Judeo-Christian Beliefs II

Specifically in the teaching of Paul we find no reference to:

• Jesus being born in Bethlehem;
• Jesus growing up in Nazareth;
• Jesus being crucified under Pontius Pilate;
• Jesus being seen physically by any of the Apostles.

Even more specifically, Paul introduced into his teaching the Gnostic concept of a Redeemer: 'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this evil world' (Galatians, 1:3-4). Neither the Essenes nor Peter interpreted the resurrection of Jesus as an act of redemption for mankind. (? did Peter focus on the crucifixion as that act)
After his third missionary voyage, Paul was threatened with death at the hands of the Jews on account of these doctrinal differences. He appealed to Caesar, and after two years' imprisonment in Rome met his death between AD.64 and 68 - a victim of Nero's persecution of the Christians. Shortly afterwards, in the aftermath of a Jewish revolt in AD.70, the Roman general Pompey sacked and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and all Jews including the Essenes were forced to leave the city. Peter and his Judaeo-Christian branch of the church vanished without trace.
In the years that followed the four canonical Gospels appeared. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John accepted that John the Baptist's followers had witnessed the appearance of Jesus, and declared Joshua to be a 'pre-existence' of Jesus. This denial of the Jesus of the Old Testament was essential if they were to place the life, suffering and death of Jesus in the Roman era, including the virgin birth at Bethlehem, his childhood in Nazareth, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, and his resurrection and subsequent physical appearance to the Jerusalem apostles. They also drew on the Old Testament for the basis of his teaching. The Gospels, therefore, should be looked upon as theological rather than historical works.
By the end of the first century AD, the centre of Christian activity having shifted to Rome after the sack of Jerusalem, Clement, Bishop of Rome (c.AD.90-100) argued that church leaders- bishops, priests and deacons - were delegated by God as 'rulers on earth' and that in order to be saved the laity should submit to them. Other branches of the church increasingly followed Rome's example, and by the end of the 2nd century a unified church began to emerge.
The Gnostics, who throughout their history had never adopted a priestly hierarchy, were condemned as heretics. The earlier Jerusalem compromise that Peter would be apostle to the Jews and Paul apostle to the Gentiles was overthrown. Although the Gentile church, and therefore the church in Rome, had been founded on Paul's teaching, and Paul had derived his belief and inspiration from the Gnostics, the new Roman hierarchy claimed that the line of apostolic succession derived from Peter and the Jerusalem Judaeo-Christian church.
Paul became diminished and extravagant claims were made to enhance the importance of Peter:

• Peter was the first person to encounter the resurrected Christ, who named Peter as his successor;
• Peter visited Rome and lived there for 25 years before his martyrdom at the hands of Nero;
• Babylon, the source of Peter's first epistle, was 'a code name for Rome'.

None of these claims had any substance whatsoever, but by the 3rd century AD tradition had it that Peter was buried on the Vatican Hill, which thus became the seat of the Popes.
This rewriting of history was continued in the Acts of the
Apostles, first mentioned by the Early Church Father Bishop
Irenaeus, writing between AD.170 and 180. The Acts distorts
Paul's autobiographical record:

• no mention is made of his years in 'Arabia'
• his conversion links him with the Jerusalem church as the source of his faith (the road to Damascus);
• his baptism was at the hands of the Judaeo-Christian Ananaias;
• he preached Christ in the synagogues (i.e. he preached what he had learned from the Judaeo-Christians).

Because the Gnostics remained resolutely opposed to the division of the church into clergy and laity, the bishops determined to define what they regarded as the true faith. The Creed was the result; anyone who held alternative beliefs was regarded as a heretic. The orthodox Christianity that emerged around the middle of the 2nd century AD was a result of conflict between the bishops and Gnostic teachers. When, in the 4th century AD, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the bishops, now empowered by the state, declared possession of heretical books a criminal offence, and ordered them to be seized and destroyed. It was then that the Gnostics at Nag Hammadi saved their library by burying it in a cliff, a precaution which on its discovery some fifteen centuries later has allowed further evidence of where the true roots of Christianity lie - not in Judaea but in Egypt - to come to light.
So the Roman church, the church of the bishops, buttressed the mythical Jesus of the Gospels with the strength of dogmatic belief; reinvented Paul to sever him from the Gnostic tradition and gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom; suppressed, at the hands of the Roman bishop of Alexandria, the cult of Serapis, burning its temple and the contents of its library; and persecuted as heretics all those who continued to worship according to the Essene and Gnostic traditions.
The suppression and defacement of Ancient Egypt's records and monuments by the Early Church is only paralleled by the fever of excitement which has attended the discovery and often trans-shipment of Egyptian artefacts in modern times coupled with the cracking of the hieroglyphic code. Neo-Platonism had always given Egypt its due, hence the great obelisk erected for the Pope by Bernini in Piazza Navona, Rome. Tens of thousands of Londoners swarmed beside the Thames and on its bridges to witness the raising of 'Cleopatra's Needle' on the embankment. Huge excitement and interest greeted Tutankhamun when he was resurrected by Howard Carter in 1935, and the post-war exhibitions of the spectacular tomb findings attracted millions of visitors. One might almost call them worshippers as they gazed at the funerary mask of the boy king and sacrifician victim.

Out of Egypt

Both the Old Testament and the early Church Fathers identify Jesus as the same person as Joshua who succeeded Moses as the leader of the Israelites (just as Tutankhamun succeeded Akhenaten as Pharaoh). The early Church Father Origen, the outstanding theologian of the third century AD, commented on Exodus 17:9 where Joshua is first mentioned with Moses: 'Up to this point nowhere has there occurred mention of the blessed man Jesus. Here first the brilliance of this name shone torth.' The historical Jesus (Tutankhamun) was tortured and hanged by the wicked priest Panhesy or Phineas at the foot of Mount Sinai on the eve of the Passover, probably in 1352 BC. His body was claimed by Aye, and buried in the valley of the Kings.
The memory of these events, together with the tradition of Jesus the Teacher and the expectation of the Second Coming was preserved by three sects: the ascetic, contemplative Theraputae (identified as the first Christians by Eusebius); the Essenes, who were Judaeo-Christians (i.e. followers of Jesus, the Teacher of Righteousness) and whose Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947; and the Gnostics, who were Gentile Christians and whose library at Nag Hammadi was discovered in 1945. These Messianic sects survived for many centuries until the start of the Christian era.
According to the New Testament, Jesus is supposed to have lived, suffered and died in the 1st century AD. Scholarly research, both biblical and historical, coupled with the accumulation of archaeological evidence, can find no reliable indication of the historical Jesus during this period. It was a time of fervent spiritual expectations1 particularly on the part of the Essenes and the Gnostics. The cornerstone of their belief was put forward by the Israelite prophet Isaiah writing in the 6th century BC. He wrote in the past tense that a divinely appointed 'Saviour' (the 'Suffering Servant') had lived and was sacrificed in the cause of mankind's spiritual salvation and the securing of life after death. Isaiah, declared prophet of the Jesus of an historian of The Essenes and who had come and the Gospels by the Early Church, was in fact events that took place some 600 years earlier. the Gnostics fervently awaited not the Messiah -gone - but the Second Coming.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, what remains of the Essenes' library, date from 200 BC. They make it abundantly clear that the Essenes were followers of Jesus: indeed the name 'Essenes' derives from 'Essa', the Arabic name for Jesus which is used in the Koran.
The Gnostics held many beliefs in common with the Essenes. Their library, found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945, contains previously unknown gospels, including the Gospel of Thomas which predates all the books of the New Testament and includes more than 100 sayings attributed to Jesus. Many of these Gnostic texts are specifically Christian: the Gnostics were seekers after self-knowledge which they interpreted as knowledge of God, for they regarded the self as being part of the divine nature, and salvation as the release of man's spirit from the imprisonment of the body. They took Joshua to be, as the Old Testament has it, the historical Jesus. Gnostic sects had spread far and wide from Egypt by the end of the 1st century BC, including to Rome.
Since the historical Jesus cannot have lived after the 1st century AD, we must look for him during an earlier period. We have the evidence of Isaiah, who is much quoted in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The book of Joshua (largely a work of fiction) calls Joshua/Jesus 'the son of Nun', and indicates him as a contemporary of and successor to Moses. The word 'Nun' means 'fish', one of the earliest symbols of Christianity. Paul vividly acknowledges the historical Jesus, and the rabbianical Talmud does the same. The argument for an earlier historical Jesus is reinforced by the fact that the events recounted and the dates implied in the four gospels are mutually contradictory: the only point at which they agree is that Jesus lived and died some time between 27 BC and AD 37 - a timespan of 64 years. The three Roman historians of the time, Philo Judaeus (himself a considerable student of the Old Testament), Justus of Tiberius, and Flavius Josephus, while recording clear evidence of John the Baptist's mission and death, make no mention whatsoever of Jesus. (A copy of Josephus does in fact make mention of him, but this is now dismissed as a forgery, as is the Acts of Pilate, written some centuries later.) What is abundantly clear from writings earlier than the Gospels is that Jesus was an anointed king of royal descent (the son of David and son of God), that he suffered for his people, and was executed.