Why “Apostle of Doom”
“So woe to those who write the scripture with their own hands, then say, ‘This is from God.’”1 The name of this site answers the man who did exactly that. This note sets out why we chose it, in shāʾ Allāh (God willing).
The name has stood since 2011, and the book behind this site carries it as its English title.2 Its first word is Paul’s claim. Its second is our verdict, in four counts.
“Apostle” is the title Paul gave himself. He wrote that he was an apostle “not of men, neither by man”, and that he received his gospel from no one: “neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ”.3
We take him at his word. He was an “apostle” appointed by no one who had known ʿĪsā ibn Maryam ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him, and answerable to none of them.
“Doom” names, first, what his teaching did to that prophet’s message. ʿĪsā ʿalayhi al-salām came to the Children of Israel with the worship of the One God and obedience to His law; the gospel Paul preached in its place set the law aside and made its messenger an object of worship. The charges trace that ruin, count by count.
It names, too, the end awaiting those who follow him. The Prophet ﷺ warned, in a ḥadīth (a report of his words) recorded by al-Tirmidhī, that on the Day of Resurrection the arrogant will be driven into
The report speaks of arrogance and names no man. Būlus is nonetheless the Arabic form of Paul’s name, and the arrogance it punishes is the sin of a man who appointed himself. The book weighs the echo in its account of the early Islamic record.
The third count we argue ex concessis, from Paul’s own admissions: al-iḥtijāj bi-kalām al-khaṣm ʿalayh (الاحتجاج بكلام الخصم عليه), arguing against an opponent with his own words, the method that runs through the book.
The New Testament’s word for final ruin is ἀπώλεια, destruction or perdition: the broad way “that leadeth to destruction”, which many enter.5 Paul turned it on those who opposed him, men “whose end is destruction”.6 The name turns it back on him.
Last, Paul was a herald of doom in the plainest sense: he foretold an end within his own lifetime. He told the Thessalonians that “we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord” would be caught up to meet him in the air, and the Corinthians that “the time is short”, since “the fashion of this world passeth away”.7 He died, as did every one of his hearers, and the world went on. The failed prophet sets out the record.
The verdict
The name holds the case in nuce: an “apostle” of his own making, whose message ended in ruin. Of such writing the Qurʾān has already spoken: “woe to them for what their hands have written.”8
The appendices
- Paul in the churches
The church's own portrait of Paul, from the catacombs of Rome to the Vatican, in photographs of its paintings, mosaics and sculpture. This is the image that the illustrations on this site turn against him, set out here in the church's own hand.
- “Luke” versus Paul: the notes of Dale B. Martin
The notes the late Dale B. Martin of Yale left on the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles and the Paul of his own letters, published as he wrote them. Where a reference in them needs correcting, a note says so.
- Why Luke does not seem to know Paul’s letters
Martin's notes end on a question they never answer: why does the author of Acts seem not to know Paul's letters? This essay takes it up from the Greek of Acts and from Martin's own evidence, weighing what the scholars have argued.
- The 2023 edition
The first texts this site published, on 30 July 2023, when it began as an English book in progress. The preface and the first chapter are kept here in the wording in which they first appeared, with the two images that went with them.
- Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:79. ↩
- Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Paulus Perosak Risalah Al-Masih (Seri Kembangan: Langgam Fikir, 2025), whose English title is Apostle of Doom: How Paul of Tarsus Undid Jesus. ↩
- Galatians 1:1; 1:12 (KJV). ↩
- Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī, no. 2492, graded ḥasan (sound) by al-Tirmidhī. ↩
- Matthew 7:13 (KJV). ↩
- Philippians 3:19 (KJV). ↩
- 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17; 1 Corinthians 7:29, 31 (KJV). ↩
- Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:79. ↩