FOURTH PART
Jesus' Teachings
Although more books have been written on Jesus than on any other historical figure, it doesn't exist, strange as it may seem, any information as how he was physically.
The American pathologist Robert Bucklin, a coroner at Los Angeles County Hospital, analyzing the negatives of pictures taken from the Shrould of Turin, described the portrayed person as a Caucasian measuring about 1.80 m of height and weighing around 80 kilos. It happens that it is very doubtful that the Shrould is from the first century and, on the other hand, 1.80 m would be an exceptional height for a Semite of that period. Thus, we continue ignoring if Jesus had a fair or a dark skin, was tall or short, thin or fat and what was the color of his eyes and hair.
Of all doubts concerning the existence of the historical Jesus, that absence of information on how he was physically is, in our opinion, the most striking. No document that deserves a minimum of credibility mentions a single word about it. A rude omission, from an historical, theological or even mythological point of view.
Perhaps, but just perhaps, those who wrote about Jesus, decided that his physical aspect should remain a mystery. Therefore, each one is allowed to build up the image of the Nazarene as he (or she) pleases.
There is also, practically, no reference as to Jesus’ activities or whereabouts, previous to the time he began to preach in Galillee. Luke mentions that when the Nazarene was twelve years old he was taken to Jerusalem by his parents and, in a certain occasion, they found him in the Temple, dialoguing with the scholars of the Law. (Lucas,2,41-48). Otherwise, the Gospels silence until Jesus' biblical appearance, when he was 30 or 33 years old.
Some authors have written about the existence of evidences - that were never appropriately documented - that, from 13 to 29 years of age, Jesus lived in the East, where he absorbed the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism.
Other sources - also of doubtful authenticity - claim that Jesus lived among the essenes, who introduced him to the scriptures and to some mystic knowledge.
But all these sayings are very vague, very indefinite. Most probably Jesus just remained, during that whole period, in the Galillee, helping Joseph in his occupation as a carpenter.
Our Jesus, the historical Jesus, was a typical human who preached, but also shared the way of living of his contemporaries and expressed all the characteristic emotions of a man. Just before being arrested in Getsemani, he displayed sadness and even fear, foreseeing the closeness of his death. And it was then that, demonstrating an unshaken faith in a heavenly Father, as well as his high degree of spirituality, he controled his feelings and proceeded, with resignation, to the encounter of his final destiny...
After a meticulous study of the four Gospels, we used our inspiration and our personal vision of Jesus, as instruments to distinguish between what he really said and what was attributed to him.
Many times the Nazarene repeated the same theme, using parables and different examples. What is understandable, once we consider that he spoke in several places and, almost always, to simple and illiterate people, who had difficulty in assimilating the new ideas that he brought them. But the intelligence and cunning of Jesus become evident when he spoke to more educated people. When, for instance, he dealt with the pharisees, who were always soughing to contradict or to commit him ( Matthew,22,15-21 / Mark,12,13-17 / Luke,20,29-26). Because they feared that Jesus’ preaching might be a threat to their authority or sound unpleasant to the Roman conquerors' ears.
Thus, we opted to leave aside countless citations, for being repetitive or because of their improbability. And, seeking quality and not quantity, we just welcomed those messages that, said in an explicit way or as parables, were the ones that touched, more deeply, our mind and our heart.
Because all the phrases we chose can be found in any bible, in order to save time, we just mention their biblical reference and, in some cases, add our personal comments.
01 Let us go and fish people (Matthew,4,18-20)
02 The Sermon of the Mountain (Matthew,5-7)
03 - The importance of love and fraternity (Matthew,5,21-24)
Comment - In this lesson, Jesus places fraternity and love for a brother (or a fellow human being) above adoration to God. A philosophical position that, as we will see later, is in absolute agreement with the principles of Jesuism.
04 - Love your friends and your enemies (Matthew,5,43-45)
Comment - Once again Jesus points out that unconditional love is an open door to heavens. In other words, he continues detaching man's virtues as a road to salvation. We insisted on reiterating that this is, also, one of the essential points of our (Nazarene) doctrine.
05 - About charity (Matthew,6,2-4)
06 - On the habit of judging others (Luke,6,37-38)
07 - Beware of false prophets (Luke,6,43-44)
Comment - In spite of this message, the number of false prophers and pseudo ‘curators’ keeps increasing, mostly among the adepts of the renewed or Pentecostal sects.
08 - The golden rule
The origins of that rule remount to China, about 500 years before the Christian era, as one of Confucius’ maxims: "Don't do to others what you don't want to be done to you"
Jesus (or the Bible) presents us several variants of that rule: "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" (Matthew,19,19) "I give you this new commandment: love each other" (John,13,34) " If you love just those who love you, why wait for some divine reward? Love (also) your enemies... and you will have a divine reward" (Luke,6,27)
09 - Come to me and rest (Matthew,11,28-30)
10 - On impurity (Matthew,15,10-20)
11 - Give to Caesar that belongs to him (Mark,12,13-17)
12 - The parable of the lost son (Luke,15,11-32)
13 - Asking to the Father
14 - The man and the sabbath
15 - Either God or money
Comment - This message is totally ignoref by a bunch of pastors who confound donation with robbery !
16 - The adulterous woman (John,8,1-11)
Comment - Although this passage is only found in John, it seems legitimates to us, for its compatibility with the senses of forgiveness and charity, so typical of Jesus.
17 - In the garden of Getsemani
Comment - This is so beautiful and touching that we shall reproduce it here, entirely:
Knowing that the hour of suffering and death was close, Jesus stood back from the disciples, knelt down and prayed: "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup (of suffering) away from me". He pauses and then says: "Nevertheless is not my will but Yours that must be done". Then an angel appeared to encourage him. In great affliction, Jesus still prayed with more vigor. His perspiration was as drops of blood falling on the ground... (Luke,22,42-44)
18 - Who is incoherent, Jesus or the evangelists ?
Although the Bible is just a literary book, without any obligation with historical precision, a few parts of the New Testament compromise the ethical image of the human Jesus. That is why if one accepts all the Gospel’s texts as faithfully expressing the messages of the Nazarene, then , in certain parts, Jesus would look incoherent. What, as far as we are concerned, is inadmissible.
Let us take the example that we consider the most striking of them all:
On one side we have :
"Love your neighbor as you love yourself" (Matthew,19,19).
or
"I give you this new commandment: love each other" (John,13,34)
or
"Follow me and learn from me. Because I’m kind and I have a humble heart, you shall find rest by my side" (Matthew,11,29-30)
or
"Love your enemies...be perfect in love" (Matthew,5,44-48);
And, on the other side:
"Do not think that I came to bring peace to the world. I didn't come to bring peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies will be those of his own household " (Matthew,10, 34-36)
A phrase that recalls, not the God of our Jesus, but Jove, of the Old Testament, the Hebrew ‘Lord of the arms’, the one who said to Zechariah: "...and the parents will kill the son when he pretends to act like a prophet..." (Zechariah,13,3)
It is hard to imagine that the man who gave us the Sermon of the Mountain, who preached love and charity, could have said what is in Matthew,10,34-36. If he did it, then Jesus would have an ambiguous and incoherent way of thinking. But, when one analyses his messages as a whole, one feels that such a text does not fit the profile of the Nazarene.
One thing is to expel from the Temple those who profane it. Another, quite different, is to preach hate among people of the same family. This, coming from Jesus, is inconceivable.
It does not matter that one hundred thousand orthodox theologians, in an attempt to preserve the infallibility of each word in the Bible, come out with the justification that the Nazarene spoke symbolically. It would be a waste of time.
Whoever inserted that sentence into the Gospel, knew nothing about the ethical and philosophical profile of Jesus!
Another example of a citation incompatible with Jesus ethics and teophilosophy:
Lucas says in chapter 14, verse 26: "If somebody comes to me and he doesn't HATE his father and his mother... he cannot be my disciple...". The Jesus that we imagine would never have made such statement ! Matheus tries to soft the expression, by substituting, in chapter 10, verse 37, the word "HATE" for the sentence " HAS GREATER AFFECTION ".
Even though, it is still, for us, very difficult to accept that any of these words were utterd by the Nazarene...
Thefore, as we see it, the Bible, written by so many authors and submitted, through the centuries, to so many alterations, ended up a contradictory, heterogeneous and, in these particular examples, a very incoherent book.
19 - Comments on the last words of Jesus
Three different phases are referred by the evangelists.
According to the first and second Gospels, Jesus evoked the first verse of psalm 22, by shouting the famous phrase: "Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabachtham?" "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matthew,27,46 / Mark,15,34)
Luke, perhaps afraid that such a "human" phrase from Jesus, could embarrass Paul’s ‘Christology’, decides to put in the lips of the Nazarene, as his last words, another verse, the fifth of psalm 31: "Into Your hands I commit my spirit!" (Luke,23,46)
And, finally, in the fourth Gospel, a sentence, quite different from the others: "It is finished!" (John,19,30)
Surprisingly, if we place, sequentially, Matthew/Mark, Luke and John versions, we shall have a text suitable to the occasion and fitting Jesus' double condition - of a common man and of a being with the highest level of spirituality possible for a human, almost in the threshold of divinity. First the feeling of abandonment; then, resignation and, finely, the recognition of the end.
"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" ... "Into Your hands I commit my spirit"... "It is finished!"
A beautiful and touching sequence, worthy of Jesus' wonderful duality. A text that, so indicates our intuition, corresponds to what he possibly said, on that Friday afternoon, two thousand years ago, at the Golgota, in the outskirts of Jerusalem...
Jesus’ Miracles
As a religious definition "a miracle is any manifestation of the active presence of God in the history of mankind" (from Aurelio’s dictionary). As a classic definition, "a miracle is a fact or an extraordinary event that is not explained by the laws of nature" (also from Aurelio’s dictionary)
For us, "a miracle is anything that cannot be inserted into the practical, scientific or technical knowledge of the time it occurred". We say so, because an event that, at a certain moment of history, is considered an extraordinary or inexplicable event, may become accepted as a natural fact sometime in the future. As a rule, they are events that evolved from the condition of "miracle" to that of a natural phenomenon, as a consequence of scientific and technological progress.
For instance: if an aircraft traveled the skies of Palestine in Jesus' time, the fact would cause fright and terror and it would be attributed to an intervention from God or from the Demon. Today, it would be a current event that, perhaps, would pass unnoticed.
Thus, what was considered a ‘miracle ' in the past can become just an ordinary event in the present.
The evangelists have attributed many miracles to Jesus. Most of them were inherited, through oral narratives, started by the disciples or by other contemporaneous of the Nazarene, who either attended to them or invented them. Such miracles were described as cures of physical illnesses, cures of demoniac possessions, resuscitations and extraordinary deeds. The ‘healing miracles ' of physical nature, include the cure of a leper (Mark,1,40-42), of two blind persons(Matthew,20,29-34), of a paralytic man (Mark,2,1-12) and many others which were not specified by the evangelists (Mark,3,9;Matthew,8,14-16;Luke,6,17)
How to explain the ‘miraculous cures '?
In the attempt of trying to clarify these phenomena, one must consider several factors :
First - Many illnesses are of a psychological nature. In those cases, the fame that Jusus had of being a ‘healer’, plus the patient’s faith, may explain the disappearance of the symptoms and, in consequence, the "patient" feels he has been cured.
Second - Modern science recognizes that the power of the mind influences certain biological processes. Let us exemplify: if we ask a patient with cancer to visualize, in video or microscope, the phagocytic (devouring) action of his (or her) macrophages (elements of the defensive system of the blood) on the malign cells and we induce him (or her) to believe that, if his (or her) mind conceives that the macrophages are scarvenging more and more malign cells, the same will happen in the circulatory system. In other words, the conviction that your defenses are mobilized against the aggressor, will really increase the defensive mechanisms of the body. This is a scientifically proven fact. Actually, by concentrating on the cure process and by strongly trusting that it will happen, the patient is practicing an act of faith. Therefore, faith can cure or, at least, minimize symptoms and, therefore, reduce suffering.
Third - Many of the cures attributed to Jesus, might have had its dimension exaggerated by the religious fervor of those that attended them. Thus, the simple alleviation of a symptom may gain the status of a radical cure.
Fourth - Finally, we do believe that Jesus was endowed by God with a special gift for healing. Therefore, it is possible that he indeed performed many of the miracles that were attributed to him.
This is an open question, to be answered according to each one’s intuition and faith.
As far as the resuscitations that he would have accomplished, there is, in the Gospel, reference to two cases. The first would have been that of a widow's son who had died recently. Only Luke (Luke,7,11-15) mentions this event. This case is not referred by the other evangelists. A strange omission, since we would be supposedly dealing with a miracle of such dimension. The second has to do with the famous resuscitation of Lazarus. Another episode that, also strangely, it is not cited in the three synoptic Gospels. Actually, the very figure of Lazarus is never mentioned by Mark, Matthew or Luke, although Marta and Maria, who, according to John, were Lazarus sisters, appear, more than once, in the first three Gospels.
Lazarus either is a creation of the fourth Evangelist or, for ignored reasons, his name and supposed resuscitation were remove from the other Gospels, before or during the elaboration and revision processes at Nicea. But, if that was what happened, a new question comes to mind: why were they allowed to remain in John’s Gospel ? An omission from the bishops and scholars, in the hurry to conclude their task, pressed by Constantine ?
In relation to the widow's son, perhaps he was not really dead, just in coma or in a cataleptic state. As far as Lazarus is concerned, due to the great theologian meaning involved, an everlasting debate will probably remain among the scholars. Nevertheless, considering that Jesus greatest feat is strangely absent in the synoptic Gospels, the most probable is that, even if Lazarus did exist, his resuscitation, so thoroughly described by John, probably stands in the land of fantasy, present in the mind of whoever wrote about it, in the famous fourth Gospel.
Of the other miracles attributed to Jesus, three are the most well-known:
1 - Jesus walks on the waters.
We can discourse a little on the phenomenon of levitation, which has been, through the centuries, described by followers of spiritism, parapsychologists and some Christian theologians. Levitation is, in a certain way, a modality of telequinesis, which consists in the displacement of objects (why not also individuals?) from one place to another, thus challenging the law of gravity. Countless cases have been described and, some, confirmed.
We, ourselves, witnessed an experience, in which a lady endowed of paranormal powers, accomplished the feat of moving a relatively heavy ashtray from one table to another.
In the case involving Jesus, he may have levitated. But. there is another possible explanation. As one can infer from the description in the Gospel (Matthew,14,22-32), Jesus and the apostles were in shallow waters when the episode happened. And the report that he would have walked on the waters, might have resulted from an erroneous translation from the Hebraic to the Greek text Because, in Hebrew, the word 'al', means either on or through. Therefore, the disciples could have stated that Jesus approached them, walking ‘through’ the waters and not ‘on’ the waters. The decision of how this must be interpreted depends on the private vision of each person.
2 - The multiplication of loaves and fishes (Matthew,14,13-21)
It is our feeling that we are dealing with a fantasy or a legend, created by the disciples or, later on, by whoever passed this myth to the evangelists.
3 - The transformation of water into wine (John,2,1-10)
Once again, we have an episode only related by the fourth evangelist and, in conformity with his characteristic, in a very meticulous way. An alchemy that, for the absence of other references in the New Testament, also seems to remain in the realm of fantasy.
Conclusion: according to our view point, Jesus, although born a human, acquired, along his life, a high level of spirituality. Therefore, it is not impossible that he has accomplished many of the miracles attributed to him, particularly cure of ailments and expulsion of evil spirits, since he was, as we previously stated, a charismatic man endowed with strong powers of ‘healer’ and ‘curator’. As for the other ‘miracles ', perhaps they must be regarded as products of the disciples' fertile imagination, or fantasies created by the multitude or person who took part in the making of the Gospels or manipulated the original texts.
Nevertheless, the Nazarene, with his immense telepathic force, resultant from his high spirituality, could have made, for instance, that people were convinced they were seeing the color of wine in their cups and feeling the flavor of that drink, although they were simply drinking water. Yes, why couldn't he have so performed ? Today, in experiments accomplished under virtual reality conditions, it is possible to make somebody see or feel something that we determine that he sees or feels, but that, actually, it is not happening.... Identical reasoning could be applied to the case of the multiplication of the loaves... However, it doesn't seem likely that our great and dear pilgrim used his powers just to show off, but, instead, to lessen people's suffering and, sometimes, to cure them of their physical or spiritual illnesses.
The Mystery of the Empty Grave
According to our belief that Jesus died physically, while still in the cross or soon after, and that his resurrection (if it happened) was of an spiritual nature, then we come across the mystery of the grave, where his body was originally placed and was found open and empty, less than 40 hours later.
In order to understands our version on what might have happened in the meantime, we must go through some important data:
The crucifixion process presupposed a period of slow agony and suffering until the lethal end. A period that, sometimes, took days to complete and death rarely occurred before having elapsed eight to ten hours in the cross. In certain cases, to accelerate the end, they fractured the convict's legs.
According to the second evangelist (Mark,5,25,34-37), Jesus' crucifixion began around 09: 00 a.m. and his death (real or apparent) occurred close to 03: 00 p.m. - therefore, prematurely, in relation to what usually happens in such situations.Thus, Jesus would have been in the cross for no more than six hours, a period below that usualy necessary to lead to death. It must be also taken into account that the Romans didn't break his legs. And, although Jesus presented several wounds and excoriations, caused by whipping and nailing of both pulses and one foot, he suffered only one potentially lethal wound: a lance blow in the lateral part of the chest. If such blow didn't reach any vital organ, then it would be conceivable that Jesus, when removed from the cross, was still alive, although out of his senses or in coma, and in severe shock, due to stress, loss of blood and dehydration.
And it is then that Joseph of Arimathea, a rich pharisee, enters into the scenery: as soon as the Roman centurion in command declares that Jesus is dead, Arimatea goes to Pilate and requests permission to remove the body from the cross and bury him. The Procurator immediately agrees. Soon after, Arimathea and his friend Nicodemus take Jesus out of the cross, involve him in white sheets of linen and carry him away from the Golgota.
The attitude of these two men would be incomprehensible, unless one accepts that they had been friends and admirers of Jesus. What, in fact, they seem to have been. One Gospel reveals, at least, a dialogue between the Nazarene and Nicodemus (John,3,1-21) and, according to the fourth evangelist, Joseph Arimathea was a secret disciple of Jesus (John,19,38).
Coincidentally, Joseph was also the owner of a property close to the Golgota. And, in that place, there was a garden where a cave had been dug out of a rock to serve as a grave. And it was to that place that the two noblemen transported Jesus' body, possibly helped by slaves and even by Roman soldiers, to whom rewards must have been given. They placed Jesus on a windowsill and left immediately, closing the entrance of the cave with a stone.
According to a citation of Hugh Schonfield, in his book " The Passover Plot ", they were also helped in that task by a gardener named Philogenius, whose son had been cured by Jesus. The participation of the gardener seems to find confirmation in a manuscript of Egyptian origin, that would have been written by the disciple Bartholomew and can be found at the British Museum in London, under the title : "The Book of Resurrection ".
Anyway, the fact is that, between Friday evening and Sunday morning, Jesus' body disappeared from the grave. If, as we suppose, it didn't disappear for some supernatural phenomenon, then somebody removed it. And reason dictates that the most probable ‘culprits’ were Arimathea, Nicodemus and the gardener.
And, if their intention in transferring Jesus to some more appropriate place, was to try to revive him, (therefore believing he was alive when removed from the cross) then they acted on that same night, ignoring the Jewish law that forbids activities of that nature during the sabath. Because they could not wait. Jesus would not have the slightest chance of surviving until the night of Saturday, without water, food and treatment of his wounds.
So, in the still of that Friday night, they removed Jesus from the grave, without wasting time in putting back the stone that closed the entrance of the cave, and took him him to the place previously prepared.
But the rescue attempt failed, either because Jesus was already dead on arrival or because his physical conditions was beyond any possibility of recovery. The three plotters then decided not to take the body back to the cave, since, as probably dawn was approaching, there was the danger of they been seen carrying a body. Thus, they chose to bury Jesus somewhere else, probably in some solitary place in the very garden of Arimathea’s property.
If, in taking such decision, Nicodemus and his companions had other intention, besides to avoid that their audacious and risky adventure be discovered, no one will ever know.
The fact is that, on Sunday morning, the grave was found empty, giving rise to a series of speculations and, in a certain way, strengthening the idea that Jesus had resurrected and arisen to heaven, as, seemingly, he had prophesied.
This is our daring, but not impossible, explanation, for the mysterious episode of the empty grave. And we are now faced with another challenge to logical reasoning and natural laws: if the Gospels are to be credited, a man, after having died, reappears alive, at least in two occasions. It so happens, however, that we are not dealing with a common man, but with a very special one, endowed with an unique spirituality. And, perhaps, nothing is impossible to the owner of such a power. So, Jesus appears, first to Maria Magdalene and, then, to his disciples. Thus, the prophesied miracle has happened!
An incontestable fact ? No.
Admissible ? Yes. Within a context of total exception of the natural laws, involving God’s divinity and Jesus’ spirituality...
Or the miracle didn't happen and Jesus' encounters were just illusions that became legend. But how to explain this second version?
In the case of Maria Magdalene, it is quite acceptable that, seeing that the grave was empty, she was taken by a strong emotion. And, carried by imagination, in the anguish of reviewing the Master she loved so much, when running across any man that had a minimum of likeness with Jesus, she would easily convince herself of have seeing him.
Now, in relation to the disciples, it is possible that we are dealing with something beyond ilusion: Urged or not by a superior force, they would have been taken by a "esprit de corps" of complicity, expressed by the determination of turning into a legend the man who, for one to three years, they followed, admired, respected and loved. And what better way of doing so than to announce that the Master's prophecy - resurrection - really took place? And the legend had a strong element to sustain it: the disappearance of Jesus' body.
There is no reason to doubt that the disciples sincerely believed that Jesus would return one day. And they would be waiting. But, while waiting, why not "make believe" ? Besides, the resurrection would be a glorious victory to counterbalance the humiliating defeat brought by the crucification of their leader...
The writer Juan Arias makes a similar suggestion, by saying that "the resurrection would be just a myth invented by the disciples and followers of Jesus, who created the first Christian communities, in order to look strong before the other Jews, by the perpetuation of Jesus in history, through the miracle of resuscitation, after the defeat represented by his death in the cross."
Whatever the cause or motivation of the disciples, once it was created, the legend of the resurrection became one of the pillars of Paul’s Christianity. And, until today, this myth sustains the blind faith of the credulous, while it keeps needling the intelligence of scholars and unorthodox theologians.
The Apostle Paul
We have already spoken a lot about this personage in previous chapters, but there are some things still to be said about him. We won't describe, in depth or extension, the adventures and misfortunes of this dynamic and vain converted, nor the epistles that he sent to several communities all over the Greek-Roman world. All this is related with his condition of the greatest Christian missionary of all times, influencing, in a categorical way, the destiny of Christianity, through the diffusion of Christ's message, mainly among the heathens. To accomplish such a task, Paul, accompanied by Barnabas, Luke (the evangelist) and other followers, took three trips to Arabia, Minor Asia and Greece. He also went to Jerusalem (to meet with Peter and Thiago) and, finally, was sent to Rome, where he died.
Paul stimulated the formation of religious nuclei, to spread the Lord’s Word, in the places he visited. And, later, established links among them, thus creating an unified net of Christian churches. With ability, he reduced the attrition among Christian-Jews and Christian-heathen, a fundamental step for the integration of Christianity. Were not for Paul, the Christian theophilosophy - that he transformed into a religion - would have been restricted, as we already mentioned, to a small Jewish sect (the sect of nazarenes), which, probably, would be extinguished after the death of Jesus' first disciples.
From a theological point of view, Paul gave enormous emphasis to the second and third dogmas of Christianity: Jesus' physical resuscitation and man's salvation through total devotion to Christ, in his condition of God’s divine son. Paul developed all his theological work, that he, himself denominated " My Gospel " (Romans,12,16), around an abstract Christ, never around a concrete, human, historical Jesus. Therefore it could be said that Paul is the great difusor of a Christianism, never of a "Jesuism".
From a practical point of view, Paul introduced a principle that, before being accepted, suffered serious contestation from the Christian Jews. The principle by which non-Jewish Christians were exempted to submit totally to the Law of Moses, as well as to obey certain Jewish rituals, as obligatory circumcision and the restriction to ingest certain kind of foods.
Being the author of what we could denominate "The First Gospel ", in its largest part written between 50 and 57 a.D., Paul introduced some of his own thoughts, which were very different from several ones that would later appear in the classical four canonical Gospels. Actually, for having written before the traditional evangelists, he might have served as theological source for them. Certainly, he inspired his friend Luke.
However, some of Paul’s ideas are, for us, quite inadequate even at his epoch; today they would sound totally inadmissible. As, for instance, in showing his unquestionable misogynist condition, he preached that women should always be submissive to men (Ephesians,5,22-24), denied females the right to have any prominent position in ecclesiastical life and prohibited them from even speaking in church meetings, (Corinthians I,14,34-35). Spong (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism) goes a step ahead and suggests that Paul of Tarsus was a disguised " male gay".
Several times, Paul failed to hide his vanity. A clear example is found at a passage in Galatians, where, speaking about conversions in Syria and Cilicia, he says: "they praised God because of me " (Galatians,1,24)
Paul was not a moderate preacher. Actually, he was a cunning and contusing agitator who liked to mix into political affairs. In several occasions, Paul flattered the Romans (perhaps for fear). On the other hand, he strongly confronted both pharisees and sadducees. Twice, at least, he was arrested in Jerusalem.
In 64 a.D., the then Emperor Nero decided to accuse the Christians for the fire of Rome and ordered that all leaders of Christianity be arrested and executed. Some time later, a Roman official recognized Paul in a place called Nicopolis. He was arrested and sent to Rome. After facing two judicial courts, he was condemned to death in 67 a.D. But, as he still conserved the rights of a Roman citizen, Paul had a Roman execution : he was properly beheaded.
