Seeded Male-Brides: Matthew Thiessen on "Pneumatic Gene Therapy"

In this blog post, we will see that what Paul literally believed was that the DNA of his Israelite messiah was going to literally transform the DNA of his Gentile-followers. First, see this post explaining that Paul likely saw the spirit (pneuma) as a supernatural pnenomenon but also as an actual material substance. 

 The following are excerpts from the book A Jewish Paul by Matthew Thiessen (2023 Edition), from chapter 8 "Pneumatic Gene Therapy." The words in brackets are my own words. The footnotes are from the origional text. The web links were also added by me. Here is the first excerpt:

... Paul’s writings demonstrate his abiding commitment to ancient ethnic reasoning. Gentiles need to become connected to Abraham so that they can inherit God’s promises to him and his seed [lineage]. Paul argues against gentile circumcision not because he is trying to break down ethnic boundaries but because he does not think that circumcision has the power to bridge the genealogical gap between Abraham and the gentiles. For Paul, only the divine power of the pneuma [pronounced "nooma"] (often translated into English as “Spirit”) can truly connect gentiles and Abraham. Gentiles, in short, need to undergo pneumatic gene therapy in order to inherit the many things God promised to Abraham. ... 

 

... Paul argues that circumcision and adoption of the Jewish law in its entirety will not work for gentiles because Israel’s God never intended for non-Jews to undergo circumcision and adoption of the Jewish law. [2] ... a circumcised gentile has not addressed the underlying condition: he has dealt only with the flesh, not the pneuma [again, pneuma is pronounced nooma]. ... 

 

... Romans and Galatians speak about Abraham and Abraham’s seed at some length (Rom. 4 and Gal. 3– 4). Abraham is the father of all who believe, and those who trust in the Messiah are Abraham’s seed (Rom. 4: 11, 13; Gal. 3: 6, 29). These passages show that Paul believes that gentiles do indeed need to become related to Abraham in order to inherit what God promised. But if circumcision and law are unable to make gentiles into seed [lineage] of Abraham, what can? ... in both Romans 4 and Galatians 3 Paul sets out to show how one becomes a seed [decendent] of Abraham. Galatians 3: 29 provides the clearest distillation of Paul’s thinking on this point: “If you are [part] of the Messiah [ei hymeis Christou], then you are the seed [sperma or ancestors] of Abraham.” For gentiles to become [the Jewish] Abraham’s seed [genetic ancestors], they only need to belong to the [Jewish] Messiah. One does this by being immersed into and being clothed in the Messiah. Paul uses the language of containment—entering into (eis) and becoming wrapped by or clothed in (enduō) the Messiah (Gal. 3: 27). Such statements encourage us to think in very spatial categories. The Messiah is a location or a container or a sphere into which gentiles must enter in order to be related to Abraham. [6] ... 

 

... By receiving with faith the good news that Paul proclaimed, the gentiles became recipients of this powerful pneuma [or nooma] (3: 1– 5). Paul goes on to compare this gentile faith to Abraham’s faith in Genesis 15: 6, concluding that those who are born out of faith are Abraham’s sons (Gal. 3: 6). [7] The logic, then, of Galatians 3: 1– 7 is that through faith one receives the pneuma (cf. 3: 14). Simultaneously, the one born out of faith becomes a son of Abraham. ... 

 

... It is not faith itself but what faith brings that makes one Abraham’s son. Faith brings the pneuma, and it is the pneuma that creates a connection between Abraham and the gentile believer. Why? Because of the identity of the pneuma that these gentiles receive. According to Galatians 4: 6, God sends the pneuma, which he identifies as the pneuma of his son, the Messiah, into the hearts of these gentiles in Galatia. ...

 

... I recall a pastor telling me as a teenager that the thought that Jesus enters into someone’s heart was laughable—that this was nothing but a mere symbol or metaphor. I think Paul would disagree. Jesus the Messiah invades the flesh-and-blood bodies of those who trust in him via his own pneuma. When gentiles receive the pneuma by faith, when this pneuma enters into their hearts, they have been infused with the stuff of the Messiah, which now permeates their bodies. Simultaneously, these gentiles are clothed in the Messiah. The Messiah, then, both envelops them and indwells them. ... 

... Understandably, this strikes us as odd. The best analogy that I can come up with is a sponge that one immerses in a pail of water. If held underwater long enough, the porous body of the sponge is filled with water while also being surrounded by it. The water simultaneously enters into the sponge and “enclothes” the sponge. This is close to, if not quite the same thing as, what Paul envisages. I have argued elsewhere, following the lead of Caroline Johnson Hodge and Stanley Stowers, that Paul depends here on the ancient science of his day to depict what happens to Messiah [8]. [Footnote 8 reads: Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs; and Stowers, “‘ Pauline Participation in Christ.’” ... According to Stoic philosophers, [the mixture of two substances was] called krasis. This is where this philosophical discussion becomes relevant to Paul (and others): the Stoics thought the supreme example of krasis was the mixture of an element they called pneuma with other, coarser substances that were made out of the four lower elements of air, fire, earth, and water. So, for instance, the Stoics believed that the soul was made from the material of pneuma and that this material perfectly combined (krasis) with the elements that made up flesh-and-blood bodies to make an organic unity. Pneuma continues to exist as pneuma, and flesh as flesh, but they share the same space. The Stoics called this the interpenetration of two substances. ... note how well this description fits what Paul says in a dense section of Romans 8 that talks about the very substance of the pneuma: “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the pneuma, since the pneuma of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the pneuma of the Messiah is not part of him. But if the Messiah is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the pneuma is life because of righteousness. If the pneuma of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised the Messiah from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his pneuma that dwells in you” (8: 9–11). The first sentence parallels Stoic thinking about krasis (whether Paul knows it or not): the Messiah follower is in the pneuma; simultaneously, the pneuma is in the Messiah follower. Again, the best example I can think of is a sponge (the person) both saturated and surrounded by water (the pneuma). Via his pneuma, then, the Messiah dwells in his followers, and they dwell in him. They are in him and of him, and he is in them. This is no mere external relationship to or with the Messiah; it is full and intricate and intimate participation in the Messiah.

 

I have been convinced by other scholars that the pneuma, God’s pneuma, the Messiah’s pneuma, in Paul’s mind is not something immaterial but the finest, most perfect form of matter. [Footnote 10. See especially Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self.] These arguments depend on ancient Stoic thinking again. Yes, this is controversial to many Paul scholars, not least because classical Christian theology has insisted on the immateriality of God. Such theology insists that God cannot be made up of matter because that would mean God is divisible and subject to change and decay. But that is not how some ancient people thought about the stuff of pneuma. Philosophical and scientific reflection on pneuma goes back at least to Aristotle, who argued that it was in some way related to a fifth element that made up the cosmos. Whereas previous philosophers had proposed four elements— fire, air, earth, and water— Aristotle conceived of one more element, a heavenly one called aether. ... Aristotle believed that aether was unlike the other four elements. It alone was unchanging, eternal, and divine. [11]. ... Aristotle had no problem speaking of pneuma both as a body and as matter. [12]  ...

 

... Paul was neither a Stoic nor a highly trained philosopher. But the basic elements of Platonic and Stoic thinking were the conceptual air that most people in the Greco-Roman world breathed. One would surely be wrong to think that all people today know what quarks and hadrons are, but many of us have a basic understanding of what gravity is or what atoms, protons, and neutrons are. So too, it is hard to believe that someone like Paul would not have known how the term pneuma was being used more broadly in his day. And, if we can trust Acts on this point, Paul came from the city of Tarsus, a known hotbed of Stoic philosophy. This was his world, even if it is not ours. ... unless he unmistakably signaled that he meant something quite different, his readers would inevitably have heard pneuma as those around them were commonly using it: to refer to a type of matter that was eternal and divine. While we cannot know what was in Paul’s mind, I would suggest that unless he was a very poor communicator, he would have known he needed to clarify what he meant by pneuma if he meant something dramatically different from what most others around him would have meant by the term. Otherwise he would have opened himself up to inevitable misunderstandings. ... 

 

... when Paul speaks about the pneuma entering into people’s hearts, as he does in Galatians 4: 6 and Romans 5: 5 and 2   Corinthians 1: 22, or more broadly about those who follow the Messiah receiving the pneuma (1   Cor. 2: 12; 2 Cor. 5: 5), modern readers should take this as materially as possible. The pneuma is the material gift from God—it is the presence of God and God’s Messiah—that enters into human hearts, the epicenter of human bodies. The holy pneuma materially inhabits human bodies (Rom. 8: 11; 2 Cor. 6: 16, quoting a modified form of Lev. 26: 11; cf. 2 Tim. 1: 14). [13] ... 

 

... gentiles have been infused, therefore, with the unchanging and eternal stuff of the Messiah, who himself became pneuma at his resurrection (1 Cor. 15: 45; 2 Cor. 3: 17– 18). By infusing gentiles with the Messiah’s pneuma, God has intervened in the gentile condition by editing their genetic code, modifying gentile DNA, so to speak. The pneuma is a vector inserted into the bodies of gentiles so that they now contain the Messiah’s genetic code: anyone united to the Lord is one pneuma with him (1 Cor. 6: 17).

 

Think about what this means so far. The Gentile Romans were not acceptable as Gentiles in Paul's mind. They needed to have their genes transformed though the pneumatic substance containing the genes of the Jewish Jesus, whose seed/sperm/DNA would make these gentiles descendents of Abraham. 

This same idea of "gene replacement" is echoed all throughout the New Testament. Let's look at just one verse in 1 John 3:9 (EXB):

Those [All] who are God’s children [born of/begotten by God; 2:29] do not continue sinning [or sin], because the new life from God [or God’s message; or God’s Spirit; his seed/sperm] remains [abides] in them. They are not able to go on sinning [or sin], because they have become children of God [are born of/begotten by God].

 

In other words, because Jesus decends from Abraham, when he implants his sperma in them through his pneuma, one's DNA is replaced and they partake of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).  

Mathew Thieseen continues:

... Just prior to Galatians 4: 6, Paul outlines an argument that the Messiah is the seed [ancestry] of Abraham (Gal. 3: 16). ... Immediately before Abraham trusts God’s promise, he complains to God that all God’s promises seem to be oblivious to the fact that Abraham still has no child to inherit what God promises to give him. As Abraham puts it, “You have not given to me a seed [sperma/descendants]”(Gen. 15: 3). God responds with yet another promise: “The one who comes out of your belly will inherit you”(15: 4). [14] Genesis 15 defines Abraham’s seed (sperma), therefore, as “the one who comes out of your belly.” This phrase occurs in only two other places in Jewish scriptures, both of which refer to David’s offspring. Once it refers to one of David’s sons, who seeks to kill David (2   Sam. 16: 11). The other is 2 Samuel 7, where through the prophet Nathan, God promises to David that he will raise up David’s seed (sperma), “the one who comes forth out of your belly” (7: 12). The Hebrew in both passages is the same, potentially creating in Paul’s mind a connection between Abraham’s seed and David’s seed. [15] 

 

If Jesus is the Messiah, then he is not only the seed [ancestor] of David but also the seed [ancestor] of Abraham, whom God promised in Genesis 15. And if gentile believers have the Messiah’s pneuma, then they have his material in them and are, at the same time, clothed in the Messiah. They are in the Messiah, and the Messiah is in them. They have received an infusion of the Messiah’s DNA, so to speak. Consequently, they are now materially, genetically, and genealogically connected not just to the Messiah but also to Abraham. They have undergone divine, pneumatic gene therapy to address the fact that they were previously unrelated to Abraham. ... Through the pneuma and in the Messiah, gentiles have become Abraham’s sons and seed [i.e. of his genetic lineage] .

 

... [Paul was arguing that] Gentiles had not received the pneuma through works of the law [like circumcision], so why would works of the law address something that the pneuma had not already? By adding works of the law to the pneuma, such people were in effect (although presumably not intentionally) implying that works of the law could do something that the pneuma could not, which is, of course, to imply that the Messiah  had not fully addressed the gentile condition. 

 

Paul again depends on the physics of his day when he makes this argument. Human flesh was made up of a combination of the four lower elements, and so it was mutable and non-eternal. To place confidence in a practice such as circumcision, then, was to place confidence in something that was passing away. If the Galatians tried to forge a connection to Abraham via circumcision, whatever connection they made, being merely skin deep, would simply not stand up to the test of eschatological time. They were making themselves Abrahamic sons according to the flesh (Gal. 4: 29), at best citizens of the “now Jerusalem,” a terrestrial [earthly] and therefore non-eternal citizenship in a Jerusalem that would not exist in the eschaton [end-times (the new earth)] (4: 25). In contrast, gentiles who became connected to Abraham through the Messiah’s pneuma were Abraham’s sons according to the pneuma (4: 29), connected to Abraham via an unchanging, indestructible, eternal material, and therefore were citizens of the Jerusalem above, the celestial and eternal Jerusalem (4: 25). To outline Paul’s argument succinctly:

 

Gentiles need to become Abraham’s sons and seed [ancestors] to inherit God’s promises.

The Messiah is Abraham’s son and seed [ancestor].

Gentiles, through faith, receive the Messiah’s essence, his pneuma.

Through faith and pneuma they have been placed into the Messiah.

The pneuma of the Messiah also infuses their bodies.

They have the Messiah’s essence in them, and they exist in the essence of the Messiah.

Gentiles have become Abrahamic sons and seed [i.e. his genetic ancestors].

 

 This is why I have titled this blog series, Seeded Male-Brides. 

 

 

 

Seeded Male-Brides (Introduction)

 Given the rise in anti-Semitism as of 2024, I want to begin this blog series by saying specifically that I oppose any form of anti-Semitism. 

When I talk of "the Jews" as a people and ethnicity in the ccontext of the New Testament, I am not referring to all Jews (then and now). I have a deep respect for the Jewish people and their ethnic heritage and Jewish religion. Whenever I might sound like I might be being critical of Judaism, I am not. I am actually being critical of the ideology and ethnocentrism of the Apostle Paul and some of the New Testament authors. In other words, the Jews who composed the New Testament are not to be equated with all Jews. I am distinguishing Jews who believe in and practice Judaism today and the Jewish-Christians who composed most of the New Testament. For example, just go on YouTube, and do a search for  "Tovia Singer and the apostle Paul" (or Google it). Tovia Singer, as a Jewish Rabbi, is very critical of Paul and the Messianic Jews who composed the New Testament. So too, I am only analyzing the New Testament authors and being critical of their ideology but I am not being critical of all Jews (then and now). 

My thesis, based on other biblical scholars, is that the Pauline cult looked down on Gentiles to a certain degree even though it often sounds like the opposite at times. In brief, the Pauline message is that the goyim (non-Jews) must be supernaturally transformed into Israelites through the seed (DNA) of the Jewish Messiah. Paul was thus seeking to erase and replace the ethnicity or genes of the Roman goyim with Jewish genes. This was not what ancient Jews themselves thought or believed in but was unique to the apostle Paul. In this blog series, I will show that what this Pauline mythos ends up meaning is that the cultural ethnic identity of non-Jewish pagans needed to be essentially erased and replaced with a "Jewish identity" by being supernaturally adopted into Israel through the implanted seed of a Jewish Messiah. In other words, the Pauline gospel-message is that ethnic pagans needed to be part of the chosen people by being grafted into the Israelite lineage (DNA). This was accomplished through them supernaturally receiving the Jewish Messiah’s divine sperma and receiving supernatural replacement gene therapy. All of this is explained in detail through several blog posts in this blog series. 

For example, the Pauline portraits of Jesus in the Gospels, where Jesus sometimes seems to talk down to Gentiles, is better understood as not necessarily the actual attitude of the historical Jesus, but is instead better understood through this blog series that covers the larger underlying context of Seeded Male-Brides. In other words, in order to better understand why the Jesus-character or Christ of Faith in the Gospels (which is not necessarily the Historical Jesus) sometimes talks down to pagans/Gentiles, one needs to understand the underlying Pauline idea of Seeded Male-Brides. Paul is seeking to "save" pagans through an ethnocentric mythology of literally replacing pagan genes with Jesus' Jewish genes. Therefore, the Gospels, which are influenced by the Pauline mythos, present various potraits of a Pauline-Jesus who often acts as if pagans are inferior to Israelites, and this is because underlying these Pauline portraits of Christ is the Pauline idea that pagans need to be supernaturally transformed into Israelites (that is, their pagan DNA has to be replaced with Jewish DNA). Again, non-Christian Jews, then and now, do not teach this. 

Again, due to a rise in anti-Semitism as of the year 2024, I want to be crystal clear that this blog series is in no way meant to be critical of Jews themselves or Judaism. I have a lot of respect for Jews as an ethnicity and for the Jewish religion. This is not a criticism of today's Jews or Judaism. Jews for Judaism never sought to replace Gentile DNA with Jewish DNA, that is a distincly Pauline idea. In New Testament times, as today, a Gentile could convert to Judaism without him changing his DNA. This idea of Gentiles needing to be supernaturally transformed and become spiritual Semites/Israelites is a distincly Pauline and New Testament idea. There is also no evidence that the Historical Jesus expected Gentiles to become genetically Israelite. 

This is also mostly only a critique of the apostle Paul's ideology and the Pauline aspects of the New Testament, and is not a criticism of most Protestant sects and Catholicism, which no longer teach these Pauline ideas. In fact most Christians do not even know about this idea of Seeded Male-Brides. Today's Christian theologies have completely ignored and reshaped the original New Testament theology, so that it's not about being seeded with the sperm of a male messiah, but it is now about Martin Luther's concept of being saved by grace through faith (i.e. religious conviction alone saves you). Meanwhile, most New Testament translations cover up the problematic language of Seeded Male-Brides. 

So I do not have a problem with most versions of Christianity today because it is simply a completely different religion from the origional New Testament Pauline religion. For more details on transformation from Pauline-Christianity into today's modern version of Christianity, see the book: The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C Russell.