“The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.” ~ Gospel of John 10:33
This quote from the gospel of John is a later interpretation of a man whom the evangelist thinks that Jesus had claimed to be a god. Many titles were thrown at Jesus, as a result of the messiah mythology already in existence.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6
As you peel back the layers to earlier traditions contained in the other gospels, Jesus was not thought of as god at all. As a verse in Matthew 9:8 demonstrates, “When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to man.” Jesus was seen as one of the men God gave authority to. Another verse where Jesus did not view himself as god is in Mark 10:17-18, “As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call me good?’Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone.’”
One such title that was often applied to many messianic figures from first century Judea was ‘King Messiah’ or anointed King, (in Greek, χριστὸς βασιλεύς). This is what Jesus is accused of in Luke 23:2 (where it is part of a noun phrase ending in εἶναι to be) – and thus has Jesus claiming himself to be an anointed king, (a ‘messiah’ King). The gospels make many claims in hindsight, but the reality is that many a charismatic figure gathering a crowd would be declared a king. As Josephus said (a historian of first century Judea):
“And now Judea was full of robberies. And as the several companies of the seditious light upon any one to head them, he was created a King immediately, in order to do mischief to the publick.” ( Ant. 17.10.8).
This ‘king messiah’ was an expected figure from Jewish scripture, who would establish with God’s help, a “kingdom of god” right here on earth. He would restore Israel from foreign rulers after being imbued with the scriptures, “at the end of days”,(this is an eschatological concept which in Greek literally means ‘end of days’). This is typical of an apocalyptic Jew and since the time of Schweitzer Jesus was thought of as an apocalyptic prophet. [1] Dale Allison using his re-occurrence theme, (i. e. the concepts that keep getting mentioned in the gospels) demonstrates in favour of an apocalyptic prophet [2] Bart Ehrman says all the earliest sources and Jesus’ sayings point to him being an apocalyptic prophet. [3] As Jesus is acclaimed to have said:
“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”, (Mark 9:1),
This shows that this new kingdom was imminent. These are the typical sayings of an apocalyptic prophet (apocalypse is Greek for revelation) and many downtrodden peasants would rally around such a figure as all other hope is exhausted. A quote from Josephus demonstrates this nicely:
“in adversity man is quickly persuaded; but when the deceiver actually pictures release from prevailing horrors, then the sufferer wholly abandons himself to expectation” (Josephus, War 6.286)
Within the scriptures were many inspiring verses that would rally many of the downtrodden around a messianic figure, a rallying call such as:
“The spirit of the lord yahweh is upon me because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor he has sent me to heal the broken-hearted to proclaim to the captives liberty and to [those who are] bound the opening of the prisons.” (Isaiah 61:1).
Many such charismatic figures appeared on the scene of the Roman province of Iudaea before and after Biblical New Testament times, some willing to lead, others not so willing to lead the crowds. They offered deliverance from the harsh conditions imposed on the lower class by the ruling class. Apocalyptic Jews were even more dangerous as they thought the end of the world was approaching, they could abandon their way of life and become revolutionaries. This is reflected in Mark 1:17-20 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.” Or in Luke 9:52 it is even more amplified, “Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” As Adolf Harnack said, these were similar to “a military oath of allegiance” and all these sayings were torn from their real historical context [4]. The people were hoping for a liberator as seen in the Emmaus narrative in Luke 24:21 where it was expressed after Jesus’s death, “but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to liberate Israel.” Everything was wrong in the life of peasants in Jesus’s day, they were oppressed, overtaxed and over burdened. They worked hard and could not feed their families. The kingdom of god that was promised by messianic figures was going to fix everything with gods intervention. That is why the gospels are the opposite of the background they were set in, they were describing a kingdom of god that Jesus was ushering in. A land of milk and honey where everybody gets healed and fed. There are clues left in the gospels of the real background, the one full of trouble and revolts, such as reported by Josephus. The background atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Not only downplayed by the gospels but even downplayed by translations, one downplaying is held in Matthew 4:12 where Jesus retreats to Galilee as a safe haven. As Bruce Chilton writes, “Many translations water down the meaning of anakhoreo in Matthew’s Greek, giving us “he withdrew.” That is because they ignore the fraught political context that the execution of John by Herod Antipas produced for all John’s disciples.” [5]
“the kingdom of the heavens is taken by violence, and the violent claim it” (Matt. 11:12).
By the time of biblical literature being written, Jesus, being one of those figures was thought of as a God. We will explore this fascinating topic in the blog here.
In fact Jesus is so buried and behind the pious stained glass window that mythicism seems at first likely, but then after you keep researching and digging you begin to ask yourself questions such as: why try to cover up crucifixion? Why try and downgrade and attempt to write out James (the movement’s successor) out of the NT? Actions that they need not have used or done if written by fiction writers. Why call him the messiah? A title that was not needed for this hero if the story was made up from scratch. If a messiah was crucified, well then he obviously wasn’t the messiah. As God had failed to intervene, the belief was shattered. Most other messianic movements fell away after the death of their leader. There were a few exceptions where the movement tried to get around the fact that God did not intervene and thereby proving that the leader was after all the messiah. Many similar movements from the time met with little success, (one example was the Messiah Stone) until we had Paul and his success with the Jesus movements. In order for the Jesus movements not to collapse Paul had to come up with some special propaganda to get over the crucified messiah title.
I majored in Irish history, here the influence of Jesus, ironically on the Irish rebels of 1916, eventually caused the breakaway of the Irish Free State. Padraig Pearse was the spiritual leader of the rebellion, exalted among his peers because of his education. Padraig Pearse was a schoolteacher (the start of his exaltation) and revered. He believed in blood sacrifice for the Irish rebellion – dying to save Ireland, emulating Jesus who died to save everybody (or so Paul says). As Pearse wrote, “the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.“ [6] A later interpretation of Jesus insisting “that his followers should “take up their cross” and follow him (Mark 8:34–38)….for early Christians this was an unambiguous call to martyrdom.” [7] This rebellion failed but eventually took over the minds and hearts of the Irish people to such an extent that Sinn Fein almost won every parliament seat in Ireland in 1919. Soon after the war of independence started.
The Rebel
I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow;
Who have no treasure but hope,
No riches laid up but a memory of an ancient glory,
My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,
I am of the blood of serfs;
The children with whom I have played, the men and women with whom I have eaten
Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,
and though gentle, have served churls.
The hands that have touched mine,
the dear hands whose touch is familiar to me,
Have worn shameful manacles, have been bitten at the wrist by manacles,
have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers.
I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone I that have never submitted;
I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people’s masters,
I that have vision and prophecy, and the gift of fiery speech…
And because I am of the people, I understand the people,
I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire;
Extract of The Rebel by Pádraig Pearse 1915
Thousands of Jews were crucified by the Romans in the aftermath of the Roman Jewish war, it took the victims days to die, the horror of this method was to act as a deterrent to rebelling Jews. Yet of all the victims, we have only one from archaeology in first century Judea and this was due to the fact that they could not remove the nail from his ankle. Thus lies the problem of the nature of evidence for over 2000 years ago. The literary evidence is highly theologised and sanitised as any man would never be good enough to be called god, thus all evidence is tampered with, some even caught red handed by textual critics. (A good starting book discussing textual criticism would be Bart Ehrmans, “Misquoting Jesus”). [8] Most messianic figures would be recorded in the memories of those that knew them. In the case of Jesus, (as in the case of other messianic figures such as the one the Messianic Stone was on about), the memories are contaminated with exalted language from the very beginning. Many only saw Jesus through the lens of resurrection, making the historian’s task all that harder. We can see that this happened from the earliest of times by the pre Pauline traditions that Paul incorporated into his epistles. So we see the earliest stratum of NT literature is contaminated with theological concepts. By reading comparative texts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls will all help us interpret Paul’s epistles. Both the authors of the Scrolls and the epistles were written by apocalyptic Jews. The gospels provide how Christians wished to view Jesus. By studying the works of Josephus, we will be able to form a clearer picture of what was happening on the ground. Given the state of the evidence for the existence of Jesus, we may be forgiven for questioning if he ever existed. But if we look more carefully into what we know about apocalyptic Jews in first-century Palestine, you will get a clearer picture and show you the indicators that the existence of Jesus best explains the literature of the genuine epistles of Paul. Pauls epistles show a name on an ancient piece of literature from an apocalyptic cult of Jews. If you compare Pauls epistles to a comparative set of apocalyptic Jews such as those found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you will see the indicators are that they were talking about a historical person. Bart Ehrman is one of the latest scholars to accept Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew, by use of multiple attestation he has shown the apocalyptic sayings go back to the historical Jesus. [9] Being an apocalyptic Jew made this messianic figure like a loaded gun. “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”. (Matt16:28). What was there to lose with Gods intervention. Of course the gospel of Matthew had to put in a redefinition as miraculous help did not help this minor sign prophet, just as God did not intervene with all the other sign prophets, it puts into the mouth of Jesus – “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53). The early followers of Jesus being apocalyptic Jews is also reflected in Pauls epistles. Take this with all the polemics, politics and parodies contained in the gospels and it will show a high probability of a historical core to all the myths found in the NT. The cover-ups also indicate a historical person. The cover ups such as:
• the crucifixion, an execution only carried out for going against the Roman Empire. The blasphemy charge is a cover up for this.
• the cover up of being the messiah, as a crucified messiah makes no sense. “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).
•Gospel of Matthew goes out of his way to say Jesus fulfilled (pléróō, πληρόω) all the requirements of messiah, obvious propaganda as he did not. (The Messiah was supposed to restore God’s Kingdom right here on Earth, by the time Matthew was writing, the opposite had happened. The Temple (God’s house) was obliterated by the Romans in 70CE).
•The cover up such as Jesus being from Nazareth instead of being a Nazorean.
.•The polemics against James, attempts by the gospels and Acts to write him out, yet he was the succeeding leader.
Plus the fact that a messiah was a military figure going to usher in a new kingdom (only way to do that is violence).
Matthew 11:12 “the kingdom of the heavens does suffer violence, and violent men do take it by force.”
You get the impression they are covering up a historical person. I’ve become convinced by historicity. It’s the cover ups that convinced me. The cover ups of a messianic movement. The changes that came about to concepts because the movement moved from one culture to another all helped to cover up the truth. The deification concept came from the cross culture of syncretic concepts. The Greeks took the ‘son of god’ literally, to the Jews it was figurative.
Their leader got crucified, the movement couldn’t hack it and had to explain it theologically. Paul rose up in this organisation because he was a total genius at explaining it and changing it (with some concepts from the mystery religions). Nobody could make sense of the crucifixion like Paul could.
A crucified person could not be the Messiah as God did not intervene to help him. In Paul’s mind he used Deuteronomy 21:23 “Anyone hung on a tree [that is, crucified] is under God’s curse”. To the Jews he would not be cursed for being crucified as many Pharisees (Paul claimed to be a Pharisee) would have been crucified under the Hasmoneans. He just would not be the messiah. But if Jesus did not die, being resurrected, he was now Gods favoured and he was still the Messiah. Here is the problem – 1 Cor1:23 “but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” and this is the solution – 1 Cor15:14 Paul says, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Apocalyptic thought believed the dead would rise at the start of the new age, Jesus being “first fruits” that is the first to rise. (Cf Daniel12:2). Paul raised the steaks by proclaiming that a new age had already started with Jesus being the first to rise. This caused a great impetus for the Jesus movement and helped turn it away from its failed rebellious beginnings to a more successful spiritual movement greatly influenced by the Mystery religions. But Paul was a double edged sword, things started to go wrong when he started disrespecting Jewish laws. The reason Paul rose up in this organisation is that he was a car salesman as seen in 1 Cor. 9:19-23, he was a genius and all things to everyman. He was the preacher, propagandist and syncretist. The gentile side of the movement thrived under Paul. Paul had a totally different solution to the gentiles joining the movement than that if the Jerusalem council. The rift between Paul and the Jerusalem council headed by James is so raw in Galatians that it could be nothing but historical. To include Paul’s polemics in this letter attests to its historicity. By being able to see through the polemics, by an analysis of higher criticism you begin to recover the historical circumstances surrounding Jesus and his immediate aftermath. All these observances and clues give the indication that there were bits of historical data preserved. When you keep coming across these bits, eventually you say- hey these cover ups, overwrites, political agendas, compilations of contrasting traditions incorporated into the gospels and other bits that don’t really fit fiction, they come down on the side of historicity. You have got to be sensitive to ancient history or you’ll miss it. Back in 1931 Eisler who had a massive influence on Brandon and Eisenman said “for those who feel that we cannot go on for ever with our traditional histories of New Testament times, into which a life of Jesus cannot be made to fit, and with lives and characteristics of Jesus which cannot be made to fit into the contemporary history of Jews and Romans.”[10]
Most of the evidence has been tampered, overwritten, destroyed: all because Jesus was god and none of his very human aspects would ever be good enough for him to be god. That is why I said in relation to the evidence, when you walk on water, you leave no footprints. The Epistle of the Apostles, known also by its Latin name, Epistula Apostolorum, tries to convince us otherwise, that Jesus did leave footprints after the resurrection.
“At his insistence the disciples feel him and his wounds; and he tells Andrew “look at my feet and see if they do not leave a footprint. For it is written in the prophet, ‘The foot of a ghost or demon leaves no print on the ground” Epistula Apostolorum ch 11 Ethiopic.
“And I often wished, as I walked with him, to see if his footprint appeared on the ground—for I saw him raising “himself from the earth—and I never saw it.” (Acts of John, 93)
Acts of John sums up the heart of the matter, the evidence of a historical Jesus has left no footprints, evidence even though destroyed and tampered with, still leaves indications, clues and fingerprints of what was changed. With the help of a lot of detective work, a historical person can be shown at the core of all the literature. He may have been portrayed very different from the man on the ground in an attempt to make him a saviour god ascended to the sky.
[1] Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus.
[2] Dale Allison, JESUS OF NAZARETH
MILLENARIAN PROPHET
[3] Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium
[4] Harnack, Adolf, Militia Christi, The Christian Religion and the Military in the first Three Centuries, (English Translation Fortress Press, 1981), pp.26f
[5] Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus, ch4, fn 1.
[6] Pearce, Peace and the Gael, 216.
[7] Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution, Introduction.
[8] Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus,
________, Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.
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