Saul, Paul, and how Jesus survived Christianity

How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing. Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours. I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it. We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you. (ACIM:T-5.IV.8)

In Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles, I paid quite a bit of attention to the issue of the transition that takes place in the traditions about Jesus, between the teachings of Jesus, of which the Thomas gospel seems to be the most authentic record, and Chrisitianity, named after him, but never 'founded' by him in any meaningful sense of the word, but merely ascribed to him by others and given his name, after his death. Because of the profound intertwining of the Jesus tradition with the orthodoxy of Chrisitianity as it solidified in the next 300 years, for a long time it was the "canonical" books of the New Testament that appeared authoritative.
Only with the re-discovery of the Thomas Gospel, once one understands the timeline of how and why it emerged before the gospels of the New Testament collection, does it become insightful where the break occurs - with the introduction of the theological foundations of Christianity, including the exceptionalism about Jesus as God's only son, to the exclusion of the rest of the sonship as 'adopted sons,' the interpretation of the crucifixion, resurrection (bodily, as Paul assures us), the second coming (the puzzling idea of his returning to the world he claimed to have overcome), the Eucharist etc. All of these concepts were features of Pauline Christianity, and there were many other schools of would-be Christian thought which did not have them, or had entirely different notions. Among other things there were many vocal debates about the idea that the moment of the resurrection was really the moment of the Heavens opening up in the story of the baptism in the River Jordan, under John the Baptist. That particular story would be closer to what is reflected in the Course today. The fact is Pauline Christianity won, because it rendered itself palatable to Caesar, and as a result eventually what we now regard as Roman Catholicism. The fact that it was most successful in stamping out other views, and gained the upper hand politically is no recommendation.

After those original debates died down, Christianity went through a consolidation phase, and then a splintering again. With Vatican II the most obvious attempts at mind control were starting to be relinquished, allowing such an oxymoron as Catholic Bible Scholars, or in general Catholic Bible Studies to exist, just when the first serious translations of the Thomas Gospel began to gain currency, while at another place on the planet the dictation of A Course in Miracles got under way.
Since the time of the enlightenment, thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson in the US had become suspicious of the Pauline material, and smelled a rat. Jefferson likened his efforts to cull Jesus' teachings out of the Biblical materials to salvaging 'pearls' from a pile of 'manure.' Paul he called a 'dupe' and a 'fraud.' This was all very perceptive, but name calling does not solve anything. Jefferson's positive contribution, which was only published posthumously as the 'Jefferson Bible' -- he had called it The Life and Morals of Jezus of Nazareth -- however is a powerful turning point and came very close to anticipating the re-discovery of the Thomas Gospel almost 125 years later.

The interesting thing about A Course in Miracles no doubt is that in it Jesus quotes some of Paul's inspired writing on numerous occasions, while at the same time forcefully correcting the fundamental constructs of the Christian theology of which Paul was the principal architect. In other words, the Course shows also in that regard, what forgiveness means -- the mistakes and the messes are cleaned up and corrected, and only the inspired, 'loving' thoughts are remembered. To that extent then it is never useful to pursue this type of critical scholarship of the tradition, unless it also helps us to see how we all make the mistakes Paul made, and forgive him and ourselves in the same breath. Here, the text of the Course is our guide, as the opening quote shows.

The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity

It seems this book is sold out in the moment, but one of the things I'm trying to do on this site is to offer mini reviews of the books I've consulted in writing Closing the Circle. The most recent printing of this one was at Barnes & Noble, in their reprint series.

I think this is a very important book, because it provides a unique and different look at an old problem. There are a lot of ways to approach the evident differences between the teachings of Yeshua, and the words that the Pauline world of the New Testament puts in Jesus's mouth, all the while framing the stories in a way that underscores Christian theology. Hyam Jaccoby, is a Talmudic scholar, and he approaches it from that angle, and his investigation is pretty convincing. If there is a weakness it is that Jesus is left as a Jewish rabbi, really as the sort of Yeshua that his brother James and the Jerusalem community would have wished he were. He Jewish rabbi, with some unique ideas perhaps, but nevertheless a Jewish rabbi. That was their view. While Paul's view was the one to mythologize Jesus in ways that laid the groundwork for the Christian teachings about him.

Hyam Jaccoby takes Paul to task by pointing out that ideas like Jesus's divinity and the meaning of the Eucharist, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Second Coming all go back to Paul and not to Jesus. In short everything that makes Christianity what it is, originates with Paul, not Jesus. The book is truly very informative, the more so while it does this through analyzing Paul's writing and influence. But the conclusion lines up perfectly with what we now know about the Yeshua of the Thomas gospel, who also dates from before he was made to sound like a Christian.

With the Thomas gospel in hand it seems to me we would differ with Maccoby, in that Jesus did transcend the Jewish mold as well. In short I agree with Maccoby that he was not the proto-Christian Paul makes him out to be, but that does not automatically make him out to be the Jewish rabbi which Maccoby makes out of him, again, really following the mold of how the Jerusalem community under James looked at him.
So this is complimentary reading for someone who is so inclined. I found it tremendously engaging reading, and intuitively quite convincing.

The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity

On Joining the Y

If it wasn't going to be Closing the Circle, perhaps the title of the book should have been Joining the Y, but while on the one hand the first required a subtitle to avoid confusion with other books with the same title, on the other hand Joining the Y might have been mistaken as a membership drive for a venerable youth institution, so Closing the Circle it is. However, I like the graphical notion of the Y as a symbol for the book, namely that it has two legs, ACIM and the Thomas Gospel, which come together in one Jesus. Just another way of looking at it, but it makes the point that the book is all about realizing that in truth, allowing for different times and places, the voice and the message never changed. This was the real promise of the Last Supper and the ritual that has been distorted as the Eucharist - Jesus promises that he is present to us in our mind whenever and wherever at our slightest invitation, exactly because he is not a body, he is not promoting the cannibalistic ritual Christianity has promoted instead. And the cover represents the one Jesus for all time, who is just the symbol of God's Love in our lives. We got lost, but we have the option of wandering back any time we like, and he comes in at our invitation.

The way it seems to be working out in practice is that the painting, Teach Only Love, on the cover really is the shortcut to the book, and I am gratified to see that it is being picked up by readers who previously did not know much about either ACIM or the Thomas Gospel. The first reports I received from Holland was that the picture practically made the book jump into people's arms. And the longer it is out there, I realize that my collaboration with the painter, Sam Augustin, is really a central feature of the book, and the fact that it's so inviting really is an integral part of the book itself. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the painting is better than any lenghty introduction.

Coincidentally, some people have asked why the two sources of light over Jesus' head in the cover art. Sam answered that in his mind that symbolized the omnipresence of Love, which then was focused in the presence of Jesus. It occurred to me that on some level it could also represent exactly the Y I'm talking about in this post, i.e. the two legs of ACIM and the Thomas Gospel, connecting to the one consistent manifestation of Jesus as the presence of Love.

Anything Rather Than The Love Of God

They said to him, "Tell us who you are so that we may believe in you."

He said to them, "You examine the face of Heaven and earth, but you have not come to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to examine the present moment."
(PGoTh, Logion 91)

In Lesson 196 we find the following: The thing you dread the most is your salvation. (ACIM:W-196.9:4) The central theme here is that Jesus teaches us in this saying as well as throughout the Course that our problem is that we are slamming the door in his face, or to put it more formally, we keep choosing the separation now.

To paraphrase it in a different way, he is present to us, always, but we prevent ourselves from seeing him while we keep seeking in the world outside, and in the past, for the explanation of who he is, instead of accepting his presence. Thus the ego's motto in slightly different words is: "Anything rather than the Love of God." The Course may not use quite those words anywhere, but the theme plays throughout, as in here:

It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. (ACIM:T-4.II.1:1-3)

And again this is also the essence of what has been misinterpreted in Christianity as the Eucharist--he is sharing his mind with us, and is present to us whenever we remember him, that is the power of the resurrection. The power of the Course as a path lies in the fact that all of this points towards our responsibility for a behavior in the mind which we can stop. Jesus is outside the door, and it is up to us to stop slamming the door in his face, as he will be glad to come into our mind at our invitation. The ego's problem is we keep looking for him as a body, i.e. outside, and that sets us up for defeat, which played itself out in early Christian history as the constant adjustments about the prediction of the Second Coming, which then became enshrined in various apocalyptic theologies over time. Meanwhile, we safely keep him outside the door, by denying his reality, and through our addiction to conflict we keep him far away from us.

Thus, we indeed do not know how to examine the present, for we are sound asleep in the ego's dreams, unable to be awake to his presence--think also of the apostles asleep in the garden. And here is where the Course is so practical and helpful, for it helps us to learn to see the silliness of our resistance, and how we're causing our own pain. And the practice of forgiveness helps us to let go of the defenses that are designed to keep us in misery.