It may sound harsh to use the words cult and insanity to describe first century Paulianity, but on this website I will explain why I think those terms are completely justified. I replace the word Paulianity for Christianity because there is in fact many Christianities. When I refer to Paulianity I am referring to the cultish ideology created by the apostle (emissary) Paul and copied and imitated by other New Testament authors. My core thesis is the following in bullet points:
The apostle (emissary) Paul was likely mental ill and delusional; for by our current standards of assessing those who talk like Paul did today on street corners yelling "its the end of the world," are considered by modern Americans bat shit crazy or insane.
Paul was insane/delusional but not uneducated nor stupid but a highly intelligent and manipulative cult leader.
Paul's core position is that all humanity is cursed after Adam was tricked by a talking snake into eating magical fruit the supernaturally cursed all humanity with Death and Sin. "Sin" was a literal evil space alien or force possessing everyone's body and causing them to fail to behave perfectly which angered Paul's god. Paul's god was Holy and everything earthly was unholy. God was like a Platonic Form, perfect, pure, and formless. As long as mankind was in a mortal human body, Man was subject to the god of the earth (Satan), and Death, and Sin residing in them, which made Man permanently unholy and unable to dwell in the realm of pure Forms.
Paul claims he was a perfect adherent of Torah Observance (the Jewish Law Code). But he was influenced by Hellenic culture and religion, and overtime he was influenced by Greek Stoicism and the Mystery Cults of Rome. This provided Paul a solution to his internal dilemma. He could not fulfill the Torah Law Code with what he believed to be a cursed Adamic body and Sin dwelling in him causing him to always error and fail to be perfectly Torah Observant. So being a religious genius, Paul did what many were doing in the first century era, which was he synthesized the Jewish Maccabean martyr tradition with the Greek Noble Death tradition and the core motif of the Hellenic mystery cults, in order to transform Jesus' original Pro-Torah Messianic Judaism into a dooms day mystery cult.
The mystery cults all had the same basic motif, supernaturally dying to your self and being reborn as a member of the family of a patron god offering immortality through connection with the deity through a secret ritual.
Paul combined the mystery cult idea of dying and rising with the mystery cult deity, but connected salvation to becoming a suicidal suffering martyr in imitation of Jesus who suffered and died a martyr on a cross.
So the solution to Gentiles (pagans) being born outside the Jewish ethnicity and not being a member of the Chosen People, was for Gentiles to be supernaturally inseminated with the sperma (seed) of the male Messiah via the pneuma (pronounced "nooma"); so that one's human nature and pagan ethnicity (whether it be Germanic, Scandinavian, Celtic, Ethiopian, etc.) was replaced was the Messiah's Jewish/Davidic lineage and divine DNA through what one scholar calls pneumatic gene therapy. So that as if the male convert to Paulianity was inseminated with new DNA inside them, growing in them a new creature (a new pneumatic body) that replaced their natural body and their previous genetic ancestry (ethni) back to Adam.
What most theologically Liberal Christians fail to fully realize and account for is just how crazy the original Pauline cult ideology really was. For this idea of being controlled by a space alien named Sin and male converts being literally "spermatically impregnated" by a male Messiah's divine sperma and becoming a Bride (Fiancé) of the Male Messiah is interwoven all throughout New Testament scripture. Even the Gospel of John emphasizes a literal implanting of divine sperma (see Not by human seed but born from above to become children of God: Johannine metaphor of the family or ancient science? by Jonathan A. Draper). This theology of seeding male Brides by a Male Messiah is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 that the ideal lifestyle is a celibate one. This is because first his cult was a dooms day cult with the false belief that the end of all mortal life was ending soon; so he completely disvalued this life, this world and the bodily instincts and thus he has no long term future plan for building a civilized society. Paul rejects focusing on a long term future career, retirement, dating and family planning. Second, in Paul's deluded mind, the human body is cursed and impure, but being inseminated by the cosmic Messiah Husband makes you supernaturally engaged to the male Messiah; and thus being a chaste virginal or celibate male was ideal in order to be a pure virgin and holy for your male husband Jesus as his future holy bride. But Paul says that sex is allowed if you can't control your lust, but only because he believes its better to have sex with a wife than to give into one's lust and have sex with a pagan prostitute in an unholy pagan temple cult of prostitutes which was popular back then. In other words, Paul saying basically, look, you are a fiancé of Messiah and implanted with his sperma/DNA, so remain a virgin or celibate and whatever you do don't disrespect your future husband you are engaged to by have sex with prostitutes.
I'm sorry, but a man having to believe he has been supernaturally seeded (inseminated) by a cosmic Male Husband, becoming his obedient slave and man-wife (Bride); and is called out as a "holy one," as a "living sacrifice" (as Paul puts it), to deny living and planning for this life here and now, and instead envision a future marriage to this Male Messiah who Paul said was going to fly down from the sky bringing a new communistic utopian government as the soon arriving celestial dictator, is crazy. This whole idea of being a male bride and inseminated and being a "slave to Christ" (as Paul literally puts it) is hardly appealing to a free born male heterosexual. Not to mention that Paul is attempting to replace one's own ethnic heritage and genetic lineage and one's forefathers and one's own ethnic identity and culture and values with basically his ethnicity and his idea that you are supernaturally inseminated with new replacement divine DNA erasing your own actual genes and your own ethnic identity; which is replaced with Paul's claim to one being implanted with a cosmic Jewish Messiah's sperm/DNA, so that one's genetic family and cultural heritage is replaced with the Pauline cult family of suffering celibate martyrs. As someone who is genetically Germanic and Scandinavian (Viking), with my own ethnic heritage and culture DNA, I personally find this idea of basically being a mark of a con, a slave to the domineering take-over agenda of the cult leader Paul, to be very off putting. I do not find Paul's insane claim to shamanically spirit-channel the voice and will of a deceased Jewish Rabbi to me convincing. I don't find this idea credible nor sane or appealing, that his Messiah died and arose from death and was divinized with the god Yahweh's DNA so that he can inseminate a colony of slaves and male brides by erases one's actually gender, ethnicity, and culture and values with a new set of Pauline slavish virtues and a body despising martyr-centric mentality. I consider this dooms day cult ideology utterly insane and totally crazy from my perspective!
The theologically Liberal Christian cannot disentangle this Pauline agenda of molding celibate and more docile and effeminate male brides who are to voluntarily seek a life of low status and suffering and voluntary martyrdom. For the Pauline agenda affects the entire New Testament. The Pauline letters and epistles are obviously beholden to this agenda, but so is the earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark which is a Pauline document. So is the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Mathew's Gospel is more Torah oriented, but the same Pauline agenda of celibate martyrdom is present. The Book of Revelation promotes traditional Torah observance as well but within a celibate ideal and Pauline martyrdom paradigm. The Gospel of John contains a literal concept of being seeded (inseminated) by the sperma of Jesus. So the Pauline agenda of effeminate male fiancés impregnated by Jesus's divine sperm that is supposed to magically erase one's entire genome and ethnic heritage and DNA, replacing say one's Scandinavian DNA with a Jewish Messiah's DNA and Paul's end-times slavish virtues and values, is something that cannot be unwound from the New Testament. For to absorb the New Testament Pauline agenda interwoven throughout, is in my mind to become one of Paul's controllable-targets as a cult leader seeking total domination of one's psyche to the point of replacing their authentic self with the "mind of Christ" as Paul puts it, and replacing one's actual DNA and cultural heritage with his cultural heritage as an Israelite borrowing the Jewish Maccabean martyr tradition to feel powerful and special as the one called by god to save/rescue the Gentiles (non-Jews) from the coming fiery annihilation by grafting them into the alleged Chosen People through his Christ Cult. Paul was clearly unwell and insane by modern standards. He wanted a cult following of fellow believers who would substantiate his own delusion of grandeur as the shamanic-savior of the Gentiles. He craved followers who would sustain his hatred of himself, his body, his desires and instincts, and life itself, and join him in attempting to escape the earth and the body in death in order to be with his Male Husband from the Sky. He wanted those who would join him in seeking a life not of pleasure, power, wealth, and family, but a life of celibacy and seeking suffering and weakness and death by modeling his Suffering Messiah. Paul was against embracing this world and one's bodily instincts and growing in health and vitality by heroically achieving this-worldly goals and dreams and building a family and a long term just society here and now.
In prisons you will have one male prisoner saying to another male prisoner that he wants to make him his girlfriend. Is this what Paul was seeking to do subconsciously with his cultish mythology? Not only does he seek to psychologically make his male converts think of themselves as brides to a male Messiah that inseminates them; but he says that he himself is no longer himself but Christ who lives in him. So is he trying to feel mystically one with Christ so that he becomes a husband to his male converts who would in his mind mystically become his brides indirectly?
Why is it that nearly all of the virtues that Paul encourages his male devotees to adopt at that time in the first century, are the virtues of women and slaves in Rome? He is constantly attacking the masculine drive to thrive, maligning male pride and the competitive energy of seeking territory status and power by directing his male devotees to instead transfer their masculine energy into suffering silently for his cult by never punching back but letting their future Messiah Husband do that while attacking their own masculine instincts and encouraging them to instead ideally become celibate and docile and subservient like a good slave or wife in first century Rome; instead of engaging in the masculine pursuit of building a family with wealth and a retirement plan, he instead indoctrinates men into seeking monastic poverty and suffering without fighting back and voluntary martyrdom (all in imitation of their celibate Suffering Messiah).
As the 2024 movie Heretic parabolically explained, the "one true religion" is about is control. Paul either consciously or subconsciously was seeking control over others and claiming to be the sole mouthpiece of Christ and the the only deliverer of the will of God through a resuscitated deceased Jewish rabbi. Through this claim of shamanic channeling like a medium, he gained a sense of power and control as his own internal angst and turmoil over his sexuality and bodily drives drove him to negate his very self, his body, his instincts and thus he declared a resounding "No!" to Life itself; and the more people he could manipulate into joining his Suffering Messiah, Cult of Death, joining him a life of celibacy, suffering and death, the more validated his delusions became to him and the more self-esteem he felt as his delusions became substantiated in those who risked death for his message and lifestyle.
Paul's ultimate message was the total negation of life. A life that clearly caused him so much pain to even exist, as he says oh wretched man that I am. He is desperately seeking an escape from himself, his drives and passions. But he needed his delusions substantiated through witnesses who imbibed his revelatory Kool aid. So each new convert gave him a feeling of validation and power and growing sense of control over others that he lacked in himself due to his delusion that he was controlled by Sin in him and the god Satan controlling the world. What he could control is other's minds which made him feel less alone as he sought his own escape from the mortal body into the sky realm. The more people who joined him in this path of mental decline and into the grave as an escape from life into union with the void in the form of his Messiah Husband, the more validated his ego grew and his longing for intimacy was satisfied as his male converts joined in him seeking to escape their bodies through suffering and death as inseminated celibate brides, so that they too can enter into the imaginary arms of a Messiah Husband.
Understanding all of this I can't help but think that Paul was very much like Martial Applewhite, in that I suspect that he felt a sense of intimacy with his male followers who joined him in his delusion and also gained a sense of psychological power and control in this process of having men join him in what was essentially a body-despising quasi-suicidal Messianic doomsday cult.
It was by claiming to be their father and they his sons he found a way to justify his own hatred of the world and his body and his desire for death, by getting others to share his deluded nihilism by finding a way to manipulate their emotions with talk of a Boogeyman named Satan controlling the world and a space alien called Sin possessing their bodies, combined with the threat of if they don't become his bitch and get inseminated with the sperm of a his husband Messiah, they will be annihilated very soon in an immanent Second Coming. Through his fear-mongering and manipulation and conscious or unconscious tricks with handkerchiefs and insane claims of exorcisms, he got many heterosexual males to consider themselves inseminated fiancé's of a male Messiah: as they joined him in sharing his same suicidal delusion as suffering martyrs seeking a more intimate connection with their mystery cult Messiah movement by imitating his suffering and death. Thus Paul was able to delude thousands of men into a life of life-denying monastic celibacy and suffering and eventual death as deluded voluntary martyrs; just like Marshall Applewhite did with his deluded followers in the Heaven's Gate cult.
This does not mean I don't find a lot to value in the New Testament, for the New Testament is not a single book by a single author but contains many different ideas and agendas. The New Testament contains some true gems of wisdom based on Stoicism and Jewish ethics, like leave the 99 for the 1, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, etc. But these few gems have become minuscule compared to the larger overall agenda of the New Testament, which is to create cult followers of Paul's cultish dooms day martyr-centric agenda.
What will become clear from the documents on this website is that while there are some good ethical ideals in the New Testament, what becomes clear is that the Jesus figure is largely an avatar of the apostle Paul's personality and his agenda. For a careful investigation of the chronology of the New Testament documents reveals that Paul's letters and epistles came before the first gospel written (Mark), and nearly every saying and idea attributed to the Gospel Jesus can first be found being taught by Paul who said he did not get his ideas from Jesus of Nazareth's brother James or Peter but instead Paul claimed he got all his ideas from hearing the voice of Jesus in his head. Today, most New Testament scholars and historians believe that the original Jesus Movement led by his brother James after Jesus died, was a Torah Observant Messianic Movement that rejected the Pauline agenda or tolerated the Pauline agenda to coexist with the original Jesus Movement. What this means is that Paul did not just seek to replace the cultural identity of Gentiles to save them from a immanent apocalypse that never happened, but he essentially stole the original message of Jesus' brother James who knew Jesus, replacing it with his revelatory spirit-possession cult with Paul acted as lead guru of the Jesus Movement amidst his Pauline groups.
What Liberal Christians do not realize is that yes one can demythologize the New Testament and people like Jordan Peterson can psychoanalyze the New Testament from a non-Fundamentalist point of view, and find value in the mythology from a Jungian and Joseph Campbell perspective. But what they fail to account for is the fact that the New Testament itself is composed of writings by cult leaders of these early Pauline groups, who used their literary genius to craft texts to be read aloud with the agenda of literally creating a cult family of ideally celibate life-denying suffering martyrs in imitation of the Suffering Messiah. What this means is that the New Testament is a breeding ground of delusional thinking and a recipe for generating a cult following. This is why so many dooms day cult use the New Testament as their central text. For example, something Liberal Christians do not want to talk about is the fact that the Heaven's Gate cult utilized the ideas of Pauline New Testament in order create a subservient group of cult members who eventually voluntarily took their lives. Constantine realized the power of the New Testament groups and texts and its power to control minds and he used that to unify the Roman Empire. Today we have mega church pastors and faith healers using the same cult indoctrinate energy in the New Testament itself, to con people out of money.
There is a reason cults do not use the writings of Gaius Musonius Rufus or the Tao te Ching, for these documents while proving a life-stance and ethics, do not have the same recipe for building a cult following of mind controlled believers like the New Testament is capable of producing in the hands of con men and charlatans today pretending to be holy men or women. For this reason, I consider the New Testament a less favorable source for ethics and finding a meaning in life. A far better source of meaning and ethics can thus be found in other areas of philosophy.