According to the Ebionites' account (note 1), Paul was a Greek who pretended to be a Jew (note 2). As a young man, he went to Jerusalem and madly fell in love with a High Priest's beautiful daughter called Popea. With a view to winning her love, Paul became a proselyte and was circumcised (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30.16.6-9; Williams 2009). In order to curry favor with her, Paul became a secret policeman under the High Priest and vigorously persecuted the early Jewish Christians, according to his own words (Acts 9:3-7; Acts 22:6-10; Acts 26:12-20). Upon being rejected by Popea, Paul flew into a rage against Moses' Law and circumcision (Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason). He targeted early vegan Jewish Christianity rather than mainstream Judaism for two reasons.
Firstly, "Jewish Christianity strove to make the Jewish law stricter than the Jewish tradition seemed to teach" (Akers 2000:8). "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy them, but to fulfill them," said Jesus (Matthew 5:17 NIV), who tried to lead the people back to the eternal law that commanded nonviolence {towards animals (veganism) and towards humans (pacifism)}, and simple living. In other words, Jesus' vegan church is more Jewish than mainstream Judaism.
Secondly, the High Priest, as protected by the Roman Empire, was too powerful to fight.
Paul therefore accepted a mission impossible directly from the Roman Empire in place of the High Priest (Voskuilen 2005) -- to feign conversion on the road to Damascus, to infiltrate Jesus' vegan church, to corrupt Her from within, to change Her doctrine, Her liturgy, and Her mission. Below please find a few examples of the many ways in which Paul's doctrines directly contradict Jesus' vegan teachings and the Law (note 3):-
On the one hand, Jesus admonishes the Pharisees, quoting Hosea 6:6, "Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13 CSB). In fact, the Torah explicitly bans believers to eat animals sacrificed to idols (Exodus 34:12-16; Deuteronomy 7:26).
On the other hand, in I Corinthians 8:4-13, Paul argues that eating meat offered to an idol is not immoral, because “an idol is nothing at all” (I Cor. 8:4 NIV). “Food,” he asserts, “does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do” (I Cor. 8:8 NIV). "To the pure, all things are pure" (Titus 1:15 NIV).
On the one hand, Jesus warns against meat-eating:- “Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh" (Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament Gospels; Burkitt 1904:359). Indeed, He taught veganism (Panarion 30.18.9).
On the one hand, Paul advised, "Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience" (1 Corinthians 10:25 NIV). Paul even defames vegans as weaklings in terms of faith:- "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables" (Romans 14:2 NIV).
On the one hand, Jesus asserted that not even something as small as an accent mark in the written law would be changed until heaven and earth pass away (Matthew 5:18)
On the other hand, Paul said, “no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law” (Romans 3:20 NIV).
In conclusion, for two thousand years, Paul's false doctrines have (mis)led numerous Christians to think that it is alright to murder innocent animals, to eat their flesh, and to use them as tools. It's high time we saw through Paul's treachery -- an unfortunate result of his personal failure in courting a pretty woman -- returned to the Vegan Christ, and went vegan.
Notes:
1. The Ebionites were a group of early Jewish Christians, who believed in simple living, pacifism and veganism. They got their name from the Hebrew term “אביונים Ebionim” meaning the poor (cf. Shaw n.d.). “Looking at his disciples, he said: 'Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God," says Jesus (Luke 6:20-21 NIV). Here, Jesus must be referring to the Ebionites for, naturally, not every poor person is righteous and deserves to be blessed. The Gospel of the Ebionites is known only by the quotations from Bishop Epiphanius (A.D. 310–320 – 403). Epiphanius, however, is an excellent sources for several reasons. First, he has interviewed individual Jewish Christians and possesses copies of their Gospel. Second, he is an antagonistic source: he scorned Jewish Christianity, thus he cannot be accused of concocting proofs favoring Jewish Christianity (cf. Akers 2000:25).
2. It can be seriously disputed if Paul knew Hebrew at all, although he claimed to speak Hebrew, to have been born a Jew and educated as a Pharisee (Acts 22:2-3, 26:4-5). As noted by Akers (2000), in quoting the Old Testament, whenever the Septuagint (Greek) and the Hebrew versions differ, Paul always adopts the Greek version.
3. For more related information, see Chen (2021).
Article link: https://www.hkbnews.net/post/paul-corrupted-jesus-vegan-church-due-to-unrequited-love-by-dr-chapman-chen
References
Akers, Keith (2000/2020). The Lost Religion of Jesus. New York: Lantern Publishing & Media.
Chen, Chapman (2021). "How St. Paul Perverted Jesus' Vegan Teachings." HKBNews, Dec 31.
Burkitt, F. Crawford, ed. (1904). Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe: The Curetoninan Version of the Four Gospels. London: C. J. Clay and Sons.
Shaw, Jacob A. (n.d.). "Jesus was a Vegetarian." All Creatures Org. (https://www.all-creatures.org/articles/an-tpr-shaw.html)
Williams, Frank, trans. (2009). The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. https://gnosis.study/library/%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0/ENG/Epiphanius%20of%20Salamis%20-%20The%20Panarion,%20Book%20I%20(Sects%201-46).pdf
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 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09592310500079940)