Introduction
Dictated by the Spirit
Emmanuel and published in 1942, the book Paul and
Stephen was considered by Francisco Candido Xavier
to be his main mediumistic work and classified by the
Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB), which edited it,
as a “historical novel”. Romance is defined in the main
dictionary (Ferreira, 2004, p. 1771) as: “long
description of the actions of fictional characters;
exaggerated or fanciful description; plot of
unbelievable things and speeches; real fact or episode,
but so complicated that it seems unbelievable”. A
historical novel, on the other hand, is correctly
defined on Wikipedia as: “a literary prose genre in
which the fictional narrative takes place in the past”.1 This
article challenges the classification of Paul and
Stephen as a historical novel, arguing in favor of
recognizing the complete veracity of this book about Paul
of Tarsus trajectory and nascent Christianity.
Outcome of the
classification as a historical novel
Having only become a
Spiritist in 1999, it took me ten years to read Paul
and Stephen, unconsciously, due to the generalized
association between romance and fiction, despite my
recognition of Emmanuel and Chico Xavier. After this, I
read with interest and attention the other “historical
novels” published by this duo. It is worth mentioning
that the great appreciation already made of this work
(but, unfortunately, it seems, left out) by the judge of
law Haroldo Dutra Dias woke my attention to its reading.
However, those videos of lectures and interviews on
Youtube, as well as the literary-musical seminar on the
theme in which he took part, specifically, did not reach
or did not convince a part of the Spiritist movement.
The first time I came across this reality was in 2017
when a leader of a Spiritist center in Sao Paulo, a
person with an intellectual profile, said during a small
seminar aimed at members of the religious community
itself that Abigail would be an example of a “poetic
invention” by Emmanuel to make the narrative of the book
beautiful.
But the evidence of
significant discredit in the Spiritist medium of the
main psychographed work by the late medium only appeared
to me when I watched on Amazon Prime pay TV, in 2020,
the movie Paul of Tarsus and the history of primitive
Christianity, of the “docudrama” type, combining
documentary and staging aspects. Produced, directed and
narrated by the journalist Andre Marouco, presenter of
programs at TV Mundo Maior, linked to the Andre Luiz
Foundation – FEAL2, the cast featured
the renowned actor Caio Blat playing Stephen. It entered
the cinema on October 3, 2019 - the day of the birth of
Allan Kardec, it is worth remembering - and there was a
campaign to publicize him among Spiritist groups, just
as it had happened with other films of the genre. Its
director explained the fact that the feature film was
rarely seen in the cinema: “this type of film does not
reach a wide range in the commercial market because it
is not a novel” [my emphasis] 3.
In the feature film, Paul
of Tarsus's trajectory is narrated, showing many current
images of the places he traveled, based on the biblical
texts: Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s
Epistles. There are comments from some well-known
Spiritist speakers 4, mainly from the
professor of religious sciences, linked to the Federal
University of Paraiba, Severino Celestino da Silva, who
is also a program presenter on TV Mundo Maior. Biblical
researcher and organizer of commercial trips for
Spiritist groups to Palestine and Europe, Celestino was
a curator, that is, a consultant for the film.
Although it is emphasized
in the feature-length film - through the speeches of
Celestino, Ruiz and Lucca - the influence that Stephen
had on the entire trajectory of the apostle to the
Gentiles, Emmanuel's book has none of its excerpts
reproduced and, more than that, not even quoted. Another
fact that elucidates the discredit of the psychographed
work by Chico Xavier is the statement by Marouco in the
film: “After the Romanization, Christians learned to
idolize religious leaders, speakers, authors and mediums
as beings endowed with infallibility” 5.
It is also worth noting that the feature film makes only
one mistake, however important, also in relation to the Acts
of the Apostles by stating that "Among the most
suspicious of Paul's conversion was the apostle Peter".
Contradicting Paul and
Stephen, the film points out not Simon Peter, but
James Minor as, from the beginning, the legitimate and
great leader of the first Christian community in
Jerusalem, called Casa do Caminho in the work of
Emmanuel. In chapter 15 of his book entitled The
gospel and primitive Christianity (2010), Severino
Celestino highlights the role of James reverberating the
position of two theologians who lived in the 3rd century:
Eusebio de Caesarea (265-339) and Clemente de Alexandria
(150 -215), that the apostle would be Jesus' biological
brother.6 The fact that Paul of Tarsus
referred to James as “the Lord's brother” in the Letter
to the Galatians (1:19) reinforces this
interpretation, although contemporary researchers, also
non-Catholics, claim that they are only relatives. It so
happens that the Spirit Humberto de Campos (2013), in
the work Boa Nova (Good News)– the first
edition was published in 1941 - also psychograded by
Chico Xavier, clarifies the question by saying on page
35:
Levi, Thaddeus and James,
sons of Alphaeus and his wife Cleopas, a relative of
Mary, were Nazarene and loved Jesus from childhood,
often being called “the brothers of the Lord”, in view
of their deep affective affinities.
Finally, in item 7 of
chapter 14 of The Gospel according to epiritism,
Kardec (2002, [1864] complements and also definitively
solves the interpretative problem (at least for
Spiritists) by stating:
As far as His brothers
are concerned, it is known that they had no esteem for
Him. As little advanced Spirits, they did not understand
His mission: they considered eccentric the way He
behaved and His teachings did not touch them, so much so
that none of them followed Him as a disciple”[emphasis
added].
This is why Jesus
entrusted the care of Mary of Nazareth(deeply Christian)
to the apostle John, brother of James the Greater, who
took her as a kind of adoptive mother, something also
highlighted in the book Good News, in line with
the sayings of Jesus to both on the cross, according to
John 19 (26-27):
Then, when Jesus saw his
mother and, standing beside her, the disciple he loved,
He says to his mother: Woman, here is your son. Then he
says to the disciple: Here is your mother. Since that
moment, the disciple received her in his own home.
In addition to the
feature film by Andre Marouco, another Spiritist film
was made about the convert from Damascus, but this is a
documentary divided into 15 episodes and shown only on
Youtube from May 2020. Titled Paul of Tarsus: the
medium de Cristo (Paul of Tarsus, Christ’s Medium”:
it was produced and narrated by the lawyer with a
master's degree in philosophy Paulo Cezar Fernandes.
Similarly to the previous one, this production is also
full of images, in addition to photographs, taken on a
seventy-day journey of the director and his wife through
places where the apostle traveled in Turkey, as well as:
Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Italy. In the documentary,
at least, Paul and Stephen has its cover
displayed, is mentioned a few times and appears as one
of the six books cited as reference works. However,
Fernandes chooses to transcribe on the screen
exclusively excerpts from Acts of the Apostles,
ignoring Emmanuel's version of important events, among
them the stoning of Stephen and Paul's experiences,
shortly after his conversion, both in Dan's oasis 7 and
in Tarsus. More than that, the fundamental role played
by the martyr in mediating between Jesus and the apostle
to the Gentiles is disregarded in the documentary's own
name.8 It appears, therefore, that the
book psychographed by Chico Xavier is effectively
secondary as a reference in the elaboration of this
production.
Biographies of Paul of
Tarsus
With the introductory
text "Brief news", Emmanuel explains, already in the
first paragraph of Paul and Stephen, the meaning
of its existence.
There are many works in
the world, in relation to the glorious task of the
Apostle to the Gentiles. It is fair, therefore, to
expect the question: - Why another book about Paul of
Tarsus?
There are actually a lot
of literary works about the apostle of the Gentiles, the
most important, from the 19th century, Saindt Paul (1869),
published in Brazil with the title Paul: the 13th apostle (2003),
by the famous French historian Ernest Renan (1823-1892).
This book, which addresses the Pauline epistles, was one
of two declared references to the first national
biography of the convert from Damascus, written by the
spiritualist philosopher from Santa Catarina Huberto
Rohden (1893-1981) Paul of Tarsus: the greatest
pioneer of the Gospel (2003), also sold in spiritist
bookstores. Much better known than this, in such a
medium, is the work of the renowned spiritist writer
from Rio de Janeiro Herminio Correa de Miranda
(1920-2013), published in two volumes, the second about
Martinho Lutero and the first, published in 1974, about
the Tarsus missionary: The marks of Christ: Paul, the
apostle to the Gentiles (2010).9
Edited by FEB, Herminio's
book cites Renan and other sources, mainly Paul and
Stephen, whose content the author reproduces,
without using quotation marks, in more than half of the
work, in a mixed way, therefore, with his writings. In
spite of such importance, the then FEB’s president,
Francisco Thiesen - who prefaces the book - does not
mention it, choosing to mention other works by
Emmanuel: On the way to the light (1939); The
Comforter (1941); Path, Truth and Life (1949).
Herminio himself will quote Paul and Stephen for the
first time, discreetly, on page 60 of the book. However,
he makes a point of contradicting Ernest Renan and other
biographers of Paul of Tarsus, in favor of the veracity
of Emmanuel's work when he stated on page 59:
It speaks to Jews in the
context of Jewish thought forms. The proof is in his
beautiful Epistle to the Hebrews, which, because it is
so impregnated by the emotional burden of the aged
Apostle, is considered by many to be apocryphal.10
In the academic world,
the book Paul: a biography (2018), by the English
theologian and Anglican emeritus bishop, as well as a
researcher at the University of Oxford and recognized
New Testament expert, Nicholas Thomas Wright, stands
out. Before that, he had published a very important work
entitled Paul: new perspectives (2009). Also
worthy of mention is the biography Paul of Tarsus:
story of an apostle (2007), written by the also
theologian, but Irish and Catholic, as well as a
Dominican priest and professor of New Testament at the
Jerusalem Bible School, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor (1935
-2013). He had previously published Paul: critical
biography (1996). It is worth noting that in his
mentioned books, Wright does not mention O'Connor and
both do not mention Ernest Renan.
Although not mentioned by
any of the authors listed above, with the exception of
Huberto Rohden, the most complete biography - given the
breadth of the research expressed in the wealth of data
exposed - is entitled Paul of Tarsus (2008) and
was originally published in 1937 by the Catholic German
priest Josef Holzner (1875-1947), whose chronology of
Paul of Tarsus basically corresponds to that also
pointed out by Nicholas Wright. The result of three
decades of research, Holzner's book,11 with
574 pages (Wright's also voluminous has 477), cites
Renan and dozens of other authors. It is not by chance
that his work is the closest to Paul and Stephen,
as we shall see. (Continued
in the next edition.)
References:
ANDRADE, Aila Luzia Pinheiro de. Shadow
and reality: a study of Hb 10 in the light of Christ's
'perfection'.
Master's thesis in theology. Belo Horizonte, FAJE, 2003.
BARBOSA, Leonardo. The Letter to the
Hebrews and the Pauline authorship. Sevorum Dei,
January 6, 2018. Available at:
Disponível em: Link-4 -
Accessed on: 03/19/2021.
FERREIRA, Aurelio Buarque de Holanda. New
Aurelio’s dictionary of the Portuguese language.
3rd edition. Curitiba, Positivo, 2004.
HOLZNER, Josef. Paul of Tarsus. 2nd edition. Sao
Paulo, Quadrante, 2008.
KARDEC, Allan. The
Gospel according to Spiritism. Araras,
IDE, 2002.
MIRANDA, Herminio Correa de .. The
marks of Christ: Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. Vol.
1. 6th edition. Rio de Janeiro, FEB.
MURPHY-O´Connor, Jerome. Paul:
critical biography. Sao Paulo, Loyola, 1996.
_______. Paul of Tarsus: story of
an apostle. Sao
Paulo, Loyola, 2007.
XAVIER, Francisco Candido. Good
news.
By the spirit of Humberto de Campos. 37th edition.
Brasilia, FEB, 2013.
WRIGHT, Nicholas Thomas. Paul: new
perspectives. Sao
Paulo, Loyola, 2009.
_______. Paul: a biography. Rio de
Janeiro, Thomas Nelson Brasil, 2018.
________________
2 The
feature film had promotional support from: TV Mundo
Maior, Radio Boa Nova, Mundo Maior Filmes - all linked
to FEAL - in addition to Radio Rio de Janeiro and the
Union of Spiritist Societies of the State of Sao Paulo
(USE-SP), as well as the sponsorship of TV Alvorada
Espirita.
5 Although
in the Spiritist environment, there is really idolatry
of certain people with such profiles, the fact is that
the director of the film referred, in a subliminal way,
to Chico Xavier and his psychographed book.
6 In
two editions of the TV show “Abrindo a Biblia”, on TV
Mundo Maior: on 09/03/2010 and 04/11/2011 and available
on Youtube, Celestino addressed the alleged leadership
exercised in an unchallenged way, in his opinion, by
James Minor in the Christian community of Jerusalem,
mentioning the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, a
document that won an edition focused on the Spiritist
segment (Miranda, 2007).
7 In
the Letter to the Galatians (1: 15-17), Paulo de Tarsus
refers to such a place, generically, only as "Arabia".
8 It
is interesting to note that even in the film Brothers of
Faith (2004), by Columbia Pictures, which was consulted
by the Catholic bishop emeritus Fernando Figueiredo and
the participation of the renowned actor Tiago Lacerda
and the famous priest Marcelo Rossi, it is recognized in
some way Stephen’s role in Paul's trajectory. This
happens shortly before the end, when the martyr's
sister, named in the feature film Macaria, appears
together with the convert from Damascus, while he is in
tears, on his knees and embracing her while she says:
“my brother is at your side, blessing and approving your
every step”.
9 Herminio
Miranda is also based on Ernest Renan to whom he
attributes the fact of pointing out, in his respective
book, several similarities between Paul of Tarsus and
Luther. Geraldo Lemos Neto, who was a close friend of
Chico Xavier, pointed out in an interview available on
Youtube
(Link-3 - accessed
on: 02/10/2021) that it was Emmanuel, through Chico, who
made Miranda the revelation that Luther and Paul de
Tarsus are the same Spirit.
10 However,
contemporary research based, to a large extent, on the
work Contra Celso (2011), completed in the year
248 by the Egyptian theologian Origen of Alexandria
(185-254), recognizes the Pauline authorship of this
letter (Andrade, 2003; Barbosa, 2018).
11 Work
of the life of this priest, who was a military chaplain
during World War I, then a parish priest in a small
municipality in his country and a professor of religion
in the also German city of Munich.
André Ricardo de Souza is PhD in
Sociology at the University of Sao Paulo, Associate
Professor II at the Department of Sociology at the
Federal University of Sao Carlos and organizer of the
books: Spirituality and Spiritism: Reflections beyond
religiosity (Porto de Ideias, 2017) and Identity and
assistance dimensions of Spiritism (Appris, 2020). He is
a member of the Sao Paulo Spiritist Heart of Jesus group
from São Paulo.
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