AW! Epistles
From Kaman
Abstract
Wednesday, September 06, 2000
Just read your excellent book Mystery of B and am starting Hidden J—great work. There’s a lot of new scholarship going into analysis of those years AD 30-70 and its quite exciting.
Many thanks for your kind words. I think you will enjoy Hidden J if you liked MOB, A book I have not read but believe is very good is by Robert Eisenman and covers the identity of James Just. It is published in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians by Element Books.
Thanks for your previous reply. We’ve just returned from a week’s camping at the Dorset Steam Fair and have been testing out plenty of fermented juices to see if they can solve as many mysteries of the universe as they’ve done for you :) . Took your book Hidden J, and enjoyed the alternative perspective. It helps throw off the shackles of earlier brain washings.
You certainly seem to have been gadding about a bit. I used to share a few ciders with a hippy couple from Kingston on Thames who were keen steam types. I used to meet them from time to time at the Ram Cider pub in Farncombe near Godalming—a place well worth visiting if it remains the same as it was about 10 years ago. The great thing about traditional cider is that you only need a few and the great mysteries either seem to be solved or become totally unimportant.
Trouble is I buy books then find I have too many to read. I have the book by Hancock somewhere and have not yet read it, but I did read the Orion Mystery which I thought was good. Of course I read the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the Messianic Legacy about ten years ago and thought both were great books for making you think, though I am more inclined to believe that Jesus was a high ranking Essene and therefore kept himself celibate because the Essenes took perfection to mean asexuality like the angels.
May I ask what your opinions on the following?
1) JN is supposed to have had 4 brothers and 2 sisters J Just and J Thomas we read something about, but Joseph and Simon seem to be non-existent in the gospels. Its a long-shot to merely compare such common names, but could Simon have been the bodyguard Peter, and Joseph have been the one of Arimathea?
2) Now what was J Thomas doing in the proceedings? He seems to turn up as an evangelist only after the drama, and heading East to die in India. D’you think it was him who accounted for (some of, the rest being psychic) the Appearances. And maybe him who was later mistaken by the Moslems to thus be still alive (= not crucified)? Is there any evidence for the Basilidean Substitution idea ?
3) J Thomas appears in painting of Last Supper, so Leonardo obviously thought he was one of the 12. And I notice in your development of the Prophesy of Betrayal (which could have given a juicy role to Thomas if he might have been J Iscariot before Mark renamed him), that you eventually decided to leave the Iscariot reference out of the Secret Testament. Was that because you think it was only a fabrication by Mark to denigrate Jews, or simply due to lack of clarifying facts as to who Iscariot was ?
4) Does the story of J Arimathea supposedly having swum across the Med with a cup between his teeth and landed in Glastonbury have any details /substantiation?
1. Could have been but there is nothing other than the name to go on and all of these were common names. Of course they were all brothers within the brotherhood of the Essenes and it is a moot point whether this monk-like brotherhood is not meant. If you accept that Mark is more reliable than other gospels then the references to Mary as Jesus’s mother are slight and the original one could have been inserted to pander to the Roman housewives and bondmaidens who were the bulk of the first congregations. In THJ (p324) however I point out that Joseph of Arimathea is acting like the next of kin in claiming the body.
2. If Thomas was Jesus’s identical twin brother as he is depicted in Leonardo’s painting, he could plainly have pretended to be Jesus. The puzzle though is why no one recognised him, either as Thomas or as Jesus. The followers do not see Jesus when they see whoever it is that they eventually take to be him. I take it that they are presented with a new Nasi -- Jesus’s successor in the Essene order. In THJ I wonder about the tradition of a substitute. It is supposed to have been Simon the Cyrenian, considered to have been a pilgrim from North Africa, but I believe there is an Aramaic word behind the apparently Greek word Cyrenian and discovering that will help to explain the puzzle.
3. Really it is because I take it to mean Judas Sikari, Judas the Deliverer, so named because of the role Jesus gave him but was unable to fulfil. So he never actually was the Deliverer. Christians lost the meaning of Sikari, mishearing it and misunderstanding it because they were Greek or Latin speaking not Aramaic, thinking it was a surname not a description. Translating from Greek into other languages Christians deliberately forced the meaning betrayer where deliverer would have been correct. Yes, the whole episode was deliberately misunderstood to add to the vilification of Jews.
4. While you were in this neck of the woods you should have called into Glastonbury where there is the Avalon Library set up to accept gifts of religious and mystical books. There might be an answer there. Geoffrey Ashe, who I believe is a founder of the Library has written some excellent books on Arthurian legend. My guess is that Joseph of Arimathea was neither a good swimmer or a good sailor and the legend is based upon some early missionary founding a church which was dedicated to Joseph of Arimathea. Later the legend came out of the dedication. It seems fairly sure that there was a church on the spot very early on—long before England was officially converted by Augustine in the 6th century.
I particularly like the focussing around your page 287 on the crucial switch in the Psychological State of JN when he starts to realise the Romans are returning unbeatably. J seems to have been so obsessed with fulfilling prophesies, that he failed to recognise Capturing salem in the first place WAS the miracle, and he should then have concentrated (as a King) on maintaining its defence. When reports started coming in later of the Romans regrouping, he seems to have thought: I’ve done my bit, now god will do the rest, and sat around watching for signs—thus proving he was subject to demonaic /distracting influences more than God (= common senses).
Next he meekly surrenders to Caiaphas /Pilate instead of following Zachariah’s third prophesy, Sod the kingdom—lets run for it boys. It looks to my overview, that J was never (from the beginning) of the right stuff to become a king in the sense of Leading any battles and actually fighting himself, but took on the role of Figurehead due to his Delusions of Grandeur when it was thrust on him by the success of his Insurrectionist Behaviours. When the crunch came and he had the chance to lead the Final Charge so as to consolidate the miracle, he backed out and chose to Suffer rather than suicide (or run for it).
So not only a Dupe of his own Devil, but a Coward as well?? (not that I’d necessarily blame him/anyone in such stressful times).
Some might argue that it WAS courageous to have stood his ground while Pilate crucified him, but that theory would need credibility added by J having publicly stated something like: I’m going to let them kill me so as to give you confidence that death is not such a fearful thing, rather than why hast thou forsaken me.
So it looks rather as tho he was a sad victim more than a hero. THE DEVILS MOST SUCCESSFUL FRONT THRUOUT HISTORY ! The main treacheries being causing people to (1) Love Enemies EXCESSIVELY, resulting in them thinking these Christians are soft, we can kick them around and nick all their stuff, and all they do is praise god (2) Lean on supernatural powers (by praying) rather than Enacting their own salvations via Common Senses. (This having serious consequences of mental instability and preparedness to believe /utter gibberish in all sorts of ways).
These type of psychological speculations almost apply not to J but to ourselves in similar situations, and we come to some opinion based on our own past responses. As to what J actually did /thought, we may never know, but the fact that the records of his experiences touch so closely on our everyday encounters (!) with devils and tax collectors, gives a model with which to compare/analyse our own minds and the scenario of possible reactions.
I agree with you that capturing Salem was Jesus’s main miracle and it has never been recognised. But he was not deliberately fulfilling prophecies. The Christian writing of the gospels give that impression because they were desperate to show Jesus as the prophesied messiah. Jesus saw the signs of the times as indicating that the biggy was on its way—Yehouah would bring in his kingdom if the Children proved that they wanted it by capturing Jerusalem. if they were determined enough to do that then God and his angels would complete the cosmic battle and evil would be forever vanquished and the Ebionites would rule over God’s kingdom.
He was possibly surprised that the miracle did not happen before the Roman counter attack and the impatience of the Apostles tends to prove this. The night of the Passover was his best chance however and it is plain, from his anguish in the garden of Zadok, that is how he saw it. We have to remember though that Jesus was not alone in his reading of the signs—the whole Essene order was responsible. That is why the Essenes stole his body after the crucixion. They took him home as a hero to be buried probably at Qumran. The whole order had read the signs wrongly but Jesus, as the leader, had suffered the ultimate punishment and had done so according to the Essene code—without complaint.
Sensible people like us would cut and run this but the Essene moral code required a false prophet to die. Judas was assigned to the task of executioner but the Temple guard arrived first and Jesus had to suffer a felon’s death.
The Essenes were extremely brave men as Josephus tells us. They were inured to pain and suffered torture readily rather than deny the law of Moses—which is really God’s law. Jesus was of this type. The whole scenario that they read in the scriptures was of God sending a miracle as long as the perfectly holy people succeeded in getting the Jews to prove that they really wanted the kingdom of God by evicting the Romans from the Temple. When the miracle did not come, nothing remained. Jesus might have had a delusion not supported by the whole Essene order but they were happy to let God prove whether he was right or wrong. Gamaliel in Acts of the Apostles takes a similar line over Peter and the first Christians. For me the only sense in the disappearance of the corpse is that the Essenes took it. The Nazarenes, mainly converts, would have known nothing of it, but the men in white at the tomb were Essenes who wore pure white linen. Added note: I normally take the meaning of Nazarene to be one of Jesus’s converts because that is what they came to be called, but originally it was one of the many names the Essenes had for themselves. Mike
So—far from being a coward, but both he and the order were seeing signs in the scriptures that were not there.
Well, throughout the march upon Jerusalem Jesus was telling his men not to fear death because they would be resurrected on the third day—all of them that had died, not just Jesus. Mark alters this into prophecies of Jesus’s own death and resurrection. The theory was that all of the dead righteous would be resurrected into the perfect kingdom of God on the third day as Hosea prophesies. So like Kamikazi warriors and Arab suicide bombers, they expected to be revived in paradise. By the time he was on the cross Jesus knew the theory was all to pot, so he was not being brave particularly as an example, but simply because he had to as a leading Essene, as the DSS indicate.
You are right, but I do think that he was heroic if not a hero. He had a moral code and stuck to it to the letter. Unfortunately, like all religious theorists. he was misguided.
You might have a point in (1) if Christians, except for a tiny minority of Amesh and monks, ever did it. Christians have always been ready to lift a fist or a sword because they never followed what their supposed leader supposedly taught. Since Jesus was plainly wrong maybe that is just as well but, if Christianity means behaving as Jesus taught, then they have never doone it.
I totally agree with (2) and the last para. When praying has an effect, it is a psychological one, helping people to find the inner strength to do difficult things. Whatever we do, WE have to do it, and take the responsibility if it is wrong as well as the praise if it is right. Gods and devils other than human ones have nothing to do with our actions.
James was the official replacement down in Salem of course, but maybe out in the fields, if Thomas was acting like J, the simpletons might have assumed it was J. except that I’d still wonder what reason would Thomas have to add any pretence to his role? Idea just come to me that it was Thomas actually seen and NOT pretending, but Marcus edited the story to make the encounters seem like psychic ones from a spirit J.
Could the substitution be just an explanation dreamed up later (in Moslem times) to account for inaccurate knowledge of Thomas existence. (since by that time the christians had destroyed most of proper scrolls, and even the Moslems were malinfluenced by gospels. Can’t feel any Essene honour in letting someonelse die instead of J.
So if Judas had a definite existence and role, rather than merely being a later fabrication, why did you omit his name from your summarial ST? [Judas is right there in the STMike].
If JN intended Judas to deliver (= kill or hand him over) to Romans, then Christians were right about the fact but wrong about the MOTIVE. Looks like JN was being stupid to have asked /ordered Judas to hand him over, rather than Judas being treacherous.
Surely it is a bit strange to dedicate a church to a relatively obscure /unimportant member of the drama ? unless some other reason. smells of lost knowledge /scrolls. We still have to account for the original inspiration for the Knights Templars in S. France around 900ad, who seem to have discovered genaeologically they were direct descendants of JN (or of his family) and which sparked them off on their trail.
My intuition is that unknown direct descendant(s) of JN escaped across the Med to Languedoc and formed the basis of subsequent Cathar /gnostic heresies. Merovingians. If that person was known (at that time) to be Arimathea, then it would give a reason for a monk in Glastonbury to honour him—otherwise there’s not enough reason to use that name.
Yes I can believe that the legend came out of the dedication. Although there was an original king Arthur, he was nothing until he became used as basis for the Knights Templar version we live with nowadays. The grail and other treasures were known /thought to be in S.France, so maybe that was just tacked onto the Glastonbury legend due to the already unusual dedication of the building.
But he was not deliberately fulfilling prophecies. Really. I thought you thought quite the opposite. What about riding on the ass and Zachariah’s alternatives etc. Mike’s added note: The ass was to announce himself as king according to prophecy but, unlike Graves and Podro and Campbell, I do not take him to have been setting up some sort of charade in which he offered himself as a victim deliberately to become the suffering servant or whatever. Mike.
Thanks again for having written your book. Your style made the details more interesting than previous stuffy writers.
PS one of the early bishops wrote a lot of sermons on the facts that Magdalene was not only Black (accounting for the Black Madonnas) but became the leader after J died, due to her being more faithful to Js original teachings at the time when Peter was swinging towards Paul. But James became the official leader, can you add anything to clarify that situation?
Thanks for your many notes once more. The truth is that Jesus and his band were never going to succeed against the Empire—it was simply too strong. As you note, it is a tribute to the commitment and bravery of the Zealots that they were able to fight the Jewish War so effectively, and to Bar Kosiba’s later rebellion when many legions were tied up for four years. The result though was not in doubt and besides having Jews scattered from Palestine many were butchered throughout the Empire. It might be tempting to think that if Jesus had been Bar Kosiba history would have been changed, but I reckon it was never on to drive the Romans out of Palestine unless God split open the Mount of Olives and sent a host of angels.
My belief is that Jesus was aware of this but was convinced that if he took Jerusalem God would respond with the host of angels. He and the other Essenes leaders had read the signs, but as the gospel Jesus is a pains to make out, no one could tell exactly when the miracle would occur except that it would be soon (after the Romans had been driven from the Holy City) but before the sun rose on the night of the Passover. Doubts probably began when the miracle was not immediate and, of course, became certainty in the garden of Gethsemane. The poor man :) knew then that he had been forsaken and the appropriateness of Psalm 22 must have forced itself on to him.
Regarding Magdalene, I take Mark’s to be the earliest and the least edited gospel, and therefore the most accurate. Mary Magdalene has no role of any consequence, nor does any other woman. The story was one of rebellion, the men involved were chaste for reasons of religious purity and women could have had little to do with the original events. Magdalene might be remembered because she was, as the gospels suggest, perhaps the first to recognise the first fruits of the general resurrection in the disappearance of the body. In this sense then she had a stronger faith in Christian terms than Peter and the Nag Hammadi gnostic texts preserve this.
Black!? In modern PC terminology they were all black! Some people seem to think even Chinese should be called black. To my way of thinking, this is purely racist—if you are not white, you are black! In fact, there is no reason why she should not have been African. The Romans had improved travel opportunities and ties with Egypt were close, the Essenes had particularly close ties with the Therapeutae of Egypt and the vessels containing the Dead Sea Scrolls were of an Egyptian design, and in the Acts of the Apostles Peter baptises a black African eunuch who was obviously a Jewish proselyte because he was up to Jerusalem to worship.
I agree that Jesus and his band were never going to succeed against the Empire. Jesus was only a Figurehead playing at becoming a king just like modern nutcases dream of being Napoleon.
If Jesus had been Bar Kosiba history would have been changed, mainly in that he would have been forgotten long ago as have thousands of other minor wars and kings. The only reason he was remembered was due to Saul’s babbling enthusiasms. Should be called Paulianity.
I thought they were all married (including J to MM at Cana) and Qumran burials etc—contrary to old ideas. Recently I read (must have been in Second Messiah if not MOB) that Peter was jealous of her proximity and favoured status next to JN and that she took over after Peter started veering towards Paul.
Black!? I dont mean negro, but many other peoples can be quite black. I mean as distinct from white /fair. Also J was supposedly short and ugly, not tall and fair as Mormons etc like to say.
Some of the Gnostics revered Mary Magdalene as superior to Peter. If you have not read it get The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels—it’s excellent stuff.
Regarding the wedding at Cana: I know it has been popular to make out that it was Jesus’s wedding and I guess that you accept it as that, but really it was an Essene ritual wedding of God’s people—Israel—to God, again signifying the freeing of Israel from the Roman yoke. The word Cana indicates it was a Zealot ceremony because Zealots were the Canaim. It is related to the raising of Jair’s daughter. The daughter is a personification of Israel again and is dead because she has notionally been violated by Rome. A ravished maiden has to die according to the scrolls so Israel was dead. Jesus brought her back to life so that she could marry God as He had always intended.
Christians had to virtually suppress the ritual wedding as too obvious in its symbolism and because they had re-written the marriage metaphors to make Jesus not God the bridegroom and the Christians as the bride not the Jews. Jesus however could not have been shown actually being a bridegroom because it might have been misunderstood in just the way that latterly it has been anyway—that he actually married. He never did. He had no descendants and the Holy Blood is an interesting myth. I know you will disagree, but there it is! Very few women’s bodies were found at Qumran and they were probably ones who unfortunately died at the Annual Renewal of the Covenant—otherwise Pentecost to Christians—when all Essenes apparently made a pilgrimage to Qumran for re-grading.
