Paul played a leading part in distorting the interpretation of the earlier scriptures to legitimize the teaching he devised. He abandoned the law of the Torah, and he also used it, cunningly, as a tool to mislead. Verses of the Torah are often quoted, but their meaning is changed to support a doctrine contrary to the original intent of revelation.
In one of his letters Paul quotes the passage on the ease of keeping God’s commandment10 but interprets it in Romans 10:6–8 as a call to faith without law, and so cancels the obligation of the law.11 He likewise manipulates the context of the punishment of a hanged criminal12 in Galatians 3:13, supposedly to prove that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him) bore a curse on behalf of humanity.13
Tested and found liars
In the message of Revelation, delivered through the writing of John of Patmos, the church at Ephesus is praised for having tested those who claimed to be apostles and found them liars:
2I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:1
The statement reflects the caution and firmness of the early communities of Asia Minor in rejecting figures who brought teaching that departed from the true teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam.14 What is striking is Paul’s own admission in one of his last letters:
15This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes.2
The region meant includes the chief cities of Ephesus, Smyrna and Pergamum, all named in Revelation. The Revelation narrative about the rejection of “false apostles” takes place in the same region where Paul admits he was abandoned. The connection cannot be brushed aside, above all when we consider how few figures in early Christian history claimed to be an apostle to the Gentiles besides Paul himself.
Some will object that the verse in Revelation does not refer to Paul explicitly. The absence of a name leaves room for interpretation from context, and Paul’s own testimony to rejection in Asia Minor strengthens the reading that he was the one rejected by the community praised for rejecting false apostles.
Workers of lawlessness
Paul’s teaching also bears closely on the picture Jesus himself gave when he warned those who claim to know him yet live in violation of the law:
21Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.3
The Greek anomía (ἀνομία, Strong’s G458) here means “without law” or “rejection of law” in the Greek lexicons.15 In this context, those who abolish the obligation of the Torah fall among the “workers of iniquity” refused entry to the Kingdom of Heaven.
In his letters Paul goes beyond denying the need for the law and gives it a negative connotation, as an obstacle, a burden and a curse. He states: “As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.”16
And again: “Christ is the end of the law.”17 Such teaching plainly contradicts the command of Jesus Christ that not one jot of the law shall pass until heaven and earth pass away.18
Some will defend Paul by pointing to statements such as “we establish the law”19 as proof that he upheld it. That is rhetoric only.
Set beside statements such as “ye are not under the law, but under grace,”20 Paul’s real meaning becomes plain: the Torah ceases to bind. The argument that Paul brought the gospel to Gentiles and that the law therefore no longer applied is weak too, because Jesus Christ said all his teaching must be taught to “all nations,”21 without exception.
More troubling, Paul positions himself as more than a teacher. He says “I have begotten you through the gospel”22 and tells his followers to imitate him.
That contradicts the prohibition of Jesus Christ himself against calling anyone “father” in a spiritual sense on earth.23 The Revelation narrative that praises the rejection of false apostles, Paul’s admission that all in Asia had abandoned him, and the testimony that violators of the law will be rejected by Jesus himself together form a firm textual conclusion: Paul belongs among those whose teaching the early church, and Jesus, rejected.
Typology
Beyond the distortion of particular verses, Paul created a systematic method of interpretation known as typology. Under it, figures, events or laws in the Torah are treated as shadows (typos, τύπος) of the Christian teaching he claimed as their fulfillment (plērōma, πλήρωμα).24
Modern study confirms that this symbolic reading began with Paul and became one of the earliest and most influential foundations of the Christian tradition.25 Examples of Paul’s typology include:
1. Adam as a shadow of Christ. In Romans 5:14 Paul claims that Ādam (ʿalayhi al-salām) is “the figure of him that was to come.”
The interpretation became the basis of the doctrine of Original Sin and the need for redemption through crucifixion, which no prophet ever taught. Through the analogy Paul introduced the idea that the fall of humanity began with one individual and salvation comes through one new individual, Christ. Adam brings death, Christ brings life: the basic structure of Paul’s soteriology, which ties spiritual salvation to figurative history.
2. Hagar and Sarah as symbols of two covenants. In Galatians 4:24–26 Paul reads the story of Hagar and Sarah as an allegory of two covenants: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children into bondage, the other from “Jerusalem which is above,” bearing children into freedom.
Hagar stands for the old covenant bound to the law, Sarah for the new covenant in Christ. By casting Hagar as bondage and Sarah as spiritual freedom, Paul frames the whole of scriptural history as a narrative that ends in the supremacy of the gospel. Historical figures are reread allegorically to support the theological shift from law to faith, from rule to grace.
3. The rock in the wilderness as Christ. In 1 Corinthians 10:4 he claims that the rock that gave water during the wandering of the Children of Israel26 was a symbol of Christ: “that Rock was Christ.”
The event is read directly as a manifestation of Christ’s presence with the people in the distant past. The interpretation is exegesis ex post: the conclusion is fixed, the presence of Christ before his incarnation is assumed, and the text is read until it yields it. Paul plants the pre-existence of Christ into the history of Israel, so that the whole past becomes a shadow of Christ’s role in the history of salvation, a reading that depends on a theological narrative fixed in advance, and on none of the original context.
4. The Passover lamb as a redeeming sacrifice. In 1 Corinthians 5:7 Paul equates Jesus with the Passover lamb: “Christ our passover (Christos to pascha hēmōn, Χριστὸς τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν) is sacrificed (etuthē, ἐτύθη) for us.”
With that statement he made the sacrificial law of the Torah the basis of a doctrine of redemption from sin through human blood. He ties the death of Christ to the annual sacrifice of Jewish tradition and makes the Passover a symbolic prelude to the crucifixion. That allows Paul to construct a unity between the ritual law of the Torah and the new dogma of salvation, with Christ replacing the whole system of animal sacrifice.
The death of Christ is then the fulfillment of a divine script (to thelēma tou Theou, τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Θεοῦ) fixed from the beginning.
5. The crossing of the Red Sea as Christian baptism. In 1 Corinthians 10:2 Paul reads the crossing of the Red Sea by the Children of Israel as a symbol of Christian baptism.
A collective historical experience is reread as a figure of the rite of baptism (baptisma, βάπτισμα) into the new covenant. The interpretation aims to show continuity, or more precisely a transfer of meaning, from God’s saving acts in history to the rites of the church, and it lends legitimacy to Christian practice by attaching it to an earlier narrative whose original meaning was different. It reflects a consistent interpretive strategy in Paul’s writings: rearranging history so that it fits an existing theological frame.
6. The Ark of the Covenant as a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice. Although not stated explicitly in Paul’s letters, the typological reading of the Ark of the Covenant has been widely accepted in the Pauline theological tradition as a shadow of Jesus’ role as the sacrifice of atonement.
The cover of the Ark (הַכַּפֹּרֶת, ha-kappōret) was the place sprinkled with blood on Yom Kippur, marking atonement between God and the Children of Israel. In the Septuagint the term is rendered ἱλαστήριον (hilastērion), and Paul uses that very word:
25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;4
The verse shows how Paul made the body of Jesus a substitute for the kappōret in the Temple, transferring the concept of atonement from the sacrificial system of the Torah to the crucifixion. The interpretation became the basis of the doctrine of blood redemption, and it also distorted the original meaning of the law by importing a foreign element of divinity into the function of the Ark of the Covenant.
Interpretation of this kind became the basis of church culture to this day, where allegory and typology continue to be used to legitimize teachings far removed from the literal meaning of revelation.27
The Tanakh rewritten
Paul also played a chief part in shaping the New Testament through the distortion of the Jewish scriptures (the Tanakh) in support of a theology that departed from the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (ʿalayhi al-salām). Cunningly, his followers or he himself twisted direct quotations from the Old Testament to attract Gentiles and cut the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam from its Jewish roots.
One chief example is the quotation of Jeremiah 31:31–34 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose authorship is attributed to Paul although textual critics dispute it.28 The theology of the letter reflects Paul’s agenda of replacing the covenant of the Torah with a new covenant through Jesus Christ.29 The original text of Jeremiah (hinnēh yāmîm bāʾîm, הִנֵּה יָמִים בָּאִים, “Behold, the days come”) foretold a new covenant with Israel and Judah, promising the Torah written on the heart and the forgiveness of sins.30
The Epistle to the Hebrews altered the meaning of the text. The phrase “although I was an husband unto them” (Jeremiah 31:32, bāʿaltî bām, בָּעַלְתִּי בָם) is replaced by “and I regarded them not” (kai egō ēmelēsa autōn, καὶ ἐγὼ ἠμέλησα αὐτῶν) following the Septuagint (LXX).
The Jeremiah text, which joins knowledge of God to unconditional forgiveness, is separated from its context in Hebrews by foregrounding forgiveness through the doctrine of redemption on the cross.31 The choice portrays God as having rejected Israel and as sanctioning the abolition of the law that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam had confirmed.32
31Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:5
8For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: 9Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.6
The pattern recurs, mutatis mutandis, in Galatians, where Paul twists a quotation from Genesis 12:7 (lezarʿăkā, לְזַרְעֲךָ, “unto thy seed”), turning “seed” (zeraʿ, זֶרַע, a singular noun with collective meaning) into a word referring to Jesus (sperma, σπέρμα, “seed,” singular) to support his Christology.33 The real text of Genesis refers to all the descendants of Ibrāhīm, but Paul changed it to justify Jesus as the fulfiller of the promise.
16Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.7
In Ephesians Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 (lāqaḥtā mattānôt, לָקַחְתָּ מַתָּנוֹת, “thou hast received gifts”) but changes “received” (lāqaḥtā) to “gave” (edōken, ἔδωκεν), portraying Jesus as bestowing spiritual gifts.34 The Psalm refers to God’s victory and says nothing of the Messiah; Paul altered the verse to support his own doctrine.
In 1 Corinthians Paul gives Isaiah 64:4 (lōʾ rāʾătāh ʿayin, לֹא רָאֲתָה עַיִן, “neither hath the eye seen”) in paraphrase and ties divine wisdom to Jesus, although the Isaiah text refers to God’s future action for Israel. The loose paraphrase (ha kategrapsen, ἃ κατεγράψεν, “as it is written”) departs from the original context and serves only to reinforce Paul’s narrative.35
One more striking example is in Romans, where Paul quotes Deuteronomy 30:11–14 (kî-qārôb ʾēleykā haddābār, כִּי־קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר, “for the word is very nigh unto thee”), which affirms that God’s commandment is within reach without searching heaven or crossing the sea. Paul changes the meaning by tying it to righteousness through faith in Jesus (peri dikaiosynēs tēs ek pisteōs, περὶ δικαιοσύνης τῆς ἐκ πίστεως, “of the righteousness which is of faith”) and makes Jesus the fulfiller of the word. That replaces the direct accessibility of the Torah with a reading centered on Jesus.36
11For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. 12It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? 13Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? 14But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.8
6But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) 7Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) 8But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;9
Paul’s influence on the New Testament cannot be denied. Through his letters he introduced the doctrines that form the basis of Christian teaching today, and he also created a false mechanism of interpretation that allowed revelation to be distorted systematically and inherited by Christian institutions to this day. From justification by faith to freedom from the law, Paul’s teaching continues to shape the growth and spread of Christianity.
The changes Paul made damage the New Testament theologically, and they raise a larger question: where did these teachings come from? Is everything Paul delivered divine revelation, or is there imitation and plagiarism of earlier teaching disguised as truth? That is the question the next articles examine.
- Revelation 2:2 (KJV). ↩
- 2 Timothy 1:15 (KJV). ↩
- Matthew 7:21–23 (KJV). ↩
- Romans 3:25 (KJV). ↩
- Jeremiah 31:31–32 (KJV). ↩
- Hebrews 8:8–9 (KJV). ↩
- Galatians 3:16 (KJV). ↩
- Deuteronomy 30:11–14 (KJV). ↩
- Romans 10:6–8 (KJV). ↩
- Deuteronomy 30:12–14. ↩
- See Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2020), on Paul’s quotation of Deuteronomy 30:12–14 in Romans 10:6–8. ↩
- Deuteronomy 21:23. ↩
- op. cit., analysis of Paul’s use of Deuteronomy 21:23 in Galatians 3:13. ↩
- Revelation 2:2. epeirasas (ἐπείρασας, Strong’s G3985); apostoloi (ἀπόστολοι, G652); pseudeis (ψευδεῖς, G5571). ↩
- See Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, entry ἀνομία: “the condition of being without law; contempt and violation of law; iniquity.” ↩
- Galatians 3:10. ↩
- Romans 10:4. ↩
- Matthew 5:17–18. ↩
- Romans 3:31. ↩
- Romans 6:14. ↩
- Matthew 28:20. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 4:15–16. ↩
- Matthew 23:9. ↩
- cf. Ephesians 1:23; Colossians 2:9. ↩
- David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (University of California Press, 2002), p. 45. ↩
- cf. Exodus 17:6. ↩
- Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 89–92. ↩
- See Dianne Bergant and Robert J. Karris (eds.), Tafsir Alkitab Perjanjian Baru (Yogyakarta: Kanisius, 2002), p. 413. ↩
- Hebrews 8:8–12. ↩
- Jeremiah 31:31–34. ↩
- Hebrews 8:9. ↩
- cf. Matthew 5:17–18. ↩
- Galatians 3:16. ↩
- Ephesians 4:8. ↩
- 1 Corinthians 2:9. ↩
- Romans 10:6–8. ↩