Perjury, curses and the whited wall

The Qurʾān asks those who profess faith why they say what they do not do, and calls the gap between word and deed hateful in the sight of God.⁵ ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him) gave the same test: a prophet is known by his fruits.⁶

The counts against Paul examine his doctrine. These two articles examine his conduct, by the only evidence that survives: his own letters and the narrative of his admirer Luke.

Much of that record is already before the reader. Paul’s lie in the service of the gospel, his admission of guile, his readiness to be all things to all men and his indifference to preaching in pretence are set out under Count·II.⁷ The Temple vow, sworn to prove he kept a law he had abolished in writing, is set out there too, and his anathemas on anyone who preached otherwise appear in The vision.⁸

His ledger of sufferings and his contempt for the body and for women belong to Count·III.⁹ This article adds what those pages do not carry.

Perjury, in a lawyer’s words

The Temple vow deserves one addition. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of English legal reform, examined the episode in 1823 as a lawyer reads a case.

He called it “the notorious perjury he was at that moment committing,” a perjury Paul preferred to giving up his intrusion on a community that abhorred him.¹⁰ The judgment comes from a man with no stake in Islam or in the church, applying the ordinary law of oaths.

The wish of mutilation

The curses in Galatians had targets. The men who preached circumcision to Paul’s converts were the emissaries of James, the brother of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, and the Islamicjerusalem community that kept his law. Of them Paul wished that they would go further than circumcision and cut themselves off entirely.¹¹

12ὄφελον καὶ ἀποκόψονται οἱ ἀναστατοῦντες ὑμᾶς.

12I would they were even cut off which trouble you.¹

To the Philippians he called the same men dogs, evil workers and “the concision,” a sneer at circumcision.¹² Of the pillars of the Islamicjerusalem church, James, Cephas and John, he wrote that whatever they were made no difference to him.¹³ The men who had walked with ʿĪsā ibn Maryam were, in his letters, false brethren, dogs and persons of no account.¹⁴

The whited wall

Acts preserves one scene of Paul’s temper. Struck on the mouth at the order of the high priest Ananias, he answered: “God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.” Told that he had reviled God’s high priest, he replied that he had not known who it was, and quoted the law against speaking evil of a ruler.¹⁵

3τότε ὁ Παῦλος πρὸς αὐτὸν εἶπεν· Τύπτειν σε μέλλει ὁ θεός, τοῖχε κεκονιαμένε· καὶ σὺ κάθῃ κρίνων με κατὰ τὸν νόμον, καὶ παρανομῶν κελεύεις με τύπτεσθαι; 4οἱ δὲ παρεστῶτες εἶπαν· Τὸν ἀρχιερέα τοῦ θεοῦ λοιδορεῖς; 5ἔφη τε ὁ Παῦλος· Οὐκ ᾔδειν, ἀδελφοί, ὅτι ἐστὶν ἀρχιερεύς· γέγραπται γὰρ ὅτι Ἄρχοντα τοῦ λαοῦ σου οὐκ ἐρεῖς κακῶς.

3Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, thou whited wall: for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the law? 4And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God’s high priest? 5Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.²

The retraction is as instructive as the insult. Paul, who claimed to be a Pharisee trained under Gamaliel, professed not to recognize the high priest presiding over the Sanhedrin.

Either the claim of training was false, or the excuse was. His next move before the same council, the declaration that he was on trial for believing in the resurrection, Bentham found “a stratagem of the Defendant’s,” a statement that “neither was true, nor by possibility could be so,” since the Pharisees who dominated the council believed in the resurrection themselves.¹⁶

Hatred with a new object

The hatred Saul bore the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, examined in The vision under its rabbinic name, did not end at Damascus. It changed its object. In 1 Thessalonians he wrote of the Jews that they killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, that they please not God and are contrary to all men, and that wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.¹⁷

15τῶν καὶ τὸν κύριον ἀποκτεινάντων Ἰησοῦν καὶ τοὺς προφήτας καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐκδιωξάντων, καὶ θεῷ μὴ ἀρεσκόντων, καὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐναντίων, 16κωλυόντων ἡμᾶς τοῖς ἔθνεσιν λαλῆσαι ἵνα σωθῶσιν, εἰς τὸ ἀναπληρῶσαι αὐτῶν τὰς ἁμαρτίας πάντοτε. ἔφθασεν δὲ ἐπʼ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος.

15Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: 16Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.³

The passage is the seed of Christian anti-Judaism, and it came from a man who called himself a Hebrew of the Hebrews.¹⁸ A letter written in his name goes further, and approves a Cretan poet’s verdict that Cretans are always liars, evil beasts and slow bellies, adding: “This witness is true.”¹⁹

Nietzsche saw in Paul the type: “he represents the genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred.”²⁰ The sinat chinam (שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם, “hatred without cause”) of the persecutor became, in the apostle, a doctrine.

Money

Paul’s letters return often to money, and once to a confession. He tells the Corinthians that he robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to serve the Corinthians without charge.²¹

8ἄλλας ἐκκλησίας ἐσύλησα λαβὼν ὀψώνιον πρὸς τὴν ὑμῶν διακονίαν,

8I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.⁴

The word he chose is esylēsa (ἐσύλησα), “I plundered.” Apologists read it as hyperbole for accepting support. The man who wrote it was defending himself against the charge that his collection for Islamicjerusalem was being handled with guile, and his defence was to admit the guile and claim it was for a good end.²²

The second article turns from what Paul did to what he commanded others to do: about slaves, and about the powers of this world.

1. Galatians 5:12 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
2. Acts 23:3–5 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
3. 1 Thessalonians 2:15–16 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
4. 2 Corinthians 11:8 (SBLGNT; KJV). ↩
5. Sūrah al-Ṣaff 61:2–3. ↩
6. Matthew 7:16–20. ↩
7. Romans 3:7; 2 Corinthians 12:16; 1 Corinthians 9:20–22; Philippians 1:18. See By their fruits. ↩
8. Acts 21:20–26; Galatians 1:8–9; 1 Corinthians 16:22. See The Jerusalem Council and the parting with Barnabas and A self-appointed apostle. ↩
9. 2 Corinthians 11:23–29; 1 Corinthians 7:1. See The letters of a man. ↩
10. Jeremy Bentham (as Gamaliel Smith), Not Paul, but Jesus (London, 1823), ch. XV, “Law Report: Jews versus Paul.” ↩
11. Galatians 5:12. The Greek apokopsontai (ἀποκόψονται), “cut themselves off,” is read by the standard commentaries as a wish for castration. ↩
12. Philippians 3:2. ↩
13. Galatians 2:6. ↩
14. Galatians 2:4; Philippians 3:2; Galatians 2:6. ↩
15. Acts 23:2–5. ↩
16. Bentham, op. cit., ch. XV, section 3, “Trial II.” ↩
17. 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16. ↩
18. Philippians 3:5. ↩
19. Titus 1:12–13. The letter to Titus is one of the Pastoral Epistles, written in Paul’s name by his school; see Count·V. ↩
20. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, §42, trans. H. L. Mencken (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920). ↩
21. 2 Corinthians 11:8. ↩
22. 2 Corinthians 12:16–18. ↩