Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

72 Jesus, Praphet of Islam

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Thus Paul produced a religion which encompassed different con­
tradictory elements. He took the Unitarianism of the Jews and
added to it the philosophy of the pagans. This admixture was com­
bined with some of what Jesus had taught and some of what Paul
claimed Christ had revealed to him. Paul's theology was based on
his personal experience interpreted in the light of contemporary
Greek thought. Jesus was deified and the words of Plato were put
in his sacred mouth.
The theory of redemption was Paul's brainchild, a belief en­
tirely unknown to Jesus and his disciples. It was based on the mis­
taken belief in 'original sin', the 'crucifixion', and the 'resurrec­
tion', none of which have any validity. In this way a synthetic reli­
gion was produced: Christianity - mathematically absurd, histori­
cally false, yet psychologically impressive, guaranteeing simulta­
neously, as it apparently did, both absolute guilt and complete free­
dom from retribution.
In the magnificent temple of the religion which Paul helped so
zealously to erect, he built doors on an sides. The result was that
people who came across his brand of Christianity for the first time,
when they entered its temple, were given the impression that they
were paying homage to the same deity that they had worshipped
an along, whether they were Jew or Gentile. As the basic miscon­
ceptions introduced by Paul evolved and becameestablished, many
a man who thought that he was following Jesus followed Paul with­
out knowing il.
There is, therefore, some justification for Heinz Zahmt calling
Paul a 'corrupter of the Gospel of Jesus,' 8 and for Werde describ­
ing him as 'the second founder of Christianity'. Werde says that,
due to Paul:

... the discontinuity between the historical Jesus and the

Christ of the Church became so great that any unity be­

tween them is scarcely recognisable. 9

And Schonfield concluded that:

The Pauline heresy became the foundation of Christian

orthodoxy and the legitimate Church was disowned as

heretical. 10

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