John Deere

Hi Walt:

I posted this reply to your questions on the CM website;


Unbeliever,

I do not know who created the non-canonical Gospels, or why.

I presume that the 100 and the 133 CE Jewish rebellions both spawned from the same source as the 66 CE rebellion - a uncomprimising messianic movement that would not allow itself to be absorbed into the Roman Empire. It is interesting that in the 100 CE rebellion the Jews attacked the Roman temples. This may have been a response to the fact that the false Judaism was being taught in them, though this is speculation.

I believe that the 153 'large fish' caught in John 21 are indeed part of the Roman typological satire. I did not include this piece in Caesar's Messiah because the humor is extremely complex and I felt that I had enough to defend as it is.

The joke operates as follows.

In Matt 17 Jesus is asked to pay the temple tax. He then asks Peter if the "kings of the earth" take tribute from their children or from strangers, implying that the 'children of God' do not need to pay tax to their 'father'. He then instructs Peter to, nevertheless, 'cast a hook' and take a gold coin out of the 'fish' he catches to pay the tax.

As "fish' represent men in the Gospels in is not hard to see that Matt 17 links to the passage in Josephus' Wars of the Jews that describes the catching of Jews who hid gold coins in their bellies but were then slit open after they are captured trying to escape Jerusalem. Thus, Matt 17 is actually (like the rest of the Gospels) a prophetic satire describing how the paying of the temple tax will be done by the catching of Jewish 'fish' with coins inside them.

This then sets up John 21 - the conclusion of the Gospels - with Josephus' descrïption of Masada - the conclusion of the war. At Masada, 960 rebels try to hold off the Roman besiegers. All are killed save 7, who, as I show in Caesar's Messiah, are the begining of the 'Christian' dynasty.

In the passage in Wars of the Jews immediately before the descrïption of Masada - 7,6,6 - Titus, who has conquered Judea, states that the temple tax must now be paid to him by Jews, "wheresoever they were".

So the puzzle is this: How did the Jews at Masada pay their tax?

The answer is by the 153 fish in John 21. Here the puzzle becomes subtle and is a good example of the deeper level of satire in the Gospels I left out of Caesar's Messiah. To recognize that the 153 fish are the method by which the defenders at Masda paid their tax to Titus, one must recognize that the seven "Christians' who survived do not need to pay the tax because, as Jesus said, the 'children of the King' - Titus - do not need to pay the tax. Thus the number of fish needed to pay the tax the defenfers of Msada 'owed' would seem to be 953 - 960 minus the seven 'Christians'.

But it would be too obvious to have the disciples haul up 953 fish at the conclusion of John, hoi pollio might spot it, so the authors required another step be taken. In the paragraph that Titus demanded the tax, Josephus noted that Titus did not found any city in Judea but he did "assign a place" for 800 of his soldiers at Emmaus, the city the disciples are walking to at the conclusion of Luke. Since Titus in the paragraph in which demands the Temple Tax places all of 'Judea for sale', by giving spaces to his '800 children' Titus has, in effect, already received 800 'payments', and the Jews thereby only owe him 153 units of tax. This is then covered by the catching of the 153 fish in John 2i - who have gold coins in their bellies like those described in Matt 17.

I think you can see why I left this bit out of the book.

Those guys had some time on their hands.

Joe

John Deere

Walt:

Here's the Martha reference:

http://olivetree.com/cgi-bin/EnglishBible.htm

Unbeliever

I've never before been able to interact with an author concerning a book, especially one I consider as potentially important as CM.

You weren't kidding about it being complex; but I figured there was more to it than meets the eye, since you said that there was nothing inadvertant in the NT.

Thanks for the link!

I have some more questions, but I don't want to pester you any more right now, so I'll post them tomorrow.


Walt

S.C.Carlson

People have wondered about that for centuries. I don't think a convincing explanation has been discovered.

Johnny Skeptic

Well, if the message was directed at the Jews, there are not any good reasons to believe that very many of them accepted it. There is no historical evidence that a good percentage of Christians in the 1st century were Jews, even in Palestine. If there had been a good percentage of Christian Jews in the 1st century, what happened to them in the 2nd century?

GakuseiDon

I've read that 153 is supposedly part of a ratio attributed to Pythagoras, which is known as "the measure of the fish". See these links:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc...ica_piscis.htm
http://www.pilgrimchurchredding.org/...%204-25-04.htm

Whether it is true or not, I'm not sure, but it is interesting.

GakuseiDon

According to Wikipedia Encyclopedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Christians
The history recorded further in the book of Acts shows all converts to Christianity to have been Jewish prior to the discussion of the conversion of the Roman officer Cornelius by Peter in Acts 10. The only division within the Church at that time was between Hellenistic and non-Hellenistic Jews (Acts 6). However, after the conversion of Cornelius and his acceptance as a Christian, there was now another group — Gentile Christians. Much of the early controversy in the Church was over the issue of whether Gentiles could enter the Church directly or ought to first convert to Judaism. Note that this controversy was fought largely between opposing groups of Christians who were themselves ethnically Jewish.

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaize
The influence of the Judaizers in the church diminished significantly after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Jewish-Christian community at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans during the Great Jewish Revolt. However, Christian groups following Jewish practices did not vanish immediately; though most had been suppressed as heretical by the 5th century

John Deere

Johnny Skeptic and Gakuseidon,

In my opinion, the effort to convert Jews to the pro-Roman messiah cult was a failure as shown by the subsequent mass Jewish rebellions against the empire. Further, if the Gospels are fiction, sadly, we are not going to get very far in terms of learning about the actual process by which Christianity transitioned from a Jewish to a Gentile religion by studying Acts and the Letters as they, therefore, must be fiction as well.

However, it is possible that the Flavians had a broader hope for their religion from its onset.

The early British historian Bede recorded:

“In the year of our Lord’s Incarnation 156, Marcus Antoninus Verus, fourteenth from Augustus, became Emperor jointly with his brother Aurelius Commodus. During their reign, and while the holy Eleutherus ruled the Roman Church, Lucius, a British king, sent him a letter, asking to be made a Christian by his direction. This pious request was quickly granted, and the Britons received the Faith and held it peacefully in all its purity and fullness until the time of the Emperor Diocletian."

Lucius conversion to Christianity is interesting in that Momouth - the other ancient British historian - tells us that his father grew up in the Flavian court in Rome.

“From his early childhood this Coilus had been brought up in Rome. He had learnt the ways of the Romans and had conceived the greatest possible liking for them. He paid their tribute without even attempting to argue about it, for he realised that the whole world was subject to them and their power was great than that of individual countries or any one province. He therefore paid what was demanded and was left to rule in peace over his possessions�

All this is found in Blakely's excellent paper at:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/FLAV2.htm

(That link incidentaly is from Cliff Carrinton's website. If you haven't visited it I hope you will. CLiff also suspects the Flavians as having created Christainity. He reached this conclusion through a straightfoward analysis of early histories and his research may be of interest to you.)

Britain at this time was referred to as Flavian Britain as Vespasian and Titus had conquered it before Nero sent them to Judea and Vespasian left his most loyal legions in charge of the place when he departed. It is possible that Lucius's conversion to Christainity was an attempt to begin to use the 'power of the messiah' on hoi pollio throughout the empire.

This would then explain the numerous traditions that St. Helena was from British royalty. She would have come from the family the Flavians had maintained in power in Britain and used to implement the family's cult. It also explains how Helena knew where Peter died and the 'true cross' was buried etc. She knew where everything had happened because she knew the real history of the religion's origins.

Her son Constantine, who it must be remembered was a Flavian, then carried on with the process started in Britain by ordering the cult as the state religion.

All of this suggests, at least to me, that the Flavians may have designed the religion from the outset with the idea of using it to create the same blind subserviance to 'God' and authority that they saw existed within the followers of the Messiah in Judea. They certainly didn't introduce the religion into Britain because of any problems with Jews.


I have discovered quite a lot of interesting tidbits within this vein and will be presenting them in a book I am writing with John Hudson.


Interesting eh?


Joe

andrewcriddle

a/ Geoffrey of Monmouth is not a historical source in the normal meaning of the term.

b/ Bede is probably directly or indirectly the original source for all British claims about the conversion of the British King Lucius to Christianity. (The relation of the Welsh Triads to Bede is unclear but there does not seem to be any strong chronological problem in making them ultimately dependant on Bede for their account of Lucius.)

c/ Bede's source is probably an acount of the Popes compiled in the 6th century in Latin on the basis of an earlier 4th century catalogue. This account added to the pontificate of Eleutherus 'Hic accepit epistolam a Lucio Britanniae Rege ut Christianus efficeretur per ejus mandatum'

d/ There was almost certainly no historical British King Lucius in the 2nd century. The origin of this story seems to be a tradition about the conversion to Christianity of King Abgar VIII 177-212 (AKA Lucius Aelius Septimius Megas Abgarus VIII).

Abgar was of course King of Edessa not Britain however Edessa was frequently referred to as the citadel of Edessa 'Britio Edessenorum' There appears to have been a confusion in the Latin tradition between Britio/Britium and Britain.

Andrew Criddle

John Deere

Andrew Criddle

Thank you so much for your response. It well summarizes the current understanding of Bede and Monmuth - that their works cannot be trusted as history as many of the events and personas they depict are not coorborated by other early historians. As Blakeley wrote at the begining of his paper:

"Both of these great men’s works are simple treated as non factual Medieval wishful thinking written to justify their own stand on the pressing issues of their time."

This is not to say their histories can be disproved, of course. Which is why you used such cautious language in presenting your understanding of them - "probably", "probably", almost certainly", and "appears".

However, as Blakeley also pointed out:

"...because most writers have passed over the works of these two Historians the small clues they offer about the early development of Christianity in the British Isles have not been fully explored. The clues which are embedded in their sometimes hard to believe narratives have simple been ignored. These clues have never, to my knowledge, been isolated and rigorously examined. Nor have they been compared to those histories written by the Roman writes that have subsequently formed the foundation of Western history such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, and later Eusebius."

When I began my reveiw of Blakeley's paper this was the first claim I attempted to verify. To my surprise I found that he was correct. There was no "rigorous" examination of Bede's and Monmuth's claims as they linked to 'known' history. (If you are aware of any I would appreciate it if you would cite them)

Blakeley then goes on and shows that far from being "fanciful" the events Bede and Monmuth cite pertaining to "early development of Christianity in the British Isles" track almost perfectly into the history that has been handed by the Roman scholars. As I noted in the post above Blakeley's paper can be veiwed online at:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/FLAV2.htm

Moreover, the traditions Bede and Monmuth cite concerning a Flavian connection to the development of an early Christain community are part of a larger pattern, one that has also not been much scrutinized by scholars. For example, as I noted in Caesar's Messiah the Acts of Nereus and Achillus a non-canonical Gospel from the fourth ot fifth century states that the Pope who was the successor to Peter - Clement the first - was Titus's nephew or grandnephew. This particular claim cannot be dimissed out of hand as it is coorborated by extant evidence. The first Christain catacomb in Rome is shown by existing insciptions to have been founded by Flavia Domittila - Titus's sister or niece - who indeed was the mother of a Christian named "Clement".

There are many such traditions. Too many. Cliff Carrington has done a brillant job of bringing together the early Christain legends that link to the Flavians. You can read his findings on his web site at:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/EXTRAS3.htm

Finally, in my biased opinion, the analyis presented in Caesar's Messiah showing that the Flavians indeed produced the Gospels, provides a new foundation for scrutinizing the numerous traditions connectioning the Flavian court to the early Christain communities. If the analysis in Caesar's Messiah becomes the dominant paradign regarding the origin of Christainity, as I suspect it will shortly, then much of what we view as history is about to change.