Brother AACOOLDRE : Paul's Conversion: An explanation of the animal imagery

AACOOLDRE

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PAUL’S CONVERSION: An explanation of the animal imagery

By Tom Harpur, author of The Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity p.170-171

“What are we to make, then, of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts chapter 9)? I have become fully convinced that strange as this may sound to orthodox ears, there is more than enough solid reason to suspect that the whole episode of Paul’s great vision was the rescript of a portion of Mystery dramatism. For Paul says that the sudden, blinding radiance of Christly glory threw him with his face to the ground, after which a voice out of the light spoke to him and said, “Stand on your feet, Paul”. This hardly seems like personal history; in the Mystery philosophy, the descent of the divine soul into incarnation in the early human beginning stage sent it first into the bodies of animals, who walked on all fours with face to the ground. As the Christ consciousness gradually asserted its rulership, the humanized animals slowly rose to their feet. For the god-soul to incarnate at the beginning of the cycle was for it to fall to earth with its face to the ground, then the divine voice within spoke and bade it stand up on its feet as the upright human-divine! It is not hard to presume that an age saturated with mythical typology would have readily introduced in the mystery ceremonial such a dramatized representation of the soul’s descent into lowly animal body and its resurrection to eventual upright human status. The initiate acted out the entire consciousness-raising rite”.

Unfortunately the Letters James, Jude, 2 Peter chapter 2 and Revelations chapter 6 didn’t see Paul as departing from the animal stage of a Donkey. They used Psalm 32 & Proverbs 26 to lampoon Paul as a Donkey, horse and a mule, in part, for his unnecessary curse upon the law of Moses. 2 Peter Chapter 2 was also using Number’s 22 to spoof Balaam’s Donkey to make a point that Paul’s road on Damascus was the same “Wages of wickedness” and Paul three versions of this encounter is Balaam’s Donkey three rebukes.

Apuleius, in his Golden *** is turned into a Donkey until going through the mysteries of Isis & Osiris and eating their magical roses to turn him back into a human.

Typology is the basing of one character upon another. Strangely I saw Paul’s so-called conversion ,(of being knocked from a horse blinded eyes with scales on it then getting hungry for food),as a Typological link with Revelations chapter 6 with the Black Horse holding Scales and the Grey Horse of famine. Revelations used, in part, the imagery of Zechariah’s 9:9 use of the Donkey, colt, the foal and war Horses.

Robert Eisenman James The Brother of Jesus and the Dead sea Scrolls Volume 1 p.106 believes that the people hostile to Paul were using Belial/Balaam/Bela circle of language on him.


Note:

Jude 8-10 “Unreasoning animal” polluting their bodies

2 Peter 2:12 beast, running on instinct. Also 2 Peter 2:20 saw Paul “entangled” back in his error may be a direct objection of Paul in Roman’s 11:1-10 use of David’s Psalm 69:22 use of Table food as a “snare”. Part of Paul’s error was changing the dietary laws so he could Fish (catch) Gentiles into the religion and Jude, James and Peter didn’t like his eating food sacrificed to idols.
 

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