Messiah and Apostle

An unorthodox account of the establishment
of the Christian "Son religion" in competition with
the Jewish "Father religion", and how it challenged
the might of Rome to become the creed of Europe.



SOURCE: Max Dimont, Jews, God and History
(New York: Simon and Schuster; Copyright © 1962 Max Dimont)

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WHEN CHRISTIANITY WAS BORN

100 B.C. to 600


Roman History Years Judeo-Christian History
Age of revolutions and coming of Caesarism. Rome master of known world. 100 B.C. to 1 A.D. Judah becomes a Roman province. Herod the Great made King of the Jews. Jesus Christ is born.
Age of Emperors Nero, Vespasian, Titus. Britain conquered. 1 to 100 Jesus crucified by Romans. Paul takes Jewish-Christian sect to pagans. Jerusalem destroyed. Pauline Epistles written. Gospels composed (70-120 )
Age of Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius. Internal economic and moral collapse. 100 to 200 Second and third Jewish uprisings against Rome. Roman persecutions of Christians increase. Schisms plague new Church.
Pressure on Rome's frontiers by Germanic tribes in North, and Parthians in East. Military dictatorships. Empire divided. 200 to 300 Jews become Roman citizens. Christian ranks raked by heresies. Christians branded subversives by Romans.
Emperor Constantine temporarily reunites empire. Age of Theodosius. Empire split permanently in two. First Vandal invasion. 300 to 400 Emperor Constantine recognizes Christians. Church Council of Nicaea held. New Testament canonized (395). First laws limiting rights of non-Christians.
Vandals, Goths, Huns pour across frontiers. Rome sacked. Barbarian kings seize throne of Rome. Feudal Age settles over Europe. 400 to 600 Church solidifies its position in the empire. Papacy established. Jews only non-Christian body left in sea of Christianity.


Throughout the centuries, Jews have accused Christians of calculated injustices of which they are innocent, and Christians have accused Jews of crimes of which they are not guilty. But what seems like planned prejudice or irreconcilable hostility could be only psychological astigmatism or a plain garden variety of human frailty afflicting both sides. Early Jewish-Christian relationships must be placed in a new frame of reference if we are to have a better understanding of them.

Who originated Christianity? Who spread it, and how was it able to become a dominant world religion? For centuries the opinion prevailed that the concepts of Christianity were totally the innovations of Jesus. Then, in 1947, an electrifying event occurred. Manuscripts dating back to 100 and 200 B.C. bearing a striking resemblance to the Christian creed were discovered. The so-called "Dead Sea Scrolls" had been found, and with them the mystery of the origin of early Christianity may have been solved.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls ranks as one of the greatest finds in archaeology, overshadowing in importance even Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy and the Mycenaean civilization. No fiction writer would have dared invent the circumstances under which the Scrolls were found. No great scholars or planned expeditions were involved. The discovery was made in the early spring of 1947, by a young Bedouin black marketeer named Muhammed the Wolf, at a time when he was stealthily crossing the Arabian-Palestine lines on his way to Bethlehem with a flock of contraband goats.

Palestine was in a crisis. The defunct League of Nations' Mandate over Palestine was about to end. The British who had administered that Mandate since World War I were preparing to leave the following spring, and the Arabs were threatening to invade the moment the British left. Practicing for invasion day, the Arabs were sniping at the Jews and the Jews were meeting fire with fire. As the British sided with the Arabs, the Jews sabotaged the British to hasten their departure. The British hanged the saboteurs and the Jews reciprocated by hanging British soldiers. Palestine was a proverbial powder keg.

These were the trying conditions under which Muhammed the Wolf had to earn a living. To reach the lucrative black market in Bethlehem where he could sell his flock of goats at a handsome profit to the Jews, Muhammed had to elude both Arab and British patrols. A native of the region, he took a little-known path along the desolate, hilly western shore of the Dead Sea. In pursuing a stray goat, Muhammed passed a strange cave and idly threw a stone into it. To his astonishment and fright he heard the sound of breaking pottery. He ran away but came back later with a friend engaged in the same profession, and together they explored the cave.

Inside the cave the two youths found tall clay jars, the kind Rachel might have used at the well when Jacob met her, or Zipporah might have used in tending her father's flock when Moses first saw her. Inside the jars Muhammed and his friend found scrolls of parchment with what turned out to be ancient Hebrew writing on them. They were Biblical and Essene religions manuscripts dating back to 100 and 200 B.C. The two young Bedouins had stumbled upon an Essene genizah, a storage house for religious manuscripts.

Eventually these scrolls found their way into the hands of competent Biblical scholars, who identified them as genuine Old Testament manuscripts and as hitherto unknown works of Essene writings. What astounded the scholars was the incredible resemblance of this Essene Judaism as revealed in these scrolls to early Christianity.

Among the many complete scrolls and fragments of Essene writings, the most important were those documents now entitled Manual of Discipline, Habakkuk Commentary, The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, and Zadokite Fragments. These manuscripts formed the heart of the Essene religious creed, and in these scrolls, many scholars now contend, are embedded the origins of early Christianity.

Briefly, the Essenes, whose political origins we have already explored, believed in a divinely sent messiah whom they called the "Teacher of Righteousness", and who had died a violent death at the hands of the Sons of Darkness. The followers of the Teacher of Righteousness called themselves the "elect of God" and their new religious community the "New Covenant". Members of the New Covenant were initiated through baptism. They had a protocol for seating which is almost identical to that of the Last Supper as described in the New Testament. The Manual of Discipline describes a ritual which could be mistaken for the Christian Communion. The many striking resemblances have best been summed up by A. Dupont-Sommer, a professor at the Sorbonne:
Everything in the Jewish New Covenant heralds and prepares the way for the Christian New Covenant. The Galilean Master, as He is presented to us in the writings of the New Testament, appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness. Like the latter, He preached penitence, poverty, humility, love of one's neighbor, chastity. Like him, He prescribed the observance of the Law of Moses, the whole Law, but the Law finished and perfected, thanks to His own revelations. Like him, He was the Elect and the Messiah of God, the Messiah Redeemer of the World. Like him, He pronounced judgment on Jerusalem, which was taken and destroyed by the Romans for having put Him to death. Like him, at the end of time, He will be the supreme judge. Like him, He founded a church whose adherents fervently awaited His glorious return. In the Christian Church, just as in the Essene Church, the essential rite is the sacred meal, whose ministers are the priests. Here and there, at the head of each community, there is the overseer, the "bishop". And the idea of both Churches is essentially that of unity, communion in love - even going so far as the sharing of common property.

All these similarities - and here I only touch upon the subject - taken together constitute a very impressive whole. The question at once arises, to which of the two sects, the Jewish or the Christian, does the priority belong? Which of the two was able to influence the other? The reply leaves no room for doubt. The Teacher of Righteousness died about 65-53 B.C.; Jesus the Nazarene died about 30 A.D. In every case in which the resemblance compels or invites us to think of a borrowing, this was on the part of Christianity. But on the other hand, the appearance of the faith in Jesus - the foundation of the New Church - can scarcely be explained without the real historic activity of a new Prophet, a new Messiah, who has rekindled the flame and concentrated on himself the adoration of men.
Up until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, only a handful of historians and scholars, among them Josephus, Philo, and the Roman scholar Pliny, had made any references to the Essenes and their religious observances; and few people paid any heed to them. In 1864 a British scholar with the unlikely name of Christian D. Ginsburg published a monograph entitled The Essenes: Their History and Doctrines, in which he intuitively asserted what the Dead Sea Scrolls prove. But this too was dismissed as the meaningless work of a foolish scholar who speculated about something for which he had no concrete evidence.

But with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the scholars were vindicated. Josephus, Philo, Pliny, Ginsburg - all had been right. "Christianity" had existed at least two hundred years before Jesus, its greatest and noblest spokesman, but not its originator.

Instead of a loud reverberation through Christian and Jewish institutions at this momentous discovery, there was nothing but silence. The Christians were not anxious to impute to Jewish rabbis the total origin of their religion, feeling it enough that Jesus was Jewish. Neither were the Jews anxious to assume credit for the complete authorship of Christianity, feeling they had contributed enough by providing the central figure in the Christian religion. Thus the Essene Dead Sea Scrolls have remained the property of little-known scholars who continue to write about this great discovery in esoteric magazines, or have become the playthings of popularizers who dilute their essential meaning with so many soothing clichés that their importance has been reduced to trivia.

In the troubled land of Judea, in the first century A.D., bleeding under Rome's tyrannical rule, many prophets, preachers, and holy men representing most of the twenty-four religious sects in the country at the time, went about proclaiming the coming of a messiah who would deliver the Jews from the evil of the Roman yoke. Each sect preached its own brand of salvation, but the most numerous of these itinerant prophets and preachers were the Essenes. History has shown us that the most important of them all was Jesus.

Jesus Christ is Greek for "Joshua the messiah", and the word "messiah" comes from the Hebrew word mashiah, meaning "one who is anointed", that is, a messiah. As scholars disagree about the dates of Christ's life, we will give only approximate ones. Depending, then, upon what authority is used, Jesus was born between 7 and 4 B.C. either in Bethlehem or Nazareth (Cecil John Cadoux, in The Life of Jesus Christ, makes a strong case for his belief that the birth of Jesus took place at Nazareth, not at Bethlehem. This is the view generally held by scholars today), during the reign of Herod the Great in Judea, and was crucified either in 30 or in 33 A.D. (astronomical evidence points to 33 A.D. rather than 30 A.D. All four Gospels agree the crucifixion of Jesus took place on a Friday, during the Feast of Passover, celebrated by the Jews on the fifteenth of Nisan, commencing on the evening when the full moon occurs. In 30 A.D., Passover was held on a Thursday, whereas in 33 A.D. it was held on a Friday, as the full moon occurred on those days). The Gospels according to Luke and Matthew trace his ancestry to the royal house of David, each through different and conflicting genealogies; the other two Gospels make no such mention. When Jesus was about twelve years old he was taken to Jerusalem, where he listened to learned rabbis discuss the Torah, but, as in the case of Moses, we know little else of his childhood and nothing about his early manhood. In the light of the findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seems likely that he spent that period in the Essene monastery so recently discovered in the very neighborhood in which the New Testament says he spent his youth.

After his visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve, Jesus disappears from the pages of the Gospels until he reappears somewhere between 28 and 30 A.D., at the age of thirty, at which time he is baptized by John the Baptist, so called because John taught, in accordance with the Essene creed, that men could cleanse their souls symbolically through "baptism", that is, through immersion in water. This was not an unorthodox or heretical notion among the Jews, who for centuries had practiced one another form of water purification ritual. John also proclaimed that he was the messenger of God, and that his mission was the ushering in the kingdom of God. Neither Pharisees nor Sadducees though this a blasphemous notion, because John was never brought to any trial by them. John was not put to death for any political or religious reasons, nor was he put to death by the Jews. John met his death at the hands of the Idumean king, Herod Antipas, appointed ruler of Galilee by the Romans, because he openly denounced the marriage of Antipas to his niece as illegal and incestuous.

Jesus' public life as a savior begins with his baptism. His ministry lasts but one year according to the Synoptic Gospels (the first three Gospels are "Synoptic" because the narratives parallel each other, which is not the case with the Gospel According to Saint John), and three years according to John, depending on how one interprets the reference to the number of Passovers mentioned in that Gospel.

Jesus took up the life of a teacher, preaching his own gospel. There was nothing different or un-Jewish in his teachings. He was a liberal; he was against all injustice, in the tradition of the Prophets. He taught the observance of the Mosaic law, compassion for the poor, mercy, and tolerance. He spoke in a soft voice and with a loving heart. He was an inspiring teacher who expressed himself in crystal-clear parables. His messages went straight to the hearts of his listeners. He was an oasis of comfort in a desert of Roman misery. The humble people flocked to him to take solace in his words, to find comfort in his vision, and to take heart in the hope he held out. Nothing he preached, taught, or said was in contradiction to what other Jewish prophets, rabbis, or sects said or taught. Jesus was not in danger from the Jews. He was in danger from the Romans, for it was no longer safe to teach justice in a land ruled by terror. Judea was sitting on the powder keg of incipient rebellion, and the roman cure was to seize all suspects and flay them alive or crucify them head down.

In the year 33 A.D. Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims who had come from every part of the world to celebrate the Feast of Passover. Excitement ran high. A rebellion in the provinces had just been quelled. Rumors of another rebellion were rife. People were talking about a new messiah who had arrived in the city on the colt of an ass, in the manner Jewish legend prophesied. To the Romans this talk about a messiah spelled trouble. These messiahs could inflame the people with words quicker than a torch could set fire to paper. Any small incident might incite the Jews to another rebellion. The procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, left his mistress in Caesarea, the administrative capital, to come to Jerusalem. He brought his legionnaires with him, ringing the city with steel.

The messiah the people were talking about was Jesus. This was the political atmosphere into which he stepped when he made his decision to come to Jerusalem. This was the time he had chosen to reveal publicly that he was the messiah. His destination was the Temple. His aim was the reform of some of its practices. From a political viewpoint, he had chosen the worst possible time to hasten Temple reforms.

The events which follow are shrouded in obscurity. They are viewed with hindsight by New Testament readers, who are baffled by what to them seems like blindness on the part of the Jews for not accepting immediately the Temple reforms which Jesus wanted to institute. That is how it may seem today, but not in Jerusalem in the year 33 A.D. What New Testament readers forget is that on the day Jesus entered Jerusalem no one, with the possible exception of a few of his closest disciples, knew that he was the messiah, because at this point Jesus had not as yet revealed it. This he did not do until later, after the incident at the Temple. Just exactly at what point Jesus revealed who he was is hard to say, as all four Gospels are contradictory at this point. But when Jesus entered Jerusalem his adherents had no knowledge that he was, or would soon declare himself, the messiah. How could it then be expected that the people in Jerusalem, who had never heard of him, would know what his followers themselves did not know?

Another point which New Testament readers forget, or are not aware of, is that it as the Prophets who began the reformation of the Temple cult, eight hundred years before Jesus. In the days of Jesus there existed, side by side, tow Judaisms, one the Judaism of temple and sacrifice, the other the Judaism of synagogue and prayer, just as two Christianities exist side by side today, one Catholic, the other Protestant. Jesus, then, was not the first reformer of the Temple cult. When he appeared on the scene, the reforms instituted by the Prophets were already doing away with the entire Temple cult itself. In this dying Temple cult, Jesus aimed to do away with two practices, the selling of sacrificial animals and the handling of money on Temple grounds.

It was a long-established custom in those days to sell sacrificial doves and pigeons outside the Temple, just as it is the custom to sell candles and crosses inside churches and cathedrals today. As Jewish pilgrims came from many lands to offer their sacrifices in the Temple, it was also a custom for vendors to make change from one currency to another as a service to these pilgrims. Some Sunday-school textbooks hint that there was gambling involved, and understandable elaboration, but this theory is not supported by any of the four Gospels. Jesus objected, not to the making of change, but to the handling of money on Temple grounds, just as he might object to the custom of handling money inside churches and cathedrals today when collection plates or baskets are passed to worshipers (this custom, incidentally, does not exist among Jews, who do not allow the handling of money inside their temples or synagogues. They either pay annual dues or make pledges to pay certain sums toward the support of their religious institutions).

When Jesus arrived at the Temple, smashing the tables of the vendors and driving the money-changes down the Temple stairs, those Jews who wanted these services were as outraged as Christians would be today if someone were to storm into their churches during Easter services smash the candles and crosses offered for sale, and drive the gentlemen passing the collection plates down the church steps. Does anyone doubt that such an intruder would be arrested at the orders of the priest or minister? Yet the Jews did not arrest Jesus at this time. They wanted no trouble with the Romans and hoped the incident would be forgotten.

But this hope was not to be realized. News of the commotion in the Temple tensed the Romans. Was this the event that would set off a riot? An uprising? A rebellion? Responsible Jewish citizens, fully aware of the danger of the slaughter, rapine, and torture which would take place if the Roman legions were unleashed, might have felt that Jesus should be restrained until after Passover, until the excitement had died, until the legionnaires had departed and the semi-siege lifted. Cautiously they waited to see what would happen. The adherents of Jesus were now for the first time beginning to speak of him openly as "king of the Jews" and as "the messiah", further arousing the suspicions of the Romans. The Jews, according to the Gospels, arrested Jesus on the third day after his appearance at the Temple.

Twelve eventful hours in the history of mankind now took place. The only accounts we have of the twelve hours which followed the arrest of Jesus are contained in the four Gospels, which were written forty to ninety years after the event itself. Their many contradictions aside, the Gospel accounts say essentially this: Jesus was arrested at night by orders of the Sanhedrin, the highest court in the land, and condemned to death by the Sanhedrin for the crime of blasphemy, or religious corruption, at the palace of the High Priest with the aid of suborned witnesses. The Gospel versions then go on to relate that Pontius Pilate, who had to approve the sentence, did so most reluctantly because he was afraid of the Jewish multitude.

Anyone familiar with Jewish judicial procedure in Biblical times will find it difficult to take the Gospel accounts literally. According to Jewish law at that time, no one could be arrested at night. It was illegal to hold court proceedings after sundown on the eve or the day of the Sabbath or a festival. The Great Sanhedrin could convene only in the Chamber of Hewn Stones, never in the palace of a High Priest or in any other dwelling. Nor could the Sanhedrin initiate an arrest. No one could be tried before the Sanhedrin unless two witnesses had first sworn out charges against him. As there was no prosecuting attorney, the accusing witnesses had to state the nature of the offense to the court in the presence of the accused, who had the right to call witnesses in his own behalf. The court then examined and cross-examined the accused, the accusers, and the defense witnesses. The Talmud, in fact, decreed that even as a condemned man was led to his place of execution, a herald had to precede him crying out to all: "So and so, the son of so and so, is going forth to be executed because he has committed such and such an offense, and so and so are his [accusing] witnesses. Whoever knows anything in his favor, let him come and state it." (The Talmud, Sanhedrin, Mishna 43 a.) These facts make it very unlikely that a Jewish High Court would defy every law in its own code and act contrary to time-honored custom. Such action by the august body of the Sanhedrin is as inconceivable as the United States Supreme Court's seizing a man at night, searching for "witnesses" during the night to accuse him of a crime, condemn him to death without a trial, and clamor for immediate execution - all within the space of twelve hours (as one wit expressed it: "Some Christian scholars do not believe Jesus existed, but they are all convinced that the Jews killed him").

A historian familiar with the cruelty and rapacity of Pontius Pilate will find it equally difficult to accept the portrayal of Pilate as a tender and merciful judge, zealous for the welfare of one Jew. In fact, Pilate's cruelty and rapacity became so notorious that the Emperor Tiberius had to remove him because he brought dishonor to Rome. It demands too much credulity to think that this Pontius Pilate, a Roman general in command of many legions surrounding the city, was cowed by a Jewish "multitude" armed with nothing more fearful than phylacteries (small amulets wrapped around one arm during prayer).

Does it not seem more probable that Jesus was arrested by the Jews to protect him from the Romans (who never had any compunction about crucifying one Jew more or less), that this protective arrest was to no avail, and that the Romans demanded that the Jews turn Jesus over to them for punishment? There is evidence in the Gospels themselves for such a theory. According to the Gospels, it was the Roman soldiers who scourged and tortured the body of Jesus. It took Roman fiendishness, not Jewish compassion, to press a crown of thorns on his head, and to hang the mocking sign, "King of the Jews", on his body.

We cannot but be touched by the poignancy of Christ's agony, when he turned his eyes heavenward and uttered the now familiar cry, Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani" - My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? (it could be that Jesus was praying in the traditional Jewish manner, for the words come from the Old Testament, Psalm 22:2. The psalms of course use the Hebrew word "asavtani", whereas Jesus uses the Aramaic equivalent "sabachtani" [Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34]). The Gospels themselves relate that it was the Jewish multitude that wept at the scene of his crucifixion, not the Romans. The Romans were busy playing dice for his mantle. All the internal evidence points to a Roman atrocity, not a miscarriage of Jewish justice. Jews never in their history crucified anybody, nor ever demanded crucifixion for anyone. In fact the Jews came out in the defense of the Christians, as evidenced in the New Testament itself. Acts 5:34-39 states that the Pharisee Rabbi Rabban Gamaliel openly opposed the Roman persecutions of the Christians. Josephus mentions that when James, the brother of Jesus, was executed by the Romans, it was none other than the Pharisees who risked their lives by protesting this wanton killing.

With Jesus dead, Christianity seemed doomed. It was saved by the Jewish doctrine of resurrection. Jews throughout Judea were familiar with the idea of resurrection after death, and freely speculated about the hereafter. We find innumerable references to this in the apocryphal writings of the Pharisees and in the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Essenes, written at least a century before the time of Jesus. We should, therefore, not be surprised to read in the Gospels that on the Sunday following the crucifixion of Jesus some women went to his tomb to pray and found the stone in front of it rolled away and the tomb itself empty. One of the women had a vision of Jesus. Two disciples had that same vision (this is a composite of the four Gospel accounts, since ach Gospel tells part of the story only and the separate accounts contradict one another in a number of details). News of this miracle quickly spread among the dispirited remnants of the followers of Jesus. All were convinced that he had risen from the dead. Not only Jesus, but Christianity had been resurrected.



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