Paul ?
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Paul and Mithraism
3. Mithraism
"Spirit of Spirit, if it be your will, give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again - and the sacred spirit may breathe in me."
Prayer to Mithras
"Mithraism and Judaism merged and became Christianity. Jesus, son of the Hebrew sky God, and Mithras, son of Ormuzd are both the same myth. The rituals of Christianity coincide with the earlier rituals of Mithraism, including the Eucharist and the Communion in great detail. The language used by Mithraism was the language used by Christians. St Paul as the first "Christian" bears much of the responsibility for merging the two in his preaching and teaching, and also comes from Tarsus, a major Mithraist center.
The idea of a sacrificed saviour is Mithraist, so is the symbolism of bulls, rams, sheep, the blood of a transformed saviour washing away sins and granting eternal life, the 7 sacraments, the banishing of an evil host from heaven, apocalyptic end of time when God/Ormuzd sends the wicked to hell and establishes peace. Roman Emperors, Mithraist then Christian, mixed the rituals and laws of both religions into one. Emperor Constantine established 25th of Dec, the birthdate of Mithras, to be the birthdate of Jesus too. The principal day of worship of the Jews, The Sabbath, was replaced by the Mithraistic Sun Day as the Christian holy day. The Catholic Church, based in Rome and founded on top of the most venerated Mithraist temple, wiped out all competing son-of-god religions within the Roman Empire, giving us modern literalist Christianity."
"Mithraism" by Vexen, 2002
"It was in Tarsus that the Mysteries of Mithras had originated, so it would have been unthinkable that Paul would have been unaware of the remarkable similarities we have already explored between Christian doctrines and the teachings of Mithraism. [Footnote:] Tarsus was the capital of Cilicia, where, according to Plutarch [46-125CE], the Mithraic Mysteries were being practiced as early as 67BCE"
"Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [more info], p199
Paul conversion an interpretation of Yeshua's death, his old Mithraistic beliefs and the Messiah/christ confusion combined to forge a new religion distinctly separate from all the various sects of Judaism. The fact that Judas was not killed, but Yeshua (the real king, in the eyes of Paul) led Paul to believe he had been the sacrificed christ sent from Mithra/God.
4. Gnosticism
Jesus Mysteries
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More info and quotes
That Christianity appears to be a combination of Jewish religion and the elements of the pagan Mystery religion of Mithraism is not surprising given that Paul came from Tarsus. Gnosticism is a form of Christianity that taught the same as Mystery religions: That the great son-of-god characters were only symbolic. The Outer Mystery comprised of the publically available information and constructed stories of the religion, whereas the Inner Mysteries were learned by initiates, and revealed that these stories were allegorical and symbolic creations that hold deeper spiritual meanings. Literalists were those who later rejected the inner teachings, forming Christianity as we know it today, as a religion that beliefs in the rebirth of their savior in an actual physical, real, literalist way.
So, was Paul himself a gnostic and a teacher of the Jesus Mysteries, or was he a Literalist? Freke and Gandy conclude that he was neither. A large chapter of their Jesus Mysteries hypothesis is dedicated to showing us the many ways in which early Christianity was a Mystery religion, which was later replaced Christians who only interpreted it's vegetation myths literally rather than spiritually. They conclude that although Paul's genuine teachings were gnostic, Paul was neither for or against gnosticism, because literalist Christianity did not yet exist, so there was no "side" to be on.
"Upon reflection we felt that to call Paul a Gnostic was, in a sense, misleading. The more we looked at the evidence we had uncovered, the more it seemed that to apply to 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."
"Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [more info] p214
That Christianity actually started out as a Mystery Religion is not accepted even by many liberal Christians, but nonetheless the evidence is laid out comprehensively that Paul taught gnostic teachings, not because he was a "gnostic" as opposed to a "literalist", but because Christianity was inherently gnostic from it's conception, another god-man myth like Mithraism, Osiris-Dionysis myths and other common religions of the time. Taking the bullet points from Freke and Gandy (Ibid. p212-213), here is some of the simplified evidence that Paul taught the same things that the Mystery religions, because Paul was himself an gnostic, being an initiate of The Jesus Mysteries:
The Gnostics claimed that their spiritual lineage stemmed from Paul and that they were privy to secret oral teachings taught by Paul to select disciples
Gnostics had many gospels which they attributed to Paul, their 'Great Apostle'
Many Gnostic groups claimed Paul as their founding father
By the middle of the second century the communities to which Paul had written his letters are known to have been centres of Marcionite Gnosticism
Paul's anti-Gnostic Pastoral letters are fakes, forged in the late second century. In the genuine letters Paul is not anti-Gnostic and never mentions an historical Jesus
Literalist Christians of the early second century attack Paul, who they claim 'contradicts' the true teaching and is the 'adversary' of Jesus.
Paul was born in Tarsus, a major centre for the Pagan Mysteries, and often uses terms from the Mysteries in his letters. He even calls himself a 'Steward of the Mysteries of God', the term for a priest in the Pagan Mysteries of Serapis. Paul quotes Pagan sages and teaches Pagan doctrines.
[...] Paul's letters reveal a powerful Gnostic content. Paul regularly uses Gnostic terms. [...] He teaches that Jesus came only in the 'likeness' of flesh. [...] He describes the scriptures as 'allegories' and 'symbolic'. [...]
Whilst the Literalists saw the resurrection as the promise that they would rise from their graves and experience bodily immortality after the Second Coming, Paul teaches the Gnostic doctrine that the resurrection is a mystical experience that can be had here and now.
The great secret that Paul claims to be able to reveal is not that Jesus literally walked the Earth, but the mystical revelation of "Christ in you"
The Gnostics claimed that, like the gospels, Paul's letters encoded secret teachings. Paul taught in 'two ways at once': the Outer Mysteries [and] the Inner Mysteries [...].
What does this mean? It means that the rebirth of Jesus was not thought of as a historical event. This explains why, for example, early Christians had no traditions on the birth of Jesus, nor did they know where he was buried, nor are there any mentions of a historical Jesus by historians. All the elements of the birth narrative that we know are false are easily explained by the fact that they were gnostic stories, designed to teach initiates greater truths than the mere literal value of the stories. All of this not only lends support to the suspected truth that Jesus did not exist, Chrsitianity as a literalist religion based on historical truth is a mitake.
5. Paul's Funky Laws
"The "glad tidings" were followed closely by the absolutely worst tidings - those of St Paul."
"The AntiChrist" by Friedrich Nietzsche
The teachings of St. Paul are infamously misogynistic. The following text is copied and slightly edited version of text from hansss/Pauls-laws.html, which is no longer online.
Don't marry unless you 'cannot control yourselves' (1 Cor. 7:1, 1 Cor. 7:38 - From genuine teachings of Paul)
Don't get divorced (1 Cor. 7:11 - Genuine)
Don't get circumcised (1 Cor. 7:19, Gal. 5:2 - Genuine)
Don't seek freedom from slavery (1 Cor. 7:21, Tit. 2:9 - Former genuine, latter a fake)
Don't worry about eating food sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8:4 - Genuine)
Don't have long hair [men] (1 Cor. 11:14 - Genuine)
Don't wear gold, braids, expensive clothes (1 Tim. 2:9 - Fake)
Don't let women teach/have authority over men (1 Tim. 2:12 - Fake)
Don't give welfare to women under sixty (1 Tim. 5:9 - Fake)
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http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/paul.html#mithraism