As argued by Keith Akers (2020), Paul violated Jesus' vegan principle and the Jerusalem Council's vegan decree; as admitted by Paul himself, he was a relative of the Herodian family (Romans 16:11) and his real name is Saul (Acts 7:58, 8;1-3); as interpreted by Robert Eisenman (2012), Paul was the liar described in the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to Thijs Voskuilen (2005), Paul was a Roman spy; and as pointed out by Robert Mt. Sion (2013), Paul was the AntiChrist. Paul corrupted Jesus' vegan church and Pauline Christianity has hijacked the Vegan Christ for two thousand years. Below please find a life history of Paul from a vegan perspective.
1. Courting the High Priest's Daughter & Joining the Gestapo
According to the Anabathmoi Jacobou's ("Ascents of James") account as conserved by Epiphanius (Panarion 30.16.9), between the 30s and the 40s A.D., in order to court a High Priest's beautiful daughter called Popea, Paul became an underling of the High Priest, and led a group of secret police to persecute and kill vegan Jewish Christians. (Later, Paul was jilted by the girl, which made him hate Moses' Law very much).
2. Assault on James the Just
Around 40 A.D., according to Clementine Recognitions, James the Just (Jesus' natural brother), standing on the Temple steps, debated with a group of priests about the truth as told by Jesus Christ. When he almost convinced them, an enemy (according to a marginal note, it was Paul), along with a few men, jumped out and accused James of being a sorcerer and incited the priests to assault James. The enemy Paul "snatched a firebrand from the altar, and began to beat him (James)... And then the enemy cast James down from above the steps, but after he fell and became as if dead, he did not beat him a second time" (Recognitions 1:70) .
According to Robert Eisenman, this 40 A.D. assault on James is a rewrite of the 60s A.D. stoning of Stephen (as allegedly witnessed and approved by Paul according to Acts) combined with a transposition of the 62 A.D. execution of James by stoning as decided by the High Priest Ananas in a Sanhedrin trial.
3. Dubious Conversion on the Road to Damascus
Paul then traveled towards Damascus with a view to slaughtering all the vegan believers of Jesus there. But Jerusalem had no jurisdiction over Damascus. Only the Roman central government had. So by then Paul must be working directly for the Roman Empire rather than the High Priest, himself a puppet of the Roman authorities.
It's precisely on the way to Damascus that Paul claimed that he had a visionary encounter with Jesus Christ and was converted and assigned by the latter to preach the good news to the Gentiles. Three accounts are given by Paul in Acts but they all contradict each other (Chen 2023).
Moreover, as questioned by Thijs Voskuilen (2005), upon Paul's conversion on the way to Damascus, how come his secret-police companion did not beat him up or arrest him? How come they were even so kind as to escort Paul to a Jewish believer's home in Damascus for him to recuperate from a temporary blindness caused by the vision? Doesn't make sense, does it?
Paul then went into Arabia for three years, where he was taught an unique gospel "by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:12 KJV). So the Second Coming of Jesus Christ already took place, albeit solely in the presence of Paul!
4. An Unqualified Apostle
In fact, Paul never meets the eligibility requirements to be considered an apostle. In Acts 1:21-22 KJV, Peter, in conjunction with the other 10 apostles and around 120 disciples, as well as "the women, Mary the mother of Jesus and... his brethren", clearly laid out the eligibility criteria to be considered a replacement for Judas the traitor:- the candidate must have "companied" with the other apostles "all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us," "beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day he was taken up from us"; and must be "a witness with us of his [Jesus'] resurrection".
Then two candidates were nominated, namely, "Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias" (Acts 1:23 KJV). "And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles" (Acts 1:23 KJV).
Not only are there eligibility requirements to be considered an apostle, but the number of apostles is strictly limited. In accordance with Revelation 21:14, God never endorses Paul's status as the 13th apostle, for the wall of the new Holy Jerusalem has only twelve foundations, which contain only twelve apostles' names.
Paul is just a self-proclaimed apostle and probably an apostate:- "Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead" (Galatians 1:1 NIV).
5. The Vegan Apostolic Decree
It's Barnabas who first introduced Paul to James in Jerusalem. 14 years later, ostensibly in connection with the issue of whether the Gentiles were to undergo circumcision, Paul traveled to Jerusalem to negotiate with James the Just and the other elders. After a lot of debate, James decided that they would not trouble the Gentiles, save that the Gentiles had to comply with four minimum restrictions: No blood, no strangled animals, no food offered to idols, no fornication. Blood may be interpreted as bloodshed or violence towards humans and other animals (Akers 2020).
6. Anti-Vegan Preaching of Paul
Paul just paid lip service to James and the other elders, and ultimately to Jesus. As soon as he's out of Jerusalem, he preached the opposite:- Only those are weak eat herbs (Romans 14:2), "All food is clean" (Romans 14:20 NIV); Eat any meat sold in the market with a sense of guilt! (1 Corinthians 10:25).
Contrariwise, in Matthew 9:13 and Matthew 12:6-7, Jesus the Vegan Christ twice quotes Hosea 6:6 in stating "I desire compassion, rather than sacrifice" (ESV). On the second occasion, He develops it in further detail:- "But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means: ‘I desire COMPASSION, rather than sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the INNOCENT" (New American Standard Bible). As pointed out by Akers (2020: 120-121), Jesus is here asking his audience to be compassionate towards the animals, instead of condemning these innocent creatures of God by sacrificing them on the altar, for the context Hosea 6:6 is about God's preference for love rather than animal sacrifice.
While Jesus preached the Gospel of Kingdom of God, Paul preached the Gospel of Grace. While Jesus stressed, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them," stresses Jesus (Matthew 5:17 ESV), Paul asserted, "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse" (Galatians 3:10).
7. The Antioch Confrontation
Following the Jerusalem of A.D.49, Paul returned to Antioch, where Peter subsequently visited. On that occasion, Peter initially sat with a group of meat-eating Gentiles. But then James' men came and said something to Peter, who then withdrew from the table and sat with them instead. Probably, James' men reminded Peter of the vegan Apostolic decree and the necessity of staying away from "the table of devils" with meat-eaters for God asks us "not to taste dead flesh" (Homilies 7.4)
Seeing that, Paul immediately lashed out at Peter for practicing Apartheid: You Peter, a Jew, have lived like a Gentile; what right do you have to require the Gentiles to live like Jews! In actual fact, it was Paul who failed to tolerate Jewish Christianity (cf. Tabor 2012:213-220). He forbade his followers from converting to Judaism or to get circumcised (Galatians 5:2-4).
8. Ambush in the Temple
In 57 A.D., rumors that Paul told not only the Gentiles but also Jews that they did not have to follow Moses' Law reached the Jerusalem apostles, and Paul was summoned to the Jerusalem Council. When Paul appeared before the 12 apostles, he said nothing. And James reiterated the four minimum requirements for the Gentiles:- abstinence from blood, strangled animals, food sacrificed to idols, and fornication. On top of that, he required Paul to take part in the purification ceremony in the Temple. Paul complied for at that time, Jewish Christianity was still the mainstream. Unknowingly, this time he fell into a trap. Many Jews in Jerusalem saw through Paul's treachery and intensely hated him, so much so that forty of them swore that unless they succeeded in killing Paul in the Temple, they would never eat and drink again (Acts 23:21).
9. Escorted by 470 Roman Soldiers
At this juncture, the Romans intervened. On the pretext of arresting Paul, a centurion sent 470 soldiers to escort Paul away (Acts 23:23). Mind you, even Jesus was only escorted by two guards on the way to the cross. So the arrest looked more like protection than persecution. Paul then demanded to see the Emperor on the ground that he was a Roman citizen and deserved a fair trial. He was accordingly sent to Rome, where he was put under house arrest. But in the mean time, he was still able to receive visitors and preach "with all confidence no man forbidding him" (Acts 28:31)! This was virtually impossible unless Paul was a Roman spy. For example, this kind of privileges are never enjoyed by political prisoners in contemporary Hong Kong like Jimmy Lai and Benny Tai.
10. Stoning of James and Paul's Plundering of the Poor
By 62 A.D., James the Just was the leader of the religious-political opposition alliance in Jerusalem. He then proclaimed that the Messiah would soon return to liberate the Jews. This crossed the bottom line of the Roman authorities. The High Priest Ananus held a Sanhedrin trial, found James and a few of his colleagues guilty and sentenced them to death by way of stoning. As a consequence, James' followers started a rebellion and successfully assassinated Ananus and left his corpse unburied. By then, Saul (Paul) probably had returned to Jerusalem from Rome. According to Josephus' Antiquities, he and his brother Costobarus, seized the opportunity to plunder the poor, and the Ebionites [evyonim], early vegan Jewish Christians, exactly means the poor in Hebrew (cf. Tabor 2012:223).
11. Paul Requesting the Roman Army to Enter Jerusalem
Subsequently, around 70 A.D., according to Josephus' The War of the Jews, Saul (Paul) and Costobarus, falsely representing the residents of Jerusalem, petitioned to King Herod Agrippa II and pleaded with him to invite the Roman army to enter Jerusalem and suppress the rebellion. This led to the massacre of Jerusalem.
Again according to Josephus' The War of the Jews, Saul (Paul), after the fall of Jerusalem, went to Rome to report to Nero what had happened in Jerusalem. Most vegan Jewish Christians were killed in the massacre. And Pauline Christianity became the mainstream and vegan Jewish Christianity became the heretics.
12. Jesus' Prophesies about Paul
Paul appears to meet Jesus' prophesy about false prophets. “Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6 NIV) . In Matthew 7:15 KJV, Jesus warns, "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves"! Here, Jesus is alluding to Genesis 49:27, "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divided the plunder" (Genesis 49:27 NIV). Matthew 7:21-22 seems to indicate that the false prophets are Christian, rather than Jewish.
Now, Paul was a self-admitted Benjamite (Romans 11:1). [In fact, the first king of Israel, also named Saul, was a Benjamite who badly persecuted David (I Samuel 18-19)]. Paul, as confessed by himself, had atrociously persecuted vegan Jewish Christians, thus "devouring the prey." Subsequently, he "divided the plunder"and split Christianity:- he was responsible for preaching to the Gentiles whereas the 12 apostles of Jesus were responsible for preaching to the Jews only (Gal. 2:6-9). Moreover, Paul admitted that after his conversion, he remained a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). In the entire New Testament, the only person that embodies the three identities of a Benjaminite, a wolf in Christian sheep's clothing, and a Pharisee is none other than Paul.
13. Paul as the Liar
According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, 'Teacher of Righteousness' was the genuine heir of Jesus Christ. The 'Liar', pretendeng to be Jesus' apostle and distorting Jesus' teachings, was the adversary of the Teacher of Righteousness from within the community. The 'Teacher's' second adversary was from outside. This was the 'Wicked Priest', a corrupt representative of the establishment who conspired to exterminate the 'Poor' - those 'zealous for the Law'. He harried the 'Teacher of Righteousness' wherever the 'Teacher' sought refuge. At the hands of the 'Wicked Priest's' minions, the 'Teacher' suffered some serious injury and possibly - the text is vague on the matter - death. Subsequently, the 'Wicked Priest' was himself assassinated by followers of the 'Teacher', who, after killing him, 'took vengeance upon his body of flesh' - that is, defiled his corpse.
According to Robert Eisenman's (2012) interpretation, James the Just parallels the Teacher of Righteousness, Paul (Saul) the Liar, and Ananus the Wicked Priest in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The text states explicitly that, 'the Liar... flouted the Law in the midst of their whole congregation'. He 'led many astray' and raised 'a congregation on deceit'. He himself is said to be 'pregnant with [works] of deceit'. These, of course, are precisely the transgressions of which Paul is accused in Acts - transgressions which lead, at the end of Acts, to the attempt on his life. And Eisenman stresses Paul's striking hypersensitivity to charges of prevarication and perjury. Paul's letters reveal an almost obsessive desire to exculpate himself from implied accusations of falsity.
In 1 Timothy 2:7, for example, he asserts indignantly, as if defending himself, that 'I am telling the truth and no lie'. In II Corinthians 11:31, he swears that: 'The God and Father of the Lord Jesus... knows that I am not lying.'
14. Return to the Vegan Christ
Judging from his life history above, Paul is very likely a Roman secret agent sent to subvert, pervert, and domesticate Jesus' vegan church from within. Ever since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Paul's carnivorous camp has hijacked Jesus' vegan church for two thousand years. 60 percent of the New Testament is written by Paul who declared the whole Bible, including his words, is inspired by God (and thus unchallengeable). From Vatican to Martin Luther, from Evangelicalism to Anglicanism, all the mainstream churches have followed the anti-vegan Paul rather than the Vegan Christ. Martin Luther even wanted to remove James' letter from the New Testament, probably because in the letter, James, in saying that faith without works is void, directly rebuts Paul's doctrine of justification by faith! It's high time we returned to the vegan Christ and rebuild vegan churches with veganism as one of the core tenets, for "God is love" (1 John 4:7 NIV), and Christ is compassion (Matthew 12:6-7).
References
Akers, Keith (2020). The Lost Religion of Jesus. NY: Lantern Publishing & Media/ Woodstock & Brooklyn.
Chen, Chapman (2023). "Was Paul Really Converted by the Vegan Christ?" HKBNews, 6 Mar. https://www.hkbnews.net/post/was-paul-really-converted-by-the-vegan-christ-by-dr-chapman-chen
Chen, Chapman (2022). "Paul the Anti-Vegan is an Ineligible Apostle. Go VEGAN!" HKBNews, Nov. 27. (https://www.hkbnews.net/post/paul-the-anti-vegan-is-an-ineligible-apostle-go-vegan-by-dr-chapman-chen-hkbnews)
Chen, Chapman (2021a). "Jesus Heals a Mule: A Coptic Bible Story." HKBNews, Dec. 3. (https://www.hkbnews.net/post/jesus-heals-a-mule-a-coptic-bible-story-go-vegan-by-chapman-chen-hkbnews)
Chen, Chapman (2021b). "How St. Paul Perverted Jesus' Vegan Teachings." HKBNews,
Dec 31. (https://www.hkbnews.net/post/how-st-paul-perverted-jesus-vegan-teachings-by-chapman-chen-hkbnews)
Chen, Chapman (2020). "Proofs that Jesus was Vegan." HKBNews, Dec. 28 (https://www.hkbnews.net/post/proofs-that-jesus-was-vegan-%E6%85%88%E6%84%9B%E8%80%B6%E7%A9%8C%E9%A3%9F%E5%85%A8%E7%B4%A0-by-chapman-chen-hkbnews )
Eisenman, Robert (2012). James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea ScrollsI. London: The Way Publishing.
Sion, Robert Mt. (2013). Paul the Antichrist. Saarbrucken: Bloggingbooks.
Tabor, James D. (2012). Paul and James. NY: Simon & Schuster.
Voskuilen, Thijs (2005) "Operation Messiah: Did Christianity Start as a Roman Psychological Counterinsurgency Operation?", Small Wars & Insurgencies, 16:2, 192-215, DOI: 10.1080/09592310500079940