Littlejohn

One of the more disconcerting aspects behind the undoubtedly enigmatic figure of Paul of Tarsus, arises from the fact that such a character that appears in the 'canonical' texts, was not at all an 'univocal' historic figure, because it (the one that still appears in the documents of New Testament), was the result of a syncretic disconcerting operation, operated by the founding fathers of the catholic-christianity: namely the literary 'fusion' of two actually historic characters, in order to obtain a single figure, which one has wanted to give the name, precisely, of "Paul of Tarsus."

The first of these two characters, of which Josephus also tells us on three separate occasions, is quoted in the first part of Acts of Apostles: namely Paul/Saul, a herodian villain (as he also was 'painted' by G. Flavio), persecutor of jewish patriots (the 'zealots-messianic' ones) on behalf of the religious authorities of the temple and of romans and herodians rulers. He also was author, along with his gang of cynical criminals, by the murder of James the Just (or 'the child'), stepbrother of Jesus, on behalf of the high priest Ananias. (see Recognitiones, Josephus and Eusebius, in his quote by Hegesippus).

The second character, which is discussed in the second part of the Acts of the Apostles, was the TRUE Paul of Tarsus: a character absolutly different from the first one. However, talk of 'true Paul of Tarsus' does not make much sense, since neither of two character was called 'Paul', because such a pseudo name derived from the latin adjective 'paulus', meaning 'small man', when it is referring to a person: ergo, the two people mentioned were of small stature. Furthermore, none of them was from Tarsus, as were both of the jews (or palestinians).

Almost certainly, the 'true' Paul of Tarsus never claimed, during his life, of accrue from Tarsus, but from another city, however outside the borders of Palestine of the time.


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Littlejohn

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