“Petty sacrilege is punished; sacrilege on a grand scale is the stuff of triumphs” (nam sacrilegia minuta puniuntur, magna in triumphis feruntur), -so wrote Seneca in his Moral Epistles letter 87.23.

This clever quip by Seneca reflects the rewards due to massive theft and violence! Paul glorifies Jesus with Triumph language but Mark reflects persecution with anti-Triumph language.

[The Triumph] is cast as a ritual which, throughout the history of Rome, asserted and reasserted the power of the Roman war machine and the humiliation of the conquered. Cleopatra of Egypt is famously supposed to have killed herself rather than be triumphed over. ^[1]

The Triumph Cleopatra avoided was the Triumph over Egypt in 29 BCE (which was one of three in that year – for Illyria, Greece, and Egypt awarded to Octavian). With Cleopatra dead, her kids had to do instead for the Triumph, but not the child she had with Julius Caesar- Octavian had quipped, “Too many Caesar’s is not good” and had him executed. Instead Cleopatra’s children with Mark Antony, Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios, were paraded in heavy golden chains. Although Octavian was no great general (it was others such as Agrippa who won his battles), he did not want to be outdone by Pompey’s three Triumphs in 79, 71 and 61 BCE).

The Roman Triumph may have evolved out of Etruscan and Greek ceremonies about Dionysus, a god who triumphs, a bull was sacrificed and the king appeared as the god. The Roman Triumph was an offshoot and evolvement of this.^[2]

Paul makes use of the Roman Triumph to highlight the victory Jesus has over his cosmic enemies, powerful enemies that use human authorities to carry out evil deeds such as Jesus’ execution. Paul is thinking in cosmic terms when he sees spiritual powers as the ultimate culprits behind the historical crucifixion of Jesus in 1 Cor. 2:8, those powers were allying themselves with human political actors. The “Archons” (meaning rulers either human or spiritual) and the human “rulers” are intimately connected. This is a common theme in Jewish literature, all you have to do is look at the book of Job where God gives permission to Satan to test Job or in Enoch where cosmic Archons are influencing people. Paul says elsewhere in 1 Cor. 5:5 “to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh…” shows Paul believing the Archons controlled people.

We also know a historical crucifixion is in view when taking other references into consideration – Like Paul’s use of the word Stauros (Phil. 2:8). Josephus uses this term Stauros to tell of Romans crucifying Jews. And the arguments of 1 Thess. 2:14-16 as an interpolation no longer stand which puts the crucifixion in Judea. Carrier’s arguments for interpolation are directed at the verse “But wrath has come upon them at last!” as he associates this with the Temple destruction, but that is only reading the epistles retrospectively.^[3] “Wrath of god” could easily be applied to famines that the Jews suffered in 45-47 CE. (Ant. 20.49-53) or the disaster of 49 CE where 30,000 Jews were killed at Passover (Ant. 20.112 and War 2.224-7). Robert Jewett rightly stated, “From the perspective of those who know about the Jewish-Roman war, it is surely the most appropriate choice. But to someone who lived before that catastrophe, several of the other events could easily have appeared to be a final form of divine wrath.” ^[4]

Other reasons for thinking of it as an interpolation are countered by Simon J. Joseph:

The authenticity of this passage has been disputed, yet the allegedly anti-Judaic tone and content of 1 Thess 2:14–15 is fairly consonant with Pauline theology. In Romans, Paul writes that the Jews have been “broken off ” or “cut off ” from the tree of Abraham (“because of their unbelief”; Rom 11:20) and will not be grafted back until the future, when God’s “wrath” against them comes to an end (cf. Rom 11:11–29). Paul repeatedly appeals to the theme of God’s “wrath” in Romans (2:5, 8; 3:5; 4:15; 5:9; 9:22; 12:19). It seems safe to conclude that not only were some Jews involved in the death of Jesus, but we can be even more specific by identifying the high priest (and chief priests) as disliking him enough to form conspiratorial attempts to stop him, a dislike that ultimately led to a judicial action by the “Sanhedrin” and to Jesus being “handed over” to Pilate, who sentenced him to death. ^[5]

Getting back to our Triumph imagery, defeating these cosmic powers, Zeichmann demonstrates Paul’s use of a Roman Triumph for Jesus’ parousia in 1 Thess. 4:16–18 – “God’s trumpet—an instrument that has military connotations elsewhere in his letters (1 Cor. 14:8)” and “the parousia in Paul’s letters may refer to an imperial victory procession: the Lord’s signal, the cry from the archangel, and the sound of God’s trumpet sound suspiciously like a military parade, specifically a triumph or an ovation.” This all adds to the Triumph imagery. “Paul describes this coming with the word parousia, a term associated with the presence of the imperial visitors, often bearing the honorific title kyrios, to a city. One Egyptian administrator, for instance, writes a frantic letter concerning the additional work required by the king’s imminent parousia at a nearby village (P.Tebt. 1.48). The term is well attested across the eastern Mediterranean several centuries before and after Paul wrote. Consequently, many have argued that Paul draws upon Greco-Roman imperial frameworks for his apocalyptic scenario.” ^[6] Often a committee of the city would go out to meet the Emperor for his arrival (parousia) and Paul uses this imagery, but it so happens that Jesus is in the clouds (nephelais), which means the believers have to meet him in the sky.

Here is the relevant passage from Thessalonians:

According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, (parousian) will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord (Kyrios) himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds (nephelais) together with them to meet (apantēsin) the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thess. 4:16–18).

The Roman Triumph which would not have been physically witnessed by most Roman inhabitants except for those residing in Rome itself, would still have been well known and sometimes copied by different areas of the Empire. By the time Paul took to writing his letters correcting his newly formed ecclesias, Triumphs were only celebrated by Emperors. This was because it was too dangerous to let a general celebrate due to turning him into a dangerous rival. Instead the general got the lesser acclaim of an ovation. Steve Mason provides the examples of the last generals to celebrate it:

Pompey the Great besieged and occupied Jerusalem in 63 B.C. A generation later (37 B.C.) Gaius Sosius, Syria’s governor under Marc Antony, repeated the exercise to remove Jerusalem from the Parthian sphere and install King Herod. Both generals received triumphal processions, memorialized on a marble record [Fasti Capitolini = The Capitoline Chronology or Calender or Fasti Triumphales = Register of Generals] in the Roman Forum, fragments of which survive. (Pompey’s [third] triumph celebrated in 61 B.C. Sosius’ in 34 B.C.). …^[7]

According to Appian, Pompey put none of the prisoners to death in his Triumph for Asia except Aristoboulus. Of the fourteen nations conquered only two got executed – “Aristoboulus [of Judaea] was put to death at once, and Tigranes [junior] later.” (Appian, Mith. 117.) Pompey had wished to execute him at his Triumph as Pompey had sided with his brother Hycranus against Aristoboulus but according to Mary Beard other writers think Aristoboulus escaped, and caused more trouble for Pompey in his civil war with Julius Caesar (Josephus, Ant. 14.79, 92–9, 123–4; War 1.158, 171–3, 183–4; Dio Cassius 37, 16, 4; 39, 56, 6; 41, 18, 1) and was captured and killed later by Pompey supporters so ultimately Pompey got his wish! ^[8]

Christopher Zeichmann shows how the Triumphs featured in the popular imagination:

The triumph was the single highest honor bestowed upon a general and granted at the behest of the Senate. There was no strict formula for a triumph’s proceedings, but common elements included an early morning speech by the victorious general, salutes from the crowd, dispersal of gifts to the army, a procession through the city displaying war captives (soon to be sold into slavery or executed), and culmination in a sacrifice to Jupiter with a public feast. During Rome’s imperial period, triumphs were limited to emperors. Less prestigious were ovations, which were granted for less decisive victories, for smaller conflicts (fewer than 5,000 casualties), or for victories over less “worthy” foes. Triumphs and ovations were uncommon and limited to the city of Rome, meaning very few in the Roman Empire ever saw one. That said, both varieties of parade loomed large in the popular imagination and were imitated on occasion.” ^[9]

Using political terms like parousia, apantēsis and Kyrios all adds to the Triumph motif.

one finds three terms rich with political connotation: parousia, apantēsis and kurios. [note I highlighted those words in my quote of 1 Thess. 4:16-18]. Frequently parousia refers to the arrival of Caesar, a king, or an official, and apantēsis refers to citizens meeting a dignitary who is about to visit the city. These two terms are used in this way by Josephus (Antiquities, 11.327ff.) and also similarly referred to by such Greek writers as Dio Chrysostom. The term kyrios (“lord”), especially when used in the same context as the two preceding terms, also has a definite political sense. Further, the eastern Mediterranean applied the term kyrios to the Roman emperors from Augustus on, although the first verifiable inscription of kyrios used as a title in Greece dates to the time of Nero. All of this, coupled with the use of euangelion (“good news”) and its possible association with the eastern ruler cult, suggests that Paul and his associates could easily be understood as violating the “decrees of Caesar” (Acts 17:7) in the most blatant manner, and this could easily provide a context for ad hoc persecutions.”^[10]

This was all imperial language borrowed by Paul to empower Jesus just like this language empowered Caesar- Another inscription- the Priene calendar inscription refers to Augustus’ birth using the term evangelion (gospel). This calendar also refers to Augustus as God and Saviour.

Paul imagines his converts as part of the Triumph:

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.” (2 Cor. 2:14)

In the next generation after Paul, written in one of the Deutero-Pauline letters-

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Col. 2:15)

All highlighting the victory parade of a Triumph.

Mark picks up on Paul’s Triumph imagery but inverses it to a type of anti-Triumph framework to inverse a failure of Jesus ending up on the cross (Mark 15.16–32). This inversion is within keeping of a reversal of fortunes that is often promised in an expectant in-breaking of the kingdom of God.

Having Triumph motif incorporated in the crucifixion scene suits the apotheosis of Jesus in Mark. Even within the Roman Triumph with its over the top victory glorification, there was room for humility and stoicism. A slave standing in the Triumphator’s chariot held a crown over the Triumphator’s head and kept repeating a Janus type saying, “Look behind you. Remember you are a man”. (Tertullian, Apologeticus 33; Jerome, Epistulae 39.2.8, cf. Cassius Dio Roman History 7.21.9)

The Triumphator’s costume and painted red face made him ‘god for a day’:

The red-painted face, mentioned by Pliny, (Pliny, Nat. 33, 111–2) is supposed to have echoed the face of the terracotta cult statue of Jupiter in his Capitoline temple (which was periodically coated with red cinnabar). What is more, Livy on one occasion expressly states that the triumphing general ascended to the Capitol “adorned in the clothes of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.” (Livy, History of Rome 10.7.10) …

the godlike aspects of the costume and have seen in the general a characteristically Roman attempt to conceptualize the divine. As one argument runs, the general oscillated between divine and human status through the course of the procession; he constituted both a living image of the god himself and, simultaneously, a negation of the divine presence. ^[11]

Mary Beard shows Julius Caesar wanted a horse drawn chariot like that of Jupiter. “the four white horses which, according to Dio, were decreed to Caesar for his triumphal celebrations of 46 BCE. (Dio Cassius, Roman History 43.14.3). The fact that chariots drawn by white horses were regularly associated with Jupiter or Sol (the divine Sun) has strongly suggested that Caesar was attempting to claim some such divine status for himself. ^[12]

There was a precedent for an anti-Triumph in the aftermath of Crassus disastrous defeat in the Battle of Carrhae (Rome lost 5 legions, 2 came back, this was much worse than Varus 3 legions in Teutoburg forest). Surenas of Parthia who had defeated Crassus, had carried out a mock Roman Triumph in Selucia-on-Tigris. He had a Roman soldier looking like Crassus dressed as a woman. (Plut. Crass. 32.1-5). ^[13]

Dio Crassius uses anti- Triumph mockery motifs in describing some of Romes anti- Heroes, such as Sejunas (58.11.1-3) and Vitellius (64.20.2-21.2) showing this ironic language was not exclusive to Mark. ^[14]

Here is his passage on Sejunas:

they had escorted to the senate-hall as a superior being, they were now dragging to prison as if no better than the worst; on him whom they had previously thought worthy of many crowns, they now laid bonds; 2 him whom they were wont to protect as a master, they now guarded like a runaway slave, uncovering his head when he would fain cover it; him whom they had adorned with the purple-bordered toga, they struck in the face; and him whom they were wont to adore and worship with sacrifices as a god, they were now leading to execution. (Dio Crassius, Roman History, 58.11.1-3).

The imagery of a Triumph is not lost in Mark, a gospel heavily influenced by Paul. Ferguson shows Mark agrees with Paul’s gospel and food laws.^[15] One fantastic example of Mark using Galatians is provided by Tom Dryska-

Tom Dryska shows the “parallels between Mark chapter 7 and Galatians 2: 11-14 are too dense to be coincidental.

In Mark, the scribes come “from Jerusalem”; in Galatians, the men who cause the strife come ”from James,” who is based in Jerusalem. In Mark, Jesus’ opponents attack him for engaging in table fellowship with men who are ritually unclean; in Galatians, Paul’s opponents convince Jews to stop table fellowship with Gentiles, who are considered ritually unclean. In Mark, Jesus calls the scribes “hypocrites” (ὑποκριτῶν, the only use of that word in Mark); in Galatians, Paul accuses Peter and the Jews who also quit eating with Gentiles of acting hypocritically (συνυπεκρίθησαν ….  ὑποκρίσει). In Mark, “the commandment of God” or “the word of God” contrasts with something variously called “the tradition of the elders,” “the precepts of men,” “the traditions of men,” and “your tradition”; in Galatians the gospel that is “not man’s gospel” contrasts with “the traditions of my fathers” that Paul was zealous for before he began preaching the gospel. In Mark, Jesus criticizes the scribes for “nullifying” (Ἀφέντες) and (ἀκυροῦντες) God’s commandment; in Galatians , Paul warns that the Law cannot nullify (ἀθετεῖ, 3: 15) or “annul” (ἀκυροῖ, 3:17) God’s promises to Abraham. In Mark, the story leads to the conclusion that what matters is how one speaks and acts, and ends with a catalog of evils; in Galatians the epistle leads to the conclusion that the Law boils down to “love for the neighbor,” followed by a catalog of evils. This story and the ones about Jesus versus Peter clearly hark back to Paul’s confrontation with the “pillars” in Galatians 2:1- 12, which means the Galatians text was prominent in Mark’s mind as he wrote his gospel. ^[16]

Robyn Walsh succinctly shows how Mark put his gospel together from Paul’s letters:

There he finds talk of Jesus as Christ, possessing divine pneuma (Rom. 8:9; Mark 1:10); a divine lineage of Abraham (Rom. 3, 4, 9; Mark 1); “pneumatic” demonstrations (1 Cor. 2:4–5; Mark 2:8, 5:1ff., 5:41ff.), including divination; demonstrations of power over demons, archons, and unclean pneuma (Rom. 8:38–39; 1 Cor. 15:24; Mark 1:23, 39, 5:2ff., 7:25); Jesus as a prophet for a new age (Rom. 3:21–22; Mark 1:1–15) or a New Adam (1 Cor. 15:45; Mark 1:12ff.); a failure to recognize Jesus as the messiah during his lifetime (1 Cor. 2:6–8; Mark 4:41, 6:2, 8:29, 11:27ff.); and an active principle of God’s pneuma bounding people “in Christ” through baptism (Rom. 6; Mark 1). He even finds talk of fellowship meals and a meal hosted by Jesus anticipating his death (the so-called Last Supper) with dialogue (1 Cor. 11:23–25; Mark 14:22–25) and mention of other characters like James and Peter (e.g., Gal. 2; Mark 3:20–21, 31–35, 8:31–33, 14:26, 66). The proper interpretation of Judean law and allegory also looms large in these letters (e.g., Gal. 1:6–11; Rom. 1:16–17; 1 Cor. 9:16; Mark 1:1, 2:18ff.), as one might expect from a Pharisee.”^[17]

Mark also got his Triumph motif from Paul.

Helen Bond notes an “air of persecution that hangs so heavily over this work, [Mark 4:17; 8:34; 10:37–40; and 13:9–13], persecution that broke out brutally and unexpectedly under Nero in 65 CE, and might well have continued to threaten the community of Christ followers after the war.  There is an apparent allusion to Nero in Revelation via gematria that adds weight to Neronian persecution and its relevance to the Jesus Christians (Rev. 13:28). A knowledge of the Flavian triumph, celebrated in Rome in 71, might also explain the “anti-triumph” motif that several scholars have detected in Mark’s account of the crucifixion.” ^[18] Schmidt recognises a “particular segment of the crucifixion narrative (Mark 15.16-32) evoke a Roman triumphal procession, and that Mark designs this ‘anti-triumph’ to suggest that the seeming scandal of the cross is actually an exaltation of Christ.” ^[19]

Schmidt shows the purple robe put on Jesus is not historical, (Pilate the only one who would have a robe like this would not hand over his robe to be spat on) and is instead symbolic of the Triumph.

They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. (Mark 15:17). 

The crown and garb are symbols of the Triumph rather than historical reality. ^[20]

Winn using Schmidt’s paper lists these parallels:

1. the Markan reference to the ‘Praetorian’ that parallels the presence of the Praetorian Guard at a Roman triumph (15.16);

2. the Markan reference to the presence of an ‘entire cohort’ at Jesus’ trial that parallels the presence of such a unit at a Roman triumph (15.16);

3. Jesus being adorned with a purple robe, a garment also worn by the Roman triumphator (15.17);

4. Jesus adorned with a crown of thorns, paralleling the triumphator who wore a laurel crown (15.17);

5. Jesus receives mock honor from Roman soldiers, paralleling the honor given to the triumphator (15.18-19);

6. Jesus’ triumph culminates at Golgotha, ‘the place of the skull’, and a Roman Triumph culminates at the Capital, named for a skull that was found when the buildings’ foundation was laid (Mk 15.22; Livy 1.55);

7. Jesus is offered and refuses wine to drink, paralleling the offer of wine to the triumphator who refuses the offer (15:23);

[according to Schmidt at the Temple of Jupiter, just before the bull was sacrificed, the triumphator was offered a cup of wine that he rejected as a libation and poured out on the alter. (Schmidt, NTS 41, 1995:11). Schmidt infers this from archaeologist Inez Scott Ryberg study of panels on Roman Triumphs].

8. immediately after the offer of wine Jesus is crucified, whereas a bull is sacrificed directly after the triumphator refuses wine (15:24);

9. Jesus is crucified between two thieves while the triumphator was usually seated between two people (15:27);

10. after his death Jesus is hailed ‘Son of God’ by a Roman centurion, a common claim for a triumphant Roman emperor (15:39). ^[21]

The gospels depict Pilate as washing his hands and being a witness to Jesus’s innocence. Both Philo and Josephus show Pilate as a brutal administrator, yet he is depicted the opposite in the gospels. Pilate being a witness to Jesus as innocent as depicted in the gospels would sever any hint of this movement’s messianic beginnings at a time when the Romans were persecuting all Jewish messianists post Roman Jewish war.

Paul wrote before the obviously hurtful Flavian Triumph, so his use would have been only as a descriptive evocative image. By the time Mark was writing, the famous Flavian Triump was much closer to the bone, a stick it in your face parade for those suffering defeat. Mark artistically deals with this by having an anti-Triumph motif, a reason why Marks gospel won so much traction in its day- it’s motifs, political commentary and ultimate triumph over adversity was raw and memorable. John Nelson also has an interesting blog on the same topic here.

As Triumph language loomed large in classical writings, Eusebius of Caesaria could boast of “God’s triumph in a war which mankind declared on God himself,” as Christianity went on to become the dominant religion of the Empire. “God’s victory” (ενθεοσ νικη) was achieved through the martyrs of the church, where the final victory was an end to the “Great persecution” in 313 CE. [22]

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[1] Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 4, 114-115.

[2] T. E. Schmidt, 1995 ‘Mark 15:16–32: The Crucifixion Narrative and the Roman Triumphal Procession’, NTS 41, (1995), pp.1-18 (2).

[3] Richard C. Carrier, “Pauline Interpolations.” in Hitler Homer Bible Christ, The historical papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013 (Philosopher Press, 2014), pp. 203-211.

[4] Robert Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (Foundations and Facets), (Fortress Press, 1986), p.37.

[5] Simon J. Joseph, Jesus and the Temple, p.22-23.

[6] Christopher Zeichmann, The Roman Army and the New Testament, p.111.

[7] Steve Mason, A History of the Jewish War, p.5 and n.4.

[8] Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, pp.14,130.

[9] Christopher Zeichmann, The Roman Army and the New Testament, p.110.

[10] Karl P. Donfried, “1 Thessalonians”, ch 28 in The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament, Edited by David E. Aune, p.509

[11] Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, p.226.

[12] Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph, p.234.

[13] Jason M. Schlude, Rome, Parthia, and the Politics of Peace: The Origins of War in the Ancient Middle East, (Routledge, 2020), ch.3.

[14] Schmidt, ‘Mark 15:16–32’, p.4-5.

[15] See Cameron Evan Ferguson, A New Perspective on the Use of Paul in the Gospel of Mark, (2021) who builds on Joel Marcus, “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” in New Testament Studies 46 (2000) pp.473–87.

[16] Tom Dykstra, Mark Canonizer of Paul, p.150-1.

[17] Robyn Faith Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, (Cambridge, 2021), p.132

[18] Helen Bond, The First Biography of Jesus, Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020) Introduction.

[19] Schmidt, ‘Mark 15:16–32’.

[20] Schmidt, ‘Mark 15:16–32’.p.7.

[21] Adam Winn, “Tyrant or Servant? Roman Political Ideology and Mark 10.42-45”, Journal for the study of the New Testament 36/4, (2014), pp. 325-352

[22] Bralewski, S. (2015). Boże zwycięstwo (ενθεοσ νικη) – „ideologia tryumfu” w “Historii kościelnej” Euzebiusza z Cezarei. Vox Patrum, 63, pp.331–351.

On the Gerasene demoniac passage in the gospel of Mark, William Harold wrote, “what was on the surface a simple fairy tale about exorcism and pigs, but was in fact a promise to the Jews of the fate that awaited their Roman overlords, pigs in the fable represented the army of occupation. … Mark’s fable in effect promised that the messiah, when he returned, would drive the Romans into the sea as he had earlier driven their four-legged surrogates.”[1] But is it as simple a narrative that Harold claims? Richard Horsley claimed this passage was a subtext on Roman occupation and and Jesus’ exorcisms symbolized the messiah driving out Roman imperialism. [2] The strongest reason for thinking this as subtext is the use of the term legion (Mark 5:9) and the description of the many evil spirits possessing the man as a “legion of demons” (Mark 5:15). “The original hearers would have recognized immediately that “Legion” referred to Roman troops. For in their recent experience, Roman legions had burned the villages around such towns as Magdala and Sepphoris and slaughtered or enslaved thousands of their parents or grandparents.”[3] Some scholars connect the “legion of pigs” to “Caesar’s tenth legion (Legio X Fretensis) which had, among other things, the image of a boar on its standards.”[4] “legio is among Mark’s occasional Latinisms; in other instances where Mark transliterates Latin terms into Greek, it almost uniformly signals something encoded as Roman in the postwar period (e.g., denarius, centurio, praetorium).”[5] John Dominic Crossan added the suggestion that what was wrong with possessed individuals was an expression of the colonial oppression experienced by the individual that lead to a mental illness.[6] Yet the anti-Roman occupation reading as noted by Horsely and others does not sit well with the passage or gospel overall. At the end of the passage the crowd plead with “Jesus to leave their region.” (Mark 5:17). On the surface of the story the people were not pleased with the drowning of their pigs, (therefore they asked Jesus to leave) but we also have a deeper reading. This is not a Jewish population that would have pigs, but a gentile one. Geresa was a city of the Decapolis, a series of loosely connected gentile cities. On the surface level Gerasa is a way too far from the Sea of Galilee for the story to work, so the name was only picked to highlight the country of the gentiles. It was changed to Gadara in Matthew to try and correct Mark but still too far for the Pigs to run. In the words of Christopher Zeichmann this subtext may have been on about Roman occupation but it was not anti.[7] As he notes the residents of the Decapolis were actually pro – Roman and had welcomed them at the time of Pompey. “There is every indication that residents of the Decapolis were thankful for this [Pompian] emancipation—not only do historical sources, inscriptions, and coinage attest such gratitude, but the cities of the Decapolis even adopted a Pompeian calendar in appreciation: most of the Decapolis took Pompey’s conquest as their epochal year and enumerated their calendar beginning then.”[8] This is what is going on in with the gospel overall, recognizing the Roman centurion at the cross as the first human to recognize Jesus as the son of god. (This is opposed to demons who seem to be the only ones who knew who Jesus was). This “Roman soldier expresses faith in Jesus as the Son of God, or at least as the son of a god.”[9] Also Mark overall takes the blame away from the Romans for Jesus’ crucifixion, we can see that this is not a simple anti Roman narrative. Instead what we will see is that Mark takes a hot political potatoe, shows a better solution, basically win your enemies over rather than trying to defeat them militarily (Impossible after the battering in the aftermath of the Roman Jewish war). This is a gentile perspective and Mark is written from a gentile diaspora perspective looking back Romantically (The rose tinted glasses got rid of the anti Roman sentiment).

How the literary technique of the messianic secret is handled in this episode is also fascinating and also fits in with the gentile perspective. In my study of the messianic secret I have noticed a demonic exception (Jesus does not say to keep it quiet) which I think is of note:

The “messianic secret” is a term that over a century ago came to be applied to the Gospel of Mark to explain one of its most distinctive and puzzling features.[10]  Mark portrays Jesus clearly as the messiah.  Note the very first verse!  “The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah.” It’s all about Jesus as the Messiah.

But there’s a strange feature in Marks portrayal of the messiahship of Jesus.  Mark is unique among the Gospels in having Jesus tell his disciples and everyone else who starts to recognise who he is not to tell anyone.  He tries to keep it hushed up.  But why?

Most scholars today think it is a literary/ theological device used by Mark, to answer skeptics in the Jesus story (the most obvious skeptics are those that did not believe Jesus as the messiah as he had been crucified), This literary device also racks up the suspense (why is he trying to keep it secret?) and to make sure that people understand the full implications of messiahship.

Jesus had not fulfilled Jewish messianic expectation but had been rejected and crucified. Mark had divinely concealed the messiahship and the only public time Jesus reveals his messiahship is when he was about to be crucified. This literary device was created by Mark to explain that Jesus was a different type of messiah that had to suffer. That he was the messiah despite being crucified.

Here is the most fascinating thing I noticed on the messianic secret-

Jesus never told legion or the cured man to be quiet about it as the many unclean spirits of legion was in the land of the gentiles. Intriguing as it’s an obvious literary reflection that changing the messiah concept is easier among gentiles.

It is Mark dealing with the political hot potatoes that won its traction on the ancients. It is the reason that this first gospel was influencial, causing rewrites and launching at least 30 more gospels on Jesus’ life. Mark supports the gentile mission- win over the foreigners before the new age is the solution and in line with the apocalyptic worldview.

Let us now reproduce the passage:

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. ² When Jesus got out of the boat,a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. ³ This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. ⁴ For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. ⁵ Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. ⁶ When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. ⁷ He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” ⁸ For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” ⁹ Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” [Λεγιὼν (Legiōn)] he replied, “for we are many.” ¹⁰ And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. ¹¹ A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. ¹² The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” ¹³ He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. ¹⁴ Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. ¹⁵ When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. ¹⁶ Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well.¹⁷ Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. (NIV Mark 5:1-17)

Let’s examine the framework used to put this story together.

Catherine Gail Emmet discusses three scholars, all of which had the probable sources Mark used as a framework for this story. Each discussed  different source and Mark probably had used all of them.[11] MacDonald sees the Odyssey as the framework for this story and examines the Odyssey 9.354-366 and Mark 5:1-17. Neither Odysseus nor the demoniac gave his true name. Odysseus’s pseudonym of “nobody” indicates nonexistence; the demoniac’s (“legion”) a plethora of existences. In both stories the exchange of names gives the hero power over the monster in radically different ways. By naming himself “Nobody” Odysseus outwitted the giant, who then could not ask for help from his friends, for Nobody was harming him. Jesus, on the other hand, gained power over the demons by learn­ing their name.[12] Nineham has suggested that this story is perhaps a fulfillment of Psalm 68.19 Which reads, “God gives the desolate a home to live in; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious live in parched land” (Psalm 68.6).[13] According to Watts Mark uses Isaiah 65:1-7 as background for the Gerasene demoniac story.[14] This is evident because Mark stresses tomb-dwelling and the presence of swine in this story, a departure from his normal style. Isaiah contains a scathing account of Israelites in which swine eating and tomb-dwelling are the most repugnant results of idolatry. In ancient times, swine were a part of pagan worship and were offered to Zeus, Dionysus, Athena. The swine being destroyed is appropriate for the destruction of other types of worship.

So this story probably started on the understanding that Mark had heard of Jesus as an exorcist or faith healer. Gerd Theissen classed this as an exorcism when examining it’s Sitz im Leben.^[15]  To Rudolf Pesch the demoniac is portrayed as representative of this offensive way of life (vv. 3-5); he came from a distance, like the Gentiles.[16] Mark had wanted the story to be in the land of the gentiles but had not realized how far Gerasa was from the Sea of Galilee.[17] Asking a demon to reveal his name is a typical exorcistic technique. The demon responds, “Legion is my name, because we are many.”

“Mark links the practice of exorcism with an apocalyptic understanding of the times. The evangelist presents Jesus in conflict with Satan immediately following his baptism (1:9-11) and in the controversy over his exorcisms (3:22-30).”[18] Horsley shows us how Mark makes these exorcisms apocalyptic:

in the initial exorcism in Mark, Jesus does not “cast out” (ekballein) the unclean spirit, but “vanquishes” (epitiman) it. The latter meaning can be discerned from usage in texts such as Psalms (9:6; 68:30; 76:6; 80:16), Zechariah (3:2), and now in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In those passages, the term epitiman in Greek, trans­ lating ga ‘ar in Aramaic and Hebrew, was used with reference to Yah- weh/God coming in judgment against foreign imperial regimes who had subjected Israel, or Yahweh subjecting Satan, or God vanquishing the spirits of Belial who were attempting to lead the people away from the covenant (1QM 14:9-11). That is – ga’ar /epitiman – refers to the decisive action by which God or God’s representative brings demonic powers into submission, and establishes the rule/kingdom of God and the deliverance of Israel. The “unclean spirit” (Mark 2:24) indicates precisely what is happening: “Have you come to destroy us?”[19]

The story of the pigs is in line with Jewish literature of the time, spirits controlling earthy things- Jesus, Satan, Daniel and the book of Revelation all have heavenly armies. You could link the kingdom of Satan with Rome and the healing activity of Jesus with the restored kingdom of Israel.[20]

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[1] William Harwood, Mythology’s Last Gods, (Prometheus, 1992), p.313.

[2] Richard Horsley, Jesus and Empire, pp .99–103;

[3] Horsley, Jesus and Empire, p.100.

[4] Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark, A Commentary, (Fortress, 2007), p.269.

[5] Christopher Zeichmann, The Roman Army in the New Testament, (Fortress Academic, 2019), p.50

[6] D. J. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1989), p.90.

[7] Zeichmann, The Roman Army in the New Testament, pp.50-57.

[8] Zeichmann, The Roman Army in the New Testament, p.54

[9] Adela Yarbro Collins, “Mark and His Readers: The Son of God among Greeks and Romans,” HTR 93 (2000) pp.85–100, (94–97)

[10] William Wrede, The Messianic Secret: Das Messiasgeheimnis in Den Evangelien (Foundations in New Tedtament Criticism), Translated by J. C. G. Greig, (James Clarke, 2022).

[11] Catherine Emmet Gail, The Gerasene Demoniac, An Exegises and exploration of the Synoptic texts, 2005, Masters thesis retrieved here:

Click to access emmett_katherine_g_200508_ma.pdf

[12] D. R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, (Yale University Press, 2000), p.3

[13] D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark, (Baltimore, M D: Penguin Book, 1963), p.151

[14] R. E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark, (Turbingin, Mohr Siebeck,1997).

[15] Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition, (Fortress, 2007), p.321.

[16] Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium I. Teil: Ein- leitung und Kommentar zu Kap. 1,1—8,26 (HTK 2.1; Freiburg: Herder, 1976; 5th ed. 1989) ,pp.292-93.

[17] Collins, Mark, A Commentary, p.266

[18] Collins, Mark, A Commentary, p.272

[19] Horsley, Jesus and Empire, p.100.

[20] Collins, Mark, A Commentary, p.270.

Brian McPhee differentiates Jesus’ walking on water to other Greco Roman figures who have a divine ability to run over water.[1] Just because the gospels describe it differently, (Mark 6:45-53 and parallels) it seems he misses the point of what the gospels are doing. The gospels are using the trope of objectification. Litwa has explained the trope of objectification as dreams, visions and divine intervention that were narrated in such a way as if it happened externally. In Paul’s epistles Jesus’s resurrection appearances were experienced as visions. In the gospel retellings the body became ‘flesh and bone” (Luke 24: 39), able to be poked and prodded by eyewitnesses—including the famous “doubting Thomas” (John 20: 24–28).[2] This trope of objectification suited the apocalyptic worldview of the times. As Dan Merkur explains, “Ancient Jewish accounts of otherworldly journeys and places portray visual images as real perceptions of ordinarily invisible beings and sceneries of heaven, paradise, hell, and distant locations on earth . In these apocalypses, seeing was believing . Their seers assumed that what they saw in their visions existed objectively in a spiritual manner.”[3] McPhee goes through all the interesting figures that performed such a feat, while saying that many examples did not actually walk on water. Yet the gospels use of walking in water, was employing a similar trope to those Greco figures showing Jesus’s power. Walking or running on water was reserved for gods and powerful kings. Adela Yaboro Collins gives many interesting examples both human and gods either having control or moving over the surface of the sea.[4] She has examples of gods: Posiden rode his carriage “over the waves” (Homer Iliad 13.23-3), or the Roman equivalent, Neptune who “over the water’s surface lightly he flies in azure car” (Virgil Aenead 5.816-21) and of humans: where Xerxes had successfully crossed the Hellespont as if Zeus gave him the power to march over the water (Herodotus The Histories 7.56). Euphemous in quest of the Golden Fleece could “skim the swell of the grey sea” (Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.182-84). Orion son of Poseidon – “Poseidon bestowed on him the power of striding across the sea” (Apollonius Library 1.4.3). Josephus gives Agrippa a speech that recalls about Xerxes:

While those Athenians, who, in order to preserve the liberty of Greece, did once set fire to their own city; who pursued Xerxes, that proud prince, when he sailed upon the land, and walked upon the sea, and could not be contained by the seas, but conducted such an army as was too broad for Europe” (Josephus War 2.358).

From this anecdote of Josephus you can see where the mythology of running or walking on water came from. To the ancients it was only Kings that could “walk on water” in their ships to cross the sea and fight a battle. This all gave rise to the walking on water trope.

Dennis R. MacDonald has said in the introduction of his book Mythologizing Jesus, “the Odyssey is crawling with gods and demigods: Athena, who walks on water and disguises herself to appear as anyone she wishes; Aeolus, who commands the winds; Poseidon, who causes the sea to rage or relax; or Zeus, the lord of the thunderbolt and king of the gods.[5] In Homers Iliad 24, Hermes has golden sandals that let him walk across the water, and Priam and Idaeus are terrified when they first see Hermes approach at night, much like the disciples’ reaction to Jesus on the sea at night. Walking on water is a statement of power reserved for gods and great kings!

See the gospels for what they are and not for what they are not. Do we take them literally, did Jesus actually walk on water? or is the whole gospel written as a sort of parable as John Dominic Crossan has argued in his book, The Power of Parable. Crossan went on to explain in his prologue that after seeing a re-enactment of the passion play, of the crowd adoring Jesus one week, baying for his blood the next week, that this did not work well as history but did function better as a parable.[6]

The walking on water trope is part of a wider Greek literature technique such as explained by Dr Richard Miller where the gospels used the empty tomb to apotheosis Jesus.[7]

Of course Jesus’ walking on water also was one up on Moses parting the Red Sea. Jesus controlling the sea would have been analogous to God’s control over the raging, chaotic sea is a common theme in the Old Testament, from the creation myths of Psalms and Isaiah to the crossing of the sea in Exodus. Elizabeth Malbon gives some examples she thinks are relevant to Mark’s portrayal of the sea, notably LXX Psalm 106 (MT Psalm 107):

Those who used to go down to the sea [LXX: thalassa] in boats, doing business on many waters—it was they who saw the deeds of the Lord and his wondrous works in the deep. He spoke and the tempest’s blast stood, and its waves were raised on high. […] they cried to the Lord when they were being afflicted, and out of their anguish he brought them, and he ordered the tempest, and it subsided to a breeze, and its waves became silent. (Psalm 107:23-25, 28-29).[8]

We can see Mark’s reliance on Psalm 107 here.

Malbon goes on to say:

Mark presupposes the connotation of the sea as chaos, threat, danger, in opposition to the land as order, promise, security. …The threatening power of the sea is manifest, but the power of Jesus’ word is portrayed as stronger; Jesus stills the storm and walks on the water, overcoming the threat of the sea; Jesus causes the swine possessed by unclean spirits to rush to their deaths in the sea (5:23a, b), turning the threat of the sea to his own purpose.[9]

Job 9 shows the power of god where god “treads on the waves”. This walking on water trope is all about showing Jesus as the powerful messiah. This is a trope that goes all the way back to Mesopotamian times, as Tiamat the water goddess was walked on by Marduk as seen from the poem Enuma Elish (Tablet VII:74).

 

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[1] Brian McPhee, “Walk, Don’t Run: Jesus’s Water Walking Is Unparalleled in Greco-Roman Mythology”, JBL 135/4 (2026), 763-777.

[2] Litwa, How the Gospels became History, (2019), Ch2.

[3] Dan Merkur, “Cultivating Visions through Exegetical Meditations” in Daphna V. Arbel and Andrei A. Orlov (eds), With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism in Honor of Rachel Elior, (Gruyter, 2011), ipp.68-69

[4] Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), pp. 328–33; Adela Yarbro Collins, “Rulers, Divine Men, and Walking on the Water (Mark6:45-52)”, Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 74. Ed. Lukas Bormann, Kelly Del Tredici, and Angela Standhartinger, 1994. pp..207-227.

[5] Dennis R. MacDonald, Mythologizing Jesus, Introduction.

[6] Crossan, The Power of Parable, Prologue.

[7] Richard Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, Routledge, 2015

[8] Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “The Jesus of Mark and the Sea of Galilee”, JBL 103/3 (1984), pp. 363-377 (376).

[9] Malbon, “The Jesus of Mark and the Sea of Galilee”

 

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While not trying to oversimplify this area of history and recognizing Paul’s presumptions, let’s get real with Jesus and talk about him like we would other historical figures of this time or other times. We will not oversimplify if we recognise Paul’s very different worldview which is in fact very alien to modern atheists or theists alike. Both sets of people will fail to understand Paul, our earliest reporter of Jesus. In fact using your atheistic or theistic framework will not unlock Jesus history. The only framework that will work is the now obsolete apocalyptic worldview. Simply put, this apocalyptic worldview shared by Jesus, his comparative Sign Prophet figures (as reported by Josephus) and also shared by Paul, divides history into two periods. The first is an age in which the people of God are oppressed. In the second period, God will intervene to save his people. For Jesus both ages are played out right here on earth- so nothing to do with what will happen after we die, Jesus hoped for a kingdom of God right here on earth. Once we read through the apocalyptic worldview of Paul and all the presumptions that entails, getting Paul wrong will no longer happen and we can recognise that these were people, people who still fought like cats and dogs as the white heat of the letter to the Galatians shows. In that letter Paul had said of the Judasizers that wanted what the Jerusalem leadership wanted (and not what Paul wanted – his version of the gospel) – the Judasizers insisted that those converts ‘in Christ’ to become like Jews and become circumcised. Paul exclaimed- “As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!” (Gal. 5:12). This was an argument that boiled over at the food table in Antioch. Over thousands of generations, man has not evolved much above the monkey[1], will feel threatened over the smallest of things like what to do about the gentiles- as Theissen classed as the Gentile question.[2] Basically the argument over circumcision all had to do with what will happen to the gentiles in the eschaton. (The end of the first age). Certain passages from Isaiah show that these gentiles (non circumcised) will be destroyed (Isaiah 54:3) and other passages in Isaiah says the gentiles will not be destroyed (Isaiah 2:2-4; 25:6). These contradictory solutions to the gentile position at the eschaton within the same book is what caused the circumcision debate at this time. The exact same debate, (i. e. should Izates get circumcised or not) is recalled in Josephus Antiquities at the court of Adiabene (Josephus Ant. 20.38-47).

To get down to earth on this history with what people who are new to this area will call a weird worldview, (the newbies think Paul’s letters are weird) let’s just reproduce a conversation I had with my friend Peter Stanbridge, just discussing normal history where so many have overcomplicated this area.

 

Dave:

When you really dig into the stuff you could see that the likes of Theudas (one of Jesus’ comparable figures- a Sign Prophet) could just as easily ended up in the statues in all the churches all over the world. You can read about Jesus’ other comparable figures and what they hoped to achieve here. Theudas is a person who could have been just as easily revered – instead of crucifixion scenes, we would have beheading scenes depicted…

 

Peter:

So how was it that Jesus became the man? Given the fictional nature of the gospels, Paul’s spiritualisation version. Maybe the only link to the real Jesus if we had written stuff (apart from your reconstruction from Josephus et al) is if we had the James and other Pillars giving us their account. They would be the only ones with access to the historical Jesus. But then how did they see him given his failure as a prophet?

 

Dave:

Cognitive dissonance meant they did not accept Jesus as a failure, their visions caused by cognitive dissonance ensured God favored Jesus by raising him and this “vision Jesus” told them he was coming back. The survival of the Jesus history is really down to the likes of Marcion and Valentines picking up Paul’s letters. The letters Paul wrote as a missionary were probably the best that was out there- the guy was persuasive and adaptive. It didn’t succeed from the unbending James and Co, and never would have. It really was down to the wilier “bendy” Paul. How they got around Jesus’ failure was their own visions- they had visions of Jesus who told them themselves he was coming back. By god backing Jesus and raising him up “in their minds” meant all of a sudden he wasn’t a failure.

 

Peter:

There isn’t much left of the James stuff though. The NT has pretty well squashed it. Even in Matthew where the original must have been sympathetic. It’s hard to belief the “not one iota of the law passage” survived. But amazing bit of history. Pre temple destruction with so much wish for Romans to be beat. And post distraction and failure of jesus’s return all the contradictory stuff in NT shows. John’s realised eschatology, Luke not having an atonement based death, the catholicising of NT material, attempts to bring in John the Baptist, the Thomas school, forged Paul on behalf of catholic orthodoxy, Acts harmonising the Paul/Pillar conflicts. What a soup pot. If Paul pre-destruction one can see why the polemic still there. Post destruction one can see why James version was going to struggle. But still sufficient for Acts to harmonise. But by then it is really Peter. How did Peter become dominant over James? Maybe James had died?

 

Dave:

Peter was the active missionary- James was not, so Peter was seen as the dominant active figure and the literature wrote him up (even though polemically to keep him below Paul) to suppress James.

 

Peter:

Fascinating. Why the word “suppress”?  That is of interest. For example as opposed to simply not doing anything with him simply because of the predominance of Peter over James? Is it because James was over active anti-Paul and pro Law?

 

Dave:

You can see with Eisenmans work, (the actual good part of Eisenmans scholarship as opposed to dating the scrolls) he shows Acts actually wrote James out.

As Eisenman pointed out in his book James the brother of Jesus, fiction does not try to write people out of their narratives and yet that is what happened in Acts.

“James is mentioned for the first time in Acts 12:17 as if he had been introduced before and is mentioned as the leader of the Jerusalem church in such an off hand way, that we the reader should know about him and would have if Acts had not been overwritten. Acts assumes we already knew who James was. Another James, James the brother of John was killed at the beginning of chapter 12 (decapitated) just before introduction of this James the Just and according to the epistles is brother of Jesus. (Cf Gal.2:12; 1:19).” [3]

As Painter said:

“The variety of ways in which the appointment of James is described suggests that the direct appointment of James by Jesus, a tradition found in the Nag Hammadi tractates, especially the Gospel of Thomas logon 12, and also in Gospel of the Hebrews and the Pseudo-Clementines is being opposed. There is no [non orthodox] tradition in which the risen Jesus authorizes a successor other than James.” [4]

 

Peter:

I think there is a lot of fiction in Acts. But that doesn’t make the characters fiction or the tensions it irons out. Eg the speeches are fiction and as Eisenman himself has pointed out the stoning of Stephen is fiction probably/possibly based on someone else. The we passages could be Homeric etc etc. The stuff on the early church all fiction but probably based on what was either remembered or believed about them (giving up property etc).

 

Dave:

Acts or the gospels don’t turn the historicity question one way or the other, the genre of the gospels and Acts would work on either a historical or fictional character.[5] What turns the dial to historicity is the way Paul talks about Jesus in the letters- only actual people resurrect to second temple Jews. Jesus was the “first fruits” already resurrected according to Paul (1 Cor. 15:20).

 

Peter:

Well the blanket statement doesn’t work. It seems like in it you are referring to the historical Jesus not historical in general. So we have this idea that there is an historical Jesus but apart from this fact pretty much all of acts is fiction and except things it’s author includes (like there is a Peter and Paul who are evangelists) but everything he has them do is fictional (but maybe in some cases at least for Paul on some of the actual journeys he says he took in his letters). I think Paul’s conversion stories in Acts (3 of them) is likely to be fictionalised accounts based on what Paul says on his letters. So when we say something is history or historical we have to be very careful in each case to say which thing we are speaking about. There is a similar problem in philosophy with respect to Realism/nominalism. When someone says they or someone is a realist/nominalist, I always say with respect to what are you are realist/nominalist and is it an ontological or epistemological or both realism/nominalism.

 

Dave:

Yes that’s what I meant taking Acts/gospel on their own. It is only where they seem to be using the letters as a source that we get actual history, outside of that there is no way of verifying. Now because we do have the actual letters that changes the way we can use the gospels. It changes our knowledge that the gospels do contain historical data, but it is extremely difficult to get the data out. What we can do in that case is take some blunt tools such as re-occurrence theme (where things happen over and over again) (see Allison)[6] and to have some idea of historical data a similar method of multiple attestation (see Ehrman)[7]can be used. [Allison method consisted of what kept re-occurring in the gospels more than likely came from historical sources told in a literal and theological way in the gospels. Ehrman called his method multiple attestation, where things are mentioned in multiple gospels or letters.] These methods tell us how the ancients understood Jesus (such as an apocalyptic prophet) and Josephus tells us there was a certain class of these men and modern scholars class them as Sign Prophets. That’s how to get basic history done.

Since I wrote this blog I have discovered that memory studies are much more successful extracting history from the gospels and have released two papers on this:

Jesus Realpolitik, JHC forthcoming

“Memory studies and the realpolitik in John’s Gospel (memories we can determine from Josephus)” In Anderson, Just and Thatcher (eds) John, Jesus and History, vol 7 forthcoming.

Actually a third paper is in the pipeline- “Sign Prophet Hypothesis for Jesus”, JHC 20.2 (2025) now out!

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[1] Ian Tattersall, The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human.

[2] Matthew Theissen Paul and the Gentile Problem.

[3] Robert Eisenman, James the brother of Jesus, ch.6.

[4] Painter, Just James, p.114.

[5] To see the level of education required to write a gospel see Helen Bond, The First Biography of Jesus. To see Greek literature techniques used to apotheosis Jesus such as the empty tomb see Richard Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, Routledge, 2015. To see that the gospels are products of Roman book culture see Robyn Faith Walsh, The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, Cambridge, 2021; To see the gospels using memises and thus creating a fictional nature, see Dennis MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Yale, 2010.

[6] Dale Allison, Jesus of Nazareth, Millenarian Prophet

[7] Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium

 

For I received (παρέλαβον) from the Lord (ἀπὸ τοῦ Κυρίου) what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over (παρεδίδετο), took bread, and when he had given thanks (εὐχαριστήσας), he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance  of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance (ἀνάμνησιν) of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim (καταγγέλλετε) the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Cor. 11:23-26 on the Eucharist.

 

G. E. Ladd explains why the Greek shows that Paul had got the explanation for this ritual from those in the movement rather than from just Jesus alone. Paul frequently refers to his preaching and teaching in the same terms which are used of the Jewish oral traditions: to deliver (paradidonai) and to receive (paralambenein) tradition. … Most commentators think Paul means to assert that this tradition which he received from other apostles had its historical origin with Jesus. Paul says he received ἀπὸ, not παρά from the Lord. (παρέλαβον ἀπὸ τοῦ Κυρίου – received from the Lord). παρά would suggest reception directly from the Lord, whereas ἀπὸ indicates the ultimate source.” [Basically Paul got the ritual from those in the movement but the ultimate source would have been Jesus.][1] The technical language of tradition, paralambano , “receive,” and paradidoni, “hand on, pass on,” reappears, as it will again in 1 Cor. 15:3. Paul appeals to tradition in his argumentation, to a tradition that has already taken shape in the first generation of the church after Christ’s exaltation and before he joined it. It is a traditional formula that he has not only received himself but has already passed on (ho kai paredoka) to Corinthian Christians when he evangelized that Roman colony. As in 1 Cor. 7:10, an early tradition, derived ultimately from Jesus of Nazareth and now quoted by Paul, is traced by him to “the Lord,” not in the sense that he has had a direct communication from the risen Christ about this supper, but that what he has received as tradition he now vests with the authority of the risen Christ, the one who was given up to death but is now the Exalted One.[2] ‘to receive’ (παραλαμβάνω) and ‘to deliver’ (παραδίδωμι) represent the rabbinical technical terms kibbel min and masar le (P. Ab. I.df., etc.), so that 1 Cor. 11.23 says nothing other than that the chain of tradition goes back unbroken to Jesus himself.[3] As Ehrman states, “The terminology of “received” (paralambano, παραλαμβάνω ) and “delivered,” (paradidómi, παραδίδωμι) as often noted by scholars, is the kind of language commonly used in Jewish circles to refer to traditions that are handed on from one teacher to the next.”[4] In rabbinic literature the chain of tradition is given as follows: Moses received the Torah on Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, who in turn delivered it to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Synagogue (Perkei Avot 1:1).[5]

The reservations of some scholars claiming Paul got this existing ritual exclusively from the risen Jesus is answered by Simon J. Joseph who shows Paul taking an existing ritual from the movement and changing it to suit his gentile converts by claiming a vision from Jesus. As I will examine later the bread and wine was already within Jewish literature, where Paul changes this is tying it into Paul’s gospel of Jesus’s death, consuming the divine Christ, this is all part of the possession cult so that Paul’s converts are referred to as those “in Christ”. This is to give Paul’s converts a mystical union with Christ. For this invention of Pauls, he has to claim a vision- so he can consider his own inventions as something given from above. (This helps Paul to counteract his powerful enemies such as James and co., what more powerful authority than Jesus himself?)

The Eucharist is “cultural hybrid of Jewish and pagan constituent elements.” [6] This hybrid ritual accommodated the gentile followers, that would sit well with Paul’s new converts but would cause major contention with the leaders of the Jesus movement (James and co.), Paul “shared with them the meaning associated with Jesus’s last meal: Paul is at pains here to point out that the meaning of this ritual action – presumably performed regularly within his ekklēsiai – is the association of the Lord’s Supper, especially its constituent elements of bread and wine, with Jesus’s death. it would seem that it was the risen Jesus himself who told Paul that the bread was his body and the wine his blood.”[6]

As seen from the Torah, no Jew would consume blood:

You must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it (Gen. 9:4).

And if any native Israelite or foreigner living you eats or drinks blood in any form, I will turn against that person and cut him off from the community of your people (Lev. 17:10).

You must never eat or drink blood- neither you nor foreigners living among you (Lev. 17:12).

Be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat (Deut. 12:23).

No Jew would drink blood or associate with a ritual of consuming blood and would find this abhorrent. Paul’s wording as he quotes what Jesus would have said – “this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood” which is not problematic from a kashrut perspective, yet it is still is borderline in associating consuming blood. This may have been what the ritual was, how the participants practiced it, when Paul found it. Now see how Paul twists this to annoy James and co – Paul tells us Jesus said of the bread: “This is my body”, we could infer the wine is his blood when Paul says, “In the same way”. Cross reference this with 1 Cor. 10:16- “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?” This would not have passed the strict Torah observant James and co. Paul is most likely twisting an existing ritual and using his own claimed revelations to say he “received from the Lord” an account in which “Jesus identified his body and blood with bread and wine (1 Cor. 11:23–25; cf. Gal. 1:11–12), an account subsequently echoed and narrativized in Mark 14:22–24. The Didache, however, provides an alternative Eucharist in which Jesus does not identify his body and blood with bread and wine (Did. 9:2–3), suggesting the existence of alternative Eucharistic traditions in which Jesus’s fellowship meals and/or “last supper” was not associated with his death.” [7] This is evidence of an existing more Jewish ritual before Paul changed it to suit his “mystical divine union with Christ” gospel Paul proclaimed throughout his letters. This union with the divine would compete much better with the mystery religions that were all the rage of the time. This is the reason for Paul’s success! Continuing on with an alternative Eucharist which was celebrated by the Ebionites: who observed the so-called “Lord’s Supper” or “Eucharist”, which commemorates the death of Jesus, they did so using not wine, but only water, which shows that they did not believe in blood atonement.

 “They also reject any aspect of Christianity that makes it a religion of salvation. For them, the mission of Christ is simply to teach … They see Jesus as a reformer of the Law who brings it back to the true ideas of Moses. As it exists in Judaism, the Law seems to them to be mixed with elements of diabolical origin that are later than Moses. Items to reject they are mainly the worship in the temple and, in particular, the bloody sacrifices.”[8]

Epiphanius points out that the Ebionites did not use wine when observing the memorial of Jesus’ death:

 “They have a baptism of initiation and every year they celebrate certain mysteries in imitation of the Church of Christians. In these mysteries they use unleavened bread and, for the other part, pure water ” (Epiphanius, Panarion XXX.16).

To get people on Paul’s side he gets Jesus himself to explain it- “In this case the mythic features are that Jesus himself explained the symbols and that it happened “on the night he was handed over.” Handed over was a term taken from the history of warfare and used in martyrologies to indicate the shift in power that set the situation up for a martyrdom. It did not need any narrative elaboration.”[9] Many modern translations wrongly translate παρεδίδετο as ‘betrayed’ such as the NIV does, when in fact it really means ‘handed over.’ [10]

Paul is saying that he passed on a tradition that originated with the Lord Jesus (on the night that he was handed over to be executed) that he heard from others and then passed on to the Corinthians. In order to twist this ritual he says that Jesus himself has said it.

We find bread and wine traditions already in Jewish literature showing how this ritual about Jesus may have started before Paul’s intervention. Melchizedek figure was “king of Salem [i.e., Jerusalem] and priest of God Most High,” as mentioned in Genesis 14:18-20 was revered by Abraham who paid him tithes, Melchizedek in turn gave Abraham bread and wine. (just like Jesus in the Eucharist). And as Cargill goes on to explain the bread and wine tradition even goes back further- “the wine and bread brought out by Melchizedek in Gen. 14:18 compares to a text from Ugarit, which may describe a festival poem used in southern Canaanite Temple ceremony……this gesture [bringing out the bread an wine] on part of Melchizedek should be interpreted as part of an offer of a peace treaty between the King and the man who rescued the people and property of Sodom.” [11]

A farewell dinner that took on messianic connotations in The Messianic Rule of the Congregation (1QSa or 1Q28a) also has bread and wine:

“. . . when God begets the Messiah. . . . And [when] they shall gather for the common table, to eat and to drink new wine. . . . Hereafter shall the Messiah of Israel extend his hand over the bread and all the congregation of the Community [shall utter a] blessing. . . .”

The Messianic Rule describes an “eschatological” banquet that is blessed by a priestly messianic figure (1QSa 2:17-21). This has clear parallels with the Eucharist described in 1 Cor. 11:23-25, Mark 14:22-25 and Matthew 26:26-29. Whereas the bread and wine did exist in Jewish thought, it is the drinking of blood as highlighted in Luke 22:13-20 that is abhorrent to Jews. (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:10,12; Duet 12:23). Also bread is not allowed at a Seder Meal as the synoptics depict it. The gospels only depict it as a Seder meal for theological reasons. Unleavened bread, lamb and bitter herbs are all absent from the Synoptics description of the meal. (cf Exod. 12:8). This was changed to a Seder meal in the Synoptics, Passover arises only as a result of the context in which the words of institution stand in the Synoptic Gospels. This associates a great Jewish festival with the momentous event of Jesus’ final meal before his execution.

Also like to note that Paul, like he does with most Jewish concepts, transforms them to Gentile mystery religion matrix where the consumption of a god has a very ancient pedigree. To transform these Jewish concepts Paul claims the authority of visions.

They say that the Eucharist comes from Seder yet no Jew ever would say “drink my blood”. The drinking blood looks like the rituals of Dionysus, blood of the grape, bread of the grain. This ritual fits better as being Judaized to a new Passover.

Paul integrates this ritual with scriptural backing:

“Our forefathers … ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ … Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” (1 Cor. 10:1-17)

He also speaks of “Christ, our Passover lamb” (1 Cor. 5:7).

Of course we get a hint why Paul adapted this widespread ritual by tying the bread and wine onto Christs death, all in line with his own theology and syncretised very well with gentile practices, this hint comes from Justin Martyr a century later.

“Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, This do in remembrance of Me, Luke 22:19 this is My body; and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, This is My blood; and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.” (Martyr, 1 Apology 66).

As Elaine Pagels said:

“priests of the Persian sun god Mithras and the Greek Dionysus “commanded the same things to be done” as Jesus allegedly did— even “eating the flesh and drinking the blood” of their god in their sacred meals. But Justin insists that these supposed similarities are actually imitations of Christian worship inspired by demons who hope to “deceive and seduce the human race” into thinking that the Christian cult is no different from the mystery cults.[12] Many scholars have considered the parallels between the rituals practiced in mystery religions and the Christian eucharist.[13]

 

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[1] G. E. Ladd, Revelation and Tradition in Paul, pp. 223-225.

[2] Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, Commentary on First Corinthians, pp.435-6.

[3] Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, p. 101

[4] Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, p. 122.

[5] https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.1?lang=bi

[6] Simon J Joseph, The Rejected Jesus, pp.120ff.

[7] Ibid

[8] Cardinal Danilou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, pp.63-64.

[9] Burton L Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?, (HarperCollims, 1996), pp.91ff

[10] You can cross reference this with Mark 1:14. “Now after John *was arrested*…” “μετὰ δὲ τὸ *παραδοθῆναι* τὸν Ἰωάννην…” (Mark 1:14). παραδοθῆναι is the aorist passive infinitive of παραδίδωμι (“to hand over” – here translated as “to be arrested”). The definite article (τό) makes the verb function like a noun phrase – i.e. “(after) John’s arrest”. παρεδίδετο as found in 1 Cor. 11:23 is the imperfect indicative passive of the same verb παραδίωμι.

[11] Robert Cargill, Melchizedek, King of Sodom, ch1.

[12] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief, p.10.

[13] E. Lohse, The New Testament Environment (London, 1976); A.J.M. Wedderburn, “The Soteriology of the Mysteries and Pauline Baptismal Theology,” Novum Testamentum 19:1 (1982) pp.53-72, and “Hellenistic Christian Traditions in Romans 6?”, New Testament Studies 29 (1983), pp.337-355.

 

Romans viewed any new cult, with suspicion and even viewed some ancient cults such as Bacchanalia as abhorrent. Romans were mostly tolerant of established ancient practiced cults but there were exceptions. In 186 BCE one cult – the Bacchus cult was deemed so bad not just practicing drunken parties of banquets and wild sex but also committing much more serious crimes of ceremonial rape and murder. An edict was issued by the Senate to stop the Bacchaic rites.[1] This edict killed the cult as there was to be “no common fund of money, no president of the ceremonies, and no priest.” This stopped the drunken festivities that included murder and rape.[2]

One of the first concrete associations of Christianity being described in terms of a Bacchus cult is alluded to in Tacitus’ description of the Neronian persecution. Here is the lurid description taken from Tacitus, Annals 15.44:

And so, first of all, those who confessed were arrested; then, on their information, a vast number was convicted, not so much on the charge of arson as for their hatred of the human race. And as they died, mockeries were added, so that, covered by the hides of wild animals, they perished by being ripped apart by dogs, or, fixed to crosses [and made flammable], when the daylight had gone, they were burned to provide nocturnal light. Nero had made his gardens available for the spectacle and he put on a show (there) in his private racing arena. Dressed like a charioteer, he (either) mingled (on foot) with the common people or stood up in his racing chariot. Whence, although (action was being taken) against guilty individuals deserving the ultimate in punishment, pity arose because it was felt that they were being annihilated not for the public good but to satisfy the savagery of one man.

Tacitus, Annals 15.44

It was noted by Margaret Williams.

The phrase ingens multitudo, is probably a deliberate allusion to Livy, History of Rome 39.13.14, where those accused of involvement in the Bacchanalian conspiracy’ are likewise described as constituting a ‘huge multitude’ (multitudinem ingentem).[3] Larry Hurtado notes ‘But given that the church of Nero’s day could not have had “vast numbers” of adherents, this is either a rhetorical exaggeration or many others beyond the Christians were included’.[4] Peter Lampe shows the two major areas occupied by Christians in Rome were Trastevere and the Appian Way/Porta Capena were popu­lated by “the lowest social strata” of Rome.[5] Robert Jewett notes “[Trastevere] which lay across the Tiber from the rest of Rome, was left untouched by the Roman fire, which may account in part for the scapegoating of Christians by Nero.”[6]

Williams also sees this reflected in 1 Clements:

[1 Clement] refers not only to ‘a series of recent calamities that have befallen us’ (i.e., the Christian community in Rome) [fn.119: 1 Clem. 1.1. Generally thought to be a reference to Domitian’s recent hounding of the Christians.] but also a substantial persecution of Christians in the imperial capital within the lifetime of the writer. [fn.120: 1 Clem. 5.1 – τῆς γενεᾶς ἡμῶν (‘our own generation’) From the torments mentioned in connection with the latter event, namely, Christian women dying in droves [fn.121:  1 Clem. 6.1 – πολὺ πλῆθος (‘a great multitude’). Cf. Tacitus’s multitudo ingens at Annals 15.44.4]. through forced participation in re-enactments of grisly myths, [fn.122 1 Clem. 6.2 – ‘Through jealousy women were persecuted as Danaids and Dircae, suffering terrible and unholy indignities’] scholars have been strongly reminded of the ludibria (mockeries) to which Tacitus alludes at Annals 15.44.4. Consequently, there is now a growing conviction that both texts refer to the same thing – i.e., the ‘fatal charades’ in which Christians had been forced to participate during the Neronian persecution.[7]

Contra Shaw who simply sees this event as myth, Tacitus had no reason to make this up.[8] Just because Tacitus is unique in mentioning this event does not argue that he simply melded it onto the Neronian Fire.[9] Margaret Williams adequately explains why others chose not to bother mentioning an insignificant group of Christians. She shows the context of Pliny the Elder, Dio and Seutonius was to lay the blame squarely at Nero’s door.[10] In researching Josephus I have seen many things mentioned in Antiquities, where Josephus often had chosen not to mention them in War, simply because it did not add to the narrative he was trying to convey.

There is also no justification to see Tacitus’ sources as exclusively coming from Pliny the Younger. The loss of Pliny the Elder’s Annalistic History could well have been Tacitus’s source for his material on Christ and his devotees in the Rome of Nero.[11] Robert Drews also has another possible suggestion. “Tacitus knew about Christiani may have come from the book on the Judaeans (still available late in the second century) written by M. Antonius Julianus, who had governed Judaea from 66 until 70. On Julianus’s authorship of such a book see Minucius Felix, Octavius 33.4, where Octavius instructs Caecilius to read about the nequitia of the Judaeans in the histories written by Josephus, or, if Caecilius prefers something in Latin, to read the book Antoni Iuliani de Iudaeis.”[12] Or as I have noted before:

“It is likely that Tacitus got his information about Christians from his friend Pliny the Younger, but that was not his only source. F.F. Bruce notes that Tacitus’s information best aligns with Greco-Roman polemical sources on Jews, yet he also said, ‘It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that both Tacitus and Suetonius depended here, directly or indirectly, on Josephus’, in regards to the oracle applied to Vespasian (compare Tacitus, Hist. 5.13 to Josephus, War 6.312-313; cf. Suetonius, Vesp. 4.5).[13]

Williams notes: “Through unmistakable allusions to Livy’s lurid account of the clandestine activities of the devotees of Bacchus suppressed by the senate in 186 bce, he indicates very clearly the lines along which their thoughts should run. That text will have been thoroughly familiar to the members of Tacitus’s audience, given the importance placed by Roman educators on Livy’s patriotic history of Rome.”[14]

Along much the same lines a speech of Fronto preserved by Minucius Felix in Octavius accuses the Christians of orgies:

certainly suspicion is applicable to secret and nocturnal rites; and he who explains their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for his wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, appropriates fitting altars for reprobate and wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve. Now the story about the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily — O horror!— they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are covenanted to mutual silence. Such sacred rites as these are more foul than any sacrileges. And of their banqueting it is well known all men speak of it everywhere; even the speech of our Cirtensian testifies to it. On a solemn day they assemble at the feast, with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of every sex and of every age. There, after much feasting, when the fellowship has grown warm, and the fervour of incestuous lust has grown hot with drunkenness, a dog that has been tied to the chandelier is provoked, by throwing a small piece of offal beyond the length of a line by which he is bound, to rush and spring; and thus the conscious light being overturned and extinguished in the shameless darkness, the connections of abominable lust involve them in the uncertainty of fate.

-Fronto, as reported by Minucius Felix, Octavius 9. 5-7

Hoffman notes:

Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan, written around 111, rumors of Christian excesses were widespread throughout Asia Minor and were doubtless linked in the popular mind with the nocturnal forest rites of the Bacchae. Described by Livy during the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.E.-14 C.E.) these rites were thought to include drunkenness, the defilement of women, promiscuous intercourse, and assorted other debaucheries. Pliny had heard this much and more about the clandestine practices of the Christians- including suggestions that they occasionally sacrificed and ate their young and indulged in ritual incest at their love banquets. Pliny himself appears to credit the Christian denial of such charges (“They claim . . . they meet to partake of food, but food of an ordinary and innocent kind”), at the same time professing a healthy ignorance about their beliefs.[15]

Adding to this Bacchaic association were the strange practices of some of the christianities that had existed and reported about by Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Epiphanius. Yet the gatekeeper orthodox would of course use the Bacchaic polemic just as the earlier classical writers did in describing these movements.

 

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[1] Livy, The History of Rome, book 39, chapters 8-22; Henry Bettenson, Livy: Rome and the Mediterranean (London:Penguin 1976).

[2] Bart Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, ch.3.

[3] Margaret Williams, , Early Classical Authors on Jesus, The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 7, (T & T Clark, 2022), p.72

[4] Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p.619 n. 171 

[5] Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries, (Fortress Press, 2003),   p.65.

[6] Robert Jewett, Forward in Lampe book From Paul to Valentinus, (fn.5), p. xiv.

[7] Williams, Early Classical Authors on Jesus,, p.72

[8] B. D. Shaw, ‘The Myth of the Neronian Persecution’, JRS 105 (2015): 73–100 (74 – ‘this event never happened’). For rebuttals to Shaw’s thesis, C. P. Jones, ‘The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw’, NTS 63 (2017): 146–52 and Van der Lans and Bremmer, ‘Tacitus and the Persecution of the Christians’ (Chapter 1 n. 36).

[9] Christopher Hansen, “The Problem of Annals 15.44: On the Plinian Origin of Tacitus’s Information on Christians,” Journal of Early Christian History 13 (2023): 62–80 (69-70). 

[10] Williams, Early Classical Authors on Jesus, pp.69-71: Pliny the Elder, Nat. 17.1.5-6; Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.16-18; Seutonius, Nero 36-38.

[11] Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (London: SCM, 1998), p.83; Birgit van der Lans and Jan N. Bremmer, ‘Tacitus and the Persecution of the Christians: An Invention of Tradition?’ Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina 53 (2017): pp.229–331 (301 n. 9); Williams, Early Classical Authors on Jesus, p.8.

[12] Robert Drews, “Judaean Christiani in the Middle Decades of the First Century”, Journal of Early Christian History 13,(2023), p.54, footnote 21; 

[13] David Allen, “A Model Reconstruction of What Josephus Would have Realistically Written about Jesus”, JGRChJ 18 (2022) pp. 113-43, (139);  F.F. Bruce, ‘Tacitus on Jewish History’, JSS 29 (1984), pp. 33-44 (42).

[14] Williams, Early Classical Authors on Jesus, p.80.

[15] Celsus on The True Doctrine, A discourse against the Christians translation by R Joseph Hoffman, (Oxford, 1987), p.16; Pliny the Younger, Epistles, 10.96; Trajan’s reply, Epistles, 10.97

Like any new preacher in town, Paul sensed people were questioning him, doubting all the promises he made, like a resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:12), like will it even happen at all or is Paul just a crank. Disbelieving converts were asking obvious questions like what do you mean- “How are the dead raised? With it what kind of body will they come?”(1 Cor. 15:35). It’s obvious people were skeptical of this new preacher, why wouldn’t they? Paul had promised them all new bodies! God would give these bodies to them. (1 Cor. 15:38).

Paul was trying to convince them of the visions he had of this recently executed prophet- (he had been the Anointed god had promised), he told them he wasn’t the only one who was having these visions (1 Cor. 15: 5-8). Paul’s rhetoric that if what he preached wasn’t true -that “Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile”- (1 Cor. 15:7) that was the rock Paul was willing to perish. And how did Paul know Jesus was raised? – Jesus had told Paul and others in a vision that god raised him!

With the Jewish concept of resurrection Paul promised the Corinthians all new bodies, these were spiritual bodies but not immaterial, they were made of the same finer material that spirits or angels were made of. “For Paul, flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God.  They are done away with, because people are raised in spiritual bodies, just as Christ was.”[1] As “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50), a new body was required.

These new bodies were for a kingdom of god, this entailed basic outlines of Jewish concepts with the added conviction that Jesus was coming back (1 Thess. 4:16-18).

Jesus being the “first fruits” (1 Cor. 15:20), has already got his new body. Perhaps Jesus had this type of body all along because Paul suggested this when he said “made of woman” as opposed to the more commonly way of expressing the common idiom “born of woman” (Gal. 4:4). Paul seems to break with the Biblical precedent of this idiom, using γίνομαι (ginomai = made) rather than γεννῶμαι (gennomai = born). With Paul using both expressions “made of woman”, “made under the law” could mean that Paul was emphasizing that Jesus was born with a divine body- which would make Paul a docetist! He still believed Jesus had walked the earth as he said had said we all knew of Jesus according to the flesh. (2 Cor. 5:16). Jesus with his new super body was coming back to start a new age, and all those “in Christ” can enjoy the mystery of getting these new bodies. (1 Cor.15:51-52; cf. Rom. 8:11). This new Christ cult was ready to compete with the mystery religions!

Paul offered all his new converts (those referred to as “in Christ”) all new bodies 1 Cor. 15:42, not just ordinary bodies but bodies made of the same stuff as heavenly beings (1 Cor. 15:40,44). The bodies of those “in Christ” would transform (1 Cor. 15:51,52). Not only that but those “in Christ” could also bring their dead loved ones along with the baptism of the dead. “material nature of the dead was assumed to transform, having received the divine “stuff ” of Christ.” [2]

Candida Moss had commented about ideas like these already existing in the Jewish world, “In his description of the various “philosophical sects” that made up ancient Judaism, the historian Josephus includes a summary of the views of the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees on the question of the immortality (or not) of the soul after death. The Essenes, we are told, subscribe to a complicated view of the afterlife, akin to that of “the Greeks.” They believe that bodies are corruptible but that the soul is immortal. The Pharisees, he adds, subscribe to the idea of the incorruptibility of the soul and that the souls of the good will receive new bodies in the future. The Sadducees, by contrast, deny the existence of any kind of afterlife.[3]

The Essenes:

That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. (War 2.154-155)

The Pharisees:

They say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies,—but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment. (War 2.163)

Sadducces:

They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades. (War 2.165)

Josephus also explains the Greek views of afterlife in War.

“souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue, and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death; and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death.” (War 2.155-156)

 

In his debate with Hansen, Richard Carrier has succcessfully shown that God has manufactured these new bodies “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” [2 Cor. 5:1] These bodies are already in heaven; we have them waiting—not will have them, but already have them. They await us.”[4] While Paul deliberately swapped out born for made in a common idiom- born of woman, and later scribes in their fights with docitists changed the word back to born, this really has nothing to do with the futile mythicist/historicist – made/born debate that Carrier and Hansen carry out. This is my answer to that futile debate- it actually makes no difference if god manufactured new bodies for people that actually existed, I mean like Paul literally promised all new bodies for the newly converted, this argues against Mythicism. New bodies were made for actual people, Jesus being one of the first fruits was the first of an actual recently executed person who had one of those new bodies.

In one of my happy debates with a fellow facebooker, Christopher Frawley, we debated whether those “in Christ” received new bodies or kept their own body. I did not realize at the time we were both right. Frawley saying as Paul is a Pharisee (Phil. 3:5) he kept with the Pharisiac thought of getting a new body (War 2.163) and this was evidenced in 2 Cor. 5:1. Yet in 1 Cor. 15 Paul was on about the transformation of the body to the divine body (1 Cor. 15:51-54). It’s quiet clear in that passage that the body that will be raised will be ‘clothed’ with the new body, thereby transforming. The clue of the two of us being right is the same kinda thing happens in Baptism- Paul’s Baptism is not just an initiation/ purification rite but “institute a physical transformation of the gentile body.” The birth and death to Paul is consistent- “In Paul, we see a yoking of initiation rites with “magical” rites that involve wielding divine powers, such that the initiate is purported to transform into something new; what mortals call “death” is, in fact, the beginning of “real” life.”[5] In the passage in Romans quoted you’ll see this mystical union of bodies explained by Paul:

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom. 6:3-5).

Paul not only promised new bodies but the means to get them- god will hand them out to those who die “in Christ” so that they won’t really die. This was what Paul was selling, a product much like the wildly popular mystery religions promising eternal life.

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[1] Bart Ehrman, Did Paul Believe that the Fleshly Body Would be Resurrected – The Bart Ehrman Blog.

[2] Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Divination in the Letters of Paul, Oxford 2019, p.142.

[3] Candida Moss, Divine Bodies, Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity, (Yale, 2019), p.15.

[4] Richard Carrier, “Chris Hansen on Jesus from Outer Space” retrieved from:

Chris Hansen on Jesus from Outer Space

[5] Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Divination in the Letters of Paul, Oxford 2019, p. 130.

Paul was a missionary who joined a thriving cult in existence, that had rituals (eg. Baptism 1 Cor. 12:13; Eucharist 1 Cor.11:23-24) , creeds (eg. 1 Cor. 15:3b-5; 1 Cor. 12:3, Rom. 1:3-4;10:9) and various missionaries – Paul was one of many missionaries that worked under James’ organisation (Gal. 2:12), others independent of Paul are occasionally mentioned in his letters, “Andronicus and Junia, apparently a missionary couple, were independent of him (Rom. 16:7); another couple, Prisca and Aquila, seem to have worked on their own, though sometimes in collaboration with Paul (Rom. 16:3, cf. Acts 18: 2); and doubtless there were many others.”[1] Many other missionaries were already out in the field ready to assist Paul, such as Euodia, Syntyche and Clement (Philippians 4:2-3). Paul was very jealous of Apollo (1 Cor. 1:12; 16:12).

Paul was very adaptable, As Paul said himself 

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.

(1 Cor.9:20-22; cf. Rom. 6:14 for those not under the law).

By being not under the law was to facilitate the gentiles who did not want to circumcise, it made it easier for Paul to be a success by offering the Jewish God stripped of regulation.[2] Paul was a great persuader and whatever occasion confronted Paul determined how he dealt with it. “What he says, for example, about the role of the law seems to be highly contingent on the problem he is wrestling with. In different contingencies Paul gives different, contradictory answers.”[3]

The pre Pauline literature (ie stuff that Paul incorporated into his letters) we see reflected rather mixed ways of exalting Jesus. This is even within the authentic letters themselves much controversial and contradictory statements on how exactly Jesus came to be exalted so highly, as highly as the Jewish god in fact. Basically what we can see in the movement Paul joined and what Paul reiterated was using the Roman cultural preconceptions of Emperor apotheosis plus Paul was also reiterating the Hellenized Jewish practice of the once hidden now revealed schema that existed in second Temple literature. On top of these methods of exaltation, much of the language used to glorify the Jewish god got applied to Jesus as he was believed to be a messiah figure. This messiah title got very otherworldly, it became an end time figure through the apocalyptic presumptions of the time.

Jesus claiming to be either an eschatological prophet or believed to be a messiah and ending up on a cross had a devastating effect on Jesus’ followers. The execution without gods intervention would have caused a cognitive dissonance among his followers.[4]

Paul reiterated the cultural understanding of second temple understanding of resurrection, that created an expectation of Jesus’ return as some type of ends time figure. This is how the cognitive dissonance was beaten- Paul assured his followers that god did in fact intervene, how? – by resurrecting him! And how did Paul and the apostles know this?- because they were talking to Jesus through visions. That’s one way to beat cognitive dissonance! The gospels would later take on the Enochian “son of man” as this end time figure. You can track a progression in the gospels themselves where Jesus was actually made into the “son of man.”

Paul also uses the title Lord Messiah, christos kurios for Jesus, let’s examine other contemporary documents that used this title such as the Psalms of Solomon (cf. Psalms of Solomon 17:21-32) “Christos most commonly stands for an End-time Davidic warrior and ruler. Traditions visible both in Paul’s letters and in the later gospels also present Jesus as such a redemptive End-time figure: returning with angels, coming on clouds of glory to gather his elect, bringing in the Kingdom with power.”[5]

In an examination of what we call various pre Pauline traditions incorporated into the letters we see various ways the earliest movement tried to exalt Jesus. Bart Ehrman does an extensive examination of preliterary traditions ie traditions that were formulated and transmitted orally before they were written down by the authors whose works we still have.[6]

It is from Paul’s letters that we see using the norms of recent imperial cults plus the more Jewish ways of how ancient hero’s were honored all being used in the exaltation of Jesus. Sometimes the very description for the Jewish god was used to exalt Jesus very soon after his death. 

For an example of two very different ways of Jesus’ exaltation I will quote EP Sanders here on two passages that got incorporated into the Pauline letters – Philippians 2:5–11 and Romans 1:1-3.

The two most substantial passages in which he commented on who Jesus was are Romans 1:1–6 and Philippians 2:5–11. In the first passage he states that Jesus was ‘descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead’. The reader of this passage would understand that Jesus was ‘designated’ Son of God, and further that he was designated such only at the time of the resurrection. In later terminology, this is an ‘adoptionist’ Christology. Jesus was adopted by God as Son, not born that way.… [once hidden, now revealed schema caused the earliest followers to create the Philippians hymn- a piece of pre-Pauline literature that got incorporated into Paul’s letters. Philippians 2:5–11, Jesus was] … in the form of God’ before he was born, but then he took on ‘the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men’. The passage continues, ‘and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death’. God ‘highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name’, that is, Lord. … Jesus was in the form of God, then he was in the form of a slave, that is, he was in human form…..the passage basically states that Jesus Christ was pre-existent and was in some sense divine, but that he became human before being exalted even higher than he had originally been, to the status ‘Lord’ [Paul] drew on, rather than composed, quite diverse statements, one offering a ‘low’ Christology, the other a ‘high’ Christology.”[7]

Another passage that presumes the ‘once hidden, now revealed’ schema is 1 Cor. 10:4 where Christ is the rock of Moses (Deut. 32:4), as if Christ had always existed but Paul is only revealing him now.

Here’s Margaret Baker take on the ’son of god’

Long before the first Gospel was written down, Paul could quote a Christian hymn, [Philippians 2:6-11] presumably one which his readers would recognize, and therefore one which was widely known … Similarly, at the beginning of Romans, Paul quotes what seems to be an early statement of Christian belief:

the gospel of God … concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. (Rom. 1.3-4)

All the titles are there: Son of God, Lord and Messiah.”[8]

It was no wonder that Paul quoted a “son of God” creed in his letters to the Romans. This would have resonated well with the Roman audience familiarity with the imperial cult. Comparing Jesus divine sonship to the Emperors divine sonship exalts Jesus and shows his power. The most famous person in the world, the emperor, was divi filus.[9]

‘Son of God’ fragment 4Q246 from the DSS has some very interesting implications for the concept of the title ‘Son of God’ in Jewish messianism.

The text includes phrases such as “son of God” and “the Most High”, so the two references of Daniel 7:13-14: [10]

1.He will be called the son of God, they will call him the son of the Most High. But like the meteors 2. that you saw in your vision, so will be their kingdom. (“Son of god” text 4Q246 col 2)

This meteor reminds us of Octavian’s memoirs where we have “The common people believed that this star signified the soul of Caesar received among the spirits of the immortal gods, and on this account the emblem of star was added to the bust of Caesar that we shortly afterwards dedicated in the forum.”[11]

As this blog shows Jesus’ exaltation was drawn from the cultural environment of both hellenized Jews and Greco-Roman methods that were used to exalt figures from this time.

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[1] E. P. Sanders, Paul, A New Very Short Introduction, (Oxford, 1991), p.7.

[2] Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Kosher Jesus, (Gefen Publishing House, 2012), ch1.

[3] Jouette M. Bassler, “Paul and his Letters” ch. 21 in David E. Aune (ed)  The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament,  (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010), p.173.

[4] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, The Process of Jesus’ Deification and Cognitive Dissonance Theory, Numen 64 (2017) , pp.119-152.

[5] Paula Fredriksen, Paul, The Pagans Apostle, (Yale, 2017), p.135.

[6] Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, (HarperOne, 2014), ch.6

[7] E P Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction, ch8.

[8] Margaret Baker, The Great Angel, p.2

[9] Peppard, The son of God in the Roman World.

[10] Israel Knohl, The Messiah before Jesus.

[11] Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958). Cf Suetonius, “Iulius,” 88, in The Lives of the Caesars; Dio Cassius, Roman History 45.7.1; Servius on Virgil, Eclogues 9.46.

There was also another body of wicked men [other than the Sicarii] gotten together, not so impure in their actions, but more wicked in their intentions, which laid waste the happy state of the city no less than did these murderers. These were such men as deceived and deluded the people under pretense of Divine inspiration, but were for procuring innovations and changes of the government; and these prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty. But Felix thought this procedure was to be the beginning of a revolt; so he sent some horsemen and footmen, both armed, who destroyed a great number of them. (Josephus, War 2.258-60)

When Solomon Zeitlin read the passage on the Sign Prophets under Felix it led him to note: “Apocalyptists who are the forerunners of the Christian movement.” [1] Yes Jesus being one in a series of Sign Prophets makes all these movements sound like a proto-Christian one as Zeitlin described. Josephus makes an important distinction between the Sign Prophets and the Sicarii in this passage he said the former were “not so impure in their actions” (War 2.258). This suggests the religious fervour of these groups. These Sign Prophets were distinctive in that they all “led their followers into (anticipated) participation in some great liberating action by God.”[2] As Hengel had noticed in the Rabbinic literature centuries later, we have disapproving rabbis of the Sign Prophets who were trying to “force the end.”[3] “The Jewish prophets believed that Israel had suffered enough and that the slavery under Roman rule would soon come to an end, at the time appointed by God. They must have linked the biblical tradition of Moses and its signs and wonders with that of Daniel, to whom the timetable of the eschatological events had been disclosed in a vision (Dan. 9:20-27). The prophets’ claims of being inspired by God (War 2.259) certainly included the conviction that they knew the mysteries of God, especially the future events and the time of their coming.” [4] “In the War passage Josephus uses words such as “change” and “innovation” suggesting political change from Roman rule, that that was the freedom promised and would be brought about by God. In the report about John the Baptist, for example, change has political overtones.” [5] “We are not searching for Jesus the individual in himself, but for Jesus-in-relationship, Jesus-in- interactive-role(s). A focally important aspect of a relational and contextual approach to Jesus is attempting to discern what interactive roles he was playing or in which he was being placed by his followers/movement(s). … [We can] detect a few roles that were very much alive in popular circles. Josephus’s accounts of the prophets Theudas and “the Egyptian” are evidence of prophets like Moses and/or Joshua who led movements of renewal of Israel at the popular level. The credibility of this role is enhanced by parallel evidence from the scribal level, in the “prophet like Moses” in Deuteronomy and the Moses-like portrayals of the Righteous Teacher in Qumran literature. … That Mark, Q speeches, Matthew and John all represent Jesus so prominently as resembling or imitating Moses and Elijah in both his actions and his speeches makes it all the more inviting to reason back toward Jesus’ adaptation of such roles.” [6] Not only did Jesus adapt a role, the crowd that followed him believed that god was going to intervene on the Sign Prophets behalf –  “the crowd did not just think what the Sign Prophet promised was possible – “they actually thought it would happen. This is the reason they could pull a crowd and hope to achieve an impossible task.” [7]

As seen from the reports of the other Sign Prophets, Josephus consulted the records under all the various governors of Judea, where footmen or cavalry had to be sent against any mass movement. The gospel of John reports such an incident- a σπεῖρα,(speira), that is a cohort consisting of 500 to 1000 Roman soldiers was sent out and John uses the word χιλίαρχος, (chiliarchos), for their commander, this is a commander of one thousand (Jn. 18:11).[8]

This was only one such movement, you can read about all the other movements in my latest forthcoming paper. I deliberately dealt with Jesus last in this paper so you can see that Jesus was no bigger than all the other figures ahead of other similar mass movements. The Sign Prophet movements are the best matrix for the first generation “proto-Christians.”

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What my friends say:

As my friend Jordan Lavender from A Jewish View said:

Exactly and probably many more [movements] would have survived if the Roman Jewish War and Bar Kokhba revolt turned out differently. Both movements of John and Jesus survived.

My friend Dr. Rick Miller (whose book Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity shows you that the gospels are using well known Greek literature techniques to say Jesus was apotheosized. eg. the Empty Tomb):

With Josephus, Tacitus, et al we see the civic sober-minded perspective of such dangerous movements. Beneath the folk-belief, legend, myth, and fictive literary layer cake of the canonical gospels, we still find the traces of a sanitized, pro-movement origin. Reading against the grain of those bits refracted at the bottom we end up more or less with something akin to what you describe. Although I would add: activist, provoking, deliberately criminal to the description. Tacitus called the cultic movement a “deadly superstition,” that is, this radical group was associated with a confession to arson causing the Great Fire that burned down half the city of Rome itself (c 64). He pointed out the founder who had also instigated disturbance in Jerusalem and was prosecuted. People speak of demythologization; I think here these narratives must also undergo desanitization what were the ugly criminal realities that resulted in several of the cult leaders and followers to be prosecuted by civil authorities in the first decades of the new cult?? Dennis MacDonald and I had breakfast Saturday together and are more/less in alignment with you discussing these things.. early criminal zealotry became a shit-stain later heavily overlaid with Hellenizing orientalizing cultic legends and a myth of innocence.

I responded with:

All those groups required the prefect/procurator to send cavalry and men against them. Jesus came from one of those groups. In the Sign Prophets under Felix, [as in the passage I discuss in this blog] while Josephus did make a distinction between the Sign Prophets and the Sicarii- he actually said the Sign Prophets were worse! More like religious fanatics.

Rick: The charge: This man said he would destroy the temple

Dave (me): And expecting it to be rebuilt without human hands is very Sign Prophet territory there.

My friend Peter Stanbridge:

I personally don’t consider any other explanation [for Christian origins] comes close to credible. I also like it because it explains the points the mythicists make. They are correct on so many observations except they miss the roots or foundations of the movement are in front of them. You can be a historicist and see the fiction all at the same time. You have a blog somewhere I remember linking these to. Explaining how this movement managed to create the historicised fictions (Burton Mack, Crossan, and others do notice the pluralities of jesuses and christs presented in the gospels I think are genuinely there). Your reconstruction also can support the big fight between Pauline and Peter Christianities as written about by Michael Goulder and all the others that were wiped out by the developing orthodox and the Muslim takeover.

My response to this:

Thanks Peter, lots of amalgamated and legendary stories were thrown onto Jesus. It’s a love card to all the Sign Prophets.

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[1] Solomon Zeitlin, “The Christ Passage in Josephus”,  Jewish Quarterly Review XVIII (1928),  p.236.

[2] Richard Horsley, “Popular Prophetic Movements at the Time of Jesus, their Principal Features and Social Origins,” JSNT 26 (1986), pp. 3-27, (8).

[3] Martin Hengel, The Zealots, Investigation into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I to 70 AD (translation by David Smith), (Edinburgh 1989), p.124; Steinsaltz, Koren Talmud Bavli (The Noé Edition), Jerusalem 1965, 2019, Ketubot 111a; Townsend, Midrash Tanhuma Appendix to Devarim, Siman 3 on Song of Songs 2:7, S. Buber Recension, 1989. Available online: https://www. sefaria.org/Song_of_Songs.2.7?lang=bi&p2=Midrash_Tanchuma_Buber%2C_Appendix_to_Devarim.3.1&lang2=bi

[4] Otto Betz, “Miracles in the Writings of Flavius Josephus,” ch. 9 in Feldman and Hata (eds.), Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987) p.227-228.

[5] Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 119.

[6] Richard Horsley, “Jesus-in-Context, A Relational Approach” in Holmén and Porter (eds.), Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, (2011), p. 227-228.

[7] David Allen, “How Josephus Really Viewed Jesus”, RevBíb 85/3-4, (2023), p.353

[8] Lena Einhorn, A Shift in Time, How Historical Documents Reveal the Surprising Truth about Jesus, (Yucca, 2016). The gospel of John describing Jesus’ captors as a speira and their commander as a chiliarchos was Premise 2 in Einhorn’s book. Einhorn mistakingly identifies Jesus with the Egyptian, yet the reason Jesus sounds like a lot of these Sign Prophets such as the Egyptian is that Jesus was a Sign Prophet. 

I found books generally from: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament, are excellent quality and for now I’ll do a recommendation series.

Todays book is:

Jörg Frey, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation.

The book I’m reading now just shows how Paul is actually working off of Jewish concepts (whether he twists them for his gentile audience or not). It adds to the current understanding of Paul within Judaism, and adds a greater understanding of not just Paul being on the edge of Judaism but actually just part of a multifaceted Judaism. The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) is paramount for showing Paul is actually working within Judaism (Judaism was not normative at the time but diverse….)

“(b) The term “works of the law” (ἔργα νόμου: Gal 2:16; 3:2, 5:10; Rom 3:20, 28), to which no parallels exist either in the Hebrew Bible or in rabbinic literature, can be found in the Qumran library. In 1QS V 21, “his works in the law מעשי התורה ) is attested; the exact expression is found in 4QMMT (C27 8 ) works of the Torah). There, it designates halakic specifics, “works, which are to be done according to the law” and are things the addressee should obey and teach so that this would be “counted for righteousness.” Paul takes up a term that was used in the discussion of halakic questions and was also connected there with the motif of “righteousness” in an eschatological context.
(c) Furthermore, the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ has no exact parallels in the OT. For the first time, an analogous Hebrew phrase is used in the Qumran texts: (צדקת) 1QS X 25; XI 12) and ( צדק אל ) 1QM IV 6). In 1QHa VI 26– 7, there is a parallel to the “revelation of the righteousness of God” (Rom. 1:17) ונגלתה צדקתך and your [God’s] righteousness will be revealed 1:17 before all your creatures.” The understanding of righteousness is different, but the parallel is that it is “revealed.”
(d) The Qumran community saw itself as a “temple of humans” (4Q174 = 4QMidrEschat III 6) and “Aaron’s house” (1QS VIII 5; cf. IX 6), in which God’s holiness is present. Both in Qumran (1QS VIII 5; XI 8; cf. Jub. 1:16– 17) and in Paul (1 Cor 3:9–17) the notion of temple and building is associated with the equally broader notion of one “planting” of God (see CD I 9). Paul takes pictures that are spread throughout the Jewish tradition and are already connected – even using them with respect to his dominantly Gentile-Christian addressees.
(e) The dualistic antithesis of “flesh” and “spirit” (Gal 5:17; Rom 8:4ff.) and especially the talk of “flesh” as a sin-stirring force that is hostile to God, which occurs in the New Testament only in Paul, cannot be explained either by the OT or Hellenistic Judaism (Wis; Philo). It does, however, have close parallels in Qumran texts in which “flesh” (בשר) is associated with “iniquity” and “sin” (1QS XI 9–14; 1QHa XII 30–1) and an astonishing awareness of one’s own baseness and sin. The idea of the “sinful,” not only sluggish, due to the material existence, but downright anti-divine “flesh,” goes back to pre- sectarian wisdom texts (Instruction), in which it can be seen how the negative connotation of בשר successively arose and then was received by the yaḥad. Thus, here, Paul takes up a motif from a hitherto unknown branch of the Palestinian-Jewish wisdom tradition.127

From page 78 of book pictured.

The temptation scenes of Jesus and Satan can be seen in light of Qumran:

“In CD V 17–19 the struggle between Moses and Aaron and the Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres is depicted as the struggle between the Prince of Light and Belial. Belial functions as the origin of temptation in Israel’s history and presence (IV 13, 15; XII 2) and as the Angel of Destruction punishing the wicked (VIII 2–3; XIX 14). Thus, the sapiential tradition of an ethical dualism is clearly embedded into a reinforced cosmic dualism, with the division of humankind at the border of the community. Consequently, the idea of an ambivalence within the heart of any of the members is dropped.”

• Jörg Frey, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation, p.318———————————————————

Also other apocalyptic concepts can all be understood better from the DSS-

“Early Christian Theology is not conceivable without the thorough impact of contemporary Jewish apocalypticism, or – at least – of some of its motifs. The thought world of the earthly Jesus of Nazareth was strongly shaped by apocalyptic motifs and terms,38 probably originally inspired by John the Baptizer. Prominent concepts and terms such as the “Kingdom of God,” the “Son of Man,” the eschatological judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the imagery of a struggle between a strong one and an even stronger one, the imagery of an eschatological meal, and the announcement of an eschatological change of the situation of the poor, the hungry, and the weeping in the earliest makarisms are all signs of a clearly apocalyptic thought world, and even the idea of the kingdom which is yet to come and – in his works – already present, attests to a reinforced rather than reduced apocalyptic viewpoint.
With the apocalyptic thought world, early Christian authors and texts also adopted various elements of apocalyptic dualism, although a direct borrowing, e.g., from Qumran, cannot be confirmed. As in Judaism, “dualism” can at most be “moderate,” not “radical” or “absolute”: No power can be consid- ered equal to God, the creator and ruler of the universe. Within these limits, different types of dualism were adopted: Cosmic dualism (God/Christ vs. Satan), ethical (good vs. evil; spirit vs. flesh), and eschatological (final/eternal salvation or punishment) dualism.
Jesus reckoned with demonic spirits causing illness and destruction. They are considered to be subject to a governing power, “Satan” (Luke 10:18; Mark 3:23), or “Beelzebul” (Mark 3:22), although the concept is not totally consistent. New Testament texts rather stress the conviction that Satan’s power is already broken by the power of the kingdom, as made manifest in Jesus’ exorcisms. Paul refers to “Satan” as one who tempts and deceives (1 Cor 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11), and he even calls him “the God of this Aeon” (2 Cor 4:4; cf. also “Belial” in 2 Cor 6:15), but at the same time he is convinced that Satan will be defeated shortly (Rom 16:20). Post-Pauline epistles mention Satan (or now the “diabolos”; cf. Eph 4:27; 6:11; 1 Tim 3:6–7; 1 Pet 5:8) as the one who stimulates heresy, sin, and apostasy. Only Jude 6 and 2 Pet 2:4 adopt the tale of the fall of the angels (Gen 6). Jude 9 furthermore adopts the struggle of Michael and the devil over Moses’ corpse from the lost ending of the Testament of Moses.
The Johannine writings are most thoroughly shaped by elements of dualistic language. They not only mention opposing powers such as Satan (John 13:27), the diabolos (John 8:44; 13:2), and the “ruler of the/this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), whose power is considered to be broken in Jesus’ death (John 12:31; cf. Rev 12:9). Even more significant is the intense use of pairs of opposites such as “light” / “darkness,” “truth” / “lie,” “death” / “life,” and “above” / “below.” This language was often thought to be adopted from a particular history-of-religions background, either Gnostic or Qumranian. But the differences are more remarkable than the similarities. The various terms point to different backgrounds, and they are used in John with a particular rhetorical intention to draw readers from darkness to light,40 rather than as a fixed worldview.
The notion of a Satanic adversary is most fully developed in the only apocalyptic writing in the New Testament, in Revelation, where Satan’s “names” are accumulated (12:9), he and his host are said to face eternal punishment (20:10), but at present they have the permission to harm the Christians (12:12–17). Even here, the “dualism” is a very moderate one: All evil powers are subject to and limited by the power of the one God. Dualistic concepts are rather used to qualify the enemies of the communities, the Ro- man power as well as the synagogue (Rev 2:9; 3:9), the Jews, and also deviant or “heretic” Christians. Thus 1 and 2 John explicitly draw on the concept of an “antichrist,” and label the deviant teachers as “antichrist(s)” (2 John 7; cf. 1 John 2:18; 4:3).
This survey of the reception of dualistic concepts in early Christian texts shows how deeply Early Christianity is indebted to Jewish concepts, and not least to the apocalyptic thought world. The views of eschatological opponents, the idea of demonic spirits, the concept of a struggle with evil or mis- leading powers, the expectation of the end and a world to come (cf. Rev 21), and the eschatological division between those who will be saved and those who will be rejected are all traces of concepts from the dualisms developed in early Jewish apocalypticism.”

• Jörg Frey, Qumran, Early Judaism, and New Testament Interpretation, pp.322-324

Some other books from the series, highly recommended