Who Was Paul of Tarsus What Your Minister Doesn't Want You to Know Part V Apostels Paulus," 1890, pp. 47-125) has convincingly shown, epilepsy, called by the Greeks "the holy disease," which frequently put him in a state of ecstasy, a frame of mind that may have impressed some of his Gentile listeners, but would frighten and estrange him from the Jew, whose God is the God of reason (comp. II Cor. v. 13; x. 10; xi. 1, 16; xii. 6). The conception of a new faith, half pagan and half Jewish, such as Paul preached, and susceptibility to its influences, were altogether foreign to the nature of Jewish life and thought. In the forefront of Paul's teachings stand his peculiar vision of Christ, to which he constantly refers to as his only claim and title to apostleship (I Cor. ix. 1, xv. 8; II Cor. xii. 1-7; Phil. iii. 9; Gal. i. 1, 12, 16, on which see below). The other apostles saw Jesus in the flesh; Paul saw him when, in a state of entrancement, he was carried into paradise to the third heaven, where he heard "unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (II Cor. xii. 2-4). A strong parallel to the claimed ecstacy of Rabbi Elisha. Evidently this picture of Christ must have occupied a prominent place in his mind before, just as Metatron (Mithra) and Akteriel did in the minds of Jewish mystics. To him the Messiah was the son of God in a metaphysical sense, "the image of God" (II Cor. iv. 4; Col. i. 15), "the heavenly Adam" (I Cor. xv. 49; similar to the Philonic or cabalistic Adam Kadmon), the mediator between God and the world (I Cor. viii. 6), "the first-born of all creation, for by him were all things created" (Col. i. 15-17), identical also with the Holy Spirit manifested in Israel's history (I Cor. x. 4; II Cor. iii. 17; comp. Wisdom x. 1.-xii. 1; Philo, "De Eo Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat," § 30; see also Jew. Encyc. x. 183b, s.v. Preexistence of the Messiah). So, what you have here is circular reasoning. Paul creates Jesus Christ who then through Paul's miraculous conversion validates Paul's teachings, which in turn validates the existence of Jesus Christ. This also means, since there was no such person as Jesus Christ, that the gospels have to be the product of the same people who were responsible for the creation of the Pauline Epistles, the Romans. From all available information, you would think that Apollos of the epistles, which is short for Apollonius, the Jew from Alexandria and Apollonius of Tyana were two different people, but that is not the case. The only question you need ask yourself, is whether a religion that would go so far as to burn all written references to Apollonius of Tyana, including the library at Alexandria, would also be willing to alter their own scriptures and change, the Cappadocian, Apollonius of Tyana to Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria? Apollonius made two separate trips to India. The first from c 36-38 CE and the second from c 45-50 CE. It was after his first trip that he returned to Palestine, with some copies of the teachings of Christos, and instituted a new order in a small village near Gaza called Nazarita. It was at this time that he first preached the gospels and it was in 54 CE that Apollos is first mentioned in the scriptures. It therefore, becomes abundantly clear that these two individuals are indeed one and the same person, Apollonius of Tyana. The following quotes confirm this fact. Continued / Table of Contents