Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, July 27, 1999

The Revelation

The revelation to his disciples that he was the messiah is in Mark 8:27–8:33. The scene is set in the region of Caesarea Philippi, in the shadow of Mount Hermon. Jesus as ever does not go into the town itself. Evidently the leadership of the Nazarenes are still barjonim, keeping out of towns and cities. They are still on the run, staying out of Herod Antipas’s kingdom, in the kingdom of Antipas’s more tolerant brother Philip, in Iturea, north of Galilee, suggesting that the event occurs on the journey back from Tyre.

The prominence of Peter, his apparent insistence on saying that Jesus was the messiah, and the sternness of the charging in Mark 8:30 (in the Greek it is the same word as the rebuke of Peter in Mark 8:32) and Jesus’s response in Mark 8:33 suggest that the two were having a row. There might well have been such a row when Jesus declared his conviction that he was the messiah and had to capture Jerusalem. The difference with the gospel record was that Peter thought that Jesus was not the messiah. He probably thought he was mad to suggest it.

Jesus would have seen in the row a further fulfilment of prophecy because the coronation described in Zechariah 3:1-10 involves a staged row between Satan and the messiah which has already appeared after the baptism of Jesus as the temptation. The High Priest, said to Satan: “the Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; yea the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” This passage perfectly described Jesus’s aim and so would have taken Peter’s objections to his revelation as evidence that God had willed him the role of Satan. Later, when Peter had been convinced of the plan, Jesus required him to play the role of Satan at the transfiguration. Whence the words spoken here by Jesus. So the row which is recorded was a ritual one, part of the crowning ceremony, the transfiguration. The ritual given in Zechariah was performed with Peter in the role of Satan and he was rebuked. The Greek translated “savourest not” implies disagreeing with another’s opinion or taking sides against.

The way Matthew has Jesus posing the question about his messiahship (Mt 16:13) allows for only one answer. He asks: “Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” using a title which clergymen consider as messianic, and therefore giving away the answer. But only Peter gets it! If the question were not part of a coronation ritual, then Jesus would have said: “Who do men say that this son of man is?” Here “this son of man” simply means I, spoken thus to affect modesty. The gospel account shows that the question and answer were formal ones. Only Peter answered because he had to answer in his role as Satan. Satan had to recognize the messiah, God’s messenger, and then be rebuked according to the ritual.

In his brief account, written much later (Jn 6:66-71), John can see no merits in including any of this Essene ritual and makes Judas Iscariot, not Peter, into Satan.

In Matthew’s version (Mt 16:13–23) Jesus is so pleased that Peter got the answer to his inquiry right, having told him the answer, that he gives him the keys of the kingdom of God and, using the masonic analogy, tells him he will be the rock upon which the church is built, punning on his nickname, Rocky. This is all fictional nonsense which did not exist in the second century, as we know because it does not appear in the first gospel harmony, the Diatessaron. It was added quite late to puff the church of Rome, whose founder was supposed to have been Peter, in its ambition to be top church. The only significance in it is that Matthew calls Peter by the name barjona, admitting that he is an outlaw.

Mark 8:31 is such a categorical prediction of the events which are later described that, if genuine, it could not have been mistaken especially if there was a row about it. Yet no one was the wiser after it, even when the predicted events occurred. The prediction is hindsight. This conclusion is confirmed when the passage has Jesus “rising” and not “being raised” by God. The former is the later concept—God and Jesus being equated. Beforehand God took the credit for all miracles.

Mark 9:11–9:13 has what seems to be more related to Jesus’s decision to announce himself as the messiah. The second line of command of the Nazarenes are again depicted as dolts. Peter, James and John are puzzled that Elijah had apparently not come as he was supposed to, according to scripture. Jesus seems to tell them that Elijah had already come, in the person of John the Baptist who was imprisoned.

The text is garbled but this must refer back to the row between Jesus and the apostles, especially Peter. That is possibly why it has been so badly distorted. When Jesus announces that he must be crowned messiah the disciples quarrel with him. One of their arguments would have been: If “you’re the messiah, what happened to Elijah?” because Elijah was to appear before the messiah. Jesus answers: “John the Baptist is Elijah”. The identification here is parabolic: they did “with him what they pleased”, which applies to John the Baptist—Matthew 17:13 says so explicitly.

Unfortunately the scriptures do not, as Jesus asserts, say this of Elijah at his second coming. Malachi 4:6 says Elijah will restore the hearts of the fathers and the children, thereby restoring all things, as Jesus says. You might contend that John began to restore all things, with his hugely successful call for repentance, but was prevented when they did to him whatsoever they wanted. And that seems to have been Jesus’s argument.

Further confusion has occurred here with the justification for Elijah’s presence at the coronation ceremony. Moses plainly had a right to be there but some of the disciples might not have known the reason for Elijah being present. Isaiah might have had an equal or better claim for Essenes. Jesus has therefore explained to his converts that Elijah was the last prophet according to Malachi. Whereupon some might have asked the gospel question. We do not have to believe that the question came from Jesus’s High Priesthood, who must have known Malachi.

The Transfiguration

In Mark 9:2–9:13, Jesus goes up to a high mountain and is ”transfigured.” Christian scholars have almost ignored the story of the ”transfigration” as too embarrassing to discuss, though they find other excuses. A D A Moses (MOS-MTSJCC) says scholars have neglected it because it is too difficult, though there are analogies with the pericope in Hellenistic literature of the period. Since Christian scholars do not like difficult problems, this has been one to avoid.

Bultmann saw the transfiguration as a theophany, but little in it suggests Jesus had become a god. All we read in Mark 9:7 is the instruction, “Listen to him”, denoting him as a prophet. Peter witnessed the radiant garb and the conversation with Elijah and Moses, but still addresses Jesus as Rabbi (Mk 9:5), not kurios, the form required of a god or a ruler of a domain. It is a ceremony of ordination—a coronation. Peter has just declared Jesus as the messiah and Jesus has explained his objectives. The next stage is logical—the crowning of the messiah. This takes the form of the ”anointing” of Jesus as “that prophet”, the final prophet promised by Moses.

S Mowinkel believed there was an annual ceremony of enthronement of Yehouah in Israel. H Riesenfeld thought the transfiguration was also a coronation, but he thought that the booth was the place of divine nuptials so that the enthronement was also a wedding of God and Israel. If so, this was a quiet wedding, but Riesenfeld’s idea strikes a chord with the idea that the Essenes indeed did have a ritual wedding of Yehouah and Israel as indicated by the story of Joseph and Aseneth and suggested by the mysterious wedding at Cana.

In the Greek appears the word ”paralambanei”, used six times by Mark (each time when Peter was a supposed eyewitness—a hint that Mark does indeed contain the gospel according to Peter) on occasions when a ritual was being conducted or tradition being received. They are the occasions when the three ”priests”, Peter, James and John accompany Jesus to conduct a ritual. Mark is inclined to give these people’s names an emphatic definite article on these occasions, so we have literally ”the Peter”, suggesting these were ritual titles, not names. Much in the passage suggests the End Time and the general resurrection. Thus, Mark 9:9 speaks of the resurrection from the dead, meaning the general resurrection but made to seem like the resurrection of Jesus only by translating ”son of man”—meaning ”humanity”—as Son of Man, meaning Jesus. In Mark 9:10–11, the disciples ask questions about the meaning of ”the rising from the dead”. They also ask about Elijah, who is the prophet prophesied to herald The End.

The baptism made Jesus a prince or a king. This one makes him a prophet.

And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter and James and John and leadeth them into a high mountain apart by themselves. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid. And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.

Mk 9:3-8

The incident is extremely terse suggesting that much is omitted. The meaning of transfigured in Mark 9:2 is also unclear. The Greek verb is ”to metamorphose” which literally means to be transformed or to change one’s form. As noted, the people named in this verse are curiously emphasised with definite articles.

White robes signify a priest and the Essenes, who regarded themselves as a priestly sect, wore white as the sign of righteousness. We find early Christians accepting the same symbolism in Revelation 19:8:

And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.

Rev 19:8

And in Revelation 3:4–5 Jesus speaks of the significance of white garments for those who are worthy.

Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

Jesus emerges not merely white but dazzlingly white, even radiant. The old gods of Canaan were sky and storm gods and often had the attributes of sun gods, and Yehouah was no exception. There is also precedent in other apocalyptic writings for the radiance of those who come into God’s presence (Dan 12.3; Syr Apoc of Baruch 51.1-3; Rev 7.13-14; 2 Cor 3.7-18; Mt 13.43). In 1 Enoch 14:20, the gown of the ”Great Glory” was:

shining more brightly than the sun. It was whiter than any snow.

Compare this imagery with with Matthew 13:43:

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

Josephus described the sight of Herod’s temple as it was approached in the sunlight, saying that onlookers had to turn away from the blaze of fire reflected from the temple rooftops. The roofs were gilded and the structure faced with white marble. This fiery brilliance of the golden roofs reflecting the sun atop the marble columns of the porticoes is the impression Jewish writers try to suggest of the effect of God’s presence—supernatural whiteness and brilliance became a convention applied to those who had entered the sight of God. Fiery brilliance was therefore the garb of the glorious messiah and the archangel Michael.

Only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies into the presence of God, and only at Yom Kippur when he was also allowed to utter the divine name. Normally he wore elaborate coloured garments decorated with a cosmic motif but to enter into the presence of God, he wore pure white robes. Ben Sira describes him as emerging radiant with God’s aura just like the description of the reflexion of the sun from the gilded roof of the temple in Josephus, though Ben Sira was writing at the time of the high priest Simon the Just, Onias II, father of Onias III who lost the Jerusalem priesthood for the Zadokites.

The shining whiteness occurs often in the Enoch literature. Enoch was, of course, one of the few humans in Jewish tradition that ”dwelt with God”:

Take Enoch from his earthly garments and clothe him in garments of glory.

2 Enoch 22:8

All the righteous and elect. . . shall be as intense as the light of fire.

1 Enoch 39:7

The elect will be clothed with garments of glory from the Lord of spirits, and their glory shall never fade away… The righteous and elect shall rise from the earth and shall cease being of downcast face.

1 Enoch 62:13-16

Matthew and Luke both describe Jesus as having a shining face, though Mark does not. Was this a harmonisation with the scriptural events on Sinai? It might be that Matthew and Luke are restoring what the Essenes expected and what Mark, in his ignorance, had omitted. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, illumination or radiance of the face is symbolic of the New Covenant. The Righteous Teacher is illuminated by the covenant of God and he, in turn illumines the faces of the congregation. In the Thanksgiving Hymns:

I thank thee, O Lord, for thou hast illumined my face by thy covenant.

1QH 12:5 (Puech)

And in the same hymn:

Through me, thou hast illumined the face of the congregation.

1QH 12:27

The reason is that wicked men cannot look upon the faces of the holy because, according to 1 Enoch:

The light of the Lord of Spirits has shined upon the face of the holy, the righteous and the elect

1 Enoch 38:4

Jesus is again announced as “my beloved Son” by a voice described as God’s. We have noted that this is the liturgy for crowning a king or ordaining a priest. It seems that the transfiguration is another coronation making Jesus a priest or a king. But Jesus as an Essene is already a priest and his baptism seemed to make him a king or Nasi. What then is this coronation but the ordaining of Jesus as the prophet of Moses?

The Authorized Version mistranslates Luke 9:35:

And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

The translation has been harmonized with Matthew and Mark, but Luke’s verse in the original Greek reads:

This is my Son, the Elect One: hear him.

The Greek is ”ho eklelegmenos”, ”the elect one”, linking the coronation with the Essenes and the Enoch cycle of books. The voice from the cloud, equates Jesus with Moses and Elijah, and announces him as the Son of God. Jesus’s enthronement is depicted as an apocalyptic vision shown to his senior lieutenants. The transfiguration also parallels Daniel 10, another apocalyptic vision.

Jews believed that some scriptural figures would reappear at the end time (see Mt 8:11; Lk 13:28f). The two supernatural figures attending the transfiguration were Moses and Elijah. Mark does not stress the role of Moses as a law-giver in this passage, simply giving one clue as his significance—the allusion to Deuteronomy 18:15, “Listen to him”. Mark presents Jesus as the eschatological prophet whose coming Moses had announced as “That Prophet”. Moses was the first prophet (Dt 34:10). In 1QS 1:3; 8:15, the Essenes regard Moses as a prophet. So, both supernatural beings were prophets who, like Jesus, fasted for forty days and met Yehouah on a mountain. Wayne Meeks has pointed out that in both rabbinic and Samaritan traditions, God enthroned Moses at Sinai as His vice-regent. An enthronement is a coronation.

Jesus’s metamorphosis much reminds us of Moses at Sinai, when his face shone. Philo interprets Moses on the mountain as a transfiguration (metamorphosis) caused by his communion with God which makes him a prophet, the High Priest and Hierophant, and also ”god and king of the whole nation”.

Elijah was not numbered among the Nebi’im—the Jewish prophets—but even so was considered the last prophet, not because he was the last in sequence but because he was prophesied in Malachi 4:5 to be the last to appear before the final visitation, to turn men’s hearts back to the purity of their fathers. Ecclesiasticus 48.10 portrays him as restoring the tribes of Israel, and inaugurating the new age. So, in the rabbinic tradition, Elijah would reassemble the scattered of the nation, bring about penitence in Israel, and settle disputed points of the Law, ritual, and biblical exegesis. In The Assumption of Moses, Elijah, in the person of Taxo, is ready to die to bring in the kingdom. The Apocalypse of Elijah, around the first century AD, has Elijah and Enoch defeating the anti-Christ in battle. Elijah was the prophet of the end time, indeed, the embodiment of the End Time in turn-of-the-era Judaism.

It might seem odd that Elijah is introduced by Mark before Moses who preceded him in time, and the other gospel writers or editors seem to think the same, changing the order. But the point for Jesus and the Essenes was that Elijah introduced the End Time and so had to come before Moses. That Mark himself reverses this order only a verse later, in Mark 9:5, when Peter makes his crass proposal in direct speech suggests that this verse might be a later interpolation meant to denigrate Peter. Matthew, who was writing after all eschatological hope had gone, long after the forty years were up, demotes Elijah in favour of Moses because his aim is to picture Jesus as the new Moses. Elijah was an anachronism.

Moses was also the prophet who passed his authority to the previous Jesus who carried the Israelites over the Jordan and into the promised land—Joshua, which is in Greek, Jesus, suggesting that Jesus was always a ritual or sacred name the Essenes used for the messiah. Moses and Elijah also represent the law and the prophets, and as such appear to testify, in an age of false prophets, to the authenticity of Jesus as a prophet—here was one of their own! Jesus was being acknowledged as a true prophet! The priestly liturgy of the transfiguration adds the words, “listen to him”, confirming that Jesus was now the prophet—the prophet promised by Moses (Dt 18:15,18), called by Jews “that prophet”.

The transfiguration therefore ritually proclaims Jesus as the prophet, priest and king of the Essenes—and one who is all three is the messiah. By being crowned as “That Prophet” as well as the priest and the king, Jesus was crowned messiah. Jesus realized that should he prove wrong and not be “That Prophet” then he would have been crowned falsely—he would be a false prophet. The punishment was death (Dt 18:20).

From the Epistle to the Hebrews, he also becomes Melchizedek, the priest-king of Genesis 14:18–20. Its author asserts Jesus’s superiority to the temple by showing him to be Melchizedek—the king of righteousness and the king of peace—and because he was immortal, a priest forever. Hebrews expressly says he had no father and no mother and therefore no genealogy. He sounds like an Essene waif. The Essenes were particularly interested in Melchizedek because he was the legendary priest who preceded the Zadokite line. He was considered an immortal being, like the angels and the sons of God in Genesis. He had supernatural powers, raised up the righteous for judgement and punished the wicked.

The Essenes seem to identify Melchizedek with the archangel Michael but in the Essene text Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, Melchizedek officiates as the High Priest in heaven just as Jesus does according to the author of Hebrews. Melchizedek was the heavenly messiah, the one unto the Son of man of Daniel. Jesus came to believe he was the earthly messiah, then his followers identified him with the Son of man and thence with Melchizedek.

Jesus prepared for the ceremony for six days—God called Moses after six days on Mount Sinai. Eduard Schweizer suggested the link between them. The Essenes read Exodus 24:16 as a prescription of ritual purification for anyone to appear before God. The reference to a mountain parallels both Moses and Elijah in their meetings with God’s agents. The appearance of a cloud through which God speaks is also a normal scriptural device occurring frequently in Exodus. A vigorous fire covered in green leaves would suffice.

Apparently only Jesus’s three principle lieutenants, Peter, John and James, were present besides the supernatural figures. Though Mark gives no clues in the passage itself as to when it occurred, from the previous passage, he places it when the party are supposed to be in Iturea. Jesus was travelling back from Tyre where he had been accompanied only by a few disciples, perhaps only by these three. At the ceremony, one of them played the role of Elijah, one the role of Moses and one the role of Satan. Since Jesus calls Peter, Satan, it seems that Peter’s role at least was known. One of the prophetic figures would have spoken the part of God. Jesus is crowned messiah and then the four participants find themselves alone!

Mark puts the transfiguration here as an indication that the coming in power of Mark 8:9:1 was arriving. The curious and inappropriate proposal of Peter is perhaps a device by the author to distinguish the apostles from the supernatural figures they played. If there is any significance in it, it might be a hint that the occasion was the feast of booths or tabernacles, the Jewish feast commemorating the period in the desert, when God dwelt in the midst of them as he would again at the coming of the kingdom. The imagery of the tents, the fire and the clouds all evoke the period of wilderness wandering prior to the entry into the promised land.

The link of the appointment of the messiah on this occasion and the expectation of a metaphorical crossing of the Jordan into God’s kingdom was plainly deliberate. Yehouah lived in a tent as the Israelites did in the wilderness wanderings and so His messiah had to be a similar bedouin—unlike foxes and birds, he would have no place to lay his head until the kingdom came. The feast of tabernacles was always the time of high eschatological hopes when dreams of a messiah peaked. Nationalistic fervour reached a particular peak on the seventh day of the feast, the very day that Jesus chose to be crowned as messiah, having spent six days preparing.

H Baltensweiler realised this but in typically Christian fashion, instead of deducing that Jesus had chosen the appropriate occasion to be crowned messiah, he ludicrously concludes that Jesus rejected the temptation to do this! Josephus (Ant 8:4:1) describes the feast of tabernacles as ”a most holy and most eminent feast”, and adds (Ant 15:3:3) that it was ”a festival very much observed among us”. In Antiquities 13:13:5, Josephus relates that Alexander Jannaeus was pelted with lemons at the feast of tabernacles when he sought to offer a sacrifice at the altar. He massacred many Jews in revenge.

Note though that Peter does not offer to make a booth for God which would have been more appropriate, possibly implying that they had already prepared a booth for God and Peter is saying: “Let’s make one each for the other two as well.” Perhaps Peter said this ineptly but his crassness is probably part of Mark’s theme of making the apostles seem like idiots. Probably the ritual required booths for them all. There would have been more detail in the original tradition that Mark has omitted. Note that Matthew wants to pretend the ritual was a vision (Mt 17:9) and Luke implies it was a dream (Lk 9:32). They did not want to suggest that Jesus had been ceremonially crowned as the messiah in his lifetime.

Christians like to think that the mountain on which all this occurred was Mount Tabor, though it seems that there were people living on the domed top of this mountain at that time. Another, more likely candidate is Mount Hermon, though possibly not at the summit of the mountain itself but one of its lesser peaks. The ridge of high land of which Hermon is a part is extensive, extending south through the Golan Heights as the eastern scarp of the rift valley. The event probably occurred on this ridge somewhere near Caesarea Philippi.

Mindful of Jesus now being officially a prophet, Mark immediately makes him prophesy his own resurrection (Mk 9:9-10) which the disciples do not understand—naturally—despite the detailed explanation earlier in Mark 8:31. Jesus had the same reasons as before, if not better ones, for keeping his titles secret.

It seems that Jesus had thoughts of dying himself before the kingdom was inaugurated. He would have seen himself dying in the battle against the dark forces to allow the kingdom to begin—not on the cross. In Mark’s chronology Jesus had just been urging his men not to fear for their own lives because the righteous would nonetheless see God’s kingdom. The thought that he too would die in battle must therefore have crossed his mind but like all the righteous people in Hosea’s prophecy (Hos 6:2) he would be resurrected by God to inherit the kingdom. If references to resurrection at this early stage are genuine, they do not mean the later gospel story but the resurrection of the righteous who have fallen in the battle for the kingdom.

Hence the original context would have been Jesus explaining that he, and indeed they, might fall in battle but they need not fear because the righteous would be resurrected by God in the kingdom to come.

The point mentioned above that Philo considered that Moses was himself made divine by his theophany on Sinai, might indicate a tradition that contributed to the subsequent deification of Jesus as a consequence of his transfiguration.

The coming of the kingdom to the Essenes, if not all Jews, meant that God rejoined His people. Heaven and earth became a unity, a favourite concept of the Essenes. Now Josephus, describing the advent or appearance of God on earth when he appeared to Moses on Sinai and also later when he entered the House that Solomon consecrated for him, uses the Greek word ”parousia”, the very word used subsequently of Jesus’s supposed expected ”return” to earth on a cloud—his ”coming”. In the Haggadic tradition, the coming of God to Moses was the sixth ”parousia” of God. Parousia then must have meant an appearance of God in the world and was only applied to Jesus when the bishops decided that Jesus was another manifestation of God.

The Essene expectation was that at the end of the forty years of cosmic war, God would send his general, Michael, and his armies, to purge the world and then a ”parousia” of God would happen and heaven and earth would be united. The first revision of the expectation was that the cosmic war did not terminate, as Jesus thought, at Gethsemane, but was forty years later. Then, Jesus, not Michael, or perhaps originally, Jesus as his heavenly parallel (Zoroastrian “fravashi”), Michael, would appear with God’s armies (hosts). When Jesus in a yet later revision was identified with God, the parousia of God on earth became the parousia of Jesus, to be expected at some unknown time but always ”soon” in the future.

Jesus Announces that He is the Messiah

In Mark 6:1–6:6, Jesus comes back into his own country when we did not even know he had left it. This pericope must belong after Jesus returns from his trip to Phoenicia. He has crowned himself messiah—the transfiguration—adding prophet to his previous titles. This event seems logically to follow Jesus’s return from the mountain of the transfiguration in Mark 9:14-16.

While apparently near Caesarea Philippi on the way back from Phœnicia, in Mark 9:14–16, but with no clear indication of the location, Jesus returns from the mountain of the Transfiguration to meet a multitude who are amazed. No reason for this amazement is given and clergymen are wont to think it is because Jesus was still radiant after the Transfiguration. The real reason must be that Jesus had reappeared in public in Galilee after his period of hiding, a bold thing to do. Mark sees a parallel with Moses in Exodus 32–33 and plays it up. And in Mark 9:30–9:32, Jesus again returns to Galilee still travelling incognito. The evangelist knew nothing about the itinery of Jesus and these returns to Galilee are probably one occasion only, the most memorable one—after the Transfiguration.

In Mark 6:1–6:6, Jesus’s family are explicitly described but with no mention of Joseph—he is found nowhere in Mark—and it is not Jewish custom to refer to lineage through the mother, as here. The dogma of the perpetual virginity of the Mother of Christ had not arisen at the time of Mark so he jollily lists Mary and his brothers, James, Joses, Judas and Simon, and some sisters too.

They and others are offended by Jesus’s teaching, leading Jesus to comment that a prophet is not without honour save in his own country and among his own kin. Yet if Jesus were teaching simple honest truths why should anyone have been offended. Nor is it because he was preaching insurgency and anyone contemplating rebellion against the Romans and their Herodian puppets must be mad—it was because he now claimed to be the messiah.

The corresponding passage in Luke 4:16–24 gives much more detail. He tells us that Jesus taught in the synagogue at Nazareth. The implication is that each town, even minute ones like Nazareth, had a building called a synagogue open to all. But a synagogue in Hebrew is an assembly rather than a building. If Jesus went to a synagogue, whose was it, that of the Pharisees? Jesus was critical of the Pharisees and they of him. The only other significant group was the Essenes. If Jesus had returned home to preach—where, to use Luke’s phrase, he was brought up—the implication is that he was an Essene.

He quoted a passage from Isaiah 61:1–2:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.

The passage is from the late parts of Isaiah which were probably written by Essenes or their predecessors, the Hasidim. The language is purely Essene and messianic—just what we would have expected a Nasi like John the Baptist and now Jesus to be proclaiming. He is proclaiming an insurrection which will change the hearts of the oppressed children of Israel. Captives and prisoners will be released. He even announces the day of vengeance of our God also calling it the acceptable year of the Lord. The acceptable year of the Lord is not as the clergy maintain the era of salvation following the messiah but is the appointed time of the Lord as the Essenes would put it. This is plain because it is when God takes his vengeance. Luke does not include the final line of Isaiah’s verse 61:2—his quotation ends at acceptable year of the Lord. Clergymen argue that Jesus deliberately ended there because his message was not one of vengeance, but that is nonsense. The author of Luke or an editor ended there because he wanted to suppress the real Nazarene message!

The quotation is altered as well as curtailed. The “meek” of Isaiah is changed to the “poor” of Luke, and Luke inserts after captives, “and recovering of sight to the blind”. The Essenes knew themselves as the meek and the poor, so Jesus was not preaching good tidings to any meek or poor people but only those who were righteous, those who had repented and accepted baptism. The Nazarenes understood doubt, unbelief, opposition and apostasy in terms of metaphors of physical affliction. Offering to recover the sight of the blind, Jesus is saying that he will persuade doubters to repent and join God’s army.

Jesus boldly declares: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears”, announcing himself as That “Prophet” of Moses, he who will fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah. He symbolically proclaims it by choosing the passage where Isaiah movingly says that the spirit of the Lord was upon him, and in Luke 4:24 specifically uses the word prophet of himself. Now he is prophet, priest and prince—the messiah—the Lord hath anointed me. The age of prophecy was considered to have ended, so for Jesus to claim to be a prophet was as bold as his other claims. People were now very skeptical of him and he could not persuade any (or not many) people to join his crusade.

In Mark 9:30–9:32, Jesus predicts his death and resurrection quite explicitly for the second time. He will do it yet again to complete the set of three. If these were genuine prophecies of his own death by Jesus as theologians believe then the stupidity of the people being told, the disciples, is beyond credibility. The alternative is more credible—Jesus did not make any such explicit predictions. Jesus will have noted the likelihood that he among others would die before the arrival of kingdom which he anticipated. But that is a far cry from Mark’s predictions. Each of the three prophecies of the passion in Mark do not mention the crucifixion suggesting that Mark had something apparently prophetic to base his prophecies on, but it did not include the crucifixion.

Mark 10:32–10:34 introduces the final and most detailed prediction of the passion of Jesus and mentions Jerusalem as the destination for the first time. His followers are afraid. If theologians are to be believed it could only be because, after the two specific prophecies so far and several strong hints, the message has penetrated—they will all be in danger when Jesus is arrested and killed. But they are dolts and poltroons. They are cowards and will never understand—for Christians! To achieve Mark’s normal purpose they should have been amazed and afraid after prophecies not before, so the second part of Mark 10:32 should go logically after Mark 10:34.

The truth is that they were afraid because they were entering upon a dubious adventure. They were to seize Jerusalem and the temple from the authorities and then await the start of the cosmic battle. If this passage records anything of the Nazarene leader’s thoughts it is that he, and others, knew they would die in the battle for the kingdom—but they would be resurrected when it arrived. Matthew (Mt 20:19) is the only gospel writer to add the detail of the resurrection.

Further Reading

• More on the baptism as a coronation, John the Baptist, and John and Jesus
• More on the cult of Joshua, Moses, Joshua, and Joshua the Priest
• More on similarities and differences between Jesus and the Essenes, Nazarenes, and Essenes as militant Jewish nationalists.

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History