Abstract

Saturday, 05 March 2005

Rabbi Rosen (Continued)

“So Islam agrees with them that Jesus was a prophet. The gentile Christians between 70 ands 130 AD separated from the ideas of the original Jerusalem Church. The original Essene idea was that the archangel Michael would lead the hosts of heaven. Then, for Christians, the hosts of heaven would be led by Jesus at his second coming, to end 40 years of cosmic battle between good and evil. What then had happened to the angel Michael? The answer to this conundrum is that Jesus was the archangel Michael, a view supported by the Gnostic sects which saw Michael and Satanael as the two sons of God.”

Maybe, but the Gnostics came later and were a Hellenistic syncretism of the Christian and Judaic myths. IT is anachronistic to take them as a source, because they came AFTER the church Gentilised and broke from Judaism. They were thoroughly gentiles and even tried to take the Gentilisation process much firther, by jettisoning the OT completely and declaring the G-d of the OT as the devil, Satan, the G-d of evil as opposed to the G-d of the NT which was good.

Mike

No one knows when Gnosticism began. Christianity makes it almost contemporary with apostolism in that Simon Magus was supposed to have been the first Gnostic. Christianity was itself a syncretism of Hellenistic and Jewish myths, and Gnosticism might have been a parallel but different formulation of it. The fact that Simon Magus was a magus seems to me to be significant because it suggests an alternative route from Persian religion into the melting pot. Persian religion was manifestly dualistic, but Judaism is not. Perhaps the Rabbis suppressed Satan as well as apocalyptic. In any event, it cannot be said with certaintly that Gnosticism was not contemporary with the early Christians. What matters, though, is that the dualism of Persian religion must have been known. Mithras was the face of Ahuramazda, and there was a wicked spirit called Ahriman, who logically also had his public face. In Christianity it was named Satan and in Gnosticism Satanael. Which came first. Satanael is more Jewish as a God’s name since it has “el” in it. The evidence indicates that the duality of Satan and Christ which appears clearly in Christianity and in Gnosticism has been suppressed in Judaism.

“The archangel Michael is the Jewish form of Mithras, the face of the Persian transcendent god, Ahuramazda, so Michael is the visible face of Yehouah. So, Jesus is God—or an aspect of Him. It is a moot point whether any observant Jews can have gone this far. The general view is that they could not have, but Ahuramazda was also an exclusively good god who eventually became Mithras to the Zoroastrians of Asia Minor. Naive people cannot be stopped from believing what appeals to them most. Anyway, that is for experts like yourself to debate.”

I do not know of any such currents in ancient Judaism that would deify a man or consider him the presence of G-d on earth. Judaism did eventually develop something remotely similar, but NOT regarding a human. It was Shekhina, or divine presence of G-d. In later times though, including modern times, there were in Pharisaic/Rabbinism some examples where sects have gone this far, including in modern times a Rabbi from New York which was though by his followers and a few times declared himself G-d. But to my knowledge nothing of the sort happened in ancient times. The idea of Moshiack was there, true, but it was not taken to be a identification with G-d until the 1666 Messianic fervour which caught a half of the worlds Jews in its maelstrom. But that is 16 centuries too late and it was greatly influenced by the Christian and Islamic milieu, hardly a sampling of Jewish thought around the time of Yeshu. It might have happened as you suggest, but not to my knowledge.

In Persian religion, God has several aspects, most obviously the Holy Spirit that also appears in Christianity. In Judaism, he seems to be the archangel Michael, but He is certainly the Angel of the Lord, whoever this is in the angelology. Angels in the Jewish scriptures commonly appear as if they are ordinary men, as they do in the Christian gospels. Plainly in both Christianity and Judaism God can appear as a man. There is therefore a basis in Judaism for it. The suggestion here is that the Essenes, from what we can read in the Scrolls, believed the hosts of heaven would be led by Michael. Christians modified it so that the hosts of heaven would be led by Jesus Christ on his return. The only conclusion I can see in this is that the Christians identified their dead hero with the archangel Michael. If Michael was accepted as the face of God, then Jesus becomes the face of God, and so is God.

“It is not necessary for this hypothesis, though it might help it, if an Essene sect could have had such a view even inchoately before the Christian schism.”

True, it is not crucial for the hypothesis, but it would have been nice to have it recorded. Then again, it might have existed and been lost or expunged.

That’s right.

“Perhaps so, up to a point, but in those days absolute control was much more difficult even than today, when sects divide like rabbits. The spallated state of Jewish belief even in Palestine is utterly clear. “Where is the Jewish Liberation Front?” “He’s over there!” (Monty Python’s Life ofBrian). It must have been the same in the Diaspora. As for proof, it is wonderful to have, but there is no proof that things are as they are presented by Christians.”

True. Even IF the Christian story were accurate, it has to be verified and confirmed by outside sources to be accepted as factual. That is because one can not testify for himself and be believed without any corroborative evidence. And as far as Christian history and claims there is no outside corroboration. A few faked and interpolated texts that do exist, do not count on account of their being doctored and plastered over the original texts which did not contain these claims. In short they are pious lies so they must be discarded.

“Since they had propaganda reasons for changing the story, one can guess with some confidence that their story is not true history, should it not be obvious anyway. I say again that the best hyothesis is the one that offers the best explanation of as many of the most important facts as possible, without having to stretch reality into the fantastic.”

Of course.

“I think it is explained by the antagonism between Rome and the Palestinian Jews which exploded in the Jewish War of 66 AD. This war brought out into the open what had been known only in some Jewish communities before—Jesus was an earlier Jewish rebel just like the latest ones, a Jewish troublemaker.”

Despite the long history of pogroms and persecutions that his Gentile followers unleasged over the centuries against the Jews, I CANNOT regard Yeshu as a bandit or troublemaker. He was if he existed, and your theories are quite plausible, a patriot, who wanted freedom for his country and his people from Roman occupation. In my eyes, such a man counts as great patriot and freedom fighter. Yes, the Romans of that time might have viewed his as a trouble maker, but I view him as a Judean patriot. There is nothing wrong with a man fighting for the freedom of his country and his people. Even if the Gentile Church abused Jews in his name. Yeshu, if he existed as you portray him was a great Jew. Even if he lost the contest with the Romans.

I am, of course, categorising him as the Romans would, not as the Christians, or even the Palestinian Jews at the time would (except the collaborators). As we know only too well in this day and age, one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.

“The efforts of the bishops to hide this drove a wedge between the orthodox Jews and the Hellenised/gentile sect which eventually left the gentiles in charge.”

As I exposed above, in the beginning of this email, I do think that the Romans had a hand in changing the Church doctrines outside Judea. IT is logical, but there is little evidence left by the Romans on this. (They would have been dumb if they did leave traces, as it would lead to exposure and the ploy would have failed). But the metamorphoses of the Church after 70 CE, does support this hypothesis, especially since in 132 the Judean Church (not only the church outside Judea/Palestine) did NOT join the other sects in the fight against Rome.

The story of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, read with suspicion, reveals him as a Roman agent provocateur. I have pages on it, if you have not read them.

“I cannot see it. Some might have joined them to find an alternative home, but I think that many were scattered into the diaspora, and being disliked by the Pharisee led synagogues, they joined the Christians. Both Sadducees and Essenes were priestly sects, and had some things in common from that, even though the Essenes despised the Sadducees. Once the ties to the Jerusalem Church were severed or even weakened enough, the colonial churches could accept Sadducees into them.”

Dear Dr Mike, when I said the Sadducees disappeared from history, I did not mean a physical extermination (though the top Sadducees might well have been killed off by the Romans and by the other Sects during the war against Rome and the civil war within Judea and Jerusalem), but I only meant their survival as organised party/sect. Also, the Pharisees had a dual existence, BOTH as a lesser Temple/priestly party/sect, AND as Rabbis/teachers roaming the country side and other cities of Judea and the larger Palestine. (Perhaps to some extent they were also present in cities in diaspora) This dual nature in fact explains why the Sadducees went extinct while the Pharisees continued to exist—they did not totally depend on the Temple.

I know you were not saying they were exterminated, but you seemed to be saying they became Ebionites. That is what I could not see. They were Christians all right but presumably Christians as Jesus might have exoected them to be—aware of the spiritual benefits of poverty. The Sadducees had been the ruling class, and, while not all were loaded, they were comfortably off even in the villages, and used to having privileges. Joining the Christian sects in the diaspora led by Hellenised Jews and expatriot Essenes dismayed by the turn of events in Judaea seems more likely. If any Pharisees had priestly functions, it will be because some Sadducees had changed allegiance to the Pharisee party. It cannot have been many.

“24 hours is a long time in politics! It is a question of how principled these people were, or how committed to their beliefs. Influential and wealthy Sadducees given the choice of working by the sweat of their brow to earn a living when the temple closed, or becoming a Christian bishop, given the chance, would have chosen the latter, or enough of them would to help swell the Christian ranks.”

It is not merely a function of the Sadducees loyalty to their beliefs or conviction of their beliefs. It is rather the fact that they had very few skills outside being priests. (Josephus was one of the lucky few to be taken to the Roman court and be a court lackey, writing drivel that the Romans wanted to hear; but few others were so lucky. Most died in Jerusalem. The few who might have survived-there weren’t that many Sadducees to begin with-were relatively low ranked). So it is possible that some lower rank Sadducees found a place in the Church ranks. If they did, their usually anti-war stance and more moderate/sober approach to the Roman superpower would have made them just the kind of pliable material that the Romans would have looked for in their policy to moderate the church. Their extensive literary and scriptural knowledge would have been well suited, since the gentile flock and the Hellenised Jewish flock would have been weak on OT knowledge. They would have been the perfect tools to carry out this policy. This line of thought may unlock some more doors to this mystery, don’t you think?

As I said, they were out of a job! Joining the Christians in the diaspora would have offered them a natural home that would allow them to aspire to a job and the respect of a small community, not dissimilar to the position they had formerly, especially the provincial Sadducees. Your further observations are pertinent. We agree on this.

“Essenic principles would have been watered down as the senior Essenes were left behind in the Jerusalem Church, leaving less committed people in charge.”

Actually, there was no Jerusalem church, since the whole city was wiped out. There might have been some surviving Church left in Judea/Palestine, but its leadership would have been decapitated. The Diaspora Church was in effect headless from 70 CE onwards. This of course opened the way to fast innovations and metamorphoses in the Diaspora Church, unlike the more conservative Ebionite and Nassarenes of Judea who still did not bring themselves to accept Yeshu as G-d even as far as the 6th century CE.

I noted above that the church of the Palestinian Jewish Christians we call the Jerusalem Church. We don’t know whether that was its name for itself (they probably called themselves “The Poor” (Ebionites—Paul was collecting for “The Poor” in Jerusalem), but it is a clear name for our purposes, and does not necessitate it being based in Jerusalem after the war, though I don’t see why some of its remaining members should not have returned to Jerusalem. It must have been thrown out after Bar Kosiba’s revolt because it remained Jewish. The gentile Christians by then were distinct and were allowed a church in the city.

“It is another reason why the early church was so protean. It was Jewish but not Jewish, Essenic but not Essenic, a Mystery Religion but not a mystery religion, and so on, until it was a new religion suited to wealthy Romans, and then it took over the known world.”

Amazing. I was thinking/remarking the same thing. It is this flexibility without the fear of breaking under the bending that has made Christianity such a successful religion (2.1+ billion today) It is about twice as large as the second largest (Islam: 1.2 billion) Other religions would have disintegrated if they changed doctrinally as much as Christianity did/does, yet Christianity grows while doing it. I know of no other such protean and resilient religion.

I guess that I am among them, but can hardly be called a Christian in fact. I wonder how many of the two billion are practising Christians.

“Of course. It illustrates that the Temple had no overall control in Judaea, and many of the factions in Palestine will have had their supporters abroad. The cristiani mentioned in the early first century Roman histories were not Christians, as Christians always like to claim, but messianic Jews of various persuasions, some of whom might indeed have been Christians, but not all by any means.”

Mike, the Temple had no overall control even over Jerusalem! It depended on the Roman puppets and Roman governors and troops to maintain order and its own authority. They were only in control of the Temple and its dogma. The enforcement of these was tenuous, and from time to time a hot headed rebel would create troble, take over the temple temporarily etc, and that mad their reliance on Roman puppets and governors even greater. It also forced them (Sadducees) to bring the more moderate of the Messianists (the Pharisees) into the Temple priesthood and the Sanhedrin. IT was a way of buying their help in keeping things quiet in the poor quarters of the city and outside it, lest the Romans use disturbances as a pretext to annex the whole province and destroy the Temple, which unfortunately is what did happen.

Earlier you said to me, “Could be, but the link of the Hellenised Jews of the Diaspora with the Essenes and the Jesus group must be proved. The naysayers would counter (with some credibility) that the Temple and not the Essene insurrectionists controlled the Diaspora. ” You have just answered the “naysayers”!

“Yes, I can buy this with no trouble. Like the IRA and Sinn Fein in Irish republicanism.”

Something like that. With the Essenes being the IRA and the Pharisees being the Sinn Fein. The differences were tactical, not of strategy; they were two sides of the same coin, kind of the good cop, bad cop, but cop in both cases, sort of thing.

I thought you meant that the Zealots and particularly the Sicarii were the armed wings of the Essenes. Essenes spent their days professing to be pacific when they were looking for signs auspicious for a holy war.

“Perhaps you are trying to BE too logical!”

Yeah. It is a character trait (defect maybe??) Many people have told me the same thing. ;-)) A hard habit to change. Perhaps because I love mathematics.

I’ve had the same said to me by some counsellor when my marriage was on the rocks. I was too rational and my wife too emotional so we were both missing the target! I like mathematics too, but lost it when the school I went to made me skip the fifth form. What the sixth form were being taught was beyond me.

“It was a great confusion, but essentially the gentile followers have to be thought of separately from the Jewish ones. Until the Jewish War, the Jerusalem Church was presumably in charge of the embryonic Christians, but since most of them were hundreds of miles away in Asia Minor and even further off in Rome, the Jerusalem Church did not matter much to them. They were influenced by people much closer at hand. People exemplified by the New Testamant Paul of Tarsus, a man ready to bend with the wind, to do in rome what the Romans do, and to be all things to all men. They were opportunists ready to use the collections for the Poor in Jerusalem for their own aggrandisement. It was to their advantage to keep their flocks out of involvement in the geopolitics of the time to keep the funds flowing.”

If memory serves right, Saul/Paul used to be Pharisee before switching to the Church? Perhaps here we are given a hint in NT about the Pharisee conncetion and guidance from the shadows of the whole Essene/Church movement. There might be more here than it looks on the surface?

Yes, so he claimed in the bible as we now find it, but early on the gentile Christians wanted to distance themselves from their parent, the Essenes—whom they wrote out of the account to further the pretence that Jesus was unique—and the Pharisees—whom they made the villains as the strongest surviving Jewish party after the war (they were often referred to as “the Jews”), and the manifest villains in 135 AD.

“Whenever have Christian Churches been different except when the geopolitics was to their own advantage, of course? They knew that they were causing a division in Judaism that would lead to a new relgion, and some of them like Paul seemed to be acting consciously to do it. That is why the Jerusalem Church saw him as a rogue, and their successors, the Ebionites, always thought so.”

If the Ebionites thought Paul as a rogue and the Jerusalem church saw his courting of Gentiles as a ploy to divide Judaism and create a new religion, perhaps they saw at work the hand of Rome. They would have smelled that something sneaky is done here, but they couldn’t do much in Diaspora. They had sway in Jerusalem and around it, but in say, Egypt, or Syria or Asia Minor, their sway was far less and dependent of Roman governors of these places. Also the Jerusalem church had its own troubles inside Jerusalem itself, with the Temple authorities and the other competing sects. It appears that the Jerusalem Church’s authority was being eroded even before 70 CE!

Agreed. Paul was a Roman-Jewish spy, and, whether Rome had its fingers in the pie or not, it was hard for the Jerusalem Church to control the outreach churches. Acts shows that they sent men to control the activities of Paul and fellow Hellenists, but they could not.

“Too true! The silly thing is that the Rabbis helped it, but then again,, it seems they had little choice.”

Maybe they had little choice. But with the benefit of hindsight it was a disastrous decision, which led to over 17 centuries of hardship and persecutions. They should have worked harder to prevent a split. But hindsight is perfect, while they did not have the benefit of hindsight.

Going back to the topic of the gentilisation of the church: it seems that the pharisee/yeshu messianics split may have been exagerated after 70 and even more so after 135 and then projected backwards in time. Yeshu himself was called a Rabbi in NT, a title that was usually (cant remember any exceptions right now) denoting a Pharisee. IT may be that the Pharisee and the Essene/Jewish christians were the same group, but the Essenes being as lightly more extreme version of it. Obviously as the church spread in the gentile world in the 40 year generation before the resumed fighting in 66 it became more mild. Those Jews in diaspora were more interested in spiritual salvation than in political independence like their palestinian brethren. In this scenario, the Jeruslem/Palestinian branch of the church/Essenes would have been actually the trigger of the 66-70 war. The Pharisees would have been allies, but a little more distinct from them by now, though still under the same umbrella. When the Romans demolished Jerusalem the Jewish element as well as the link between the Hellenised Jews/gentile members and the Jerusalem headquarters would have been severed, as well as the link with Pharisees.

There seems little doubt to me that the Church did exaggerate the hatred between the contemporary followers of Jesus for the Pharisees, althouh I cannot agree that there was none originally because they were all chums. The Essenes did not like the Pharisees because they were pragmatic, and, though they too resented the occupation, they were willing to tolerate it pro tem rather than constantly get battered to a pulp by superior forces. Since Jesus expected a holy miracle and wanted to save Jews for the kingdom of God, he must have been ready to accept Pharisees along with any other Jew that was willing to repent and be baptised. As you know, the real enemies were the Sadducees whose position depended on the foreigner.

The death of James in about 62 AD, almost the precise Jewish generation from the suggested date of the Nazarene uprisng in 21 AD, has been said to have caused the dissent that eventually triggered the Jewish War.

“The Pharisees had undertaken a function of being teachers, but I cannot see other sects not having the same function, and anyone with the function of teaching a doctrine would have been called rabbis.”

But the term is used only in describing the Pharisees, not the Sadducees or other sects. And here is the rub—the Essenes did not have Rabbis either. They had only masters and teachers of righteusness (that being a supermaster, the top Essene) who incidentally happened to be called a Rabbi! Just like Yeshu is called repeatedly throughtout the NT! Caincidence? Maybe, but it is quite some coincidence!

Take care. The term “rabbi” is used only to describe Pharisees—except for Yeshu… and except for the Righteous Teacher. You are being contrary, R Rosen! It seems that it might be a case of the Pharisees doctoring their own commentaries to keep the honourable title to themselves. Since “rabbi” means “my master”, and refers to sages qualified to give decisions on the Mosaic law, it seems to be entirely appropriate for Essenes. When the rabbis withdrew from proselytising after the Bar Kosiba revolt, and reformed Judaism, they took the title for themselves. They were the only people who could justifiably hold it.

“The ultimate Pharisaic domination of Judaism has perhaps left the deliberate impression that only Pharisees were rabbis.”

You may be right, be we have no surviving evidence that other sects had this title. (Of course I may be biased or it may be beyond my current knowledge).

You just gave it.

“Pharisees and Essenes were distinguished by Josephus so it seems unlikely that they could have been the same,”

Josephus was a captive court Jew, who would sing the songs the Romans wanted to hear. Also he might not have though it wise to associate the Pharisees of which he was one with the more extreme and more zealously anti-Roman Essenes. There were reasons of self preservation and self ingratiation with the Romans. Also there is the possibility the Christians tinkered with the texts also, after the Gentilisation of the church when the Bishops had an interest in severing any traces of ties with Judaism.

You are right about these possibilities, but much of what comes to us in Josephus has been verified from the original documents of the Essenes in the Scrolls. There are differences, of course, and your comments might explain some of them, but the two sects were distinct, and not on friendly terms. While both seem to have descended from the Hasidim, there was a split before 100 BC, and the two factions went in different directions. Details are still shrouded in history, but the general outline seems right.

“Though the real point is that they were all Jews, and when it came to consideration of who should be in charge in God’s country, just like today, there would be little disagreement—the Jews not the Romans. Essenes seemed not to like the Pharisaic idea of having a law to protect the law, which seemed, to them, like backsliding. The Pharisees thought it was an excellent way of achieving holiness by making it harder to break god’s law.”

Sure there were some differences (like IRA and Sinn Fein), with the Essenes being the more intransigent sect. But that is no proof of them being a separate sect.

Well, you are using “proof” like any fundamentalist here. There might be no proof, but there is plenty of evidence. The whole period is fraught as our discussion shows. I cannot see any point in generating unnecessary complications besides those there already are!

“The ranting against the law in the New Testament might be ranting against this building of a wall of the law around the law not ranting against the Law of Moses per se.”

This may well be later interpolation by the Gentile Bishops. We do see a stronger anti-Pharisee line in the older gospels, but less so in the Mark gospel.

By general consent, Mark’s is still the oldest of the four, but I agree that many of the instances when Pharisees are depicted as Jesus’s opponents, Sadducees would make more sense. The explanation, besides the desire for Christians to distinguish themselves from the unpopular Jews, was that the Sadducees had disappeared from history, some of them, we surmise, into the Christian ranks, and so there were two reasons for substituting them for Pharisees in the original accounts.

“It has been deliberately confused to suit the Hellenised Jews and gentile godfearers for whom the Law was a tribulation and a bore.”

Yes, but it appears a later, post-Gentilisation twist.

“Quite so. It gives away the recent parts of the Jewish scriptures too—romances like Joseph and Samson, almost seamless as you say, and therefore late compositions.” Yes, the Jewish scriptures are as much a fictional literary creation as the Christian ones. The same goes for all the scriptures of all religions. Taken as allegorical stories they are harmless. Taken as divine commandments and real historical events they have historically caused much pain and suffering.

“I suppose when I say ‘liberal’ I assume with it that the people are intelligent. Many Christians accept Jesus as a holy man rather than literally a supernatural son of God, but they are thoughtful Christians forwhom supernaturalism is a non-starter.” That might be true of the well educated, European Christians, schooled in a progressive, secular and modern school system. But that does not extend to non-European Christians, which are the vast majority, who did not have the benefit of this kind of education system. The ‘supernatural’ is much easier accepted by people in grinding poverty and with only a little education, inside countries where political violence is common, food is a problem and the best of the educated leave the country in search of saner life and better opportunities. It becomes accepted as a palliative for such deperate people. This is an explanation, of this phenomenon, not an excuse of it. “I would have thought that there would be a bigger proportion of similar Jews, if only because there are more secular Jews and Jews are more often thoughtful. I am not making them a majority, but they ought to be influential. Some ‘Ebionite’ sects that seem to have formed since the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered might be heading in this direction.” Yes, you are correct about the % and the influence of this subgroup but as I said there would be little acceptance among them too, at least for now, because Yeshua failed, and all failed Messiahs are given a bad light. It also has to do with the subconscious baggage of Jewish Christian relation. If that history didn’t happen, and Jews would not have been persecuted for so many centuries in the name of Yeshua, then he would be easier to accept. Again, this is an explanation of this phenomenon. Do not take it as an excuse made by me (or anyone else) for it. I personally have no problem with accepting Yeshua as a great man, but you will not find too many Jews that could stomach it. I have also read about the neo-Ebionites, but they are rejected by the Jewish mainstream for the reasons (whether conscious or unconscious) that I gave above.

“Bishops gentiles—I don’t think it necessary that they were. We are speaking of a time after the Jewish War. Even if many or most bishops were still Jews—former Essenes and Hellenised Jews—they were now facing the ire of the gentile Romans. Think of it like the Moslems having to handle 9/11. Those who had found a niche in western society were embarrassed by the attack. Look at the result. The US sought revenge by attacking Moslem countries and arresting Moslems they said were dangerous. Some Moslem organisations have rejected the attacks as not Islamic. The proto-Christians, even though they were still nominally Jewish, will have wanted to distinguish themselves from the Jews that fought the Romans. ‘It was not us, your honour.’ Since the Jerusalem Church had almost certainly fought with the Jews and been subsequently scattered, the diaspora churches were free to reject the centre. It could not object.” You made a good point. Some would have tried to find a way to blend, to avoid unnecessary attention and retribution from the Romans. (guilt by association). What is the less understandable thing is why the Pharisees did not try to blend and de-Judaise in the same manner? (as an aside, this is the last remaining hole in your theories, as you have already answered all my other questions-sorry I had so many, but I had them unclear and I thank you for helping me find an answer to them- so again, this is the last puzzlement. IF the Sadducees were gone as a political party, and the Christians were already trailblazing this assimilation and syncretism path, why the Pharisees stuck with Judaism. They were under the same duress and circumstances as the Christians, after all. (ok, this is more of a philosophical question, and it has no negational influence on your theory, but it is an interesting question nevertheless.

It seems to be a question of geography and commitment. The Hellenised Jews who became Christians were not too committed to Judaism and mainly were living outside Judaea. The Pharisees were highly committed to Judaism and mainly were living in Judaea, indeed in Jerusalem. These latter were soon to go into conclave to find a way of practising their religion without causing periodic outbreaks of rioting and dissension that caused Jews and Romans trouble, and that the Jews habitually came out of worst. They invented modern Judaism.

Though this new form of Judaism resembles little the previous types, I think it was a good decision to adopt it because it lessened conflict. The periodical rebellions against the super power of the time led to cyclical massacres when the inevitable defeat happened again and again. IT made it possible for the Jews to survive because otherwise we wouldn’t be around. The Romans were not the forgiving type and their punishments were savage when provoked.

“Why rewrite?—Because of the war. You say even Hellenised Jews would not have wanted to break away from Judaism, but I disagree. Their tie to Judaism was already flimsy. It amounted only to a once or twice in a lifetime trip to Jerusalem for Passover.” Yes and no. The Islamic faith also requires the Hajj once in a life time, but that does not mean Mecca is not important to Muslims. Just like today the Muslims face Mecca when they pray, the Jews faced Jerusalem. IT was more than just a trip to see the temple. People who undertook this pilgrimage were very, very, committed to that religion (Temple Judaism). The trip was expensive, dangerous and time consuming. It was not just a trip to the park for a picnic. Unlike the Hajj, which is required once in a life time, the Jews where required to undertake the pilgrimage many times (yearly is possible), but at least once in a life time. (maybe this is the origin of the idea for the Hajj, but maybe not. It is definitely a parallel) The point is that any Jew, Hellenised in daily life in Diaspora, or not, if he was undertaking the pilgrimage, he was committed to Judaism. You can see for example the British Muslims who take the Hajj, They would be the least likely to dump Islam. (this is just intended as a contemporary example)

Perhaps you are right, but I suspect you are making the distinctions two black and white to be realistic. An assimilated Jew is no longer a Jew, despite his origins. A devout Jew is still loyal in every respect to one or other sect of Judaism. I think that the Hellenized Jews were in between, but even they were not monolithic. There were degrees of Hellenization. I take it, from the events described in Acts that there were Hellenized Jews who were nevertheless committed enough to want to undertake the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Despite your argument, my guess is that for many of them, their annual or occasional pilgrimage was their last solid link with their original religion. They would eventually stop the pilgrimages, and then little if anything would be left of their religious affiliation. Perhaps the usual weddings and funerals would sometimes draw them back to communal worship. That is all. Their children would probably be all together assimilated, or would be after a brief adolescent interest in the religion of their fathers. So, I am saying that at the fringe of those who attended the Passover were quite uncommitted, nigh on assimilated Jews still clinging to the last vestige of their belief, the vestige retained in the seder la-shaner.

“The word Hellenisation means they were adopting the Roman way of life in all other matters.” Yes, in all other matters, but not in matters of religion. The same was a British Hajji (Muslim who undertook the Hajj pilgrimage) will dress with European clothes instead of the Arabic clothes of the Meccans, and will freely associate in business with non-Muslims, but still remain very committed about Islam. You seem to think the 2 contradict, but as you can see by this example, they don’t always contradict.

“The war combined with the Jewish link provided by their devotion to a Jewish messiah was sufficient. Hellenisation implies to me that the Hellenised Jews were probably also already impressed by the mysteries which they were probably not eligible to join. Christianity was a hybrid religion. The dying and rising messiah had given it characteristics of a mystery, and after the war, if not before, it will have reinstated Essene-like initiation conditions to baptism. What otherwise was a catechumen?” Yes. But to have such an effect, the link to a Jewish Messiah could have supplanted the loyalty to the Temple only if/after the Temple was razed. Then it would have provided the only psychologically soothing link to the home country and the religion of the ancestors. So this fits perfectly with the post 70 CE period, but only tenuously with the 21-70 CE period. In this intermezzo the Temple would still have trumped any Messiah, especially a failed one.

“Roman agents—It would not surprise me. I have already argued that Paul was a Roman agent, an idea already suggested by Maccoby. It would answer many questions in the career of Paul, not least why he was chummy with Roman governors, centurions and Jewish princes.” Never heard of Maccoby. I will go back to re-read the webpages about Paul. Seems I missed that. But anyway, with different material and different angle of looking at it I reached a similar conclusion. So it is not just a wild idea. It is in fact a very logical act that Romans would do it (with or without Paul). The Persians have done it before and it is still done to this day.

“I am inclined to think the Sadducees were already pretty much Hellenised. I doubt that they had much of an axe to grind vis-á-vis the Jewish religion. They were the placed men of the Greeks.” Not only of the Greeks, but later also of the Romans too. Although I have been trained and conditioned to think of them as traitorous, I have come to see them as the most sober and wise of the sects. It was clear that some degree of moderation and accommodation with the Hellenistic kingdoms and later with the Roman Republic and Empire were necessary. Of course I have the benefit of historical hindsight. The Sadducees were also decrying the fact that too many of the Jews were taking up Hellenistic customs, so they were trying to slow down that assimilation process. But they also took Greek names so they were also assimilating. What is important in realising when assessing them is that the Maccabee kings and later the Roman puppets and Roman governors had far more power and control than the Temple had. The Temple as a political tool, dependent on the Roman puppets and governors had the assigned role of channelling the Jewish fervor on safe paths and to avoid religions and political extremism. They were not simple stooges though. They realised that open rebellion against the super-power of their day will result in the destruction of the nation. Although the Essenes and the Pharisees have painted them as cowardly, traitorous tools of the Romans, historical hindsight proves they were the wisest and most realistic of the sects/parties of their time.

“Pharisees and Essenes were moreloyal to the original Persian concepts of the religion (Pharisee = Parsee, if you like).” Actually the word Pharisee is from the Hebrew perushim, from parash, meaning “to separate”).

How certain are you that the verb came before the sect? Separate is what the separated ones, the Perushim, do.

The use of the verb in ancient texts preceded the emergence of the sect. I think that is a good enough reason.

Even if the verb precedes the sect historically, I would say the name was chosen for its dual sound—punning again. Even my unscholarly eye sees a tremendous amount of it in Hebrew writing.

That is true. I was just pointing out that the word had a Hebrew, not a Persian root. The Persians imposed their theology, slightly changed, but they never insisted in imposing their language. The Arabs were much better colonialists in that respect.

The point is how far back does the Hebrew root go? If Jewish literature began in the Persian period, then the word could still have been a reference to Persians. The Persian Magi were also men who had to be separated out for reasons of ritual cleanliness. We might be misled by the idea that some of the books in the Jewish scriptures are pre-Persian, but this is most unlikely. The best test is whether an unquestionably cognate word is found in other pre-Persian Western Semitic writings. It would be quite significant if “Pharisee” could be shown to mean Persian, Parsee or whatever.

“Their interest in it was as rulers, and a source of their wealth. They were like the Aga Khan. You are right, though, in that I am not suggesting they became Christians en masse, but they had lost their sinecures and needed something similar to replace them.” In terms of purity, the Sadducees were unrivalled. They had to be as theirs was the role of keeping the purity laws of the temple. They were more in line with the original Persian concept of religion, because their role was to keep things quiet and the masses away from politics. The Essenes and the Pharisees were the more militant ones, so their involvement in politics is more unlike what the Jerusalem Temple was designed by the Persians for—collecting taxes, keeping things quiet and promoting difficult and self-absorbing purity laws and some form of lesser Zoroastrianism. The difficulty was that now the Romans and not the Persians were in control, so now that this instrument of control (the Temple) was in the hands of the Romans, which were at war with the Persians, the Sadducees were of no use to them anymore. So I imagine that the Persians would have much preferred the hot heads, even as the Romans would have preferred the Sadducees. But in terms of pure dogma, you are right, because the Sadducees rejected some key Zoroastrian concepts such as the immortality of the soul, the existence of angels and spirits etc. So in that respect you are absolutely correct. The Sadducees were more rational than the other sects.

To strengthen the assertion I made about Sadducees being more strict and continuing the Zoroastrian purity laws to a larger extent, I include a few articles about the purity of the Temple rituals and I will contrast them with the Pharisee views so you may compare them:

• They held that the daily burnt offerings were to be offered by the high priest at his own expense, whereas the Pharisees contended that they were to be furnished as a national sacrifice at the cost of the Temple treasury into which taxes were paid.
• They held that the meal offering belonged to the priest’s portion; whereas the Pharisees claimed it for the altar.
• They insisted on an especially high degree of purity in those who officiated at the preparation of the ashes of the Red Heifer. The Pharisees, on the contrary, opposed such strictness.
• They declared that the kindling of the incense in the vessel with which the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement was to take place outside, so that he might be wrapped in smoke while meeting the Shekhinah within, according to Lev. xvi. 2; whereas the Pharisees, denying the high priest the claim of such super-natural vision, insisted that the incense be kindled within.
• They opposed the popular festivity of the water libation and the procession preceding the same on each night of the Sukkot feast.
• They opposed the Pharisaic assertion that the scrolls of the Holy Scriptures have, like any holy vessel, the power to render ritually unclean (taboo) the hands that touch them.
• They opposed the Pharisaic idea of the eruv, the merging of several private precincts into one in order to admit of the carrying of food and vessels from one house to another on the Sabbath.
• In dating all civil documents they used the phrase "after the high priest of the Most High," and they opposed the formula introduced by the Pharisees in divorce documents," According to the law of Moses and Israel".

Which Aga Khan? The founder of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam (Nizari Ismaili)?

I was referring to any of the modern ones who live the life of a socialite and racehorse owner.

“Jerusalem Church—Well, Jerusalem was left. It was the temple that was closed down at that stage.” The Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE. The city was also left in ruins. The only portion that was left standing was the Wailing Wall.

The city will have been ruined in the war but I did not know that nobody lived in it. What is your evidence that the city was unoccupied?

Josephus and archaeological evidence. As well as other writings from the period mention it.

I just checked in a small book I have called This is Jerusalem by a Dr Menashe Har-El of Tel Aviv university when it was published in 1977, and he says (p46), J“ews continued to live in Jerusalem after its destruction, and worshipped God on the rubble of Temple Mount. When Hadrian planned to erect a Roman city there, thus desecrating its sanctity, the Bar-Kochba Revolt erupted and the city was taken again by the Jews (132-135 CE).&dsquo; It might seem a minor point but offers some basis for thinking there could have been an Essene Jerusalem Church actually, or notionally but with justification, in Jerusalem. In other words the messianic Essenes could still have been working from there.

“I think it was R Akiva who describes seeing afox running across the ruined temple court, so he must have been in Jerusalem after the war.” Yes, the Romans (Hadrian) rebuilt it after 135 CE as a pagan city from which Jews were banned. They were allowed only one day a year, the 9th of Av, to come to this last remaining wall to wail. Rebbi Akiva would thus have had a chance to see it.

“In any case, I take it that ‘Jerusalem Church’ is the name of the organisation of the Jewish Christians in Judaea as opposed to the Christians in the diaspora.” Ok. But as long as the city existed, I take it that Jerusalem church would have been primarily in Jerusalem itself. Afterwards the few remaining survivors would have been scattered in Judean country side and surviving towns.

“Fighting—I take it that the Jerusalem Church considered Jesus to be the messiah, but otherwise were typical Essenic Jews. They would have fought in the Jewish War because they will have seen it as the beginning of the return—the hosts of heaven emerging from the Mount of Olives led by Jesus to win the cosmic battle against evil. Again it did not happen. Many Palestinian Jews will have returned to Pharisaic Judaism with this disappointment, but those who did not continued as the Ebionite sect of Jewish Christians. Since the followers of Jesus were called Galilaeans, these might have been the same people. Jesus repeatedly speaks of the poor, interpreted as abstract references to poor people. He meant ‘The Poor’, the Ebionites. members of his own following.” I also believe that it was the Yeshua followers who were in fact the initiators of the war in 66 CE, with the Pharisees joining in, believing that now the time was ripe for a military showdown with Rome. Turns out the Sadducees were still right—the time was not ripe at all, and the conflict will only enrage the Romans and thus put an end to Judean state. (This may be true only at the grass roots level, as it was still a Sadducee high priest who initiated the conflict when he called for a stop of sacrifices to the Roman Emperor; it is more complicated than it seems.)

“These people could not support Bar Kosiba’s revolution because he claimed to be the messiah. Jesus was the messiah of the Galilaeans. They might have helped the revolt in 132 rather as conscienscious objectors will help their own country’s war effort. Not as soldiers but in any other pacific way. Kosiba’s Murabba’at letter seems to imply something like this.” Haven’t read the letter. Don’t know its contents. Would like to read it as it will elucidate this whole issue.

“So, there is no need to think the diaspora churches had influenced the central church. There was no reversal of roles.” Hard to say, because the title of messiah was not fixed in stone. The Galileans could have interpreted Kockhba as Yeshua returned or his earthly representative. It is most strange for a group that already fought the Romans in 21 and 66-70 (73 at Massadah) would use this kind of argument to shirk the obligation to fight. Some metamorphose was required for it. Otherwise how do you explain that they did fight in 66-70 (73) CE? There was no Christian messiah leading that fight either. So why did they fight then and not in 132-135?

The Jerusalem Church was expecting the supernatural Christ to return when the Jewish war started and so will have fought to hurry it along. They had no such expectation when Bar Kosiba raised his rebellion. Bar Kosiba was very much alive and not leading the supernatural hosts of heaven from the Mount of Olives, so he could not have been mistaken for Jesus Christ.

That is true, but the same argument could be made for the 66-70 rebellion, Mutatis Mutandis.

Hardly, because Jesus was known to have died on the cross. His return was expected not as a man, but as the archangel Michael leading the heavenly hosts from the sundered Mount of Olives.

“Temple—The Essenes had an ambiguous attitude to the temple, but it certainly amounted to a rejection. Perhaps, if they had been able to have unconditional control over it, they would have been happy to restore it to the temple it should have been in their view. So, you are correct in that respect, but they realised long before that there was no prospect of it, and had taken the view that the people (Essenes) were a living temple. This is one of the evidences that Jesus was an Essene because it was his view too, although the bible contrives to make Jesus alone the temple.” I think we are thinking the same thing, just express it different. The Essenes would have loved to have the Temple under their control. Since they could not have it anytime soon, they came up with the doctrine ‘the temple is the people’. But they still had designs on the Temple. Otherwise why did Yeshua attempt to take it over and purify it throwing out the money changers etc? They still wanted the Temple in their hands. Purifying it meant getting complete control over it.

Agreed, they would have been happy to have a purified temple.

“Essenes/Pharisees—I cannot see this to be the case but perhaps it is possible. The interpreters of the Scrolls see the Essenes and Pharisees as different groups, and the Essenes use various euphemisms for the Pharisees such as ‘seekers of smooth things’.” Sure, they would have seen the Pharisees as the smooth/moderate ones. But their theological and doctrinal differences were mainly with the Sadducees and the Judean rulers acting for Rome. They were both in the independence camp, they both accepted the resurrection and the judgement etc. The doctrinal agreements with the Sadducees were far fewer. I am sure the IRA viewed in the past the Sinn Fein as ‘seekers after smooth things’, as weaklings and as backsliders to opposition against occupation. (I am not supporting that view, only trying to give an example) I also have to say upfront, that no one I know has ever made this point (not that nobody could have said it, just I do not know about it), that the Essenes were merely the more extreme wing of Pharisees. I go only by doctrinal identity, use of words and expression etc. No other groups overlap to such an extent. Could I be wrong? YES. But it is an interesting line of enquiry, and as far as I can judge it fits rather well. Do I expect that other people accept it? NO. But it might unlock some doors nevertheless. The picture becomes more coherent with it. Both were originally the Hasidim but they apparently split because the Pharisees were more pragmatic, and the Essenes more zealous, over the law and occupation. That was my whole point! Their differences were only on the surface, as far as the methods and approach were concerned, not on the political goals. Other than the Pharisees being more pragmatic, I do not see any difference worth noting. (isolation in the deserts for some of them, was imposed by their hotheaded behaviour, not a first choice)

You are right on it all, I would say, except that the two factions remained close enough to be allies. Such splits commonly lead to greater disgust and hatred than much wider divisions, and precisely because everyone concerned can see it is disuniting, and each side regards the other as traitors. There was no chance of a victory in the war against the might of Rome as the Sadduccees knew, and the pragmatic Pharisees deduced, but the Essenes put their trust in God, regarding the other sects as Godless collaborators!

I know what you mean. They seem to have still a counterpart in modern days among some hot headed settlers. They too put their trust in G-d and come what may. I hope they don’t bring about the same disastrous events as the ones 2 millennia ago.

I saw a nice quotation in The New Scientist this week, cited as Islamic. It was, P“ut your trust in God, but still tie up your camel”. It is almost a Jewish joke, I would have said, but certainly funny.

“That is why the Essenes would have nothing to do with the Sanhedrin, a puppet organisation of the Romans.” True, they wanted nothing to do with a Roman serving Sanhedrin. But with their behaviour and approach they would also not have been accepted in anyway. So it was a sour grapes thing.

“Graeco-Roman mystery religion in this context, I’d say was more likely, though some Indian influence through Alexandrian Christians is just possible. I don’t think it necessary to postulate it, when the mysteries are more obvious by far.” Agree. I think that Graeco-Roman mystery religions had similar characteristics as Hinduism. (incarnation of gods, etc). It does not require direct Hindu influence. I stand corrected.

“You might be right, but I think you are again underestimating the degree ofHellenisation, as before.” Could be, but if Hellenisation was that pronounced, it would have been assimilation, therefore they would not have been Jews anymore. We are discussing Jews, right? So we must allow them some modicum of Judaism. I am aware of Hellenisation, and do not deny it happened (as well as a lot of complete assimilation too). That is not what I am saying. It is only that some elements have to be allowed as fixed, or we cannot talk of Jews anymore, but only of former Jews.

My answer above applies here.

“My impression of them is that they are Romans in all but name and tradition. Yours is that they are still essentially Jews.” No, not that they were the same kind of Jews as those in Palestine of Jerusalem. But as in the example I gave with British Muslims going on Hajj, we must assume that a rather strong commitment to Judaism would have remained. Watered down, perhaps, but not to the point of being unrecognisable from the Gentile milieu. If it reached that point, it the assimilation would have been complete. They would have been Roman AND Jewish just like you can have a Muslim AND British person. Those who undertake pilgrimage would not be the ones who would assimilate completely, as I explained earlier. And for the purposes of your Yeshua theory, it is precisely this group of Diaspora Hellenised Jews that was the soil in which Christianity grew. If we assume that too much assimilation occurred and they were totally Romanised, then they were not going to go in pilgrimage and thus not been in contact with the Essenes of Yeshua. So then the whole theory collapses. That is why they have to be allowed some modicum of Judaism, at least sufficient to move them to undertake the pilgrimage.

Quite so. We only disagree on what this degree of commitment is to some Jews of the time. I see it as an umbilical cord that is slowly being severed for many of the Romanised Jews of the empire. But they were still Jews, just as you say, as long as they had the desire to undertake the pilgrimage.

“I don’t believe that the Hellenised Jews would have been regular attenders of synagogues and, since they were not taught geography, they need not have had much clue about the geography of Palestine.” Some things are just too sacred to be left out in such ignorance. Any Muslim child knows by heart about the layout on the Hijaz (western coast of Arabia) even if they never set foot there, regardless if they are literate or not. This is part and parcel of their lessons from their elders. Similarly, it would be hard to conceive of such ignorance as not to know anything about Palestine among adult Jews of the Diaspora.

Your parallel is imperfect for you are not talking about westernised Moslems. My sister married an Anglo-Pakistani. He was thoroughly westernised and knew nothing of Mecca and the Hajj. His father was an immigrant from Pakistan some time shortly before the war, and as far as I can see, he was himself not a practising Moslem, even though he must have been brought up as one. My former brother in law was assimilated but his father was not, though he was not devout. I have no idea whether he ever went on the pilgrimage or not, but he would be the kind I am thinking of, and my brother in law too, had he been taught enough about his father’s beliefs to leave him curious about them. The father could have though that he had better undertake the pilgrimage at least once, or for a last time, if he had been before, and the son could have had a sort of romantic yearning to know what it was all about. What I am imagining is that of the millions of Jews in the Diaspora, there must have been a whole spectrum of levels of assimilation, and there must have been a level corresponding to those who felt they ought to undertake the Passover pilgrimage to realise a fading duty still felt.

“I see them as being glad to grasp at the straw offered them by Christianity—they could be Jews without the bother, and in a gentile world, it suited them. The commitment they had, such as it was, to Judaism evaporated with the embarrassment of the war. They wanted to assimilate while hanging on to a remnant of Jewish tradition, but the war left them even more outside society than they had been before. It gave them a choice of returning to Judaism, a grave problem, or abandoning it for their new Judaeo-gentile belief.” Yes, particularly after the destruction of the Temple, this crisis of identity would have been that much more acute. Christianity would plausibly give them a half way route between adhering to the old faith-now in bad odour with the Romans-and complete assimilation.

“The bishops, half a century after the original event that founded Christianity, had enjoyed a comfortable living and faced the prospect of losing it. So, they quite naturally made their excuses to retain their flocks and separated from Judaism. From now on, it was not a matter of the Christians being Jewish, althouh many still were, in origins, but of the Romans being willing to accept they were not. In the next half century, recruitment was of gentiles, even though many were Hellenised Jews still!” Since they still used the OT-the NT was not yet written-it would have been hard for the Romans to miss their Jewishness. Presumably by gentiles that were Hellenised Jews you mean Jews that have formerly assimilated? If yes, why would they join such a sect after they already blended with their gentile milieu especially at a time when all Jews were viewed with great suspicion?

Sorry! Badly expressed. I am saying that the original Christians were Hellenised Jews, but they were now being diluted by the new gentile converts.

Alright, then it is all clear and logical.

“The temple had been closed, so the Hellenised Jews no longer had the Passover pilgrimage to keep them tied to Judaism. They happily joined the practical alternative, a mystery religion that had a Jewish flavour. Devout Jews became loyal to the Pharisees, and after the Bar Kosiba revolt became the founders of modern non-temple Judaism.” That seems most logical.

“It would have been impossible for the ruling Christians under Constantine to keep the records in the Roman acta. They told the real story, not the one the post-war bishops had doctored.” Well, if after 325 CE the Christians would have found any such official Roman references they would have burned them. But what I do not understand-assuming that such documents did exist-why didn’t the Roma government use them (before 325CE) to nip in the bud the growing threat of Christianity to the security of the empire? This is unbelievable and unprecedented oversight. How could that be?

Perhaps they did, but the Christians in power contrived to present them as forgeries.

“It seems to me, late though they are, that there might be evidence yet to be found in the Jewish commentaries, albeit in disguised form. Is there anything that could be read as a capture or recapture of a city by Jews? Are there any unknown Jewish heroes, perhaps considered mythical or parabolic that might fit the bill. Or any relevant commentaries on the messiah. You have shown that various identities were given to Jesus in a negative way, but are there more that might be him however unlikely on the basis of the Christian story, but possible on this reconstruction, negatively or positively presented?” I will try to go through all the known instances of Yeshua (although I will try to cover everything, I could without my knowledge leave out some things since I do not have absolute knowledge and much data has been lost or been erased): his name should have been Yeshua ben Yosef. It was indeed his proper name, given to him by his parents, and only in Hebrew does this name have any meaning. In Hebrew Yeshua means both "Salvation," and the concatenated form of Yahoshua, is "Lord who is Salvation." There are many Yeshuas that we read about in Biblical text and many are confused with the Yeshua who would later become the "Christ". The name Yeshua appears 29 times in the Tanach. Yehoshua (Joshua) of Nun is called Yeshua in Nechemyah (Nehemiah) 8:17. Yeshua is the name of the Cohain HaGadol (the high priest) in the time of Zerubavel in Ezra 3:2. It is the name of a Levite under King Hizkiyah (Hezekiah) in 2 Chronicles 31:15. There is even a city called Yeshua in the negev of Yehudah in Nechemyah11:26. Yeshua is also a shortened version of the word Yehoshua. There are 7 other Yeshuas (Jesuses) in the Brit Chadashah. There is Elymas bar Yeshua in Acts 13:6. There is an ancestor of Yeshua HaMashiach: the son of Eliezar, the father of Er in Luke 3:29. In Rabbi Paul’s letter to the Colossians in chapter 4, verse 11, there is a Justus called Yeshua a fellow worker of Paul. Josephus, the famous Jewish historian mentions 20 different Yeshuas (Jesuses), 10 of which are contemporary with Yeshua HaMashiach. All together, at least 50 Yeshuas from his time plus about 9 in the Tanach have been revealed from Biblical text and other literary sources. Since Yeshua is spelled "Jeshua" and not "Jesus" in most English versions of the Old Testament (for example in Ezra 2:2 and 2 Chronicles 31:15), one easily gets the impression that the name is never mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet “Yeshua” appears there twenty-nine times, and is the name of at least five different persons and one village in the southern part of Yehudah ("Judah"). In contrast to the early biblical period, there were relatively few different names in use among the Jewish population of the Land of Israel at the time of the Second Temple. The name Yeshua was one of the most common male names in that period, tied with Eleazer for fifth place behind Simon, Joseph, Judah, and John. Nearly one out of ten persons known from the period was named Yeshua, or one in 5 among males. I will look next to other instances of self proclaimed Messiahs around the time of Yeshua. Our principal source is Josephus, who wrote:It came to pass, while Cuspius Fadus was procurator of Judea, that a certain charlatan, whose name was Theudas, persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them, and follow him to the Jordan river; for he told them he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river, and afford them an easy passage over it. Many were deluded by his words. However, Fadus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt, but sent a troop of horsemen out against them. After falling upon them unexpectedly, they slew many of them, and took many of them alive. They also took Theudas alive, cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem. (Jewish Antiquities 20.97-98) His followers were dispersed, and were never heard of again. (Incidently there was a Theudas that was travelling with Paul.) An "Egyptian" (who unfortunately is not named by Josephus) is said to have gathered together 30,000 adherents, whom he summoned to the Mount of Olives, opposite Jerusalem, promising that at his command the walls of Jerusalem would fall down, and that he and his followers would enter and possess themselves of the city. But Felix, the procurator (c. 55-60), met the throng with his soldiery. The prophet escaped, but those with him were killed or captured, and the multitude dispersed. (insertion: Yeshua was said to have been to Egypt and that he also said: pull down those walls of the Temple and in 3 days they will be raised back up.)Another messiah, Josephus reports, promised the people "deliverance and freedom from their miseries" if they would follow him to the wilderness. Both leader and followers were killed by the troops of Festus, the procurator. Even when Jerusalem was already being destroyed by the Romans, a prophet, according to Josephus suborned by the defenders to keep the people from deserting, announced that God commanded them to come to the Temple, there to receive miraculous signs of their deliverance. Those who came met death in the flames. Another such insurectionist was Menahem ben Judah, the son of Judas the Galilean and grandson of Hezekiah, the leader of the Zealots, who had troubled Herod, was a warrior. When the war broke out he attacked Masada with his band, armed his followers with the weapons stored there, and proceeded to Jerusalem where he captured the fortress Antonia, overpowering the troops of Agrippa II. Emboldened by his success, he behaved as a king, and claimed the leadership of all the troops. Thereby he aroused the enmity of Eleazar, another Zealot leader, and met death as a result of a conspiracy against him. He is probably identical with the Menahem ben Hezekiah mentioned in the Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 98b) and called "the comforter that should relieve". Since you place Yeshua in the year 21, it would appear that he was the first trial run in the struggle against Rome; testing the waters. Unfortunately the records that place a Yeshua and a Messiah in the same breath do not exist. Either they never existed, or someone has scrubbed the records squeaky clean. I do not include further Messiah claimants after the year 70CE since that would be too late in time for our purposes.

“I don’t think this is true, unless you have a particular definition of slander. Mark mentions the Sadducees only once when they ask him about the resurrection, and he answers them fairly. He mentions the Pharisees 12 times, depicting them as pious sticklers for the law, keen to trip him upon doctrine, ‘tempting him’, and he warns against ‘the leaven of the Pharisees’.” Mathew is a little rougher on them though. I would like to draw your attention to the difference in outlook between Essenes and later Christians and Sadducees—what you say is being ‘fairly’ answered, for the time was a devastating critique. This was a most basic theological difference, so much so, that in the view of Yeshua followers, both Essenic and later Christian ones, this rejection of resurrection was the total rejection of Judaism so it made the Sadducees appear as heretics. And not just heretics, but heretics in charge of the Temple! I can see of no greater jab at the Sadducees than that. It is not me using a ‘particular’ definition of slander. Rather it is using the analysis of the theological outlook of the Yeshua followers. I do not use a value judgement or pronouncement of who was right/wrong in this dispute, only using this to explain how profound the antipathy and chasm between the 2 groups was. By contrast, he is accusing the Pharisees only that they tried to trip him on some minutia or technicality of the Law. The differences between the Essenes and Pharisees did exist, but they were over minutia, not the total chasm that existed between them and Sadducees.

“You might be right that all this is added later to discredit the Pharisees after the Sadducees had disappeared, it must have happened, but there already was a basis for it, the Scroll scholars think, in that the Essenes disliked the Pharisees as collaborators and avoiders of the hardships of obeying the law—they did not think God meant it to be hedged about.” That is also the way I think. It appears that the gospels get more anti-Pharisaic the later they are. That is normal, as the Church was trying to differentiate in the second century from Pharisees.

“The Ebionites were Christians, and would have been known as Christians to the Arabs. The more Jewish branch, rejected by the Church, did not accept Jesus as having any divine nature or substance.” Quite possible. In fact Ebionites were present in Palestine until the 5-6 century, so it is possible some went to Arabia, either before or after they were finally suppressed by the Christianised Byzantines. It also would have been difficult for Arabs from Hijaz to tell them apart, so they may have considered them Christians.

“The Nestorians did. The Moslem identification of Jesus as a major prophet but not divine in any way matches the Ebionite belief.” True. It also matches the Judaic view of not attaching partners to G-d which is a well guarded dogma in Islam. So it may be an Ebionite influence, or it may be an Arabic interpretation of Jesus through a Jewish prism. Which also happens to be the way the Ebionites would have thought. So I am inclined to agree with you on this. The problem with Ebionites ways that no written material survives from them and we only know about them through the critical writings of the Pauline Christians (the same way that Sadducee writings did not survive and we only know about their thoughts from their Pharisaic and Christian opponents). We do know that they did use the Gospel of the Hebrews, which was the same as that of Matthew except it did not have the first 2 chapters (on Yeshua`s birth)As for Nestorians, the believed that God could never be a helpless child, and could not suffer on the cross.They also did not call Mary as the mother of G-d but only as the mother of Christ. So by arguing that G-d the Word did not suffer and died on the cross and that G-d is ominiscient while Jesus the man had limited knowledge the Nestorians seem doctrinally at least to be cut from the same cloth as the Ebionites. The Ebionites were ruled over by blood relatives of Yeshua (Desposyni) which according to them included: Mary, Joseph, James the Just, Joses, Simon and Jude. All early community of Judean followers of Jesus, whether Nazarene or Ebionite was run by one of the Desposyni. They included Simeon, the second bishop of Jerusalem and 3 Nestorian bishops of Seleucia on the Tigris well into the 3rd century CE. The gospel of Philip also mentions children of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as among the most revered of the Desposyni. This will provide another possible link between the Ebionites and the Nestorians. They rejected Paul as a Greek who tried to convert to Sadducee Judaism but later apostatised over disputes with the high priest whose daughter rejected his advances. The Ebionites held strongly that Jesus followers whether gentile or Jewish must adhere strongly to the Noachide laws and Mosaic laws, a point that Paul was against, because it was a barrier in his policy of bringing more gentiles into the church. They also rejected Peter because they held the view that apostolic succession should only go to Desposyni, which Peter was not. They also rejected the view that sins could be atoned by the death of Jesus, and that Jesus had a physical resurrection saying all his posthumous appearances were spiritual experiences, such as dreams and visions. This or the Nestorian sect (if they were not one and the same) or both had an impact on the Islamic view of Jesus.

“No one knows when Gnosticism began. Christianity makes it almost contemporary with apostolism in that Simon Magus was supposed to have been the first Gnostic. Christianity was itself a syncretism of Hellenistic and Jewish myths, and Gnosticism might have been a parallel but different formulation of it. The fact that Simon Magus was a magus seems to me to be significant because it suggests an alternative route from Persian religioninto the melting pot. Persian religion was manifestly dualistic, butJudaism is not. Perhaps the Rabbis suppressed Satan as well as apocalyptic.” You may be right. The Judaic faith certaintly suppressed Satan, but he certainly appears throughout the NT, although like in Zoroastrianism he does appear to be inferior in powers to the G-d of good and light. But the Christian religion (acts, John) mention the Greek name of the G-d of the underworld (Hades). So it appears that the Greek influence was at work too.

“In any event, it cannot be said with certaintly that Gnosticism was not contemporary with the early Christians. What matters, though, is that the dualism of Persian religion must have been known. Mithras was the face of Ahuramazda, and there was a wicked spirit called Ahriman, who logically also had his public face. In Christianity it was named Satan and in Gnosticism Satanael. Which came first. Satanael is more Jewish as a God’sname since it has ‘el’ in it.” I wouldn’t go as far as that; EL is a Western Semitic word and appears also in Phoenician and Carthaginian names. IT does not necessarily imply a Judean connotation or connection. The brother of Hannibal was called Hasdrubael sometimes appears as Hasdrubal. Also, syncretistic religions could borrow liberally from other cultures and this may be the case here. The Gnostics rejected Judaism and the G-d of OT. They might have used such names EL for the evil god as an insult or separation/rejection of Judaism. This is very likely given their stance on Judaism.

Yes, of course, but Judaism is the link between the Semitic near east and the Roman world. Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Jews were all Canaanites, so were ethnically the same people, the Phoenicians and Jews were all part of Abarnahara, the Persian satrapy that the Jerusalem temple was the treasury of, and I imagine were dorected by the Persians to place their religious loyalties there in preference to their old gods like Moloch and Tanit (Ishtar), and, with the utter razing of Carthage in 146 BC, my guess is that the dispersed carthaginians reverted to the religious practices of the Phoenicians (Syrians to Romans) and became Jews. It is why the diaspora was too incredibly large to have originated in a tiny country witha short history.

“The evidence indicates that the duality of Satan and Christ which appears clearly in Christianity and in Gnosticism has been suppressed in Judaism.” The last sentence I take it you meant Michael or G-d, not Christ? The rest is probably true.

Yes. Christ is Michael.

“The archangel Michael is the Jewish form of Mithras, the face of the Persian transcendent god, Ahuramazda, so Michael is the visible face of Yehouah.” It seems that way.

“So, Jesus is God—or an aspect of Him. It is a moot point whether any observant Jews can have gone this far.” The Ebionites did not consider Yeshua ben Yosef a G-d, but a man. This thought of Yeshua = G-d appeared among gentile followers outside Judea.

Yes. I am tracing how the identifcation occured, and wondering whether some Jews would have seen it in the same way. We read of two branches of Ebionites, the one you speak of who seem to be Jews essentially, and ones who do accept Christ as God and so seem to be Christians. Modern Jews cannot imagine any Jews thinking a man could be God, but, as I argue, there is much to suggest that God appeared as a man in the Jewish scriptures, so perhaps some Jews were ready to accept it as possible, even if others thought they were heretical. I am not saying that all angels were God, but some such as Michael and the Angel of the Lord show every indication of being a device to allow God to appear without burning up the observer.

“In Persian religion, God has several aspects, most obviously the Holy Spirit that also appears in Christianity. In Judaism, he seems to be the archangel Michael, but He is certainly the Angel of the Lord, whoever this is in the angelology. Angels in the Jewish scriptures commonly appear as if they are ordinary men, as they do in the Christian gospels.” True, in the OT the angels appear in human form. But they are not G-d and do not represent a face of G-d or an emanation of G-d. They are strictly messengers of G-d, that can die. In OT one such angel was eaten by a lion. ;-)

“Plainly in both Christianity and Judaism God can appear as a man. There is therefore a basis in Judaism for it.” Yes, G-d could in OT take human form. But a man could not become G-d or one with G-d. These are worlds apart and very foreign to Jewish theological thought. Look even the Ebionites despite centuries of suppression and persecution still could not bring themselves to swallow that gentile Christian dogma, though they did accept Jesus as a Messiah and were ruled over by members of his family. That is sufficient testimony to the impossibility of reconciling Jewish thought with this man to G-d metamorphosis. Even Jesus family and descendants could not accept it. Isn’t this enough proof? How much more do we need?

Well, I do not deny that there was a predisposition in Judaism against the notion, but the evidence is there that God could appear as a man. Now you then make a subtle distinction that I cannot get, that a man cannot be God. If God appears as a man then a man is God! It seems evident to me that the whole point of the proscription on men being God was to stop madmen and opportunists from claiming to be God. The trouble being that there were those chinks we have agreed on in the scriptures where God is a man. It allowed those of a thoughtful and rebellious bent to question the orthodoxy, and allowed the Christians to come up with the very thing that was forbidden. They rationalized the Parousia of Jesus as that Michael was the heavenly Jesus, and therefore Jesus was the earthly Michael, ie God. The roots of the idea ARE in Judaism, and I am merely wondering whether some Jews were able to accept the reasoning along with Christianity. I suspect they were, and the Christianized branch of the Ebionites possibly confirms it.

“The suggestion here is that the Essenes, from what we can read in the Scrolls, believed the hosts of heaven would be led by Michael. Christians modified it so that the hosts of heaven would be led by Jesus Christ on his return.” Well, yes, the thought that G-d could revive a human did exist especially in regard to prophetic figures etc. But it was still an agent of G-d, not G-d Himself. This is exactly the point of difference between the Jewish (Ebionites, later Nestorians etc) followers and the Gentile Christians. It has remained so to this day. That is a tremendous consistency over millennia, despite persecutions, pogroms, Holocaust, promise of rewards and social advancement. This is a though that did not then and cannot now be accepted by Jews. IT never was. You know history well enough so I don’t need to go now bring here dozens of examples.

“The only conclusion I can see in this is that the Christians identified their dead hero with the archangel Michael.” Could very well be. They could and from what survives in Ebionite doctrine apparently was allowed for. IfMichael was accepted as the face of God, then Jesus becomes the face ofGod, and so is God. But that is not what they believed. Even an archangel like Michael was still an angel, an agent of G-d or a messenger of G-d but not G-d Himself. Nowhere in Judaism does this Michael = G-d proposition appear. It is not in OT.

Perhaps so, you will know better than me, but Michael has the same role as Mithras in Persian religion.

True, but Judaism was not a pure form of Zoroastrianism. So there is a limit how far the similarities and parallels go.

Of course, but we do not know where the boundaries were at that time. We are speculating that they will have been much closer to Zoroastrianism than they now are.

Michael leads the heavenly hosts, surely making him into God, for who is the leader of the heavenly hosts other than God. The Angel of the Lord seems to be God on earth. There is a philosophic thread that allows Jesus, a man, to be identified with God, and this thread is typical of the religious speculation of the time that burgeoned in Gnosticism.

“I know you were not saying they were exterminated, but you seemed to besaying they became Ebionites.” I do not think they all became Ebionites, though s few could have, just as a few could have become Christian, as you suggested. In fact for those Sadducees that survived the war of 66-70CE and remained in Palestine, it would have been easier to become Ebionites than Christians. Those outside Palestine might have had it easier to turn Christian, as the benefits were greater and the general gentile environment was more accepting of deification than in Judea. This does not really contradict your theory, as they were geographically separated. (the Ebionites from Palestine and the Christians from Diaspora)

“That is what I could not see. They were Christians all right but presumably Christians as Jesus might have exoected them to be—aware of the spiritual benefits of poverty.” Sure, but isn’t this exactly what Ebionites were?

Indeed, but the Sadducees had been privileged, and the enemies of the Ebionites. They could hardly have wanted to join them or be accepted if they did. The Christians were a much better new home for them.

“The Sadducees had been the ruling class, and, while not all were loaded, they were comfortably off even in the villages, and used to having privileges. Joining the Christian sects in the diaspora led by Hellenised Jews and expatriot Essenes dismayed by the turn of events in Judaea seems more likely. If any Pharisees had priestly functions, it will be because some Sadducees had changed allegiance to the Pharisee party. It cannot have been many.” Well there only 6000 Pharisees and 4000 Essenes before the war. Not that many. Even fewer survived the war. I have not yet found out how many Sadducees there were, but I would assume they were even fewer than the other sects. If you mean the Pharisees having priestly functions only because some Sadducees had switched allegiance to the Pharisee part in the Christian churches of the diaspora, I cannot argue that, for I lack knowledge. But if you mean in the Sanhedrin and the Temple, that is wrong. There were Pharisees in both.

I am saying I did not know that Pharisees could act as priests in any way, unless some Sadducees had joined the Pharisee party. There were Pharisees in the Sanhedrin, naturally. It was largely a Pharisee institution. I did not know that any Pharisees had any sacerdotal responsibilities. I would have thought the jealouslies between the sects would have ruled it out.

“As I said, they were out of a job! Joining the Christians in the diaspora would have offered them a natural home that would allow them to aspire to a job and the respect of a small community, not dissimilar to the position they had formerly, especially the provincial Sadducees. Your further observations are pertinent. We agree on this.” Exactly.

“I noted above that the church of the Palestinian Jewish Christians we call the Jerusalem Church. We don’t know whether that was its name for itself (they probably called themselves ‘The Poor’ (Ebionites—Paul was collecting for ‘The Poor’ in Jerusalem), but it is a clear name for our purposes, and does not necessitate it being based in Jerusalem after the war, though I don’t see why some of its remaining members should not have returned to Jerusalem.” What was the point of returning to ruins? The Romans did not allow any rebuilding by the Judeans.

Again you have the better of me here. I understood that Jews were not barred from Jerusalem until the city was ploughed under after the Bar Kosiba rebellion and rebuilt as the gentile city Aelia. So, although the city had been severely damaged after the Jewish War, I did not know that no one lived there, and it seems unlikely to me. People often have to live in ruined cities, even if it is only for a time. Why also should the Romans have wanted to utterly erase a city in 135 AD that was already derelict and deserted? But no doubt you have read sources I have not.

“It must have been thrown out after Bar Kosiba’s revolt because it remained Jewish. The gentile Christians by then were distinct and wereallowed a church in the city.” We already agreed on that.

“I guess that I am among them, but can hardly be called a Christian in fact. I wonder how many of the two billion are practising Christians.” You know that all religions try to exaggerate the head count of their flock. Others do it too. How many Jews do you think attend Synagogue regularly? My data suggests it is less than 30%. I think the % of Christians in Europe who attend regularly their Church is less than that. (in third world and North America is much higher though) You know as well as I do that you are counted in even if you have the most tangential contact with the religion of your birth. You are only counted out if you undertook conversion to another religion.

“Earlier you said to me, ‘Could be, but the link of the Hellenised Jews of the Diaspora with the Essenes and the Jesus group must be proved. The naysayers would counter (with some credibility) that the Temple and not the Essene insurrectionists controlled the Diaspora.’ You have just answered the ‘naysayers’!” Good! J It must have been subconscious that I did. I didn’t realise this. But my thoughts on this topic are evolving, so I learn as I go.

“I thought you meant that the Zealots and particularly the Sicarii were the armed wings of the Essenes. Essenes spent their days professing to be pacific when they were looking for signs auspicious for a holy war.” I did meant that too. The Sicarii and the Zealots were the muscle men, and did not have an ideology any different than other anti-Roman groups. They were however willing to go further and use violence, assassination etc. It was a difference of degree, not of substance. In fact all this division: Essene, Pharisee, Sicarii, Zealots, Nazarenes, Galileans etc was more gradual than it was made out to be by the Christian histories.

“I’ve had the same said to me by some counsellor when my marriage was on the rocks. I was too rational and my wife too emotional so we were both missing the target! I like mathematics too, but lost it when the school I went to made me skip the fifth form. What the sixth form were being taught was beyond me.” Sorry, I am not at all familiar with the English school system so I have no clue what 5th or 6th form means. But anyway, this is irrelevant to our topics. I do however feel bad about you being made by the school to skip one of these forms. I taught a bit myself (not just theology, but also math) and I can say that it is always the teachers fault, not the students when things don’t go as expected. It happens because the teachers were not competent enough and did not teach well or did not kindle interest in the student. Unfortunately I had a lot of such teachers. I learned from that and I was a better teacher than those I had as a child. Perhaps that was because I genuinely cared about the subject I taught and tried to make them easy to understand and relevant to the students.

“Yes, so he claimed in the bible as we now find it, but early on the gentile Christians wanted to distance themselves from their parent, the Essenes—whom they wrote out of the account to further the pretence that Jesus was unique—and the Pharisees—whom they made the villains as the strongest surviving Jewish party after the war (they were often referred to as ‘the Jews’), and the manifest villains in 135 AD.” It is definitely the logical conclusion. After the war in 70 CE, the last remaining of the Zealots was destroyed at Massadah and the only parties that remained in Judea/Palestine were the Ebionites and the Pharisees. So as the only surviving party that was different from them, the Ebionites (and the gentile Christians outside Judea) were now distancing themselves them and starting a more anti-Pharisee line, since the winner was going to be the only ideological force in all of Judaism. The stakes were high and the gloves came off. (I do not know if there were any Essenes that were not associated or accepting of Yeshua at this point; perhaps you can fill me in on this)

My guess is that there were. I do not think that all Essenes accepted Jesus at all, and Josephus specifically mentions Essenes in the Jewish War. So, the phenomenon that was Jesus caused more splitting in the brittle structure of Judaism at the time. Some essenes must have returned to their former ways as perusers and prophets of the scriptures, continuing to look for auspicious signs, having got this one wrong, but others, perhaps a minority, thought Jesus a significant leader and became the Ebionites you speak of. Genrally, though, the Essenes will have been more damaged in organisational structure and in psychology by the defeat in the Jewish War. I think many will have become cynics and effectively rejected God (for rejecting them, despite all their best efforts) and formed the basis of Gnostic Theology by categorising the Hebrew God as a lesser God who had become megalomaniac. They could not reject the idea of a Good God entirely of course, so they reverted to the older Canaanite hierarchy and re-established El as God, now the high god of heaven, as he was originally. This God was remote, and the lesser God had taken advantage of his remoteness to impose himself as the God of the earth. But you will know all this. My point is simply that disillusioned Jews of the Essene sect will have started Gnosticism in this way.

“Agreed. Paul was a Romano-Jewish spy, and, whether Rome had its fingers in the pie or not, it was hard for the Jerusalem Church to control the outreach churches. Acts shows that they sent men to control the activities of Paul and fellow Hellenists, but they could not.” The NT mentions that Paul went to Jerusalem. They could have controlled him while there. That is a strange story, because Paul would not have gone there unless he was sure nothing will happen to him. But with the Romans and their puppets still protecting him, probably nothing could have happened to him anyway. What is strange is that Paul never mentioned that he met there any of Jesus’ 12 apostles (with the exceptions of Peter? Please correct me as I am a bit weak on NT). Doesn’t this sound strange? What happened to all the others? And Paul was a Roman citizen. That was not an honor bestowed on just anybody, least of all a Jew. That is unless he was very useful in some manner. As a member of a society/sect that proclaimed a Messiah (as the Christians were), he would basically have been recognising another king than the Roman Emperor. That in itself was seditious. Yet nothing happened to him. Even after arrest he is treated with kid gloves, which the Romans never used on people guilty of sedition. The story just has too many inconsistencies. The Roman treatment is a little too friendly not to arise suspicion.

“Take care. The term ‘rabbi’ is used only to describe Pharisees—except for Yeshu… and except for the Righteous Teacher. You are being contrary, R Rosen! It seems that it might be a case of the Pharisees doctoring their own commentaries to keep the honourable title to themselves.” That seems a very unlikely thing, because the Pharisees did not write the Essene documents. You seem to suggest either that they did, or that they somehow went back in time and modified them?? Neither Temple period Pharisees nor Rabbinical Scholars of the post-Temple period could have done those things.

I don’t know why you think I have that idea. The others you mentioned used the term for specific people, so the term seemed to be in general use for religous teachers. Perhaps the Pharisees that survived all the carnage simply continued to use the title, and gave the impression in their own commentaries that it was theirs solely.

‘You may be right, but we have no surviving evidence that other sects hadthis title. (Of course I may be biased or it may be beyond my current knowledge). You just gave it.’ I don’t see it. Of 4000 Essenes only one had such a title. This may only indicate that he was a Pharisee. Many secret societies are run by other ones and only the top leaders know of it.

Then by being called a rabbi he was being exposed as a fifth columnist. Different sects can use honorific titles in different ways. Catholicism has only one pope but has countless fathers, yet they mean the same. The Essene leader was the righteous teacher, and so rabbi was their equivalent of pope, but for the Pharisees, it was like the use of father. All were teachers, and so were called it. I do not know, but do not think much weight can be placed on it.

‘Well, you are using “proof” like any fundamentalist here. There might be no proof, but there is plenty of evidence. The whole period is fraught as our discussion shows. I cannot see any point in generating unnecessary complications besides those there already are!’ That’s funny. Fundamentalists don’t let proofs get in the way. Truth seekers look for proofs. Even the same party has different wings. The more so in a time of occupation. The fact is that both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were financing and blessing resistance movements and rebels. Politics might have prevented them from acknowledging their ideological children or their client muscle outfits, but any serious look at their ideological similarities can tell the story.

What they do is use the word "proof" for the word "evidence", as if they were the same thing, for their own purposes. Opponents have no proof, but they have plenty (though it is at best evidence). When you say Sadducees you must mean Essenes, and while we agree that the two rival sects were originally both Hasidim, that they were still different wings of the same party seems unlikely, though I supopose possible. I think someone called Laurence Schiffman has ideas on this issue. Have you read any of it?

I have not but I will look it up.

“By general consent, Mark’s is still the oldest of the four, but I agree that many of the instances when Pharisees are depicted as Jesus’s opponents, Sadducees would make more sense. The explanation, besides the desire for Christians to distinguish themselves from the unpopular Jews, was that the Sadducees had disappeared from history, some of them, we surmise, into the Christian ranks, and so there were two reasons for substituting them for Pharisees in the original accounts.” Our main disagreement is that of the relationship of the Pharisees and Essenes. I am happy for the moment to accept the consensus that they were distinct sects. The evidence is well inclined that way, but if ancient Judaism was much more apocalyptic than it now is, perhaps the two sects were much more like the Essenes than scholars think at the moment, taking, as they do, modern Judaism as the type of the Pharisees. Their differences would seem even more like hair-splitting than they currently do when we think of Pharisees as much more reasonably people in our modern terms, and therefore quite distinct from the more fanatical Essenes. Both were perhaps fanatical and apocalyptic, and we have false ideas about them based on modern Judaism.

Agreed. We only seem to disagree on minor details, and often they are details that simply cannot be known for sure. So we agree pretty closely. It is a narrative that is plausible and fits the historic circumstances without requiring any supernatural postulations. No reconstruction of the past can be perfect, but it is a lot better than the prevailing Christian one.

“What I am imagining is that of the millions of Jews in the Diaspora, there must have been a whole spectrum of levels of assimilation, and there must have been a level corresponding to those who felt they ought to undertake the Passover pilgrimage to realise a fading duty still felt.” Well, the example is interesting. But in the case of the Jews the necessity of Pilgrimage was even stronger than it is in Islam. Islam requires a one in a life time pilgrimage IF you can afford it. Judaism required multiple pilgrimages, preferably yearly, but absolutely necessary once in a life time. There was no IF you can afford it proviso. The importance of pilgrimage was therefore much greater. Also you compare events at a 19 century remote, from the inside of a society (British) that is pretty much secular. That was not the case either with the Roman Empire or with the first century CE Jews. Many polytheists had pilgrimages to some temple also and the Jews would not have had any reason to emulate a secularism, which frankly did not exist. While in Britain, of the 20th century CE it did exist.

We seem to be agreeing on this. Hellenized Jews will have retained an inclination to go on pilgrimage even though their degree of overall knowledge and commitment to Judaism might have been weak. These are the ones that will have heard of the Messiah Jesus and thought it offered them a chance of salvation despite their general stumbling over the law.

“Perhaps they did, but the Christians in power contrived to present them as forgeries.” It is possible, but if they did exist, the Roman authorities would have still convinced the would be converts and many of the less fanatically convinced Christians with their publicity. I maintain that it would have been a devastating blow to the nascent Christianity. It could even have been used as a conviction of treason against the Emperor Constantine because he joined a politico-theological movement that had its origin in sedition against Rome. That would have been the Watergate of the ancient world!! The only logical conclusion is that such official Roman documents either did not exist or they were destroyed BEFORE 325 CE. Perhaps much before, because none of the Roman nobles and senators which were displeased with Constantine’s adoption of Christianity and his change of capital to Constantinople mentioned them or try to use any documents of this nature. If they knew of such documents or if they existed they would have used them for sure.

Eusebius, a sycophant of Constantine, claimed that forged Acta Pilati were made by the pagans in the time of Maximinus II (311 AD). He confirms that Christians did declare some Roman archives as forgeries, and the reason was that they did not support the Christian story. Epiphanius, I believe, also mentions them. The Christians produced their own forgeries to counter the ones they called forgeries! So Constantine was OK! The Christians were too strong by then anyway.

“…with the utter razing of Carthage in 146 BC, my guess is that the dispersed Carthaginians reverted to the religious practices of the Phoenicians (Syrians to Romans) and became Jews.” I think this last part is pushing it. The Carthaginians might well have reverted to the religions practices of the Phoenicians (though I do not think they ever abandoned them), but they would not have become Jews. Monotheism is not exactly an appealing doctrine unless force is applied to impose it and why would they choose the religion of the Jews, a poor, provincial and backward people on the other side of the Mediterranean? (I know this sounds strange coming from me, but let’s be realistic and think the way they would have thought). I cannot see it at all. Judaism would not have had any attraction to them. It didn’t have any before the Romans conquered them and it would not have appealed to them after it. In fact Judea was not yet conquered by Rome in 146 BCE. The city of Carthage was pillaged and most of the men were slaughtered. The few who survived, together with the women and children were sold into slavery. Pretty much as in Judea in 135 CE. The original Judeans and Carthaginians disappeared from history. Both at Roman hands. It is why the diaspora was too incredibly large to have originated in a tiny country with a short history. I think conversion had that effect. The Zoroastrian born religions had universally replaced a race with a Church. The present day Jews are only remotely traceable to Judeans, despite the claims of some nationalists. In fact the position of the Rabbis is that Jews are a nation only due to the Torah. Although active missionising is not occurring today, in the past it did occur a lot. Whole tribes and races were converted to Judaism. That is the key which explains the exploding numbers of Jews. You are right though that the Persians had a keen interest in this: the more problems they created inside the Roman Empire the better, because the Persian Empire was always in conflict with Rome. Up to the point where both were engulfed by the emerging Arab Empire. (Islam also maintains numerous Zoroastrian themes, though the Muslims would deny this).

I appreciate your doubts and agree with much of what you say. The whole question of the Jewish diaspora needs looking at outside of religious channels. In about 450 BC, the population of Yehud was only a few tens of thousands. By the first century AD, there were millions of Jews but mostly not in Judaea. They could not all have been descendents of the original few myriads, and nor could they even have been all converted into the religion of those few myriads. Where then did they all come from? The answer is that Jews as a religion were never confined only to Yehud. The Jews of Yehud were a nation of priests. They were the central priesthood of the religion of the Jews, and the Jews were the people conquered by the Persians with no opposition, ie those who surrendered voluntarily, or yielded to little pressure. They were the peoples whose gods were not evil divas, whose religions were accepted but were given the official stamp and characteristics of Zoroastrianism. The Persians seemed to call them all Juddin, a name that is so curiously similar to Yehudim that we have to consider whether it is merely coincidence. Since they also set up a temple in Yehud, which quite a short time after it was set up (less than 100 years) was freed of any connexion with the Persians by the Alexandrian conquest of Persia, the many different Juddin of the old Persian empire could have seen the Jerusalem temple as a common holy place—perhaps were encouraged to do so by the Persians. If the priesthood of the temple in this period had seen the opportunity, and I cannot imagine they did not, then they will themselves have encouraged the idea that the temple of Jerusalem was the temple of the Juddin. It is a time of which we know little enough. It would, though, explain why Jews were dispersed. They always were! All I am saying about the Carthaginians is that once their city was razed, their loyalties would have been to their original homeland in Canaan, and so they would have joined the diaspora by converting to Judaism as it then was. As you say, those who were not murdered were enslaved but they must have been many. Carthage was a big city. Many Syrian traders from Antioch will have been Juddin. By the time that Pompey conquered the east with its millions of Juddin in about 64 BC, there must have been a lot of Canaanite slaves or sons and daughters of slaves in the Roman empire. All of these people then will have found an identity in the Jerusalem temple, and many will have opted for it rather than accepting what their masters had to offer, alien religions anyway. So, it is not a matter of them identifying with a poor country, any more than it is now. They were identifying with what they had already come to see as their spiritual home!

“I am not saying that all angels were God, but some such as Michael and the Angel of the Lord show every indication of being a device to allow God to appear without burning up the observer.” It is a bit complicated, but I will try to explain the Judaic position: both Michael and the Angel of the Lord were not thought of as human beings. Messengers and representatives of G-d yes, but not as human beings, nor as G-d Himself.

Yes, I quite accept that pious Jews could have thought of a distinction between these angels and men and with God too, but they served the function of allowing God to appear before men. Since they were angels and therefore heavenly beings and necessarily perfect, they could not have told lies, and so gave the precise message of God and did precisely what God wanted, and so they were God on earth to all intents and purposes. Then again, if the Zoroastrian attitude to God still prevailed, it must have been that the various aspects of God could be personified as seven spirits and these were the archangels, yet were aspects of God Himself. Now, I try not to let the attitudes of modern Judaism influence my own attitude about how those people two millennia ago actually thought. It was not necessarily as certain or as prescriptive as modern Jews think, and, indeed, in much less uniform times, there must have been far less uniformity of thought, and, of course, we know there was because Judaism was spallated into many sects. I am merely speculating that there were strands of Judaism that could accept that God or an aspect of Him could appear as a person.

“Now you then make a subtle distinction that I cannot get, that a man cannot be God. If God appears as a man then a man is God!” Ok, bear with me a bit. G-d in Judaic theological thought is omnipotent. Therefore if He so wishes he could appear in a human form. (Think of Greek legends where Zeus took the form of a Bull to kidnap Europa; clearly the Greeks did not think of Bulls as Zeus?! Same here.) So while G-d could take any form he wished: a burning bush, a pillar of smoke, a humanoid form etc, it was still G-d. Not the other way. A man was not G-d simply because the omnipotent G-d of Judaism could take a humanoid form. There is no Judaic source which affirms the opposite, i.e. that a human turns into G-d. That thought is a Greek formula, not a Judaic one! A man might be a messenger or prophet of G-d, but not G-d himself. A big difference. Jews would not worship or deify a pillar of smoke, a human, a prophet etc. Maybe Greeks or Hindus might extend divinity to such entities, but this was very foreign to Judaic thought. This was condemned in fact and constituted the greatest theological crime, worse than breaking some other commandments or breaking dietary laws. It goes against the Shema. While to you this distinction might seem a trifle or hair splitting, in Judaic thought this is a much more serious issue. Think of a man and his suit of clothes. The man might get dressed in another suit (the outward appearance) but the suit is not the man! You are confusing the man with the suit.

Not at all. Let me begin with what you accepted above. God is omnipotent and so can appear in human form. I quite agree that if God did this trick, the appearance of man that He incarnated as would still be God. Suppose then that He incarnated in the form of rabbi Rosen. The point is how can I or anyone else distinguish God in the form of rabbi Rosen from rabbi Rosen. I am not saying that rabbi Rosen is God but that God can appear as rabbi Rosen and then I would have no idea which was which. So, then, suppose rabbi Rosen claimed he was God and offered some remarkable revelations or new teachings and perhaps a few conjuring tricks to impress the gullible. How could anyone be sure that this claimant that everyone had known as rabbi Rosen was not really God? This is the dilemma for anyone if it is conceded that God can and would under some circumstances want to appear as a man. From what I have read in Isaiah, God warns in no uncertain terms that no one should think any man was God, which has to be a declaration that God would not ever appear as a man and expect anyone to believe it because it would be tempting people to break the commandment he had given not to believe any man who made the claim. But then I and you and the designers of modern Judaism are fairly logical whereas the primitive and semi-literate people of the time might not have been like us.

“It seems evident to me that the whole point of the proscription on men being God was to stop madmen and opportunists from claiming to be God.” That would refer to gentile madmen. Jewish madmen did not claim to be G-d, merely that they were His prophets.

I like it! But one Jew who was mad enough to make the claim, Christians say, was Jesus. Was he the first Jew actually to make the claim?

“The roots of the idea ARE in Judaism, and I am merely wondering whether some Jews were able to accept the reasoning along with Christianity. I suspect they were, and the Christianized branch of the Ebionites possibly confirms it.” I don’t think we will ever agree on this one, because you look at it through the prism of a gentile grown in a Christian milieu, while I plainly tell you this is not how Judaism views this matter. Best agree to disagree. I value you as a friend and don’t want to antagonise you over theological minutiae. As I said before, gentile Christians would readily make this jump, while Jewish Christians would not. A Muslim would understand what I say, but a Christian would not. Suffice it to say that Yeshua was not the first, nor the last Jewish Messiah. Many came before him and many came after him. None of these other Messiahs followers ever claimed their Messiah was G-d. And as the Ebionite example proves, the Jewish Christians did not either. Only the gentile Christians made that jump. Perhaps if these other Jewish Messiahs had gentile followers or converts, they too would have been elevated to the status of G-d. But only by gentiles.

I am not antagonized over an illuminating discussion, and perhaps we will have to agree to disagree in the end, though it does not make a large difference to anything proposed whether the source was Jewish or gentile. I simply think the beginnings of Christianity were so Jewish that we have to consider the possibility that some Jews had the original idea—or delusion. I think it was probably impossible, once Christianity had started, for any other messiah, Jewish or otherwise to succeed while claiming to be God. And it is possible that, after Christianity began to get converts, the rabbis expunged any records of any previous such claimants, had there been any, as well as anything about Jesus himself.

“Michael leads the heavenly hosts, surely making him into God, for who is the leader of the heavenly hosts other than God. The Angel of the Lord seems to be God on earth.” Seems to be only to the eye of a gentile. The Jews did not see Michael as G-d on earth. But again we are revolving around the same argument and it must bore you by now. And I do not want to upset you over theological minutiae. If I told you otherwise I would be telling you things that are not in the Judaic thought. How can I explain this better? I try: Hermes was the messenger of Zeus. But he was not Zeus. Even the Greeks understood this distinction and never entertained the thought that because Hermes carries Zeus’ messages he is Zeus himself. Same with Michael and G-d. It is complicated, but I hope I succeeded in explaining the difference.

I quite understand what you are saying, but you are failing to see that what obtains now did not necessarily obtain then, at least in such a monolithic way.

“I did not know that any Pharisees had any sacerdotal responsibilities. I would have thought the jealous lies between the sects would have ruled it out.” I think I made an error here. I was thinking of Sanhedrin and I think I wrote Temple priests. I will have to check back. It is not easy being old. I apologise for the error. IT was unintentional. The Sadducees held the leadership of the Temple. I do not know if some minor Temple functions might have been handled to Pharisees. This gets more complicated still. There were 5 Sanhedrins set up by the Romans. The one mostly talked about is the one in Jerusalem, but it was not the only one. After the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin was reconvened at Yavne by Yohanan ben Zakkai. It (in some form or another) continued to meet periodically in Yavne and later in Sepphoris and Tiberias. It was presided over by a Nasi (as you know the Nasi was a Essene title, giving more power to my earlier assertion that Essenes and Pharisees were in fact one) of the house of Hillel (as you know Hillel was the mythical founder of Pharisees until 415 CE, when the Nasi Gamaliel VI was deposed by joint decree of Emperors Theodosius and Honorius. Some of the earliest work of the reconstituted Sanhedrin was determining how to replace the rituals of the now-destroyed Temple while still honoring their spirit; organized daily prayer began to be codified in this period. The Sanhedrin in the post-Temple age concerned itself primarily with codifying the ancient traditions of the Oral Torah; its members were instrumental in the drafting of the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud. It is more comlicated than it appears. If you are confused, you are not alone; I am equally confused.

“Why also should the Romans have wanted to utterly erase a city in 135 AD that was already derelict and deserted? But no doubt you have read sources I have not.” In Roman histories, and this is backed by modern archaeology, the city of Jerusalem was totally wrecked and demolished in the 66-70 war. The Emperor Hadrian ordered it rebuilt in 132 CE in a trip there with his male girlfriend but his construction did not proceed too far before the rebellion began anew. After 135 when the Judean were once again thouroughly defeated the city was built and named Aelia Calitolina. There was no Jew allowed there except for one day a year to the Wailing Wall. (This could be a legend; certainly the Wall standing today is not the same one. It is dated from a much closer time.) Before 132 there was no ban per se against Judeans roaming the ruins, but it was not allowed to rebuild the city either. That’s why I said there was no point in visiting ruins.

I have cited what Har-El said earlier. He goes on to say that after the fall of Betar ending the Bar Kosiba rebellion Jews were forbidden to live in Jerusalem under penalty of death, but he adds, interestingly, that Rabbi Hanina ben Teradion gathered people at the gates of Zion, according to Lament of the Cedars of Lebanon. He concludes from this that the edict cannot have been fully enforced. He goes on to say that synagogues were built on Mount Zion in the third century. In this context, it merely shows that the Jews of the time would not be easily deterred from using Jerusalem even if it were ruined. The Wailing Wall seems to have been Hadrian’s construction, though parts of it were built from Herodian stones left from the previous destruction of Herod’s temple.

“My point is simply that disillusioned Jews of the Essene sect will have started Gnosticism in this way.” Interesting. I will have to look into this. Actually I do not know about this. Gnosticism is not that much known to me. I can analyse it, but Rabbinical education did not give me any insight in this field. I will have to start from scratch to study it. On the surface I would not see it as necessarily an offshoot of disgruntled Judean insurrectionists. They were more likely to die fighting or abandon Judaism for some other faith than to give birth to such a perverse and anti-Judaic philosophy. Would you conceive of the settlers after they will be evacuated joining the Aryan Nations or starting something similarly perverse and anti-Judaic like that? Because this is similar to what you say. It seems most unlikely.

It is a question of whether devout people subject to disapointment upon disappointment and disaster upon disaster will eventually conclude that God has abandoned them. Their loyalty to God, which we cannot doubt, was rationalized. The God they had been loyal to was not the proper God. It has echoes of the evidence there is that Judaism was initially divided over who the proper God was, El or Iah. If they knew anything about this especially, they will have decided the wrong choice was made, and by chosing the wrong god and offering him their devotion they had made him even more megalomaniac than he was at forst. The wrong choice was Iah, who was merely a demiurge god, an artificer to make the world for the great God beyond who was El. This conclusion would then have been wrapped up in a lot of Hellenistic thought by gentiles in the great cities of the eat like Alexandria.

“Perhaps the Pharisees that survived all the carnage simply continued to use the title, and gave the impression in their own commentaries that it was theirs solely.” Well, you would be right if it weren’t for the recorded history that mentions Pharisees as the scribes and sages which were given the title Rabbis. This is not mentioned anywhere in connection with any other Jewish sect. Without these references, I would have accepted your argument. But the non-Pharisaic references mention this, thus giving outside reference to it.

But was it after the time when only Pharisees remained because any rabbis there were around then must have been Pharisees?

“Then by being called a rabbi he was being exposed as a fifth columnist.” The reference was in a restricted circle, not shouted in the market place. The few around were probably high enough in rank to know it and discreet enough not to talk of it. The NT was written much, much later at a time when Yeshua was no longer alive and these distinctions did not matter anyway in the generally gentile milieu, which might not even observe the nuance. If your trained and educated eye did not catch it until now, the half literate gentile converts reading it a century and a half later would not have had even that much of a chance to notice it.

We imagine that the Pharisees and the Essenes were both Hasidim or derived from the Hasids and any teaching among the Hasidim will presumably have required “rabbi” to pass as a title for a teacher to both later sects, although I do not doubt that the Pharisees were publicly teachers while the Essenes taught each other privately within their sect. It is not an issue that bothers me much either way.

“What they do is use the word ‘proof’ for the word ‘evidence’, as if they were the same thing, for their own purposes.” Well, we are talking different languages too. In German both “proof” and “evidence” are the same word. So if you asked me for “proof and evidence”, you will be saying “Beweis und Beweis”. So you see, it seems a translation issue. English is a much richer language and it may lead non-native speakers to either express themselves wrongly or to understand wrongly what the other person is saying. I guess I should have said evidence. Thanks for pointing out this to me. I must improve my English. By the way, the same applies for very many languages, not just German. English language is very vast and has many nuances that escape non-native speakers.

Your English is excellent to my eye, only odd phrases occasionally betray a possible non-native user, but even then I think it could just as easily be a typo. What you said about “beweis” is interesting. There are a lot of people of German descent in the USA, and they have had an effect on US English. An example is the American way of stringing nouns together just as the Germans do, the difference being that Germans make compound nouns of them whereas Americans make the qualifying bouns play the part of adjectives. Perhaps it is this lack of distinction you mention in German that explains why “proof” end “evidence” seem to get mixed up by Americans (not the the British are free of the error, including myself probably at times). Fundies seem to make a deliberate use of the confusion, though.

“We only seem to disagree on minor details, and often they are details that simply cannot be known for sure. So we agree pretty closely. It is a narrative that is plausible and fits the historic circumstances withoutrequiring any supernatural postulations. No reconstruction of the past can be perfect, but it is a lot better than the prevailing Christian one.” Ah, but I never said the Christian story is anything else than a theological story, a myth. I never bought into it. Although there are some minute points in your theory that I still find difficult, they are really minute, microscopic. Your theory is coherent, has internal consistency and has logic and historical developments backing it up. The Christian story has only faith and a sword to make itself believable.

Comment

Clark Wilkins

I found this to be an informative and knowledgable exchange. As to the subject of what caused the Jerusalem Church to descend in power while the Diasporah Nazarene ascended, that can be answered by membership numbers. If one assumes a Jesus crucifixion date of 30 AD and the Nazarenes electing James, Jesus’ brother, as their Jerusalem Church leader, 40 years would take us to 70 AD. The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee and, therefore, believed in physical resurrection of the body on Judgment Day. The disappearance of Jesus’ body and the belief that he had been resurrected would have been an indication to Paul that everyone would be resurrected in his lifetime (or roughly 40 years). He mentions this in Thessolonians and it is repeated in the Gospels that Jesus’ return would come “quickly”.

Thus, Paul sets the stage, by his own conversion, for that of other Pharisees. They would have been the first to adopt the beliefs of the Nazoreans. Yet they would also the first to drop it. The failure for others to be resurrected by 70 AD would lead to the Pharisees to do just the opposite. When Paul died and the resurrection expected by the Pharisees didn’t happen, Paul was proven wrong. Likewise, James, the brother of Jesus, had died at about the same time as Paul - Again with no resurrection. Thus, both Churches faced the same problem at the same time.

Forty years had passed with no resurrection and no return. This would have been an indication to the Pharisee membership that their belief was a false one. Jewish membership would have fallen in both churches. However, the Gentiles that had converted to Paul’s Diasporah synogogues would have been unaware of the problem and they were there in large numbers. Salvation and forgiveness of sin was, for them, as close as the collection pot. Acts describes how much money Paul was taking in. In the Diasporah there was an economic incentive to keep the belief system alive. At least two letters of Paul’s are now believed to be falsified as well as two other Christian books, which deal with the problem of the failure of the Second Coming by explaining why it hadn’t yet occured. All of these works appeared in the Diasporah. Thus, the Gentile Christians of the Diasporah replaced the Church of Jerusalem in the leadership role.

The posted discussions here also included Jesus’ position on Mosaic law and how Pharisees critisized the Hellenized Jews for their lax attendance to these laws. The Gospels were all written in Greek, a sign of Hellenized Jewish authorship. These works go out of their way to be critical of Pharisees for their obedience to law, at the very time that Pharisees were critical of Hellenized Jews for their disobedience to the Law. The Hellenized Jewish authors argued that the Pharisees were hypocrites for preaching one thing but doing another.

It would seem to be a curiosity why the Christian Gospels would be attacking their core Pharisee membership as “hypocrites” until one actually dates those Gospels. Outside of the Book of Mark they were all written post 70 AD which coincides with when Pharisees should have been leaving the Church, disillussioned with the failure of the Second Coming. The Hellenized Jews seem to have taken “parting shots” at their leaving.