took me a minute to realize those two bands were an = / equal sign. at first i was like, “is that supposed to be a military ribbon for the All Gay Army’s Operation: Gay Sex?”
…
anyway, back when i used to be more emotionally invested in what The Bible said about various things, i was introduced to the concept of Pauline Christianity, which evangelical orthodox fuck ups and many other types of complete asshole find to be a confusing or pejorative term. it’s been a topic in theology for a long ass time. simply put, Paul was a Class 1 Prick Deluxe.
he never actually met jesus and spent his life being shitty to the early christian cult members. he was an educated roman citizen and from a very devout/pious/conservative religious order that shit all over everybody else with their public performances of piety. this religious order was so annoying, jesus called them out, by name, repeatedly for being irredeemable assholes who god will not allow into heaven because their hearts are such garbage. then, well after jesus was dead, paul had some kind of “experience” and decided he was now a big, fully-erect christian, actually and spent the rest of his life to make a shitload of pronouncements about what christianity meant and how to be a good christian. paul’s christianity was all quite distinct from what any of the people who met jesus said, but was very easily incorporated into roman life because it was explicitly patriarchal, socially conservative and judgey as fuck. very “servants obey your masters” and “women are not supposed to talk” shit. naturally, as christianity came to become the state religion of rome, it all worked out to give us a cosmology in christendom that is HEAVILY influenced by paul. more than half (14 of 27 books) of the content of the new testament is from this fucking guy paul.
so you can imagine why the term Pauline Christianity can get under the skin of evangelicals in a way they are unequipped to handle. it’s funny because evangelicals tend to be very anti-rome/anti-pope, so its a really intense contradiction to consider that they embrace all the roman baloney paul cooked up more than anything jesus said or did. one time i explained what it was to someone else (myself and another non-religious person just talking about belief systems at a party) and this third party, a pseudo-cool, lib, faux-tolerant brand of christian butt-in and accused me of being a “christ denier” and stormed off.
anyway, i bring this up, because i always notice now when some clown is out there being hateful as shit and wanted to put a jesus stamp on it, it’s always quote from paul. i don’t think i’m christian anymore really, but i still notice that. it’s like a little game of Where’s Waldo i play when i see these people.
It’s fascinating, right? As soon as you ditch the concept of “all these perfectly-selected books are God’s Word and people were just writing it down”, it’s incredibly clear just how much of the New Testament is just Paul telling everybody how it’s gonna be from now on.
The concept of Pauline Christianity is irritating to evangelicals because it implies that things could ever have been some other kind of way.
a very devout/pious/conservative religious order that shit all over everybody else with their public performances of piety. this religious order was so annoying, jesus called them out, by name
There are actually a lot of good contemporary and modern writings on the ‘Pauline Reinterpretation’, or whatever it’s called, where there are good reinterpretations from the Left of Paul’s progressivism in order to reclaim his original thinking that was recuperated and reformulated by the conservative Church tradition. I really disagree with the usual Paul bashing and don’t think Paul is as bad as people, both on the Right and the Left, usually think he is. It’s funny because I meet a lot of Right-wingers that also hate Paul, but I think it generally comes from a lack of understanding. I don’t think it’s much different from how anarchists and Right-wingers both hate on Lenin, for example. Paul was pretty progressive, or even radical, for his moment and had a beautiful vision for Christianity.
And, historically speaking, it is absolutely necessary to include Paul’s authentic letters in the canon as they are the earliest writings we have of Christianity at all. Paul’s earliest epistle clocking at about 50 CE is about 20 years older than the earliest Gospel in the canon, the Gospel According to Mark which is estimated to be written in 70 CE. Although your statement that 12/27 books of the Bible are Paul’s is factually incorrect as we now know that quite a few of the epistles attributed to Paul, and usually very conservative, are inauthentic. 12/27 books are Pauline but not necessarily Paul’s. In fact, even his authentic letters are analyzed to have later interpolations that change the whole meaning of passages as well. Paul was butchered, in my opinion.
I don’t remember all of the books on the subject, or even the term for it at the moment, but I would really recommend checking them out for a better grasp of the Pauline project. Taubes’ The Political Theology of Paul, and Badiou’s St. Paul are both great places to start and both leftist philosophers.
This has been on my mind a lot lately and I had no idea that it had a name.
Everything I know about what Jesus taught can roughly be summed up as:
person asks Jesus very specific question
Jesus responds with obscure, abstract story about a related situation
And it blows me away that millions of people think “oh yeah, Jesus gave us so many clear cut rules to follow!” when in actuality he said like 2 things that were not obfuscated by a parable, including:
The most important thing to do is love me and to love each other and yourself equally (Matthew 22:37-40)
By loving each other you love me (Matthew 25:35-40)
At least, that’s what I can remember
about what he said from my time going to Sunday school. If I’m misremembering something, please let me know but otherwise I’m convinced that evangelicals desperately want me to think that Jesus was far whiter and far more hateful than he actually was
took me a minute to realize those two bands were an = / equal sign. at first i was like, “is that supposed to be a military ribbon for the All Gay Army’s Operation: Gay Sex?”
…
anyway, back when i used to be more emotionally invested in what The Bible said about various things, i was introduced to the concept of Pauline Christianity, which evangelical orthodox fuck ups and many other types of complete asshole find to be a confusing or pejorative term. it’s been a topic in theology for a long ass time. simply put, Paul was a Class 1 Prick Deluxe.
he never actually met jesus and spent his life being shitty to the early christian cult members. he was an educated roman citizen and from a very devout/pious/conservative religious order that shit all over everybody else with their public performances of piety. this religious order was so annoying, jesus called them out, by name, repeatedly for being irredeemable assholes who god will not allow into heaven because their hearts are such garbage. then, well after jesus was dead, paul had some kind of “experience” and decided he was now a big, fully-erect christian, actually and spent the rest of his life to make a shitload of pronouncements about what christianity meant and how to be a good christian. paul’s christianity was all quite distinct from what any of the people who met jesus said, but was very easily incorporated into roman life because it was explicitly patriarchal, socially conservative and judgey as fuck. very “servants obey your masters” and “women are not supposed to talk” shit. naturally, as christianity came to become the state religion of rome, it all worked out to give us a cosmology in christendom that is HEAVILY influenced by paul. more than half (14 of 27 books) of the content of the new testament is from this fucking guy paul.
so you can imagine why the term Pauline Christianity can get under the skin of evangelicals in a way they are unequipped to handle. it’s funny because evangelicals tend to be very anti-rome/anti-pope, so its a really intense contradiction to consider that they embrace all the roman baloney paul cooked up more than anything jesus said or did. one time i explained what it was to someone else (myself and another non-religious person just talking about belief systems at a party) and this third party, a pseudo-cool, lib, faux-tolerant brand of christian butt-in and accused me of being a “christ denier” and stormed off.
anyway, i bring this up, because i always notice now when some clown is out there being hateful as shit and wanted to put a jesus stamp on it, it’s always quote from paul. i don’t think i’m christian anymore really, but i still notice that. it’s like a little game of Where’s Waldo i play when i see these people.
It’s fascinating, right? As soon as you ditch the concept of “all these perfectly-selected books are God’s Word and people were just writing it down”, it’s incredibly clear just how much of the New Testament is just Paul telling everybody how it’s gonna be from now on.
The concept of Pauline Christianity is irritating to evangelicals because it implies that things could ever have been some other kind of way.
Pharisees, right?
Yeah, he says that in Acts 23:6.
Attributed to him anyway.
There are actually a lot of good contemporary and modern writings on the ‘Pauline Reinterpretation’, or whatever it’s called, where there are good reinterpretations from the Left of Paul’s progressivism in order to reclaim his original thinking that was recuperated and reformulated by the conservative Church tradition. I really disagree with the usual Paul bashing and don’t think Paul is as bad as people, both on the Right and the Left, usually think he is. It’s funny because I meet a lot of Right-wingers that also hate Paul, but I think it generally comes from a lack of understanding. I don’t think it’s much different from how anarchists and Right-wingers both hate on Lenin, for example. Paul was pretty progressive, or even radical, for his moment and had a beautiful vision for Christianity.
And, historically speaking, it is absolutely necessary to include Paul’s authentic letters in the canon as they are the earliest writings we have of Christianity at all. Paul’s earliest epistle clocking at about 50 CE is about 20 years older than the earliest Gospel in the canon, the Gospel According to Mark which is estimated to be written in 70 CE. Although your statement that 12/27 books of the Bible are Paul’s is factually incorrect as we now know that quite a few of the epistles attributed to Paul, and usually very conservative, are inauthentic. 12/27 books are Pauline but not necessarily Paul’s. In fact, even his authentic letters are analyzed to have later interpolations that change the whole meaning of passages as well. Paul was butchered, in my opinion.
I don’t remember all of the books on the subject, or even the term for it at the moment, but I would really recommend checking them out for a better grasp of the Pauline project. Taubes’ The Political Theology of Paul, and Badiou’s St. Paul are both great places to start and both leftist philosophers.
This has been on my mind a lot lately and I had no idea that it had a name.
Everything I know about what Jesus taught can roughly be summed up as:
And it blows me away that millions of people think “oh yeah, Jesus gave us so many clear cut rules to follow!” when in actuality he said like 2 things that were not obfuscated by a parable, including:
At least, that’s what I can remember about what he said from my time going to Sunday school. If I’m misremembering something, please let me know but otherwise I’m convinced that evangelicals desperately want me to think that Jesus was far whiter and far more hateful than he actually was