As the title says, Paul was a gnostic. This is significant because most modern christians aren't. In fact, modern christians are biblical literalists who considered gnostics to be heretics... and in the earlier centuries after the advent of Christianity, heretics usually ended up biting the dust.
There is also ample evidence to suggest that 6 of the 13 letters attributed to Paul, were forgeries. Couple of links here, but you can find many with a search:
paul's forged letters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles
and http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/paul.html
The second link is particularly interesting. Scroll half-way down to the large-type. The authors of 'The Jesus Mysteries' (a very interesting read in itself), say that it was misleading to call Paul a gnostic at that time because literalists didn't really exist until long after the 1st century. Maybe so, but there can be no doubting that his 'mystical' beliefs were far-flung from the beliefs later to be held by the literalists.
I pointed-out the forgeries since I think their content has a more literalist style. Clearly, added by literalists to bolster the literalist point-of-view whilst also diluting Paul's more-spiritual message in his other letters.
There are more links here supporting the claim that Paul was a gnostic:
http://www.theosophical.ca/PaulOpponent.htm paul the gnostic
http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/Paul-Gnostic.html
http://gnostics.tribe.net/thread/a1d9513d-e484-422f-967a-de9830c8cb89
Of course, there are alsorts of ramifications here to such a disclosure, not least of which is that literalists have completely corrupted the fundamental message given by Jesus (not to mention Paul), so that the Roman Catholic church (and related churches) is unveiled as a total sham.
There is also ample evidence to suggest that 6 of the 13 letters attributed to Paul, were forgeries. Couple of links here, but you can find many with a search:
paul's forged letters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles
and http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/paul.html
The second link is particularly interesting. Scroll half-way down to the large-type. The authors of 'The Jesus Mysteries' (a very interesting read in itself), say that it was misleading to call Paul a gnostic at that time because literalists didn't really exist until long after the 1st century. Maybe so, but there can be no doubting that his 'mystical' beliefs were far-flung from the beliefs later to be held by the literalists.
I pointed-out the forgeries since I think their content has a more literalist style. Clearly, added by literalists to bolster the literalist point-of-view whilst also diluting Paul's more-spiritual message in his other letters.
There are more links here supporting the claim that Paul was a gnostic:
http://www.theosophical.ca/PaulOpponent.htm paul the gnostic
http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/Paul-Gnostic.html
http://gnostics.tribe.net/thread/a1d9513d-e484-422f-967a-de9830c8cb89
Of course, there are alsorts of ramifications here to such a disclosure, not least of which is that literalists have completely corrupted the fundamental message given by Jesus (not to mention Paul), so that the Roman Catholic church (and related churches) is unveiled as a total sham.
