Saint Paul's Offer to the White People
Saint Paul's Offer to the White People
The anachronistic order of books in the New Testament helps create the illusion that Jesus Christ was a real person. A chronological New Testament would be ordered more like Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John. The original letters of Paul are dated to the time period of 40-70 CE. This interval culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem by the Roman Titus Flavius. Mark, the oldest “gospel”, must have been written after this event because it boasts a knowledge of the destruction of Jerusalem that is exactly corroborated by the Jewish historian Josephus in his War of the Jews.
But while the composition of Mark can be dated as far back as ~75 CE, no Christian texts were known to the public until about 140 CE, more than a century after Christ’s purported ministry. Then a fellow named Marcion published a gospel which is not contained in the Bible, along with some letters of Paul. Marcion’s gospel was even attributed to Paul by his followers. The first letter of Paul in Marcion’s bible was Galatians, and it may indeed be the oldest Christian document.1
The name Galatians explicitly means white people: Paul’s target audience. It literally means “milk” people, from the Greek root Gal-, referring to the Celtic settlers of Anatolia from the 3rd century BC. As seen in my other essays, the name Galilee must be another reference to Galatia. Strangely enough, the word Gallus took on another meaning associated with the exact same region, supposedly preceding the Galatians by centuries, when central Anatolia was settled by Phrygians and their King Midas. Eunuch priests of the Phrygian goddess Cybele were also called Galli.2
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul is a [former] Jew preaching to white people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. Yet Mark depicts Christ as a world famous celebrity on account of his miracle work. This is one of many fundamental disagreements between Paul and the gospels. Despite being the oldest of all Christian writings, Galatians says “I do not preach a gospel according to man, I did not receive it nor was I taught it by a man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:11-12). In other words, Paul says that Jesus Christ was not a man.
Indeed, Paul tells us nothing about Jesus’s life. Elsewhere, Paul suggests that Christ was only witnessed after his death and resurrection, and then only by about 500 people (1 Corinthians 15:6). Paul eschews both wisdom and miraculous signs, arguing instead that Christianity is based on invisible nonsense. It turns out that Paul himself is the only preacher in his letters; he presents Christian teachings as his own. Anticipating a literary competition, Paul says “Some people are troubling you and wishing to pervert Christ’s gospel. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be cursed” (Galatians 1:7-8).
Paul actually identifies himself with Christ extensively. He says he was “crucified” along with Christ. He appears to suffer from chronic pain, boasting to the Corinthians about a “thorn in his flesh”, and telling the Galatians “It was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you” (Galatians 4:13). He says “I am again in the agony of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). He concludes “Let no one trouble me, for I bear the stigmata of Jesus on my body.” (Galatians 6:17). Clearly Paul did not misspeak when he said Christ was revealed “in” him. He makes no claim to have known a teacher or miracle worker. Rather, he rationalizes his own pain.
Paul constantly centralizes his Jewish identity: “You heard of my conduct in Judaism, that I persecuted and wasted the church of God, progressing in Judaism beyond the contemporaries of my race, being abundantly zealous for the traditions of my ancestors” (Galatians 1:13-14). Paul says God revealed Christ in him so that he could preach Christianity to the nations. When this “apocalypse” occurred, Paul says he did not immediately visit the other apostles in Jerusalem, but after three years he went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, the “head” of the Christian church (Galatians 1:18) (John claims Cephas is a nickname for Simon Peter). Thus we can see that according to Paul, the Christian church was in Jerusalem, not Rome.
So what is Paul’s message to the white people, the Hellenic “nations” (aka Gentiles or Goyim) to whom Paul addresses his letters? He says Jesus Christ came “to deliver us from this evil age” (Galatians 1:4). Paul is heavily vested in fulfilling the text of the Jewish Bible; invoking the story of Abraham to argue that salvation comes from grace, not from adherence to the law. He supports his argument with references to Genesis, Deuteronomy, Habbakuk, and Leviticus (Galatians 3:6-15). He also quotes Isaiah when claiming that Christians are like the children of a barren mother (Galatians 4:27). For Paul, Jesus Christ is the very fulfillment of Jewish scripture. He is the Messiah.
But Paul’s reverence for scripture creates the central contradiction in his message: he both affirms the Jewish Bible while also arguing that it is not necessary to follow all its laws. We see why this tenet is so vital to his proselytization, since he tells Gentiles they can be uncircumcised and still saved from their sinful nature. But this also allows Paul off the hook; he literally places Christianity above the law. Paul explains “I was given the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Cephas was given the task of preaching the gospel to the circumcised” (Galatians 2:7). Paul publicly criticizes his fellow Jew Cephas for his hypocrisy in withdrawing from the Gentiles:
I said to Cephas in front of all of them: "If you, a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how will you force the nations to Judaize? We who are born Jews and not wicked Gentiles know that a man is not saved by obeying the law, but by faith in Christ Jesus. We believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be saved by faith in Christ and not by obeying the law, because obeying the law cannot save everybody. If, seeking salvation in Christ, we were found to be sinners, does that make Christ a minister of sin? Not so. For if I rebuilt the things I destroyed, I would become a lawbreaker. Through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been impaled along with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” […]
“If righteousness comes through the law then Christ died for nothing”.
-Galatians 2:15-21
Paul sums up his teaching nicely: “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law” (Galatians 3:25). Paul’s emphasis on transcending the law also figures heavily in the gospels, as Jesus advocates against at least 2 of the 10 commandments by flaunting the sabbath and telling his followers that he will put them at war with their own families. Jesus also spurns the dietary and divorce laws of Moses. In John, he prevents an adultress from being stoned.
Paul sees Christianity as a way for Jews to peddle their influence to the nations, as he proclaims in his letter to the Romans, demanding material tribute from the nations (Romans 15:27). As Paul says, “Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor” (Galatians 6:6). Yet Paul also insists that Jews and Gentiles are equal in the Christian church. The question becomes: is Paul actually interested in “saving” Galatians and other “goyim” through his exegesis of Jewish scripture? Or is he merely fishing for their wallets?
Paul really know how to win hearts and minds. He writes, “Oh foolish Galatians, who bewitched you, you who had the execution of Jesus Christ portrayed before your eyes? […] Are you so foolish? After beginning with the spirit, are you now trying to attain perfection by human effort?” (Galatians 3:1,3). Read what he says carefully. He calls the Celtic white people fools for pursuing human effort. He does not say that they witnessed Christ themselves or knew anything about his life, only that Christ had been “portrayed” to them (by Paul). He chides them for leading their lives instead of believing his self described nonsense and sending money to Jerusalem.
Paul writes, “I swear to God that what I write is not a lie” (Galatians 1:20). But this proclamation is less than reassuring. The implicit benefits for Paul are twofold: he does not have to obey the law, and he gets paid by his followers for doing so.
On a final note, Paul’s letter to the Galatians brings us full circle to the eunuch Galli who hailed from the same region. Complaining about those people who are leading his Galatian marks astray, and in reference to circumcision, he says “As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and castrate themselves!” Jesus remarks about making oneself a eunuch “for the sake of the heavenly kingdom” in Matthew, and church father Origen was apparently one of the first people to take his advice.
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Marcion bears an uncanny similarity to Luke, which in turn is grouped with Mark and Matthew as “synoptic” gospels because parts of them are clearly copied from each other. Luke did not enter the literary record until about 170 CE, along with the book of Acts, which was written by the same individual. These books are dedicated to Theophilus, who was Bishop of Antioch at that time. Some argue that Marcion is a clipped version of Luke; but in fact Luke must be an expanded version of Marcion. Marcion in turn was apparently writing against certain aspects of Mark and Matthew. One good reason to give Mark priority over all the other gospels is its sheer simplicity.
The Phrygians entered Anatolia from the Balkans (per Herodotus), splitting from their cousins the Brygians, meaning that like the later Celts, they were white people. They called themselves Gordum in their own language, a sister tongue to Greek, and established their capital at Gordion, the place where Alexander the Great would later sever the mythical knot. Phrygians were part of the Iron Age invasion of the middle east, and they worshipped an iron meteorite at Pessinus which was supposedly removed to Rome in 205 BC along with the worship of Cybele and her eunuch Galli, at the end of the Second Punic War. Perhaps the meteorite of Cybele (Kubileya in Phrygian) is now part of the Muslim Kaaba (Cube).