| Did Simon Magus substitute for Jesus |
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Q. Rico H , of Aue, Saxony, Germany, writes: I read about a theory, saying that Jesus had been substituted on the cross by Simon (Simon the Zealot or Simon of Cyrene), who then survived the crucifixion, while Jesus could flee. Sources for this theory are the Nag Hammadi scriptures ("Second Treatise of the Great Seth") and also the canonical gospels. Is there any indication in the pesher for the role of Simon or for a substitution? |
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A. This idea is not found in the canonical gospels, but it is indeed in the gnostic document "The Second Treatise of the Great Seth", one of the Nag Hammadi documents found in a jar in Egypt in 1945. The Sethian gnostic literature held docetic views, that is they believed that Jesus was so divine that he could not suffer physically, he only appeared to suffer. The crucifxion did not happen to Jesus, because he was too superior to allow it. The passage reads:
"And the plan which they (the enemies of Jesus) devised about me (Jesus) to release their error and their senselessness - I did not succumb to them as they had planned. But I was not afflicted at all. Those who were there punished me. And I did not die in reality but in appearance, lest I be put to shame by them because these are my kinsfolk. I removed the shame from me and I did not become fainthearted in the face of what happened to me at their hands. I was about to succumb to fear, and I suffered according to their sight and thought, in order that they may never find any word to speak about them. For my death which they think happened, happened to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man to their death....It was another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another upon whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height above all the wealth of the archons and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance." (vii, 2, 55: 10- 56:19). Even before the Nag Hammadi discovery, doceticism was classed as a Christian heresy, for it denied what was held to be a central Christian doctrine, that Jesus' suffering on the cross was a final act of atonement, removing the necessity of an annual sacrifice of an animal for the removal of the guilt of sin. The pesher shows where the ideas in this passage came from. Simon Magus did indeed suffer on a cross- the central cross beside the western one of Jesus and the eastern one of Judas Iscariot. Jesus was only the third man of the three who were crucified for being militants against Roman rule. But for Christians he had been put there unjustly, as an act of treachery by his associates, substituted for Barabbas-Theudas who had actually been the third militant. For Christians, moreover, Jesus should have been on the central cross, for he was the supreme one, both a priest and king. So Simon, in this sense, substituted for Jesus on the central cross. If you would see the pesher of John 19:17 (found from the Index of verses in the Word for Word Index in the left column of this site) you would see that the pesher shows that Simon carried his own T-shaped discipline board. The Sethian passage picks this up, but with its own distortion of the facts. The pesher of Mark 15:23 shows that when the crucifixions began both Simon and Jesus were offered a sedative mixed with wine, but Jesus did not accept it. In Matthew 27:34 it is added that the drink offered to Jesus contained poison (gall), in case he wanted to suicide at the outset, but he did not accept it at this stage. John 19:29 shows that Jesus was offered a drink of vinegar at 3 pm on the cross, and he drank it. It is the Gospel of Peter (See the Gospel of Peter in "The Other Gospels" in Section 4) that clearly says that it was mixed with gall. Simon Magus did not drink it, although he had been offered it at the outset. At 3 pm he was still alive, and his legs were broken in order to prevent him from escaping from the cave where he would be placed. The pesher does show what really happened, and is a useful corrective to the imaginations of the devout, both in the past and now. B.T. |
| Satan Revisited |
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Q. James Brayshaw of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada asks:
I am looking for some insight on the testing of Yeshua (Jesus) in the wilderness.(Mat4) I have a very vague understanding of the rabbinic style of testing that was used to test a candidate who was a possible Messianic figure.
Do you have any resources you might be able to lead me to? I am working on volume 2 of Satan, Christianity's Other God (see www.scog.ca if you are interested) and am hoping to supply the reader with a little more historical insight than the vagueness already contained in the draft of this 2nd volume. My understanding of the testing is that there was a group of religious leaders who made it their job to run a Messianic candidate through a battery of tests. Tests such as being able to turn stones to bread and throwing oneself off a high building without suffering harm were a part of these tests. Hence, the account in the gospels of the testing of Jesus lands squarely on the hands of influential men as the responsible "devils". Are you able to assist me in this plight to add information to vagueness? |
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A. While I understand the theological direction of your book, and the interest it would have for present theological controversies, I have to offer something much more prosaic. "Satan" was a real person in a political organization, as human as we are. There is no supernatural Satan, just as there are no supernatural beings in the sense that believers affirm.
Jesus was "tempted" by "Satan" in the "wilderness" (Mark 1:13) because he was going through a process required for ascetics of the second order of Essenes. He was coming out of a monastery where men of the great dynastic lines lived until they reached the age of 36. They then had to marry in order to continue the dynasties of the Zadoks and Davids, who had once been in power in the Jerusalem temple. Having been expelled from it, they were supported by Essenes in the hope of a Restoration to the temple. In the meantime they had to continue their hereditary lines through the process of dynastic marriage, while also valuing celibacy as the highest mode of life. The dynastic process applied to other men beside Jesus. At the age for marriage they came out from the enclosed monastic life into the "world", kosmos, as Jesus was said to do in John 1:93. They went through several stages, living like the Therapeuts rather than the Essenes, related groups who both kept the distinctive solar calendar. Therapeuts formed institutions called abbeys, schools in which their members studied, but were free to leave for marriage, unlike permanent monastics who could never leave. Therapeuts, as described by Philo in Contemplative Life, began as hermits, the name derived from the Greek erēmos, "wilderness". They went to an isolated place and lived alone in simple dwellings, with very few possessions, spending their days in solitary study of learned books. Jesus like all dynasts, including John the Baptist the heir of the Zadoks , took up this mode of life for a short time in order to adjust from the ordered monastic community to the complex society of the outside world. John, who was 6 months older than Jesus, is also introduced in the Wilderness, a hermitage, in Mark 1:4. They were prepared by being "tempted" by the Chief Therapeut in the role of a "Satan", which simply means an Examiner. His task was to make sure that the candidate was morally strong enough to keep the ascetic rules for marriage, which meant limiting sex to the purpose of procreation only. He was given a trial period up to three years. If during that time his wife - who was also an ascetic, previously a nun - became pregnant, he waited for 3 months in case of miscarriage, then if all was well he underwent the binding marriage ceremony. After the child was born, preferably a son, he returned to the monastery, but only if he had proved that he could resist further temptations of the flesh, turning away from sex until the time came for a return from the monastery for a further conception. These were the rules for the second order of Essenes, described by Josephus in Wars of the Jews 2, 160-161. "Satan" was the name given to the Chief Therapeut in the role of Examiner applying the standards of the Therapeuts. In the literary drama of the book of Job, the Satan was permitted by the Lord to test Job, to see if he would withstand the pressures of tortured flesh. In the abbeys of the Therapeuts, the schools they went up to after the hermit stage, there was a developed hierarchical system. Under the leading priest there were two deputies, a levite whose job was to ensure that the dynast returned to the monastery, and a "Satan" who tested him for ascetic discipline while he was outside. In the hierarchy of the gospel period the levite was Judas Iscariot, and the "Satan" was Theudas the Chief Therapeut. This is made clear in John's gospel, which has a special interest in the ascetic rules. At the Last Supper, at the time Judas Iscariot left, "Satan entered into Judas Iscariot" (John 13:26-27). Thereafter, at the following discussion during the evening, there was present a "Judas not Iscariot" (John 14: 22). In the list of 11 apostles without Judas Iscariot in Acts 1:13 there is included a "Judas of James (Jacob)". In Luke 6:15-16 the list of 12 apostles at their first appointment included both Judas Iscariot and Judas of James. Comparing this list with the ones in Mark 3:17-19 and Matthew 10:2-4 it is seen that this man was also called Thaddeus, that is, Theudas. As "Satan" who entered the position of the departed Judas Iscariot, he adopted his name Judas, but a different Judas. The Chief Therapeut as a Judas is also found in Damascus, in Acts 9:11. The Book of Revelation presents an even more down-to-earth Satan. In Revelation 2:13 a letter is addressed to Pergamum, a city in the Roman province of Asia, north of Ephesus. A Satan lives there, occupying a throne, and he dwells there with Antipas, a title of a married Herod. The Essene monasteries were for gnostics, men who spent their time in learning. Under Pythagorean influence they had developed astronomy and mathematics well beyond what was known by ordinary people. It was secret knowledge, not to be revealed to anyone who had not studied for years with them. Elaborate imagery, pseodonyms and codes concealed the detail of their organization. But when their pesher conundrums are solved, it is found that they were simply very intelligent people, who gave to the world many of the elements of western culture. B.T. |
| Was Jesus physically present for years after the crucifixion |
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C. Senator John Siddons, retired from the Federal Parliament of Australia, has a special interest in Christianity and politics. He follows up his recent comment with what seems like a problem for the history: "The fact that Jesus is not portrayed as being active in the Acts or the Epistles has always been a stumbling block for many active Christians to believe that Christ went to Rome" |
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A. Let's have another look at it. In Corinth, according to
1 Corinthians 1:12, there were 4 factions: one for Paul, one for Apollos, one for Cephas (Peter), and one for Christ. What did the Christ faction do, since this was in the 50"s AD and he was supposed to be dead? Paul should surely have explained why he presented them as all equal. In that same city, according to
Acts 18:9, Jesus spoke to Paul one night with some very local advice when Paul was having trouble with Jews: "Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one shall attack you or harm you, for I have many people in this city". It was said to be in a "vision" (orama), a word from the verb "to see". But Jesus did not talk broad spiritual generalities as a vision might do; rather, down-to-earth facts about a particular city, and what he said was no different from what the head of a faction such as a bishop might say.
In the same Epistle to Corinthians, in chapter 7, Paul was giving Christian rules for marriage. He came to the subject of divorce in verses 1 Corinthians 7:10-16. Without mentioning a vision, he gave two varying opinions, emphasising that one was his, and the other that of the Lord, about whether divorce should be permitted. The Lord said there should not be divorce, although with some concessions. Paul said in verses 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 that the matter depended on whether one partner was a Christian, a believer, and the other not. The viewpoints could be reconciled, but why did Paul say so plainly that one was from the Lord and one from himself, giving himself equal authority with the Lord? It was just as if the two had been having a recent discussion about it at a table, as two bishops might. That would fit the fact that there were four equal factions in Corinth, but not the fact, which is not stated, that Jesus was dead and speaking from heaven. In Acts 23:22, in Jerusalem in the late 50's, Paul was again in trouble. "The following night the Lord stood by him and said, 'Take courage, for as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also at Rome"'. No indication of a vision is given, simply of a secret meeting at night, when Jesus acting like a ruling bishop told Paul of his intention that Paul should leave Judea and continue his work in Rome. From the time that Paul and his party boarded the ship to go to Rome, the narrative of Acts 27 changes from the normal 3rd person "they" to the 1st person "we". Modern scholars, convinced that the gospels and Acts are the product of many different sources, have defined the "we-sections" as coming from a different source written in the 1st person by a participant. That is to assume disunity, but that assumption is being weakened by the mass of new documents that have come to light. An alternative would be to assume unity, and that something else is being conveyed by the word "we". Jesus was in a situation where he needed someone to represent him. He stayed in seclusion , while another who knew his mind spoke for him as "we". That someone was Luke, the author of Luke-Acts, who as the "beloved physician" was very close to the man who had suffered injury at an aborted crucifixion many years before. It was Luke who accompanied Jesus to Rome. Jesus stayed in Rome for years after their arrival, until he died and was buried in Rome. All of this is what a reasonable thinking person might suppose when he or she considered what Acts and the Epistles say. It does not draw on the pesher technique which has been learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls and gives a great deal more, fully confirming these observations. The pesher technique does say something significant about other occasions in Acts which do look like visions, with Jesus speaking from above to Paul and Peter. In Joppa, in Acts 10: 9-16, Peter went up on to a roof to pray at noon. From above a voice spoke to him, and a cloth was let down full of all kinds of unclean animals, three times. The voice gave direction that Peter should give up his dislike of the "unclean", that is he should dine with Gentiles. The well-tested assumption of the pesher, which always works, is that it was a natural event . Peter was in a building with two storeys. He went up on to the roof of the first storey. The second storey was set a little further back. Jesus was on the top of this storey, and he let down a tablecloth that woud be used at the noon sacred meal. It was embroidered with images of animals in the fashion of Gentiles. The meaning was plain, that Peter, an exclusive Jew, should use a Gentile cloth and dine with Gentiles. In Damascus Paul had had a similar experience (Acts 9:1-9). It was 40 AD, years after the crucifixion and "resurrection". The Damascus monastery was a meeting place for the Way, a name for proselytes to Judaism. The roof of the building was a platform for priests to pray at noon, among them Jesus, who was attending a council in Damascus. Paul arrived on the ground floor further forward than the prayer platform, full of hostility to Jesus' pro-Gentile attitudes. Jesus saw him and spoke with him, bringing about a conversion by Paul to his point of view. Thus Jesus "appeared to him in the Way" - translated road - to Damascus. B.T. |
| The Flood Story |
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Q. M.J. Davies, of Canberra, Australia, asks
Is there a pesher interpretation of the flood story?Does the pesher technique apply to the Jewish history/Old Testament, or does it only apply to that history/literature as it relates to the Qumran community? |
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A. Your question allows me to clarify the use of pesher, and also to give historical information about the Flood story.
No book of the Old Testament was set up for a pesher. Only certain books in the New Testament were set up for it - the gospels, Acts and Revelation. They were intended as a new scripture, composed by people who believed that scripture ought to contain an exact pesher available to learned people with an insider's special knowledge. Nevertheless, the Flood story of Genesis 6:11-7:22 has been a satisfying study for scholars ever since the discovery of cuneiform tablets in Mesoptamia in the 19th century. Among the discoveries was the Gilgamesh Epic. Its column 11 gives a Flood story that is closely parallel to the biblical one, but its hero is a man called Utnapishtim, and the flood was brought about by pagan gods and goddesses. Here are some extracts from it: "...Their heart led the great gods to produce the flood... 'Tear down the house, build a ship! Aboard the ship take the seed of all living things. The ship that you will build, her dimensions shall be to measure...'. I provided her with six decks, dividing her into seven parts. Her floor plan I divided into nine parts...On the seventh day the ship was completed...All my famiy and kin I made go aboard the ship. The beasts of the field, the wild creatures of the field, all the craftsmen I made go aboard...Six days and six nights blows the flood wind...When the seventh day arrived, the sea grew quiet, the tempest was still, the flood ceased...On Mount Nisir the ship came to a halt...A fifth, a sixth day Mount Nisir held the ship fast...When the seventh day arrived, I sent forth and set free a dove...Then I sent forth and set free a swallow...Then I sent forth and set free a raven..Then I offered a sacrifice...The gods smelled the savor, the gods smelled the sweet savor, the gods crowded like flies about the sacrificer..." In James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Princeton University Press. The parallels with the biblical story gave reason for what is now a settled conclusion, that there really had been an unusually devastating flood between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. An enterprising man built a boat and sailed it to a mountain top , where some survivors with their animals could settle and start their agricultural civilisation again. Their rescue gave religious significance to what had happened, and the mountain became a shrine where the story was preserved. The boat-builder became their prophet. In the course of time their salvation history underwent accretions of all kinds, including adjustment to an early form of calendar. It remained among the records of the area, with differing theological interpretations. As in the case of the Creation story - which was also found among the tablets- it was believed that when a particular tribal group gained an independent identity, that was the beginning of universal history at the moment of the creation of the world. The Noah story became the subject of a pesher artificially imposed on it by the pesharists of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in 4Q252. As may be seen from the gospels, the story was used as the theme of an acted drama of initiation in the 1st centuries BC and AD. Gentiles were "saved" from a coming world catastrophe by becoming initiates of the Qumran community, which developed into the Christian church. They were made to wade through sea water like "fish" and brought up on board a fishing boat, which sailed up a water channel until it let them out on to the dry land of salvation. The missionaries who instructed them likened themselves to the dove and the raven which had been sent out by Noah. John 21 gives the best information about the method it. In our "Miracles" section, see the item on "walking on water". B.T. |
| Jesus and politics |
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C. John Siddons, formerly a Senator of the Federal Parliament of Australia, has sent a thoughtful document in which he relates the teaching of Jesus to political issues. Australians will find it interesting that Mr Siddons helped Don Chipp found the Democrats, who for us were an intermediate party, neither Liberal nor Labor.
One of his comments is: "Jesus was strongly opposed to two vital national political and religious issues (a) the Zionists and the Pharisees' support for war with Rome to secure Jewish independence (b) the appointment of hereditary High Priests. Jesus insisted that all people, Jews and Gentiles, were equal in God's sight and had to be treated equally in religion and in politics." |
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A. I am in full agreement with what you say. I would add that it was not a simple question of good versus evil, peace versus war. Jesus was not acting as an individual against all others, but as one of the leaders of a widespread well established politico-religious organization. When it was necessary he co-operated with military action against Rome, although only as a subordinate. It was for that reason that he was crucified by Pilate. But when it went too far and became terrorism, he opposed it in councils. The terrorists then regarded him as a traitor, and contrived by deceit to mislead Pilate about his more discerning views.
Similarly with priesthood. It was a matter of how hereditary priesthood was interpreted - whether self-serving opportunism as in the case of Jonathan Annas, or the privilege of serving and educating others as in the case of Matthew Annas. Jonathan Annas illustrated very well the evil that can be found in a respected religious institution. The Christian non-hereditary priests subsequently developed in the same two opposite directions. Thank you for your interest. (More information on Jonathan Annas and Matthew Annas can be found in the Biographies section of this site.) B.T. |
| Understanding the surface text |
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Q. Tim Mansfield, of Brisbane, Australia, writes:
Now that the discovery of the pesher has revealed the real historical reporting of Jesus' life and the early Church, I now find it difficult to clearly identify and differentiate teachings and lessons of the new movement in the surface text. Would appreciate your perspective and if you can provide some examples of these messages. |
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A. Thanks for a very productive question. It is the case that every saying has a pesher, but that does not mean that the surface text is not valid. The skill in the device is that both are true, but they also have a particular application to an institution in the past, giving us its history.
A good example is "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44, agapate tous echthrous hymon). It is a particularly wise precept in these days of religious hatred. But the word "enemy", echthros, had the special meaning of "Roman" in the period when the gospels were written. They had occupied Judea, taken over its rule, and some governors such as Pilate behaved oppressively. It was a matter of honor for oppressed Jews to fight them with guerilla warfare. The ascetics among them held a sacred meal called agape, the "love-feast", at which celibate men and women were present but without sexual relationships, believing that human love was possible without sex. They also could be militant against the Romans, and it was something new to say "Invite the Roman governor to your agape meal", that is make him a member. That proved, however, to be the effective way, making Christianity a universal religion without distinctions of race, class or gender. Another example is Mark 8:34, "If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" . The special meaning of "himself" (heautos) is "Himself", in the sense the Irish use the word, for an important person whom it would be too familiar to name. It always means Simon Magus, who was the political leader of the party Jesus belonged to. To "deny" (arneomai) has the special meaning "to deny that a man is high priest", as opposed to confessing a man as high priest, as in Hebrews 4:14. Simon Magus claimed that he himself held the office of the Zadokite, the high priest whose line the Essenes were aiming to restore. As his initiation emblem Simon used the X mark on the forehead, the archaic Hebrew letter Taw. He was an anti-Roman militant, and the mark became the Sign of the Beast. The Christians who broke away from his party, teaching peace with Rome, used the T sign of the cross, a Greek T against the Hebrew Taw, a T. So, while the surface meaning of the text is "Be a Christian practicing self-denial", its pesher is "Reject anti-Roman political terrorism". Still very relevant! Could I suggest that any reader who would like further such examples asks for a text as a "Request for a pesher". B.T. |
| Flaws in the crucifixion story |
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Q. Will Watson, of North London, England, asks:
Would Pilate really have ridden out in the middle of the night, to a secret den of fierce Judaism, at Qumran, to catch one or two anti- Roman "terrorists" ? Who did the cutting in Jesus' side as he hung on the cross ? If a Roman soldier had done it, one may imagine he would have stabbed quite hard and burst or broken an organ, and Jesus would have died. And then the "cup" that Annas tells Jesus about : did Annas explain that the "cup" was going to have not poison, but a knock-out drop, which would go towards saving Jesus' life?... How sure was Annas that he could make this switch?...How much risk was Jesus really taking ? |
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A. Will Watson, a friend from previous correspondence, writes from North London, where it is spring and the daffodils are blooming (I'll suppress a witticism about yet another exotic place for our questions to come from!)
Will is in heartfelt agreement with the main results of my research. He has now asked questions about the events of the crucifixion. He sees inconsistencies in my accounts of events. So, Sherlock Holmes, let this poor colonial reply by saying, "Elementary,my dear Sherlock. Bring out your magnifying glass and look more closely at all the evidence." Or,put more bluntly, you have missed quite a lot ! Since Easter is coming round again, let me put in a reminder of the main facts behind the events, as shown by the pesher. The history is not about individuals performing extraordinary actions. It is about a solidly established religious institution, which had been going for over a century, was highly organized, and had become a nice little earner for Herod the Great (37 - 4 BC). He taxed wealthy Diaspora Jews for the huge sums needed for his lavish building operations in Judea. The organization had become so influential that it could lobby for appointments to the high priesthood of the Jerusalem temple. At the time of the Roman occupation of Judea in 6 AD, a Sadducee priest Ananus the Elder co-operated with Rome, against the Pharisees who opposed them. He was given the high priesthood, and his five sons after him all had a turn at it, but for political reasons did not last long in the office. They had very different temperaments. Matthew Annas the fourth son, the sponsor of the first gospel, became a founder of the Christian party that was gradually emerging from the original organization. But Jonathan Annas, the second son, who was a contemporary of Jesus in the gospel period, was vain and pompous, much too aware of his status as a priest who was superior to all laymen. He irritated everyone so much, and showed such dangerously poor judgement, that he was eventually assassinated. See the account in the biography of Jonathan Annas on this site. Jonathan in offering the cup was intending to poison Jesus, who had often mocked his priestly pretensions. It looked like compassion, giving him the chance of committing suicide to avoid the unbearable physical pain of weeks on the cross. But it was a personal vendetta within their own party. It was the friend of Jesus, Simon Magus in the cave, who gave him the antidote that expelled the poison. All the characters in the story were acting not as individuals but as powerful leaders of an organization of thousands throughout the Diaspora, which had become a real threat to the Romans occupying Judea. Pilate's job was to deal with them, just as terrorists have to be dealt with these days (although the parallel is not too exact!). They kept staging demonstrations, stirring up civil disobedience. Pilate, a corrupt incompetent, was already in trouble with Rome, and it would be a feather in his cap if he succeeded in executing the three main leaders of the insurrectionists . He would go anywhere to catch them, once Judas told him where they were. It was not a Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus' side. It was John Mark, the Beloved Disciple, who was standing near Jesus at his cross to help him. He was also called a centurion because Gentiles like him organized themselves for evangelistic mission using Roman military terminology. As you agree in your further remarks, it was only an incision that a doctor would make to determine if there was bleeding or not. He was using a medical lancet. All of the members of the Therapeuts were educated as doctors. These are questions that I have been asked from the beginning of the research, so you are not alone! It takes time to balance out the surface impression of the gospels with the background history that was intended to be known only to insiders understanding the pesher. B.T. |
| Why did Jesus go into hiding |
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Q. Calvin Johnson of Maryland USA asks:
"Why did Jesus need to go into hiding after the resurrection (particularly after political leadership in Judea changed)? Would it not have been a more compelling story to have Jesus alive in Acts and the Epistles?" |
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A. He went into hiding after the crucifixion and alleged resurrection only in the sense that he went to live in monasteries. The monasteries to which he progressively moved until he reached Rome were the powerful centers of authority of a widespread political movement, long established. He was moving from one center to the other, himself one of the authorities, instrumental in the change from Judaism to Christianity that was gradually taking place.
We do need to adjust our thinking away from an individual to an institution. It had all come about through social forces - as religious revolutions do, including in our own time. The talented Jewish people who made Jerusalem their capital under King David had been settled there for centuries, but from about 600 BC the struggle for world power between rival empires brought many of them to countries outside, primarily Babylon, but subsequently to Asia Minor, Alexandria, and as far away as Rome. There they found living conditions more comfortable and prosperous than in the homeland, and they became the Diaspora, the Dispersion. Being by tradition intellectually active, they absorbed much of the culture and learning of the outside countries, but remained stubbornly Jewish on one question, monotheism. There was only one God, as against the multiplicity of pagan gods, and that meant that reality was unified. Moreover God could not be objectified with a name. They found themselves derided by some pagans and respected by others on this central human question. In the course of the history from the 2nd century BC that we have been tracing in detail, respect for them advanced in some places to a desire to convert to their religion. A process of proselytisation began. By the mid 1st century BC Hillel the Great was famed for making proselytes and giving them a modified version of Jewish laws that they could accept. The numbers of Diaspora Jews, with proselytes and added Gentiles, became so large that Herod the Great found them a primary source of income for the upkeep of Jerusalem. In such a situation there was constant development through the meetings and clashes of the different cultures. One element began to separate - Gentiles who valued the central theology but could not accept ritual laws of any kind :circumcision, the sabbath, exclusiveness. When they found leaders with sufficient authority, who eventually came to include Jesus, they saw that they really had a new, inclusive religion. It went through its major developments caused by political crises in the 1st century AD, and eventually emerged as an independent institution called the Christian Church. You ask: "Would it not have been a more compelling story to have Jesus alive in Acts and the Epistles?" I don't think so. A religion also needs a prophet, so that ethical decisions can be made in the name of an understandable person, not a history lesson. And in the hellenistic world, someone far more than a prophet. The emperors held power from the popular belief that they were gods. Heroic figures were said to be conceived from gods. The missionaries to proselytes had understood that, teaching that their priests were gods. Jesus had actually claimed priesthood, and that meant that he should be called a god. Consequently he should be kept largely invisible from ordinary society. Jesus had the additional need to remain secluded because of the physical injuries he had sustained on the cross, his hands being irreparably damaged by the nails. Moreover, his ambiguous position as possibly illegitimate, together with the fact that he was a subordinate only to the brilliant leader Simon Magus, reinforced his social separation. What happened in the period of the Acts and Epistles was not primarily due to him, but he remained in personal contact with men like Paul, who had their own reasons for rejecting ritual Judaism. Jesus' great skill was in finding the words for the theological change, made into a permanent record in the books of the New Testament. There is plenty for us to learn from that record! B.T. |
| Did Jesus actually claim to be the Son of God |
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Q. Denoon Sieg, of Sun Valley, South Africa, writes:
My question is, as far as can be ascertained by the documentation (Dead Sea Scrolls, etc), "Did Jesus actually claim to be the Son of God?" |
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A. Yes he did - in the sense he was using the term. It simply meant that he was a levite, a deputy priest. It did not mean that he was a supernatural figure.
The historical evidence has always been there, now added to by the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the course of Christian history Jesus became transmuted into a supernatural figure, with the result that theologians did not dare to take account of the very plain historical evidence on what the term meant in its own day. There are three main sources for it: a passage in Philo, a series of Dead Sea Scroll documents, and the words of Jesus himself in a passage of John's gospel. The passage in Philo of Alexandria, which has long been available, shows that Diaspora Jews believed that their high priest was a semi-divine being. Although it was quite contrary to Jewish monotheism to say that a human could be a god, they had been so influenced by hellenism - which had a multiplicity of gods in human form - that they claimed that their high priests were gods. The passage, in Philo's On Dreams (2, 188-189) reads: "(The high priest is) a being whose nature is midway between man and God, less than God, superior to man. 'For when the high priest enters the Holy of Holies, he shall not be a man' (Leviticus 16:17). Who then, if he is not a man? A God? I will not say so, for this name is a prerogative, assigned to the chief prophet, Moses, while he was still in Egypt, where he is entitled the God of Pharaoh (Exodus 7:1) Yet not a man either, but one contiguous with both extremes, which form, as it were, one his head, the other his feet". Among the Dead Sea Scrolls were found a series of fragments 4Q400- 407, which have been called Songs for the Holocaust of the Sabbath. A parallel to them was found at Masada. 4Q400 offers praises to beings who are plainly called "gods: (elohim, elim) and said to be priests in the Holy of Holies. "For he founded them for himself as the most [holy, who minister in the H] oly of Holies......He has established for himself as priests of the inner temple, the most holy...of gods, the priests of the highest heights...". Its wording indicates that some men have been appointed to act as high priests, in the office of the high priest who officiates in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. They are actually called "gods". For Qumran, there was a symbolic Holy of Holies, not a building, but consisting of the priests of their community, the Essene priests who had been expelled from the literal Jerusalem temple (1QS 8:1-16). A further step was taken in the Diaspora, where there was a natural shortage of hereditary priests who had been born into the tribe of Levi. In the synagogues a man with sufficient merit and educational qualifications could be appointed to officiate on the sabbaths. The series of Songs for the Holocaust of the Sabbath set out the prayers they are to utter on each successive sabbath, acting as a prayer book. Since Diaspora Jews lived too far away from the homeland to attend the Jerusalem temple on the Day of Atonement, the synagogue services transmitted the atonement symbolically, and the educated layman who had been appointed represented the high priest in his hellenised role of a "god". A "son of God" was a deputy to him, a levite. A passage in John 10:33-36 shows what was actually meant by the term Son of God in the time of Jesus. The Jews were attacking Jesus "because you, being a man, make yourself God". Jesus' tightly structured reply meant that scripture called all teachers gods, so there was nothing wrong with him saying "I am the Son of God". Quoting Psalm 82:6, he said, "Is it not written in your law 'I said, you are gods'? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and the scripture cannot be broken), do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming' because I said 'I am the Son of God?"' The actual objection to Jesus was that, being a layman, he was claiming to be a priest and the high priest. The Qumran community expected two Messiahs, a lay Messiah of Israel, and a superior priestly Messiah of Aaron. Even though Jesus could claim to be the Messiah of Israel as a descendant of David, he could not claim to be the Messiah of Aaron, the descendant of Zadok. Hebrews chapter 7 deals with this objection, arguing from the coronation psalm of the David kings that he could indeed be a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, like a descendant of Zadok. Following on Jesus' combination of the two Messiahs, Christian ministers were ordained to their office, not born into it like Jewish priests. That meant no less than an abolition of traditional Judaism, which identified with its hereditary priesthood. The parallels in our own time are worth considering! B.T. |
| Do you believe in God |
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Q. Captain William Richardson, Aerial Delivery Officer on duty at an American camp in Iraq, writes: May I be as bold to ask if you believe in any kind of God and what do you think happens to us when we die, as well as, why you believe that way? I have never asked these questions to anyone before........ If you are comfortable with answering and feel that others may benefit as well, please feel free to post it on your website. |
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A. Such questions can hardly be treated privately in this age of evangelistic atheism.
My own answer would be that no human language can ever say anything truthful on the subject we call God. Language is a human construct. To use language to assert a belief about God is to give a descriptive statement, implying that the speaker has knowledge on the subject . The speaker is therefore as good as God, or even better. If he asserts that God exists, he is attributing existence to God, speaking from his human experience. We have existence, and it means that we can cease to exist. In supposing existence for God, the believer is not only implying that God can die, but is implying also that humans are the model for everything. We are the paradigm of all reality. Some would call that blasphemy, and idolatry. The assertions of the new atheists are doing the same thing, saying that they have knowledge that God does not exist. They are useful for smashing the idols that are crippling believers, but their words are not adequate for spiritual perception. It seems to me that silence avoids such presumption, that of asserting either existence or non-existence. It gives our brain a chance to be quiet, and to experience what I would call "faith", if a word has to be used - but it is better not to use words at all. Silence has been the path of Christian mystics, and of Buddhists among other traditional religions. But they still have had to form societies in order to transmit the means of faith, and societies have to use language. So we are double persons, necessarily active in society for the sake of our physical survival and that of others, but capable also of sensing divinity when wordlessly alone. On the question of life after death, I take for granted what I would think is the common attitude these days, that there is no survival of our bodies and brains, and "soul" is a fiction. Some people have been fortunate enough to contribute something that is of great benefit to others, surviving in that sense, but through communication the record of their lives has to be so simplified that it also is a fiction. I won't take your time quoting the theologians who in every generation have come up with understandings like this. It is the normal result of theological study by intelligent people to be freed through such perceptions. Just listen to your own growth, helped by thinkers who remove the impediments to growth. Many thanks for asking, from battle-torn Iraq. B.T. |
| DSS written in Stone |
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Q. Claude Robitaille, of Quebec City Canada asks:
Is there something you can add to tell us about what you think of this unknown Dead Sea Scroll ? I lately read an article concerning "A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone ?" written by Ada Yardeni. Drawn from the text:
Biblical Archaeological Review January/February 2008 Vol. 34 No 1. (pp. 60-61) Note: The full Hebrew and English text can be found on the BAS Web site. A scholarly article on the composition appears in Hebrew in Cathedra (2007). |
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A. It is known now that there is an industry producing profitable fakes on stone. It is possible to carve on stone convincing reproductions of Hebrew letters as they are drawn in the Scrolls, forming words of interest to historians and the general public. The fake "ossuary of James the brother of Jesus" had this character, and it fooled Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archeological Review. Scientific examination of the setting of the carved letters showed that they had been made in modern times.
While not necessarily in a position to examine the stone itself , a scholar who was closely familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls would recognize from the wording that, at the very least, the stone in question does not belong with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is very likely to be a fake. The writing picks out words that are of great interest to the question of the Christian associations of the Qumran community, but are used in contexts that are different from the way they are used in the Scrolls. If only one of these terms appeared in the whole of a genuine scroll or fragment, it would trigger scholarly interest. They are crowded together in this piece. Examples: "the greatness of Jerusalem. Hasidim. My servant David; David the servant of Yahweh. Angel Michael. I am Gabriel. In three days you will know. These are the chariots, seven. The blood of this chariot. The three saints of the world. Sons of saints." A descendant of David was expected by the Qumran community, as is shown in 4Q252, 6 and a pesher on Isaiah, "[the Branch] of David who shall arise at the end [of days]" (4Q171 frs 8-10, line 15). But the significance given to the sons of Zadok in extensive passages of the main documents 1QS and CD indicates that, of the priests and kings of the first temple, it was the Zadokite high priests who were the most important at Qumran, priests being of higher grade than the laity (CD 14:3). This piece if genuine would have included the sons of Zadok together with David. Michael and Gabriel appear in 1QM 9:15 and 16 as names to be written on the shields, and in 1QM 17:6-7 Michael is named as the supreme archangel. They do not appear as living persons whose actions are described. They do appear as active persons in the New Testament, in Luke 1:19 and Revelation 12:7 - a point for the argument for fakery. The word translated "saints" in lines 65, 76 is usually translated "holy ones". It is found very frequently in the Scrolls. The term "sons of holy ones" in line 76 is not found in the Scrolls, and if meant literally is unlikely, as the "holy ones" were celibates. It is also the case that no other writing on a stone of that size was found at Qumran. Their compositions on small scrolls of vellum or papyrus were intended to be movable, as is shown by the fact that they were hidden in caves. That the existence of this stone has not been revealed before is a strong indication that it is part of the current wave of fraud. B.T. |
| DSS written in Stone |
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Q. Graham Hayward, from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, writes: With reference to The Beast number 666. I have read that there is evidence that the number 666 in Revelation 13:18 was wrong and should have been 616. Apparently this argument has been around since the second century. Do you have information as to the accuracy of this research and, if it is correct, how would this 'translate' into letters and affect the meaning you have drawn from 666? |
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A. It is not the case that one is wrong and the other right. They are both right, and 616 is a valuable confirmation of my case concerning the meaning of 666.
Both are plays on Hebrew letters, which were also used for numbers. The letter Taw, the last one in the Hebrew alphabet, also stood for 400. (The one before it, Shin, stood for 300, but it is not used in this case). The one before it, Resh, is used for 200. Taw and Resh together add up to 600. Then a letter further back in the alphabet, Samekh, is used for 60.Then further back still is the letter Waw meaning 6. Waw is frequently used with initials, and is found with an initial in the DSS. So the combination Taw-Resh-Samekh -Waw adds up to 666. The reason for selecting those letters is that they were also used for grades in the Essene monastic educational system. Men studying in the system were promoted every year. When they reached the highest possible grade they were given the letter Taw, the last in the alphabet, to show that there was nothing higher. (It was written as an X, the archaic shape of Taw). There were three especially significant grades: first that of initiation at age 23, marked by the letter Samekh. Then, after four years of undergraduate study and a further year outside the sanctuary, they were promoted to the sanctuary with the letter Resh. It was the letter for the lowest of the three priests Taw, Shin, Resh, and it gave them for the first time a high honor, a form of priesthood. There were even higher honors to go to, culminating in Taw. So for anyone familiar with the Essene monastic system and the coded way it talked, to say "666" meant "the monastic system in which initiates are at grade Samekh, lesser priests are at grade Resh, and highest priests at grade Taw". The three letters were bound together with Waw to show that they were initials. It had become the Number of the Beast because by the time of writing Revelation 13:18 the Christians had separated, being in favor of peace with Rome, while the Beast was the militant head of anti-Roman zealots who would eventually bring about the fall of Jerusalem. That was the case for 666. The number 616 is a variant using the same principles, and referring to the educational system at a lower stage than Samekh, so as to include novices and other pre-initiates. The pre-initiate stage of the greatest significane was given at age 18 when studies began- equivalent to entry to university. Its letter in the system was Yod, even further back in the alphabet. Yod also meant 10. When the Waw 6 for initials was added, and the higher Taw and Resh preserved, this version summed up the system as Taw 400, Resh 200, Yod 10, Waw 6 = 616. For your interest, the number system was Aleph 1, Beth 2, Gimel 3, Daleth 4, He 5, Waw 6, Zayin 7, Heth 8, Tet 9, Yod 10, Kaph 20, Lamed 30, Mem 40, Nun 50, Samekh 60, Ayin 70, Pe 80, Sadhe 90, Qof 100, Resh 200, Shin 300, Taw 400. They wrote 25, for example, as Kaph (20) + He (5). They had trouble with 15, Yod and He, and 16 , Yod and Waw because they also stood for the divine name, being abbreviations of Yahweh, so they wrote Tet 9 + Waw 6. and Tet 9 + Zayin 7. But Yod and Waw in the larger group Taw Resh Yod Waw did not present this problem. The Number 666 of the Beast is certainly more dramatic than these boring mathematics! The writers of Revelation knew quite well that it would appeal to the imagination of the uneducated, and they left it that way so as to preserve a code available only to insiders. In my opinion it is a regrettable book, deliberately setting up superstitions. But its codes are great fun to solve in one's leisure moments, like cryptic crosswords. It is hoped that we will shortly post on this site the solutions to Parts C and D of Revelation. B.T. |
| Dionysius The Areopagite |
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| Q. Don Sanderson, of Brisbane, Australia, writes: "I am a PhD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia) ... I have become interested in the work of (and the person) Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 5-6th century CE?) who has appropriated a number of neoplatonic, Jewish, Hellenic, traditions and morphed them into the new (Christian-Catholic) church dogma. In one of the Pseudo-D's work The Celestial Hierarchy he opens with the words, "To my fellow-presbyter Timothy." Using "Timothy" ties it to biblical characters; there was a Dionysius the Areopagite who the bible says becomes Bishop of Athens awarded by Paul after he had converted under Paul's influence - just like the Herodian Timothy in Dr Thiering's work. Timothy, according to Dr Thiering is a pupil of Paul's." |
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A. This comment raises the question why a Dionysius the Areopagite and a Timothy appear together in what is certainly a late work. On the usual 19th century assumption of pretended authorship, Dionysius has been labelled "Pseudo". Not so. Another piece of lost history may be unearthed by working out the pesher of Acts 17.
There is no doubt that this Dionysius' writings are late, dealing with matters that did not become central until the Council of Nicea and later. Two of his treatises may be found here. He writes , for example, "In an ineffable manner, the simple Being of Jesus assumed a compound state" (Divine Names 4 ,79), and in his Mystical Theology "Trinity, which exceedeth all Being, Deity, and Goodness! Thou that instructeth Christians in Thy heavenly wisdom!" (Chapter 1, introduction). There is no interest whatever in historical matters; it is all timeless philosophy of the neoplatonic school. In Acts 17, Paul is shown in December 51 AD preaching on the Areopagus, a hill in Athens west of the Acropolis. Athens was the world center for philosophy. Paul did not have the 15 year old Timothy with him, but had left him in Macedonia, and was joined by him later in Corinth. The term tines (Certain Ones, plural of reproduction for Herod) appears frequently, in the pesher always meaning Thomas Herod. He is grouped with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in v.18. The plural of reproduction means an individual. The "Stoic philosophers" means Seneca, the eminent Stoic philosopher with whom Paul subsequently exchanged correspondence. (See Correspondence between Paul and Seneca in the The Other Gospels section of this site). Dionysius the Areopagite appears in v.34. The title means that he was an authority at the Areopagus. The name Dionysius was that of the Greek god of wine. Paul's message has a pesher which means that he was not talking to pagans who had never heard of his doctrines, as appears on the surface, but to Herodians, with whom he was arguing distinctions of politics. Paul was in a Herodian abbey, an extension of the royal Herod Vineyard in Rome. Abbeys were characterised by the drinking of wine, in contrast with hermitages of the Therapeuts which did not permit wine at their religious meals. The pesher means that Agrippa II had another abbey in Athens, called after its setting on the Areopagus, where an education in Greek philosophy was given to Jews of his court who wanted to become hellenised. The altar inscribed "To an unknown god" (agnōstō theō) (v. 23) concerned the king, Agrippa II. He could be called theos, without the definite article, in the same way as his father Agrippa I had accepted the title theos in Acts 12:22. He was a-gnōstos meaning "anti-gnostic", that is, it was not a Magian institution, for the Magian monasteries were at enmity with Herodian abbeys. Paul was objecting to the definition of a Herod as divine, a messianic figure. Although Herod the Great and Agrippa I had claimed it, the timid Agrippa II was not suited to the role, and under Paul's tuition abandoned it in favor of Jesus, who was called theos without article in John 1:1. Paul went on in vv. 24-27 to speak positively of ho theos with article, describing him in Sadducee terms. All Annas Sadducee priests were spoken of as ho theos. Paul was speaking of Ananus the Younger, the next Annas who was destined to become high priest (in 62 AD) after his four brothers had all had their turn. It was Ananus the Younger who became Dionysius the Areopagite, the approved head of the abbey after Paul's reform. In an institution, the title of the head was used again by a successor. This was the case with the titles "John", "Jesus" and "Agrippa". The later Dionysius who wrote the neoplatonic treatises was a successor holding office in the Athens abbey, which had become Christian. He addressed his work to Timothy because there had been a role for a Timothy as chief student, although the particular Timothy in Paul's time was too young. The first Timothy was the adopted son and heir of the childless Agrippa II, so there was a place for the prince in the abbey. He however, abandoned his Herodian identity, as many hellenised Herods did at this time. If scholarship would move to the assumption of institutions - an assumption forced on us by the Dead Sea Scrolls - rather than autonomous individuals acting for solitary purposes, a dramatic change in our understanding of Christian origins would take place. B.T. |
| Book of Psalms |
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Q. Tim Mansfield, of Brisbane, Australia, asks:
"Could you please explain the intent and purpose of the Book of Psalms and if and where the pesher can be used to support the conclusions?" |
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A. One of the contributions of 20th century European biblical scholarship was to show that the Book of Psalms was never intended for private use. The Norwegian scholar Sigmund Mowinckel in a major book, The Psalms in Israel's Worship, showed that they were composed for public use, for state occasions in the temple. They were called the Psalms of David because as king all temple worship was authorised by him, in the same way as the King James version of the Bible was named after the reigning king.
The state occasions for which they were written included the coronation of the king, and a royal wedding. Psalms 2 and 110 were both written for the coronation. They would have been sung by a massed choir in the Jerusalem temple at this greatest of political events. At a particular point the new king, humbly kneeling and aware of his human limitations, was assured by Psalm 2 that he would have divine protection against the armies of the enemies who would try to defeat his country and dethrone him. The divine power is said to be laughing at the enemies, deriding them and terrifying them. He would be quoted as saying "I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill". Then the king would respond, speaking of his personal confidence, "I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said to me, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you"'. "Today" means the coronation day, and "begotten" means made a king, a man looked up to by the people as having a familiar relationship with the divine, and so like a son to him. Such a belief was a necessary part of the ancient political myth, giving security. In Psalm 110 the words to be used in another part of the coronation ceremony were set down. The words in v. 7 "He will drink from the brook by the way" give the actual point. It was during the traditional procession described in 1 Kings 1:38-40, when Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet escorted the new king Solomon, riding the royal mule, from the Mount of Olives across the valley to the temple on the west side to be crowned. When they reached the brook Gihon, the waters of which were held to be sacred, the king drank from it and Zadok anointed him with oil. " Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, 'Long live King Solomon!" It had been at that spot that the Amorite Abraham, centuries before, had met with Melchizedek the Hittite priest-king of Jerusalem, and made an alliance with him (Genesis 14). The Amorites had actually taken over the Jerusalem religious site for the worship of their god Yahweh, but they did it through diplomacy, grafting their line of kings into that of Melchizedek. The coronation psalm 110 preserved the formula that continued to be used from that time, "You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek". (v. 4) It will be apparent, from this understanding, why Psalm 45 was for a royal wedding in the temple. Turning to the personal use of the Psalms, the above gives the reason why there is so much in them that does not make much sense for the spiritual believer trying to apply them to her or his needs. The word "I" in so many of them does not mean that they are for any individual, but for the king in one of his royal roles, as a representative of the nation. The words draw on an accepted mythology to speak of his reliance on the divine, not on himself. By extension, they do give a language to all individuals who can speak of their condition in the same terms. The symbols and metaphors can broadly apply, but there is no use of pesher, a concept that came much later. To pass over the incomprehensible parts, such as "You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek", is to miss a great deal about how our religious language arose from a particular institution in a particular place. The concept of pesher was introduced into the Psalms, as into other Old Testament books, by the Teacher of Righteousness at a much later time, when the David kingship and ceremonies in the Jerusalem temple had lost their authority. The irrationality of the procedures is apparent in the surviving DSS fragment of the pesher on Psalm 37. Commenting on v. 10, which reads "Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more", the pesharist says that it means "at the end of 40 years they willl be destroyed." He got the 40 years from the Hebrew word me'at, "little" for the sole reason that it starts with the letter Mem, which in Hebrew is also used for the number 40. Since, for him, the "'wicked" of the psalm meant the party that included the Wicked Priest, he saw it as a prophecy that that party would be destroyed in 40 years' time. The prophecy is preserved in another book from the DSS, the Damascus Document , which says in its col 19:14 that 40 years after the death of the Teacher of Righteousness those who deserted to the Man of a Lie would be destroyed. It is argued here that the Teacher was John the Baptist and Jesus was the Wicked Priest and the Man of a Lie.The prophecy suited very well the conditions of 70 and 71 AD, the fall of Jerusalem, 40 years after the Baptist's death. Except that it was the Teacher's party that was destroyed, and the Christians escaped to new centers in the Diaspora. It is also argued here that the concept of pesher was developed by the Christians when it became necessary for them to record their previous history in the Qumran community, but keep it concealed from their simple believers, the "babes", who believed that Christianity was a revelation given directly from heaven. The big difference was that the Christians used it rationally, with such consistency that all words used with a special meaning always had the same sense. That is why the gospels, Acts and Revelation are a priceless source of the history of earliest Christianity, when the special meanings are discovered. B.T. |
| Did The Jews Pioneer Monotheism |
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Q. Hans Olminkhof, of Sydney Australia, asks:
"I have noticed over the years that you appear to be convinced that the Jewish religion pioneered monotheism. You say this again particularly clearly in your latest answer "What does the bible actually say about creation?". I'm wondering if you have a firm basis for this. I have noticed references on line and elsewhere over the years to Zoroastianism, Zoroaster or Zarathustra that suggest that this persons philosophy could also have been described as such. It is suggested that the date is around 1000BCE. In the context of your answer referenced above is there any certainty about early monotheism?" |
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A. There can of course be no certainty about the precise origin of big ideas that are likely to have come from universal human experience. But in as far as the ancient written sources that we happen to have can be relied on, there seems to be reason for concluding that while other major cultures underwent shifts in the direction of monotheism by reducing the number of gods, the smaller Jewish culture stood out among them by refusing to objectify divinity at all. Their refusal to even pronounce a name for God is the continuing evidence of this. No doubt they were accused of atheism in their time!
Their first geographical source was undoubtedly in Iran, in Mesopotamia,the fertile land between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The Assyrian-Babylonian cultures stayed there, and at a certain stage produced a figure called Zarathustra, or Zoroaster in Greek. It was because the Semitic tribe that became Jews retained their contact with Mesopotamia that it has been argued that they derived their kind of monotheism from Zoroastrianism. No doubt the intellectual influence was part of the impetus, but for many reasons, the major one being their enforced isolation, the Jews developed a purer form of monotheism. They did not have the richness and variety of political experience that seemed to imply the existence of many deities. The date of Zarathustra is disputed, the most recent understanding, about 1000 BC, to be found at Wikipedia. It does not matter to our case when their prophet lived, only that such currents of thought were present when they lived in exile in Mesopotamia, most noticeably in Babylon during the 6th century BC. There they would have come in contact with what was respected as a more humanising world view. Its main contribution was the removal of mythology and magic and the replacement of these by an ethical interpretation of the spirits governing the universe. It held a dualistic splitting of the cosmos between two opposing forces, good and evil, Truth and the Lie, which was closely associated with an eschatological view of history. The Avesta, their scripture, contains Yasna 30, "The Gatha of the Choice". Its parallels with passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially 1QS, The Community Rule 3:15- 4:1 have been apparent since their first discovery. "Now at the beginning the twin spirits have declared their nature, the better and the evil, in thought and word and deed. And between the two, the wise ones choose well, not so the foolish. And when these two spirits came together, in the beginning they established life and non-life, and that at the last the worst existence should be for the wicked, but for the righteous one the Best Mind. Of these two spirits, the evil one chose to do the worst things, but the Most Holy Spirit, clothed in the most steadfast heavens, joined himself unto righteousness; and thus did all those who delight to please the Wise Lord by honest deeds. Between the two, the false gods also did not choose rightly, for while they pondered they were beset by error, so that they chose the Worst Mind. Then did they hasten to join themselves unto Fury, that they might by it deprave the existence of men" The spirits were, however, personified, becoming the equivalent of gods. The evil spirit, the spirit of a Lie (druj) is personified as Angra Mainyu. He opposes Ahura Mazda, the good spirit, while the present temporal sphere lasts. But there are not two eternally coexistent deities. Only Ahura Mazda is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and eternal, whereas Angra Mainyu is limited in time, in power and in knowledge. There will come a time in the future, after the present form of human existence has run a measurable number of millennia (12 000 years in orthodox Mazdaism) when there will be a catastrophe and the renovation of the world will come, freed of an evil force. There can be no doubt that this world view was absorbed by Jews of the exile and became part of what developed as the Essenism of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Another source of Jewish monotheism has also been claimed, that of Egypt in the period of Akhenaton, 14th century BC, who instituted a religious revolution by abolishing the shrines of the multiple Egyptian gods. His son-in-law Tutankhamon regained the loyalty of the masses by restoring them. One of his inscriptions reads: "Now when his majesty (Tutankhamon) appeared as king, the temples of the gods and godesses from Elephantine down to the marshes of the Delta had gone to pieces. Their shrines had become desolate...their sanctuaries were as if they had never been...and the gods turned their backs upon this land" (in J.B. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts,Princeton University Press, 1955, p. 251). Moses appeared at around this time, as a Hebrew who had been taught, possibly as a slave, in the Egyptian court, and who led a band of Semitic slaves out of Egypt to join other Hebrews who were at that time invading Canaan. Since the tribe of Levi remained as the separate priestly tribe, a 13th, it has been reasonably supposed that the ex-Egyptian Semites, derived from the Hyksos, having a much higher standard of learning for that period, became the priest-teachers in Israel , taking the role of more learned men in all cultures. There would have been an influence on Moses from Akhenaton's objections to multiple gods, but gods were still named, the reformer himself taking one of their names. Israelite religion was less Egyptian than Amorite, and developed as something unique in the area. Whatever the actual origin of the name Yahweh, it came to be understood as meaning "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14), simply Being, not a particular entity who was part of All-Being. In 2 Kings 18:13-35 the story is told of the Asssyran invader the Rabshakeh ("great sheik") taunting Hezekiah the king of Jerusalem for relying on a god whose shrines he had abolished by centralising worship in Jerusalem. It was surely the nomad influence that preserved throughout Jewish history the perception that God cannot be localised in any place, or in any name. In the song of Balaam, in Numbers 23:9, their reputation is quoted: "Lo, a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations!" It is from the desert, from isolation, that such insight has always come. B.T. |
| What Does The Bible Actually Say About Creation |
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Claude Robitaille of Quebec City Canada asks another question, very relevant at the present time.
Q. "If your research on the Christian origin brings the conclusion that there is nothing supernatural about Jesus, the miracles, etc. would you expect and agree that the same conclusion may be applied to the origin of the universe meaning that there was no intervention from some kind of God or supernatural power. I still think that men created all kinds of gods and not the opposite." |
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A. Thanks for initiating discussion of some information that is very much needed, especially now. I'll take up one of your implications, that we have to go past the Bible if we are to be theologically truthful. But at the same time I'll be making distinctions between what the Bible says and what it does not say. People who swear by the Bible very often have no idea of what it says.
Of course the affirmation of Genesis that a God created the world is a consequence of its assumption of a supernaturalism that we can no longer hold. Taken with the solipsist assumption - not encouraged by the Bible - that humans are the center of everything, it is easy to identify where such a belief comes from. It is that of a young child, who has no other experience than its own family, and in its painful dependence has to believe in an infallible creating and protecting power. We all start that way, but in every generation there are people who grow out of it. The Old Testament began as a collection of stone tablets containing the carved records of a particular tribe of Semites from Mesopotamia. They were nomads who had been driven out to the hills by a more privileged class of priests who had acquired some learning, especially of regular astronomical events, and who had developed writing enough to record them. The priests were admired and protected, possessing temples in fertile lands near the rivers, a garden of Eden. A differing race led by an Adam coveted their learning and retained some of it, but tried to seize more than they were qualified for and were driven out, becoming socially rejected. They wandered from watering hole to watering hole with their bands of sheep, never permitted to practice agriculture. The dangers they were frequently exposed to sharpened their intellects and gave them close cohesion. They survived by struggling, overcoming threats, and after many centuries became aware that they had a longer and stronger identity than settled peoples whose empires rose and fell. The tablets with their records were carried around in a box, and they saw that they had developed historical learning, as opposed to learning about natural science. The retention of the history of their own tribe became central to their religious sense, that is to their questions about their own value. They also recorded the laws that they had found to be essential to their survival, preserving internal loyalty necessary at times of attack. No killing of their own fellows, no taking their women, no stealing their meagre possessions. During the second millennium BC they turned their military skills and aggression on a strip of fertile land on the east coast of the Mediterrnaean. They invaded it, seized it from its complacent inhabitants unprepared for war, and wrested from them the knowledge of agriculture. By about 1000 BC they and other ex-nomads who joined them had mastered the land and become a significant political power. A talented leader, David, used intellectual and diplomatic skills to consolidate a small empire. It survived for some 400 years, with its own temple where priests developed their kind of learning, but it was no match for the mighty powers, Assyrians and Babylonians, who had now turned their attention west and were taking over smaller civilisations. For another half-millennium the Israelites, now calling themselves Jews, lived quietly under a series of foreign overlords, having lost their imperial power. They turned instead to reflection, meeting in small groups in synagogues, and posing again the question, "what is our value?" Their records, transferred to parchment,went back further than those of any other nation they encountered, some 4000 years. They saw that their own rise to a strong identity had begun with Adam. Giving high religious value to historical origins, they came to believe that the world had begun with them. Raising more sophisticated questions about nature that were now current, they became persuaded that their God had created the physical world, for the benefit of their race. Their earliest records and laws, now adapted to include such practices as observance of the workers' day off, the sabbath, became central to study at their synagogue meetings, and the record collection was treated as an object of worship. But their records never said that God created the world in 6 days. They were not so unrealistic as that. They adopted the commonsense belief that there must have been a succession of stages during which the physical world developed before the appearance of humans, who were consequently not the first principle. That belief still stands, in essence, and has been verified by observations of phenomena. Genesis held a kind of evolution in nature. It did not, however, give any timing for the stages. I wish that influential biblical scholars would come out with what has been known to them for generations. Genesis is not trying to say that God created the world in 6 days. It is saying that there is to be a religious festival extending over 6 days, celebrating the successive stages of creation. On the first day the celebration of the first stage, the creation of Light, is performed with prayers and incantations. On the second day, another celebration, the creation of the firmament. Each stage is followed by the formula naming the topic for the day: "And there was evening and morning, the first day" etc. No doubt their stages were out of sequence - the sun moon and stars were not created until the fourth day - but at least they believed in stages of unstated duration, not 24 hour days. This is known because we have the tablets describing the procedure of the Babylonian akitu festival in exactly this form, giving the topics for prayers and ritual at a New Year festival over a succession of 14 days. The translation and associated texts are to be found in J.B. Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts(Princeton University Press, 1955). In a document describing an Akkadian ritual, the prayers and readings for each of the 14 days of the month Nisannu (Nisan, March-April) are given. For the fourth day, "the urigallu priest of the temple Ekua shall recite ...to the god Bel the composition entitled Enuma Elish." These are the first two words of the Creation Epic that has also come to light with these tablets. It deals with the way creation of the physical universe came about as a consequence of battles between the different Babylonian gods. Israelites, always standing apart because of their unique monotheistic theology, rejected the myth of creation through conflict, although recovering some of its elements in the Flood story that was also borrowed from Babylon. But they retained the festival structure for the great religious occasions at the seasons of the year, and on each of a successive 6 days read out the account of one of the stages of a unified creation. We have gone considerably further in separating humans and their religions from the physical universe - or multiverse. We are now seeking reassurance about our own value in other ways, in the midst of yet another of our monstrous conflicts. We would be wiser to look further than to an ancient book on these matters. But when we do read it for what it says, rather than for superimposed misunderstandings, it can give us useful guidance about the way the human part of the natural world has always conducted itself. B.T. |
| Who Was Melchizedek |
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Q. Claude Robitaille, of Quebec City Canada, asks a question about the mysterious figure Melchizedek, who appears occasionally in the Old and New Testaments, and is now known to have been important to the Qumran community. "I would be interested to know about this Melchizedek, the order of Melchizedek, how he was made a priest, and the line after him permitting to be recognized as such. I seem to have no problem with Aaron, the tribe of Levi, but for some reason I seem to know more about him. (I know that the Catholic Church mentioned the order of Melchizedek when ordaining their priests)". |
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A. Melchizedek appears in only two places in the Old Testament, making it all the more puzzling that the title is applied to Jesus in Hebrews 7. It is certain that he was a Canaanite king - why should he be revered by Israelites who had conquered Canaan?
The main source is Genesis 14, a chapter that deals mainly with the story of Lot being rescued from Sodom by his kinsman Abraham. In the course of it there appears the account of a meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek king of Salem, that is, Jerusalem. He was a "priest of God Most High", El Elyon in Hebrew. At this meeting, Melchizedek brought out bread and wine. He pronounced a blessing over Abraham in the name of El Elyon. Abraham then paid Melchizedek a tenth of everything, that is the tithe that was due to Israelite priests. The historical background of this episode was recognized by Scandinavian scholars of the Myth and Ritual school, eg Georg Fohrer in "History of Israelite Religion" (SPCK 1973). They saw that Melchizedek was a descendant of a long line of Canaanite priest-kings who conducted worship on the sacred site of Jerusalem, a high place that was ideal as a religious site (and continues to be). They were from a quite different religion and culture from Abraham, who was a Semitic Amorite from nomad tribes that had moved west from Mesopotamia. Abraham worshipped God under the name of Yahweh, whereas Canaanites worshipped their god under the name El - as is known from numerous sources in the Ugaritic documents discovered in the early 20th century. The form El Elyon meant "God Most High", appropriate to the highest El on the supreme religious site, Jerusalem. Abraham then brought off a diplomatic masterpiece, by uniting his religion and culture with that of the Canaanites. The names of the gods were joined, so that the combined god could be called both Yawheh and El, more usually Elohim in a plural form. In English it became Lord (Yahweh) God (Elohim). The union came about under cultural pressures, as major theological innovations always do. The Canaanites were agricultarists, settled people farming fertile land, producing grain and grapes, so their symbols were bread and wine. Abraham's Amorites were nomads, moving from place to place, warriors who always had to fight for the water springs where they temporarily settled. Arriving from the deserts into the fertile coastal strip of Canaan, they began to develop agricultural skills and settle down. Their warrior habits enabled them to take control of the lands, and eventually of Jerusalem. They were able to intimidate the current priest-king Melchizedek into a treaty. He consented to uniting their religions rather than being driven out. At the formal meeting where the treaty was announced, he offered the symbols of his culture, bread and wine, with a blessing from his God El Elyon, and Abraham in return treated him as if he were an Israelite priest entitled to tithes. From that point the Amorites rose to dominance in the Jerusalem place of worship. The David line of kings, appearing around 1000 BC, were from the Yahwist Amorites, but could adopt the title Melchizedek as their own. At their coronation ceremonies their ritual included many of the psalms, which were composed for this purpose, not for individual use. Psalm 110:4 shows that the coronation ceremony included the words "Yahweh has sworn, and will not change his mind, you (the David being crowned) are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek". It was for this reason that Hebrews 7 was subsequently able to argue that Jesus from the line of David could be a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, even though he was from the tribe of Judah and not from the priestly tribe of Levi that had produced Aaron. The culture clash that had produced the union of gods was seen by scholars as even more striking when the origin of the Jerusalem Canaanites became better known. In Ezekiel 16:3 the prophet is condemning Jerusalem's current apostasies, and says "Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite". The ancient Hittite civilisation, which had been as powerful as that of Egypt in the 2nd millennium BC, became known through excavations at Boghazkoi in Turkey. Its language was related to Indo-European, from which western languages come, not Semitic. For example its word for "water" was "watar" . A branch of the Hittites had moved south into Canaan and claimed fertile land there. It was for that reason that Abraham the Amorite bought his burial place from the Hittites who owned it. He "bowed to them as the people of the land", and gained the land through further diplomacy (Genesis 23:3-16.) The name Melchi-zedek means, in Hebrew, "my king" (melchi) and "righteousness" (zedek). The Zedek part gives Zadok . When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, one of them, 11Q13 (11QMelch) showed that Melchizedek was very important indeed to the Qumran community, and was closely connected with their solar calendar and its predictions. In the context of a final jubilee at the end of 490 years on the Day of Atonement, they spoke of themselves as "the Sons of Light and the men of the lot of Melchizedek". It is clear from passages such as 1QS 5:1-3, CD 4:1-7, 1QSa 2:1-22 that the Qumran community called themselves "sons of Zadok" and used messianic terminology. They expected two Messiahs, a priestly one from Aaron and a lay one from Israel. Although the consensus case for dating the Scrolls has hesitated to make the obvious connections - which lead straight to Christianity - a historical development can be readily discerned. The Essenes, driven out of the Jerusalem temple, preserved the descendants of its priests and kings in their communities. Zadok had been the Jerusalem high priest (1 Kings 1:32-40) and David the king. The exiled Essenes relied on their solar calendar and its predictions to give them the date when the descendants of these figures would be restored to power in the Jerusalem temple. The high priest of the line of Zadok, who still used the title Melchizedek, would be the important Messiah for this priestly community. John the Baptist was the current Zadokite and the title applied to him. Jesus, believing that priests were not superior to the laity, aimed to combine both lines. He himself would be the Messiah of both Aaron and Israel when the Kingdom came. The argument in Hebrews 7 justifies his claim on good biblical and historical grounds, for the title Melchizedek covered both priest and king. Jesus would be not only the king, but "the high priest of our confession" (Hebrews 3:1, 4:14, 5:1-10). Laymen - including the despised Gentile laymen - would be made priests by ordination, not through any privilege of birth. It appears from what our questioner says that the Catholic Church has preserved this history, by repeating the coronation/ ordination language of Psalm 110. The DSS were needed to give the full background, and should help to put their ritual in its true historical perspective. B.T. |
| Where was Jesus when Paul wrote his Letters |
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"Lisatdeppe" (whom we have unfortunately been unable to contact for details of country) has asked a valuable question:
Q. Where then was Christ when Paul wrote his letters ? Thank you. |
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A. There is evidence that Jesus was physically present with Paul when Paul wrote his letters in the 50's and early 60's AD.
When Paul approached the subject of divorce in 1 Corinthians 7, he gave two different opinions, one that of the Lord, the other his own, making a clear distinction between them (vv.10 and 12). That was in the 50's AD, long after the time that Jesus was believed to have died and ascended to heaven. If, as the surface reader would naturally assume, the opinion of the Lord was the ultimate authority, endorsed by his heavenly status, it was surely improper of Paul, to say the least, to give an alternative opinion on his own authority. His opinion - that there could be divorce in some circumstances - was in effect contrary to that of the Lord, who said that a husband should not divorce his wife, and a wife should not separate from her husband. If Paul wanted to present his opinion, he should surely have claimed that it was implied in the authoritative opinion of the Lord, as was the usual method on details of law, rather than plainly saying that it was not that of Jesus. These verses are supporting evidence for what is given at every point of the pesher. Jesus was indeed alive and physically present with his friends in the 50's AD. During the latter years of that decade he was resident in Corinth, the city to which Paul was addressing his Corinthian letter. During that period he sometimes came across the Aegean Sea to Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). He had every opportunity of personal discussion with Paul in Ephesus. There was a good reason why Paul would give a differing view on divorce, from his motive of maintaining the religious devotion to Jesus which it was his mission to teach. Jesus had in fact been divorced himself, and the scandal was threatening to destroy his authority, playing into the hands of his moralistic enemies. Mary Magdalene his wife had remained with the party of Simon Magus, militantly anti-Roman, with whom Jesus had been associated at the time of his marriage to her in the 30's AD. Under the emperor Claudius (41- 54AD) a tolerant attitude to Jews caused many of the missionaries, including Jesus and Paul, to change their politics. But Mary Magadalene believed that it was a betrayalof all they had stood for. She separated from Jesus, and a divorce followed, on her initiative. It was out of this unhappy and damaging experience that Jesus said, "The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband. And the husband should not divorce the wife". He was drawing on his own actual experience, saying that he had not initiated the divorce. Paul first quoted the law in the conservative form that Jesus had relied on. Essenes were known for forbidding divorce once a child had been conceived after the second wedding. But Paul himself, as a Pharisee who in principle permitted divorce (Mark 10:2-4), had carried out the legalities of the divorce, and had himself officiated at the second marriage of Jesus, to Lydia (Acts 16:14-15 taken with other facts of the chronology). In his treatment in 1 Corinthians 7, in his own name, Paul was finessing the law in a form that left Jesus in the clear, circumventing the impression that Jesus was not being straightforward in regard to his own case, by showing that he had been justifiably divorced. It had taken place at the time of the schism of Christians, who only began to use that name in 43-44 AD. Mary Magdalene was not a Christian in the legal sense of the word. So Paul wrote "If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her (And likewise if the husband is an unbeliever). For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband...But if the unbelieving partner desires to separate, let it be so; in such a case the brother or sister is not bound. For God has called us to peace" (that is, in the pesher sense, to political peace, friendship with Rome). A more subjective reason can be offered for saying that Jesus was present with Paul at the time of writing the letters. It is not factual evidence, but is persuasive on literary grounds. In his first known epistle, to Galatians, which may be dated about 45 AD, Paul embarked on a crucial argument that was taken up and expanded in his magnificent epistle to Romans from 57 AD. The argument gave the pivotal reason for the separation of Christians. Judaism in its traditional sense had become obsolete. It was no longer a cause of eternal damnation to disregard the Jewish law. "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1-2)." Those words continued to ring through the ages, setting free subsequent reformers who felt themselves bound by a religion that had become ossified - as religions have periodically done throughout human history. These words certainly represented the opinion of Jesus, who had been betrayed by the traditional form of Judaism into which he had been born. Having attempted suicide on the cross, he had found himself in the cave coming back to consciousness and life. He had undergone a kind of resurrection, accompanied by an act of intellectual liberation from beliefs that had bound him. The drama of his experience had supplied the Christian liturgical drama of resurrection, which those who needed it took literally. A new language for religion that was not the Jewish conceptual language had indeed begun on the cross. But was Paul capable of such a supreme moment of inspiration? Were the words all his? In the same epistle to Romans he wrote of his own conflicts about separating from Judaism. "For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriachs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ." (Romans 9:3-5). At the times Paul wrote, Jesus was officially dead, but living in seclusion. A belief in a literal resurrection was proving immensely powerful to masses, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, who were converting to Christianity. Jesus himself understood how the theological revolution should be expressed, but he was silenced by the very beliefs of their unlettered membership. In constant contact with Paul, who had undergone a political conversion with the help of Jesus, a way was found. Jesus would have supplied the substance of the argument, including its very language in some cases, while Paul published it as his own, adding his own pastoral advice such as was appropriate in letters to believers. In his final letter, 2 Timothy, written in 63 AD, Paul under arrest spoke of the lack of support from his other associates in Rome, but he went on: "the Lord stood by me and gave me strength." (2 Timothy 4:17). A vision? or an actual visit by Jesus from his own place of concealment in Rome? There must have been times when Jesus was actually sitting with Paul as he wrote. Although the exact facts of what was his in the letters may not be known, the history of his life as given in the pesher is enough to indicate that we have in these letters Jesus' authentic voice. For those who need to think in terms of a human founder of a religion, this much can be a source of strength. For others, who are moving into the theological revolution of our own times, the history itself supplies a much needed guide. B.T. |
| Missing Andrew |
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Q. Claude Robitaille of Quebec City Canada asks a further question about Andrew, an associate of Jesus. He first quotes G. Vermes:
"Andrew was one of the leading members of the circle of twelve apostles whom Jesus entrusted in Galilee with the mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and performing exorcisms. ... He was the brother of Simon-Peter. Apart from the lists of the apostles and a couple of insignificant anecdotal references, the Gospels report nothing about Andrew." (Vermes, G. Who's Who in the Age of Jesus. p. 45, Penguin, 2005) Claude comments, "In fact, I realized that the fact of his not being mentioned has some importance. Would you feel the same thing?" |
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A. Vermes is reproducing from traditional writers the conclusions derived from the surface narrative of the gospels. He takes no account of pesher, nor of any of the apocryphal literature, which traditionalists, assuming a new revelation through Jesus, have rejected as later fiction. That position has been difficult to maintain since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi literature in 1945.
There is evidence even on the surface that "brother" was used in a symbolic sense, for a fellow-worker in the mission. (eg. in Acts 9:17 for Paul). In the pesher the singular of the word is used for the symbolic brother and the plural of reproduction for the literal brother. The singular is used for Andrew, meaning that he was simply a fellow-worker with Peter. Andrew is the subject of a number of apocryphal books. They are undoubtedly hagiographa, full of fanciful inventions, and on an earlier assumption that all apocrypha are fiction have been dismissed as historically worthless. On the alternative assumption that there may be a nucleus of historical truth in these books, the fact may be extracted from them that Andrew was a pioneering missionary to pagans in the mid 1st century. In the less lurid of these records, the Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew in Christian Classics Ethereal Library, formerly Ante-Nicene Fathers vol 8) , he is said to have been sent by Jesus to the province of Achaia, southern Greece, where he came into conflict with the Roman proconsul Aegeates. Andrew attempted to convert him to Christianity, and the debates between the two on Christian doctrine are recorded. Aegeates refused to believe that this new religion Christianity, which "has lately made its appearance" should replace traditional paganism. He imprisoned Andrew, but the people of the city, hating Aegeates, took Andrew's side. He ordered Andrew to be crucified, and Andrew willingly accepted a fate that would imitate Jesus, certain that it would take him to heaven. After four days on the cross he was still alive (a useful point about the length of time that crucifixion lasted). The people of the city wanted to release him, but Andrew refused, insisting on his martyrdom. As he died he was granted visions of Jesus. His death had the effect of converting Maximilla, the wife of Aegeates, who wanted to leave her brutal husband. As a Christian she devoted herself to celibacy, as is more fully recorded in another Andrew story. The process of winning women in unhappy marriages to a Christian celibate life is also attributed to Peter in Rome, in the apocryphal Acts of Peter. It is indeed significant, as you say, that Andrew is given so little importance in the gospels. The difference between John's gospel and the Synoptics on this question is the first step in understanding the reason. In John's gospel (1:40-41) Andrew came first at the separation of two disciples who turned to Jesus and left John the Baptist. Andrew then found his "brother", Peter, convincing him that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ. In the pesher, that means that Andrew accepted that Jesus was the legitimate heir of David, against the Baptist who held that he was illegitimate. Peter expressed the same view later, when he said to Jesus "You are the Christ" (Mark 8:29). Andrew is thus presented in John as a superior of Peter, who deferred to his views. From that point in John's gospel, Andrew is also paired with Philip, an association never found in the Synoptics (John 1:44; John 6:7-8; and especially John 12:21-22 where Philip and Andrew go directly to Jesus without mention of Peter). In the Synoptics, however, there is a group of four, Peter, Andrew, James of Zebedee and John of Zebedee. All four appear together in Mark at the outset (John 1:16-19 John 1:29) and in John 13:3, but three of them without Andrew - Peter, James and John - were present at Jesus' supreme moments (Mark 5:37; Mark 9:2; Mark 14:33). Philip in the Synoptics appears only in the lists of apostles, but in Acts is shown to have been an associate of Simon Magus (Acts 8:13). The reason for the omission of Philip, and for some omissions of Andrew, would be that Peter, James, and John belonged with the western party and became Christian, while these two retained some forceful Magian methods from the earlier form of the mission. They were methods that included the multiplication of miracles, as seen in the Andrew apocrypha. They were rejected at the time of the schism of Christians in 43-44 AD. (See the biography of Philip in the Biographies secction of this site). The separation from the Magians began during the gospel period, led by Peter, James and John. Peter is shown attacking Simon Magus in Acts 8:14-24, and in the Clementines - a very valuable historical source - it is shown that they , as the twin brothers Niceta and Aquila, had turned away from Simon Magus who originally educated them (Clementine Homilies 2, 20-21). Once again it is seen that valuable historical facts may be uncovered by applying the pesher technique and by drawing on the full range of relevant material, not confining study to a list restricted out of theological considerations. B.T. |
| Did Jesus Know Forbidden Secrets |
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Adrian Apollo, of Fresno California USA asks: Q. Did Jesus know the secrets of the Pythagoreans, i.e. the secrets that its members were forbidden to reveal? Many teachings of the Pythagoreans are lost , because the members of the order were bound by an oath not to reveal the teachings of the master. I really am very curious to know if there is anything at all in your research that might point to the possibility that they used numbers in a secret or coded way. If so, then perhaps we could discover the secret history of the Pythagorean sect. I know there are lots of ways in which Jesus's group adopted certain Pythagorean ideas (as you have explained), but I wonder if it went further than that? (See the previous question from Adrian Apollo, "Pythagoras" for information on Pythagoras.) |
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A. Jesus had the same "secret" knowledge as a scientist in a research institution. After years of disciplined study, a competent scientist has gained skills in a particular area of knowledge that can be applied to the improvement of human life. Jesus' community was a school, the equivalent of a research institution, developing the science of the day. Their educational programme, with 4 years undergraduate study and 3 years postgraduate study, was devoted to the application of the skills of measurement that can be acquired through a mastery of numbers and keeping accurate records. They applied it to astronomy, and with others like them had discovered that our globe is spherical, not flat. Following the centuries of learning of other such institutions, in Babylon and Egypt, they were able to predict lunar eclipses and the positions of stars and planets.
To those who had not done such study, it looked like sheer magic when they announced that an eclipse would occur and it was subsequently seen. It also looked like irreligiousness, because these scholars were claiming to know as much as God. It was quite apparent to the religious man that God decided every day whether to make the sun rise. It was due humility to recognize that man was much less than God, and there were no laws of nature that could be discovered, for God was omnipotent and above all law. So for the Pythagoreans, their scientific knowledge must be kept secret, for fear of causing ordinary unlettered men to lose their faith and their trust in what was greater than themselves. Their "secrets" would have been no more than this, scientific knowledge as far as it had been taken in their day. Such an attitude breeds myth in order to rationalise ignorance and keep society stable. The learned men were held in awe as magicians, and some of them played up to it with hocus pocus that brought them status. The Magians, who had brought their knowledge from Babylon, gave the words "magic" and "magician". Simon Magus was the original of the Faust legend, the man who had all knowledge but sold his soul to the devil. He had advanced medical knowledge - used in the "resurrection" of Jesus - but he had no hesitation in descending to thaumaturgy, magical tricks such as a stage magician would use. (See the biography of Simon Magus in Biographies.) What the Pythagoreans knew was no more than can be worked out from the records about them, combined with our more extensive knowledge. So I don't think there is any more to be discovered about them from the pesher. The schools we are studying applied their theory of systems of measurement to the times for prayers, constructing a human clock that was later replaced by mechanical devices. It was a combination of science and religion, but of course was much too restrictive about religion. But their exact systems, particularly those derived from the solar calendar, are the main means of discovering the pesher. B.T. |
| Hillel The First Pope |
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Claude Robitaille of Quebec City Canada asks: Q. Did the recruiting of Gentiles really start with Hillel (Mesopotamia, Babylonia) or if it could be possible to trace that before him? |
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A. The process began with the spread of hellenistic culture among Diaspora Jews, so it really has to be traced back to Alexander the Great (356- 323 BC). One of his many wise diplomatic moves was to be friendly and respectful to the Jews of Jerusalem
(Josephus, Antiquities 11, 329-339). In Hans Jonas' book The Gnostic Religion there is an insightful understanding of the profound effect of Hellenism. There were far more Jews in the Diaspora than in Jerusalem - "myriads of our race" according to Josephus (Against Apion 194). They had always valued learning, and had stood out among surrounding countries for their monotheistic theology. In close contact with the new Greek learning, they took it on eagerly, reconciling it with the laws of Moses by claiming that Moses had known it all along. Philo the Jew of Alexandria illustrates that very well, finding Greek philosophy and science in the Torah by his allegorical method.
By the second century BC the "seekers-after-smooth-things" had appeared, Diaspora Jews and Samaritans who had gone so far with the new learning that they sat loosely to Jewish identity and the moral side of Jewish law. They invited a successor of the Seleucid Antiochus Epiphanes into Jerusalem (4QpNah 1:1-3). They continued into the period of the Teacher of Righteousness, condemned by him as heretics (1QH 12/4: 9-12). The extension of the process, with active mission to Gentiles, began under the Jewish king Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC). He followed his father in becoming Sadducee, with a broader world outlook than nationalistic Pharisaism. With his wife Salome, he encouraged Gentiles who had become intrigued by the amalgam of Judaism and Hellenism that retained the best qualities of both. Gentiles were given a form of initiation into Judaism, with a center of learning and administration in Tyre. It had been a meeting place for female initiates, and since Gentiles were defined as equal to women, they were given schools in Tyre, Sarepta and Sidon. At about this time the Jason mission to Gentiles of the west began. In order to communicate effectively, the Greek myth of Jason's ship was drawn on, with an acted drama using a boat bringing initiates to the dry land of salvation. The "Jason" was the Magus of that period, a Samaritan. Islands of the Mediterranean, already suitable for female convents, were taken up by eremitical Gentiles. The chief ones for males were Cyprus, Crete and Malta. All of this was well established by the time of Herod the Great. When in 41 BC he began his rise to power as an ambitious, talented Idumean (west bank Arab) under the patronage of Rome, the huge numbers of Diaspora Jews gave him the opportunity of a system of taxation that brought in enormous wealth, needed for his building operations in Judea (4Q159 and the Copper Scroll give the details). The Jewish identity of Diaspora Jews was re-affirmed, with a modernised kind of Judaism called the New Israel, with its own new "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob". The boat mission was now reformed to use biblical imagery, under a "Noah". In Babylon, a particularly learned Jew named Hillel was attracting Gentiles to become proselytes, converts to the moderately hellenised form of Judaism. He emphasised the Golden Rule as summing up the essence of the Law. As a Pharisee he emphasised the adoption of a Jewish identity, the ritual requirements including circumcision. His kind of teaching was endorsed by Queen Salome, once she became queen regnant and turned from her reckless husband to seek Pharisee advice (76-67 BC). Hillel began his career in Babylon, then he moved closer to the homeland by establishing a center for mission to proselytes in Damascus. He was then invited by Herod the Great to move to Jerusalem. He became the well respected chief adviser to Herod on Diaspora matters, the "Abraham" of the New Israel, its first Father, or Pope. It was at this time that the mission was structured into the necessary organization for the taxation system. Ascetics, the stricter party of Jews derived from Essenes, added the requirement of celibacy to the more orthodox ritual requirements. This aspect was attractive to intellectual Greeks, who believed in the superiority of the soul to the body. Gentile interest increased, but the emphasis on Jewish identity meant that they were still defined as low grade, unable to be given the kind of initiation that was reserved for Jews. It was the first stage of education for ministry, which could not be given to Gentiles. In the latter half of his reign Herod's increasing paranoia produced a split among the ascetics, who parted from him decisively when he turned down their Temple Scroll plan. Sadducees and Magians separated, while the Pharisee Hillel and his sucessors (subsequently including Paul) remained loyal to the Herodian monarchy. Hillel died in 19 BC. He was the "Abraham" whom Jesus would have seen if he had been born in 19 BC, 50 years before the time of speaking about him in 32 AD (John 8: 57). Other ancient texts of this verse, understanding the pesher, change "Have you seen Abraham 50 years ago?" to "Has Abraham seen you?" as Jesus would have been a baby 50 years before. It was the "left" of the New Israel that became Christian. But Hillel deserves the credit for having helped found the structured organization that became the Church, and for being the first Pope. B.T. |
| Pesher in Gospel of Thomas |
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Dylan Stephens, our Webmaster, of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, asks: Q. The Gospel of Thomas says 42."Become passers-by" Does this have a pesher significance beyond the concept of avoiding the corruptible world? |
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A. The Gospel of Thomas was found in 1945 in Codex II of the books in the jar at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. In the same volume was the Gospel of Philip, which also uses a great deal of symbolism, and is also called a gospel in its written title. Philip and Thomas especially raise the question of whether they are using systematic pesher in the same way as the New Testament gospels. The trouble is that we only have them in Coptic, the language of Egypt in its Christianized period. Systematic pesher only works in the simple Greek of the New Testament, sometimes called Koine Greek. Its grammatical constructions and cases are essential for the language devices. They do not transfer to other languages in such a complete form that it can be certain that there is a pesher. That was one of the main reasons why the pesher was lost.
It is the case, however, that much of the pesher depends on the special meanings of words. These may be used in varying contexts. The Lexicon we are offering here contains many of them. In the New Testament Epistles such as those of Paul it is found that they drop into the special meanings of terms when something secret is to be said, but do not use the devices that depend on grammar. It could well be that this is the case also with gospels such as Philip and Thomas, coming from gnostic circles that were not authorised to compose canonical gospels. The passage in GThom 9 is capable of an exact pesher following the form of the canonical parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-9). Very strikingly, its final sentence alters the figures. In the canonical gospels, the seed bears fruit 30 fold, 60 fold and 100 fold. In GThom it bears fruit 60 and 120 fold. As may be seen, the figures in the canonical gospels tell the pesharist that there were 30 years to go to complete the numbers of initiated Gentiles. Some would study for 3 years (10 periods of 3 years in 30 years, periods x 10 for the 10 provinces, 100 fold) some for 5 years (6 periods of 5 years in 30 years, periods x 10 for the 10 provinces, 60 fold) some for 10 years ( 3 periods of 10 years in the 30 years, periods x 10 for the 10 provinces, 30 fold). These 30 years would be the final ones, between 30 AD and 60 AD, which was believed to be the year 4000 from creation, when the Eschaton would come. Thus the canonical calculation was from 30 AD, in the gospel period, beginning the "good soil" of Gentile additions. That was the date on which Herodians were working, as exemplified by Paul's "year 14" in 44 AD (Galatians 2:1). In Thomas, however, the altered figures 60 and 120 work for a period of 60 years. Some Gentiles would study for 5 years, and for them there would be 12 periods in the 60 years, periods x 10 for the 10 provinces, 120 fold. Others would study for 10 years, giving 6 periods in the 60 years, periods x 10 for the 10 provinces, 60 fold. At what date did a calculation of 60 years begin? If the Eschaton was assumed to be 60 AD, it was 1 BC. That was the date that Matthew's parable of the workers in the Vineyard was relying on, each "hour" representing 5 years (Matthew 20:1-16). Or, it could be in Thomas that the beginning was 40 AD, after a zero generation had been added to 1 BC, putting the Eschaton at 100 AD. The latter is more likely, as the content of Thomas and Philip is gnostic, and it was in 40 to 44 AD that the schism between western Christian Herodians and eastern Magian gnostic anti-Herodians took place. Coming to the question on GThom 42, it looks as if the tractate is dropping into special meanings of terms without having a systematic pesher, either because the original Greek did not have one, or because the Coptic was forced to reduce the scope. The text reads "Jesus said, 'Become passers-by"'. Its pesher meaning for gnostics may be shown to be "Become celibate missionaries to proselytes". In the Greek of the canonical gospels, (para)poreuomenoi, which is normally from another verb for "go", has the special meaning of "travelers", and it refers to missionaries to the Diaspora. (See Travel in the Lexicon.) In Luke 24:28 & 32 it is connected with going on the Way. (See Way in the Lexicon.) The original meaning of "the Way" was the mission to proselytes, Gentile outsiders who were encountered by chance by ascetics as they traveled, whom they engaged in conversation on the way, and eventually persuaded to be converted to the Jewish religion. In the hands of western Christians the name came to be extended to uncircumcised Gentiles of the order of Asher, represented by James Niceta and John Aquila. Hence their communities were called the Way (hodos)in Acts 9:2, Acts 19:9, 23. The saying "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" ( |