The Jesus Papers By Benson Saili 1v4s2t

Jesus Papers Series Article No. 1

UNVEILING THE REAL YESHUA He is history’s most famous personage. More books have been written about him than any other being. To a huge swathe of humanity, he is the very God of the universe, the creator of all there is. But is Jesus of Nazareth the being Christianity projects him as? In a new series called The Jesus Papers, BENSON C SAILI sets out to separate the man from the myth, to demarcate between the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history.

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n the night of October 27 312 AD, Constantine, the Roman emperor from 306-337 AD, had a dream as he soundly slept in his palatial lap of luxury. At the time, Constantine was yet to be firm in the saddle of undisputed sovereign of the Roman world. The throne was still contested by two, justifiable pretenders, Maxentius and Licinius. Constantine was set to clash with the forces of Maxentius, his late father‟s brother who was the designated heir, in the now famous Battle of Ponte Milvio (Milvian Bridge) the following day. As Constantine slumbered, he had a dream in which he saw a huge cross loom large in the heavenly expanse accompanied by a divine voice which thundered, “in this, conquer”. The following day, October 28 312, Constantine‟s troops used the emblem of the cross on their shields in the Battle of Ponte Milvio and indeed were victorious. Constantine duly attributed the victory to Jesus – Yeshua in Hebrew – and became the first Christian Roman Emperor. He proceeded to declare “Jesus Christ” ( please note my enclosure of the name in quotation marks as this is significant as we shall soon find out) as one and the same with God and later in the year had the various s on Jesus integrated into one Holy Writ. This Holy Writ became known as the Canon. Today, we simply call it the Bible. Musical though the above story may sound to the ears of the born-again, tongue-speaking Brother and Sister in Christ, it is largely a legend. It is a concoction folks. Firstly, Constantine never had a dream of the sort, the dream in which he saw the Christian cross and heard the voice of “Jesus”. In his initial of the incident, that is before he became advisor to Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 AD), the leading Church Father of the day, never made mention of the dream. He only did so in a revised in later years, when he became a kind of imbongi of the Emperor. Secondly, the symbol the Roman shields bore was not the cross. It was what is called a Chi-Rho. Chi and Rho are X and P in Greek. The Chi-Rho symbol is formed by superimposing the X and P on each other. It has been said that the Chi-Rho invokes the crucifixion of Christ but that simply isn‟t true. The Chi-Rho symbol was used on some coins of Ptolemy III, an Egyptian King who reigned from 246-222 BC. This was over two hundred years before Jesus was born. Thirdly, Constantine never became a Christian. The Catholic Encyclopaedia itself (Farley Edition) is very frank and forthright when it says on pages 370-1 that there was no Christian religion at the time of Constantine and that the tales of his “conversion” and “baptism” are “legendary”. If the familiar story is a sublime pack of lies, what then exactly transpired? How did the modern Bible come to be and what role did Emperor Constantine exactly play? CONSTANTINE MOOTS SINGLE RELIGION All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. This is 2 TIMOTHY 3:16. The scripture is for me the most misleading age in the 1

entire Bible. This scripture attributes all that is written in the Bible to God. Maybe the apostle Paul, who allegedly wrote this second letter to Timothy, was talking about a different God, not the God Jesus introduced to mankind. 2 TIMOTHY 3:16 wasn‟t talking about the Bible in the form it is today. It was referring to the Hebrew Bible, popularly known as the Old Testament. At the time Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy, that is, in the first century, the New Testament wasn‟t in existence. The epistles were there but they were simply that – mere letters. If perchance they were to turn up today, Peter, Paul, James, and the rest would be astonished to find that we have turned their mere letters into a body of unimpeachable religious dogma! The “scripture” Paul refers to in 2 TIMOTHY is the Hebrew Bible. Yes, the Hebrew Bible was in existence in the First Century in the form of collective Jewish scrolls. But even the Hebrew Bible itself was far from inspired by God. For we now know that the gods of the Old Testament were the Anunnaki, Aliens from the Sirius and Orion star systems and the planet Nibiru, the little-known, tenth planet of the Solar System which is seen only once in 3600 years. In New Testament times, the world was awash with faiths and gods (in truth, they were basically the same gods but under different guises). The Western world had their own gods, the Eastern world their own gods, the Middle East their own gods, North Africa its own gods, and the Indian subcontinent its own gods. Moreover, the mainstream religions themselves were riven by factions, just as is the case today among the Protestant movement. Because of these religious schisms, Constantine was finding it rather stressful to rule his empire, which stretched all the way from Britain to India and encomed all of North Africa and the Middle East. For example, in 324 AD, Constantine sent his Spanish religious advisor Hosius of Cordoba to Alexandria in Egypt to prevail over the eternally feuding bishops – each punting his own religious creed – and get them to make peace. The gesture was fruitless. The emperor therefore decided to create one unified super religion under one god. This new religion would be protected by law. Just how would he go about doing this? ASSEMBLY TO ELECT A GOD! Constantine, who incidentally was black (see accompanying picture of a third century Roman coin which depicts him with typical Negroid features of a dark skin, flat nose, thick lips, and protruding eyes) issued an empire-wide decree ordering all bishops and their deputies to “be mounted on asses, mules, and horses belonging to the public, and travel to the city of Nicaea”. in the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. Nicaea is today called Iznik and Asia Minor is what we call Turkey. In June 325, a total of 318 bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, and exorcists gathered in Nicaea to decide on one, universal god General Election-style. Altogether, they had 2231 scrolls with “legendary tales of gods and saviours, together with a record of the doctrines orated by them” according to Life of Constantine by Eusebius. Sabinius, the Bishop of Heraclea (today‟s Irakleia, an island in Greece) who was in attendance at the Nicaea gathering, noted that the delegates other than Constantine himself and Eusebius were all “a set of illiterate, simple creatures who understood nothing," though the statement was slightly exaggerated as we shall find out. Practically each delegation hyped and promoted its own god in election-campaign style. Altogether, 53 gods and goddesses were eventually tabled for discussion from a cross-section of the Roman empire. They included Apollo, Baal, Caesar (Constantine‟s late father Flavius Valerius Constantius), Jesus, Hesus, Horus, Iao (Jehovah), Jupiter, Krishna, Mithra, and Zeus. The Nicaea gathering has gone into the annals of history as the Council of Nicaea or simply the Nicene Council. Four years before the Nicene Council, Constantine had been initiated into the cult of Sol 2

Invictus. This was a religious sect that worshipped what was termed as a “Saviour Sun God”. Sun Gods were simply of the Anunnaki pantheon who masqueraded as distinct gods but were basically one and the same. For example, the Sumerians, the world‟s first known civilisation, referred to their Sun God as Utu-Shamash. The Greeks called him Helios. The Romans addressed him as Apollo, or simply Sol, meaning Sun. This was all one person, Utu-Shamash, going by different names. Utu-Shamash was the grandson of Enlil, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. The Enkites (the clan of Enki, the step brother to Enlil who actually genetically engineered modern man into existence by mixing Anunnaki and Homo Erectus genes 300,000 years ago) also had their Sun Gods. The first was Marduk, the firstborn son of Enki. Marduk was also known as Ra in Egypt. Perhaps the most famous Enkite Sun God was Horus, the great grandson of Enki. He was ancient Egypt‟s most popular god, just as his mother Isis was the most popular goddess. More will be said about Horus, Isis, and her husband Osiris in due course as they have a great deal to do with the Jesus story. EUSEBIOUS CHAIRS PROCEDINGS Because of his hip of the Sun cult, Constantine instructed Eusebius to convene the Nicene Council sessions on June 21, the summer solstice. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year. Occultically, it is deemed to be a very powerful day as that is the day when the sun is at its maximum strength. Constantine did not worship the true God as your average Christian believes: he worshipped an idolatrous, counterfeit god – a flesh-and-blood god who was a mere Alien from another planet. Eusebius accordingly took pride of place in the hall at Hosius‟s Palace. He occupied the first seat on the right of the emperor and delivered the inaugural address on the emperor‟s behalf. At the time, Eusebius, a Roman of Greek origin, was a noted historian, theologian, and statesman. He was a particularly polemical scholar and defender of the Jewish scriptures, including the gospels and the epistles of Paul. He is today venerated as a Church Father (that is, men who were in the forefront of defending, expounding, and developing Catholic doctrines), a category that includes Clement of Rome (d. A.D. 97), Ignatius (d. 110), Polycarp (d. 155), Justin Martyr (d. 165), Irenaeus (d. 202), Tertullian (d. 220); Athanasius (d. 373), Epiphanus (d. 403); Jerome (d. 420); and Augustine (d. 430). But exactly which faith was Eusebius in true allegiance to? For despite his outward professions, Eusebius, as we shall soon find out, was not at heart a Jesus devotee. The process of electing one, universal God was painstaking, lasting one year and five months. According to the Catholic Encylopaedia, there was a “huge assortment of wild texts” and “Gospels and Gospels” circulating among the gathered presbyters. Tempers were also very high among people who were supposedly “holy” men. For instance, when Arius, an aged Libya priest of Alexandria rose to posit a counter-argument, Nicholas of Myra in today‟s Turkey punched him in the face hard and good and that took care of him for the rest of the proceedings. Who of the 53 gods finally carried the day? The answer will surprise!

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 2

JESUS ELECTED GOD … but it was a composite Jesus cobbled up from various strands of other “Jesuses” and “Christs”

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he Nicene delegates campaigned and balloted for one year and five months with a view to settle for one universal god as per the wishes of Roman emperor Constantine. Consensus, however, proved impossible to attain. The long list of 53 “candidate gods” was narrowed down to a shortlist of only 5 most popular gods. These were Caesar, Krishna, Mithras, Horus, and Zeus. Jesus was conspicuous by his absence. Just who were the five standout gods? In unpacking the quintet, we will begin with Zeus. Zeus was the Greek name for Jehovah (also called Jove, Jah, Yahweh, etc). As I related in my very first series, the Earth Chronicles, Jehovah was an Anunnaki (Sumerian term for Alien) from Nibiru, a Solar System planet seen only once in 3600 years. The Sumerians, the world‟s first known civilisation that flourished 6000 years ago in Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq, referred to him as Enlil, meaning “Lord of the Shining Ones”, as the Anunnaki were called by Earthlings. This was long before the Old Testament was chronicled. The Roman elite were aware Jehovah, Enlil, Zeus, etc, were one and the same god but the common man had no idea this was so. Zeus was the head of a pantheon (a clan of gods). It was he and his grandson Apollo who were the most popular gods among the Roman aristocracy of the time. All the so-called gods were Anunnaki. On the other hand, the commoners in the western expanse of the Roman world (what we today call Europe) mostly worshipped Caesar. Caesar was the title for the Roman emperor. Since the death of Julius Caesar (100 BC to 44 BC), Roman emperors were worshipped as gods by the mass of Roman subjects. Roman emperors were also called “Saviours”. The term saviour originally referred to the sun. Put differently, Caesars were deemed as vital to mankind as the sun was to life in general. Of course in private, Caesars themselves worshipped Zeus or Apollo. As we explained in Article 1, Apollo‟s Sumerian name, Shamash, meant Sun God. Horus was mostly worshipped in Egypt. He was a great great grandson of Enki (meaning “Earth Lord”), the step brother and arch-rival of Enlil. Mithras was mostly worshipped in Persia, and Krishna was mostly worshipped in India. Horus, Mithras, and Krishna were essentially the same “gods” going by different names but of course the ordinary man was not aware of this. In sum, the five gods that made the final cut at the Nicene Council were chosen not on their individual merit but on the basis, largely, of geographical balance. Each region of the Roman empire had to be represented – Western Europe, Egypt, India, Persia, etc. But what about the Middle East? The Middle East was represented by Zeus but the general populace didn‟t know this as the name Zeus was associated with the Greek pantheon. Thus when Iesus (Jesus) was initially bandied about, some very influential voices objected, insisting that that would be a duplication as Iesus was simply a reincarnation of Krishna. Indeed, Krishna was Sanskrit (an ancient language of India) for Christ. In other words, the person known as Iesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) in the Middle East was known as Krishna in India. CONTENTION FOR A BRITISH “JESUS” Constantine was kept informed of the goings-on in the Nicene Council proceedings. After a year and five months of grueling debate and spirited propagandistic pitching of partisan gods, the chairman, Eusebius

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Bishop of Caesarea, reported to him that there was a deadlock on five gods. The emperor then tabled the five gods before his inner circle, all of whom were of the Roman Illuminati. The emperor‟s advisors noted one anomaly. This was that one very important god was missing among the five candidate gods. This was Hesus. Hesus was a very popular god among the Druids of Britain. Britain was at the time part of the Roman empire too but it was not represented at the Nicene Council. The Druids were a very eminent priestly tribe of what was then known as Gaul. Gaul was mainly present-day and Belgium, plus parts of and Britain, and parts of the Scandinavian countries. The Druids were thus a very influential lobby in the Roman establishment. The Druids had worshipped Hesus since 834 BC, that is, close to 900 years before Jesus was born. Hesus too was a Saviour Sun God. Like Mithras, Krishna, and Jesus, Hesus too was crucified. He was depicted on a cross with a lamb on one side, to symbolise his innocence, and an elephant on the other side, to signify the colossal weight of the sins of the world he came to redeem. The idea of a Saviour or Redeemer did not begin with Jesus: it dated back thousands of years before he came onto the scene. Constantine‟s advisors also told him that if he simply settled on one god, he would ruffle a lot of feathers: there would be no religious solidarity within his empire. What he had to do was to foist a composite god – several gods rolled into one to placate the most influential factions. The most sensitive parts of the Roman empire at the time were Britain and India. It were the gods of these areas that Constantine decided to nominally project. In essence, all the five gods, plus Jesus, who also had a significant following in the empire, particularly in Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch and who was imionedly promoted by Eusebius, would be incorporated but the name of the now synthesized god would derive from the British and Indian gods. It was a masterstroke. The emperor pretended to have disqualified some gods when in reality he had simply fused all of them into one syncretic deity. “JESUS CHRIST” TRIUMPHS The emperor‟s announcement to the Nicene assembly took almost everybody by surprise but since he was the Lord of the Realm no one dared but him any buts. Constantine ruled that since the deliberations had failed to come up with a unanimous god for almost 18 months, it now fell to him to cast the compromise imperial vote. Of the five gods that were still a bone of contention, he had decided to drop four – Caesar, Mithras, Horus, and Zeus. Only Krishna was retained, for politically strategic reasons as indicated above. At the same time, the emperor proposed another god, Hesus of Britain. Hesus and Krishna would thus be the coned one god to be called Hesus Krishna. In Greek, this translated to … hold your breath … Jesus Christ! (Note, however, that at the time the letter J did not exist: it only came into being in 1630. Hence, in the 4th century, the new god was addressed as Hesus [or Iesus] Christ.) Constantine did not wish to issue a decree in respect of his decision and so he put it to a “democratic” vote by a show of hands, though the outcome of the vote was already a foregone conclusion courtesy of preliminary lobbying. The vote was a cliff-hanger though: the emperor‟s wishes carried the day by a wafer-thin margin of four. 161 delegates voted for the new, unified god and 157 voted against. Consequent to the vote, a document known as the Nicene Creed, also called the Profession of Faith, was drawn up. It read as follows: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Hesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of every God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from 5

Heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into Heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost.” To the uninformed Christian, the Nicene Creed may come across as referring to the familiar Jesus Christ of the gospels. However, the attributes of the Jesus Christ of the Nicene Creed do not solely belong to the Jesus of the gospels: the story of Jesus is uncannily similar in many ways to that of Krishna, Mithras, Hesus, Horus, and other Saviour Sun Gods before him as we shall in due course demonstrate. The Jesus of the gospels is actually a composite Jesus, with elements of his story drawn from other Saviour Sun Gods. Indeed, if the Jesus Christ of the Nicene Council of 325 AD is himself a composite god, it automatically follows that the gospels themselves must be composite narratives too. But how can the gospels be of a composite Jesus if they were written at least 200 years before the Nicene Council? CONSTANTINE FOUNDS CHRISTIANITY The term Christianity is a relatively modern concept. Christians harbour the belief that Jesus was the founder of Christianity. Theologians aver that it was Paul who founded Christianity. Both notions are grossly mistaken. The de facto founder of Christianity was Roman emperor Constantine. Even then, Constantine did not call it Christianity (it was first called Christianity in the 15 th century). He called it Catholicism (kataholos in Greek, meaning a “universal faith” because it arose from a blending of several distinct though somewhat related religious persuasions). In his epistles, the apostle Paul typically refers to Jesus as Jesus Christ or simply Christ. “Christ” is Greek for the Hebrew word “Mashiack”, or Messiah, meaning “Anointed One”. Yet Paul did not refer to the Jesus movement he rallied into force as Christians. He called the movement Ekklesia, meaning “a fraternity set apart for a specific purpose”. It is the Greek term Ekklesia which English language Bibles translate as “Church”, itself a cynical term etymologically as we shall soon learn. On his part, Jesus called his followers “disciples”, meaning “students”, not Christians. The Jewish authorities branded them the “Nazarenes” (see ACTS 24:5), again not as Christians. Why didn‟t Paul refer to his version of the Jesus movement as Christians (Kristianous in Greek)? In New Testament times, the word Christian was a derogatory, or offensive, term. It was a scornful label that characterised the Jesus movement as “miserable, misguided creatures”. The word Cretin, meaning “idiots”, stems from the term Kristianous. In ACTS 11:25, Dr Luke writes, in proper translation, that “And at first in Antioch the taught ones were called Kristianous”. This is not the same as saying “they called themselves Kristianous” but that they were dubbed Kristianous by some sections of society. The only other places the term Kristianous appears in the Bible are ACTS 26:28 and 1 PETER 4:16. That it is only seldom encountered in the Bible is evidence enough that it was indeed a disagreeable term. Over time, the Jesus movements splintered into numerous sects. Some of these sects began to refer to themselves as Chrestoi, which was very different from Kristianous. Chrestoi simply meant “good men”. The early Church Fathers, such as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, both referred to “all those who believe in Jesus “ as Chrestoi – good men – in contrast to those who didn‟t and as such were apostates or reprobates, which simply meant “evil men”. The Roman historian Suetonius records that earlier in AD 49, a Jewish agitator who called himself Chrestus – “The Good Man” – stirred up a frenzied religious revival in Judea that spread as far afield as 6

Rome (Who this man was will surprise you when his identity is revealed in due course!). In the event, the then Roman emperor Claudius had the Jews expelled from Rome en masse, an event Dr Luke makes mention of in ACTS 18:2. From then henceforward, the Romans typically referred to any semblance of the Jesus movement as Chrestians – after Chrestus. Indeed, Tertullian, one of the Church Fathers, even remonstrated in his book Ad Nationes that it was improper to refer to the of the Jesus movement as Chrestians. What other measures did Constantine take in a bid to consolidate the new strategic religion he founded, initially called Catholicism and latterly Christianity?

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 4

THE CANON EVOLVES Shipping Magnate Marcion Of Sinope Lays Down Controversial But Thought-Provoking Marker

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he New Testament comprises of 27 books. They are said to have been written by only 8 people, namely Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Simon Peter, Jude, and James. The 27 books, plus the 39 of the Old Testament, are also referred to as the canon, which simply means a recognised body of scriptural writings. We know that the canonisation of the complete New Testament as we know it today was officially instituted at the Nicene Council of 325 AD at the orders of Roman Emperor Constantine. But it was not until 367 that Athanasius of Alexandria (296-373 AD), the most influential Church Father after Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 AD), published the full list of the 27 books. The ultimate canon took so long to come to be because certain of the books had been the subject of protracted dispute. These were Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, which were deemed to be somewhat out of sync with the other books and therefore not exactly “inspired by God”. Yet the individual books, if we can call them that as they were essentially letters and kind of cursory biographical narratives, had been in circulation since the first century, including several others that were excluded from the canon altogether. We know at least some of these were in existence around this time as Dr Luke, the author of Luke and Acts, made mention of and even researched from them. In LUKE 1:1, Dr Luke says, "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us …”, clear evidence that indeed there were a host of s on the saga of Jesus in circulation by AD 41, when according to my own reckoning (as opposed to that of the so-called scholars) the first edition of Dr Luke‟s gospel was completed. All the books of the New Testament except Hebrews bear titular or textual references to individuals who wrote them. That, however, is far from conclusive. Of the gospels, for instance, only Luke and Mark were arguably written by the named authors. The gospels Matthew and John are said to have been authored by the apostles John and Mathew but their contents demonstrate quite clearly that they could not have been first-hand witnesses as we shall in due course show. The same can be said of some of the epistles. For instance, the authoritative Bible scholar Professor Bart Ehrman has argued persuasively that 2 Peter was not written by Simon Peter and that 7 of the 13 letters attributed to Paul were written by somebody else. We must also bear in mind that the names of some authors were not necessarily original, even that of Dr Luke possibly. They were in all probability assumed or assigned names, largely to lend credibility to the work. Furthermore, some of the books were not the work of one individual but a like-minded team, who then commissioned a scribe. Sadly, even the most esteemed Bible scholars have missed this glaring fact. For example, Professor Ehrman says the book of Ephesians does not conform to Paul‟s distinctive Greek writing style (the New Testament was originally written in Greek). “Paul wrote in short, pointed sentences while Ephesians is full of long Greek sentences,” he argues. What the highly esteemed professor overlooks is that Paul would simply have dictated Ephesians to an assigned script writer. As somebody who has done ghost writing before and prepared text on behalf of others, I should know better.

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A DOCTORED BODY OF SCRIPTURE Every written work must have an original. Most Christians are not aware that we don‟t have original copies of all scripture. What we read from in our Bibles are copies of copies of copies, ad infinitum, of the long-lost originals. The earliest manuscripts date from 150 AD, which is about 120 years after the crucifixion. There is to date more than 5800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts of the New Testament; 10,000 Latin manuscripts; and 9300 manuscripts in other languages such as Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, etc. All these are mere copies. No one knows exactly what was contained in the originals, except the Vatican perhaps, which has a mini-world of ancient manuscripts in its underground catacombs, access to most of which is denied the public. Since reproduction of copies was done by hand, onto scrolls and parchments (the first printing press, the Gutenberg, was invented in the 15th century), arbitrary and ambitious changes were typically made to them. These changes are called interpolations. As we said last time around, the Christianity of early centuries was riven with factions. Thus each faction made subjective, as opposed to objective, changes to the text according to its own doctrinal slant. That‟s why the Bible sounds so self-contradicting in many respects. The Catholic Encyclopaedia its that “even the genuine epistles were greatly interpolated to lend weight to the personal views of their authors”. The Church Fathers, or aptly the Con-Fathers, were equally culpable. They do not even pretend to gloss over the fact that they censored and made changes to the copies of scripture in their possessions. In Ecclesiastic History Vol. 8, Eusebius writes thus of the gospels: “We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity.” This is the man who was tasked by Emperor Constantine to preside over the compilation of the New Testament. And Christians have the temerity to say the Bible is inspired of God when the same Eusebius could unabashedly declare in another of his publications, 12th Book of Evangelical Preparation, that, “How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived.” MARCION’S PIONEER BIBLE Although the Nicene Council gave rise to the first official canon in that it had the emperor‟s seal of approval, the very first Bible, albeit an unofficial one, was produced by a man called Marcion of Sinope (modern-day Sinop, a city in Turkey). Marcion is to me the foremost sage of the people of his day. Had he been fated to live in our time, I would have been the very first to sign up as his fan. Marcion (85-160 AD), a wealthy ship-owner, was born to a father who was not only the Bishop of Sinope but also had personally known the Apostle Paul. Marcion rejected (as I do) the Old Testament godhead, Jehovah, as an evil god who Jesus actually came to destroy. He called Jehovah a demiurge, meaning a fashioner of only this material and chaotic universe and not the overall creator of all there is that he purported to be. As far as Marcion was concerned, the God Jesus preached was very different from the god of the Old Testament. Marcion therefore regarded the Old Testament and the religion of Jesus as diametrically opposed and therefore rejected the Old Testament altogether. To him, only Paul was the genuine apostle: all others were pretenders and their writings were therefore of no value. It was Paul who correctly interpreted and transmitted the teachings of Christ. In 144 AD, Marcion issued the first Bible. It was divided into two parts: the Evangelikon and the Apostolikon. The Evangelikon was a shorter and earlier version of the Gospel of Luke. Marcion 9

rubbished the other three gospels and settled for Luke because Luke had been an associate of Paul. The Apostolikon were 10 epistles of Paul. They were Galatians; I Corinthians; II Corinthians; Romans; I Thessalonians; II Thessalonians; Ephesians (which Marcion called Laodiceans); Colossians; Philemon; and Philippians in that order. In other words, Marcion rejected 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus as he was certain they could not have come from the pen of the Paul his father knew. The Marcionite Bible thus contained only 11 books. Both the Evangelikon and Apostolikon were not adopted in their entirety but were rigorously edited and reconstructed. For example, in Luke, Marcion removed the first four chapters, which he regarded as “Judaising interpolations” as well as the last sections that talk about the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. As far as Marcion knew, the saga of Jesus ended with the crucifixion, period. As regards the 10 epistles, Marcion weeded out all references to the Old Testament as he had it on good authority that a highly intellectual and discerning Paul would never have quoted the Old Testament. Unlike the Church Fathers and other Christian factional fanatics, however, Marcion never added anything new to the received texts: all he did was edit out the glaring distortions. The Church Fathers were alarmed by the popularity of Marcion‟s maverick canon. They quickly moved to declare him a heretic and excommunicated him from the ecclesiastical fold. From what we now know of the nature and origins of the Old Testament gods as well as what the historical Jesus indeed taught, it is safe to say the Marcionite Bible was the real deal although it did ignore other genuine but generally unpopular gospels as we shall demonstrate with time. THE FINAL CANON It was the Marcionite Bible that set in process concerted efforts toward the compilation of a formal New Testament as the maritime tycoon seemed to have stolen a march on the slumbering Church Fathers. By the time the Nicene Council was called by Emperor Constantine, the process was already at an advanced stage. It was Eusebius, a trusted confidante of Constantine, who urged the emperor to use the Church to his own devices as even Eusebius himself was not genuinely religious but a mere opportunist. The emperor deferred to the advice by issuing the 313 Edict of Milan, which recognised Christianity, and by convoking the 325 Nicene Council, at which the canonisation of the New Testament was officially set into motion. Eusebius and the scribes he commissioned to produce the New Testament considered a number of gospels and epistles, which he divided into four categories. The “acknowledged books” were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, the 13 letters of Paul, Hebrews (which Eusebius endorsed as having been authored by Paul too), and Revelation. The New Testament as approved by Eusebius, therefore, totaled 22 books. The “disputed books”, which were nevertheless known to most and of which were 5, were James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John. The “spurious ones”, that is, forged ones, were Acts of Paul; Shepherd of Hermas; Apocalypse of Peter; Epistle of Barnabas; Didache; and the Gospel According to the Hebrews. The “wicked and impious ones” which not only had to be “rejected” but “cast aside” were the Gospel of Thomas; Gospel of Peter; Gospel of Matthias; Acts of Andrew; and Acts of John. In 367, however, Athanasius, who had effectively assumed the authoritative mantle of the departed Eusebius, itted the five disputed books into the New Testament canon to bring the total to 27, which has been the case ever since. On February 27 380, Emperor Theodosius declared Catholicism as the only authorised religion throughout the Roman empire, an improvement on the 325 declaration by Constantine that it was the official religion of the empire. In fact, from 325 till the Martin Luther-spearheaded

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Reformation of the 16th century, Christianity consisted of only one denomination – Catholicism. There was no Anglican, Pentecostals, Adventists, Baptists, Jehovah‟s Witnesses, etc.

Meanwhile, Constantine made two seismic declarations. First, December 25 was declared the birthday of the god the symbolic birthday of the god he personally worshipped, the Saviour Sun God Sol Invictus, who was actually the Anunnaki Utu-Shamash (also called Apollo), the grandson of Enlil, the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Second, he decreed that the first day of the week be the day of religious observance. The first day of the week was called Sun-Day, or Sunday as we refer to it today. It meant “day dedicated to the Saviour Sun God”. That Constantine never converted to Christianity despite pretences to the contrary is evidenced by the fact that he continued to mint coins inscribed with the Latin words “Soli Invicto Comiti”, meaning “Sol, Invincible Comrade”, that is, comrade of Constantine. Far from a God-fearing sovereign, Constantine was revoltingly cruel. Reads one chronicling of him: “He assassinated his son Crispus and then drowned his second wife Fausta in boiling water. It was the same Constantine who butchered his little nephew, murdered with his own hands his two brothers-in-law, bled to death several men and women, and smothered an old monk to death in a well.”

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Jesus Papers Series Article No.5

SUN IS GOSPEL GOD Cultists Piggyback On Jesus Name To Propagate Sun-Worship

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f there is one troubling paradox about Jesus, it is that very little, factually, is known about him from the familiar sources when he is history‟s most famous being. The Bible itself is far from a dependable, surefire source: arguably 70 to 80 percent of the stories about Jesus as related in the gospels are based either on legend or allegory. Most of the statements attributed to him are imputations – words that were put in his mouth by the gospel writers or contending factions of Christianity who over the years embellished or embroidered his story to align it with their own doctrinal leanings. If you think I‟m pulling your leg, I suggest that you turn to the Catholic Encyclopaedia Volume VI of 1910, p292. There, Pope Leo X, who reigned from 1513-1521, forthrightly says, “How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us". I don‟t have to define for you what the term “fable” means as it is very basic English. The Catholics are the very people who midwived and universalised Christianity and yet it is they who are the first to so boldly drop the hint that what they have been propagating all along is actually a lie. Is Jesus a lie? Did he really exist? If so, was he the God Christendom today worships? I elect not to furnish my own informed answers to the above questions at this juncture but suffice it to say that Pope Leo wasn‟t a raving lunatic. His statement wasn‟t without foundation. Let me at this very point in time introduce to you what is known as astrotheology. This is theology that is based not on a divine being – mortal or spirit – but on heavenly phenomena, that is, the stars, sun, moon, and the planets. In short, astrotheology is the worship, indirectly, of the heavenly bodies. Much of the story of Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with him but with astrotheology. WORSHIPPING HEAVENLY BODIES Astrotheology is itself a coalescence of what is called the solar, stellar, lunar, and saturnine mythos. These were the four major ancient cults. The solar mythos, also known as the solar cult, is about worshipping or venerating the great orb of day we call the sun. This is done directly or indirectly. You may find this hard to digest, but Christianity is a solar cult. It is about sun-worship, a form of idolatory called heliolatory, “helio” meaning the sun. This is not what Jesus intended but it is the corruption with which saboteurs tainted his otherwise very profound and progressive teachings. Worship is a very serious matter folks. That is because you may not know exactly what you ultimately are worshipping. For example, you may think you are worship Michael Jackson because you are so besotted with his music. However, what you actually are worshipping is not Michael Jackson or his music but the dark forces that overshadow him and his music. And when you worship something, you invest it with a seamless amount of power in the so-called spiritual realms, which are simply higher-vibration spheres of existence. That‟s why the Devil, or various guises of him, demand worship because worship is perhaps the most potent source of metaphysical power, which religion mistakes for supernatural power. Once upon a time, the major cults of antiquity, of which there were 7 in number, operated independently. Then at onetime they merged. That‟s why to those who read the Bible between the lines, they can easily detect elements of sun-worship, moon worship, star worship (notably the Sirius and Orion constellations), 12

and planetary worship (particularly Saturn, Venus, and Mars). It is sun-worship, or the solar mythos, however, which is the more prevalent and therefore the aspect we will presently dwell upon. How did the solar mythos come about? ISRAELITES “WHORE AFTER SUN” Let us begin with the Old Testament. Few Christians are aware that there was a great deal of sun-worship in ancient Israel. I can give you scores of examples but I will provide only a few because it is not my wish to bore you with an inordinate amount of focused detail. Time after time, the Anunnaki god of the Jews, Enlil, who is best-known as Jehovah, warned the Israelites to desist from a deification (worshipping) of the sun. In DEUTERONOMY 4:19, Enlil intones, “And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them …” In this injunction, Enlil slams the entire spectrum of astrotheology – sun-worship (solar cult), moon worship (lunar cult), and star worship (stellar cult). Enlil repeats the same onition in DEUTERONOMY 17:2-3 and 2 KINGS 23:5. Yet the Israelites simply could not give up on sun-worship. In Jeremiah‟s time (625-565 BC), the socalled “Weeping Prophet” literally wept over the Israelites‟ disturbing proclivity to loving, serving, and worshipping celestial bodies, including the sun and moon. In the era of Ezekiel (circa 586 BC), the tendency actually got out of hand as the priests ed the abomination of sun-worship too as captured in EZEKIEL 8:16 thus: “And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord: and behold at the door to the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the Temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east.” Why were the Israelites so unyieldingly stubborn in “whoring after sun-worship?” Ironically, it was because Enlil himself was associated with the sun. For instance, in PSALM 84:11, we read that “For the Lord God is a sun and shield”. This may sound contradictory as Enlil cannot slate his own people for worshipping the sun whilst he himself is the sun. However, when you read the Sumerian tablets and cylinder seals, from which the Levites – the authors of the Old Testament – copiously researched, you will appreciate that there is actually no contradiction at all. The Sumerians, the world‟s first known civilisation who were based in modern-day Iraq, documented 6000 years ago that the “gods” were neither one person nor supernatural beings but a flesh-and-blood royalty from Nibiru, a Solar System planet seen only once in 3600 years (I did dwell on this subject in detail in the Earth Chronicles). The “gods”, known as the Anunnaki to the Sumerians and called Elohim in the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, were a pantheon of 12, the overall leader of whom was called Enlil, who the Bible would in due course call Yahweh, or Jehovah. But in biblical times, any one member of the pantheon at one time or another did assume the guise of Enlil as part of a strategy to dupe mankind into thinking they were one god when they were actually a syndicate. This syndicate, however, was never in complete harmony because it was made up of two factions in the main, that of Enlil and that of his step brother Enki, with the former being the hawk faction and the latter being the dove faction. That‟s why Jehovah in the Bible curiously comes across as if he is of two diametrically opposed personalities – at times movingly benevolent (e.g. freeing Israelites from the yoke of Egyptian bondage) and at others unconscionably ruthless (like dousing the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in a nuclear conflagration). Among the Enlilites, the god who fancied himself as a “Sun God” of the Israelites at the time of the exodus and beyond was Utu-Shamash, the grandson of Enlil. Among the Enkites, it was Marduk the 13

firstborn son of Enki, and Horus, the grandson of Marduk. The Jehovah who repeatedly warned the Israelites of sun-worship was primarily Enlil, the Jehovah proper, and secondarily Nannar-Sin, his second-born son, as the two did not want the Israelites to be hijacked by Marduk or to be so carried away by an apotheosis (deification) of Utu-Shamash. For when Israelites worshipped or venerated the sun, they were effectively worshipping the putative “spirit” behind it, that is, Marduk or Utu-Shamash, and thereby neglecting the seniormost god Enlil. Now we can understand why Jehovah in EXODUS 20:5 would say, “I‟m a jealous god”. This was in relation to other “gods”, that is, fellow of the Anunnaki pantheon. GOD’S “ONLY BEGOTTEN SUN” Let us now turn to the New Testament, or to be specific, the gospels, which are fraught with the solar and stellar mythos too. But first, a preamble of the very dawn of human life on the planet is in order. In the beginnings, when primitive man asked questions about his condition and that of the world he dwelt in, he had no one to directly and definitively provide the answers. Hence, he relied on his intuition. The ancients instinctively knew that life on Earth was made possible by the existence of the sun. They were therefore of the belief that some greater and mightier force must have created the sun for the benefit of mankind. They referred to this force as “God” and the sun itself as “God‟s Son”. Although God himself was unseen, so they reasoned, he did reveal himself through his sun/son. What is Jesus reported to have said? “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (JOHN 14:9).” Since the sun was God‟s son and to the ancients the sun was unique in that it was the only one of its kind in the immediate sky, they referred to it as “God‟s only begotten son” (in fact, in Germanic languages, “sun” is spelt “sonne”, conclusive enough evidence that in ancient languages sun and son were used interchangeably). The ancients felt forever indebted to the unseen God for having provided them with his only sun/son. God‟s sun/son was a permanent and eternal gift to mankind, so that even if man continued to die as he always did in old age, life would continue because of the ever-present sun/son. That is to say, for as long as the sun/son shone, life on Earth would not cease but would continue forever. Hence, in their ceremonies and day-to-day parlance, humans would say, in tribute to God, that for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten sun/son so that mankind may have everlasting life, not in the afterlife, where in any case the sun was not needed, but here on Earth. Now, where have you read such a statement? In the gospels – JOHN 3:16 to be specific, the best-known verse in scripture. This verse is said to be the Bible‟s “greatest” only because it has been “overspiritualised‟, or span wholly out of its primeval context to carry afterlife connotations. It is said to be the prototypical demonstration of God‟s grace, with the “son” in the age said to refer to Jesus, an absurdity given what we now know. The age has been turned into a form of blackmail – believe in Jesus, otherwise you perish in the infernal of Hell. The writer or writers of John did not intend the age to apply to the Jesus of history. They penned it in to subtly promote and propagate sun-worship. Yet the ancients (and by this I mean people who lived long before Old Testament times) never even worshipped the sun at all: they simply revered it. The ancients invoked their ancestors and that was the closest they came to worship. They never worshipped aspects of phenomena such as animals or celestial bodies like the sun. Such superstitions came much later when the Anunnaki were ruling the world. The other New Testament age that underlie sun-worship is JOHN 1:18, which says, “No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” Put differently, the age is saying mankind has never seen the creator but only his sun, which is the very symbol of the creator. The initiated ones, what we call the Illuminati, know how to read the Bible because they are aware it is written in code, that is, in a language that is not obvious to everybody. 14

Jesus Papers Series Article No.6

THE HORUS CONNECTION Cult Of Egyptian Sun God Grafted Onto The Jesus Of The Gospels

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f you were to ask anybody what the light of the world was, they would not strain to answer that it was the sun. On some nights of course, the world gets some faint, silvery illumination from the moon but moonlight is not original: it is a reflection of sunlight. The sun is therefore the real light of the world in that it shines forth original and enduring light. The Johannine (John‟s) gospel, which is the most theological as well as astrotheological of the four canonical gospels, is punctuated by declarations by Jesus that he was the Light of the World (e.g. JOHN 8:12 and 9:5). In the Old Testament book of Malachi, God is referred to as the “Sun of Righteousness with healing in his Wings”. To the people of Malachi‟s day, the message was crystal-clear, for in ancient Egypt, where the Israelites lived for 400 years and therefore picked up a lot of religious customs and traditions, the sun was depicted as a winged disc, that is, a circle with bird wings. The bird wings corresponded with the corona of the sun – the gaseous envelope that is normally visible during a total eclipse and which takes the shape of a jagged glow. So when Jesus in MATTHEW 23:7 and LUKE 13:34 says to the Jerusalemites that “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,” the imagery again is unequivocal: the gospel authors are alluding to his being a Sun God. There is another layer to the characterisation of Jesus as the Light of the World. Shedding light, in the context of inculcating knowledge, is called illumination. The people who rule the world from behind the scenes call themselves the Illuminati, meaning the illuminated ones. That is to say, they are privy to knowledge denied or withheld from the rest of the global citizenry. As such, when the Bible refers to Jesus as the Light of the World, it is saying he was the disseminator of privileged knowledge as indeed he was “the light of men “(JOHN 1:4). In other words, Jesus too was one of the Illuminati (but a renegade Illuminati as we shall show in future). The knowledge Jesus set out to impart, however, was not dispensed directly but indirectly, through parables and allegories for instance. That‟s why he would say in MATTHEW 11:15 that, “He who has ears let him ear” or in MARK 4:11 that, “The secret of the Kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables.” 1 JOHN 1:5 says, “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all”. This is patent reference to the sun and therefore to sun-worship. Once this solar-mythos element about the gospels is grasped, one is certain to understand why some of the statements attributed to Paul have been completely misunderstood through over-spiritualisation. For example, when 2 CORINTHIANS 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” the scripture is almost universally understood to refer to a “sinless Jesus”. But the statement yet again pulsates with sun-worship. It is primarily talking about the sun and only secondarily about Jesus as light is a metaphor for righteousness and darkness is a metaphor for evil and sinfulness (Demons and witches are, for example, referred to as the Forces of Darkness. Also see ROMANS 2:19). The moral is that if Jesus was the personification of the sun, then he must have been without sin just as the sun did not have an iota of darkness in it. Then there is the famous transfiguration incident in MATTHEW 17:2, where Jesus “was transfigured before them (the disciples Peter, James, and John) and his face did shine as the sun”. Needless to say, 15

this was about the Son of God showing off his bona fides as the Sun God. It was not so much a historical incident as a philosophical allegory. SUN TERMINOLOGY GALORE In primeval times, when the world was young relatively speaking and mankind led a primitive, survivalof-the-fittest life, he felt kind of desolate and vulnerable in the cold of night. He therefore looked forward to the rising of the sun to chase away much of the physical and mental insecurities that haunted him. Thus every morning, he would utter the sigh, “GOD‟S SUN HAS RISEN”. As we said last time around, the sun was regarded as the son of the unseen creator, or simply God. The sun DECLARED GOD‟S GLORY. Whereas man dwelt here on Earth, God‟s sun/son dwelt “UP THERE IN HEAVEN,” heaven simply meaning the sky. Since sunrise restored peace of mind, the sun was a symbol of God‟s benevolence. It was therefore dubbed the PRINCE OF PEACE (understandably therefore, “solace”, meaning peace and tranquility, derives from “solar”, meaning “sun”). Moreover, since man‟s survival was sustained by energy from the sun, the sun was the SAVIOUR of the world. Every morning, therefore, the sun was hailed as the RISEN SAVIOUR. Every day at dusk, mankind looked forward to the SAVIOUR‟S IMMINENT RETURN. The Saviour would certainly COME AGAIN, the human race assured itself every evening at sunset. When the Saviour Sun returned the following morning, he would be RIDING ON A CLOUD and so EVERY EYE WOULD SEE HIM. Meanwhile, in the dark of night, possible danger hung over the head of every being as that was a time when marauders typically struck. At night, visibility is limited and even familiar objects become only vaguely defined and so there‟s uncertainty in the air. Darkness was therefore associated with possible harm and evil, or the WORKS OF DARKNESS. As much as the sun ruled over day time as THE PRINCE OF PEACE, night was possibly also ruled over by THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Hence, all evil was attributed to the FORCES OF DARKNESS. When the sun shone down on the Earth, it energised not only mankind but the food on which he lived. In other words, the sun gave up the very energy that sustained it for mankind‟s sake. That way, the sun, or God‟s son, GAVE UP ITS LIFE FOR MANKIND TO LIVE. It sacrificed itself at the altar of mankind. All the above emphasised are encountered in the Bible as attributes of either Jesus or the so-called Devil. In JOHN 4:42 and I JOHN 4:14, Jesus is characterised as “THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD”. In MATTHEW 20:28 and MARK 10:45, Jesus, the Sun God “GAVE HIS LIFE AS A RANSOM FOR MANY”. The ages in the gospels and Acts that deal with the resurrection of Jesus are replete with statements like “HE HAS RISEN”, “HE WAS TAKEN UP INTO/ASCENDED TO HEAVEN”, “HE WILL COME AGAIN”, and “HE IS COMING ON THE CLOUDS”. When Jesus died, “THERE WAS DARKNESS ALL OVER THE EARTH” (LUKE 23:44-45 and MARK 15:33). The scriptures that talk about the dichotomy of “LIGHT AND DARKNESS” are so numerous they stretch all the way from Matthew to Revelation. It is not accidental that scripture is so awash with sun-related terminology. It is purposeful. Somebody was rather succinctly putting out a scarcely veiled message that Christianity was “Solarianity”, if I may coin a word to denote sun-worship. Christianity is a religion of the sun. It is disguised idolatory. Jesus never could have foreseen the degree to which his name would be so perverted.

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HORUS VS SET Life, it seems, imitates nature. A certain rhythm, or some such phenomena, is witnessed in nature and over time mankind replicates it either in his behavior or his creed. Let‟s take the duality (state of opposition/contrast) of the forces of good and the forces of darkness. Man first noted this duel in nature before he applied it to human dynamics. God‟s sun brought light and darkness opposed sun-light. Darkness was therefore the opposer or adversary. Do you know what the “Devil” and “Satan” mean? They mean opposer or adversary. The Anunnaki, the gods of the Old Testament, were the first to employ the above typology in Egypt about 9000 years before Jesus was born. Two gods of the same clan, the Enkite clan, went to war over the rulership of Egypt. They were Horus and his uncle Set, the brother to Horus‟s father Osiris. The war arose because Set had Osiris killed so he could be undisputed claimant to the Egyptian throne. Horus was therefore the positive god and Set the negative god. It was Set who had opposed Osiris, the most popular of the Egyptian gods, and continued to oppose his son Horus. Set‟s full name was Set-En, meaning Lord or Prince Set. The term “Satan” (Shaitan in Arabic) stems from Set-En. Horus was born after his father Osiris‟s death. He was looked-up to as the god who was going to avenge his father‟s death by destroying the usurper and devil Set as well as his works. Horus was therefore referred to as the Saviour Sun God, just like the Jesus of the gospels. Thus when the sun arose every morning, the Egyptians referred to it as the “NEW-BORN BABY HORUS”. They would say, “HORUS HAS RISEN”, an echo of “HE HAS RISEN” in the context of the Jesus resurrection. It is from this phrase we get our English word “Horizon”. Since Horus the sun traversed the sky over a full day, his path comprised of 12 major steps, or 12 hours. Again the term “hours” derives from the name Horus. If daylight was associated with Horus, inevitably darkness was associated with Set. That‟s why when the sun disappears down the western horizon, we call this “sunset”. In fact, in Egyptian pictography, Horus and Set were depicted as one body but with two heads, with that of Horus resembling a dove and painted white, representing light/goodness, and that of Set resembling a hawk and painted black, representing darkness/evil. Now you should know where the idea of doves and hawks in American politics came from. The subliminal message is that Republicans (hawks) and Democrats (doves) are no adversaries as such as they are simply two branches of the same Illuminati tree. Horus did have Set defeated all right but not vanquished. Set was simply exiled to the Sinai Peninsula. In fact, the aftermath of the banishment of Set was that Horus lost his eye. In short, the works of Set were destroyed but not Set himself. To the discerning, the Horus-Set confrontation and the associated symbolism are so vividly replayed in the Jesus story. JESUS AS HORUS In the Illuminati cult, there is no single, universal god. There are several. Just as the conventional religions of the world such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc, worship distinct gods (though ultimately and unbeknown to worshipers these gods are essentially the same Anunnaki masqueraders), occultic religions, a category in which the Illuminati falls, are also in factions. For example, Satanists will tell you they worship Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, etc, but when you dig deeper, you will find that Satan or Devil is simply a generic term: the dark forces that are actually being worshipped are distinct personalities. For example, the Devil a Satanist in Maun worships is not the same as the Devil a Satanist in the Vatican worships. Only the other day, I watched a confession on video by a Satanist who said their “god” is actually a She-Devil called “Diana”. The teenage Satanists in Maun call their god “The Beast” according to local press reports. 17

One of the most popular Illuminati gods is Horus. Horus is a ubiquitous symbol in the Western world. He typically takes the form of what is called “The All-Seeing Eye”. One example is Endemol‟s Big Brother logo. Why is Horus such a popular god for people with a sinister agenda of the world? The reason is that his birth marked the inception of a New World Order, an Illuminati term for a shift in their programme for manipulating the global citizenry. Horus was born after the killing (that is, sacrifice) of his father Sun God Osiris by Set. Horus thus ushered in the New World Order of his day. Since then, the Illuminati have at particular junctures of history sacrificed a symbolic Sun God/Goddess to institute a New World Order. In modern times, the victims were Jack Kennedy in 1963 and Princess Diana in 1997. In the first century, the chosen sacrificial victim to mark the dawn of the Age of Pisces was the Galilean called Yeshua ben-Joseph. In our day, he is best known as Jesus Christ.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 7

THE TRIUNE GOD Trinity of Word, Sun, and Son mong the evangelicals, particularly Pentecostals – a denomination to which I belong – the phrase “being born again” resonates like a kind of ecumenical anthem. To be born again in Pentecostal parlance is to be “saved” – from eternal damnation in the hell fire of the afterlife. Only the bornagain, or the spiritually regenerated, will enter Heaven, so Pentecostals insist.

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The notion of being born-again as a prerequisite to ission into Heaven stems, largely, from JOHN 3:3-5. The wealthy Pharisee Nicodemus had asked Jesus as to how he could enter the Kingdom of God, to which Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” Philosophically, this is very sound doctrine. The Gnostic Christians, the Christians who best understood the teachings of Jesus, did teach about this as well but in a radically different light. For instance, the Gnostics did not incorporate the water element. Why? Because they were aware Jesus did not teach salvation through water baptism at all. This was an element that was interpolated (that is, added) to the Jesus story by the redactors (editors) at the 325 AD Nicene Council with a view to write sun-worship into the gospels. Being born again, a theme I will dwell on in greater detail at a later stage when I zero in on the real Jesus, is a purely metaphysical phenomenon that does not involve water at all. Water baptism originated with ancient Egypt and it all had to do with sun-worship. In ancient Egypt, it was taught that if you wanted to follow the life of God‟s Sun, you had to live in its light. The sun was regarded not only as God‟s Son but as the Word of God, that is, the Logos. The sun was the Logos in that it did speak, through its movements and through the agents of nature. All the laws of nature, such as planets revolving around the sun, were enunciated and regulated by the sun. Since the sun was the symbol of the unseen God, it was immortal. It would never die. When it set in the evening, which was symbolic of death, it always arose the following morning, which was symbolic of resurrection. In other words, the sun was always conquering death. Man too, it was believed, was capable of conquering death through a process known as reincarnation. In other words, man could die and be reborn into the world to begin life anew. This cycle, also known as the transmigration of the soul, was unending. But for mankind to be able to reincarnate and therefore be like God‟s Sun, he had to be born again right in this world. Just as he was born into this world through uterine water – amniotic fluid – he also had to metaphorically die to an old way of life and begin a new, upstanding way of life. Because his mother‟s waters broke when he was born into this world, man‟s new virtuous life had to be symbolised by coming out of total immersion in water. Clearly therefore, baptism derived from sun-worship: it had nothing genuinely spiritual about it. The Egyptians conducted it as a rite of worship and veneration of their Sun God Marduk, and latterly Horus. In Old Testament times, the prophet Elijah conducted water baptism to venerate Utu-Shamash, the Jewish Sun God who along with other of the Anunnaki pantheon took turns to pose as Jehovah. Jesus knew the sacrilegious nature of baptism. He knew it was based on idolatry and so had nothing to do with it. As the Jesus Papers progress and the true Jesus unfolds, you will come to appreciate that the historical Jesus had very little to do with what the Bible says of him.

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THE “LOGOS” AS THE SUN In JOHN 1:1, we read that, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”. Then thirteen verses later, in JOHN 1:14, we‟re told, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father) …” In these ages (and the bulk of those in between), John equates Jesus with “God” and with the “Word”. This same Word is luminescent: it shines forth light, termed “glory” in the John ages. This glory is not the Word‟s own but is derived from “the Father”. The sun symbolism and sun worship is more than obvious. It is in fact in the gospel of John that Jesus is repeatedly referred to as the “light” and the “truth”, both of which are sun-related. The word translated “Word” is “Logos”. The Logos theology dated back to ancient Egypt and informed much of the philosophy of Greek savants such as Pythagoras (c. 570 to c. 495 BC) and Plato (c. 423 to c. 348 BC). In both the Pythagorean and Platonic Schools, which flourished about 500 years before Jesus was born, the Logos was the First Source, the Universal Intelligence that spoke everything into existence, what we call God and what John also refers to as “the Father”. The opening verses of Genesis encapsulate this philosophy very well, when forms of matter are said to have come into being from the word of God. Logos theology held that the first and unique creation of the Logos was the sun. The sun was therefore the “only begotten son” of the Logos. As a result, the sun was the symbol or emblem of the Logos as it embodied the principles of life and light. The sun was the very byword for truth and righteousness since it illuminated, as contrasted with darkness that shrouded everything and was therefore synonymous with perversion and evil. Occultically, the sun is a very powerful symbol, the most potent in the Solar System after the planet Saturn (which occultists call the “Black Sun”). That‟s why it was such an esteemed symbol by representatives of the two rival Anunnaki clans – the Enlilites, led by Enlil, the Jehovah proper, and the Enkites, led by Enlil‟s step brother Enki. Among the Enlilites, the sun emblem was appropriated by UtuShamash (also called Apollo, Sol, or Helios, all of which mean “Sun”), whereas among the Enkites it was adopted by Marduk and Horus. In our day, the Illuminati (“en-lightened ones”) so venerate the sun (or rather, the attributed spirit behind it – the Anunnaki “gods”) that practically every logo that you see on a major brand has a semblance of sun symbolism (anything spherical; with rays; with “O”-like lettering or pictography; with wings; or with a cross-like image). The most obvious ones are the logos belonging to the following companies: Shell; BP; Xerox; Microsoft; Google; Phillips; LG; BMW; Ford; Coca Cola; Toyota; and Pepsi, to mention only a few. Other companies have simply incorporated the word “sun/son” itself into their logos. Examples include Sun Microsystems; Samsung; Sony; and Panasonic. The Devil hides in plain sight folks. TRINITY INFORMED BY SUN As far back as we can go into the ancient world, we find that all known cultures had a three-in-one deity. Alternative for this setup are the Triune God or the much more familiar Trinity. Examples include the Anunnaki gods Osiris, Isis, and Horus in ancient Egypt, and Nimrod, Seramiramis, and Tammuz in Babylon, all of whom predated Jesus by thousands of years. In Christianity, the Trinity is rendered as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three are said to be “different persons who are the same in substance”. In other words, they are equal in rank although they perform the particularised roles of originator, executor, and applicator respectively. This is yet another example of the tendency on the part

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of evangelicals to over-spiritualise scripture. In the New Testament, the Trinity doctrine is not clear-cut: it is inferred. In the Old Testament for one, it is totally absent. In the Babylonian and Egyptian cultures, the Trinity comprised of a god, a goddess, and a son. The three were not supernatural beings but were flesh-and-blood just like mankind was and lived amongst mankind. In the Babylonian case, Nimrod was the god; Seramiramis the goddess; and Tammuz the son. In the Egyptian case, Osiris was the god; Isis the goddess; and Horus the son. What Christians refer to as the “Holy Spirit”, an ethereal being, ancient cultures actually personified. In pre-Gospel times, the Holy Spirit was a goddess known generally as Sophia. Sophia was the goddess of wisdom and hence the Greek word for wisdom is Sophia. In several ages in the New Testament, the goddess Sophia is in fact referenced but the translators cleverly rendered this as simply “wisdom”. It explains why MATTHEW 11:19, a statement imputed to Jesus, does not appear to make sense. It reads: “The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.” How can “wisdom be justified of her children?” Clearly, the proper translation should have been, “But in the eyes of Sophia, there is nothing wrong with such conduct.” The apostles Paul and James also make references to Sophia but in ways that have been deliberately obfuscated by the translators in these scriptures: 1 CORINTHIANS 1:20 and 2:7; and JAMES 1:5 and 3:13-18. But the crux of the matter is, what gave rise to the concept of a Trinity? What was the archetype? Once again, it all harps back to sun-worship. The very first Trinity was simply the three stages of the sun as it traversed the celestial arch. At dawn, it was a new-born baby. At noon, it was full-grown and therefore mature. At sunset, it was old and dying. It was all the same sun but at differing degrees of its brilliance. SUN OF THE MOST HIGH In ancient Egypt, the sun, or God‟s Sun/Son, was referred to as the “Good Shepherd” or the “Great Shepherd” because it was said to be the overseer of mankind – the Sheep of God. Thus kings, or gods as the Anunnaki kings were called, referred to themselves as shepherds, that is, people who took care of the flock on behalf of the Good Shepherd. The Egyptian god Marduk therefore called himself “Amen Ra”, Ra meaning “ray” (of the sun), or Sun God in short. Amen meant “unseen”. This was in allusion to the fact that the sun was a symbol of the unseen God. In the Bible, Jesus is referred to as the Good Shepherd (JOHN 10:11 &14) or the Great Shepherd (HEBREWS 13:20). Like Marduk, Horus, and Utu-Shamash before him, Jesus is portrayed as the Sun God right in the pages of scripture. In the Annunciation message, the "Angel Gabriel" refers to the unborn Jesus as “the Son of the Most High (LUKE 1:32).” To most Christians, “Most High” is simply a metaphor for “God”. Well, not exactly: once again, sun symbolism comes into play here. The Egyptians of old knew that the sun was at its highest point in the sky at noon (12 o‟clock in modern times), when no shadow was cast by the pyramid. At this point, all Egypt offered prayers to the “Most High God”, that is, the sun, represented on Earth by Marduk initially and Horus latterly. The ancients, as we stated before, regarded the sky as the abode or temple of the sun – the Most High. Thus, when you read in LUKE 2:46 that Jesus had occasion to be in “my father‟s house (the Jerusalem Temple) at age 12, do not take that as simply historical, if at all, but as allegorical as well. It was fundamentally a veiled characterisation of Jesus as the Sun God. The Bible says when Jesus died, there was darkness all over the Earth (LUKE 23:44-45). Those who could fathom the Bible code knew what that meant – that in the absence of the sun, darkness reigns. And when Jesus died, he was wearing a crown of thorns. This is “corona” in Latin. Of course the sun is always surrounded by a gaseous envelope called a corona, which is pronouncedly visible during a solar eclipse. The Jesus story is essentially the Story of the Sun. 21

Over a year, the life of “God‟s Sun” is completed in 4 seasons of equal duration from the point of view of Mediterranean climates – spring, summer, autumn, and winter. That‟s one reason the Church Fathers settled for only 4 gospels in the New Testament. This sun symbolism is also why Leonardo Da Vince‟s famous Last Supper painting divides the disciples into 4 groups of three and puts Jesus, the Sun God, at the centre! Given that sun symbolism, aka sun-worship, is apparent in almost every sphere of our lives, we may as well it that God‟s Sun/Son is indeed the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 8

JESUS THE PISCEAN GOD Fish symbolism in gospels abound with a view to inaugurate the zodiacal Age of Pisces

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et me start by restating the fact that although Christians denounce numerology as demonic or satanic, the Bible itself actually “chokes” with it. Let us take the number 12. It pops out of practically every page of the entire canon. To mention only a few examples: Jesus had 12 disciples; Joseph had 12 brothers; Israel had 12 tribes and 12 judges. In REVELATION 12:1, the 24 elders and the 144,000 saints are multiples of 12. The gold-paved, New Jerusalem city has 12 foundations and 12 gates and measures 12 thousand furlongs. It has a tree with 12 kinds of fruit. One could go on and on. Once again, the constant recurrence of the number 12 in the Holy Writ harps back to astrotheology – the worship or veneration of heavenly bodies, namely the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Forget about the oftpeddled nonsense that the ancients were a benighted people who knew very little, if anything, about the cosmos. Fact is, they understood the universe better than we do in that they were taught by technologically and scientifically advanced beings – the Anunnaki. The ancients knew that the Solar System had ten planets, not nine (or eight if the “demotion” of Pluto to a planetoid in 2006 is taken into ) as modern astronomy would have you believe. The tenth planet was Nibiru, the Anunnaki planet which is seen once every 3600 years. The ten planets plus the moon and sun brought the total of the principal heavenly bodies in the Solar System to 12, that is, from the point of view of Earth. The ancients knew all about the zodiac – that it constituted 12 constellations and that these constellations (the pattern of stars we see in the night sky) changed every 2160 years. Furthermore, the ancients were aware that the Anunnaki pantheon, the top brass that ruled over Earth, was a group of 12, led by one overall leader with the title Enlil, called Jehovah or Yahweh in the Bible. As above, so below: hence, 12 was a very special number and a recurring feature in mankind‟s institutions. As much as the significance of the number 12 derived from the line-up of the Solar System (the sun, moon, and the ten planets), it by and large stemmed from a veneration of the stars of the zodiac, which was encoded into the life and circumstances of the Jesus of faith – Christ as portrayed in the Bible – as opposed to the Jesus of history. This aspect of the gospels was informed by what is called the Stellar cult, meaning a cult of the stars. LORD OF THE FISH AGE Have you ever asked yourself why the “fish” imagery is so recurrent in the Jesus story? Let me try to jog your memory a little bit with some examples. MARK 1:17: “Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men". MATTHEW 12:40: "... Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth". MATTHEW 14:17: “And they said to Him, 'We have here only five loaves and two fish'". LUKE 5:6: "And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking". LUKE 24:42: "So they gave Him a piece of a boiled fish and some honeycomb". JOHN 21:6: "And He said to them, 'Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.' So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish." Jesus‟s first four disciples – the brothers Andrew and Peter and the two sons of Zebedee John and James – were fishermen according to the synoptic gospels. This repeated 23

invocation of the fish motif in New Testament times speaks screeds on its astrotheological orientation. It was a salutation to … the astrological Age of Pieces! Whether you are a born-again, “tongue-speaking” Pentecostal or a diehard atheist, you know what the stars of the Zodiac are. We all have a “star”, the constellation that corresponds to the month in which we were born. There are 12 stars (constellations literally: “star” is used metaphorically). Why 12 stars? The Anunnaki, who colonised our planet eons ago and brought us (modern man) into existence by blending their genes with that of Ape Man (Homo Erectus) 300,000 years ago, divided the sky into 12 equal chapters. The 12 chapters were called Ages. They were also loosely referred to as Houses, or Mansions, of the Heavenly Zodiac. In astrotheology, however, they were called Kingdoms or simply Signs. The 12 Houses were mostly identified according to the approximate pattern of stars that was consistently seen for 2160 years at a time. For example, if for 2160 years the star clusters that were seen at night collectively resembled the shape of a bull, the 2160-year period was referred to as the Age of Taurus. The 12 Ages are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pieces. It takes 25,920 years (2160 x 12), called the Great Year, for the Earth to through all the 12 Houses, after which the cycle begins all over again. Now, what is the Age in which we presently are? We are in the Age of Pisces. Mathematically, the Age of Pisces began in the year 1 AD, which by deliberate design coincided with about the time the historical Jesus was born. Thus the birth of Jesus ushered in the Age of Pisces. The “AD” years began with the birth of Jesus roughly speaking. Pisces is thus the “Lord‟s Kingdom”. We who are alive today are in the “last days of the Kingdom” because very soon a new Kingdom will dawn upon us – the Age of Aquarius. That‟s why in MATTHEW 28:20, Jesus is reported to have said, “I‟ll be with you till the close of the Age”. This was God‟s Sun/Son saying he will still be shining/reigning throughout the Age of Pisces, that the world was not ending soon. That astrotheology is all the rage in the Bible can also be gleaned from LUKE 22:10, where Jesus details one of his disciples to “go into the house of the man with the water pitcher”. The water pitcher as we all know is the symbol of … the Age of Aquarius, which according to astronomers follows after the Age of Pisces. God‟s Sun will lead us into his new Kingdom or House of Aquarius. Indeed, in JOHN 14:2, Jesus boasts that “In my father‟s house are many mansions”. This is actually wrong translation. The proper translation is, “In my Father‟s heavenly abode are many houses”. In astrotheological , the heavenly abode is the expanse of sky and the houses are the zodiacal constellations. I suppose you can now grasp the “why” of the fish symbolism in the gospels. If you look at any astrological chart, you will see that Pisces is represented by … two fishes! Jesus the Sun God is also the Reigning God of the “Fish Age”. VIRGIN BIRTH COULD HAPPEN! According to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born of a virgin mother, without the involvement of a male agent. Cynics scoff at such a scenario, saying it is nonsensical as it simply is not possible. Well, here is a surprise if ever there was one: a virgin birth is not only possible but is demonstrable. There is even a scientific word for it – parthenogenesis. This is a form of reproduction where an ovum develops into fully functional offspring without being fertilised by a male sperm cell. About 100 years ago, the famous biologist Jacques Loeb said: “The male is not necessary for reproduction. A simple physio-chemical agent in the female is enough to bring it about." True, parthenogenesis has been observed in the animal kingdom. It was first documented in 1845 by the Swiss 24

naturalist Charles Bonnet. Bonnet noted that female aphids (small sap-sucking insects) laid eggs which developed to full adulthood without mating with a male. Parthenogenesis has since been observed in a range of insects (e.g. ants and honeybees), reptiles such as komodo dragons and monitor lizards, sharks, and snakes. Parthenogenesis does not naturally occur in mammals but it can be induced, that is, artificially engendered. For instance, in 1936, Gregory Goodwin Pincus successfully induced parthenogenesis in a rabbit. In April 2004, scientists at the Tokyo University of Agriculture created a mouse using pathogenesis. Monkeys have also been produced using the same process. The snag with mammals arising from artificial parthenogenesis is that they either do not live to a ripe age or develop certain abnormalities that seriously handicap them in one way or the other. What about humans? Again I will say something that you may not know. The female was the first physical species. For eons, females reproduced their kind by parthenogenesis. Males came later when the “gods” decided not only to vary the species but to wrest universal sovereignty from females. As the American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913) aptly put it, “Women are the race itself – the strong primary sex – and men the biological afterthought.” Did you know that as we develop in our mothers‟ wombs, we all begin as females? For the first few months we‟re all Jills. Then when genetic instructions to turn that particular Jill into a Jack are expressed, ovaries descend to become testicles and the clit elongates into a penis. In other words, the likes of Rudeboy Nectar, Assam Makwinja, and myself are nature‟s second choice even though we may think by being born male we‟re kind of privileged! Parthenogenesis is not actively operative in human females but remains latent, meaning it could occur if intently and painstakingly stimulated. In 1933, Dr Walter Timme, a famed endoctrinologist, delivered a lecture to the New York Academy of Medicine titled “Immaculate Conception – A Scientific Possibility" in which he persuasively argued that a virgin birth was physiologically possible. This was because the parovarium (a group of tiny, tube-like structures often found near the ovary or oviduct) in some cases did produce male reproductive cells capable of fertililising the eggs in the same body, causing them to develop without the participation of male gametes. The parovarium have been known to appear in young girls aged 8 to 16 with intact hymens, that is, who have never had sex. CASE OF THE OJIBWE The Ojibwe are a North American Red Indian race who are found both in the US and in Canada. Red Indians are probably the race I ire the most in the whole wide world. That is because they are bearers of very valuable ancient knowledge that has helped me understand the world much better than I would otherwise have (for instance, the teachings, revelations, and insights of Robert Morning Sky, a Native American of Hopi and Apache stock, are a golden nugget). It is one, if not the major, reason the Illuminati have deliberately ostracised them and once upon a time desired to have them disappear from the face of the Earth (in the 60s/70s Cowboy movies, for example, Red Indians were always cast as bowand-arrow wielding villains who had to be exterminated by horse-mounted, rifle-bearing Westerners). In 1971, Den Poitras, who like Robert Morning Sky is an outspoken male feminist, reviewed a book about the Ojibwe that documented their traditional practices long before Westerners invaded and appropriated the Northern American land mass from them. This is what Poitras says about the subject of the book: “One story (in the book) was that wise-women of the tribe looked for certain young maidens that possessed grace, intelligence, and comion. Sometimes a candidate for conceiving and giving birth this way wouldn't show up for a generation or two. Nevertheless, these wise-women kept an eagleeye open for her. When found, men were not allowed to court her. When she reached the age of fertility, her first period, she was instructed to fast for several days and, if willing, was required to dance around a fire in a sacred women's lodge built far away from the village. This ceremony occurred while she was 25

ovulating. Ideally, a state of bliss or ecstasy was reached during which, according to hidden wise-women knowledge, it would be possible for her to conceive and give birth in the „old way‟ (virgin birth). They also knew that a child born this way would be blessed with gifts of healing, clairvoyance or leadership. The Great Spirit would give to the child whatever tools the tribe might be in need of.” Clearly then, a virgin birth in humans, in the manner Jesus is said to have arisen, is not outlandish: it is possible and has happened, at least in ages past. But is that how Jesus indeed came into existence?

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 9

WRITTEN IN THE SKY The Gospel according to the Stars

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irgin births, or parthenogenesis in scientific , are by no means the stuff of fairy tale as we showcased last time around. At the dawn of humanoid life, they were the only way reproduction took place. They have also occurred in relatively recent times. In her archaeological book, The Language of the Goddess, Marija Gimbutas says, “The parthenogenetic goddess has been the most persistent feature in the archeological record”. Marguerite Rigoglioso, author of The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece and Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity, also avers that early Greek priestesses actually practiced parthenogenesis, knowledge they are said to have acquired from ancient Egyptian priestesses associated with the cult of Hathor (Ninmah, the Anunnaki goddess who was a half-sister to the brothers Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible, and Enki, and whose face is carved on top of each of the columns that have been found in her Egyptian temple, takes the form of a woman's most sacred organ of creation – the uterus! In his book, Mysteries of Human Reproduction, Dr. Raymond Bernard says, “That the immaculate conception (virgin birth) has been made to appear miraculous and supernatural, a solitary event incapable of repetition, and something which every rational and scientific mind must reject as absurd, has prevented the birth of many more individuals like Jesus and greater ones during the last several thousand years.” Yet as a medical doctor, Raymond Bernard ought to know that if Jesus had been born by way of parthenogenesis, he wouldn‟t have been male but female. All cases of parthenogenesis invariably produce female offspring. The reason men came to be was not only to introduce the male species as such but to enable the female to have the capacity to produce males, a capacity the female did not have on its own. So, if Jesus wasn‟t born to a virgin woman, how do we explain the virgin-birth s in Matthew and Luke? Once again, it all boils down to astrotheology – the worship or veneration of stars, the sun, moon, and planets. CHRISTS BEFORE CHRIST Jesus is not the only “god” to have been born of a “virgin mother”. In the so-called mythology (originally true stories which nevertheless have been so corrupted and even mixed up over time that they now sound like pure legend), we encounter up to 16 “Savior Sun Gods”. Examples include Krishna of India (1200 BC); Tammuz of Syria (1160 BC); Hesus or Eros of Britain (834 BC); and Mithras of Persia (600 BC). According to the 1875 book by Kersey Graves titled Christianity Before Christ (the book is preserved in electronic form: you can read it on the Internet), the above god-men have a great deal in common with the Jesus of the gospel, more so Krishna. “For example,” says Kersey, “some figures had miraculous or virgin births, were sons of supreme gods, were born on December 25th, had stars point to their birthplaces, were visited by shepherds and magi as infants, fled from death as children, exhibited traits of divinity in childhood, spent time in the desert, travelled as they taught, had disciples, performed miracles, 27

were persecuted, were crucified, descended into hell after death, appeared as resurrections or apparitions, or ascended into heaven.” Sounds familiar doesn‟t it? It ought to, yes, not because these were real events but because they were mostly allegories based on astrotheology. They were more or less about celestial phenomena being dramatised as real human events in which some “god-man”, a “Sun God”, was the protagonist. Thus if you think the gospels tell the real story of Jesus, you are totally mistaken. To some extent, they tell the story of the sun, moon, stars, and planets disguised as the story of a certain Jesus of Nazareth. The story of the Son is indeed the story of the Sun and its Celestial Siblings. By the same token, the four gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – were not the only documented s on Jesus. There were others which were excluded from the final canon, such as the Gospel of Peter; the Gospel of Thomas; the Gospel of Mary; the Gospel of Phillip; the Gospel of Nicodemus; the Gospel of Judas; the Protoevanglium of James; etc. We know these gospels did exist because they were part of what has become known as the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of texts discovered near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. The Gospel of Judas was discovered in the 1970s near another Egyptian town called Beni Masar. Its existence was recorded as early as 180 AD by one of the Church Fathers Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202 AD), who attacked it for presenting Jesus as Gnostic (which he truly was). The decision by the Nicene Council of AD 325 to settle for only four gospels was not entirely based on the fact that they were “inspired of God”. It was based, fundamentally, on astrotheological logic. Over the course of the year, the sun moves through four seasons. As such, since Jesus was the Sun-God, his story had to be told in four gospels. In his book Against Heresies, Irenaeus set forth the argument for only four gospels slightly different in a bid to veil the element of sun-worship. He said: “It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are since there are four zones of the world in which we live.” The “zones” are the cardinal directions of north, south, east, and west, all of which correspond to the position of the sun (from the point of view of Earth) on March 20/21 (autumnal equinox); September22/23 (vernal equinox); June 20/21 (winter solstice); and December 21/22 (summer solstice). OF MARY AND “VIRGIN” In antiquity, including up to Jesus‟s day, dynastic heirs were not born in an ordinary month and on an ordinary day. They had to be born in a specified month and on a specified day. This was in order to accord with the astrological sign as any particular day and any particular month has its own metaphysical energies that a baby absorbs at birth depending on the star of the zodiac ruling in that month. Even in our own day, we have seen this happen in the case of Prince William‟s birth. According to her biographer Andrew Morton, Princess Diana was due to deliver on July 1st but the delivery was artificially induced so that William was born a week earlier, on June 21st 1982. Prince George, the next in line after Prince William, was born on July 22 2013. The desire of the House of Windsor, therefore, is that their heirs ideally be born on 21st/22nd and in the month of either June or July. In other words, the heirs to the British throne have to be Cancers (or something else as the Illuminati follow a 13-star zodiac which has its own calendar). The Crown Princes of Judah (as were other dynastic heirs in other major domains of the world) as well as the bloodline priesthood of the House of Aaron, the brother to Moses, were planned to be born in August/September, corresponding with the astrological sign of Virgo. Virgo means “virgin”. Its other meaning is “House of Bread”. The latter element explains why it is depicted as a woman with grain stalks in her left hand. Both these attributions bear striking relevance to the Jesus story. The historical Jesus was 28

not only a descendent of King David of the Kingdom of Judah but he was in the line of succession to the Davidic throne. Jewish Crown Princes were by deliberate design born in August/September, under the sign of Virgo. In astrological therefore, Jesus was born of … a virgin! Clearly, the virgin birth of Jesus was not historical: it was astrological. Because Jesus was born under the astrological sign known as House of Bread, we find in the gospels a characterisation of Jesus as the “Bread of Life” (JOHN 6:35); his feeding of the 4000/5000 with five loaves (MARK 6:41 and LUKE 9:6); and his breaking of bread at the well-known Last Supper. Moreover, is said to have been born in Bethlehem because like Virgo, Bethlehem means … “House of Bread!” The name of his mother Mary also evokes the Virgo motif. The ancient hieroglyphic symbol of Virgo looked like the letter M. Hence, the mothers of all “Saviour Sun Gods” bore names starting with M. Examples include Myrra the mother of Adonis; Maya the mother of Buddha; and Isis-Meri the mother of Horus. Most ancient queens, princess, and wives of aristocrats were named Mary. A familiar example other than the mother of Jesus is Mirriam (a variant of the name Mary), the half-sister wife of Moses. Even in the Catholic religion of our day, every conventual sister is a titular Mary: all nuns bear the name Mary before their own original names, just as High Court judges bear the name “Justice” before their own names. OF THE NAZARENE AND BOOTES Anybody who has only rudimentary knowledge about astrology will upon reading the Jesus story, and indeed much of the Bible, outrightly recognise that it is not about events that happened on Earth as such; it is about interpretive “events” that “happened” yonder in the sky. Put simply, it is about astrotheology. To drive this point further home, let us return to the so-called virgin birth of Jesus, which has more to do with the constellation Virgo than anything else. Virgo, meaning virgin (or maiden), is the constellation‟s name in Latin. In Hebrew, it is called Bethulah, also meaning virgin. In Latin, the term for “branch” is “virga”. We therefore see a connection between Virgo and virga and between virgin and branch. Now, if you look at the depiction of the constellation Virgo, it is of a woman (the deductive shape of the star cluster) carrying a branch in her right hand and some ears of corn in her left hand. Let us at this juncture study the constellation Virgo in more detail. A constellation as we know is a star group. Virgo has 110 stars. Of these, the brightest, located in the ear of the corn Virgo is carrying in her left hand, is called Spica, meaning “seed”. In Hebrew, however, it is called Tsemech, meaning “branch”. In the Old Testament, the term branch was used by the prophets to refer to the Davidic line or coming messiah. Here are a some examples: JEREMIAH 23:5– “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous BRANCH”; ZECHARIAH 3:8 – “Behold I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH"; ZECHARIAH 6:12 – “Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, behold the MAN whose name is the BRANCH"; and ISAIAH 11:1 – “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse (David‟s father), and a BRANCH from his roots will bear fruit." There is another word in Hebrew which means branch. It is “Netzer”, from where “Nazareth” or “Nazarene” are derived. When Jesus was referred to as the Nazarene, it simply meant he belonged to the “Branch Family”, the royal lineage of King David. It had nothing to do with the Galilean town called Nazareth as officially there was no such town at the time of Jesus. The Romans, who ruled Palestine in the first century and kept meticulous maps, did not document a single place called Nazareth. The town of Nazareth flourished much later to give retrospective credence to the contrived term “Jesus of Nazareth”.

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In the zodiac, Virgo the virgin, or maiden, lies at the feet of Bootes, the constellation depicted as a man walking rapidly, with a spear in his right hand and a sickle in his left hand. What this means is that although Virgo (Mary) gave birth to Bootes (Jesus), she is subject to him. This we see in LUKE 1:48, when Mary addressing "God" through the "Angel Gabriel" says, “For he hath considered the LOW ESTATE of his handmaiden: for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” Indeed, Bootes means “the coming one,” a fitting allusion to messiah Jesus. Certainly, when Jesus said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword (MATTHEW 10:34), it was the Bootes allegory at play here as Bootes carries a spear in his hand. In sum, Jesus (Bootes) was the seed (Spica) of Mary (Virgo) and a branch (Tsemech) of David. You can now understand why the Roman Catholic as early as the 4th century demonised astrology because they were aware that their version of the Jesus story, the Jesus of the gospels, was actually written in the stars and had very little to do with the Jesus of history. In order to keep this knowledge to themselves, they had to cast astrology as satanic.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 10

GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD The truth about the Star of Bethlehem ecember 25 is the world‟s most famous day. It is called Christmas, the day dedicated to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Like most outwardly innocuous things, Christmas does have a hidden, sinister (in fact, anti-Christ) connotation but that is another topic for another day. What is of relevance for now is that it is the day on which the birth of the Jesus of the gospels is commemorated, though to the religiously indifferent it is simply a day of special merriment, hence “Merry Christmas”.

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But the question is, was the Jesus of history indeed born on December 25? Every time they conduct a Christmas service, the men in the pulpit are quick to underscore that December 25 is simply a ceremonial day, that Jesus was not born on December 25 but on another unknown date. Fair enough. But why should December 25 be the only day chosen as the symbolic birth date of Jesus? Why not any other day and any other month out of the 365 days and 12 months there are in the solar year? Once again, we have astrology and astrotheology to “thank” for the rationale behind it all. In astrologyspeak, the sun is re-born every December 25. This is because that is the day (from the point of view of the Northern Hemisphere) when the hours of daylight start to increase. Since the gospels present Jesus as a Saviour Sun God, his birth had to coincide with the annual astrological birth of the sun. Indeed, all Saviour Sun Gods before Jesus (Krishna, Hesus, Mithras, Horus, etc) are all said to have been born on December 25. These were not biological births: they were attributed astrological births. We all know that December 25 falls in the astrological House of Capricorn, which rules from December 22 to January 22. So Jesus had to be born in a house (MATTHEW 2:11). At the same time, he had to be born in a manger (LUKE 2:7). A manger is a feeding trough for animals in a stable. What did the ancients call the constellation of Capricorn? The Stable of Augeas. Luke relates that when Jesus was born, shepherds were out in the fields in the dark of night tending to their flocks. Of course this is not plausible if Jesus was born in December. In Palestine at this time, and at night in particular, it is practically ice-cold. The shepherds could not have been so foolhardy as to so unnecessarily risk their lives. The only reason the element of shepherds was introduced into the nativity (birth story of Jesus) was to highlight the fact that Jesus was a Sun God. As we have long pointed out, the sun was referred to as the Great Shepherd by the ancients because it sustained the life of its sheep – mankind. Thus, the shepherds who rushed to go and “worship” the newly-born Jesus were a metaphor for earthly kings – who in antiquity (in Egypt and Babylon in particular) called themselves “Shepherd Kings” – doubling up to pay homage to the King of Kings, the Great Shepherd known as Jesus Christ. The Shepherd Kings had been reigning over their subjects in the dark, symbolically speaking. That darkness would now dissipate as the “Light of the World”, Jesus Christ aka God‟s Sun/Son, had now come into the world (“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us … And we beheld his Glory [light] – JOHN 1:14). It‟s all primarily allegorical folks and only secondarily history. The “gospel” is not the greatest story ever told: IT IS THE GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD.

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STAR OF BETHLEHEM According to the gospel of Matthew, baby Jesus was visited by a team of wise men “from the east” as he lay in a manger in Bethlehem. The wise men (whose number Matthew does not state but who are traditionally believed to be three) were guided by a star, commonly referred to as the Star of Bethlehem. Attempts to explain the star range from the theological to the astronomical. The Church Fathers, such as Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), simply took it for granted that the star was a miraculous sign God emplaced in the skies of Bethlehem to guide the wise men. That, of course, is taking faith to far, but this is the belief that, unfortunately, is a foregone conclusion in all Christendom. The astronomical scenario was first persuasively argued by Johannes Kepler, the German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer in 1606 (the same scenario had been posited in church annals wayback in 1285). Kepler calculated that in 7 BC, around the time the historical Jesus is said to have been born, the planets Jupiter and Saturn overlapped – called a conjunction in astronomical – and the result was a single, rather bright star from the point of view of Earth (Jupiter is the brightest object in the night sky when it appears). Planetary conjunctions do take place from time to time, just like the sun and moon periodically overlap to form an eclipse. For instance, on June 17 in 2 BC, Jupiter and Venus visually merged and appeared like one huge star. However, the 7 BC merging of Jupiter and Saturn was later found to be problematic. In his 1949 booklet titled The Star of Bethlehem, Roy K Marshall documented that throughout their known history, Jupiter and Saturn were never so close together as to appear as one star. Earlier, in 1946, another astronomer, Charles Pritchard, had done meticulous research on the event and found that Jupiter and Saturn appeared very close together (that is, they did not align to appear as one star) on three dates in 7 BC. These were May 29, October 1, and December 5. Pritchard called this a “triple conjunction”. The giant planets again drew close in 66 BC, a phenomenon that sparked the famous Jewish uprising against the Romans with disastrous consequences. Yet even if it is assumed that Jupiter and Saturn did appear as one star, this star could not have moved “ahead” of the wise men like a lamp moving across the sky and then come to hover over the exact place in Bethlehem where Jesus had been born (MATTHEW 2:9). Celestial bodies don‟t move like that from the point of view of Earth: they actually seem stationary over a very wide geographical expanse. Even the moon, which actually moves, does not simply hover over Gaborone or Phakalane or the Rail Park Mall. It is seen over a whole country or region at once if there is no cloud cover in some parts. You will also note that Matthew contradicts himself when he relates that the wise men actually got lost and had to consult King Herod for directions to the place where Jesus was born (MATTHEW 2:2). How could they get lost if the star was such a precision, drifting guide? So if the theological argument is nonsensical and the astronomical argument is hollow, how do we explain the Star of the Bethlehem? It is astrology yet again that comes in handy here (and a bit of allegory as we shall demonstrate at a later stage). SIRIUS AND ORION Let us begin with the wise men themselves. The Greek word translated wise men is actually “Magi”. Although Magi sounds very close to “magician”, that‟s not what it meant. It meant astrologers. That the Jesus story is in large measure astrological is intimated by the appellation of the very deputation who are said to have paid a venerational call on him at birth. The English term “wise men” is in fact not farfetched. In antiquity, people who understood the positions of the stars and planets and how they influenced events on planet Earth were said to be wise and learned. They were wise because they were seers – people who could foretell the future simply by studying the stars. As we have already demonstrated, the interpretation of the deduced shape of star clusters was actually played out in the story 32

of the Jesus of history, so that the “prophecies” Jesus fulfilled were in reality what was “written” in the cosmos by way of the geography of the heavens – the general shapes star groups make in the night sky. That‟s how the Illuminati influence our lives folks without us having the slightest idea that we are simply being manouevred through our Earthly destiny like pieces on a chess board. Life is simply a computer game on a grander scale, with people who are furiously pecking away on a keyboard and directing the cursor hidden from view. I recommend that you watch the Matrix Trilogy starring Keanu Reeves to best understand the cyberspace character of the human condition. As noted above, the number of the wise men is not specified in the gospels and yet they are assumed to be three. On the face of it, this assumption must derive from their having had presented three gifts to baby Jesus, namely gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The truth of the matter, however, is that the “three” wise men are fundamentally a astrological allegory. They correspond with the so-called Orion belt – the three stars on the “waist band” of the Orion constellation. In astronomy, the three stars comprising the Orion Belt go by the names Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak. What did the ancients call these three stars as a collective? The three kings. That‟s why some very misguided traditions aver that the Magi were the Kings of Persia. Regarding “the star in the east”, this is actually Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius always aligns with the Orion Belt. This has consistently been the case for the past 4,000 years. However, on December 24 (the third day after winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere) and from the point of view of Jerusalem, Sirius pops above the horizon just after sunset. On that day, it indeed becomes the “star in the east”. That way, it symbolically announces the annual “birth” of the sun on December 25. That‟s why Jesus, the Saviour Sun God, had to have a Christmas birthday. The Son of God had to be born on the very day the Sun of God is reborn. It‟s all astrotheology folks and not history. THE ANUNNAKI CONNECTION Much of what has happened on Earth over the ages has not been determined by the indigenous people – ordinary mankind. It has been schemed by outsiders – beings from other star systems. The star systems that have exerted the most influence on Earth are Sirius and Orion. Orion for one is directly mentioned in the Bible three times in JOB 9:9 ("He is the maker of the Bear and Orion"), JOB 38:31 ("Can you loosen Orion`s belt?"), and AMOS 5:8 ("He who made the Pleiades and Orion"). When we talk about the Anunnaki, we‟re primarily referring to Aliens from the Sirius and Orion star systems. The Anunnaki do not originate from planet Nibiru. Nibiru is simply their Solar System outpost. Their place of origin is the Orion Empire, of which the Sirius star system is a part (and of which our Solar System is an indirect colony). In the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, the Anunnaki are referred to as the Nephilim. In ancient Aram (today‟s central Syria), Orion was called Nephila, meaning the place of the Nephilim. The Anunnaki are the result of a politically expedient marriage between the King of Sirius and the Queen of Orion. People have always wondered why Enki (the Serpent of Genesis and the real father of Noah according to Sumerian records) was so charitable toward the human race whilst Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible, was so mean. The reason is simply that Enki was an Orion prince. Enki was the first-born son of the Queen of Orion (a matriarchal society) and therefore inherited much of female tenderness. Enlil, on the other hand, was from Sirius, a male-dominated, testosterone-driven domain. Siriuns evolved from the cat (lions) and dog species, the reason why Sirius C is also known as the Dog Star. The tension between the Enlilite clan and the Enkite clan is very apparent in both the Jesus of history and the Jesus of the gospels, a subject we shall dwell on in detail in due course. Although the Anunnaki no 33

longer rule us directly, they very much call the shots behind the scenes. Since they are of two factions, they hardly ever see common cause on an agenda, which is why our planet is in the sorry state it is today. Even when they get to agree on a goal, they use different action plans to attain to that goal. The gospel interpolators who factored in the Star of Bethlehem incident were not writing history. They wanted to underscore that the birth and life of Jesus was controlled and driven not by Earthlings but by the Anunnaki. Therefore, Sirius and the Orion Belt had to be made to align, symbolically, and point at the symbolic birthplace of the being the Anunnaki envisaged to be the foremost religious frame of reference on the planet, whose cult following was meant to sidetrack mankind from the exercise of the great capacities that were innate to his being. The result, indeed, is that today we worship Jesus when we‟re all gods in our own right.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 11

JESUS EXISTED … but he wasn’t the God-man Christendom preaches today

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n much of today‟s world, Jesus is arguably the most famous being in history. Even the Koran makes prominent mention of him (25 times, plus an entire chapter dedicated to his mother Mary). Moslems too take cognizance of him although they conceitedly assume him away. More books have been written about him than any other figure of history. In Christendom, he is actually God himself, who took the form of mortal man, a phenomenon known as the incarnation. When he walked the Earth in the first century, Jesus is said to have performed miracles – healing paralytics, restoring sight to the blind, bringing the dead back to life, and even commanding the elements to quietude, such as the tempests at sea. He himself was killed but he physically reanimated, full of health and vitality. He held healing and evangelising crusades that attracted throngs in their thousands. For a man who wrought such great deeds, he should have blazed in the firmament of his day. He should have featured in the writings of practically every historian who lived around or happened to visit Palestine around that time. Yet the irony of ironies is that the only substantive mentions of Jesus in familiar literature are found in the Bible. Outside it, he is almost unheard of. In his 1909 book, The Christ A Myth, John Remsburg lists 42 historians, Roman and Jewish alike, who were contemporaneous with Jesus. None of them makes any worthwhile reference to Jesus or his disciples. Michael Paulkovitch (No Meek Messiah, 2012), actually points to 146 of such “silent witnesses” who never heard of Jesus at all. Let us just take one of them, Philo of Alexandria (25 BC to 50 AD), a famous Jewish historian and philosopher who both predated and outlived the Jesus of the gospels. Philo had connections to the Jewish priesthood and the Herodian dynasty in Jerusalem and wrote a great deal about the goings-on in Palestine at the time. He does not say a single word about Jesus. There was a near-contemporary of Jesus who most Christian apologists (fanatical defenders of the contents of the gospels even where they do not make sense) cite as perhaps the most authoritative extrabiblical source on the existence of Jesus. This is Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD), the best-known and the most prolific of Jewish historians. In his most famous work, The Jewish Antiquities, is found what has become known in theological circles as the Testimonium Flavianum, a age which reads as follows: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.” 35

The problem with the Josephus age is that scholars are almost unanimous that it is a fraud. The Jewish Antiquities was published in AD 93. The first person to quote the Testamonium Flavianum was Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 AD) 200 years later. All the Church Fathers who lived before Eusebius such as Origen, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria and who substantially referenced Josephus never ever alluded to the Testimonium Flavianum. Clearly, it was Eusebius, desperate to showcase a historical Jesus, who inserted the age into the Josephus volume. We know Eusebius was capable of such chicanery as in his own books he boasted about lying with a view to advance a certain, sacrosanct agenda. If secular history cannot trace the Jesus of faith, then it follows that he is pure fiction, the subject of “cleverly devised myths” as Simon Peter put it in one of his epistles. Is Jesus nothing but a astrological or astrotheological character as we have argued thus far in the Jesus Papers? A PROTECTED MASCOT he Jesus of the gospel may sound like the stuff of myth but the fact of the matter is that he did exist. Jesus was very much a historical figure. But there is a whole host of differences between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. The Jesus of history was born in the normal way (the Bible actually intimates so: the virgin birth is astrological on the one hand and the result of a rather shallow understanding of the gospel stories on the other, as we shall soon demonstrate). The Jesus of history was hardly a miracle worker nor a religious firebrand. He was a freedom fighter, albeit a peaceful one. He was a spiritual luminary of course but not so much in the sense of founding a religion as in the sense of instruction. In other words, he was primarily a teacher. His underlying mission, however, was essentially political as opposed to being theological. He was a Davidic messiah, somebody who was expected by mainstream Jews to oust the Romans and restore the Kingdom of Judah, not the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The Jesus of history was not as famous as the gospels project him. Like most freedom fighters, he was more of a shadowy figure than a public square demagogue. He became famous posthumously, if I may be permitted to use such a word as he lived beyond Calvary. He in fact lived to about age 70. The Jesus of history was not celibate. He was married and even had kids. The celibacy of Jesus as preached by the clergy is contrived: the Bible itself makes it very clear Jesus was a married man as we shall relate at a later stage. The Jewish establishment, who included the Herod dynasty, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Temple priests all did recognise Jesus as of dynastic stock but the political polemics were such that not everybody rallied around him as the undisputed Davidic messiah. The establishment was in two factions generally – those who recognised Jesus as the Davidic messiah and those who campaigned for his immediate younger brother James – for reasons we shall go into in future articles. Even then, there was no real animosity between the two factions as the only adversary who really mattered was the occupying power – the Romans. Since Jesus was more or less the rallying Jewish political figure, his profile was kept very low by deliberate design, with the result that the Roman authorities were scarcely aware of his existence and his whereabouts. Even the few of the Jewish public who were aware of his social 36

status were not in the slightest inclined to spotlight him. They did not wish to jeopardise him with the Romans at all. All Jewish historians, including Josephus, avoided a direct and elaborate chronicling of his activities for his own safety and that of his heirs. He was expected by mainstream Jewry to rule a liberated Palestine and so he had to be shielded from the merest publicity. In the gospels themselves, there are hints, actually, that Jesus didn‟t want his messianic status to be proclaimed to the world at large (the triumphant entry into Jerusalem is wholly out of context). All these facts we will comprehensively dwell upon in due course. Since it was in the interests of the Jewish establishment, the Jewish historians, and the Jewish public – call it Jewish solidarity – to keep the agenda and stratagems of Jesus a closely guarded secret, it is easy to understand why he is almost totally absent from secular history, with only ing mentions of his saga here and there. It is unfortunate that this stark fact has escaped the so-called scholars of our day. If they deserve sympathy, it is only because gospel narratives, or their misunderstanding, have led people to believe that Jesus was a kind of phenomenon in his day who was a household name when he actually was far from that. He was a very obscure, self-effacing figure folks and was overshadowed by the likes of John the Baptist and the Herods. The Herods only turned against him when he began to vociferously assert his messiahship at their expense. All such dynamics of the day will become clear as the Jesus Papers unfold. JESUS FAR FROM LILY-WHITE Let us first put the Jesus of history in context before we zero in on his life in the first century AD. Jesus was a Jew. He was of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of King David, Israel‟s most famous and most beloved King. He grew up in a part of the world which at the time was known as Palestine, which is today‟s Israel plus the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestine of Jesus‟s day comprised of three provinces. They were Judea in the south, Samaria in the midlands, and Galilee in the north. Jesus was legally from Galilee though he was born in Judea. In our day, we have become accustomed to depictions of a white-skinned, blue-eyed, and blonde-haired Jesus. That is all a forgery. It is a contrived image meant to entrench the propaganda of white supremacy, of the racist paradigm that since white stands for “purity” and “positivity”, Jesus too, the very model of a good man according to the gospels, must have been white. If you are of a similar belief because you too pander to this narrative, then I have news for you. Jesus was not white. He was black like me. Maybe not as exactly dark-skinned as I am but he was of the Negroid race, with coffee-coloured skin, like that of your typical Ethiopian. Yes, today Jews come in all shades. There are black Jews, such as the Falashas of Ethiopia, white Jews, such as Henry Kissinger, and what are called Sephardic Jews, the Jews who look like Arabs. Jews have typically been a mixed race because Jewry is more about religious faith – Judaism – than skin colour. In antiquity, however, Jews were predominantly black. The line of Jesus for one was black as we shall soon attest. How did the Jews come about? 37

ENKI PRESERVES MANKIND We‟re all familiar with the Great Flood of Noah‟s day, also called the Deluge, which engulfed much (not all) of the world. The flood was the Anunnaki strategy to extinct the human species. The Anunnaki, the gods of the Old Testament, had fashioned mankind about 300,000 years before with a view to use us as a slave species – to serve them in mining, farming, and construction in the main. This they did by fusing their own genes with those of a creature that was on its way to evolving into man 10 to 25 million years down the line. This creature was called Ape-Man, or Homo Erectus in evolutional nomenclature. This genetic engineering resulted in Homo Sapiens, or thinking (reasoning) man. Now, the Anunnaki were aliens to this planet. They were not indigenous to it. They were from Nibiru, a Solar System planet seen only once in 3600 years. Nibiru itself was not an “indigenous” Solar System planet. It had strayed into the Solar System eons ago. It was originally part of the Sirius star system. One of the stars in the Sirius star system, Sirius B, exploded as all stars ultimately do (though some do so prematurely) to become what is known as a white dwarf. In the process, one of its planets, Nibiru, was blasted off deep into the void of space. As it drifted along, it was eventually drawn into our Solar System by the powerful gravity of Neptune and thus became a permanent member, the 10th planet. Nibiru was inhabited by the Anunnaki, who are the ruling race of the Orion and Sirius star systems. In time, mankind grew more clever and therefore more rebellious. Not only were humans difficult to tame but they became the source of a great deal of friction among the Anunnaki pantheon, which was led by Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible, and his step-brother Enki, the Serpent of Genesis. Legally, Enlil was Earth‟s Chief Executive but he was frequently defied by Enki, who thought on merit alone he deserved overall rulership of Earth. Not only was Enki older than Enlil but he was suringly brilliant. There was nothing, it was said, that he didn‟t know. Furthermore, Enki came to Earth before Enlil, commissioned by his step-father Anu to set up a viable operating infrastructure for the Anunnaki. Above all, Enki was the son of the Queen of Orion, whereas Enlil was the son of Anu, the King of the Sirius star system. Although Anu and the Orion Queen had entered into ceremonial wedlock with a view to cement peace between the two warring empires, the Orion Queen was senior cosmically in that females existed long before males came to be. It was Enki who ensured mankind survived the Deluge. Exactly how?

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 12

ENKI’S TEMPLATES How the Anunnaki’s “Einstein” engendered three human races through his bastard son Noah

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round 11,000 BC, Nibiru, the comet-planet of the Old Testament gods, was scheduled to return to its perihelion, that is, the section of its orbital circuit that loops between Jupiter and Mars. The Anunnaki scientists had calculated that when the planet, which is said to be 4-8 times Earth‟s size, approached this time around, it was going to trigger a global-wide flood as the ice sheet that capped the South Pole had become loose and Nibiru‟s mighty gravitational effect was certain to tip it into the sea, giving rise to a tsunami of apocalyptic proportions. Enlil, best-known as Jehovah in the Bible, thought this was the best opportunity to get rid of the troublesome and therefore loathsome human race. Accordingly, the Anunnaki pantheon, comprising of 12 of the Anunnaki royalty, met to deliberate on the matter. The consensus was that mankind should be allowed to perish in the foreseen cataclysm (GENESIS 6:6-7). Not every member of the pantheon was pro such a decision. Enki and his half-sister Ninmah were particularly revolted. Enki and Ninmah, along with the former‟s genius son Ningishzidda, were the mastermind of the genetic engineering project that gave rise to Adam and Eve, the progenitors of mankind. Naturally therefore, they had a very strong attachment to mankind. Enki for one never once referred to mankind as a slave race. He called us “a helper race” in the tasks of the Anunnaki. Enki, dubbed the Serpent in the Bible, had defied Enlil to enlighten Adam and Eve about their potential to be just like the Anunnaki were (GENESIS 2:5). He always had the best interests of mankind, literally his own creation, at heart. But it was a numbers game. Enki and Ninmah were out-voted in the ratio 10 is to 2. Mankind had to disappear from the face of the Earth in the coming deluge. A gutted Enki immediately put his genius mind to work. THE CUNNING OF ENKI Once the decision to exterminate mankind was reached, Enlil gave the pantheon to understand that under no circumstances was mankind to know of the impending flood. This was a secret to be jealously guarded by the Anunnaki. In order to ensure the secret was cast in stone, Enlil had every member of the pantheon swear to its strict upholding. Although Enki took the oath too, he had other, renegade plans. As the Anunnaki‟s greatest thinker, he could always find a loophole for the sake of his beloved mankind, which he indeed did. Through this loophole, he would ensure the survival of mankind. The agent of the survival was going to be none other than Noah. Now, in the Bible, Noah is rather hurriedly introduced despite his iconic stature. Of his beginnings, Genesis only says that he was the son of Lamech. There is no background story of the circumstances of 39

his birth. This omission is deliberate on the part of the Levites, the authors of Genesis and all of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. This is because not only were the circumstances of Noah scandalous but he was the seed of the very being the Levites called the Serpent. If you have demonised the Serpent, you don‟t want your audience to know that this same Serpent is in fact the father of mankind. The Levites wrote Genesis during their 70-year captivity (with the rest of the Jewish nation) in Babylon in the 6tH century BC. Much of the Genesis story was researched from the Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets, which abounded in Babylon. The Sumerian tablets detail the circumstances of Noah‟s birth. In fact, one reason the apocryphal Book of Enoch was excluded from the biblical canon was because it revealed too much, including who the real father of Noah was. Noah‟s real father was … Enki! Unlike the comparatively self-restrained Enlil, Enki had always been a philanderer. According to Sumerian records, and indeed the Bible itself (GENESIS 4:1), it was Enki who promiscuously fathered Cain, the putative firstborn of Adam and Eve, when he committed adultery with the latter. And it was Enki who fathered Noah, when he committed adultery with Lamech‟s wife Batanash (the Sumerian records chronicle that Lamech even complained about his “strange-looking son” [blue-eyed, blondish hair, and chalky-white skin like the Anunnaki] to his father Methuselah). In the English Bible, the term “God” uniformly applies to all of the Anunnaki pantheon, though it mainly refers to Enlil. The Hebrew version of the Old Testament, however, uses specific titular , such as Elohim, Adonai, El Elyon, El Shadai, Baal, etc. The Sumerian tablets are even more particular as they employ the more familiar names such as Enlil and Enki. The same tablets also carry precious more detail about biblical patriarchs like Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. In the Sumerian tablets, Noah goes by the names Ziusudra and Atra-Hasis, both meaning somebody of a very wise pedigree, an echo of Enki, who was acknowledged by the Anunnaki as their greatest intellect ever. In Akkadian (the forerunner to the Hebrew language), Noah was called Utnapishtim, meaning one who preserved life, which he indeed did. The name Noah itself has connotations both of wisdom and serpent. It therefore must have been a mocking nickname associating Noah with Enki, the Serpent of Genesis. The Sumerian tablets expressly describe Noah as the son of Enki and the wisest man of his day. The same Sumerian tablets say it was Enki and not Jehovah who tipped Noah about the impending flood and got him to construct a submersible craft, a kind of submarine, which the Bible simply calls the ark. Since of the pantheon were not supposed to alert mankind about the coming flood, Enki put up a kind of screen and behind it dictated to Noah the details of the coming deluge. Enki‟s post-flood justification when under trial before the pantheon was that he did not talk to Noah directly but simply meditated to himself aloud behind a screen. Noah therefore simply eavesdropped on him. Noah duly proceeded to construct the submarine and when it was ready he packed his family in there and the DNA of all the animal species, not animals themselves as Genesis mistakenly suggests. There were some physical animals of course on the ark but these were for-food animals as well as beasts of burden to 40

use once the flood had receded. Thus through his stratagem, which was effected through his bastard son Noah, Enki preserved mankind when Jehovah wanted us to perish once and for all. The irony is that it is Enki who we continue to call the Devil whilst Jehovah we respectfully address as “Our Lord God”. This Earth, My Brother … THREE ENGINEERED PROTOTYPES When Noah entered the ark, he was with his wife, three sons, and three daughters-in-law, so the Bible says. The three sons were Japheth (meaning “the light-toned one”), Ham (meaning “the dark-hued one”), and Shem (meaning “the famed one”). The Bible seems to struggle to enunciate the order of the three. It is not crystal-clear who was the eldest among the three. The Genesis statements are so convoluted that any one of the three could be inferred as the youngest. As to who was the oldest, it is a toss-up between Shem and Japheth. All this confusion, however, would be needless had the Levites observed their own chronicling in GENESIS 5:32 that “When Noah was 500 years old, he begot Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” Shem, Japheth, and Noah were born at the same time, not as triplets but through surrogate mothers. In other words, they were Test Tube babies, just like Adam and Eve were. Their wives could have come about the same way too. It explains why the Bible neither mentions the name of Noah‟s wife nor those of his sons. Noah‟s children were genetically engineered by Enki to be the three progenitors of the principal human races of the near-future in the wake of the flood. These were Negroids, Caucasians, and Semites. Since these are the races Enki wanted perpetuated after the deluge, he had Noah sire his three children via artificial means before the advent of the flood. The flood was not foreseen only a few years in advance: it was anticipated by at least a hundred years or so, well in time for the children to grow to mature adulthood. In any case, the Anunnaki knew full well the rate at which their own planet Nibiru streaked through its orbital circuit. At the cessation of the flood, Enki was tossed from pillar to post by Enlil for divulging the imminence of the deluge to Noah and for preserving the human race though legally he did not do so. It was at this stage Enki owned up to the fact that Noah was actually his son. After almost coming to blows with Enki (Sumerian tablets say exactly that), Enlil was eventually pacified. Enki convinced him that the amount of work that was required to restore the Earth to viable usefulness would need the assistance of mankind so it was just as well that Noah and his family were spared. Although Enlil was wroth at first, he now could not help commend his step-brother‟s amazing powers of foresight. DIVISION OF EARTH Before the flood, the Anunnaki were directly ruling Earth. Then post-flood, they decided to devolve direct rulership of the planet to the human race themselves, who they now decided to intellectually enhance by introducing civilisation in intervals of 3600 years, equivalent to one year on planet Nibiru. They themselves would simply be the superintending “gods”. The Earth was accordingly divided into four regions, metaphorically referred to as the Four Corners of the Earth. Says the Sumerian records of this

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development: “The Anunnaki who decree the fates sat exchanging their counsels regarding the Earth; the four regions they created.” The four regions were Africa (which at the time included the Arabian Peninsula), Indo-Europe (Indian sub-continent, Europe, and central Asia), the Middle East, and Tilmun. The first three regions were allotted thus: Indo-Europe to the tribe of Japheth, Africa to the tribe of Ham, and the Middle East to the tribe of Shem. In other words, Africa was given to Enki‟s subjects whilst Indo-Europe and the Middle East where given to Enlil‟s subjects. Tilmun, however, was retained by the Anunnaki themselves and for a special reason. Tilmun means “land of the missiles”. Tilmun, best known today as the Sinai Peninsula, not only harboured a missile base but was also the site of a spaceport, where interplanetary and intergalactic flights took place, particularly to and from Mars, Nibiru, the moon, and the Sirius and Orion star systems. Since Tilmun was such a strategic place, the Anunnaki pantheon decided to vest authority over it not to Enkites or Enlilites, the two adversarial Anunnaki clans, but to Ninmah, the half-sister to Enki and Enlil. Ninmah was regarded neutral not because she was a lady but because she had a son with Enlil and about six daughters with Enki (the Anunnaki were an incestuous race who permitted marriage or consensual sexual relations with sisters, aunties, in-laws, and even daughters). In practice, however, it was the Enlilites who controlled Tilmun, together with Jerusalem, which was the mission control centre. The commander for Tilmun and mission control centre was Utu-Shamash, the grandson of Enlil. Indeed the Enlilites, particularly Ninurta (Enlil‟s son with Ninmah), Shamash, and his sister Inanna-Ishtar were the Anunnaki‟s ace aerial fighters and astronauts. And the Sinai Desert is actually named after Nannar-Sin, the second-born son of Enlil and father to Shamash. If a single one nation of mankind could live within the vicinities of both the spaceport and mission control centre, that had to be the one that was dearest to Enlil and his clan. This was the tribe of Shem. The original meaning of Shem in the Sumerian language was “rocket”. Shemites (or Semites as per the traditional pronunciation) were thus chosen by Enlil primarily as protectors of the Anunnaki spaceport and mission control centre, controlled as they were by the Enlilites. When the Jews therefore call themselves “God‟s chosen people”, it is not afar-fetched claim. The main strand of Semites would over time come to be known as Jews (Ewes, or sheep), Hebrews (nation of the beings [the Anunnaki] of the Planet of the Crossing [one meaning of Nibiru]), or Israelites (Protectors of El, that is, El Elyon, a title of Nannar-Sin, who at some stage became the superintending Enlilite after Enlil decided to concentrate on matters of Nibiru). It was through the coned line of Shem (Semites) and Ham (Hamites, or to be specific Canaanites, the descendents of Ham‟s fourth-born son Canaan) that Jesus arose.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 13

THE CONIAH QUANDARY Did the Curse of a Royal Ancestor of Jesus Disentitle Him from the Davidic Throne?

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here is a section of the gospels which practically nobody reads, including pastors. This is the genealogy, the lineage of Jesus. Throughout the 30 years or so that I have been a Christian, I have never heard a single sermon on the genealogy of Jesus. This is unfortunate because the genealogy, when investigated by cross-reference with Old Testament records, yields some very valuable insight on the ancestry of Jesus. Furthermore, it provides context as to why he was such a love-him-orloathe-him figure as well as why the circumstances of his birth were overshadowed by a scandal that continued to haunt him for the rest of his life. The genealogies are found in MATTHEW 1:1-17 and LUKE 3:23-38. The scope of each of the two genealogies is tailored to the audiences for whom the gospel narratives were primarily intended. Matthew was fundamentally writing for the Jews; hence he begins his genealogy with Abraham, the father of the Jewish race. On the other hand, Luke, a Greek, targeted Gentiles. Accordingly, he began his genealogy with Adam, the father of the human race. Why did Matthew and Luke deem it necessary to furnish a genealogy of Jesus? Certainly, if Jesus was a God-man, as the bulk of Christendom believe, there would be no need for a genealogy. God will not need details about his family background. The only reason, therefore, why the two evangelists decided to include a genealogy in their s was because they wanted to set down evidence of Jesus‟s royal credentials. They wanted to demonstrate that Jesus was a descendent of David, Israel‟s covenant king, and therefore had the right pedigree. Both Mathew and Luke do articulate Jesus‟s Davidic connection. The very first line of Matthew‟s gospel reads, “This is the record of the ancestry of Jesus Christ, the son of David …” In LUKE 1:32, we‟re told, plainly, that Jesus would “sit on the throne of his father David”. It was the Jews‟ Anunnaki “God” Enlil – called Jehovah in the Bible – who through the prophet Nathan declared to David during his waning days that only a Jew of Davidic stock would ever rule Israel (2 SAMUEL 7:12-16). Since God so said, the Jews simply never accepted anybody who wasn‟t a descendent of David to rule over them. For example, King Herod (reign: 37 BC to 4 BC) went out of his way to try and win the devotion and affections of the Jews. He even built a magnificent temple for good measure, the globe‟s architectural masterpiece of the day. The Jews were unmoved. Being half-Arab, Herod was not a true blue Jew. Worse still, he did not have a single drop of Davidic blood coursing in his veins. Even the prophets themselves – Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc – referred to Israel‟s throne as “David‟s throne”, that is, one worthy only of a descendent of David and no less.

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Yet although Jesus was of Davidic lineage, he was tainted in two ways. First, there was a curse once upon a time in his ancestry. Second, he was born in circumstances anathema to a dynastic heir. THE CURSE OF JECONIAH The Jewish king who caused problems for Jesus, who considerably dented his legitimacy, was Jeconiah (also known as Coniah and as Jehoiachin). In of kingly profile, Jeconiah was dismally undistinguished. He officially ruled over Judah for only three months but the effect he had on the fate of his nation was probably of eternal proportions. Jeconiah ascended to the throne at the very tender age of 18, on December 9 598 BC, following the foul death of his father Jehoiakim. Then just after 100 days on the throne, he was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar on March 15 597 BC (“beware the ides of March” a soothsayer had warned Julius Caesar) and led in chains into incarcerated exile in Babylon. In the greater scheme of things, his fate was inevitable: it was part of a series of Seven Chastisements Enlil had pronounced upon the Jews for diluting their loyalty to him with intermittent worship of rival “gods” (LEVITICUS 26:27-28 /PSALMS 12:6)). However, since the Babylonian Chastisement, the second of the seven, occurred on Jeconiah‟s watch, a sadistic Enlil slapped a further curse on him personally (?). Enlil pronounced the curse through the prophet Jeremiah thus: “Is this man Coniah a despised, broken pot, a vessel no one cares for? Why are he and his children hurled and cast into a land that they do not know? O land, land, land, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord: „Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his seed shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah (JEREMIAH 22:28-30).” The boy king did no wrong: he incurred a personalised curse all because a national curse took effect when he was reigning. We Christians ought to wake up: our “God” is a joke really! The Kingdom of Judah was not left without a king though as Nebuchadnezzar appointed his own client king in place of Jeconiah. This was Zedekiah, Jeconiah‟s 21-year-old uncle, another youngster. About ten years later, Nebuchadnezzar struck again after an intransigent Zedekiah revolted. This was the beginning of the Babylonian captivity proper, when Solomon‟s Temple was razed to the ground and virtually every able-bodied Jew, including Zedekiah himself, was matched off to Babylon. To ensure there was no rabble-rousing heir for the Jews to possibly rally around, Zedekiah‟s toddler sons were killed in cold blood and Zedekiah had his eyes gouged out. He was to die whilst in captivity. The exile ended in 537 BC, when Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon and issued a decree to free the Jews. The Jews left in batches, with the last wave arriving in 516 BC. Altogether, the captivity lasted 70 years counting from 586 BC. The Jews naturally did not recognise Zedekiah as their king. Only Jeconiah counted as he was the linear and anointed king. At the same time, they were well aware of the fact that he was accursed, including his descendents, which meant that there was never going to be another King of Judah from his line. That was what complicated things for Jesus. He was legally a descendent of Jeconiah and was by rights 44

disqualified from ever occupying the throne of Judah. But did the Jeconiah curse indeed invalidate the accession of Jesus to the throne of a liberated Israel? A CANCELLED CURSE Let us take another look at the Jeconiah curse. There were three aspects to the curse. First, Jeconiah would not prosper in his life time. Second, his own descendents too would not prosper. Third, none of the Jeconiah offspring would ever be King of the Jews. We will begin with Jeconiah himself. Contrary to the wishes of his God, Jeconiah did actually prosper. True, Nebuchadnezzar did confine him to jail but he was released after 36 years, on March 27 561 BC. What happened upon his release? Nebuchadnezzar exalted him above every other king that was in captivity in Babylon at the time (2 KINGS 25:27-28). In other words, Jeconiah became a national patriarch in a foreign domain, a kind of elder statesman whose views in regard to the affairs of the nation were periodically sought. This may come as a shock to Christians but prophecies did not always come true. For instance, this was what a “major” prophet had said about Jeconiah: “And I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim King of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon saith the LORD: for I will break the yoke of the King of Babylon (JEREMIAH 28:4).” The same Enlil who had surrendered Jeconiah and the rest of Judah for that matter into Babylonian bondage declared that he was nonetheless going to ensure that Jeconiah returned to Judah some day. This prophecy never came to as Jeconiah died right in Babylon. The Bible is full of consistencies which Christians tragically, hypocritically, and therefore comically assume away. It is clear from these developments that the Jeconiah curse did not bear out in full measure: only the element of a descendent of his never having to sit on the throne of Israel was fulfilled though this was simply in the nature of things and not because Enlil intended it. I say this because the Jeconiah curse actually lapsed. In JEREMIAH 22:24, Enlil had said thus to Jeconiah: “As surely as I live … even if you, Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim King of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off.” Enlil had compared Jeconiah to a signet ring, a symbol of divine as well as monarchical authority: Enlil himself wore this ring and so did other of the Anunnaki royalty and Egyptian kings. Now let us listen to what another prophet of the same Enlil said to Zerubbabel upon his return from Babylon: “On that day … I will take you, my servant Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel … and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you … (HAGGAI 2:23).” Enlil here designates Zerubbabel as a potential king by likening him to his signet ring. Clearly, the Jeconiah curse was at this point rendered null and void. It explains why Jerubbabel, Jeconiah‟s grandson legally speaking, did prosper: when the exile ended, he was not only instrumental in resettling the freed Jews in Jerusalem but he was appointed governor of Judea. Sadly, the matter of the status of the Jeconiah curse was a rather grey area to the Jews of Jesus‟ day. Some thought Jesus was not entitled both to the symbolic and literal throne of Judah as his ancestral line had been the subject of a curse. This was the more influential view. Those who recognised that the curse had been withdrawn as per prophet Haggai were in the minority. Since the matter was not settled with cut 45

and dried finality, later Christian redactors inserted phrases in the gospel texts that made it look like both Matthew and Luke had intimated that Jesus was not fathered by Joseph but was begot supernaturally. In truth, however, Jesus was unaffected by the Jeconiah curse. THE ROLE OF NERI Both Mathew and Luke were cognisant of the Jeconiah curse and the problems it threw up for Jesus. In their s, therefore, they made sure it was somewhat disambiguated. How? Let us begin with Matthew. On concluding his genealogical line-up, after the words “Jacob became the father of Joseph”, Matthew adds: “the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Contrary to what some ranks of the so-called scholars aver, this statement had nothing to do with the drivel that Joseph was not the real father of Jesus or that Jesus was born to Mary only by supernatural means, without the involvement of a male agent. Mathew featured Mary in a genealogy she was not part and parcel of, the genealogy of Joseph, for two reasons only. The first one was to demonstrate that Jesus was a descendent of David not only through Joseph but through Mary as well. As such, the Jeconiah curse had to be evaluated in this context. Matthew, however, did not expand on his point. Noting this shortcoming, Luke decided to plug it. Now, Luke is my most favourite evangelist. Like the other three, he is not consistently truthful and even shows bias in some respects but he is the most accurate historically as even scholars now almost unanimously agree. The man was not only a chronicler but he was an intellectual, a doctor, and so he made sure he meticulously investigated everything to make sure what he set down was in general unimpeachable (LUKE 1:3-4). Whilst Matthew traces the ancestry of Jesus through Joseph, Luke does so through Mary. Both Joseph and Mary were descendents of David but Joseph came through the line of Solomon, David‟s heir, whereas Mary came through the line of Nathan, Solomon‟s elder brother. According to Luke, Joseph and Mary‟s lines did converge at Shealtiel as indeed the two genealogies bear the name Shealtiel. However, what Luke found was that Shealtiel was not the son of Jeconiah but the son of Neri (LUKE 3:27). What must have happened was that whilst in prison and conscious of the ramifications of his curse, Jeconiah asked his cousin Neri of the line of Nathan to “serve” his (Jeconiah‟s) wife and sire heirs for him particularly that he was not sure when he would be released from jail. Such arrangements, called levirates, were common among Jews particularly when a wealthy or dynastic relation died childless or simply was infertile. Thus whilst Jeconiah was the legal father of Shealtiel and at least four other children out of Jeconiah‟s seven, their biological father was actually Neri. That way, the Jeconiah curse was rendered invalid, with all descendents henceforth –Jesus included – benefitting from such a setup. Indeed prophet Haggai‟s euphoria over Zerubbabel says it all. But as I have already indicated, the issue was quite a sticking point to the Jews of Jesus‟ day and therefore remained a divisive bone of contention indefinitely.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 14

THE LORD’S SEEDY ANCESTRY The Lineage Of Jesus Includes Four Matriarchal Women Of Revoltingly Loose Morals. Was Mary The Fifth?

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n the previous piece, we made mention of only one reason Matthew decided to retrofit Mary to her husband Joseph‟s genealogy – that he wanted to underscore that Jesus was a descendent of David not only through Joseph but through Mary as well and as such, Jesus steered clear of the Jeconiah curse, that ostensibly ran through the line of Joseph. There was still another reason and that is that in the line of David, Mary was not the only scandalous woman. There were several women whose reputations were even baser than Mary‟s. The women are mentioned in Matthew‟s genealogy. They are Tamah, Rahab, Ruth, and “Uriah‟s wife”, that is, Bathsheba, the daughter-wife of David. These four are the only females other than Mary to feature on the list. What scandal was Mary the subject of? The Bible does furnish hints but Christians just do not take notice or they gloss over the matter by way of fanciful and wishful-thinking interpretations. The most glaring one is JOHN 8:41, where Jesus is sneered at by his audience for having been born of fornication. Another is MATTHEW 13:55. Here, an adult Jesus is referred to as the son of Mary. Now, in Jewish culture, no grown man was addressed as the son of his mother. He was addressed as the son of his father (e.g. son of Joseph), after his hometown (e.g. Jesus of Galilee), or after a famed grouping (e.g. Jesus the Nazarene). Thus for people to call Jesus the son of Mary was a slur: it had connotations of his having been born in an illicit manner, what we would today call a son of b… The fact that Jesus was born in unsavoury circumstances is very apparent in the gospels. We are told, for instance, that upon learning that Mary was pregnant, Joseph contemplated annulling their betrothal. The Christian spin is that Mary was put in the family way by the “Holy Spirit” and that angels assured Matthew that all was well as baby Jesus was conceived supernaturally. As the Jesus Papers progress, it will become clear that this is reading too much theology in the gospel narratives. There were no angels or holy spirits involved in the birth of Jesus. He was born exactly like you and I were – through sexual relations between a mortal father and a mortal mother, period. If Jesus was indeed born naturally and in the familiar way, was he the result of an immoral union? Was Mary impregnated by somebody else other than her husband Joseph? Is it time Pope Francis began to invoke “Hell Mary” instead of “Hail Mary”?

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MARY IN GOOD COMPANY Let us do an up-close on the four women Matthew irregularly listed on his genealogy. Matthew goes: “Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar … Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth … David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife … "(MATTHEW 1:3-5). The four women have one thing in common: they were all tainted by a sexual scandal of some kind. Tamar (GENESIS 38), at the time a childless widow, posed as a road-side prostitute with only one catch in mind – her own randy father-in-law Judah (the fourth-born son of Jacob). Since she was so masterfully disguised, Judah did not recognise her and so propositioned. The ensuing two-minute stand gave rise to the twins Perez and Zerah. The Bible patriarchs were not as holy as we receive them folks. Rahab (JOSHUA 2 & 6) is the famous career prostitute who provided lodging to two agents sent by the Israelite General Joshua to spy out Jericho prior to its siege. Ruth (The Book of RUTH) was the daughter of Rahab and her spitting image character-wise. She got a man called Boaz senselessly drunk, did a blowjob on him, and got herself pregnant. Thus tactfully blackmailed, Boaz had no choice but to marry her. According to the Bible, King David committed adultery with Bathsheba (2 SAMUEL 11-12) after watching her bath from the vantage point of his lofty balcony. To ensure the scandal did not become a staple of societal buzz, David had Uriah, Bathsheba‟s soldier husband, set up to fight at the battle front with a view to getting him killed, which came to . The king and the widow then tied the knot. The more reliable extra-biblical sources, however, document that Bathsheba was in fact David‟s daughter and therefore the matrimonial union was not only scandalous but incestuous. After making mention of the above four women in a most incongruous genealogy, Matthew adds a fifth – Mary. There is clearly something Matthew is trying to convey here and that, obviously, is that in one way or another, this Mary was like the four promiscuous women of Old Testament times who, ironically, were iconic in Jewish reminiscences. Put differently, Matthew is saying, yes, Mary too had a sex scandal that resulted in the birth of Jesus, the Davidic heir, but she was not the odd one out. There were others in the Davidic lineage whose reputations were just as lousy, such as Tamar, who actually became the Mother of all kings of Judah; Rahab, who was the great-great grandmother of the great King David; Ruth, who was the great-grandmother of King David; and Bathsheba, an adulteress who married the man who betrayed and murdered her husband. Mary, Matthew seems to venture, is in good company and should therefore not unduly raise eyebrows. Exactly how did Mary‟s sexual scandal come about? JOSEPH WAS REAL Before we talk about Mary, it is in order that we start with her husband Joseph. There is no shortage of scholars who hold that Joseph was invented, that he did not exist but was simply deviously inserted into

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the gospels. The reasons they advance, amongst others, is that the Joseph of the gospels is so uncannily similar to the Joseph of Genesis. First, both Josephs had a father called Jacob. Second, both Josephs were communicated with by God through dreams – the Genesis guy when he was in prison and the gospel fella when his betrothed, Mary, “mysteriously” became pregnant. Third, the Joseph of the Old Testament was taken to Egypt when he was young and the infant son of the gospel Joseph, Jesus, was taken to Egypt too to escape the wrath of a power-obsessed Herod. The scholars, it seems, are yet to learn how to read the Bible, particularly the gospels. Their literal interpretation of everything they read in the Bible is unfortunate. I will dwell on this shortcoming in detail at a later date but for now I will simply point out one area in which scholars show breathtaking ignorance. Not every name in the Bible was an original name. Some, if not most, were titles. In the New Testament in particular, names like Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, Jacob, etc, were all titular. Other names were actually nicknames which became more popular than the original name. Peter is just one example. Yet other names were cover names, meant to protect the bearer in a political climate where an occupying power, the Romans, constantly sniffed for the slightest hint of anarchic or revolutionary designs. The names of most of Jesus‟ so-called 12 disciples were actually pseudonyms as we shall demonstrate in due course. Indeed, when you read the New Testament with a bit of insight, you will come to know that some individuals were known by two to three names. For example, very few people are aware that the names James, Joseph of Arimathea, and Cleopas all belonged to only one individual – James the brother and successor to Jesus, a detail we shall comprehensively explore at a later stage. Suffice it to say that Joseph did exist. Joseph‟s father was called Jacob, a titular name: his childhood name was Eliakim. All the Davids (that is, the ruling line of Judah who in the first century comprised of Jacob, Joseph, Jesus, James, and Jesus Jr) had an own name as well as a hereditary name. In African cultures, this is actually commonplace. For instance, I was given the name Benson by my father. My widowed grandmother conferred me another name – Chindalo, the name of my departed grandfather who ed away the year before I was born. As such, throughout his life my father respectfully often referred to me as “my father”. I recall him addressing me as such since the time I was in primary school. All elderlies in our extended family called me Chindalo: only youngsters called me Ben. Jacob-Eliakim was born in 70 BC. His heir Joseph (it too a titular name) was born in 44 BC. JacobEliakim was the first David to accept the diminished status of the Davidic dynasty when he made a pact with the sellout half-Arab, half-Jew and Rome‟s client King of Judah called Herod the Great. RISE OF HEROD The first king of the United Kingdoms of Israel (north) and Judah (south) was Saul. Following the ouster of Saul, David took over the reins in about 1000 BC. He was succeeded in 955 BC by his son Solomon. After the death of Solomon in 930 BC, the ten Israeli tribes who dominated the north rejected his anointed heir Rehoboam owing to his refusal to effect radical reforms. The result was a split. The southern tribes, those of Judah and Benjamin, recognised Rehoboam, whilst the northern tribes came under the rulership of ex-fugitive Jeroboam of the tribe of Ephraim.

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In the next 420 years, 19 more kings would rule Judah. The last legal king was Jeconiah, who ruled for only three months after which he was taken into Babylonian captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. This happened in March 597 BC. Nebuchadnezzar replaced Jeconiah with vassal king Zedekiah but in the Jewish revolt against Babylon in 588 to 586 BC, Zedekiah was captured and banished to Babylon. The Temple was also destroyed. Henceforth, the Kingdom of Judah was no more. Judah was now ruled by Jewish governors appointed from Babylon. Following the end of the Babylonian exile thanks to a decree by new Lord of the Realm, the Persian King Cyrus, Zerubabel, the levirate grandson of Jeconiah, was appointed governor of Judah. The Babylonians ruled Judah from 586 to 536 BC and the Persians for over 200 years thereafter. The next conqueror was Alexander the Great of Macedonia, in 332 BC. At his death in 312 BC came the turn of the Seleucid dynasty, who ruled all the way to100 BC. In 140 BC, however, Judah had become semiautonomous, with the Hasmonean dynasty, also called the Maccabees, ruling under oversight from the Seleucids. The Hasmoneans were Jews of the priestly tribe of Levi. When the Seleucid Empire disintegrated in 100 BC, the Hasmoneans became firm in the saddle. It was the first time since 597 BC that Palestine was ruled by Jews. Nonetheless, the Hasmoneans ruled by brute force and fearing for their lives, the Davidic descendents self-exiled to Babylonia. In 68 BC, a civil war ensued in Palestine in the wake of heated feuding among the Hasmonean royalty. The Romans, the new world power in the ascendant, took advantage and in 63 BC seized the Jewish territory under General Pompey. The Romans put oversight of Palestine under the governor of Syria, their Middle-Eastern capital. They did not, however, intend to rule Palestine directly at that point. They therefore appointed John Hyrcanus II, a Hasmonean, as Prince of Judah. Hyrcanus‟ main advisor was Antipater and his son Herod. It was the latter two who wielded real power and not Hyrcanus. In 40 BC, the Parthians invaded Palestine, drove away the Romans, and replaced Hyrcanus with his nephew Antigonus. Three years later, the Romans were back. The Parthians were routed, Antigonus and all his ers beheaded, and Herod, who had played a heroic role in the Parthian ejection, installed as Rome‟s client King of Judah. Herod, who was far from the kindest being to have ever existed, was determined that the Hasmoneans posed no threat to his throne whatsoever. He had Hyrcanus, his daughter Alexandria, and her two children murdered. He spared Hyrcanus‟ brother Aristobulus but for provisionally strategic reasons only: he had married his sister Mariamme. In 35 BC, Herod thought Aristobulus had served his purpose and so had him drowned. He went on to eliminate his own wife Marriame. The Hasmonean purge was complete. As much as he was a megalomaniac, Herod was a clever political operator. Although he was a vassal king who danced to Rome‟s tune, he did not wish to be Rome‟s lackey forever. He wanted to be sovereign of the whole world some day, like Caesar presently was. To achieve this goal, he decided that first, he had to endear himself to the Jewish nation. Second, he had to win the loyalty and of the only royal clan whose memories still resonated with the Jewish nation. This was the House of David. The House of David was at the time bandied around Jacob-Eliakim, Joseph‟s father, who was about 30 years old then. It was to Jacob-Eliakim, the Davidic heir, that Herod began to make serious strategic overtures.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 15

PACT WITH THE DEVIL How Jesus’s grandfather sold his birthright to megalomaniac Herod

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f you were to ask a Christian to name the main Jewish sects, he would no doubt begin with the Pharisees (because Jesus had innumerable slanging matches with them according to the gospels), followed by the Sadducees. Yet there was a third, equally momentous sect – the Essenes.

Although there‟s not a single, one mention of the Essenes in the Bible, the New Testament is filled with Essene-type language as anybody who has read the Dead Sea Scrolls would readily recognise. In point of fact, it was the Essenes who produced Jesus as well as the infamous Jewish band of freedom fighters known as the Zealots. Furthermore, almost all the New Testament writers were either Essenes or champions of the Essene cause as is apparent in their language and the drift of their overall philosophy. The Essenes have a palpable presence in the Bible, albeit a cloaked one. The Essenes were the most popular, the most esteemed, and the most influential of the Jewish sects. The Jewish historian Philo (20 BC-50 AD) devotes 90 percent of his description of the Jewish sects to the Essenes. He wrote that the Essenes “dwell in many cities of Judea and in many villages and in great societies of many numbers”. Hyppolytus of Rome (170-236 AD) devoted nine-and-half chapters to the Essenes and only one to the Sadducees. The Essenes are the authors of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in 1947 in Israel at a place called Qumran and which have given us even greater insight into the happenings in the first century than the Bible itself. How did the Essene movement come about? The Essenes, meaning “puritans of the faith”, were the Jewish sect that was the most loyal to the Davidic dynasty. They set themselves apart from the mainstream Jewish community circa 175 BC and established their headquarters at Qumran, about 40 km from Jerusalem. Since the Jewish nation revered the Davidic royal line, the only legitimate and rightful rulers of Judah in their view, they rallied to the Essenes en masse. And because the Essenes were disparaging of the Hasmonean rule (140 BC to 63 BC), the mainstream Jews also took a dismissive view of Hasmonean rule too. The Essenes were so highly regarded because of their virtue and spirituality. The legendary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD) writes thus of them: “They are more mutually affectionate than the others (Pharisees and Sadducees). Whereas these men shun the pleasures as vice, they consider selfcontrol and not succumbing to the ions virtue … Since [they are] despisers of wealth – their communal stock is astonishing – one cannot find a person among them who has more in of possessions. For by a law, those coming into the school (that is, the Essene fold) must yield up their funds to the order, with the result that in all [their ranks] neither the humiliation of poverty nor the superiority of wealth is detectable, but the assets of each one have been mixed in together, as if they were brothers, to create one fund for all.” 51

In time, the Essenes became quite influential even with occupying powers. For instance, when the Greek General Pompey installed Hyrcanus II as ruler of Palestine in 63 BC, he sought the opinion of the Essenes. The Essenes recommended that Hyrcanus go by the titles High Priest and Prince, not King, to which Pompey paid heed. In 142 BC, when Simon was installed by the Seleucids as ruler of Palestine, the Essenes had insisted on the same titular style. To the Essenes, everybody who occupied Israel‟s seat of authority was simply holding fort for the real deal – the Davidic King. In 37 BC, when Herod became King of Palestine, the potential Davidic King was Jacob-Eliakim – the father of the Joseph of the gospels – who was an Essene himself. It was in order to win the blessings of the historically popular Jewish royal family that Herod sought to curry favour with the Essenes. JACOB’S PACT WITH HEROD About the time Herod came to power, there were three citizens of considerable stature in Palestine – Hillel, Menahem, and Jacob-Eliakim, the grandfather of Jesus. Hillel is by all s ancient Israel‟s greatest teacher and scholar. He was the foremost spiritual sage in the development of the Talmud and the Mishnah, the most authoritative religious references of the Jews which are second only to the Old Testament in esteem. The renowned “Golden Rule”, which is invariably attributed to Jesus, was actually coined by Hillel. It is not certain whether Hillel was an Essene but his teachings did have a profound influence both on Essene philosophy and that of Jesus, who was an Essene too. It was Menahem, however, who was an incontrovertible Essene. The Essenes were of two main branches. First, there were the puritans, the Palestinian Essenes. Then there were the liberals, the Diaspora Essenes, who sneered at the Palestinian Essenes' dogmatism and rather strict views on morality. Menahem was the leader of the Diaspora Essenes. He was also privilleged to be advisor to King Herod. Herod did hold Menahem in very high regard. Josephus relates that when Herod was a school-going lad, Menahem had patted him on his back and said to him, “one day you will be King young man.” Since the prophecy came to , Herod had a certain, atypical respect both for Menahem and the order of Essenes. Jacob-Eliakim‟s significance was by virtue of his pedigree. He was of the royal line of David and was therefore the uncrowned King of the Jews. Now, as we indicated in the previous piece, Herod had his own grand designs about rulership of the world notwithstanding the fact that he was in reality a vassal of Rome. When he made overtures to the trio, they didn‟t mince words: they told him that in the new Israel, the Israel that would rule Earth once the Romans had been toppled from the pedestal of world power, it was a Davidic King who would reign. Herod took very strong exception to such a prospect. Herod was neither a full-blooded Jew nor of Davidic stock but he was royalty in his own right. His father, Antipater, had been the governor of Idumea and in due course Judea in the Hasmonean government and was in fact the real ruler of the entire Palestine, with John Hyrcanus being a mere figurehead king. When he (Herod) was only 25 years old, 52

his father had appointed him governor of Galilee. Herod thus had strutted the corridors of power from the day he was born and he wasn‟t going to give that up easily either for his own sake or that of his descendents. As such, Herod maintained to the trio that in the new, overarching Kingdom of Israel, he was going to be the emperor and would be based in Jerusalem. Just like the Greek empire of Alexander had been a triarchy (a kingdom divided into three governments), the global Kingdom of Israel (“Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord‟s Prayer) was going to be likewise. There was going to be a ruler in the east, a ruler in the west, and a ruler in the centre, that is Jerusalem, under the oversight of Herod himself. Hillel would rule in Jerusalem; Menahem in the east; and Jacob-Eliakim in the west. If these three happened to have disappeared from the Earthly scene by the time the Kingdom of Israel came into being, their descendents would observe the same setup. The pecking order would thus be like this: Herod as the emperor; Hillel as the senior king; Menahem as the second-ranked king; and Jacob-Eliakim as the junior king. Put differently, Herod had by the stroke of a pen reduced the Davidic dynasty from foremost to least important as it posed the most serious threat to his office. Meanwhile, the three kings-in-waiting would go by the names of the Old Testament patriarchs. Hillel would henceforth be called the Abraham, or the Father (or Papa, which later morphed into Pope), since Abraham was the Father of the Jewish nation; Menahem would be called the Isaac; and Eliakim the Jacob. Half a loaf was better than nothing at all and so Jacob-Eliakim meekly accepted this arrangement. When Jesus later said, “Many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the new Kingdom of Heaven (MATTHEW 8:11),” he did not mean an afterlife kingdom: he referred to the Earthly setup proposed by King Herod. A MARRIAGE AND KILLING SPREE Meanwhile, Herod sought to consolidate his power to keep himself firm in the saddle. In accomplishing this, he used contrived diplomacy coupled with sheer savagery. The diplomatic route he used was politically expedient marriages. This strategy one historian chronicles as follows: “With the marriage to Doris of Jerusalem, a princess of the royal lineage of King David, in 37 BC, Herod, in his mind, was able to secure for his throne and descendants the bloodlines of the royal descendants of King David. With the marriage of Hasmonean Princess Miriamne I in 37 BC, the daughter of Queen Alexandra II, Herod secured for his descendants the throne of the Hasmoneans. With the marriage of the daughter of the High Priest Simon Boethus, called Mariamme II in 23 BCE from the officially approved lineage of the high priest dynasty of Zadok the High Priest of King David, King Herod secured, in his own mind, the power over the high priestly families and temple hierarchy in Judea. With the marriage of Cleopatra VIII „of Jerusalem‟, the posthumous daughter of Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and the Roman Dictator Julius Caesar, King Herod won, in his own mind, the power struggle between he and his nemesis, Cleopatra the last Pharaoh of Egypt over control of the regions of Judea and Jericho, and potentially secured the right for the throne of Rome by his own sons.”

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In addition, Herod ensured that everybody who he considered a threat to his power and that of his dynasty both presently and futuristically he ruthlessly purged. These included some of the Davidic dynasty who he deemed scheming or unduly assertive, his in-laws from the Hasmonean line, and his own wives and children. In 35 BC, he had his brother-in-law Aristobulous III drowned. In 28 BC, he executed another brother-in-law Koshtoba. The father of Mary mother of Jesus, called Heli in Luke‟s genealogy but whose titular name was Prince Alexander III, and her grandmother Queen Alexander II were also murdered by Herod. As for his own family, Herod had the following executed: his wife Mariamne I in 29 BC; his two sons by Mariamne I, Alexander and Aristobulus IV, in 7 BC; and his son Antipater by his wife Doris, who he ordered killed whilst he (Herod) lay on his deathbed in 4 BC. It‟s small wonder that the then Roman emperor Caesar Augustus joked that, “It is better to be Herod‟s pig than his son”, which was apt: as a “Jew”, Herod did not eat pork and therefore in the event that he kept any pigs, they would never have to be killed. FALLOUT WITH ESSENES Those days, the Davidic heir used the title “Jacob” rather than “David” as the latter title was very risky, particularly under the Hasmonean government. Given that Joseph was the most beloved son of the Old Testament Jacob, the next in line, that is, the firstborn son of the Jacob, used the title “Joseph”. In September 44 BC, a son was born to Jacob-Eliakim. As the crown prince to the Jacob, he was given the titular name Joseph, the name by which he became best-known. Like his father Jacob-Eliakim, Joseph was a missionary. But he also had a trade. He was a carpenter, a boat builder primarily, and a master of his craft. The word translated “carpenter” in the Bible is the ancient Greek word “ho hekton” which means a master artisan or craftsman. In 31 BC, Qumran, the Essenes‟ Judean wilderness bastion, was struck by an earthquake. The hermitic Essenes had no choice but to trek back to Jerusalem, from where they operated indefinitely at a place they called the Essene Gate. Then in 23 BC, Herod struck again. He had Jacob-Eliakim killed on trumped-up charges of sedition, his motive simply being a continuation of a systematic purge of the Davidic “pretenders” to his throne. The Essenes were wroth. They now set about promulgating to the Diaspora Essenes that Herod would have no part to play in the coming Kingdom. Instead, the overall King would be Joseph, the son of JacobEliakim. This was the beginning of a permanent rift between Herod and the Essene sect.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 16

MARY’S SEX SCANDAL Jesus Conceived Irregularly

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hen King Herod proposed a three-way world government (a triarchy) in a post-Caesar dispensation, he stipulated that it would have three sub-kings, all under him, in the following order of seniority: the great Jewish rabbi Hillel; the Diaspora Essenes head Menahem; and Jesus‟s grandfather-to-be Jacob-Eliakim. Jacob-Eliakim would be king of the West, the location of Rome, which was regarded as the least important geopolitically. This was Herod‟s cleverly couched attempt at a belittling of the line of David. Menahem would rule in the East, the location of Babylon, which was considered more important than Rome. Hillel would rule in Jerusalem, the world-capital designate, under the direct supervision of Herod. The prospective global world was subdivided into ten provinces to facilitate governance and tax collection. Palestine would have two provinces, Judea and Samaria, the latter of which would include Galilee. Asia Minor (largely present-day Turkey), where the bulk of Diaspora Jews were concentrated, would have five provinces. The last three provinces would be Babylon, Rome, and Alexandria in Egypt. The future capital of the West was not Rome: it was Ephesus in Asia Minor. Having been allocated the West, it was in Ephesus and Alexandria that Jacob-Eliakim spent most of his time evangelising to fellow Jews about the future Kingdom of Israel. This was the beginning of the New Covenant, whereby Jews who converted to the ideal of a new Kingdom of Israel were baptised by immersion in water. To mainstream Palestinian Jews, Jacob-Eliakim was a sellout. Herod had demoted his pedigree but to somewhat placate him, he gave him the honorary title of Patriarch or Prince of Jerusalem. By subordinating the Davidic throne-in-waiting to Herod, Jacob-Eliakim had gone against what the nation of Israel‟s God, Enlil, called Jehovah in the Bible, decreed – that every King of Judah had to be a descendent of David. So when the unpredictable Herod had him killed in 23 BC for “sedition”, as part of a pogrom against the line of David, there was very little sympathy for him. In 44 BC, Joseph had been born to Jacob-Eliakim. Joseph was a title: it was not his real name. At the death of his father, Joseph became the Jacob. However, he preferred the title “David”, the more apt one historically. Joseph would become the father of Jesus. When Joseph attained 30 years of age in 14 BC, his uncles and the Essene sages sent him to Rome and Alexandria to do his part in missionary work, which was simply about promulgating to the Diaspora Jews the future Kingdom of Israel in which a Son of David, that is a descendent of King David, would rule. Egypt was also a special place because Joseph‟s maternal relations were Egyptians. Jacob-Eliakim had two wives. The one was called Euchariah, a Jewish princess, of whom very little is known, and the other, the dynastic wife, was Princess Cleopatra. Cleopatra was an Egyptian princess: she was the daughter of Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Julius Caesar. Jacob-Eliakim and Princess Cleopatra had three sons: they were Joseph, the father of Jesus, and the twins Cleopas and Ptolas. Joseph was thus the Davidian Prince of Israel as well as contender to Crown Prince of Egypt. Despite pretences to the contrary on the part of the Jews, Egypt and Israel have always had ties of monarchical kinship.

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In 8 BC, Joseph was required by Essene custom to return home and fulfill his obligations for a dynastic marriage. A wife-to-be had already been chosen for him by his uncles and other patriarchal Essenes. This was Dorcas, better known today by her title name Mary. THE FATE OF MARY To put the lineage of Mary the mother of Jesus in context, it is in order that we begin with her grandfather Yehoshua (Jesus in Greek) III. Mary was offspring of two royal lines, the Davidic line and the Hasmonean line. Yehoshua III was the Herod–appointed High Priest of Israel between 36 and 23 BC. He had no sons, only three daughters namely Joanna, Elizabeth, and Anna, all of whom he organised dynastic suitors. Elizabeth would be married off into the House of Aaron, the legitimate priestly line, and Joanna and Anna would be married off into the House of David, the legitimate kingly line. That‟s how Elizabeth became the wife of Zechariah of the tribe of Levi and in due course the mother of John the Baptist. Mainstream Israel up to the level of the Sanhedrin had recognised Anna as the eligible mother of the future King of Israel and not the sitting impostor Herod (it is not clear what happened to first-born Joanna but she probably ed away before she got married). Anna was accordingly married off to Alexander III, a Davidic and Hasmonean prince who was best known as Heli as indeed the genealogy of Luke clearly attests. Heli and Anna too had no sons. They only had daughters, the firstborn of whom was Mary, born in 26 BC. Mary was orphaned early in her childhood when her father Heli was killed in 17 BC at the orders of the increasingly paranoid Herod and when her mother Anna died a year or so later. Since she was a dynastic heiress, it was likely that Herod would come after her. The Essenes thus secreted her somewhere in remote Galilee. It was actually in Galilee that most of the Davidic royal line were concentrated not only to keep as far away from Herod as possible but to also enjoy the protective custody of the Zealots, who were the secret military wing of the Essenes and a thorn in the side of both Herod and the Romans. Joseph was also based in Galilee. JOSEPH CALLED TO “DUTY” Dynastic marriages are often more politically strategic than spontaneous. For example, the union of Prince Charles and Princess Diana was motivated by the need to fuse the Windsor genes with those of the Stuarts as the Windsors, being predominantly Reptilians, were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their human form. The Stuarts, the clan of Diana, had by far more human genes than Reptilian and they too were an aristocratic family. That‟s why once Charles had produced a “heir and a spare”, he completely sidelined Diana, who he had never loved, and devoted himself to his real love – Camilla Parker-Bowles. The marriage of Joseph to Mary was equally strategic. Although both were from the tribe of Judah and of the royal Davidic line, they were from different branches. Joseph was a descendent of Solomon, whereas Mary was a descendent of Nathan, Solomon‟s elder brother. The line of Solomon, as we saw earlier, had been tainted by the Jeconiah curse. The line of Nathan was clean. Since the son of Joseph and Mary would be the future King of Israel, it was important that he not be compromised by the baggage, rightly or wrongly, of the Jeconiah curse. Hence the desirability of the union of Prince Joseph and Princess Mary.

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Now, both Joseph and Mary‟s clans were Essenes. As such, their marriage process, formalities, and protocols had to strictly adhere to Essene dynastic rules. The Essenes were in ranks. Amongst the higher echelons were the two great dynasties, the Davids and the Zadoks, who had been the high priests and kings of Israel respectively before the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. The Davids and Zadoks lived a strictly holy life, typically in a monastery at Qumran, the reclusive headquarters of the Essenes. They were sequestered there so that they did not fall prey to the machinations of the bloodthirsty King Herod though officially their address was Galilee. In fact, the major reason the Essene movement had come into existence was to preserve and safeguard the Davidic and Zadokite lines, the religio-politico haunt of Herod and the Hasmoneans initially. According to the Essene code, the Zadoks and the Davids were not to engage in sex for recreational purposes because it was regarded as defiling: it diluted holiness. The only times they were supposed to do so was when need arose to produce heirs. In 8 BC, it was now opportune for Joseph, the David, to produce a heir and so he was excused from a life of chastity. At this point in time in fact, the Essenes were focused on two dynastic figures. These were Joseph and Zechariah. The two were expected to produce the Messiah of David and the Messiah of Aaron, that is, the future King of Israel and the future High Priest of Israel. According to Essene rules, the David had to marry at age 36, so that by the time he was 40, he had already sired a heir. The new heir had to be born when the David was 37. If the child was a daughter, she could not inherit, and so the David had to set about the procreation of a second-born, who hopefully would be a boy (copulation to that end was allowed only when the daughter was 3 years old). The Davidic heir had to be born not in any other month but in September, the holiest in the Jewish calendar. In order to conform to these parameters, a betrothal ceremony was held at the beginning of June. During the betrothal period – the three months from beginning of June to end of August – sexual relations were not permitted. Then at the beginning of September, a First Marriage was held. This was the beginning of the marriage proper as now the couple were allowed to become intimate. However, the intimacy began only in December, with a view to deliver a heir in September the following year. At the end of March, the Second Marriage was held for it was hoped that by that time the spouse was three months pregnant if there hadn‟t been a miscarriage. With the Second Marriage, the wedlock was permanent: divorce was never allowed whatsoever. Meanwhile, if the spouse hadn‟t conceived in December, sexual relations were suspended till December the following year. The husband would then leave her spouse and return either to the monastery at Qumran or embark on a tour of duty elsewhere in furtherance of the Essene cause. A BINDING ENGAGEMENT According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes were not only a spiritual, revolutionary, and philosophical movement. They were also ardent believers in astrology. They meticulously studied the stars and the movements of planets to read what they portended about the future. Thus the reason a Davidic heir had to be born in September was not only because this was the holiest month of the year: it was also in recognition of the fact that September was ruled by the constellation Virgo. In other words, September was astrologically the month of the virgin. That was what Mary was. Mary was both a virgin physically and a virgin titularly. A bride of the future king was required to be a virgin. As an Essene, Mary belonged to the Order (not the tribe) of Dan. This was the Order of Nuns, or virgins, both legal and physical virgins. Thus in the Order of Dan, a woman was not a virgin only before she slept with a man: she was a virgin until she was six months pregnant. In the case of a dynastic spouse 57

like Mary, this was up to end of June. From then henceforth, she was promoted within the Order to the first stage of a Mother. Joseph‟s betrothal to Mary took place at Qumran in June 8 BC. Now, in our day, betrothal simply means engagement to be married. In ancient Israel up to New Testament times, betrothal was part and parcel of the marriage contract. It was definite and binding upon both groom and bride, who were considered as man and wife in all legal and religious aspects, except that sexual relations were not permitted. For example, in 2 SAMUEL 3:14, King David refers to his betrothed woman as “my wife”. Also in DEUTERONOMY 22:24, a betrothed woman is referred to as “his neighbour‟s wife”. In the betrothal formalities, dowry and bride price were included. If a bride and groom for one reason or the other wanted to opt out of the betrothal after the betrothal ceremony, they had to seek a formal divorce. Since the betrothal took place in June, Joseph and Mary were not supposed to make love till December, that is, six months after the betrothal ceremony and three months after the First Marriage ceremony in September. Just one month after the betrothal ceremony (that is, at the beginning of July 8 BC) however, Mary became pregnant. Was it Joseph? Was it rape by a Roman soldier called Panthera as some contemporary records suggest? Or was it simply the supernatural act of the “Holy Spirit” as Christendom holds?

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 17

THE CARPENTER’S SEED Jesus Was Joseph’s Flesh And Blood hose who hold that the circumstances of Mary‟s pregnancy were supernatural can be excused. This is because the language employed therein smacks of ethereality – Holy Spirit, Angel Gabriel, Son of the Most High, etc. To those who have read and rigorously studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, such terminology is well within the temporal context. That is to say, it does not carry spiritual connotations as such. True, the idea of an angel speaking to Joseph and Mary in their sleep may seem supernatural but the dreams are theological interpolations, inserted into the gospels in onward editing to fit a contrived agenda – what Karl Marx called the opium of the masses.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls are so named because they were discovered in caves around the Qumran plateau of the West Bank (about 40 km east of Jerusalem), at the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, in March 1947. The discoverer was a Bedouin shepherd kid who was looking for a lost goat. The scrolls were found hidden in jars. The 1947 find was the initial discovery: more discoveries were made after further excavations on the same site spanning 11 years in a series of 11 caves. Altogether, 972 texts were turned up. They are written in four languages, namely Hebrew (the majority), Aramaic, Greek, and Nabatean, mostly on parchment. Other texts were inscribed on papyrus and bronze. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments. Fragments of all the Old Testament books have been found save for the book of Esther. The only complete book is Isaiah. There are also apocryphal books (those arbitrarily excluded from the Old Testament canon by the Constantine-convened Nicene Council of AD 325) such as the book of Enoch and the book of Jubilees, and sect-specific writings that embody rules and beliefs of the people who compiled them. The latter include commentaries on the Old Testament, paraphrases that expand on the Law of Moses, rule books of the community, war conduct, thanksgiving psalms, hymnic compositions, benedictions, liturgical texts, and sapiential (wisdom) writing. These texts have been given appropriate titles such as the War Scroll; Manual of Discipline; the Community Rule; the Temple Scroll; the Copper Scroll; etc. The Dead Sea Scrolls were written/preserved by the Essenes between 168 BC and 68 AD. We know this because Pliny, the first century Roman historian, wrote that, “On the west coast of Lake Asphaltitis (the Dead Sea) are settled the Essenes, at some distance from the noisome odours that are experienced on the shore itself. They are a lonely people, the most extraordinary in the world, who live without women, without love, without money, with the palm trees for their only companions.” The Essenes stashed away the scrolls some time in 70 AD, when Roman General Flavius Titus overran Jerusalem and laid waste to the Temple following a catastrophic Jewish uprising – led by the Zealots, the military wing of the Essenes – that began in 66 BC. This they did in heed of JEREMIAH 32:14, which says, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Take these evidences … and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days.” The Dead Sea Scrolls have given us invaluable insight into the beliefs, customs, rituals, politics, philosophies, and traditions of first century Palestine. In their writings, as well as in the interpretation of Old Testament scriptures, the Essenes employ a technique called pesher (pesharim in plural). The present-day authority on this subject is Barbara Theiring, who after studying the Dead Sea scrolls for 18 years on end fathomed the trick. According to the pesher technique, certain scriptures have two layers of meaning. There is the surface meaning, which 59

is religious in orientation and is intended for lay people. Then beneath the veneer lies the real meaning, which only those privy to pesher would tell. “The pesharist implies two levels of meaning,” Theiring says. “The surface containing a general religious matter, suitable for ordinary readers, and beneath it specific historical matter, available only to those with special knowledge, knowledge of the events which fitted the text handled in this way. The surface remains valid: it is not negated by the other meaning, and it meets people‟s general religious needs. But it does set up a mystery, capable of solution by experts.” Jesus, who was an Essene, did drop hints on the pesher secret when he said, “To you (his disciples) is given the mystery of the Kingdom of God but for those outside everything is in parables” (MARK 4:11). Theiring found that the four gospels, the book of Acts, and Revelation were written in pesher code. Theiring has explicated the pesher principle in her books Jesus of the Apocalypse (1995); John‟s Gospel: The Book That Jesus Wrote (1998); and Jesus the Man (2006). Her only undoing is that her books are complex and require a special attention span, enormous reserves of patience, and a highly retentive mind to really grasp what they are trying to convey. Anyone who is not familiar with pesher and the traditions and customs of the Essenes as set out in the Dead Sea Scrolls will never understand the Jesus story: it is as simple as that. It explains why all the bible-thumping guys who rant and rave in the pulpits every Sunday and on religious television channels spew utter drivel. They preach nonsense because they runaway only with the surface message of scripture. They are practically ignorant. JOSEPH’S DELIBERATE BREACH We have already made the point that a dynastic heir – that of the Davidic or Zadokite line – was supposed to be born in September, this being both the holiest month of the year as far as the Jews were concerned and the most astrologically appropriate as it was ruled by the constellation Virgo, the virgin. Joseph, however, decided to throw away the script. The Age of Aries (2160 BC-0) was transitioning to the Age of Pisces (0-2160 AD). Joseph‟s son would come into the world at this crossroads. As the future King of the World, his son would be symbolically ushering in a new world order simultaneous with the advent of the Age of Pisces. Joseph therefore decided that his son must arrive not in a month ruled by Virgo but in a month ruled by Pisces. This was March. Now, the overall global agenda as we now know is driven by two factions of Anunnaki royalty, the Anunnaki being the Sumerian term for the Old Testament gods, and the Sumerians being the world‟s first-known civilisation that thrived in Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq 6,000 years ago. The Enlilites, led by Enlil, called Jehovah in the Bible, are the hawks, whereas the Enkites, led by Enki, the Serpent of Genesis, are the doves. Joseph, as did Jesus, subscribed to the Enkite agenda. Pisces had always been the age in which the Enkites exercised hegemony as per the pact between the two factions. Hence, the idea of Jesus being born in a month ruled by Pisces perfectly conformed to the Enkite agenda. At their betrothal ceremony in June 8 BC, Joseph and Mary were told in no uncertain that dynastic procreational rules demanded that they not indulge in sexual relations till December, the least holy month on the Jewish calendar. , the Essenes frowned upon sex: to them it was defiling and therefore desecrating. On the occasion that it was sanctioned – and only for those who had to produce heirs, namely the Davids and the Zadoks – it had to take place only in December. Since Joseph had a scheme, he could not wait: he slept with Mary bang on the very night of the betrothal ceremony and “scored”. The following month, Mary announced to her husband that she was carrying his seed. Joseph was ecstatic. At the same time, he was worried sick as he was not sure how the Essene sages were going to receive this blatant breach of royal procreational norms. 60

JESUS, MARY DISOWNED If Joseph were an ordinary Joe, his sexcapade with Mary would hardly have made a ripple. It would actually have been a non-issue. But he wasn‟t: he was the prospective heir to the Jewish throne. Everybody – the Essenes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the ordinary man in the street – either knew him or had heard of him. The rumour, thus, spread like a wild fire practically overnight. His transgression became a national scandal that reverberated all the way from Galilee, his place of official residence, to every nook and cranny of Palestine. The scandal was to dog his unborn son for the rest of his life. The reason the indiscretion so rapidly became public was largely because the Sadducees, the rich Jewish elite of the day who profited gargantuanly from Roman patronage, were content with the status quo. They were therefore just too eager to pounce on the merest whiff of scandal on the part of the Davidic heir – a veritable threat to the perks of privilege they presently enjoyed. If the scandal had happened in our day, the Sadducees would have made sure it was splashed on the front page of every major newspaper across the country. For according to dynastic procreational rules, what Joseph had committed was not a mere breach: it amounted to fornication, sleeping with a woman you are not married too (JOHN 8:41). Joseph, who had not anticipated the thunderclap splash his misdemeanour created, began to have second thoughts. The evangelist Matthew puts it this way: “Then Joseph, her husband being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily” (MATTHEW 1:9). This is pure male chauvinism on the part of Matthew, a trait that was prevalent among the Jews of the day. This sexist stance where women were the ones invariably in the wrong in matters of this nature went back all the way to Genesis, when Eve was unjustly blamed for causing Adam to disobey God. The fact of the matter was that it was all the fault of Joseph, the result of his personally devised scheme having boomeranged back horrendously. In order to at once extricate himself from blame and appease the disquieted and disapproving public, Joseph decided to do two things. First, he was to privately divorce Mary. Second, he was to place her in monastic custody: that is the meaning of the term “put her away privily” in pesher language. Now, Qumran had several quarters. One of these was called the Queen‟s House. The Queen‟s House was a place where newly-born babies who had been abandoned by their mothers on a wayside were philanthropically raised. Girls were groomed as nuns and boys were groomed as monks. These two classes of celibates served the Qumran priests. Joseph decided that his unborn son be classed as illegitimate and be raised as an orphan-cum-monk. The spirit of the unborn Jesus must have uttered a sigh of desperate protest in its mother‟s womb. HOLY SPIRIT CONSULTS ANGEL The contemplations of Joseph were all his own: poor Mary had no say whatsoever. In gospel times, women simply did not matter. Their only role was to produce children and do household chores. In fact, women were so looked down upon that they were not even allowed to testify in court. However, the final say rested not with Joseph alone but the Essene top brass. Now, according to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essene order had a hierarchy comprising of 19 grades (that is, 0-18 in descending order, with 0 being the top grade). I will confine myself to the top three as these bear the most relevance in the nativity story.

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If you recall, the main reason the Essene movement came into being was to champion the cause of the House of David (the royal lineage) and the House of Aaron (the priestly lineage). From the time of King David, the line of Zadok was the senior priesthood and the line of Abiathar was the second in rank. Thus in the Essene order, the high priest was the Zadok and his Number 2 was the Abiathar. The priests also had angelic designations. The Zadok was called “Archangel Michael”, whilst the Abiathar was called “Angel Gabriel”. You can read all about this in the Community Rule document as well as the War Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 8 BC, the year of the Joseph scandal, the Archangel Michael, also referred to simply as “The Lord”, was Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. The Angel Gabriel, also referred to as the “Angel of the Lord” in that he was the Michael‟s deputy, was Simeon (LUKE 2:25-35). Simeon was the priest in charge of Grade 4 celibates, that is, those of the House of David and House of Aaron who had to be given leave at specified intervals so that they can produce heirs. He was also mentor to the Grade 2 Essene, called the Sariel (another angelic title), who was third in the hierarchy. As the Davidic heir, Joseph was the Sariel. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Sariel also went by the title … Holy Spirit. Since Joseph the Holy Spirit was under the direct supervision of Simeon the Angel Gabriel, it was to the latter he headed for advice on his predicament.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 18

SIMEON ABSOLVES JOSEPH Gabriel Priest Declares Mary’s Pregnancy As Legitimate

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imeon was the head of the Abiathar dynasty of priests, which was second in seniority only to the Zadok dynasty of priests, headed at the time (in 8 BC) by Zechariah, the future father of John the Baptist. Simeon also went by the title “Angel Gabriel”, just as Zechariah went by the title “Archangel Michael”. The “angel”, “god”, “holy spirit”, “son of god” etc, have been invested with ethereal connotations not because the Bible says so but because of distorted translations from the original languages in which the Bible was written – Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek and Aramaic for the New Testament. The Bible has undergone more than 2000 years of corrupt translation incrementally and to the extent that much of what we read in the scriptures today bears very little resemblance to what intended by the original writers. On the other hand, the Dead Sea Scrolls had lain intact for more than 2000 years: they had never been tampered with by any single, one person whatsoever. They are therefore very much a reflection of the language of the gospel era and the intent of their authors‟ message. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes did not regard Old Testament “gods” or “angels” as supernatural beings. Whilst they did believe in a supernatural “God” (with a capital “G”), who was the creator of all that existed, they also recognised the existence of “gods” (with a small “g”) who were not supernatural beings but mortals like we all were. These gods were the earthly representatives of God even though they were fallible and therefore errant. Thus in their (Essenes) midst, there were individuals who carried the titles “Lord”, “Father”, “Holy Spirit”, “Angels” etc. The Essenes fancied themselves as God‟s ambassadors, or special messengers, as well as ministers, or propagators of the word of God. That is why those in the higher echelons were simultaneously called priests and angels. Contrary to what Christians believe, an angel is not a supernatural being who bears wings. The term angel simply means “messenger” or “ambassador”. Hence, the highest ranking Essene, Zechariah the Zadok, went by the title “Archangel”, meaning “God‟s chief ambassador to mortals”. The titles Michael and Gabriel were borrowed from Old Testament books. Flavius Josephus, the first century‟s foremost historian, talks about “the names of angels so particularly preserved by the Essenes”. The angelic system is detailed in the apocryphal book of Enoch whilst one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, called the War Scroll, identifies the order of priestly rankings and their corresponding angelic designations. The book of Enoch stipulated that successive dynastic heads (the royal House of David and the priestly House of Aaron) carry the names of the traditional angels and archangels to denote their rank and position. It was because the book of Enoch revealed too much (for instance, making it clear that angels were not spirits but mortal beings) that it was excluded from the canon. In the cuneiform clay tablets, the records of the world‟s first-known civilisation called the Sumerians, the Old Testament gods were called the Anunnaki, meaning Aliens – beings who were not indigenous to Earth but came from elsewhere in the cosmos. Low-ranking Anunnaki were called angels because they were the ones who carried out the mandate of the pantheon, the 12-man Anunnaki royalty. The two seniormost Anunnaki, Enlil (the Bible‟s Jehovah) and his step-brother Enki (the Serpent of Genesis), were addressed as “Lord”. Their children were addressed as “archangels”. Of Enlil‟s children, his firstborn, Ninurta, was also called Michael, the war angel, whilst his second-born Nannar-Sin was called Gabriel, 63

the judgement angel. When Enlil withdrew from the conduct of Earthly affairs, he was succeeded by Nannar-Sin. The Essenes knew the Old Testament gods were Anunnaki and not divine beings. That was why they felt at liberty to use their titles. RULING BY SIMEON The third highest ranking priest in the Essene hierarchy was the Levi priest. His angelic designation was Sariel. The Sariel was also called the “Holy Spirit”, though all Essene celibates were termed holy spirits (in small letters) as they did not indulge in sex, which, so the Essenes maintained, rendered a person unholy and therefore spiritually unclean. The Sariel was an angelic style conferred on the Davidic Kingin-waiting. In 23 BC, when Jacob-Heliakim died, Joseph had succeeded him as the David. However, since he was still single at the time and was only 21 years old, young Joseph‟s grade in the Essene hierarchy was 4, that of a bishop. Then upon his marriage to Mary in June 8 BC, he was conferred Grade 2, that of the Sariel/Levi priest. The Davids were given this designation not as an operative one but as a honorary title. In other words, Joseph did not perform priestly functions though he was the Sariel/Levi priest. As the Sariel/Levi priest, Joseph was also now referred to as the Holy Spirit. As a bishop and as a celibate, Joseph had been under the mentorship of Simeon, the Angel Gabriel, who held Grade 1(junior only to Zechariah, who held Grade 0). But even as the Sariel, Joseph was also subordinate to Simeon. Hence it was that when he faced that dilemma in respect of the irregular pregnancy of Mary, he sought the standpoint of his superior Simeon. Simeon would not simply voice an opinion: he would pronounce a binding verdict as his role also included an oracular dimension. Now, Simeon was the most level-headed and far-sighted of the high-ranking Essenes of the day. His take was that although Joseph had flouted dynastic matrimonial rules by rather hurriedly sleeping with Mary and making her pregnant, the matter was a sensitive one as what was at stake was a Davidic heir, the future King of Israel and of the world at large if it was a boy. Such a child could not be allowed to grow up anonymously, as an orphan and as an illegitimate kid. In any case, Joseph had not committed fornication with Mary as such: betrothal in Jewish custom amounted to marriage in that to break it one needed a formal divorce. Even more important, the child had in truth been conceived within the confines of wedlock albeit in breach of dynastic procreational rules. Joseph had slept with Mary, a virtual wife, and not with somebody outside marriage. Simeon accordingly ruled that the conceived child was not a bastard but a legitimate seed “of the Holy Spirit (Joseph)” as per MATTHEW 1:20 and that if male he be recognised as “the Son of the Most High" (another title of David and the Davidic heirs) as per LUKE 1:32. Furthermore, Simeon decided that Joseph treat the first marriage ceremony, which was due in September 8 BC, as the second and final marriage ceremony (which was due in March 7 BC). That said, Joseph was forbidden from having further sexual relations with Mary till three years later if the child turned out to be a girl or six years later if it was a boy (MATTHEW 1:24-25). This was in keeping with the rule that governed dynastic Essene celibates, for whom sex was purely for producing heirs and not for pleasure. The nativity s as they appear in the gospels were only partially historical: they were “spiritualised” for religious purposes. This was done to give Christianity a better chance of competing with “pagan” religions of the Greek world, whose gods according to age-old legends were born supernaturally. , the gospels were written after the crucifixion, that is, post AD 33. The nativity stories are therefore retrospective and not contemporary.

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RULING BY BOETHUS The Essene priestly order was not the same as that obtaining at the Jerusalem Temple. The Essenes had their own temple at Qumran, a miniature version of the Jerusalem Temple. That‟s why we find that whereas in the Essene hierarchy the high priest was Zechariah, at the Jerusalem Temple the high priest was Simon Boethus, an appointee of King Herod who was in office from 23 to 5 BC. King Herod had also appointed himself the nominal head of the Essene and the Temple priesthood as he had vested interests in both. Some office-holders among the Qumran fold were also arbitrarily appointed by Herod. As high priest of the Temple proper, Simon Boethus was politically senior to both Zechariah and Simeon. Therefore, when Simeon made his ruling on the matter of Joseph and Mary, he was under obligation to report his verdict to Boethus. When Simeon so did, Boethus altered the verdict, therefore overruling Simeon in some respects. Whilst he agreed that Joseph and Mary proceed to tie the knot, he insisted that the child Mary was carrying was illegitimate. The baby therefore had to be born in the section of Qumran where orphans and illegitimate children were brought up and not in a regular home. The controversy of the conception of Jesus is why Mathew mentioned Mary along the four matriarchal Jewish women who had been tainted by a sexual scandal of some sort in his genealogy. Mary never committed adultery: she simply became pregnant at a time a dynastic spouse was not supposed to. Technically therefore, she had committed fornication. As such, her son Jesus was to become a somewhat polarising figure. The Jewish fundamentalists held that having been born of fornication, he was automatically disqualified as a Davidic heir. On the other hand, the liberal Jews were of the view that he did qualify as a Davidic heir in that although he was born unprocedurally in of dynastic procreational rules, he was born within marriage as in Jewish custom betrothal was as good as marriage. Be that as it may, the scandal of his birth continued to resound throughout his life. MARY CONFINED TO “MANGER” About 1 km south of the Qumran plateau was a building which was at once noble and ignoble, actually more so of the latter. This building was used for two main purposes in the main. The first was as an enclave in which orphans as well as illegitimate and abandoned babies were raised in what was called monastic custody. When they grew, these children renounced marriage, gave themselves to a totally celibate existence, and devoted themselves to serving the Essene priests. The second use was as an isolation unit for women who were menstruating. The Essenes regarded menstruating women as unclean; hence they had to have their own, isolated quarters. The building was known as the Queen‟s House. This was because its superior, the overall superintendent, was the wife of the Davidic heir, in keeping with what was called grail service, that is, humble service to the indigent that was expected of a Davidic Queen. Since Joseph was the David and his marriage to Mary was now cast in stone as per Simeon‟s ruling, Mary as the Davidic Queen was now the overseer of the Queen‟s House. Thus, when Boethus ruled that Mary‟s baby had to be born in the Queen‟s House and therefore Mary had to be confined there, Mary was not stigmatised as such given that she could have ended up there anyway by virtue of her being the Davidic spouse. The Queen‟s House had arisen on a site that had previously housed an animal stable. There were in fact a few animals around the premises still. The whole compound therefore had another name – a Manger. It was called by yet another name. The Essenes had nicknamed Qumran as Judea, actually one of its clutch of nicknames. In line with this nomenclature, the Queen‟s House was alternatively known as … Bethlehem of Judea. You will now appreciate that when the gospels say Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem of Judea, that does not mean he was born in the city of Bethlehem and was placed in a 65

feeding trough for animals. What it means is simply that he was born in the Queen‟s House at Qumran. Sadly, most Christians, including college-trained pastors, are not aware of this stark fact because they base their understanding of the life of Jesus on a rather shallow interpretation of the gospel narratives. I humbly refer them to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which will properly enlighten them.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 19

THE PRONUNCIATION The Specifics Of The Simeon Ruling On The Legitimacy Of Baby Jesus hen Simeon, the Essenes‟ second-ranking priest who also went by the titles “Angel Gabriel” and “Angel of the Lord” (“The Lord” being the Zadok priest Zechariah) made his ruling, he was in line with Essene protocol obligated to deliver it in person first to Mary (being the first respondent as she was a woman) and then to Joseph.

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In the gospels, this direct communication is spun as a dream-communication by a spirit-angel when that was far from what actually transpired. It all has to do with what was known as the pesher code – the cryptic Essene technique of telling a story with two or several layers of meaning, with the surface meaning meant for general consumption and the underlying meaning meant for initiates – those who were part of the inner sanctum of the Essene order. The gospels say when Gabriel visited Mary, her “kinswoman” Elizabeth was sixth months pregnant (LUKE 1:36). We have already established that Elizabeth was Mary‟s aunt, being the elder sister of her late mother Anna. Since Mary got pregnant toward the end of June, it meant Elizabeth‟s baby, the future John the Baptist, was scheduled to be born in September in perfect conformity with dynastic procreational rules. Mary obviously was distraught that whilst her aunt‟s child would be born in the stipulated month, hers would be born way off the mark. She had an even greater worry: she was liable to execution by stoning as her transgression with Joseph effectively amounted to adultery. OF GALILEE AND NAZARETH When Simeon presented himself to Mary to deliver the verdict in June/July 8 BC, he did so as the second highest-ranking Essene as well as a representative of Zechariah, the highest ranking Essene who also went by the titles “Archangel Michael” and “Lord God”. The place at which Simeon met Mary was “the city of Nazareth in the Galilee” (LUKE 1:26). To those unfamiliar with the pesher code, what immediately springs to mind is Galilee the northernmost province of Palestine and the town of Nazareth where Jesus is said to have grown up. Sorry folks, but you couldn‟t be more wrong: this includes every pastor who is ministering today! To begin with, there was no town called Nazareth in gospel times. The Romans, who were the lords of the realm at the time, kept rather comprehensive maps of every corner of their empire and there isn‟t a single one place on their map of the Palestine of the day that was called Nazareth. The Nazareth of today is a classic case of myth turning to fact by deliberate design and for purposes purely of profit – to cash in on the tourist allure. So what Nazareth was Luke talking about? The term Nazareth was used for various places in the Judean wilderness (the broader habitation of the Essenes). The Judean wilderness had three principal settlements. They were Qumran, the HQ, Ain Feshkha, and Mazin. All three settlements were along the west coast of the Dead Sea and were exactly three kilometers apart. The other significant Essene settlements in the Judean wilderness were Mird and Mar Saba, about 10 to 12 km southwest of Qumran. It is important that you keep these names in mind as I shall be referring to them time and again.

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According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, every place in the Judean wilderness where Nazarites resided was referred to as Nazareth. These were the areas between Mar Saba and Mird on the one hand and Ain Feshkha on the other. The Nazarites were Essenes who were married but abstained from sex for varying lengths of time from 100 days downwards. They included men and women as well as Jews and Gentiles. The chief Nazarite was always the Davidic heir. In 8 BC, this was Joseph. The term Nazareth stems from the Hebrew term “Netzer‟, meaning “branch” or “shoot”. The future Messiah of Israel was called the “Branch of David” ( IASIAH 11). Clearly therefore, since Joseph, the representative of the Messianic line, was the head of the Nazarites, it was fitting that all the places where the Nazarites converged be named Nazareth as a tribute to the Davidic heir. The Essenes were very specific in their use of language. When they said, “City of Nazareth”, they meant one particular quarter at Ain Feshkha set aside for Gentile and female Nazarites. At the time Mary fell pregnant, she was a Nazarite and so was based at Ain Feshkha. It was at Ain Feshkha that Simeon met Mary. As for “Galilee”, this again is pesher language at play here. The Essenes had key representatives in regions of Palestine they called bishops. When, say, the Bishop of Galilee was visiting a particular place in the Judean wilderness, it was said he had “brought Galilee with him”. For as long as he was around that particular place, it was provisionally called Galilee in his honour. Thus, when Simeon went to see Mary at Ain Feshkha/Nazareth, the Bishop of Galilee was also in attendance since Mary‟s official place of domicile was Galilee. Ain Feshkha/Nazareth was accordingly referred to as “the Galilee” – with the definite article “the” as per the literal translation – at that particular point in time. This system of naming we glean from the Dead Sea Scrolls. SIMEON BRIEFS MARY The first thing Simeon said to Mary was to recognise her as Joseph‟s wife despite what had transpired. She would not be divorced and the child she was carrying would not be denounced as a bastard child but as a procedurally sired child of Joseph. Simeon even prophetically pronounced a titular name for the begotten child. He was to be called Yeshua (Jesus in Greek), which is Joshua in English. The name not only was reminiscent of Joshua, the great Israel general who had succeeded Moses and led the Israelites into the promised land of Canaan, as Palestine was previously called, but it also honoured Yeshua III, the late grandfather of Mary. The name Jesus was therefore meant as much to honour a great Jewish liberator as to appease Mary. Simeon proceeded to say that the Essene High Priest Zechariah (the “Lord God” in the gospels, one of his titles in the Essene hierarchy) had pronounced that Jesus would be recognised as the new David after Joseph had ed on. Thus to the High Priest and indeed to the Essene movement, Jesus was not illegitimate but the rightful heir to his father Joseph‟s inheritance. As such, baby Jesus was going to be called the Son of the Most High. In today‟s parlance, the “Most High” is rendered “His Royal Highness”, which simply means Crown Prince. As the Davidic heir, Joseph was the Most High. Since Jesus would be next in the line of succession, he would be called Son of the Most High. All this was like music to Mary‟s ears. The Essenes regarded women as potential seducers (I refer the reader to Dead Sea Scroll No. 4Q184 in this regard). Therefore, Mary‟s pregnancy, technically a fornication pregnancy (hence the reference to herself as of “low estate”, LUKE 1:48), was not the fault of Joseph as such but hers. Ordinarily, she would have been delivered to a mob for stoning, but since her

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pregnancy had now been legitimised and the unborn child was recognised as the son of the Holy Spirit, the Essene title of Joseph, she was excused from such a fate. The unborn Jesus was also given another title. He was to be called the Jacob, the same title his grandfather Jacob-Heli had carried. Before a Davidic heir became the David, he first had to be the Jacob. Presently, Joseph was the David and so his heir would be the Jacob. It was only when Joseph died that Jesus would become the David. The emphasis on the title of Jacob by Simeon demonstrated that the Essenes had at this juncture reconciled with King Herod, at least officially. If you recall, Jacob-Heli was to be a third-ranking King in the post-Roman global empire ruled by King Herod, in which he would be allotted the Western world. So what Simon was saying was that this arrangement still stood and Jesus as a descendent of Jacob-Heli would rule not as King of global Israel but as King of the Western division of global Israel (the House of Jacob as per LUKE1:33). Modern-day Christians are scarcely aware of the labyrinth of power politics Jesus had to navigate in first century Palestine. Mary was not exactly sure as to how she would be received by the wider Essene community as her unborn child was technically illegitimate. Simeon set her at ease when he declared to her that he would ensure he got the Essene community to understand that Jesus was the “Son of God”. All Essenes called themselves Sons of God, which simply meant they served at the pleasure of High Priest Zechariah, the “Lord God” as per one of his titles as the highest ranking Essene. As I made clear at some stage, Essenes used the term God very loosely: it seldom had the “Heavenly” connotation it has today. JOSEPH’S TURN Next, Simeon called on Joseph. Matthew seems to characterise Joseph as “righteous” or a “just man” (MATTHEW 1:19), meaning an above-board person. Once again, this is symptomatic of the usual tendency to wrong translation that we often encounter in the scriptures. The term “Righteous” or “Just” was a Davidic title. All Davidic kings and Crown Princes were addressed as “the Just” or “the Righteous”, similar to the way we address judges, such as “Justice Key Dingake” (Kings for one were addressed as "Righteous Shepherd"). In the first century, this title was held by Joseph, Jesus, Jesus‟s brother James, and finally Jesus Jr, who was best-known as Jesus Justus. Of the four, it was James who was best-associated with the title: almost all extra-biblical s of the day refer to him as James the Just. Simeon informed Joseph that he had ratified Mary‟s pregnancy as legal. The child she was carrying must therefore be recognised as his (“child of the Holy Spirit” as per the gospels) and procedurally conceived. There was therefore no need to divorce Mary quietly as he had initially pondered. Accordingly, Joseph was to proceed with the first marriage ceremony, due in September. Ordinarily, there would have been a second and final marriage in March 7 BC but since Mary had hastily become pregnant, Joseph was to regard the first marriage ceremony as the second and final one. Nonetheless, he was with immediate effect barred from indulging in sexual relations with Mary as per Essene dynastic rules. The next time conjugation would be allowed was when time was ripe for him to sire another child. This would be in 5 BC if Mary‟s firstborn turned out to be a girl or 2 BC if it was indeed a boy – that is, a 3-year-wait in the case of a girl and a 6-year-wait in the case of a boy as per Essene dynastic procreational rules. Joseph fully heeded Simeon‟s pronouncement, which is commonly referred to as the Annunciation. Meanwhile, Mary went to stay with her aunt Elizabeth, who lived at Ain Feshkha too. Since Zechariah the “Lord”, Elizabeth‟s husband, was senior to Joseph in the Essene hierarchy, Mary was effectively a maid to Elizabeth (LUKE 1:38). Elizabeth was already six months pregnant at the time. She was “heavy with child” and therefore it was fitting that she be tended to by Mary, who was only one month pregnant. Mary served Elizabeth not as an ordinary maid but as the supervising maid. 69

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for approximately three months (LUKE 1:56), from mid-July to midSeptember. Elizabeth gave birth to John in September 8 BC. At the same time, Mary and Joseph had to wed in September, which was apt: Mary was now three months pregnant and the odds of a miscarriage were very low. The wedding did take place and according to Essene dynastic rules it was irrevocable: there would be no divorce whatsoever. Mary stayed with Joseph for three months only, that is, up to December 8 BC. All along, she was still a titular virgin even though she was pregnant. In December, she ceased to be a titular virgin, being six months pregnant. At this juncture, she was promoted to Mother and was obligated to move to the Queen‟s House at Qumran. The reasons were two-fold. First, as Mother Superior, she had to oversee the destitute women as well as orphans and illegitimate children who were housed there. This was the role of the potential Davidic Queen, which Mary had become after her final marriage to Joseph. Second, the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple, Simon Boethus, had overruled Simeon and pronounced that Mary‟s child be born not in a conventional home but in the Queen‟s House at Qumran. This was because in the view of the Temple establishment, the child she was carrying was illegitimate and had to be raised in a setting befitting of such an ignoble conception. The Queen‟s House was also known as the Manger. Its other name was Bethlehem of Judea!

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 20

BORN THEN REBORN Jesus Was Biologically Born In 7 BC And Symbolically Reborn In 6 AD

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he gospel of Luke is my favourite by a long shot. This is because it is the most historically accurate and the least theological of the four gospels. Luke was more interested in telling history than promoting a faith we today call Christianity or making a case that Jesus was God incarnate. He had his political biases and even lapses here and there but his is the most credible of the Jesus chronicles. Luke is the author of two New Testament books, the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. He is the only Gentile, that is, non-Jew, on the roll of New Testament writers: he was of Greek stock and was domiciled in Antioch, Syria, the third largest city in the Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria. His career, however, was not that of a scribe: he was a medical doctor. This is evident both from the testimony of Paul and intimations in his (Luke) own writings. For instance, he names diseases in the manner of a medical buff rather than simply attribute them to “demon possession”. Luke was not only Paul‟s travelling companion but he was also his personal doctor. We learn this from his own work, Acts, and from the epistles such as 1 COLOSSIANS 4:14, where Paul says, “Our Dear friend Luke the Doctor and Demas send greetings”. In penning his gospel, Luke did painstaking research and dared those who might criticise him by naming scores of people – both famous and ordinary – and several places. Now, if you relate your story in the wider context of global history and you even furnish names, you are in trouble if you are telling a lie. This gesture on Luke‟s part is persuasive enough evidence that what he set down was indeed true: you don‟t set booby traps for yourself if all you are doing is spinning a yarn. This is how Luke introduces his gospel to underscore the fact that it was very well-informed: “1Many have undertaken to draw up an of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly for you, most excellent Theophilus,4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (LUKE 1:1-4).” From the above preamble, we learn three more things beside the fact of the meticulous research. First, there were numerous stories that had been written about Jesus and were in circulation at the time Luke wrote his gospel. Most of these have either been lost or form part of what we call the apocryphal – the s about Jesus that were excluded from the New Testament canon at the 325 AD Nicene Council, where the New Testament was collated. Second, part of the data that informed Luke‟s gospel was provided him by people who knew Jesus personally. These may have included the apostles themselves as well as the family of Jesus, particularly his mother, brothers, and sisters. Thirdly, Luke wrote his two books at the bidding of or in deference to a venerable man known as Theophilus, who features in the opening statements of both the gospel and Acts.

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Who was Theophillus? It is important that we make his acquaintance for then we will be in position to put a approximate timeframe to Luke‟s embarkation on his literary projects. In any case, it is Theophillus we owe a debt of gratitude for Luke‟s two seminal books: without him, there would never have been a gospel of Luke and an Acts of the Apostles, in consequence of which we would be greatly diminished in our understanding of the Jesus saga. THE PRO-CHRISTIAN HIGH PRIEST Luke addresses Theophillus as “Most Excellent”. There are only two other personages who are addressed likewise in the entire New Testament corpus. They were Roman governors in charge of Judea, namely Felix (ACTS 23:26) and Festus (ACTS 26:25). Inevitably therefore, Theophilus must have been a highranking political figure. In gospel times, there was only one well-known VIP who went by the name Theophilus. This was Theophilus ben Annas, the son of the infamous Annas who presided over the trial of Jesus. He was High Priest from 37 to 41 AD. High Priests were appointed by the reigning King, himself an appointee of Rome. The argument that this was the Theophilus Luke reverenced in his gospel is more than persuasive. First, this Theophilus was not a total stranger to Luke. As youngsters, the two had been classmates under the tutelage of the great Jewish teacher Gamaliel. Theophilus, his two brothers Jonathan and Simon, and the apostle Paul were contemporaries at Gamaliel‟s academy. It makes sense, therefore, that if Theophilus wanted an authoritative brief on the life and times of Jesus, the name that immediately came to mind was Luke, who was not only a member of the Jesus movement but was a constant companion of Paul, the most famous propagator of the Christ message. Luke is also the only one of the four evangelists to have mentioned the names Theophilus and Joanna. Joanna, the wife of Chuza, who was the chief steward of Galilean King Herod Antipas. Joanna is mentioned in LUKE 8:3 and 24:10. She was one of the women who financially ed the labours of Jesus and possibly one of the female witnesses to the resurrection. Now, according to an archaeological find, Theophilus had a granddaughter called Joanna, which explains why she was married to Herod Antipas‟ Chancellor of the Exchequer: high society typically marries into high society. When in his prelude Luke says to Theophilus that “you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”, he must have been referring to Joanna, one of the “eyewitnesses and servants of the word” who obviously must have related the story of Jesus to her grandfather. In the gospel, Luke addresses Theophilus as “Most Excellent”. In Acts, however, he simply addresses him as “O Theophillus”. What this implies is that by the time he wrote or concluded Acts, Theophilus was no longer High Priest. Why did Theophillus commission Luke to do a story on the Jesus epic? The most plausible reason is that he was persuaded by his granddaughter Joanna, with a view to alter his perception of the Jesus movement. In a political climate where the Herodians were so antagonistic toward Christians (Stephen had been killed for instance), it was necessary to disabuse the High Priest of certain distortions about it. Indeed of the Annas priestly dynasty, Theophilus turned out to be the most sympathetic to Christians. Three years after he was removed from power, James the son of Zebedee was executed at the orders of King Herod Agrippa I. With such a political backdrop, we can now confidently date the writing of the gospel of Luke. This was between AD 37 and 41. In fact, by AD 60, all the gospels had been written. What we have today are not originals but subsequent editions, which were revised by the authors themselves and over time embellished by editors with sectarian agendas.

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TWO BIRTHDAYS OF JESUS We have already asserted, from what we glean from the pesher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that Jesus was born in 7 BC. Does the Bible agree with this date or otherwise? The biblical clues on Jesus‟s birth date are furnished by Matthew and Luke. We will begin with Matthew. Matthew indicates that Herod the Great was alive when Jesus was born. Herod died in 4 BC, meaning Jesus could not have been born later than this date. Luke‟s assertion, however, remains a moot point. Scholars actually continue to pan him for his timeframe, charging that he was grossly mistaken as he was more than ten years off the mark. Well, I beg to differ. When it comes to the timing of events, Luke is infallible. Scholars are a swell-headed lot who think they know it all when they actually do not. So what has made scholars cast cynical aspersions at Luke in relation to the birth date of Jesus? Luke situates the birth of Jesus in the year Quirinius was governor of Syria and when there was a census “throughout the Roman world” as decreed by Emperor Augustus (LUKE 2:1-3). Quirinius was appointed governor of Syria in AD 6. In that year, Archelaus, the Herodian ruler of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea was deposed by Augustus and his three territories came under direct Roman rule, with a Roman prefect, also called procurator, mandated to take charge of them. At the same time, the three territories, now known as Iudaea, were made subordinate to the legate of Syria, who was also referred to as governor. The first such legate was Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, an iconic and decorated Roman general. Since Iudaea was now under direct Roman istration, Quirinius was instructed by Emperor Augustus to conduct a census in the region for purposes of taxation. Being the first one of its kind in Palestine, the census sparked a Zealot uprising led by Judas the Galilean (ACTS 5:7). In AD 6, Herod the Great had been dead for nine years and it is such a scenario that makes scholars sneer at Luke. This is unfortunate because as usual Luke was correct. How do we know? The answer is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which few scholars have bothered to read and decipher. In March AD 6, Jesus turned 12. At this age, he had to undergo a ceremony known as Bar Mitzvah, a coming-of-age ritual. Whilst mainstream Jewry celebrated Bar Mitzvah at age 13 for a boy and with hardly any fanfare, the Essenes did so at age 12 and with an elaborate ceremony particularly for a dynastic child. The Essenes regarded Bar Mitzvah as a symbolic rebirth. At the ceremony, therefore, they reenacted the actual birth of the person concerned. To the Essenes, Bar Mitzvah was more important than even the biological birth date because at age 12 the person was conferred a grade in the Essene hierarchy – 18, the lowest grade. Thus the birth Luke alludes to in his gospel is not the year Jesus was actually born: it is the year he was re-born, when he was initiated into the Essene hierarchy. Calculating backwards from AD 6 to the 12th year gives us the year 7 BC as the birth date of Jesus (there was no year 0)! By highlighting the Bar Mitzvah date of Jesus instead of his actual birth date, Luke was signalling two things to discerning readers – that Jesus was an Essene and that he became the legitimate heir to the Davidic throne in AD 6. Exactly how did the latter come about? JAMES INAUGURATES AD ERA The acronym BC means “Before Christ”. How then could Jesus have been born in 7 BC, before he was actually born? The official explanation is that one Roman monk called Dionysius Exiguus erred in his calculations done in the year 526 AD. He first dated Jesus‟s birth as 753 years after the founding of Rome. The birth date was designated AD 1, with AD being a Latin acronym for “Anno Domini”, meaning “In the Year of our Lord”. In due course, however, it transpired Dionysius had made a mistake 73

as Jesus was actually born between 746 to 749 years after the founding of Rome as we now know, meaning Jesus‟ birth date now relocated into the BC era. The “official” version, however, is not true as is often and typically the case. The demarcation between the BC era and the new, AD dispensation was determined at Qumran, by the Essenes. What happened was that when the powers-that-be, the Temple priesthood led by then High Priest Simon Boethus, refused to recognise Jesus as the Davidic heir as he was technically born of fornication and at the wrong time for a dynastic heir (March instead of September), Joseph was now under obligation to produce a “bona fide heir”. According to the Essenes‟ procreational rules, Joseph had to embark on this assignment six years after the birth of Jesus. Joseph paid due heed and his second-born son James was born when Jesus was seven years old. In the year James was born, the High Priest was a son of Boethus, Joazar, and as per the Boethusian stance James was eagerly embraced as the Davidic messiah as not only was he born in strict adherence to dynastic procreational rules but he was born in the holy month of September. It was with the birth of James that the Essenes inaugurated a new world order and therefore designated his birth year as Year 1, what we now call AD 1. Since Jesus had now been sidelined, his birth date was referred to as “7 years before the beginning of the new era”, or 7 BC as we refer to it today. Yet Jesus was not to be marginalised forever. In AD 6, when he turned 12, there was a change of the guard at the helm of the priesthood. The new High Priest de-recognised James as the Davidic heir and reinstated Jesus. The name of the High Priest was Annas ben Seth. How and why did this state of affairs come about?

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 21

ASTROLOGERS ENDORSE JESUS They Use Gold, Frankincense, And Myrrh As Emblems Of Their Affirmation

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n gospel times, politics and religion were intertwined, just as they today are in jurisdictions like the Vatican and parts of the Islamic world. Reading the gospels, the surface impression one gets is that Jesus was strictly a spiritual crusader and politics was a turf only of the occupying Romans, the priesthood such as Caiaphas and Annas, and the Herodian dynasty. The fact of the matter is that Jesus too was part of the politics of his day: he was very much in the thick of it. His arrest and death sentence stemmed not from the arrant nonsense that he claimed to be divine: they were a political fallout. The gospels do provide hints about this state of affairs, such as when Pontius Pilate categorically stated in writing that Jesus was crucified not because he claimed to be God but because he claimed to be “the King of the Jews”, which was a boldfaced dig at the overarching authority of the mighty Caesar. Yet politics was not a purely extraneous factor as far as Jesus was concerned. There was politics right in the bosom of his family. Let us not forget that Joseph was the Davidic heir and therefore all eyes in Judea and Galilee in particular were focused on him. It was he who was expected to produce Israel‟s messiah, Christ in Greek. The Jewish messiah was not the spiritual messiah that Paul spun into a popular and abiding dogma. He was a political messiah who was expected to liberate Israel from the Roman yoke and turn it into a global super power. Thus, the Romans were not to know about who this messiah was. The Herodian dynasty was to be made to think that he would always be subordinate to them. The priesthood at the Jerusalem temple were to know who he was and even be counted upon to surreptitiously bolster his cause but since they so bountifully benefitted from Roman patronage, they were content that he be no more than a symbolic messiah. Only the Essenes genuinely deferred to him although they too used tact as the highest rank he could provisionally occupy in their hierarchy was that of third. The temple priesthood, however, were not in total unanimity as to the messiahship of Jesus. Whether Jesus was the rallying-cry messiah or otherwise depended on which priestly clan was in office at the time. One clan, the House of Annas, so recognised him: the other, the House of Boethus, sidelined him and promoted his younger brother James instead. MAGI’S WRONG TIMING We have already made the case that Jesus was born not in the city of Bethlehem but at Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls inform that the Essenes had code names for eminent persons in their ranks and for their settlements in the broader Judean wilderness. One of their code names for Qumran was Judea. The Queen‟s House, the Qumran quarters for orphans, illegitimate children, and destitute women was nicknamed the Manger in that it had previously served as an animal paddock and even presently had a few domesticated animals milling around. The other code name for the Queen‟s House, so-called because it was istrated by the Davidic Queen – Mary at the time – was Bethlehem of Judea. It was here that Jesus was born in March 7 BC. He was born in such an ignoble surroundings because the incumbent high priest of the Jerusalem temple, Simon Boethus, had pronounced that for a Davidic heir he was conceived in scandalous circumstances and so had to be born in a place of illegitimate and parentless children and be raised likewise. As far as the Boethusians were concerned, Jesus would never be a Davidic heir as he had forfeited this right of primogeniture on of the stigma of the manner of his conception.

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The Essene priesthood on the other hand unequivocally subscribed to Jesus‟ legitimacy as the Davidic heir. The Magi were even more emphatically so. The term Magi in those days meant astrologers. Founded by Menahem in 44 BC, the Magi were a branch of Essenes who had a more liberal outlook of the Essene creed than the puritans of Qumran. Most of the Magi belonged to the tribe of West Manasseh, which was based in Samaria. It was the tribe of West Manasseh that constituted the bulk of the Diaspora Magi. That the Essenes were astrologers who studied the stars and the planets for a clue on future developments is made very plain in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which bear unequivocal records of horoscopes. (This was one reason the Vatican took 45 years to publish all the scrolls: the first 20 percent were reluctantly published in the mid 50s, with the remaining 80 percent being released only in 1991. The Vatican didn‟t want Christians to come to know that the sect that produced Jesus were astrologers. Modern-day Christendom denounces astrology as secular and even sinister). In the gospel era, the Magi were also known as “Wise Men” because of their renowned capacity to project the future. The Diaspora Magi, who had been eagerly looking forward to the birth of Jesus, expected him to be born in September 7 BC as they were well aware of dynastic procreational rules. They therefore arrived at Qumran in September 7 BC, their wagons loaded with gifts of the newly-born Jewish mascot. By that time, however, Jesus was six months old. Since they lived overseas, it had not come to their knowledge that Jesus had been conceived at the wrong time of the year and was scheduled to be born not in September but in March. HEROD IS DECEIVED The gospels talk of a star that guided the Magi to a stable in which Jesus was born. That, as I explained at the outset of the Jesus Papers, was a astrotheological interpolation into the nativity story by redactors (editors) with vested interests (see article headed “GREATEST STORY EVER SOLD”). There was a star in the nativity story of course but this was not a heavenly body: it was a human being. According to a Dead Sea Scroll text dubbed the Damascus Document, the Davidic heir also went by the nickname “Star of David” because the Star of David was the emblem of the descendents of David. In 7 BC, the Davidic heir was Joseph. It was Joseph, therefore, who was the allegorical Star of the Magian story. Joseph guided the Magi in that it was he who had tipped them as to the whereabouts of Jesus‟s birth – Qumran. Joseph invited them over so they could lend legitimacy to his newly-born son. When the Magi, who were based in Persia (modern-day Iran) arrived at Qumran, they were received by Simeon, the second-ranking Essene priest who also went by the name “Angel Gabriel”. The Magi inquired from him as to where exactly the future “King of the Jews” had been born so they could pay homage to him (“bow to him” in direct translation), not worship him. The exact place of his birth would provide them a veritable clue as to the regard in which the Essene sages held Jesus, that is, whether they recognised him as the Davidic prince or had dismissed him as a bastard child. Simeon told them Jesus had been born at the Manger, the Queen‟s House. On the face of it, the implication this had was that he had been designated as an illegitimate kid. Simeon, however, explained to the Magi that Jesus had to be born at the Queen‟s House simply to content the priesthood at the Jerusalem temple; otherwise, the Essene priesthood duly recognised him as the Davidic heir. On hearing this, the Magi broke into praise songs for the “Son of God”. The term Son of God carried three connotations. First, it was a title of the Davidic King. Second, it was a honorific to Zechariah, the highest ranking Essene priest whose other title was “Lord God”. Third, Essenes in general called themselves sons of God.

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Now, although King Herod was the figurehead of both the Essene priesthood and that of the Jerusalem temple, he wasn‟t made privy to every key development in Palestine. He was only part-Jew and a despot to boot and therefore he wasn‟t trusted. Thus, when Jesus was born, Herod was not apprised of this development. However, since the Magi arrived in Judea with great fanfare, Herod got wind of their presence and the object of their mission through his spies. Herod didn‟t know the whereabouts of Joseph and Mary nor of Mary‟s pregnancy: all this was kept from him for fear that he could order their execution as the last thing he wanted was a Davidic aspirant to the Jewish throne. Gathering his advisors, he asked them as to where the Jewish messiah was to be born. Being patriotic Jews, his advisors answered him in the cryptic pesher language. They said the Messiah was prophesied to be born in “Bethlehem of Judea”. To Herod, this meant the city of Bethlehem in the province of Judea. In pesher, however, “Bethlehem of Judea” referred to the Queen‟s House at Qumran. Herod, who had not been instructed in the pesher technique, was therefore hoodwinked. Next, Herod sent for the Magi themselves to establish from them as to when exactly the messiah was or would be born. Now, according to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Magi (as all Essenes) counted time slightly differently from the Jerusalem establishment, the Herodians. A Magian year was always two years ahead of the Herodian year by deliberate design. Some years also had specific designations. For instance, 7 BC was dubbed the “southern generation year” in the Magian calendar. Since the Magian calendar was two years ahead, this meant that to the Herodians, the southern generation year was 5 BC. Thus when Herod asked the Magi as to when the Christ would be born, they simply said, “the southern generation year”. Herod automatically took that to be 5 BC, which was two years away as the present year was 7 BC. We can now understand why according to the gospels, Herod waited two years before he ordered the massacre of all infants who were two years and below. The Magi had deceived him big time. SYMBOLISM OF MAGIAN GIFTS The Magi presented baby Jesus with three principal gifts. They were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Christendom has typically over-spiritualised the gifts. It is frequently bellowed from the pulpits that gold was symbolic of Jesus‟ divinity – God in the flesh; that frankincense (which was burnt as a pleasant offering to God as per EXODUS 30:34) was a symbol of his holiness and righteousness and his willingness to become a sacrifice for the whole of mankind at Calvary, analogous to a burnt offering; and that myrrh foreshadowed his tribulations leading to death, being a substance used in embalming the dead. All the above is pure theology: it is wishful thinking. The Magi were not Christians. They were Essenes. Essenes did not believe in or conceive of a spiritual messiah who would suffer, be crucified, rise from the dead, and ascend to some fanciful utopia called Heaven. They looked forward to an here-on-Earth political messiah who would free Jews from Roman overrule and establish a worldwide kingdom in which he would rule and in which the nation of Israel would reign supreme. The notion of a spiritual messiah was invented by Pauline Christianity after Jesus turned out to be a feckless and pacifist messiah who didn‟t live up to his politico-revolutionary billing. In light of the above gainsayal, what did the three gifts stand for? In antiquity, gold was a gift for kings. For instance, everything King Solomon owned was made of gold because dignitaries from far-flung domains presented him with cartfuls of gold whenever they called at his courts. By presenting Jesus with gold, the Magi asserted that they recognised him as the Davidic King and not as an illegitimate kid born of fornication as per the stance of the priesthood of the Jerusalem temple.

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Frankincense was an incense used by priests when they made offerings to God. What this gift betokened, therefore, was that not only did the Magi recognise Jesus as the Davidic King but they also recognised him as a Priest-King – the Melchizedek. As for the myrrh, this was not meant for Jesus. It was meant for his mother Mary. According to the Song of Solomon, an Old Testament romantic book that lyrically documents the fervid ion between the King (Solomon) and his bride (the future Queen), myrrh was a perfume of marriage because it was reckoned to be amongst the best fragrances. The myrrh symbolism, therefore, was that the Magi saluted Mary as Joseph‟s Queen and not as an outcast fornicator courtesy of the Jerusalem temple establishment. In short, the Magian gesture was both a veneration of baby Jesus as Israel‟s Priest-King and an endorsement of Joseph‟s marriage to Mary. There was nothing spiritual, theological, or prophetic about it.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 22

“FLEE INTO EGYPT” And This Was Not The Egypt You Are Familiar With

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hen Jesus was born, in March 7 BC, the High Priest at the Jerusalem temple was Simon Boethus, who had been appointed to office by his son-in-law and Rome‟s puppet king Herod the Great in 23 BC. Boethus, a moralist at least outwardly with the strict view of the circumstances of Jesus‟ birth, from the word go denounced baby Jesus as a baseborn kid – that is, one who resulted from an act of fornication – and therefore unworthy of succession to the Davidic title, which at the time was held by his father Joseph. Joseph was resentful of this slight and naturally looked at Boethus with disdain. In 5 BC, King Herod decreed that all the Jews should take an oath of loyalty both to himself and the overriding sovereign, Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. About six thousand Pharisees, who had considerable sway over mainstream Jewry, took very strong exception. Joseph, who otherwise led a quiet life devoted to personal discipline and charity in the spirit of a true Davidic prince, ed in the countrywide protest. In doing so, he inevitably incurred the displeasure of both Simon Boethus and King Herod. Needless to say, he was a marked man. Meanwhile, the Egyptian-based Essenes, known as the Theraputae, had proliferated at Qumran. The Theraputae were a Diaspora Jewish sect who flourished in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in the main. Although they were Hellenists – Jews who combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture – and therefore comparatively liberal in their observance of the tenets of Judaism, they were fiercely anti-establishment. It was the Theraputae who instituted a determined mobilisation of the Zealots, the clandestine military wing of the Essenes, with a view to an armed revolution leading to national independence. The Theraputae were headed by a man called Theudas, their leader since 9 BC. Theudas, also called Thaddeus/Judas in the gospels (MATTTHEW 10:3, MARK 3:18, and JOHN 14:22) would in future number among the 12-man apostolic band of Jesus. In AD 32, when he led a failed uprising against Pontius Pilate, Theudas dubbed himself “Jesus”, which simply means “God‟s Liberator”, as he sought to free the Jews from the Roman yoke. In the pages of Josephus, he is referred to as Zadok. His other name, a titular distinction, was Barabbas, the notorious “murderer” and “insurrectionist” (MARK 15:7) who by “public demand” was reprieved by Pilate in the histrionics of the Jesus‟ trial in March AD 33. At the turn of the first century, Judas of Galilee, Theudas Barabbas, and Judas Iscariot were the leading lights of the Zealots. Joseph now radicalised and therefore no longer a pacifist, allied with Barabbas. The two were dubbed the Star (Joseph, “star” being an emblem of the Davidic lineage) and the Sceptre (Barabbas). Both cognomens were drawn from NUMBERS 24:17, which in part reads, “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the people of Sheth.” One does not need to be a genius to guess who the virtual Moabites and Shethites were in the eyes of Joseph and Barabbas in 5 BC.

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HOLY FAMILY GOES INTO HIDING The maniacally vengeful King Herod now had two reasons to put a bounty on Joseph‟s life. First, he had become a dissident, intent at a toppling of the powers that be. Second, he was one of those who in 5 BC had a kid who was about two years old, a category whose slaughter Herod now ordered in light of what the Magi had informed him in relation to the birth of the Jewish messiah (it had now occurred to him that the Magi had deceived him as the prospective messiah had actually been born two years earlier in 7 BC; hence his institution of the massacre of the innocents who were two years old and below). Fearing for his life and that of his little heir, Joseph once again sought direction from his priestly superior in the Essene hierarchy, Simeon, the so-called “Angel Gabriel”. Simeon straightaway ened him, “Flee into Egypt”. The Christian clergy has interpreted this literally, as Egypt in Africa. As usual, they are way off the mark. They had better consult the Dead Sea Scrolls to unravel for them what Simeon meant as per the cryptic pesher code. It turns out the “Egypt” to which Joseph was told to flee was actually Qumran and the broader Judean wilderness. Since the Theraputae, who hailed from Egypt, now abounded in the settlements of the Judean wilderness, Qumran, the Essene HQ, had won itself another nickname, “Egypt”. So Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt simply meant that Mary moved from the Queen‟s House, where Jesus was born and where Mary had been based since she was six months pregnant, to Mird, about 12 km to 15 km away from Qumran. Mird was punctuated by a series of caves that were used by Nazirites both for their retreats and solitary meditations and therefore provided a secure haven. THE CHANGING FATES OF BABY JESUS Since Joseph and Barabbas abhorred Simon Boethus like the plague, they secretly began to campaign for a more agreeable contender to the high priesthood. The iconic Jewish historian Flavius Josephus records that this was a certain Matthias. Before long, Matthias was in office thanks to a chain of events that was fortuitously set in motion by the people around Herod himself. In 5 BC, Mariamne II, Herod‟s third wife, was, along with Herod‟s first-born son Antipater, implicated in a plot that sought to eliminate Herod. She was in all probability set up by the Essenes with a view to seriously compromise her loathed father Simon Boethus. When Herod got wind of the scheming, his response was swift and drastic, though surprisingly restrained for a man who was so ravenously bloodthirsty. Mariamne II was sent packing and Simon Boethus was summarily dismissed as high priest. In addition, the only child Mariamne II had by King Herod, Herod II, was permanently removed from the line of succession. With Boethus having been given the boot, Matthias was promptly installed as high priest. The wish of the Star and the Sceptre had breathtakingly come to , practically in the twinkling of an eye. It goes without saying that Matthias right away saluted Jesus as the Davidic heir. Sadly, Matthias was not destined to last. Early in 4 BC, Herod, now 77 years old, was taken ill and was clearly teetering on the brink. As he lay on his deathbed, two of his surviving sons Antipater and Archelaus headed out on a charm offensive across Palestine. It was Archelaus, however, who stole the show as it was common knowledge that Antipater had been disinherited when the plot to poison his father was unearthed: Herod‟s will now expressly named Archelaus as his heir. As crown prince in the waning days of his father, Archelaus did overreach himself though. What happened was that when Herod had a Golden Eagle mounted over the Temple Gate as a symbol of Roman rule, a singularly provocative and sacrilegious gesture in the eyes of the Jewish grassroots, the latter not only staged a rowdy protest but hacked it down with every tool in the book. Herod responded by rounding up the ring leaders, two popular rabbi-preachers and about 40 teenagers, 80

and had them burnt at a stake. Rather than strike terror in the Jews, this blood-curdling act only served to harden their stance and a showdown loomed. Archelaus, who had inherited the cold streak of his father, decided he had to preempt an escalation of this dare to his preliminary flaunt of regnal authority and so set his entire army upon the temple. Josephus puts the number of lives lost in the siege at over 3000. Meanwhile, when the two rabbis and 40 youth were murdered at the orders of an ailing Herod, the restive Jews had demanded, amongst other things, the removal of Matthias as high priest as they regarded him as either complicit in or indifferent towards this carnage. In a gesture meant to placate them for the massacre of the 3000, Archelaus buckled and Matthias was straight off replaced by Joazar, the son of Simon Boethus. The Boethus position as we already know was that Jesus was illegitimate and so could not be a Davidic heir. It was back to square one: the infant prince, now about three years old, was a nonentity again. Although his father Joseph still retained his pedigree as the Davidic prince, he was a disgruntled man nonetheless: for as long as his son was not recognised, his own princely status was of little avail. FLIGHT TO GALILEE When King Herod took gravely ill in the first quarter of 4 BC, he was so numbed by disease he was unable to stand upright. Knowing his number was up, he decided to spend his last days at his palace in Jericho on the shores of the Dead Sea to be soothed by the evening breeze. Flavius Josephus records that Herod, a heavy drinker, was wracked with ailments which included intestinal pains and tumours, asthma, genital gangrene and “worms”. The schizophrenic, Idi Amin-like despot expired on March 12. Herod had had 9 wives, some of whom he murdered, and numerous mistresses. He also had dozens of children, again some of whom he ordered killed on the merest suspicion that they were a threat to his regnal perch. Even as he lay on his deathbed, he was issuing instructions to the effect that this or that child be put to the sword. In 7 BC, he had his two hitherto favourite sons by his second wife Mariamne 1 slain. This he did at the instigation of Antipater, his eldest son by his first wife Doris. Antipater was declared crown prince but after being implicated in that plot to poison his father, he was disinherited and replaced with Antipas. Antipas was King Herod‟s youngest son, borne by his Samaritan wife Malthace. Whilst on his deathbed, Herod reconsidered. He named Archelaus, Antipas‟ full elder brother, as his heir. Archelaus was promoted to Herod by the then high priest Joazar and Barabbas though Joseph, the father of Jesus, abhorred him on of the cruelty he had exhibited in the murder of 3000 Jewish demonstrators. Only five days before his demise, Herod ordered the execution of Antipater just to make sure his anointed heir had a unperturbed reign. Josephus reports that Herod also had hundreds of leading officials and their families thrown behind bars with orders that they be killed at his death so that every family in Jerusalem would have someone to mourn when he himself kicked the bucket! Fortunately, this diabolic wish wasn‟t carried out by his heir. In Herod‟s deathbed will, he had decided to parcel out his kingdom amongst three of his sons. The biggest portion, half of the kingdom, went to his 27-year-old anointed heir Archelaus. This was Judea, Idumea, and Samaria. A quarter, constituting Galilee and Perea, was given to Antipas, who was only 16 years old at the time. The other quarter vested in Phillip. These were territories northeast of the Sea of Galilee, namely Gaulanitis (the Golan Heights); Batanea (Southern Syria); Trachonitis; and Auranitas. Since Palestine was a client kingdom subject to Rome, Augustus had to ratify Herod‟s will. Indeed, Antipas had contested the will, insisting that Herod had drawn it when his faculties were not fully functional and therefore it was null and void. As such, Antipas maintained he was entitled to all of Palestine in line with the earlier will of 5 BC, which was written up when the King was discernibly mentally competent. Augustus, however, validated the will as it presently stood though Archelaus was 81

given the title of ethnarch ( ruler of a race) rather than king, whilst Antipas and Phillip were to be called tetrarchs (quarter-kings) to accord with their junior status. What this meant with regard to Archelaus was that he was put on a kind of probation: Augustus would confirm him as king with full stripes if he proved himself worthy. He was to disappoint horrendously. Archelaus had struck a deal with Barabbas and Joazar that he was going to secretly collaborate with the Zealots to undermine and eventually overthrow the Romans. Simeon, however, was wary. He thought Archelaus was way too cruel and therefore unpredictable to make for a trusted ally. Thus, when Archelaus was crowned ruler of Judea in 4 BC, Simeon advised Joseph to conceal Mary and baby Jesus in Galilee, a province that was outside the jurisdiction of Archelaus (MATTHEW 2:22) just in case the latter got up to some mischief. Having gone into hiding in the Judean wilderness to avoid being preyed upon by King Herod, the Holy Family now had to go into hiding even further afield to steer clear of the possible intrigue of King Herod‟s son.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 23

BORN WITH A BANG A Rival Arises In The Bosom Of Jesus’ Own Family

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erod the Great was appointed King of the Jews by the Roman senate in 40 BC. But it was in 37 BC, when he captured Jerusalem which Antigonus, the beleaguered Hasmonean ruler of Palestine, had held on to, that he became undisputed King. That is why official history chronicles his reign as spanning the years 37 BC to 4 BC. In truth, however, his reign commenced in 40 BC. Based on their reading of the apocryphal book of Enoch, the Herodians (and much of the Jewish establishment) naively reckoned that the world had been created in 3941 BC (Year 0) and that it was going to last for a total of 4900 years, or approximately 5000 years, before God came down to assume direct rule of Earth, a setup called a theocracy. In line with this reckoning, therefore, the year 41 BC marked exactly 3900 years since creation and the onset of the final, 1000-year epoch, a millennium. As such, the apocalyptic Last Judgement was expected to occur between 960 AD and 1000 AD. When Paul in his epistles stressed that “we are in the last days”, he essentially spoke in this context though mistakenly so of course. Now, in those days, a generation amounted to 40 years. Herod therefore called the first 40 years from 41 BC as Generation 1. Generation 1 was to be dedicated to an indoctrination of the world – disguised as evangelising – with the notion of the Kingdom of God. Herod‟s aim was for his descendents to rule not only Palestine but the whole wide world so that when God (not Jesus, please take note) descended to establish a theocracy, he would find a Herodian on the planet‟s geopolitical throne. Joseph, Theudas Barabbas, and their fellow Essenes took very strong exception to such a scenario. As far as they were concerned, God had to find a Davidic King on the world throne when he came circa 1000 AD. If this prospect was not to come to , it was only because Jesus, the next in the Davidic line of succession after his father Joseph, was a divisive figure: he was not universally recognised by the Jerusalem establishment owing to the questionable circumstances of his birth. In order to ensure the Davidic succession was not forever jeopardised, Joseph set about siring a son in a manner that perfectly conformed to the prescribed dynastic procreational parameters so that this son was acknowledged by all and sundry as a fitting Davidic heir. Of particular importance was that the son had to be born in the right month – September, the holiest month in the Jewish calendar. Joseph did not intend to disinherit Jesus: he was simply hedging his bets. JAMES, THE COMPROMISE MESSIAH Jesus had been born on Sunday March 7 BC. According to Essene dynastic procreational rules, Joseph had to wait for six years before he sired a second-born (he would have waited for only three years had Jesus been a daughter). And so it was that in December 1 BC, Joseph resumed sexual relations with his wife Mary (since for dynastic families sex was purely for procreation and not for pleasure as per strict Essene chastity rules, the couple had not copulated in the intervening years). Nine months later, they were blessed with a baby boy as per their wish. Joseph gave him the name Cleopas, after one of his two younger brothers who were twins. He would, however, become best-known by the titular names Jacob and James in adulthood.

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Since James was born at the prescribed time, he was straightaway hailed as the Jewish messiah by the high priest of the Jerusalem temple Joazar, at the expense of his elder brother Jesus. The Essenes, however, still held that Jesus was the rightful messiah irrespective of the scandalous nature of his birth. The controversy was to linger for a long time to come, both among the Jews and within Jesus‟ own family, with Mary inclined, at least initially, towards a recognition of James and Joseph gravitating towards Jesus. More will be said on these family dialectics as the Jesus Papers progress. To the Essenes, it was the birth of James that marked the beginning of the countdown to 1000 AD and not the year 41 BC. Hence the year in which James was born was designated AD 1 (it was not called that before: it was called 754 AUC, that is, 754 years after the founding of the city of Rome). The years 41 BC to 1 BC were therefore unilaterally re-designated as Generation Zero by the Essenes. It was the first 40 years from AD 1 that became Generation 1. This revised outlook explains why this period was characterised by fevered evangelising and ministration by Jesus, John the Baptist, and the apostolate. ZECHARIAH IS KILLED During the reign of Herod Archelaus, the dynamics radically changed at Qumran. First, the Diaspora Essenes became much more influential and increasingly assertive. The Diaspora Essenes, who included the Theraputae, were doctrinally more liberal than the rigid Palestinian Essenes, the latter of whom included Simeon and Joseph the father of Jesus. Because of their relaxed moral rules, the Diaspora Essenes were cynically branded as “seekers-after-smooth-things”. Second, schisms emerged, renting asunder the solidarity that held firm all along. There was a peace faction on the one hand and a belligerent faction on the other. The belligerent faction was led by a fire-breathing nationalist known as Judas of Galilee, who had arrived at Qumran in AD 4 as commander of the Zealots, the private though ragtag guerilla army of the Essenes. Barabbas too was initially a member of the belligerent faction, as was Judas Iscariot, both of whom would in time become associate of Jesus. The belligerent faction was privately sponsored by Herod Archelaus and ed by high priest Joazar. Its aim was to drive away the Romans and therefore win independence for Palestine. In order to effectively inculcate to his army the art of war, Judas of Galilee wrote up a war manual, now called the War Scroll and which was among the Dead Sea find. It was under Judas of Galilee that the Zealots became a household name. The peace faction was led by Simeon, the Essenes' second-ranking (Abiathar) priest who also went by the title Angel Gabriel. It included Joseph and Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist who sat at the apex of the Essene priestly hierarchy. Its aim was to act as a check on the insurrectionist propensities of the belligerent faction though to no avail. Now, Archelaus seemed to have a kind of split personality. Although he professed a predilection to free the Jews in the behind-the-scenes counsels with the Essene high command, he ruled his subjects with an iron fist. He was said to be even more callous than his deceased father. The peace faction therefore had justification to suspect that he was actually working in cahoots with Rome as an agent provocateur whilst pretending to be allied with the Essenes. As a result, the peace faction convinced Barabbas to defect from the pro-Archelaus belligerent faction and forces with them in a plot to eliminate Archelaus and depose a supine Joazar from the priesthood. This conspiracy was broached at a top-secret meeting where Zechariah, Simeon, and Joseph were in attendance early in AD 6. Also present was Annas, the “new kid on the block” who was tipped to replace Joazar as high priest. Annas, who in future would part-

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preside over the trial of Jesus, had undertaken to recognise Jesus, now on the cusp of 12 years of age, as the Davidic messiah, a position that had consistently been the stance of the Essenes. The meeting was a stormy and fateful affair. For reasons that are not amply chronicled in the records of the day, sparks flew and violence ensued. In the process, Zechariah was killed by an agent of Judas of Galilee. Joseph‟s younger brother Ptolas, Cleopas‟s twin, also died in this same scuffle. As the spiritual leader of the Essenes – and probably as a term simply of veneration – Zechariah was also known as the Teacher of Righteousness, a titular distinction that is regularly encountered in the pages of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Shortly thereafter, his only child, young John the Baptist, was named as his successor. In other words, Little John was the new Zadok Priest, Archangel Michael, Lord God, and Teacher of Righteousness, all titles of which his father had carried. He was to be mentored and chaperoned by the patriarchal Simeon. Meanwhile, Annas was briefed to hold fort for Little John till he was 30, the age of high priesthood. ARCHELAUS IS DEPOSED Herod Archelaus was vindictive to a point of self-destruction. Josephus relates that he “used not the Jews only, but the Samaritans also, barbarously; and this out of his resentment of their old quarrels with him”. When he had 3000 protesting Jews slaughtered in the temple whilst his father was in his death throes in 4 BC, he was petitioned before Roman Emperor Augustus Caesar. The Jews bemoaned to the emperor that they had had enough of Herodian tyranny and would rather they were directly ruled by a Roman authority than a dynasty of dubious Jews. They bid the emperor that Judea be overseen by the Roman governor in charge of Syria, one reason Archelaus was put on an open-ended probation. It was apparent that this probation now seemed to have run its course. In AD 6, things came to a head. Once again, Archelaus was arraigned before Augustus. Josephus: “In the tenth year of Archelaus's government, both his brethren, and the principal men of Judea and Samaria, not being able to bear his barbarous and tyrannical usage of them, accused him before Caesar.” As he sailed to Rome to answer to the charges preferred against him, Archelaus was almost certain this was a one-way voyage. The Qumran sage Simeon had indicated to him that that might well be his fate. Archelaus had had a dream in which he saw “nine ears of corn, full and large, but devoured by oxen”. Seeking an explanation to this riddle, he consulted Simeon, who Josephus acknowledges as the greatest fortune teller of his day. Simeon spelt out to him that he would rule no more than 9 years, after which an eerily dark chapter would dawn in his life. Exactly five days later, Archelaus was summoned to Rome, distressed that AD 6 was his 9th year on the throne. The glory days were certainly over. At Rome, Augustus confirmed the inevitable. He had given Archelaus more than ample time – or was it ample rope? – to prove himself and he had been an absolute fiasco. He was dethroned and banished to Vienna in modern-day , where he would die in obscurity. The Jews were now going to be given what they had requested of Caesar in 4 BC. Judea, along with Samaria and Idumea, was annexed to Syria. It was to be overseen by the governor of Syria and directly istered by a Roman procurator. The first such procurator was Lucius Coponius though the most famous is Pontius Pilate. Now that Judea had come under direct Roman rule, Augustus commissioned Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, the governor of Syria, to conduct a census there for purposes of assessing potential tax income (LUKE 2:2). All Jews who owned property in Judea were required to return home for the census. This included Joseph, who although officially domiciled in Galilee (for strategic purposes) actually had property in Jerusalem bequeathed to him by his father Jacob-Heli. At the time though, Joseph was already in Judea,

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at Qumran, with Mary and young Jesus, who was being prepared for his Bar-Mitzvah ceremony which had fallen due now that he was 12 years old. The AD 6 census was the first one of its kind in Palestine. Judas of Galilee, the Zealot commander, vowed he would resist it to the death. To him, Rome was consolidating its rule over the Jews rather than relax it. Besides, he was indignant that his secret allies Archelaus and Joazar had been deposed. So having disposed of Zechariah, Judas of Galilee broke ranks with fellow Essenes and incited a full-scale revolt against the incoming Roman istration (ACTS 5:37). Barabbas too threw his weight behind Judas and played a pivotal strategic role in the revolt. The upheaval was promptly put down by Coponius and Judas was captured and killed. The bulk of the insurrectionists, however, simply melted into the civilian population Al Qaeda-style. The failure of the Judas uprising meant the belligerent faction at Qumran had lost out in the bigger picture and the peace faction had triumphed. In the event, Annas, who was allied with the peace faction, replaced Joazar as high priest, trusted by Coponius to foster harmonious relations between Jews and Rome. That, however, did not mean that the Zealots were no more. They remained very much a cornerstone of the Essene institutional edifice as they were central to a future popular revolution that was always imminent. In fact, following the demise of Judas the Galilean, another Judas promptly took his place. He was Judas Iscariot.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 24

JESUS IS BORN AGAIN … And Is Formally Inducted Into The Essene Institutional Structure

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n March 6 AD, about three months before the insurgency of Judas of Galilee, Jesus turned exactly 12 years old, having been born in March 7 BC (there was no Year Zero; hence 1 BC was immediately followed by 1 AD). According to Essene custom, the order had to celebrate his coming of age, a ceremony known as Bar Mitzvah. In the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, the birth of the person was re-enacted. The Bar Mitzvah ceremony was therefore a symbolic rebirth. It is this symbolic second birth of Jesus that Luke records and not his biological birth. Jesus‟s ceremony was particularly significant in that he was the de facto future King of Israel. The ceremony was held at the Queen‟s House, exactly 1 km south of the Qumran HQ. Jesus had been born at the Queen‟s House in accord with the edict of the then Jerusalem high priest Simon Boethus as befitted a child who was conceived through “fornication”. The mistress of the Queen‟s House was the Davidic Queen, who was Mary at the time. The Queen‟s house was also referred to as the Manger and as Bethlehem of Judea in coded Essene language. Present at the ceremony was Simeon. Another prominent figure in attendance was Annas, who had succeeded Joazar as high priest of the Jerusalem temple. Annas came to formally acknowledge Jesus as the Davidic heir, meaning James, who had been recognised as such by Joazar, was once again relegated to second in line. Jesus was dressed in a swaddling band, wrongly translated as “swaddling clothes” in the gospels. This was a piece of fabric 15-18 feet long, which was wrapped around his body all the way down to the ankles, the same way he had been dressed when he was born. As hosts and in mimicry of their situation back in 7 BC, Mary and Joseph were symbolically a live-together couple although in practice they lived separately (a dynastic Essene husband was only allowed to live with his wife when it was time to produce a child; otherwise, he lived apart from his wife as a monastic celibate). As such, the couple were not allowed into the Katalyma. This word is translated as “inn” in the gospels but it also means “upper room”. The upper room was the sacred dining chamber where a special meal was being had by separated celibates, a category which Mary and Joseph had in the circumstances provisionally forfeited. That is the explanation of the phrase, “there was no room in the inn” in the gospel of Luke. JESUS REINSTATED AS DAVIDIC MESSIAH Meanwhile, the next four highest ranking figures in the Essene hierarchy (after Annas, who was holding fort for the young John the Baptist; Simeon; and Joseph the father of Jesus) were busy at work at Ain Feshika, codenamed the “farm”. These were the Cardinal; the Archbishop; the Bishop; and the Presbyter. They specialised in pastoral duties and were presently ministering to pilgrims who had come to Qumran to co-observe the equinox as well as celebrate the forthcoming over feast. In the gospels, the ministers are cryptically referred to as “shepherds”, and the pilgrims as the “flock”, both of which are metaphorically apt as even today we figuratively refer to pastors as shepherds and the congregation as the flock.

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Simeon, whose other title was the “Angel of the Lord”, called on the ministers to announce the “good news”, accompanied by Theudas Barabbas, who according to the pesher of the Dead Sea Scrolls was also known as the “Glory of God” – God being a title of the late Zechariah and presently of Annas. , Theudas Barabbas (though he took part in the AD 6 uprising) had broken ranks with the belligerent faction led by Judas of Galilee to align with the peace faction now led by Annas. The “good news” Simeon came to deliver was that Jesus had been officially recognised by the new high priest Annas as the Davidic messiah. With the announcement of such good tidings, Simeon, Barabbas, the four ministers, and the pilgrims – collectively referred to as the “host of heaven” in the gospels – burst into a hymn of praise titled “Peace on Earth” because they all belonged to the peace faction and both Annas and the new Roman governor of Judea Lucious Coponius had committed to forging peaceful relations with the Essenes. Simeon then told the ministers that young Jesus was being feted at the Queen‟s House and described his attire. The ministers then hurried to the house, which was only 3 km away, and when they got there they venerated Jesus in song. Whilst Joseph was elated by the euphoria over his son, Mary had mixed feelings. As far as she was concerned, she would rather the Davidic toast went to James once and for all rather than Jesus. This was not because she did not approve of Jesus: she was simply haunted by the fact that Jesus had been controversially begotten and therefore he would always carry this badge of “shame”. Annas had recognised him all right, but the high priest who came after him could well de-recognise him again, just as Simon Boethus and Joazar had done before: his princely status would continue to ebb and flow. On the other hand, James had been sired procedurally and would therefore not be as susceptible to such vicissitudes. No one would ever call him a bastard whereas Jesus was already being so calumniated. On Day 8 of the ceremony, Jesus was dedicated to the evangelical cause of the Essene fraternity through ission into its ecclesiastical hierarchy. He was given Grade 18, the entry point, the highest grade being 0, that of the Zadok priest, also referred to as the “Lord God”. This dedication was euphemistically referred to as circumcision of the heart (ROMANS 2:29), meaning having a pure heart/being separated unto the works of the Creator God as directed by his earthly representative – the “Lord God‟, who previously was Zechariah but now was Annas standing in for the youngster John the Baptist. PROPHETESS ANNA ENDORSES JESUS Luke is the only one of the four evangelists to have made mention of the characters Simeon and Anna. Anna is the subject of LUKE 2:36-38, which reads thus: “And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.” What this age reads in English is not exactly the way it reads in Greek, the language in which it was originally written. Furthermore, the underlying pesher language is significantly different from the surface language. I will therefore properly explicate for you in line with knowledge derived from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other extra-biblical sources. Just as Simeon was the highest ranking Essene after the death of Zechariah, Anna was the seniormost of the Essene womenfolk. Anna belonged to the order of Asher. Women of the order of Asher bore the titles “Sarah”, “Rebecca”, and “Rachel”, the wives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob respectively. Anna was the Sarah of the day, actually the first Sarah of the Essene order. She was born in 93 BC, meaning in 6 AD she was 98 years old (in one of his copious works, the legendary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus marvels at the longevity of the Essenes, owing, seemingly, from the medical wizardry of the Theraputae). The 84-years in the Luke age is her age as counted from her symbolic rebirth – the Bar 88

Mitzvah ceremony, which took place in 79 BC, when she attained 14 years, the age of early initiation for girls. The Sarah of the Old Testament bore Isaac at age 91. As such, the Sarah of the order of Asher was classified as a “virgin” when she turned 91, which simply meant she had officially ceased to bear children and had figuratively speaking become a virgin again (in his book, Contemplative Life, Philo of Alexandria talks of “aged virgins” who were of the Qumran Theraputae). Since Anna turned 91 in 2 BC, in AD 6 she had been a virgin for 7 years. In the Essene hierarchy, Anna‟s superior, the priest who initially supervised her when she was younger, was the Phanuel, an “angelic” title which had the same grade as the Raphael (“daughter of”, or “son of”, sometimes meant “immediate subordinate of”). The Phanuel was of Grade 3, the fourth from the top. Anna was the Essene prophetess and intercessor, the counterpart of Simeon, who was the Essene prophet and intercessor as Josephus chronicles for us. She was therefore symbolically the mistress/wife of Simeon. She had actually been looked after by Simeon since she was widowed at age 84. When Jesus was presented at the Qumran temple, Anna, now frail, bent, and possibly immobilised, was present. She gave a vote of thanks to high priest Annas, the acting “Lord God”, for recognising Jesus as the Davidic messiah and also acknowledged Jesus as the redeemer of Israel, in a political sense, not in a spiritual sense. By spotlighting Simeon and Anna, therefore, Luke wanted to demonstrate that Jesus was endorsed as the Davidic heir by both the menfolk and the womenfolk of Qumran. SIMEON CALLS IT A DAY In LUKE 2:25-35, Simeon is explicitly made mention of as follows: “ Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord‟s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, 29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation 31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” 33 And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” Once again, the Greek original more or less differs from the doctored English version. To give just one example, the correct translation for Verse 28 should be “he received him into his arms,” or better still “bear-hugged him”, which one can do for anybody of any age. This is actually the more apt scenario as Jesus was at this time not a baby who could be received up in the arms but a 12-year lad. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes had been awaiting two messiahs and one prophet. The two were the messiah of David and the messiah of Aaron, or the political and priestly messiah. Both messiahs had arisen in the persons of Jesus, born in March 7 BC, and John the Baptist, born in September 8 BC. In AD 5 and 6 respectively, the two had been symbolically reborn and assumed their ranks in the Essene pecking order.

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Simeon had long wanted to step down from his priestly duties following the birth of the two messiahs but Joseph, the “Holy Spirit”, had dissuaded him against such a course of action till Jesus had undergone the Bar Mitzvah ceremony at age 12. This had now happened. Furthermore, Zechariah, the highest ranking Essene and the father of John the Baptist, had been killed by Judas of Galilee. The fault lines in the Essene substructure were not only aggravating but were spilling blood in the very midst of the hitherto harmonious fraternity. Simeon therefore decided to quit as an active priest in pursuit of purely peaceful and spiritual causes, thereby detaching himself completely from the insurrectionist bent of the Zealots. As a prophet, Simeon did provide a preview of the kind of life Jesus was destined to live. When Jesus was presented at the Qumran temple, not only did Simeon invoke God‟s blessings on Jesus but served notice that he would be a contentious figure and cause some high-standing personages to either wane or wax. Exactly who rose or fell on the Davidic prince‟s ? We will get to know these as the Jesus Papers progress.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 25

THE JESUS DYNASTY The Lord Had Four Brothers And Three Sisters n his gospel, Luke relates that at the conclusion of Jesus‟s Bar Mitzvah ceremony, Joseph and his family headed back to “Nazareth” in “Galilee”. To the superficial reader, that is “obvious” enough: it was the village of Nazareth in the province of Galilee. It wasn‟t. Anybody who settles for the surface meaning of gospel narratives and takes that as the ultimate truth will never have the slightest smattering about the historical Jesus. The real Jesus story has to be deciphered using the pesher instrument.

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Logic itself makes nonsense of the Holy family‟s return to Galilee. , the reason they sought refuge in Galilee was to escape the machinations of Herod Archelaus. Now that Archelaus was no longer in power, there was utterly no need for Joseph to beat a path back to Galilee. Furthermore, we have already underscored the fact that the village of Nazareth did not exist during gospel times. Nazareth, according to the pesher – the underlying story encoded in the surface narrative as per deliberate design on the part of the Essenes – referred to any of those settlements in the Judean wilderness that were inhabited by Nazarites. Nazarites were Essenes who had taken a vow of special consecration to God and were celibates of varying periods of abstinence. One such Nazareth was Mird. At this juncture, Mird was also referred to as Galilee since the Essene Bishop of Galilee was present, having arrived to celebrate the over feast which would soon be underway. You will be aware by now that if a certain VIP was visiting a place in the Qumran precincts, or a particular sub–sect of the Essenes were at that point in time concentrated in that particular place, it was called after their name in their honour. For example, Qumran was at times referred to as Egypt in that the Theraputae, whose headquarters was in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, now abounded there. Such a system of naming on the part of the Essenes was contrived: it was meant to confuse the Romans as well as the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem, particularly the Herodians. PRINCES AND PRINCESSES OF JUDAH After siring Jesus and James, Joseph and Mary had six more children – three sons and three daughters. Their last born was a son, who was born in AD 22, the year before Joseph ed on. The order in which the children between James and the last born came is not documented. However, the Bible furnishes some hint as to the sequence in which the boys arrived and extra-biblical sources offer an idea as to the order in which the girls came. The boys in descending order of seniority were Jesus, James, Joseph, Jude, and Simon (MARK 6:3 and MATTHEW 13:55-56). Christians claim they read the Bible everyday but if you were to ask any single one of them as to whether Jesus had siblings, almost all would recoil at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Pastors hardly ever preach about Jesus‟s family: throughout my more than 30 years as a Christian, I have never heard a single sermon on the brothers of Jesus, not even on James, who was actually the spiritual “superstar” post-Calvary.

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James‟s given name was Cleopas. He was named after his uncle, one of Joseph‟s twin brothers. As an adult, however, he was best known as James (Iah-mes in Aramaic, or Mes-iah the other way round) and as Jacob. Both names were titular. As James, he was the recognised messiah by the Palestinian Jews and the priestly family of Boethus because he was born procedurally and in the right month, September. The Essenes and the Diaspora Jews, on the other hand, subscribed to Jesus as the true Davidic messiah. On his part, James was content to be only next in line after Jesus but the politics of the day caused him to vacillate from time to time, particularly that his mother Mary tacitly promoted him as the politically palatable messiah. After the ostensible crucifixion of Jesus, James became the uncontested David King de facto. It was then that he assumed the name Jacob. Jacob was the title of the Davidic messiah since the time of Jesus‟ grandfather Jacob-Heli. Before the crucifixion but after the death of his father, James‟s other title was Joseph. Joseph was the title of the crown prince as indeed James was next in line after Jesus. It was James who succeeded Jesus as leader of the Jesus movement and not Paul or Simon Peter as Christendom wrongly believes. James is the author of the New Testament‟s epistle of James. More will be said about James as the Jesus Papers progress. When James became the Jacob after the crucifixion, his immediate younger brother accordingly became the Joseph, the name by which he was best-known. Other people abbreviated it and so addressed him as Joses (in today‟s parlance we say “Joe”). His other names were Barsabbas and Justus. Following the death of Judas Iscariot, Joses made an unsuccessful tilt at replacing him among the Twelve: he was outvoted by a certain Matthias in a succession poll. Jude is another rendering of the name Judas. Like Joses, Jude was sometimes referred to as Barsabbas, this being a titular surname of the sons of Joseph (Barsabbas means “Son of Seb”. Seb is another abbreviation of the name Joseph, the emphasis being on the “Seph” syllable). Jude is the writer of the epistle that comes just before Revelation Simon, the lastborn, was best known as Silas, or Silvanus, in old age. It was he who replaced Barnabbas when the latter felt out with Paul. He was specially prized by Paul and the early church as he was a bold evangelist and a man of the people, very much like his elder brother Jesus. Once, he was even detained with Paul. If you thought the brothers of Jesus were peripheral to his ecumenical cause, you are in error: they were actually front and centre of the Jesus movement. Although the three sisters of Jesus are not expressly specified as such in the gospels. Outside the canon, however, Epiphanius of Salamis (310-403 AD) mentioned them in his two works titled Panarion and Ancoratus, as well as Apostolic Constitutions, a fourth century book by one of the church fathers. Two apocryphal works, the Gospel of Phillip and the Protoevangelion of James, also make mention of the sisters of Jesus by name. According to a Dead Sea Scroll named the Damascus Document, the brothers of Jesus were collectively referred to as the Princes of Judah among the Essene community. JESUS LEARNS ART OF SANGOMA! It has been said Jesus was not educated though he was strikingly sharp, wise, and knowledgeable. The truth is, Jesus underwent both formal and informal education. He did formal education at Qumran and not in a formal rabbinical school of the day.

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The Essenes had a virtual continuous education process that ran practically all the way to age 30. The initial phase commenced at age 13 through age 18. It was segmented into elementary school at ages 13 and 14; middle elementary school at age 15; higher elementary school at age 16 and 17; and monastic education at age 18. The second phase began at age 24 and ended at age 27, the graduation age in respect of general academia. At age 28 commenced priestly education, which ended at age 30, when the highest grade was attained. What exactly did the Essenes teach in their exclusive academies in the Judean wilderness? Evidently, the subjects must have included mathematics, numerology, astrology, astronomy, philosophy, Gnosticism, spirituality and natural as well as spiritual healing. We know the Essenes studied the stars and the planets because the signs of the Zodiac constitute part and parcel of the Dead Sea texts. Everything the Essenes did had to conform to mathematical propriety, ranging from the numerical equivalent of their titles to the distances between their settlements to the architecture of their Qumran temple. According to Flavius Josephus, the first century‟s prima donna historian, Essenes were advocates of the famous Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras (we all know what Pythagoras Theorem is, don‟t we?). The Essenes were specially interested in the mathematics which governed the order of the cosmos. Their culture was to a large extent dominated by Pythagorean thought, the influence by and large of the Magi of West Manasseh and the Egyptian Theraputae. Josephus also records that the Essenes were practiced in the art of healing and received their therapeutic knowledge of roots and stones from the ancients. Certainly, the term Essene, a English rendering, must refer in part to this expertise as the Aramaic word Assaya meant physician and corresponded to the Greek word Essenoi. In light of the above information, we now can understand why Jesus was so intellectually arresting and why he was a renowned healer and seer. This was nothing supernatural: it was not the result of his being a God-Man. It was all a learnt endowment, acquired through a rigorous educational process which left no stone unturned – pun intended. Jesus was not only a spiritual/natural healer but was a herbalist and even threw bones! If he lived in our time, we would not only call him an itinerant preacher but a fortune teller and Sangoma rolled into one. JESUS DEFIES JOSEPH The gospels relate an incident (LUKE 41-50) where Jesus, aged 12, was left behind at the Jerusalem temple at the conclusion of the over festival and when his parents returned to fetch him, they found him engaged in an intellectual slugfest with learned old geezers. The age reads as follows in part: “They found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. [47] Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. [48] When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, „Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.‟ [49] „Why were you searching for me?‟ he asked. „Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?‟ [50] But they did not understand what he was saying to them.” Taken on face value, the above narrative is certain to be misunderstood. It can only be correctly grasped once one has read it through the pesher lenses and is familiar with the contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the happenings in and the politics of the first century as documented by contemporary historians. Jesus was not 12 years old: he was 23 and the year was AD 17. In AD 6, when he actually turned 12, the Essenes had introduced an unofficial parallel calendar. AD 6 was a particularly dark year for them. Firstly, the Romans had assumed direct rule of Judea. Secondly, the Essenes had lost two of their shining beacons, High Priest Zechariah and Zealot Commander Judas of Galilee. They thus designated the year AD 6 as the Year of Wrath. Furthermore, they styled it as Year 1 in the parallel calendar. According to this calendar, Jesus was 12 years old in AD 17 though he was factually 23 years old. 93

Jesus had turned 20 in AD 14 and was conferred Grade 10 in the Essene pecking order. According to the Essene ascetic rule, he was at this age eligible for marriage and had to choose whether to indeed marry and lead a conventional, mainstream life or adopt a celibate lifestyle under the tutelage of the Essene sages. In AD 14, Annas was still high priest and so Jesus was still recognised as the Davidic heir. He therefore chose a celibate life style and being a dynastic heir, it meant he would only marry at age 36. In AD 17, he turned 23 and having chosen a celibate lifestyle he become an initiate, or a Grade 7 Essene. This was the age at which the Essene acknowledged one as a “man”: prior to this, one was still a “young man ” or “novice”. The first stage of the Grade 7 ceremony was a second baptism, the first one having taken place at age 21. Joseph and Mary attended Jesus‟ baptism ceremony in Jerusalem, then went ahead of him for the full initiation before rightwing Essenes at Mar Saba in the Judean wilderness. Jesus, however, stayed in Jerusalem to be initated by the metropolitan Essenes at the Essene Gate. What this entailed was simply the taking of an oral examination before a of priests. It was at the Essene Gate where his parents finally located him after waiting for him at Mar Saba for three days. Rather than be awestruck by the intellectual prowess with which he transfixed the “professors”, they were mystified by his defiant attitude toward them when he had been so unfailingly heedful all along. His response upon being interrupted by his parents that “I must be in my father‟s house” has also been misinterpreted and unduly spiritualised. By “father”, he alluded to the incumbent high priest Eleazer, the son of the now former high priest Annas. All the Annas priests used the titles “Father” and “God”, just as the Pope uses the title “Holy Father”, and all of them advocated cooperation with Rome. Thus the statement “I must be in my father‟s house” was a philosophical one: it meant Jesus felt obligated to stick by the peace-with-the-Romans ethos of Eleazer rather than proceed with Joseph to Mar Saba and be initiated by the militaristic, anti-Roman Essene faction.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 26

THE SHOOT SPROUTS The Life And Times Of Teen Jesus

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hilst Jesus was formally educated at Qumran, he did his informal education in the course of his periodical journeyings around the world.

Being their recognised Davidic heir, the Essenes had set about grooming him not only as the future King of Israel but as the global Caesar once the Romans had been ejected from the pedestal of world power in the foreseeable future. A future King of the world had to be conversant with its various cultures and bodies of beliefs, hence Jesus‟s once-in-awhile peregrinations around the world. Most of these tours were done not with his father Joseph but with his uncle Cleopas. Joseph, who was based in Galilee not only was frequently needed at Qumran but he was also devoted to his charity work in Galilee and his business of stone masonry and boat-building. Of course Jesus did not visit every country in the known world then, but there is circumstantial – not concrete – evidence that he did travel to Egypt, Britain, and Japan. On the other hand, there is persuasive evidence that he did actually venture to India, Nepal, and Tibet. Jesus would have visited Egypt for two reasons in the main. First, he had partial genealogical roots in Egypt. One of his progenitors was Cleopatra VII, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, from whom he was only three generations removed. If you recall, we did relate that his grandfather Jacob-Eliakim had married Princess Cleopatra, daughter to Cleopatra VII. It was by Princes Cleopatra that Jacob-Eliakim had Joseph, father to Jesus. Second, the Theraputae, who at the turn of the first century had flourished at Qumran, were based in Alexandria, Egypt. The Theraputae were renowned healers with unswaying spiritual discipline, as Jesus would turn out to be. As their apprentice, Jesus would inevitably have had been sent over to Egypt to be chaperoned by sectarian gurus. As for India, the place had an aboriginal, sentimental value to practically every Jew. India was the place where Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, originated. In fact, I would go as far as to intuit that the term Theraputae itself was of Indian origin. Philologists say “Theraputae” has to do with healing but that, like most words in use today, is an evolutionary meaning. The root word ought to be Terah, the name of Abraham‟s father. Indeed, therapeutes originally meant “one who is attendant to the gods”. Terah was the first priest-king – the Melchizedek – of Shalem, modern-day Jerusalem. He was anointed as such by Nannar-Sin, the Anunnaki god who he had dutifully served since days immemorial. Nannar-Sin was the second-born son of Enlil, known as Jehovah in the Hebrew Bible. JESUS IN INDIA Two years after Jesus celebrated his Bar-Mitzvah, coming-of-age ceremony at age 12, he travelled to India and the Far East. His exploits in this regard came to light in a 1894 book titled The Unknown Life of Christ by a Russian doctor and traveller called Nicholas Notovitch (the book survives: you can freely it from the Internet). Sometime in the 19th century, Notovich visited with Buddhist monks in the Indian region of Ladakh and was amazed to learn that Brahmin historians had recorded Jesus‟s life and journey from Jerusalem to Benare in Uttar Prudesh in two large yellow volumes titled The Life of St

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Issa, Issa being Jesus in Arabic. Notovich detailed a member of his entourage to translate the chronicle from Tibetan and that was how his book came about. Notovich‟s groundbreaking work was in the nature of things greeted with derision back in Russia but it was he who had the last laugh when two skeptics who set out to prove he was a phoney actually confirmed his findings. They were Swami Abhedanada in 1922 and Nicholas Roerich, a philosopher and distinguished scientist, in 1925. Both found that Notovich‟s story did indeed check out, that it was far from a mercenary concoction. Abhedanada for one turned up a Bengali translation of 224 verses of the sayings of a boy wonder fondly reminisced as St. Issa when he visited the same Buddhist convent in Ladakh. Abhedanada and Roerich record their experiences in their books Kashmir O Tibetti and Legends of St. Issa respectively. Notovich laments, of Jesus, that, “Being of Jewish origin, he dwelt in Palestine and Egypt; and the scripture contains not a word, not the slightest allusion, to the part played by Buddhism in the education of Jesus.” He relates that, “In the course of his fourteenth year, young Issa, blessed by God, journeyed beyond the Sindh and settled among the Aryans in the beloved country of God.” Only a budding teen, Jesus was noted for his precocious wisdom and a sense of botho by the Buddhist monks. One of a multiplicity of examples Notovich cites in this regard involved the Sudras, the lowercaste, dark-skinned Indians who have been discriminated against by light-skinned Indians since the days of Abraham. “The Sudras were not only forbidden to attend the reading of the Vedas,” Notovich relates, “but to gaze upon them even; for their condition was to perpetually serve and act as slaves to the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, and even to the Yaisyas. „Death alone can free them from servitude,‟ said Para-Brahma. „Leave them, therefore, and worship with us the gods who will show their anger against you if you disobey them.‟ But Issa would not heed them; and going to the Sudras, preached against the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas. He strongly denounced the men who robbed their fellow-beings of their rights as men, saying: „God the Father establishes no difference between his children, who are all equally dear to him.‟” Clearly, Jesus‟s raft of virtues were not simply homegrown but eclectically acquired. JESUS THE NAZARENE As a youngster, Jesus led as much a peripatetic life as he would in adulthood. If he wasn‟t travelling abroad, he was either in Galilee or attending formal school at Qumran in Judea. Jesus had two homes – one in Galilee and another in Judea, although officially he was a Galilean. As a member of the family of the Davidic succession, he should have been ideally domiciled in Judea, but the family had decided to base themselves far afield in Galilee beyond the vicinities of Herod the Great, who had set out to purge all the Davidic heirs as he regarded them as the most formidable threat to his throne. Herod had murdered Jesus‟ grandfather Jacob-Heli and several senior of his mother Mary‟s family. He had also sought to kill Jesus when he was an infant. Because of the ever looming danger from the Herods, Joseph had founded a blue-blood settlement in Galilee about 6 km southeast of the bustling city of Sepphoris. He called the little settlement “Branch Town”. It would over time become known as Nazareth. Why did Joseph opt for the name “Branch Town”? In Hebrew, the word for “branch” or “shoot” is Netzer. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the messiah of David, that is, the future King of Israel, is referred to as the “Branch of David”. That is because in ISAIAH 11:1-2, the messiah of David‟s lineage is indeed called the “Branch of David”. It was therefore apt that Joseph chose to call his pioneer settlement in Galilee as Netzer Town, later corrupted as Nazareth, 96

meaning a place of royal Davidic descendents. Of course at the time, Nazareth was not an official name: it is not found on any single one map of the Palestine of the day. Says the American archeologist James Strange: “Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century AD.” Strange reckons that the population of Galilee‟s Nazareth in gospel times was about 480. It was therefore an inconsequential settlement populated in the main by extended family of Joseph and Mary. The first mention of Nazareth outside the gospels was made by Julius Africanus circa 200 AD. Africanus, however, locates Nazareth in Judea, not in Galilee. A fourth century treatise titled History of the Carpenter avers that Nazareth was located within walking distance of the Jerusalem temple. All this may sound confusing but it need not be courtesy of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls inform us that Nazareth was any place in the Judean wilderness that housed Nazarites – a particular fraternity of Essene celibates. This was not a single place: the settlements in the Judean wilderness such as Mird, Mar Saba, and Ain Feshka each had sizeable Nazarite enclaves and therefore each qualified as a Nazareth. Ain Feshka for one was only 3 km from Qumran, the Essene HQ – within walking distance of the Qumran temple. One nickname for Qumran was in fact Jerusalem. In the Dead Sea Scrolls – as well as the gospels and Acts – when the term Jerusalem is used, it actually refers to Qumran. Jerusalem proper is referred to repetitively as “Jerusalem Jerusalem” (e.g. MATTHEW 23:37). Today, we can justifiably refer to Jesus as “Jesus of Nazareth” but in the first century he was never addressed as such: he was simply known as Jesus the Nazarene, meaning Jesus the Davidic Branch – the messiah. His followers accordingly became known as Nazarenes or “Branchites”. The term “Christian” came much later not as a prided name but as a derogatory style. JESUS THE STONEMASON In religious portrayals, Jesus has always been depicted as a carpenter or the son of a carpenter. The quaint image of Jesus bent double alongside his father in the family “carpenter shop” is familiar from centuries of reverential paintings. Although this is not exactly far-fetched, it is not unassailably factual. The enduring impression of a carpenter Jesus derives from two scriptures. MARK 6:3 says, “Is this not the carpenter?” MATTHEW 13:55 reads, “Is this not the son of the carpenter?” The New Testament was originally written in Greek. In the Greek, the word translated “carpenter” in the English canon is tekton. Tekton meant artisan, that is, a person who is skilled in a particular craft. That could of course include a carpenter, who is a person skilled in wood craft, but this would have been a misnomer in the rocky terrain of the Palestine of Jesus‟s day, where wood was a very scarce commodity. The primary meaning therefore of tekton in gospel times was that of a stonemason, defined as “a person who cuts, prepares, and builds with stone”. Extra-biblical sources seem to bear out such a concept. For instance, the Protevangelium of James says Joseph was a “builder of buildings”. Both houses and buildings in first century Palestine were built of stone: wood was used for roof beams and doors. During Jesus‟ childhood, there was a great deal of construction work going on in Galilee, particularly in Sepphoris, the capital city of the province. Herod Antipas, who had become tetrarch of Galilee in 4 BC, had decided to turn Sepphoris into the “Ornament of Galilee”. The building trades were therefore booming at the time and Joseph must have been drawn to the massive building projects in order to earn money to Essene causes such as charity. He could not have done so for his own good as Essenes worked for the betterment of each other and shared al possessions. Building, however, was not a respectable trade. Building labourers were typically hired on a casual, daily basis and were paid a throwaway wage. They were actually regarded as the scums of the Earth. Says one respected author and researcher: “In Roman culture, the artisan trades were regarded as akin to slave 97

labour. They were viewed as the toilsome, backbreaking work of the lower classes. Sophocles, the Greek poet, emphatically objected to someone who wrote that his father was a tekton, as if that would demean his social class. He wrote that perhaps his father had such workers as slaves but he himself was surely not of such a trade.” The stigma that attached to stonemasonry explains why Matthew – who copiously researched from the work of Mark – changed Mark‟s reference to Jesus as “the carpenter” to read “son of the carpenter” as if to say, “Look, it was not Jesus who was a tekton: it was his father”. The allusion in Mark was not incidental: it was a slur. Paraphrased, it should read: “Is not this the son of that day labourer we all know well, that illegitimate son of Mary?” Yet Joseph was not simply a stone mason. He was also a boat builder according to the Dead Sea Scrolls and boats were made from wood. In this sense then, the carpenter characterisation does strike a chord. But boat building was not an everyday vocation: it was occasional. Hence, Joseph‟s regular trade was that of a stonemason. Since in antiquity children typically followed the trade or profession of their father, Jesus too must have been a stonemason. It explains why there is so much “builder imagery” in his parables, e.g. LUKE 6:48 and three ages in all the synoptic gospels where Jesus indirectly refers to himself as the stone builders rejected but that became the head of the corner.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 27

JESUS WAS PITCH-BLACK Familiar Lily-White Image A Papal contrivance

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ometime in the latter half of the 90s, Bible Life Ministries, which I was then attending, held a crusade at Gaborone‟s Boiphuso Hall. The host preacher was Dr Mensa Otabil, founder of the International Central Gospel Church of Ghana. Dr Otabil caused side-splitting laughter when he joked that if Jesus were to materialise as we invoked him in prayer, we would not rush to embrace him but to “bind” him as he would not match the mental image we typically have of him. Whilst we imagined him to be white with blond, straight hair and blue eyes, he was actually a black, olive-skinned man. I the evangelist even asking a fair-skinned Motswana lady who was seated about a couple of rows behind me to stand up, after which he exclaimed, “That‟s how Jesus looked like!” I wager you that image of Jesus Dr Otabil proffered did not endure in the minds of those in attendance: almost overnight, it was replaced by the familiar one – that of the handsome Caucasian blond we frequently encounter in books, movies, and paintings. I wish to restate to the readership that Dr Otabil was spot-on: Jesus was no Caucasian, nor did he look like Middle-Easterners look today. Jesus was a black man. That‟s why a narrative emerging amongst black Americans today is that they did not actually originate from Africa but from Palestine. Hence, they are black Jews rather than African-Americans. Of course this association is fondly bandied about only because the Jews have such enormous political and economic clout in America. If they were an inconsequential race and we Africans were a leading economic bloc and mighty geopolitical force, every black American would be identifying with and gravitating towards us. As it is, most African-Americans deplore any association with Africa: there are hardly any throwbacks to the Marcus Garvey‟s (champion of the early-20th-century‟s Back-To-Africa Movement) and Alex Hailey‟s (whose proud rediscovery of his Gambian origins inspired the iconic novel Roots) of this world. Whoopi Goldberg has made it clear she‟s not African. Even Oprah Winfrey a few years ago offered that her ancestry was “Zulu” (obviously because South Africa is a decent economic power), not “African”. It was Inkhata Freedom Party boss Gatsha Buthelezi who was bold enough to throw the lie back at the Queen of Talk when he scoffed that no American slave trader of the 18th, 19th century would have been so thick as to venture half a world away to shop for slaves from Durban when a bustling slave market, West Africa, was only a heartbeat away from US shores. A DESCENDANT OF CANAAN Let us first pose this curious question: how did the black race originate? There are two streams of the black race that are extant to this day. The first stream sprang straight from Adam and they today constitute the bulk of Africans. As we by now know, Adam was created (that is, genetically engineered from a mixture of Anunnaki and Ape Man‟s genes) by Enki, the “Serpent” of Genesis. The venue of the creation was today‟s East Africa in Enki‟s laboratory called BET SHIIMT (“Place Where Life Is Generated”) in Sumerian, the world‟s first known language. Adam was black though his name has connotations of red. Blacks appear reddish when they are born. As a grown man, Adam looked more like the Aborigines rather than the typical African because he had a fair amount of Anunnaki blood in him. The Anunnaki themselves were white as wool. 99

The second stream of blacks came after the Deluge, the Greta Flood of Noah‟s day, which occurred around 10,900 BC. This is the stream to which Ethiopians and first century Jews largely belong. Noah‟s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were born in the same year, when Noah was 500 years old, to three different women. Apparently, Japheth was the earliest to arrive, followed by Shem, and lastly Ham. The simultaneous births were as per Anunnaki plans to repopulate the Earth but with three different race strains after the devastation of human life by the flood. Though the Bible gives the impression that life on Earth was completely wiped out save for the family of Noah, the Sumerian records, from which the Genesis writers researched, say the flood did not entirely engulf the globe. Africa was probably not that much affected (archaeological evidence of the Deluge is very scanty on the continent) and therefore great swathes of its population survived. Of Noah‟s three sons, Ham was the darkest: he had the chocolate complexion of today‟s Ethiopians, “reddish” to the Anunnaki, the very meaning of his name. Note that his complexion was not the result of a curse: even in the Bible, there is no single age that says Ham was cursed. It was his son, Canaan, who is said to have been cursed by an irate Noah. The Bible says Ham saw his father‟s nakedness, which he announced to his older brothers, and for that Canaan was cursed. But why Canaan when he had nothing to do with Ham‟s transgression? The event is not a literal one: it is a figurative story that has nothing to do with Noah‟s drunkenness, the exact circumstances of which constitute a separate topic. The fact is, Canaan was never cursed. The curse was retrospectively concocted by the Levites, the authors of Genesis, just as they concocted the curse of Enki, the “Serpent” of Genesis. It was a hindsight Israelite ploy to justify their seizure of Canaan under their god Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible. What actually happened was that Canaan was blacklisted by the Enlilites, the clan of Enlil, because his people and their “god”, Set, settled around TILMUN, a region that had been designated by the Anunnaki pantheon as a neutral area after the flood. TILMUN was located in what became known as Canaan or Palestine. It was at once a spaceport and missile site of the Anunnaki. Set and the Canaanites‟ settlement around TILMUN triggered the Second Pyramid War, which pitted the Enkites against the Enlilites. Having descended from a dark-skinned Ham, the Canaanites were black. Jesus was descended through the coned lines of Judah and Canaan. THE HISTORICAL JESUS In today‟s world, the most influential people are the pale-skinned races. These have interpreted and recast history mostly to their own taste and we blacks have blindly taken it as gospel truth. It explains why every prominent biblical personage – Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Paul – is depicted as Caucasian. This is a total fraud. In antiquity, dark-skinned people were the commonest. Few people know that most Egyptian pharaohs were black or that some of the earliest popes were black too. Early Egyptians and Jews/Israelites were black. The white races were in Rome, Greece, and other European regions. One reason the likes of Alexander the Great and the Caesars of Rome made a habit of subjugating North Africa and the Middle East was because these places were predominantly populated by dark-skinned people. The light-skinned people who occupy North Africa and the Middle East today were not the original inhabitants: they are encroachers in the main. Some spring from early intermarriages which over time gave rise to fairer races. (It only takes three generations for cross-racial unions to produce a person with predominantly white genes, that is, 87.5 percent and above. Do you know why Hitler was made to hate the Jews like the plague? He was told the primeval ancestry of the Jewish people were pitch-black. Wherever Jews went after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, they were discriminated against by virtue primarily of their skin colour or their black ancestry. Hitler was told Jews originated in Africa and this is not a far-fetched thesis.)

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The Greek historian Herodotus (484-426 BC) who visited Egypt in 457 BC described North African races as follows: “The Nubians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians have broad noses, thick lips, woolly hair, and they are burnt of skin”, typical Negroid features. The Roman senator and historian Cornelius Tacitus (56117 AD) associated the Jews with a possible “Ethiopian origin”. Ancient Ethiopia, also called Kush, stretched all the way to Nubia, today‟s Sudan. The highly regarded Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) and who spent years studying the origins of the human race, asserts that “Semitic races arose in the 4th millennium BC from cross-breeding between black inhabitants of the Holy Land (Canaanites) and white northern invaders”, the latter being Hyksos, the race of Abraham. The white-skinned Hyksos in due course melded into a dark, hybrid race through intermarriages with the original black Jews. It is only relatively recently that the Illuminati decided to revive white Jewry by hook and crook. This dark, hybrid race is what produced Jesus Christ. In our day, the Sephardic Jews (who look like Arabs) are the genuine article, the race of Jesus‟s lineage. Yet were Jesus to turn up today, he would not look like them: he would look like a Falashan Jew, the black Jews of Ethiopia, almost all of whom now live in Israel following a systematic transfer initiated by the Israeli Government beginning 1979. The Falashan Jews trace their origins through Menelik, the son King Solomon is said to have sired with the Queen of Sheba (modern-day Yemen). The real story though is that the Queen of Sheba, or Bathsheba, was actually David‟s daughter who he incestuously and scandalously later married. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD) relates that the Queen of Sheba “ruled Egypt and Ethiopia”. David ruled Egypt and by extension Ethiopia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Kingdom of Judah from 995 to 955 BC as Pharaoh Tehuti-Pasebakhaenuit. Tehuti or Thoth are respective Egyptian and Greek renderings of the name David. The Bible makes it plain that Jesus was from the tribe of Judah and a descendant of King David. David was a 9th generation descendant of Perez, the bastard son of Judah (Jacob‟s 4th son) and Tamar. Tamar was a Canaanite woman, that is, she was black. So even if we were to assume for argument‟s sake that Judah was fair-skinned, Tamar‟s race would have made his descendants dark-skinned. In 2002, British forensic scientists and Israeli archeologists used the skull of a first century Jew to digitally reconstruct an image of what Jesus would have looked like. Their findings, which were widely published in leading scientific journals across the globe and featured on the popular documentary channel National Geographic, were that Jesus must have had “a broad peasant's face, dark olive skin, short curly hair, and a prominent nose”, in short, a black man. Your familiar image of a tall, long haired, long bearded, white-skinned, and blue eyed Son of God is the Jesus of the Illuminati story and not of history. Jesus was our own folks. How then did he become white? A COUNTERFEIT JESUS Although it is the Vatican that turned Jesus from a black man to a Caucasian, the Vatican itself actually does not remotely try to gloss over the fact that the real Jesus was black. If you want to see illustrated evidence of a black Jesus, just take a trip to Rome and book a tour of its underground catacombs. In there, paintings of a black Jesus that date back to the second century have been well-preserved. A fresco in the catacombs of Domitilla and which dates to between the second and third centuries shows Jesus amidst his 12 disciples. Both Jesus and the disciples are plainly dark-skinned and their hair is black albeit curly, like that of the Aborigines. Also in the British Museum is a gold coin that was minted and engraved at the time of Byzantine Emperor Justinian II (reign: 685-705 AD), on which is embossed an image of Jesus with tightly curled, wooly hair and Negroid features.

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It was Pope Alexander VI (original name: Rodrigo Borgia. Tenure: 1492-1503) who decided Jesus should turn white. By Alexander‟s time, Europeans had taken full control of the Church; hence, “God” also had to become white like “us”. The papacy ordered that every black image of Jesus be withdrawn from the public domain and a new Caucasian image be fashioned. Alexander VI was a very controversial Pope: he had a string of mistresses and even several children by them. His most beloved child and his spitting image characterwise was Cesare Borgia, who was said to be the best-looking man in the world. It was Cesare‟s looks, so the Pope desired, that the new image of Jesus was to be patterned after. The best artists of the day were accordingly commissioned to come up with a painting that bore the closest resemblance to Cesare. They included the ageless icons of art, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Da Vinci won the contest but it was not until circa 1520 that Altobelli Melone served up a portrait of Jesus that was based on Da Vinci‟s depiction of Cesare. A new, effeminate Jesus with emphatically Caucasian features which included blue eyes, shoulder-length hair, and an extended thin nose was born. For a long time, this was the ubiquitous image of Jesus till 1940, when Warner Sallman‟s “Head of Christ” depiction supplanted it as the most popular image of Jesus of all time, with more than 500 million reprints to date. So the mental image you have of Jesus Brothers and Sisters in Christ is one of either Cesare Borgia, a most disreputable character who was bisexual, was a mass murderer, and had countless children out of wedlock, or one that springs from the fertile imagination of a 20th century Chicago-born painter. An enduring trait of the Illuminati is to repeat a lie without let-up in the hope that eventually people will believe it as it is in their face all the time. The hope is always fulfilled.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 28

THE OTHER MESSIAH John The Baptist Born To An Ominous Fate

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ccording to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes, and by extension all nationalistic Jewry, had been expecting the rise of two messiahs and one prophet-like figure in the mould of either Elijah or Moses. From time to time, counterfeit messiahs did suddenly burst onto the scene to declare a national revolution (particularly from amongst the ranks of the Zealots, e.g. Judas of Galilee), but the true-blue messiahs that were awaited were the messiah of Aaron and the messiah of David, the former from the tribe of Levi and the latter from the tribe of Judah. In the first century, the two messiahs were anticipated through the seed of Joseph, the Davidic heir, and that of Zechariah, the lineal descendent of Aaron. Until the time of Jeconiah, the last recognised Jewish King of Judah, high priests were appointed for life: if they stepped down, it was of their own discretion. In gospel times, they were appointed annually by the Herodian monarch and from 6 AD by the Roman governor. Every year, the sitting high priest had to be either reappointed or relieved of his duties. These priests of the Jerusalem temple were not of the Levitical succession: they were purely political appointees foisted onto the Jewish populace and bore no relationship whatsoever to the House of Aaron. It was the Essenes‟ Qumran temple in the Judean wilderness that continued with the tradition of a Levitical high priest. At the turn of the first century, the Qumran high priest, also known as the Zadok priest, was Zechariah. It is a pity that when Christians read of Zechariah serving in the temple, they take it for granted that this was the Jerusalem temple. This assumption betrays a sorry ignorance with respect to the dynamics and religio-politics of first century Palestine. Zechariah had nothing whatsoever to do with the Jerusalem temple, which the Sadducean elite had turned into a “den of robbers” courtesy of Jesus. Zechariah was high priest yes, but he was high priest of the Qumran temple 40 km removed from the Jerusalem temple. When John was born in September 8 BC, the incumbent high priest at the Jerusalem temple was Simon Boethus. When James, the brother of Jesus, was born in 1 AD, the high priest was Joazar. Joazar was succeeded in 6 AD by Annas. It was the Jerusalem priesthood who were the official high priests of Israel. The bona fide high priests, however, were the ones who presided at the Qumran temple because these were the dynastic priests. The Qumran temple, a sanctuary really as it was more of a token temple than a real temple, was recognised by the contrived Jerusalem priesthood as well as the Herodian dynasty. The Jerusalem priesthood were aware that in the future, self-governing Kingdom of Israel, it was the Qumran high priest who would take the reins at the Jerusalem Temple. As for the Herodians, the Qumran priesthood was little beyond a talismanic convenience. Being a dynastic one and therefore the real deal, the Qumran priesthood lent the Herodians a veneer of legitimacy since as a “manufactured” monarch, the Herods were irredeemably unpopular in the eyes of the Jewish nation. Once in a while, however, the Qumran priesthood did fall victim to the wrath of either the Herodian dynasty or the Jerusalem priesthood itself as happened, for instance, in the case of Jesus, his brother James, Zechariah himself, and his son John the Baptist.

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ZECHARIAH NO AGED MAN In the superficial, Christian understanding of the Bible, the conception of John the Baptist was a miracle in that both Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were reportedly in geriatric territory – too old to be productive, more so for Lady Liz who had long gone past menopause. That is as familiarly fallacious as your typical clergy‟s interpretation of scripture. Zechariah and Elizabeth both were spring chickens according to the pesher of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The term “advanced in their days” does not mean the couple were old: in pesher language, all it says is that they had stayed rather long in mutual sexual abstinence: they had not conjugated since their marriage. Zechariah and Elizabeth were a dynastic couple. As such, they were, per Essene dynastic procreational rules, to live apart till it was opportune for them to produce a heir. They should have done this earliest when Zechariah was 36 years of age but the fact of the matter was that they didn‟t. On her part, Elizabeth is characterised in the gospels as “barren”. Again, that by no means suggests she was unable to bear children: in the pesher language, it simply means she was a virgin who had not had a kid before. Indeed, in the apocryphal BOOK OF WISDOM 3:13, female celibates are referred to as “barren” and male celibates are referred to as “eunuchs”. In addition, both are also referred to as “Blessed Ones”. In LUKE 23:29, we happen upon this statement: “For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.'” Ordinarily, one would think that “barren” and “wombs that never bore” denote the same thing and therefore there is no need to differentiate between them in the manner they have been in the Luke age. In pesher, the underlying code language in which the gospels were written, the two phrases are different as a barren woman is not infertile but simply a virgin who has scrupulously abided by the rule of not engaging in sexual relations till the right time comes for siring a dynastic heir. Clearly therefore, Elizabeth had stayed chaste and therefore childless for an unusually long period of time and for reasons not of her choosing though. FEAR OF A JOHN’S FATE Why did Zechariah neglect to have a child at a time prescribed by the Essenes? A persuasive argument can be made that it was on of the pressures of priestly duty: he was so devoted to his job that dynastic procreational obligations became secondary if not altogether immaterial. The real reason, however, was that he was indifferent principally because he was loath to pandering to the arbitrary and manipulative Anunnaki agenda, the Anunnaki being the Old Testament gods who were in fact Aliens from a planet called Nibiru, seen only once in 3600 years by Earthlings. What was this agenda? Well, the Anunnaki blueprint for “Saviour Sun Gods”, as Jesus was, fields a cast of three protagonists. First, there is a forerunner, one who announces the imminence of the Saviour Sun God and initiates him when he finally emerges to effect his preordained remit. The second is the Saviour Sun God himself. Finally, there is the chronicler – the person who documents the philosophy and teachings of the Saviour Sun God for posterity. This three-man archetype harped back to Ancient Egypt, where the famed Horus was the Saviour Sun God, Anup (or Anubis) was the herald of Horus, and Aan was the recorder of the ethos and exploits of Horus. The names Anup and Aan are primeval forms of the names John, Jan, Juan, Johannes (Yohanan in Hebrew), Sean, etc. Put differently, An-up and Aan are the two Aans – the Two Johns! The epic of the Saviour Sun God ran concurrent with the Two Johns. As wise King Solomon so insightfully put it, “There is nothing new under the Sun: what has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done” (ECCLESIASTES 1:9).

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Now, Zechariah was aware he was the one who was to sire the man who was to announce and present the Saviour Sun God Jesus. At the same time, as Essene high priest, he was well-versed in Egyptian Anunnaki mythos and was under no illusion as to what happened to the John who introduced the Saviour Sun God: he always met a gruesome death. Indeed, the John who introduced Horus was beheaded. Since history was cyclical and therefore kept repeating itself as per the Anunnaki‟s age-old scheme for the Earthly realm, Zechariah feared the same thing might happen to his son, or some such unnatural death. It actually came to as according to the gospels John was beheaded at the orders of Herod Antipas. It was in apprehension of the fate that was certain to befall his heir that Zechariah shrank from producing a child. In point of fact, Zechariah would rather he died childless so that the Aaronic succession would become extinct so disgusted was he with the diabolical, self-serving Anunnaki agenda. Unfortunately, the Anunnaki always win in the end. Although they execute their agenda for this ill-fated planet subtly and under the radar, they are very much in control and therefore inviolable. Noting that Zechariah could torpedo their well-laid-down plans, they moved to force his hand. HOW JOHN WAS BORN Early in December 9 BC, Simeon, the Essence‟s Abiathar priest who was second in rank to Zechariah and who also went by the titles “Angel Gabriel” and “Angel of the Lord” approached Zechariah with a view to persuade him to set about siring a heir. The Essenes were pundits both of astronomy and astrology and they knew that the Age of Pisces was just around the corner and it was time for a new generation of Davidic and Aaronic messiahs to arise. It was these two messiahs who were to usher in the final 1000year stretch leading to a theocracy – a globalwide, Earthly government ruled by God himself. Although Zechariah, who also went by the names “Archangel Michael” and “Lord God” was not inclined to consent, he was under obligation to. Otherwise, he would have forfeited the high priesthood. Furthermore, more serious repercussions would have ensued: as God‟s foremost representative to the Essene fraternity, he was duty-bound, so he was told, to produce a dynastic successor who would step into his issues when he was no more. Zechariah therefore just had to comply. Up until now, Zechariah had been celibate. Now he was going to institute sexual relations with his wife Elizabeth. In other words, he was going to live like a married man proper. The Essenes regarded sex as spiritually contaminating. That‟s why for the priesthood, it was allowed for the sake only of procreation. Because sex was defiling, in Essene jargon all married men were called “sinners”. Since Zechariah had now become a sinner with effect from December 9 BC, he would no longer perform priestly duties nor preach, minister, or issue instructions of any kind: that role now vested in Simeon, who would act in his stead. In Luke‟s gospel, this situation is allegorised in such a way as to suggest Zechariah was “struck dumb” for not believing the words of the Angel Gabriel. Zechariah‟s suspension, however, would only be in force for the duration of his wife‟s pregnancy: once she had delivered, he would part with her and return to Qumran to resume his priestly duties. Elizabeth fell pregnant at the end of January 8 BC. Since she was used to a celibate life, the pregnancy somewhat embarrassed her. Hence for the next five months, she cocooned herself at Ain Feshka as she was shy to show off her pregnancy. Unlike Jesus, John was conceived in perfect conformity with dynastic procreational rules. Hence, he was born in the right month, in September 8 BC, the holiest month of the year. If Zechariah had wanted another child, he would have done so only in 1 BC given that as a member of the Levitical succession he had to wait for six years after the birth of a son or three had John been a daughter. As it was, Zechariah

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was not interested in producing kids at the pleasure of the Anunnaki. John was to be his first and last child. The name John was atypical: none of Zechariah‟s ancestors had carried that name. Clearly, it was not Zechariah‟s choice: it was mooted by the Anunnaki. Why did the Anunnaki opt for such a name? Because it fitted very well with their agenda for John in the grand scheme of things. John was going to reprise the same role of the John who introduced and baptised the Egyptian Saviour Sun God Horus thousands of years back. He was ultimately going to die the same or similar death as that of the John of Horus‟ day. Names are portendous folks: do not simply casually confer names on your children as they spell a particular fate! When Zechariah was murdered by Zealot commander Judas of Galilee in 6 AD, John the Baptist, aged only 13 years, succeeded him as Zadok, his other title as the Essene priest. However, a “regent” was retained to act on his behalf till he was 30 years old, the age when one was eligible for high priesthood. This caretaker high priest was Annas, who in AD 6 had replaced Joazar as high priest of the Jerusalem temple. In the very same year, when the now 12-year-old Jesus, the messiah of David, celebrated his Bar-Mitzvah ceremony, young John was present in his capacity as the messiah of Aaron. Thus Jesus and John, contrary to popular brief, were familiar to each other since childhood. After all, they were cousins, Elizabeth being a maternal aunt of Mary the mother of Jesus. They also spent a lot of time together at Qumran. Unlike Jesus though, John never travelled the world. He was not a political messiah but a priestly messiah who would always be based in Jerusalem. Hence, he saw no need to venture out on a familiarisation tour of world cultures. Sadly, this insularity made him fiercely anti-Gentile and was to engender a serious rift between Jesus and himself.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 29

JOHN TRASHES PRIESTHOOD The Scrupulous Baptist Throws Away The Script

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hen the Essenes referred to the year AD 6 as the Year of Wrath, It was not a mere figure of speech. The loss of their high priest Zechariah to the thrust of a dagger wielded by an agent of Judas of Galilee was a crushing blow. For the next 20 years, they were practically leaderless, though by no means rudderless, as Simeon, Zechariah‟s deputy, had bowed out to pursue purely philanthropic causes untainted by political chicanery of whatever guise. Indeed, a line in a Dead Sea Scroll dubbed the Damascus Document” bemoans that “for 20 years we were like blind men groping for the way”. Yet on a somewhat optimistic note, the Essenes had given the year AD 6 another moniker – the Year of the Plant Root. This primarily referred to Jesus, a “shoot” from the Davidic “root”, who had officially been inducted into the Essene fold at his Bar Mitzvah ceremony in AD 6. They pinned on him their hope for a popular political messiah who would spearhead the apocalyptic war against the “Kittim” – their sneering nickname for the Roman occupiers. Morally allied with him would be a counselor, a counterpart messiah of the House of Aaron. The messiah of Aaron, namely John, would be the priest who would promote Jesus to the body politic before he finally strode onto the public stage. John would be the Elijah foretold in the Old Testament through a pronouncement by the prophet Malachi that “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (MALACHI 4:5-6). Meanwhile, Annas, the new high priest of the Jerusalem temple, was mandated to stand in for John till he was 30 years of age. Annas, however, was content with being a symbolic high priest of the Qumran temple: all his efforts were devoted to enriching himself from the loot of both temples. When it came to providing spiritual, moral, and ecclesiastical guidance particularly at the Qumran temple, he was as detached as made no difference: he did not care a damn at all. The provisional Qumran priesthood was little more than an opportunistic feather in the cap for him. Age was also probably a factor: he was only 26 years old when he was appointed high priest and was way short of the qualifying priestly age of 30, meaning for at least four years or so, he did not command commensurate priestly authority at Qumran. Sadly for the Essenes, their cherished hope for liberation messiahs did not crystalise. It turned out neither Jesus nor John had that much of a zest for armed revolutionarism Zealot-style. Even worse, the two messianic mascots began to work at cross purposes with one another. JAMES BACK IN LIMELIGHT The second decade of the first century was not exactly epoch-making but it was fairly eventful as Annas ceased to be high priest, a new Roman governor was installed, and the second Caesar was crowned. Augustus Caesar, who had been emperor since 27 BC, ed on in August 14 AD. He was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius, who had carved himself a reputation as one of Rome‟s greatest generals. Annas had been appointed high priest of the Jerusalem temple in AD 6. Sometime in AD 15, he was deposed by Valerius Gratus, who had just assumed office that very year as Roman governor of Judea. Gratus, 107

Pontius Pilates‟s predecessor, was a hard-to-please oddball. Of the four priests who followed after Annas, only one lasted for more than a year. This was Joseph Caiaphas, the son-in-law to Annas. Caiaphas was appointed in AD 18 and was in office up to AD 36, making him the longest serving high priest alongside Simon Boethus under Roman rule. It was Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas who tly interrogated Jesus in the early hours of March 20 AD 33. Unlike the Annas priests (that is, Annas and his son Eleazer) who had lent unequivocal weight to the messiahship of Jesus, Caiaphas took the Boethusian view that Jesus did not qualify for the Davidic title as he had been born in sexually scandalous circumstances. As such, he promoted James as the next in line after Joseph. In AD 23, Joseph died aged 67 and Caiaphas officially recognised James as the new David. Until then, James had been known by his given name Cleopas. At his father‟s demise, he became the Jacob, which was his more familiar title as the David. And since he had been declared messiah of Israel by the religious establishment, he also assumed the name James, by which he was best known. In Aramaic, James was Iah-Mes, or Mes-Iah when reversed. Iah- Mes meant “Son of God”. All Davidic kings were addressed as Son of God as per PSALM 2:7. That, in fact, was the original meaning of “Messiah”: the widely held view that it meant “anointed one” was a derivative and not primary interpretation. With such sagacious and sensible Essene elders such as Zechariah and Simeon no longer on the scene, James‟s designation as the Davidic King de facto did have quite a resonance at Qumran and the national grapevine. However, James, now aged 23, still privately deferred to his brother as the bona fide Davidic messiah at this stage at least. It was only in later years that he actively contended with Jesus for the title at the urging, unstintingly, of his mother Mary and not on of personal ambition but in heed of the sway, generally, of the politics of the day. JOHN GOES OFF AT A TANGENT In AD 23, John turned 30 years of age: he was born in September 8 BC. As the Essenes‟ Zadok priest, he had long been tipped to commence his priestly duties in that year. A priest, according to the Torah, was to serve in the temple from 30 years to 50 years of age (NUMBERS 4:3). It transpired, however, that John had decided he was not going to follow in the footsteps of his late father Zechariah and substantively assume the position of the Zadok – the high priesthood of the Qumran temple. Instead of becoming a monastic priest hidebound by ecclesiastical ritual, he disavowed all this, opting for the life of an ascetic and reclusive Nazarite in the Judean wilds. He had decided to be the Elijah proper. John‟s actions were informed by specific Old Testament injunctions which he read as applying to himself. One of these was ISAIAH 40:3, which said, “Prepare the way of Yahweh in the desert.” Yahweh had also announced, through the prophet Malachi, that, “I‟m sending my messenger to prepare the way before me” (MALACHI 3:1). Read on the surface, John‟s decision comes across as self-impelled, as the stirrings of a purposeful impulse of a wayward, non-comformist man. But the Anunnaki undertones behind the move are loud and plangent. In ancient Egypt was a river called Iarutana. In modern, anglicized spelling, this is … the river Jordan. It was in the river Iarutana that Anup, the Egyptian John, baptised Horus, the Egyptian Jesus. Indeed, the gospels themselves do not say John decided to retreat into the wilderness proper of his own accord: they say he heard a “voice” – that of Yahweh if we are to go by Old Testament prognostications. Today, in 2015, we know who Yahweh was. He was Enlil, the head of the Anunnaki pantheon, the Anunnaki being Aliens from a little-known planet of the Solar System called Nibiru, seen only once in 3600 years by Earthlings. Of course in the Age of Pisces, which mathematically began in AD 1, Enlil is not in direct charge of Earthly affairs. It is his grandson Utu-Shamash (called Abbadon in Revelation) who sits at the reins (he was not uncontested though: the Enkites, led by Enki‟s eldest son 108

Marduk, challenge him to this day as the Age of Pisces was contractually one of those in which they were to exercise hegemony as per the compact between the two ever-feuding clans). John‟s move, therefore, was not voluntary as such: it was a prompting – a setup. From a purely mundane point of view, however, John‟s course of action followed the pace the Essenes themselves had set. About 200 years before, some ranks of disaffected Jews had read the same Isaiah scripture and made a kind of “Great Trek” from mainstream society to sequester themselves in the Judean wilderness at a settlement by the Dead Sea called Qumran, where they embarked on writing what have come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the Community Rule, their foundational document, they state that they had “separated from the habitation of unjust men” with a view to “prepare in the wilderness the Way … This is the time for the preparation of the Way in the wilderness”. They in future would become best known as Essenes but initially they did not call themselves that: they referred to themselves as “The Way”, that is, people who were paving the morally and spiritually upright way for God‟s imminent direct rule of Earth. That must ring a bell, or doesn‟t it? Early Christians called themselves “Followers of the Way” (ACTS 19:20) and Jesus said ,“I am the way, the truth, and the life” (JOHN 14:6). All this is unequivocal enough evidence that Jesus, John, and the entire Christian movement were forged in the Essene crucible. A mature John, however, had now decided his concept of preparing for the Way did not exactly dovetail with that of the monastic Essenes. Whilst the Qumran Essenes pretty much kept to themselves and did not proselytize, John had decided on a strategy of reach-out. He wanted to actively minister to the nation of Israel by clarion call so he could effectually get the message across to them and the only way he could do this was to set up his own base well beyond the orbit of the Qumran establishment. A THREE-YEAR PREPARATION The exact place in the Judean desert John chose as his hermitical perch was where the Jordan River flowed into the Dead Sea. This is 429 metres below sea level, the lowest inland spot on Earth. Called the Aravah, it was not totally barren desert: it was a valley with scattered stands of savannah vegetation in a general terrain of colouful cliffs and sharp-topped mountains. There, John, with a handful of disciples who included Simon Peter and Andrew began life as a Nazarite and the new Elijah. This was his southern redoubt. A Nazarite (very different from “Nazarene”) was a Jew who had taken a special vow of separation from society in line with NUMBERS 6. Accordingly therefore, he let his hair and beard grow long Rasta-style, abstained from liquor, and wore a rough camel‟s hair garment with a leather belt. Nazarites did marry, examples of whom where Samson and James the brother of Jesus, but John took the institution to another level: he never married and never pursued a trade. His aversion to an intimate relationship with women was almost certainly inherited from his father, who had to be bidden – if not browbeaten – to consummate his marriage and produce a heir. In addition to a southern, Judean lair, John had a northern lair just within sniffing distance of Galilee. This was just south of the Sea of Galilee at a place called Aenon near the settlement of Salim. This was a strategic location for two reasons in the many. First, it was associated with the prophet Elijah, whose birthplace, Tishbe, was just across the Jordan River to the east along a brook called Wadi Cherith. Wadi Cherith is the area around which Elijah hid from Ahab and his wicked queen Jezebel and was fed by ravens. But just as important, the spot John chose lay at the intersection of the Valley of Jezreel and the Jordan River. This was the route the Galilean pilgrims used in travelling south to Judea for annual festivals such as the feasts of over and Tabernacles. Thus John literally stood at the crossroads of a

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national thoroughfare where a captive audience for his apocalyptic sermons every now and again processed. Yet John did not begin to court the public straightaway. He waited for three years before he stepped into the public spotlight. This was not by mere happenstance: it was purposeful. He had a schedule based on the messianic timetable of the prophet Daniel. In working to this schedule, he was partnered by one of his cousins, a dynastic one like he was. This was Jesus.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 30

THE MESSIANIC REVIVAL Jesus And John the Baptist Band Together To Inaugurate New Dispensation

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n of the change of the political guard, the year AD 26 was just as momentous as AD 14/15. The tectonic plates in fact began to shift in AD 23: that year, Drusus, Roman Emperor Tiberius‟s heir and one of his only two children, died at the tender age of 34. The death was such a blow to Tiberius that he gradually began to withdraw from everyday conduct of the affairs of his empire. Finally in AD 26, he removed to the Isle of Capri, about 263 km from Rome, and fixed his abode there – the first time he departed from Rome since enthronement in August AD 14. Although Tiberius still called the shots as emperor, the man he trusted to exercise imperial power on his behalf was his closest confidant Lucius Aelius Sejanus. In the very same year that he was so exalted, Sejanus had Valerius Gratus recalled as governor of Judea and replaced with his lapdog, Pontius Pilate, arguably history‟s most infamous Roman. Pilate would remain in office from AD 26 to AD 36. It was in the same crossroads year of AD 26 that John emerged from self-imposed hibernation to become the now famous John the Baptist. His partner-in-chief in this seminal mission was none other than Jesus. This enterprise was not incidental: it had been three years in the making, tly charted by the two messiahs of Aaron and David. What was so special about AD 26 that John and Jesus had to earmark it as the “acceptable year of the Lord”? HEEDING THE DANIEL TIMETABLE Both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible tell of the imminence of the “Kingdom of God”. Contrary to the interpretation of much of Christendom, this was not an ethereal, “Heavenly” Kingdom. It was a throughand-through righteous, Earth-based realm ruled by a descended God, also called a theocracy (Jehovah‟s Witnesses demonstrate a truer understanding of this particular theme than evangelicals). This theocracy would not suddenly dawn on mankind: it was to be heralded by two Earthling messengers of God called messiahs. These were the messiah of Aaron and the messiah of David. The term messiah in this context meant “anointed one”, that is, a figure who was divinely commissioned to undertake a divinely assigned role. The two messiahs were inferred from ages in the Old Testament – most of which imprecise – and were plainly anticipated in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were to be preceded by Elijah and an unnamed prophet. The Old Testament document that Elijah did not die but was straightaway conducted to Heaven by God. (The more categorical Sumerian records relate that the Anunnaki, the Old Testament gods, transported him by a “celestial boat” to their planet Nibiru, like they had done with Adapa [Adam], Enoch, and Jacob before). As such, he was expected to return and prepare Israel for the emergence of the Levitic and Davidic messiah just before the advent of the terrestrial Kingdom of God. As to when the two messiahs were to appear, the timelines were not uniform. But the first century was one of fevered expectation particularly that mathematically it marked a crossover into a new zodiacal age – that of Pisces. Just as the birth of Abraham had inaugurated the age of Aries, another epoch-making figure was expected to arise at the onset of the Age of Pisces. The time table that was the baseline frame of reference was that according to the prophet Daniel – the so-called Seventy Weeks of Daniel. 111

Daniel had postulated that from the time of a certain decree to “restore and rebuild Jerusalem” following its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar to the “time of the end, seventy weeks of years” would elapse. In other words, every 7 years amounted to one week of years and therefore seventy such week-years yielded a total of 490 years. (According to Sumerian records, 7 was the number of Enlil, the Anunnaki god of the Jews who the Old Testament generally refers to as Jehovah or Yahweh.) The Jewish number crunchers reckoned the beginning of these 70 weeks from 457 BC, the year Ezra the scribe returned from Babylonian exile. Counting from 457 BC to AD 26, we come to a total elapsed time of 69 week-years, meaning in that year there was only one more week-year remaining, that is, 7 years, for all the 70 weekyears to come to . AD 26 was therefore the beginning of the countdown to the establishment of messianic rule in Israel and it was in heed of Daniel‟s timetable that Jesus and John the Baptist, the dynastic kingly and priestly figures of the day, decided to spring into action and institute a messianic revival. JOHN BECOMES POPE Although John the Baptist had disclaimed the Essene priesthood when he became eligible at age 30, he was in AD 26 persuaded to assume leadership of the order. He insisted, albeit, that he would do so only in an elective capacity and not as the dynastic Zadok priest. Just to recap, the Essenes had to have three dynastic priestly heads. These were the Zadok, the Abiathar, and the Levi in line with the setup that obtained under King David in the 10th century BC. From 6 AD onwards, however, the top two positions had been vacant in a substantive sense. Zechariah, the Zadok, had been killed: Annas, who had acted on behalf of Zechariah‟s heir John the Baptist, had forfeited his position when he was sacked as the national high priest in AD 14. Simeon, the Abiathar, had resigned right in AD 6. They did have a Levi priest all right, namely Jonathan Annas, but his stature was nowhere near that of the Zadok or that of the Abiathar. That‟s why the Essenes pitted themselves as practically leaderless. In AD 26, John the Baptist finally consented to be the Essene leader but under the title of Father rather than the Zadok. The title of Father was not dynastic: it was elective. It was not as prestigious, therefore, as that of the Zadok succession but it had considerable clout nonetheless. As the acting Zadok on behalf of young John, Annas also had held the title Father. His son Eleazer and his son-in-law Caiaphas had gone by the same title too, though unlike Annas the latter two never acted as Zadok priests. The title of Father was in homage to Abraham, the Father of the Jewish nation. Hence the Father was sometimes also referred to as Abraham. As we saw in earlier articles, the great Rabbi Menahem was the Essenes‟ first symbolic Abraham. The setup today where the Pope is elected and also carries the title “Holy Father” was purloined from the Essene setup. Indeed, the term Pope is simply a corruption of “Papa”, meaning “Father”. In the event therefore, Caiaphas stepped down as the Father and John, who had a qualifying pedigree, was elected in his stead. The Essenes were exultant. “For 20 years we were like blind men groping for the way” they wrote in a Dead Sea Scroll dubbed the Damascus Document. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, John is referred to as the “Teacher of Righteousness”. The Essenes document that the Teacher of Righteousness appeared 20 years after the formation of the “Plant Root”. The “Plant Root” referred to Jesus, who in AD 6 was officially recognised as the Davidic heir when he turned 12 on the occasion of his Bar Mitzvah ceremony.

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As the titular Father, John the Baptist had the right to appoint two deputies. These went by the titles “Son” and “Spirit”. Accordingly, John decided to appoint his fellow dynastic cousin Jesus as Son. As for the Spirit, he opted for Jonathan Annas, the son of former national high priest Annas. In the gospels, Jonathan Annas is best-known as Nathaniel. The three were directly addressed as Holy Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit and they were deemed to operate in one accord, that is, as “one”. This is highly instructive. When we read the Bible and we come across references to “Father”, “Holy Spirit” or “Son”, our tendency as Christians has been to generalise these into one, across-the-board meaning. That is unfortunate. It is imperative that we look at the context and fathom whether “Father” in that situation meant “God in Heaven” or it meant something else. This is because there are times when the term “Father” or “God” actually refers to mere mortals, such as a sitting high priest, John the Baptist himself, or simply an Anunnaki god. By the same token, “Holy Spirit” at times referred to an Anunnaki god, Essene celibates, or Joseph, the father of Jesus, particularly in the nativity s as we demonstrated in earlier pieces. Then as today, words or titles meant different things in different contexts and junctures of history. THE BAPTIST ON PEDESTAL In the gospels, it is not clear-cut as to who was senior in messianic status between Jesus and John. There are ages that suggest Jesus was senior and there are those that exalt John above Jesus. It is only when you read between the lines and filter out the sectarian interpolations that you realise who was the more esteemed of the two. Christians of course take it as an article of faith that Jesus was the main man and John was a mere harbinger. It is to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were never tampered with for over 2000 years, we have to turn if we are to know the real truth. To the Essenes, John was senior to Jesus, just as his father Zechariah had been senior to Joseph, the father of Jesus. In a Dead Sea text titled the Testament of Levi and catalogued 4Q541, this is what the Essenes say of the messiah of Aaron: “He will atone for the sons of his generation and he will be sent to the sons of his people. His word is like a word of Heaven and his teaching is according to the will of God. His eternal sun will shine, and his fire will blaze in all the corners of the earth. Then darkness will disappear from the earth and deep darkness from the dry land.” Put simply, John was the “atoning” messiah as far as the Essenes were concerned, not Jesus as Christendom wrongly believes. In another Dead Sea scroll titled the Community Rule, the Essenes state that in a future, liberated Israel, the Priest messiah would preside over the “Messianic Banquet” with the King messiah as his “companion”. Clearly, this makes Jesus subordinate to John. There is also this apocryphal book titled The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs which dates from the 2nd century BC. In it, Judah himself (the fourth son of Jacob who was anointed by his father as progenitor of the dynastic kingly line) declares that, “For to me the Lord gave the kingship and to him (his brother Levi) the priesthood and he set the kingship under the priesthood”. This is the messianic paradigm the Essene followed and therefore rightfully had John take precedence over Jesus. In sum, two Jewish messiahs were expected by the children of Israel. They were the messiah of David, from the tribe of Judah, and the messiah of Aaron, from the tribe of Levi. The Davidic messiah was to be the king in a self-governing Israel and the Levitic messiah was to be the high priest. In the first century, the prospects in this regard were Jesus as the future king (with James his brother as a from-time-to-time contender) and John the Baptist as the future high priest. Although John did disown the Essene priesthood, he still valued the national priesthood as that was his birthright.

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Of the two young messiahs, it was Jesus who was junior and was therefore expected to defer to and follow the direction of John. Jesus meekly accepted this relationship without rancour. It explains why he was comfortable with being the “Son” to the “Father” that was John.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 31

CRACKS IN THE EDIFICE Factions Emerge In Messianic Movement

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eading the New Testament, it strikes one as crystal-clear that the first century was gripped with apocalyptic fever. The nation of Israel expected a seismic change both at the political and theological level. Paul, for instance, wrote that, “The appointed time has grown very short” (I CORINTHIANS 7:29). Simon Peter said, “The end of all things is at hand” (1 PETER 4:7). James the brother of Jesus declared, “The Judge is standing at the door” (JAMES 5:9). All these promulgations were based on the time table of Daniel‟s prophecy primarily. And the rallying figure who had set the pace was none other than John the Baptist. Having decided time was ripe to bring about a messianic awakening, John and Jesus now set to work in 26-27 AD. This was not an ordinary overlapping year: it was what in Hebrew is known as the Shemittah Year but commonly referred to as the Sabbatical Year. The Sabbatical Year was observed once every seven years, from one September to the next, and had been decreed to the nation of Israel by their Anunnaki god Enlil, called Jehovah or Yahweh in the Bible. In LEVITICUS 25:3-4, this is what Enlil had said: “For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce. But in the seventh year, the land shall have a complete rest, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field, you shall not prune your vineyard, nor shall you reap the aftergrowth of your harvest.” That is to say, in the Sabbatical Year, the Israelites had to desist from cultivating their land, allowing it to remain fallow. Enlil had also pronounced thus: “At the end of seven years you will make a release. And this is the manner of the release: to release the hand of every creditor from what he lent his friend; he shall not exact from his friend or his brother, because the time of the release for the Lord has arrived” (DEUTERONOMY 15:1-2). In the Sabbatical Year therefore, creditors were under obligation by godly fiat to waive for good all the debts owed to them by anybody and everybody: it didn‟t matter the magnitude of the sum. Besides giving the people an opportunity to put their faith in God and see it fulfilled, the year-long abstention from farming also allowed them to collectively take a breather and focus on higher, more spiritual pursuits. In the event, therefore, they had occasion to pack the synagogues and study halls. Since thousands of peasants and villagers whose normal life was tied to agricultural cycles were largely free from their normal work, John and Jesus saw this as the perfect opportunity to spark a religious renaissance among the masses. The prophet Zechariah had talked of “two sons of fresh oil” who he likened to two “olive branches” that stood before the Menorah, the seven-branched oil lamp that symbolised God‟s spirit and presence. Doubtless, Jesus and John saw themselves in this light. THE BAPTISM OF JOHN The method the two messiahs of Israel adopted to bring about the new apocalyptical awakening was baptism. This involved immersing somebody in water wholly or partially as symbolic of dying and being born anew. To most Christians, it‟s like baptism was invented by John. It was not. It dated back to ancient Egypt where as we saw at one stage Horus, a type of Jesus, was baptised by Anup, a type of John. In the Old Testament, we have one of the prophets asserting, “Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you” (EZEKIEL 36:25). 115

In the first century, the Jews conducted baptism of some sort though they did not refer to it as such: they called it ritual washing. The Jews were obsessed with both bodily and spiritual cleanness. If you had a nocturnal seminal discharge, was on menses, had drawn near a burial site or came into with a corpse or animal carcass, to mention but a few, you were unclean and so had to undergo a ritual bath within a stipulated period of time, typically seven days. Converts to Judaism, called proselytes, were also required to immerse themselves fully either in “living water” (river, stream, or spring water) or in a mikvah – a specially constructed bath directly connected to a natural source of water. This was baptism proper and it was called tevilah. Flavius Josephus, the iconic Jewish historian, also relates that the Essenes, the religious sect to which Jesus and John belonged, practiced immersion in water on a daily basis. People who were newly itted into their fold were also immersed in water as an initiatory ceremony, which explains why at the Qumran ruins have been found communal stepped pools. Before the initiate was baptised, he first of all had to declare and adopt a pious and repentant attitude towards God. To that effect, a text in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls says, “It is by humbling his soul (that is, an initiate's) to all God‟s statutes that his flesh can be cleansed by sprinkling with waters of purification and by sanctifying himself with waters of purity”. Baptism, thus, was an outward public testimony of a cleansing of the spirit so that one started on a clean slate in of his attitude toward God, what is called a remission of sins. Clearly then, John‟s baptism was not original but derived from customary Essene practice. Yet Baptism served another purpose in the case of John. It also marked a gesture of recruitment into the movement of John. John‟s movement was called “The Way”, one of the original names of the Essenes, and its were called people of The Way. Indeed, the people who would in future become known as Christians began as people of The Way. The Way was a new religious movement collectively begun by Jesus and John. It was not a splinter movement from Judaism or a radical departure from the tenets of Essenehood but was simply a new religious consciousness that alerted people to the imminence of the end times. Sadly, it was misinterpreted by the powers that be and for that John ended up paying for his life. What was the process of John‟s baptism like? Shimon Gibson, author of The Cave of John The Baptist, combined bits of information taken from the Old Testament, the works of Josephus, and the gospels to outline for us a scenario in the following words: “Crowds of people gathered by the Jordan River to listen to his teachings and exhortations … John then spoke to those gathered there, asking them to lead righteous and pious lives … Subsequently, the souls of the people gathered there were cleansed and there was a remission of sins …T his was performed with the sprinkling of some water … Only those who had completed this part of the procedure were then allowed to proceed to the next step … The people then immersed themselves in the river, dipping themselves seven times in the water in order to purify the flesh of their bodies from contamination. On emerging from the water, John would have called again on the divine name and asking for the Holy Spirit (the Shekinah) to descend upon the crowd. The ceremony may have ended with doves (symbolic of the special relationship between God and the Chosen People) being let loose from the cages.” JOHN OUTSHINES JESUS It was decided that the two messiahs conduct the revival in opposite geographical locations. John was to be based in the north, at the crossroads of the territories of Galilee, Perea, and the Decapolis, and Jesus in the south, into the countryside of Judea, that is, the Qumran area.

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Although it was John who gained fame as the “Baptiser”, it wasn‟t him alone who baptised. Jesus also baptized, although the gospels tried to downplay this aspect of his ministry by attributing the actual conduct of baptism to “his disciples” when at the time they were mounting the baptism campaign (that is, AD 26-27), Jesus had no disciples of his own. But John became the more renowned of the two for two reasons. First, he was the leader of the movement and movements are typically associated with their leader. Secondly, he was a gifted evangelist and bristled with authority. Josephus says he “commanded”, not appealed, to the Jewish masses to repent and lead righteous lives both towards each other and God. The Dead Sea Scrolls say he was gifted with an “eloquent tongue”. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, John is fondly referred to as the “Teacher of Righteousness”. On the occasion that he made a tour of duty down south, he attracted enormous throngs to his wilderness pulpit such was his ministerial prowess. The nation of Israel had never seen an evangelist of his fervour. SCHISMS EMERGE All groupings, whether they be political or religious, give rise to factional dynamics. The Essenes always had factions too but under the leadership of John the Baptist, the factional rivalry became intense and practically came to a breaking point. To begin with, there was the faction called the Hebrews on the one hand and the Hellenists on the other. The Hebrews were the faction John aligned himself with. Their other leading lights were Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple; Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great; Gamaliel, the greatest rabbi of the day who was also head of the Essene order of Benjamin; and James the brother of Jesus. It was this faction that would in future produce the fiery apostle Paul. When Paul said I was a “Hebrew of the Hebrews”, he did not mean he was a devout follower of Judaism as Christians wrongly infer: he meant he was a Jew who had belonged to the Essene faction called the Hebrews. It goes without saying that Paul was an Essene too, a member of the order (not “tribe” as wrongly translated in the Bible) of Benjamin. The Hebrews were the stricter of the two factions in of their moral standpoint and religious observance. They conducted their worship services in the Hebrew language and did not allow women to minister, a stance Paul would in future advocate. They also did not permit Gentiles to minister. Even more importantly, they did not recognise Jesus as the Davidic heir (owing to the questionable circumstances of his birth) but instead rallied to his brother James, who they had co-opted into their faction. Jesus naturally belonged to the Hellenist faction, a faction comprising of people who had steadfastly endorsed him as the Davidic messiah from the day he was born. The prominent of this faction were Theudas Barabbas; Jonathan Annas, better known as Nathaniel in the Bible; Simon Magus, who is best known as Simon the Zealot in the Bible; and the Essene orders of Ephraim and West Manasseh, who included the Magi and all of whom were Samaritans (hence the parable of the Good Samaritan). The Hellenists were more liberal and tolerant in their application of Judaism. They accepted women as equals and allowed both they and Gentiles to minister, an attitude we witness in the ministry of Jesus and the evangelism of the early church. All their worship services were conducted in Greek because it was a cosmopolitan language, the “English” of the day, as opposed to the restrictive Hebrew language. While the Hebrews were united in what they stood for, the Hellenists were divided. One sub-group, headed by Simon Magus, advocated the overthrow of the Roman occupiers by violent means. This group called itself the Figtree. Its other name was the "Lightning Party". The other sub-group, headed by Jonathan Annas, stood for ive resistance towards Rome, and not recourse to arms. This group called 117

itself the Vineyard. Its other name was the "Thunder Party". When Jesus “cursed the fig tree” for not bearing fruit, there was no tree involved at all: all he did was condemn the Figtree faction in the Hellenist group for adopting methods that were at cross-purposes with his pacifist ways of bringing about political change in Jerusalem.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 32

THE HORUS FACTOR The Baptism Of Jesus Was Fraught With Anunnaki Symbolism

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n AD 29, Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. The baptism was to remain a moot point for a long time to come.

For those who limit their inquiry into the Jesus story to the Bible only and who settle for the surface message of the scriptures, the implications of this baptism can be obscure. It is only when the gospels are read through the prism of the pesher device and relevant ages in some of the extra-biblical literature (including the so-called Apocrypha that were excluded from the New Testament canon) are taken into that one gets to the crux of the matter. The baptism of Jesus by John militated against Pauline Christianity, which projected Jesus as the equal of God and therefore incapable of sin. People were therefore understandably forced to ask: if Jesus was inerrant, why did he have to be baptised by John for the remission of sins when he had no sins to repent of? Furthermore, in the context of ancient Judaism, rabbis or teachers baptised their disciples: as such, Jesus‟s baptism by John suggested rather persuasively that he was subordinate to and was mentored by the latter. In the 40s AD, when the earlier versions of the gospels, as well some of the epistles of Paul, were written, both Jesus and John the Baptist were no longer on the scene but each had spawned his own movement and consequently his own following. Thus the Johannites maintained that John was the greater of the two and the Christians were adamant that John was beneath Jesus. One reason, if not the principal one, the gospel of John arose was an attempt to rebut the view that the Baptist was superior to Jesus. It explains why the writer of the Johannine gospel ensures that virtually every time he mentions the Baptist, he diminishes him relative to Jesus. In the gospel of John, the Baptist is made to deny that he was not the messiah, Elijah, or “the prophet” and to expressly it that Jesus was greater than he. Clearly, this is not history we‟re reading but political propagandism. A disinclination to unequivocally it to the “Lord‟s” baptism by John is more than apparent in all the four gospels. Mark makes a point of mentioning that Jesus may have been baptised by John all right but the Baptist made it clear Jesus was preeminent in the greater scheme of things. Matthew categorically states that John was reluctant to baptise Jesus and that it was at Jesus‟s insistence that John subjected him to the rite of immersion. Luke equivocates: the message he seems to put across is that Jesus was not directly baptised by John (he makes mention of Jesus‟s baptism only after John‟s imprisonment). In the gospel of John, the baptism of Jesus by John is not even mentioned at all although it is implied. Just what exactly transpired? THE ANUNNAKI CALL THE SHOTS First, let us recognise that the course of Jesus‟s life was not spontaneous: it was being driven by the Illuminati of the day practically every step of the way, just as they today chart the course of the world's affairs behind the scenes. These were the Anunnaki, the Old Testament gods who we now know were not gods at all but Aliens from another planet. Jesus was aware of their existence and their influence. The 119

apostle Paul too did come to know about them though by the time he did it was too late to turn back the clock and begin it all over again. Just as the Illuminati of our day are obsessed with the bloodline thing (that is, dynastic genetics), the Anunnaki also were sticklers for lines of descent. The ancestry of Jesus did not begin with Abraham: it began with Adapa (who is not the same as Adam but like the rest of the human race stemmed from Adam), the first civilised human being who was fathered by Enki, the step brother to Enlil, called Jehovah in the Bible. The line from Adapa all the way to Jesus and beyond was called the Sangreal. In English, this translates to “Holy Grail”. It was through the Sangreal that the Anunnaki had undertaken to indirectly rule the world. Although they were in two factions, the Enlilites, led by Jehovah, and the Enkites, led by Enki, they typically intermarried just to ensure they had equal claim to world rulership through the coned Sangreal line. Now, the Anunnaki have a cyclical as opposed to a linear way of conducting the affairs of Earth. They to a lesser or greater degree duplicate events between time periods. King Solomon was very much aware of this phenomenon and hence his assertion that, “There is nothing new under the sun. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again” (ECCLESIASTES 1:9). It is small wonder that when we read the history of “Saviour Sun Gods”, we find that the lives of Horus of Egypt, Krishna of India, and Jesus of Nazareth bear very striking parallels, a characteristic that has made modern-day historian naively dismiss such stories as the stuff of myth and legend. Of course not every aspect of Jesus‟s life as related in the gospels is historically authentic: there was a lot that was inserted to make the Jesus story more or less coincide with the Horus story. Such a scheme has been more than amply showcased by Gerald Massey in his book Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World. Massey has shown that two Johns were associated with Horus, the Egyptian Anunnaki god who was a great great grandson of Enki and who ruled Egypt for 300 years from the year 8683 BC. There was a John who baptised him and a John who wrote his story – the Two Witnesses. In the life of Jesus too is found two Johns: the John who baptised him and the John who wrote the book of Revelation, which unbeknown to most people is a continuation of the life of Jesus and his family. My brilliant friend LM Leteane, a columnist, author, and researcher, has convincingly demonstrated that the John who was officially commissioned to document the saga of Jesus was Stephen (Stab-Aan, meaning “one like John”) but after he was killed at the instigation of Paul, another John, the author of Revelation, stepped into the breach. Jesus was baptised in the river Jordan and Horus was baptised in the river Iarutana, which is the same name pronounced differently. The John who baptised Horus was killed by decapitation and John the Baptist also died in exactly the same fashion. The Bible, folks, has to be read with an informed mind. If you take it at face value, as most of the Christian clergy have, you will be under the impression that you are very knowledgeable about it when you actually know nothing! It is not seminary education or even a PhD in theology that will correctly illuminate you: it is your own quest for the real truth as institutional education, needless to say, is pure indoctrination for the most part. JESUS AS NEW HORUS According to the gospels, the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist was marked by two “supernatural” incidents. First, the “Holy Spirit” in the form of a dove descended on him. Second, a voice from overhead bellowed out, saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I‟m well pleased: listen to him”.

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My fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ will be disappointed to learn that nothing of the sort happened. This embellishment was interpolated into the gospel by redactors who were acting under the say-so of the Anunnaki. It was the Horus story being grafted onto the Jesus story: it all harps back to ancient Egypt. Once, in ancient Egypt was the trinity of Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit (which simply meant sage, guru, or elder statesman). These were Osiris, his son Horus, and his father Ra (Marduk) respectively – the Anunnaki, who were addressed as gods by Earthlings. This was the clan of Enki that ruled ancient Egypt for 12,300 years according to the Egyptian priest Manetho, who chronicled the history of Egypt in the 3rd century BC. How many Christians are aware that when they are baptised in the name of “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”, they are actually being baptised in the names of three Anunnaki gods? Now you will understand why throughout my more than 30 years as a Christian, I have stoutly refused to be baptised. Horus was born “miraculously” so to speak. His father Osiris had been killed by Set, his half-brother, in the jockeying for the rulership of the whole of Egypt, and his body cut into pieces and scattered or over the Egyptian wilds, then lushly forested. Osiris‟s wife Isis, however, managed to retrieve all the pieces except the most vital – the phallus, which she needed to extract sperm cells and produce a heir. Having failed to locate the phallus, Isis turned to her uncle Ningishizidda (Thoth). Ningishzidda, who like his father Enki was an all-knowing genius, produced sperm cells from the non-sexual cells of Osiris‟s remains using a process known as artificial meiosis (which in our day still resides in the realm of theory). Isis then inseminated herself with these fashioned male gametes and that was how Horus was born. The virgin birth attributed to Jesus in the surface narrative of the gospels partly derive from the Horus story. When Horus was baptised at age 30, the rite fundamentally marked three milestones. One of these was that he was now officially adopted by his grandfather Ra, the Holy Spirit, as his son (having been fatherless). When he emerged from the water, Ra, who was in attendance, formally acknowledged him as his “beloved son” just as the voice of God asserted in respect of Jesus. It was at this juncture that Horus adopted the symbol of a dove (indeed, Horus is in ancient depictions portrayed as a human with the head of a bird). This not only was the seal of approval by his new foster father Ra but it also denoted embodied wisdom. That‟s why the word translated “Holy Spirit” in the Bible actually means wisdom. We see, therefore, that the dove imagery as well as the “voice of God” at the river Jordan is not historical. The event does have some underlying fact but is strongly overlayed with Egyptian Anunnaki ritual ORDAINED AND PREPARED FOR TEMPTATION Besides marking his official adoption by his grandfather Ra, Horus‟s baptism had two other principal purposes. First, it ordained him as the chief minister of the god Ra. We see the same thing with Jesus for it is only after the baptism that the ministry of a now “spirit-filled” Jesus commences in earnest. It is only after the baptism that we encounter statements like, “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit” (LUKE 4:1/MATTHEW 4:1) and, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor: he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. To-day hath the scripture been fulfilled in your ears” (LUKE 4:18-19). Paraphrased, what all this serves to underscore is that Jesus was the new Horus whose mission had been commissioned by the Anunnaki, the Enkites in particular as opposed to the Enlilites. The other purpose of the baptism of Horus was to prepare him for a showdown with his arch-rival Set – the man (his uncle) who had murdered his father Osiris for the throne of Egypt. Set„s full name was SetEn, meaning "Prince Set" or “Lord Set”. Set-en is Satan in our day, a byword for “Devil”. This is exactly

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what we see in the Jesus story. MATTHEW 4:1, which comes just after the baptism says, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil”. All in all, the so-called supernatural events that took place at the River Jordan were not history: they were interpolations lifted from the factual saga of the Anunnaki gods of ancient Egypt. They were inserted purely as political statements. For God‟s sake, if God indeed volubly spoke at the baptism of Jesus, why did John later doubt Jesus when he was in prison, when he sent a message to Jesus wondering whether he was “the one to come or should we look for another?” (MATTHEW 11:3). Yet just as Jesus was the Horus and John was the Anup, the gospel times had their equivalent of Set, the Satan or the Devil. Again this was not a supernatural being but a flesh-and-blood being. His name was Judas Iscariot. It was Judas Iscariot who istered the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 33

THE 12 “DISCIPLES” They comprised of Jews, Gentiles, and Samaritans and were headed not by Simon Peter but by Simon the Zealot!

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lthough John had baptised Jesus, it was a grudging act. He did it because he had to: there were overriding, shadowy powers who forced his hand. For by the time he was baptising Jesus, in AD 29, the two messiahs barely saw eye to eye. The messianic movement had splintered into two, with one faction led by John the Baptist, called the Hebrews, and the other by Jesus, called the Hellenists. The split occurred because as we explained in an earlier article, John was rather old-school, dogmatic, and unbending. As far as John was concerned, Gentiles, women, and married men could not participate in ministerial roles as they lacked the sanctity to do so: only Levites were eligible. Jesus, on the other hand, wanted an all-inclusive faith that embraced all and sundry, that did not discriminate along lines of sex, race, or ethnicism. John seemed to toe the exclusivist Enlilite line, whereas Jesus sought to promote the inclusive Enkite line. John was a puritan; Jesus was a liberal. Since in the eyes of John Jesus had become a radical, he was not fit to partner him as the Davidic messiah. As a result, John decided to promote James, Jesus‟s immediate younger brother, as the Davidic messiah. Initially, James was reluctant to supplant his elder brother in this role but it was not only John who prevailed over him: the sitting high priest of the Jerusalem Temple, Caiaphas, as well as Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, also weighed in on this persuasion pitch. The stance taken by James caused a serious rift in the family of Jesus. After the death of Joseph in AD 23, Jesus as the firstborn had become the head of the family. Titular-wise, he had become the David. James had accordingly become the Joseph, the title of a Crown Prince (since at that stage Jesus was childless and therefore had no heir). Now that James was estranged from his senior brother, Jesus decided to designate his other brother, Joses (short for Joseph), as the Crown Prince. Joses came immediately after James in the nuclear family line-up. It was all a typical Anunnaki ploy, where they always make sure they drive a wedge between brothers, a stratagem that harped back to the rivalry between Horus and Set, Esau and Jacob, Cain and Abel, and Enlil and Enki. Theirs is divide and rule, for they know that under harmonious human relationships, they cannot attain to their goal of riding roughshod over us. JESUS CHOOSES 84 DISCIPLES According to the gospels, Jesus had a total of 84 disciples, that is, ministerial students. He first appointed 12, and subsequently 72 others (LUKE 10:1) he commissioned into crusading outreach. The word disciple, however, is correct only to a degree. The 12, the inner core, were more than disciples. They were actually a future Cabinet of a liberated Israel as the world‟s foremost geopolitical power. It was a shadow government, though in of legitimacy, it played second fiddle to that of John the Baptist, who was recognised as the official head of the Essene community as a whole (the Jesus faction was a kind of opposition party to the John faction). Of the 12, not all were Jews: some were Gentiles and others were Samaritans. 123

Simon Peter is obviously the most famous of the 12. In the Bible, he is presented as the seniormost disciple and is invariably listed first. The reason he enjoys such preeminence is fundamentally because he was the most instrumental in the founding of the church in Rome. It explains why Catholics hail him as the first Pope, though this is in a de facto sense rather than factually so as the first pope was actually Prince Linus of Britain (in office c. 67 to c. 76 AD and mentioned in 2 TIMOTHY 4:21). The gospels were over time subjected to selective editing and embroidery and in the process Simon Peter was retrospectively exalted to a status he did not deserve. Luke also had a great deal to do with this accentuation of Peter in that in the book of Acts, he deliberately promoted him at the expense of James, the brother of Jesus, who was a rival to Paul, Luke‟s principal. At the time Jesus was ministering though, Peter was nowhere near the top brass in the apostolic band. The seniormost among the 12 was Simon Magus, listed on the apostolic roll as Simon Zealotes (i.e. the Zealot) or Simon the Canaanite. In the gospels, the older of seniority of the disciples is listed in reverse order: the top dogs appear last, whilst the minnows, to which Simon Peter belonged, appear first. One explanation for this has been outlined above – to deliberately put Simon Peter on a pedestal for the pioneer role he played in the establishment of the Roman church. Another, equally important reason was to blindfold the Roman authorities. The likes of Simon Peter, Andrew, John (the Son of Zebedee) and James (another Son of Zebedee) were simple people who were practically anonymous: they were ordinary village Essenes who held no visible sectoral office. On the other hand, the likes of Simon Zealotes and Judas Iscariot were the embodiment of the freedom struggle: they were at the head – clandestinely so – of the Zealot movement. It was therefore strategic that their profile be toned down so the Roman vigilantes focused on the more innocuous people. Thus by rearranging the names of the 12 as they did, the Gospel writers diverted Roman attention from those apostles in the very forefront of public life. It was all politics at play here and not religion. In truth, therefore, the leading and most influential of the counsel of 12 were Simon Zealotes; Nathaniel; Judas Iscariot; Thaddeus; Matthew; and Thomas more or less in that order. Rather than being literal disciples of Jesus, these six were his associates. It is they we will discuss first. THE TOP THREE Had the gospel writers been non-partisan and objective chroniclers, Simon Zealotes would have enjoyed a prominence only second to Jesus. In extra-biblical literature, more is written about him than even Jesus. To begin with, he was the closest associate of Jesus, his father-in-law and his most ardent er. Simon Zelotes was the foster father of Mary Magadalene, Jesus‟s wife. He was one of “the disciple Jesus loved” that we frequently encounter in the gospel of John. The Lazarus who was “raised from the dead” was actually Simon Zealotes. Jesus‟s affinity for Simon Zelotes was one reason he ended up at Calvary as we shall demonstrate when we dwell on the crucifixion. Simon Zealotes was not a Jew but a Samaritan, the head of the Magians of West Mannaseh, the group that was the first to recognise Jesus as the Davidic messiah at his birth. As the leading astrologer and medicine man of his day, Simon was vilified by his enemies as a “magician”, the reason he was commonly known as Simon Magus. In later days, he became an arch-rival of both Simon Peter and the apostle Paul and for that his character was unduly blackened. He was labelled as the “Anti-Christ”, or “Anti-Pope”. Yet it was he who even more than Paul consistently and steadfastly championed the co-option of Gentiles into Judaism. Although he was an extremist who advocated war against the Romans as the only way of driving them away, his belligerent instincts were for the most part checked by the pacifist that was Jesus. In the gospels, Simon Zealotes is sometimes referred to as Simon the Canaanite, the latter of which is a mistranslation of the

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Hebrew word qana, which means “one who is zealous”, that is, a Zealot. He also went by the name Zebedee, meaning “My Gift”. In the 12-man apostolate, there were two sub-factions as we noted at one stage. There was a faction that was for war against Rome and the faction that was for peaceful engagement with Rome. Simon Zealotes headed the war faction also called the “Lightning Party”, whereas Nathaniel headed the peace faction, also called the “Thunder Party”. Thus Simon Zealotes and Nathaniel were mini-adversaries in the apostolic band. Nathaniel‟s real name was Jonathan Annas. He was the second-born son of Annas, who had been high priest of the Jerusalem temple from 6 to 15 AD and who according to the gospels partpresided over the trial of Jesus. Before the messianic movement split, Nathaniel had been third after John the Baptist (the Father/Pope or the Abraham) and Jesus (the Son or the Isaac). Nathaniel was the Holy Spirit or the Jacob/James. Thus in the gospel, he is at times listed as James son of Alpheus. “Son of Alpheus” was a title meaning “he of the succession”, or simply “deputy”. This referred to his being next in line to the position of Pope (Jesus was not eligible for the position of Pope as he was a kingly heir). Judas Iscariot is arguably the most despicable villain of history. Dante, the iconic Italian poet and caricaturist, not only designates him as the first sinner but places him right at the centre of Hell, ingested head-first by a horned and winged Devil. Until the crucifixion, however, Judas was a man of highstanding and high-esteem. First, he was the undercover commander of the Zealots, having succeeded Judas of Galilee who was killed in the abortive uprising against direct Roman rule of Judea in AD 6. As a mathematically erudite man, he was entrusted Essene treasury. This was a very senior position, considering that at the Jerusalem temple, the temple treasurer was only second in seniority to the high priest. Certainly, had the Romans been ejected from power in the time of Jesus and a Jewish government established in its place, Judas would have become the nation‟s Chancellor of the Exchequer although he aimed higher than that as we shall soon demonstrate. After the death of John the Baptist but before the crucifixion, Judas occupied the position of the second-highest ranking member of the 12 after Simon Zealotes, hence his other title as “Son of Simon” as per the gospel of John, “son of” simply meaning “deputy”. Furthermore, Judas was the Chief Scribe, or lead script writer, which suggests he was a skilled writer. The Dead Sea Scrolls were produced under his direct oversight alongside Judas of Galilee. His surname Iscariot could mean two things. In one sense, it could have been “Sikariotes”, Greek for “dagger man”, that is, a Zealot trained in assassinations. In another vein, it could have been a posthumous nickname derived from the Hebrew word “Sikkarti”, which meant “to deliver up”, in this case “delivery“ suggesting the betrayal of Jesus to the Jewish establishment. THE SECOND TIER Theudas, alternatively rendered Thaddeus, is the disciple who also appears on the gospel lists under the name Judas (not Iscariot), a variant of the same name. His other name was Lebbaeus. But Christians are not aware that Theudas was actually the Barabbas who featured in the trial of Jesus. He was the oldest of the 12, having been a contemporary of Jesus‟s father Joseph. Not only was he a Zealot but he had been head of the Theraputae since 9 BC. Although he was in the Jesus faction, he was closer to James, Jesus‟s brother (who was in the John faction), than he was to Jesus. His tile of Barabbas, meaning “Son of the Father” (that is, “Deputy of the Father”), derived from the fact that he later became Nathaniel‟s deputy when Nathaniel became Pope following the demotion of Simon Zealotes. His characterisation as “Judas of James” on the list of disciples attests to this. , Nathaniel‟s other title was “The Jacob”, Jacob being the same name as James.

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Matthew was the immediate younger brother of Nathaniel and was the most humane and pro-Christian of the Annas dynasty. It was Matthew who sponsored the gospel of Matthew whilst he was high priest of the Jerusalem temple from AD 42-43. At some stage, Nathaniel became the chief priest (not the same as high priest) in the Essene hierarchy. The holder of this position went by the nominal title “Levi”. After the death of Nathaniel in AD 57, Matthew succeeded him as the Levi, which explains why Luke and Mark refer to him as Levi rather than Matthew. Earlier in the 20s and 30s AD, Matthew was a publican, that is, a tax official who was responsible for collecting taxes from Diaspora Jews for the Essene treasury. Of all the disciples, Thomas had the noblest pedigree although he was to develop a mocking cognomen as “Doubting Thomas”. His real name was Crown Prince Philip I. As a youngster though, he was known as Herod II. He was the son of King Herod the Great (37 to 4 BC) by his wife Marriamne II. Then when Marriamne II was sent packing after being implicated in a poison plot against the King, young Phillip was disinherited, whereupon his half-brother Herod Antipas was named heir. Because of the ignominy of his forfeiture of the inheritance, Phillip I was given the nickname Esau, who lost his birthright to his younger brother Jacob, and was therefore derisively called “Teoma” (Thomas in English), which is Aramaic for “twin”. In Greek, the word for twin is “Didymus”. Thus Thomas Didymus (“Twin Twin”), as he is sometimes referred to, is tautologous. In the Jesus faction, Thomas was also a twin to Jesus figuratively speaking because only the two of them were of royal descent. Indeed, some petty, early historians mistook this hilarious characterisation of the two to band about the bunkum that Jesus and Thomas were biological twins.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 34

JESUS SNUBS JUDAS The two were vying for the same position and Jesus’s stance drove a wedge between them imon Peter is today the most famous of Jesus‟s disciples. As an apostle, he is overall only second to Paul in prominence. Yet in Jesus‟s day, he did not enjoy the prestige he does today. Peter was impetuous, with a combustible temperament. Even later in the noon of his life when he was the prime mover in the founding of the church of Rome, his methods were crude and unorthodox, an echo of the exact manner in which he related to Jesus. In the Josephus corpus, where he is referred to as Simon Bar Giora, his bare-knuckle ecclesiastical approach is well-documented.

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Peter easily picked up quarrels with his boss, Jesus, and hated women who were frequently in Jesus‟s entourage – such as Mary Magdalene, for instance – like the plague. In the apocryphal Gospel of Phillip, he is quoted as saying, “Women are not worthy of life”. Yet for all his eccentricities, a tender and long-suffering Jesus loved and prized him essentially for three reasons. First, he was resolute, a go-getter. Second, he was very dedicated to Jesus and was a great crusader. He was a riveting, if propagandistic public speaker. Third, and perhaps most importantly, he was Jesus‟s chief bodyguard. His major weaknesses other than those cited above was that he was fickle, operated on a very short fuse, and could be curt and confrontational. As Jesus‟s principal minder, he was always armed as even the gospels indicate. His generally uncouth behavior stemmed from his being, like his brother Andrew, a uneducated simple villager. Like Judas Iscariot, Simon Zealotes, and Theudas Barabbas, Simon Peter was a Zealot. We know this both from his affinity for arms (the sword) and his very name. He was sometimes hilariously referred to as Simon Bar-Jona (MATTHEW 16:17), wrongly translated in the doctored modern versions of the New Testament as “Simon son of John”. Bar-Jona, however, derives from the Aramaic word “Baryona”, meaning “outlaw” or “terrorist”. Zealots were referred to as terrorists by the Romans as well as peaceloving Jews. The gospels seem to suggest that Jesus designated Simon Peter as the bedrock of his church, the reason he gave him a new surname “Peter” or “Cephas”, both of which mean “rock”. Whilst it is true that Jesus did proclaim Peter as his evangelical heir, the name Peter could have been conferred on the basis of his tough-man demeanour (a “Rocky” in today‟s language) or his being Jesus‟s metaphorical rock, that is, his main protector as bodyguard. Simon Peter and Andrew were originally disciples of John the Baptist. After Jesus‟s split from the Baptist, Jesus lured them to him particularly that they were compulsive evangelists. Andrew for one may not have been as rousing a public figure as Peter but he was a dynamic soul-winner. He was always bringing people to Jesus to meet him on a one-on-one basis.

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THE SONS OF “THUNDER” Like Andrew and Peter, James and John were brothers and the youngest of the 12. They were Hebraised Romans, having been born as illegitimate kids to Julia, Caesar Augustus‟s only natural daughter, and brought up in Judea. The names John and James may have been original or assigned names. Their Jewish names were Aquila (John) and Niceta (James). The Aquila you read about in Acts, whose wife was Priscilla, was actually John. Of the two factions in the Jesus party, John and James initially were loyal to the “Lightning” faction, the one headed by Simon Zealotes. This was because they were his adopted sons, having been sold to his mistress Helena-Salome by Julia through a middle man slave trader when they were young. Simon Zealotes also went by the name Zebedee, meaning “My Gift”. Hence, James and John were alternatively addressed as the “Sons of Zebedee”. Later, when Jonathan Annas (Nathaniel) became the Father (that is, the chief Essene priest) after the demotion of Simon Zealotes, James and John switched their allegiance to him. Nathaniel was the leader of the “Thunder” faction in the Jesus party and so James and John accordingly became the “Sons of Thunder” after Nathaniel designated them as his spiritual sons.. Curiously, James and John were senior to Peter and Andrew when it came to baptismal roles despite their being Gentiles. James and John were ordained “fishers”, whereas Peter and Andrew were lay “fishermen”. These do not carry the meaning popularly attributed to them – that of people whose trade was catching literal fish. It was all imagery, part of the Essene‟s secret jargon. “Fish" was a term for celibate Gentiles, who when they were being baptised had to be hauled up in large nets onto a boat stationed on the Dead Sea not far from the shore. The “Fishers” were the priests who conducted the baptism, a class to which John and James belonged, and the “Fishermen“ (a category in which Peter and Andrew fell) were those who aided the baptismal candidates into the boat. When Jesus told Andrew and Peter upon “poaching” them from John the Baptist that “Follow me and I‟ll make you fishers of men”, all he simply meant was that he would in due course promote them to baptismal priests. Peter, Andrew, James, and John constituted the quartet who accompanied Jesus on evangelical missions much of the time as being without executive duties like the sort the Top 6 we talked about last time had, they had plenteous time to spare. Noting that Jesus seemed to gravitate more to Peter and Andrew, Helena-Salome, the step mother of John and James, at one time set out to promote them to Jesus as his two left and right-hand pillars in a liberated Kingdom of Israel (Helena-Salome also took of the fact that she was Jesus‟s mother-in-law, being the mother to Mary Magdalene). Jesus‟s response was that that recommendation had to come from the “Father” of the day, who at the time was Nathaniel. BERT AND PHIL The two leading Gentiles in the Jesus party were Bartholomew and Phillip. According to the secular Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, Bartholomew‟s real name was Eutychus, a name by which he appears in certain ages in the gospels. As an evangelist, however, he was known as John Marcus. It was he who sponsored the gospel according to Mark. He was very close to Simon Peter and in due course became his evangelical deputy, and not his “disciple” as some historians wrongly document. In his first epistle, Simon Peter refers to John Marcus as “my son” (1 PETER 5:13). As we have already pointed out, “son” often meant “deputy” or “would-be successor”. John Marcus was also useful in Paul‟s ministry (2 TIMOTHY 4:11) although initially the two had a tumultuous relationship. His nickname of Bartholomew (meaning “servant of Ptolemy”) derived from the fact that he was attached to the influential Egyptian Theraputae at Qumran. Ptolemy was a Greek general who took over Egypt following the death of Alexander the Great.

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Phillip was one of Jesus‟s favourite disciples and a keen evangelist. In the Jesus party, he belonged to the Thunder faction and was very close to Nathaniel as a result. So what characteristics do we see about the 12 principal assistants of Jesus Christ? They were a mixed bunch. They comprised of Zealots (Judas Iscariot, Simon Magus, Theudas Barabbas, and Simon Peter); aristocrats (Nathaniel, Matthew, and Thomas); Gentiles (James, John, Phillip, and Mark); intellectuals (Judas Iscariot, Simon Zelotes, Theudas Barabbas, Thomas, James, John, and Mark); simple village men (Simon Peter and Andrew); and Samaritans (Simon Magus and Theudas Barabbas). The senior six, headed by Simon Zealotes, were Jesus‟s associates, whereas the junior six, headed by Simon Peter, were his disciples (ministerial students) proper. JUDAS COURTS JESUS Now that Jesus had been baptised by John the Baptist (that is, commissioned into service as a public ministry rabbi), it was decided that he be initiated into deeper Essene secrets. The most sacred Essene secret was that of Gnosis. Gnosis was not availed to everybody just because they were Essenes: it was imparted only to a select few, those in the higher echelons. Gnosis is the term from which the English word knowledge is derived. But Gnosis was not simply ordinary knowledge or any kind of knowledge for that matter: it was knowledge about metaphysics and the spirit world, also called the Kingdom of God. Gnosis taught that not only was man primarily spirit but he was also a god in that his spirit was a fragment from the very essence of the real God. Thus even when he was in this physical world, man was capable of visiting the spirit world, a phenomenon known as astral projection. The spirit world could be accessed through the Third Eye, also known as the Eye of the Needle. This is the 6th chakra, located behind the forehead between the physical eyes. People who do not know the importance of the 6th Chakra “perish for lack of knowledge” (HOSEA 4:6), that is, lack of Gnosis primarily. The person who was to initiate Jesus into Gnosis was Judas Iscariot, who was the authority on the subject along with Simon Zealotes. The familiar image of Judas is that of the very scum of the Earth but in his time, he was a very highly regarded and respected figure. Judas was the Essenes‟ chief scribe by virtue of his encyclopaedic knowledge. Initiates into Gnosis were subjected to intensive instruction at Qumran (referred to as the “wilderness” in the gospels) after which a rigorous test was istered to them by Judas. It was something akin to a test one is subjected to when defending a thesis or dissertation but before a one-man . Since Judas conducted these tests, he was called the Satan. The word Satan had several meanings. Depending on the context, it could mean acc (one example of which was when Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Get behind me Satan” [MATTHEW 16:23]); adversary; what we today call a devil‟s advocate – that is, somebody whose duty is to broach the worst scenarios possible as food for strategic thought; a generic term for Zealots, who were also sometimes referred to as demons or devils; or “lie detector”. The latter was in fact the original meaning of the style Satan (Set-En, meaning “Truth Lord”, a role played by Enki‟s great grandson Set after he defected from the Enkite clan and ed the Enlilite clan. Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible, assigned him to test those who were changing loyalties from the Enkite faction to the Enlite faction so as to ensure they were not undercover agents of the Enkites.)

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Judas was called Satan because his role was akin to that of a Truth Lord, to test initiates into Gnosis with a view to ensure they were well-grounded in it and also that they would not be susceptible to betraying the secrets they had been taught. According to the gospels, the instruction took 40 days but that is just a symbolic number: it in all probability took longer than that and entailed abstinence from eating at certain intervals as fasting focuses the mind on meditation. When testing Jesus, however, Judas decided to make political capital out of this closed-door opportunity. Although he was tipped to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in an independent Israel as well as a Jewishruled world empire, Judas wasn‟t content with such a position as it was effectively No. 3. He wanted the position of High Priest. In AD 29, the de facto Essene High Priest, a dynastic position, was John the Baptist and was tipped to be the universal High Priest in an independent Israel. But signs were that very soon the Baptist would be toppled and the three front runners for his position were Simon Zealotes, Nathaniel, and Judas himself, considering that the Baptist had no heirs. Since Jesus was the future King of Israel and global emperor and therefore carried enormous clout potentially, Judas decided to elicit from him mutually beneficial favours. First, he asked for endorsement for the position of Essene High Priest, that is, that of “Arch-Angel Michael”. Judas would in return elevate Jesus from his present position as the “Sariel”, which was 3rd, to that of “Moses”, also called “Angel Gabriel”, which was 2nd. Second, Judas promised to appoint Jesus as the “Son” if Jesus ed him as Pope once the Baptist was ousted. Jesus had been the Son (the deputy to the Father/Pope that was the Baptist) but John the Baptist had given that position to James, his younger brother, after the split. Finally, Judas said he would rally behind Jesus as the King of Israel and emperor of the world at the expense of James, who now was a contender, if Jesus in turn ed him for the position of national High Priest. This effectively would make Jesus Judas‟s No.2, just as the Iranian President is subordinate to the Ayatollah, the spiritual leader of the entire nation. . Jesus politely turned down all the three propositions by Judas. First, Nathaniel was the rightful linear successor to the Baptist as Pope (an elective position). Second, Judas did not qualify to be the Essene High Priest or national High Priest as he was not a descendant of Aaron although he was a Levite. Thirdly and most importantly, Jesus himself was aiming at combining the positions of High Priest and King as he was both a descendant of David (from his father‟s side) and a descendant of Aaron (from his mother‟s side). Judas was wroth. From that point onwards, he nurtured a deep-seated bitterness towards Jesus that largely ed for the infamous betrayal four years later. The exchanges between the two are recorded in the sections of the synoptic gospels commonly referred to as the Temptation (MATTHEW 4:1-11; MARK 1:12-13; and LUKE 4:1-13). The exact nature of the conversation is encrypted and can only be deciphered using the pesher device courtesy of its discoverer, the Australian theologian Barbara Theiring who studied the Dead Sea Scrolls for 18 years.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 35

CURTAINS FOR JOHN The Baptist Is Beheaded At The Instigation Of A Jesus “Disciple”

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eading the New Testament, the surface impression one gets is that the most influential Jewish sects in first century Palestine were the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Scribes, the Sadducees taking primacy because they were aristocrats and dominated the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council. Indeed, the incumbent high priest of the Jerusalem temple, Joseph Caiaphas, was a Sadducee. The truth of the matter, however, is that the most influential and popular sect was none of the above but the Essenes. It was the Essenes among whom the kingly messiah, Jesus, and the priestly messiah, John the Baptist, belonged. And in private, all the major political players of the day – Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa, and Joseph Caiaphas himself were Essenes although this was only in a nominal sense and not in a philosophical sense. Essene hip lent legitimacy to high-profile public office: no single holder of such office felt secure if he was neither a member nor an of the Essene sect. Note that the Essenes were found throughout Palestine although their main base was the Judean wilderness. Yet the problem with the Essenes was that they had two centres of power as of AD 29. There was a governing council headed by John the Baptist and a shadow governing council headed by Jesus. There were two bulls in the same kraal. Whereas John‟s father Zechariah and Jesus‟s father Joseph had gotten along so well as the dynastic nobles, their sons were adversarial thanks to John‟s intransigency and his uncompromising stance. Clearly, one of the two factional heads had to give. Sadly, it was John who was forced to. Now, whilst John was his party‟s unequivocal head, Jesus wasn‟t. Jesus was simply a honorary leader by virtual of his being the Davidic heir. , the highest ranking Essene was not the Davidic heir; it was the Zadok, a descendant of Aaron. John the Baptist, however, had decided to forego the dynastic Zadokite position and instead opted for the elective one, that of Pope, or Father of the community. What that meant was that one of his appointed deputies, called the Holy Spirit, who was No. 3 in the hierarchy, was his electable successor. His No. 2, the Son (the Davidic messiah), was not eligible for position of Pope just as Joseph was not eligible for the Zadokite position. A Davidic heir could not be Father. After the split, John the Baptist had relieved Jesus and appointed James, his younger brother, as the Son. But he had not appointed somebody else to replace Nathaniel (Jonathan Annas), who now belonged to the Jesus faction, as the Holy Spirit. In the event, therefore, Nathaniel still held the status of Holy Spirit. The reason John had not demoted him was most likely because he came from the influential Annas family, who were represented in the John faction by Joseph Caiaphas, a brother-in-law of Nathaniel. John‟s hand must have been stayed by politics. It was Nathaniel who was the effective head of the Jesus party. Jesus was to his party what the Queen is to England, whereas Nathaniel was to the party what David Cameron is in British politics.

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BAPTIST STEPS ON HEROD’S SHOES In AD 26, John the Baptist had postulated that Palestine would be self-governing by AD 30, a development that was referred to as the Restoration. Since this prophecy was not fulfilled, his detractors made an issue out of it largely for political expediency and particularly that he boasted, according to his own words as recorded in a Dead Sea Scroll titled Hymns of Thanksgiving, that he was a “discerning interpreter of wonderful mysteries”. The unavailing prophecy was the excuse the Jesus party used to break away from him and form a rival party in AD 29. As such, John‟s position as Pope practically teetered on the brink. In order to give him enough rope to hang himself, the Jesus party gave John one more year, from April 30 AD to end of March 31 AD for his prophecy to possibly bear out (he had said Heaven would intervene miraculously to liberate Palestine from the Roman yoke). But the Baptist had already effectively lost his sway at Qumran and Nathaniel was already being hailed as the de facto Pope, with his coronation being not a matter of “if” but “when”. The Baptist was still wildly popular with the grassroots and the fundamentalist Essenes: it was with the political Essenes, who he derided as “seekers-after-smooththings”, that he fell out. John knew knives were already out for him so he decided to hit back both viscerally and justifiably. As far as he was concerned, the instigator of the upsurge of feeling against him was Herod Antipas, the tetrarch (quarter king) of Galilee and Perea, who had substantial influence in the Jesus party as he was its virtual patron just as Herod Agrippa, his young nephew, was the virtual patron of John‟s party. It was Antipas that John targeted in his counter-attack. Sometime between the years 24 and 28 AD (the exact date is not known for certain), Antipas married Herodias, his niece and sister to Agrippa. This marriage was problematic in a number of ways. First, it was an elopement as Herodias was already married to her other uncle. This was Thomas, a half-brother to Antipas and a member of the so-called 12 disciples of Jesus (Thomas‟s official name was Prince Herod Phillip I and most historians have therefore confused him with another Phillip [Herod Philip II], who at the time was ruler of Iturea and Trachonitis). Thomas even already had a daughter with Herodias, whose name was Salome. Herodias‟s marriage to Antipas therefore amounted to polyandry – a situation where a woman gets married to two men, the reverse of polygamy. Secondly, the marriage was not only morally reprehensible but it went against the Law of Moses. LEVITICUS 18:6 said, "Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife, for this would violate your brother”. The penalty for such a transgression was death. Thirdly, the marriage went against the wishes of Herod the Great, the deceased father of Thomas and Antipas. When she was young, Herodias had been promised in marriage to Thomas by King Herod. Fancying himself as the new Elijah, who had rebuked the King and Queen of Israel – Ahab and Jezebel – to their face, John made a vocation of vitriolically condemning the unlawful marriage. Ostensibly for that purpose, he even stationed himself in eastern Galilee, Herod Antipas‟s domain, though he was strategic enough to base himself at the border with the Decapolis so that he could easily escape across the Jordan River if Antipas decided to go after him. This attitude did not help John but only served to mark him out as the tetrarch‟s enemy No. 1. Meanwhile, in the Hymns of Thanksgiving, the unflappable and headstrong Baptist, who is referred to in the Dead Sea Scrolls as the Teacher of Righteousness amongst other titles, made the following remonstrative entries as a dare to the people ganging up against him: “I have been a snare to those who rebel but healing to those of them who repent ... To traitors, thou has made of me a mockery and scorn

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but a counsel of truth and understanding to the upright of way. I have been iniquity to the wicked … but to the elect of righteousness Thou hast made me a banner …” No prize to guess who the Baptist meant by “rebels”, “traitors”, and “the wicked”. BAPTIST BEHIND BARS In March AD 31, John the Baptist was finally nabbed at the orders of Herod Antipas. The legendary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus relates that he was imprisoned without trial at Machaerus, a fortified castle located at the southern borders of Perea. Machaerus was not a prison: it was a hilltop palace belonging to Antipas. That Antipas had John detained there signalled two things. First, he did hold the Baptist in high esteem notwithstanding his vitriol against him. John was the most esteemed figure by mainstream Jewry at the time and thus the circumstances of his incarceration had to reflect his stature. Prison for him simply meant lack of freedom: his actual circumstances were equivalent to that of Nelson Mandela at Victor Vester Prison, which amounted to three or four-star treatment. John was allowed visitors and continued to write texts for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Second, Antipas feared that john‟s detention might precipitate a rescue attempt by the Zealots although this was most unlikely given that the three Zealot top-brass – Judas Iscariot, Simon Zealotes, and Theudas Barabbas – all belonged to the Jesus party, of which Antipas was a patron. To ensure that the rescue attempt was practically a non-starter, Antipas circumscribed John at the most secure location in the entire country. With the imprisonment of John, Nathaniel officially became the acting Pope. The top three Essenes were now Nathaniel as the Father; Jesus as the Son; and Simon Zealotes as the Holy Spirit. What were Jesus‟s feelings about the imprisonment of his great cousin? They are recorded in MATTHEW 11, where Jesus sounds very distraught and acknowledges John as the greatest man who ever lived. Jesus also pronounces “woes” against four cities, which was a code for people in his party who had something to do with the fate of his cousin. As a naturally good-hearted being, he sorrowed for the Baptist but as we have already demonstrated, he did not exercise much sway in his own movement being only a ceremonial leader. The wielders of real power were the likes of Nathaniel, Simon Zealotes, and Judas Iscariot, all of whom were anti- the Baptist. Yet to the Baptist‟s loyalists, it was Jesus who was responsible for the fate of their leader. The scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to Jesus as the “Wicked Priest”. Jesus did certainly root for the position of Essene High Priest (so that he could have real authority as opposed to the nominal authority he presently had) following the incarceration of the Baptist though vainly so. The scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls had even before John‟s imprisonment accused Jesus of “working with the men of Ephraim and Manasseh (Simon Zealotes and Theudas Barabbas) who shall seek to lay hands on the Priest (the Baptist) and the men of his council at the time of trial which shall come upon them”. Meanwhile, whilst in detention, John the Baptist wrote the following psalm as recorded in a Dead Sea text: “I seek Thee (God) and sure as the dawn. Thou appear as perfect Light to me. Teachers of lies (the Jesus Party) have smoothed Thy people with words and false prophets (the Jesus Party) have led them astray. They perish without understanding for their works are folly. For I am despised by them and they have no esteem for me that Thou mayest manifest Thy might through me. They have banished me from my land like a bird from its trees. All my friends and brethren are driven far from me and hold me for a broken vessel.”

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It is clear from the above psalm that the Baptist had hope in the midst of his travails. Sadly, his fate was already sealed and partly of his own making. BAPTIST IS NO MORE In September AD 31, John was killed by beheading, after only six months in prison. We know he was killed in that year because one of the Dead Sea Scrolls speaks of a period of 40 years that elapsed between the death of the “Teacher of Righteousness” and the “end of the heretics”. This was anticipated by the puritan Essenes, who were unflinchingly loyal to John, at around AD 70. AD 70 was the year Jerusalem was stormed and razed to the ground by Roman general Flavius Titus. The Baptist was not killed in the barbaric manner most Christians have come to believe – his head delivered on a silver platter to a loathing queen – but he certainly was terminated by decapitation. To those of us of our day who are accustomed to seeing the Jihadi Johns of this world fiendishly brandishing the head of an executed hostage, beheading may appear like a most gruesome way of extinguishing somebody‟s life. In Jesus‟s day, beheading was the most dignified procedure of execution available that could have been chosen for John. It was an easier way to die than to be hanged, drawn and quartered; garotted; impaled; flayed or burnt alive; torn limb from limb; crucified; or stoned to death. Of these methods of execution in fact, stoning was the most preferred method practiced by Jews in the first century and earlier. That Herod Antipas consented to dispatch John by way of decapitation was a attestation of the esteem in which he held him. Antipas did not intend to kill John: he did so only after being craftily coaxed. Indeed, John‟s death continued to haunt him for the rest of his life. The gospels depict him as a person wracked with grief and guilt over John‟s demise (MATTHEW 14: 9/MARK 6:26). According to some extra-biblical records, he was prepared to release John if he retracted what he had said about him and promised never to repeat it. In all fairness, John‟s obsessive diatribe against the tetrarch amounted to sedition: it was like calling for the death of a monarch since the penalty for the kind of marriage Antipas had entered into with Herodias was death according to the Law of Moses. True to form, however, the Baptist was adamant: he made it clear he stood by what he said and would never desist from saying the same thing again. John‟s greatest weakness was an implacably stubborn will. If Antipas was cajoled into killing John, who schemed it all and who was the instrument of the plot? Well, it was not the tetrarch‟s wife Herodias and his step daughter Salome as the surface narrative of the gospels suggest. It was a disciple of Jesus. Exactly who it was we reveal next week.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 36

THE JOHN CONSPIRACY Was Jesus Among The Cabal That Plotted The Death Of The Baptist?

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hy did Herod Antipas have John the Baptist killed? There are two versions on the subject. One is found in the gospels and the other in the works of Josephus. The Josephus is recorded in The Jewish Antiquities as follows in part:

“Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise) thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late.” The gospel version goes as follows: 17 “

For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip‟s wife, whom he had married. 18 For John had been saying to Herod, „It is not lawful for you to have your brother‟s wife.‟19 So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, 20 because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him. 21 Finally, the opportune time came. On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. 22 When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. The king said to the girl, „Ask me for anything you want, and I‟ll give it to you. 23 And he promised her with an oath, „Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.‟24 She went out and said to her mother, „What shall I ask for?‟ „The head of John the Baptist,‟ she answered. 25 At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: „I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.‟ 26 The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27 So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John‟s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, 28 and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother” (MARK 6:17-28. Same event related in MATTHEW 14:1-12). From the above s, we see that whereas Josephus attributes the Baptist‟s death to power politics, the gospels attribute it to a scheming queen. Which of the two versions is true? WHERE GOSPELS GOSSIPY? Let us begin with the gospel version. Although it does have a core of truth, it contains aspects that smack of naivety. Why it comes across as such we shall explain shortly. The central villain in the gospel version is Herodias, along with her unnamed daughter. Thankfully, Flavius Josephus supplies the name for us: she was Salome. Salome was Herod Antipas‟s stepdaughter. Herodias was first married to her uncle, Herod II, also known as Phillip I (not to be confused with the tetrarch Phillip II, another uncle). In the gospels, Phillip I is also referred to as Thomas, one of the socalled disciples of Jesus. Thomas was the fourth son of King Herod the Great (37 BC to 4 BC) and was a 135

half-brother to Herod Antipas, the youngest of the Herod scions. It was with Thomas that Herodias had Salome. Why did Herodias ditch Thomas for Antipas? Thomas had been in line to succeed King Herod but was disinherited in the waning years of King Herod when his mother Mariamne II was implicated in a plot to poison the King. The gorgeous and deathly ambitious Herodias, however, saw herself as a future Queen and so when Antipas proposed marriage to her, she had no compunctions about tying the knot with him without legally divorcing Thomas. Antipas was at the time already married to Phasaelis, a daughter of Aretas IV, King of neighbouring Nabatea (modern-day Jordan). This was clearly a politically expedient marriage. Antipas decided to hitch Herodias to again make political capital out of her pedigree: not only was she a Jew but she had Hasmonean blood. The Hasmonean line had ruled Palestine for nearly 100 years and was held in higher esteem than the Herod dynasty, who were generally dismissed as Arabs. Aware of her marquee value, Herodias insisted to Antipas that he could only take her hand in holy matrimony if he divorced Phasaelis. A hooked Antipas did likewise, a move that led to a disastrous war with Nabatea, which Antipas nearly lost. The gospels say it was Herodias who was behind the killing of John the Baptist owing to his unstinting condemnation of her unlawful marriage to Antipas, that Antipas had John beheaded after making an inviolable pledge to little Salome (the Greek word associated with her in the gospel of Mark suggests she was a very young girl, probably aged 12 or thereabouts), whose exquisite dance moves stupefied him out of his senses. Of course the story cannot be taken on its face value: there was no way Herod would have promised little Salome half of his kingdom in honour of her wish, a kingdom which he did not have. Antipas was Rome‟s client king (quarter-king actually), meaning he ruled under the mandate and at the pleasure of the emperor. He had no powers whatsoever to parcel out the territory in which he had jurisdiction to anybody he wished. , even Herod the Great‟s will, whereby he divided Palestine amongst his three sons, had to be ratified, and was even altered, by Caesar Augustus and unlike Antipas, Herod was a King with full stripes but who nonetheless had to defer to Rome. The gospel therefore sounds gossipy and borders on fable. THE JOSEPHUS VERSION It is Flavius Josephus who provides a more credible explicit of the death of the Baptist. Josephus documents that Antipas had the Baptist arrested by virtue of his rock-star popularity. John the Baptist was indubitably the most popular figure of his day and to the extent where he had to “command” the Jews to repentance and not appeal to them. Whenever and wherever he held a crusade, be it in the village square or some river valley, thousands thronged there. Antipas therefore must have feared that with such a hold on the masses, John could easily incite them to rebellion against his rule. Such a scenario could only be forestalled if the Baptist was erased from the face of the Earth. What we see, therefore, is that Josephus did not draw a causal connection between Antipas‟s marriage to Herodias and his decision to have the Baptist executed. Now, in relating the death story of John, Josephus was not simply writing as a historian: he did have near-firsthand knowledge of the circumstances of the Baptist‟s death. Josephus was born in 37 AD, six years after the death of John. But as a teenager, Josephus spent time in the wilds with a man called Banus, who to all intents and purposes was a former disciple of the Baptist to judge by his ascetic and unconventional life style that mirrored that of John. The following is Josephus‟s of his encounter with Banus according to his most famous work, The Jewish Antiquities:

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“When I was about sixteen years old, I had a mind to make trim of the several sects that were among us. These sects are three: - The first is that of the Pharisees, the second that of the Sadducees, and the third that of the Essenes, as we have frequently told you; for I thought that by this means I might choose the best, if I were once acquainted with them all; so I contented myself with hard fare, and underwent great difficulties, and went through them all. Nor did I content myself with these trials only; but when I was informed that one, whose name was Banus, lived in the desert, and used no other clothing than grew upon trees, and had no other food than what grew of its own accord, and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both by night and by day, in order to preserve his chastity, I imitated him in those things, and continued with him three years.” Banus certainly must have recounted to Josephus the manner of the Baptist‟s death, but was Banus fully conversant with the cutthroat politics against whose backdrop John met his fate? SIMON ZELOTES SUCCEEDS BAPTIST The gospel version of the Baptist‟s death, it turns out, is not as legendary as may be suggested on the surface. It is actually factual. But the factuality is not apparent: it needs discernment with the help of the vital pesher instrument. Just to recap, pesher is a device whereby the real story is told beneath the surface story using the familiar language but which has a double, underlying meaning only known to the writer and people privy to the secret language. In the gospels, “Daughter of Herodias” does not mean Salome, the stepdaughter of Antipas. It stands for Helena-Salome, a namesake of Antipas‟ stepdaughter, which explains why the evangelists did not name her. Helena-Salome, who is actually the most significant woman in the gospels after Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, was the mistress of Simon Zelotes, Jesus‟s lead disciple. Helena-Salome was nicknamed “Daughter of Herodias” because of her scheming with Herodias about the Baptist. John the Baptist had 30 disciples and of these only one was female – Helena-Salome. Whilst Simon Zelotes belonged to the Jesus party, his mistress stayed with the Baptist as Simon‟s mole and agent provocateur. It was Simon Zelotes and Helena-Salome who orchestrated the killing of John. Helena-Salome (who goes by several names in the Bible and of whom we will talk about in detail at a later stage), was a former priestess of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. As a priestess, she performed orgiastic dances to the Anunnaki goddess Artemis. It was these sexually provocative dancing skills that she put on display before a spellbound Herod Antipas at the Fortress of Machaerus in September AD 31. That‟s how she wrung a pledge from a literally hypnotised Antipas to instantaneously render her a gift of her asking as a reward for her lewd contortions and gyrations. Helena-Salome was rooting for her consort Simon Zelotes to take over from John the Baptist as Pope, as a result of which she and Simon strategically endeared themselves to Antipas and Herodias, having capitalised on the Baptist‟s incessant tirades at the illegality of the couple‟s marriage. As such, Helena-Salome‟s request for the “head of John” had two meanings. The surface meaning was the execution of John. But the pesher meaning was John‟s headship – the papacy, which she wanted conferred on Simon. Antipas, who had made the promise before a dignified gathering, was cornered and had no option but to make good on it. He would never recover from this grisly deed. Meanwhile, the Baptist had ceased to be Pope after his incarceration and Nathaniel had become the acting Pope. Whilst Nathaniel was Pope, Simon Zelotes had lobbied Jesus to him to take over from him in case John permanently forfeited the position and Jesus had agreed.(This story can be deciphered using the pesher code from Jesus‟s conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman (MARK 7:25-30/MATTHEW 15:2128), who as we shall later demonstrate was actually Helena-Salome).

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Meanwhile, the incarcerated John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to tell him to his face that he (John) was justified to endorse James (the younger brother of Jesus ) as the Davidic messiah as Jesus had done nothing whatsoever to help set him free. Jesus‟s response was that the messengers should not bother persuading him (the Baptist) that he was indeed messianic material but simply relate to him his epic deeds (MATTHEW 11:1-6/LUKE 7:18-23). Jesus‟s statement in this regard that “blessed are those who are not offended by me” is as plain as plain can be that he and the Baptist were not on good . Following the execution of the Baptist at only age 38, Simon Zelotes was elected as Pope, having been ed by Jesus and Antipas himself, and Nathaniel accordingly stepped down. Simon then appointed Judas Iscariot as his No. 2 and Jesus as his No.3. Note that this was in of the priestly hierarchy, which was the most prestigious. Politically, Jesus was still head of the 12 so-called disciples, who included Simon Zelotes and Judas Iscariot. As successor to John the Baptist, Simon Zelotes also took the headship of the 30-man apostolate that John had headed. The fundamentalist Essenes, however, who were diehard loyalists to the Baptist, directed their wrath not at Simon Zelotes but at Jesus. As far as they were concerned, it was he who instigated the death of their leader. Jesus consequently became a marked man in Judea, as a result of which he relocated from there to Galilee, where he enjoyed the protection of Antipas as Galilee was the latter‟s jurisdiction.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 37

THE LORD'S BELOVED Her Name Was … Mary Magdalene!

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n April 2003, Dan Brown, then a obscure, unknown writer, published a novel titled The Da Vinci Code. The central motif of the book‟s fact-based storyline was that Jesus not only had a wife but had children too. The claim galvanised practically the entire globe and the book became a best seller overnight. It has since sold more than 81 million copies and ranks as the ninth best-selling book of all time. Yet the assertion that Jesus was a wedded man did not originate with Dan Brown. The first such claim in the public domain was made by three researchers, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln in their 1982 non-fiction book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Their book was a best seller too but it was nowhere near the phenomenal success of The Da Vinci Code. Perhaps because of the dizzying success of the The Da Vinci Code, the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail unsuccessfully litigated against Brown for “appropriating the architecture of our book”. In 1996, Laurence Gardner published a book titled Bloodline of the Holy Grail, which corroborated the thesis that Jesus did marry and had offspring. Gardner, who was granted privileged access to royal and suppressed archives while researching the book, went on to say that European monarchs had known of Jesus‟s marital status since days immemorial and that some of these royal families were descended from the coned lines of Jesus and his immediate younger brother James. The Da Vinci Code was widely denounced by Christendom as little more than the product of a fertile but warped imagination. The notion that Jesus, who is worshipped as God incarnate in Christendom, could have engaged in sexual relations with a mortal was anathema to Christians. The Vatican lambasted the book as replete with “shameful and unfounded lies”. The Pope even appointed an archbishop dedicated to debunking its contents. The irony of it all, though, was that the Bible itself does detail clear-cut evidence that Jesus was married and does contain coded evidence to the effect that he had kids. The “Lord‟s” spouse was Mary Magdalene. Jesus had three children with her. THE FIRST LADY Mary is a recurring name in the gospels. There are three Mary‟s mentioned in the New Testament. There is Mary the mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene; and Mary “of Cleopas” (that is, the betrothed of James the brother of Jesus). The apocryphal Gospel of Phillip makes mention of yet another Mary. This was Jesus‟s eldest sister. Mary is also rendered as Mirriam (Mariam in Arabic) or Maria. According to the Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Mary was the commonest name (80 percent) in gospel times followed by Salome (63 percent). The name‟s popularity derived, first and foremost, from its Egyptian origins. All the wives of Egyptian rulers were Mary‟s, or rather “Mery‟s” in the language of the day. The name meant “Queen”, or “Beloved of”, what we commonly refer to as “First Lady” in respect of Republican 139

governments. For example, Meryaten meant “Beloved of Aten” (Aten being Nannar-Sin, Enlil-Jehovah‟s second-born son), and Meryamon (over time abbreviated as “Mirriam”) meant “Beloved of Amon” (Amon being Marduk, Enki‟s firstborn son, the origin of the “Amen” Christians innocently utter at the end of their prayers). The popularity of the name Mary also stems from Mirriam, the half-sister-wife of Moses, who according to the book of Jasher (excluded from the Old Testament canon by deliberate design) was a renowned prophetess and was more popular than Moses, who had to resort to magic to earn the respect of the children of Israel (The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses is the standard manual on advanced witchcraft). Thus Mary originally was not a name but a title. In Setswana, Mary would be rendered as Mohumagadi. Since we all want to give our children talismanic names, the title Mary became a typical household name. In the House of David, that is, the dynastic family of Jesus, Mary was not a mere name: it was a titular distinction primarily. Mary was the title of the wife of the Davidic heir (e.g. Joseph, Jesus, and his younger brother James) and the firstborn daughter of the Davidic heir, that is, the first princess. It explains why Jesus‟s mother was called Mary; his wife was called Mary; one of his sisters was called Mary; and James‟s betrothed was also called Mary. Scholars have puzzled as to why there were so many Mary‟s in attendance at the scene of the crucifixion and have come up with all sorts of fanciful theories. Well, the simple answer is that all the Mary‟s at Calvary were primarily titular names. The three Mary‟s could have had their own particular names which are not recorded in the Bible or are recorded but in not that apparent a fashion. For example, we know that the given name of Mary the mother of Jesus was Tabitha – Dorcas in Greek. She became a Mary when she got engaged to the Davidic heir Joseph. The non-canonical gospel of Phillip says, “There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion. His sister and his mother and his companion were each a Mary.” This very statement, which posits that Jesus had a mistress, was enough to disqualify the gospel of Phillip from inclusion in the New Testament corpus at the Council of Nicaea. What is the first obvious signal that Mary Magdalene was Jesus‟s wife? There are seven occasions in the Bible where Jesus‟s female companions are cited. On six of these, Mary Magdalene is listed first – a tacit metaphor for First Lady. Even in the seventh list (JOHN 19:25), she is only supplanted by Mary the Mother of Jesus (the reasons why this time around she is listed fourth instead of first we shall dwell upon in due course). Mary Magdalene was the first person to speak to Jesus after the resurrection. The apocryphal texts describe her as, “The woman who knew the all of Jesus”; the one “Christ loved more than all of the disciples”; and the apostle “endowed with knowledge and insight far exceeding that of Peter”. If she‟s at once spoken of in superlatives and presented as somebody who was closer to Jesus than anybody else, then surely Mary Magdalene had to be special. But first, exactly who was Mary Magdalene? RELEASED FROM THE JUDAS TUTELAGE In the 13th century, Jacapo di Voragine, the Archbishop of Genoa, wrote a book titled Life of Mary Magdalene from church records. The book furnishes a bit of insight on the lineage and parentage of Mary Magdalene. According to Jacopo, Mary Magdalene‟s father was Syro, which may not have been his real name as it seems to be too suspiciously close to “Syria”. Syro was a Jewish nobleman who was based in Syria. He was descended from Ira the Jairite, a chief priest of King David. The Jairus priests originated with the Old Testament sons of Jair in the time of Moses. Syro‟s wife, Eucharia, the mother of Mary Magdalene 140

according to Jacopo, was a Hasmonean princess. However, as we shall soon find out, Syro was not the real father of Mary Magdalene and Eucharia was not her mother at all. Mary Magdalene was actually not a Jew but a Gentile. Most Christians may not be aware of this but Mary Magdalene makes her first appearance in the gospels in MATTHEW 9: 18-25 as Jairus‟s daughter who was “raised from the dead”. Now, there was no miracle about this event: Mary Magdalene did not die and was then restored to life. What she underwent was a simultaneous Bar Mitzvah ceremony and a baptism by Jesus to make her eligible for marriage to him. She was therefore raised from figurative death (darkness) into the degree of community life (light, a metaphor for an Essene, who called themselves “Sons of Light”). Jesus performed this rite on Mary Magdalene when she was 12 years old as the gospels relate, in AD 29. Since she had come of age, she was eligible for marriage and therefore was ripe for betrothal. Prior to this, she was not a Mary: but after her engagement to Jesus at age 12, she assumed the titular name of Mary and became entitled to all the privileges this title conferred. The AD 29 t baptismal and Bar Mitzvah ceremony also marked the event when “seven demons came out of Mary Magdalene” (LUKE 8:2). Once again, this has been misconstrued as Mary‟s deliverance from seven literal evil spirits, which is unfortunate. All Mary‟s, that is, future dynastic spouses for the Princes of Judah (that is, Jesus and his four younger brothers in gospel times) primarily or any other suitors from the nobility, were kept in a monastic convent at Qumran where they were supervised and watched over under strict regulations by the seven demon priests. The seven demon priests, also called satans, were Zealots who were a symbolic opposition group to the seven civilian priests who were considered to represent the seven lights of the Menorah (the seven-branched candlestick of Jewish tradition). Numbered 1 to 7 in ascending order, the seven demon priests were headed by the Chief Scribe, who was designated Demon No. 7. In gospel times, this was Judas Iscariot. When a Mary was spoken for and was about to get betrothed, she was released from the convent. This was figuratively referred to as “being delivered from seven demons”. , in biblical times, the “Satan”, “Devil”, and “Demon” did not always carry the diabolical, Reptilian connotation they invariably do today. WATCHTOWER OF THE FLOCK Why was she called Mary Magdalene (whose variants are Maddalena and Madeleine)? There are three reasons for this, rooted in the gospel writers‟ penchant for wordplay, with the last two being the more logical. The first is that she must have come from Magdala, a bustling trade centre on the Sea of Galilee which was noted for fishing as well as fish processing. Its correct name was actually Magdal Nunaiya, meaning “Fish Tower”. Since there are several Mary‟s mentioned in the gospels, Mary Magdalene had to be referred to as such to distinguish her from the rest. The Magdal Nunaiya attribution, however, is suspicious as it seems to conform to the fish symbolism that pervades the gospels. The fish symbolism is a political rather than historical statement: it underlines the advent of the Age of Pisces as well as the fact of Jesus being a champion of the Enkite agenda as opposed to the Enlite (Jehovah‟s) agenda. Enki was also known as the “Fisher God” in that he was the god of the sea. The second had to do with the Essene order to which she belonged. Essenes categorised themselves into orders which corresponded to the 12 tribes of Israel. The women belonged to either of only two orders, that of Asher and Dan. Mary‟s in particular belonged to the order of Dan. In each order, women were classified into grades. These were Mother (12), Virgin (13), Widow (14), and Wife (15), with the lower number being senior to the higher number. A woman was classified a Virgin until she was six months pregnant, when she was promoted to Mother. As a Virgin, she was said to belong to “Great Dan”. In 141

Greek, this was „Megas Dan”, which was corrupted to Magadan in daily parlance and in due course became synonymous with Magdala and hence Magdalene. The third reason derives from Mary Magdalene‟s personal status in the order of Dan. In Life of Mary Magdalene, Jacapo di Voragine says Mary “possessed the heritage of the castle of Bethany”, or rather the tower of Bethany as it should be correctly translated since Mary‟s were not allowed to own property and therefore Mary Magdalene could not have possessed the heritage of a castle. In Essene nomenclature, Bethany was a building used by the “poor” (a term applying to Essenes who were not allowed to own individual assets) at Qumran and the surrounding centres such as Mird and Ain Feshka. The poor included of the order of Dan as all its had to pool whatever they personally owned into a common, communal stock. As Virgin and the bride of the Davidic heir, Mary Magdalene was the chief woman of the order of Dan and oversaw 500 women. Her title was therefore the Magdal-elder, meaning “Watchtower of the Flock”, as in MICAH 5:8, which reads, “As for you, watchtower of the flock, stronghold of Daughter Zion, the former dominion will be restored to you; kingship will come to Daughter Jerusalem". This was a high societal status (castle/tower) of community guardianship. Indeed, it is significant that in LUKE 8:2, Mary Magdalene is described as “Mary called Magdalene”, that is, Mary called the Watchtower! Now, if Mary Magdalene was not a Jew and her real parents were not Syro the Jairus and his wife Eucharia, who were her real parents? That we unpack for you in the next instalment.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 38

THE LORD’S MOTHER-IN-LAW She was called Helena-Salome, the mistress to Simon Zelotes

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ver the ages, the name Mary Magdalene has been loved and loathed in equal measure. Apostles such as Simon Peter and Paul hated her like the plague. For a long time, the Catholic Church had her designated a whore. Then in 1969, the Church reversed full cycle when it declared her a saint. Yet over the centuries, she has been one of the most positively depicted of all classical figures. There are numerous portrayals of her at the tomb and at the crucifixion. She was a most special woman but both the early Church and Catholic Church vilified her. Why? Because she represented a major threat to their theological dogma. Having declared Jesus as God, they didn‟t want it to be openly known that actually he was a mere mortal who even had a wife and children. Religion, as the great Karl Marx said, is the opium of the masses. Be that as it may, the assertion that Mary Magdalene was a whore was not exactly far-fetched. It did have a near-credulous foundation only this foundation was somewhat askew. The ascription of harlotry to Mary Magdalene had to do more with her mother than she herself. For her mother was Helena-Salome, the consort of Simon Zelotes, Jesus‟s foremost disciple. This fact we learn directly from extra-biblical sources and indirectly from the gospels themselves. The fact that Helena-Salome was Mary Magadalene‟s mother makes Simon Zelotes a father-in-law to Jesus. It is small wonder then that Simon Zelotes was the closest of Jesus‟s so-called disciples – or rather his closest associate – whereas Mary Magdalene was his closest female associate. All these three – Simon Zelotes, Helena-Salome, and Mary Magdalene feature prominently in the New Testament, the first two under various guises most Christians and most pastors are not aware of. Simon Zelotes is the same person as Simon the Zealot; Simon the Canaanite; Simon the leper; Simon the tanner; Simon of Cyrene; Zebedee; Lazarus; Ananias; “the great power of God”; Demetrius the silversmith; Beelzebub; and Beast 666. He also has symbolic names such as “Lightning” and the titular name at some stage of “Father” or “Pope”. Outside the Bible, he was best known as Simon Magus, that is, Simon the Magician. In the Bible, Helena-Salome appears under the names "daughter" of Herodias; Syrophoenician woman; woman of Samaria; mother of the sons of Zebedee; sister of Mother Mary; Martha; Joanna; Salome; Sapphira; and Jezebel. She was also characterised as “Wisdom of God”. Outside the Bible, she also features under the names Justa; Luna; and Paulina. THE GENTILE MOTHER Helena-Salome is an enigmatic figure. Her real name is not known for certain. The name Helena was given to her by Simon Zelotes, who believed she was the reincarnation of Helen of Troy – Innana, the most famous daughter of the god Zeus, who was actually the Anunnaki god Nannar-Sin. Simon Zelotes thought she was the divine “Thought of God” because of her suring wisdom. She could also have been called Helena because she was the spiritual advisor of Queen Helena of Adiabene (located in parts of modern-day Iraq, Kurdistan, and Armenia), when she converted to Judaism in about 30 AD.

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The name Salome has two possible explanations. The first one has to do with her status in the Essene community. She was the female head of the order of Asher, whose were Gentile converts to Judaism. The order of Asher was founded by Queen Salome Alexandra, the last woman to rule over Judea and one of only two females to have ever done so, in the first century BC. “Salome” thus became the title of every woman head of the order of Asher. The second explanation derives from her being the chaperone of Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas, and godmother to Herodias‟s daughter Salome. Helena-Salome was a Canaanite from Phoenicia, a narrow coastal territory corresponding to much of today‟s Lebanon. Phoenicia meant “land of purple” in Greek as the territory was famed for its purple dyes, which were made from shell fish. Phoenicia was organised into city states, the most eminent of which were Tyre and Sidon. In 64 BC, Phoenicia was annexed to the Roman province of Syria and henceforth became known as Syro-Phoenicia. It therefore makes sense that the Syro-Phoenician woman we encounter in MARK 7:25-30 and the Canaanite woman we encounter in MATTHEW 15:21-28 was Helena-Salome and not simply a chance woman. Whilst a Temple Virgin at the Temple of Artemis (Innana-Ishtar) at Ephesus, the voluptuously beautiful Helena-Salome was tricked into having sex with a man who disguised himself as a “god” (He may as well have been the Anunnaki god Utu-Shamash – known to Greeks as Apollo – who was a twin brother to Innana). The result was a pregnancy leading to the birth of a daughter. The daughter would in future come to be known as Mary Magdalene. Helena-Salome, however, strongly believed that she indeed had slept with a god and therefore vowed that she would never desecrate herself by ever sleeping with an ordinary mortal. She was to abstain from sexual activity for the rest of her life. DIVORCE FROM JAIRUS Since Helena-Salome had decided to live a chaste life forever, she bought two boys to adopt as sons. According to the Clementine literature (that is, the Clementine Homilies and Clementine Recognitions), the two boys were illegitimate sons of Julia the Elder, the only natural child of Augustus Caesar. Julia had sold them to slave traders but had at the same time asked Helena to buy them off and promised to help her with the finances needed for their upkeep. In the process, Helena became a very affluent lady. The two boys were given the Jewish names Niceta and Aquila but they were to be best known as James and John respectively, the gospels‟ sons of Zebedee who were among Jesus‟s inner circle of 12 associates. Because of her ethereal beauty and glittering intelligence, Helena easily caught the eye of men. One of these was Syro the Jairus, a chief priest of some synagogues in Syria and Galilee and a descendant of Ira the Jairite, who was an ancillary priest to King David of Judea. Jairus proposed and soon the two had tied the knot. Of course Helena was not his first wife. The marriage did not last as Helena was adamant that she was not going to be intimate with anybody ever again. Resultantly, Syro sent her packing but her daughter had already gained a reputation as Jairus‟s daughter, perhaps because of her staggering beauty (more so if she had Anunnaki blood in her). Helena moved to Tyre where she set up her own temple that was dubbed a brothel. This, of course, was a vilification. Helena‟s temple was far from a brothel. Helena had been a Temple Virgin at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Temple Virgins were known as Sacred Priestesses. They were also referred to as Scarlet Women. The reason they were so-called was because they were a specially designated source of menstruum, from which a number of medicinal products were made. This practice was called ritu, meaning “redness” because of the blood element of the ceremony. Ritu is the origin of the term “ritual”. 144

Most people are not aware that menstruum has a whole host of medicinal uses which Illuminati doctors are aware of but which they do not share to the wider world. In ancient times, the Earth-based Anunnaki used menstrual extracts to lengthen their lives! This “elixir of life” was called Star Fire and was taken only from Temple Virgins. In Greek, Temple Virgins were known as hierodulai, that is, Sacred Woman. In medieval French and English, hierodulai became “harlot”. In the early Germanic tongue, Temple Virgins were known as “hores” (meaning “beloved ones” because of their highly venerated role), a term which was to transform to the now despicable “whores”. The temple that Helena founded in Tyre was meant to groom Temple Virgins for purposes of ritu but her detractors deliberately twisted this to a brothel temple. It was at her Tyre temple that Simon Zelotes met Helena and decided to hitch her up. However, Helena was to be only his consort and not his wife as she was unflinching in her volition to abstain from sexual relations. Simon Zelotes, who was smitten by her resounding wisdom and her resoluteness of purpose, raised no objections. Indeed, throughout all extra-biblical literature, Helena is always referred to as the consort (partner) of Simon and never his wife. Among the Essene community, she was often referred to as a “rich widow”, widow in this context meaning divorcee. , Essenes had their own lexicon, such that words which on surface had familiar meanings actually had special underlying meanings. This coded language was called pesher. Simon Zelotes adopted Mary Magdalene and the boys James and John. Since Simon‟s other name was Zebedee, meaning “My Gift”, the two boys were typically referred to as the sons of Zebedee. Later in their adulthood, they would switch their political loyalties in the Jesus party from the “Lightning” faction headed by Simon Zelotes, to the “Thunder” faction headed by Simon‟s main rival, Nathaniel. They were therefore now addressed as the “Sons of Thunder”. While Nathaniel was Pope/Father (successor to John the Baptist), Helena spiritedly promoted her two boys to Jesus so that they would be his deputies in his capacity as Priest-King in an independent Israel (MARK 10:35-45/MATTHEW 20:20-28). A politically correct Jesus stoutly refused to commit to that and instead referred her to Nathaniel. This was because as things presently stood, Nathaniel was the future High Priest of an independent Israel and it was up to him to choose his two deputies. HONOURABLE, NOT PROSTITUTE In the Essene community in the 20s AD and onward, Helena-Salome was the most highly regarded woman alongside Mary the mother of Jesus. She actually fancied herself as the Essene priestess and called herself Justa, meaning “crown princess” or “future queen”. This was at the time when Simon Zelotes was Pope and therefore the highest ranking Essene – a king to her own mind. Because of her high social standing, she was entrusted headship of the Essene‟s female order of Asher, which alongside with the order of Dan, had strictly Gentile hip. The order of Asher was headquartered in Tyre, the capital of Phoenicia, because Phoenicia had been the territory of the Israel tribe of Asher. The title of the female head of the order of Asher was Sarah-Salome. She would in due course assume another title, that of Martha. Her daughter Mary Magdalene, however, belonged to the order of Dan. Whereas of the order of Dan were not allowed to own private property, those of Asher could. This allowed Helena to be a very “rich widow” as she had plenty of property courtesy of the lavish material she had been receiving from the wealthy Julia the Elder, the real mother of John and James. Mary Magdalene would have been in line to inherit this wealth but when she became a Mary at her engagement to Jesus, she had to the order of Dan, whose female were not allowed to own property whatsoever: whatever personal assets they had was forfeited to the Essene community as a collective. 145

Since she was wealthy and so strikingly intellectual, Helena was the only woman disciple of John the Baptist. John had a total of 30 disciples to correspond with the number of days in the month and Helena was designated as the 29th, to accord with a lunar month in a leap year. Her other name therefore was Luna. For the most part though, Helena, just like her consort Simon Zelotes, was regarded as too ambitious and a schemer who knew no limits. Her male contemporaries therefore went out of their way to tarnish her name, often unjustifiably. Her putative involvement in the death of John the Baptist may just have been one such smear. The church father Eusebius also ed in the chorus of slurs. In his Church History, he wrote thus of Helena: “And there went around with him (Simon Magus) at that time a certain Helena who had formerly been a prostitute in Tyre of Phoenicia.” Clearly, Eusebius too misunderstood the purpose of the Virgin Temple she opened up in Tyre (she later shut it down anyway). Her own adopted son James and John never once impugned her. This is what James reported according to the Clementine literature: “They (the slave traders) sold us to a certain widow, a very honourable woman named Justa. She having bought us treated us as sons, so that she carefully educated us in Greek literature and liberal arts.” John the Baptist was a puritan who never compromised his principles. There simply was no way a prostitute would have been part of his apostolic band and taken pride of place. The commonplace claims therefore that Helena-Salome was a harlot belong to the dust bin. Sadly, this character assassination stuck and unduly rubbed off on her only natural child – Mary Magdalene.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 39

A MERCENARY MARRIAGE? How Helena-Salome pitched Mary Magdalene to Jesus

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imon Zelotes and Helena Salome were one of the most fervidly ambitious partners of their time. Simon Zelotes wanted to be High Priest in a liberated Israel and Helena-Salome wanted to be High Priestess although officially there wasn‟t such an office. To make a reality of their ends – or near enough – the couple needed to tactfully get rid of people who stood in the way and to cultivate strategic alliances with men of clout. Their main stumbling block had been John the Baptist, who they had already taken care of. The allies of overarching influence were Jesus, the Davidic messiah, and Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. Since the death of John the Baptist, Simon Zelotes had become the Father/Pope of the Essene community, which almost certainly guaranteed him the national high priesthood in a liberated Israel. HelenaSalome was the female head of the order of Asher. As an ecclesiastical minister, her Essene title was that of cardinal/archbishop owing in the main to her wisdom and scintillating education. This was Grade 3, the fourth from the top, after Simon Zelotes, Judas Iscariot, and Jesus. Her two adopted sons, James Niceta and John Aquila, were part of the 12-man inner circle of Jesus, which guaranteed them plum positions in the Cabinet of an independent Israel. But Helena was not content with all that. She wanted more. She wanted to be the Queen Mother in a selfgoverning Israel and there was only one way to attain to that – by getting her daughter hitched to the Davidic King, Jesus. The ideal spouse for a Davidic King was a fellow Jew and somebody from a royal line, preferably the Hasmonean line. To a Gentile Helena, however, who was a Canaanite from SyroPhoenicia, this was not a handicap considering that in Jesus‟s own genealogy could be found Gentile women. For example, Tamah, the mother of all the Kings of Judah, was a Canaanite like her; Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David, was a Moabite. As if that was not odd enough, Rahab, the great-great grandmother of King David, was a prostitute and Bathsheba, David‟s Queen, was an adulterer. In fact, Jesus for one was a cosmopolitan person who did not see himself as the future King of Israel as such but as the future King of Kings – emperor of the world. So to marry a Gentile would not be a big deal for him. There was an even stronger case for her daughter Mary to marry Jesus. Her father was a god, that is, an Anunnaki, and so she was even more royal than the purest Jewish woman alive at the time. So with all these aces up her sleeve, Helena decided to pitch her daughter directly to Jesus. She could not do this through his mother Mary because Mary probably already had somebody else in mind who like her was a Jew and was of noble lineage. HELENA’S OVERTURE TO JESUS The series of incidents in which Helena-Salome propositions her daughter to Jesus and succeeds is cryptically told in the stories of the healing/raising of Jairus‟s daughter (MATTHEW 9:18-26/MARK 5:35-43/LUKE 8:40-56); the encounter with the Syro-Phoenician Woman (MATTHEW 15:2129/MARK 7:24-30); and the healing of the Menstruous Woman (MATTHEW 9:20-21/MARK5:2532/LUKE8:40-56).

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The Matthew version in regard to the healing of the Jairus daughter reads as follows: 21 “

And Jesus having come forth from there, withdrew to the parts of Tyre and Sidon, 22and lo, a woman, a Canaanite, from those borders having come forth, did call to him, saying, "Deal kindly with me, Sir, Son of David; my daughter is miserably demonised." 23And he did not answer her a word; and his disciples having come to him, were asking him, saying, "Let her away, because she cries after us;" 24and he answering said, "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25And having come, she was bowing to him, saying, "Sir, help me;" 26and he answering said, "It is not good to take the children's bread, and to cast to the little dogs 27And she said, “Yes, sir, for even the dogs do eat of the crumbs that are falling from their lords" table;" 28then answering, Jesus said to her, "O woman, great [is] your faith, let it be to you as you will;" and her daughter was healed from that hour. 29And Jesus having ed from there, came near unto the Sea of Galilee, and having gone up to the mountain, he was sitting there, 39And having let away the multitudes, he went into the boat, and did come to the borders of Magadan.” The story concerns a unnamed woman and her unnamed daughter. The woman has three characteristics. First, she is a Gentile, a Canaanite. In the other gospels, she is described as a Greek (to underline her great learning) and a Syro-Phoenician woman. In the story, Jesus refers to her as a “dog”. This was a metaphor for Gentiles, just as sheep was a metaphor for Jews. Second, Jesus encountered her in Tyre and Sidon. Again this emphasised her place of origin, in modern-day Lebanon. The incident did not take place in Lebanon but in the Judean wilderness at Ain Feshka. Tyre and Sidon were interchangeable code names for Ain Feshka in the Essene lexicon. Third, her daughter was “miserably demonised”. This had nothing to do with her being possessed of evil spirits. It simply meant that she was under the tutelage of the Seven Essene Zealots who were headed by Judas Iscariot, who as the seniormost of the seven was referred to as Demon No. 7. Thus what Helena was saying to Jesus was that her daughter could not be released from the Judas convent unless he (Jesus) agreed to take her hand in marriage. Jesus did equivocate though, aware of the implications of a Davidic Messiah marrying a Gentile (that explains why his disciples had made it very difficult for her to see Jesus) but Helena was so convincing he finally capitulated: she was not regarded as a goddess incarnate just for the fun of it. It is telling that at the conclusion of the story, Jesus heads for Magadan. Magadan was one of the Essene code names for Mazin in the Qumran precincts. It was where the women‟s order of Dan, the order to which Mary Magdalene belonged, where housed. The encrypted message here is that Jesus proceeded there to officially propose to Mary Magdalene. The story of the Syro-Phoenician woman is also related in the Clementine literature, where HelenaSalome is addressed by her much more ambitious name of Justa, meaning “royal heiress” or “future Queen”. JESUS ACCEPTS PROPOSITION The healing of the woman with an issue of blood is related in all the three synoptic gospels, which points to it‟s being a pivotal event. Once again, the story is not exactly the way it appears at surface. It was a high-stakes one, with Jesus as the party it impacted the most. In a nutshell, it concerns a woman who had had an abnormal menstrual order for twelve years, during which the menses never lapsed. But when she sought Jesus and touched the helm of his garment, she was instantly healed. Sadly for my brothers and sisters in Christ, the woman had no such affliction and there

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was therefore no miracle about her story. The underlying story according to the pesher, plus some diaphanous extra-biblical facts, is as follows: The woman in question was Helena-Salome. The surface, 12-year menstrual disorder had to do with the fact that for 12 years now, she had never copulated with any man. If you recall, she had been impregnated at the Temple of Artemis whilst a Vestal Virgin by a “god” and had thereafter sworn never to indulge in sexual relations ever again even if she legally got married. Not having had known a man for 12 years was tantamount to having a disorder that forbade such activity– an indefinite issue of menstruum. There was yet another aspect to the blood symbolism. As the woman head of the Essenes‟ order of Asher, Helena‟s title initially was that of Sarah-Salome, which was equivalent to a lay priestess. In effecting this role, she performed communal prayers only during a new moon – when the moon‟s dark face was facing the Earth and so was not seen (Helena‟s other name was Lunar, meaning “moon”). This was equated to shedding blood once every month, like a normal menstrual period. In due course, Helena was promoted to a Martha, which conferred on her full priestly status as opposed to a lay priestess. As a Martha, she was under obligation to perform sacrifices of prayer every day, suggesting the image of a woman with a menstrual disorder. When the Essenes read the gospel s in the first century, they knew exactly who the woman was in the story because they were familiar with the coded language. They also knew what the story really was about. The blood symbolism and the 12 years was to identify her. Her “healing” by Jesus was simply a coded way of saying Jesus had elevated her from the Gentile she was to a honorary Jew, what Paul described as “being grafted onto the nation of Israel”. She was thus now officially eligible to be her mother-in-law. Such a conversion ritual, however, was supposed to be done by John the Baptist, who was the priestly messiah (this event happened in August AD 29, before the arrest of the Baptist), and not by the Davidic messiah. That Jesus thought it incumbent upon himself to perform the ritual demonstrates how at odds the two messiahs were with each other at the time. THE CLEMENTINE TESTAMENT Helena-Salome‟s successful pitching of her daughter Mary Magdalene to Jesus is corroborated in the Clementine literature. This is what the Clementine Homilies say on this and other related subjects: “She (Helena), therefore, having taken up a manner of life according to the law, was, with the daughter (Mary Magdalene) who had been healed, driven out from her home by her husband (Syro the Jairus) whose sentiments were opposed to ours (Helena was a Temple Virgin for Artemis, who was tricked into having sex with a man disguised as a god and let go by the priest). But she, being faithful to her engagements, and being in affluent circumstances (ed by Julia the Elder), remained a widow herself (abstaining from sex), but gave her daughter (Mary Magdalene) in marriage to a certain man who was attached to the true faith (Jesus!), and who was poor (member of the Essenes who referred to themselves as the Poor). And, abstaining from marriage for the sake of her daughter, she bought two boys (James and John) and educated them, and had them in place of sons. And they being educated from their boyhood with Simon Magus (Simon Zelotes, their godfather as well as putative stepfather), having had learned all things concerning him. For such was their friendship, that they were associated with him in all things in which he wished to unite with them.” Exactly how did Jesus and Mary Magdalene come to get married? You don‟t have to look elsewhere folks: it‟s all in the Bible in plain daylight. In case you have been unable to unravel it, we undertake to do it for you in the next installment.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 40

THE LORD IS ENGAGED … On the occasion of the so-called “Wedding at Cana”

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n March AD 30, Jesus turned 36 years of age, having been born in March 7 BC (there was no year 0: the transition proceeded straight from 1 BC to 1 AD, the AD era having begun with the birth of James, the brother of Jesus, who unlike Jesus was born in the month of the year befitting of a dynastic heir, this being September). Being a messianic heir, this was a significant date. A messianic heir (that is, the Davidic heir and the priestly heir) was supposed to be married between ages 36 and 40 at the most, the latter being referred to as a generation year. It was mandatory for the messianic heir to produce his own heir within this 4-year period. The four-year window allowed for the odds of siring at least one son as girls did not inherit. It also allowed for ample testing of the woman‟s fertility: if she could not produce a child within this period, the marriage was terminated by legal divorce. STAGES OF THE MARRIAGE PROCESS The Essenes, the religio-politico grouping to which Jesus belonged, had laid down very strict rules with respect to messianic heirs. Messianic heirs were never to indulge in sex for purposes of pleasure: it was for procreation only. Messianic heirs were therefore celibates in the grand scheme of things. They were allowed to sleep with their wives only if the appointed time had arrived for them to produce a child. The time for both the marriage and the reproduction was strictly demarcated. First, there was a betrothal ceremony. This took place between March and June. Then there was a First Marriage. This happened in September, the holiest month in the Jewish calendar. But the First Marriage did not permit a live-together: the couple only came under the same roof only in December, when intimate relations commenced with a view to conception on the part of the female spouse so that the child should be born in September the following year. The First Marriage was also referred to as a trial marriage. Thus, if the female spouse did not conceive in December, copulation was suspended till the following December. The couple were to live separately all the while, though technically they were regarded as husband and wife from the day of betrothal. If betrothal was to be terminated, it would require a formal divorce. A trial marriage was allowed for a maximum of three years, whereupon if the female spouse did not conceive, the marriage was annulled by way of divorce. Divorce was necessary because Essenes did not countenance the idea of polygamy. On the other hand, if conception did take place in at least one December during the three-year trial marriage, a Second Marriage was held in March. By this time, the spouse was three months pregnant and as such, the chances of a miscarriage were very low. After the Second Wedding, the union was final and irrevocable: divorce was forbidden as royal marriages were meant to last “till death do us part”. A messianic spouse therefore was always three months pregnant at the time of her second and therefore final wedding. Although she was already pregnant, she was still referred to as a Virgin titularly. She only ceased to be called a Virgin at six months of pregnancy, that is, in June, when she now assumed the title of Mother. Resultantly, all Davidic spouses –Mary the Mother of Jesus; Mary Magdalene; and MaryCleopas, the wife of James the brother of Jesus, were all referred to as Mother Mary.

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GROOM-ED FROM CHILDHOOD The woman who had been earmarked for Jesus to wed was Mary, the daughter of Helena-Salome, a Gentile of renown from Syro-Phoenicia. In antiquity, a future king‟s bride was chosen when she was practically a tiny tot. For example, Herod the Great had long chosen Herodias for his then favourite son and therefore heir apparent Herod Philip I, best known as the disciple Thomas in the gospels. Typically, a dynastic bride was chosen from the immediate extended family so that King and Queen would be cousins or uncle and niece, or half-brother and half-sister. In the case of Herodias, she was a niece to Thomas. But in a bid to cement diplomatic relations and therefore forestall the possibility of armed hostilities, a bride might be chosen from a foreign dynasty. A case in point is Herod Antipas, the tetrarch (quarter-king) of Galilee and Perea, whose first wife was Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabataea (modern-day Jordan). In the case of Jesus, however, convention was flouted: he chose a commoner and a Gentile for that matter as his bride. This is one reason Mary Magdalene was so viscerally loathed by the apostles, particularly Simon Peter, Judas Iscariot, and Paul. His father Joseph, on the other hand, had loyally heeded convention by marrying a Hasmonean princess in his (Jesus‟s) mother. In truth, however, Mary Magdalene was neither a commoner nor a Gentile. She was royalty proper, far much more than any blue-blooded Jewish lass. Her real father was an Anunnaki and the Anunnaki were the gods of the Old Testament, which might explain why Helena gave her the name Mary, which meant “First Lady”, “First Princess”, or simply “Queen”. Even in New Testament times, the Anunnaki were around but operated behind the scenes, from which they subtly and systematically charted the course of Earthly affairs. It was because Mary Magdalene had Anunnaki blood that Helena-Salome was unstinting in seeing to it that she married her off to the future King of Israel who was at once the future King of the world. Jesus must have taken Mary Magdalene‟s Anunnaki stock into when he succumbed to Helena‟s overtures to marry her. Beauty was not an irrelevant factor either: as half-human, halfAnunnaki, Mary Magdalene was white skinned, that is, a Caucasian, which enhanced her aesthetic appeal compared to the genetically dark-skinned Jews of the day. To ensure Mary Magdalene met the grade as Jesus‟s wife when she came of age, Helena put her in conventual sisterhood at Qumran from a very young age. The Essene convent into which she was placed was that of the Mary‟s in the female order of Dan. Mary‟s were groomed as future spouses for monarchs, princes, and other of the nobility. The female head of the order of Dan was Mary the mother of Jesus. But overall, the Mary‟s were overseen by men. Altogether, there were seven men who supervised them. They all were Zealots but were metaphorically known as the Seven Demons or Seven Satans. “Demon” and “Satan” were alternative for Zealots, the military wing of the Essenes who sought to overthrow the Romans by force of arms but were neutralised by highly influential pacifists such as Jesus and John the Baptist. The Seven Demons were headed by the Essenes‟ Chief Scribe, who also went by the title Demon No. 7. In gospel times, Demon No. 7 was Judas Iscariot. Judas, whose other title was the Jairus, was therefore Mary Magdalene‟s principal, another reason why she was also referred to as “Jairus‟s daughter”. Mary Magdalene was very rich in that her mother was wealthy. By tactfully and strategically inserting her into the order of Dan, it now meant she no longer was eligible to inherit her mother‟s wealth as an individual. Whatever would be bequeathed to her would vest in the Essene fraternity as of the order of Dan were not allowed to own individual property. But Helena didn‟t mind the pauperish situation into which she had thrust her daughter. As the future Queen, Mary Magdalene would be even wealthier than her mother. When people said Helena was a schemer, it wasn‟t simply a mere stereotype. 151

TURNING WATER INTO WINE Yet if Jesus had to marry a Gentile, that Gentile had to be approved by the Father of the Essene community, the Pope. In AD 29, the Pope was John the Baptist. John, however, was a puritan. If Jesus was a Davidic messiah, there was simply no way he was going to be allowed to consort with a Gentile woman. Moreover, John and Jesus were at this time at loggerheads with each other, with the result that Jesus had broken away from John to form a rival party. John had in fact de-recognised Jesus as the Davidic messiah in favour of his younger brother James. Since John the Baptist was not seeing eye to eye with his equally great cousin, Jesus decided to assume the role of priest-king at least for the purpose of his beloved Mary Magdalene. In doing so, he had the of his principal associate Simon Zelotes, who was the foster father of Mary Magdalene. Thus when Mary Magdalene came of age at 12 and underwent the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, Jesus performed another rite on her. He elevated her from figurative death (the unregenerated Gentile state) into the community of life (the Essene state in the sight of God). This initiation is recorded in MATTHEW 9:1825 though it has been grossly misinterpreted as raising “Jairus‟s daughter from the dead”. As far as Jesus was concerned, this was no big deal as his notion of the Kingdom of God embraced Gentiles as much as it did Jews. In any case, even the great Jewish patriarchs of old had consorted with Gentiles. With the rite performed, Mary Magdalene was now not only itted into the Jewish fold (“grafted onto Israel” as the apostle Paul would say) but she was also effectively unofficially engaged to Jesus, though official engagement required its own ceremony. Jesus‟s official betrothal to Mary Magdalene took place at “Cana”, which was a structure at Qumran where women and Gentles were allowed and where Mary the mother of Jesus was the Mother Superior of the female convent. The incident is related in JOHN 2:1-12. Although, it is called a wedding, it was actually not: it was a sacred meal that preceded the betrothal. The bride and groom are not expressly mentioned. This was deliberate: somebody didn‟t want to put it in no uncertain that the groom was Jesus and the bride was Mary Magdalene. But it is clear that a matrimonial ceremony involving a member of Jesus‟s family is going on as his mother is clearly the hostess and Jesus himself takes centre stage. The Essene betrothal custom was for there to be a formal host (as appears in the ), who would be in full charge as the Ruler of the Feast. Secondary authority rested only in the bridegroom and his mother, and this is entirely relevant for when the matter of the communion wine arose, Jesus‟s mother said to the servants (JOHN 2:5), “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”. No invited guest would have had any such right of command. It is plain, therefore, that Jesus and the bridegroom were one and the same. The event is referred to as a wedding because betrothal was as binding as a marriage proper. It was in fact a dual ceremony. First, Jesus initiated a class of people who Essenes regarded as unclean into the “Drink of the Congregation”, which was a kind of communion. These were married men, novices , Gentiles, and all lay Jews. At such a ceremony, the unclean were not eligible to partake of the wine: they were restricted to a ritual bathing with water only (that‟s why there were so many jars of water). Only already initiated Jewish celibates were allowed to drink wine. Jesus, a radical reformist, would have none of that. To him, there was no longer a divide between the clean and the unclean. All were equal before the sight of God. Jesus therefore allowed the unclean to partake of the wine too. In Qumran language, the act of allowing unclean persons to drink wine at a communion was referred to as “turning water into wine.” This was called a “miracle” by virtue not of its wondrousness but of its strange, aberrational nature.

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In such a Gentile-friendly setting, it is little wonder that Jesus decided to betroth the Gentile Mary Magdalene to underline that she too had been received into the exalted Jewish-Essene fold and was therefore worthy of his bride.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 41

THE LORD TIES THE KNOT … As Judas Iscariot Takes Strong Exception

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he gospels which were excluded from the official canon, the New Testament, at the Council of Nicaea are known as the apocrypha. One of these apocryphal works is the gospel of Phillip. In this gospel, the intimate relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is openly discussed thus:

“And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said unto him, why do you love her more than all of us? The Saviour answered and said to them, why do I not love you like her? … Great is the mystery of marriage, for without it the world would never have existed. Now, the existence of the world depends on man, and the existence of man on marriage.” It is clear from the above statement that Jesus held marriage in high regard because he himself was part and parcel of it. The disciples (that is, most of them) were offended not because he and Mary were an item but because they simply did not approve of her as she was a Gentile and a commoner. Otherwise, the kissing was not offensive at all: it was a customary expression of mutual affection between the sacred bride and groom. This we gather from the prototypically romantic Old Testament text known as The Song of Solomon, which opens with the words, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” As the Davidic groom, Jesus was therefore entitled to kiss Mary Magdalene as his bride. THE FIRST MARRIAGE In September AD 30, Jesus and Mary Magdalene had their First Marriage ceremony. Jesus had turned 36 in that year, the appropriate marriage age for a Davidic heir, and September was the holiest month in the Jewish calendar. Having been born irregularly himself (in the wrong month of the year because of his father Joseph‟s intransigence), Jesus was determined that he himself follow the law to the letter so that his child would not suffer the same indignities as he did. The First Marriage is captured in LUKE 7:35-50. The marriage took place at the home of Simon the Pharisee. This was another name for Simon Zelotes, the stepfather of Mary Magdalene. Although Mary Magdalene is not directly named, she is described as a “sinner”. This was another term for Gentiles, as in the eyes of the Jewish God, they were unregenerate and therefore hopeless sinners. Mary Magdalene, whose mother Helena-Salome was of Syrian origin (Syro-Phoenicia to be specific), was a Gentile. On the occasion, Mary Magdalene performed three acts as set out in LUKE 7:38. She wept; kissed his feet; and anointed him with ointment. This is what a bride was supposed to do to her groom as clearly evinced in The Song of Solomon, a series of love poems concerning a spouse and her husband the King. Of the three rites, perhaps it is the weeping that require elucidation. This was at once symbolic and sentimental. The First Marriage was simply a ceremony: the moment the ceremony was over, the husband and wife separated, that is, they lived apart until the month of December, when they came together under one roof. This was in accord with Essene stipulations for dynastic marriages, that is, those of the Davidic messiah and the priestly messiah. 154

Prior to the First Marriage, the bride was known as an Almah, meaning a betrothed Virgin. After the First Marriage ceremony, the Almah was demoted to a Sister. This was because the ensuing three-month separation meant husband and wife would not indulge in sexual activity and so the wife was as good as a sister to her husband. The imagery of Sister also being a wife is seen in 1 CORINTHIANS 9:5, where the apostle Paul refers to his wife as Sister. In ACTS 23:16, Paul‟s wife is again referred to as his Sister. Now, when the Almah became a Sister, she was metaphorically called a Widow, because she was being separated from her newly wedded husband. As such, she was expected to symbolically weep on of this separation. That explains why Mary Magdalene had to weep at her first wedding. It is a pity that most Christians and their clergy miss the real story so wrongly indoctrinated are they. In December AD 30, Jesus moved in with Mary Magdalene to consummate the marriage. It was hoped that Mary would fall pregnant so that in March the following year, a Second (and final) Marriage ceremony would be held. Sadly, conception did not take place. According to Essene dynastic procreational rules, the couple had to separate again. They would reunite in December AD 31 for another try at conception. The reason they separated was because for a dynastic heir, marriage was purely for procreation and not for recreational sex. But even that year, Mary did not fall pregnant, necessitating another year-long separation. What that meant was that Mary would be given one more last chance – in December AD 32, by which time Jesus would have been 38. If she did not conceive this time around, the marriage would come to an end through a legal divorce and Jesus would be free to seek a new spouse. THE FINAL MARRIAGE In December 32, Mary Magdalene finally conceived. When Jesus was crucified therefore in April 33 AD, his wife was three months pregnant. By this time, the Second Marriage ceremony, the final one, had already taken place, this being in March. The Second Marriage is cursorily related in MATTHEW 26:0613; MARK 14:03-09; and JOHN 12:01-08.The John version reads as follows: “Jesus, therefore, six days before the over, came to Bethany, where was Lazarus, who had died, whom he raised out of the dead; they made, therefore, to him a supper there, and Martha was ministering, and Lazarus was one of those reclining together (at meat) with him; Mary, therefore, having taken a pound of ointment of spikenard, of great price, anointed the feet of Jesus and did wipe with her hair his feet, and the house was filled from the fragrance of the ointment. Therefore said one of his disciples -Judas Iscariot, of Simon, who was about to deliver him up – „Therefore was not this ointment sold for three hundred denaries, and given to the poor?‟ and he said this, not because he was caring for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and what things were put in he was carrying. Jesus, therefore, said, „Suffer her; for the day of my embalming she has kept it, for the poor you have always with yourselves, and me you have not always.‟” This story (also see JOHN 11:1-44 ) centres on four people primarily. They are Jesus; Lazarus; Mary; and Martha. “Mary” was actually Mary Magdalene. “Martha” was a titular name for her mother, HelenaSalome. In the Lazarus story, the two ladies are referred to as “sisters”. This denotes conventual sisters, like the Catholics refer to conventual nuns, and not sisters by blood. Helena-Salome actually headed a nunnery. By the same token, the reference to Lazarus as “brother” has a connotation akin to what Pentecostals refer to as “Brother in Christ”. Thus, the story revolves around Jesus the groom; his bride Mary Magdalene; his father-in-law Simon Zelotes; and his mother-in-law Helena-Salome. This is a family affair folks, which provides strong hints as to the exact relationship between Jesus and Mary. The raising from the dead of a man called Lazarus, sadly, was not a miracle at all: it was a ceremonial restoration from excommunication back to the Essene governing council, which comprised of Jesus and his so-called 12 disciples. The “Lazarus” who was thus restored was actually Simon Zelotes, at the time

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the most “beloved” by Jesus of the entire apostolic band, who had been demoted under circumstances relating to a Zealot uprising against Pontius Pilate. More will be said on the subject at a later stage. The anointing of Jesus by Mary with “spikenard” harps back to ancient married rituals as patently demonstrated in The Song of Solomon. This was the second time Mary had anointed Jesus, first at the First Marriage in September AD 30 AD and now at the Second Marriage in March 32 AD. On both occasions, Mary anointed Jesus whilst he sat at table. In SONG OF SOLOMON 1:12, the bride says, “While the King sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof”. The anointing in the gospels was therefore an allusion to the ancient rite whereby a royal bride prepared her groom‟s table. Only as the wife of Jesus and as a priestess in her own right could Mary Magdalene have anointed both the feet and head of Jesus. The anointing in effect had two purposes: first, to seal the marriage, and second, to officially announce to the Jewish nation that Jesus was the Davidic messiah (and not his younger brother James, who had been so promoted by John the Baptist). It all harped back to the tradition in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, where Kings or Pharaohs were anointed for office (in their case with crocodile fat) by their half-sister brides. The King‟s bride actually kept the anointment substance for use for one more time – when the King died. You can now understand why Jesus said “the day of my embalming she has kept it” in reference to his anointing by Mary Magdalene and why the first person to feature at the tomb of Jesus was none other than Mary Magdalene! Three ages in the Lazarus story (in JOHN11: 1-44) are particularly telling. They are Verses 20, 28, and 29. They read as follows: “When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house … After Martha said this, she went back and called her sister Mary privately. „The Master is here,‟ she told her, „and is asking for you.‟ When Mary heard this, she got up and hurried out to meet him.” The reason Mary (Magdalene) first kept her place before proceeding to meet Jesus is not supplied in the Johannine gospel. However, the apocryphal document which has come to be known as The Secret Gospel of Mark sheds more light. It explains that on the first occasion, Mary did come out to meet Jesus along with her mother Martha (Helena-Salome) but upon being rebuked by the disciples of Jesus, she repaired back to the house. Why was she lashed out at? Because according to the Essene matrimonial code, she was not permitted to come out of her own accord and greet her husband: she was to wait until he had given her express permission to emerge. There is yet another element in the conduct of Mary Magdalene that has parallels with Solomon‟s queen. In the back-and-forth romantic dialogue between the couple, the queen is referred to as a “Shulamite” (SONG OF SOLOMON 6:13). The Shulamites were from the Syrian border town of Solam and we have already seen that Mary‟s first foster father, Syro the Jairus, was a Syrian, as was her mother Helena-Salome. JUDAS DENOUNCES THE MARRIAGE The marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene was vehemently opposed by most of his so-called disciples. The most vociferous on this position was Judas Iscariot. The writer of the John gospel characterises Judas as a “thief” who used to pilfer alms money but that is a smear. The gospels were written post-eventual and therefore Judas‟s name was already in ignominy. His detractors therefore had a field day at sullying his character. Yet prior to the betrayal, Judas Iscariot was one of the most respected figures among the Essene community. At the time of Jesus‟s marriage, Judas was the second-highest ranking Essene after Simon Zelotes (that is the meaning of “Judas of Simon” in the age quoted above, meaning “Judas the deputy of Simon”): Jesus was third, although politically he was the seniormost. Judas opposed the marriage on grounds, primarily, that Mary Magdalene was not only a Gentile but a commoner. Judas had the right to pronounce on Jesus‟s marriage because it was he who was in charge of 156

the Essene‟s order of Dan, to which Mary Magdalene belonged prior to her marriage to Jesus and therefore had the right whether to release her for marriage or retain her in the convent. Judas would rather the spikenard (the most expensive fragrance of the day, the reason it was only used by queens) was sold and the money generated donated to the Essene kitty (“the poor” was another name for Essenes: when Jesus in the Beatitudes said “blessed are the poor”, he was not referring to you and me: he meant the Essenes). Sadly, as high-standing as he was, Judas had no right of veto over the marriage of a Davidic heir: only Simon Zelotes had by virtue of his position as the Essene‟s Pope. Simon Zelotes was Mary Magdalene‟s stepfather and there was no way he was going to stand in the way of the marriage of his own daughter. Moreover, Jesus had already begun to fancy himself as Priest-King. As far as he was concerned therefore, he was at once the Davidic messiah and the priestly messiah – the Melchizedek. Thus even if Simon Zelotes had perchance objected to the marriage, Jesus would have gone ahead with it anyway. It was Jesus‟s highly unpopular appropriated role as the Melchizedek that set him on the path to Calvary.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 42

HELL UP IN JUDEA Pitiless Pilate Is Let Loose On Turbulent Province case can be made that history‟s most infamous Roman is Pontius Pilate. It was Pilate who condemned Jesus, the “Son of God”, to the most cruel, most barbaric, and most excruciating of deaths – crucifixion – and cowardly at that as the gospels attest for us. Yet the exact circumstances under which the crucifixion took place and what followed thereafter far from jells with what is familiarly known. The fact of the matter was that there was a lot of political wheeling and dealing and boldfaced corruption on the part both of the Jewish authorities and the Roman establishment in the person of Pontius Pilate. In this piece, we attempt to present a fuller photo of Pilate as the pivot of the whole machination.

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Pilate‟s historicity is not in doubt. In 1961, an Italian archeologist unearthed a limestone block at Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, which as of 6 AD was the Roman seat of government as well as the military headquarters. The block bore the inscription, “Pontius Pilate, the Prefect of Judea, has dedicated this temple to the divine Augusti” (that is, then Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar and his wife Livia). Pilate also gets varying degrees of mention in the works of Roman senator and historian Cornelius Tacitus (56-117 AD); the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher and chronicler Philo of Alexandria (25 BC to 50 AD); and the legendary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD). Although his year of death (37 AD) is documented, his year of birth is a matter of conjecture. He came from the Pontii tribe (hence the name Pontius), a tough, warlike people. The Pontii tribe was of the equestrian class, the second-tier in the Roman caste system. Originally, the equestrians were those Romans with ample pocket power to bribe their way to knightly ranks in the Roman army. Pilate was born to Marcus Pontius, who had distinguished himself as a general in Rome‟s military campaigns. Following one of his particularly sterling military exploits, Marcus was awarded with the Pilum (javelin), a Roman decoration of honour for heroic military service. To commemorate this medal of valour, the family took the name Pilati, rendered Pilate in English and Pilatus in Latin. The son, Lucius Pontius Pilate, also distinguished himself as a soldier in the German campaigns of Germanicus, a prominent general of the early Roman Empire. Thanks to his scintillating military profile coupled with strategic connections in the hierarchies of the Roman government, Pilate was able to wend his way into the heart of Claudia, the granddaughter of Caesar Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire and ruler from 27 BC to 14 AD. Claudia‟s mother was Julia the Elder, who was also the biological mother of the apostles John and James. When Claudia was about 13 years of age, Julia sent her to Rome to be reared in the courts of Emperor Tiberius Caesar, to whom she had been married from 11 BC to 6 BC. Although Tiberius was not the biological father of Claudius, he gladly acquiesced to being her foster father in deference to the memory of her late grandfather Caesar Augustus. Pilate arrived in Rome when Claudia was sixteen years of age. In AD 26, the two tied the knot. Needless to say, it was a marriage based not on love as such but on political opportunism.

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ASSIGNMENT JUDEA The high-placed connection who facilitated Pontius Pilate‟s smooth landing into the inner sanctums of Rome‟s royalty and put him on a pedestal that saw him take pride of place in the cosmic gallery of rogues was Aelius Sejanus. Like Pilate, Sejanus came from the subordinate equestrian class, who would never be eligible for a seat in the Senate, the legislative council of ancient Rome. Sejanus, however, had over time become Emperor Tiberius‟s most trusted lieutenant and to the point where he was the de facto prime minister. He had been commander of the Praetorian Guard, the elite Special Forces unit created by Augustus Caesar as a personal security force, which developed under Sejanus‟s command into the most significant presence in Rome. In AD 26, the emperor was not even based in Rome: he had confined himself to the 10.4 km2 island of Capri, about 264 km from Rome, and left control of Rome and the government of the Roman Empire to Sejanus. It was Sejanus who recommended the appointment of Pilate as prefect, or governor/procurator of Judea. The appointment was pronounced right on the occasion of Pilate‟s nuptials with Claudius. Philo records that when the bridal party emerged from the temple where the marriage ceremony was celebrated and Pilate started to follow the bride into the imperial litter, Tiberius, who was one of the twelve witnesses required to attend the ceremony, held him back and handed him a document which he had taken from his bosom. It was the wedding present – the governorship of far-flung Judea – with orders to proceed at once to Caesarea Maritima to take over the office made vacant by the recall of Valerius Gratus. Pilate was notified by Sejanus that a ship was in fact waiting upon him to transport him to Palestine right away. The only disadvantageous aspect about the assignment was that Pilate was to leave the shores of Rome alone, without the pleasure of spending a first night in the arms of his newly wedded wife: by imperial decree, the wives of governors were not allowed to accompany them in their jurisdictions. Pilate, however, was a royal by marriage and so this prohibition was waived. By special permission granted by His Imperial Majesty Tiberius Caesar, Claudia soon ed her husband in Judea. The wily Pilate had calculated well when he married into royalty. A SADISTIC The Judean perch was not prestigious though. The prefects of Judea were not of high social status. At least one – Felix, referenced by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles – was an ex-slave, which says a great deal on the low regard in which the province was held by Rome. Pilate was only secondarily sent to Judea on of having married into royalty: his posting to the volatile province stemmed, primarily, from his being of a inferior social pedigree. Be that as it may, Pilate relished the posting in that it gave him the chance to exercise power, absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and in Pilate was the archetypal example. Pilate‟s brief was simple: to collect taxes, maintain law and order, maintain infrastructure, and keep the population subdued. Although he was born lowly, he positively had the power of life and death over his Jewish subjects. Let us listen to Josephus in his allusion to Coponius, Judea‟s first Roman governor and who like Pilate was from the same subservient social class: “And now Archelaus‟ part of Judea was reduced into a province and Coponius, one of the equestrian order among the Romans, was sent as procurator, having the power of life and death put into his hands by Caesar.”

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Pilate was callous to a point of being sadistic. He was scarcely the scrupling judge with the rare soft spot that we encounter in the gospels. Philo charges him with “corruptibility, violence, robberies, ill-treatment of the people, grievances, continuous executions without even the form of a trial, endless and intolerable cruelties.” He further declares him to be a “savage, inflexible, and arbitrary ruler” who was of a “stubborn and harsh quality” and “could not bring himself to do anything that might cause pleasure to the Jews”. The essentially humane character of the Pilate who presided over the trial of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels may not be wholly fictitious but is highly embellished. Why did Pilate have such a pathological hatred of the Jews? Sejanus had more to do with it than the spontaneous leanings of his own nature. According to Philo, Sejanus hated the Jews like the plague and wished “to do away with the nation” – to exterminate it. In AD 19, for instance, he forced the Jews in Rome to burn their religious vestments and expelled them from the city without much ado. For as long as Sejanus was in power, Pilate could do pretty much as he pleased. He didn‟t have to worry about compromising reportage reaching the emperor as everything went through the implacably anti-Jewish Sejanus. Sejanus was unrivalled in power: golden statues of the general were being put up in Rome, the Senate had voted his birthday a public holiday, public prayers were offered on behalf of Tiberius and Sejanus, and in AD 31 Sejanus was named as Consul tly with Tiberius. The Judea posting also gave Pilate a golden opportunity to make money – lots of it. The governors of the Roman provinces were invariably rapacious, greedy, and incompetent: this we learn not only from Jewish historians of the day but from contemporary Roman writers as well such as Tacitus and Juvenal. As long as the money skimmed from the provinces was not overly excessive, governors were allowed a free hand. It is said of Emperor Tiberius that, “Once he ordered a governor to reverse a steep rise in taxes saying, „I want my sheep shorn, not skinned‟!” For those governors, such as Pilate, who had from the very acmes of Roman power, they were practically a law unto themselves. PILATE’S WINGS ARE CLIPPED Pontius Pilate was untrained in political office. Furthermore, he was a sycophant to the core who was prepared to go to any length in a bid to curry favour with and prove his loyalty to the powers that be in Rome. Both these attributes gave rise to a series of blunders that brought him the intense hatred of the Jews. The first abomination he committed in the eyes of the Jews was to set up a temple dedicated to Emperor Tiberius, which he called the Tiberieum, making him the only known official to have built a temple to a living emperor. True, Roman emperors were worshipped, but Tiberius was the one exception. According to the Roman scholar and historian Suetonius, Tiberius did not allow the consecration of temples to himself. Pilate‟s act was therefore an overkill: it was not appreciated at all. Throughout his tenure, Pilate had a series of run-ins with the Jews, some of which entailed a lot of bloodshed and one of which sparked an insurrection that paved the way to Calvary(see next piece). Then it all began to unravel. On October 18 AD 31, his patron Sejanus was summoned to the office of Emperor Tiberius and an angry denunciation was read out to him. It is not clear what caused Sejanus‟s fall from the emperor‟s good graces but circumstantial evidence points to the perceived threat to the emperor‟s power. As the ancient historian Cassius Dio puts it, “Sejanus was so great a person by reason both of his excessive haughtiness and of his vast power that to put it briefly, he himself seemed to be the emperor and Tiberius a kind of island potentate, inasmuch as the latter spent his time on the island of Capri.” Sejanus, hitherto the most powerful man in Rome, was thrown into a dungeon. That same evening, he was summarily condemned to death, extracted from his cell, hung, and had his body given over to a crowd that tore it to pieces in a frenzy of manic excitement. His three children were all executed 160

over the following months and his wife, Tiberius‟s own daughter, committed suicide. The people further celebrated his downfall by pulling his statues over. Meanwhile, Tiberius began pursuing all those who could have been involved in the “plots” of Sejanus. In Judea, Pilate, a Sejanus appointee, must have been badly shaken. Were his friends and family under suspicion? Would he be purged like others? Imperial attitudes to the Jewish race seemed to have changed now with the riddance of Sejanus. Tiberius made sure this was the case by appointing a new governor for Syria (who went by the title Legate and to whom Pilate was obligated to report). The governor, Lucius Pomponius Flaccus, arrived in Rome in AD 32. Philo records that Tiberius now “charged his procurators in every place to which they were appointed to speak comfortably to the of our nation in the different cities, assuring them that the penal measures did not extend to all but only to the guilty who were few, and to disturb none of the established customs but even to regard them as a trust committed to their care, the people as naturally peaceable and the institution as an influence promoting orderly conduct.” So Pilate had lost his ers at the top, his new boss was on his doorstep, and there had been a change of policy regarding the very people he was in charge of. Surely, he would have to watch his step. The fact of the matter, however, was that he hardly did so. In November 32 AD, for instance, he provoked a miniuprising by the Zealots led by Judas Iscariot, Theudas Barabbas, and Simon Zelotes. It was this revolt that culminated in those three “crosses” of Calvary that are indelibly etched on the mind of every Christian.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 43

MANHUNT FOR RING LEADERS Pilate seeks out Judas, Barabbas, and Simon Zelotes for inciting bloody insurrection

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ith the demise of his all-powerful mentor Aelius Sejanus, Pontius Pilate decided to win and cement the faith of the emperor. Flavius Josephus records that one day the Jews awoke only to find voltive shields – shields which bore an effigy of Tiberius Caesar – set up all over the “Holy City” of Jerusalem. Outraged, they straight off sent a deputation to the governor‟s residence in Caesarea to their disgust. Images of the emperor were considered by Jews to be blasphemous, an affront to the scriptural command to make no “graven images”. They demanded their removal forthwith. Although Pilate initially refused to budge, he later relented and agreed to meet the protesters at a square in Jerusalem to listen to their petition. Unbeknown to the protesters, they were being lured into a snare as Pilate had stationed troops with concealed weapons around the perimeter. At his signal, the soldiers drew their swords and poised to attack. Pilate then enunciated a warning to the protesters that if they did not at once cease and desist from demonstrating, they would all be slain. If Pilate thought they would immediately cower and retreat, he was grossly mistaken. According to Josephus, the protesters “laid their necks bare, and said they would take their death very willingly, rather than the wisdom of their laws should be transgressed”. For the first time since he took office as governor of Judea, Pilate capitulated to the will of his subjects: he ordered that the shields be removed from Jerusalem and brought back to Caesarea. The injury to his ego must have been enormous but there was no Sejanus to sweep the carnage that would have ensued under the carpet. There was another such standoff with the Jews that is related by Philo. It also involved shields but this time the shields simply bore an inscription rather than the image of the emperor. The inscription, writes Philo, “mentioned these two facts, the name of the person who had placed them there (Pontius Pilate), and the person in whose honour they were so placed there (Tiberius Caesar).” Once again, when the Jews remonstrated, Pilate cocked a snoop at them. The affair was so potentially tempestuous that this time around, the sons of Herod, led by Antipas, got involved. They told Pilate to his face that if he did not withdraw the shields from the Holy City, they would report him to the emperor and set out before him “his corruption and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending and gratuitous and most grievous humanity.” Pilate stood his ground nonetheless and the sons of Herod had no choice but to write a letter to Tiberius, who immediately replied, ordering Pilate to remove the shields to Caesarea. The intervention by Tiberius strained relations between Pilate and Herod Antipas which thawed only after the trial of Jesus (LUKE 23:12). All in all, however, it was a telling lesson to Pilate – that Tiberius was no Sejanus. From this day on, Pilate seemed to have exercised a modicum of caution in his dealings with the Jews, particularly those of Jerusalem. For example, he had in 162

AD 29, 30, and 31 minted coins which bore images with symbols of sacred artifacts used by Roman priests in their pagan religions and which the Jews understandably found offensive. Post31 AD, no Pilate coin bore any pagan symbols. Be that as it may, Pilate had not exactly mellowed as we shall soon see. THE BARABBAS INSURRECTION Sometime in AD 32, Pontius Pilate was at it again in his provocative bunglings against the Jews. He appropriated Temple funds to construct a water carrier to Jerusalem. When the Jews rightfully demonstrated, Pilate responded with heavy-handed reprisals. It seemed this time around, he didn‟t care a jot about possible repercussions from Tiberius. In The Jewish Antiquities, Flavius Josephus documents the incident thus: “Pilate undertook to bring a current of water to Jerusalem, and did it with the sacred money, and derived the origin of the stream from the distance of two hundred furlongs (40 km). However, the Jews were not pleased with what had been done about this water.” Judas Iscariot, who was the underground leader of the Zealots, the Essene military wing, and Theudas Barabbas (the disciple Thaddeus in the gospels, who is also the second Judas on the list) consulted with the then Essene Pope, Simon Zealotes, on the matter. The three Zealot top brass decided a protest should be staged during the forthcoming Feast of Dedication in November AD 32. The “Anti-Pilate Protest” would therefore be the theme of the festival. The Jews were accordingly rallied, with Theudas Barabbas at the head of the protest march, which was dominated by the more belligerent pilgrims from Galilee. “Many ten thousands of the people got together, and made a clamour against him (Pilate), and insisted that he should leave off that design,” relates Josephus. “Some of them also used reproaches, and abused the man, as crowds of such people usually do.” Pilate, who naturally operated on a very short fuse, felt affronted and dared against. His reflex inclination was to pounce. First, he sounded off a hypocritical warning he well knew would not be heeded. Josephus: “So he habited a great number of his soldiers in their habit, who carried daggers under their garments, and sent them to a place where they might surround them. So he bid the Jews himself to go away.” When the Jews stayed put, “boldly casting reproaches upon him”, Pilate “gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition.” This is the carnage alluded to by the evangelist Luke with respect to the “the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices” (LUKE 13:1-3). The demonstration had turned into an insurrection thanks to Pilate‟s penchant for disproportional cruelty. Pilate‟s forces did not escape unscathed nonetheless: a few were killed. Further incensed by the loss of his men, Pilate proceeded to issue a warrant of arrest for the three ring leaders. At the top of the wanted list was Theudas Barabbas, who had spearheaded the protest: he was charged with murder as the life of a Roman soldier was far more precious than any number

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of Jews. Next was Judas Iscariot for being the leader of the Zealots overall. Simon Zealotes was third as he was at once a Zealot and their spiritual leader in his capacity as the Essene Pope. Meanwhile, Jesus, who was the political leader of the three as they numbered among his 12-man shadow government (called the 12 disciples), censured them for provoking the Pilate backlash. Part of this outrage he expresses in JOHN 10:11 thus: “The good shepherd lays his life down for the sheep (the demonstrators in this context); and the hireling (mercenaries, a cynical characterisation of the three ring leaders), and not being a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, does behold the wolf (Pilate) coming, and does leave the sheep, and does flee; and the wolf catches them, and scatters the sheep; and the hireling does flee because he is an hireling, and is not caring for the sheep (the three had gone into hiding instead of sticking their necks out for the sake of the demonstrators.)” Clearly, the three had acted unilateral, without seeking the opinion of Jesus on the matter. SIMON ZELOTES IS DEMOTED The disastrous riot against Pilate scandalised Simon Zelotes. , Simon Zelotes had in September AD 31 succeeded John the Baptist (after his execution) as Pope, or the Father of the Essene community. Now that his reputation was in tatters and a warrant of arrest had been issued against him, he could not be Pope anymore. Accordingly, Jonathan Annas (the disciple Nathaniel) acceded to the papacy forthwith. In the Jesus movement, there were two factions – the Belligerent Faction, who advocated a forceful expulsion of the Romans, and the Peace Faction, who preached co-existence with the Roman overlords. Simon Zelotes headed the former, whilst Jonathan Annas headed the latter. As such, Jonathan was agreeable to the Roman authorities too. As the new Pope, Jonathan took one more step: he decided to excommunicate Simon Zelotes and Judas Iscariot from the Essene fold primarily to placate Pilate (it is not clear why Theudas Barabbas was not excommunicated). Jesus was talking about this course of action when he said, “I saw Satan and Lightning fall from Heaven” – the proper translation and not the one we typically encounter which wrongly reads, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven” and into which the Christian clergy have read all sorts of wishful meanings. As we have long explicated, “Satan” was the nickname of Judas as the leader of the Zealots and “Lightning” was the nickname of Simon Zealotes as the head of the war faction in the Jesus movement. Once Simon Zealotes was excommunicated, it meant he would never ever be Pope again and Jonathan Annas would be practically uncontested as Pope. Now, just as being initiated into the Essene fold was referred to as “being born again”, excommunication was referred to as “dying spiritually”. Excommunication involved undergoing a ritual of symbolic death. An excommunicated monastic was put through a burial rite, dressed in grave clothes, and put in his own tomb. In the case of a leader such as Simon Zelotes, the tomb was one of the caves carved out from the ends of the southern cliffs at Qumran. This cave has been found by archaeologists and has been dubbed “Cave 4”. This was a tomb reserved for the burial of Popes. As the first Essene Pope, Menahem, had been given the titular name Abraham, Cave 4 was also known as Abraham‟s Bosom in his honour. The excommunicant was

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placed there for three full days and on the fourth day was brought out and released into the wider world, with all connection with the Essene Community completely severed. Simon Zelotes was subjected to the same ritual as well. However, before it could run its course, there was a “divine” intervention. Exactly what was this? JESUS MOVES TO RESTORE SIMON Whilst he was Pope, Simon Zealotes went by another informal title, “Eleazer”. The title derived from Eleazer of the Old Testament, who succeeded his father Aaron as High Priest. The Pope was the de facto High Priest of the Essene community. In Greek, Eleazar is Lazarus. When Simon Zealotes, alias Lazarus, was demoted as Pope, he became a “Leper”. This did not mean a diseased person. In Essene jargon, “Leper” was a term for a person who was not to be itted into sacred surroundings (this definition can be found in a Dead Sea scroll called the Temple Scroll). This was the fate of Simon Zelotes when he was excommunicated from the Essene fraternity. Thus, when Jesus was feted in the house of “Simon the Leper” (MATTHEW 26:6-13/MARK 14:3-9), it was actually in the house of Simon Zelotes. Now, although Jesus did not approve of the demonstration against Pilate, he still held Simon Zelotes in very high esteem. Not only was Simon Zelotes his staunchest er politically but he was his father-in-law. As the Davidic messiah, Jesus must have therefore been under enormous pressure from his own wife Mary Magdalene and his mother-in-law Helena Salome to do something about the restoration of Simon Zelotes. Eventually, Jesus caved in. The reinstatement of Simon Zelotes is recorded in JOHN 11:1-53, a age frequently titled as The Raising of Lazarus. The Christian clergy has spun this as the act of summoning Lazarus from a state of natural death and have therefore dubbed it as a miracle. The fact of the matter was that it was the raising of Lazarus not from real death but from symbolic death. Just to reiterate, when Simon Zelotes was excommunicated from the Essene fold, he figuratively died in that he was banished from all manner of fellowship with the Essene fraternity. Jesus now boldly stepped forward to unilaterally restore him to fellowship. This figuratively meant “raising him from the dead”. When Jesus performed the ritual to reinstate Simon Zelotes, he stepped onto the toes of the Essene top brass and from that day on they began to plot his demise (JOHN 11:53). Exactly how was the restoration ritual performed?

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 44

THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER It was the price of a slave. So how could Judas have traded Jesus for a song?

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he exact process of the ritualistic resurrection of Lazarus (Simon Zelotes) from figurative as opposed to real death is related in a textual fragment that was originally a component of what has come to be known as the Secret Gospel of Mark.

The fragment was discovered in a monastery at Mar Saba, near Qumran, by Morton Smith, later Professor of Ancient History at Columbia University, in 1958. It was actually part of the contents of a letter written by the churchman Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-215) as a reply to his colleague Theodore. In the letter, Clement confirmed the existence and authority of “Secret Mark” and suggested that it was being kept under lock and key. RELIGIOUS DUPING BY DELIBERATE DESIGN Clement‟s letter centred on a “heretical” group known as the Carpocrations, who were inspired by the teachings of Helena-Salome, the consort of Simon Zelotes and the mother of Mary Magdalene, and who had irregularly come into possession of the Secret Gospel of Mark. It decreed that some of the original content of the gospel of Mark, whose dirty linen the Carpocrations were washing in public, was to be suppressed because it did not conform with establishment agenda. The basis for this censorship Clement explained as follows: “Such men (Carpocrations) are to be opposed in all ways and altogether. For even if they should say something true, one who loves the truth should not even so agree with them. For not all true things are the truth; nor should the truth which seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth – that according to the Faith. To them, one must never give way; nor when they put forward their falsifications, should one concede that the Secret Gospel is by Mark but should deny it on oath. For not all true things are to be said to all men.” Note the last statement: For not all true things are to be said to all men. No wonder the great Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the masses. What we learn from the Clement reder is that there was originally a more authentic though controversial Gospel of Mark than the doctored one we have today. Few Christians are aware that when the New Testament was collated at the Nicene Council in 325 AD, the gospel of Mark ended at chapter 16:8, whereby Mary Magdalene and other women depart from Jesus‟s empty tomb: there were no postmortem appearances of Jesus. Indeed, the gospel of Mark that we find in the two oldest complete or near-complete scriptural manuscripts (dated to the 4th century AD), the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaticus, ends at 16:8. All the verses beyond that were later interpolations by church fathers who preferred a particular dogmatic spin. Writes professor Smith: “Based on this letter (the Clementine response to Theodore), we can conclude that the Secret Gospel of Mark was the older and more complete, and the version we have is an edited version with the troubling ages left out by the Church fathers.” The portions supplied by Clement fit in between MARK 10:34 and 10:35 and the middle of MARK 10:46.

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Exactly what did the fragment from the Secret Gospel of Mark say? THE PESHER OF THE LAZARUS RITUAL The Secret Gospel of Mark tells a story similar to the raising of Lazarus in JOHN 11:1-44. Fragment 1 reads as follows: “And they came to Bethany. And there was a woman there, whose brother was dead. And she came and fell down before Jesus and said to him: Son of David, have mercy on me. But the disciples rebuked her. And in anger Jesus went away with her into the garden where the tomb was; and immediately a loud voice was heard from the tomb; and Jesus went forward and rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And immediately he went in where the young man was, stretched out his hand and raised him up, grasping him by the hand. But the young man looked upon him and loved him, and began to entreat him that he might remain with him. And when they had gone out from the tomb, they went into the young man‟s house; for he was rich. And after six days Jesus commissioned him; and in the evening the young man came to him, clothed only in linen cloth upon his naked body. And he remained with him that night; for Jesus was teaching him the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. And from there he went away and returned to the other bank of the Jordan.” Fragment 2 describes what purportedly happened in Jericho thus: “He came to Jericho. And there were there the sisters of the young man whom Jesus loved, and his mother and Salome; and Jesus did not receive them.” In the two ages referenced above, as well as in the corresponding age in the gospels (JOHN 11:1-44), there are a number of with meanings in the Essenes‟ pesher language (the code language intended for initiates only) which are not apparent in the English language. These we will attempt to make clear for the readers though fuller details can be found in the writings of Barbara Theiring. Bethany, as you may know by now, was a building at Qumran. Bethany is Bethania in Hebrew and it means “House of the Poor”. The Essenes referred to themselves as a community of “the poor” since in general they did not possess individual property as all property was ceded to communal ownership. The woman “whose brother was dead” was Mary Magdalene. It was Mary Magdalene and her mother Helena-Salome (Martha in the gospels, a title meaning “Lady”) who pleaded with Jesus to revive Lazarus (Simon Zelotes), that is, restore him to the Essene leadership fold after he had been excommunicated following his involvement in the mini-insurrection against Pontius Pilate in November 32 AD. The two women feared that Simon, who was “sick” (in the early stages of excommunication) would “stink” if he remained long in the tomb through not having the means of ritual washing Essenes underwent on a daily basis. The reference to Lazarus as “brother” implies conventual brotherhood as opposed to a relational brother, just as “sister” meant conventual sisters rather than relational sister (in the Catholic Church, a “Brother” or “Sister” is one who “commits him/herself to following Christ in consecrated life of the Church, usually by the vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience”.) After his demotion from the papacy, Lazarus was now a brother and not a superior. Mary Magdalene was rebuked by the disciples because by urging Jesus to reinstate Simon, she was going against the edict of Jonathan Annas, the new Father of the Essene community. The “loud voice” that issued forth from the tomb (appealing to Jesus to lift his banishment as part of the ritual) meant a voice of authority. Simon, as the former Essene Pope, was a man of authority still. “Young man” was a technical term for initiates, who at their initiation wore a linen surplice without any undergarment. This was the level to which Lazarus had sunk after he had been excommunicated, meaning theoretically he would have to work his way up the hierarchy once again once he was reinstated as an Essene. After his 167

excommunication, Simon Zelotes became “rich”, meaning he was no longer an Essene – the “poor” – and therefore was now entitled to private property such as the very house in which he now lived. “Love him” (a part of the ritual‟s jargon) in this context means Simon desired to have a special communion meal presided over by Jesus as the Davidic messiah. “The young man who Jesus loved" meant Simon Zelotes as he indeed was Jesus' closest associate among the apostolic band. Now that Simon Zelotes had been restored to the Essene fold, Jesus as a matter of routine had to instruct him again in “the mysteries of the Kingdom of God” – special knowledge, called Gnosis, which only high-ranking Essene were privy to. THE JUDAS DEAL The release of Simon Zelotes from excommunication not only alienated Jesus from Jonathan Annas, the man who had replaced Simon as Pope, and his ilk but also caused him to fall afoul of the law. First, by unilaterally reinstating Simon Zelotes, he was claiming the role of Jonathan Annas, who as the Father of the Essene community had the prerogative to excommunicate (spiritually “kill”) and restore – (spiritually “resurrect”). When Jesus boasted in JOHN 11:25 during a conversation with Helena-Salome, the consort of Simon Zelotes, that “I‟m the resurrection and the life”, he was referring to his actions in relation to Simon. Put differently, Jesus was claiming to be at once the Davidic messiah, Malchus, and the priestly messiah, Zadok, or Melchizedek in short. It was on grounds of this claim and other associated acts that Jonathan Annas decided to plot against Jesus. Second, Simon Zelotes was an outlaw: he was wanted by the Roman authorities for his part in orchestrating the insurrection against Pilate and for the killings that ensued. Thus Jesus‟s reinstatement of Simon was certain to be interpreted by Pilate as showing open for a fugitive from justice, resultantly making him an accomplice in the whole affair. The three wanted men – Judas Iscariot, Simon Zelotes, and Theudas Barabbas – had been in hiding in the Qumran caves since December AD 32. In March AD 33, they came out of hiding to attend the seasonal council of the leaders of the Essene community that was held at Qumran with a view to observe the over and other associated festivals. All the three had been restored to Essene hip. By this time, Judas had already concocted a plan as to how to extricate himself from his predicament. His instrument of redemption in this regard was none other than Jesus. Judas had loathed Jesus for some time now. Jesus had turned him down as his deputy in a liberated Israel. He had married Mary Magdalene, a commoner and a non-Jew, and he now claimed the roles of both King and Priest. Judas therefore was of the view that not only did Jesus lack wisdom but he was power-hungry and held him (Judas) in very low esteem when he was a respected intellectual and as the Essenes‟ treasurer-general was a man of high standing. Not only was Judas the Essenes‟ chief scribe but he was the underground leader of the Zealots, the military wing of the Essenes and the most esteemed liberation movement. In the event, Judas decided to make a pact with Jonathan Annas. He proposed that Jesus replace him as the third culprit among the trio who were wanted by Pilate. Jonathan Annas, who was already alienated by Jesus, readily acquiesced. In return, Judas would not only be struck off the wanted list but he would assume leadership of the 30-man group that John the Baptist had established. The group actually comprised of 29 men and 1 female, Helena-Salome, to represent the 29-and-half days in the lunar cycle (a woman was regarded as half a man). The group‟s symbol was silver, like the silver light of the moon, and was thus known as the Thirty Pieces of Silver. The prospective take-over of the group by Judas is what the gospels mean when they say Judas betrayed Jesus with thirty pieces of silver. There was no

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money involved whatsoever (in any case, 30 pieces of silver was the price of a slave and it does not make sense that Judas traded Jesus for such a pittance).

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 45

THREE RANGED AGAINST JESUS They were Judas Iscariot, Jonathan Annas, and Herod Agrippa

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arch AD 33 was a momentous month in the life of Jesus. Not only did he seal his marriage with Mary Magdalene but he publicly proclaimed himself as the King of the Jews. The marriage was as political as it was a social compact. It‟s political import was to prepare him for his symbolic coronation as the King of the Jews when he was anointed by his “queen” Mary Magdalene as per the ancient monarchical custom that went back to the time of ancient Egypt. Why was Jesus so intent at asserting his status as King of the Jews? Let us first recall that at the time, both Jesus and his immediate younger brother James were contending for the Davidic kingship. Historically, the Pharisees (and conservative Jews) promoted James, whereas the more politically influential Sadducees (and Hellenistic Jews) rallied behind Jesus. The Pharisees clamoured for James because he was born procedurally as befitted a Davidic heir, in September, the holiest month of the year, in 1 AD. On the other hand, Jesus was born at the wrong time of the year for a Davidic heir – in the month of March 7 BC, which was six months out of kilter. To them, the unusually early birth suggested hurried sexual relations between his father Joseph and his mother Mary, which amounted to fornication. The Sadducees, however, reasoned that Jesus was conceived when Joseph and Mary were already betrothed and since betrothal was practically marriage itself as it needed a formal divorce to terminate, Jesus was effectively born within wedlock. In the 30s AD, it was the Pharisaic stance that held more sway. When Jesus in AD 29 broke away from the movement of John the Baptist to form a kind of opposition party to his wayward cousin, John, who held the position of Pope – the Father of the Essene community – responded by de-recognising Jesus as the Davidic heir and embracing James in his stead. Jesus had also estranged himself from the current Pope, Jonathan Annas, when he unilaterally restored Simon Zelotes to the Essene fold following his excommunication, which stemmed from his involvement in the bloody riot against Pontius Pilate. Hence Jonathan Annas, whose brother-in-law was the Jerusalem Temple High Priest Joseph Caiaphas, turned against Jesus and began to root for James as the Davidic messiah. For the first time therefore, Jesus was at odds with the Sadducees, who had consistently backed him hitherto. Jesus did not take the matter lying down. He hit back by de-recognising James as his Crown Prince and elevating his second brother Joses, short for Joseph. This course of action caused a rift in the family as Mary, their mother, was of the inalienable view that James was the legal heir to Jesus. In fact, Mary had from the very beginning preferred James as the Davidic heir since he did not have the baggage of perceived moral scandal that Jesus had thanks to the questionable circumstances of his birth. As such, Mary and some of her children (she had five sons and three daughters) on occasion tried to disrupt Jesus‟s campaigns as the Davidic messiah (MARK 3:21/31 and 6:4). AGRIPPA COURTS JESUS In gospel times, there were two Herods who both directly and indirectly influenced Jewish affairs in Judea. They were Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, aged 53 in 33 AD, and his cousin Herod Agrippa I, aged 44. Agrippa was a grandson of Herod the Great, the deceased father of Antipas.

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Agrippa‟s sister Herodias was married to Antipas, which meant the two Herods were at once cousins and in-laws. The two Herods both were highly ambitious men. Each wanted to be the political King of the Jews (Jesus was the ceremonial King) subject to the sanction of Rome. Of the two, Antipas had the brightest prospects: as ruler of Galilee and Perea, he was already a quarter-king, the meaning of the term tetrarch. Agrippa‟s chances were to all intents and purposes bleak. He had been declared bankrupt whilst he resided in Rome at only age 25 and was consequently banished from there. He settled in metropolitan Judea. But Agrippa believed this tarnish would not endure. Whilst in Rome, he had established very close bonds with people who were close to Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar. He fell into debt because of his lavish entertainment of distinguished Romans to banquets at his home in order to gain political influence, his single aim being to regain the Herod monarchy that had been abolished by Caesar Augustus in AD 6. He tactfully cultivated close friendship with Drusus, the son of Tiberius, and Gaius, the grandson of Antonia, the most powerful Roman woman of the day who was also the sister-in-law of Tiberius. Antonia, who was close friends with his mother Bernice, became his godmother. With such powerful connections right in the nucleus of the Roman Empire, Agrippa was hopeful that in the fullness of time he would be favourite for king at the expense of his uncles, notably Antipas. The relations between the two most eminent Herods were fickle. They kept blowing hot and cold. Antipas had been persuaded to extend a financial lifeline to the broke Agrippa by his wife Herodias when he verged on committing suicide on of his insolvency but this generous gesture did little to endear him to his cousin. Instead of lending to Antipas as the future king, Agrippa decided to enter the fray too as a contender in his own right when he was not King Herod‟s son but a grandson and therefore quite distant in the line of succession. Since Agrippa was based in Judea as opposed to Antipas, who was based in Galilee, he was closer to the theatre of realpoilitik. He knew which alignments in Jewish political dynamics were the more opportune and expedient. Flavius Josephus writes glowingly of him, characterising him as “naturally noble in spirit”, but he was a political prostitute who switched alliances on a whim. For instance, when John the Baptist was alive, Agrippa aligned with him against Jesus. But after the Baptist‟s death, he began to gravitate towards Jesus and to the extent where Antipas, who had always been aligned with Jesus, now played second fiddle. Thus when Jesus decided to proclaim himself as the Davidic messiah to send a unequivocal message to James and company that he was the real king in waiting, he was aided and abetted in this regard by the equally royal figure of Agrippa. Meanwhile in Rome, things were happening. In AD 19, Germanicus, the adopted son of Tiberius and his anointed heir, had died. That made Germanicus‟s son Gaius Caligula as next in line. In AD 33, signs began to emerge that Tiberius was set to name Gaius as his heir. The Qumran community were therefore aware that if Gaius became emperor, it was almost a given that he would appoint Agrippa as the client King of the Jews. It was on of such a scenario that they began to rally to Agrippa at the expense of Antipas. Since Agrippa also needed the of Jesus in his monarchical ambitions, he decided to openly project him as the Davidic King of the Jews. AGRIPPA ORDAINS JESUS AS KING The incident in which Jesus rode astride a donkey into Jerusalem is commonly referred to as “The Triumphant Entry” in allusion to the euphoric manner in which he is supposed to have been received by pilgrims to the over. It is recorded in MATTHEW 21:1-17; MARK 11:1-11; LUKE 19:28-39; and JOHN 12:12-19.

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The notion of the incident having taken place in Jerusalem derives only from the surface reading of scripture. The gospels were written in a code language called pesher and some of the the writers employed do not carry the meanings we superficially attribute to them. In pesher, Jerusalem (in plural form) was a code name for Qumran. It is at Qumran that the Triumphant Entry took place. In fact, much of what you read in the gospels happened at Qumran and the surrounding areas, the collective code name of which was the Judean Wilderness. The evangelist who relates the incident most accurately is Matthew. Matthew documents that there were two animals involved, a donkey and a colt (a young donkey). This is significant as it correctly suggests that the Triumphant Entry did not involve one person but two. The one of course was Jesus and the other was … Herod Agrippa. Invariably at this time of the year (the over season), a harbinger ceremony was conducted at Qumran. One of the Herods and a Davidic heir mounted donkeys and led a procession in mimicry of the coronation of a king. The involvement of the Herods arose because they saw themselves as the future monarch either as subordinate to Caesar (as Herod the Great was) or simply as a monarch in their own right in a world were Rome was no longer in power. In the latter, a Herod would be the political monarch and the Davidic heir would be the ceremonial king subordinate to the Herod. Accordingly therefore, Agrippa rode on the donkey (being senior) and Jesus rode on a colt. To the mainstream Jews, however, it was Jesus who stole the limelight as the ceremony evoked that of the Old Testament whereby King David instructed his son Solomon to ride in a procession on a donkey so that he could proclaim him as heir to the throne (1 KINGS 1:28-34). The shouts “Hosanna” and chants of “the coming kingdom of David” was a clear enough message that the pilgrims recognised Jesus as the real King of the Jews. It was a triumphant affair indeed. The ceremony began at the Mount of Olives, a code name for the Manger, the Qumran house in which Jesus had been born, and concluded at the temple, that is, the Qumran sanctuary and not the Jerusalem temple. AGRIPPA TURNS AGAINST JESUS The Qumran temple also served as a treasury, where tithe money was stored. Part of this money came from Essene missions abroad. Since foreign money was “unclean” and had to be converted to “holy money”, the money changers did proliferate within the temple precincts. Jesus had always resented this commercial element, which seemed to override the main thrust, the spiritual element. Now that he had been officially instituted as the Davidic King, he decided to show his outrage by turning over the tables of the money changers. His message was that the temple was fundamentally a house of worship and not a bureau de change. The money changers had turned the temple into a “den of robbers” as they exploited the pilgrims by charging highly inflated exchange rates. Jesus‟s action naturally incensed the Herods, particularly Agrippa. The Herods had a vested interest in activities going on at the temple as they had a stake in the foreign exchange business there. In fact, the rivalry between Agrippa and Antipas primarily had to do with who had the most control of this business. The Herods were not a spiritual people: they were dynasts. To them, religion was secondary to commerce. None of the two was king and thus none felt subordinate to the other. Whoever had the finest rapport with the Essene Pope and the Treasurer-General had the lion‟s share of the business that was taking place at the temple. Presently, the Pope was Jonathan Annas and the Treasurer-General was Judas Iscariot. Jonathan Annas‟s loyalties now lay with Agrippa, whose odds of becoming king with the change of the monarchical guard 172

in Rome were brightest. Annas had promised all the monthly tithes that came from the Diaspora to Agrippa and Jesus had taken very strong exception. He would rather the tithes went to Simon Zelotes, who had been the head of the Diaspora mission before his excommunication and demotion from Pope. But Jesus had reinstated Simon to the Essene top brass and therefore was of the position that Simon was deserving of the tithes. Agrippa and Simon Zelotes hardly saw eye to eye: they seemed to be mortal enemies. Jesus was not only devoted to Agrippa‟s foe but he was now sabotaging the foreign exchange business, a lifeline of the Herods. Furthermore, he had alienated himself from Jonathan Annas by openly laying claim to the position of Pope so that he could be the Priest-King, the Melchizedek. In the event, Agrippa and Annas banded together against him. Judas Iscariot, who also resented Jesus, closed ranks with the two. Judas was a monarchist and as the Essenes' keeper of the purse had always pandered to the financial exigencies of Agrippa. The stage, thus, was now set for the trio to teach Jesus a lesson.

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SUPPING WITH DEVILS The Last Supper took place at Qumran and had none of the cannibalistic connotations the modern church associates with it

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n Christendom, the Last Supper has arguably come to be the most iconic sacrament. Catholics call it the Eucharist whilst Protestants simply refer to it as the Breaking of Bread or Holy Communion. The frequency with which the rite is conducted varies from denomination to denomination. Some churches break bread every time they meet; others only once a month. On the occasion, wafers or pieces of bread and a bit of wine, or any semblance of it such as red juice for instance, are ingested by the congregants. To Protestants, the bread and wine are simply emblematic of the body and blood of Jesus. To the Catholics, they actually corporealise, a phenomenon referred to as transubstantiation, meaning what you consume are not simply emblems but real flesh and blood! The meal, if it can be called that, is meant to commemorate the supper Jesus had with his disciples the night before the Romans cuffed him up and dragged him off to be crucified. It is informed by a statement attributed to Jesus, which says, “Do this in remembrance of me as often as you meet (LUKE 22:19). When I was a young Christian, I innocently partook of Holy Communion as a member of Evangel Temple in Chingola, Zambia. Then having gained in knowledge about the origins of Christianity, I decided to refrain henceforth. What I learnt was that the idea of ingesting bread and wine as symbols of the body and blood of Jesus was an age-old pagan ritual which was written into the gospels by Illuminati elements. Every time you partake of Holy Communion, you are acting out a satanic practice. It equates to killing somebody and then drinking the blood that gushes forth (vampirism) and gorging on the body parts (cannibalism) – something that is only done at satanic sacrifice rituals. Jesus never instituted such a ritual. In the mechanics of the “Last Supper”, Jesus by no means intended to convey the paradigm of his apotheosis to mankind. It‟s a pity that modern Christianity fuses both good and fiendish elements in its devotional practices. No wonder acts of moral turpitude are so prevalent among the Christian clergy today. THE MODALITIES OF THE LAST SUPPER If one point ought to be underlined, it is that the Last Supper did not take place in an upstairs house in your familiar Jerusalem. It took place at Qumran, code-named Jerusalem (in the plural) by the Essenes. Another is that its occurring on over was sheer overlap: it was not a over-oriented event at all. The author of the gospel of John was aware of this element as he did not remotely associate it with the over. The Last Supper was actually one of those meals which was a daily feature at Qumran. It took place in the vestry, a huge, rectangular room running north-south that attached to the Qumran temple. The vestry was called the Body, or the Heavenly Man, because when the council of twelve met in the room, they imagined a super-sized image of a man superimposed on the room floor. It was divided into two parts – the northern and southern part. The northern part was elevated by 18 inches, like a stage, and was therefore nicknamed the katalyma, meaning the upstairs room. The dining table was placed east-west on

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the katalyma. Jesus and the six seniormost of the council sat on chairs on the katalyma, whereas the junior six sat on seats below the katalyma. The seating arrangements in the main corresponded to the various parts of the Heavenly Man. The highest ranking men, for instance, sat in positions that corresponded to the head; those of middle rank positioned in the section that matched the thorax, such that when somebody sat in the “bosom” or “chest”, it meant he was of intermediate rank. The so-called “beloved disciple” who sat in the “bosom of Jesus” did not sit by his chest: he was simply a middle-ranking disciple. There was an afternoon meal and an evening meal. Flavius Josephus says the afternoon meal was the holiest: it was a strictly religious ritual with no diversions or polemics whatsoever. The evening meal was divided into two parts – the common meal and the sacred meal, altogether spanning 4 hours. The common meal ran for two hours, from 6-8 pm, and was meant to satisfy common hunger. The sacred meal began at 8 pm and ended at 10 pm. This was not simply about eating and family devotion: a number of issues – political, religious, socio-economic – were discussed during the sacred meal, especially at over times as this was the time when the seasonal council was held. The participants in the meals were always 13 people. These were the seniormost Essenes. In the 30s AD they comprised of Jesus and the so-called 12 disciples. As we have emphasised time and again, they were not disciples as such: they were the governing council of the Qumran community who also styled themselves as the future cabinet of a liberated Israel. Jesus was their leader only in of politics, being the Davidic heir; otherwise, their real leader was the Essenes‟ chief priest, the so-called Pope or Father of the Community. Presently, the chief priest was Jonathan Annas, known as Nathaniel/James the son of Alpheus in the gospels. In each section of the two meals, the first hour was for solid food and the second hour for drink. The food was bread (and some fish in the afternoon meal) and the drink was wine. The loaves were 12 in number: this evoked the Old Testament‟s 12 loaves of the Presence which were eaten by the priests as a sign of gratitude on behalf of each of t he 12 tribes of Israel for the harvest that gave them food (LEVITICUS 24:5-9). At Qumran, the chief priest ate his loaf on behalf of God. Since he stood in the place of God, his other title was “Lord God”. This is where Christians just don‟t get it: the God and Lord in the gospels do not always mean creator, just as angel does not always mean a heavenly figure. JUDAS GETS SET Even before the Last Supper got going, Judas Iscariot, Jonathan Annas, and Herod Agrippa I had already compacted as to how Jesus was going to be dealt with. Jesus had already served notice that he was going to formally challenge Jonathan Annas as chief priest during the sacred meal. Jonathan‟s heart was thus even more hardened against Jesus. It was agreed that midway in the sacred meal, Judas would excuse himself and proceed to make arrangements to alert Pontius Pilate that the men who were behind the November AD 32 riot in which some Roman soldiers were killed were at large at Qumran and were sitting ducks for arrest. Pilate had already been told to await a messenger who would deliver the message in person on horseback and he had indicated that he would come over to Qumran, try the culprits in a kangaroo court setting, and sentence them summarily. Judas‟s reward for this betrayal was that he would not be arraigned for his role in the November insurrection; instead, Jesus would take his place as the third accused. In addition, Judas would be elevated to the position of No. 2 in the Essene priestly hierarchy. In other words, he would be deputy to Jonathan 175

Annas. Furthermore, Judas would now preside over the 30-man group the late John the Baptist had established and which was currently overseen by Jonathan Annas. The unofficial name for this group as we now know was the 30 Pieces of Silver. Judas said he was game. When the common meal was in progress, Jesus acted as the host, which was very much in keeping with his status as the Davidic King. There were 13 people in attendance. Normally, these should have been Jesus and his so-called 12 disciples. On this occasion, however, Simon Zelotes was not allowed to take his place at the table. It had been taken by Agrippa. Simon Zelotes was present all right but he did not occupy his designated seat. He sat at the periphery, the place normally occupied by invited observers. It seemed his reinstatement by Jesus was still a moot point as far as Jonathan Annas was concerned. Agrippa had been invited by Jonathan Annas so that he could witness Jesus‟s pitch for the chief priesthood and see how that could be twisted to pad his imminent indictment before Pilate. Agrippa was expected to be named King of the Jews after the death of Tiberius Caesar and so Jonathan Annas wanted to curry as much favour from him as possible. Jesus, unaware that Agrippa had betrayed his trust, did not protest his presence. Jesus sat next to Jonathan Annas. The two occupied the august chairs of King and Priest respectively. Directly opposite Jesus was his ministerial deputy Simon Peter. Judas sat opposite Jonathan Annas as his deputy-designate too. As host, one of Jesus‟s roles was to wash the feet of all in attendance – his guests. This was not only peculiar to Jesus but was a standard gesture on the part of every host at periodical meals held in Qumran homesteads. That done, Jesus went back to his seat, following which he blessed a cup of fermented wine and distributed it. JESUS ASSUMES MANTLE OF PRIEST-KING Once the common meal had concluded, the sacred meal commenced. Since this was not an ordinary meal but was taken in the context of a seasonal council, there were a host of issues to be addressed. They included the November riots against Pilate; Jesus‟s unilateral reinstatement of Simon Zelotes to the Essene fold, which was endorsed by Herod Antipas but frowned upon by Agrippa; and of course the pros and cons of Jesus‟s tilt at the position held by Jonathan Annas. The sacred meal that coincided with the seasonal council therefore typically went beyond the allotted two hours that night. Jonathan Annas, who as chief priest was presiding over the proceedings, procedurally blessed the bread and wine. Then Jesus got into his stride. He turned to Jonathan and observed to him that he was contesting the papacy. He then instructed Simon Peter and Judas Iscariot to change positions. In other words, Jesus had promoted Judas as his deputy: now that he had laid claim to high priesthood, he was now Priest-King. Resultantly, Jonathan Annas had now been relegated to third in the hierarchy. With this stroke-of-the-pen restructuring of the Essene organisation chart, we can now understand why Simon Peter would later deny Jesus three times. By nature a temperamental fellow, the guy was livid at being sidelined in favour of Judas. With the plot against Jesus already at an advanced stage, Jonathan Annas did not resist Jesus‟s gesture. He meekly exchanged seats with Jesus, thus formally acknowledging that Jesus was now the Priest-King, or the Melchizedek. As to what Judas felt in regard to his unheralded promotion by Jesus, we can only surmise. Be that as it may, it was too belated an honour as Jesus‟s days as a free man were numbered. In fact, shortly thereafter, Judas excused himself from the meeting and asked that Theudas Barabbas (the other “Judas” on the list of apostles in the gospels), his deputy as Zealot commander, act on his behalf.

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He then proceeded to detail an agent to rush to inform Pilate that he had better come immediately as the wanted men were at the scene. Meanwhile, Jesus addressed a number of questions in his new portfolio as Priest-King as the gospels document. Agrippa and Jonathan Annas must have adduced a lot of subjects to make sure the meeting unduly prolonged to allow Pilate enough time to travel to Qumran. For some reason though, Pilate did not pitch till the following morning: only his troops arrived.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 47

THE JUDAS KISS Simon Peter rallies to Jesus as Judas and James bare their fangs

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he sacred meal having concluded (the Last Supper of Christian lore), Jesus led the gathering in a recessional hymn both as a formality and to ameliorate the tempers that must have flared up during the deliberations. Then exiting the vestry, he led his companions toward the Mount of Olives.

Now, I cannot emphasise this point enough: the scene was Qumran, code-named Jerusalem, and not literal Jerusalem. The Essenes regarded Qumran as a microcosm of Jerusalem, a loose imitation infrastructurally of the Holy City. So every landmark of Jerusalem was nominally reproduced at Qumran. Thus, just as there was Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, Kidron Valley, and Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, there had to be a Gethsemane, a Mount of Olives, a Kidron Valley, and a Pool of Siloam at Qumran too, albeit in name only and not the exact replica. The Mount of Olives was a building east of the Qumran sanctuary – the Jerusalem temple in Essene nomenclature – where monastics (Essenes who were permanently single or temporarily single) used to gather. The open expanse around the hall was known as the Garden of Gethsemane. In addition, there was an outer hall to the immediate south of the monastery hall which was exclusively for married Essenes and Gentile pilgrims, all classified as “unclean”. Jesus took along the disciples Simon Peter, John, and James and shuttling forth between the outer hall and the outside garden he istered the extensive teaching recorded in JOHN chapters 15-17 to both the Gentile/married party and the celibates. It was during these ministrations that Simon Peter approached him and whispered into his ear what he had just gathered – that he would soon be under arrest in connection with the November 32 AD insurrection against Pilate courtesy of Judas‟s malign treachery. It now occurred to Jesus that he had been set up: he now understood why Jonathan Annas had so ively yielded his papal status to him and why Judas had made a disappearing act halfway during the sacred meal. Jesus was under no illusion as to his predicament now. His accs would press the case that he indeed was involved in the insurrection as he was so close to Simon Zealotes, his father-in-law and one of the three masterminds of the uprising. Since this was an offence against the Roman authorities, it meant he would be brought before the judgement seat of Pilate and knowing Pilate‟s reputation, capital punishment almost certainly beckoned. Having in all probability apologised to Simon Peter for the earlier snub for the position of deputy, he asked the three disciples to accompany him outside and posted them to keep vigil so that when the arresting party arrived, they would tip him accordingly. CAIAPHAS CONTRIVES TO SPARE JESUS At this time of the year, all the high and mighty in Palestine came to Qumran. Herod Antipas, Herod Phillip, Herod Agrippa, as well as Annas the former high priest of the Jerusalem temple and the current high priest Joseph Caiaphas were around. It was from here they would depart to celebrate the over in Jerusalem.

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Excusing himself from his three disciples, Jesus went to see Caiaphas and pleaded with him to intervene and save him from the fate that would soon befall him. Jesus had not yet been arrested and so the gesture was not sub-judice. Caiaphas was a conservative Pharisee and as such he did not recognise Jesus as the Davidic King; instead, he advocated for James, his younger brother. James was not as ambitious as Jesus was: all he wanted to be was the ceremonial Davidic King and not Priest-King. Thus Jesus was no longer relevant and new arrangements had already been made to have him replaced as the David King by James the moment he was thrown into the slammer. However, it was not the desire of Caiaphas that Jesus indeed die in the event that he was condemned to death. If Jesus was crucified, arrangements would be made to ensure he did not actually expire on the cross. The crucifixion would be carried out all right to content Pilate but extra care would be taken to see to it that he survived whilst on the cross. As he hang on the cross, he would be given a cup of poison which would induce a state that resembled death and he would be quickly taken down from the cross and be given a make-believe burial the same day. He would then be resuscitated in the tomb. This is the event the gospels cryptically allude to when they document that Jesus prayed to “his Father” to have the “cup” removed from him in the garden of Gethsemane (MATTHEW 14:36; MARK 14:36; and LUKE 22:42). Just as the Essene chief priest carried the title “Father of the Community” or “Lord God”, the Jerusalem temple high priest bore the same title too. The title derived from their being de facto representatives of God on Earth. The agony of the cross terrified Jesus. Besides, although he consented to the cup arrangement, he could not exactly trust Caiaphas. It was probable that they could finish him off on the cross. Returning to his three disciples, Jesus was so overcome with fear he sweated blood, which biology tells us is possible in circumstances of extreme anxiety (it is instructive that this aspect was recorded by Luke, a physician by profession). The man was a full-blooded human being: he was no God at all. But soon he resigned himself to his fate after thorough soul-searching and was his normal, serene self again. As a Gnostic, he was aware man could only kill his body and not his soul. He knew that like everybody else, he was an eternal being. If he were to die now, it simply meant he had accomplished the mission he came to do in the physical realm and another assignment awaited him from the hereafter. He was actually master of his own destiny and at the spiritual level charted his own cosmic fate. It was only his flesh that was weak and not his spirit. THE ARREST PARTY Not long after midnight, the arrest party pounced. Who comprised the arrest party? According to the four gospels, it was the crowd; the chief priest; the scribes; the elders; the Pharisees; the Temple police (that is, the Jerusalem temple); the servant of the high priest; and a detachment of soldiers. Not each one of these is mentioned in every gospel: this is simply the sum total. But why all these people, who could have numbered well over a thousand? Scholars have sneered at the idea of such an over-the-top turnout at the arrest of Jesus, who was a peaceful man and therefore posed no threat to anybody, somebody who was like a “lamb being led to slaughter”. Indeed, the term John uses for detachment of soldiers is speira, which means cohort. A cohort was made up of 500-600 soldiers. This was the number of soldiers that manned the Antonia Fortress that overlooked the Jerusalem Temple. They were on hand in the over week just in case Galilean pilgrims, who were notorious in this regard, stirred up trouble. Why should Pilate empty the Antonia Fortress for the sake of only one man?

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Well, the fact of the matter was that it was not only Jesus who was targeted but the Zealot top brass, the leaders of a guerilla army, too. Discounting Judas Iscariot who had sold out, these were Simon Zealotes and Theudas Barabbas. Pilate didn‟t want to take chances: there was the possibility that the Zealots would spring from nowhere and offer to fight for their leaders to the death. At this very juncture in fact, there were thousands of pilgrims at Qumran and some of these of course were Zealots. Zealots were ordinarily part of the civilian population and one wasn‟t absolutely sure who was and wasn‟t a Zealot. But there is another element to the gospel language of which most Christians are totally ignorant. This is the underlying code language in which the gospels were written – pesher. When you read the ages in pesher, you will understand exactly who was present at the arrest of Jesus. In pesher, “crowd” was the code name for the Herods who lived among commoners. These were Herod Agrippa I and Herod Thomas, the disciple Thomas in the gospels. The term “chief priest” was the pesher name for Jonathan Annas, a position he held as leader of the Essenes. “Scribes” referred to Judas Iscariot, who was the Essenes‟ chief scribe. “Elders” was the code name for James in his capacity as the chief Nazarite, Nazarites being wider society Essenes (distinguished from monastic Essenes whose permanent abode was Qumran and the surrounding areas) who led celibate lives not permanently but from time to time. “Pharisees” was the code name for Caiaphas since as the Jerusalem temple high priest, he was the highest ranking Pharisee. PETER OPPOSES JAMES The first to be arrested was Theudas Barabbas, who had commanded the November 32 AD riot in person, followed by Simon Zelotes, who at the time of the insurrection was the Father of the Essene community. They were quickly whisked to the north vestry, the place where the Last Supper had taken place: there they would be interrogated by Caiaphas. Next was Jesus as this was the order of their arraignment. On the charge sheet, Jesus had taken the place of Judas, who had extricated himself from the indictment by bribing Pilate and had now become state witness on behalf of the Roman government. At the head of the arresting party were Jonathan Annas, Judas Iscariot, and James the brother of Jesus. Right behind them was Caiaphas, Herod Agrippa, former high priest Annas, and Thomas. Jonathan, Judas and James were at the fore because they had now become the top-three in the Essene hierarchy now that Jesus had fallen foul of the law. Jonathan had reverted to his position as Essene high priest, with Judas as his new deputy. James had replaced Jesus as the Davidic King. In John‟s gospel, James is cryptically described as Malchus (Melek in Hebrew, meaning “King”), and as the “servant of the high priest”. In Essene jargon, servant of the high priest was the title of the Davidic King as he was subordinate to the Essene high priest and not vice versa. In relation to the high priest, the Davidic King‟s grade was that of bishop, meaning a lay teacher and not a priestly teacher. As state witness, Judas had to demonstrate that Jesus was an enemy of Rome being a Zealot too. Zealots, the underground military wing of the Essenes, were automatically regarded as terrorists and subversives. Judas implicated Jesus by planting a kiss on his cheek. A kiss was a sign of fellowship. By kissing Jesus, Judas, the commander of the Zealots, was making a public statement that Jesus was a fellow Zealot and that he was one of the prime movers in the November AD 32 insurrection. It is significant that when Judas kissed Jesus, he addressed him as “Rabbi”, meaning “great teacher”. This was not a reverential statement: it was a deprecating statement. It demonstrated that Judas no longer recognised Jesus as the Priest-King but simply as a respectable teacher. Note Jesus‟s response: he described Judas as a “friend”, crystal-clear evidence that Judas was not a disciple of Jesus but an associate in the council of twelve of which Jesus was simply the political leader. Jesus also made it clear that he was aware the kiss was not a sign of camaraderie but a mercenary betrayal. 180

The reaction by Simon Peter has been taken literally because the mass of ignorant Christians and their pathetic clergy simply settle for the surface language of scripture. Peter was a hero, they say, because he drew a sword and struck off the right ear of one of the people who had come to arrest his master Jesus (JOHN 18:10). Sorry to disappoint you folks, but this is all symbolic language. Firstly, the person who Peter attacked is identified as Malchus, the servant of the high priest. As we have illumined above, this was none other than James the brother of Jesus, who had come to publicly declare before Jesus that he was the new Davidic King. Secondly, the “right ear” was a metaphor for the position of the Davidic King. If you recall what we said last time around, when the council of twelve met in the Qumran vestry, they imagined a giant-sized image of a man superimposed on the room floor. The six seniormost sat in the section corresponding to the head. The exact position of the Davidic King, that is Jesus, was the right ear. So what did Peter actually do at the scene? All he did was denounce James as the new Davidic King. In other words, Peter was not prepared to become James‟s chief ecclesiastical minister or minder because he was a usurper; instead, he would continue to recognise Jesus as his master come rain or shine. This must have been quite a blow to James for Peter was potentially a great asset in his ministerial labours. It may sound reprehensible that James squared up against his brother at a time when he faced possible execution but James was aware that in the grand scheme of things, the intention was not to have Jesus killed but to simply remove him from the public domain. All formalities done, Jesus was bound and led away for interrogation.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 48

THE MIDNIGHT HEARINGS Jesus appears before High Priests Annas and Caiaphas

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istorians, scholars, theologians, and the Christian clergy invariably assert that Jesus was tried four times. He appeared before the court of former high priest Annas ben Seth, the court of incumbent high priest Joseph Caiaphas, the court of Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and the court of tetrarch Herod Antipas. That is totally and utterly wrong. It is as mistaken as the belief that the trials took place in Jerusalem. As we have reiterated time and again, Jesus was tried at Qumran 40 km from Jerusalem. And his only trials were before Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas. The appearances before Annas and Caiaphas (tly, and not separately as suggested by some gospels) was not a trial before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court: it was a synod hearing. Indeed, none of the gospels categorically state that Jesus came before the Sanhedrin. He came before a synod, a t assembly of ecclesiastical figures in the Essene governing council and the Jerusalem temple. What this sought to address was not the crime against Pilate, the November 32 AD riots, or whether Jesus had committed “blasphemy”. It restricted itself to two issues only. The first was his status in the Essene hierarchy, that is, whether he was deserving of being the Davidic King or the Priest-King. The second was whether he still advocated peace with the Romans or had now adopted the Zealot stance that war had to be waged against the Romans. Thus the Annas-Caiaphas was not a trial but a form of interrogation. It was a hearing, with a view to review the political and institutional status of Jesus so that when he was sent before Pilate, Pilate knew exactly in what social capacity he was trying him. The fact that Jesus‟s appearance before Annas and Caiaphas was not before the Sanhedrin explains why the procedures and process to which he was subjected seem to go against every grain of Jewish jurisprudence. A whole galaxy of books have even been written about how the “trial of Jesus” before the “Sanhedrin” was a total travesty of justice. To the discerning, such as you, My Brother, and me, this is understandable because it was not a trial at all: it was a hearing by an ecclesiastical which purely had to do with power politics and factional leanings. It is as simple as that. The synod dealt with politics; Pilate dealt with the crime. SIMON ZELOTES DEMOTED AGAIN The first to appear before the was Simon Zelotes. He took precedence because at the time of the November riots, he was the Pope and therefore was superior to Jesus, who was third in the hierarchy. Theudas Barabbas, who was one of the three accused, did not appear before the . He had already and martyr-like itted his role in the insurrection and was now in remand awaiting an official plea of guilty before Pilate and onward sentencing. Simon Zealotes was the second highest ranking Zealot after Judas Iscariot, who was the overall leader. The Zealots, who were the underground military wing of the Essenes, agitated for a forceful ouster of the Romans. They had staged a number of uprisings to date against the Romans but all had come to naught.

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They had a particularly fanatical following in Galilee, where most of the uprisings erupted. As a result, the term “Galilean” in Judea had come to assume the secondary meaning of “Zealot”. Simon Zealotes was close to Jesus in one vein: he was his father-in-law. Simon was the foster father of Mary Magdalene, the wife of Jesus. Where it came to political philosophy, however, Jesus and Simon were poles apart and were therefore always at odds. Whereas Simon was a champion of war against the Romans, Jesus was for peaceful co-existence till Providence itself intervened. Jesus was a staunch believer in non-violence. His inalienable belief was that violence only begot violence, that those who lived by the sword always perished by the sword. Hence, when Judas Iscariot, Simon Zealotes, and Theudas Barabbas staged that mini-uprising against Pilate in November AD 32, Jesus strongly disapproved of their conduct and vociferously lashed out at them. It was therefore ironic that thanks to Judas, he too was now being associated with the bloody act. Following the November uprising, Simon Zelotes (who also went by the titular name of Eleazer – Lazarus in Greek), had been excommunicated from the Essene community altogether by Jonathan Annas, who had succeeded him as Pope. Jesus, however, had at the bidding of Mary Magdalene and her mother Helena-Salome unilaterally restored him, claiming to exercise his putative powers as Priest-King. This is the event referred to in the Bible as the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The ruled that as an outlaw, a man who was wanted by the Roman authorities for his role in the uprising, Simon Zealotes no longer merited hip of the Essenes' council of the twelve. His reinstatement by Jesus was therefore invalid. Simon Zelotes was accordingly demoted to Grade 9 in the Essene hierarchy, that of a lower novice. Protocol required that he be stripped of the clothes he was wearing and remain only with a loincloth – the ceremonial attire of a lower novice. In the Essene code language of pesher, a lower novice was referred to as a “young man”. When a person had been demoted to a lower novice, he was said to have been “stripped naked”. This fate of Simon Zelotes is vividly captured in MARK 14:51, which reads, “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.” This cryptic characterisation of the fate of Simon Zealotes as pronounced by a Jewish has escaped scholars and theologians alike, who have puzzled as to its necessity and relevance. There have even been some rather fanciful intimations that the young man was actually Mark himself! The ruling by the now meant that Simon Zealotes would be standing before Pilate not as a venerable member of the Essene community (which could possibly be a mitigating factor in the judgement) but as a nonentity. JESUS LAYS CLAIM TO WHOLE TRIARCHY The gospels dwell comparatively more comprehensively on the Jesus hearing than that of Simon Zelotes because Jesus is their main subject. Jesus was heard by Annas and Caiaphas. The two were simply the t presiding officers; otherwise, all the country‟s bigwigs – the Herods, Jonathan Annas, Judas Iscariot, and his brother James – were in attendance. It was important that Annas, a former high priest who nevertheless had retained his title just as former presidents continue to be addressed as President in our own day, be present. This was because the legitimacy of Jesus as the Davidic King was at stake here. Annas represented the Sadducees, who recognised Jesus as the Davidic King, whereas Caiaphas represented the Pharisees, who had embraced James as the Davidic King. The Davidic King was typically third in the Essene hierarchy.

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It‟s crucial that you understand some of the terminologies that are used in the gospels in regard to titles and which Christians sadly take literally and therefore superficially. I have explained this point many a time in the past but I think it bears repeating here. The highest ranking Essene, the chief priest, had several titles. He was the Archangel Michael because he was the representative of God on Earth. Hence, he was also referred to as the Lord God, the I am, the Blessed, and the Power (that is, the Almighty). His most invoked title, however, was that of Pope, that is, Father of the Community. Presently, these titles belonged to Jonathan Annas, the second-born son of the very Annas who was presiding over the proceedings. The second-ranking Essene went by the title Angel Gabriel. As the Gabriel, he was the Lord God‟s messenger to mankind. His other titles were therefore Son of God and simply Man. And since it was he who bore the “glory of the Lord God” by representing him to mankind, he was also referred to as the Glory. The Gabriel was also known as the Prophet. Presently, this should have been Judas Iscariot but since he had not been cleared yet in his role in the November uprising, he was represented by a certain man called Eleazer. The third-ranking Essene was the Sariel. This was always the Davidic King, also known as the messiah or Christ in Greek. Since the Davidic King was junior to the Gabriel, who also was known as Man, his other title was Son of Man – Jesus‟s most favourite title. As firstborn, Jesus was the widely recognised Davidic King but he had now been challenged by his brother James. In short, the top three were the Priest, the Prophet, and the King in that order. They were also referred to as the Power, the Glory, and the Kingdom, a setup hinted at in the so-called Lord‟s Prayer, and the Michael, the Gabriel and the Sariel. Now, if you recall, during the Last Supper, Jesus had challenged Jonathan Annas for the position of chief priest, which Jonathan had meekly yielded knowing the fate that awaited Jesus. Jesus had thus become the t Priest-King, that is, the Melchizedek. But after his arrest, he had forfeited his newly gained status. The position of chief priest had thus reverted to Jonathan Annas and that of the Davidic King had been contested by his brother James. Annas, the t-chair of the hearing who was pro-Jesus, expected Jesus to lay claim only to the status of the Davidic King, a pitch he was ready to endorse. Jesus, however, took Annas by surprise. Not only did he insist on his entitlement to the position of Priest-King: he also now declared that he also merited the title of Prophet. In other words, he was three-in-one – God, Son of God, and Son of Man. In the gospels, the question Jesus was asked by Annas and Caiaphas are a bit convoluted because of faulty translation that was not informed by the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as knowledge of pesher. Thus the responses Jesus gave are not that clear-cut and in some cases sound contradictory. But the point Jesus was trying to make was that he was actually Priest, King, and Prophet rolled into one – the very embodiment of the triarchy. Was he justified in this claim? A DESERVING MELCHIZEDEK In the Dead Sea Scrolls are to be found two highly instructive texts. These are the Prince Melchizedek Document and the Damascus Document. Both these documents make it clear that the dynastic high priest was called the Melchizedek, meaning King of Righteousness in one vein and Priest-King in another. In the first century, the dynastic high priests, also called the Zadokite dynasty, were Zechariah initially and his son John the Baptist subsequently.

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John, however, had chosen a reclusive life and had therefore relinquished the dynastic high priesthood. He was nevertheless persuaded to accept the elective position of Pope, that is, Father of the Essene Community. To the mass of the Jewish population, however, for as long as he was alive he would be regarded as the Melchizedek. But after his execution, the Zadokite dynasty came to a sudden end as John died childless and therefore without heirs. In truth though, John was not a Melchizedek proper. Although he was of the priestly line as a descendent of Aaron, he was not of the kingly line – a descendent of David. He was Priest but not King. It was Jesus who was king as he was descended from David. But Jesus was also priest. Why? First, his mother Mary was a descendent of Aaron. Even more important, Enlil, the Anunnaki god of the Jews familiarly known as Jehovah, had told King David that, “The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (PSALM 110:4), the first Melchizedek having been Abraham‟s father Terah, who was once the King of Jerusalem and priest of Nannar-Sin, the son of Enlil. Thus if King David was priest-king defacto (he voluntarily never exercised the priesthood, leaving it, instead, to Zadok the Aaronite), then Jesus too merited the same status. By the same token, Jesus was entitled to position of Prophet. This was because when he and John the Baptist formed the messianic movement, he was the No. 2 in the hierarchy. John had chosen him to be his deputy, whose other title was Son of God. If the two hadn‟t parted company and had John been alive presently, Jesus would still be the No. 2. Jesus therefore was in order when he claimed all the top three positions. He was God, Son of God, and Son of Man. He was Priest, Prophet, and King. He was the Michael, the Gabriel, and the Sariel. He was indeed the Alpha and the Omega, the first and last and something else besides. It was he who was the rightful successor to John though in reality he had all along being greater than him. This claim of his being the be-all and end-all outraged everybody present, including his erstwhile staunch er, former high priest Annas. He was called all sorts of names and even physically roughed up. But he was unrepentant because he was convinced he was right by every reckoning.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 49

A SHAM OF ATRIAL Verdict a foregone conclusion as Pilate is bought

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lthough the interrogation of Jesus in a t hearing by Annas and Caiaphas was not a trial, it was more or less conducted along the lines of a trial.

Jesus had a defending witness. This was one of his disciples, Bartholomew, whose real name was John Marcus. Apparently, Jesus was allowed only one such witness. Besides his principal acc, the turncoat Judas Iscariot, there were a number of witnesses who testified against him. The gospels refer to them as false witnesses but this is probably an exaggeration: they simply misunderstood some of his statements largely because he tended to use allegorical language, which could be properly interpreted only by Gnostics. On occasion, he chose to be deliberately ambiguous, as when he said, “Do to Caesar what is due to Caesar and to God what is due to God.” The crux of the matter was whether there was anything in his conduct that could associate him with the Zealots. For example, he was accused of harbouring and voicing designs to destroy the Jerusalem temple within “three days”. The Zealots did band about such threats, but it was not the temple they sought to destroy: it was the temple establishment – the priesthood and the Herodian Sadducees. The perception was that these somewhat benefitted from Roman patronage. Thus, if Jesus did instigate doing way with the temple establishment by foul and crook, this could obviously not sit well with Annas and Caiaphas, both of whom belonged to this clique. But Jesus‟s words had been taken out of context. In Gnostic language, the temple (the correct translation should be “palace” as the Jewish word for temple and palace is the same) was the human body because it housed the real being – the spirit-soul. So what Jesus was saying to those who wished him ill was that even if they physically killed him, his soul would continue to live (a person can be clinically dead but at the etheric level, he is irreversibly dead only after three days). Clearly, he was grossly misunderstood. Jesus vehemently denied being a Zealot. He made it clear to the that every time he taught or preached, he was heard to promote peaceful co-existence with Rome. How then could he be a Zealot, who preached enmity with the Romans? Put differently, Jesus was saying he had played no part whatsoever in the November 32 AD riots against Pilate. The fact that Simon Zelotes was his father-in-law was pure happenstance. In their heart of hearts, both Caiaphas and Annas were aware Jesus was not inclined to violence and therefore could not be a Zealot. So the matter they seized upon was his claim to be Priest, Prophet, and King. This was what revolted them the most, the sin for which they sought to teach him a lesson. The gospels say they set men (the Jerusalem temple police who had escorted Caiaphas) on him who blindfolded him, slapped him around, spat on him, and dared him to “prophesy” as to “who has hit you” – a sneering allusion to his claim to be priest and prophet as only the high priest could prophesy. This physical mockery did probably take place but there is an underlying symbolic language. When a person was spat upon (by a holy man, such as the high priest), it meant he had been demoted from priest to a mere layman. A “blind man” was another characterisation for an Essene who was of Grade 8 level, a novice. A novice was not yet initiated and therefore he was blind because he had not yet “seen the light”, that is, not yet illuminated.

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What it all boils down to is that by decree of the three priests Annas Sr, Caiaphas, and Jonathan Annas, Jesus had been downgraded from Grade 2, the third position in the Essene hierarchy (the first two being Grades 0 and 1), which was the position of the Davidic King (now held by his young brother James), to Grade 8, the position of a novice, a virtual nobody. Thus, when he appeared before Pontius Pilate, that was the status he would declare when his occupation was asked of him. This lowly social status would significantly bear upon Pilate‟s psychology and therefore his contemplation of Jesus. PETER DOES A JUDAS Now, when a hearing or trial was in progress, the Essene rule was that there had to be two doorkeepers. These were two people who were close to the person who was the subject of the proceedings, typically a relative and an associate/friend. In the case of Jesus, the doorkeepers he selected were Simon Peter and his mother Mary. Besides being Jesus‟s disciple, Simon Peter was Jesus‟s personal bodyguard and chief ecclesiastical minister. As the Davidic King, Jesus was entitled to a bodyguard and chief spokesman, both roles of which were ably performed by Peter. That made Peter arguably the closest to Jesus in an occupational sense. As for Mary, she substituted for Jesus‟s wife Mary Magdalene, who was now three months pregnant and therefore was on mandatory separation from her husband according to Essene dynastic procreational rules. The two doorkeepers ceremonially opened the doors for the ists or judges to enter the hearing room. As the male doorkeeper, Simon Peter stood by the door in the inner corridor whilst Mary stood by the same door in the outer corridor. Peter, however, had been assigned another role – that of the rooster of the night. The rooster that crowed three times as per the gospels was not a bird: it was Simon Peter. “Rooster”, or Cock, was the term for a religious person assigned to call out the time. , they had no clocks those days and at nighttime, the sundial, which was used during the day to read time, could not be used. So during a momentous occasion such as this one (the week of over), a person was detailed to announce the time every three hours at Qumran. Since Jesus‟s hearing took place shortly before midnight, Peter was expected to announce the times at 00:00; 3 am; and 6 am. 3 am was specifically called cock-crow (see MARK 13:34). It was just before 3 am that Peter “denied” Jesus. He did not deny him at three intervals: he denied him only once but before three inquisitors. Now, Simon Peter was also a Zealot, a point we have long underscored. It explains why in the gospels he comes across as combustible, argumentative, and highly assertive. He was known as Simon Bar-jonah, which has been wrong translated as “son of John”. Bar-jonah actually derived from “baryona”, which was Aramaic (the most widely spoken language of the day in Palestine) for “outlaw”. We know, courtesy of Josephus, that Zealots were referred to as outlaws by the Romans. So as Jesus was being interrogated, one of the witnesses against him made mention of the fact that he must have been a Zealot since his own bodyguard was a Zealot. Peter was therefore instantly called upon to confirm or deny that he was a Zealot. As could be expected, Peter stoutly denied he was. He also proceeded to say that he was not as close to Jesus as many people thought. Once he had exculpated himself, he resumed his vigil as doorkeeper. The hearing lasted for hours and there were intervals in between, during which Peter also took time off to warm himself before a fire. During one such break, Mary, Joseph (Jesus‟s second brother) and James (the son of Zebedee) also confronted him and demanded to know why he without shame or scruple just stopped short of disowning Jesus. Peter was unflinching, saying they were all mistaken: he was not as close to Jesus as they thought. It was at this point that he stood up to announce the time 3 am for the hearings to resume. Shortly thereafter, it dawned on him that he had stabbed Jesus in the back and later apologised teary-eyed to 187

Mary. The man Jesus called “Rocky” was far from being a rock: he was a chicken, a flip-flopper. Maybe it was no coincidence that on this fateful night he was assigned the role of a male chicken! JUDAS TREACHERY BACKFIRES Pontius Pilate arrived at Qumran towards 6 in the morning to conduct a kangaroo court trial for the people wanted for the November 32 AD uprising in which some Roman soldiers were killed. Why did the Roman governor have to travel all the way from Jerusalem, where he was based during the over week, to Qumran and not insist that the trial be held in Jerusalem itself? There were two reasons for this in the main. First and foremost, there was something in it for him. He had been backhanded with a tantalising bribe by Herod Agrippa to excuse Judas Iscariot. We know Pilate was hopelessly weak where it came to palm-greasing and extra-legal trials. Philo, the Jewish philosopher and historian who was a contemporary of Pilate, records that Pilate was prone to corruption (a streak that ran through all Roman governors and of which the emperor himself was acutely aware) and “continuous executions without even a form of a trial”. Second, a trial of the leading Zealots in Jerusalem at over time would have provoked another uprising as Jerusalem at this time of the year swarmed with Galilean pilgrims most of whom were either Zealots or pro-Zealot. Qumran was therefore a safe venue as it was remote and was not crawling with too many people. The trial would thus practically unnoticed by the wider population. Arriving at Qumran, Pilate was determined that he was going to sentence the culprits (save for Judas of course) to death. The November uprising had tarnished the record of his emperor: it was the only insurrection in Judea during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Pilate would use the sentence as a showcase to the emperor that he was a no-nonsense man who did not in the least brook dissident tendencies. Now, Herod Antipas had learnt of Agrippa‟s bribe to Pilate and he and Agrippa rarely saw eye to eye, being rival claimants to the Jewish monarch. Antipas was aware that the crucifixion Jesus would be subjected to would not be fatal but a partial one that would ensure his survival. However, Theudas Barabbas was too old to bear the strain of even partial crucifixion whereas Jesus and Simon Zelotes were much younger. Chances therefore were that Barabbas might perish right on the cross. So in a private meeting with Pilate before the trial commenced, Antipas offered Pilate a bribe substantially higher than that which Agrippa had given him. Accordingly, the two agreed that Judas should be reinstated as a culprit. At the same time, Barabbas should be released. It was game, set, and match. MAKE-BELIEVE REFERAL TO ANTIPAS The trial was held in the north vestry, the same place where the hearings by Annas and Caiaphas took place. Annas, Caiaphas, the Herods, and the brothers of Jesus were in attendance. The trial was a farce. The proceedings were almost wholly orchestrated. On trial was Judas Iscariot too, who courtesy of the Antipas bribe had been re-arrested, bringing the number of respondents in the dock to four. Judas, as the overall commander of the Zealots, pleaded guilty. That is what the gospels mean when they say he “hung himself”. Now penitent of having falsely implicated Jesus, Judas also told the court that Jesus was innocent and had played no part whatsoever in the November 32 AD insurrection. Judas‟s absolution of Jesus is what is cryptically referred to in the gospels as “returning the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priest”, meaning he no longer was leader of the 30-man group that John the Baptist had established: its leadership had now reverted to the current Essene high priest Jonathan Annas. Judas was resultantly sentenced to death by crucifixion along with Simon Zelotes and Theudas Barabbas.

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However, Agrippa was determined that Jesus be found guilty in order to get even with his brother-in-law Antipas. He and Caiaphas were in full flow, insisting that Jesus not only was a “Galilean”, which was another code name for Zealots, but he urged Jews to refrain from paying taxes and also fancied himself as “King of the Jews” when that title now belonged to Emperor Tiberius Caesar. This was treason and for that he deserved to die. Although Pilate had no intentions of acquitting Jesus (it was he who was to be sacrificed for Barabbas as per his stratagem with Antipas), he at least wanted to superficially cast himself as a reasonable and impartial judge. Judas had exonerated Jesus and the priests had countered that. So Pilate announced to the gathering that since Jesus was of Galilean origin (he feigned ignorance of the fact that the term Galilean was used in the context of his being a Zealot), Herod Antipas was to break the ice. Antipas was asked to try Jesus in another room and whatever verdict he rendered would be binding. This aspect was not part of the pre-plan with Antipas but Antipas did welcome it nonetheless as it openly underlined that in the eyes of Rome, he took precedence over his rival Agrippa. As for Agrippa, all he could do was froth at the mouth. From that day on, Pilate became his mortal enemy: on the other hand, Antipas and Pilate became abiding friends.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 50

JESUS SAVES BROTHER James avoids cross by the skin of his teeth

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n order to grasp exactly where Herod Antipas stood in relation to Jesus, it is in order that we revisit the political dynamics at Qumran that we talked about earlier in this series.

When in AD 29 Jesus and John the Baptist parted company, two political parties emerged. The party headed by John the Baptist was called the Hebrews. Call these conservatives or hawks. John was not keen to embrace Gentiles, women, and uncircumcised Jews. He was a hardcore Judaist. The only Gentile and female in his party was Helena-Salome, the mother of Mary Magdalene, and this because being a woman of substance she greatly assisted John‟s movement materially. Ever the opportunist, Herod Agrippa was initially a patron of the Baptist‟s party although he later defected to the Jesus party before falling out with Jesus again. The breakaway party led by Jesus (in a political sense, that is, as ecclesiastically he was third) was called the Hellenists. Jesus was liberal: he accommodated all and sundry; it didn‟t matter whether you were Jew or Greek, man or woman, circumcised or otherwise. Herod Antipas was a patron of the Hellenists. He abhorred John the Baptist for relentlessly and vociferously castigating him for marrying Herodias, his cousin Thomas‟s wife. Antipas eventually had John executed for these broadsides and for rallying the people against him. In the Hellenist party, there were two factions – the Figtree and the Vineyard. The Figtree, also known as the “Lightning Faction”, was headed by Simon Zelotes (called Simon the Zealot on the apostolic list and Lazarus in John‟s gospel), whereas the Vineyard, also known as the “Thunder Faction”, was headed by Jonathan Annas (called Nathaniel in the gospel of John and James of Alpheus on the apostolic list of the synoptic gospels). Although Antipas as patron was expected to be impartial, he aligned with the Figtree faction. The Figtree people were the right wingers in the Hellenist party: they advocated for war against Rome, a stance Antipas tacitly endorsed because he was disgruntled that his rival cousin Agrippa was on more amenable with the emperor‟s circle than he. On the other hand, the Vineyard faction was for peace with Rome. It was in the interests of the Annas dynasty to be on cordial with Rome because they enjoyed the perks of the status quo. So contrary to what the gospels suggest, Antipas and Jesus were not at odds. Antipas in fact was desirous that Jesus be in good health as the Jews had not forgiven him for causing the death of John the Baptist. Antipas was also very favourably disposed toward Simon Zelotes in that Helena-Salome was mentor to his wife Herodias. Furthermore, he greatly revered Theudas Barabbas (Thaddeus in the book of John and the other Judas on the apostolic list of the synoptic gospels) because he was the hero of the watershed AD 6 Zealot uprising against the Romans. JAMES’S CLOSE SHAVE Herod Antipas‟s trial of Jesus was an impromptu one, as Pilate had decided to involve him on the spur of the moment. Jesus was conducted into the outer hall, where Antipas would preside over the case and Caiaphas would be the lead prosecutor.

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Jesus knew that Antipas was on his side and was careful not to give the game away. So when Antipas lobbed questions at him, Jesus stayed silent, not out of insolence but knowing full well the rescue plan that he (Antipas) and Caiaphas had hatched up, this being to effect only a partial crucifixion and therefore spare his life. The partial crucifixion was necessary to content Pilate and Jesus‟s detractors, notably Agrippa. Now, although Antipas wanted Jesus to be strung up the cross and have Barabbas freed, he didn‟t wish to make that plain. If he did so and perchance Jesus happened to die on the cross, the Jewish nation would take him to task for causing the death of yet another of their principal men. He therefore draped Jesus in a dazzling white robe and sent him back to Pilate‟s quarters. Everybody who saw Jesus enter Pilate‟s judgement room could read the tetrarch‟s verdict from Jesus‟s attire – he had been found blameless as he was clad in the colour of innocence. This put Pilate in a dilemma. He was supposed to condemn Jesus and free Barabbas as per the prior agreement with Antipas but now Antipas had signalled that Jesus was innocent and as such did not deserve going to the cross. What was he to do now? He was determined to have three people crucified to match with the number of the already wanted men: in the event, he could set free only one man out of the four respondents and not two. Then he thought of a way out of the conundrum. As a politician himself, he knew a bit about Jewish politics. He reckoned that if Jesus had been the Davidic King and now had been stripped of that and reduced to a novice, then somebody else must have succeeded him. So he asked who this was and was told it was James, the immediate younger brother of Jesus. Pilate wasted no time in asking James to take the stand. Then he dropped a clangour. The matter at hand presently was not about Jesus‟s involvement in the November 32 AD riots but his claim to being King of the Jews. In replacing Jesus as the Davidic King, James had effectively indemnified his brother and put himself on the spot. It was he, James, who presently was the new King of the Jews and so it was he who therefore had to stand trial for taking occupancy of a position that rivaled that of Caesar. James and his backers in Agrippa and the others were horrified. They did see Pilate‟s logic and were aware legally there was no way out. Jesus was about to be set free and James would soon be headed to the execution site! It was Jesus who snatched his brother from the Jaws of the lion. He pleaded with Pilate that he would rather die he himself than James, that James was a mere claimant to the Davidic title and not the substantive holder. He, Jesus, had not surrendered the title to his brother and was unflinching in his stance that he was the rightful Davidic King, that when Jews regained their sovereignty, he would rule the nation as Priest-King. That sealed Jesus‟s fate. By making such a bold assertion, he nullified the innocence that Antipas had ruled of him and Pilate now had the excuse to send him to Golgotha. James was accordingly asked to leave the dock and Jesus was immediately pronounced guilty and sentenced to death by crucifixion. BARABBAS WALKS The venal Pilate now acted on the pact he had made with Herod Antipas. He announced that he was exercising a prerogative of mercy and the beneficiary would be Theudas Barabbas on grounds of his age (he was in his 70s at the time). In the event, only three people would be crucified, namely Jesus, Simon Zelotes, and Judas Iscariot. 191

The announcement was greeted with jubilation by the Theraputae and some ranks of the Zealots who were at Qumran at the time. Barabbas had been around for some time and was the most popular Zealot of the day in that notwithstanding his advancing years, he was implacably bold, daring, and fearless, attributes which made him a man of renown among the Jewish population. He had been head of the Theraputae, the Jewish-Egyptian ascetics who held the most sway over Essene affairs and who were instrumental in persuading Antipas to secure a Barabbas pardon from Pilate, since 9 BC. At around that time, he and Joseph, the father of Jesus, had formed an alliance they called the Star (Joseph, whose family emblem as royal descendents was the Star of David) and the Sceptre (Barabbas). It goes without saying that he came highly recommended to Jesus. Until AD 4, Barabbas, a Samaritan, was also the Zealot commander. In that year, he was replaced by Judas of Galilee in a gesture meant to the touch to a younger revolutionary. But he did not withdraw from the forefront of the struggle: he was ready for service when necessity demanded. Indeed, in the AD 6 Zealot uprising against the Romans, it was he who was the master strategist though Judas of Galilee was the battlefield commander. During the uprising, Barabbas was known as Yeshua (Joshua in English, Jesus in Greek), which meant “deliverer” as the Zealots counted on him to liberate the Jewish people from the Roman yoke. Sadly, his moniker did not live up to its billing: the upheaval was crushed and Judas of Galilee was hunted and killed by the Romans. Barabbas, however, escaped the dragnet. Following the death of Judas of Galilee, another Zealot of the same name, Judas Iscariot succeeded him (it would seem that “Judas” was the pseudonym title of a Zealot leader as could clearly be gleaned from Judas of Galilee, Judas Iscariot, and Judas of James, the latter of which is the name by which Barabbas appears on the apostolic list in Acts and the gospel of Luke). Judas Iscariot was chosen for his genius. He was highly intelligent and resourceful, mathematically erudite, had mastery of the Greek language – the “English” of the day – and had excellent writing skills. It was he, Simon Zelotes, and Barabbas who were the intellectual titans of Qumran. As a Zealot, Judas Iscariot was not a battlefront combatant but trained and supervised the assassination squad known as the Sicari, from which his surname partly derives. However, although Judas Iscariot was in the Hellenist party of Jesus, he and Antipas, the group patron, were not on very sound primarily because as the overseer of the Qumran purse strings, Judas voted substantial sums to the bankrupt Agrippa‟s upkeep and very little to the better-off Antipas (all the Herods were entitled to a portion of Qumran funds). Judas was aware Agrippa was very likely the future substantive King of the Jews, like his grandfather Herod the Great had been, and therefore knew which side of his bread was buttered. The name Barabbas, by which Theudas is famously known in the gospels, meant “son of the father”. As we have explained before, hierarchically “son of” meant “deputy” or “next in line”. When Simon Zelotes became undisputed Father of the Essene community (Pope) following the death of John the Baptist in September AD 31, Theudas became his deputy and was accordingly addressed as Barabbas. PILATE “S” THE FOLD The bribe Herod Antipas offered Pilate for the sake of Theudas Barabbas was a steep one. Antipas therefore did not wish to bear it in person. He wanted it to be paid from Qumran funds under some cleverly concocted pretext. But in order for Pilate to receive the money, he had to be initiated into the Essene fraternity as a nominal, ex-officio member of the Essene community who was entitled to receiving Qumran funds just as the Herods did. That way, a shrewd Antipas laundered the bribe into “clean money”. This required the discharge, publicly, of a simple rite. 192

The rite involved a form of ad hoc baptism in which Pilate had to wash his hands in a basin, which Pilate did as the gospels duly record. However, the spin that has been put on this incident by the gospel writers is that Pilate washed his hands to extricate himself from karmic blame for the crucifixion of the innocent man that was Jesus. That is simply not true. Pilate did not have such scruples. To him Jesus was a nobody and therefore easily expendable. Let us once again recall to mind how the Jewish historian and philosopher Philo Judaeus describes him – a man who was given to “ill-treatment of the people” and of a “stubborn and harsh quality” who “could not bring himself to do anything that might cause pleasure to the Jews”. True, Pilate might have had a bit of a soft spot for Jesus but a Roman governor would not have showed such overt weakness before his subjects as washing his hands off responsibility for the fate of a Jew as if to say, “you guys have won: you have defeated me and I ain‟t got anything to say”. Pilate for one would not have allowed himself to exhibit such boldfaced humiliation and make a laughing stock of the almighty Caesar. Having performed the washing-of-hands rite, Pontius Pilate had now been officially itted into the Essene fraternity and the Antipas bribe had been legitimitised. But that was probably the first and last time Pilate demonstrated his hip credentials.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 51

THE CRUCI-FICTION Jesus was fastened to a tree rather than nailed to a cross

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he gospels say once Pontius Pilate had pronounced judgement, he had Jesus scourged and then handed over to Roman soldiers for crucifixion. The soldiers then subjected him to a welter of taunts before shambling him off to Golgotha.

Jesus, Judas Iscariot, and Simon Zelotes were scourged all right, but we should be wary how we read the scriptures and always bear in mind the underlying pesher connotation that always lurks. The gospels talks of at least 600 Roman soldiers who came along with Pilate to Qumran – a cohort. However, the term “soldier” in pesher had other meanings. When it was singular, it referred to Herod Agrippa, and when it was plural, it referred to Merari, the youngest son of former high priest Annas. True, it were Roman soldiers who flogged Jesus but the taunting was done by Agrippa‟s and Merari‟s thugs. Much of the taunting was not merely wanton activity: it was both ceremonial and allegorical. With their sentence by Pilate, Jesus, Judas, and Simon Zelotes had been excommunicated from the Essene fold. Anybody with a criminal record automatically forfeited hip of the Essene sect domestically (they still retained hip of Diaspora Essenes though). In the event, certain rites had to be performed. For example, they were subjected to what was called ceremonial cursings (by way of pushing away the offender with a wooden object) and denunciatory beatings with soft blows. In the case of Jesus, there was the matter of his having forfeited the Davidic kingship, which now vested in his younger brother James. This element too had to be caricatured. The gospels say that Jesus was dressed in purple and had a derisive crown weaved from thorns placed on his head with a view to lampoon him as a bogus King of the Jews, or the clown King of the Jews. That was not the intention. The Dead Sea Scrolls furnishes the reason as to why this was done. At Qumran, the Princes of Judah, that is, Jesus and his four brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judah, wore a metal headband with a star on it to denote their regal pedigree. On the other hand, orphans who had been raised up at Qumran wore a plaited rope circlet with a thorn in it. It is the latter which was placed on the head of Jesus by Agrippa. The message was to deride him as somebody who was born by way of fornication and therefore deserved to have been raised not as a Davidic Crown Prince but anonymously as an orphan. Thus the crown of thorns we always see Jesus depicted in on the cross is in truth a mockery. To the Illuminati, however, it is a honour. The crown of thorns to them is homage to a “Saviour Sun God” as the crown actually represents a corona – an aura of plasma that surrounds the Sun. Its other symbolism is that of the rings of the planet Saturn. The planet Saturn in astrotheology is the planet of Satan. So those crowns you see on the heads of Western monarchs are not a matter simply of pomp and ceremony. They are a blatant assertion of the diabolical forces those monarchs actually worship. As for the purple robe (the colour of royalty), it was draped around Jesus‟s body but was removed at the end of the cursing ceremony. This defrocking denoted Jesus‟s demotion from the Davidic King to a commoner and his excommunication from the Essene community. Both the cursing and defrocking were based on the Genesis imagery: when Adam transgressed, not only did he discover he was without clothes but he was also expelled from the Garden of Eden (Jesus as the Davidic King was also known as the “Second Adam” and the “Gardener” since Adam was tenderer of the garden of Eden). 194

QUMRAN WAS SCENE OF CRUCIFIXION Where exactly was Jesus crucified? Was he really crucified? The widespread belief is that it was on a dome-shaped hill in Jerusalem known as Golgotha (Aramaic for “place of the skull”) or Calvary (Latin for Golgotha). But that is simply convention: it is not based on what the gospels actually say. In any case, if Jesus was tried and sentenced at Qumran 40 km from Jerusalem and in a kangaroo type court setting, it does not make sense that he was taken to Jerusalem and crucified there. The most obvious place of crucifixion was none other than Qumran itself. And there is ample evidence to that effect from both the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The gospels describe Golgotha as a “place near the city”: nowhere does it say Golgotha was a hill in Jerusalem. True, Jerusalem was the main city in Judea, but there was another place that was known as the “city”. This was Qumran. , Jerusalem in the plural or “New Jerusalem” were the alternative nicknames for Qumran. There are scriptures in the New Testament which point to Qumran as the place of the crucifixion. HEBREWS 13:11-13 says Jesus “suffered outside the gate” and “outside the camp”. According to DEUTERONOMY 23:10-14, “outside the gate” and “outside the camp” were interchangeable which referred to various physically and ritually unclean places which included pit latrines. Indeed, pit latrines were always located outside an area where people were camping. At Qumran in particular, there was a section where pilgrims camped in tents. It was called the camp and was designated as unclean because the pilgrims who were housed there were mostly Gentiles as well as married people, a category of the “unclean” according to Essene ideology. The pit latrines were located just south of the camp. Beyond the pit latrines was a graveyard. Between the cubicles used for priests and the camp was a sign in the form of a skull to warn them that they were approaching a unholy precincts. Hence, the camp, the pit latrines, and the graveyard were collectively referred to as “the place of the skull”. A further clue that Qumran was the place of the crucifixion is furnished by REVELATION 11:8. This says Jesus was crucified in the “great city known as Sodom and Egypt”. We know that one nickname for Qumran was Egypt because it had a sizeable concentration of the Theraputae, whose primary base was Alexandria in Egypt. The name Sodom derived from the fact that Qumran encomed the area north of the Dead Sea which was believed to be the location of the ancient city of Sodom that was destroyed by the Anunnaki in 2024 BC. CRUCIFIXION BY BINDING Exactly how was Jesus crucified? To some people, this may appear as a redundant question. Well, it isn‟t. In point of fact, if you thought Jesus was crucified in the manner you think, then I have a surprise for you. Let us begin by defining the term crucifixion. It is commonly assumed that crucifixion entailed being nailed to an upright wooden post in the shape of a cross. That of course did happen but it was not standard practice. Methods of crucifixion actually varied. The Oxford dictionary defines crucifixion as “the act of crucifying or putting to death on a cross”. To crucify, according to the same authoritative lexicon, is to “put to death by nailing or otherwise fastening to a cross”. This is a well informed definition but it does smack of one glaring shortcoming in its accentuation of the term “cross”. Crucifixion was not only about nailing the victim to a crux (the Latin word from which the term crucifixion is derived); sometimes it simply involved tying or fastening him to a crux. And a crux was not always a cross; it could also simply be a vertical object of wood such as a pole, an erected beam, or a trunk of a tree.

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Jesus was not nailed to a cross; he was bound to a tree trunk and flogged in that position. The gospels do suggest an element of nailing, such as when they make mention of a risen Jesus showing forth his nail marks to a doubting Thomas, but this was a later embroidery of the gospel stories. It was written into the ion story at some stage to project Jesus as a “Saviour Sun God” of the same ilk as Krishna, Mithras, Hesus, etc, who were some of the most worshipped deities in the Roman world, the principal audience of the gospel story. All Saviour Sun Gods were said to have been nailed to the cross and if Jesus was to fit into this category and therefore compete with them, he too had to be similarly crucified. Consider this: Pilate was called upon on short notice to come and try the ring leaders of the November 32 AD uprising at Qumran and irregularly at that. Obviously, the people who summoned him did not expect him to come and fashion a cross at Qumran in the dead of night; they would have assured him that the crucifixion “infrastructure” was already in place. And what was this infrastructure? Naturally grown trees. And , the intention of the Jewish establishment was not to bring crucifixion to bear to full effect on the three victims: it was partial crucifixion, so that they survive though having been sternly chastened. Clearly, nailing was not even envisaged at all. Had nailing been a standard component of the crucifixion process, Pilate wouldn‟t have been invited to Qumran whatsoever. There is also this widely held belief, which is fundamentally based on the gospel narratives, that the Romans always flogged victims prior to their crucifixion. That is simply not true. In fact, it was rare that people facing crucifixion were flogged. Flogging was meant to so torture the victim that when he was fastened to a tree or cross, he died from the effects of the flogging itself. Nailing in such circumstances was hardly necessary. Historians of the day do document that some victims of the flogging were not even put up on a crux; they died right on the flogging platform. In other cases, the Romans tied the victim to a tree and flogged him to death. The latter is what happened to Jesus. When a bribed Pilate sentenced Jesus, Judas, and Simon Zelotes to death by crucifixion, the instrument of death was flogging on a tree and not nailing to a cross. There were no flogging facilities at Qumran and therefore Jesus wouldn‟t have been flogged on the temple premises, where the trial was held. Essenes were puritans and would not have allowed such a desecration of their temple. The only vicinities where flogging would have been allowed were the place of the skull – the unclean precincts of Qumran. A MILD SCOURGING When Roman soldiers squared up to ister flogging, they did not play. The flogging was gory. One chronicler characterises it as follows: “The usual instrument was a short whip (flagellum) with several single or braided leather thongs of variable lengths, in which small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied at intervals. The man was stripped of his clothing, and his hands were tied to an upright post. The back, buttocks, and legs were flogged either by two soldiers (lictors) or by one who alternated positions. The severity of the scourging depended on the disposition of the lictors and was intended to weaken the victim to a state just short of collapse or death. As the Roman soldiers repeatedly struck the victim's back with full force, the iron balls would cause deep contusions, and the leather thongs and sheep bones would cut into the skin and subcutaneous tissues. Then, as the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh. Pain and blood loss generally set the stage for circulatory shock.” In his book Ecclesistica History, the church historian Eusebius o f Caesarea demonstrates for us the utter savagery of the act of flogging thus: “For they say that the bystanders were struck with amazement when they saw them lacerated with scourges even to the innermost veins and arteries, so that the hidden inward parts of the body, both their bowels and their , were exposed to view.” Because of the callous 196

and beastly nature of flogging, Roman citizens were generally exempt according to the Porcian (248 BC) and Sempronian (123 BC) laws. The punishment was reserved for runaway slaves, non-Roman subjects, and Roman soldiers who deserted military service. From the above, it is clear that flogging was meant to kill: crucifixion by nailing was not necessary. In the case of Jesus, however, the flogging was not as severe as it typically was. Jesus was crucified amidst fraudulent circumstances where dirty money changed hands. Both Pilate and the few soldiers who istered the scourging had their palms greased. The beating they istered was mild though it was patent enough just in case there was an onward inspection. It is apparent that Jesus, Judas and Simon Zelotes were not damaged goods as they stayed strapped on those tree trunks as the gospels make it plain that they were able to conduct a conversation. In a regular flogging, there simply was no way they could have been able to move their lips, let alone produce audible sounds.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 52

“BURY THEM ALIVE” James tricks Pontius Pilate into altering manner of death of the crucified trio

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n a typical crucifixion, the victim was made to carry a part of the crucifixion stake. This was the patibulum, or crossbeam, along which the arms were outstretched. The popular depictions of Jesus faltering under the weight of a whole cross on his shoulders are fanciful: crucifixion victims never carried the entire cross to the crucifixion site. The vertical pole was already erected at the site. As such, it was only the crossbeam they carried if they could bear it. The full cross weighed over 136 kg, nearly double the average weight of a male. Even the crossbeam itself was some burden: it weighed between 3457 kg. Most victims, in fact – greatly debilitated by the preliminary scourging where this did take place – were unable to carry even the patibulum itself and it fell to the Roman soldiers themselves to bear the burden on their behalf. In the case of Jesus, however, the need for a patibulum did not arise because he was crucified on a natural tree, to which he was simply attached with ropes and not nailed. If that was the case, how do we explain the matter of Simon of Cyrene, the “the poor pilgrim from Africa” who according to the gospels was coerced by Roman soldiers to carry the cross (or rather, the crossbeam) on behalf of Jesus? Simon of Cyrene is today the subject of countless eulogising sermons in Christendom which laud him for being the archetypal servant of the Lord, for being the man who bore the cross of “his creator”. What a load of bollocks! There was no African from Libya in the ion events. Simon of Cyrene was actually Simon Zelotes, one of the two men who were crucified along with Jesus. Cyrene was located in modern-day Libya. It had a flourishing Jewish community which had arisen when more than 100,000 Jews from Judea fled during the reign of Ptolemy Soter (323–285 BC). During the Zealot uprising of AD 66, Cyrene was the principal destination to which the Sicari, the dagger-wielding division of the Zealot contingent who specialised in assassinations, beat a path. At the time the gospels were re-issued (post-AD 70) to tailor them to a Roman audience in general, the moniker “Cyrenaens” was one of a clutch of code names used for the Zealots to blindfold the Romans. It is in this context that the gospels make mention of the fact that Simon Zelotes was crucified together with Jesus but in a way that only those who knew the coded pesher language could fathom. The gospels also describe Simon of Cyrene as the father of Alexander and Rufus. Once again, this is all coded pesher language. Although Simon Zelotes had been demoted as Father of the Essene Community, he was still recognised by two people in the council of the twelve. These were Theudas Barabbas and Thomas. Barabbas as we already know was the head of the Alexandria-based Theraputae; hence the code name Alexander. Thomas, again as we already know, had been nicknamed “the twin” because he at one time was supplanted by his half-brother Antipas as heir to Herod the Great. He was therefore the “Esau” to the “Jacob” that Antipas was given that in the Old Testament Jacob had deceptively wrested the right of primogeniture from Esau. Esau‟s nickname was the “Red One” as he was reddish at birth. In Latin, Red is “Rufus”.

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A FAMILY VIGIL If there was one thing that Jesus did indeed carry to the place of the skull, it was a titulus. This was an inscription on a wood tablet which stated the convict‟s name and the crime for which he had been condemned. It was placed around the convict‟s neck and fastened to the stake at the crucifixion site. The inscription was written in Hebrew, the vernacular; Greek, the cosmopolitan language of the day; and Latin, the language of the intelligentsia. In the case of Jesus, it said, “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews”. In other words, Jesus was condemned for appropriating to himself the title of Tiberius Caesar, who as emperor was the lawful King of the Jews. As he was escorted to the crucifixion site, Jesus was enclosed in a hollow square of four soldiers. Since the Roman soldiers were responsible for the crucifixion, it is they who determined the order in which the three convicts, namely Jesus, Judas Iscariot, and Simon Zelotes were lined up on the trees. The gospels put Jesus in the centre simply because he was their main subject and not that that was necessarily the case. If we were to go by the “wanted” list, Judas should have been in the centre as he was the overall leader of the Zealots. Simon Zelotes, another Zealot, should have been on the right as his “right-hand man” in the military hierarchy. Jesus should have been on the left, the place that ideally should have been occupied by Theudas Barabbas. Although the crucifixion was by deliberate design a partial one that did not involve nailing, the people close to Jesus were at the scene. They too were aware of the partial crucifixion arrangement and it was for this reason that they came over – to ensure that nothing extreme was done to him to endanger his life. Those keeping vigil were his mother Mary; his pregnant wife Mary Magdalene; his mother-in-law Helena-Salome; and his sister-in-law, another Mary (a titular name), who was the wife of his younger brother James. The gospel of John says Jesus entrusted his mother Mary to the care of his “beloved disciple” who is not named. That does not make sense at all: it is a political rather than a factual statement. Firstly, Jesus was not dying as pre-arranged. Secondly, even if he had died, Mary would not have suffered: she would have been taken care of by the Essenes as caring for widows, orphans, and the aged was one of the roles for which they were renowned. Thirdly, the best minder on an intimate level would have been a brother of Jesus, such as James or Joseph, and not a mere disciple. As head of the family, Jesus had the right to ensure his mother was left in good care in case he died but certainly a brother or even a sister would have been better placed to do so. In any case, why would he see to the care of only his mother and not his wife Mary Magdalene if he was dying? Sorry folks, but John‟s statement is well beyond the pale. FANCIFUL “FULFILMENTS” As Jesus and his two colleagues hung on the stakes, they are said to have carried out a conversation in which one of the two, Judas, actually taunted him. In particular, Judas dared him to extricate himself from his ordeal if he was indeed the messiah. The statement is not factual: it is an interpolation. Judas wouldn‟t have uttered it at all. The Jewish messiah was not expected to perform miracles. He was expected to free the Jews from occupation through an armed revolution and not by way of magic. The ion story is in fact replete with fanciful happenings as well as statements by Jesus which are based on rather vague Old Testament ages. The major culprit in this regard is the gospel of Matthew. Matthew goes out of his way to try and demonstrate that Jesus was indeed the messiah spoken about by the prophets 400 years before by even quoting “fulfilled” scriptures. Jesus is even made to utter the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, which is a verbatim quote from PSALM 22:1. This certainly was not history being recorded: it was theology. The same applies to Jesus being speared 199

through the chest (ZECHARIAH 12:10); his clothes being bid for by Roman soldiers (PSALM 22:18); his hands and feet being pierced (PSALM 22:16); and his being the only one of the three whose bones were not broken (PSALM 34:20). None of these events happened in reality. The crucifixion was supposed to be partial and very mild so that the victims ended up in one piece. There was therefore no way they were going to have nails driven through their limbs, sharp objects thrust into their chests, and their legs broken. FROM “HANGING” TO “BURIAL ALIVE” At some stage, Jesus uttered the words “I Thirst”. This was not an incidental statement but a code word that had been whispered into his ear long before the crucifixion. The plan was that the moment he so said, he would be fed a drink that would send him into a swoon that resembled death. On hand to ister this drink was the freed Theudas Barabbas. Now, Barabbas as we already know, was the head of the Theraputae. The Theraputae, from which we derive the English word “therapy” – meaning “healing” – were renowned for their suring knowledge of medicine and herbology. They were both physical and spiritual healers and their prowess in this regard was such that some of their feats were regarded as “miracles” when they actually were not. Jesus himself had learnt a lot from the Theraputae, the reason he too was famed as a “miracle worker”. It is said in the gospels that when Jesus was heard to mumble the words “I Thirst”, he was given “vinegar mingled with gall” on a sponge. This is evidence in itself that the few Roman soldiers who were present had been bought by the Jewish establishment; otherwise, they wouldn‟t have allowed anybody to respond to the trauma of a condemned person whatsoever. After all, crucifixion was meant to occasion a slow death through the agonies of the scourging or the nailing as well as physiological deprivations such as food and water. Vinegar mingled with gall was soured wine mixed with snake venom. A strong such mixture would cause death but a measured, light one would only induce unconsciousness. Shortly after Jesus took the potion on a sponge, he “gave up the ghost”. He didn‟t: he simply became comatose. Judas and Simon Zelotes were not subjected to the same treatment as Jesus as the scheme would have been too obvious. Since the intention was to ensure the three survived and not perish on the cross, it was imperative that they be brought down from the cross the same day and be “buried”. Normally, crucified convicts were left on the cross indefinitely till they died. Note that even properly crucified people, those, that is, who were nailed, rarely died the same day. They could take up to a week and sometimes even more. Because of the urgency of the matter, a deputation led by Joseph of Arimathea approached Pilate, who was still at Qumran, to have the three removed from the trees. Joseph of Arimathea was James, the brother of Jesus. Joseph was his title as the next in line to the Davidic King, who was Jesus: Jesus was the David, and James was the Joseph. Arimathea (ha Rama Theo, a word made up of Greek and Hebrew elements meaning “His Divine Highness”) was his title as Crown Prince to Jesus‟s throne. It was akin to the way we refer to Prince Charles, heir to the British Throne, as “His Royal Highness”. Since James is addressed as Crown Prince, it is clear he had had a change of mind: he had decided to repudiate his claim to the Davidic throne and recognise his brother as deserving of the title.

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The excuse Pilate was given was that since the following day was a Sabbath, it was against the Jewish law to have dead people on stakes on that holy day. This was consistent with DEUTERONOMY 21:2223 which said, “ If someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God‟s curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.” So James asked Pilate that the two convicts who were still alive be brought down from the cross along with Jesus, who was already "dead", and be buried alive. The gospels record that Pilate was surprised that Jesus had died so fast. Pilate had reason to be so surprised in that he knew Jesus was not nailed but scourged on a tree to which he was fastened. In that case, he was expected to take longer to die than people who were nailed. Pilate ascertained from his bribed soldiers who were posted at the crucifixion site that Jesus was indeed "dead". Then he duly sanctioned the change of procedure from hanging (as manifest in crucifixion) to burial alive, which was an old Roman custom. Indeed, the gospel s do not say the men were dead; it simply refers to the removal of their bodies – that is, live bodies as against corpses! The three men had hung on the tree for less than half a day.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 53

HEAVEN ON EARTH Jesus is itted into the “Kingdom of Heaven”, which was a metaphor for the Essene priesthood

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t Qumran, there were a number of caves on the cliffside (Qumran overlooked the Dead Sea), located not very far from the site where the crucifixion had taken place. Two of these caves were particularly important. One was Cave 4. Cave 4 was called Abraham‟s Bosom. It was the burial cave for the Davidic King and the Pope, the Father of the Essene community. Across the chasm from Cave 4 was Cave 8. This was the burial cave of the Davidic Crown Prince. It was also known as Paradise. Putting politics aside, the rightful Davidic King was Jesus and the Crown Prince was his immediate young brother James. Thus Cave 8 was owned and taken care of by James. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm this. One text thereof, called the Copper Scroll, says „there was a tomb of the son of the third Great One”. In the Essene hierarchy, the third-ranking person was the Davidic Messiah, Jesus. But Cave 8 would not have belonged to his son in that he had no heirs yet. As such, it belonged to James, who was next in line till Jesus produced a heir. Cave 8 had another purpose – a storage of money that was in the custody of James. This was Essene initiation fees paid by Gentiles. It was entrusted to the care of the more cosmopolitan Davidic princes, who directly received the money because coming from Gentiles it was regarded as unclean money. Because James was in charge of these funds, he was cynically referred to as “The Rich Man”. This explains why Joseph of Arimathea (James) is characterised in the gospels as a rich man. Cave 8 and Cave 7 were aded. The two caves had one entrance through the side of the roof, with steps leading from the entrance down to the floor of the cave. The entrance was covered with a huge stone that only people on the outside could roll away. The remains of the two ed caves can be seen even today in the ruins of Qumran. When Jesus was brought down from the crucifixion tree by James, he was laid in Cave 8 in keeping with his Davidic status. Judas and Simon Zelotes were laid in Cave 7. Note that had he died, Jesus would have been placed in Cave 4. Since this was the eve of the Sabbath, guards were posted around the caves to see to it that when the Sabbath took effect at midnight, Sabbath rules were not infringed upon in any way, shape or form. Ananus, the youngest son of former Jerusalem Temple high priest Annas, was one of those who stood guard. In particular, he wanted to ensure that none of the three men in the tomb was removed during the Sabbath. He was to alternate with Theudas Barabbas, who had been strategically posted there as shall become clear shortly. THE DEATH OF JUDAS At midnight, when Ananus took leave of his vigil and Theudas Barabbas replaced him, the latter stole into the cave (of course he had help to remove the huge stone cover). In the ion story, Barabbas is disguised under the name Nicodemus (meaning “Conquering One,” exactly as Barabbas was hyped in his capacity as a leading Zealot revolutionary). The gospel of John says Nicodemus brought with him myrrh and aloes. From the nature and workings of these herbs, it is easy to tell what exactly transpired in Cave 8. 202

Myrrh is used as a sedative (a drug that calms a patient, easing agitation and permitting sleep). This of course was used on Simon Zelotes, who along with Judas had been brought down from the crucifixion trees fully conscious. Both had received substantial scourging from the Roman soldiers and were therefore in acute pain. They badly needed some sleep as a form of provisional escape from the pain. Aloes are a strong and fast-acting purgative (a substance used to induce rapid bowel movements so that the bowels are quickly emptied). No doubt these were used on Jesus to expel the poison that he had been fed as he hung on the tree. This was a task to which Theudas Barabbas as head of the Theraputae was best suited. The Theraputae specialised in knowledge of medicines and poisons, including snake poison. In fact, one of their assassination “weapons” was snake poison. In 44 AD, for instance, Herod Agrippa I was murdered by the Zealots with snake poison. In his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke ascribes Agrippa‟s death to having been “eaten with worms”. The term worms was a metaphor for snakes and snakes was a metaphor for the Theraputae top brass. Now, the emplacement of Jesus, Judas, and Simon Zealotes in the cave was not only about hoodwinking Pilate. It was primarily about fulfilling a ritual. This was excommunication of the three from the Essene fold. However, the excommunication of Jesus and Simon in particular did not have the blessings of Herod Antipas, who was very close to Simon and held Jesus in high esteem, who he recognised as the bona fide Davidic King. So Antipas had schemed with Simon Zelotes that while in the cave, he should reclaim the status of Pope, currently held by Nathaniel, and invoke papal powers to reinstate both and Jesus and he himself. This had to be done within three days of the crucifixion as beyond that excommunication would be irrevocable. This explains why there were such frantic efforts to medically attend to the men in the cave. The herbs and therapeautic methods employed by Barabbas worked like a charm and the following day Simon and Jesus felt much better. Accordingly, Simon Zelotes wasted no time in reclaiming the papacy and exercised it by lifting the excommunication of he and Jesus. This gesture was communicated to the Jewish establishment by Barabbas. Judas Iscariot, however, received the short end of the stick. He never benefitted from the medical attention Jesus and Simon received. Simon denounced him as a traitor for betraying his colleagues. The ading cave – Cave 7 – had a ventilational window. Judas, who had been weakened by scourging, was thrown out the window. Hurtling headlong down the cliff, he landed on some jagged rocks and with his stomach punctured his bowels spilt out. His death is recorded partly accurately by Luke in ACTS 1:18. SIMON FORMS OPPOSITION PARTY Early on the morning of the first Sunday after the over Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, pregnant with Jesus's first child, pitched up at Cave 7. She could have come on Saturday but movements of a certain radius were forbidden on Sabbath Day. Mary as the wife of Jesus was anxious as to his condition: she wanted to ensure that he indeed was safe, that he had indeed survived the crucifixion ruse. The gospels say she encountered two angels. Of one such angel, MATTHEW 28:3 says: “His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow.” This is either cryptic language or simply a distortion on the part of the translators. We already know by now that Simon Zelotes was nicknamed “Lightning”. We also have seen that he had at this juncture challenged Nathaniel for the status of Essene high priest, that is, that of the Archangel Michael, and so had garbed himself in priestly attire with a view to reinstate to the Essene fold both Jesus and he. Thus, the correct translation should read, “His countenance was like that of Simon Zelotes in his priestly vestments”.

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MATTHEW 28: 2 reads, “There was a great earthquake and an angel appeared”. Ancient records do not mention a single earthquake in Palestine in the first century. Once again, this was pure allegorical language. Earthquake was another of the nicknames of Theudas Barabbas. He was an angel because Simon Zelotes had designated him his No. 2 in the Essene hierarchy, that is, the Angel Gabriel. Thus, the two angels Mary saw were Simon Zelotes and Theudas Barabbas. Mary also saw another man who at first she mistook for a gardener. Garden was another name for Cave 8. It was likened to the Garden of Eden, or Paradise – another of its nicknames– because the person in its charge, James the brother of Jesus, became the second Adam when he challenged Jesus for the status of the Davidic King. James was thus the gardener Mary thought she had seen. But it wasn‟t James: it was Jesus. Apparently, Jesus and James looked very much alike. Realising that it was Jesus and not James, Mary was overcome with emotion and fervidly reached out to hug him but Jesus kept her at bay. Why? Because according to Essene dynastic protocols, she was not, as a pregnant spouse, allowed physical with her husband for at least three years. All in all, the three men at Cave 8 had, with the blessings of Herod Antipas, declared themselves as the heads of the new Essene shadow council of the 12 in opposition to the official one led by Nathaniel pending official elections. Simon Zelotes was the shadow Michael; Barabbas the shadow Gabriel; and Jesus the shadow Sariel. But it would take six more months before they became formally so. JESUS FINALLY IS PRIEST-KING Although the so-called crucifixion took place in the relative quiet and seclusion of Qumran, it was not meant to be kept under wraps for long. Pontius Pilate wanted to demonstrate to his subjects that the key people in the AD 32 uprising had been dealt with decisively. The crucifixion though was publicly announced after the over celebrations were done with. This was tactical on the part of Pilate: he did not wish to foolishly provoke another uprising at a time when Jerusalem was teeming with the highly radical Galilean pilgrims. By the time the crucifixion became common knowledge, however, Jesus was sufficiently fit to make appearances to people who were close to him – his family and his so-called disciples. He would later appear to a gathering of over 500 at Qumran, most of whom were Diaspora Essenes. To those who did not know about the crucifixion ruse, he had conquered death. He was therefore hailed as a veritable messiah. Voices now clamoured to make him priest-king – the Melchizedek, the very status that he had laid claim to and that had put him at odds with the Jewish establishment. Jesus was careful though in his post-crucifixion appearances: he tactfully picked his audience and cautiously timed his showings. He didn‟t wish Pilate to get wind of the fact that the crucifixion was a hoax. In fact, very few Jews were aware he had survived the crucifixion. Meanwhile, Simon Zelotes decided to make political capital out of what had transpired. In his campaign for the papacy, he boasted that it was he who was responsible for “the miracle in the tomb”. Hence, his marks of respect too grew exponentially. From that point on, he became known as “Simon Magus”, that is, Simon the magician. With his popularity reaching such dizzying heights, he was in September 33 AD elected as Pope, thus replacing Nathaniel. With his accession to the papacy, he decided to heed the wishes of the people and have Jesus installed as the Melchizedek. This event is what has come to be known as the Ascension although it has been wrongly interpreted as a physical entry into Heaven, the abode of God. It is captured by Luke in ACTS 1:9, which reads, “After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight”.

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The incident is nothing more than the ission of Jesus into the priesthood as priest-king of Israel. The “Kingdom of Heaven” was the inner sanctum of the Essene priesthood. Jesus was conveyed into this inner sanctum by his brother James, who now unequivocally recognised him as such, and ordained by Simon Zelotes and Theudas Barabbas (the “two men who stood by in white apparel” as per ACTS 1:1011). It was the Exodus imagery at play here. “Cloud” was another title of James. It was a cloud that had led the ancient Israelites into the Promised Land (EXODUS 13:21-22) and the appearance of God on Mount Sinai had been accompanied not just by thunder and lightning but by a cloud as well (EXODUS 19:6). Thus, the “Thunder” (Nathaniel); “Lightning” (Simon Zelotes); “Earthquake” (Theudas Barabbas); and “Cloud” (James) were retained as symbolic designations in the Essene community. If Jesus didn‟t die in AD 33, what was his life like in subsequent years and when did he actually die? Thanks to the pesher device, this we can partly glean from the book of Acts, the Pauline epistles, and the book of Revelation. It is a subject we will adequately dwell upon in the questions segment of the series. POSTSCRIPT The Jesus Papers have arguably been the most widely read of all the series to date. This is borne out by the fact that I have received more questions on the series than on any other. The questions have come from pastors, elders, deacons, lecturers, Bible college students, theologians, and even non-Christians such as atheists and Moslems. With such a blitz of questions, I will spend more time on the Q&A segment than I have done previously. Of course, I cannot answer all the questions and therefore will address only those I deem important. The rest of the questions will be dealt with in the book version of the series.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 54

FINAL WORD ON CONSTANTINE We begin with questions on Constantine, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity

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HY IS CONSTANTINE KNOWN AS CONSTANTINE THE GREAT? WHAT EPIC DEEDS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH HIS NAME?

His original name was Flavius Valerius Constantinus. “The Great” derives from his own self-conferred cognomen as Invictus Constantinus Maximus Augustus, meaning, “His Majesty the Great, Unconquerable Constantine”, as evidenced by a coin that was minted in 313 AD. He was nonetheless a great man in his own right. He united an empire that had been fragmented for ten years. At the time he acceded to the throne in July 306 AD, two other rulers laid claim to parts of it. He first became King of Britain, Gaul (modern-day , Belgium, and Luxemburg) and Spain and after a series of victorious battles ensconced himself as undisputed emperor of the entire Roman Empire in 324 AD. He was emperor for 31 years (306-337), the second longest reign in the Roman Empire: only Augustus (Gaius Octavius) ruled longer at 40 years. Ten emperors who came after him proudly carried his name.

YOU SAID CONSTANTINE WAS A CHRISTIAN ONLY OPPORTUNISTICALLY. COULD YOU FURTHER SUBSTANTIATE YOUR ARGUMENT AS AMONG CHRISTIANS HE IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS THAT EVER HAPPENED TO THEIR FAITH? The Christians who salute Constantine as one of Christianity‟s greatest mascots are horribly misinformed. Constantine never became a Christian. The Catholic Encyclopaedia itself says tales of Constantine‟s conversion to Christianity are legendary. Constantine was a Catholic – kataholos in Greek, meaning a “universal faith”. He founded Catholicism, not Christianity. Catholicism was a blending of several faiths that included pagan faiths. Just look at the ritualistic garbs and protocols of the Vatican papacy today and you will agree with me that Catholicism is replete with pagan elements. Catholicism was a political manouvre. Constantine wished to unite his empire because it was torn apart by religious factions and feudings. In order to unite his empire, he decided to forge a syncretic religion that artificially fused all of them into one. In so doing, he decided to project Christianity – which itself was riven with antagonistic sects – simply because it was the most docile and had made a lot of headway in Europe and was practically the main religion of the day there.

IT IS SAID CONSTANTINE WAS BAPTISED ON HIS DEATHBED. WHO BAPTISED HIM? It is not certain who performed the rite or when. There are actually two versions of the emperor‟s alleged baptism. One says he was baptised by Pope Sylvester I of Rome in 326 AD after he cured him of leprosy.

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The other version, which we encounter in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea, is that he was baptised a few days before his death by Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (Izmit in today‟s Turkey).

IS IT TRUE THAT IT IS CONSTANTINE WHO CHANGED THE CHRISTIAN DAY OF WORSHIP FROM SATURDAY TO SUNDAY? No it is not. The gospels themselves make it resoundingly clear that the early church, the one that was first led by Simon Peter and subsequently by James the Just (Jesus's brother), met on “the first day of the week”, which is Sunday. Of course the Jewish establishment frowned upon this setup. It was one reason the establishment persecuted the leading lights of the early church such as Simon Peter and the brothers John and James the “Sons of Zebedee”. The misconception that Constantine changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday arises from his decree of March 7 321 AD. On that day, he declared that, “On the venerable Day of the Sun, let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.” Throughout his reign, Constantine worshipped Apollo, the “Saviour Sun God”. Apollo was the Greek name for the Anunnaki god Utu-Shamash, the son of Nannar-Sin (Zeus) and the grandson of Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible. Constantine never worshipped Jesus whatsoever. So his decree of March 7 was in honour not of Jesus but of his own Sun-God Apollo. Note that Constantine simply hallowed Sunday; he did not proscribe the Sabbath. The person who proscribed the Sabbath was Pope Sylvester I (reign: 314-335). It was he who decreed that “the rest of the Sabbath should be transferred to the Lord‟s Day” (Sunday).

HOW COULD CONSTANTINE HAVE BEEN A PAGAN WORSHIPPER WHEN ALL RELIGIONS OF THAT DAY AND EVEN OUR DAY WORSHIPPED/WORSHIP THE SAME ANUNNAKI GODS BUT IN DIFFERENT GUISES? Humans have always been played by the Anunnaki. The idea of the same Anunnaki gods posing as a distinct god of a particular religion was their strategy of divide and rule. Let us take Nannar-Sin, the second-born son of Enlil, the Bible‟s Jehovah predominantly. As god of the Jews, he was called Yahweh. As god of the Ishmaelites, he was called Allah. As god of the Greeks, he was called Zeus. As god of the Romans, he was called Jupiter. But as far as Christians and the Jews were concerned, Zeus, Jupiter, and Allah were little more than idols. Of course the Romans and Greeks had the same view of Yahweh. Yet unbeknown to all, such was the foolproof wool pulled over their eyes by the Anunnaki, all these were one and the same god. You are therefore right when you say in deifying the Sun-God Apollo, Constantine was no different from any other person who claimed to worship Yahweh, Jupiter or Allah. I suppose Constantine was aware of such a subterfuge, as a result of which he decided to take political advantage of this blindfold.

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YOU SAID JESUS WAS BORN IN MARCH 7 BC. WHY THEN DID CONSTANTINE CHOOSE DECEMBER 25 AS THE BIRTHDAY OF JESUS? It was not Constantine who declared December 25 as the birthday of Jesus; rather, it was the Catholic papacy. Constantine chose December 25 to honour his Anunnaki Sun God Apollo. Like most Anunnaki gods, Apollo was worshipped as a Saviour Sun God. The sun element stemmed from the fact of the sun being the sustainer of life on our planet. In ancient times therefore, the Sun was referred to as the Saviour. As such, Sun Gods like Apollo were called Saviour Sun God because they were deemed as indispensable as the sun. December 25 was particularly chosen by Constantine as the ceremonial birthday of the god Apollo because astrologically, the Sun reaches its lowest point (from the point of view of the northern hemisphere) in the sky on December 22, the so-called winter solstice. From December 22 to 24, it is basically stationary: the metaphor is that it has “died”. Then on December 25, it begins to move to bring with it the season of spring. Thus on December 25, the sun was said to have “risen” or be “born again”. That‟s the reason Constantine chose the day as a ceremonial birthday of his god Apollo. The first such birthday was celebrated in 336 AD. A few years later, Pope Julius I (Bishop of Rome from 6 February 337 to his death in 352 AD) declared that Jesus‟s birthday would also be celebrated on December 25. The finger of indictment should therefore point to the Vatican and not to Constantine.

WHAT GREAT THINGS DID CONSTANTINE DO FOR CHRISTIANITY? Granted, Constantine was a counterfeit Christian but what he did for the faith was epoch-making: without him, Christianity would not be the pervasive and authoritative faith it is today. The watershed event was the promulgation by the emperor of the 313 Edict of Milan which allowed freedom of religious expression in his empire. Christianity was of course just one of the many religions that benefited from the edict but this augured well for the faith all the same. Before the advent of Constantine, Christians had been at the mercy of institutionalised harassment and persecution. Emperor Dioclesian for one instituted what was to become known in history as the Great Persecution, which lasted from 303 to 311 AD. Christian assembly buildings were razed down and every Christian who refused to offer a sacrifice to the emperor (who fancied himself as a demi-god) or his god faced death. Constantine put an end to all this with the Edict of Toleration in 311. One chronicler further underscores the emperor‟s invigoration of Christianity thus: “Constantine took over the role of patron of the Christian faith. He ed the Church financially, had an extraordinary number of basilicas built, granted privileges (e.g., exemption from certain taxes) to clergy, promoted Christians to high-ranking offices, returned property confiscated during the Great Persecution of Diocletian, and endowed the church with land and other wealth.” And of course it was the 325 Nicene Council – decreed and wholly financed by Constantine – that marked the birth of the canon we today call the Bible. If Christianity is today a leading cultural force, it is because Constantine put it on a pedestal at the expense all other religions which at the time were vying for preeminence.

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IF CONSTANTINE WAS SUCH A GREAT CHAMPION OF CHRISTIANITY, WHY DIDN’T HE OUTRIGHTLY DECLARE IT AS THE SOLE STATE RELIGION? WHY DID HE EQUIVOCATE? ISN’T HE OVERRATED IN THAT REGARD? True, it was not Constantine who designated Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire. The person who did that was Theodosius I, the 67th Emperor of the Roman Empire, when on February 27 380 AD he issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which ordered all subjects of the empire to “profess the faith of the Nicene Council”. As much as Constantine valued Christianity, he was not prepared to exalt it above every other faith. This was because Catholicism, its main expression, was a hybrid religion that drew from Western, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern faiths. Even more important, Constantine as an individual never fully embraced Christianity: he worshipped the Sun God Apollo. Throughout his rein, he continued to mint coins bearing symbols of Apollo with the inscription “Sol Invictus”, meaning the “Unconquerable Sun”, that is, his Sun God Apollo. Even if Constantine perchance did profess to be a Christian, he was far from exemplary virtue-wise. He had his own firstborn son executed; a nephew strangled; and his wife cooked alive in boiling water. Goodness knows how many other ancillary family and friends he secretly sacrificed to his god.

YOU SAID CONSTANTINE KILLED HIS WIFE AND HIS OWN SON. WHAT SINS DID THEY COMMIT? The son was Julius Valerius Crispus, his firstborn. Constantine had Crispus by his first marriage with Minervina. Crispus was an illustrious general and was described by all and sundry as “a prince of the highest merit” and therefore a worthy successor to the throne. His rock-star popularity had his step mother and empress Fausta green with jealousy. Constantine had divorced Minervina in 307 to tie the knot with Fausta in a politically expedient union: Fausta was the daughter of former emperor Maximian who was still politically influential (Maximian had ruled tly with Dioclesian). Fausta had three sons with Constantine. They were Constantine Jr, Constantius, and Constans, none of whom were in their teens yet. Fausta thought Crispus stood in the way of his sons, particularly her eldest Constantine Jr. According to the Byzantine historian Zosimus, who lived at the time of Emperor Constantine, Fausta first tried to endear herself to Constantine Jr by making sexual overtures to the handsome heir 27 years her junior. When Crispus politely rejected her, she set about poisoning him to his father – that he had designs on the throne and so posed a threat to the emperor‟s continued occupancy of it. Although there was no evidence of any disloyalty on the part of Crispus to his father, the emperor was swayed by his scheming wife. First, he stripped Crispus of rulership of Gaul in 323 AD and summoned him back to Rome, where he could keep close watch on him, and Constantius at only 9 years old was declared the new Caesar, that is, deputy to his father, whose title was Augustus. Then in August 326, Crispus was arrested, banished to Pola in Istria (today part of Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy), and executed after a sham trial. That Crispus‟s death was the result of sheer spite on the part of Fausta is evidenced by the fact that his cousin Licinianus, the son of the emperor‟s sister Constantia and who was only 12 years old, was also killed in

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cold blood. Clearly, Fausta instigated the murders to ensure that there was no viable potential contender to the throne other than her own sons. The emperor was to rue his act. His 80-year-old mother Helena confronted him and bitterly reproached him for killing an innocent child. Constantine indeed confirmed this, as a result of which he had Fausta murdered by suffocation in an over-heated bath later the same year. As for the death of his son, the emperor was genuinely contrite. According to another Byzantine historian Codinus, Constantine “raised to the memory of Crispus a golden statue, which bore the inscription, „To the son whom I unjustly condemned‟, and fasted and refused the comforts of life for forty days.” This obviously sincerely remorseful gesture did not placate the bishops a jot, who stoutly refused to “purify” him from his crime. The philosopher Sopater, to whom he desperately turned for comfort, also told him to his face that he would have nothing to do with a “heinous sinner”. That was who Constantine was to his subjects and not the god-fearing icon Christendom misrepresents him as.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 55

FINAL WORD ON THE ESSENES This Time We Deal With Question Relating To The Sect Of The Essenes, Of Which Jesus Was A Member

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OU SAID THE ESSENES, THE GROUP THAT PRODUCED JESUS, ARE NOT DIRECTLY MENTIONED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. IF THEY ARE INDIRECTLY MENTIONED, HOW DOES ONE GET A HINT IT IS THEY WHO ARE BEING TALKED ABOUT? You will not be able to tell if you haven‟t read the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Essenes did not actually call themselves Essenes. According to the Jewish historian and philosopher Philo Judeaus, Essenes was “a name awarded to them in recognition of their holiness”. It stemmed from the Greek and Egyptian term meaning secret and sacred, which was befitting: the Essenes flaunted holiness like a badge and lived in self-imposed isolation. The Essenes had several philosophically descriptive names. One of these was “the poor”. They were poor because they generally shared everything and therefore had no individual property. When you encounter the term poor in the gospels, rest assured you are reading about the Essenes. The Beatitudes in MATTHEW 5 begin with “Blessed are the poor”. That introductory sets the tone for all the remaining 7 Beatitudes that follow. They are about extolling the virtues of the Essenes. In other words, Jesus, who is said to have uttered them, was saying unless you morally bankrupt and spiritually corrupt Pharisees and Sadducees emulate our humility and spirituality, woe unto you. Although the Essenes are not directly mentioned in the Bible, secular chroniclers of the day such as Flavius Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the younger give them prominent mention, in some cases even much more than the Pharisees and Sadducees. What is ironic is that it is they who wrote the New Testament. All the language and philosophy you find in the Dead Sea Scrolls is found in the Bible from Matthew all the way to Revelation.

WHY DID THE ESSENES SET THEMSELVES APART FROM THE REST AND SECLUDE THEMSELVES AT QUMRAN? The Essenes had removed themselves from mainstream society around 175 BC to live a monastic life about 40 to 50 km southeast of Jerusalem. The name they chose for this cluster of settlements was Judean Wilderness. Although it was generally characterised by arid and uninviting terrain, the Judean Wilderness did have scanty vegetation.

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Examples of the mini-settlements that comprised the Judean Wilderness were Mird; Mar Saba; Mazin; Ain Feshka; and Qumran. Qumran was the principal settlement. Qumran, Ain Feshka, and Mazin were located on the West coast of the Dead Sea. Although the Qumran settlers are best known as Essenes, they primarily referred to themselves as the Nozrei ha brit, meaning “Keepers of the Covenant” – the Davidic Covenant by which the Jewish Anunnaki god Enlil, best known as Jehovah, promised David and his descendents everlasting rule over Israel. In their formative stages, however, the Essenes called themselves the Sons of Zadok, or simply Zadokites. In one sense, this meant “Righteous Men”. In another, it meant “adherents to the Zadok order”. Zadok, a Levite and descendent of Aaron, was the temple high priest during the reign of King Solomon. All the first 30 priests from Eleazer, the son of Aaron, to the Babylonian captivity were Aaronites. But after the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BC, priests were arbitrarily appointed by the occupying power as well as by puppet Jewish kings who served the interests of the occupying power. Moreover, the Davidic dynasty was banished from ever ruling Israel after the Babylonian captivity. To some section of the Jews, this not only amounted to a desecration but was a breach of the Davidic Covenant. So circa 175 BC, this section of the Jews separated itself from other Jews and set up its own community at Qumran in protest. There, the community awaited two messiahs to liberate Israel from foreign occupation – the Davidic messiah from the tribe of Judah and the priestly messiah from the tribe of Levi. It also awaited a prophet like Moses or Elijah. This community of Jewish puritans and fundamentalists is what became known as the Essenes.

HOW DID THE ESSENES DIFFER FROM THE PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES? Generally speaking, the Sadducees were the aristocrats of the day. They were the elite of Jewry. It was the Sadducees who ran the Jerusalem Temple and dominated the Sanhedrin, the Jerusalem-based Jewish governing council. The Pharisees were mostly teachers of the law of Moses, the so-called scribes. Both the Pharisees and the Sadducees worshipped in the Jerusalem Temple, although the Pharisees did have local houses of worship called synagogues. However, neither the Sadducees nor the Pharisees were exactly in one accord. Each group had splinter groups. For instance, the Herodian Sadducees were the Sadducees proper. Qumran too had its share of Pharisees and Sadducees who were amenable to Essene ideals. The Essenes regarded the Sadducees and Pharisees as corrupting and sacrilegious. For instance, whereas animal sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple were the order of the day, the Essenes never sacrificed animals at their sanctuary at Qumran. The Essenes never even ate meat: the only flesh they ate was that of fish. Those who say Jesus was the “sacrificial lamb” of God are totally mistaken. Jesus was an Essene and Essenes did not believe in animal sacrifices or such typology. The Essenes were staunch champions of the restoration of the Aaronite priesthood to the Jewish temple and the Davidic dynasty to the Jewish throne. That‟s why both Jesus and John the Baptist arose from their ranks.

OTHER THAN ESSENES, WHAT OTHER NAMES DID THE ESSENES CALL THEMSELVES? According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes went by several names. They called themselves the Keepers of the Covenant; the Sons of Zadok; the Righteous Ones; the Elect; the Sons of Light; the Holy; the Saints; the Perfect of the Way; the Poor; the Osim (meaning something like healer); the Zealots ( meaning people who are zealous for the law, although this term predominantly applied to their military

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wing); the New Convenanters; the Remnants of Israel; Lebanon, which means white because they wore sparklingly white linen; etc. Also, the Essenes had several sects amongst them, each with its own adopted name. For example, there was a sect of the Essenes known as the “Few” and another known as the “Many”. This kind of language peppers the gospels and sadly the overwhelming majority of the pathetically ignorant Christian clergy settle for the generalised superficial interpretation of these . The Jesus movement was called the Nazarenes, not Christians. The Nazarenes were an offshoot of the Essenes. Nazarenes primarily meant “People of the Branch”. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Branch of David was another name for the Davidic messiah, this being Jesus in the first century. A secondary meaning of the term Nazarenes was “Fish Men”.

IF THE ESSENES OR ESSENE S WROTE MUCH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AS YOU SAID, SURELY THEY WOULD HAVE MENTIONED THEMSELVES IN THE BIBLE INSTEAD OF MENTIONING ONLY THEIR RIVALS SUCH AS SADDUCCEES AND PHARISEES. It is probable that in the earlier gospel versions as well as epistles that are now lost, the Essenes directly mentioned themselves. The versions we today find in the Bible are edited ones. The gospels and epistles were continuously edited to accommodate certain philosophical and doctrinal slants which reflected the schisms amongst the early church. In AD 66, the Essenes waged what was to become a 7-year war against the Romans. They were crushed by Roman general Flavius Titus and the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. That was the end of the Essenes and Sadducees: only Pharisean Judaism was allowed to flourish by the Romans because it was inimical to both the other two. From that time henceforth, it was suicidal for anybody to call himself an Essene. Hence, the versions of gospels and epistles that were published post AD 70 (which form the basis essentially of those we have in today‟s Bible) could not risk employment of the term Essene. Even Josephus never mentioned the Essenes in his first work, The Wars of the Jews, which was published in AD 75. He first made mention of them in The Jewish Antiquities, which was published in AD 93, when Roman anti-Essene sentiment had substantially subsided. Josephus claimed he was a Pharisee but this of course was a self-preservation tactic: he was an Essene. It is clear he was an Essene because he wrote a great deal more about the Essenes than the Pharisees, let alone the Sadducees. But conscious of the peril that attached to calling oneself an Essene in the 70s AD (when he became a property and imbongi of the Romans,) he elected to play it safe and dub himself a Pharisee.

IF THE ESSENES WERE AS PEACEFUL AS CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS DESCRIBE THEM, WHY DID THEY HAVE AN UNDERGROUND MILITARY WING IN THE ZEALOTS? The Essenes were a government of national unity at a microcosmic level. Among the Essenes were fundamentalist Sadducees as opposed to the Herodian Sadducees who ran the Jerusalem temple; moderate Pharisees as opposed to conservative Pharisees who were based in Jerusalem; the Egyptian-based Theraputae who were headed by Theudas Barabbas; the Samaritan-based Magi who were headed by Simon Zelotes; the People of the Way, founded by John the Baptist; the Nazarenes, who were headed by 213

James the Just (the brother of Jesus); and the Zealots who were headed by Hezekiah, his son Judas of Galilee, Judas Iscariot, and Menahem ben Judah (the brother of Judas of Galilee) and Joseph Gishala in that order. The Zealots were not Essenes as such initially: they were political as opposed to philosophical allies of the Essenes. Flavius Josephus describes the Zealots as a “fourth sect of the Jews” after the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. It was not until after the death of James the Just in AD 62 that the Zealots took control of Qumran. “Zealot” was a cover name: it meant “those who are zealous for the role” and was actually another name of the Essenes before it was usurped by Galilean revolutionaries. The Zealots officially called themselves Galileans because Galilee was their principal bastion. The Essenes were extremely civil and peaceful. It was the Zealots who were drawn to the Essenes because of their spirituality and puritan character and not vice versa. Sadly, instead of Essene sanctity rubbing off on the Zealots, it was Zealot radicalism that at long last corrupted the other.

HOW WAS THE ESSENE WAY OF LIFE? Flavius Josephus and Philo provide a very highly illuminating and remarkable portrait of the Essene way of life. They were a marvelous people the Essenes. They were arable and pastoral farmers, beekeepers, artisans, and craftsmen. All these activities were purely for subsistence purposes: they never engaged in commerce at all. They were absolutely peaceful, never kept slaves, and made no instruments of war. Although they did study philosophy (particularly Pythagorean philosophy), mathematics, astrology, and medicine (herbs, vibrational healing from bones and stones, and spiritual healing), they emphasised moral and virtue the most. They preached and practiced love of God; love of virtue; and love of mankind. They practiced mutual love and renounced riches: their society was totally egalitarian. All possessions were shared; all were economic equals. They were remarkably just: all judgements were ed by a court with not less than 100 people on the bench! They had prophets and astrologers who were “rarely wrong” in their predictions. However, they were very strict in the istration of justice. People who betrayed their secrets (that is, Gnostic secrets) were either expelled from the Essene community or, rarely so, killed. Menstruating women were forbidden to come into with men and were not to allow themselves to be seen at all. A man could not the Essene community if he was handicapped in any way or had a stigmatic disease such as leprosy for instance. Essenes were not allowed to mix with or go into the homes of non-Essene lest they be “tainted” or “defiled”. Because of the therapeautic prowess of the Theraputae among them, the Essenes were able to live up to 120 years, which was as unusual those days as it is in our day.

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HOW UNIQUE WAS ESSENE THEOLOGY RELATIVE TO THAT OF MAINSTREAM JEWS? The Essenes‟ spiritual philosophy was based not on Judaism as such but on the teachings of Pythagoras, the great Greek mathematician and philosopher (see http://www.essene.com/History/PythagorasAndNazareans.html for a highly insightful comparison between Essene and Pythagorean way of life.) They had their own sanctuary at Qumran and therefore never worshiped in the Jerusalem temple. In their sanctuary, they never sacrificed animals at all. Their overall leader was called the Teacher of Righteousness. This was their high priest. They forbade swearing oaths. They were strict adherents to Sabbath requirements: even cooking and going to the toilet was not allowed on the Sabbath. Whilst they forgave each other, they had a permanent hate of their enemies. An Essene was obliged to bath his body in full at least twice daily, before a meal. To them, inward cleanness had to be mirrored by outward cleanliness. In addition, they had numerous bathing rituals which were regularly conducted. Co-option into full Essene fellowship was rigorous: it took 3 years. They believed not in an afterlife Heaven but a theocracy right here on Earth in which Israel would rule the whole world. They anticipated an apocalyptic war between they, the Sons of Light, and everybody else, the Sons of Darkness. This war would be led by the messiah of David, who they awaited along with the messiah of Aaron. They believed in the immortality of the soul nevertheless. The body was regarded as a prison from which the soul was liberated at death.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 56

FINAL WORD ON THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS This Week We Deal With Questions On The Qumran Documents And The Pesher device

HY DON’T PREACHERS PREACH ABOUT THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS?

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There are two reasons in the main.

The first is that it challenges the entrenched Christian dogma. It upsets the apple cart. , the Dead Sea Scrolls contain documents that have never been tampered or tinkered with for 2000 years. It‟s hard to argue with such an authoritative body of literature. Second, the scrolls are too technical and somewhat complex. They were for the most part written in a code language, called pesher, and preachers of our day simply are not prepared to devote time to delve into what lies behind the surface message.

DO THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS CONTAIN ANY NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS? The Dead Sea Scrolls are actually thousands of fragments that have been pieced together to make intelligible reading. They are not intact texts. But it is easy to see that there are some ages, statements and events recorded in the New Testament that were clearly excerpted from the Dead Sea Scrolls. For Instance, the messianic message in the Great Isaiah Scroll, the only scroll that is almost wholly in one piece, is quoted in all the four gospels. The “Son of God” scroll reads practically word for word like the Annunciation story in LUKE 1:32-35. The eight Beatitudes in the book of Matthew were lifted straight from the “Blessings of the Wise” scroll.

DOES THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS CONTAIN ANY NON-CANONICAL TEXTS? Yes they do, but all these are Old Testament texts. They are Jubilees, Enoch, Tobit, and Syrach. All these are only fragments. They comprise 30 percent of the entire collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only complete Dead Sea text is the book of Isaiah. All Old Testament book are represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls except the book of Esther. ARE MIRACLES ANYWHERE FOUND IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS? No they are not. There is no single miracle recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is no raising of people from the dead, no restoration of sight to the blind, no multiplication of fishes and loaves, no casting out of demons, no virgin births.

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DID THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS HAVE ANY PROPHECIES IN THEM? Yes. The Essenes believed in an apocalyptic war we today refer to as the war of Armageddon. This war was going to be fought with the “Kittim”, the derogatory Essene term for the Romans. The messiah of David was going to lead the Essenes to victory in that war. The Dead Sea Scrolls also say angels – Heavenly beings – would at that time come down to help them in the final war. In the war, all the Gentiles were going to die, except the few Gentiles who allied with them. The Essenes were going to rule in the new Utopia, a kind of Heaven on Earth Jehovah's Witnesses style. The Dead Sea Scrolls do not envisage ascendancy to a spiritual Heaven: they talk about a Heaven-like realm here on Earth. The Essenes, however, were very realistic in their prognostications. The final war wasn‟t going to be a walk in the park: the Essenes – or the Sons of Light as they referred to themselves in this context – were going to lose at least two battles and win the rest even with Heavenly angels fighting alongside them.

WHICH NEW TESTAMENT FIGURES ARE DIRECTLY MENTIONED IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS? The Dead Sea Scrolls were largely written in a coded language. This was in order to blindfold the Romans just in case they happened upon the documents. As such, no names, whether of Essenes themselves or their enemies, are directly mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Instead, descriptive code names are used. Sometimes, different code names are used for one person in view of the changing dynamics over time since the scrolls were not written all at once. They were written over scores of years and were revised from time to time. In some cases, the same code name is used for different people. To tell which one is exactly being referred to, you have to read the context and compare with what the gospels say as well as extra-biblical works such as those of Josephus. A few examples will suffice. John the Baptist was referred to as the Teacher of Righteousness when he was alive. After his death, the same title was applied to James the Just, the brother of Jesus. The apostle Paul was called the Spouter of Lies. Pontius Pilate was referred to as the Man of Wrath. Incidentally, Jesus is not that popular in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is denounced as the Wicked Priest. The reason is that he was suspected of involvement in the death of the Baptist and was said to have divulged a number of Gnostic secrets to the public. This unflattering portrayal of Jesus in the Scrolls explains in part why your pastor will never preach about them. WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THE COPPER SCROLL? I HEAR THE KNIGHT TEMPLARS STRUCK IT RICH AFTER READING THE COPPER SCROLL. The Copper Scroll is the only one of the 981 Dead Sea Scrolls that is written on copper sheets. It is also the only scroll that is not philosophical or doctrinal but a descriptive key to underground locations dotted all over Israel where Essene treasures were stashed.

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The two rolls of copper sheets identify 64 such locations, 63 of which bear treasures of gold and silver. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran between 1946 and 1956 and the Copper Scroll in particular was discovered in 1952, but it appears the Knights Templar did stumble upon some other Qumran scrolls in the 12th century. The Dead Sea Copper Scroll referred to 24 other scrolls deposited under the ruins of the Jerusalem temple, along with gold, silver and other precious objects. Apparently, these treasurers were hidden there after the destruction of the temple by the Roman general Flavius Titus in AD 70. The Knights Templar movement was formed in AD 1119. They spent the next 8 years digging under the ruins of the Jerusalem temple and hey presto, they had become fabulously rich. The Copper Scroll lists 65 tons of silver and 26 tons of gold. It is possible the Knights Templar did turn up part of this cache in their diggings and that‟s how their sudden wealth can be ed for.

YOU SAID GOING BY THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, THE EIGHT BEATITUDES JESUS IS SAID TO HAVE PRONOUNCED DURING THE FAMOUS SERMON ON THE MOUNT (MATTHEW 5:1-12) REFER TO THE ESSENES AND NOT CHRISTIANS IN GENERAL. WOULD YOU CARE TO ELABORATE ON THAT POINT? I will do that with pleasure, in respect of the first seven as the eighth apply to Jesus in person. Blessed are the pure in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven: The Essenes called themselves the poor because in general they did not own individual property. They referred to the Essene priesthood, the bona fide priesthood as far as they were concerned, as the Kingdom of Heaven as well as to the eternal bliss that would arise when Israel was ruling the world. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted: The Essenes and other conservative Jews had declared for themselves an indefinite period of national mourning till they took control of the Jerusalem Temple, which was in the “filthy hands” of the “unworthy” – the Herodian Sadducees. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth: The Essenes referred to themselves as “the meek”. Essenes believed in a future Heaven-like kingdom right here on Earth in which the nation of Israel led by the Davidic messiah and the priestly messiah would rule. In order for this utopian kingdom to be expedited, Essene were to conduct themselves in an exemplary meek and humble way. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be satisfied: The Essenes called themselves the “Sons of Zadok”, meaning “seekers after righteousness”. This quest for holiness would eventually be satisfied when the Kingdom of God was set up here on Earth. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy: Essenes preached forgiving one another for moral, everyday wrongs (that‟s why Jesus, who was an Essene, ened everybody to forgive 70 times 7 times, which simply meant forgiving all the time) without reservations (it was only their enemies – the Romans mainly – who they hated for good). Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God: Essenes called themselves the “Holy Ones”, what we call saints today. Their Gnostic philosophy was that for one to see God in the afterlife, they had to have a pure heart in this life, they had to lead a life that was holy. Of course they did contradict themselves because they too had enemies such as the Romans.

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Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God: The Essenes generally advocated for war against Rome and even envisioned a war of Armageddon. They were therefore no pacifists. But in rooting for war against the “Sons of Darkness”, they were working for “Shalom”, a state of peace, prosperity, and general wellbeing that would reign once the Romans were defeated and the Davidic and priestly messiahs ruled the Earth. In a new Heaven on Earth, everybody would be a Son of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven: The Essenes regarded themselves as victims of both the Romans and the Jewish establishment who ran the Jerusalem temple. Their puritan spirituality was scorned by both the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who they called “seekers after smooth things”, that is, people who profoundly compromised holiness for their own selfish material ends.

YOU SAID JOHN THE BAPTIST WAS AN ESSENE. HE IS SAID TO HAVE FED ON LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY. WERE THESE PART OF ESSENE DIET AND ARE THEY MENTIONED IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS? Honey and locusts were part of the Essenes‟ everyday diet yes. The Damascus Document, a component of the Dead Sea Scrolls, says locusts were to be captured alive and either boiled or roasted before they were eaten. Essenes ate locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, and fish for their proteinaceous sustenance. As for honey, we have long pointed out that Essenes were beekeepers and bees are kept for only one purpose – honey. John the Baptist must therefore have eaten honey for his carbohydrate intake since he did not live among the broader Qumran where he would eat the community‟s “daily bread” but in seclusion in the deeper wilderness.

YOU RECOMMENDED BARBARA THEIRING AND GEZA VERMES IN RESPECT OF AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. WHO IS THE BETTER OF THE TWO? They actually complement each other. Geza Vermes simply reproduces the Dead Sea Scrolls verbatim, in English. Barbara Theiring, on the other hand, studied them for 18 years with a view to decode them and get to the underlying meaning as per the pesher technique. But as I said, Theiring is a very lousy writer. She confuses very easily (and even does confuse herself in some cases). You need to be extra-patient to get the drift of what she‟s talking about.

YOU SAID THE GOSPELS WERE WRITTEN IN PESHER. PLEASE ELUCIDATE BY GIVING EXAMPLES. Pesher is a written communication technique whereby you convey several messages in one statement. First, there is a surface message, the most obvious one. This is evangelical in thrust. Then there is an underlying message, which can be deciphered only by people who are privy to the pesher device. This is political in thrust. 219

In most cases, the surface message can be received as is; in other cases, the surface message must be received as an allegory and not as a real event. Thus what we interpret as miracles in the gospels, such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead, was not actually as such: the pesher meaning, that is, the correct meaning, in the case of Lazarus is simply that Lazarus had been restored to Essene fellowship after he was excommunicated. In pesher, therefore, death means excommunication and resurrection or reanimation means restoration. The Essenes employed pesher because they were wary that their enemies, particularly the Romans, would victimise them if they made their messages too obvious.

IN HER BOOK JESUS THE MAN, BARBARA THEIRING, WHO YOU RECOMMENDED, STATES A PESHER RULE KNOWN AS THE RULE OF LAST REFERENT. I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND IT. PLEASE EXPLAIN IT FOR ME. You can only understand with an example. Let‟s take JOHN 18:33, which says, “Pilate … called Jesus and said to him, „Are you the King of the Jews?‟” In the sentence as a whole, Pilate is the first referent and Jesus is the last referent. In ordinary reading, the question was asked by Pilate; but in pesher, it was actually Jesus, the last referent, who asked Pilate as to whether he was the King of the Jews. This is what is called the rule of last referent. This may strike you as nonsensical since it was Jesus who was supposed to be the King of the Jews and not Pilate. But when you delve deeper into the Dead Sea Scrolls, you find that “King of the Jews” was also a title for somebody who had graduated from Herod Antipas‟s philosophical school (that is, Essene philosophy) for Gentiles at Tiber Island in Rome. Jesus asked Pilate the question deliberately, in accord with the pre-plan with Antipas. It was a signal for Pilate to perform an act that would make him eligible to receive an Essene bribe (in respect of the release of Theudas Barabbas). Thus when Pilate performed the rite of washing his hands, he was publicly indicating that he had become a honorary graduate from the Antipas school and was therefore entitled to receive Essene funds as an Essene evangelical “minister”. That was how the bribe was laundered.

I DON’T AGREE WITH MUCH OF WHAT BARBARA THEIRING SAYS, IN PARTICULAR HER INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS. DO YOU? To the contrary, I agree with much of what she says. But like everybody else she‟s human and she‟s prone to err. For example, the way she interprets most of Jesus‟s parables strikes me as fanciful. 220

Jesus Papers Series Article No. 57

FINAL WORD ON JOSEPHUS This Time, We Tackle Questions About The Iconic Jewish Historian Flavius Josephus And The Destruction Of Jerusalem

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OW RELIABLE ARE THE WRITINGS OF FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS? Like all history, they are reliable only to a certain extent. No record of history is truthful through and through. There are s in which the bias in his writings is quite blatant.

For example, Josephus (37-100 AD) calls the Zealots in the AD 66 uprising against the Romans as terrorists. They were not terrorists: they were freedom fighters. In some cases, he lies outrightly, such as when he says he was a Pharisee. If he were, he would have written precious much about the Pharisees. But he wrote very little about them and instead dwelt on the Essenes at disproportionate length. Clearly, he was an Essene, at least at some point in time, but he would not openly identify with the Essenes because at the time he was writing (post-70 AD), the Essenes had been outlawed for their centrality in the AD 66 uprising; only the Pharisees were allowed to operate. In general, however, Josephus is fairly reliable and is in fact crucial. Without him, our knowledge of the happenings in first century Palestine would be substantially diminished.

YOU HAVE TALKED ABOUT TWO PERSONS WITH THE NAME FLAVIUS – FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS AND FLAVIUS TITUS. WERE THE TWO RELATED? They were related yes but in a political rather than a familial way. Flavius was the clan name of a succession of dynastic emperors who ruled the Roman Empire from AD 69 to AD 96. These were Vespasian (69-79 AD); his son Titus (79-81 AD); and his other son Domitian (81-96 AD). Each of the three emperors carried the name Flavius in his full names after their ancestral patriarch Marcus Flavius who lived in the fourth century BC. The collective reign of the three emperors is therefore in history referred to as the Flavian dynasty. Josephus was born Joseph ben Matthias. When he sold out to the Romans in AD 69, the year Vespasian became emperor, and became a Roman citizen, he adopted the emperor‟s clan name Flavius and became interpreter and advisor to Crown Prince General Flavius Titus. Since he wrote his books under the name Flavius Josephus, it is by this name that he is best known.

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EXACTLY WHAT SPARKED THE JEWISH REVOLT AGAINST THE ROMANS IN 66 AD? JOSEPHUS OFTEN IMMERSES YOU IN SUCH A SEA OF UNNECESSARY DETAIL THAT YOU GET LOST. It was the appearance of Halley‟s Comet on January 25 of AD 66. The Zealots were Essenes and Essenes were astrologers. They believed that the appearance of certain heavenly phenomena signalled a watershed event. Their inspiration was the Great Revolt of 164 BC, in which the Maccabees recaptured Jerusalem from Greek-Syrian domination. The Maccabees revolution was inspired by Halley‟s Comet, which had appeared in that year too (it is seen every 71-74 years). Josephus actually plainly states that the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple was the result of the Jews misinterpreting “a star resembling a sword which stood over the city, a comet that continued a whole year”. The Zealots thought they could replicate the Maccabees feat since the comet was a sign of good luck. It turned out it was sometimes a sign of ill luck.

WAS YOUR “LEGENDARY” JOSEPHUS A MAN OF VIRTUE? I ASK BECAUSE EVEN WHEN HE RELOCATED TO ROME, HE WAS ALWAYS UNDER HEAVY GUARD AS EVEN THE JEWS OF THE DIASPORA BAYED FOR HIS BLOOD FOR DINING AND WINING WITH THE ENEMY IN THE ROMANS. He had his black marks; at the same time, he had his plusses. First, he was very cerebral. As a kid he was a child prodigy. This is what he writes in his autobiography in this regard: “I made mighty proficiency in the improvements of my learning, and appeared to have both a great memory and understanding. Moreover, when I was a child, and about fourteen years of age, I was commended by all for the love I had to learning; on which the high priests and principal men of the city came then frequently to me together, in order to know my opinion about the accurate understanding of points of the law.” Second, he was a proficient lawyer and suringly eloquent in speech. For instance, in AD 62, at only age 26, he travelled to Rome to argue before Roman Emperor Nero the release of priestly men who Felix, the Roman governor of Judea, had imprisoned without trial on trumped up charges. He was successful. It was his great eloquence, coupled with his cunning, that endeared him to the then Roman general Vespasian. Thirdly, he was an illustrious soldier. When the Zealot war against the Romans broke out in AD 66, he commanded the Galilean forces at only age 29 with no leadership or military experience and bravely fought the Romans under General Vespasian in the battle of Jotapata before he surrendered following a seven-week siege in June-July AD 67. As much as he is deserving of condemnation for one reason or the other, let us give him credit where it is due.

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HOW DID JOSEPHUS END UP A CLIENT OF ROME? When the Romans overran Jotapata in June-July AD 67, Josephus and forty others were trapped in a cave. General Vespasian, who wanted Josephus alive as commander of the Galilean chapter of the rebellion, called upon them to surrender but they insisted they would rather they took their own lives. They therefore made a suicide pact (Josephus‟s cleverly contrived idea) by which they were to kill each other by turns through drawing lots, with the last person killing himself. As it was, Josephus was one of the last two. Since he cherished his life, he convinced the other guy that they simply surrender to Vespasian, which they did. General Vespasian was taken in by the sharp wit and sweet tongue of Josephus. When he was being interrogated, Josephus told the Roman general that he was actually a prophet of the Jewish god Yahweh and that Yahweh had made known to him that he had decided to punish the Jews and adopt the Romans as his people, that Vespasian was the messiah the prophets of old had spoken about, and that Vespasian was destined to be emperor. Instead of executing him, a smitten Vespasian simply imprisoned him to see whether his prophecy would bear out. It did, as Vespasian was proclaimed emperor in July AD 69 after a draconian and seemingly deranged Nero committed suicide in AD 68. That‟s how Josephus earned his freedom and the esteem of the emperor as a divine prophet. He first became advisor and interpreter to the new Roman general Flavius Titus right in Judea before he finally left for Rome with the general in AD 71 after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Roman temple. There, he was given Roman citizenship and a very generous pension and lived in the lap of luxury. That‟s why he was branded a traitor by the Jews everywhere and became their mortal enemy.

I DID READ PART OF THE JEWISH ANTIQUITIES BY FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS AS PER YOUR RECOMMENDATION. I FIND THAT HE WRITES RATHER GLOWINGLY OF ROMAN GENERAL TITUS. IT SOUNDS LIKE PROPAGANDA RATHER THAN OBJECTIVE HISTORY. YOUR TAKE? You are not the only one to have made such an observation. A number of historians have done so too. Certainly, Josephus‟s claim, for instance, that Titus saved an entire legion of Roman soldiers by singlehandedly fighting back crowds of armed Judeans is laughable to say the very least. Josephus also says the temple was destroyed by wayward Roman soldiers contrary to the wishes of General Titus, who had ordered that it be spared “even if it be used as a fortress because its beauty should be preserved as a possession of Rome”. However, another historian, Sulpicius Severus, writes that Titus expressly ordered the sacking of the temple. It must be borne in mind ,albeit, that the destruction of the temple and the overall carnage in Jerusalem in AD 70 arose not because Titus was bloodthirsty. He tried his best, using Josephus as his go-between, to get the insurgents to surrender but to no avail. Moreover, though Titus was reputed as a merciless general who ordered the execution of suspected traitors on the spot and was received by Romans as “another Nero” when he succeeded his deceased father in June AD 79, it turned out he was actually a very, very good man. He ruled for just over two 223

years before his death in September AD 81 but he turned out to be a very popular emperor. One of the first things he did as emperor was to proclaim an amnesty for traitors on trial. The historian Suetonius writes that if in one single day the emperor did not perform at least one beneficial act for his rein, he ruefully remarked, “Friends, I have a lost a day”. He was tough and ruthless as a general only because that came with the territory: in those highly tumultuous times, a general had to be a Saddam if he was to keep his emperor‟s domain intact.

HOW LONG DID THE ROMAN SIEGE OF JERUSALEM LAST AND HOW WERE THE CASUALTIES LIKE? The war itself is referred to as the first Jewish-Roman War. It lasted from AD 66 to AD 73/74, although it was practically over in AD 70 when Jerusalem was destroyed. The siege of Jerusalem by General Flavius Titus lasted 7 months from March to September AD 70. The Jewish insurgents, led by the Zealots, were a hard nut to crack. Titus used four legions (equivalent to about 40,000 troops inclusive of auxiliaries) in the campaign. Josephus documents that 1.1 million were killed, the vast majority of whom Jews, and 97,000 were captured. Later, Titus released 40,000 Jews who were non-combatants but the insurrectionists, including their wives and children, were taken into slavery. Josephus says the supply of slaves so deluged the market that the slave price plunged precipitately! Josephus lost his own parents and his first wife in the war. Josephus himself, whilst imploring his fellow Jews to surrender in his capacity as interpreter and go-between, was struck in the head with a stone and knocked unconscious but he survived and was soon doing his duty again. The Romans erected a fence of palisades around the city so that it was fully enclosed and there was no means of escape. All trees within fifteen kilometres of the city were hewn down for this purpose and another – mass crucifixions. Captured insurgents were crucified in various mocking positions at a rate of 500 per day, with the result that no single tree was seen throughout Jerusalem! The Romans used starvation of the fenced-in Jews as a physiological weapon, to the extent where the Jews had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Josephus provides one such example thus: “One woman slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him, and kept the other half by her concealed. Upon this, the seditious came in presently, and smelling the horrid scent of this food, they threatened her that they would cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had gotten ready. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son.”

SINCE YOU SAID THE ANUNNAKI CONTROL THE AFFAIRS OF EARTH FROM BEHIND THE SCENES, TO WHAT EXTENT WERE THEY INVOLVED IN THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM IN 70 AD? It is they who cleverly orchestrated it. In LEVITICUS 26: 27-33, Enlil, the Anunnaki God of the Jews who is best known as Jehovah, had served notice to the Jews that he was going to chastise them seven times for “whoring after other gods” at his expense. The destruction of Jerusalem was the fifth such chastisement. Josephus hinted about this 224

knowledge when he wrote in War of the Jews that, “The Deity, indeed long since, had sentenced the Temple to the flames … And one may well marvel at the exactness of the cycle of Destiny; for, as I said, she waited until the very month and the very day on which in bygone times the Temple had been burnt by the Babylonians,” the Babylonian captivity of the 6th century BC having been the second chastisement. General Titus also had an idea about Anunnaki involvement in the whole saga. When he was asked to accept the wreath of victory by his lieutenants for making mince of the Jews, he declined, saying, “There‟s no merit in vanquishing people forsaken by their own God”. He said he was simply the instrument the Jewish god had used to punish them. On his way back to Rome, the general stopped over at Memphis in Egypt to venerate Apis, the bull deity. The bull deity as we now know was a symbol of Enlil.

DID THE ZEALOTS ANY SIGNIFICANT VICTORIES IN THEIR AD 66 WAR AGAINST THE ROMANS? They were formidable. They solidly held out against the Romans for five years. The fortress of Masada for one did not fall until AD 73/74, three years after Jerusalem had fallen. At one stage in AD 70, General Titus was nearly captured by the Zealots during a sudden attack. A case could be made that to a degree, the Zealots were the architects of their own demise. They were busy warring against each other at the same time as they were fighting the Romans. They had four factions waging a mini- civil war. In addition, they were busy looting the temple of its treasures, particularly gold, besides extorting similar personal treasures from fellow Jews. Jewish deserters to neighbouring Syria, fearing that the gold they had grabbed could be appropriated by Roman soldiers if they encountered them, began to swallow it for temporary storage in their guts. Big mistake. When rumour spread that all the Jews who were fleeing Jerusalem were a gold mine walking, Arabs and Syrians resorted to cutting their stomachs open as a matter of routine. Josephus records that “in one night alone, no less than 2000 Jews were ripped up”. Whether they were stitched up after being ripped up he does not say. Meanwhile, the haul of gold in the process was such that its market price, like that of slaves, took a dramatic tumble.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 58

FINAL WORD ON THE CANON This Time We Address Questions On The Bible As A Text

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S IT TRUE THAT THE KING JAMES VERSION OF THE BIBLE IS THE OLDEST BIBLE? AND WHY IS IT CALLED KING JAMES FOR THAT MATTER?

No it is not true. The oldest Bible (that is, a complement of New and Old Testament books) is the Codex Sinaiticus. Although it was discovered in 1844, by a German theologian known as Dr Constantin von Tischendorf, at St. Catherine Monastery at Mount Sinai (hence the name Sinaiticus), it is dated to between 330 and 380 AD. The King James Version is simply one of the earliest translations of the Bible from its Greek and Hebrew versions. The translation took place over 7 years from 1604 to 1611. The King James Version wasn‟t even the earliest translation of the complete Bible into English: that distinction belongs to William Tyndale, who completed his translation in 1523. The King James Bible is so-called because it was authorised by King James I of England and Ireland who ruled from 1603 to 1625. It became the most popular Bible of the day because it was the first English Bible to have a royal seal of approval and was “appointed to be read in churches”.

YOU MENTIONED THE CODEX SINAITICUS AS THE EARLIEST BIBLE. COULD YOU PLEASE SAY MORE ABOUT IT? I actually received quite a number of questions on the Codex Sinaiticus. The Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in 1844 but is believed to have been written in the 4th century AD. It originally comprised of 1460 pages but today it occurs only in portions, altogether constituting only half of the original. These separate portions are dispersed among four institutions only, namely St Catherine's Monastery in Israel, the British Library in England, Leipzig University Library in German, and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg. The British library houses the largest portion at 694 pages, which includes the entire New Testament corpus. The Codex Sinaiticus was written on parchment (animal skins) in Greek. It contained all the canonical books of the Bible (the familiar 66) plus some apocryphal books such as Tobit, Judith, Syrach, the Odes of Solomon and Wisdom of Maccabees in the Old Testament, and the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas in the New Testament. The Codex Sinaiticus was first displayed in the British Museum in 1933 as the oldest Bible in the world and triggered an avalanche of visitors which is yet to be sured in the history of the museum.

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IN WHAT WAYS DOES THE CODEX SINAITICUS DIFFER FROM THE BIBLE OF OUR DAY? There are marked differences other than the number and nature of the books it carries. I‟ll cite these only with respect to the New Testament. The modern-day New Testament has 14,800 editorial alterations on the Codex Sinaiticus. The Codex Sinaiticus itself has been tampered with multiple times. Ultraviolet tests conducted on the Sinaiticus found that ages in it had been altered by at least 9 editors over a period of time. There are no resurrection appearances in the Sinaiticus. The Gospel of Mark in the Sinaiticus ends at MARK 16:8. The Sinaiticus has no genealogy, virgin births, or King Herod‟s mass murders of infants. The “raising of Lazarus” incident is much more truthfully related in the Sinaiticus: it has none of the supernatural trappings of the modern-day New Testament. The Gospel of Luke is 10,000 words shorter than our familiar gospel, meaning these were inserted into the gospel post-fourth century AD. However, we must not rush to the conclusion that just because the contents of our modern-day Bible differ in some respects from the Sinaiticus, it contains spurious information. Even the original gospel texts of the first century were not uniform through and through. They were subjected to editing and redactions over time. The biblical texts were written by ordinary men like you and I and so it would be a stretch to expect them to be entirely without flaw. Moreover, over the centuries, there have been new discoveries of texts about Jesus and these had to be taken into too, not simply rubbished as “uninspired”. Note that even the Catholic papacy, the people who gave us the Bible, were not in one accord over the veracity of the Bible owing to the erratic way in which it evolved. In 1587, Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) commissioned the compilation of what he called “our own ”. He devoted 18 months of his early papal days to writing a new Bible. Pope Clement XIII (1758-69) ordered the destruction of all volumes of a new Bible that had been published in 1759 because it was a comedy of errors. Pope Leo X (1513-1521) was so confused about the disparate s of the Jesus saga that he called him a “fable”.

WAS THE BIBLE INDEED INSPIRED BY GOD? Yes it was. The “God” who inspired it were the Anunnaki, the Alien masqueraders. The Anunnaki have inspired all religious canons of every major faith. The real God, the First Source who created you and me at the level of the spirit-soul, never inspired a single religion. Real religion is strictly between two beings – your higher self (the spirit-soul) and the First Source. Jesus encapsulated this point when he said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”.

WHO WROTE THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT? It cannot be said with absolute certainty as to exactly who wrote the books of the New Testament.

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Some books do not carry the names of their writers. The four gospels and the epistle to the Hebrews, for instance, do not specify who their writers were. Even where the names are stated, there is still the lingering question as to whether it is the name of the person we have in mind or others simply wrote in his name. But there are some books where the odds that the named writer did actually write them are very high. There is little doubt, for instance, that Luke and Acts were written by the Greek doctor Luke. The apostle Paul almost certainly wrote all the epistles that bear his name, although in some cases he used ghost writers. A persuasive argument can be made that the apostles John and Simon Peter wrote the gospels and epistles that carry their names. The apostle John also wrote Revelation. Two of Jesus‟s brothers, James the Just and Jude, no doubt wrote the two epistles respectively that carry their names. Matthew, however, was not the writer: he was the sponsor. A member of Jesus‟s 12–man party, Matthew, also known as Levi, was the fourth-born son of Annas, who interrogated Jesus prior to the crucifixion. He was high priest of the Jerusalem temple from AD 42-43. Mark is said to have been written by the apostle Bartholomew, whose real name was John Marcus.

WHY ARE THERE ONLY FOUR GOSPELS? It was a deliberate decision by the Nicene Council of AD 325, which collated the Bible as it has been handed down to us. It was all based on sun symbolism. The Illuminati of the day, who included the so-called church fathers such as Origen and Eusebius, desired that their elected make-believe “Sun-God” Jesus (their real Saviour Sun God was the Anunnaki god Utu-Shamash, also known as Apollo) reflect as close as possible the solar mythos. The orb of day we call the sun (or God‟s Sun/Son) goes through four seasons in the course of a year. Its life, figuratively speaking, runs its course in one, four-season year. As such, the life history of Jesus, God‟s Son/Sun, had to be told through no more than four gospels to accord with four seasons. We see, therefore, that the choice of the number of the gospels was not objective: it was meant to sync with the real religion of occultists, that of astrotheology.

THERE ARE SO MANY VERSIONS OF THE BIBLE. WHICH ONE DO YOU USE AND WHICH YOU CAN THEREFORE RECOMMEND? It is the Interlinear Bible. To me there could never be a better Bible. The Interlinear Bible shows scripture in English and its original languages of Greek and Hebrew. You can order it from Amazon.com at $30 here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Interlinear-Bible-HebrewGreek-English-English/dp/1565639774. 228

ARE THERE ANY INSTANCES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT OF REFERENCES TO APOCRYPHAL SOURCES? There is yes. This is particularly the case with the book of Jude. Jude references the book of Enoch in verses 1:6 when he says, “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling, these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day” and in verses 14-15 when he says, “ Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: „See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.‟” The book of Enoch talks a great deal about the saga of the Anunnaki and if Jude quotes Enoch then it is reasonable to assume that the apostles were very much aware of who the Old Testament gods really were. In Verse 9, Jude writes thus: “Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the Devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, „The Lord rebuke you!” This is a direct quotation from another apocryphal book known as The Assumption of Moses. It is ironic that the clergy of our day treats apocryphal sources as taboo when the apostles themselves liberally quoted from them.

I’M GIVEN TO UNDERSTAND THAT UNTIL THE 16TH CENTURY THE CATHOLIC PAPACY FORBADE READING THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC. HOW TRUE IS THAT? That was not exactly the case. The papacy forbade two things – the use of the Bible in any language other than Latin and the reading of the Bible by ordinary people (non-priests) in public without prior permission from the “authorities”. The Latin Bible was called the Vulgate (first printed on the newly invented press in 1456). It was a translation from the original Hebrew and Greek by Jerome in the 4th century. The first translation of the complete Bible into a language other than Latin was done by Martin Luther, the spearhead of the Reformation, in 1522. This was a German version. It was the German version of the Bible that popularised the German language.

OF THE FOUR GOSPELS, WHICH ONE WOULD YOU RECOMMEND AS FOREMOST IN ACCURACY? It is the Gospel of Luke.

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Luke was a doctor (COLOSSIANS 4:14) and therefore his approach was scientific to a more or lesser degree. The gospel of John is elaborate but it‟s too emotional. Mark is too hurried, brief, and therefore insubstantial though it was the first gospel to be written (Luke and Matthew substantially drew from it). Matthew is kind of fantastical as virtually everything Jesus did and said is cross-referenced to what was said and written in the Old Testament at least 400 years back. Luke, on the other hand, is very sober-minded. He relates his chronicles of Jesus in a historical context so that those who wished to check the facts could do so. In both the gospel and Acts, Luke mentions more than 14 prominent historical figures. A prominent archeologist carefully examined Luke‟s references to 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands without finding a single mistake!

IN ONE OF YOUR ARTICLES, YOU EXTOLLED THE ACCURACY OF THE EVANGELIST LUKE. BUT IF HE WAS THAT ACCURATE, WHY DID HE COMMIT SUCH A SPECTACULAR BOOB IN LUKE 2:1-2? In LUKE 2:1-2, Luke writes that every Jew living in any place had to return to their place of origin for the census ordered by Augustus Caesar through Quirinius governor of Syria, who had jurisdiction over Palestine. Scholars have scoffed at Luke for the implausibility of such a state of affairs. They say he was, “fanciful … You will never do a census like that! It will upset the whole economical (merchant) system in the area by having the whole population move back to their place of origin just to be counted ... That‟s just plain fantasy ... It must be the only story without any historical truth behind it.” Well, these same scholars were stomped for words when an edict from C Vibius Maximus, the Roman procurator of Egypt, was discovered which was dated AD 104. It read: “The enrollment (census) by household being at hand, it is necessary to notify all who for any cause soever are outside their nomes (istrative divisions of Egypt) to return to their domestic hearths, that they may also accomplish the customary dispensation of enrollment and continue steadfastly in the husbandry that belongs to them.” It turns out the practice of people trekking back to their birthplaces for a census was a common if not standard practice in antiquity. St. Luke was incredibly accurate as usual.

IN LUKE 3:1-2, LUKE MAKES MENTION OF ONE LYSANIAS WHO WAS TETRARCH OF ABILENE DURING THE 15TH YEAR OF TIBERIUS CAESAR. IN MY CLASS, HOWEVER, OUR LECTURER TAUGHT US THAT LUKE WAS WRONG AS LYSANIAS HAD BEEN DEAD 50 YEARS EARLIER. Your lecturer ought to do more research. True, there was a Lysanias, ruler (not tetrarch) of Abilene (also known as Chalcis) who was executed at the orders of Mark Anthony, one of the three then t rulers of the Roman Empire, in 34 BC. However, there was another Lysanias who was tetrarch of Abilene, or Abila, a small realm on the slopes of Mount Hermon near Damascus during the reign of Tiberius (Roman Emperor from AD 14-37). This fact is borne 230

out by an inscription found on a temple of the time of Tiberius which read: “For the salvation of the August Lords (a t title of Tiberius, the son of Caesar Augustus, and his mother Livia, the widow of Augustus) and of all their household, Nymphaeus, freedman of Eagle Lysanias tetrarch established this street and other things.” The 15th year of Tiberius was AD 29 and Livia died in AD 29. Thus Lysanias must have become tetrarch of Abilene long before AD 29. Luke once again is spot-on. I love Dr Luke!

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 59

FINAL WORD ON ASTROTHEOLOGY This Time We Deal With Questions Relating To The Jesus Gospel As The Cosmic Gospel

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EADING THE JESUS PAPERS, IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THERE WERE SEVERAL LAYERS TO THE JESUS STORY – HISTORICAL, THEOLOGICAL, ALLEGORICAL, AND ASTROTHEOLOGICAL WASN’T IT?

Exactly. Events of history, both modern and ancient, are multilayered. It is just the way the creators of this holographic (Internet-like) universe schemed things to be. Jesus did exist. He was a historical figure. But not everything we read about him in the Bible were actual events. Other abstract themes were woven into his story. There were allegorical elements (such as his healing of a blind man called Bartimaeus); theological elements (such as his being cast as a God-Man); and astrotheological elements (such as his being characterised as God‟s Son, which was actually God‟s Sun). Some events encom all these elements at once. Let‟s take the crucifixion. It was historical because Jesus was indeed fastened to a tree. It was theological because he was said to have been crucified for the redemption of the sins of mankind. It was allegorical because he did not literally die and then rise from the dead: death in his case meant excommunication from the Essene fold (as punishment for his claim to be Priest-King) and resurrection meant his restoration to the Essene fold. It was astrotheological because as the Sun God, his “death” depicted the setting of the Sun and his “resurrection” depicted the rising of the Sun, the light of the world. Thomas Paine could not have put across the point better when he said, “The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.”

I’M TOLD THAT EVEN THE GOSPEL TITLES HAD A ASTROTHEOLOGICAL COMPONENT BEHIND THE NOMINAL COMPONENT. TRUE OR FALSE? Very true. Matthew was the son of former high priest Annas who sponsored the gospel of Matthew. The name Matthew came from Maat, the Egyptian goddess who is usually depicted holding the scales of justice. On the zodiac, the scales of justice represent the constellation Libra. As a disciple, Matthew was said to be a tax collector. Hidden behind this characterisation is the fact that in antiquity, the scale or balance was a symbol of the tax collectors because they did not only collect money tax: they also collected grain (and even livestock) in lieu of money, which they had to weigh on scales. 232

Mark, the writer of the gospel of Mark, was actually John Marcus, a disciple of Jesus who was best known as Bartholomew. But Mark is also rendered as Mars. Astrologically, the planet Mars rules the constellation Aries. Luke was the brilliant physician who wrote the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. In Latin, Luke is Lucius, meaning light. And in astrology, the House of Light is the constellation Leo. Leo means lion and Jesus is referred to in the Bible as the Lion of Judah. The lion and its mane symbolise the sun and its rays. Do you know why the lion is called the King of Beasts when there are other animals that are bigger and more ferocious than it is? It is because it represents the Sun – God‟s Sun/Son, the ruler of the world. John comes from Jahn or Oannes (Enki), the fish god who was represented by streams of water flowing around him with fishes swimming along them. On one level, this symbolises the constellation Pisces (represented by two fishes); on another, it symbolises the constellation Aquarius because January (Jahnuary) comes from Jahn and the month of January is ruled by the constellation Aquarius. The proliferation of fish and water (particularly baptism) symbolism in the gospels derive from astrological motifs. Michael Tsarion best captures the astrotheogical dimension of the gospels when he says, “So now we see the gospels clearly detailed as signs of the zodiac. The Sun-king must through these signs. They are his „chroniclers‟ („chron‟ means time specifically relating to the round of the zodiac). They are his measurers, his „Apostles‟ („post‟ means demarcation post, a colure of the zodiac). They are his „Disciples‟ („disc‟ means round circle, as is the zodiac).”

IF THE STORY OF JESUS IS UNCANNILY SIMILAR TO THAT OF THE EGYPTIAN GOD HORUS, THE INDIAN GOD KRISHNA, AND THE PERSIAN GOD MITHRAS AS YOU SUGGESTED, DOESN’T THAT MAKE IT PURE MYTHOLOGY SINCE NO TWO LIFE HISTORIES OF DIFFEERENT ERAS CAN BE IDENTICAL? Certainly, in his book Christianity Before Christ, Kersey Graves correctly observes that all these figures had "miraculous or virgin births, were sons of supreme gods, were born on December 25th, had stars point to their birthplaces, were visited by shepherds and magi as infants, fled from death as children, exhibited traits of divinity in childhood, spent time in the desert, travelled as they taught, had disciples, performed miracles, were persecuted, were crucified, descended into hell after death, appeared as resurrections or apparitions, or ascended into heaven.” Krishna lived in 1200 BC, Mithras in 600 BC, and Jesus in the first century AD. So how come their life profiles are almost the same? Well, as I keep saying, the beings who chart the course of Earthly history are the Anunnaki and other extraterrestrials. These are capable of replicating history because unlike us, they are aware that time is not horizontal: it‟s vertical. All events happen not from year year to year and age to age but simultaneously. To us, they appear linear because that is the Illusion we have been fed. Humankind is so steeped in illusory reality we are practically ignorant, except for very few who have awakened. Thus the stories of Jesus and other “Saviour Sun Gods” are similar not because they are legendary but because they were largely based on astrotheology – the worship of cosmic bodies and the corresponding Anunnaki deities they represent.

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How about this striking comparison of the sagas of JFK and Abraham Lincoln one researcher came up with: “Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846. John F.Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946. Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Both were particularly concerned with civil rights. Both wives lost a child while living in the White House. Both Presidents were shot on a Friday. Both Presidents were shot in the head. Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy. Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln. Both were assassinated by Southerners. Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808. Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908. John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839. Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy (as many wrongly believe as he was a mere fall guy), was born in 1939. Both assassins were known by their three names. Both names are composed of fifteen letters. Lincoln was shot at the theatre named Ford. Kennedy was shot in a car called Lincoln made by Ford. Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials. A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland. A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe. And… Lincoln was shot in a theatre and the assassin ran to a warehouse. Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and the assassin ran to a theatre.” To somebody reading this in the year 4000 AD, it would appear like mythology. But to you and I who live in this day, it is factual. So the similarity of the histories of Jesus, Horus and Krishna is no cause to dismiss Jesus as a fable. His fate was plotted by forces he had no control over. He himself was aware of this fact.

IF I READ YOU CORRECTLY BEN, YOUR ARGUMENT VIS-À-VIS ASTROTHEOLOGY IN SOME OF YOUR PIECES IS BASICALLY THAT SIMPLY BY CONSIDERING THE MOVEMENT OF THE SUN ACROSS THE SKY OVER THE SPACE OF A YEAR AND THE CELESTIAL BACKGROUND, ONE CAN WRITE THE JESUS STORY? PLEASE FORGIVE ME IF I’M WRONG. You are actually correct to a degree My Brother. In astrotheology, Jesus‟s is God‟s Sun, which religion spins as God‟s Son. Let me just demonstrate part of the story from the point of view of the Northern Hemisphere, where ancient civilisations were concentrated and therefore was their main frame of reference. On December 25, the Sun is said to be “born” after being “stationary” (dead) for the previous three days. Ceremonially, December 25 is celebrated the world over as Christmas, meaning the birth of Christ. In antiquity, both prior to and post the advent of Jesus, the “births” of “Saviour Sun Gods” were celebrated on December 25 even if they were not actually born on this day. The celebration was meant to accord with the solar mythos, also called the solar cult. Since December 25 falls in the astrological sign of Capricorn, which is symbolised by a goat, it was said animals attended the birth of God‟s Son. The surface narrative of the Jesus story is that he was born in a manger, a stable of domesticated animals. When the Sun is born on December 25, “three kings” are present. These are the three stars on the constellation Orion‟s “belt”. The three gifts presented to Jesus by the Magi at his birth represented these three kings. Jesus was found in the temple at age 12 and he was also referred to as the Son of the Most High. At 12 noon, the Sun was said to be at its highest strength in ancient Egypt and so was referred to as “most high”.

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Jesus was about 30 years of age when he started ministering. This corresponds to 30 degrees of each of the 12 stars of the Zodiac in the celestial circle (360 divided by 12). Toward the end of January, the Sun moves into the astrological sign of Aquarius. When it so does, it is said to be “baptised by the Waterman”, the Waterman being Aquarius as indeed Aquarius is symbolised by a water pitcher. Jesus is said to have been baptised at age 30 by John the Baptist. There are also multiple other symbolisms in the gospels which point to the primacy of signs of the Zodiac. The encounter of fishes and fishermen reflects Pisces. Jesus is referred to as the “Lamb of God” and that is Aries. At the vernal equinox (March 21), when day and night are equal in length, the Sun is said to be “on the cross” because it is crossing the equator. It explains why the crucifixion (crossification) of the Son/Sun of God Jesus had to take place in March. Now, that is not to say the Jesus story is pure allegory this I must stress. It is simply that the Illuminati of the day wrote into it a lot of solar mythology and either deliberately left out his real story for the most part or neglected much of it because their agenda was primarily to promote Sun worship.

WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT ANIMAL SACRIFICES IN THE BIBLE? FOR I GATHER THAT THESE ALSO HAD TO DO WITH ASTROLOGY. Having read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, I find it curious that the reason for sacrificing animals is not explained anywhere. To get to know the rationale behind animal sacrifices, you have to read extrabiblical history. I will not here go into the reasons: that‟s another subject altogether that I‟ll address in the next series. Suffice it to say at this juncture that what animal was sacrificed in a particular era depended on what age it was. In the Age of Taurus, it was the bull that was sacrificed. In the Age of Aries, it was the lamb mainly and the goat secondarily. Christianity began in the Age of Pisces, symbolised by two fishes. It partly explains why the Jerusalem Temple had to be destroyed because fish were not bloody enough to be sacrificed! We‟re now entering the Age of Aquarius, the Age of “Water”, and what do we see? Veiled Illuminati sacrifices of people by way of bathtub deaths, examples of which include the deaths of Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobbi Kristina. Corry Griffin, the co-initiator of the Ice-Bucket Challenge whereby celebrities poured ice cubes over their bodies in an Illuminati ritual that was meant to herald the Age of Aquarius but which was disguised as a fund-raising campaign, drowned in a swimming pool in August 2014 at only age 27. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that more children die of bathtub drownings than accidental gunshot wounds in that country. 550 children die every year in backyard swimming pools in the US alone. In Japan, 14,000 people die every year in bathtubs. As the Age of Aquarius unfolds, expect more fatalities related to water than has ever been the case in recorded history (also note recent cases of drownings from capsized ferries, plane crashes into the sea, which is another veiled way of killing people by drowning, asylum seekers headed for Europe whose makeshift boats have been sinking en masse with hundreds of lives lost, and pirates holding ships to ransom.)

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I WAS CAPTIVATED BY YOUR ASTROTHEOLOGICAL CONTEXTUALISATION OF THE JESUS STORY. WHICH BOOKS WOULD YOU RECOMMEND ON THE SUBJECT? The best sources are the works of Dorothy Murdock, who uses the pen name Acharya S. I particularly recommend The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold; Jesus as the Sun; and Suns of God. Two other books I would suggest are That Old Time Religion by Jordan Maxwell and Astrotheology and Sidereal Mythology (Kindle Edition) by Michael Tsarion. The Maxwell book is much simpler to grasp than the Acharya and Tsarion books because it is spare in size, brief and to the point, and is written in straightforward English.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 60

FINAL WORD ON THE CRUCIFIXION This Time We Answer Questions About The “Execution” Of Jesus

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F JESUS HAD BEEN NAILED TO THE CROSS AND LEFT THERE TILL HE WAS DEAD, HOW LONG WOULD HE HAVE LASTED AT THE MOST? Maybe up to a week, or even slightly more.

You should bear in mind that death on the cross could be occasioned by one of a number of factors. First, there was suffocation due to difficulty in breathing. Second, there was trauma due to the severity of injuries sustained from scourging where this had taken place. Third, there was hunger and dehydration since victims were not fed nor given water. It was rare that victims died the same day they were crucified.

COULD A PERSON NAILED TO THE CROSS SURVIVE IF HE WAS BROUGHT DOWN ALIVE NOT LONG AFTER BEING CRUCIFIED? It was possible to survive yes. In The Jewish Antiquities, Flavius Josephus relates an incident where as he and Roman general Flavius Titus inspected the crosses upon which hundreds of Jews had been nailed during the course of the Jewish uprising in AD 70, they came across three Jews who were dear to Josephus. Josephus besought the general to spare their lives. Titus obliged and the three were brought down from the crosses. Following days of nursing by Roman military doctors, two died anyway but one survived.

IN A TYPICAL CRUCIFIXION, WERE THE DEAD BURIED OR LEFT TO ROT ON THE CROSS? The Romans never buried their crucified. But they did hand over the bodies of the dead to their families if they claimed them. Otherwise, they were left on the cross to the mercy of the elements and wild animals.

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Typically, victims were crucified not too far above ground level so that in the event that they died and no one came forward to ask for their bodies, scavenging wolves and carrion birds such as vultures could reach them and therefore feast on them.

WHEN JESUS HUNG ON THE CROSS, WAS HE TOTALLY NAKED AS THE APOSTLE JOHN SUGGESTS OR AT LEAST HE HAD A LOIN CLOTH? Jesus was not nailed to a cross as I related. He was tied to a tree at Qumran. Crucifixion did not always entail nailing: sometimes, as in the case of Jesus, the victim was simply fastened to a tree and then fatally scourged left, right, and centre in that position. True, when Romans istered crucifixion of any kind, the victim was left stark naked, without a stitch on, to maximise the sense of humiliation (incidentally, even Jewish law dictated that a person who hung on a tree be completely naked). But the crucifixion of Jesus was a staged one: it was like a mock crucifixion. Money had changed hands between the Jewish establishment and the Roman authorities and hence there was a lot of informality. Thus Jesus did have an undergarment on. Besides, the crucifixion took place at Qumran and since the Essenes were puritans, there was simply no way they would have allowed a Son of David to be so humiliated as to be entirely without a covering. The gospel narratives should not be taken at face value as I have long underlined.

ACCORDING TO THE GOSPELS, JESUS TOLD ONE OF THE TWO “DYING THIEVES” CRUCIFIED WITH HIM THAT “VERILY, VERILY I SAY TO YOU TODAY YOU WILL BE WITH ME IN PARADISE”. DID HE GO TO HEAVEN IN THE THREE DAYS THAT HE WAS DEAD? He never did because he didn‟t die on the cross: he simply lapsed into a deep stupor as per prearrangement. “Paradise” was a code word for the Qumran Cave in which Jesus was placed after he was untied from the tree and medically attended to. The conversation Jesus and the two “dying thieves” (Simon Zelotes and Judas Iscariot) had is a clear fabrication. It was written into the gospels to further vilify Judas. Judas was portrayed as mocking Jesus at Calvary whilst Simon Zelotes was portrayed as sympathetic. Simon Zelotes is made to say he and Judas‟s crucifixion was deserved because the two were Zealots who indeed had masterminded the November 32 AD riots against Pontius Pilate, whereas Jesus was completely innocent. Judas is cast as mocking Jesus, daring him to save himself if he indeed was the Son of God (that is, if he was a Saviour Sun God, he didn‟t have to die just as the Sun would never die off). Judas was a betrayer and the writers of the gospel had to cast him in as dark a light as possible. But we know from the pesher of the Dead Sea Scrolls that Judas had exculpated Jesus before Pilate. He had shown genuine penitence for attempting to embroil him in the uprising.

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Sadly, Judas was not allowed the chance to write his own gospel as he was eliminated the day after the crucifixion. SOME WEEKS BACK, OUR PASTOR (I’M A PENTECOSTAL) PREACHED THAT DURING THE THREE DAYS JESUS WAS DEAD, HE ACTUALLY WENT TO HELL AND PREACHED TO SOULS WHO HAD DIED BEFORE HIM SO THEY TOO COULD HAVE A CHANCE TO EMBRACE HIS MESSAGE OF REDEMPTION. DO YOU AGREE? You haven‟t quoted the scriptures your pastor must have referenced in that regard but I presume it must have been 1 PETER 3:18, which reads, “Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison”, and possibly ACTS 2:31, which says, “His soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption”. If you have been following my writings, you will perhaps have come to appreciate that the writers of the New Testament were seldom philosophically truthful. Even my favourite evangelist, Dr Luke, had his philosophical biases too although in of the broader historical backdrop he was remarkably accurate. The chroniclers of the Jesus story lived under Roman rule and in an era where the Roman world worshipped several Saviour Sun Gods who were said to have wrought supernatural feats. They wanted to promote Jesus as being on the same divine footing as these various Saviour Sun Gods and so his story had to be substantially embellished if he was to make the grade. Jesus had to compete with Krishna, Horus, Mithras, etc, if he was to merit acceptance in the cynical Roman world as a worthwhile “God”. For instance, the Hindu Bible says Krishna “went down to hell to preach to the inmates of that dark and dreary prison, with the view of reforming them, and getting them back to Heaven, and was willing himself to suffer to abridge the period of their torment”. It was written of the Greek god Adonis that, “After his descent into hell, he rose again to life and immortality”. The Caucasus god Prometheus was presented as “suffering and descending into hell, rising again from the dead, and ascending to heaven”. These are just a few examples. In order to measure up as a saleable God, the apostles also invented like experiences about Jesus. That‟s what you should tell your pastor next time you meet him My Brother. As Kersey Graves pointedly puts it in his book The World‟s Sixteen Crucified Saviours, “The story of their descent into hell was doubtless invented to find employment for them during their three days of hibernation or conservation in the tomb, that they might not appear to be really dead nor idle in the time”.

DID THE JEWS CRUCIFY THEIR OWN PEOPLE? Yes they did. Flavius Josephus relates that in 162 BC, High Priest Alcimus had 60 Jews executed by crucifixion, among whom was the priestly scribe Jose ben Joezer. In 90 BC, King Alexander Janneus crucified 800 Pharisees following a failed revolt. In 80 BC, Shimon ben Shetah had 80 "witches" from Ashkelon crucified. The Jewish law provided for “hanging on a tree” (besides other forms of death such as stoning for instance) particularly for perpetrators of treason or blasphemy.

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The Temple Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls also ordained that evildoers be “hung alive” on a tree. This was not exactly the same as crucifixion but it was partly interpreted as such (at the time the Torah was written, crucifixion by nailing to a stake was not known to the Jews and therefore it could not be specified as a form of punishment in their statutes. They learnt about crucifixion when they came under Persian rule in the 6thcentury BC).

WAS JESUS AWARE THAT HE WAS A SAVIOUR SUN GOD WHO HAD TO BE CRUCIFIED LIKE ALL SAVIOUR SUN GODS ALWAYS WERE? No he was not. He was cast as a Saviour Sun God retrospectively, long after he had died. All Jesus knew was that he was a dynastic descendent of King David. The divine aspects about him were an invention, first by the apostle Paul (brainwashed by the behind-the-scenes Anunnaki) and later by the early church fathers. There is very little that Jesus actually said or did that is recorded in the Bible. He never claimed to be God whatsoever. The people of his day knew him simply as a Davidic prince, a rabbi, and a crusading politician.

IF I GOT YOU RIGHT, YOU SAID THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS WAS ALL PART OF THE ANUNNAKI AGENDA. WHAT DID THE ANUNNAKI STAND TO ACHIEVE BY HAVING JESUS CRUCIFIED (OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT SINCE YOU SAID HE WAS ACTUALLY NOT NAILED TO THE CROSS)? There were two parties with vested interests in the crucifixion of Jesus. These were the Jewish establishment directly and the Anunnaki behind the scenes. In the case of the Jewish establishment, their aim was to defame Jesus before the Jewish masses and elevate his younger brother James the Just in his stead. The Jewish establishment resented the fact that he was too politically ambitious. He wanted to be both King and High Priest of a liberated Israel. But like the Illuminati of our day, the Jewish establishment simply wanted him to be a ceremonial King, like the British monarch is in our day, and have nothing to do with the priesthood whatsoever. They wanted an elected High Priest, like the way the Pope is elected in our day. Jesus was adamant that he had to be Priest-King (Melchizedek) and that this status had to be hereditary and not elective. James, on the other hand, was content to be the ceremonial Jewish King and was not interested in the priesthood. That‟s how he endeared himself to the establishment. If Jesus was to be defamed irretrievably, his dynastic standing had to be sullied .Crucifixion was the surest way to achieve this. The Torah said, “Cursed is he who hangs on a tree” (DEUTERONOMY 21:22-23). In the eyes of the Jews therefore, Jesus could not be the Messiah because crucifixion made him accursed of God. It automatically disqualified him from the Davidic heirship. It explains why some of the people who saw him on the crucifixion stake mocked him and said, “If you indeed are the King of the Jews, extricate yourself from the tree”, meaning only then could he qualify as the bona fide King of the Jews as the King of the Jews was not expected to be crucified. It also explains why Paul in his epistles went to great lengths to spin the crucifixion as a blessing to mankind rather than an enduring curse on Jesus. The Jews struggled to come to with the acceptability of a Messiah who had been crucified and therefore cursed.

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On the part of the Anunnaki, they wanted to achieve two goals. First, they wished to set Jesus up as a Saviour Sun God (a goal Paul partially promoted) so that he could over time become an object of worship and veneration to the mass of mankind. The Anunnaki knew that people who worshipped a fellow creature were very easy to manipulate and they would never come to realise their own innate power as gods in their own right being bearers of the essence of the true God. Secondly, they wanted to set up the Jewish race so that it would become the most hated race in the world for “killing the Son of God”. That way, the Jewish Anunnaki god Enlil, called Jehovah in the Bible, would partly achieve his declared, systematic chastisement of the Jews for “prostituting themselves to other gods”. Indeed, Jews have been persecuted over the ages because of the fabricated indictment and ission that they crucified Jesus (“Let his blood be on us and our children” as per MATTHEW 27:25).

YOU SAID JESUS WAS NOT NAILED ON A CROSS BUT WAS TIED TO A TREE AND FLOGGED IN THAT POSITION. BUT THE GOSPELS ARE CATEGORICAL THAT HE WAS NAILED TO A CROSS. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS CONTRADICTION? I thought I sufficiently explained that point in one of my articles. The English word cross is derived from the Latin term crux. In antiquity, a crux was not always across in the way we understand it today: it could also be a vertical object of wood, such as a pole, an erected beam, or a trunk of a tree (I recommend the 2011 book Crucifixion in Antiquity by Gunnar Samuelson in this connection.) I also did underline that crucifixion was not standardised as a practice. It was not always that the victim had nails or spikes driven through their limbs. One authority that backs me in this assertion is Joseph A Fitzmeyer, who in a research paper titled Crucifixion in Ancient Palestine and which was published in 1978 wrote that, “In pre-Republican times, the Romans sometimes punished disobedient slaves by fastening them to barren trees and scourging them to death”, that is, without being nailed at all although the act overall was referred to as crucifixion anyway. In any case, the Bible does not employ the term cross through and through in referring to the crucifixion of Jesus. For example, ACTS 5:29-30 says, “Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree” (also see ACTS 10:34-41 and 13:27-31). Thus simply being hung on a tree, being fastened to a tree by means other than spikes and scourged to death, or being nailed to a conventional cross all constituted crucifixion.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 61

FINAL WORD ON THE GRAIL FAMILY This Time, We Answer Questions About The Jesus Dynasty

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HE TERM “HOLY GRAIL” HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH JESUS PARTICULARLY SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF THE BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL THE DA VINCI CODE BY DAN BROWN.COULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

The term “Holy Grail” derives from the French word Sangreal, which means “Blood Royal” or, the other way round, “Royal Blood”. It referred to the House of Judah, the Jewish royal line that progressed through King David and onward through Jesus and Mary Magdalene and their offshoots. In English, Sangreal was translated as “Saint Grail”. Since the word “Saint” meant “Holy”, Saint Grail was fashionably rendered as “Holy Grail”. The remnants of the Sangreal family, or the Grail Family, are descended from the coned line of Jesus and his brother James the Just. In the first century and until medieval times, the Sangreal were known as the Desposyni. In the first century and early second century in particular, the Desposyni included the families of Jesus‟s other brothers, namely Jude, Simon, and Joseph.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE TRACES THE LINEAGE OF JESUS BACK TO ADAM, THROUGH ADAM’S SON SETH. IS THIS ACCURATE? I ASK BECAUSE SOME SOURCES SAY LUKE WAS AT FAULT IN THIS REGARD. Luke was certainly at fault but as a researcher he was using records that were available to him at the time. He couldn‟t have known they were faulty in ways because they were found in the Old Testament scriptures. True, Genesis suggests that the Grail Kings (the ruling line of Judah) began with Seth. That is a contrived lie. The lie was manufactured by the Levites, the compilers of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). The Anunnaki god of the Levites was Enlil, called Jehovah in the Bible. As such, the Levites didn‟t want to make it plain that the Jews were in fact descended from Enki, the arch-rival of Enlil.

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Sumerian records, which predated the old Testament by at least 1000 years, make it crystal-clear that the Grail Kings are descended from Cain, not Seth. The same Sumerian records are categorical that Cain was not the son of Adam: he was the son of Enki. Enki, the Serpent of Genesis who genetically engineered us into existence and was notorious for his philanderings despite his suring genius, produced Cain when he slept with Adam‟s wife Eve. When GENESIS 4:1 is properly translated, Eve is saying, “I have produced a son (Cain) by my Lord Enki”. Since Cain was half “god” (as the Anunnaki were referred to) and half human, he was superior to both Abel and Seth, who were full humans. I will develop this theme further in the forthcoming series but suffice it to say for now that Jesus arose through the line not of Seth but of Cain.

YOU SAID JESUS WAS MARRIED TO MARY MAGDALENE AND THE COUPLE HAD KIDS. WHO WERE THESE KIDS? Jesus and Mary Magdalene had three kids, two boys and a daughter. Their firstborn was a daughter. They named her Tamar (Damaris in Greek), meaning Palm Tree. Tamar was a prominent name in the Davidic lineage. The original patriarch of the Royal House of Judah was called Tamar (GENESIS 37-38 and MATTHEW 1:3). King David‟s sister (2 SAMUEL 13:1) was known as Tamar. Furthermore, King David‟s scrupulous virgin daughter who was raped by her halfbrother Amnon (2 SAMUEL 3) also went by the name Tamar. Tamar the daughter of Jesus was born in September AD 33, when Jesus was 39 years old. As we demonstrated in the concluding articles, Jesus did survive the crucifixion and went on to live to a ripe old age. The second-born was Jesus Jr (the heir). He was born in September AD 37. The third-born (the spare) was named Joseph, after Jesus‟s father. Joseph was born in Marseille, , in September AD 44. Having been born in the wrong month himself for a dynastic heir (March 7 BC), Jesus ensured that all his kids were born in the holy month of September. He also rigidly followed the sexual regimen for a dynastic heir. He waited for the prescribed three years of abstinence after the birth of a daughter and six years of mandatory abstinence after the birth of a son as per dynastic procreational rules.

WHAT DIRECT EVIDENCE IS THERE IN THE BIBLE THAT JESUS HAD KIDS AS YOU STATED IN ONE OF YOUR ARTICLES? Firstly, you ought to familiarise with the pesher technique, in which the gospels and the epistles were largely written, to grasp this point. ACTS 6:7 says, “The Word of God increased”. In pesher, “Word of God” stood for Jesus and to “increase” was to be fruitful, the same thing as having a kid, most notably a son. ACTS 6:7 is therefore a cryptic reference to the birth of Jesus Jr in AD 37.

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The birth of Jesus Jr's younger brother Joseph in AD 44 is cryptically recorded in ACTS 12:24 (“The Word of God grew and multiplied”). ACTS 3:20-21 also talks about Jesus entering “Heaven” till the “times of restitution”. We know that after his make-believe crucifixion, Jesus was reinstated to the Essene top brass, whose pesher name was “Heaven”. He was to be in ecclesiastical ministry for three years, during which he would stay celibate. This was because he had had a daughter in September AD 33 and as a dynastic heir, he had to abstain from sexual relations with Mary for three years. At the expiry of these three years, he was to resume sexual relations with his wife with a view to produce a heir. The dynastic prince‟s resumption of sexual intimacy with his wife was in pesher language known as “restitution”. When Jesus Jr was born in AD 37, he became Jesus‟s heir, that is, the Crown Prince. Before the birth of Jesus Jr, the Crown Prince was James, the immediate younger brother to Jesus. The title of the Davidic Crown Prince was “The Just”, “Justus”, or “The Righteous”, what in our day we would also refer to as “Right Honourable”, “His Honour”, or "Chief Justice”. This explains why in much of extra-biblical literature, James is addressed as James the Just or James the Righteous. At his birth, Jesus Jr replaced James as the Crown Prince and so became known as Jesus Justus. In COLOSSIANS 4:11, Paul says, “Jesus, who is also called Justus, sends his greetings”. It is clear here that Paul is notifying the people of Colossae that at the time he wrote this letter (whilst in Rome), he was with the son of Jesus!

YOU DIDN’T SAY MUCH ABOUT THE FAMILY OF JESUS. WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM? I‟ll begin with the heir Jesus Jr, also known as Jesus II and Jesus Justus (in , he was called Gais or Gesu, which is Jesu in Setswana and Yesu in some other Bantu languages). In AD 46 at age 9, Jesus Jr began schooling in Caesarea and not at Qumran as had been the case with his father. When he attained 12 years of age, he underwent the coming-of-age Bar-Mitzvah ceremony in Provence, . Shortly thereafter, his uncle James the Just took him on a tour of England as the Anunnaki had earmarked the country as the future geopolitical capital of the world. In AD 53, upon his attainment of the majority age of 16, Jesus Jr officially took over from his uncle James as Crown Prince to the Davidic title, which was still held by Jesus, who was still alive at the time. It was then that Jesus Jr formally became known as Jesus Justus, meaning Crown Prince Jesus, although he had all long been loosely called by that name. Early in AD 73, Jesus Jr married a granddaughter of Theudas Barabbas (also known as Nicodemus in the Bible). He sired only one child, a son called Galains in French but who also went by the name Jesus III (he never got to see his son though as he was crucified by Roman general and procurator of Judea Flavius Silva during the siege of Masada in AD 74). But Galains opted for a monastic life: he never married and therefore died without issue. Consequently, the Davidic succession ed from Jesus Jr to his younger brother Joseph. Joseph was educated at a Druidic college in England and settled in . He too sired only one child, called Josue. Following the death of Galains, Josue became the David. Tamar, the firstborn-daughter of Jesus, married the apostle Paul in September AD 53. After her marriage, she changed her name to the Greek Phoebe. Besides being Paul‟s wife, she served as a deaconess in the ministry of her husband.

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ACCORDING TO DAN BROWN’S DA VINCI CODE, MARY MAGDALENE SETTLED IN . IS THAT TRUE? AND IF SO, WHY DID SHE LEAVE PALESTINE? Dan Brown did quite splendid research when he wrote The Da Vinci Code. Mary Magdalene did indeed settle in Marseille, , in AD 44. Two seismic events happened that year in Judea. First, the apostle James (the “Son of Zebedee”) was executed by King Herod Agrippa I. Now, James and his brother John were adopted sons of Simon Zelotes, who was also known as Zebedee. Understandably therefore, Simon Zelotes, a Zealot, struck back almost immediately: he had Agrippa I assassinated through food poisoning: that was the second seismic event. Agrippa‟s brother King Herod of Chalcis (in modern-day Syria) reacted by launching a manhunt for Simon Zelotes and the Zealot top-brass. You will be aware by now that Simon Zelotes was the foster father of Mary Magdalene. Wary that she might be associated with the assassination, Mary Magdalene appealed for protection from Herod Agrippa II, who was only 17 years old at the time and who as a former student of the apostle Paul was sympathetic to Jesus and his family. Agrippa II duly arranged Mary's age to Vienne, north of Marseille, in . Also on the voyage were Simon Zelotes; her mother Helena-Salome; and Jesus‟s sisters Mary and Sarah. On arrival in , they were first hosted by Herod Archelaus at the Herodian Estate. Archelaus had been exiled to since AD 6, when he was deposed as ethnarch of Samaria, Judea, and Idumea by Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus.

AFTER THE “RESURRECTION”, DID JESUS LIVE WITH HIS FAMILY? He almost never did. As the Davidic King, Jesus was only supposed to live with his family when he had to sire a child. This period was known as the Days of Restitution. The moment his wife became pregnant, he left to immerse himself in evangelistic pursuits according to Essene dynastic rules. He would return to see the newly born kid but he would promptly set off and be away from his wife for between three to six years. At some stage though, Jesus did take a second wife. Her name was Lydia (ACTS 16:14-15 & 40). Lydia is described as a “seller of purple” (a coded term for her royal status having been married to Jesus) and one “whose heart the Lord opened” (pesher term for hitching somebody into marriage). Jesus‟s marriage to Lydia in AD 50 did not sit well with the Qumran sages. The Damascus Document (one of the Dead Sea Scrolls) hints at this when it makes mention of an eminent personality who was “caught in fornication” by “taking a second wife while a second is alive”. The Essenes did not condone polygamy, least of all for a dynastic heir. But the same Damascus Document age advances mitigating arguments that King David was polygamous too. 245

As to the early church, the matter was a hot potato as it was regarded as a virtual divorce from Mary Magdalene (some of the early church were aware Jesus was around) considering that as PriestKing, Jesus was not permitted to take a second wife. Paul was therefore at pains to dwell at length on the subject of divorce and why it was immoral (1 CORINTHIANS 7:10-16). Paul made it a point to underline that in addressing this subject, he was not speaking for himself but “for the Lord”, that is, Jesus, who did not embrace the idea of divorce.

WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY MAGDALENE AND JESUS POST-THE CRUCIFIXION? Your question is not very clear but I take it you are referring to how and when they died. Mary Magdalene died in Aix-en-Provence, , in AD 63. She was buried at Saint-Maximin-la-SainteBaume, about 40 km east of Aix-en-Provence. Jesus travelled extensively, venturing as far as India and Pakistan but generally incognito. In Rome in particular, very few were aware that he was still in circulation. When the Zealots rose up against the Romans in AD 66, Jesus was called upon to come and assume command as the Davidic Messiah. At first he was reluctant as he did not believe in a forceful overthrow of the Romans, but in AD 73 he was persuaded by Eleazar ben Yair, the commander of the Sicarii, an elite wing of the Zealots who were holding out at the mountain-top Fortress of Masada. Jesus arrived there before the Romans surrounded it, not to fight but to spiritually uplift his people. On hearing that his father was at Masada, Jesus Jr decided to follow after him (most likely to substitute for his father, who was 80 years of age at the time). By then, however, the Romans had already surrounded Masada and Jesus Jr was captured and crucified on the plain below in full view of Jesus and the Sicarii. Flavius Josephus records that the Sicarii, who numbered 967 including non-combatants, committed suicide, with only 7 found alive. But it seems Jesus slipped through the dragnet alive as a scroll (now lost) that he wrote whilst at Masada was discovered there during excavations in the 1960‟s and part of what happened at Masada is cryptically recorded in REVELATION chapters 15 and 16. He died in India at age 86. The fact that his burial site is at Shrinagar in Kashmir also attests to his having survived the Masada siege, which lasted from late 73 to early 74 AD. That Jesus is buried in Kashmir is not surprising at all: he had a strong attachment to India because Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, came from there. I WISH TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE FAMILY AND FATE OF JESUS AND MARY MAGDALENE. WHICH BOOKS MUST I READ? I recommend two books by Barbara Theiring titled Jesus the Man and Jesus of the Apocalypse.

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The others are Bloodline of the Holy Grail and The Magdalene Legacy, both by Lawrence Gardner; The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent; and The Jesus Scroll by Donovan Joyce. Lastly, I recommend the biblical book of REVELATION. Very few people are aware that it is actually a coded of the life of Jesus and his family! It has very little to do with eschatological (futuristic) events as your pastor will avidly preach.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 62

FINAL WORD ON JAMES THE JUST This Week We Deal With Questions On The Iconic Brother Of Jesus

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UST WHO BECAME THE LEADER OF THE EARLY CHURCH AFTER THE CRUCIFIXION? READING THE BOOK OF ACTS, IT’S LIKE IT’S A TOSS-UP BETWEEN PETER AND PAUL AND NOT JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS AS YOU SUGGEST. The truth of the matter is that the official early church was led neither by Paul nor Simon Peter but by James the Just, the immediate younger brother of Jesus. The top three in the apostolic hierarchy were James, Simon Peter, and John the “Son of Zebedee” in that order. These three were referred to as “The Pillars” (GALATIANS 2:9). Paul was the so-called Thirteenth Apostle. He was a John-Come-Lately who was unilaterally commissioned into evangelistic duty by Jesus at the say-so of the behind-the-scenes Anunnaki. Although he was at long last welcomed into the fold by James and company, he was never fully embraced as an apostle owing to his unsavoury track record as a persecutor of the church and because of his brand of theology that was at cross-purposes with what James and others preached. It explains why in 1 CORINTHIANS chapter 9, Paul goes out of his way to set down his bona fides as an apostle with full stripes.

YOU SAID JESUS WAS SUCCEEDED BY HIS YOUNGER BROTHER JAMES AS THE LEADER OF THE CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT. IS THEIR EVIDENCE IN THE BIBLE THAT THAT WAS INDEED THE CASE? There is ample evidence yes. Let‟s start with the testimony of Paul. In GALATIANS 1:18-19, Paul says when he decided to close ranks with the Christian movement after three years of introspection, the only apostles he met were Peter and James, that is, the top two. In ACTS 12:17, Simon Peter, after his escape from prison, relays word to some people that “James and the brothers” (that is, the other brothers of Jesus) should be notified of his freedom. Obviously, the reason it was necessary for James to be informed of Peter‟s circumstances was because he was the head of the movement. In ACTS 21:17-18, Luke relates that when he went to Jerusalem as part of a deputation led by Paul, the person they sought to meet was James. When the meeting was held the following day, “all the elders were present”, incontrovertible evidence that James was the leader of the early church. Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that James was the head of the Christian movement after the crucifixion can be gleaned from ACTS chapter 15. At a Jerusalem conference (“Jerusalem” here meaning 248

Qumran, as that was one of its nicknames) held in AD 50, at which matters of crucial importance were to be deliberated and codified and where Paul and all the apostles and elders were present, the concluding speakers were Simon Peter and James. But of the two, it was James who spoke last and pronounced the binding decision. He said, “It is my judgement that …” That doubtless was the voice of the highest authority.

DID JESUS EXPRESSLY APPOINT HIS YOUNGER BROTHER JAMES AS HIS SUCCESSOR? I DON’T SEE THAT IN THE GOSPELS. True, that is not made plain in the Bible but it is in extra-biblical sources. In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, for example, saying 12 has the disciples wonder to Jesus: “We know that you will leave us. Who is going to be our leader then?” Jesus answers: “No matter where you go, you are to go to James the Just,” meaning that the authority of James was not restricted to Jerusalem but was inclusive of the Diaspora. A Syriac source titled The Ascents of James, says, “The church in Jerusalem that was established by our Lord was increasing in numbers being ruled uprightly and firmly by James who was made Overseer over it by our Lord”. The Clementine Recognitions also has this to say of James: “Wherefore observe the greatest caution that you believe no teacher, unless he brings from Jerusalem the testimonial of James the Lord‟s brother, or of whosoever may come after him.” The elevation of Simon Peter at the expense of James was a ploy by the Vatican to undermine the Jesus dynasty and write it into oblivion. The Vatican claims apostolic descent from Simon Peter, who they say was the first Pope. Yet Peter never held any formal office. The first Pope was Britain‟s Prince Linus. This fact, ironically, is recorded in the Vatican‟s own Apostolic Constitutions. Prince Linus wasn‟t even installed by Peter: he was installed by the apostle Paul in 58 AD and this was during Peter‟s lifetime.

JESUS DESIGNATED SIMON PETER AS THE ROCK UPON WHICH HE WAS GOING TO BUILD HIS CHURCH, MEANING HIS SUCCESSOR ONCE HE HAD DEPARTED THE EARTHLY SCENE. HOW DOES THAT SQUARE WITH YOUR ASSERTION THAT HE WAS ACTUALLY SUCCEEDED BY HIS YOUNGER BROTHER JAMES AS THE LEADER OF THE EARLY CHURCH? The inference that Simon Peter was Jesus‟s anointed successor stems from MATTHEW 16:18, which reads, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it”. The statement, which was uttered by Jesus in AD 32, that is, before the crucifixion, has been taken wholly out of context. The English translation from the original Greek has also contributed to the distortion. We know Simon Peter was nicknamed “Rocky” by Jesus because of his tough-man demeanour and owing to the fact that he was Jesus‟s chief bodyguard in his capacity as the Davidic King. But Peter did have 249

other responsibilities. Not only was he Jesus‟s chief spokesman but he was also his lead evangelist being a dynamic and fiery speaker. At Qumran, the Essene headquarters, Peter was in AD 32 put in charge of the ekklesia, meaning “the called-out”, by Jesus, who at the time was third in the Qumran priestly hierarchy. The ekklesia were married men (as opposed to celibates, another specific Essene class) from Essene villages who from time to time were called upon to bring along food tithes for the Essene priests. Since they came from all over, they spent some time at Qumran before they returned to their families. The ekklesia were also known as the Kath holon, meaning “according to the whole ones”. They were whole (holos) because unlike celibates they were married and so were complete. It is the term Kath holon which gives us the English word Catholic, meaning “universal”. Thus in MATTHEW 16:18, Jesus was simply asg Peter a new Qumran responsibility and not designating him as his successor. In any case, the nickname Peter, Petros in Greek, means “small stone” or “pebble”. You don‟t build a globalwide church on a pebble; you build it on a real rock. As for the statement “the gates of hades will not overpower it”, this was figurative language. The “gates of Hades” were a set of objectionable vices. In the Dead Sea Scrolls‟ Community Document, they are also known as the “three nets of Belial”. They were fornication, love of riches, and conduct that served to defile the Qumran sanctuary. In employing the term, all Jesus was saying was that Simon Peter‟s assigned ministry would never be corrupted by these kinds of temptation because he was a married man, principled, and content with his standard of living.

IN MATTHEW 16:19, JESUS HANDED THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN TO SIMON PETER. IN OTHER WORDS, HE TIPPED PETER AS HIS SUCCESSOR AND NOT HIS BROTHER JAMES AS YOU ALLEGE. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN YOURSELF OUT OF THS STARK FACT? MATTHEW 16:19 reads, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth will be bound n heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Again this is another age of the scriptures that has been blown out of proportion, much like MATTHEW 16:18, and upon which the Vatican seized to elevate Simon Peter to a status he did not remotely deserve. If we are to properly contextualise the statement, it is crucial that we turn to ISAIAH 22:22, which reads as follows: “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.” This is Enlil, the Anunnaki god of the Jews best-known as Jehovah, talking about Eliakim, the royal chamberlain (an officer who managed the household of a monarch) of King Hezekiah of Judah (who was of the Davidic lineage). The “keys of the kingdom of heaven” is thus synonymous with the “key of the House of David”. However, the key in Isaiah was not promised to the King‟s heir: it was promised to a chief of staff of the King‟s palatial personnel. Eliakim was not the King‟s heir apparent but his right-hand man. Similarly therefore, what Jesus was saying to Peter was that he was designating him as the right-hand man to his successor – his younger brother James the Just. That‟s what Peter actually became post the crucifixion. He was James‟s right pillar, whereas John was James‟s left pillar.

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Peter was commissioned by James to minister to Jews in the Diaspora (GALATIANS 2:2). He was given the authority to it Diaspora Jews (pry them loose from worldly shackles) into the Essene fraternity (codenamed “Heaven”, whereas non-Essenes were said to be “of Earth” or “of the World”) or expel them where they were errant (bind them).

IF JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS TOOK OVER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE EARLY CHURCH AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF JESUS, THEN HOW COME THAT IN THE EARLY CHAPTERS OF ACTS IT IS SIMON PETER WHO WE SEE TAKE CENTRE STAGE AND EXERCISE HEGEMONY INSTEAD OF JAMES? Simon Peter was initially deliberately promoted by Luke – in his book of Acts – at the expense of James. Now, although Luke is impeccable when it comes to the historical settings of his narratives (places, civic institutions and authorities, etc), he is unabashedly biased in one particular vein – his marginalisation of the role of the family of Jesus in the evolution of the early church. I will give only a few examples though they abound both in his gospel and in Acts. In his gospel, Luke never mentions a single name of Jesus‟s brothers though Mark, his main source, categorically does so. In Acts, he starts by casting Peter as the leader of the church, instead of James; then at some stage, once Paul is introduced, the story becomes a one-way trumpeting of the exploits of Paul. Luke was a fan, physician, and travelling companion of Paul and therefore Paul had to be exalted. At the first formal meeting of the apostles at Qumran forty days after the crucifixion, Luke mentions all the names of the apostles who were present. But the family of Jesus he simply generalises thus: “… including Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers”. When he finally mentions James in the course of his story, he does not introduce him the way he did Paul, for instance. James simply floats into the narrative from without. Of course he does imply James was the leader of the early church as we have seen because he just cannot gloss over this inalienable fact, but he does not directly state so. Aware that after James was killed he was succeeded by another member of the Jesus family – something he does not wish to make known to his readers for fear that it will put the Jesus dynasty on a pedestal at the expense of Paul – he terminates his story at the time Paul was evangelising in Rome. Scholars have puzzled over the seemingly abrupt ending of the book of Acts. The reason is simply that it was a deliberate ploy by Luke: he didn‟t want people in the Roman world to get to know that after the death of James in AD 62, his successor was his first cousin Simeon and for the next sixty years or so, of the Jesus dynasty continued to be at the helm of the Jerusalem church. Ending his narrative before AD 62 meant he was not obliged to mention who succeeded James after his death!

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HOW DID JAMES DIE AND WHO SUCCEEDED HIM AS LEADER OF THE EARLY CHURCH? Flavius Josephus relates that James was stoned to death in AD 62 at the orders of Annas, the youngest son of the Annas who interrogated Jesus in AD 33. Young Annas had just been appointed high priest of the Jerusalem Temple by the recently deceased governor of Judea Porcius Festus. What happened was that James, who had been high priest of the Qumran temple for almost 30 years, decided to lead a Qumran demonstration to the Jerusalem temple to press the case that it was time he took over as high priest of the temple (this was in accord with the Essene time table which demanded that the Jewish priesthood vest in a dynastic heir before the Romans were kicked out). Annas hit back forthwith by seizing him, trying him hurriedly in a kangaroo court setting and having him executed outside the Jerusalem temple in broad daylight before the new governor Albinas arrived. The outraged Essenes, however, sent a vehement protest to Albinas while he was on his way to Jerusalem and the moment he arrived, he had Annas fired after only three months in office. According to Eusebius and Epiphanious, James, who was the most respected Jew of the day, was succeeded by his cousin Simeon, the son of his uncle Cleopas. Simeon was in office up to AD 106. Meanwhile, Annas was a marked man: when the Zealots overthrew the Romans in the AD 66 uprising, Annas was one of the first to be put to the sword.

WHICH ROMAN EMPEROR LAUNCHED A MANHUNT FOR JAMES? Actually, all of the Jesus dynasty were put on a wanted list by Roman emperors. For instance, Hegesippus writes that Vespasian commanded that “the family of David to be sought, that no one might be left among the Jews who was of royal stock”. Emperor Domitian was also dead set against the Jesus of all the “Desposyni inheritors of Jesus”.

clan. Hegesippus says he ordered the execution

In AD 106, Simeon, the cousin of James who was in charge of the Jerusalem church, was crucified by Emperor Trajan. The apostle John in REVELATION 12:17 cryptically captures the victimisation of Mary Magdalene and her offspring in these words: “Then the dragon (Rome) was enraged at the woman (Mary Magdalene) and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring (Jesus‟s children and the extended family) – those who keep God‟s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus”. And of course Jesus Justus, Jesus‟s heir, was crucified at Masada during the reign of Vespasian.

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YOU SAID THE FAMILIES OF JESUS AND JAMES “CONED”. DID THEY INTERMARRY? Yes they did. This happened in the mid-second century when Aminadab, a great-grandson of Jesus and Mary Magdalene through their last-born son Joseph, married Eurgen, a great-grand daughter of James and his wife Anna. The coned line became known as the Fisher Kings (that is, Enki‟s Kings). In the 4th century, a Fisher King married into a family of the Sicambrian Franks of , spawning a new dynasty that became known as the Merovingians, who ruled a great swathe of Europe and were reputed to be very popular kings. In the latter-day world, the best-known descendant of the Jesus dynasty was Princess Diana. However, the linear descendant, who has being completely ignored and even vilified thanks to Illuminati intrigue, is the 7th Count of Albany, Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart, now 57 years old.

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Jesus Papers Series Article No. 64 FINAL WORD ON JOHN THE BAPTIST We Conclude The Jesus Papers With Questions On The Ill-fated Messiah Of Aaron

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HERE IS JOHN THE BAPTIST’S HEAD BURIED? His disciples buried him in a tomb at Sebaste (Samaria). However, the exact location of his burial site was kept a closely-guarded secret for two reasons in the main.

First, they wanted to keep alive the mystique of his being the Elijah who was expected to reappear and intervene in Jewish religio-politico affairs. Hence, making known the whereabouts of his resting place would have reduced him to a purely mortal man who would never reanimate and participate in temporal affairs again. Secondly, Jews in general frowned upon the adulation of tombs of prophets. That‟s why Jesus in MATTHEW 23:29 railed at the scribes and Pharisees for their penchant to “build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous”.

I READ FROM SOMEWHERE THAT THE CAVE IN WHICH JOHN THE BAPTIST USED TO LODGE IN THE JUDEAN WILDERNESS HAS BEEN FOUND. IS IT TRUE? It is true yes. The cave was discovered in 2004 following four years of archaeological excavations by Shimon Gibson and James Tabor at a place in Israel called Suba. The cave dated back to the 8th century BC. One of the reasons it was deduced the cave had been used by John the Baptist was that it had primitive drawings of him etched into its walls. The drawings showed a man wearing a skin garment, a bodiless head, and a platter with a sword across it, amongst other depictions. All these constitute aspects about the life and fate of the Baptist. The drawings of course must have been made by people who were making pilgrimages to the cave maybe a century or two after the Baptist‟s death.

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JESUS, THE DAVIDIC MESSIAH GOT MARRIED AND HAD OFFSPRING. ON THE OTHER HAND, JOHN THE BAPTIST, THE PRIESTLY MESSIAH, CHOSE A LIFE OF CELIBACY. WHY DID JOHN ELECT TO BE THE ODD ONE OUT? There are basically two reasons why the Baptist opted for a chaste life. First, he was an Essene. Essenes in general disdained marriage. They thought coitus was a stain, somewhat, on one‟s spirituality. Second, John‟s father Zechariah also only reluctantly entered into marriage and only with a view to beget a heir. If he had his own way, Zechariah would have died without issue but he was persuaded by Simeon, his No. 2 in the Essene hierarchy, to produce a heir. Once he did that, he never had intimate relations with his wife Elizabeth ever again and they never ever lived together. This aversion to marry in all probability must have rubbed off on his son John. It was because John died without heirs (thus rendering extinct the Aaronite bloodline) that Jesus (who was part-Aaronite as his mother Mary was Aaronite) claimed both the Davidic messiahship and the priestly messiahship. The Jesus dynasty thus became the Melchizedek, or priest-kings, beginning with Jesus himself as Paul clearly lays down. Not long after the crucifixion, James the Just, the immediate younger brother of Jesus, was installed as the high priest of the Essene community. Had John sired a heir, or had he had a brother, that would not have happened: his son or brother would have become the head of the Essenes.

WHAT DID JOHN THE BAPTIST MEAN WHEN HE SAID “YOU BROOD OF VIPERS?” This denunciation (against the Pharisees) is found in MATTHEW 3:7 and LUKE 3:7.Jesus also uttered it in MATTHEW 12:34 and 23:33. It was an Essene phrase that was used to refer to lying tongues. A viper was the most poisonous snake found in the Palestine of the day and so it became a metaphor for a lying tongue. In JAMES 3:8, the tongue is described as a restless evil full of poison (snake venom). In the Dead Sea Scrolls‟ Damascus Rule, the Pharisees are derided as people who “open their mouth with a blaspheming tongue against the laws of the covenant of God”. The phrase was therefore not a malicious insult as such but a figure of speech.

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IN ONE OF YOUR ARTICLES, YOU SAID ZECHARIAH, THE FATHER OF JOHN THE BAPTIST, WAS KILLED BY AN AGENT OF JUDAS OF GALILEE, THE THEN LEADER OF THE ZEALOTS, IN 6 AD. ARE MATTHEW AND LUKE REFERRING TO THE SAME INCIDENT IN MATTHEW 23:35 AND LUKE 11:50-51? MATTHEW 23:35 quotes Jesus as saying to the Pharisees, “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” In LUKE 11:50-51, Jesus is quoted as saying, “That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, who perished between the altar and the temple.” The Zechariah Jesus is talking about in either age is not the father of John the Baptist: it is Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest whose death in the temple by way of stoning is recorded in 2 CHRONICLES 24:20-22. Jesus cited the deaths of two martyrs from the first book of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) and the last book of the Hebrew Bible (in the first century, 2 Chronicles was the last book of the Hebrew Bible, not Malachi as is the case today) to illustrate the persecution of the righteous since the foundation of the world to date. The “Barachias” in Matthew is a later insertion by a copyist: he does not appear in the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest Bible, nor indeed in any of the earlier manuscripts of the gospel of Matthew. The copyist seems to have confused the “Zechariah son of Barachias” mentioned by Flavius Josephus in his book Wars of the Jews who was killed by the Zealots in the temple when they seized power in AD 66 after overthrowing the Romans. Indeed, Luke, arguably the most reliable of the synoptic gospels, does not mention Barachias at all.

YOU SAID JESUS WAS AN ENKITE. WAS JOHN THE BAPTIST AN ENKITE TOO? Yes he was. Jesus and John the Baptist were Essenes and all Essenes were Enkites (champions or instruments of the Enki clan‟s agenda, Enki being the great Anunnaki figure who was pro-mankind having genetically engineered us into existence). The Age of Pisces, which numerically began in AD 1, was an age which the Enkites were to preside over (The Enlilites had presided over the Age of Aries, which lasted from 2160 BC to the hypothetical year 0) but the Enlilites led by Apollo (Utu-Shamash, the grandson of Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible, who in the book of Revelation – an Enkite document – is referred to as Apollyon or Abbadon) hijacked it. The name John is actually Oannes in its antecedents and Oannes was the name Enki also went by as the Fish God or God of the Sea. The ubiquitous water symbolism in the gospels (by way of baptism) was essentially an Enkite motif.

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IF I FOLLOWED YOU CORRECTLY, SOME OF JOHN THE BAPTIST’S DISCIPLES, SUCH AS SIMON PETER AND HIS BROTHER ANDREW, FLOOR-CROSSED TO THE JESUS MOVEMENT. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REST OF JOHN’S FOLLOWERS? Although Jesus and John were Essenes in substance, they were basically a faction within the overall Essene fraternity. When the two leading dynastic personages banded together to spearhead the messianic movement in AD 23, they called it the Nazarenes. The term meant two things basically. One meaning was “fishes”. The other was “branchites”. The fish connotation had to do with John, whose name derived from Oannes, the Sumerian Fish God Enki (Note that the Christian symbol in the first century was not a cross: it was a fish. The idea of the cross was devised by the Catholics). The branch connotation had to with Jesus, who as the Davidic heir was a Davidic branch. But Jesus and John did split in AD 29 and therefore had their own disciples. After the crucifixion, Jesus‟s disciples were now led by his younger brother James the Just. On the other hand, John the Baptist‟s disciples were led by a man known as Banus, who Josephus talks about and even apprenticed with. But in AD 37, the bulk of the followers of John the Baptist left Judea to escape the mass persecution of the Nazarenes that was led by the as yet unconverted Paul. They eventually settled in today‟s southern Iraq. They are called Mandeans. The Mandeans continue to revere John the Baptist, who they call Yahia Yuhana, and hate Jesus like the plague. They denounce Jesus as a rebel (for breaking with John the Baptist) and as a heretic (for betraying Gnostic secrets).

WHO WAS SENIOR BETWEEN JESUS AND JOHN THE BAPTIST? I thought I amply dwelt on this point in the course of the series. In the gospels, there is clearly a deliberate attempt to subordinate John the Baptist to Jesus, especially in the gospel of John, when the fact of the matter was that John was senior. History is written by the victors and through the likes of Paul, who wrote almost half the New Testament, and the subterfuge of the pro-Jesus Nicene Council of AD 325, which decided what had to go into the Bible and what should be left out, Jesus was elevated to a God-Man and as a result every other contemporary figure of note became little more than an also-ran. In the event, John the Baptist was almost totally eclipsed by “The Lord”. What is ironic though is that Jesus himself made it clear that John was the greatest man who ever lived (maybe with a touch of hyperbole but telling all the same). This is made much more clearer in the Hebrew version of Matthew, not the doctored Greek version (the familiar English translation) the men of the pulpit like to quote.

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The Hebrew version has Jesus state, unequivocally and unqualified, that, “Among those born of women, none is greater than John”, period. Jesus also says in the same Hebrew version that, “For all the prophets and the law spoke concerning him (John)”. Jesus goes on to say, “John was sent to save the world”. All these statements I have cited were altered in the Greek version in a bid to deliberately diminish John. Bear in mind that Jesus and John were Essenes and in the Essene hierarchy, the seniormost was not the Davidic heir but the high priest. That‟s why high priest Zechariah, John the Baptist‟s father, was senior to Joseph, Jesus‟s father. Both Jesus and Joseph were third in the hierarchy. It was only after the death of John the Baptist that the Davidic heir also became the high priest.

HOW HAVE CHRISTIANS RECEIVED THE JESUS PAPERS BEN? Surprisingly, they have been the most avid readers of the series. About three quarters of the questions came from Christians, including pastors and elders. They said they felt safe to ask questions since I do not publish names of questioners. I constantly get invitations to propound to them face to face but I‟m reluctant to do so as it is not my intention to be a mini-celebrity.

YOU SAID YOU ARE A CHRISTIAN DESPITE YOUR FORTHRIGHT CRITIQUES ON THE FIGURES WHO LAID THE FOUNDATION FOR THE FAITH. WHAT DOES YOUR PASTOR SAY ABOUT YOUR WRITINGS AND WHAT ROLE DO YOU PLAY IN YOUR CHURCH? I‟m a Christian yes and I‟ll always be a Christian. I fellowship at a Pentecostal church in Gaborone. I enjoy the vibe of church fellowship in itself and the fact that I always learn something new from the sermons. These new insights are not doctrinal as such: they are about leading a morally upright life. Pastors rarely teach doctrine (a huge lapse): they concentrate on morals and righteousness because they are a more straightforward subject. Even at home, I like listening to telecast sermons by Joel Osteen, Dr Charles Stanley, Fred Price, Jentzen Frentzen, Joseph Prince, Joyce Meyer, and the late Myles Munroe. In the past, I used to be leader of our cell group but I excused myself at some point as the teachings I was expected to help inculcate were overwhelmingly at odds with the knowledge that was now at my command. But I do attend the cell group meetings once in a while, not to propagate my outlook but for sheer camaraderie. My pastor has never once engaged me about my writings. He strictly minds his own business.

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BENSON “SHIT” SAILI, YOU HAVE DESTROYED MY FAITH. I THINK YOU ARE A FALLEN ANGEL STRAIGHT FROM THE PIT OF HELL. TRUST ME, THE DAY I GET TO LAY MY HANDS ON YOU, I’LL SEE TO IT THAT YOU ARE TOSSED INTO THE BRINE OF THE DEAD SEA ALONG WITH YOUR DEAD “SHITTY” SCROLLS! You should do your homework Brother. The Dead Sea is so saline and therefore so dense that nothing sinks in it: everything stays afloat. I recommend that you use a gun instead. For as long as you aim well and target the right part of my body, you will achieve your goal much more decisively. So propose a rendezvous: I will be keenly waiting on you.

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