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!

---

[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]

 

---

[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.

 

---

[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.

---

[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.

---

[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.”

---

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.

---

[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

In opening of the book, A Jewish Paul, Matthew Theissen noted how obscure Paul really was:

The earliest surviving statement about Paul’s letters describes them in the following way: “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16 NRSVue). … If someone much closer to Paul’s day, someone who shared many of Paul’s cultural assumptions, considered Paul difficult to comprehend, then how likely is it that we modern readers will understand him?[1]

Hopefully this blog will let you understand some of the cultural assumptions behind Paul’s letters.

I love the way Paul put the cross as a marker of the end of the old age and the beginning of a new one. I mean he totally transformed the utter shame of the cross in an apocalyptic way. In line with apocalypticism Paul has a “firm belief that he lived and worked in history’s final hour is absolutely foundational, shaping everything else that Paul says and does… asserting the nearness of the End: “You know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to awake from sleep. Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand” (Rom 13.11–12).” [2]

“The earliest historical references to the concept of Jesus’ sacrificial death are found in the letters of Paul. Paul uses a wide variety of images and metaphors to describe Jesus’ death. It initiates reconciliation between humanity and God. [2 Cor. 5:18–20] It is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,”[1 Cor. 1:22–23],  a cosmic turning point,[2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15] and the defeat of the Powers.[Gal. 3:10–14; Col. 2:15]. Jesus is “our Passover lamb.” Jesus died “for us” (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν) and/or “for our sins,” [ 1 Cor. 15:3; Rom. 5:6, 8, 14:9; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15; Gal. 2:21, 1 Thess. 5:10] “according to the Scriptures.”[1 Cor. 15:3]. Paul uses this expression so frequently that it has been described as “the most important confessional statement in the Pauline epistles.” [Rom. 5:6–8; 2 Cor. 5:14; 1 Thess. 5:10] Jesus’ followers are “justified by his blood” and “reconciled to God” because Jesus was “given up (ὃς παρεδόθη) for (διὰ) our trespasses and raised for (διὰ) our justification.” [Rom 5:9, 5:10, 4:25]. This is language deeply indebted to the Temple cult. While there continues to be debate about whether Paul refers to Jesus’ death as a sin- or guilt-offering, [Rom 8:3; 2 Cor 5:21] it is clearly identified as a sacrifice. [ 2 Cor. 5:21] Jesus’ death as “a sacrifice (ἱλαστήριον) of atonement” by God seems to refer to the Day of Atonement, [Rom. 3:24–25] when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies: Jesus is now the place where atonement occurs (the ἱλαστήριον was the place where the sins of Israel were cleansed on the Day of Atonement). Jesus’ sacrificial death lies at the very heart of Paul’s theology.[3]

Paul a newly converted missionary to a new Jesus movement succeeded to integrate this Jewish movement to the gentile environment. Of course Judaism was already hellenised- in fact the use of the word mystery, which would fit in with the mystery religions that were all the rage of the time, all promising salvation after death. Part of Judaism integrating with the Greek world was the “use of the word raz (“mystery”) in Hebrew and Aramaic Jewish texts of the Second Temple period. … ostensibly a word of Persian origin, borrowed probably first into Aramaic and then into Hebrew—was not used in biblical texts until the Aramaic portions of Daniel were composed, and that the word also showed up with considerable frequency in 1 Enoch and related Aramaic texts (the Genesis Apocryphon, for example) and with great abundance in Qumran sectarian texts (the Community Rule, the Damascus Document, the Hodayot, the pesher to Habakkuk, and others). … the word could be found in closely allied non-sectarian (or “pre-sectarian”) texts otherwise dealing with esoteric teachings, such as Mysteries (1Q27/4Q299-300[301]) and 4QInstruction (1Q26/4Q415-18, 423), and in compositions with magical, medical, astronomical, and physiognomic associations.”[4] In Enoch the once hidden, now revealed schema was alive and well. Not only were mysteries revealed to Enoch but look at those evil watchers- “These are the angels who descended from heaven to the earth, and revealed what was hidden to the children of men, and led the children of men astray into committing sin’” (1 En. 64 .2). T. J. Lang has a fascinating study on the meaning of the word mystery- the apocalyptic worldview of the people that used that word – “any number of issues that were provoked by the apocalyptic newness of Christ, the “once hidden, now revealed” schema provided the hermeutical scaffolding for integrating what was now seen as the old and the new.”[5] Of course what is revealed through the mystery is one of the most basic creeds of Paul’s letters- is that Jesus is Lord (kyrios), always has been and only now recently revealed. And he’s coming back (Thess. 4:16–18). Dahl’s classification of what he termed a Revelations- Schema in early Christian preaching, the central feature of which was the proclamation that some reality, usually a christological reality, had been established before the ages but only recently revealed. The key texts marked out by Dahl include Rom 16:25–26; 1 Cor 2:6–16; Eph 3:4–7, 8–11; Col 1:26; 2 Tim 1:9–11; Titus 1:2–3.[6] Bockmuehl examines mystery terminology in early Judaism broadly, and the use of mystery within the interplay of hiddenness and revelation in much early Jewish exegetical literature.[7] According to April DeConick:

The idea that the “mystery” is “revealed” to Christians while simultaneously kept from unbelievers appears to have been a very old and prominent Christian teaching . Paul says that “the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ” has shone in the hearts of believers, but it is kept from unbelievers . In their case, “the god of this aeon” has blinded their minds to keep them from seeing “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the Image of God .”[ 2 Cor 4:4-6 ] Only the believer is able to behold face-to-face the Glory of the Lord, and be gradually transformed into that Glory by degree, while the unbeliever stares absently at a veil that conceals the splendor of the Glory (2 Cor 3:18). This transformation is a mystery that will be completed at the eschatological moment when death is swallowed up in victory at Jesus’ return appearance (1 Cor 15:51-55; 1 Thess 4:15-17).[8]

This 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’.[9] It’s not just the Philippians hymn, here is another passage presuming Jesus’ pre existence- 1 Cor. 10:4b: “For they [the people of the exodus] drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”

Another passage shows that even the archons or cosmic powers are also part of the ‘once hidden, now revealed’ narrative.

No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Cor. 2:7-8)

Paul is thinking of cosmic, spiritual powers as the ultimate culprits behind the historical crucifixion of the historical Christ – even if those powers were allying themselves with human political actors. The “Archons” and the human “rulers” are intimately connected. Archons are influencing people. This fits with Paul’s line of thinking as he says elsewhere in 1 Cor. 5:5 “to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh…”. This is the way ancients think, that demonic powers or Satan influenced people like the ‘archons of this age’ in the passage above.

It’s all very exciting that this is suddenly revealed, giving this cult that Paul joined an attraction at least as great as other mystery religions, perhaps a greater attraction due to the newness.

“The first thing to note about Paul’s claim that he arrived in Corinth “announcing the mystery of God” (καταγγέλλων…τὸ μυστήριον τοῦ θεοῦ) is that it is not unusual for Paul to refer to mysteries as things that are spoken. I shall contend 2:7 is best read as a reference by Paul to “speaking in a mystery” (λαλοῦμεν…ἐν μυστηρίῳ) about the hidden wisdom of God. Paul likewise describes mysteries as being orally communicated on two other occasions in 1 Corinthians (14:2; 15:51).” [10] While Paul’s authentic letters has “the mystery of God”, this gets changed to “the mystery of Christ” in the inauthentic letters showing a natural exaltation of Jesus.

Paul is interested that those “in Christ” (and this was a spirit possession cult) are saved by Grace that Christ gave you! (Grace has a Greco Roman connotation of gift). Jesus after his resurrection is now “life-giving spirit” (pneuma soopoioun) and powerfully present among his followers. Jesus as living Lord is the “person” who is the source of the spirit (the energy field) that changes them as persons and makes them a new creation and the authentic Israel. Paul’s conversion (Gal 1:16) was that God revealed his Son IN Paul. The spirit of the Son entered Paul. Similarly the spirit of the Son enters Christians generally and they become Sons of God. (Gal. 3:16) This is, obviously, a spirit possession cult, maybe not obvious to all. Modern translators try to say god revealed his son to Paul as in a vision but this is not what the Greek says.

Jennifer Eyl defines Grace “charis”(χάρις) much better than John Barclay, who correctly stated in Greco Roman times had a connotation of gift.[11] Jennifer Eyl goes much further than this to explain that these were divine gifts you got from god as long as you reciprocated with faith “pistis”. Charis had the same root as charismatic. These gifts could include – prophecy, speaking in tongues etc.[12] Of course charis fits in with the imperial language suggesting the gift of the ceasars was a benefit to all, a reciprocal relationship between ceasar and his subjects. This is especially seen in an inscription from Ephesus where Augustas was shown as “example of beneficence” representing  an “instance of the Augustan ‘age of grace’.[13] The inscription reads as follows:

By means of [t]he [favou]r (χαριτ[ι]) [chariti =grace] of Caesar August[us] from the sacred reven[ues] (εκ των ιερων προσο[δων]) [w]hich he himself [gave] freely (εχαρι[σατο]) to the goddess a road was laid under the procons[ul] Sextos Appoleios.[14]

Reminds you of the other imperial language borrowed by Paul to empower Jesus just like a 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.

Pauls fits in with other Mediterranean preachers of the time   “divinatory practices and speaking practices take place within a larger framework of reciprocity with gods”[15]

Moving onto to the  metanarrative of Christianity:

“key moments of the biblical narrative as identified by creeds, liturgies, hymns, theologies and artworks. In the ancient creeds, the Christian story is compressed into a list of discrete items distributed between three divine persons: ‘God the Father’, who creates the universe; ‘his son Jesus Christ’, who becomes human by way of a miraculous birth and who suffers, dies, is raised and returns to heaven; and ‘the Holy Spirit’, who is associated with the ongoing life of the Christian community and its future destiny. This credal list is heavily weighted towards the second of the three persons and especially towards the unique beginning and end of his earthly existence, viewed in largely passive terms as events he experienced rather than actions he performed.

Creeds identify certain highlights of the Christian story, but they do not attempt to demonstrate its coherence or narrative logic. The individual items become a coherent story only when the divine persons are viewed as agents cooperating to provide a solution to a problem – specifically, the problem of human ‘sin’, disobedience to the command of the divine creator and overlord, along with the mortality with which that sin was punished. The unique events that bookend Jesus’s earthly career comprise a singular divine act of ‘salvation’ that opens the way for sin to be removed through ‘forgiveness’ and death to be overcome by ‘eternal life’. The site of this drama of sin and salvation is a world created ‘in the beginning’ by God, and it is the primal relationship of creator to human creature that underlies the narrative sequence of command, disobedience, disaster and restoration.

This story is familiar to anyone acquainted with the ongoing life of Christian churches, whether as participant or observer. It is foundational to that ongoing life, an ever-present presupposition even when not explicitly articulated, and it is foundational because it is taken to be true: not a but the true story of the world from beginning to end, the universal metanarrative, a theory of everything.”[16]

Morton Smith tries to reconstruct other counter narrative making use of tte Greek Magical Papyri:

“Jesus the magician” was the figure seen by most ancient opponents of Jesus; “Jesus the Son of God” was the figure seen by that party of his followers which eventually triumphed; the real Jesus was the man whose words and actions gave rise to these contradictory interpretations. “Jesus the Son of God”

is pictured in the gospels; the works that pictured “Jesus the magician” were destroyed in antiquity alter Christians got control of the Roman empire. We know the lost works only from fragments and references, mostly in the works of Christian authors.

Some Jewish polemics are even contained in the gospels about seeing the source of Jesus miracles as Beelzebul. 

Pharisees accused Jesus, saying, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons” Matt. 12:24 (cf Lk. 11:19)

There are many verses in the gospels where the magical traits have been edited out. One example is in Mark 5 where Jesus asks the demon his name. This happens in magic where you find out the name and then order the demon out. Mark only preserves the question and not the exorcism proper, this in turn makes the question useless. The magic has been edited out. Matthew 8:29 edited out the question as well.[17] Such cuttings have left fossils of magical exorcisms that are now only being recognised.[18]

If the Outsiders’ charges were already in circulation, it is hard to believe that the disciples would have made up a story that would justify them. We should therefijre suppose either that the Christian story was the starting point, and the Outsiders’ attack a malicious Interpretation of it, or, more probably, that both were independent, contemporary interpretations of Jesus compulsive behavior and compelling powers. In either case the Christian story must be at least as early as the polemic, and must have originated during Jesus’ activity in Galilee.[19]

Jesus could not cast out demons; there are none. But he could and probably did quiet lunatics, and the reports of “casting out demons are merely reports of quieting lunatics (what observably happened) with built-in demonological “explanations.”[20] This all fits in better with divinatory practices of the time, both Paul and Jesus display practices of terata (wonders) and dunameis (powers), Jesus’ healing and Paul’s prophecy signs such as being a mediator between the gentiles faith (pistis) and receptory act to receive the pneuma (spirit) of Christ and thus empowerment.

Paul planted many seeds in his letters that all grew and developed in different directions. One such seed was that revelation was much superior to knowledge gained by man. It does not matter that much of this was done to puff up Paul’s authority against his accusers who were actually quoting Jesus against him. What mattered is that the gnostics took this seriously- as Hiscox writes:

The Gospels of Judas and Mary both feature interesting narratives that are in many ways contrary and complementary to the traditional NT narratives. However, I believe many people miss the greater point of these texts. For example, whilst the Gospel of Judas may present the picture of Judas being asked by Jesus to betray him, the fundamental point of the text was to present knowledge of Jesus received through visions as superior to knowledge of Jesus as passed down by man. Likewise, the same is true of the Gospel of Mary. The idea of Mary being Jesus’s closest companion and bearer of his deepest teachings appeals to many people, but much of the content of the text itself is concerned with upholding the superiority of knowledge gained through visions. We learn from early orthodox apologists such as Irenaeus that Gnostic Christians believed that knowledge gained through revelations was more reliable than that handed down by man. Hence, Irenaeus was so keen to argue for the authority of the proto-orthodox tradition on the basis of apostolic authority. This was a major point of contention in the 2^nd century[21]

Trobish noticed that all the apocryphal gospels also presumed that you knew the metanarrative and pulled off of this. Other books about Jesus outside the canonical share the metanarrative. “using the authoritative voices of first-century witnesses to address second-century problems, fixation on the creation narratives of Genesis, filling in narrative gaps in the tradition, creating historical credibility by referencing seemingly independent sources, and producing edited collections of apostolic writings to promote a narrative—to name but a few of their generic properties. These publications typically address an audience that seeks authoritative information that has been hidden from the public. They share a metanarrative that explains where Christ came from, what he did and taught while he was on earth, and what happened after Christ returned to the spiritual realm from which he had made his descent.”[22]

---

[1] Matthew Theissen, A Jewish Paul, The Messiah’s herald to the Gentiles, (2023), opening lines in the Introduction.

[2] Paula Fredriksen, Paul, The Pagan’s Apostle, (Yale, 2017), Preface.

[3] Simon J. Joseph, Jesus and the Temple, pp. 210-211.

[4] Sam Thomas, The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (SBLEJL 26; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009). Quote from here: https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/secrecy357910

[5] T. J. Lang, Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness, p.3

[6] Nils Alstrup Dahl, “Formgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zur Christusverkündigung in der Gemeindepredigt,” in Neutestamentliche Studien für Rudolf Bultmann (BZNW 21 Berlin: Alfred Tö- pelmann,1957),  pp.3-9

[7] Markus N.A. Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity (WUNT 2/36, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990)

[8] April D. DeConick, “Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism” in Arbel and Orlov (editors), With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism in Honor of Rachel Elior, (DeGruyter 2011), p.301.

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

[10] Lang, Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness, p.49

[11] John Barclay’s treatment of this in Paul and the Gift.

[12] Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Divination in the Letters of Paul, Oxford 2019, pp.183-4.

[13] J.R. Harrison, “The ‘grace’ of Augustus paves a Street at Ephesus,”  NewDocs 10 (2012), p.60.

[14] Harrison, “The ‘grace’ of Augustus,” pp.59-63.

[15] Jennifer Eyl, Signs, Wonders, and Gifts, Divination in the Letters of Paul, Oxford 2019, p.41

[16] Francis Watson and Sarah Parkhouse (eds) Telling the Christian Story Differently, Counter-Narratives from Nag Hammadi and Beyond, p.1

[17] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, p.145

[18] Hull, Hellenistic Magic; Fridrichsen, The Problem of Miracle in Primitive Christianity and Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician

[19] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, p.144

[20] Smith, Jesus the Magician, p.149.

[21] James Hiscox blog

Ancient and modern Christian apocrypha: The Gospels of Judas, Mary, Thomas, Peter and Phillip etc. and The Kolbrin Bible, The Gospel of The Essenes and The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ etc.:

[22] David Trobish, On the Origins of Christian literature, pp.31-32

Fernando Bermejo-Rubio used the Alexamenos graffiti on the cover of his book The Invention of Jesus of Nazareth, History, Fiction, Historiography with the following caption-

Graphite of Alexamenos (2nd or 3rd century CE), discovered in the Paedagogium of the Palatine (Rome) in 1856. The inscription “ALEXAMENOS SEBETE THEON” means ” Alexamenos worships (his) god.”

 

In discussing the wider context of this graffiti Bermejo-Rubio goes on to say:

“The mention of the crucifixion is found in the authentic letters of Paul, in Mark, in Flavius Josephus and in Tacitus, and is reflected in the graffiti of Alexamenos of Palatine. … the fact that we have several sources and that among them there are some non-Christian ones increases the probability that they cannot be derived in their original form, from just one independent source. Of all the events related to the life of Jesus, his crucifixion presents the greatest number of testimonies.” [1]

This is also one of the earliest known depictions of the crucifixion. It has a tau cross with hands of the crucified person were tied to the cross beam, and there was a bar to support the feet. [2] As noted by Campbell and Cilliers this was “a remarkable parody from early christianity called the Alexamenos graffito, or graffito blasfemo (ca. 238–244), still captures our imagination today. It was carved in the plaster of a wall near the Palatine hill in Rome and can be seen now in the Palatine Antiquarium Museum. It seems to have been created in the quarters of the imperial pageboys, a boarding school called Paedagogium. In the depiction, one of the boys, obviously a christian, is being mocked by another boy, or by a group of his schoolfellows, by means of parody.”[3] Next to the graffiti is another inscription: Alexamenos is faithful (Alexamenos fidelis). Whether Alexamenos wrote this himself is unknown.

The building that housed this school had been purchased by the Roman Emperor, Caligula, around 40CE and was later changed to a boarding school for Roman noble’s messenger boys. “Alexamenos received his education on the upper floor of a modest two-story building which was tucked among the imposing imperial architecture that crowds the southwest slope of Rome’s Palatine Hill. The Palatine was an exclusive neighborhood in the heart of the city, but even emperors needed space for service workers. … [and] It was here that Alexamenos spent his mornings learning basic numeracy, reading, and writing.”[4]

In the graffiti we have a human with a head of a donkey crucified. Christianity was roundly derided in Rome at this time, and Christians were even accused of practicing Onolatry (donkey worship). It was Minucius Felix that had said, “I hear that they adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures, consecrated by I know not what silly persuasion—a worthy and appropriate religion for such manners.” (Minucius Felix, Octavius IX). Tertullian defended the christian belief against the charge of a critic who carried around a picture directed against christians with the heading Onocoetes, which means “donkey priest.” The picture featured a man wearing a toga and the ears of a donkey with a book in hand and one leg ending in a hoof (Tertullian, Apology, XVI).

Tertulliam complains of a street entertainer, dressed up with a placard for money- “But lately a new edition of our god has been given to the world in that great city: it originated with a certain vile man who was wont to hire himself out to cheat the wild beasts, and who exhibited a picture with this inscription: The God of the Christians, born of an ass. He had the ears of an ass, was hoofed in one foot, carried a book, and wore a toga. Both the name and the figure gave us amusement.” (Tertullian, Apology XVI).

The donkey became the standard metaphor for stupidity and foolishness in classical antiquity. Cicero, for instance, calls Calpurnius Piso a donkey, someone not capable of being taught letters, and not in need of words, but rather fists or sticks (Cicero, In Pisonem 73.37). Juvenal even talks about a stupid person as a two-legged donkey (Juvenal, Satura 9.92).[5]

As Candida Moss observed “Alexamenos, the caricaturist, and his classmates were not freeborn schoolchildren; they were enslaved members of the imperial family. Family might seem a strange kind of word to use for coerced individuals, but the family (familia) was the social building block of the Roman Empire. The imperial family (or household) incorporated enslaved people and freedmen who were unlikely to have biological ties to the emperor (even if this was a possibility). The room where the students were shaped into copyists, bookkeepers, and secretaries was in truth more a workshop than a school. But like any place of learning, it gave its students brief moments to discuss athletics, create their own sharp hierarchies of status and popularity, and make cruel jokes as only children can.”[6]

The cutting cruelty is not lost on Candida Moss as she shows that crucifixion was all too real for the “enslaved people. Thus, for Alexamenos—as for all enslaved workers in Rome—the cross was both a symbol and a concrete possibility.”[7]

The schoolboy caricaturist even got his grammer wrong as observed by D. Clint Burnett: “The famous Greek graffito from Palatine Hill in Rome (one of the cities famous seven hills) shows a Christian worshiping Jesus drawn as a crucified donkey. The inscription comments on the action of the worshipper, but does so with a grammatical error: ” Alexamenos worships (his) god” (‘Αλεξαμενòς σέβετε θεόν). The graffitist misspelled the Greek verb “worship” (σέβομαι) using a second person plural form “you all worship” (σέβετε) instead of the correct third person singular “he worships” (σέβομαι).” [8]

“The crudely drawn image has the Greek phrase “Ἀλεξάμενος σέβετε θεόν,” with σέβετε being a phonetic misspelling of σέβεται, the ε and the diphthong αι were pronounced the same at this time (MacLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, 208).” [*]

M. David Litwa also discusses the possibility that the image of the donkey may also have been an image of Seth. Litwa says Seth was frequently described as having the form or skin of a donkey. (Plutarch, Isis-Osiris 362f-363b). Throughout chapter 2 of his book The Evil Creator, Litwa explains hellenised Egyptians started describing Yahweh as having the head of an Ass. Variants of a story are that Antiochus IV discovered the head of an ass at the Temple in 167BC and so it started circulating about the fusing of the form of Seth and Yahweh. (Example: Damocritus, On the Jews; Suetonius, Aug. 40.5. “Jews worshipping donkeys”). Litwa explains the polemic of Yahweh fusing the donkey form of Seth could have been transferred onto Yahweh’s son Jesus in the Alexamenos graffiti. [9]

Another suggestion is the cult of Anubis which was popular could have been used as a polemic too.

And here’s another article on this topic.

---

[1] Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, The invention of Jesus of Nazareth History, fiction, historiography, Siglo XXI / Serie Historia, 2018), p.109.

[2] Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp.596–97.

[3] Charles L. Campbell and Johann H. Cilliers,, Preaching Fools, The gospel as a rhetoric of Folly, (Waco Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012), p.2

[4] Candida Moss, God’s  Ghostwriters, Enslaved Christians and the making of the Bible, (London: HarperCollins, 2024), p.23.

[5] Campbell and Cilliers, Preaching Fools, p.4

[6] Moss, God’s Ghostwriters, p.24-5.

[7] Moss, God’s Ghostwriters, p.27

[8] D. Clint Burnett, Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions: An Introduction, (Hendrickson, 2020), ch.1.

[*] The Textual Mechanic, (blog) Tertullian, the Alexamenos Graffito, and P66

[9] L. David Litwa, The Evil Creator, Origins of an Early Christian Idea, (Oxford, 2021), ch.2.

Paul uses an Aramaic phrase in Corinthians, this happens to be a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic expression (Marana tha) used by early Christians. Maranatha (Aramaic: מרנאתא‎) māranā thā. Here is the verse:

If anyone does not love the Lord, let that person be cursed! Come, Lord! Μαράνα θά

1 Cor. 16:22

The amazing thing about Paul using that slogan “Maranatha,” is that it indicates that even those Gentile converts “in-Christ” had enough awareness of the Aramaic speaking movement to make use of that slogan in a language that was foreign to them and to know its meaning.

The meaning of that phrase is a hopeful early return of Christ and a Greek equivalent in Revelation 22:20 “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” has the same meaning.

This same expression is used in Didache.

If any man is holy, let him come; if any man is not, let him repent. Maran Atha. Amen.

Didache 10:13-14

Hurtado has noted:

It is widely accepted among scholars that we even have a linguistic fragment or actual artifact of the devotional practice of Aramaic-speaking circles of Jewish Christians preserved in 1 Corinthians 16:22. The untranslated expression found here, “Marana tha,” is commonly taken as a prayer or an invocation formula, and is probably to be translated something like “O Lord, come!” It is also now commonly accepted that it was the exalted Jesus who was addressed as the “Lord” in this formula. It is interesting that Paul does not bother to translate the expression here for his Greek- speaking church in Corinth, probably because he expected his readers to recognize it. This is likely because it was one of the devotional formulas from Aramaic-speaking circles of the early Christian movement that he conveyed to his Greek-speaking Gentile converts, as a gesture of their religious solidarity with believers in Judea, whom Paul refers to as predecessors of his Gentile converts (e.g., 1 Thess. 2:13-16; Rom. 15:25-27). Other examples of devotional expressions that derive from Semitic-speaking Christian circles and were circulated by Paul among the congregations that he established include “Abba,” as a devotional expression used to address God in prayer (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), and “Amen.” To repeat the point for emphasis, the “Marana tha” expression must have been conveyed to Paul’s Greek-speaking converts as already a standardized devotional formula, which confirms that the devotional stance reflected in the expression was a familiar feature of Aramaic-speaking circles of Christians well before the date of 1 Corinthians. [2]

Dunn shows us the eschatological implications of this slogan:

“Paul strongly believed that Jesus’ resurrection and the gift of the Spirit were the beginning (the first-fruits) of the end-time harvest (1 Cor. 15.20,23; Rom. 8.23); and for most of his ministry Paul proclaimed the imminence of the parousia and the end (1 Thess. 1.10; 4.13-18; 1 Cor. 7.29-31). Particularly worthy of notice is his preservation in 1 Cor. 16.22 of an Aramaic cry from the earliest church – ‘Maranatha, Our Lord, come!’. It is scarcely possible that the earliest communities in Jerusalem and Palestine lacked this same sense of eschatological fervour and urgency.” [2]

---

[1] Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus, pp.36-7.

[2] James D G Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity, p.19