Section XV. St. Paul the real Founder of present Christianity.
We may repeat with the author of Phallicism:
We are all for construction—even for Christian, although of course philosophical construction. We have nothing to do with reality, in man's limited, mechanical, scientific sense, or with realism. We have undertaken to show that mysticism is the very life and soul of religion;[218] ... that the Bible is only misread and misrepresented when rejected as advancing supposed fabulous and contradictory things; that Moses did not make mistakes, but spoke to the “children of men” in the only way in which children in their nonage can be addressed; that the world is, indeed, a very different place from that which it is assumed to be; that what is derided as superstition is the only true and the only scientific knowledge, and moreover that modern knowledge and modern science are to a great extent not only superstition, but superstition of a very destructive and deadly kind.[219]
All this is perfectly true and correct. But it is also true that the New Testament, the Acts and the Epistles—however much the historical figure of Jesus may be true—are all symbolical and allegorical sayings, and that “it was not Jesus but Paul who was the real founder of Christianity;”[220] but it was not the official Church Christianity, at any rate. “The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,” the Acts of the Apostles tell us,[221] and they were not so called before, nor for a long time after, but simply Nazarenes.
This view is found in more than one writer of the present and the past centuries. But, hitherto, it has always been laid aside as an unproven [pg 123] hypothesis, a blasphemous assumption; though, as the author of Paul, the Founder of Christianity[222] truly says:
Such men as Irenæus, Epiphanius and Eusebius have transmitted to posterity a reputation for such untruth and dishonest practices that the heart sickens at the story of the crimes of that period.
The more so, since the whole Christian scheme rests upon their sayings. But we find now another corroboration, and this time on the perfect reading of biblical glyphs. In The Source of Measures we find the following:
It must be borne in mind that our present Christianity is Pauline, not Jesus. Jesus, in his life, was a Jew, conforming to the law; even more, He says: “The scribes and pharisees sit in Moses' seat; whatsoever therefore they command you to do, that observe and do.” And again: “I did not come to destroy but to fulfil the law.” Therefore, He was under the law to the day of his death, and could not, while in life, abrogate one jot or tittle of it. He was circumcised and commanded circumcision. But Paul said of circumcision that it availed nothing, and he (Paul) abrogated the law. Saul and Paul—that is, Saul, under the law, and Paul, freed from the obligations of the law—were in one man, but parallelisms in the flesh, of Jesus the man under the law as observing it, who thus died in Chréstos and arose, freed from its obligations, in the spirit world as Christos, or the triumphant Christ. It was the Christ who was freed, but Christ was in the Spirit. Saul in the flesh was the function of, and parallel of Chréstos. Paul in the flesh was the function and parallel of Jesus become Christ in the spirit, as an early reality to answer to and act for the apotheosis; and so armed with all authority in the flesh to abrogate human law.[223]
The real reason why Paul is shown as “abrogating the law” can be found only in India, where to this day the most ancient customs and privileges are preserved in all their purity, notwithstanding the abuse levelled at the same. There is only one class of persons who can disregard the law of Brâhmanical institutions, caste included, with impunity, and that is the perfect “Svâmîs,” the Yogîs—who have reached, or are supposed to have reached, the first step towards the Jîvanmukta state—or the full Initiates. And Paul was undeniably an Initiate. We will quote a passage or two from Isis Unveiled, for we can say now nothing better than what was said then: