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 3^rd 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 13^th 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. 3^rd edition. Curitiba, Positivo, 2004.

HOLZNER, Josef. Paul of Tarsus. 2^nd 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. 6^th 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. 37^th edition. Brasilia, FEB, 2013.

WRIGHT, Nicholas Thomas. Paul: new perspectives. Sao Paulo, Loyola, 2009.

_______. Paul: a biography. Rio de Janeiro, Thomas Nelson Brasil, 2018.

________________ 

¹ Link-1 - Accessed on: 10/02/2021.

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.

3 Link-2 - Acess on 02/23/2021.

4 Andre Luiz Ruiz, Antonio Cesar Perri de Carvalho, Jorge Damas Martins e Jose Carlos de Lucca. Cabe lembrar que Perri escreveu o texto “70 years of Paul and Stephen” that makes up the commemorative edition of the seven decades of the work, published in 2012, while he chaired the FEB.

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.