Was the Apostle Paul a False Prophet?
Has he led us astray?
Was the Apostle Paul a False Prophet?
Has he led us astray?
Recently I wrote an article pointing out numerous ways that the Apostle Paul had lessons that contradicted those of Jesus. I was amazed by how much of Church doctrine is based off of the lessons of Paul rather than Jesus, and what the implications of this could be for the state of Christianity today.
After writing that article I did more of a deep dive into Paul, and have found that not only is there a lot more where he contradicts the teachings of Jesus, but he also at times contradicts himself.
I will give the disclaimer though that scholars have disputed many of the books that were originally thought to have been written by Paul, this is important in the sense that it means Paul wasn’t contradicting himself in those passages. However, this brings us to the issue that these books are from an unknown writer, and are in all but one case forgeries of Paul’s writings, yet have been included in the Biblical canon where they contradict authentic writings from Paul, as well as Jesus’ teachings… so inerrancy buffs, what do we do with that?
Traditionally we attribute fourteen books of the New Testament to Paul, but out of those fourteen only seven are agreed upon to be authentic, meaning half are disputed.
Authentic: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon.
Disputed: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.
Out of these seven disputed books, the last three have more of an agreed-upon consensus of being forgeries than the first three.
Also out of the fourteen books, the only one that doesn’t explicitly claim Paul as the writer within the texts themselves is the book of Hebrews. Meaning that any of these that weren’t written by Paul other than Hebrews are straight-up forgeries with the liar, divinely inspired as we’re to believe, lying to anyone reading it about who they are.
With all of that in mind, moving forward, I’ll designate next to any verses I cite whether they are disputed or not when they are from a “Paul” source.