<Section #15> Clay Douglas states: “Paul/Saul claimed that he had a vision in which the crucified Jesus came to him (along with 500 other witnesses). As a result of this strange experience, Saul convinced others that he was now a ‘disciple’ of the Master Teacher, Esu ...”
In reply to section <#15>: Now I am absolutely convinced of one thing: Clayton Douglas is ignorant of many things, and probably because he simply can’t read! When this paper was first published, in Watchman’s Teaching Letter #92, Clifton Emahiser inserted a remark on page 1, where H. Graber badly misquoted Eusebius, concerning Graber’s reading skills, saying “My God! - Can’t H. Graber read?” It is evident to me that all Paul- bashers are blind as bats! Here Douglas says that Paul claimed 500 witnesses had seen Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus. Did Paul claim that 500 witnesses had seen his vision? The only place in all of Paul’s writing which mentions “five hundred” is at 1 Corinthians 15:6. Just look under “five” in Strong’s Concordance to find out as much. Now let us read 1 Cor. 15:3-6 from the A.V. to see what Paul meant:
“3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.”
Nothing about Damascus, nothing about Paul’s vision. He only relates here to the Corinthians what he himself had been told, “that which I also received”, about the events surrounding Christ’s resurrection and appearance to the disciples, for which see Matt. 28:9-20; Luke 24:13-53 and John 20:11-21:35 for partial accounts. If Clayton Douglas can read, then he’s a mere liar, take your pick!
Here we shall continue to address Clayton Douglas’ article The Seduction: Judeo-Christianity Or Pauline Christianity? Saul of Tarsus: Paul. A different view. Hopefully I have already long established that Douglas’ “different view” of Paul has been seen through some awfully distorted lenses. Yet Douglas’ distortions must be addressed because his article, like H. Graber’s, is very well representative of the trash being circulated by Paul-bashers everywhere. It was obvious that much of H. Graber’s material was drawn from jewish sources, and as I have shown (see section <#7>) that Paul of Tarsus taught what we today call “Israel Identity”, and he also exposed the “jews” as Edomites (Romans 9), why wouldn’t they (the jews) want to hate him? Why wouldn’t they want to trick us into disregarding him? It is also obvious that much of Clayton Douglas’ thinking also follows jewish lines. Douglas, following the jews, believes that the gospels were originally written in Aramaic, which is a downright lie: they were originally written in Greek. Douglas uses judaized appellations for Christ, such as “Esu” and “Sananda.” And although I didn’t address it specifically, Douglas even defends the one apostle who was a jew, whom Christ Himself identified as a devil and a traitor, as if he may have been but some innocent pawn (see section <#13>)! Douglas, like the jews, denies that Yahshua Christ was the Messiah (section <#4>)! Douglas’ penchant for jewish thought shall be further evident as we proceed, but here I would like to put all Paul-bashers everywhere on notice: reexamine your thinking, because you are all mere puppets and proselytes of and for the jews, therefore aiding and abetting them in their satanic agenda!
<Section #16> Clay Douglas states: “Paul’s own words bring us a sense of his strange experience. First, Paul/Saul said there were people with him who heard the voice and saw the bright light.
“Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said, ‘l am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. The men who were traveling with him .stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one’ (Acts 9:3-19; [sic 3-7] RSV)
“But, then, later Paul’s experience changes – according to his own words:
“‘Now those who were with me saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me.’ (Acts 22:9-13; RSV)
“This time the witnesses hear no voice, but they do see the light. But – hold on – Paul’s experience changes yet again.
“When Paul addresses King Agrippa, the witnesses hear nothing, they see nothing, and the vision becomes Paul’s alone.
“At midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language..." (Acts 26:13-14; RSV)
“... Paul’s vision continues to mutate subtly. By the end of the metamorphosis, Paul has become Al Pacino – the megastar in his newly developing screenplay.
“... By the time of Galatians, Paul’s authority has grown beyond measure. He is now an ‘apostle’, and he proclaims his standing as, Nazarite, one chosen before his birth as a Prophet of God. No one may challenge his position, no one may challenge his authority, Paul has taken it beyond the realm of man into an arena which no one dare question.”
In reply to section <#16>: A critic may read two different versions of the “Sermon on the Mount”, given at Matt. chapters 5-7 and Luke chapter 6, and claim fraud because the records aren’t identical. Yet rather we have two different note-takers, each recording individually the parts which impressed him most, and so we have two different accounts of the same sermon. Not having the technology that we have today, even in manual writing, such was a tedious process to the ancients, and so unlike today, precise accounts of speeches unwritten beforehand are very rare. There is historical evidence that various forms of shorthand were used in the Roman Senate about this time, yet we can hardly expect that of the pastoral folk of Galilee.
Paul gives three accounts of the “Road to Damascus” event, the last given many years after the first. Can we expect them to be the same, word for word? Of course not! Over the years, different aspects of an event are more lasting in the memory, while other details fade into oblivion. And each time Paul relates the event, it is someone else (here either Luke or someone Luke obtained the record from) who is recording it! Is the recorder really reporting everything which Paul said on each of the three occasions? Or is it more likely that, as was customary at the time, only a synopsis was given in each of the three records? Of course each record is only a synopsis, and we should not force a higher standard upon Paul than we would upon any other ancient writer, and the same goes for Luke. Luke, the typically exacting historian (see Luke 3:1), certainly saw no conflict in the three accounts, and may well have rectified one if he did, having every opportunity to do so since he wrote them!
Yet comparing the A.V. or the R.S.V. translations of Acts 9:7 and 22:9, I can see where there would be a cause for concern regarding the validity of the account, for there does seem to be an irreconcilable discrepancy there: in English. It is commonly professed by most people in various factions of what we term “Israel Identity”, that there are many errant translations found in the A.V. and other versions of the Bible. While Douglas cites the R.S.V. here, referring to Acts 9:7 and 22:9, that version does virtually no better than the A.V. in many respects, for Acts 22:9 is poorly translated in both. I have checked other versions of Acts 22:9, such as the New Living Translation, and they are worse still! It can be demonstrated time and again that theologians have written what they think the Greek says, and just as often what they think that the Greek should say, and claim to be offering fair translations! Because all of our Bible versions are so polluted, to one extent or another, one shouldn’t dare to judge any Bible passage critically unless one can, as Paul attests, “prove all things”, making trial of them for one’s self!
The first half of Acts 22:9, which I have translated “And they who were with me surely beheld the light”, is not an issue here. The second half, which I have translated “but for the voice they did not understand that being spoken to me”, is in the NA27 Greek: τὴν δὲ φωνὴν οὐκ ἤκουσαν τοῦ λαλοῦντός μοι, and is consistent among all ancient mss.
- δὲ, “but”, marks the beginning of a new clause here, being a conjunctive Particle with adversative force. It is always placed as the second word in the clause, and so follows the Article τήν here.
- τὴν φωνὴν, “the voice”, in the Accusative Case which marks it as the direct object of the verb here. I have supplied “for”, just as with the Genitive Case “of” or “from” often must be supplied, or “to” or “with” with the Dative Case. φωνή (phonê, 5456) may have been written “sound” here, and such is evident since it was translated as such in the A.V. at Matt. 24:31; John 3:8; 1 Cor. 14:7, 8; Rev. 1:15; 9:9 (twice) and 18:22.
- οὐκ is the negative Particle, “not” here. It precedes that which it negates.
- ἤκουσαν is a 3rd person plural form of ἀκούω, “to hear ... to hearken ... to listen to, give ear to ... to obey ... to hear and understand” (Liddell & Scott), and this last sense is used often in the N.T. For instance, where Christ is attributed as saying at Matt. 13:9 “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear”, the verb is ἀκούω both times it says “hear.” Yet it is clear from the context that everyone present heard His words physically, and certainly they all had physical ears, yet there were probably many present who did not understand what He said. The same verb is repeated twice again in Matt. 13:13, accompanied with another word which does literally mean “understand”, and so the physical acts of hearing, and hearing with understanding, may be both represented by the same word, lest how could one “hearing ... hear not”?
Now if Luke wanted to write, or if Paul wanted to say, that the men present with him physically “heard not the voice”, he may well have stopped right here, for he has said enough! By continuing, Paul explicitly reveals his intended meaning.
- τοῦ λαλοῦντός is a Participle form, Imperfect tense, of the verb λαλέω, “to speak” or “to talk.” With the Article it is a Substantive, a group of words used as a noun. The form of both the Participle and the Article here is either Masculine or Neuter, yet there is no personal pronoun present, i.e. “him” in the A.V. or “the one who” in the R.S.V., and the writer or speaker may easily have included one if he wanted to explicitly state as much. Rather, the phrase may just as properly, and perhaps more so for want of the personal pronoun, be written “that being spoken.”
- μοι, the last word is “to me.”
And so the way in which I have rendered this verse is quite proper, and there is no conflict with Paul’s earlier statement at Acts 9:7. Indeed the men with him heard the voice, or the sound (φωνή), but did not hear with understanding what the sound had said!
Yet Douglas creates conflict even when none can be detected! For he says: “When Paul addresses king [sic] Agrippa, the witnesses hear nothing, they see nothing, and the vision becomes Paul’s alone”, yet no such thing is found at Acts 26! The simple truth is that Paul did not relate, or maybe he did but Luke did not record, what those with him saw or heard, because to repeat it here was not important! So again, like a government prosecutor, Douglas manufactures charges hoping to further impress or awe the jury into favoring his indictment.
Douglas also states that Paul “proclaims his standing as, Nazirite [sic], one chosen before his birth as a Prophet of God”. First, did Paul do such a thing? The words Nazarite or Nazarene appear nowhere in the A.V. in Paul’s letters, or in the Acts, except at Acts 24:5, and this is the same word that pertaining to Christ also appears at Acts 2:22; 3:6; 4:10; 6:14; 22:8 and 26:9 and is translated “of Nazareth” at those places in the A.V. The Strong’s number for the word is 3480, but under “Nazareth” Strong misidentified many of the entries there with #3478, and the sources I am using here instead are the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th edition, and the Moulton-Geden Concordance To The Greek Testament. Except for Acts 24:5, the word appears in Acts only in reference to Christ (in the A.V. “of Nazareth”), and nowhere do these words appear in any of Paul’s epistles, not even Galatians, which Douglas clearly suggests. Why is Douglas lying?
Because “the sect of the Nazarenes” is mentioned at Acts 24:5, let us examine that verse, from the A.V.: “For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.” So we find that in the one place that the word is used of Paul, it is used by the jews accusing him before the procurator Felix. Now Douglas joins the jews and accuses Paul again!
Yet it can be further determined that there was indeed a sect by this name, and that they were persecuted by the jews. For writing about Herod Agrippa I (who ruled Judaea under the Romans until he died in 44 A.D.) in the days of Claudius Caesar (emperor, 41-54 A.D.), and so some time before Paul was brought to Felix (procurator in Judaea from 52 to 56 A.D.), Josephus states at Antiquities 19.6.1 (19:292-294): “He also came to Jerusalem and offered all the sacrifices that belonged to him, and omitted nothing which the law required; on which account he ordained that many of the Nazirites [sic] should have their heads shorn.” A footnote in my copy of “The King James Study Bible”, Thomas Nelson Inc., at Acts 24:5 correctly states that “The Jews would not call the believers Christians, the people of the Christ (Messiah). They used other terms like the sect of the Nazarenes. This nickname was derived from [that of] Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth” [emphasis in original, brackets mine].
The Nazarites or Nazarenes of New Testament times were followers of Christ, as identified by the non-believing jews of Judaea. While prophetically Christ’s being raised in Nazareth, that He may be called a Nazarite, has a symbolic connection to the Nazarites of the Old Testament (see Matt. 2:23), in reality being a follower of Christ, a “Nazarite” in New Testament times, is not the same as being an Old Testament Nazarite (see Num. 6:1-21), as Douglas infers above. So again, where Douglas condemns Paul, an investigation of his accusations clears Paul’s good name fully, and it is Douglas who is condemned instead!
