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(You can click control + or - to make the text larger or smaller)     definitions of terms used in this article

In this article "DSS" is short for the Dead Sea Scrolls, and JBJ1 and JBJ2 stand for the book James, the Brother of Jesus, vollumes 1 or 2, by Robert Eisenman. I will abbreviate the two terms turn-the-other-cheekism and turn-the-other-cheekers both as TOC. In this article I will be using the term Christian (with no qualifiers) to mean messianic Jews, who were the original Christians and the only true type of Christians. This is because Christ, from the Greek Christos, means the anointed one, which is also what messiah means. Hence one who believes in the (militaristic) messiah is a Christian because they believe in Christ, the military messiah. There was no such thing as a TOC mentality back then, and in fact they were just the opposite, teaching as a doctrine that they must take revenge on their enemies even to the point of killing them. Back then, a military messiah was the only kind that there was, so no differentiation was needed. If all such Jews did not themselves take up arms, they nonetheless supported those who did. This was their unified minset, which was exemplified in their concept of the role of the messiah/christ. This is historically shown by examining DSS.
       It was only later that the TOC religion (which has been wrongly labelled as "Christianity") was created by Rome. As far as the terms: Jews, Israelites, and Hebrews,  I will be using the terms as follows: I will call them Israelites up until the time of the beginning of the Persian exile, and Jews from the time of the exile until this present day. I never refer to them as Hebrews because there were no Hebrews in the Bible (true Hebrews). Click the link above to read the definitions of these terms in more detail.
       The proper process for approaching any historical quest is to get rid of all of our biases, preconceived conclusions, and beliefs, and to wipe clean the hard drive of our mind, and to simple follow the evidence wherever it may lead us. This is what I have attempted to do. We may never know the full extent of what really happened because we do not now, nor ever will, have all of the evidence. But even if we did have it all, to obtain the truth from it wd require us to understand that evidence thru the mindset and culture that was existent at that time, and in the minds of those people who had those experiences. The best we can do is to determine what is the most likely scenario that occurred, and to try not to create this scenario with our present day mind-set which is far removed from the mindset and culture that existed back then. We must remain humble and realize that whatever conclusion we may arrive at shd not be considered as final because new evidence cd come along tomorrow which can alter, or even reverse a previously held conclusion in whole or in part.
       In deciding whether the wars between the Jews and Rome were instigated by the Jews or by Rome, this may at least in part (if not the whole) be predicated upon the Jew's ideological premise that they own the land that Rome had occupied. If such a premise is predicated by their belief in a Jewish race, and that God's promises are based upon race, then we have a problem because there is no evidence that any such race ever existed, and hence all of the conflict is the fault of the Jews as instigators. If the Jews can lay claim to the land occupied by Rome as having a legitimacy on some basis, then the situation may be changed (to a greater or lesser extent). But even in this case, is such a "legitimacy" based on historical fact or is it based on a belief? If a belief, then any belief can legitimize an act of war, and who is to say whose belief is correct or not? Supposing that there is proper and logical evidence that the Jews do have some claim to this land, this same logic and argument can be used against them because what then about those people(s) who occupied that same land before the Jews did? They then wd have a right to make war against the Jews and boot them out. Many people groups may have occupied this same land, in whole or in part, and for varying periods of time.  
       If anyone wants to see what true Christianity is they must familiarize themselves with the contents of The Dead Sea Scrolls. These are the unedited writings of the messianic Jews. With these as a starting point, it is easy to see how that the NT is an attempt to rewrite these documents and effectively to rewrite history. "History" is always written by the victors, who create the "official" history, and destroy the evidence to the contrary, We therefore have to dig deep to recover the true history.
       We are told that the Septuagint was translated from Hebrew into Greek by 72 Hebrew scholars (they rounded it off to 70 for whatever reason in the name Septuigint), but this is counter-logical that a group pf Jews who were fighting the Greeks then the Romans for independence wd translate it into the laguiage of their captors who had persecuted them! At one point a Selucid king placed statues of Zeus in the Jewish synagogues requiring Jerws to worship Zeus. Then these Jews are to translate their sacred scriptures into Greek? Unlikely! They wd do just the opposite and leave them in Hebrew which they claim is their own language. The only logical explanation to all this is that they were originally written in Greek.
       The OT is notorious for false dating. This is done by creating false events then dating them, then using these false events and dates to date the text that has described them. It is cyclical reasoning. An example of the is the supposed 430 years of bondage and the "exodus" which the OT dates, then later these dates are used as benchmarks to date other events and wven when the books themselves were written. The Passover also being a fictitious story is dated, then these dates used later as benchmarks to date other events. And so on. The OT itself is a house of cards based on the dating of non-existent events. 
       There is a blurring of papal lineage, of the roles of Roman bishops and priests, and even the Jewishness of the Herodian line. There is also a blurring of offices such as bishop and priest, if they were Roman offices (the Roman government, but at the time when the Catholic Church was not yet established as such, which was not until the 4th or 5th century) or Jewish priestly offices. This blurr and confusion can be seen in a quote from JBJ1, Part 1, ch.6:

 . . . Herod did have at least two Jewish wives, both daughters of High Priests and both called
Mariamme (‘Miriam’ or ‘Mary’).
       The first Mariamme carried within her veins the last of the Maccabean Priest line. On both sides of her family she was
of the blood of the heroic Maccabees, the Jewish High Priest line defunct after Herod. This in itself is a tragic enough
story. Herod married her, seemingly by force, when he was besieging the Temple in 37 BCE. Ultimately he had her
executed on the charge that she had been unfaithful with his brother Joseph (the original ‘Joseph and Mary’ story?). In
time, Herod also executed his two sons by her, who had been educated in Rome, because he feared the Jewish crowd
would put them on the Throne in his place – presumably because of their Maccabean blood – though not before they had
reached majority and produced offspring of their own.
       In a similar manner years before, he also had her brother, a youth named Jonathan (Aristobulus in Greek, that is,
Aristobulus III – the Maccabees often combined Greek with Hebrew names), killed for the same reason when he came of
age and was able to don the High Priestly robes. It was the assumption of the High Priesthood by this Jonathan that
probably explains Mariamme’s willingness to marry Herod in the first place. In one of the most tragic moments in Jewish
history as we saw, Herod, like some modern Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler, had Jonathan drowned while frolicking in a pool
at his winter palace outside Jericho – this after the Jewish crowd wept when the boy donned the High Priestly vestments
of his ancestors. The time was 36 BCE after Herod had assumed full power in Palestine under Roman sponsorship as a
semi-independent King, the preferred manner of Roman government in that recently acquired part of their Empire.
   . . . Herod then executed his own two sons by her (Mariamme: his Jewish wife) – again probably for the same reasons – because the crowd, being nationalistic and Maccabean in sentiment, preferred them to him. Finally he executed Mariamme’s mother and Hyrcanus’ daughter, the wily old dowager Salome, who was the last to go besides these.1 When Herod was done, there were no Maccabeans left, except third-generation claimants in his own family, whose blood had been severely cut by his own over three generations of cleverly crafted marriages.

Notice that the time frame is in the BC era, before "Jesus" was even born, yet this same modus operandy that Rome used diuring the NT era was in place during the OT era. So was "Christianity" really a NT phenomenon or was it deeper as being intrinsic into the Jewish religion too? But consider another porribioity that the Jewish and "Christian and TOC religions were really one and the same creations, all created by Rome and all with the same intent: to control. At first someone may argue: Why wd Rome create a false "enemy" in the (non-existent) Jewish race just to control people? The main eason I can see is to hide their real activity and its purpose. In short: misdirection. If we apply the axiom: "if it looks, walks, swims and quacks like a duck" to the activity of Rome in the BC and AD era, it leaves us to conclude that it is all the same thing. If my theory is correct, then it is Rome that is the arm of Zionism. Zionism is always the "hidden hand" which is never itself apparent as a group that can be identified. We saw this in WW2 in which zionism orchestrated the war with the intent to steal the Palestinian land from them, but found a scapegoat (misdirection) in Hitler, and had everyone focuss on him.
       I have previously stated about Isis, Osiris, and Horus as being the trinity from which Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were created. There is no contradiction here to hold that (if it is fact is true) that Herod's wife was Mary and his brother whom he murdered as Joseph. Rome wd have been familiar with Egyptian mythology and knew that a newly created religion, to be effective, must contain some version of a holy family (triad). It just may have been an opportunity presenting itself as far as his wife Mary and brother Joseph are concerned. Given this possibility it is less likely that these were there false names because Herod wd have wanted their names to be used as dupes and pawns: Mary was despised by "God" (in practice, even tho the Bible says she was "blessed" - - - this may have been a form of sarcastic humour) by having her son brutally murdered. This wd annoy any woman, and do one way for Herod to heap revenge upon his wife Mary wd have been for her to suffer the grief of having her son murdered, and in fact, Herod did have his children (produced by Mary) murdered so that they cd not ascend the throne. And isn't this why Herod, in the Matthew nativity story had Jesus murdered? These "coincidences" lead to less likely hood that this is a mere theory. Eisenman goes on to say:

Herod proceeded to decimate the remainder of the Maccabean family, even that part of it that survived by subordinating itself to him and accommodating itself to Rome: first Jonathan; then Mariamme herself – though Josephus portrays Herod, soap-opera style, as being both in love with and hating her at the same time; then Hyrcanus II, Jonathan’s grandfather from the generation of the 60s when the fraternal strife that resulted in foreign occupation began.

This is insightful because it suggests that the Jews in that era despised the role of priest (and by extension other clerical roles) because they were not true roles but were puppet positions set up by Rome. We are led to believe the opposite in the NT in that the Jews hold in high regard the priests and clergy of the synogogues.

 
Two Different Jesuses,
Christs, and Christianities
Before we can even ask the question: What is the true history of Christianity, we must first define what we mean by the term "Christian". As it turns out, there are at least two different historic definitions that can be used, and unless we clarify what we mean by the term, we can be talking at cross-purposes (no pun intended), and we can engage in fruitless arguments because our terms mean something different. In this same way also, the term "Jew" must be defined. In this regard I recommend the book The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, who was a professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv. Today we often use the terms Jew/Israelite/Hebrew interchangeably, yet they are not the same thing, and again we can be talking at cross purposes if we do not define these terms and clarify the differences between them. Click here for the working definitions of these terms, as I use them in this article.
       Rome has been falsely accused of killing millions of TOC. The wars were not with the TOC, but were against Christians.  And to be fair both ways, the Christians also killed many Romans. Giving the bloodthirtyness and lack of conscience of Zionism (as can be seen in the mistreatement of Palestinians), I cannot automatically feel sorry for the Zionists, but I can feel sorry for the Jews who were disposable and unwitting pawns in the hands of the zionists, who sacrificed "their own" for their own self interest. Those 3ho fot against Rome were not zionists. Zionists never fight, becaue they are cowards. They get other people to fight for them, and lose their lives in the process.
       So was Rome's killing of Christians proactive or reactive?  Was the slaughter instigated by Rome or by Zionists? Or can the blame can lay on both sides? We need to be fair and open minded either way in this regard. In the first and second centuries there was constant "wars and rumours of wars" between the Jews and Rome. These are sometimes referred to as the Maccabbean wars, altho there were various categories of Jews involved, directly or indirectly, whether as a formal group or sub-group, or not, Nad whether properly labelled or not)  Such groups or categories as Sicarii, Zealots (Kannaim), Messianic Sadducees, Nazoraeans (Nozrim) or Nazarites, Essenes (Hassidim), Zadokites (Zaddikim), Ebionites (Ebionim), Saints (Kadoshim)
       If Rome had really been slaughtering many TOC, then why (other than Saul) is there zero mention of this in the NT? Something as important as a widespread slaughter of these believers going on before and at the time the NT was being written, yet not even a single reference to it going on? (other than Saul as persecutor). Was Saul the only Roman persecuting TOC? After Saul's conversion, did all persecution of TOC stop? If so, then Paul was the only one who was persecuting. And there is no mention before Paul of any persecution. How can this be if is was so widespread? No mention at all in the gospels which preceded Paul.There is a curious passage in Hebrews 11:33-40:

. . . who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; of whom the world was not worthy: they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

If we go back to verse 1, all of the names were of OT characters from Abel to David and Samuel, but it stops there. This passage is not talking about the NT era of Roman persecution, not only because of the reference to OT characters, but also because the descriptors "these", "they", and "us". Notice the bolded words in v. 38-40: . . . they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us
should not be made perfect.The phrase "they without us" clearly lets us know that they were not the persecuted Christians in view here. Rome duid not exist when Abel, Abraham, Moses, David and Samaul lived. Yet this passage of persecution in pre-Roman era that ended with David/Samuel is the one mentioned in Hebrews, not in any persecution of either Christians or TOC in the books of Hebrews. This is incredible! The only logical conclusion is that no persecution was taking place when the book of Hebrews was being written. At this point someone will argue that Stephen was stones and that I am ignoring to report this. Yes he was stones, but by the Jews, not by Rome! It was the Jews who accused him, brot him to trial before a Jewish trial and condemned him to death. We read about this in Acts chapters 6 and 7. 
       At the point where these events are said to have taken place it is an impossibility that there cd even have yet existed the turn-the-other-cheekers because the TOC mindset and doctrine had not existed yet because the gospels (and the other books of the NT at a yet later time) were written decades later, hence the only Christians that even cd have existed for the first few decades were the Jewish messianics. No where in the NT do we red about Rome persecuting, much less killing even one TOC. Regarding Saul, there are two possibilities:

1) Paul as a Roman was persecuting Christians, not turn-the-other-cheekers.

2) Saul as a Jew was persecuting other Jews (as was the case with Stephen and Jesus who were condemned by Jews, not Romans)

       This second possibility is not so far fetched as it may first seem because one only needs to read the book of acts to see how chummy Paul is with Roman leaders, and is not likely to persecute the turn-the-other-cheekers who teach men to obey Roman law and gladly pay taxes. Paul wd have invoked the anger of Roman royalty if he was persecuting that group which was teaching submission to Rome and therefore helping to promote the Roman Empire. It wd have made no sense for Paul to act in this way. 
       A "slippery substitution" is found in the usage of the name Jesus. (which is how the TOC religion was created by the Romans). The Greek word Jesus is a transliteration of the Hebrew Joshua. Jesus means the same as what Joshua means: saviour, but Joshua was not a saviour but was the exact opposite: a destroyer. His career was built on bloodshed, theft, torture, and the slaughter of entire cities. One example is when God told him to invade the city of Ai and kill men, women and sucklings! This is not the mindset of the turn-the-other-cheek concept that Jesus was patterned after, but rather the bloodshed mindset. The Christ of Messianic Christianity was in fact patterned after the bloodthirsty Joshua, which coincides with the idea of a Christian being a messianic (militant) Jew. People think of Jesus as a caring, loving, compassionate, humble man who only helped people, yet the function of Joshua was exactly the opposite. The term Jesus has been substituted for Christ, (in the sense of passivism in exchange for militancy, while at the same time is used in tandem with), then the program of Jesus is presented as the opposite of that of Joshua, which is the big deception here, the "slippery substitution". The substitution is not in the name, but the purpose or function of that name, and with the intention to deceive. This is like putting sheep's clothing on a wolf. Jesus is said to have taught forgiveness and loving our enemies, Joshua showed no mercy to anyone nor forgave anyone. The purpose and function of the messianic concept of Christ has also been substituted for a spiritual concept. This in itself is not deceptive because the NT text states this plainly that the Israel that this Jesus came to save is a spiritual Israel. The deception however is created by substituting the Christianity, Jesus, and Christ to replace the original form of Christianity (militaristic messianism) in our minds so that effectively it has been erased from history. This helps Rome to cover their tracks and divert attention from the real issue and the real history. By Rome creating false history of Rome itself persecuting turn-the-other-cheekers, (and passing them off as "Christians" in our minds) they can keep historians busy perpetually chasing their tails and never getting to the truth. The deception here is to hide the fact that the true meaning of a Christian is a militaristic Jew. By changing the true meaning of Christian to the false meaning of TOC, they are conceal their slaughter of Christians (Messianic Jews), and also conceal the fact that the TOC mindset  was created by Rome, and is being used as a way to control the masses in that Rome used it as a way to create peace and harmony within the empire, because if they can get people to believe what the NT teaches (to submit to authority in Romans chapters 13) to submit to authority, and those who have the rule over you are God's messengers, then it is obvious that the TOC version of Christianity is greatly to Rome's advantage and provides a motive for them to have created this substitutionary (false) form of Christianity in the first place. 
       The contents of the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls prevented us from having a more accurate picture of the real history of Christianity is the suppression of the true and original Christianity (Messianic Judaism or Messianic Christianity which are the same thing). An excellent book has been written called The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. (The contents, altho withheld for decades, did become available some years after the book was written) The content of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal that (the original) Christianity was actually messianic, did not include a "suffering saviour" and was not TOC. Think of it in this way: Messiah/Christ derives the terms messianic/Christian. Rome wd have had no reason to persecute the TOC because they posed no threat to the security or stability of the empire, and in fact these TOC helped to keep Rome stable and secure because they followed the teaching to submit to authority, and therefore it makes no sense to believe that Rome persecuted and tortured them. To create it then destroy it? No logic in that. Unless we understand that the true (original definition of) Christians were messianic Jews who did pose a threat to the security and stability of Rome.
       Another point to consider is whether we are tralking about Jesus as a specific person or as a function. If you call a man "doctor", are you using this as a name or as a function? Is "doctor his name, or what he does (doctoring people)? Is Jesus wjhat someone's name is, or is it what he does? (saving people -- Jesus means "saviour) If someone's purpose or function is that of saving people, then he is a saviour, without regard for what his birth name is. In this same way a man is a doctor without regard for what his birth name is. But then doctor is not his name. So then is Jesus a man's name if he saves people? Using the same analogy I just mentioned that was used for a doctor, then no: Jesus is not a name any more than doctor is a name. For this reason any man can be Jesus, wihin the context of the Dead Sea scrolls, or the NT, or outside of both. 

Here is some diplomatic correspondence between Pliny the Younger and Emperor Trajan about some of the activity of Christian":

Pliny the Younger:

" . . . for there is no doubt that people have begun to throng the temples which had been entirely deserted for a long time;
the sacred rites which had been allowed to lapse are being performed again, and flesh of the sacrificial victims is on sale
everywhere, though up till recently scarcely anyone could be found to buy it. . . .  "

Is this the activity of the TOC? No. Selling dead body parts, and reviving "sacred rites" again that had not been practiced in a long time? If no record of any Christians having performed these sacred rites before they were brought to trial, then it cd not have been Christians or turn-the-other-cheekers who are in view here. Therefore it is possible that the term "Christian" was referring not to Christians or TOC, but to some abberent sect of some kind using unethical rituals that Pliny was confusing with Christianity. Any group that believed in Any type of messiah or political saviour cd have been confused with Christianity.

The reply from Trajan was

. . .You have followed the right course of procedure, my dear Pliny, in your examination of the cases of persons charged with being Christians, for it is impossible to lay down a general rule to a fixed formula. These people must not be hunted out;
if they are brought before you and the Christian, charge against them is proved, they must be punished, but in the case of
anyone who denies that he is a Christian, and makes it clear that he is not by offering prayers to our gods, he is to be
pardoned as a result of his repentance however suspect his past conduct may be. But pamphlets circulated anonymously must play no part in any accusation. They create the worst sort of precedent and are quite out of keeping with the spirit of our age. . . .

Pliny’s ignorance of an existing policy concerning Christians is clear, along with his personal hostility toward them. Interestingly, Pliny thinks the Christians’ meetings are properly forbidden under Trajan’s ban on political groups. But Pliny clearly does not know what the emperor will think about this new problem. In Acts 21:20-21:

. . . Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law: and they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs.

       In this pasaage we have both the Christians and TOC found together. The zealous were the zealots (a militant messianic group) and the turn-the-other-cheekers was trying to get them to forsake their aderence to Jewish laws. When  it says that these Jews "believe", the context alone tells us that they believed in the strict Jewish traditions and laws. There were not "beileivers" as turn-the-other-cheekers use it today. Notwithstanding hat I have said above about two Christs, in another way there were many christs or messiahs, and in this case a christ is anyone who is a leader of the rebel forces who leads the Jews in the direction of freedom. Each successive leader of the Maccabees can be said to be a christ, or a saviour (Joshua or Jesus), but again not as divine beings. This "shell game" of  multiple Jesuses is mentioned in the introduction to vollume 1 of James, the Brother of Jesus, by Robert Eisenman:

 . . . These probably have very real relevance to a section in the Antiquities of the Jews, in which Josephus describes in gory detail the woes brought upon the people by the movement founded by ‘Judas the Galilean’ around the time of the Census of Cyrenius in 6–7 CE.
       This is contemporaneous with Jesus’ birth according to the Gospel of Luke, and is also referred to in Acts (5:37). Josephus calls this movement the ‘Fourth Philosophy’, but most now refer to it as ‘Zealot’. Here, as in the Little Apocalypse, Josephus portrays this movement – the appearance of which, again, is contemporaneous with the birth of Christ in Luke – as bringing about wars, famine, and terrible suffering for the people, culminating in the destruction of the Temple.
       These ‘woes’ also have relevance to another Messianic character whom Josephus calls ‘Jesus ben Ananias’. This man, whom Josephus portrays as an oracle or quasi-prophet of some kind, went around Jerusalem directly following the death of James in 62 CE for seven straight years, proclaiming its coming destruction, until he was finally hit on the head by a Roman projectile during the siege of Jerusalem and killed just prior to the fulfillment of his prophecy.
       The applicability of this story to the Historical Jesus (and in a very real way the Historical James) should be obvious. In fact, ‘Jesus ben Ananias’ was set free at the end of Josephus’ Jewish War after having originally been arrested. The release of such a Messianic double for Jesus is also echoed in Scripture as it has come down to us in the release of another ‘double’. One Gospel calls him ‘Jesus Barabbas’ – the meaning of this name in Aramaic would appear to be ‘the Son of the Father’ – a political ‘bandit’ who ‘committed murder at the time of the Uprising’ and is released by Pontius Pilate (Mt 27:26 and pars.)

Eisenman goes on to say later in the introduction:

Variant manuscripts of the works of Josephus, reported by Church fathers like Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome, all of whom at one time or another spent time in Palestine, contain materials associating the fall of Jerusalem with the death of James – not with the death of Jesus. Their shrill protests, particularly Origen’s and Eusebius’, have probably not a little to do with the disappearance of this passage from all manuscripts of the Jewish War that have come down to us. As will also become clear, other aspects from the biography of James have been retrospectively absorbed into the biography of Jesus and other characters in the Book of Acts in sometimes astonishing ways.

From The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians by Robert Eisenman, ch.1, section VI: A Zadokite Reconstruction:

It is often overlooked how “Messianic” the Qumran sect actually was, and one is not just speaking here about the well-known notion of “the two Messiahs”, which has been widely commented on presumably because it is so perplexing. Rather, what is even more striking is the reference to and quotation of the all-important “Star Prophecy” from Num 24:17 upwards of three times in the extant corpus: once in the Damascus Document, once in the War Scroll, and at least once in what should be called the sect’s “Messianic” proof-texts.

The two messiahs that he is referring to are Jesus (Joses) and James, with James being the successor to Jesus, yet the NT has Jesus as the ONLY messiah, with no such designation for James, whose "faith" approach is ridiculed by Paul (and Martin Luther). The "Jesus" that is in the NT is a perversion, that is, he is a fictitious creation but based on a true charcter who is The Righteous One and The Teacher of Righteousness referred to in DSS.  The Jesus of the NT is meant to replace James of the DSS, then this Jesus of the NT was killed as was also James of the DSS killed (murdered). I recommend that you read ch. 6 (Part 1) of JBJ1: The First Appearance of James in Acts. Keep in mind that Qumran Jewish community's concept of a messiah or saviour was purely a physical man, not a god-man or divine man as is the modern view of Jesus. There were many messiahs in Jewish history, whether they were real or self proclaimed. Why then does Matthew 24:23-26 declare:
Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

The idea that people in the 1st century needed to be warned about false Christs is silly if we hold the position that the Christ (whoever he is) wants to willingly give his life and be a martyr. How many men wd be lining up vollunteering to be a martyr?! And how many men back then were proclaiming that they were a god-man? To proclaim such wd have been blasphemy, and, according to the Jews at Jesus trial, (rightly or wrongly) constituted reason for execution. This statement in Matthew only makes sense in the context of a savour as a mere mortal man, with no divinoity involved, hence the statement was targeted towars messianic Jews, not the Roman public, who wd not have understood its true meaning any more than churchianity today understands it.
Symbolism
Atwill draws the conclusion that TOC was created by Rome (and I agree with him on this point), yet at the same time it does not follow (in my mind at least) that TOC was originally created to have a widespread appeal, but only a limited function: that of quelling the Maccabees who were creating unrest. Atwill's assertion that a widespread appeal was intended at its creation is questionable because if this was the case then why wd Rome have waited another 300 or so years before proclaiming TOC as the official religion? And why did the supposed Roman persecution of TOC come to an end with the Edict of Milan in 131 CE when Constantine made TOC legal, and this before it became the official religion of Rome? And at this point when the cross came to be used an an official TOC symbol where it had rarely been used previously. If as Atwill claims that the TOC was intended to be widespread at its inception, then why was not the cross declared its official symbol at this inception also, and why was not the edict issued at its inception? To quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The rare appearance of a cross in the Christian monuments of the first four centuries is a well-known peculiarity;
not more than a score of examples belong to this period. Yet, though the cross is of infrequent occurrence in its familiar form, certain monuments appear to represent it in a manner intelligible to a Christian but not to an outsider.
The anchor was the symbol best adapted for this purpose, and the one most frequently employed.

According to Harpers Book of Facts, (Harper and Brothers, 1895)
"Crosses in churches and chambers were introduced about 431; and set up on steeples about 568.

It may have been a fluke in the sense that while TOC was originally created to quell the expansion of militant Jewry to the further reaches of the empire, that after Rome realized that it was also effective in controlling non-Jews in that all of its adherents were taught to submit to the authority of the government, (as well as willingly pay taxes) that they realized that they had a winning system on their hands, which only became apparent after so many years, and that this cd be made the official religion to perpetually keep all of Rome's potential seditions at bay, and that this religion worked equally well for Jews and non-Jews. If this was the case, then it was in this sense also a fluke, which can explain why it did not become officially the religion until the 4th century, and also why the cross was not officially introduced until the 4th century to mark the official start of TOC which is where the modern day definition of "Christian" had its roots..
       As I have mentioned previously, this "crossing" can also refer to a merging of two different Christianities (while using the same terms Christ and Jesus, which is the misleading part) and as such the term "cross" here does not necessarily imply a literal wooden cross. To be consistent, if we are to hold the position that it does mean a literal wooden cross, then we must also hold that the blood was literal blood, and this is an impossibility with TOC which was designed to subdue the Christians. Any literalization (at this point in time and at this preliminary stage) wd have destroyed any attempt by Rome to seduce the militant Jews and divert them to passivism. In other words, to make it all literal wd immediately expose the fraud because the Jews knew that no one named Jesus or Joshua had been crucified on a cross, and the story wd have lost all credibility, as wd have any fledging religion based on it. Remember that this story of a crucifixion was not "released" by Rome until some decades after it had allegedly happened. As Atwill has correctly shown, the gospels were backdated. Furthermore, if this mention of a cross in the gospels was intended to be understood as a literal wooden cross, then how is it that the cross did not become the official symbol of TOC until around 300 years later? (and this only by mandate). It became at that time the sumbol, but it was not until years later that it was actually used by much of TOC. It was not popular, or even well known from the start. If the whole basis of Christianity is that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, then why was not the most important symbol in all the world neglected for 300 years? This is one historical argument regarding the cross, but next I will present a quite different one.

John 3:14 says: "And as Moses lifted up the cross in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Yet the OT is clear that the serpent was on a pole, not a cross. In other words there was only one piece of wood involved, which was vertical.

Numbers 21:8-9: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole; and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." 

       No mention of a cross here, and further, the serpent was not crucified, not harmed in any way, yet Jesus said that his end wd be like that of the serpent. If there was to be any possible representation by early TOC of a cross (not that they wd even want to represent it in the first place) a good case wd be made for the "cross" to be a pole. In other words, the cross wd not have been used at all, but instead a pole wd have been used as a Christian symbol of the crucifixion. A pole wd even have spiritual significance in another way: if Jesus was to be the bridge between God and man, then on the lower end of the pole is man, and on the upper end is God, with Jesus in the middle being the mediator. How can a serpent be "on" (top of) a pole? Can it sit on the point? A reasonable explanation wd be that the serpent was wrapped along the length of the pole, being evenly distributed. To be consistent with the NT teaching, with the son of man being "lifted up" we imply that he was already on the cross before the cross was lifted, so likewise the serpent wd have been already wrapped around the pole before it was lifted. The Israelites were instructed to look at the LIVE serpent to be saved. So to be consistent we shd then look at a LIVING Christ (on a pole/cross) to be saved. In saying all of this I have shown that the emphasis for salvation is not in a piece of wood, but what is attached to that wood (the serpent or Jesus). Yet people still glorify a cross (which is not a pole). There is a misapplication here on at least seven aspects:

1) The cross was borrowed from a previous era, and it not Christian in origin.
2) There is no relationship between a cross and a pole.
3) The serpent was not killed, but Jesus was.
4) The cross was a crucifixion device, but the pole was not.
5) The Israelites were told to LOOK at the serpent and live, we are told to BELIEVE in Jesus and live.
6) The Israelites did not glorify nor worship serpents, yet we are told to glorify and worship Jesus.
7) Genesis chapter 1 portrays the serpent as evil, yet Jesus is portrayed as holy.

Acts 5:30 says: "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree".  Acts 10:39 says: "And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree." Then to Acts 13:29 "And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulcher." Then to Galatians 3:13 "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." Then to 1 Peter 2:24 "who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree." A tree does not have any horizontal cross sections. The two best Biblical explanation of what the "cross" looked like are a pole and a tree. But now we have another problem: that a pole is not the same as a tree. Jesus cd not have been crucified on both. A tree cannot be "lifted up" because it is already up, but a pole can and must be lifted up. A pole has no roots, branches or leaves, but a tree does. A pole is dead, but a tree is alive. People will say that the cross was referred to as a tree because it was made of wood which comes from a tree, but a boat was also made of wood, and no where is a boat referred to as a tree. To be consistent, if you are going to say that Jesus died on a tree because the pole in the OT story of the serpent in Numbers 21:8-9 was made from a tree, (what else cd it have been made from?) we must also say that if we rode in a boat we were floating down the river on a tree. Then we have Marks 8:24 which refers to people as trees: "And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking."  Since Jesus was also a man, so cd we refer to Jesus as a tree, plus the cross also as a tree? Of course this is absurd because how can a tree be crucified on a tree? Cross is from the Greek word stauros (Strong's 4716). It occurs 28 times and is only translated as cross. (this from The Englishman's Greek-English Concordance of the New Testament, published 1844) 
       The authors of Creating Christ, in chapter 2, p.114, present a picture of the symbol of the anchor and dolphin(s) with a cross-piece at the top of the anchor. Why was the cross-piece later added to the top of the anchor to form somewhat a cross? Or was this an effort to even resemble the "Christian Cross" in the first place? How cd it have been intended to represent the cross when the cross was not yet a TOC symbol? If not a cross then, why was it added to the anchor? Since the early Christians (TOC type) used the anchor/dolphin symbol, does this mean that Jesus was crucified on an anchor? If as we are told he died on a cross, then why did they use the anchor/dolphin symbol and not a cross? The oldest TOC site: the Catacombs of St.Domitilla in Rome, does not contain any crosses, but does contain the anchor/fish symbol (with two fish), yet this same symbol was used by Titus (on his coins) who is said to have been persecutung TOC. How can this be? Titus was the uncle of Domitilla, and the Flavian family (the family of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian) had an inscription in this catacomb showng that it was the burial site for the Flavian family. This inscription in Latin said:

SEPVLCRVM
FLAVIORVM

and it had an anchor (with no dolphins) under the words.

       The anchor/dolphin symbol, (sometimes fish were used instead of dolphins) as it was used by Titus, then after that by early TOC, but it predated both. The anchor/dolphin symbol was borrowed from a previous era.  Did a cross of crucifixion even look like the cross that we see on churches today? 
       Does it make any sense that Christians wd glorify the method of crucifixion? This is like your best friend being murdered by a butcher knife. Wd you then glorify butcher knives and have pictures of butcher knives in your home, car, and wear a butcher knife around your neck? Wd you have a belt buckle, key chain, ring, pendant, and tee-shirt showing a butcher knife? Would you erect large butcher knives on top of your home or place of business? No! You wd want to NOT think about butcher knives. Hence it is not understandable why TOC wd even want to symbolize a cross. This may be a reason why Constantine had to make a decree that the cross was the official symbol of the Church. For Constantine to say that he had a glorious vision of the cross, is like saying that he had a glorious vision of a knife after his best friend was murdered by it. 
       Consider now Constantine's apparent conversion to the TOC in 321. Which version had he "converted" to, and on what basis was his "conversion"? What religion did he have (and give up) prior to this that he was converting from? Most people say that Rome before this time was torturing and killing TOC, yet if this was so, and if Constantine truly converted to the "moral and ethical" TOC, then why did he not apologize for the past crimes of Rome, and admit that they had mistreated many people and had acted in disobedience to God's laws? There is no remorse nor admittance whatsoever. Compare this to the conversion of St. Paul who confessed that he had committed crimes against Christians and showed remorse for it, then changes his ways and walked the straight and narrow.
       Constantine claims to have received a vision about the cross, and the message in his vision was In Hoc Signo Vinces (In this sign, conquer) No mention about living a moral, virtuous life of love and caring for the needy, but in fact just the opposite. His "vision" was a military instruction to commit atrocities. Warfare is not moral or loving, and this is the message of the vision: to conquer. And in this sign of the cross which itself is an emblem for brutality and death? His vision was an instruction to commit more crimes, but in the name of God. To murder and destroy in the name of God only makes these crimes worse than no involvement of God. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Notice that the conquering mindset is that of being proactive, not reactive. In other words the conquering is going out there to subdue other people groups, not that of any bloodshed in protecting our own people from an invasion. Is this moral or ethical and following Godly principles? No. So what was Constantine converting to? His apparent conversion was a sham . An important point here is that if Constantine had to make a decree to make TOC accepted, then it follows that it was not widespread not accepted by the masses before this. Contrast this to the Catholic Church's claim that TOC was the dominant religion in Rome from the time soon after Jesus was allegedly crucified. The term "In these signs conquer" (by bloodshed), referring to the cross, in the first instance is a military symbol, not a religious one: it's primary purpose is to conquer (via bloodshed). 
       A further point to consider regarding the gospels, and the dating of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple which we have been told occurred in 70AD, is how this date contrasts with the relief on the Arch of Titus, dated around 81 CE. How is it that a major victory by Rome over the Jews was the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD yet this major event was not portrayed on the Arch of Titus until 11 years later? This is somewhat like a team winning the Stanley Cup yet it not being acknowledged by the media for 11 years. The Arch was a media symbol in those days. It was common practice back then to create a monument or an inscription or artwork on an existing monument of a major event or victory. Something does not quite fit here. Is it possible that we have been misled into believing that the destruction occurred in 70 AD when it actually occurred 11 years later? A 40 year span was needed from the start of Jesus ministry to the destruction of the temple to fulfil the prophesy of Daniel of a 40 year period. There is no historical evidence that this destruction happened in 70AD. People use Josephus to "prove" this, but Josephus himself has been proven to be a fraud and a mouthpiece for the Romans.
       It was Christians who formed the Knights Templar, (not turn-the-other-cheekers) who fought with the Muslims enroute to Jerusalem. It was the Christians who claimed that they owned the "Holy Land", not the turn-the-other-cheekers. It was the Christians who were a threat to Rome and hence were arrested (many of them) on Friday 13th of October, 1307 by King Philip IV of France. Many were later accused of crimes, then executed. The Templar's  property and wealth was seized. Rome (thru its arm of the Catholic Church in France) wd not have had no reason to have taken action them if they were not a threat to the stability or security of the Empire. The Templars (Christians) wielded financial power and therefore were also a financial threat to the Empire. Turn-the-other-cheekism teaches its adherents to sell what they have and give to the poor, to shun worldly possessions as much as possible, and "have all things common", not to amass great wealth that rivalled kings, as had the templars (Christians). After the slaughter of the Templars there are variations of versions as to what transpired next. The most popular story (whether correct or not I do not know) is that some who escaped the slaughter also escaped from France and went to Scotland and started the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. This is where the term "Friday the 13th" comes from as an unlucky day. Maybe just coincidentally, the numbers 1,1,3,3,7 add to 15, which reduces to 6. The word October, while it is the 10th month, has as its root oct which means 8 (as in octopus). If we add 8 to 5 (Friday is the 5th day of the week) we get 13. This may not be a coincidence. The 12th disciple (twelfth or last to exist) was Judas (from the same root as Jew) gave way to the 13th disciple. The replacement messiah is found to be washing his disiples feet in John chapter 13, this before he was executed.
       One interesting reference to the cruciform (cross shape) goes back to ancient Egypt. Regarding Sneferu, the 1st King of the 4th dynasty, Joyce Tyldesley writes in Pyramids: The Real Story of Egypt's Most Ancient Monuments in ch. 8 "Sneferu, Master Builder" 

Nefermaat's wife, Atet, was included in the same mastaba although a system of separate entrances, both located on the eastern side of the superstructure, ensured that their twin burials and limestone-lined cruciform funerary chapels remained entirely separate.  


God
Since The NT claims that TOC was born out of the Jewish religion (the typologies cited) it follows then that TOC also claims to be monotheistic, which it does But there are more than one God in the religion of Israel. In Exodus 6:2-3: (bold emphasis is mine)

And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD (JHVH) : and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God [Elohim] Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them. 

Yet in spite of this we read in Isaiah 45:5:

I am the LORD (JHVH), and there is none else, there is no God (Elohim) beside me.

Yet God  spoke to Moses  as both Elohim and as JHVH, in the same verse! He appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as JHVH (he told then "I am the LORD" [JHVH]) as Elohim (by the name of God [Elohim]). So there is no Elohim (God) beside God (JHVH) Now consider the seriousness of this staement. It is saying that God does not exist! "There is no God beside me (beside or other than JHVH, and this inclused Elohim. These are not the same god by the same name because a disctinction is made between them. Even a disctinction in the worshipping of these dieties can be seen in the book Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton. Friedman in Who Wrote the Bible also mentions that within Judaism itself the northern and southern kingdoms wishipped separate deities: JHVH and Elohim.

The second ocurance of God in this verse is the word "El" (in Hebrew) which is the same word used for Bethel where Jacob built an alter after receiving the dream of the ladder to heaven. The English phrase "as God" is El, (Strong's 410). The Englishman's Hebrew Concordance of the Old Testament shows the Hebrew spelling of El as aleph - lamed. Interestingly aleph is the equivalent of our letter A, not E, as it is the first letter in the aleph-beth, and is the equivalent to the Greek Alpha, which refers to Jesus as the Alpha and Omega. El is the same root word of Elohim which is translated as God but in the plural form. When Isaac blessed Jacob in Gen 28, it is stated in v. 3: "And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people."  My bold emphasis of God is that same word El. Bear this in mind when we go to the story of Jacob's ladder in Genesis 28:12-14: 
And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.

       The name God in all three occurences in the above passage is Elohim (430) which is simply the plural form of El (410). (so much for monotheism!) Later in ch.28 we read: "I am the God of Beth-el, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred." Beth-El is Strong's 1008 and is a compound word containing El (God) and beth (house). Yet God (Elohim) is the god of Beth-El. How can God be the God of God? The only difference between the two occurences here of God is that Elohim is plural and El is singular, but they both have the same root El, and both mean God. Now to Judges 2:11-13 (bold emphasis is mine):  

And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim: and they forsook the Lord God (Elohim) of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods (Elohim), of the gods (Elohim) of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.

Now this in amazing: both the true and false gods use the same Hebrew name Elohim! This is seen in the phrase: "they forsook the Lord God (Elohim) of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods [plural] (Elohim), of the gods [plural] (Elohim) of the people that were round about them." They forsook Elohim to go and worship Elohim. (try to figure that one out!) Anyone can check this out in two different sources: the listings of 430 Elohim in The Englishman's Hebrew Concordance of the Old Testament, and also in the Interlinear Bible, translated by J.P. Green. (which contains the KJV along side Green's own translation). Both of these resources, written more than 100 years apart, agree in their findings. We have a similar situation in Exodus 15:2,11 (bold emphasis is mine): 

The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God (El) . . . Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods (El)? 

In both cases here we have El which again is Strongs 410. So the true God and false gods are from the same Hebrew word El (410). Again, anyone can check this out for yourself in the two reference books I have already mentioned. This is only part of the mixed up history of the Jewish religion. Yet Christianity IS the messianic Jewish religion.

Psalm 82:1: God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. 

It is claimed that the Jews were monotheistic and that one of their main Gods was JHVH. But other cultures and religions have used JHVH or variations thereof, and that this "God" is not exclusively Jewish. Scholarly research has been produced in this regard in the book Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton. It is arguable that the idea of JHVH is not even a Jewish enterprise at all but a parasiting of the Canaanites who worshipped JHVH, and another argument is that the "Jews" were themselves Canaanites but by a different name. But the point being that other groups used this God, even beyond the Jews and Canaanites, so it is in no way uniques to Jews. 


430 Years in Bondage?

It is disputed whether the alleged bondage was 400 or 430 years, which Osman covers in detail in his books (I can't off hand remember specifically which one, but try Moses and Akhenaten or The Lost City of the Exodus. This story of Israelies being slaves in Egypt for 400 or 430 years is a complete lie. Not only is there no evidence to support this, but the evidence even prohibits it from even being possible. Finkelstein in The Bible Unearthed, has commented on his own archeological expeditions, as well as those of other archeologists who have done excavations in Palestine, and what is interesting in his findings is that even a relatively small group of people of only a few hundred, inhabiting a location for only a few months, leaves evidence of them having been there, and somewhat like a detective story, he deduces from this evidence who these people are likely to have been, their ethnicity and occupation, and other aspects of their life. For example, from examining the bones of animals he can determine what type of meat they ate, and didn't eat (if they ate meat at all). The broken pottery reveals where they may have travelled to to get this pottery, or brot with them and from where, as pottery styles and markings are indicators. They left writing or drawing on anything from animal skins to pieces of pottery (shards) or on stone. Since he has consistently shown that groups leave evidence of where they have been, how is it then that you can have a group of many thousands in the same lace for 430 years with zero evidence of them having been there? Towards the end we are told that there were 600,000 men besides women and children, so even by conservative estimates this wd have been more than 2,000,000. Yet not one single scrap of evidence whatsoever that they were there? Impossible! Finkelstein follows the OT story of the path that they are to have taken after the exodus, and looks at archeological data at each location along the way and finds zero trace of a group of more than 2 million Israelites (or even only one Israelite) having been there.

       How is it possible also that if, as we are told, that they were Hebrews (called thus at that time) in bondage that there is no "Hebrew" writing found anywhere, whether on papyrus, animal skins, pottery or stones? Not even one "Hebrew letter? How is it that on the Egyptian side there is zero evidence of and Jews in bondage there? The earliest record of the word Israelite (not "Hebrew" and this is a significant point) is on the
Merenptah Stela which was erected to commemorate the victory of the Egyptian army in defeating the Israelite army in Palestine. According to p.29 of The Lost City of the Exodus by Ahmed Osman, One line from the  Stele says "Israel is laid waste, his seed is not" (around 1219 BCE.)
       Another amazing point is that if the "Hebrews, as the OT text calls them were in bondage  (the dates of the bondage vary from around 1100 BCE to around 1500 BCE), how is it then that the first Hebrew texts to exist, according to "Hebrew" scholar Richard Elliot Friedman in Who Wrote the Bible, did not exist until at least 200 years later? Notwithstanding this, there is no evidence that the OT books that Elliot claimed to have been written then were actually written then because no manuscripts of fragments thereof have been produced. The false evidence is based on false stories, the these false stories are used as benchmarks or milestones to demark historical time points. In other words, how these "Hebrew" books are dated is that first of all we are only to believe that they were written and existed back then, but how they are "dated" is to refer to other events in books of which there is no evidence existed back then. In a court of law none of this wd be admitted as evidence because it wd be considered as "hearsay" (He said - she said - he said, with no documentray atestation and no wittnesses).
       Furthermore, the earliest "Hebrew manuscripts that exist are those that were found in the caves at the Dead Sea which we are told to believe were copied (or created from scratch?) anywhere from the 2d century BCE to the 2d century CE, depending on the document fragment. But even then there is no proof that they were even written as far back as the 2d century. One only needs to read The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Flint and VanderKam to read about carbon 14 dating and other forms of technical dating techniques to see how problematic they can be, and that the best they can do is to create a range. Eisenman has this to say about carbon dating in the Introduction to The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians:
Nor can the accuracy claimed for such tests be anywhere near the accuracy that can be said to properly apply, carbon testing notoriously tending to “archaize”, that is, make documents seem older than they really are. This not only has to do with the callibration of the system in the first place and pollutants, ancient and modern, but also the fact that such tests
only measure when a given animal or plant was supposed to have grown or died, not when a given manuscript was actually written on the finished product—an interval impossible to estimate.
       This bears on the problem just alluded of to the tendency of a given laboratory to arrive at the results those using their services or sponsoring the tests desire. Whether evident upon first inspection or not, there is interpretation involved in reaching such results, and this is where the personal dimension comes into play. This problem is inherent even in the
final reports written up following the two series of tests done, which go out of their way to support hitherto majority theories of archaeology and paleography, giving vivid evidence of such an original predisposition.
       However this may be, the tests that were done on the Qumran documents were inconclusive and, as almost everyone acknowledges, produced skewed results: some far too early and some far too late. Where the results turned out to be at odds with what laboratories had previously been led to expect—as, for instance, a fourth-century BC dating for the Testament of Kohath (probably a first century BC—first century CE document) second/ third century CE dating for the Community Rule—they were simply dismissed. Moreover, even the dated documents supplied to the labs as controls were
known in advance to be from the second century CE, as there are no extant written documents from any other known provenance. Even here, one papyrus document with an actual date of 135 CE produced a radio-carbon date of 231-332 CE and another with an actual date of 128 CE produced a radiocarbon dating of 86-314 CE .
       But perhaps the best argument against the results of these tests, whatever they may be, is that they cannot stand together against the clear thrust of the internal data itself, and, in a sense, one must be grateful for these tests in
that they re-focus one’s reasons for disagreeing with such external indicators in general, and make one realize that one was correct in relying on internal data. In fact, because of the consistency of the internal data the same usages, turns-of-phrase, and dramatis personae (most with a clearly discernible first-century milieu)—many of these “sectarian documents, like
the Community Rule, the Habakkuk Pesher, and the Damascus Document, had to have been written at more or less the same time—regardless of the results of such “external data”. As stated as a conclusion in MZCQ (Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran by Rbert Eisenman), given the uncertain character of the external data and the kind of results obtained, these are insufficient and cannot be used to disqualify an argument which can otherwise make sense of the internal data.

Altho he is talking about the DSS, the same wd apply to all OT tests, including those dealing with the "bondage" and "exodus".
But to complicate things even more, a number of the fragments found in the Qumran caves were in what they call "Proto-Hebrew" text, not the modern Hebrew text also called "square text". But there is no "Hebrew" language in the first place. What is called "Hebrew" is really the Phonecial language that has been parasited or co-opted by the Jews. There is no Hebrew language in the first place! Anyone can look on the internet and see for yourself the Phonecian alphabet and compare it with the various stated versions of the "Hebrew" texts. It is said that the "Hebrew" text has changed thru the years. This is part of the obsfucation involved.
       The term hyksos is often wrongly used to try to describe Israelies in bondage but this is not possible. The hyksos actually ruled over (lower)
Egypt for about 110 years from about 1620 to 1510. From p. 54 of The Bible Unearthed, Manetho describes a massive, brutal invasions by
foreigners from the east, whom he calls Hyksos, an enigmatic Greek form of an Egyptian word that he translates as "Shepherd kings" but that
actually means "rulers of foreign lands. It is also important to note that this invasion took place over a period of decades, as a study of Egyptian
history reveals.
       Since there were no Hebrews and no 430 years of bondage, there was also therefore no Moses (born during the "bondage"), and therefore no
ten commandment, and none of the ordinances and other laws given to Moses exist, no any of the prophets after Moses. This is a domino effect.

—Matthew 7:12: Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
—Matthew 22:40: On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
—Luke 16:16: The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it.
—Acts 2:15 And after the reading of the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them . . .
—Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;[22]even the 
    righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference.


The last verse [22] of the last passage on the above list: "even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference." Ties in the OT to the New. Jesus said that he himself IS the NT. "for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (Matthew 26:28). If we eliminate the law and the prophets, we eliminate Christianity. Hence the significance the to bondage issue to the history of Christianity.


Mithraism
The dominant religion in the 1st and 2d centuries was Mitharism, which had many Roman adherents. It was only in the 4th and 5th centuries that turn-the-other-cheekism came to the fore and superceded Mithraism as the dominant religion. If Rome had not pushed
TOC as they had done, then Mithraism wd have been the dominant religion for us today. The Vatican itself was built upon a former Mithraic site, as have other churches and shrines. The only reason why the vast majority of texts discovered were (so-called) "gnostic" and not Mithraic is because Mithraism was of sorts a mystery school, and it was forbidden to place anything of The Mysteries in writing.


Marcionism
Marcion was a bishop of Rome (not a bishop of the Catholic Church, which had not formally existed yet) who defected from the doctrines of Rome, and was considered as a heretic after that. He drew a dichotomy between the God of the OT and NT and contrasted them and basically eliminated the OT from the equasion of Christianity. To him, the God of the OT was a violent and sadistic God, whereas the God of the NT was benevolent and loving. The earliest "Christian" written inscription ever found was a Marcionite inscription. Here is a quote from G.S.R. Mead: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (London and Benares, 1900; 3rd Edition 1931), pp.241- 249.
The Marcionites have also given us the most ancient dated Christian inscription. It was discovered over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village, and formerly marked the site of a Marcionite meeting-house or church, which curiously enough was called a synagogue. The date is October 1, A.D. 318 and the most remarkable point about it is that the church was dedicated to "The Lord and Saviour Jesus, the Good - "Chrestos", not Christos. In early times there seems to have been much confusion between the two titles. Christos is the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah, Anointed, and was the title used by those who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. This was denied, not only by the Marcionites, but also by many of their Gnostic predecessors and successors. The title Chrestos was used of one perfected, the holy one, the saint; no doubt in later days the orthodox, who subsequently had the sole editing of the texts, in pure ignorance changed Chrestos into Christos wherever it occurred; so that instead of finding the promise of perfection in the religious history of all the nations, they limited it to the Jewish tradition alone, and struck a fatal blow at the universality of history and doctrine. 

Yet we have been told that the Catholic Church is the oldest attested Church in existence, yet there is no evidence to support this, and in fact, the Marcionite "Churches" or places or worship is the oldest attested Christian place of worship. He also states:
This much we know, that the views of Marcion spread rapidly over the "whole world," to use the usual Patristic phrase for the Graeco-Roman dominions; and as late as the fifth century we hear of Theodoret converting more than a thousand Marcionites. In Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor and Persia, Marcionite churches sprang up, splendidly organised, with their own bishops and the rest of the ecclesiastical discipline, with a cult and service of the same nature as those of what subsequently became the Catholic Church. Orthodoxy had not declared for any party as yet, and the Marcionite view had then as good a chance as any other of becoming the universal one. What then was the secret of Marcion's success? As already pointed out, it was the same as that of the success of modern criticism as applied to the problem of the Old Testament.

Notice that in the 5th century that the Catholic Church had not yet been established. Notice the phrase "subsequently became the Catholic Church". Scholars have written about the problematic issue of the title of Catholic popes going back to 33 AD and that there is not a line going back that far. This is covered in some detail in Creating Christ. We get back to the decree of Constantine in declaring turn-the-other-cheekism the official religion of Rome, which wd have been unnecessary and pointless if Rome had already been established and turn-the-other-cheekism was already the main religion) of the era. Regarding the creation and existence of a Bible, he had this to say:
 His chief activity at Rome may be placed somewhere between the years 150 and 160

The previously quote (above this last one) shows that ther spreading of Marcion's views and the creation of Marcionite Churches took time, so in iother words the establishment of his Churches occurred after 150-160, during which time he was still a Roman bishop, the ceation of Marcionite Churches ossurring after 160 and wd have taken some years. Then after all this we read in this context:
As for the New Testament, in Marcion's time, the idea of a canon was not yet or was only just being thought of. Marcion too, had an idea of a canon, but it was the antipodes of the views which afterwards became the basis of the orthodox canon.

The term "in Marcion's time" refers to his lifetime, not the span of 150-160. The New and Old Testaments are based on the contents The Dead Sea Scrolls, which has been shown by Robert Eisenman in his books. The "holy canon" (I call it the Catholic Canon) cd not have been compiled until after all of the books of the New and Old Testaments had been completed, and they were not completed until the 2d century AD.
According to Wikipedia under the heading "Marcian of Sinope" 1st paragraph, it states

Marcion published the earliest record of a canon of New Testament books. (references are given). . . .

Early Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian denounced Marcion as a heretic, and he was excommunicated by the church of Rome around 144. He published his own canon of Christian sacred scriptures, which contained ten Pauline epistles (the Pastoral epistles were not included) and the Gospel of Marcion which historically is claimed to be an edited version of the Gospel of Luke. . . .

This made Marcionism a catalyst in the process of the development of the New Testament canon by forcing the proto-orthodox Church to respond to his canon. . . .

Marcion was the first to codify a Christian canon. His canon consisted of only eleven books, grouped into two sections: the Evangelikon, a shorter version of the Gospel of Luke, and the Apostolikon, a selection of ten epistles of Paul the Apostle, which were also slightly shorter than the canonical text. (references are given for all of the above statements)

This gives us some insight into why Rome may have create a canon, to ward of acceptance of the Marcion canon. The reason why Marcion was able to create his Canon before Rome creaed theirs, is because Marcion of used much less of the content of the NT, and only what was available at the time of his compilation. Rome however when it produced its canon was dishonest in declaring it at such because they knew in advance that it wd be changed. Their additions, deletions and redactions were anticipated in advance, and at at the time of ts compilation and hence the original compilation was never intended to stand as such. But they needed to announce then that they had created it, and the public cd not have second-guessed them at the time because they were no able to have access to it.
Textual Problems
There are zero Hebrew manuscrips found of any of the books of the OT or NT claiming to be original. (There are copies made from the Greek to Hebrew later on, but this has nothing to do with "original texts") Of the four books of the Maccabees for example, the first covers the period of 40 years from the start of the reigh of Antiochus (175 BCE) to the death of Simon Maccabee (135 BCE), yet this book is in Greek, not Hebrew, and without any evidence to the contrary, we can assume that the Isaiah Scroll found at the Dead Sea area was written by the Essenes, or at last was not written as far back as when the 1st book of the Maccabees was. How is it that no matter where we look, and to which texts, nothing is found in Hebrew! In any case, "Hebrew" is really a non-existent language because it is really the Phonecian language that has been parasited and repackaged as "Hebrew". This is part of the false history created about the Jews. It makes no sense that a proud Jewish group such as the Maccabees would write their history in a language other than their own.
       How is it possible that "God" who created the Bible and inspired prophets to write its sacred texts has not the power to keep the originals but was so weak that the weather, deterioration, thieves, and scholarly destruction over-ruled God's plane to preserve the originals? The Bible records miracles such as raising the dead, restoring a withered hand, making the blind to see, yet this same "God" cannot even preserve the books that he has written? A good book to read about the problems of the manuscripts is Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Change the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman.
       The earliest "officially" dated fragment of any NT text is P52 which is dated at about 125 CE (+/- 25 years). The fragment measures about 3.4 to 2.5 inches. On the front appears John 18:31-33 with 18:37-38 on the back, in which Pilate questions Jesus before the crucifixion. According to Wikipedia, there are 5,800 fragments of the NT in existence, and since the OT is three times the size, we wd expect 17,400 OT fragments, yet we do not. If anything we wd expect more than 20,000 OT fragmenst simply because the OT books (according to convention) have been around for centuries longer han the NT fragments, We have been misled about when the OT books were created (we are told that they were created as early as the 9th century BC, which is stated by Friedman in Who Wrote the Bible) is that if these books were created (originals written) in the centuries preceding the Christian era, we wd expect to find fragments that followed their creation, but we do not. (I am not saying that Friedman himself is lying if he truly believes the false dating. But nonetheless what he is stating as the dating is wrong) How is it that any OT fragments come hundreds of years later? This is not possible, as in our NT example where fragments started to occur in the following century after we are told that the gospels were written. In fact we are told that the four gospels were written in the late 1st century, then the first fragment appears in the early 2d century. We are also told that most of the NT fragments are from the 2d and 3d centuries, yet find this same pattern as applied to the OT books, and you will see no correlation as far as a similar pattern. If we use the model of P52 in relation to the gospels, the first OT fragments shd have occurred within 50 years of the "originals". Of course there are no "originals" of OT or NT books, and again, the OT was not originally written in "Hebrew", but in Greek, and how many OT fragments have been found in Greek as opposed to Hebrew? The Septuigant is the Jewish Bible and as it was written in Greek, the earliest OT manuscripts can only have come after the Septuigint was written. Anything that claims a Hebrew creation before that is a fraud for the two reasons that copies cannot exist before the original (Septuigint) and, The "hebrew" language did not exist when the first OT book was said to have been written. Notwithstanding that, even later OT books that claim to be originally written in "Hebrew" are not even in "Hebrew", but an adaptation of Phonecian. They cannot be in "Hebrew" because there is no such thing as a Hebrew language, because as stated earlier "Hebrew" is a parasiting of the Phonecian language. Notwithstanding that Friedman's dating of OT books is wrong, it is still an excellent book and recommended reading.
       Regarding the documents (including the hebrew ones) found in the caves of the Dead Sea, Eisenman writes in ch.3 of James the Just in the Habukkuk Pesher:
" . . .  68 CE is nothing but the earliest possible date for the deposits of the scrolls in the caves, not the latest."

From ch.2 of JBJ1:
The Rabbis, who became the Roman tax collectors in Palestine after the fall of the Temple, claim the same behaviour for the progenitor of the form of Judaism they followed, Rabbinic Judaism-to-be, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zacchai. Rabbi Yohanan seems also to have been involved in the process of fixing the Jewish Canon at the end of the first century. Like Hillel and Shammai before him with Herod, Rabbi Yohanan’s behaviour with the Romans has become paradigmatic. He is described in rabbinic sources as applying the same ‘Star Prophecy’, the most precious prophecy of the Jewish people at that time, to the conqueror of Jerusalem, Vespasian, who was elevated to supreme ruler of the known civilized world after his military exploits in Palestine.

prior to this in ch.2 he states:
The development of this genre of Overseas Christianity was actually concurrent and parallel to the development of Rabbinic Judaism. Both were, not only willing to live with Roman power, they owed their continued existence to its sponsorship. 

If Eisenman is correct here, then we have the situation of the first hebrew canon being compiled by collaborators with Rome, and tax collectors, with the very idea of paying taxes being anathema to those Jewish revolt groups occupying the Qumran area. Hence the ribbinic priesthood being puppets foir Rome. Obviously the promoting of paying taxes wd have been heretical and traitorous to the Qumran groups.

From The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, ch.1, section 8: Paleographical Problems:
 . . . let us suppose that an eighty-year-old scribe was sitting next to a twenty-five-year-old scribe trained in a more “up-to-date” scribal school (whatever this might mean in such circumstances).
       If the older scribe copied a manuscript using the script he learned when he was twenty, what date would we give a manuscript found in only one exemplar that was actually copied in 4 BC? 63 BC or before? Suppose the older scribe’s teachers themselves were all old or very oldfashioned, what then would be the margin of error? Or suppose that a given student just had not learned his lessons very well and made errors which looked to paleographers either like scriptual developments or regressions (there are many such confusing mixtures of innovative and regressive scripts at Qumran, depending of course on what is meant by “innovative” and “regressive”).
       It is not possible to say on paleographic grounds that a manuscript was written in 63 BC and not, for instance, in 45 CE. In particular, when one has only one exemplar of a given work (the case for instance of all the Pesharim at Qumran and many other texts) or when one has one “older” copy as opposed to several or a cluster of “newer” ones—the actual case of the Damascus Document—one must exercise extreme caution. The best one can hope for is a rough “relative chronology”. Only when manuscripts begin to bunch up in a clearly discernible manner is one justified in thinking in terms of possible dates. In any event, it is certainly incautious to date it by its earliest exemplar, however tempting this may be, as all scholars in the field rush to do, but rather where the distribution peaks. Yet Qumran scholars make these kinds of assumptions regularly, claiming a precision that comes down in some cases to a handful of years, while dismissing better theories than the one on which their own methodological assumptions are based.

Altho the context here is DSS, these same principles apply to the Bible as well. From Part 2, ch.9 of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians:
It is interesting that even in the New Testament there are Hebrew words incapable of translation into Greek, which have, therefore, to be transliterated directly from the Hebrew. One is “Nazoraean”, which for some, through further transliteration, comes out “Nazarene”; for others “Nazareth”, even perhaps “Nazirite”—though these words are not all based on the same Hebrew root. “Cananaean”—“Cananite” to some— for “Zealot”, and most likely “Iscariot” for “Sicarios” are two others; but there is also “Beliar” in Paul (2 Co 6:15), and even “Beelzebub’ in the Gospels—variations of “Belial” in the Scrolls. They show indisputably that at least some of the authors responsible for the New “Cananite” Testament knew Hebrew. Paul, too, shows some of the same knowledge in his numerous wordplays and allegorizing.
       But more than that, some of these Greek authors not only knew Hebrew, but—however incredible it may at first appear—were taking allusions and language clusters from the Hebrew and moving them directy over into Greek, and changing the meaning. This does not seem to have mattered to them as long as the main letters remained the same, as if the basic epigraphic cluster had a meaning all its own. At Qumran, there are several such language clusters, to which I have repeatedly called attention. Two of the most obvious are “Zaddik” and “Rasha'”/“Righteous” and “Evil”. These go through a variety of adumbrations in the literature, including words like “justify” and “condemn”.

To read more about the dating of Documents, read JBJ1, ch.5, starting at the third page in the subsection "The Dead Sea Scrolls".



Juggling the Jameses
There are several James in the NT. These are all the same James with the applicaton of obsfucation. The reason is to obscure and confuse (obsfucate) the one true James, the brother of Jesus, who is found in the DSS. Cleverly, the creatrots of the NT have done a slippery substitution in exchanging Jesus and James, with James being the Messiah in the DSS but his brother Jesus being the messiah in the NT. Hence to reason for diminishing the importance and relevance of James in the NT.

— James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother. Matthew 4:21, 10:2. Here he is not only called the son of Zebedee, but there is a furth
    qualifier in that he is the brother of John. But then we have another shell game with all of the Johnses.
— James the son of Alpheus. Matthew 10:3
— Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? Matthew 13:55,
    Mark 6:3, 15:40, 16:1. Now it is not the brother of John, but the brother of Jesus, Joses, Simon, and Judas. These names are those men who
    were of the sons of Mattathias who were the successive Maccabeen leaders, a satirical word play. Joses, some scholars argue, is a word play
    on Jesus because when we remove the vowels, they are the same word (as wd be the case in Hebrew) If James is the brother of Jesus, yet
    Jesus mother is Mary, then how is it that James has a different mother? If James' father is Zebedee then Zebedees' wife cannot be Mary since
    Mary's husband is Joseph. Then later in Luke 24:10 it just outright states that James' mother is Mary: It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and
    Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. Why does it not list all of the other
    sons of Mary in this verse? Why single out James? In Acts 1:19 it simply states that James is the brother of Jesus: But other of the apostles  I
    saw none, save James the Lord’s brother
— And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: among which was Mary Magdalene,
    and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children. Matthew 27:55-56. Now we revert back to Mary as being his
    mother, but then at the same time the wife of Zebedee is his mother, all in the same verse! In fact, both of his mothers are physically in the same
    group together.
— And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus, and Simon the
    Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him. Mark 3:18-19, Luke 6:15. Now James has a third set of parants: Alpheus and his wife.
— and James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder. Mark 3:17
    I have reverted back to v.17 to show the designation "sons of thunder". Obviously this is not referring to the name of his father, yet it is a further
    insertions to obsfucation.
— and Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor. Luke 6:16. Here it almost seems like the writer wants to
    denegrade James by association with Judas. Luke 6:16. Judas means "Jew" and James was a Jew as we read about in the dead sea scrolls.
    But now we have a problem because when we recert back to v.15: Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon called
    Zelotes. If James is the son of Alpheus, yet he is also the brother of Judas, yet Judas was a son of Mary as was James' brother. So again we
    have James as the son of Mary and son of the wife of Alpheus. (Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren,
    James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3, 15:40. In Acts 1:13 it again singles out James as the brother of Judas, to
    the exclusion of James other brothers: And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James,  
    and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother
    of James.
— James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ . James 1:1. Now James is described not as a brother or son, but as a servant. It is
    strange language to compare one sibling to another in terms of being a servant. This is not normal. 
— In Jude v.1: Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James. Here James has another brother not previously mentioned: Jude. Unless
    we are to understand that Jude is a play on Judas. (another shell game in the obsfucation fog)

The above references are only those found in the NT. We have yet to list the titles to James found in the DSS. However altho referred to by more than one title in the DSS, this no no attempt at obsfucation as he never is said to have conflicting brothers and multiple parents. The DSS writers, not collaborating with each other, naturally can have variations in descriptions. The obsfucation is created intentionally in the NT. It is here where he is given multoiple parants, and conflicting family members, and other designation(s). To look at it another way: the is no reason to make it that confusing. The NT cd have been written in a simple and straightforward way with regards to James. So to summarize in list format:
 
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - James  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Fathers: Mothers: brethren: other designations:
Joseph Mary John Boanerges
Zebedee wife of Zebedee John, Joses, Simon, Judas son of thunder
Alpheus wife of Alpheus Jude servant

Then when we add the shell games involving John, Jesus, Judas etc we have a mess of interplays of shell games, the purpose being to obsfucate the saviour James who is the real messiah or Christ, as shown in the DSS. Substitution and obsfucation are the tactics at work here. From JBJ1, part 1.,ch.1:
It should not be surprising that the existence of an actual brother of Jesus in the flesh was a problem for the theologian committed to ideas of divine sonship and supernatural birth. In Roman Catholic doctrine it has been the received teaching since the end of the fourth century that James was the brother of Jesus, not only by a different father, an obvious necessity in view of the doctrine of divine sonship, but also by a different mother – the answer to the conundrum presented by the perpetual virginity of Mary. That is, James was a cousin of Jesus.

Notice that James was changed from being a brother to a cousin, but that this change was not an "in your face" abrupt change that wd make it obvious, but a more subtle change that does not "register" in the conscious mind right away (if at all). This is one of many examples of how that the NT has undergone a continuous editing thru the first few centuries during the development of TOC.
       It is important to consider if these multiple James (and Johns, Mary's, Peters etc) are coexisting simultaneiously, or in chronologoical replacing order. In other words, if one James dissappears from the scene while the other suddenly appears. This can change the picture, yet it is not obvious consciously. This same principle was brot out by Atwill when examining the events in the gospels of the death, burial, and resurrectyion of Jesus in that there was no contradiction in the different resurrection accounts if the are understood as happening in chronological order, in which case it is a "smoking gun" that the texts were confabulated to manipulate our understanding so as to be not consciously precievable, yet there in the text nonetheless.  From ch.6 (Part 1) of JBJ1:
Nor does the text (in the book of Acts) tell us about James’ death, which, following even Acts’ somewhat questionable time format, also occurred at exactly the point Acts ends about two years after Paul’s arrival in Rome. A lacuna of this magnitude is inexplicable, until one realizes Acts tells us about few, if any, of ‘the other Apostles’ except Paul. Of these presumed
‘Twelve Apostles’, Acts mentions John, but in little or no detail, and has one small more or less fictional episode about a
‘Philip’. Peter is discarded almost completely after Paul makes his appearance. The first James – ‘James the brother of
John’ – is eliminated from the scene at this point as well, just in time for the sudden eruption of the second James (James
the brother of Jesus) into the narrative.

The juggling of James, and other men who are the NT co-names of men from the DSS, are swithed around as in a game of cups, where the magician places a small object under one of three cups, then moves the cups around so that we have to correctly guess which cup the object is under. In the ensuing confusion, our mind "gives up" on the existence of, or at least the credibility of such a person. "Person" is the correct word here because the Latin origin of person is persona, which has its origin in a mask that was worn by actors in a play, to hide their real identity.
       James is killed in Acts 12:2 "And he killed James the brother of John with the sword." But then he reappears in v.17: "And he said, Go show these things unto James, and to the brethren." If one is to argue that they are different James and hence no contradiction, they you must also argue that the NT teaches that there is more than one Jesus, but to do so will destroy the whole religion. For example, if Jesus is the Soin of God, then we have two Jesus hanging on the cross, dying for the sins of the people, because Barabbas in Hebrew means 'the Son of God" because bar is son, and abba means father (father-God). Remember that Jesus is the flesh and blood brother of James, and there is only one James (historically) just as there is only one Jesus (historically [as the brother of James]-- by whatever name he is called in the DSS, whether Jesus or some other name, or both) Remember that arguable Jesus is not a name but a title, as with the example of doctor. The same man who is a doctor can also, and at the same time, be called a hockey player, stamp collector, mountain climber, and photographer, and president (if he is the president of the local SPCA). Or he may have no title assigned to him and just go by his birth name.
       We have further confusion with Acts 1:23: "And they appointed two, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias." 
Justice (from the Hebrew root Z-D-K from which the title or name Zadok [the priest] means justice or righteousness, which is  the title given to James in the DSS. Yet here it is given to Barsabas. Even the name Barsabas further confuses things because it is so close to Barabbas, yet unlike Barabbas, Barsabas does not mean the Son of God. (I checked this out in my Hebrew concordance and wrote about it in detail elsewhere) In short, the abas at the end of Barsabas is not the Hebrew word Abba. Does my assertion of the playing of "cup games" sound so ridiculous now? Obsfucation and substitutions are plentiful in the NT. Further from Part 1, ch.6 of JBJ1:
       The first reference to James in Acts comes in a request by Peter to the servants at ‘Mary the mother of John Mark’s
house’ – whoever these may have been – after his escape from prison and before his departure to points unknown.
It reads: ‘Report these things to James and the brothers’ (12:17).
       Before proceeding to the problems presented by it, we must first distinguish this James from several other Jameses,
particularly the more familiar Great James or ‘James the brother of John the son of Zebedee’. This James, as opposed
presumably to ‘James the Less’ (Mark 15:40 – our James) and another ‘Justus’ who appears in Acts 1:23, is the James who
occasionally appears along with James the Just, the brother of Jesus in the Gospels.
       He is the familiar James among the Apostles and the James most people think they are talking about when they speak of James. Few, if any, realize there was a second one even greater, and that the first is in all probability, if not merely a minor character, simply an overlay or gloss.
 
This next quote is from JBJ1, Part 1, ch.6. Note that the pdf from which this was copied has been altered from the printed book (at least in my printing issue of the book of it)
       The name ‘Theudas’ is a mystery. In the Greek – the only form in which we have it – it resembles the name ‘Judas’. In
our view, it is also a parallel to that character who in two Apostle lists is called ‘Thaddaeus’.7 This character will turn out
sometimes to be called ‘Judas of James’ or ‘Judas the brother of James’ and, as we shall further develop below, we would
identify him as the third brother of Jesus, probably the person other sources call ‘Judas Thomas’. The claim implicit in the
name, ‘Judas Thomas’, is that he is a ‘twin’, ‘thoma’ in Aramaic meaning ‘twin’. The implication usually is that he is a twin
of Jesus, his third brother, ‘Jude’ or ‘Judas’. We would go further, considering ‘Theudas’ to be either a garbled form or
conflation/contraction of the two names ‘Judas’ and ‘Thomas’.
       For the purposes of the argument or discussion, let us assume this to be the case. One can now see the importance of
the ‘brother’ theme in the Book of Acts, only this time we are not dealing with a ‘brother of John’ or even another ‘James’
but, rather, the third brother of Jesus – that is, Judas the brother of James – seen here by the text as a Joshua or Jesus
redivivus. Again, the theme of beheading and the chronology are approximately right. We are somewhere in the period of
Agrippa I or Herod of Chalcis, around 44–45 CE.
       Let us also for the purposes of argument assume that ‘James’, the so-called ‘son of Zebedee’, is an editorial gloss. Not
only does Acts necessarily have to remove him at this point in order to make way for the appearance of James the Just the
brother of Jesus, the real James, but what we have here in Acts are the faint traces of the real event just beneath the
surface of the fictional one.
       To put this another way, there was another brother of Jesus called ‘Jude’ or ‘Judas’. In some texts this brother is
alluded to as ‘Judas Thomas’, either evoking an actual twinship or the Joshua/Jesus redivivus theme of Josephus’
narrative. And there really was a brother eliminated at this time, but this brother was not ‘James the brother of John’, but
the lesser known, but probably more real, ‘Judas of James’ – ‘Jude the brother of James’ referred to in the letter by that
name. That such a brother really did exist and produced offspring continuing down into the period of Vespasian,
Domitian, and Trajan is also confirmed for us in Eusebius. Using Hegesippus, Eusebius refers to the offspring of one
‘Judas called the brother of our Lord according to the flesh’, one in the time of Domitian and one right before he
describes the martyrdom of Simeon bar Cleophas – ‘the cousin of our Lord’ – in Trajan’s time. At this point Eusebius
acknowledges that Simeon’s mother was Mary and his father Cleophas, quoting Scripture. Still he cannot yet bring
himself to admit that Simeon was a brother too, that is, Jesus’ second brother Simon, but rather only ‘of the family’ or
‘the relatives’ of Jesus. . . .
       The house in Jerusalem where Peter goes ‘to leave a message for James and the brothers’ is pictured as being that of ‘Mary mother of ‘John Mark’, who is mentioned again in Acts as the man who deserted the mission of Barnabas and Paul
in Pamphylia (15:37–39). In Acts 13:13 he is simply called ‘John’, and there is no hint of the bitterness evinced by Paul
towards him in 15:39. Elsewhere, he would appear to be identified with the Gospel of Mark and Eusebius knows him as
Peter’s traveling companion.9 We were not aware that he had a mother called ‘Mary’. Nor that he had a ‘house’ in
JeThe house in Jerusalem where Peter goes ‘to leave a message for James and the brothers’ is pictured as being that of
‘Mary mother of ‘John Mark’, who is mentioned again in Acts as the man who deserted the mission of Barnabas and Paul
in Pamphylia (15:37–39). In Acts 13:13 he is simply called ‘John’, and there is no hint of the bitterness evinced by Paul
towards him in 15:39. Elsewhere, he would appear to be identified with the Gospel of Mark and Eusebius knows him as
Peter’s traveling companion.9 We were not aware that he had a mother called ‘Mary’. Nor that he had a ‘house’ in
Jerusalem in which Mary lived. Plus, it would seem not a little strange to go to a house where ‘Mary mother of John Mark’
lived to leave a message for James the brother of Jesus and the other brothers. It is simpler just to think that the text
originally said ‘the house of Mary the mother of Jesus’ or ‘Mary the mother of James the Just’ or ‘Mary the wife of
Cleophas’, and that this somewhat enigmatic substitution has taken place – and so it has remained to be enshrined in
seventeen–eighteen centuries of pious history.

Here is a quote from the introduction to JBJ1:
       James ("the Just") is not only the key to clearing up a whole series of obfuscations in the history of the early Church, he is also the missing link between the Judaism of his day, however this is defined, and Christianity. Insofar as the ‘Righteous Teacher’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls occupies a similar position, the parallels between the two and the respective communities they led narrow considerably, even to the point of convergence.
       It is to the task of rescuing James, consigned to the scrap heap of history, that this book is dedicated. James the Just has been systematically downplayed or written out of the tradition. When he suddenly emerges as the leader of the ‘Jerusalem Church’ or ‘Assembly’ in Acts 12:17, there is no introduction as to who he is or how he has arrived at his position. Acts’ subsequent silence about his fate, which can be pieced together only from extra-biblical sources and seems to have been absorbed into the accounts both about the character we now call ‘Stephen’ and even Jesus himself, obscures the situation still further.
       Once the New Testament reached its final form, the process of James’ marginalization became more unconscious and inadvertent but, in all events, it was one of the most successful rewrite – or overwrite – enterprises ever accomplished. James ended up ignored, an ephemeral figure on the margins of Christianity, known only to aficionados. But in the Jerusalem of his day in the 40’s to 60’s CE, he was the most important figure of all – ‘the Bishop’ or ‘Overseer’ of the Jerusalem Church.
       Designated as ‘the brother’ of Jesus, James the Just is often confused or juxtaposed, and this probably purposefully, with another James, designated by Scripture as ‘James the brother of John’, the ‘son of Zebedee’, thus increasing his marginalization. This multiplication of like-named individuals in Scripture was often the result of the rewrite or overwrite processes just remarked. 



Other Issues
The issue of the perpetual virginity of Jesus has always been an issue, while attempts to brush it under the rug by Rome, yet it crops up anyway. Here is a quote from the introduction to JBJ1:
Embarrassment of this kind was exacerbated by the fact that Jesus’ brothers (‘cousins’, as Jerome would later come to see them at the end of the fourth century) were the principal personages in Palestine and Jesus’ successors there, important in Eastern tradition. What exacerbated the problem of their relationship to Jesus even further in the second century was the doctrine of Mary’s ‘perpetual virginity’ and with it the utter impossibility – nay, inconceivability – that she should have had other children. This even led Jerome’s younger contemporary, Augustine, in the fifth century, to the assertion reproduced in Muhammad’s Koran in the seventh, that Jesus didn’t have any father at all, only a mother!

(his notes: Cf. Koran 3.45, 4.156-7, and 19.20-21 with Augustine, Sermon 191)

So the virginity was never a settled issue from the start as we have been led to believe. Augustine's assertion about the virginity not having happened until the 5th century.

Both the old and new Testaments are  numerolgical masterpieces in that every letter, word, and sentence was selected and crafted because of its numberical value. Every Greek and Hebrew letter has a numerical value, and words are used to create certain numbers and number patterns. Even the Authorized Version has all of its English words carefully selected for their number values. As an example of this, We read in Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There are 7 Hebrew words and 22 Hebrew letters in this verse. (There are 22 letters in the Hebrew aleph-beth) 22/7=3.14, the abbreviation for Pi. Pi occurs many times in the OT and this cannot happen by chance. Many other mathematical anomalies also occur and these cannot be by chance either. Marty Leeds has created videos on Youtube showing some of these Biblical anomalies in Hebrew, Greek, and English. I have downloaded some of his videos and I will make them available to anyone who wants them.

  
Here is some recommended reading for alternative history of Christianity:

—Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus by Joseph Atwill

—Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Jesus by James Valliant and C.W. Fahy.

—The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.

— James, the Brother of Jesus by Robert Eisenman (printed in two vollumes)

—The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians by Robert Eisenman

—The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

—Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman.


Those wishing to learn about alternate history of the OT can read: 

—The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand. Sand was professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv.

—The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Niel Asher Silberman. Finkelstein was professor of Archeology at the University of Tel Aviv.
   This is an amazing book and presents a refreshingly different perspective of the OT based on archeological data.

—Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliot Friedman. Hebrew scholar Friendman reveals, among other things, that some of the prophesies in the OT
   were made after the fact, then backdated to make it look as if they were predicting the future.



Much of Christianity (and all religions) are, at one level at least, offshoots of, or in some cases perversions of, astrotheology. Here are some mp3 lectures on astrotheology by Many Hall:  1  2  3  4  5


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