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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.
. . . 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. . . . " |
.
. .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. . . . |
. . . 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. |
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.
|
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
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. |
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. |
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.
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. |
—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 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. |
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.
|
His chief activity at Rome may be placed somewhere between the years 150 and 160 |
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. |
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) |
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.
|
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. |
.
. . 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. |
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”. |
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 |
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. |
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 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. |
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. |
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. |
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) |
—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.
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