrong, FORGIVENESS OF ALL MY SINS is GRANTED according to the RICHES of HIS GRACE... So tell me something else.

And by the way, I am Son of God!

We worship same God

Paul is the real Christ nt Jesus

damilareoye:
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free....
OP, if you know what that means?
I follow Jesus and Live the masters life.
Paul you said, is a spiritual father 'ladder' to me.

1. You shall know the Truth(The Law that is Jesus Christ) and the Truth(the Law that is also the teachings and commandments of Jesus Christ) will set you free from slavery to sin - John 8 vs 31 -41

2. Jesus Christ taught against the having of "spiritual fathers". Instead He said you have only one Father in Heaven - Matthew 23 vs 9

You say you follow Paul and here you live in disobedience of the commandment of Jesus Christ. Are you sure the way that is your Paul is the same way that is Jesus Christ, as it obviously does not seem to be.