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Literalist Christians tried to quote Paul to endorse their bizarre belief that at the Second Coming the dead would actually rise from their graves in their physical bodies. (G. Ludemann, Heretics, 1995, p. 26). The Literalists Irenaeus and Tertullian both preached the resurrection of the flesh. They did this by a devious exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15, which nonetheless failed to overcome the problem of Paul's categorical denial of this doctrine in 1 Corinthians 15:50.
1 Cor 15:50 50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. (KJV)
It is clear, however, that Paul had a very different perspective. In common with the Gnostics, Paul sees the resurrection as a spiritual event. He writes categorically that "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Rarely do we stop and ponder just what this verse implies. Irenaeus was evidently frustrated about this verse and complained, "All heretics (Gnostics) always introduce this passage" (E. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul, 1975, p. 85). To counter the Gnostic disciples of Paul, someone in the second century wrote 3 Corinthians to cast doubt on 1 Corinthians (F.L. Cross, The Oxford Dictionary Of The Christian Church, 1958, p. 1031). This states: "As for those who tell you that there is no resurrection of the flesh, for them there will be no resurrection (3 Corinthians v 24) We see the same testimony in Ludemann, op. cit., p. 224. The triumph of the Literalists in the fourth century rendered 3 Corinthians unnecessary and the forged text was excluded from the canon.
The Gnostic sage Theodotus calls Paul "the apostle of the resurrection" (Pagels, op. cit., 5, 14). Like the Gnostics, Paul does not see the resurrection as a promised future event, but as a spiritual experience that can happen right now. He writes, "This is it: the duly appointed time! This is it : the day of salvation"
2 Cor 6:2 2 (For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.) (KJV)
Paul's message is clearly mystical and allegorical - he writes of being "raised up to heaven" and "enthroned with Jesus" not as some hoped - for afterlife reward, but as something, which he and other Christian initiates have already experienced.
Eph 2:4-7 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. (KJV)
This is the Gnostic Salvation Message. The writer is speaking about something already accomplished for mankind by God and available to them in the present time. Like the Gnostics, Paul preaches that Christ Jesus' passion is not an event in the past, but a enduring mystical reality. Through sharing in Jesus' death and resurrection each Christian initiate can themselves die to their lower self and be resurrected as the Christ or Logos (W.R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, 1899, p. 64).
Rom 6:4 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (KJV)
Rom 8:11 11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (KJV)
Inge notes: "Paul's mystical language about death and resurrection has given rise to much controversy."
In his Letter to the Philippians Paul writes of "participating in his suffering" and "sharing in the form of his death," and so being "resurrected from the dead."
Phil 3:10-11 10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; 11 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. (KJV)
In his Letter to the Galatians he writes:
Gal 2:20 20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (KJV)
In his Letter to the Romans he interprets Jesus' passion allegorically, writing:
Rom 6:3-7 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7 For he that is dead is freed from sin. (KJV)
J. Campbell, Papers From The Eranos Yearbooks, 1955, p. 238 states: "It lies in the nature of the mystery cult that the mystae undergo the same experience as their god, that, as St. Paul says, they die with him, are buried with him, are reborn with him, and are resurrected with him."
In his Letter to the Colossians Paul describes himself as having been assigned by God the task of delivering his message "in full"; of announcing "the secret hidden for long ages and through many generations," which is now being disclosed to those chosen by God.
Answer for yourself: And what is this great secret?
Answer for yourself: Is it, as we might expect from an orthodox apostle, the "good news" that Jesus had literally come and walked the Earth, worked miracles, died for our sins, and returned from the dead? No! It is the perennial mysticism of Gnosticism and the Pagan Mysteries - that within each one of us is the one Soul of the Universe, the Logos, the Universal Daemon, the Mind of God. the Christ (T. Freke and P. Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, 1999, p. 166-167).
Paul writes:
The secret is this: Christ in you!
Col 1:25-28 25 Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; 26 Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: 27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: 28 Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: (KJV)
When Paul describes his famous vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus it is significant what Paul does not say. Let us look at the verse very closely:
Gal 1:15-16 15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, 16 To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: (KJV)
Notice that Paul doesn't say "God revealed his Son to me," as we would expect from a Literalist Christian. Rather, he writes, "God revealed his Son in me."
Paul's Jesus is not a historical figure, but a symbol of the Universal Daemon of whom we are all limbs. For Paul, "Christ is like a single body with its many limbs and organs, which, many as they are together make up one body."
1 Cor 12:12 12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. (KJV)
Rom 12:4 4 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: (KJV)
In his Letter to the Ephesians he teaches:
Eph 4:25 25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. (KJV)
Answer for yourself: But what do we do with a flesh and blood Jesus?
In earlier articles we made mention of the "Outer Mysteries" and the "Inner Mysteries". The Gnostics claimed that Paul taught that seeing Jesus as a flesh and blood man was only a transitory stage for beginners - the Outer Mysteries for Psychic Christians. Those Pneumatic Christians initiated into the Inner Mysteries understood the Jesus story's allegorical meaning. The Gnostics claimed that this change of perspective from a "physical" Christ Jesus to a "spiritual" Christ Jesus through initiation into the Inner Mysteries is what Paul was referring to when he wrote:
2 Cor 5:16 16 Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. (KJV)
W.R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, 1899, p. 69, states that the heretics (Gnostic Christians) claimed that the stage of worshipping the man Christ Jesus was a stage to be passed through and then left behind as one matured spiritually by ascending from the Outer Mysteries into the Inner Mysteries.
Answer for yourself: Can you find one place where Paul in his original and authentic epistles spoke of a historical Jesus? No! As stated in an earlier article it is "ONLY" in the forged Pastoral Epistles where we find Paul speaking of a supposed historical Christ Jesus.
Since Paul never claimed to have known a historical Jesus "in the flesh," it is indeed difficult to see what else he could have meant!
Answer for yourself: So how could Paul have come to be both the hero of the "allegorical" Gnostics and the Literalists Roman Catholics?
As we saw above the Gnostics taught that the Jesus story works on two levels at once:
The irony of this is opposite of what we expect today; namely that the "literal" is the true and the "allegorical" is the untrue. Just the opposite is the case here. It is the "allegorical" Christ that is real and the "literal" Christ Jesus as a human being is the myth. There is no explicit evidence for the existence for a historical Jesus outside this one book given to us by the "literalist" Roman Church...the New Testament which they themselves produced as a refutation of the earlier Gnostic First New Testament of Marcion. Although it was understood in two completely different ways, the story remained the same. According to the Gnostics, Paul's letters were likewise designed to work on two levels. As the Gnostic sage Theodotus puts it, Paul "taught in two ways at once." (Quoted in E. Pagels, The Gnostic Christ, 1975, p. 7). Theodotus claims that Paul recognized that "each one knows the Lord in his own way: and not all know him alike." (Ibid., p. 5). So on the one hand Paul preached the savior "according to the flesh" as one "who was born and suffered." This was an a "literal" introduction to carnal believers in preparation for their spiritual transformation and resurrection as they were initiated to the Inner Mystery of "Christ in you"! This "kerygmatic gospel" of "Christ crucified" he taught to Psychic Christians "because this they were capable of knowing." But to Pneumatic Christians he proclaimed Christ "pneumatically" or "according to the spirit." Each level of initiate would take from these teachings whatever they were wise enough to be able to hear. Paul himself writes:
1 Cor 2:14-15 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. (KJV)
Let us re-word this verse a little:
The Psychic does not receive the things of the spirit of God; they are foolishness to him; he cannot recognize them, because they are Pneumatically discerned, but the Pneumatic discerns all things.
The Gnostics claimed that like the gospel parables, Paul's letters encoded secret teachings so that uninitiated readers would hear one thing and the initiated another. Only those who had been initiated into the secret oral teachings of the Inner Mysteries were capable of understanding Paul's deeper meaning. As Elaine Pagels writes,
The Valentinians claim that most Christians make the mistake of reading the scriptures only literally. They themselves, through their initiation into Gnosis, learned to read Paul's letters (as they read all the scriptures) on the symbolic level, as they say Paul intended. Only this pneumatic reading yields "the truth" instead of its mere outward "image" (Pagels, The Gnostic Paul, 1975, p. 7).
The followers of Valentinus systematically decoded the allegorical meaning of Paul's letters to show their hidden meaning. For example, in his letters to the Romans Paul uses a simple everyday situation - the relationship between Jews and Gentiles - as a parable for the relation between Psychic and Pneumatic Christians. An initiate of the Inner Mysteries would understand that where Paul writes "Jews" he means "Psychic Christians" and where he writes "Gentiles," he means "Pneumatic Christians". Paul calls himself "apostle to the Gentiles" in Romans 1:5 because he is a Pneumatic teacher of the Inner Mysteries. Yet he comes to teach Christians of all levels, both "the wise [Pneumatics] and to the foolish [Psychics]".
Rom 1:14 14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. (KJV)
As well as "Gentiles," the other code words used by Paul to signify "Pneumatic Christian" include "the uncircumcised," "the Greeks," "Jews inwardly," "Jews in secret," and "the true Israel." (E. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul, 1975, p. 7).
In a striking passage in his First Letter to the Corinthians Paul writes with disappointment of wanting to give his followers Pneumatic teachings, but finding them only to be on a "Sarkic" level of awareness (a term synonymous with "Hylic," meaning the lowest level of human awareness). So he is forced to teach his students only the most basic of Christian doctrines:
1 Cor 3:1-3 1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. 2 I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. 3 For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (KJV)
Now let us read it again with a few choice words:
And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as to Pneumatics, but as to Sarkics, as to those uninitiated in Christ. I fed you milk, not meat, for you were not yet able to take it. Nor are you now - you are still Sarkic. For where there is strife and envy among you, are you not Sarkic. (E. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul, 1975, p. 59).
Likewise in his Letter to the Hebrews 5:11-14, Paul is impatient that his followers are still not ready to move on from elementary teachings. He writes:
Heb 5:11-14 11 Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. 12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. 14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (KJV) (E. Pagels, op. cit., 148-9).
Paul is impatient that his followers are still not ready to move on from elementary teachings. In his Letter to the Hebrews he writes:
Heb 6:1-6 1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, 2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 3 And this will we do, if God permit. 4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word [LOGOS/CHRIST] of God, and the powers of the world to come, 6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance...(KJV)
The "elementary doctrine," which Paul wants his disciples to leave behind, as a Gnostic would expect, includes repentance, faith, baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.
Answer for yourself: What do all of these have in common? All of these involve rituals and dogmas so precious to the Literalist Church but which Gnostics did not esteem. To the Gnostics these were only the Psychic Outer Mysteries of Christianity. Paul wants his disciples, having tasted the holy breath of Pneumatic initiation, to progress to the Pneumatic level of understanding completely and leave behind such Psychic concerns.
Like the Gnostics, Paul teaches that the Mysteries of Jesus supersede the Law of the Jewish god Jehovah.
In Galatians 3:2-3 Paul asks:
Gal 3:2-3 2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (KJV)
Paul's Gnostic Christ Jesus has given Jews a New Covenant or agreement with God and Paul does not hide his low opinion of the redundant old agreement that is traditional Judaism!" He writes:
Phil 3:5-6 5 Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; 6 Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. (KJV)
Paul gives a full account of his justification according to Jewish Law- - circumcised on the eighth day, Israelite by race, of the tribe of Benjamin, and a zealous Pharisee - "by the law's standard righteous without fault." Startlingly, he says in verse 8 that he counts all this as "so much rubbish."
Heb 8:13 13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. (KJV)
Like the Gnostics, Paul does not preach moral servitude to the Law, but spiritual freedom through Gnosis. He declares:
2 Cor 3:17 17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (KJV)
For Paul, "Nothing is unclean in itself" (Rom. 14:1-15). Later Gnostics, such as Carpocrates, quote Paul to defend their own doctrines of natural morality against those who accused them of immorality. After all, it was Paul, not some "loony" Gnostic heretic, who had famously proclaimed: "All things are authorized for me!"
1 Cor 6:12 12 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. (KJV)
Paul even goes so far as to declare Jehovah's traditionally sacred Law, the very basis of the Jewish religion, to be a curse, writing, "All who depend upon works of the Law are under a curse" (Gal. 3:6-11) and "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law" (Gal. 3:13-14). For Paul, as for the Gnostics, through sharing in Christ's suffering and resurrection the Christian initiate can be redeemed from the Law and set free: "Now, having died, we are out of the purview of the Law that kept us down" (Rom. 7:6).
Rom 7:6 6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. (KJV)
Paul claims the Law is the product of the "mediator."
Answer for yourself: What does he mean by calling Jehovah, supposedly the one God and creator of all, a "mediator?" A mediator between what and what?
Literalists have no answer, but Gnostics immediately recognize that Paul is teaching the Gnostic doctrine that Jehovah is the "demiurge," a lesser god who mediates between the ineffable supreme God and creation. Paul certainly does not regard Jehovah as the true God, for he continues: "The mediator is not one; God is one" (E. Pagels,The Gnostic Paul, 1975, p. 107-108).
Gal 3:19-20 19 Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. 20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. (KJV)
According to Paul, people who do not understand the gospel he is preaching have had their "unbelieving minds blinded by the god of this passing age".
2 Cor 4:4 4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (KJV)
In many translations of his letters, the editor adds a helpful little note here to explain the mysterious phrase "the god of this passing age." The general orthodox gloss on this line is that Paul is referring to the Devil, but why he should refer to a wicked angel as a "god" is left unexplained! To the Gnostics it was obvious what Paul meant. He was referring to Jehovah, the lesser god of the Jews, whose years of ruling the Jewish people were coming to an end and who was to be abandoned in favor of the true ineffable God of Jesus and Plato.
The anti-Gnostic letters of Paul have been found to be forgeries, but his authentic letters do oppose others within the early Christian Church who preach "another Jesus."
2 Cor 11:4 4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. (KJV)
These are not Gnostic heretics, however, but pro-Jewish Christians who believe that the Church should maintain the old Jewish custom of circumcision and honor the Law of Jehovah.
Paul attacks them with passion. In his Letter to the Philippians he warns:
Phil 3:2 2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. (KJV)
In his Letter to the Galatians he proclaims:
Gal 5:2 2 Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. (KJV)
Paul goes on to say:
Gal 5:12 12 I would they were even cut off which trouble you. (KJV)
It is not such outer Psychic observances of religious rituals, but inner Pneumatic qualities, which mark the Mysteries Paul is preaching. He claims:
Phil 3:3 3 For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. (KJV)
Let us again reword this with different words:
We are the circumcised, we whose worship is Pneumatic (spiritual), whose pride is in Jesus Christ, and who put no confidence in anything external.
Paul's teachings here are completely in line with those of the Gnostic Jesus. In The Gospel of Thomas, for example, when the disciples ask Jesus about the benefits of circumcision, he explains:
If it were beneficial, their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother. Rather the true circumcision in spirit has become completely profitable (quoted in J.M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, 1978, p. 132, sayubg 53).
What characterizes Paul's rival Christians is not their Gnosticism as opposed to Paul's Literalism, or their Literalism as opposed to Paul's Gnosticism. This is not the issue at all. Their disagreement is over the relationship between Christians and old Jewish traditions, and whether Christianity should be open to non-Jews, and if so in what way. The battles in the Church of Paul's time were not between Literalists and Gnostics, but between Christians with different views on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.
Paul's letters suggest that these more traditional Jewish-Christians live in Jerusalem. They have traditionally been taken to be Peter and others of Jesus' disciples who are mentioned in the New Testament. As we have already shown, this is actually an interpretation of the evidence based on unjustified preconceptions. Let us remember that the Book of Acts as Scholars attest today was a late second century document that appeared after Irenaeus in 180 C.E. Let us not forget who has control of writing these documents at this time; namely anti-Gnostic literalists. Having said that then understand that there is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that there ever existed a Jerusalem Church of the apostles as envisaged by traditional Roman Christianity. In fact, quite the opposite is true. (S.G.F. Brandon, Religion In Ancient History, 1969, p. 268). Indeed, when in 160 C.E. Bishop Melito of Sardis went to Judea to discover what had become of the legendary Jerusalem Church, to his dismay he found not the descendants of the apostles, but instead a small group of Gnostics! (G. Ludemann, Heretics, 1995), p. 31). Apparently this group of apostates was all that was left of the Jerusalem Church that God had so carefully preserved from destruction in 70 CE. Irenaeus leaves us in no doubt that the Ebionites were Gnostics (G. Ludemann, Heretics, 1995, p. 247, note 111). Epiphanius tells us that the Ebionites were vegetarians (W. Barnstone, The Other Bible, 1984, p. 203). This was a practice almost universally associated with Pythagoreanism in the ancient world. These Christians, who called themselves the Ebionites or "Poor Men," had their own Gospel of the Ebionites and also a Gospel of the Hebrews, Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, and a Gospel of the Nazarenes" (G.R.S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, 1906, p. 129). All of these gospels differed significantly from the gospels of the New Testament. It should be remembered that these Nazarenes knew nothing of the Nazareth legend, which was subsequently developed by the "in order that it might be fulfilled" school of historicizers (Ibid., 128-9). This form of Jewish-Christian Gnosticism managed to survive for many hundreds of years (Ibid., p. 126). The Nazarenes were still found scattered throughout Syria and the Decapolis in the late fourth century.
The Literalist propagandist Eusebius explains the fact that the Jerusalem Church had turned out to be made up of Gnostics by claiming that they had obviously all "apostated" from their original Literalism and become heretics - but he does not explain why or how this might have happened! Actually the evidence suggests that the Jerusalem Christians had always been Gnostics, because in the first century the Christian community was made up entirely of different types of Gnosticism!
Answer for yourself: So was Paul a Gnostic? Let's review a little of what we have discovered:
All of the evidence strongly suggests that Paul was indeed a Gnostic just as the Gnostics themselves had claimed all along (see T. Freke and P. Gandy's book: Jesus and the Lost Goddess). Yet, upon reflection we felt that to call Paul a Gnostic was, in a sense, misleading. The more one looks at the evidence the more it seemed that to apply the terms "Gnostic" and "Literalist" to the Christianity of the first century was actually meaningless. From Paul's letters it is clear that the Christian community of this period was deeply divided, yet this schism was not between Gnostics and Literalists, as was the case by the end of the second century. Paul is neither anti-Gnostic nor pro-Gnostic, because in his day the great schism between Gnostics and Literalists had yet to occur.
At the time of Paul, the strands of thought that would become Gnosticism and Literalism were harmoniously co-existing as the Inner and Outer teachings of the Jesus Mysteries. The theological battle that Paul is engaged in is between those initiates of the Jesus Mysteries who want to maintain a traditional and distinctively Jewish identity and those, like himself, who wish to make their new Mysteries completely "modern" and cosmopolitan.
Paul has all the characteristics we would expect to find in an initiator of the Jesus Mysteries. When something is true then "everything" starts to fall into place. We see that repeatedly in these articles. The picture presented of the origins of Christianity explains the evidence, is internally consistent and beautifully simple once you understand Gnosticism and can differentiate between what writings are authentically Pauline and which ones were later anti-Gnostic forgeries in Paul's name.
Now...you should not doubt as to the truth about the authentic Paul being a Gnostic and not a "literalist" as he is made out to be by Irenaeus and other proto-Catholic "literalist" which take the Gnostic New Testament and corrupt it beyond belief and later present the world with a book full of "lies" that render us who learn to cherish such false concepts idolators.