Propensity is probability with intent—it exerts an influence on events as if it were a physical field like an electric or gravitational field.

Who Lies Sleeping?

The Apostolic Age Begins 1.2

A Brotherhood of Equals—a “koinonia”
Sonship
Post-Crucifixion Activity

Abstract

Luke’s main purpose in Acts is to show that Christianity is the fulfilment of Judaism. It depicts the spread of the gospel as under divine protection and accompanied by signs and wonders even though Jesus had said clearly that there would be no such signs. The particular sign of the miraculous conversion of Paul is repeated several times. Acts fails to mention that James is Jesus’s brother, though Paul in a letter written much earlier admits it. Nor does Acts say anything about the martyrdom of James, and wrongly says Peter succeeded Jesus as the leader of the Jerusalem Church when all other evidence shows it was James. The lie was inserted by the Church of Rome, traditionally founded by Peter, to give it greater authority. It also aims to show that Romans are friendly and sympathetic people except when Jews annoy them.

A Brotherhood of Equals—a “koinonia”

Koinonia. Brotherhood. Fellowship. Communism!

The first supporters of the Church in the gentile world were women. Yet Jesus probably had no family other than his brethren in the Essene organization. Joseph is never mentioned in the earliest gospel and Mary is not called Jesus’s mother, though “the carpenter” is called the son of Mary in Mark 6:3. We have to assume that Jesus is the carpenter, although no one has so far said so. Elsewhere Mary is mentioned as the mother of James and Joses and Jude and Simon but not Jesus! The evidence that Jesus had a nuclear family is therefore flimsy in the first gospel.

How were the bishops to explain that no stories were emerging about his family life? Were Roman housewives to deduce that Jesus, the founder of their new faith, was from some sort of brotherhood like that of Mithras that admitted only men? The bishops first answer was that Jesus had rejected his family and they him, an argument that suited them because they wanted Jesus to have been totally rejected by the Jews—even his family—to make him acceptable to gentiles.

The New Testament treatment of the family of Jesus is an attempt by Christian editors to dissociate their god from his origins. After the quarrel reported in the gospels when Jesus leaves his family in disgust they are scarcely heard of again until the crucifixion. The initial situation was confused when the first Christians wanted to prove to doubters that Jesus was the messiah. They inserted genealogies which required him to have a known family. Later still, gentile Christians invented the virgin birth, confusing the initial certainty even more. From then on some of Jesus’s brother Essenes had to become his kin.

In Luke 14:26, Jesus advocates “hating” one’s father and mother, yet Jesus accepted the Law of Moses, for which honour of parents was a central plank. This is a difficult passage for Christians, but, if it is not a simple interpolation, there is a possible explanation. Most of Jesus’s followers were Hellenised Jews and collaborators with the Romans—sinners and publicans, respectively. Among them must have been Jews whose parents were also Hellenised—the Greeks had influenced Judah for four centuries. Unless they followed their children and accepted the Nazarenes, they were to be hated because they were unrepentant apostates who would never enter God’s kingdom. Essenes were to hate their enemies, even if they were parents, apostate ones.

The truth behind all this speculation about the “brethren of the Lord” of the New Testament is that all of Jesus’s brothers and sisters were simply colleagues in the Essene movement. It was a brotherhood and they called each other brother, a habit which they passed on to their successors, the Christian Church and which lasts until this day, in monasteries if nowhere else. The Nazarenes, like the Essenes, were a brotherhood, explaining why Jesus, putative son of a virgin, had so many brothers. Proof is that in the Acts of Peter and Paul, Paul is described as Peter’s brother(!), showing that sectarian brother might properly be understood when the word “brother” occurs.

S Jerome tried to explain this by saying cousins were brothers and sisters! He cited Paul:

Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.
Galatians 1:18

From this, James was understood by Paul to have been one of the twelve apostles. The list of the twelve apostles (Mk 3:13-19, Mt 10:1-4) has two Jameses, one the son of Zebedee and the other the son of Alphaeus. James the son of Zebedee was killed and his death is recorded in the bible, so he could not have been James the “brother of the Lord” who is mentioned long after the death of the other James. So, James the son of Alphaeus must have been James, the brother of the Lord! Alphaeus is not Joseph, so the word “brother” in this usage cannot mean siblings.

Both Mark and John gave a list of women present at the scene of Jesus’s crucifixion:

There were also women looking from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less (Greek, mikrou) and of Joses, and Salome.
Mk 15:40

Meanwhile standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.
Jn 19:25

S Jerome understood John 19:25 to mean that Mary of Clopas was the sister of Jesus’s mother, also called Mary, but she need not have been “his mother’s” sister, because the passage is ambiguous and might refer to four particular women not three, though the natural reading is that Mary of Clopas was the sister of Jesus’s mother. Moreover, if brother does not necessarily mean blood brother, then neither does sister mean a blood sister, especially as it would require two blood sisters to have the same name, Mary! Therefore, these women were more likely to have been sisters in a community like nuns were in the later Catholic Church.

In any case, Mary of Clopas in John seems to be identified with Mary, the mother of James the Less and Joses given in Mark. James the Less and Joses seem the same as those given in Mark:

Is not this the carpenter (Mt, “carpenter’s son”), the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?
Mk 6:3: Mt 13:55-56

So, now Mary of Clopas is the mother of the brothers and sisters of Jesus the carpenter, or son of the carpenter, elsewhere identified with Joseph. If “of Clopas” means “wife of Clopas”, as many translators assume, Clopas must be Joseph. For Christians, Mary of Clopas has to be the sister of Mary to avoid this snarl up, but the suggestion that here we are using family relationships as signals of seniority in a fellowship like the Catholic monastic communities is more likely.

The word used for brother in the Greek New Testament is “adelphos” which means full blood brotherhood. Unfortunately, we cannot assume therefore that the brothers of Jesus were his blood brothers because the same word is used less accurately in the Septuagint to translate words which must have meant nephews—Lot and Abraham in Genesis 14:14,16 and Jacob and Laban in Genesis 29:12, 15—or cousins—in 1 Chronicles 23:22—are meant. S Jerome himself explained the word “brother”, giving examples from the bible. It can mean mean brother by kinship, race, or love, the latter suggesting a voluntary community of brothers and sisters. Jerome opts for the first choice in that they were cousins, and so related by kinship but not actually brothers. But much more convincing is the last, that they were voluntarily each other’s brothers and sisters in a “koinonia”, a community of equals. At a later date, the risen Jesus…

…appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time… then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
1 Cor 15:5-7

Here Paul confuses the issue, if the passage has not been edited later, by referring to the twelve apostles and all the apostles, as if they were separate groups, but he also speaks of 500 brothers! Are these 500 blood brothers of the Lord? Jesus had a very large family indeed for a man whose mother was a perpetual virgin. The natural interpretation is that here again the word “brother” means members of a fellowship, confirming that the interpretations from earlier in the New Testament mean the same.

If Jesus was a senior member of the order of pious Essenes who did not marry but took in waifs and strays, he might have been such an orphan himself, and his family would not have been known. Then, the references to Jesus’s family in the gospels are bogus. Indeed, they have no bearing on the story, are slight and look as if they could have been inserted, mainly because Jesus had brothers but they were his brethren in the brotherhood, not his natural brothers. The earliest bishops could not have tolerated the idea getting loose that Jesus was one of a brotherhood and not unique. So Mary and the brothers and sisters of Jesus were introduced in Mark to makes it seem that blood bothers and sisters were meant. Gentiles introduced Joseph and Mary.

Joseph, who is not mentioned in the earliest gospel, might have been introduced to get Samaritan converts because they had an idea of a messiah son of Joseph, so it was made literally true for their benefit.

Moreover, there were no women in the story yet women were the first recruits, the female proselytes of Judaism in the Roman Empire. They were glad to join this Judaism for gentiles because they would have more success in persuading their husbands to join, circumcision having been declared unnecessary. To further this idea, Jesus had to seem like an ordinary man whereas he had been brought up in the male oriented and dominated Essene society.

Sonship

The word “son” simply meant follower—Laurel and Hardy were Sons of the Desert, a spoof fellowship exactly derived from this Semitic practice. All this is as confusing to us as the Christian use of “son of Man” would have been to an Aramaean, for whom it simply meant a “man”, the real sense in which it is used by Jesus and others in the New Testament. James was therefore the brother of Jesus in the sense of being of the same brotherhood, and probably of the same rank—the leader. Both were the Bar Abbas, the son of the Father, and therefore notionally brothers. The gospel writers could not even suggest this having made Barabbas into a bandit.

Joachim Jeremias points out an increasing tendency for Jesus to call God “Father” as we move from earlier to later gospels. There are 3 instances in Mark, 4 in Q, 4 in L, 31 in M, and 100 in John! Instances of Jesus calling God “My Father”, are 0 in Mark, 1 in Q, 2 in L, 12 in M and 32 in John. The growth of the frequency of use might show the gradual deification of Jesus—only a god or demigod has a father who is a god. It is hard to understand why Luke, as a refined gospel, does not use it more often, if this is the case. The frequent usage is in the more markedly Jewish gospels—gentile sources avoiding it. Q then stands out as odd, but Q is an earlier document and the practice of calling god as Father might have been associated with a later imminent eschatology.

Galatians 4:6 makes it clear that baptism conferred a theological sonship on to the person baptised. Those who have received sonship may address God as “Abba.” That will show the origin of the title “Barabbas”, and its misquotations as Barnabas and Barsabbas. For the Essenes, righteous and repentant people were all “sons of God”, and as such were a holy priesthood. This might have seemed far-fetched to the gentiles at first. They thought being a son of god was unusual and to have everyone being declared one might not have seemed sensible. They were content though that the great man himself should have the title.

James was “the Just” and his reputation was that of a devout man. The letter attributed to him in the New Testament is reminiscent of the scrolls, and gives a feel of the original Palestinian fount of Christianity, the Nazarene Church. The Epistle of James the Just (or Righteous) was regarded by Christians as far removed as Eusebius and Luther as unsuitable for inclusion in the canon. Its language is much like that ascribed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels and its sentiments very much like those of the Qumran Community, for example in emphasising the spiritual benefits of poverty. It is a document of the style of a Qumran exhortation with no mention of a dead and resurrected redeemer and indeed scarcely a mention of Jesus at all, This also supports the idea that the Nazarenes were a sect which existed before the crucifixion of Jesus, and, indeed, that it was not originally a religion “of Jesus” but one of righteousness and correct living which Barabbas had served as an unusual leader.

Early tradition attributes to James the Nazarite vow, seemingly, in his case, permanent, he is shown as kneeling to worship daily in the Temple at Jerusalem until his knees became calloused and later dying a martyr’s death for his convictions. All icons of Jesus show him with uncut hair (although early ones followed Greek conventions and did not, showing Jesus like Orpheus as an androgynous youth—like an angel) suggesting he also was a Nazarite. James might have been the Nasi who succeeded Jesus.

The Church led by James, explicitly called the brother of Jesus, was a Jewish sect, orthodox in all respects except for their belief that the Messiah had appeared in the person of Barabbas who had died a felon’s death, hanging from a tree, but had been resurrected and would “soon” (within their own lifetime) return with the hosts of Heaven to free the Jews from persecution. Eusebius in his history of the church tells us that the Jerusalem Church continued to sacrifice in the Temple and to keep the law even after the gentile churches had split away. Soon we hear of the Ebionite Christians, who revered Jesus, accepted the Mosaic Law, and retained, as Jews, the practice of circumcision, contrary to the teaching of Paul.

The Jerusalem Church was an exclusively Jewish community, bound by the Law of Moses, and following the Mosaic Law in its worship and practice. It had its own assembly, and used the Temple. The Nazarenes knew Barabbas as a devout Jew, who had not repudiated the Torah, indeed who was zealous for the Law. His Sabbath cures were not against the Law. Even in Acts 5:34-40 the Sanhedrin continues to accept the activities of the apostles. They were still Jews.

The only difference in the two sets of beliefs was that the Nazarenes had put in an extra stage, that of the suffering and sacrifice of the Son of God before he returned on a cloud to inaugurate the kingdom, completing the victory already begun. They believed they were living in the End Time, the days just before the inauguration of the kingdom of God on earth when the pure would be selected to rule the world as the Psalms of Solomon makes clear.

Emphatically they did not regard Barabbas as divine. Not only would that have been blasphemous but his brothers and sisters in the Essene confraternity would have regarded it as absurd. They had known Barabbas all their lives and would have been aware more than anyone of his humanity. Since a Jewish messiah could not be divine, they regarded him as human even though God had revived him from the dead! In Acts 2:22 Peter does not describe Jesus as a god but as “a man accredited to you by God”—a special man, yes, but a man nonetheless. The evidence even of the gospels is that Jesus could not have contemplated the blasphemy of a man claiming to be a god.

Post-Crucifixion Activity

Curiously after Barabbas’s death, in many ways little was different for the Jews in the Jerusalem Church. They were Nazarenes, a variety of Essenes—not the monastic Essenes of Qumran but more like the village Essenes. As Nazarenes they had been Apocalyptic Jews—they still were, but now expected the messiah who would return on a cloud to be their late leader Jesus Barabbas. Before they had been the Elect preparing themselves through purity for the End Time—now the End Time had begun and the need for purity was absolutely pressing. Before they had had a set of complex Rules designed to ensure righteousness—the same rules applied. Before they had been certain they were the Chosen Ones of the New Covenant—now they were ecstatic with the certainty and wanted every Jew to join before Jesus returned to start the kingdom of God.

Considering the apparent failure of their Messiah, Acts tells us the number of disciples in Jerusalem greatly increased in response to the efforts of the apostles. They were surprised to find themselves enjoying such success in winning Jewish proselytes that even priests adopted the new faith. Few, probably none, of these new proselytes would have been gentiles though many may have been Hellenized Jews, considered as apostates or backsliders by the orthodox. Orthodox Jews feared that the whole population would be converted. A century later Tacitus writes that the death of Jesus was a blow…

…which, for a time, checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it broke out again, and spread with increasing vigour, not only in Judaea…but even in the city of Rome.

The Recognitions of Clementine, a third century work possibly based on Nazarene tradition, confirms this success.

What was the reason for it? Ordinary Jews were superstitious and demoralised. Why should a failed Messiah have posthumously appealed to them? He must have done something memorable.

Jesus had spread the word that the day of judgement was at hand. Indeed twice in Matthew (Mt 16:28 and Mt 24:34) he promised to his disciples the kingdom within a generation.

The converts of the simple of Ephraim thought that the Righteous would be raised from the dead after God’s day of Vengeance. At the inauguration of the kingdom, the righteous would all rise from the dead to look upon the face of God. When rumours circulated that the tomb of Jesus was empty, they jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had been resurrected as the first of the righteous. The early Christian writers prove this. In Revelation 1:5, Jesus is:

The first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth.

Here the author of Revelation also declares Jesus to be the Nasi (the Prince). Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:20: He is:

Risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.

Both quotations show that the first Christians thought that with Jesus the general resurrection had begun. He is the “first” in both cases, showing that others were to follow. Matthew even says that other saints were indeed resurrected. In a religious hysteria maybe some of disciples thought they had seen the risen Jesus.

But even in those credulous times, stories of a man rising from the dead would not have been compelling enough to win over crowds unless there was something with which it was associated that was memorable. Barabbas was described as a notable prisoner (Mt 27:16) who had led an insurrection in Jerusalem. Jesus was notable because he led the Nazarenes to victory over the Jerusalem garrison, purifying the despoiled bride, Israel, bringing her back to life to meet God as his bride. The crucifixion of Jesus did not alter that fact, and his apparent resurrection proved that God had returned. So, the followers of Jesus continued to preach what Jesus had believed when he was alive—the kingdom of God was about to start—but now they had proof! The death and resurrection of the messenger proved his message—the bridegroom was at the door!

In the beginning of Acts (1:6), the apostles show that, even after the death of Jesus, they expected him to conclude his mission of the Jewish Messiah—to retrieve the Jewish kingdom from the enemy as a national saviour, asking the risen Jesus:

Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?

It is difficult to understand why this episode should have been included unless it was genuine tradition—it was not what the later church taught. In Acts 15:16, James, the leader of the Jerusalem Church, was still expecting a Jewish superstate ruling the world. This was no other-worldly place and James argues that there is no need to convert gentiles because they would be judged on entry to the Jewish theocracy. He was still expecting the restoration of the kingdom and quotes Amos 9:11 to prove it. This passage in Amos concludes with the restoration of the Children of Israel to their land:

And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.
Amos 9:15

Who then were the disciples asking to restore the kingdom? Jesus was dead but they took someone to be Jesus after the crucifixion. It could only have been the new “Jesus.” Jesus was an Essene title, perhaps that of the Nasi, and a new one had been appointed by the Essenes to succeed Jesus. The Nasi’s reply:

And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power,

shows that the apostles were not themselves Essenes but the Simple of Ephraim, Jewish converts to the Essene belief in the coming kingdom. Essene initiates would have been taught these things, but the Nazarenes had not been taught them. Yet Jesus, at the end, had seemed so certain.

They concluded the only mistake Jesus had made was to expect the angelic host immediately after the victory. The body missing from the tomb proved that Jesus had been resurrected—no one else was, despite Matthew’s imagination, and the disciples concluded the forty year cosmic battle between good and evil must follow before the general resurrection of the righteous into the kingdom. They were not at the end of forty years of cosmic battle but near the beginning of it. Now, Jesus would return as the archangel Michael at the head of the host of angels and the righteous would then be resurrected when the forty years was up.

So, the initial message of the apostles in Jerusalem was that the Nazarene victory (nasach) meant Israel would “soon” be freed. Jesus would “soon” return. Of course, he did not. Forty years later, when nothing had happened, the original tradition—now seen to be wrong—had to be garbled by the bishops. The definite promise of the kingdom within “forty years” was deformed by the bishops into a vague dalliance of Jesus on the earth for “forty days”, before his ascension.

He shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
Acts 1:3

The common scriptural reading of days for years offered an explanation for their flock’s previous “misunderstanding”. “The things pertaining to the kingdom of God” meant the expectation of the miracle on the Mount of Olives. Luke, in Acts 1:12, belatedly reveals that these events took place on the Mount of Olives.

The bishops could now explain that the travellers from Palestine were “nearly” right about the miracle expected on the Mount of Olives. It was where Jesus had ascended into heaven to sit on his father’s right hand. Jesus had not expected an army of angels which did not come, but he would return with a host of angels at his Parousia, on the self same spot.

The ascension was composed to provide spurious explanations of Nazarene tradition. Jesus was depicted as being taken up into heaven where the Essenes expected the Archangel Michael to appear with a host of saints and angels in his role as the one “like unto the Son of man” of Daniel. A lonely pair of angels, served to explain the tradition of the angelic hosts, and they it is who announce that Jesus would return in the manner of the genuine tradition—at his Parousia, but no timescale is given. Now “parousia” really means “presence” not “return” and it obviously refers to the “presence of God”, called in Hebrew, “shekinah”. The presence expected at the miracle was that of God. It was God’s kingdom. The “presence” expected at the miracle had to be transferred to Jesus, assisting the elevation of Jesus to the godhead.

Only Luke mentions the ascension into Heaven—in his gospel where Jesus was “carried up” and Acts where he was “taken up” and “received” into a cloud. The words in Mark, probably written before the conclusion of the forty years, are simply that Jesus was received up into heaven, and even these are in the last twelve verses now considered to be added. Luke’s pious lies face us with an astonishing event, reputedly seen by many but recorded only by one. It simply is not credible that people seeing such an astonishing occurrence would not report it later. Plainly, it is a fiction and one in the nature of gods.

The two “angels”, actually described simply as men in white, addressed Jesus’s followers as “Galilaeans”, though after the entry into Jerusalem, Jesus’s followers must have been from all Jewish communities showing that “Galilaeans” was an alternative name for the band and not a description of their country of origin as Christians have always pretended. Though Christians always maintain that these men in white were angels, the men who always wore sparklingly white clothes were Essenes.

Jesus, before his ascension, insists in Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:4 that the apostles should not leave Jerusalem after the crucifixion, when the disciples will sensibly have escaped to Galilee, out of direct Roman jurisdiction, as the young man in white tells them to in Mark’s gospel (Mk 16:7). Luke’s purpose in this pretence is to disguise the fact that the followers of Jesus had any reason to escape anywhere, Christianity being purely innocent, and also his desire to show the spread of the religion as starting from the Holy city.

The truth is that, immediately after Barabbas had been crucified, his followers had indeed fled. Many had been killed in Jerusalem and more had been crucified by Pilate—they did not want to stay around to find out whether there would be more arrests. Peter, the gospels admit, cut off a man’s ear, the merest indication Barabbas’s gang used force resisting arrest. He was too scared to admit that he was a disciple and denied it three times.

Yet in Acts 1:13, Peter and the apostles, together with Mary and “the women”, are active again in Jerusalem shortly afterwards. The mention of Mary and the women is probably spurious—Luke introducing women to pander to the early gentile congregations—but reflects genuine tradition in that many Nazarenes had wives. Most of them were not Essenes, unless they were village Essenes. They were converts and perhaps the converts of the perfectly holy men ultimately became village Essenes.

The number of “brethren” or disciples present is about 120. The evangelist implies that each tribe of Israel, or each apostle, has a minimum of ten followers. This echoes the Essene rule which declares that each group of ten must have among their number a priest or a levite, and therefore implies that the apostles had a priestly function—the beginning of the “Apostolic Succession”.

They met in an upper room, perhaps one in which the Last Supper was held. That room was approached secretly because the apostles were being sought by the Romans. In Acts 1:13 the word used for “to abide” “(katameno)” implies in the Greek “privately” or “alone.” They did not abide there openly but privately. They were still in hiding!

The fourth gospel makes it clear they were in hiding, meeting only in secrecy, because doors were shut when they assembled. The apocryphal Gospel of Peter says explicitly that the apostles were sought by the authorities as malefactors who wanted to set fire to the Temple. How then were they able to continue to proclaim their messiah, only half-heartedly hindered by the civic authorities, as Acts maintains, after an uprising?

The answer lies in events in the Roman administration. Pilate was withdrawn to Rome in 36 AD and the executive of the Empire changed with the death of Tiberius in 37 AD. After an interregnum the new administrators would have taken office with new concerns. The remnants of Barabbas’s band then felt able to return from Galilee and tentatively to resume activity. The activity now was probably not revolution—the revolutionary act of capturing Jerusalem had been done—but persuading people that the messiah was Barabbas and that he was soon to return on a cloud with a heavenly host as in Daniel.

Most Jews believed in life after death, only the Sadducees did not, and talk of the recently deceased Nasi returning on a cloud with a heavenly host to realise God’s will, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel, renewed their faith in the messiah just when it had apparently been frustrated. The message that had evidently been fitfully received in Jesus’s lifetime became compelling after the Nazarene victory and his death and the church benefited from apocalyptic hysteria.

At the beginning of Acts, Peter preached that Jesus had brought God home. Later, of course, new excuses had to be found, and since the gospels were written later, they already reflect them. The new excuse was that Jesus was not a warrior messiah nor a false prophet but was the suffering servant of Isaiah. Like Jesus, this scorned man was sentenced to a dishonourable death, remaining silent in his defence, and was killed but was rewarded with victory after death.

The message of John the Baptist referred to in Acts 1:5 was that “one would follow him who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Mt 3:11), the point being that God’s cleansing fire would purify the earth, burning up sin and corruption, and yet spare the souls of the righteous to be resurrected in the kingdom of God. Luke revises this to prepare for his composition of the Pentecostal appearance of the Holy Spirit as “tongues of fire”.

For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

Baptism with the Holy Spirit now meant the donation of spiritual gifts not the purification of the world by fire, further revision of the original message.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.