THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD
I would like to tell you the greatest story ever told but there's a problem - the pages on which this narrative was originally written has another story in its place. Why did it disappear? That is a story in itself, one which will necessarily weave its way through the introduction to our "revelation of truth." I have to convince you that the account I am about to give you about the real saviour of the human race is the truer than the one you received from your ancestors. Why? Because that is the essence of the "greatest story" - that one man managed to convince the age that he was the messiah, the annointed one from God and make them believe in his power to save them. It happened at least once and maybe it will happen again.
So I tell you that this great story no longer exists for us to pick up and read as we would a newspaper or a copy of the European Bible. Does this mean that what I am about to tell you never happened? Before the discoveries at Qumran and Nag Hammadi would anyone believe that these cultures existed? Indeed has anyone ever managed to properly explain who or what kind of community originally produced the stories which are on these papyrus scrolls? So why is it anyone should become suspicious of the claims another great story is lurking out there in a cave or some abandoned archaeological site? Maybe we are just making you aware of something which will get discovered accidentally at some future date.
Whatever the case maybe our twofold tale is very simple - I can prove that someone other than Jesus was the awaited messiah of
For Jesus Christ the savior of the human race is the white man's gift to the world. He send missionaries around the globe to convince people to its magnificence. However there is a paradox here which I can't believe hasn't been picked up before. The truth is that "Jesus Christ" only inspires one small part of the planet - those who believe in the divine inspiration of the very same white people who go out as "ambassadors of Christ." The Semitic man remains unconvinced of the sacredness of this account. Why doesn't he believe? Why can't the white man convince his "Middle Eastern brother" of the truthfulness of the claims of Jesus Christ? Why doesn't he even try?
Could it be because the Semitic man recognizes the official story of the European Church for what it really is - the great white hope. A story which can only make sense if you are outside the Middle East, a stranger to the house of Shem, someone alienated by blood from the family of Israel. Have you ever walked into a house where everyone is connected to a sense of belonging except for you? What do you do? You invent a story makes you feel at home. If you are strong enough, and the people lack the means of kick you out you can take possession of the gathering place. You can even redefine the rules of belonging. This is the story of the white man's relationship to Christ - the forcible appropriation of alien property.
Indeed I see this appropriation as nothing less than intellectual property theft. The messiah is a cultural invention of the Jewish people no less than champagne belongs to the French. In exactly the same manner as we see Germany was forced to return stolen booty to nations and individuals it plundered during its reign of terror I believe that Europe must give up its claims to what is certainly the greatest flower of Jewish culture. We Jews have no great works of art, no paintings or beautiful songs. Our legacy is more than religion - it is the messiah. The hope that God himself cared so much about us that he would appoint one to save us from our enemies.
To be sure the hero cult exists in every culture but the Jewish invention of the meshiach is very different. It understands that Christ is something or someone who ushers in a whole new age when we will no longer be subject people having to endure living in places that are not our own and tolerating the forcible appropriation of our culture by enemies claiming to be friends. My friends, I put before you that as long as Jesus Christ stands as the figure head of western civilization this culture cannot help but stand for the forcible plunder of the Middle East. It is not something which America has done, or Great Britain but our collective legacy from the very day of the Roman Empire and the Crusades.
In order to believe in the a western Church from Roman Catholic to Southern Baptist you have to accept on some level that God "chose" the European (i.e. and not the typically vague identification of "the Gentiles"). Of course everyone has the right to think themselves "chosen" but for God's sake do it with your own people's culture! If you want to prove the superiority of the white man to his Middle Eastern cousins do it through Odin and Thor and not through Jesus. For all that you prove by these means is your ancestors superiority at warfare. By these means even Hitler would have been justified if only he had won on the battlefield of idea.
I put before you that our greatest minds know better than this. Europeans from the time of Nietzsche have recognized the essential falseness of the Christian claims to having improved upon Judaism. Most Christians don't even know what halakhah is let alone making a coherent argument for their religion "made better" what came before it. Nietzsche wanted to create a spiritualized Dionysus worship for his "good European" contemporaries. He knew that this and only this would rescue his culture from spiritual bankruptcy. One cannot live on the avails of a criminal act forever.
Indeed all I ask my readership is to be honest as they read this book. If we know that our surviving gospels are not the "one gospel" of the original Christian community, nor our church the assembly of the first Hebrew converts how can we go on pretending? Our truths have been "white-washed" and those who believe in such things must necessarily accept the custodianship of the white man over holy scripture. Let me say it clearly one last time for all to absorb before moving on to investigation - Christianity as it has come to us was little more than a vehicle for the white man to support his control over the world. It really is that simple. It all comes down to the fact that if "Jesus" didn't want to play ball with Caesar the latter wouldn't have allowed him to flourish in his domain in the first place.
The European had no sign to offer his subjugated war captives to signal the superiority of his culture - so he stole the dominant Middle Eastern religion of the day. The Semites were masterfully superstitious. The Jews made irrational fear seem perfectly rational and even enlightened. And so, over the course of a four hundred year relationship between master and slave, European and Jew, Roman Catholic Christianity became adopted as the state religion of the Empire.
Christianity should be seen as little more than a safe form of messianic Judaism where the hope for the coming of a flesh and blood messiah has been entirely displaced by emphasizing an appearance of glory which will never come. This is why Caesar forcibly encouraged it. Christ will never appear in a chariot from the clouds. God must necessarily "updated" his wheels don't you think? The truth is that for a while the original messianic tradition of the Middle East was the greatest single threat to the security and integrity of the Empire. In due course it was overcome by offering its leaders secuirity and the promise of tacit state support.
And what did Caesar ask in return? We have already made that clear - Christianity gave up its belief in its real messiah, the man who stood at the heart of its tradition for almost its first one hundred years. Did everone simply give up the faith? No, most certainly but relentless Roman persecution and "assistance" from willing collaborators within the Church soon took care of this problem. By the end of the second century A.D. the original message of Christianity had effectively been overcome.
And what was this "original message"? We already touched upon that in our introduction. The original Christ of Christianity wasn't Jesus - he was "another," he was someone else. What was his name? His name was Mark, Marcus Julius Agrippa to be exact. The guy that wrote the first gospel, the guys whose house in Jerusalem was the first church, the guy who first established a Christian orthodoxy, who find made a "new testament" which was seperate from that of Judaism before him.
To state it succinctly Mark was the Mohammed before Mohammed. He was secretly trying to establish a religion to unite the people of the
70 A.D. represents the proper "dividing line" between "old" and "new" covenants, the end of Judaism and the beginning of Christianity yet no one - and I mean no one - ever seems to want to recognize this fact. Marcus Julius Agrippa was instrumental in the event which made this date so important - viz. the destruction of the temple. I can even demonstrate that he was declared the messiah because of it not merely among those whom we might like to call "Christians" but even in the mainstream "Judaism" of the day.
As such when I say that the original messiah, apostle and paraclete Mark was a Mohammed before Mohammed I don't mean of course that he wrote what is now called the Koran or promulgated doctrines specific to Islam a half millenium before their actual invention. What I am suggesting is that the gospel was Mark's original creation and it occupied a parallel position in his community to that which we see in Moses' before him and Mohammed after him.
This lost original "Markan" Christianity stands in a continuum with the original Moses revelation which bears striking similarities to earliest Islam. Indeed there has to be a reason why the Mohammedian formula so easily took root in the very lands of Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia where were the home of the "people of Jesus." The cultures were ready for this new "perfect revelation" because they were similar enough to something which had taken root in its soil and was violently transplanted almost a half century before. It was if the very earth cried out for its return.
Thus I will argue that the "perfect revelation" of Mark was enough "like" that of Mohammed that it seemed as if it never really went away. The occupation of the white man had been endured for almost six hundred years but in the course of the greater scheme of human history it was only a "blip" on the cosmic radar. The "religious paradigm" which was firs established by Mark and only existed in the darkness of the collective unconscious of that region could be argued to have been finally and completely fulfilled by the coming of Mohammed. It is only the white man who refuses to see matters in this way - he has to remain blind - or else he will endanger the secureness of his hold over his phantom messiah.
I am not a Muslim of course but neither am I Christian or even a practicing Jew. I am someone who has wrestled with the proper way to see the "historical Jesus" and you know what I came up with? The earliest records indicate that he was wholly divine - the Son God - who came to earth to announce another as messiah. So why should I stand in the way of that? Do I do a disservice to God if I identify him in this way? I certainly don't think so. The office of the messiah is for Him something of a "demotion."
The truth is my friends that I say by way of conclusion here that the European understanding of "Jesus Christ" is a deliberate inversion of the original formula of Markan Christianity putting the pathetic, meek and ultimately "safe" figure of Jesus in the place of the very "appointed one" of God. Of course no one seems to ask themselves why don't Jesus' people believe in this nonesense? Indeed it is certainly is noteworthy that both Jews and Muslims can't agree on much, but on this one thing they are in complete accord. They both know from oral traditions which go back to the very days of Christ that Jesus was not the awaited one of Moses, the "prophet like him" who was to usher in the messianic age.
I will say one more time that it can't be an accident that all the people who deny this come from a culture which is necessarily connected to the father of the Hebrews by blood no less than the people who believe in this Jesus as their messiah take inspiration from the culture of robbers. For let us be clear - all this nonesense about "peace" and "meekness" is not the true essence of the messiah. It was only put there by someone trying to stamp out the original messianic impulse - viz. the hope for a Semitic king to crush the heads of the white man - from spreading beyond the borders of the Middle East.
So it is that we should see that the white man was already in control of the world when he effectively castrated the original messianic Judaism. His plundering of the original hope of Christ from its native Palestinian soil was intended at first only as a means of robbing the Semitic man of the cause for which he was all too willing to die for - the messiah. The numerous ancient and modern insurrections against
I can only add that we can be certain is that there is a good reason why the Semitic man won't accept our God, our Christ and our religion. How can you steal something from someone and then attempting to sell it back to him and wonder why he doesn't say thank you? In the same way my friends don't expect that a sudden explosion of success for European missionaries in the Middle East. They simply know better. They know who we are better than we ourselves do. Maybe we should listen ...
THE "CHRIST HEIST"
I am amazed when white people speak of a "Jewish conspiracy" operating in the world. What? Is it just assumed by Caucasians that God himself decreed that they alone have the authority to determining the agenda of the world? Indeed the clearest sign that Jews have no real clout in the Euro-centric body politic of the world since 133 A.D. is that they could say these things even if they wanted to. The ideas that I am promulgating in this work are locked away in the great texts of Jewish literature - the Mishnah, the Talmud, the writings of leading luminaries like Rashi, Maimonides and Nachmanides among others. They are things Jews have wanted to say but could not because of a secret cabal against them and their true tradition which has been active ever since they were banned from setting foot in their homeland.
Indeed the only outward sign which could express their plight is the way they utter the name "Jesus" under their breath whenever things get unbearable. Yeshu - that means one thing - tsuris! Yet how did it get this way? How did the idea of the messiah become something which is so dreadful to the Jews that one of their greatest luminaries would declare "[the messiah] let him come but let me not see him!" Above all else over the course of this work I want the reader to become aware of things he may not have considered and consider things he never even knew existed.
We begin with race and group identification. The faithful Christian thinks his Church has none simply because he hugs, kisses and shakes hands with people of all different skin colours for a minute at the end of his Sunday service. Here is a Church without ethnic identification, they say to themselves. To be certain this ideal is put forward but it should not be believed to be true. For the truth of the matter is that as robber culture the white man has no claim to anything in his tradition. His highest hope is for a "divine stalemate" where God demands nothing from us other than our mere belief. There is no religious culture here. Church and state are entirely seperate here. There is no "way of life," "no walking in God," no halakhah. The sanctity of the person as seperate from God - i.e. "individualism" - is preserved as his religious credo.
This my friends, is the furthest thing from the Semitic religious experience. It has more to do with Greek philosophy and Protagoras dictum that "man is the measure of all things" than it does with God. Yet for the white man the true experience of Semitic religious form is his mortal enemy, the greatest threat to his culture. We unconsciously take part in this European halakhah, this individualistic way of life, every time we think of ourselves and our needs and put them before what is decreed for us by divine commandment.
I know this sounds rather stern and sombre but it is something which cannot be gotten around except through the deliberate subversion of the original consciousness. This war has been taking place for over two thousand years. It is like the waves pounding the wall put up to prevent the sea from coming to land. It is a clash of civilizations which goes on to this very day. On the one hand the culture where the individual is everything and on the other where he is nothing.
Of course what survives as Judaism to this day only preserves this understanding outwardly i.e. by the absurd attire, eating habits and ritual prayer imposed upon the most orthodox. Yet we can be certain that it at one time went much deeper. It went to the heart of his very soul and the relationship he had with his family, his community and those around him. The ancient Jew was more like the most radical elements of Islam that he might care to realize. Indeed in early antiquity the ancients marvelled at the Jewish propensity for "acts of martyrdom." Aristotle mentions it when Greeks first encountered Jews with the conquest of Alexander the reader of Josephus and Justus similarly shuddered at the "lunatics" their soldiers had to wage war against in the first Jewish revolt c. 66 - 70 A.D.
It is only from almost two millenia of contact with the individualistic culture of Europe that this instinct was softened. Indeed it is perpetuated by the silly belief (in no small way encouraged by the leaders of contemporary religious orthodoxy) that Jews and Judaism were 'all ways like this." No my friends, they were not always like this. They only became this way from contact with a foreign culture which forcibly smothered them in what they claimed was a "more enlightened form" of the beliefs of their fathers.
One of our most comprehensive accounts of the Jewish religious form before its consitution by the white man comes in a fragmentary form. The original writings of Celsus of Rome are now entirely lost but they survive in extensive citations of his work the True Account in the Church Father Origen (c. early third century A.D.). Celsus wrote just after the last great attempt of Jews to rid themselves of Roman rule and his impressions of Jewish religious life should taken as a witness to "what Judaism used to be" rather than anything related to the forms of the religion as we now know it to be.
Celsus argues that the Law inspired Jews to a heightened frenzy for the messiah which rendered them irrational. The same ideas could be heard in the writings of a Roman historian from a previous Jewish revolt some seventy years before Celsus. Tacitus describes the Jews as "[w]retches of the most abandoned kind" who seek only to "swell the Jewish exchequer ... increasing their wealth [through] their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards brother Jews." Tacitus accuses contemporary Jewry of "confronting the rest of the world with the hatred reserved for enemies." This is not only because "[t]hey will not feed or intermarry with gentiles" or because they merely want to "avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race" but because they sought nothing short of taking over the world.
This same charge can be heard from Isidore of Alexandria made directly against Marcus Julius Agrippa the man I will argue was the real messiah of the Jews. Tacitus argues that:
[t]hey have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Proselytes to Jewry adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods [of other people], shed all feelings of patriotism [to their country], and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable. However, the Jews see to it that their numbers increase ... and they think that eternal life is granted to those who die in battle or execution - hence their eagerness to have children, and their contempt for death.
Where did all these "Jewish values" go? Where the big families? (Indeed the abstention from sex with foreign women is particularly intruiging!) Yet most interesting is the notion of the Jewish para-suicidal saheed.
Did the Jewish orthodoxy just decide on its own that it no longer wanted to "rule the world" or was this imposed on them from without? Was it free will or determined by an unyielding adversary - i.e. Rome? I am certain that I can demonstrate that the Jewish religion as we now have it was deliberately subverted because of the discovery of the incredible cunning of one man - Marcus Julius Agrippa. He managed to fool the Romans into allowing him to set up himself as the messiah as a means of controlling the messianic impulse of his people. The Emperor of the day, Vespasian, likely gave in for many reasons but notin the least because of the incessant pleading of his young hot head son Titus.
You see Titus was madly in love with Mark's sister, Berenice. She is universally described by writers in antiquity as being one of the most beautiful women of her time. The besmitten son of the Emperor would do or say just about anything to make her happy. Can anyone doubt that her brother benefited from this relationship? After the destruction of the Jewish temple titus was granted a kind of authority to help his father govern this part of the Empire which had recently revolted. The gestation period for establishing something new to replace the old worship in the temple took place over the next decade before Titus himself assumed the crown of Emperor. Can anyone seriously doubt that it was in this age related to these circumstances that Christianity and its first written text "the gospel of Mark" was first established?
When you start thinking about it Judaism knows nothing about a "Father" and "Son" religion but as Atwill points out any cult of the Emperor in the Middle East at that time would necessarily have had to recognize this filial relationship. Was Marcus Julius Agrippa presenting to the world one kind of religious face while disguising another to members of his "assembly of love?" At least one dissenter can be identified.
About twenty years before these events when trouble was brewing between Jews and Gentiles in Alexandria a leading citizen of the city named Isidore was brought before the Emperor on charges of leading a pogrom against its Jewish residents. We don't know the whole of Isidorus' defence of his actions but one statement shines through from the fragments. The pagan points his finger at a twenty-something year old Marcus Julius Agrippa and declares:
'My lord Caesar, what do you care for a twopenny-halfpenny Jew like Agrippa?... I accuse them of wishing to stir up the entire world... They are not of the same nature as the Alexandrians, but live rather after the fashion of the Egyptian... I am neither a slave nor a girl-musician's son but gymnasiarch of the glorious city of
The Alexandrian either witnessed firsthand or heard reports of members of his citizenry waving palm branches and to screams of "Lord!" when Mark came to the city under the cover of night a decade before. He knew what he was talking about. Mark had inherited the ambition of becoming ruler of the world from his mother and he would attempt to do so in an entirely subterreanian manner.
One day when the underlying ideas of this book sink into the consciousness of our age we will understand what words such as those of the Christian apostle mean when he exclaims:
we declare a secret understanding of God, an understanding which has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before the age began.None of the rulers of this world understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Who gave the order to crucify Jesus? Does the apostle here mean the Jews or the Roman authorities who carried out the act? Who can be best be described as "rulers of the world"? Can the apostle really only mean here "angelic powers" or is there as Bloom has already noted something of an an underlying anti-Roman agenda to such statements.
We should never forget my friends that we are dealing with a secret cult here at the beginning of Christianity and as they say "where these's smoke there's fire." For why keep something hidden if you have nothing to hide. Ancient Christianity was an underground religion at the time because it didn't want to be exposed. And what was it up to? The pagan writer Celsus makes clear when he concludes a lengthy section against the tradition by noting thatwhen they declare that “it is impossible to serve many masters” in their gospel this should be seen as “the language of sedition, and is only used by those who separate themselves and stand aloof from all human society. Those who speak in this way ascribe, their own feelings and passions to God … indeed he who, when speaking of God, asserts that there is only one who may be called Lord, speaks impiously, for he divides the kingdom of God, and raises a sedition therein, implying that there are separate factions in the divine kingdom, and that there exists one who is his enemy [i.e. the ruler of the world].”
Over and over again Celsus warns his reader that the messianic veneration of Jesus is just an outward expression of a secret inner doctrine to take over the world. He speak of the cult as little more than an organized conspiracy of the Son against the "ruler of the world" - i.e. Caesar. At one point he links the tradition directly to the recent bar Kochba revolt which left the Jews without a homeland saying:
You surely do not say that if the Romans were, in compliance with your wish, to neglect their customary duties to gods and men, and were to worship the Most High, or whatever you please to call him, that he will come down and fight for them, so that they shall need no other help than his. For this same God, as yourselves say, promised of old this and much more to those who served him, and see in what way he has helped them and you! They, in place of being masters of the whole world, are left with not so much as a patch of ground or a home; and as for you, if any of you transgresses even in secret, he is sought out and punished with death.
Celsus witnesses the kind of sever repression which existed in the Antonine period against the underlying messianic tradition and the committed efforts of the Emperor to transform the tradition. However he also issues a warning against the prudence of such an effort.
"Surely it is intolerable for you to say," he writes "that if our present rulers, on embracing your opinions, are taken by the enemy, you will still be able to persuade those who rule after them; and after these have been taken you will persuade their successors and so on, until at length, when all who have yielded to your persuasion have been taken some prudent ruler shall arise, with a foresight of what is impending, and he will destroy you all utterly before he himself perishes." This indeed is a most prophetic proclamation by the pagan witness. The Roman Empire was indeed overcome but not by the specific form of Christianity which Celsus first witnessed.
This was now another religion. One thoroughly transformed by exposure to western "values" and moreover the underlying need to maintain the "Roman peace" i.e. a stable environment to conduct business unencumbered by overt religious interference. Would Celsus have really thought with historical hindsight that Christ triumphed over Caesar or was the reverse true? Did we end up with what Nietzsche identified as "Christ with the heart of Caesar"? Was Judaism any different? Is all that we end up with through parallel reforms of their tradition little more than a Jewish religious form which is thoroughly "white-washed"? I will let you be the judges.
At first it might seem like the most ridiculous of arguments. Jesus was not originally identified as just a spirit of peace and kindness. Perhaps, Celsus the ancient pagan eyewitness from 140 A.D. wasn't just "making up" stuff when he intimates that "our Lord" might have represented the "impulse" or "spirit" for revolution among many later and lost Jewish revolutionary groups. Yet this is exactly what he argues in many places of his lost work A True Logos but scholars refuse to listen. They write it off as a desperate attempt of Celsus to discredit the nascent messianic movement. Taking inspiration from the Church Father Origen who passes these fragmentary "bits" of the information they close the book on Celsus and essentially argue that because the pagan had no way to ridicule the "pure doctrine" of Christ he made up silly arguments like this to "discredit" the movement.
Yet I must ask - does someone wanting to ridicule Christianity have to stoop to these lengths in order to make his point? Aren't there enough legitimate weaknesses to pick on to achieve the same end? The more we look at what survives of Celsus in the testimony of Origen the more this "one anomaly" leads to the discovery of countless others. Christianity wasn't originally a unified message; there wasn't one dominant tradition. Some said that Jesus was a man others that he was wholly divine. Some wanted their followers to adhere to Judaism others that it was the start of something wholly new and better.
Indeed even Origen notices the fact that his Church isn't even mentioned in the treatise. This becomes proof for the Church Father that Celsus again couldn't find any fault with its doctrine. Yet this false pretence gives way to complete frustration at other critical junctures when it becomes apparent that the pagan spends far too much time dealing with Marcionitism - the tradition Harnack identifies as the earliest form of Christian orthodoxy but which later became dismissed as "heresy" with advent of Roman Catholicism.
What if Marqionitism could be demonstrated to be connected with earlier lost forms of Judaism which were centrally fixed on the hope for the coming of a royal messiah? Indeed most people who study the tradition come away with several clear impressions from what is reported about "Marqion" i.e. little Mark in the writings of the Church Fathers. Marqion taught that Jesus wasn't the Christ, that Jesus was really "only" an angel, the Son of God, who came to herald "another" who was the expected son of David. Indeed the writings of the Church Fathers hint that Marqion himself claimed to be the Christ, paraclete, and apostle of the new tradition.
What I am getting at of course is that if Marqionitism represented "another form" of lost Christianity maybe it was related to "another form" of Judaism which no longer exists which supported its claims. Maybe the Marqionite interest in a royal messiah who was actually believed to have appeared in the period between the first and second great Jewish revolts finds parallels in similar Jewish sectarian groups from the period (i.e. 70 - 140 A.D.).
In order to make confirm this suspicion we must confront the fact that almost nothing survives of any substance from the age. It is as if someone erased the information from the historical memory banks of Judaism, Christianity and Samaritanism and "rebooted" with the coming of the Emperor Antoninus. Our last glimmer of something from that era is the knowledge that some great military catastrophe occured near the end of the reign of the previous Emperor Hadrian which permantly changed Judaism. This "something" was called the "bar Kochba revolt," this event being named after the man who was the insurrection's leader.
The Roman triumph in Palestine at the end of this revolt however is one of the most obscure chapters in the history of the Jewish people. Of course scholars like to act as if they know what went on merely because they project what should be there - i.e. what and how they think Jewish and Romans should be fighting over. Indeed as with most things in this age which preceded the coming of Antoninus, there is an incredible lack of information which can't be explained other than by saying that the leaders of the newly authenticated "religious orthodoxies" didn't want what came before them to get out to their followers.
For I will argue again and again that whatever lay behind the gate which divided what happened before 138 A.D. (the beginning of the reign of Antoninus) and that which came after it was something which we weren't supposed to know ever existed. I call it the "historical blackhole" established by taking all the writings and all the witnesses to what already transpired and either throwing them to the fire or making them agree to acknowledge something different.
We can of course get a general sense of what was "originally there." It must be admitted that there was certainly an Imperially decreed restriction and persecution against Jews to who wished to continue in the original practice of the Law of Moses. It cannot be denied that at the same time there was certainly another standard of orthodoxy reigning supreme in the land of Israel. All of the small glimpses we get of the period confirm this. Where the ruler of this world declared that subsequent to 140 A.D. the house of Hillel would be the dominant Jewish religious party evidence points to the reverse trend in the period before - i.e. members of Shammai being in a position to persecute their Pharisaic opponents. Indeed it is also an age whereit is reported that thanks to Shammai two Torahs existed in the land of Israel (Tosefta Ḥag. 2.9 [MS Vienna] and parallels).
We should feel same from this and other reports that the underlying characteristic of "above ground Judaism" - i.e. those traditions which could show their faces in public - were closer to what would later be defined as heresy. A figure identified as "Elisha ben Abuyah" is such a dominant figure in the pre-140 A.D. period that despite countless reports of his rejection of the Law, his riding on horseback on the Sabbath and ignoring previous standards of orthodoxy, we find that in the post-140 A.D. period his devoted students incorporate his legal decisions into canon of the new orthodoxy.
The question of course is how could someone like Elisha ben Abuyah have been so towering a figure in the age without his opinions representing the "old orthodoxy." If this "other" theology (i.e. one focused on "another Law" beside that of Moses and "another god" other than that of the Creator) reigned supreme before Antonine how can we continue to pretend that the bar Khochba revolt was an expression of what we would know define as normative Judaism? I would prefer to view the revolt as a watershed mark representing the passing away of the "other" doctrine.
What was close to their heart in fact was a new Jerusalem called Bethar - i.e. after - which has never even been located by archaeologists. It was this city which was the heart of the insurgency and the "Jerusalem" which reports tell us the victorious general Hadrian plowed over with hundreds of oxen. It is also only one of many problematic details which scholars typically gloss over when they give their overview of the make up of the insurgency.
Another puzzling thing about this bar Kochba revolt is that it wasn't specifically a Jewish revolt. This is very significant as it challenges the "unquestioned assumption" that the rebels were fighting on behalf of a religious ideal which we can now identify. The identifiable groups involved in the revolt would seem impossible to agree on anything let alone the planning of a campaign against Rome with Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, neighbouring Semitic people fighting side by side in one apparently united cause. Who or what could have produced this kind of unity among these previously communities which had been palpably hostile toward one another for centuries?
Indeed it is clear moreover that the leaders of the "Jewish side" - viz. Simon and Akiva - weren't even Jews by blood. They were proselytes - i.e. coming from the large body of converts established over the previous two hundred years among neighboring Semitic peoples. Some Jewish sages declare moreover that bar Khochba was himself a descendant of Marcus Agrippa. In fact the surviving letters from Simon may even indicate that his actual relationship with Agrippa was much closer. Perhaps Marcus was somehow "with" the field commanders in the battlefield.
We read in a surviving revolutionary correspondance from the age written in Greek that one military commander tells another "I have sent to you Agrippa, make haste to send me shafts and citrons, and furnish them for the Citron-celebration [Feast of Tabernacles] of the Jews: and do not do otherwise." This reference in fact opens up a whole other can of worms. Why I must ask if this is a revolutionary movement within Judaism, why are "Jews" and things "related" to the Judaism referred to in a manner that it doesn't apply to the two people corresponding with one another?
Even though Jews and Samaritans traditionally hated one another the rebellion seemed to involve large numbers of Samaritans fighting it alongside Jews. As difficult as this is to imagine the idea put forward by scholars that the revolutionaries were somehow fighting for the cause of Jerusalem is certainly even more ridiculous. Samaritans reviled Jerusalem. They couldn't refer to it in more disparaging language. Yet then we remember - Jerusalem wasn't even involved in most of the fighting.
Indeed when we read that there were minted coins with slogans such as "The freedom of Israel" we must also keep in mind that "Israel" is a relatively generic concept which would certainly have meant different things to different communities in Palestine. Indeed the only thing which would remain consistent through would be that every Hebrew sects considered itself to be the "true Israel" against all claimants.
So the question we are immediately left with is - what in the world was holding them all together? A mutual hatred of Rome? Perhaps. But the accusations found in some rabbinic tradition that it was a Samaritan who conspired with Rome to bring down the fortified walls of Bethar point to the breaking down of whatever it was that was holding them together by the end of the revolt.
Indeed I suspect that what was behind the revolt was Marcus Julius Agrippa. Yes indeed this was the same king who triumphed on the side of Rome to effectively destroy Jerusalem and its temple. But as I have said many times this second war was not about Jerusalem. In my mind the bar Khochba was clearly the culmination of seventy years of development within messianic tradition which necessarily broguht the formerly disparate Jews, Samaritans and proselytes all under one roof.
What stands in the way of us seeing this is the consistent cry of Catholic Christians which denies that the community had any involvement in the fighting against Rome. Of course their weren't Catholics fighting alongside bar Kochba - this Christian tradition wasn't even invented yet! Yet the issue of whether other believers in Jesus were in the trenches alongside non-believers is still an open question. To be certain some Church Fathers claim that Christians suffered greatly at the hands of the Jewish rebels. However these reports can in no way be verified and actually contradict what Celsus seems to report and indeed direct testimony from the period also.
There are in fact letters from the hand of "Shimeon ben Kosiba to Yeshua ben Galgula and the people of Ha-Baruk" which come from the war itself which contradict this assertion. Simon it appears wanted to prevent any of the people under him from harming Christians as we read him declare "I call heaven to witness against me that if any of the Galileans who are with you is mistreated I shall put irons on your feet as I did to Ben-‘Aphlul." "Galileanism" was the established identity of Christianity before the reforms of Antoninus. Indeed writers in his age still used the term to identify the sect. So what were these "Galileans" doing being with a revolutionary "commander in the field" like Jesus ben Galgula? And why was Simon so intent on protecting them if they were fighting for the cause of Judaism as later apologists claim.
His name "son of the star" infers that he was claiming to be divine. Eusebius knows of a tradition which describes him as "a bloodthirsty bandit who on the strength of his name, as if he had slaves to deal with, paraded himself as a luminary come down from heaven to shine upon their misery." Jewish tradition speaks of him as having superhuman strength being able to throw whole boulders from the walls of the rebel city of Bethar. And then there is the supernatural association which is inferred between Simon, his soldiers and the angel Jesus.
We read in one letter Simon declares to his hearers that "[m]y order is that whatever Elisha tells you, do to him and help him and those with him." This in itself this hardly a compelling piece of evidence to prove that "Jesus" was in among the soldiers. One might quite reasonably suppose that "Elisha" is just the name of a person or a general in the revolutionary movement. Of course Elisha is also another way of saying Jesus - i.e. "the god of salvation" el + yesha. And then there is a most puzzling story which appears not once but twice in the Talmud which tells of an angelic Elisha being somehow involved in a struggle against Rome.
Let us begin by noting the source for the story. A school associated with a certain "Jannai" whom we will come back to time and time again throughout the course of our investigation is understood to make a connection between tefillin and this figure of the "Jesus-angel." We will explain what telfillin are and indeed aren't necessarily in a moment. For now we read that in one version of the story that:
Jannai said: Tefillin demand a pure body, like Elisha-the-man-of-the-wings. What does this mean? ... why is he called 'the man-of-the-wings'? Because the wicked State once proclaimed a decree against Israel that whoever donned tefillin should have his brains pierced through; yet Elisha put them on and went out into the streets. A quaestor saw him: he fled before him, and the latter gave pursuit. As he overtook him, he [Elisha] removed them from his head and held them in his hand, 'What is that in your hand?' he demanded, 'The wings of a dove,' was his reply. He stretched out his hand and the wings of a dove were found therein. Hence he is called 'Elisha-the-man-of-the-wings.'
There can be no question in anyone's mind that this "Elisha" was not a historical person. He was some kind of angelic figure who could change his form and even fly. Yet why does the tradition of "Jannai" associate him not only with magic but with a struggle against the Romans what at least appear to be "religious phylacteries"?
Let us first establish for our non-Jewish readers what "tefillin" are. According to the surviving rabbinic tradition they are identified as two small black boxes with black straps attached to them; Jewish men are required to place one box on their head and tie the other one on their arm each weekday morning to conform to the commandment of Deut 6:5-8. The text that is inserted inside the two boxes of Tefillin is hand-written by a scribe, and consists of the four sets of biblical verses in which Tefillin are commanded (Exodus 13:1-10, 11-16, Deuteronomy 6:49, 11:13-21).
Now before we go any futher we should also note that only the Pharisees took the original commandment in this absurdly literal way. The older more established traditions - i.e. Sadducees, Samaritans, even the surviving Karaites did not believe that Moses was saying that one was supposed to look so ridiculous physically "binding these instructions" on their person and "impressing them upon their children" and literally "binding them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a frontlet between your eyes." The development of actually physically attaching the words from Exodus and Deuteronomy seem more a product of a vulgar belief in magic and superstition than any real adherence to the meaning of the text.
The word telfillin derives its origin from petition or prayer and the idea specifically appear in the commandment just cited i.e. i.e. "recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up." The older tradition understands that Moses is commanding the community to have the words of the Lord through prayer and petition "bound on their hands" and "between their eyes." And what does one typically pray and make petition for? Clearly the object is a "miracle" or "wonder" - i.e. pele - which let us not forget was personified as an angelic being in Jewish tradition. In fact the early Church Fathers including Eusebius repeatedly identify Jesus as the angel Pele who led the Israelites out of Egypt in their writings on the subject.
So what am I getting at? While the tradition of Jannai does indeed identify Elisha/Jesus "the man of wings" as being some how connected with the tepelim we must be careful to point out that these are not "real phylacteries." They are wings of a magical dove which create a "wonder" or pele - viz. after being chased by the Roman soldiers Jesus/Elisha flies away in the form of a dove. We shall touch upon the significance of the dove in the contemporary culture (and especially Marqion's and indeed other "heretical group's" understanding of Jesus as the dove who came down on someone else at the Jordan) momentarily what is most significant right now is to see that this angelic being in the shape of a yonah (dove) is clearly connected with the "twin" of Israel.
Jannai continues here by saying that the yonah of Jesus/Elisha is somehow connected with Israel viz. "the Congregation of Israel is likened to a dove ... just as a dove is protected by its wings, so with the Israelites, their precepts protect them." Elsewhere Jannai argues that the dove is the twin of Israel who like Jesus in Christian theology "shares the suffering" of the pain of the community viz.
What is particularly intruiging is the possibility that the "Jesus-god" here may well have communed with the insurgents and indeed inspired them to revolt just as Celsus earlier claimed. Josephus in fact identifies a "Jesus" as the leader of the revolt in many places in Galilee especially the capital city of Tiberias. Similarly there is a wealth of literature which strangely associates the tefillin as not only the "strength" by which the revolutionaries were sustained but indeed paradoxically the ultimate reason why they lost the war against the Romans. In order for us to establish that the tefillin have always been connected with warfare in the Jewish tradition we need only cite a few early sources such as:
If one speaks after donning Tefillin on the arm, but before completing the Mitzvah by donning a second Tefillin on the forehead, it is considered a sin. One has sinned in such a manner may not join ranks of the Jewish army [as he will not be promised divine protection]. (Sotah 44b)
Not one of the warriors [who fought against Midyan] wore their forehead-Tefillin before their arm-Tefillin. Had they done so, Moshe would not have praised them and they would not have all returned home safely. (Midrash Shir HaShirim Rabba to verse 4:4)
It is through keeping the Mitzvah of Tefillin [on the arm and the forehead] properly that Hashem grants the Jewish armies the blessing of Moses, "He shall smite the enemy's arms and foreheads" (Devarim 33;20 -- Rashi: They would sever the head and arm of the enemy with one blow). (Rosh, Hilchot Tefillin sec. 15; see also Kol Eliyahu, #132)
Of course if we imagine how the men inspired by Samaritan and Sadducean beliefs would have interpreted these passages we must come to the conclusion that they must have understood that prayer and petition somehow resulted in "assistance" from the divine angel of the presence (viz. Pele) as we hear intimated in various Qumran texts.
For those who don't believe that their Jesus "the prince of peace" could have been used in such a manner I will remind my readers time and time again to go back to what is the original Christian understanding of the second coming. Yes it is true that Jesus is understood to have appeared in 33 A.D. as an embodiment of meekness even "mercy." However it is equally clear from the writings of the earliest Church Fathers that in his "second manifestation" he will embody something different - i.e. that of judgment or righteousness. As such in every age after the "first coming" believers were expected to await his appearance as a royal power, a mighty potentate like David or Moses.
Indeed the silly idea that this "next apparition" would necessarily have the supposed physical appearance of the "long haired, bearded Jesus" is equally fallacious. The second coming would have Christ appear as anyone or anything. In fact if we go back to Marqionitism, the earliest known form of Christian orthodoxy (even if it was deemed heretical by later Church Fathers), Jesus is emphasized as having been a divine hypostasis, an angel - even God the Son - but having no humanity whatsoever (i.e. no corporeal flesh, no material being).
It is also important to remember that Marqionite influence was reaching its zenith in the very period where the bar Kochba rebellion occured (i.e. the rule of Hadrian). As such it is difficult for me to dismiss the idea that the "Jesus god" associated in the rabbinic literature with tellefin was somehow connected with the "phantom Jesus" of this early Christianity. Indeed not only does Marqion divide the godhead along familiar rabbinic understanding of "mercy" and "righteousness" but even in terms of the "first" and "second" advent of Jesus respectively.
We will have more on this later but for the moment I need only remind the reader of the manner in which Christian soldiers or even athletes use the sign of the cross to "go into battle." The understanding here is that the cross is the living embodiment of the protective divine name. It is understood to "hover" or indeed "hang" over the body of the person in a very similar manner to how we must envision the tefellin must been understood to work among the Pharisees or indeed pele among the Sadducees and Samaritans.
God [i.e. ha Shem] too wears Tefillin.... What is written on the parchment enclosed in the Creator's Tefillin? "Who is like Your nation, Israel, a unique nation on earth! (I Divrei Hayamim 17:21)".... Hashem says, "You, Israel, have proclaimed Me unique, as it is written, 'Hear O Israel, Hashem is our Lord, Hashem is One (Devarim 6:4),' I too shall proclaim you unique, as it is written, 'Who is like Your nation Israel, a unique nation on earth!' " (Berachot 6a)
Of course we all know that the writer cannot mean that his God is literally "a man who wears tefillin." Anthropomorphism is explicitly forbidden in normative Judaism. However we can be certain that what is being expressed here is an understanding of the relationship between Israel and the phylacteries which is connected back to God and his angel of the presence.
Indeed just as Christianity understand its "firstborn" Jesus to rest on the person of its divinity (John 1:18) the rabbinic tradition reports that God has tefellin here. One may suspect from various Qumran texts that original "angel of the presence" was Sariel - i.e. the angel who strengthens. This because the tefillin simlarly "stengthens the weak arm" Menachot 37a) or again:
Where do we find that Tefillin are the strength of Israel? The verse states, "All the nations of the land will see that Hashem's name is upon you and they will fear you (Devarim 28:10)." ... When? When they see the Tefillin that is on our heads. (Gemara Chullin 89a)The tefillin then should be seen as an outgrowth of the original understanding of felat [prayer, petitioning] and the angel of presence [variously identified as Pele or Sariel].
Indeed when we go back to the specific issue the hypostasis Jesus/Elisha and his "miraculous" being which can assist in "being saved" from the Romans it is difficult not to connected the issue back to the Bar Kochba revolt. We have already seen that bar Kochba encouraged his followers to certain magical rituals to secure victory in battle as we read:
Eighty thousand trumpeters besieged Bethar where Bar Kozeba was located, who had with him two hundred thousand men with an amputated finger ... [who] when they went forth to battle they cried, 'O God, neither help nor discourage us!' [Lamentations Rabba]
As such we can see the beginnings of what is clearly an understanding that the soldiers somehow rejected falat - i.e. prayer, petition -or indeed the kind of palat identified by the rabbinic tradition as orthodoxy (viz. phylacteries) in favor of some other form of ritual protection.
The tradition of the Jersualem Talmus Gittin 4:5 makes much the same point as we just saw when it reports that "[w]hen Bar-Kochba would go to war [with his 400,000 mighty warriors] he would declare, "Master of the universe, I don't need your help -- just don't hinder me!" Again I will make the case that it is impossible to believe that the soldiers didn't believe in the power of palat or that they didn't petition for the intercession of the angel pele. We must see that it was rather that the sages are reporting that bar Kochba and his men didn't share the Pharisaic understanding of the "orthodoxy" associated with the phylacteries.
To be sure eventually the understanding came to be developed that they didn't follow the specific kinds of tefillin mandated by the later orthodoxy so we read:
Forty baskets of Tefillin were found on the heads of those who were killed in Betar. Jannai son of Ishmael said: Three containers, each containing forty basketfulls, were found.... The two opinions do not disagree: One is discussing arm-Tefillin while the other is dealing with forehead-Tefillin. (Gemara Gittin 58a)
The idea gets even developed further by the Vilna Gaon who explains the conclusion of the Gemara as follows:
The invading legions caught the Jews of Betar just as they were praying. Some Jews were still donning their Tefillin, others had already donned them, while yet others had already begun to remove them. Since the arm-Tefillin is donned first and removed last, the Jews in all three stages of Tefillin-dress wore arm-Tefillin, while only those in the middle stage (wearing both) had on forehead-Tefillin. This is why three times as many arm-Tefillin were found! (Kol Eliyahu, #222)
Yet I am not at all sure this is the correct answer. When we bring together the one statement that bar Kochba did petition (i.e. palat) and the testimony of "Jannai" (notice the name again) that the tefillin weren't used by the soldiers we start to build a case that these men weren't orthodox Jews as we now understand them. Their "missing finger" or indeed their "blemish" seemed to offer them the same kind of strength (cf. Hippolytus' identificaton of Mark the "stumpfingered" ho kolobodaktulos, i.e. or "mutilated in the finger").Was there some common ritual here - even castration - which at the bottom of this community which hoped to receive divine protection from the Romans through the "angel of the presence" Jesus/Elisha? We canot of course be sure. However to go on assuming the way that scholars do that those who made this "last stand" at Betar "must have been" representatives of our orthodoxy is simply absurd. This should rather be seen as the last gasp of a very different kind of orthodoxy which flourished in the perod 70 - 135 A.D. which as we will demonstrate was intimately connected with the figure of Marcus Julius Agrippa, the man whom Rashi says was the father or relative of bar Kochba himself (even though Agrippa had no kids!).
It is only because our surviving religious orthodoxies (whether rabbinic Judaism or Catholic Christianity) which don't want to let go of the idea that their beliefs "were always in force" in their respective communities. To this end while the Catholics denied that Christians were involved in the uprising to counter claims of pagans like Celsus that Jesus was a little more than a malevolent spirit of rebellion the rabbinic Jewish tradition developed the "martyrs" of the revolt as representatives of their tradition. This even though we can be absolutely certain that at least some of the assembled warriors (viz. Ishmael the high priest) was not a Pharisee at all but a Sadducee.
JESUS THE GOOD JEW
Jesus was a good Jew. There were a few things that the rabbinical establishment at the time didn't like, but he wasn't an especially great revolutionary either. [Professor Guy G. Stroumza, chairman of the Center for Study of Christianity at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in Ha'aretz Interview 23 December 1999]
To this end if a government or a religious body wants us to think or act in a certain way they put up stories or images of people doing things we are supposed to do. This what the whole Law of Moses is from Genesis to Deuteronomy - a series of examples of virtue and vice. This Law was undoubtedly established by the (high) priest Ezra at the beginning of Persian period of Jewish history. When the Jews came under the influence of the Greeks one of the first demands that their new Hellenistic masters made was for their leading sages to translate the Hebrew text so that they could know what it was that their subjects held as "virtue" and "vice." Some would even argue that the original Greek translation was deliberately developed in parts to please its new Lord.
With all of this said it is impossible in my mind to believe that the Roman government, perhaps the most organized and effecient authorities the world has ever seen could have ever allowed "Christianity" to do develop independently of its oversight. The gospel originally comes from the Flavian period (i.e. the period when the Flavian Emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitan ruled the world) and it is impossible for anyone to reasonably argue that this group didn't have a "peek" at the sacred text even if it was ultimately a "secret one." There would have been mass persecution of these Christians who were meeting under a cloak of darkness in the period which we certainly know was not the case.
If the gospel was written with the tacit approval of either Vespesian and Titus it is hardly a stretch of the imagination that at least to some degree the pair was argued to be intimated in its "Father" and "Son" cosmogeny. This is not to say that I am one of those uninformed scholars who denies that the "Son God" figured into earlier forms of Judaism which it certainly did. I am only making the point here that it was at least presented to the Flavians who ruled in tandem in the east while the gospel was composed (viz. 70 - 80 A.D.) that the cult could also be seen as an acknowledgement of their Lordship.
With all of this said I can't believe that a historical situation like that which surrounded the gospel has ever been witnessed before in terms of the gospel writer being close to his political masters. Yes, rabbinic tradition suggests that Ezra wrote the Law but was his sister fucking his boss? I don't think so. In the case of Mark's relationship with Titus this is exactly what we find and so I wonder aloud if the brother and sister tandem of Mark and Berenice knowingly conspired to use her beauty to allow his creative imagination and indeed ulterior motives a degree of latitude which otherwise would have been impossible at any other time in history. Is this why she was canonized as the earliest Galielan saint known to us?
Whatever the case may be I am convinved of the fact that where there is smoke there is fire. Where someone hides or is secretive he has something to hide or some motivation to deceive. To be certain the case was made to the Flavians that through the form of the pagan mystery religions "civilization and enlightenment" was being brought to the supersitious barbarians in Palestine. I am at the same time always leery that "what you see" is not "what you get" with the gospel.
To this end the argument must have been made that Jesus put forward the example of the blessedness of submisson to the authorities. Not only did he declare that one should "render under Caesar" but moreover always displayed a kind of peacefulness and such peaceable nature i.e. "turn the other cheek" that it was argued that this would be a perfect tonic to the savage Jewish mind always bent on war and insurrection.
If people who expound on such matters actually spent sometime refamiliarizing themselves with the actual tenets of their religion however they would immediately realize that this was little more than a "front" for the real doctrine of Jesus. Yes, Jesus was meek but when he went on the cross he "emptied" out his self (i.e. his nefesh) into the souls of believers as the cornerstone of the new mystery covenant. In other words, Jesus had to do all these things in order that the "Holy Spirit" - i.e. the angel of the presence - could be absorbed into the persons of his believers. It was all part of a "mystery" which according to the argument was established before time began and was now being set in motion at the "end times" which were supposed to have been completed c. 70 A.D.
In other words, Jesus came as one who was "weak" so we could be made "strong." But who "strenghtens" other than the angel of the presence - i.e. Pele/Sariel? Indeed the whole "certainty" that modern Christians have about Jesus' humanity is flatly contradicted by the countless reports of the "phantom god" of their earliest forefathers. Celsus makes the same comment over and over again in his report in the new age of Antoninus. The importance of the original understanding of Jesus only "appearing to be" human cannot be understated as it calls into queston the reality of the understanding that Jesus was a meek person. Again where there is smoke there is fire, where Jesus only appears a certain way for a certain purpose at a certain time means that he can reappear in another form for another purpose in another age.
As we have already made clear many times before this was at the heart of the original "second coming" doctrine i.e. that the spirit of the dove which came down "in the beginning" of Christianity could certainly reappear in other forms. When the founder of Catholicism, Polycarp of Smyrna was martyred his followers swear that they saw a dove emerge from the fire to go back to heaven. It was if they were saying "the mission of the Holy Spirit is now complete. I cannot help that this same "dove" i.e. yonah was present among the rebels in the first and second great Jewish uprisings against Rome no less than it was said to be present at the heart of the Samaritan religion of the age.
What am I suggesting? That the deliberate emphasis on the person of Jesus was deliberate as was the official persecution of "doceticism" - i.e the belief that Jesus came "only in appearance." By saying that Jesus was a man of the flesh who was meek one naturally assists the assumption that Christianity as such is about meekness. It not only succeeds in stressing the one part of original Christian understanding of the cross - viz. that Jesus died for our sins as the prophesied "suffering servant" - but gets away from the real heart of his mystery religion i.e. that his real purpose was to empty himself in order to give us strength.
This my friends was why the myth of Jesus the good Jew was invented. The original doctrine of Mark was subversive. It was invented in order to have the sign of the cross act as the equivalent of the tefillin. I will make the case eventually that the rites of Christianity were used in conjunction with the military victory of Marcus Julius Agrippa in Jerusalem during the first Jewish revolt. That exactly in the manner of the mysteries of the pagan god Mithra (to which the Christian agape was often compared) and indeed the Boxer rebellion (for those more familiar with recent historical) events the initated moved through the "degrees" of baptism, the consumption of the "magical" blood and the flesh and finally being "marked" by the cross in order to receive the abiding presence of the divine angel Jesus.
Titus and Vespasian were fooled by the mystery and Antoninus was forced to clean up the mess. Indeed when the Romans re-engineered the surviving tradition of this one messianic tradition which united Jews, Samaritans and proselytes (the very participants in the bar Kochba revolt) they necessarily had to emphasize the "humanity" of Jesus for the reasons just described. They also had to divide the one ecumenical assembly of Israel back into their respective ethnic groups - viz. Judaism, Christianity and Samaritanism - and deliberately alienate them from their original association with the messiah (Marcus Agrippa the "father" of bar Kochba) no less than his angelic power Jesus/Elisha.
While Jews and Samaritans went back as best as possible to a neo-conservative tradition without the benefit of temple altars those "repentent" proselytes who embraced a reformed New Testament with Jesus the good Jew as figurehead were also acknowledged. How, why and by whom this actually happened will be developed elsewhere. Yet for the moment I want the reader to see that the Emperor clearly recognized that Christianity could be "saved" by suppressing the "spiritual" argument about Jesus - i.e. that he was a man like any other in terms of his flesh and his suffering during the Passion.
So now we get back to our original point. Whereas the original assembly of the messiah was for and by Semitic people and their goals of liberation from foreign rule the European gospel necessarily had the exact opposite design in its infancy. Be like Jesus of the flesh and you too will be resurrected in the flesh in the coming age. The Marqionites argued that Jesus died a martyr so that in the immediate here and now his divine spirit would be passed on to believing eyewitnesses who would carry on his struggle. Where is the messiah now in Christianity? He died and will come back in a phantom appearance in his cloud chariot - Roman translation we finally got rid of the problem of Jesus.
Indeed it should be seen now that someone came along and stole that greatest of artistic creations and repackaged it in a different box and sold it under a different name. The white man plundered the messiah from their war against the Jews and now no one can even tell who or what the messiah really is. As I see it the invented myth of Jesus Christ developed in the second century under Roman tutelage. It is no different than than modern efforts to establish "democracy in the
Thus we should finally see that the "ideal" which the white man creates for his adversaries in this war to secure resources is naturally self-serving for his underlying ambitions. The image of the "good Muslim" is no different than that of the "good Jew" or the "good negro" for that matter - he is above all else peaceable and meek. In this way Jesus embodied the Roman "ideal" for people of that part in the world - i.e. be peacable, accept the ruler whom God chose to subjugate you.
It should be clear that someone other than a Jew invented the idea of the meek and essentially impotent figure of Jesus Christ - the Jewish messiah without any balls if you will - and I mean that quite literally as well as figuratively. Why without balls? Because he can't propagate himself. He comes for only a brief time and dies, never to return. The European version of Christianity is above all else the giving up of the hope for a great king and ruler like Moses. Accept the white man, accept his superiority and he will give you peace.
WILL THE
[John] came to the Jews and summoned them to freedom, saying: "God hath sent me, that I may show you the way of the Law, wherein ye may free yourselves from many holders of power. And there will be no mortal ruling over you, only the Highest who hath sent me." And when the people had heard this, they were joyful. And there went after him all Judæa, that lies in the region round
The first act of creation (or here "re-creation") is the destruction of that which preceded it. We are attempting to "get at" a messianic truth that was necessarily political. It necessarily "spoke" for one people against wishes and ambitions of another. That this Semitic Christian voice was eventually silenced (see the Antonine figure of "Philumene") is in my mind beyond question. That the apolitical, non-cultural specific "Catholic" form which came in its wake was deliberately concocted so as to obscure its truths, "redirect" investigation of whispers and rumours of "great men" of
Before I tackle the issue of "Mark" or even "Jesus" I am forced to expose the real identity of another who lived before the coming of "the Christ." Of course I am talking about John, but I want to warn the reader how deep the lies of Catholicism go. Let me assure you there was a historical figure like our "John the Baptist." Here we shall discover the ultimate embodiment of the Roman impulse to "cut off" messianism from its ultimate soil. Who was the "real John" of history? And why was there more than one "John"? These are the questions we will dissect in this section which "prepares the way" for the manifesting of the real messiah.
So it was that we should see now that as the days of the Roman occupation of the
Of course in these wars between the white and brown skin people in the era between 66 - 133 A.D the Semites ultimately lost. "Liberation" would only come a half millenium later, when Arabians on horseback would sweep through the region and chase away the last of the Byzantine outpost there. Yet scholarship never seems to make this connection between the Jewish messianic wars of the first and second centuries and the advent of Islam. the problem is that we never seem to think of religious ideas as being "in flux," as developing over the course of time or in reponse to "real life" political and ecomomic "stimuli." There is still far too much theologian in the religious scholar and too little respect for the power of science and reason.
Nevertheless as we are stuck with these guides the important thing to see here is that Judaism as we know it is itself as false a Roman construct no less than Christianity. The Judaism of the period before the Emperor Antoninus must necessarily be seen as more nationalistic, more radical, and indeed more determined to drive the Romans from
Now before the reader grows frustrated wondering how someone named "Mark" could be recognized as "John" we will have to refamiliarize ourselves with the actual religion of Judaism in the period. We will also have to admit that it has all but disappeared from the face of the earth! One of the most amazing things which no one ever seems to ever speak about sincerely is the fact that our existing religious understandings of what Judaism and what Christianity are develop in a vacuum. The Antonine-inspired traditions of each put forward claims that they represent "an unbroken chain" back to their original sources - i.e. Moses and Jesus - but we have no way of verifying any of these assertations.
The unspoken truth again is that almost everything from the period before the middle of the second century A.D. has disappeared. Without question, thanks to a "happy accident" involving a Bedouin discovering some ancient jars we have a wealth of discovered Jewish texts. The only problem is that there is so little in the way of reliable independant evidence regarding the beliefs and practices of Jewish orthdoxy in the period before rabbinic Judaism that we don't know what the hell to do with this material. Scholars will be fighting over which group and what meaning is attached to each of these scrolls until the end of civilization.
So it is that a critical understanding of the historical period is necessary. The evidence demands an answer rather than the collective ignoring of the implications that we might not have all the answers here. Indeed in order to do this we must challenge the very orthodoxy which is the bedrock of the faith of most of the scholars who study these things! Let us say with certainty that the Mishnah is not telling us the truth when it claims that its legal rulings represent an unbroken chain of religious orthodoxy through the period of Herodian, Hasmonaean and Maccabean orthodoxy. The religious compromise which is represented in its pages was coerced by Caesar no less than the invented histories of the Acts of the Apostles and related texts among the Christians.
The religious orthodoxy which one would encounter immediately before going back in time and crossing the threshold of 138 A.D. is that of the messiah John. This is going to be the most important part of making sense of the religious environment in
The point is that there used to be a Chronicles of John Hyrcanus employed widely in Judaism before Antoninus. Josephus, the chronicler of the Jewish War identifies "John" as a guiding inspiration for those baryonim who rebelled in the first war against
The point again is that never was a historical figure named "John the Baptist." This was an invented concept by the
Indeed the "fact" that the European Christian testimonies (viz. Josephus, the gospels) witness the historical reality of "John the Baptist" need hardly intimidate us any longer. There is a whole suppressed "other side" which never gets heard because of the political power that the existing religious orthodoxy has because of its ties to the ruling class. We can never get rid of "John the Baptist" because he is the lynch pin which legitimizes our whole tradition.
The imaginary nature of our "John" can be seen most clearly in the fact that earlier forms of Christianity (i.e. Marqionitism cited above) and even rabbinic Judaism have never ever even heard of this supposedly towering influence over the age. This, even though it is claimed in our European gospel that "John came, baptizing in the desert region and ... [t]he whole Judean countryside and all the people of
It is important to note that the earlier Marqionite version of the gospel has no "baptism by John," no reference whatsoever to a baptizing "wild man" by the
Indeed we must also ask why were the same editorial filters who decided on what was "orthodox" and "heresy" so keen on emphasizing that our John wasn't a king (viz. remember the lines which Jesus directs to the crowds in our gospel supposedly about John i.e. "What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings' palaces"). Again we must emphasize that these things weren't in the earlier text of the first Christian orthodoxy - i.e. the Marqionites. They were added to make a point - that is not to hope in a Semitic king and to continue to submit the legitimate "ruler of the world" viz. Caesar.
THE PROPAGATING MESSIAH "JOHN"
We must now make clear how one Christ named "Mark" (i.e. Marcus Julius Agrippa) was seen as "also being called" by the name of an earlier Christ named "John." As I have already pointed out through the quote from the early Syrian Church Father Ephraim listed above "John the Bapist to Jesus" - i.e. defenseless prophet to meek messiah - is the Catholic replacement for this original Marqionite formula viz. royal son of David to royal son of David. Why didn't the Roman's keep this formula? It was part of a revolutionary doctrine already associated with the baryonim from the time of the first Jewish War. What Caesar was trying to stamp out wasn't just "Mark" but the very hope the "sons of John" or if you will the coming of an independant Jewish king.
Does anyone out there think I am exaggerating here? Who was it who inspired the Catholic doctrine of the anti-Christ i.e. the "false messiah" who was to be avoided as an "inspiration from Satan"? To be certain the anti-Christ is the embodiment of the original late first century cult of Mark the messiah viz. "Marqion." Yet it is also a warning to all the members of the officially sanctioned Church in the second century A.D. to avoid following any Jewish messianic claimant cf.Hippolytus "[a]bove all, moreover, he will love the nation of the Jews. And with all these [Jews] he will work signs and terrible wonders, false wonders and not true, in order to deceive his impious equals. . . . And after that he will build the temple in
So it is that we should see Marcus Julius Agrippa is the coming together of all these Christ/anti-Christ revelation traditions. He was Jewish, a king, someone who "sat in the temple," someone who ruled a Syrian kingdom and above all else who embodied the "resurrection of John." He is identified in the rabbinic literature as John Hyrcanus in the rabbinic literature from the very beginning (cf. Yebamoth 61a, Gittin 57a see also Berakoth 29a). Now we need to come to terms with the origins of the propagating "John messiah" and how it was connected to the origins of Christianity.
We should see that it was the real historical "John"- i.e. who was understood to have proclaimed the coming of he himself as the awaited Christ with its opening words,"John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me." [John 1:15] I know for those who have been put under the spell of European theology the idea of "many messiahs" seems untenable. There can only be one Christ. Yet does anyone really believe that in the thousands of years since the time of Moses that no one dared to emerge as his awaited one? We already know of at least a dozen in the last three hundred years or so, many of whom are similarly said to have been "recognized" or related to those who passed before them.
Indeed we should see that the real background of earliest Christianity then is a lot more like Islam (and specifically the Shi'i variety). The original understanding must have been that John was the messiah who got resurrected or "restood" into another one of his living relatives generations after he died. According to this original messianic Jewish tradition then he who comes as Christ comes essentially as a "resurrected John" cf. "some were saying that John had been raised from the dead" [Luke 9:7]. Marcus Julius Agrippa was indeed related to John through his grandmother Miriam the wife of Herod the Great. Even Rashi recognizes his claims to Jewishness on at least this side of his family.
There are countless reports to the effect that "the disciples of John, who seemed to be great ones, have separated themselves from the people, and proclaimed their own master as the Christ." [Rec. 1:54] Of course at some point in the future people will realize that this John is not the Baptist but indeed the historical messianic recursor of our Christ, John Hyrcanus who lived c. 135 - 104 B.C. When they do they will finally make sense of the related testimony that "the Sadducees took their rise almost in the time of John (an assertion which cannot reasonably though to apply to a "John" living in the first century A.D. as the Jewish Sadducees are know to have existed at least a century earlier at the time of the "other John").
You see if you want to understand what was so dangerous about this original John you need to alway go back to the historical legacy which he left in the era. Just before Roman armies conquered the
John Hyrcanus was the first independant ruler of
We read in the standard English translation of the original psalm (which cite almost in its full form) the call to God that he should:
Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
He will judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.
The mountains will bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness.
He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.
He will endure [paniym = face, have the person] with the sun, with the moon, through all generations.
He will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth.
In his days the righteous will flourish; prosperity will abound till the moon is no more.
He will rule from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.
The desert tribes will bow before him and his enemies will lick the dust.
... All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him.
For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death.
He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.
Long may he live! May gold from
May people ever pray for him and bless him all day long.
Let grain abound throughout the land; on the heads [rosh] of the mountains may it sway.
Let its fruit flourish like
May his name endure forever; may he endure [jinnon] as long as the sun.
All nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed.
Praise be to the LORD God, the God of
Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory.
Amen and Amen.
I know many of you aren't used to seeing a whole passage of scripture cited to make a point but I think it is important to get away from the American evangelical tendency to take short phrases and sentences out of context.
The point is that if take the time to think about the original context of the statement in the Talmud in the context of the Psalm as a whole it is unquestionable that "John" - i.e. Jannai - is arguing that it applied to he himself. In other words, he was king described in the material and more specifically the reference to this royal figure "enduring" is a prophesy to his actual name (i.e. Johanan/Jannai). We can see that the surviving debe Jannai is said to have used this psalm to prove that their man as the messiah. When David wrote "Jinnon" he meant "Jannai" - i.e. that John would be his awaited one.
Indeed as late as the second century A.D. we still read that:
The
Of course scholars at least to my knowledge never make the connection between this Jannai and John Hyrcanus. They like to think that only the last Jannai - a guy that lived at the beginning of the third century A.D. was the spokesperson for this messianic idea. However this is just plain stupid. If anything demonstrates how blind these academics are and their inability to make sense of things without someone spelling it out for them this concept is it.
Let's count the number of "Jannais" there were. There was John Hyrcanus and his son Jonathan (called Alexander Jannai). There was a "King Jannai" who the rabbinic tradition says was king when Jesus appeared and another Jannai as we have already seen was Marcus Julius Agrippa (who may have been one and the same person). There was another Jannai alive at the time of the destruction of the temple mentioned by Josephus and yet another at the beginning of the second century called "Jannai the Elder" (who may be the one who was father of Dosethai ben Jannai). Yet another Jannai is identified as an old man being disgusted by the sight of
To simply assume that all of these "Jannais" are independant "individuals" given that we know that almost half of them had other "real" names. So why all the Jannais? Just look at the list. There is a Jannai for every generation. Why is this significant? Because this is the meaning attached to the statement we just cited from the Talmud about "as long as the sun, his name was Jinnon." The statement was taken as if it meant that the messiah would be propagated into the future until the end of the world. This is not just my opinion but the standard interpretation of rabbis from as early as we can tell. Yet it wasn't just the messiah" as a generic concept but originally I will argue the very messianic entity of "John" whom our hero Marcus Julius Agrippa is already identified as. The Catholic Christian tradition of a figure Mark who was called John is just another offshoot of this original tradition.
ON THE MEANING OF JINNON
So is it all becoming clearer now? The Jews already had a belief in the messianic "resurrection of John" long before the appearance of Marcus Julius Agrippa but also long after him too. I would argue that John ha Nappah was tapping into this school of thought when he received the inspiration for that "messianic text" which still guides Judaism - viz. the Talmud. Similarly it is interesting to note that there are a series of legends about
The underlying idea being here of course that for an Aramaic speaker again "Jannai" and "Jinnon" sound very similar. Jewish theologians love these sort of "folk etymologies" where one word seemed to be related to one another because they sounded alike. The point of course is that the original messianic argument made from the Psalm developed itself from the failed expectation associated with John Hyrcanus. He didn't endure forever. His messianic kingdom did not last forever. And so, one would think, the particular theological interpretation of Psalm 72 should have ended at the beginning of the first century B.C. right? Of course it didn't. It just changed shape and morphed into a different direction as it did again in the age of Antoninus.
Again if we look at the Catholic tradition associated with the "sons of Polycarp" in the Antonine era it is impossible to escape that Polycarp himself comes as a spokesperson of "John" against Marqion. It is he who undoubtedly cultivated the "John accuses this Mark of being an unrighteous steward" legend which permeats early Catholicism. Similarly Judaism has a series of propagating John figures in the Common Era. The first, the legendary figure of John the son of Zakkai (i.e. Zechariah) who "refounds" Judaism after the destruction of the temple and the last John ha Nappah, already mentioned as the quasi-messianic author of the Talmud.
So now when we come back to the issue of Mark being called John in the mid to late first century A.D. can we see where all of this naturally leads? By now it must be clear - he was partaking in the messianic power of Jannai which was understood to transmigrate from person to person. Is this the “Christ” concept at the heart of the supposedly separate Marqionite and Carpocratian communities? You bet your life. It may even be related to Lidbarski’s suggestion that the Arabic word “genie” or “jinn” goes back to an Aramaic term for daemon.
In any event it is very important for us to come to terms with the proof for the manner in which Justus understood his master to be John or as it were Jannai/Jinnon. Hundreds of years after Marcus Julius Agrippa there are still Jewish prayers messianic hymns devoted to Jannai/Jinnon. The separate prayerbook for the feast days, the Mahzôr Rabbah, contains a literary prayer by Rabbi Eleazar Ha-Qalir which might date from the sixth to the ninth centuries which references both the Jinnon Psalm and the destruction of the temple.
The prayer begins poetically: "At that time, before the creation, he already set up the oasis and the Yinnon" -- the word 'oasis' refers to the
before the creation, he already set up the
Thus the same messianic entity "John" viz. Jinnon was still "propagating" itself down through to the turn of the last millenium. In my mind its connection with the traditions associated with Marcus Julius Agrippa called Jannai or Mark who is called John is now inescapable.
MARK WHO WAS CALLED JOHN
St. Mark preached both Jews and Gentiles, but mainly among the gentiles. He had two names, "John", is the Jewish name and "Mark", is the gentile one. Mark became his distinctive name. [Pope Shenouda
So let us go over things one more time. In the beginning there was "John," a man who claimed to be the messiah. Even though those who lived under his rule called him Christ the fact that he died put an end to Jewish veneration of the "real" Hyrcanus. Nevertheless a new cult emerged, one which has parallels in early Islam. Contemporary theologians developed the idea of John's "eternal nature" with regards to his son who was also a "Jannai" (Jannai is a name which can be developed from either "Johanan" or "Jonathan" viz. the name of his son).
So it is that John who like Moses (i.e. king, high priest and prophet) gave way to Jonathan who was like Moses. As they were father and son the same arguments about John being a "son of David" applied to Jonathan too. All that transformed was the idea of "Jannai" an eternally propagating messianic "entity" transmigrating from soul to soul, age to age was born. Jannai was understood to have passed on to yet another descendant of the original John - viz. Marcus Julius Agrippa in middle first century A.D. And so the identity of "Mark who was called John" was born.
It is interesting that the connection between "Mark who was called John" and "Marcus Julius Agrippa who is Jannai" has never completely disappeared. The Christians of Alexandria (who venerate the apostle "Mark who is called John" identify him as the Mark who was married to Berenice, the Herodian princess. The "corrections" to the original text of Josephus aside Marcus Julius Agrippa certainly was married to his sister (Juvenal, Satires vi). Thus it is important to see that in the Flavian period at least (66 - 96 A.D.) and like for at least a few generations thereafter the idea of encouraging Mark's claim to be John must have been seen as a way of subverting the pre-existent cult of the eternally propagating "messiah John."
The Flavian Emperors Vespasian and Titus couldn't have been closer to the king. His sister Berenice was instrumental in developing Vespasian's own "Savior cult" in a way that would lend appeal for him among the Oriental population (making her the first known "spin doctor" in history). The idea that these steadfastly loyal servants of Caesar could use the opportunity of the Roman victory at
Of course by the time of Antoninus, some seventy years later, the grand Flavian experiment had proved itself a failure. Not only did the adoption of Mark as the messiah of Israel do little to stem the flow of messianic uprisings in the period, Celsus of Rome seems to strongly suspect Mark (or "Christ" if you will) as being the "hidden hand" which secret controlled the insurgency. Christianity's loyalty to Caesar was questioned and in due course Mark was publically executed and ultimately exised from his very tradition. Yet we can still make out his original influence through such figures as "Marqion" i.e. "little Mark" whose church is stil identified among existing "heresies" down to the time of Mohammed.
What I am suggesting of course is that we can make out details of the life and influence of Marcus Julius Agrippa through the various reports of "Marks" and "Johns" throughout Jewish, Christian and related traditions down to the modern age. These traditions make clear that at least for the proselytes to his new messianic religion his relationship with the "Son God" Jesus was critical. His original supporters made the case that Jesus had come to earth to impart knowledge of his messiahood to him, his mother Mary and a small circle of followers. Mark was not only the author of the original gospel but the "little one"- i.e. the child - mentioned throughout the text whom Jesus holds up as the exemplar of the kingdom of heaven. Mark who was called John was also present at the crucifixion where, according to the tradition, Jesus "perfected him" owing to his "beholding" the image of the cross.
Of course the job of making sense of the real history of the period is a difficult one then which cannot simply be based on taking the texts which survive from antiquity at face value. Too many scholars rely on the copies of Josephus which have been passed on to us from Catholic sources. Indeed we know that a Gentile Christian editor corrupted the text because he added the "confession" of its otherwise orthodox Pharisee regarding the existence of "Jesus Christ." Once you realize any of these text can be accused of being "somewhat corrupt" it is impossible to continue to pretend that other "offensive things" about them weren't also corrected including the acknowledgment that Marcus Julius Agrippa was the messiah in the age.
THE WHITE LIES OF THE
[Polycarp] was of much greater weight, and a more stedfast witness of truth, than ... Marcion, and the rest of the heretics [Irenaeus Against False Gnostics Book
I want to jump in right here and prove that Marcus Julius Agrippa was the messiah but I have to touch upon one other claim I have made - viz. the corruption of his messianic community by "betrayers" within his fold in the Antonine period. I touch upon this at length in my Christ Heist and feel I don't need to get into matters in great deal other than to say Caesar held a sword to the head of almost every "presbyter" - i.e. elder - of the community to make them swear by a new orthodoxy that he established for them. Those who wished to persist in the old ways were summarily executed. Those who "played ball" with Caesar reoriented the synagogues of Mark away from recognizing their master as the messiah any longer. Those who wanted to fall away from the fold were under the continual threat of a trial and execution that were certainly sanctioned by the secular authorities.
In the case of Christian heretics the presbytery would hand over the offending "heretic" over to representatives of the state. However the Jewish community was given the authority to handle matters internally as Schechter notes in his study of the "rebellious elders." We read:
A [rebellious] elder [is one] who defies the authoritative rabbinic interpretation of the Mosaic Law. In the period when the Sanhedrin flourished this was a capital offense, punishable by strangulation (Sanh. xi. 1). This is based on Deut. xvii. 8-13, and according to the Talmud refers not to an ordinary man who refuses to abide by the decision of the priest or the judge, but to a regular ordained rabbi, or a judge, or an elder over the age of forty, or one of the twenty-three jurists constituting the minor Sanhedrin of a city or town. If such a judge dared to defy the decision of a majority of the major Sanhedrin, he became liable to the penalty of strangulation.
All of this of course represents little more than standard operating practice for establishing religious orthodoxy in Judaism.
John Hyrcanus certainly "encouraged" the elders of his generation in this way as did Jonathan and certainly Marcus Agrippa too during the events of the destruction of
So it is that what I see as one universal tradition in
I hope that my readers have at least enough knowledge about the word "Catholic" to realize what "Roman Catholicism" really means. It implies something being sponsored which has a "universal" outlook sanctioned by
Of course there was a religion of Christ with Jesus as its overt spokesperson. This tradition had "little Mark" standing in every scene of his gospel - sometimes in the background, sometimes near the spotlight - but he was definitely there. It was like a "find Waldo" religion. You just had to think about every saying, figure out the "mystery" behind every scene. This tradition came before the Catholic Church, before Polycarp -but most scholars choose to ignore it.
This messianic religion saw the gospel as a testimony, a "witness" of the revelation of Christ to come. Of course Polycarp and his Church go out of their way to identify the "secret knowledge" associated with this tradition as heresy, and its revelation of Christ nothing more than the deception associated with Satan's firstborn - the "anti-Christ." Yet it is of no matter. We are I think intelligent enough to sift through such propaganda now and see the real story within. The man the Catholic calls "the anti-Christ" was the Christ of the former age. His message was secret and above all else Jewish - Jesus didn't fulfill the Law and the prophets, he did.
Our surviving Church is little more than the organized denial of Mark (or indeed "Marqion" i.e. little Mark) as the messiah. This "negativity" is the bedrock on which Christianity is founded. After how many generations of waiting for a "second coming" will the masses of foolish white people realize that they have been decieved. The "second coming" already came. What we have instead of the truth was a system of denying the man who was the true messiah
A new "Roman Catholic" doctrine emerged, a mystery religion where no reward lay beneath all the veils of obscurity. It was all intended as a distraction from the truth of "another" Christ. This message came from "the ruler of the world" - viz. Emperor "Pius." He was the first Caesar to have "discovered" that the secret doctrine of the original Church of "little Mark" and he felt it his obligation to stamp it out on behalf of the security and stability of the Empire.
And how did he do it? Caesar found a willing accomplice from within Mark's organization. A "disgruntled employee" as it were, an ambitious presbyter who coveted power as much as any Emperor. Yet how did he do it? How did he appeal his message to his portion of the Jewish messianic community in order to convince them that he was divinely inspired? As we have already shown - Polycarp came in the name of "John."
Has anyone other than me noticed that "Polycarp" isn't even a name at all but a literally Greek rendering of the Hebrew name "Ephraim"? No I don't think so - most people don't think that much about Polycarp of Smyrna. But they should because he is the founder of our whole Church and he did this founding in the age of Antoninus Pius. I can prove that he was a forger, a counterfeiter of new texts and old. Yet what is most interesting for us right now is that his students seem to interpret him as the living person of "John" once again. That's why his name "Ephraim" is so significant - it is the name of the messiah according to some Jewish traditions.
I just can't believe that it is coincidental that Catholicism and rabbinic Judaism were defined by people named "John" or who came in the name of someone named "John." It is all too much of a coincidence. Then you have the understanding that Marcus Agrippa, the real author of the gospel of Mark, was also a "John" figure and the fact that he was "encouraged" by the Caesars of his day (Vespasian, Titus and Domitain) to establish a messianic tradition to give order to the Middle East and I think we start to see a pattern here ...
PROOF OF ROMAN INVOLVEMENT IN JUDAISM
I can't believe that the idea of Roman involvement in the development of Judaism is contraversial. What do most people imagine? That religion exists in a parallel universe beside the political intruiges of this world? That because they want to believe in the pristine nature of their tradition and can close their eyes to the truth that this makes their faith true? Of course the Romans were involved in the development of Judaism ever since the time of Marcus Agrippa - the sage Nachmanides explicitly says so as we shall soon see. It is not at all difficult to see this "Roman assistance" leading to the declaration of Mark as the messiah no less than their "involement" in his removal in the Antonine period, splitting up what was one unified tradition into three de-messanified religions viz. Judaism, Christianity and Samaritanism.
Just look at the citation we just made of John ha Nappah's "unwillingness" to see the messiah. Do you really think that this his public proclamation against the messianic in Judaism wasn't related to the Romans allowing him to promote his Talmud. I mean he was necessarily granted some quasi-messianic status, after all who can write a text like this which is regarded of higher authority than Moses' Law without having comparable status to Mosheh? Moreover the late second century A.D. period where most scholars identify the Talmud as being composed reflects exactly the kind of historical era where we can see the Roman government "making deals" with the various communities who might have been seen as "siding with the enemy."
The Emperor Gallienus Augustus appeared in the age of John ha Nappah after a long period of trouble for the Roman Empire. His father and predecessor Valerius was captured by the Persians, humiliated and skinned alive. The Empire was in a shambles and we can see various "deals" which Gallienus had to cut with various parties in order to secure some semblance of internal peace. For the first time Christianity was officially tolerated, he was ready to grant the philosophers a kind of "homeland" in a soon to be named city of "Platonopolis" and then we face the supposed "coincidence" that the otherwise impoverished rabbi John ha Nappah, the "apostle" of Jannai, manifests a new Law to the Jewish community.
Come on! Are we also to believe that John's expressed "unwillingness" to see the messiah was not rooted in some "deal" to keep the Jews on "this side of the border" from conspiring with those on the "other side" - i.e. in Persian territory - to act as a "fifth column" for another invasion from the East. Of course it was. Just as we see a century earlier Antoninus after the first of many Roman-Persian (Parthian) wars necessarily shored up the Empire against the possibility of more Jewish revolts through his reforms.
This isn't the time to bring this up of course but the rabbinic literature is full of narratives about the supposedly "close" relationship between "Pius" and the founder of the surviving Jewish tradition, Judah "the prince." In these silly stories the Jewish tradition tries to make it seem as it was Antoninus who was really catering to
It is all so silly of course that it might not have been worth remembering if it were not for what one of the great luminaries of later Judaism says about the period almost a hundred years before this one. Nachmanides (1194 – 1270), explains to his readership why the Jews have suffered since the age of Antoninus by saying that their ancestors allowed the Romans to alter their religion. Commenting on Genesis 47:28 i.e. Jacob lived in the
I have already mentioned (43:14) that Jacob's descent into
The point here is of course that the Roman involvement in Jewish religious life began with a similar "selling out" to the rulers of the day by people living at the beginning of the "true Common Era" i.e. 70 A.D.
Indeed Nachmanides argues that this story of Jacob in Egypt is a prophesy for the fate of
[o]ur relationship with
What I find especially interesting about this is that it infers that something happened to the Jewish religious tradition as a result of Marcus Julius Agrippa "going to the Romans for help" which caused the exile which afflicted Jews for almost two thousand years.
Yet did the "selling out" of Marcus Julius Agrippa lead to a period where the Jews did indeed receive what seemed at the time to be the fulfillment of the original messianic expectation i.e. a "new Law," a new covenant and the manifestation of the long awaited "kingdom of heaven"? I certainly think so and this will become readily apparent when we examine earlier Jewish authorities.
What is especially noteworthy here is that Nachmanides infers that "
King Agrippa went to
This reference in Sotah (Sotah is the tractate which deals with adultery i.e. sotah = “woman accused of adultery”) in the Talmud is important because it again blames the suffering and exile which resulted for Jews on their decision to accept Marcus Julius Agrippa as not only Jewish but by inference the long awaited Jewish messiah.
Nachmanides here and elsewhere is inferring that Agrippa was not just a king but a messianic ruler in his age. The context of “adultery” in this section from Sotah can be developed with regards to contemporary debates about Marcus Julius Agrippa which go beyond the pale of our discussion here. Let it be said however that Christianity and the reforms developed by Mark originally represented for at least some Jews what was regarded as “unfaithfulness” or an "adulteration" of its original principles.
This is the whole reason why this underlying “anti-Christ inference" associated with Marcus Julius Agrippa in Nachmanides is so interesting. The very same line of reasoning can be traced back to the mouth of Polycarp against the contemporary "false-Christ" Mark or indeed "Marqion" viz. "little Mark" (or "Mark the less") in the mid-second century A.D. Am I really saying that the tradition preserved by Nachmanides against one anti-Christ named Mark from the late first century/early second century A.D. have something to do with another in Christian circles regarding a Mark-figure who lived in roughly the same age? Indeed, I most certainly am!
THE UNIVERSAL JOHN-TRADITION REVISITED
His first coming used John ... as His forerunner. His second, in which He is to come in glory, will exhibit [John the Apostle] ... John, will proclaim to all the world the coming of Antichrist [and] will work signs and wonders with the intention of making men ashamed and repentant, because of man's overwhelming lawlessness (antinomianism) and ungodliness. [Hippolytus, grandstudent of Polycarp, Antichrist 21]
So here we are having hashed out that a pre-existent messianic tradition existed in the Judaism of the first and second centuries which essentially expected the "coming back" of a messiah like John Hyrcanus. I have argued that Marcus Julius Agrippa was the contemporary fulfillment of that tradition - that is why he is "Mark who was called John" (or vice versa). Yet it is also why the Jannai tradition continues in both Judaism and Christianity after Mark's messianic tenure was over. The core religious understanding which gave birth to even the Catholic gospels and the Jewish Talmud was based on a John-revelation cult.
The point I am trying to make through all of this is that only once we become aware of the original significance of John Hyrcanus casting a messianic shadow over the whole age of Judaism do any of the Palestinian religious schisms start to make sense. Indeed even the idea of Mark (or Marqion) being the anti-Christ can fit within this framework. As I have said many times before, the real antithesis of the messiah is not the false messiah but indeed the “average Joe.” One man’s Christ is another man’s anti-Christ. The connection between Mark and the messiah is something we will see reflected in surprisingly positive manner by the earlier Rashi (1040-1105 C.E.).
In other words, where Rashi accepts Marcus Julius Agrippa as the messiah the later Nachmanides sees him as a kind of "anti-Christ." Nachmanides essentially accuses him of setting up “Edomitism” – i.e. Christianity as a false idolatrous religion. Because of the “help” sought from
So what am I saying? Marcus Julius Agrippa must necessarily be seen as having been regarded as the awaited messiah of
It is important to analyze Nachmanides' argument that it was Agrippa who is to blame for the fate of Jews – but what did he do? Clearly he makes the case that Marcus Julius Agrippa was simply the enemy of
All of this of course doesn’t explain the blame heaped on Agrippa for causing the weakened state of Judaism unless the Romans also were argued to have done something to Judaism (i.e. rather than just “form” Edomitism/Christianity ex nihilo). As I have said earlier, whether Nachmanides says this explicitly it is certainly implicit that the Romans necessarily reformed Judaism in the time of Agrippa which led to or bolstered "Edomism" just as we see in the Talmud's reports on the "friendship" between Antoninus and Judah that they "reformed" the tradition.
We should look at 'Abodah Zarah 10b's discussion (after the Emperor tucks Judah into bed!) of Judah's "advice" to help Antoninus' desire that"[t]here will be no remnant to the house of Esau?" [Obad. I, 18. i.e. Christianity]. The great rabbi says:
'That,' he replied. 'applies only to those whose evil deeds are like to those of Esau.' We have learnt likewise: There will be no remnant to the House of Esau, might have been taken to apply to all, therefore Scripture says distinctly — To the house of Esau, so as to make it apply only to those who act as Esau did. 'But', said Antonius, is it not also written: There [in the nether world] is Edom, her kings, and all her princes.' [Ex. XXXII, 29] 'There, too,' Rabbi explained, '[it says:] 'her kings', it does not say all her kings; 'all her princes', but not all her officers!
Indeed the discussion continues with what I see as the fate of our withered and indeed aged Marcus Julius Agrippa now at age one hundred and twenty being led to his execution in the forum by Antoninus and where the new editor can't help but have him "accidentally" circumcized to "save" him according to the new-old orthodoxy of rabbinic Judaism.
The point is of course is that Antoninus didn't only encourage this "cutting" but the very castration of the concept of messiah for the very reasons we saw with John ha Nappah a century later. It was perceived to be a great threat to the Empire (especially here after the great Bar Khochba rebellion almost succeeded in achieve that goal of a truly independant homeland for the Jews). Antoninus must have seen it as one of his first duties as new Emperor to cause the central paralysis of the original messianic tradition of John through the establishment of Roman Catholicism on the one hand and the rabbinic reforms of Judaism on the other. Indeed as Jacob Frank noted before me, the Talmud is enemy of the messianic in Judaism. The gospel is just its earlier precursor among the Jewish proselytes.
MARCUS JULIUS AGRIPPA THE SUPPRESSED JEWISH MESSIAH
"Daniel [in the prophesy of the seventy weeks] has elucidated to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise (rabbis) have barred the calculation of the days of Messiah's coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah" Maimonides (Emphasis added). Igeret Teiman, Chapter 3 p.24.
It is now within this context of a pre-existent John cult that we can finally put all the pieces together with regards to Marcus Julius Agrippa being recognized by our earliest surviving Jewish sources as the awaited messiah of Israel. I find it amazing that the greatest historians in our modern age lead people to believe that Marcus Julius Agrippa was a wholly "insignificant" and indeed "weak" figure (Schurer) owing to his siding with the Romans in the Jewish War. He ruled for at least fifty years presiding over nothing short of the refounding of Judaism. How can people be so blind! Even if these men never bothered to read what the Jewish sages themselves said about him by virtue of his rule of the Jews during this critical period alone these prejudices should have been dismissed.
Indeed we can't fault these historians for failing to grasp Mark as "also called John" so that it would become more readily apparent that the invented Jewish figure of "John the son of Zakkai/Zechariah" was really Agrippa. However once we make them aware of what figures like Maimonides, Nachmanides and various other of the most important figures in the history of Judaism actually say about him - then we can judge them on their objectivity!
For Nachmanides doesn't follow the logic that Mark was just "weak." No, not at all. He does not contradict the idea of his predecessors (i.e. Rashi) that Mark declared himself messiah. All he is saying again was that he was a false Christ who took advantage of an opportunity to "deal with the Romans." Indeed as we shall point out in this section Nachmanides again only represents a later rejection of what was clearly the much earlier view that Agrippa was Christ saying that was a false messiah (i.e. anti-Christ).
We shall as I already promised demonstrate quite clearly in this section that earlier rabbis perpetuated the positive acceptance of Agrippa as the messiah which continued in Jewish circles undoubtedly down to the appearance of Jacob Frank. To this end let us begin here with the central argument which appears in a debate between Nachmanides and a Christian convert named Pablo Christiani where Christiani argues that:
the Talmud itself says, "The Messiah was born when the
As I demonstrate in the Christ Heist there is a very early and authoritative understanding in Judaism that the messiah "already" came in the early to mid second century A.D. and was in fact a leper.
Of course this particular line of reasoning regarding the “leper messiah” lies outside of the scope of our present inquiry but it is interesting to note that one thing becomes clear nevertheless – the Jews had originally a tradition that the messiah was “born” or appeared c. 70 A.D. with the end of the temple and that he lived at least until the time of Judah and his reforms i.e. 140 A.D. Am I suggesting that Marcus Julius Agrippa who was born c. 28 A.D. lived one hundred and twenty years like Moses and revealed his messianic identity with his destruction of the Jewish temple? Of course I am. However these proofs will take time to develop and in essence go far beyond our present discussion. What is important for the moment to see that Christiani’s position isn’t that far off from the Jewish sages who came before his opponent Nachmanides.
The point is of course that Nachmanides has an easy time poking holes in the case for Jesus being the awaited messiah mentioned in the Talmud for the simple reason that Christiani has tried to adapt Rashi to what had become "orthodoxy" among the Gentile Christians - i.e. Jesus Christ. The problem now being that because Christians were led to identify Jesus as the messiah Daniels' prophesy of the seventy weeks can't possibly work because this event happened long before the destruction of the temple. Even though Nachmanides manages to find this "achilles heel" in Christiani's attempt to use the Talmud to prove Christianity it should by no means allow for us to dismiss the spirit of the argument of Nachmanides' opponent.
In point of fact we must admit that Christiani can't be this stupid as to not have recognized how Nachmanides was going to paint him into a corner here. After all Paolo Christiani was a Karaite (a sect of Judaism which denied the authority of the Talmud) who later became a convert to Christianity. He would have known the same early traditions which clearly made an influence on Rashi and others as we shall see where the real identity of the messiah from the destruction of the Jewish temple was Marcus Julius Agrippa.
Indeed if we actually listen carefully to Nachmanides refutation of his opponents charge that the rabbinic tradition holds that the messiah would be born with the destruction of the temple it certainly sounds quite evasive to me, being no less convincing than Christiani's argument. It is only that the debate has boiled down into a ridiculous argument about whether the Talmud itself "proves" Jesus to be the Christ (which it certainly does not) that we end up with Nachmanides as the "winner."
The fact is that the Jewish sage's argument goes against all of what came before him in order to "disprove" Christianity. We read for instance that Nachmanides declares in his defence of the Talmud that:
the Talmud is peculiar, and by its assertion that the Messiah was born with the
Yet this is certainly not the original understanding of this passage as we can see from Maimonides, Rashi and other earlier writers. Indeed we see the messianic-castration inherent from being too closely associated with the John ha Nappah's Talmud when the sage continues by saying that:
I do not long for the Messiah. With us it is accounted as of greater merit if we, living in foreign lands, among strange people, and under the protection of the king, worship our God, than if we, as free masters, adhere to the law in our own land.
The irony of course is that we know that Nachmanides accuses Marcus Julius Agrippa of having caused the failure of the Jewish people to attain liberation when indeed his very belief system (i.e. slavery is a state of mind) is symptomatic of the real cause.
Of course in such a silly debate who would stand up for the actual truth of the matter - i.e. that both Jews and Christians were systematically coerced through applied "terror" to abandon their collective messiah (viz. Marcus Julius Arippa) by the time of Antoninus Pius? Nevertheless that at least some part of the original argument was retained within Judaism does seem to have made its way to the great religious minds of Europe. That this and not Nachmanides position was the acknowledged "truth" of Judaism down to the sixteenth century is certainly witnessed by Luther who writes that:
Oh, how ridiculous it seems to these circumcised saints that we accursed Goyim have interpreted and understand this saying thus, especially since we did not consult their rabbis, Talmudists, and Kokhbaites whom they regard as more authoritative than all of Scripture- For they do a far better job of it. This is what they say ... "For sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with walls and streets, but in a troubled time." That is another point. "And after sixty-two weeks the Messiah (that means King Agrippa) will be killed and will not be" -- this means, will be no king, etc. It is indeed tiresome to discuss such confused lies and such tomfoolery. But I have to give our people occasion for pondering the devilish wantonness which the rabbis perpetrate with this splendid saying. So hereyou see how they separate the text where it should be read connectedly, andjoin it where it should be separated.
And again in another place again Luther notes that:
they [the Jews] interpret the words of the angel, "And after sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be killed, and shall have nothing," as if the Messiah refers to King Agrippa, who was killed and had nothing after his death; no king succeeded him. Why would it not be just as true to say that Emperor Nero was the Messiah? He was killed at that timeand left no heirs ... [Yet] Agrippa was not king in Jerusalem, much less the Messiah,before the last week (that is, after seven and sixty-two weeks). The Romans had graciously granted him a little country beyond the
Since they now confess, and have to confess, that a Messiah was killedafter the sixty-two weeks, that is, in the first year of the last week, and since this cannot have been Agrippa (as they would like to have it, in confirmation of their lie), nor anyone else ...
Of course Luther's point is that the contemporary Jewish understanding contradicts what the texts in the hands of white people say about Mark - however the strangest "mistake" by far is the idea that Mark was "killed" with the destruction of the temple.
I leave aside the whole issue of the Jewish tradition knowing of only one Agrippa and the Catholic version of Josephus "developing" the idea of two figures of this name and where only the "father" i.e. "Agrippa I" is recognized as the messiah. I of course side with the Jewish tradition for reasons I don't want to get into here. The point is that both the rabbinic narratives and Josephus acknowlege that "Agrippa" lived on past the destruction of Jerusalem, indeed at least until the second century A.D. so why does Rashi and a whole host of others assume that Agrippa was killed c. 70 A.D.? Now we get to the heart of the matter ...
JEWISH EXEGESIS OF DANIEL'S "SEVENTY WEEKS"
Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to restrain transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy one Know and understand this: From the issuing of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens' ... [a]fter the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And one who causes desolation will come upon the pinnacle of the abominable temple, until the end that is decreed is poured out on the desolated city [Daniel 9:24 - 27]
This my friends is what it all comes down to. Yes there are to be sure other messianic prophesies in the annals of Jewish literature. There are countless other theological arguments to support the coming of the messiah. As general as these were and as easily as they could be applied to Marcus Julius Agrippa as well as countless others Daniel's prophesy of the "seventy weeks" could not. It is extraordinarily specific not only in terms of a date - viz. four hundred and ninety years from the time Daniel received these words (i.e. the Babylonian Exile) - but the actual expectation here is far too specific to be associated with just anyone - i.e. the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.
In other words, no rational person would have argued that the prophesy applied to Marcus Julius Agrippa if it wasn't for the fact that it involved the destruction of Jerusalem (which he accomplished) and most importantly a pre-existing "orthodoxy" established that connection. This interpretation was known to Abaye who argues in the tractate Nazir of the Talmud that this prophesy was fulfilled "a long time ago" even from the perspective of his lifetime (c. fourth century A.D.). Indeed over a half millenium later Maimonides is cited as saying that "Daniel has elucidated to us the knowledge of the end times. However, since they are secret, the wise (rabbis) have barred the calculation of the days of Messiah's coming so that the untutored populace will not be led astray when they see that the End Times have already come but there is no sign of the Messiah" (Emphasis added). Igeret Teiman, Chapter 3 p.24.
In fact Rashi is not alone in this (otherwise ridiculous) chronology. Another great Jewish sage, Rabbi Saadya Gaon, clearly has the same understanding when he writes "seven weeks times seven is 490 weeks equals years. Seventy years Babylonian diaspora and 420 the
Now that I have found the explicit confirmation of my theory among the greatest witnesses to the original Jewish tradition I want to go one step further. Not only is it possible to demonstrate that the same belief existed among the earliest Catholic Church Fathers the real situation is that if we trace this opinion back from the second and third centuries A.D. to our earliest historical witnesses it is impossible to distinguish between what is a Christian, what is a Jew and what is a Samaritan. What is a Samaritan, you ask? That's a whole other topic. The underlying understanding here is that the existing distinctions between the three surviving Palestinian monotheist traditions evaporate when you look at the issue of Mark as the awaited messiah of Israel because of his role in the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem.
When we began this section we started with a quote from the third century A.D. Church Father Tertullian's preservation of material from another Church Father living in the Middle East and Rome from the second century called Justin Martyr by Catholics. We will have an expanded discussion of his person in a moment, nevertheless let us note that whatever Tertullian has saved for us from his original source represents a much earlier witness for the interpretation of Rashi and other rabbis. Yet it only represents one strand of the original Christian tradition which necessarily goes back again to "Mark." His Alexandrian contemporary Origen, living in a city which is to this day devoted to "Mark who was called John, the one who married Berenice" makes virtually the same identification albeit without referencing a work from Justin.
Indeed the earliest Catholic representative in the "city of St. Mark" Clement of Alexandria makes the original Gaonic interpretation in the late second century A.D. explaining Daniel's prophesy with the following words "[i]n those "sixty and two weeks," as the prophet said, and "in the one week," was he [Christ] Lord. The half of the week Nero held sway, and in the holy city
When we reach Clement unfortunately we hit a dead end because he is the earliest Catholic witness in the city. In order to start a fresh trail we must go back to the Catholic leader of yet another center of "Mark worship" viz. Rome and see what Hippolytus the grandson of Polycarp preserves for us regarding the proper interpretation of Daniel 9:24 -27. We should be quite startled in face when we read him explain that the "gospel" is the "new covenant" mentioned in the text as being introduced by the messiah. Can it again be coincidence that most scholars identify a "gospel of Mark" as the earliest of the Catholic canonical gospels and argue for its composition as being immediately after the events of the destruction of Jerusalem?
Citing the words of Daniel that"[a]fter threescore and two weeks the times will be fulfilled, and one week will make a covenant with many; and in the midst (half) of the week sacrifice and oblation will be removed, and in the temple will be the abomination of desolations" Hippolytus writes that "when the threescore and two weeks are fulfilled, and Christ is come, and the Gospel is preached in every place, the times being then accomplished, there will remain only one week, the last." As we have already noted Hippolytus interestingly also notes elsewhere that in this last week the messiah will appear - elsewhere noting that he will be a resurrected "John." Yet where was he getting these crazy ideas from regarding "Christ" and his "preaching of the gospel" in 70 A.D. if it was not associated with the historical Marcus Julius Agrippa?
The truth is of course that the new Catholic Christianity wants to pretend that Jesus is the messiah but has as part of its heritage the notion of two advents of Christ - one in humility one in might i.e. as the royal messiah. These same authorities who argue for the fulfilment of thhe messiah during the destruction of
The point is of course that we have to start coming to terms with the fact that it may even be possible that both at least many of the authorities may not be telling us or be allowed to tell us (owing to editorial redaction) how significant the messianic authority of Mark was in the world environment after the destruction of the temple. If Hippolytus argues for instance that the gospel is the "covenant" which will be introduced by the messiah of Daniel 9:24 - 27 it is impossible to argue that any of these men thought that Jesus himself "actually" established the "covenant of the gospel" in 70 A.D. The only way they deemed this possible is through the whole "second advent" doctrine where there is indeed an inescapable conclusion then that Mark - i.e. Marcus Julius Agrippa - had "Jesus in his flesh" when he carried out his great act.
I can't get into the understanding for the moment of what the underlying relationship is between "flesh" and "gospel" (they go back to one and the same word in Aramaic viz. besira/besora). We could develop an understanding that these words are not only the first lines of the original evangelion of Mark - i.e. "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus, son of God" but the very title of the original title of the gospel in the Marqionite tradition viz. "the gospel of Jesus." All of this might lead us away from our original effort to demonstrate the underlying "universal" acceptance between Jews and Christians of Marcus Julius Agrippa as the awaited messiah pointed out in the original prophesy of Daniel's "seventy weeks."
WITNESSING THE CONVERGENCE FIRST
some indeed by this [prophesy of Daniel] understood Herod, but others the crucified wonder-doer Jesus, others again Vespasian [Slavonic Josephus, Jewish Wars]
Yet no matter how much I want to prevent myself from getting "too carried away" with the knowledge of Mark as the possessor of the "besora d'Yeshua" in Christian circles it is too significant to pass over completely. For the idea of the apostle originally "receiving the besora" from a revelation of Jesus necessarily stands at the heart of the whole original "second advent" traditions in association with the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. On some level, Jesus the Son God was understood to have "come back" to wreak vengeance on the Jews after displaying himself "in kindness" forty years or so earlier. The manifestation of this figure of "kindness" is Jesus while that of "vengeance" is Mark. This is very important as the reception of the besora - the "gospel" or "flesh of Jesus" by Mark is the necessarily transformation point of the original "second coming."
I don't know if any of this makes sense to people out there but the same general time of "two advents of the messiah" is not only found in Christianity but also in Judaism. Only now in the section we just saw in Rashi it is applied without reference to Jesus and interestingly with Agrippa as the "son of Joseph" who prepares the way for the true "son of David" who comes in his wake. Look carefully again at his very words here that:
After the seventieth week, Agrippa, king of
Agrippa as the messiah who will be "cut off" implies clearly that he is the first coming and the one who defeats Rome sometime in the future is that of the second.
The point that I want to make of course was that in the lifetime of Marcus Julius Agrippa the understanding must have been that he was the "son of David" messiah and Jesus the Son of God, was that of the "son of Joseph." This doesn't mean in any way that these contemporaries accepted that he had a "father named Joseph." In fact earliest Christian witnesses to this phenomenon emphasize the mystical relationship between the "garment" or "coat" of many colors associated with Joseph in the Torah but which also according to oral tradition came originally from Esau. As Origen develops the "garment" here represents not only the skin which Jacob put on to imitate his divine twin brother but the "flesh" which Jesus transferred to the community of Israel, clearly through his chosen representative Mark.
Once we "get" at the knowledge that the original understanding that Mark took on the besora d'Yeshua in order to manifest the "second coming" we can I think begin to approach another amazing and under reported aspects of the whole "seventy weeks" prophesy. The facts are that contemporary witnesses to the identification of Marcus Julius Agrippa as the messiah of Daniel do indeed exist it is just that most scholars again don't know what to do with them. It all begins with making sense of many of the important variants to the existing Greek manuscripts of Josephus among the archives of the Russian church. These so-called "Slavonic texts" of the Jewish historian Josephus preserve for us what ammounts to being a firsthand witness to the original "universal faith" of Palestinians in the age with regards to Marcus Julius Agrippa as the "second coming" of Christ as it were. All we have to do is look at what is there and think carefully about what it really points to.
We shall allow Nodet to take us through the material. He notes that in section 6:311 the Slavonic’s narrative of the conquest of the temple is much different that what survived in the West in the Greek texts. The Old Russian material, according to Nodet, actually likens Marcus Agrippa's seizing of the temple in terms of a "victory of the Cross" over the enemies of Jesus through the prophesy of Daniel. We see this where the Slavonic text diverges from our own when says that:
although there was by the Jews a prophecy that the city would be destroyed by the quadrangle shape (Gk tetragonos) they started making crosses for crucifixion which includes the quandrangle shape we said, and by the demolition of [the] Antonia [tower of the temple] they gave the temple a quandrangle shape.
Of course the material is entirely garbled here and begins with the "four horns" prophesy of Daniel 8:22 which he interprets literally as “and the horn will be snapped, the four horns will sprout in its place, four kingdoms from a nation will rise and not from its own strength.”
Nodet notes that the Hebrew word for “horn” can also mean “angle” and so understands the original author to read it as “and the broken horn, four angles will sprout in its place and four armies from one foreign nation will rise and there is no more strength.” The meaning of Josephus is thus interpreted to be that Antonia is the broken horn replaced – if not conquered – by the “four-angled” shape, the Cross. Yet the latter part of the original sentence in the Slavonic Josephus can actually be linked to Daniel's prophesy of the "seventy weeks" were according to some translations "And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him." [Daniel 9:27]
In order to understand how all of this originally and necessarily came back to Marcus Julius Agrippa "taking on the flesh of Jesus" we must follow the variant Slavonic material here to the line which immediately follows this "victory of the cross" reference. The section concludes with a very different understanding of whom Josephus understood to be the “world-ruler” from the prophesy of Daniel. In the our familiar Greek text of Josephus we hear nothing about the "victory of the cross" and only that Daniel predicted the coming of Vespasian as world-ruler. The Slavonic concludes instead the words that “some indeed by this [prophesy of Daniel] understood Herod, but others the crucified wonder-doer Jesus, others again Vespasian." Fo course there was only one “Herod” alive at the time of these revelatory events: the last Herodian king of
One of the greatest mysteries in the history of scholarship is of course how the various versions of Josephus - the Greek, Old Russian and Hebrew - managed to diverge so much from one another. The only answer is of course is that at some level and perhaps many times over the original testimony of the Jewish revolutionary general and ruler of Galilee for two short years or so was reworked by later editors. People want to get away from this of course because it is "nice" to have this Jew apparently testify to the existence of "Jesus Christ," "John the Baptist" and a host of other Catholic inventions. Nevertheless I think it is very important to clear the air about all these silly things and come to terms with the immediate realization about how corrupt the textual tradition at the foundation of our Church really is.
I can't very easily explain how the Slavonic material maintains what is certainly a Marqionite position witnessed by Celsus of Rome as early as 140 A.D. - viz. "is it not ridiculous to suppose [as they do that] whereas a man, who became angry with the Jews, slew them all from the youth upwards, and burned their city (so powerless were they to resist him), the mighty God, as they say, being angry, and indignant, and uttering threats, should, (instead of punishing them) send His own Son, who endured the sufferings which He did?" unless of course we follow the suggestion made by some scholars that these references originally appeared in the text of Josephus' rival Justus of Tiberias who wrote a completely different account of the history of the Jewish War.
Indeed while Photius, the only known surviving witness to what was in that lost book, explicitly states that Jesus is nowhere mentioned in that work, the kinds of references we are dealing with interestingly also don't mention Jesus by name. Let's look at another section of the Slavonic Josephus where we might think that something of Justus' original work has been summarily "plopped down" in a sudden manner. We cite at length what appears in a section now which deals with Herod the Great that he too was involved in a "destruction of the temple" as we read:
At the time the priests mourned and grieved to one another in secret for they did not dare to do so openly out of fear of Herod and his friends. They said “the Law forbids us to have no foreigner as king (Deut
Ananus the high priest spoke to them: “I know all of Scripture. When Herod fought beneath the city wall. I never had a thought that God would permit him to rule over us. But now I understand that our desolation is nigh. Study you the prophesy of Daniel. He writes (Daniel 9;24f) “that after the return (from Babylon) the city of Jerusalem shall stand for seventy weeks of years, which are four hundred and ninety years, and after these years it shall be desolate. And when they (the others) had counted the years they were thirty four years. But Jonathan answered and spoke “the numbers of years are as we have said. But the Holy of Holies, where is he? For Daniel cannot call the Holy one this Herod who is blood thirsty and impure.
But one of them named Levi wishing to outwit them spoke to them what he got with his tongue not out of the books but in fable. They however being learned in the Scriptures began to search for the time when the holy one would come and they execrated Levi’s speeches saying “Soup is in your mouth, a bone in your head.” They said this because he breakfasted before dawn and his head was heavy with drink as if it were a bone. But he overcame with shame fled to Herod, and informed him of the speeches of the priests, which they had spoken against him. But Herod sent by night and slew them all, without the knowledge of the people lest they should be roused. And he appointed others.
Of course as it stands now the later editors of the text make it seem as if it were this "destruction of the temple" event which was predicted by Daniel occured under Herod the Great. Yet again the story interestingly does not make its way into the same Greek versions of the life of this earlier Herod.
The fact of course is that no "destruction of the temple" is ever recorded as having happened in the reign of Marcus Julius Agrippa's grandfather. The motivation for why a later Christian editor would have taken this section of material from Justus regarding his master Mark and deliberately "plopped it down" into a section which makes it seems as if the "Herod" who was identified as fulfilling the prophesy of Daniel was really "Herod the Great" is all really part of the underlying anti-Marqionite effort of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. Indeed that this position was influential can be seen in Eusebius citation of it when he argues that "if you reckon the succeeding period from that date up to King Herod and the Roman Emperor Augustus, in whose times our Saviour was born on earth, you will find it amounts to 483 years, which are the seven and sixty-two weeks of the prophecy of Daniel."
MISTAKING JOSEPHUS FOR HISTORY
"Josephus was a superb liar" [Harold Bloom, Jesus and Yahweh]
Of course Eusebius nor anyone else ever mentions any "destruction of the temple" at the time of Herod because it never actually happened. This is because it never happened; the Christian editor of the Slavonic Josephus is merely trying to get around the original understanding of Jews and Christians alike that it was the last Herodian king Marcus Julius Agrippa who was the "Herod" originally understood to have been foretold by Daniel's prophesy according to the orthodoxy of the age. Indeed the fact is that even what survives of this original narrative demonstrates itself to apply far better to the life of Marcus Julius Agrippa whom we know destroyed the temple than his grandfather who is usually remembered as having built it up.
In point of fact if we look carefully again into the Slavonic Josephus material just cited there really was only one “high priest Ananus” and he reigned in the decade which led to the Jewish War. If we bring up the list of Jewish high priests we find no figure whatsoever named “Ananus” during the whole reign of Herod the Great:
15. Ananel, 37-36 B.C. (Appointed by Herod the Great)
16. Aristobulus
17. Jesus, son of Phiabi, ? -22 B.C.
18. Simon, son of Boethus, 22-5 B.C.
19. Matthias, son of Theophilus, 5-4 B.C.
20. Joseph, son of
21. Joezer, son of Boethus, 4 B.C.
22. Eleazar, son of Boethus, 4-1 B.C. - (Appointed by Herod Archelaus)
23. Jesus, son of Sie, 1 - 6 A.D.
24. Annas, 6-15 A.D. (Appointed by Quirinius)
25. Ishmael, son of Phiabi I, 15-16 A.D. (Appointed by Valerius Gratus)
26. Eleazar, son of Annas, 16-17 A.D.
27. Simon, son of Kamithos, 17-18 A.D.
28. Joseph Caiaphas, 18-37 AD.
29. Jonathan, son of Annas, 37 A.D. (Appointed by Vitellius)
30. Theophilus, son of Annas, 37-41 A.D.
31. Simon Kantheras, son of Boethus, 41-43 A.D. (Appointed by Herod Agrippa)
32. Matthias, son of Annas, 43-44 A.D.
33. Elionaius, son of Kantheras, 44-45 A.D.
34. Joseph, son of Kami, 45-47 A.D. (Appointed by Herod of
35. Ananias, son of Nebedaius, 47-55 A.D.
36. Ishmael, son of Phiabi
37. Joseph Qabi, son of Simon, 61-62 A.D.
38. Ananus, son of Ananus, 62 A.D.
39. Jesus, son of Damnaius, 62-65 A.D.
40. Joshua, son of Gamal iel, 63-65 A.D.
41. Matthias, son of Theophilus, 65-67 A.D.
Indeed the idea of this "Ananus" being the "Ananiel" is perposterous given the relative shortness of his tenure. It makes far more sense to suppose that this Ananus was the one whom Josephus identifies as being appointed by Marcus Julius Agrippa in 62 A.D. and who had a leading role in the Jewish revolt.
Of course what stops readers from seeing the presence of this Ananus in the surviving material is that they take Josephus at face value. These gullible believers "have faith" that their original source is just "reporting the facts." Why? Because they are at bottom incredibly lazy thinkers who simply want to take the Christian editors masterful reinvention as it is rather than peel away the various layers which actually seperate us from the original historical truth of the age. The real truth of course is that beneath the outer layer of Christian reinvention of Josephus' original testimony there is an undeniable apologetic which sees Josephus take every opportunity to blame those who were actually on the side of Marcus Julius Agrippa for the revolt (i.e. Justus) which he actually precpitated.
Why the desperate effort to exhonerate himself and his associates (i.e. Ananus)? Let's not forget people that Josephus fought on the wrong side of the war. The Jewish rebels lost and Josephus along with them only he was spared because he promised to work for the side of the Romans. When Josephus changed sides he received a promise from Vespasian that his life would be spared in exchange for his efforts to bring the rebellion to close - even to betray members of his side. While Vespasian was alive Josephus could certainly feel some degree of secuirity owing to the fact that the general was a man of his word. However when Vespasian died and Josephus was forced to endure the reign of his sons who were especially anti-Jewish (especially Domitan) his position became increasing tenuous.
Indeed if we look carefully at the surviving narrative Josephus can be seen clearly as going out of his way to portray Ananus (the same high priest who is reported as opposing "Herod" and supporting the insurgency in what we have identified as material from Josephus' rival Justus) as a "good guy." In Jewish War Book Four Josephus claims that Ananus was in
Moreover we can see Josephus originally identifying himself as being the leader of "the people [who] could no longer bear the insolence of [the rebels] but did all together run zealously, in order to overthrow that tyranny; and indeed they were Gorion the son of Josephus, and Simeon the son of Gamaliel, who encouraged them, by going up and down when they were assembled together in crowds, and as they saw them alone, to bear no longer, but to inflict punishment upon these pests and plagues of their freedom, and to purge the temple of these bloody polluters of it." Thus exactly in the kind of language that he describes himself Ananus becomes transformed from being a leader of the Jewish War (Justus also so accused Josephus) to the high priest being one who resisted the push to independance by the rebellious baryonim.
We not surprisingly hear over and over again that "the best esteemed also of the high priests, Jesus the son of Gamalas, and Ananus the son of Ananus when they were at their assemblies, bitterly reproached the people for their sloth, and excited them against the zealots; for that was the name they went by, as if they were zealous in good undertakings, and were not rather zealous in the worst actions, and extravagant in them beyond the example of others." Why does Josephus go to such lengths to exhonerate Ananus? Could it be because it established through Justus of Tiberias that the two were close associates of one another?
Indeed in this original revised pseudo-history of Josephus (i.e. even before the hand of the Christian editor perverted it further) Ananus is portrayed as the voice of reason among the populace - something which was explicitly rejected Justus' earlier portrait of him as an "enemy of Rome" and Agrippa. As we read in what follows:
Ananus stood in the midst of them, and casting his eyes frequently at the temple, and having a flood of tears in his eyes, he said, "Certainly it had been good for me to die before I had seen the house of God full of so many abominations, or these sacred places, that ought not to be trodden upon at random, filled with the feet of these blood-shedding villains; yet do I, who am clothed with the vestments of the high priesthood, and am called by that most venerable name [of high priest], still live, and am but too fond of living, and cannot endure to undergo a death which would be the glory of my old age; and if I were the only person concerned, and as it were in a desert, I would give up my life, and that alone for God's sake; for to what purpose is it to live among a people insensible of their calamities, and where there is no notion remaining of any remedy for the miseries that are upon them?"
The speech goes on to claim of course that Ananus implores his fellows to throw down their arms and even going further saying "Ananus made no longer delay, but had prevailed with the people to send ambassadors to Vespasian, to invite him to come presently and take the city."
Of course this is all nonesense. As aforementioned it is not at all difficult to see that Josephus' whole history of the war is an attempt to shift blame to the party of Marcus Julius Agrippa for the cause of the war. This is certainly at the heart of the his attacks against "John the son of Levi" where "John" must have been the name which Jews identified Mark in this period. Notice of course that throughout the history of the war only Josephus recognizes the existence of this "John." At the end of the war "John" miraculously escapes punishment because of Mark and his sister Berenice and is instead put away to perpetual exile (like the Christian "John" interestingly) while Josephus neatly avoids emphasizing the fact that his historical brother Simon bar Gorius was the real leader of the revolt.
We will let Goldberg get the last word when he notes that "[t]he former High Priest Ananus, who was appointed one of the supreme commanders of Jerusalem, had a taste for power, having tried to seize it illegally several years before. When he had been High Priest he had tried to act as governor after the sudden death of Festus, and at that time ordered killed James the brother of Jesus, for which he was deposed as high priest by Agrippa. Now he was finally leader of the city and Agrippa's military enemy. Ananus was the youngest of the five sons of the elder Ananus. Each of the sons had been high priest, for which the father was most fortunate, according to Josephus in Antiquities 20.9.1 197-203. But the youngest Ananus was "arrogant in character and exceptionally bold, and followed the school of the Sadducees, who, when they sit in judgment, are more heartless than any other Jews."
THE LOST "COUNTER-HISTORY" OF JUSTUS
It is said that the history which he wrote is in great part fictitious, especially where he describes the Judaeo-Roman war and the capture of Jerusalem. [Photius, Biblioteca - On Justus of Tiberias]
The point of all of this is of course, as the reader can readily see, that I am going off on another tangent. Yet, this development is far more significant to our overall understanding than the whole mysticism regarding Mark being the "beholder of God" on the cross and its relationship to him as the "second coming." The relationship between Josephus and Justus is something which rarely makes its way into the religious history of the West i.e. real history. What an interesting "tangent" to go off on! Indeed only in a discussion of theology and mysticism can "reality" be seen as an unwarranted "intrusion."
The point is however that because of the decisions of Polycarp of Smyrna as to what was "orthodox" enough to be kept in the canon of the New Testament only one side of the original history of the Jewish War survives - that of Josephus. In antiquity there was "another side" to the story - which was of course the "counter-history" of Justus. Now in even calling this a "counter-history" we already make it seem as if Josephus' was more widely accepted which could be no further than the truth. There is very good reason to believe that in fact Justus' narrative was originally acknowledged as authorative if not for the least of which he openly seems to flatter his master and ruler of Syria, Marcus Julius Agrippa.
Indeed the very summary of its contents which are provided to us by a Byzantine chronicler named Photius hint at the original structure of the work as a hagiography of Marcus Agrippa as nothing short of the fulfillment of a "return of Moses" where he speaks of:
the Chronicle of Justus of Tiberias, entitled A Chronicle of the Kings of the Jews in the form of a genealogy, by Justus of Tiberias [who] came from Tiberias in Galilee, from which he took his name. He begins his history with Moses and carries it down to the death of the seventh Agrippa of the family of Herod and the last of the Kings of the Jews. His kingdom, which was bestowed upon him by Claudius, was extended by Nero, and still more by Vespasian. He [i.e. Justus] died in the third year of Trajan, when the history ends. Justus' style is very concise and he omits a great deal that is of utmost importance. Suffering from the common fault of the Jews, to which race he belonged, he does not even mention the coming of [Jesus] Christ, the events of his life, or the miracles performed by Him. His father was a Jew named Pistus; Justus himself, according to Josephus, was one of the most abandoned of men, a slave to vice and greed. He was a political opponent of Josephus, against whom he is said to have concocted several plots; but Josephus, although on several occasions he had his enemy in his power, only chastised him with words and let him go free. It is said that the history which he wrote is in great part fictitious, especially where he describes the Judaeo-Roman war and the capture of Jerusalem.
Of course almost all of these negative attributions by Photius regarding the historical content of Justus account come from the account that his tradition is based on the assumption of the near sanctity of the "counter-history" of Josephus.
I don't want to get too carried away with the details regarding the historical rivalry which existed between Justus and Josephus other than to say that it comes to down the fact that Justus was the "secretary" of Agrippa and Josephus took over Mark's throne while he was "cut off" from it at the beginning of the insurgency. Indeed Justus originally listed many reasons why he resented Josephus all of which have to with the manner that he as a loyalist of King Mark was treated during Josephus' short rule in Tiberias. As Gottheil notes that after:
Josephus came as governor to
Of course what historians fail to realize of course is that we are throughout this even better than average overview of the relation between the two men the claims of Josephus as if they were honest.
The fact is that the whole of Life can be identified as a desperate apology of Josephus against the charges found in Justus lost "counter-history" to his version of history in the Jewish Wars. Yet the real question in my mind is not why these two men hated one another - being involved in a catastrophic war does that to people. It is rather why the Catholic tradition decided to allow the account of an admitted general in the Pharisaic revolutionary movement to survive that of the secretary of the man who Christianity original hailed as the second coming of Jesus? Of course by now we should see that as obvious - this is exactly why Polycarp was encouraged to dispose of it!
Indeed the fact is that the historical debate between these two men was so well known and allowed us to get so deep inside the original messianic environment which gave birth to Christianity that I believe Polycarp invented a third person to obscure both of them. The figure of "Joseph called Barsabbas (who was also called Justus)" is invented in the Acts of the Apostles to stake a middle ground between the original antagonistic positions of the most active supporter of the messianic claims of his master Mark on the one hand (Justus) and its clearest living embodiment of its historical denial on the other (Josephus).
How do I claim that Justus supported Mark's claims? Well if we acknowledged that Agrippa himself had to be at the heart of the messianic claims developed by his original supporters "picked up" by the later communities of rabbinic Judaism and Catholic Christianity someone had to have transmitted them to the leading "elders" of his age. Justus was certainly that person. In fact I have long been suspicious that the figure identified as "R. Zadok" in the rabbinic tradition as being released from Jerusalem at the command of "John" was none other than our Justus.
It is worth noting that Josephus' original claim after all was that the whole Jewish War could be blamed on a "John" whom countless Galileans including Justus went crazy over. In other words, one has to become aware of the apologetic nature of Josephus' account in order to make sense of matters here. Of course as Gottheil already notes the whole of" Vita the autobiography of Josephus, was directed against this very work of Justus [i.e. the Chronicle aforementioned]." Yet we come again and again to the underlying issue about what about Justus' original history was so contraversial that it should inspire not only Josephus but the whole of the Catholic tradition to destroy its version of events during the War?
O Justus! thou most sagacious of writers for so thou boastest of thyself, that I and the Galileans have been the authors of that sedition which thy country engaged in, both against the Romans and against the king (Agrippa) [Josephus Life 65]
Indeed Josephus says something more which is always missed by scholars - Justus makes clear that the motivation for the war was religious. It wasn't just about political matters but more importantly new religious ideas which Marcus Julius Agrippa seemed to be ushering into the age. The battle between the forces who lined up on the side of Marcus Julius Agrippa seemed to have one version of religious orthodoxy ("new covenant"/messianic) while those on the side of the house of Gorius (i.e. Nicodemus, Simon, Josephus) were conservative Pharisees had another and the fate of the identity of Judaism lay in the balance.
As already mentioned by Gottheil there is the clear physical evidence of the synagogues of the capitol Tiberias "offending" the orthodoxy of the Pharisees as we read Josephus testify against Justus' original charge in Life 12
I sent messengers to the senate of Tiberius, and desired that the principal men of the city would come to me: and when they were come, Justus himself being also with them, I told them that I was sent to them by the people of Jerusalem as a legate, together with these other priests, in order to persuade them to demolish that house which Herod the tetrarch had built there, and which had the figures of living creatures in it, although our laws have forbidden us to make any such figures; and I desired that they would give us leave so to do immediately. But for a good while Capellus and the principal men belonging to the city would not give us leave, but were at length entirely overcome by us
Of course according to Josephus' practice while he admits he had the motivation to carry out the burning of these buildings he blames those on the side of Marcus Julius Agrippa - a certain "Jesus" supposedly "took with him certain Galileans, and set the entire palace on fire, and thought he should get a great deal of money thereby, because he saw some of the roofs gilt with gold."
Inded it was "Jesus" the brother or indeed "brother in law" of Justus and "his party" who Josephus blames for having "slaim all the Greeks that were inhabitants of Tiberias, and as many others as were their enemies before the war began." Josephus washes his hands of the bloodbath which Justus certainly accused him of precipitating and attempts to get around the fact that he was identified with all the stolen booty attributed to "Jesus" saying "when I understood this state of things, I was greatly provoked, and went down to Tiberias, and took all the care I could of the royal furniture, to recover all that could be recovered from such as had plundered it. They consisted of candlesticks made of Corinthian brass, and of royal tables, and of a great quantity of uncoined silver; and I resolved to preserve whatsoever came to my hand for the king."
Of course we can argue that there are countless surviving examples of these "Marqionite" synagogues (i.e. those with "graven images") dotting the landscape of
At this time it was that two great men, who were under the jurisdiction of the king [Agrippa] came to me out of the region of Trachonius, bringing their horses and their arms, and carrying with them their money also; and when the Jews would force them to be circumcised, if they would stay among them, I would not permit them to have any force put upon them, but said to them, "Every one ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and not to be constrained by force; and that these men, who had fled to us for protection, ought not to be so treated as to repent of their coming hither." [Life 23]
The discovery that Marcus Julius Agrippa allowed or even encouraged members of his religious order to remain uncircumcized is only one part of the original puzzle which Josephus' historical response to Justus' Chronicle.
The truth is that when you begin to factor in the uncirumcision, the ornate synagogues and the scraps of information we get from Justus' "sanctioned" hagiography of his master Mark (i.e. where Agrippa stood at the end of direct historical line which began with Moses) we can I think begin to see what we are dealing with here. Or can we? Are we so conditioned to think of Christianity as "being about Jesus" that the idea of "another" who came to establish the community among the "sons of man" who was the real apostle, paraclete and Christ of the new tradition through the authority of Jesus the Son God is simply beyond us? If so we are going to be severely challenged by the next section, that's for sure ...
JUSTUS
The point of course must be that Justus after partaking of this grace at the sacred meal (and through which he was saved from the poison given to him there by an enemy) he must have been understood to have received the Holy Spirit so as to "correct" the original gospel.