Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ?

[James Henry]

Here's an interesting thing I thought I would note down as it happened. Don't know where it might lead, but it IS interesting.

Atriedes came to announce a thought he had earlier: that Caesar was also the model for the story of Arthur. I told him I'd thought of that already, which I had in passing, while reading "The Mantle of Caesar".

What is interesting is that just before he came in to propose this idea, I had just been reading about two of the earliest Latin grammarians, C. Octavius Lampadio and Q. Vargunteius. They did scholarly work on the even earlier works of the earliest known Latin writers, Naevius and Ennius.

Well, "Ennius" was in my head, and when Atriedes mentioned "Arthur", my mind immediately connected to "Nennius."

First, Ennius:

Quintus Ennius (/ˈkwɪntəs ˈɛniəs/; c. 239 BC – c. 169 BC) was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent. ...

Ennius was born at Rudiae, an old Italian (predominantly Oscan)[2] town historically founded by the Messapians. Here Oscan, Greek, and Latin languages were in contact with one another; according to Aulus Gellius 17.17.1, Ennius referred to this heritage by saying he had "three hearts" (Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine sciret).

Ennius continued the nascent literary tradition by writing praetextae, tragedies, and palliatae, as well as his most famous work, a historic epic called the Annales. Other minor works...

The Epicharmus presented an account of the gods and the physical operations of the universe. In it, the poet dreamed he had been transported after death to some place of heavenly enlightenment.

The Euhemerus presented a theological doctrine of a vastly different type in a mock-simple prose style modelled on the Greek of Euhemerus of Messene and several other theological writers. According to this doctrine, the gods of Olympus were not supernatural powers still actively intervening in the affairs of men, but great generals, statesmen and inventors of olden times commemorated after death in extraordinary ways. ...

The Annales was an epic poem in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, covering Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 BC down to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BC. It was the first Latin poem to adopt the dactylic hexameter metre used in Greek epic and didactic poetry, leading it to become the standard metre for these genres in Latin poetry. The Annals became a school text for Roman schoolchildren, eventually supplanted by Virgil's Aeneid. About 600 lines survive. A copy of the work is among the Latin rolls of the Herculaneum library.

Ennius was said to have considered himself a reincarnation of Homer.

Repeated from above:

"The Annales was an epic poem in fifteen books, later expanded to eighteen, covering Roman history from the fall of Troy in 1184 BC down to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BC. It was the first Latin poem to adopt the dactylic hexameter metre used in Greek epic and didactic poetry, leading it to become the standard metre for these genres in Latin poetry. The Annals became a school text for Roman schoolchildren, eventually supplanted by Virgil's Aeneid. About 600 lines survive. A copy of the work is among the Latin rolls of the Herculaneum library."

**Bold Italics emphasis mine.

Sott covered this article in Dec 2013.
http://www.sott.net/article/270663-Unlocking-the-scrolls-of-Herculaneum

A new update to the ancient scrolls from the Herculaneum library was posted today.
_http://news.yahoo.com/x-rays-unlock-secrets-ancient-scrolls-buried-volcano-160136061.html

X-rays unlock secrets of ancient scrolls buried by volcano
Associated Press
By FRANK JORDANS

BERLIN (AP) — Scientists have succeeded in reading parts of an ancient scroll that was buried in a volcanic eruption almost 2,000 years ago, holding out the promise that the world's oldest surviving library may one day reveal all of its secrets.

The scroll is among hundreds retrieved from the remains of a lavish villa at Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was one of several Roman towns that were destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.

Some of the texts from what is called the Villa of the Papyri have been deciphered since they were discovered in the 1750s. But many more remain a mystery to science because they were so badly damaged that unrolling the papyrus they were written on would have destroyed them completely.

"The papyri were completely covered in blazing-hot volcanic material," said Vito Mocella, a theoretical scientist at the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR) in Naples who led the latest project.

Previous attempts to peer inside the scrolls failed to yield any readable texts because the ink used in ancient times was made from a mixture of charcoal and gum. This makes it indistinguishable from the burned papyrus.

Mocella and his colleagues decided to try a method called X-ray phase contrast tomography that had previously been used to examine fossils without damaging them.

Phase contrast tomography takes advantage of subtle differences in the way radiation — such as X-rays — passes through different substances, in this case papyrus and ink.

Using lab time at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, the researchers found they were able to decipher several letters, proving that the method could be used to read what's hidden inside the scrolls.

"Our goal was to show that the technique is sensitive to the writing," said Mocella. In a further step, the scientists compared the handwriting to that of other texts, allowing them to conclude that it was likely the work of Philodemus, a poet and Epicurean philosopher who died about a century before the volcanic eruption.

The next challenge will be to automate the laborious process of scanning the charred lumps of papyrus and deciphering the texts inside them, so that some 700 further scrolls stored in Naples can be read, Mocella said.

Scholars studying the Herculaneum texts say the new technique, which was detailed in an article published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, may well mark a breakthrough for their efforts to unlock the ancient philosophical ideas hidden from view for almost two millennia.

"It's a philosophical library of Epicurean texts from a time when this philosophy influenced the most important classical Latin authors, such as Virgil, Horace and Cicero," said Juergen Hammerstaedt, a professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Cologne, Germany, who was not involved in the project.

"There needs to be much work before one can virtually unroll carbonized papyrus because one will have to develop a digital method that will allow us to follow the layers," he said. "But in the 260 years of Herculaneum papyrology it is certainly a remarkable year."

Interesting that this is happening now. STO balancing? Will new truths be revealed? --or suppressed?

Will Laura get her wish to know and read the actual ancient texts? I hope so for all humanity's sake.

 

[Laura]

Just wrote a short review for amazon about another piece of the puzzle. The book s Israel Knohl's "Messiahs and Resurrection in 'The Gabriel Revelation'

http://www.amazon.com/Messiahs-Resurrection-Gabriel-Revelation-Library/dp/0826425070/ref=sr_1_7

The discovery of the inscribed stone and its subsequent decipherment reveals the ideology of an apocalyptic-messianic group that belonged to the period of the death of Herod the great. This is a fascinating revelation that may have great import for the history of Christian origins and especially for Pauline theology. It seems to me that it is entirely possible that the individual who was referred to in this inscription was the prototypical "Jesus".

But, it is Knohl's explication of the theology of the inscription that is most fascinating. It seems that the shed blood of the martyrs of that time was seen as the catalyst for the coming of salvation. It was rather like the blood itself created a "stairway to or from heaven" in some sense, that not only allowed the cry of the Jewish people to attract the attention of their god, but created a pathway for the descent of that god and/or his agents to wreck vengeance upon the oppressors, i.e. the Romans, specifically Augustus AKA the Antichrist, the latter idea being one that Knohl develops.

To me, the idea of the "living blood" was the most fascinating because of the similarity of it to certain Greco-Roman philosophical ideas (Stoic, I believe) about comets being the conveyors of souls of heroes to the heavens or realm of the gods. One is also reminded of the verse in Genesis where God tells Cain "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground." A careful reading of the epistles of Paul reveals some of these rather esoteric ideas about the value of the shed blood of martyrs, mainly "Jesus".

Another interesting idea was that only the heroic would be granted conveyance to the heavens/realm of the gods, while ordinary folks were still stuck in Sheol/Hades.

Well, it's difficult to present the evidence and arguments of Knohl in a few paragraphs; just notice that the book itself is not terribly long, but is packed with data and implications the most significant of which is that this individual, killed at this early point in time, could very well have been the "real Jesus", and it was Paul, who encountered his followers later who took some of these concepts and transformed their Jesus/Joshua from a Messianic/deliverer of vengeance on Rome to a Messianic/reconciler/justifier of both Jews and "Greeks". In other words, Paul was a sort of John Lennon of his time preaching "All you need is Love...." That would have explained his early pharisaic hostility to the "Jerusalem ecclesia AKA political/religious sect" which was geared toward revolution while pharisees were notable Hellenizers. It would also explain the hostility of the Jerusalem sect toward Paul, evident in his epistles: they were extremely hostile because he "stole their messiah" and turned him into a wimp thus diminishing their efforts to build up a strong revolutionary spirit among the people so that when the right time came, they would strike. Well, Paul did concede to them that he would only preach to the Gentiles and leave the Jews alone, but his successes made the Jerusalem peeps a bit worried because the "good news" was filtering to the Jews also. Thus, there was a serious conflict between the Cephas/James/John party and Paul who eventually referred to these "apostles" as servants of the devil.

Anyway, a fascinating piece of the puzzle; highly recommended.

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

Amazing info!. Especially this:

Another interesting idea was that only the heroic would be granted conveyance to the heavens/realm of the gods, while ordinary folks were still stuck in Sheol/Hades.

That sounds strikingly similar to the Scandinavian mythologies...So, nothing of "new age movement" here.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Thought I would add in some of my amazon reviews that I've been trying to write as soon as I complete a text so as to keep up with things.

*****************

This review is from: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Paperback)

By Walter Bauer

Be prepared for an icy blast of fresh air!, February 7, 2015
By Laura Knight-Jadczyk (France)
(REAL NAME)

This was a book that, for me, ended way too soon and did not encompass as many items as I would have liked. As one scholarly reviewer (Goguel) wrote, this work "has an importance out of proportion to the number of pages it contains... it offers more new conclusions and fruitful suggestions than many large books three or four times its size." I agree, though certainly I also can see that it COULD have included so much more on so many more items; but isn't that the main problem of any scholarly work: where do you start and where do you finish and what do you include between those two points that can reasonably be considered topical and comprehensible? Otherwise, you run the risk of endless digressions and discursive wandering that can only add confusion to a particular topic. This is where Bauer's critics fail: in their anxiousness to retain the privileged position of their texts and attributed authors, they completely miss the forest for the trees.

Bauer stood back and saw the forest, but he understood that he could in no way zoom in on EVERY little tree in order to portray the whole thing and, as he notes at the beginning, he HAS to be selective and use a few particular cases as merely examples of what could and should be done respecting the study of Christianity. That is, the critical attitude of the HISTORIAN needs to be brought to bear on the subject. I would add that Theologians and true believers probably should be excluded from the study of religious texts and religious history. It is simply too difficult for them to abstract themselves and their own hopes that it is all true, to be able to really get a grip on what is happening.

I noticed that Bauer mentions a couple of times (may have been in footnotes - yeah, I read footnotes and was happy to see them as such and NOT those irritating end notes so popular nowadays) that he was, himself, dismayed at his own conclusions. That is somewhat heartening because it is evidence that things emerged from his study rather than that he went into it with an agenda to prove and found only what he liked. He clearly was reading with his eyes and ears open and saw and heard things that were blazingly obvious to one grounded in normative historical analysis.

This is a terrific book, even if not "perfect". No dynamic, trail-blazing work can ever be perfect except in and of the fact that it IS seminal; often such works prove out in the end to be MORE accurate than those that follow and which try to expand, elaborate, "fix" the failings, etc. I think that Bauer's work will prove to be such.

This book is well-written enough for the lay-reader who is PREPARED for it. You can't just pick this one up and start reading and keep up with things if you don't have a good general knowledge of early religious writings and writers and the various controversies that surround them. But for the lay-reader hungry to get to the bottom of things, there are a few preparatory books you could read to get you stocked up with the names and works mentioned: First of all, Donald Harman Akenson's "Saint Paul", then Richard Pervo's "The Mystery of Acts". Then, Robert Price's "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man". Followed by Pervo's "Dating Acts" and then Joseph Tyson's "Marcion and Luke-Acts". Pervo also has a great book "The Making of Paul." I would also suggest F. C. Baur's "Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ", but that's a tough read because it was written in an archaic style in the 19th century. It CAN be done, but you have to be dedicated - and the rewards are worth it. Baur's work is as seminal and outstanding as Bauer's, the topic of the present review. And works in the last hundred years or so have shown Baur to be just as seminally correct as I believe Bauer will prove to be over the long haul.

One thing that I would like to see happen would be for those who study Judao-Christianity to just totally toss out the idea that ANYTHING said in these texts is historically true AT ALL. Then, read them as interesting literary works and study the adjacent historical works and search for any hints that this or that historical event MIGHT have inspired the literary creation. That is, instead of assuming that there was a "Jesus of Nazareth", try to think in terms that "Jesus of Nazareth" was a literary creation based on perhaps some events that may look very different when written about in a real history that purports to present facts that "happened". It seems to me that there is sufficient material to be found using this method to discover the many parts from which the Jesus legend was assembled and the "superhero" of myth was created. There are five or six characters written about by Josephus who could each have contributed a story, experience, characteristic of a literarily created Jesus to make the whole picture. In fact, there are events in the life of Josephus himself that appear in the gospels as "stories about Jesus." Then, there are scenes, pericopes, etc, in Homer that surprisingly appear in the gospels as well. (See the work of Dennis R. MacDonald on this - pretty much a slam-dunk expose of the literary character of the gospels if you ask me.) If one entirely excludes BELIEF in the truth of the Christian literature - which is necessary because of the type of writing it is - and just looks at it from the perspective of the historian who operates by more or less scientific principles, then a whole different picture can emerge.

Which leads to my last recommendation for anyone reading any of these types of works. Prepare yourself by reading REAL history. Read Livy, Dio Cassius, Tacitus, Pliny, the couple of historical writings of Philo, and definitely read ALL of Josephus (but with some care because Josephus sure had an agenda to hide his own connection to some of the strange goings on that may closely relate to the Jesus matter). It seems to me that there were no early "Jewish Christians" as such, but simply revolutionaries of various sorts - or freedom fighters, if you will. Nowadays they call them terrorists. There was NO separation between religion and politics among the ancient peoples, and this was doubly true for the Jews. Read Israel Knohl's fascinating study "Messiahs and Resurrection in the Gabriel Revelation" to learn that the deaths of rebels against Rome could very well have provided the model for the "risen Jesus" that was taken up by Paul and spun into a theology that enabled him to proselytize the Jewish god to the gentiles. It seems to me that the entire Jesus story was created using some theological concepts of the Dead Sea scrolls people (and Paul and Josephus certainly knew more than they let on about that!) and many little bits and pieces of the various rebels and "robbers" of Josephus. If that is the case, then there is no wonder that there was such a controversy between Paul and those early rebel leaders, Cephas and Yacov (Peter and James) who wanted Paul to collect money for their revolution. They probably also wanted him to engender support for their rebellion against Rome, and re-taking of Jerusalem for their God-King, and were horrified to discover that Paul was preaching a unifying god of peace and eschewing the Jewish law entirely. Thus, the origin of "heresy and orthodoxy".

But, this is not really the place to go into all of that though I think that such a beginning of "Christianity" goes a long way toward explaining why and how things were written up as they were AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul had done such a good job talking about his "Christ" that everyone wanted/needed to have a historical figure to focus on and thus, Jesus was created out of a patchwork of materials to hand.

Getting at the truth has to start somewhere and Christianity has been such a fraud for so long that Bauer has brought a literal blast of fresh air to blow out the stale miasma that has enshrouded the field for way too long.

Highly recommended with caveats described above.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Another:
*************

Dating Acts
by Richard I. Pervo
Edition: Paperback


5.0 out of 5 stars Landmark study, January 31, 2015


Slam dunk! Pervo's compiled a definitive, compelling, convincing study on Acts here that piles the evidence almost to heaven that it was the product of at least 3rd generation Christians, writing with an agenda, and not history at all! If there IS any history in there, it's so obscured by the agenda that it would be a labor of Hercules to extract it!

Back in the 19th century, a genius named Ferdinand Christian Baur proposed that Acts was written in the second century. Baur had a student named Matthias Schneckenburger who produced a detailed study of the parallels between Peter and Paul in Acts and concluded that there was a definite agenda and shaping of Acts. Paul is made to speak and act like Peter and Peter is made to speak and act like Paul. Baur proposed that the only reason he could see for this bizarre presentation was that the author/editor of Acts wanted to present a well-established mutual agreement among the early followers of Jesus and projected it back into the past. It could be said that Acts was the spin-doctoring of Paul and early Christianity; the obvious objective being to create a false picture of apostolic agreement on all things.

Having read Baur's compelling work, I am very glad to see that Pervo's work can be seen to support it. Now, perhaps, more young scholars will be willing to read Baur for the wonderful theological insights as well. Another scholar whose work deserves more attention is John Knox.

Drawing on the work of Morton Enslin, William Walker, Heikki Leppa, Lars Aejmelaus in addition to that mentioned above (and still others), Pervo develops a comprehensive argument for the use of Paul's letters in Acts and also the evidence for their influence on the gospel of Luke. This moves the date of composition to definitely after a collection of letters of Paul was circulated. He points out, logically, that if Luke omitted sections of Mark and creatively altered others, and then created episodes on his own, one shouldn't expect any other procedure to have been utilized in the writing of Acts.

One of the most interesting parts of this book is Pervo's connection of the Acts of the Apostles to the works of Josephus. If you doubt this, just read Josephus: clearly, the author of Acts knew almost nothing about the history of the time of Jesus and the apostles and relied almost entirely on Josephus for the historical elements that he scattered throughout the text to lead the unwary astray. And for 2000 years, Biblical readers and scholars have been under its spell.

What is sort of staggering to me is the naivete of most Biblical scholars who just can't believe that their beloved/believed texts can be/probably are, fraudulent right down to the foundations.

For the casual reader: this is a scholarly work and is tough going now and then. Best to have your dictionary and Bible to hand to cross-read. However, Pervo is courteous and translates his Greek quotes, so that was a relief!

Pervo's research is stellar, his arguments clear and decisive, and this book SHOULD completely change the dialogue on Biblical history.

Highly recommended though keep in mind, it is dense and scholarly.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus

Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus
by Donald H. Akenson
Edition: Paperback


5.0 out of 5 stars No milk, just meat!, January 31, 2015


Wow. Just wow. I just finished the book and thus far, after hundreds of books by all the experts on Jesus, New Testament, etc, that are widely touted these days, finally something that you can get your teeth into!

Akenson is a gifted writer and can be so funny as to make you laugh out loud, or so acute as to nearly draw tears. For example: "If Saul has it right, Yeshua of Nazareth was an ordinary religious man of the later Second Temple era: one who had only one truly distinguishing characteristic, but that one so intense as forever to defy direct description: an incandescent holiness that burned beyond his burial."

Not only is this book well and entertainingly written, Akenson writes for an intelligent lay audience, minimizing technical terms and eliminating long, drawn-out piling on of evidence. (Apparently, he's done that in another book, "Surpassing Wonder" that I think I'll have a go at.) His explanations of how secular historians work versus "believing" historians is revealing and much appreciated by this student of the classics. It drives me nuts that those who study the Bible and religious writings aren't held to the same standards of evidence that history requires. Thankfully, Akenson goes at the topic rigorously though I do think he gives a little too much credence to the Gospels as possible historical sources. They were probably written pretty much the way Acts was: with an agenda and complete freedom of composition.

Still, at the end, Akenson concludes that Jesus was indubitably a historical character and that one can only get something of an image of him by studying Paul. His exposition in this direction is really fascinating and convincing, done the way historical analysis ought to be done, too!

I highly recommend this book to anyone searching for the historical Jesus. So far, it's the best of the lot; meaty, satisfying, deep and wide.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

This review is from: The Making of Paul: Constructions of the Apostle in Early Christianity (Paperback)

Scholarly, but illuminating, January 26, 2015


I ordered this book after reading Pervo's "The Mystery of Acts" and was not disappointed. I will warn the reader that this one is quite a bit more dense and scholarly, but Pervo's humor nevertheless comes through frequently in illuminating ways.

This book will take you through the Pauline epistles and demonstrate what was probably going on in the social background that led to the original composition (by Paul or later authors), possible redactions and some interpolations. He shows how the figure of Paul was adjusted with each generation in an effort to keep Paul real and relevant. He also reveals some dire conflicts that were going on in the early "church" (if it can even be called that). I think it could be said, based on the evidence, that Paul pretty much created Christianity and his objectives were highly laudable. It's too bad that later officialdom in the form of a proto-orthodoxy felt the need to suppress or distort some of his ideas.

If you are really interested in the origins of Christianity, you'll want to read this book even if you are a non-scholar such as myself. With a dictionary to hand, you'll do fine! Highly recommended!

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle


by Joseph B. Tyson

5.0 out of 5 stars Stating the obvious, February 2, 2015


The book description and some of the other reviewers give a pretty good recap of the content of the book so I won't duplicate their efforts. Instead, I just want to make some comments from my own perspective, that of an amateur (but dedicated) student of the classics.

In my years of reading classics and commentary on classics, etc., I became accustomed to the more generally open way scholarship is handled in that field. The texts themselves, as they are received, are not privileged and, if the author is known, s/he is not privileged either. So it is quite disconcerting to me to engage in Biblical studies and learn that so many - if not most - of the "critics" are not - and have not been - CRITICAL at all. The belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, that the texts it contains are "the Word of God" still permeates the field and this is a huge barrier to coming to terms with, and understanding, our world and how we got where we are from where we were and what people believed then. So, in addition to the labor of adducing proofs of a particular point that the scholar wishes to make, he has to face down this "belief in scripture" paradigm and it obviously does NOT make the work easy.

Following the work of F. C. Baur (who was, in my opinion, a genius well ahead of his time), that of John Knox, Von Harnack and the work of Richard Pervo, who also follows on several more recent scholars positing a late date for Acts, Tyson contributes what is the obvious, logical, perspective on the creation of the books of Luke-Acts (and possibly ALL the gospels!). The arguments are lucid and convincing so if there are refutations from the "true believer" set, I give up on them as having any firing neurons. Maybe that is a little harsh, but really, this nonsense has gone on long enough. Baur said it, Knox said it, Pervo pretty much proved it, Tyson has explained it, so let's get on with the rest of it.

Tyson references the 'rest of it' obliquely: that maybe Marcion was right about Paul. And what would have happened if that view had prevailed instead of the stealing of the Jewish scriptures and their god and the declaring that the Jews were the bad guys not only for not worshiping their god properly, but for killing their prophets, in particular, Jesus?

Bart Ehrman accuses Marcion of being an anti-semite but that is clearly not the case. Marcion seems to have insisted that the Hebrew scriptures should be understood literally, historically and in their own context, i.e. in relation to Israel and their experiences and hopes, and Christianity ought to content itself with being a new revelation of a "higher god" so to say. Well, I don't necessarily agree with that, but perhaps, if that road had been taken, a lot better theology and exegesis would have eventually come out of the whole Christian enterprise than the silly efforts of Justin, Tertullian, Irenaeus and others. Perhaps there would have been an understanding eventually that the Jewish "creator god" was simply their version of the creator, and their version managed to get spiritualized sooner thanks to the efforts of Philo under the influence of Greek philosophy (which was another bad move).

Instead, "Luke's" efforts to hijack Israel's god necessitated not just claiming him/her/it for Christianity's own, but dispossessing the Jews of their "national heritage", so to say. Obviously, that wasn't very nice to begin with and worse, laid the foundations for anti-Semitism.

One might hope that this new view of the "defining struggle" between Marcion and the proto-orthodox Catholic church will lead to further thinking about the role of Paul as the REAL creator of the Christian vision and a re-examination of his fundamental theology which was/is utterly fascinating.

One thing is certain, a religion based on so many lies cannot bear good fruit... nor has it.

This book is suitable for the educated lay reader, particularly those interested in Christian origins.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Messiahs and Resurrection in 'The Gabriel Revelation' (The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library of Judaic Studies)

by Israel Knohl

5.0 out of 5 stars The real Jesus?, January 26, 2015


The discovery of the inscribed stone and its subsequent decipherment reveals the ideology of an apocalyptic-messianic group that belonged to the period of the death of Herod the great. This is a fascinating revelation that may have great import for the history of Christian origins and especially for Pauline theology. It seems to me that it is entirely possible that the individual who was referred to in this inscription was the prototypical "Jesus".

But, it is Knohl's explication of the theology of the inscription that is most fascinating. It seems that the shed blood of the martyrs of that time was seen as the catalyst for the coming of salvation. It was rather like the blood itself created a "stairway to or from heaven" in some sense, that not only allowed the cry of the Jewish people to attract the attention of their god, but created a pathway for the descent of that god and/or his agents to wreck vengeance upon the oppressors, i.e. the Romans, specifically Augustus AKA the Antichrist, the latter idea being one that Knohl develops.

To me, the idea of the "living blood" was the most fascinating because of the similarity of it to certain Greco-Roman philosophical ideas (Stoic, I believe) about comets being the conveyors of souls of heroes to the heavens or realm of the gods. One is also reminded of the verse in Genesis where God tells Cain "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground." A careful reading of the epistles of Paul reveals some of these rather esoteric ideas about the value of the shed blood of martyrs, mainly "Jesus".

Another interesting idea was that only the heroic would be granted conveyance to the heavens/realm of the gods, while ordinary folks were still stuck in Sheol/Hades.

Well, it's difficult to present the evidence and arguments of Knohl in a few paragraphs; just notice that the book itself is not terribly long, but is packed with data and implications the most significant of which is that this individual, killed at this early point in time, could very well have been the "real Jesus", and it was Paul, who encountered his followers later who took some of these concepts and transformed their Jesus/Joshua from a Messianic/deliverer of vengeance on Rome to a Messianic/reconciler/justifier of both Jews and "Greeks". In other words, Paul was a sort of John Lennon of his time preaching "All you need is Love...." That would have explained his early pharisaic hostility to the "Jerusalem ecclesia AKA political/religious sect" which was geared toward revolution while pharisees were notable Hellenizers. It would also explain the hostility of the Jerusalem sect toward Paul, evident in his epistles: they were extremely hostile because he "stole their messiah" and turned him into a wimp thus diminishing their efforts to build up a strong revolutionary spirit among the people so that when the right time came, they would strike. Well, Paul did concede to them that he would only preach to the Gentiles and leave the Jews alone, but his successes made the Jerusalem peeps a bit worried because the "good news" was filtering to the Jews also. Thus, there was a serious conflict between the Cephas/James/John party and Paul who eventually referred to these "apostles" as servants of the devil.

Anyway, a fascinating piece of the puzzle; highly recommended.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

The Mystery of Acts: Unraveling Its Story

by Richard I. Pervo


5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly, delightfuf and funny, January 26, 2015

This little book really turned me on to the work of Richard Pervo. I was so thankful to read that somebody else was seeing many of the things in Acts that I had been seeing: that it was just TOO good a story to be true. It was pretty clear that Acts was borrowing like crazy from the Old Testament, Greek epics, Josephus and more, creating a patchwork of dramatic scenarios that had nothing at all to do with the real life of the Apostle Paul.

What becomes clear from Pervo's analysis is that "Luke" (whoever the author really was) was not the least bit interested in writing a real history; the discrepancies between Acts and Paul's authentic letters are only the beginning! Still, as Pervo demonstrates a bit in this book, but even more in another of his works, is that the author had concerns for the survival of the church and was trying to address those concerns by "re-writing" the history of primitive Christianity. Some may suggest that maybe Christianity should not have survived, witness all the horrors committed in its name, but I don't agree. A lot of good came out of Christianity, too. However, it's long past time for Western civilization to address the myths that underpin its attitudes and ideas and coming to grips with the issue that Paul more or less created Christianity according to his own vision (literally or figuratively or both) and it's no more the "Word of God" than any other revelation then or since.

Thanks Richard I. Pervo for a great introduction to the problems that manages to be not just scholarly, but delightful and often funny at the same time.

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

It seems that mine is the ONLY review of Baur's great book and that is a shame. Anyway, some info about it followed by my review:

Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ: His Life and Works, His Epistles and Teachings
by Ferdinand Christian Baur

"One hundred and sixty years ago F. C. Baur posed, in inescapably sharp form, a question which has haunted Christianity throughout its history: is Christianity simply a form of Judaism, development from Judaism, or was it, as Baur argued, from the beginning something quite distinct, a religious spirit or consciousness which could not be or become itself until it broke through the limits and restrictions of its historical origins? Baur's radical answer set the agenda for the rest of the nineteenth century, and though neglected for most of the twentieth century, the question has reemerged with renewed force in a post Holocaust world." James D. G. Dunn, Emeritus Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, University of Durham

"It will be extremely helpful to New Testament critics to have F. C. Baur's influential work on Paul long out of print and often no longer even available on most theological library shelves conveniently at hand. Baur's application of Hegel's dialectical theories to the writings of Paul profoundly shaped the discourse of his mid-nineteenth century German contemporaries, including that of those who sought to challenge certain aspects of his interpretation. They did not escape the powerful force of his conceptualization of the world, including a deeply negative evaluation of the Oriental spirit (i.e., Judaism and Jewishness), which was central to his project. The legacy of these developments the so called Tübingen school has deeply influenced N.T. studies (and arguably world history) ever since, and continues to assert its influence on the interpretation of Paul's voice to this day, although often now in unrecognized ways. With the availability of this edition, that is about to change." Mark D. Nanos, author of The Galatians Debate, The Irony of Galatians, and The Mystery of Romans

My review:

A Tour-de-force!
By Laura Knight-Jadczyk on December 29, 2014

I understand Baur has been marginalized somewhat by scholarship since his time; that's a great pity because he definitely has much to offer and his ideas deserve a hearing in the modern day when the "search for Paul" has been re-invigorated.

This book is a stunning tour-de-force by a truly great thinker; the Paul scholars would do well to review this material again with an open mind.

One thing that Baur makes absolutely clear is that there were TWO highly charged, competing Christianities in the days of Paul and the Judaizers were aggressive and nasty. It also appears that Peter never went to Rome, and neither he nor Paul were martyred there. One suspects that Paul's missionary journey to Spain is the truth underneath the legends of St. Jacques de Compostela, also effaced by the later Judao-Christian camp who very much needed to steal the Jewish Jesus and his heritage to give themselves cachet.

Yes, this book was written a long time ago in a much more formal and tricky style, but it is well worth the effort to accustom oneself to the more complex sentences and somewhat different word use of that day for the many treasures contained in this marvelous work.

Highly, HIGHLY, recommended.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

It seems that mine is the ONLY review of Baur's great book and that is a shame.

There is a small review on the hardcover of the book (2003), which wasn't included with the paperback page for some reason:

www.amazon.com/Paul-Apostle-Jesus-Christ-Teachings/product-reviews/1565638999/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt

 

[Mike]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Laura, I'm really looking forward to see how you put all the pieces together when you write about it in full. Thanks for all the book reviews and information. I appreciate you weeding through all the research to provide the golden nuggets and passing them on, since speaking for myself with all the other books you and others have recommended on all the topics discussed on the forum I have a life time of reading to do. Thank you!

 

[Laura]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Laura, I'm really looking forward to see how you put all the pieces together when you write about it in full. Thanks for all the book reviews and information. I appreciate you weeding through all the research to provide the golden nuggets and passing them on, since speaking for myself with all the other books you and others have recommended on all the topics discussed on the forum I have a life time of reading to do. Thank you!

I'm thinking that some of you may be able to figure some of it out just from reading the hints in my reviews. I started with the most recent one first, though, so if you start with "The Mystery of Acts" and then read up, you'll see that the pieces began to come together.

I'll be putting a columnar chart together with bible stories in one column and snips from Josephus and other historical sources showing how probably everything in the gospels was taken from some other source and patched together.

The CLOSEST we get to any kind of original theology is with Paul and even his ideas were brewed in the ferment of the times. However, it does seem that he definitely had some visionary experiences and was perceiving something like 4D and its denizens. It was the spin he put on it that was interesting. Obviously, he interpreted things from his Jewish perspective and tried to understand it in the terms he had to hand, but still, what he did was amazing and brilliant.

The book by Knohl is excellent as is the one by Akenson in terms of giving a better idea of Paul's world.

I'm pretty sure that the Jesus character was modeled on Simon of Perea, Judas the Galilean, and a couple other minor players of the time. The over-arching model was, of course, Julius Caesar and it seems to me that Carotta is correct that the book of Mark was originally a sort of passion play in commemoration of Caesar's life. But more important were the ideas that began to spread around the Greco-Roman world during and after the life of Caesar. Obviously, the ideas of deification that grew up in Rome, were originally Greek, but the Romans gave them their own stamp. These ideas spread, along with Greek philosophy (which had a head start) to Alexandria and the East and were employed in all kinds of philosophical/metaphysical speculations and interpretations. Among the most interesting at the time were those of Philo of Alexandria and his Jewish take on things. Rather, it was a Greek influenced take on Judaism. His book on "The Contemplative Life" tells us a lot about the communities of uber-religious types in Israel and there you see much of what must have influenced the revolutionaries written about by Josephus. Well, as I said in my review, one man's revolutionary/terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Josephus remarks about Judas and Matthias and their "Fourth Philosophy" are probably the background for what was later interpreted as "Jewish Christianity" AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem. It was at that time that Mark was re-written with the Jewish Jesus superimposed on the tale.

Josephus own role in all of this could use some scrutiny because when he writes, he's busy as heck covering up with one hand while revealing with the other. Fortunately, back then, writing on scrolls made it a little difficult to review what you had written before and he made enough mistakes between one telling of some things and another to be able to catch some of these strange goings on.

The one thing that still remains rather obscure is WHY did all this emanate from Rome? Because it seems sure that it did which is what Bauer suggests, though he has no answer either. His critics pretend to have an answer, but theirs are just miasma.

But there was SOMETHING in Rome... and I'd like to get some clarity on that before I start writing. I don't think it is what Atwill suggests, a creation of the Flavians because it was too undermining to social stability. The "god of peace and unity" schtick came from Paul himself and it was a true revelation IMO.

But there was, from very, very early, a sort of drive emanating from the Roman church (which, I should emphasize, existed BEFORE PAUL WENT TO ROME, and I do NOT believe he wrote the book of Romans to Roman Jews), to establish monarchial bishops kind of like "divine right to rule" things. There is something truly strange there and that connection deserves the utmost attention and scrutiny.

Well, I've got a stack of books to get through, so best get back to it.

 

[Mountain Crown]

Re: Marcion, Paul, and early Christianity

Many thanks for posting these reviews, Laura.