After I saw a paper on increased personal reference (i.e. talking about yourself) in writings by vulnerable narcissists, I analyzed the relative personal reference across all the Epistles and the undisputed Pauline letters cluster together significantly higher than the undisputed non-Pauline ones.
So it’s worth considering if Paul was a vulnerable narcissist, prone to expressing both shame and grandiose intermittently as long as the focus was on him.
You can also see the charming multiple places he swears he’s not lying, such as Galatians 1:20 or my favorite in Romans 9:1 where he swears to the Holy Spirit (though I must note all of Romans 9 is missing in Marcion’s version, and this kind of swear he’s telling the truth is repeated in 1 Timothy which is almost certainly a 2nd century forgery).
Paul even declared himself lawless in 1 Cor 9:20 and acknowledged converting by signs and wonders - which is a curious degree of overlap with the description of the “lawless one” in 2 Thessalonians 2 (projection much?).
There were other traditions of early Christianity that were much, much more interesting - particularly with the hindsight of modernity. But they lie buried under the efforts of Paul and those following after him.
Also, tangentially I get the creepiest vibe from Paul’s language around being ‘Father’, his oft conflicts with towns he’s residing in, and his described relationship over time with the much younger Timothy. It’s worth remembering that as early as the 2nd century the Roman satirist Lucian is positioning the early church as providing refuge for someone who was in trouble for molesting a young boy.
I’m not much of a fan of Paul, to say the least. (Though I do think he was brilliant at manipulation, like most narcissists.)
After I saw a paper on increased personal reference (i.e. talking about yourself) in writings by vulnerable narcissists, I analyzed the relative personal reference across all the Epistles and the undisputed Pauline letters cluster together significantly higher than the undisputed non-Pauline ones.
So it’s worth considering if Paul was a vulnerable narcissist, prone to expressing both shame and grandiose intermittently as long as the focus was on him.
You can also see the charming multiple places he swears he’s not lying, such as Galatians 1:20 or my favorite in Romans 9:1 where he swears to the Holy Spirit (though I must note all of Romans 9 is missing in Marcion’s version, and this kind of swear he’s telling the truth is repeated in 1 Timothy which is almost certainly a 2nd century forgery).
Paul even declared himself lawless in 1 Cor 9:20 and acknowledged converting by signs and wonders - which is a curious degree of overlap with the description of the “lawless one” in 2 Thessalonians 2 (projection much?).
There were other traditions of early Christianity that were much, much more interesting - particularly with the hindsight of modernity. But they lie buried under the efforts of Paul and those following after him.
Also, tangentially I get the creepiest vibe from Paul’s language around being ‘Father’, his oft conflicts with towns he’s residing in, and his described relationship over time with the much younger Timothy. It’s worth remembering that as early as the 2nd century the Roman satirist Lucian is positioning the early church as providing refuge for someone who was in trouble for molesting a young boy.
I’m not much of a fan of Paul, to say the least. (Though I do think he was brilliant at manipulation, like most narcissists.)
He was little more than a good PR operation. He was less concerned with getting the message right than he was with getting the *name* out there.
The final scene in the much-maligned Passion of the Christ illustrates this pretty beautifully.