Der gefalschte Paulus: Das Urchristentum im Zwielicht (German Edition) [Hardcover]

Hermann Detering (Author)

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Text: German

Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Patmos; 1. Aufl edition (1995)
• Language: German
• ISBN-10: 3491779693
• ISBN-13: 978-3491779693
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,953,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Gnostic and Jewish Christianity were merged, October 27, 2005

By 

Michael Hoffman (Egodeath.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Der gefalschte Paulus: Das Urchristentum im Zwielicht (German Edition) (Hardcover)

Detering's book The Fabricated Paul: Early Christianity in the Twilight aims to provide a better explanation for the origins of New Testament Christianity than the usual views regarding Paul. Detering summarizes Loman's proposal in 1881, to elaborate it:

"Christianity in its origin was nothing else than a Jewish-Messianic movement ... the figure of Jesus had never existed, but represented a symbolization and personification of thoughts that could only make full headway in the second century. A gnostic messianic community later appeared alongside the Jewish-Christian messianic community. In the period between 70 and 135 CE the two groups opposed one another with bitter animosity.

"Only in the middle of the second century did they achieve a reconciliation, in which the gnostic community had Paul as its representative and the Jewish-Christian community had Peter. The result of this process of reconciliation was the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. ... the letters of Paul are all inauthentic and represent the product of the newly-believing, gnostic-messianic community."

The Catholic church didn't create the NT books, but redacted them strategically to unite the Petrine Jewish-Christians camp with the Pauline Marcionites (Gentile Christian) camp, resulting in a durable church system. Paul was a reworked Simon the Magician. Simon/Paul had leprosy. Simon/Paul taught gnostic-type anti-cosmos transcendence of and freedom from 'the law' through grace -- such transcendence being 'lawlessness'.

Initially, the Petrine Jewish-Christian camp, or the Petrine Jewish-Christian Catholic Church, tried ways of disparaging Simon/Paul, the proto-Paulines, Marcion, and the Marcionites; Jewish apocalypses so disparage Simon and his anti-law, anti-creator gospel of freedom. But ultimately, the Jewish-Christian camp, or the Catholic Church which forced together the Petrine Jewish-Christian and Pauline gnostic (Gentile Christian) camps, redacted 'Simon' into the Roman-named 'Paul', making the Paul figure compatible with Jewish-Christian faith.

John the Baptist's best follower was the historical Simon of Samaria. Cerdo (in Rome) was a follower of Simon, then Marcion was a follower of Simon after Cerdo. Marcion (from Pontus) doesn't write of Simon (from Samaria), but of Paul. The Roman name 'Paul' means 'small' which the Simonians and later Marcionites mapped to the idea of election by grace rather than law. Simon was the "standing, stable, stationary one" (alluding to the timeless unchanging divine realm).

The work involved not invention, so much as redaction of two large groups to hide the fighting between them and pull them all together. Imagine having to join together into an effective congregation the large, popular camps of both Peter and Simon -- redaction of Simon into the NT Paul was needed, to enable this merging of two popular opposed camps. Like the Roman empire, the strategy of the Catholic Church was to forcefully integrate and coercively assimilate those who are opposed, not to annihilate them.

Marcion's gnostic church was popular because his gospel of gnosis was taught openly. The main problem Jewish-Christians or the unification-seeking Catholic Church had with Simon (the original of Paul) was his gnostic teaching of two gods, which disparaged the Jewish creator JHVH in order to seek the ultratranscendent God.

In Gnosticism, 'lawlessness' means transcendent freedom from cosmic material imprisonment. From a negative, Catholic Church, polemic lens, 'lawlessness' means rebellion against the strictly ultra-transcendent, alien/foreign Good God as well as the creator of the world -- the latter being disparaged as the demiurge in Gnosticism, and instead cut-off from the spiritual realm. Several pages discuss freeing people from the power of the demiurge.

In the Marcionite, pre-Catholic version of Pauline theology, the ransom for freeing from the law was paid to the demiurge -- the Creator, JHVH, the lawgiver of the Jews. The canonical figure of Paul was derived by redactively diminishing (from dualist to monist) the original 'Paul the theologian' figure that originated in popular Marcionite Gnosticism. Ransom redemption theology can only be coherently thought-out at last, at the price of heresy.

The Catholic Church had a different strategy than the gnostic counter-JHVH system: unify the various synagogue groups and Marcionite groups, with highlighting on appropriating the Jewish religion and its scriptures and authority of established age. Unity of the Church population including the Jewish resources required unifying the Jewish Creator god and the gnostic ultratranscendent god.

The Catholic Church avoided disparaging the god of the Jews in such a way that would prevent appropriating the Jewish religion. The strategy of the Catholic Church was to appropriate, not to disown as Gnostics did, the Jewish god and the Jewish religion.

The figure of Paul in Acts is a Catholic creation, later than the original, Gentile-Christian, dualist, gnostic, Marcionite Paul. The Catholic Church transferred the negative attributes of "Paul, apostle of the heretics" instead onto Simon, treated as a character distinct from Paul.

I'd clarify that, per scholars including Luther H. Martin, the 'demiurge' or 'law' is actually a metaphor for the mystic discovery of Heimarmene, Fatedness, being a slave of Necessity. During the ecstatic visit of the Holy Spirit, the vehicle of which is the Eucharist meal, we encounter and are then redeemed from sinister Heimarmene.