THE OPINIONS OF SOME FAMOUS MEN
Walter Bauer, “If one may be allowed to speak rather pointedly, the Apostle Paul was the only Arch-Heretic known to the apostolic age.”
Ferdinand Christian Baur, “What kind of authority can there be for an ‘apostle’ who, unlike the other apostles, had never been prepared for the apostolic office in Jesus’ own school but had only later dared to claim the apostolic office on the basis of his own authority? The only question comes to be how the apostle Paul appears in his Epistles to be so indifferent to the historical facts of the life of Jesus … He bears himself but little like a disciple who has received the doctrines and the principles which he preaches from the Master whose name he bears.”
Jeremy Bentham, “It rests with every professor of the religion of Jesus to settle within himself to which of the two religions, that of Jesus or that of Paul, he will adhere.”
Martin Buber, "The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is completely opposed to Paul."
Rudolf Bultman, “It is most obvious that Paul does not appeal to the words of the Lord in support of his…views. When the essentially Pauline conceptions are considered, it is clear that Paul in not dependent on Jesus. Jesus’ teaching is – to all intents and purposes – irrelevant for Paul.”
Will Durant, "Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.... Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known.... Paul replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue. It was a tragic change."
Robert Frost, “Paul, he’s in the Bible too. He is the fellow who theologized Christ almost out of Christianity. Look out for him.”
Mahatma Gandhi, “I draw a great distinction between the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus and the Letters of Paul. Paul’s Letters are a graft on Christ’s teachings, Paul’s own gloss apart from Christ’s own experience.”
Kahil Gibran, "This Paul is indeed a strange man. His soul is not the soul of a free man. He speaks not of Jesus nor does he repeat His Words. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the Name of One whom he does not know."
V.A. Holmes-Gore, “Let the reader contrast the true Christian standard with that of Paul and he will see the terrible betrayal of all that the Master taught.... For the surest way to betray a great Teacher is to misrepresent his message.... That is what Paul and his followers did, and because the Church has followed Paul in his error it has failed lamentably to redeem the world.... The teachings given by the blessed Master Christ, which the disciples John and Peter and James, the brother of the Master, tried in vain to defend and preserve intact were as utterly opposed to the Pauline Gospel as the light is opposed to the darkness."
Thomas Jefferson, "Paul was the first corrupter of the Doctrines of Jesus."
Carl Jung, "Saul's [Paul's name before his conversion] fanatical resistance to Christianity... was never entirely overcome. It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in."
Soren Kierkegaard, "In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ the Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ."
Helmut Koester, "Paul himself stands in the twilight zone of heresy. In reading Paul, one immediately encounters a major difficulty. Whatever Jesus had preached did not become the content of the missionary proclamation of Paul.... Sayings of Jesus do not play a role in Paul’s understanding of the event of salvation.... Paul did not care at all what Jesus had said.... Had Paul been completely successful very little of the sayings of Jesus would have survived."
Ernest Renan, "True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology."
George Bernard Shaw, "There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus .... There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus ... It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus ... was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith."
Albert Schweitzer, "Where possible Paul avoids quoting the teaching of, 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 followers the 'Our Father.' Even where they are especially relevant, Paul passes over the words of Jesus."
Bishop John S. Sprong (Episcopal Bishop of Newark) "Paul’s words are not the Words of God (Yahweh). They are the words of Paul- a vast difference" (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 104, Harper San Francisco, 1991)
William Wrede, "The obvious contradictions in the three accounts given by Paul in regard to his conversion are enough to arouse distrust.... The moral majesty of Jesus, his purity and piety, his ministry among his people, his manner as a prophet, the whole concrete ethical-religious content of his earthly life, signifies for Paul's Christology nothing whatever.... The name 'disciple of Jesus’ has little applicability to Paul.... Jesus or Paul: this alternative characterizes, at least in part, the religious and theological warfare of the present day."
Have you ever given thought to where the saying of “rob Peter to pay Paul” came from? Paul substituted faith in Zeus and his blood sacrifice (THE HARLOT CHURCH’S GRACE ONLY MESSAGE) for obedience to Yahshua and his teachings.
