The Race Against Time
Controversial to put it mildly. Deeply disturbing to many. However, our first responsibility was to the truth. We had found a character who was immensely powerful and uniquely impressive.
The entire duration of Jesus’ ministry was just one year, from the death of John the Baptist to his own crucifixion. This short period was filled with bitterness and political infighting, particularly between Jesus and James. Jesus, or Yahoshua ben Joseph as he was known, was a deeply unpopular man in Jerusalem and at Qumran. Most people backed James, including Mary and Joseph.
With the loss of the priestly Messiah, Jesus’s strategy became more radical. (1) He decided it was better to break the law for the good of the nation. Jesus believed that the time of the final battle with the Romans and their supporters was close and he believed that he had the best chance of winning the war for Yahweh.
The Qumranians were happy for Jesus to be the left-hand pillar of Mishpat, but they could not accept ;him as the right-hand pillar as well. The Bible says that Jesus will sit on the right hand of God the Father, which means that he is the left-hand pillar, in that when one faces God looking west through his temple door, God will be facing out towards the east with the Mishpat pillar to his right.
James the Just told his brother that he was not considered holy enough to become both pillars, but Jesus ignored his comments and announced himself to be the two earthly connections in the holy trinity that had God at its apex. This is the source of the Catholic trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.
Jesus had a military agenda. G.W. Buchanan observed that Jesus was a warrior and concluded that it is not possible for an objective historian to dismiss all the military implications related to the teaching of and about Jesus. It was Jesus’s role to lead the war and become the new king. (2)
Of the Dead Sea Scrolls Professor Eisenman has said:
’The kind of thing we’re talking about in our new view of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a Messianic movement in Palestine that is much more aggressive, much more apocalyptic, much more militant and much more this-worldly orientated – a kind of army of God in camps along the Dead Sea, or out in the wilderness, a group preparing for a final apocalyptic war against all evil on the earth. (3)
Jesus knew from the start that time was not on his side. The first thing he did was to appoint some personal bodyguards to protect him; then he followed a policy of moving around, with only brief stays in any one place. His five principal ’minders’ were: James and John, whom he called ‘sons of thunder’; two Simons, one called ’the zealot’ and the other ‘the terrorist’ (barjona); and Judas ‘the knife-man’ (sicarius). These were no peacemakers – In Luke 22:35-38 we are told that they inform Jesus that they already had two swords after he had exhorted them to sell their clothes to buy weapons.
’And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said nothing.
Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath no purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.
For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the transgressors: for the things concerning me have an end.
And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.
The two most important requirements for the success of Jesus’s plan were more followers and more funding. The priesthood in Jerusalem was already rich, selling membership of the Jewish religion to Gentiles around the Roman empire, giving them a stone from the Jordan in exchange for large amounts of money, and he needed to unseat these people. His first idea was a stroke of genius, but one that caused panic and outrage in the Qumran Community. He started raising common people to the status of a first-year Qumranian initiate allover the place; worse still, he unilaterally ‘resurrected’ many of his closest followers to the highest level, giving them the secrets of Moses.
The New Testament indicates that Jesus had an elite that held special secrets. From the start of Jesus’s ministry there was an inner circle of Jesus’s closest followers with whom he shared special secrets. Observers have detected three additional layers; the premier team; a group of less intimate followers to whom the secret had not been revealed; and the outsiders, the indifferent or hostile people of the surrounding world. (4) Jesus’s first miracle was to turn water into wine at the wedding at Cana. It was Jesus’s first attempt at recruitment outside the Community. The term ‘turning water into wine’ was common parlance, equivalent to the English expression ‘making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’. It referred to Jesus using baptism to turn batches of ordinary people into those fit to enter the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, in preparation for the ‘end of the age’. The uninstructed were the ‘water’ and the trained and refined were ‘wine’. Taking the phrase literally, as some less informed Christians do, is equivalent to thinking that someone had the power to turn the ears of pigs into real silk purses.
The method of making a person a member of the inner sanctum at Qumran was the ceremony that had come down one and a half thousand years from Sequenenre’s murder in Thebes, that stemmed from the king-making ceremonies of ancient Egypt. The initiates were known as the ‘living’ and everyone else being referred to as the ‘dead’. The Qumran Community believed religiously that ‘life’ could only happen in the Community. It was common practice at that time for one Jewish sect to believe that all Jews of other sects were religiously ‘dead’. (5)
The Qumranians used simulated resurrection as a means of admittance to the ‘third degree’. Jesus used exactly the same techniques. When he made someone a general member of this splinter cult of the Qumranian sect, he turned ‘water into wine’ and when he initiated a new candidate into his core group, they were ‘raised from the dead’. This two-tier structure was recorded by early Christians, who said that Jesus offered simple teaching to ‘the many’ but gave a secret teaching to ‘the few’ Clement of Alexandria mentions this secret tradition in a letter. Valentinus, a Christian teacher of the mid-second century recorded that Jesus shared with his disciples ‘certain mysteries which he kept secret from outsiders’. Mark 4:11:
’And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables.’
The resurrection initiation to bring people in from the ‘dead’ was called being ‘raised’ or ‘standing up’ and it was reversible for those who contravened the rules of the sect, which was, quite logically, called being ‘buried’ or ‘falling down’. In the New Testament story, Ananias and Sapphira were members of the sect at the time of the crisis after the crucifixion. James ordered that as much money as possible had to be raised to organize the defense of the sect, and every member of the inner group was required to sell any land or property that they owned and to give the proceeds to central funds. When it was discovered that Ananias and his wife Sapphira had made their sale but had kept back some of the money for themselves, they were each, in turn, brought before Peter, who decided to make an example of the pair to dissuade others from similar thoughts. The story is told in Acts 5:1-11:
It appears that a peevish God murdered a husband and wife, using supernatural powers, because they had not supported His chosen group quite fervently enough. This portrays a god as partial and vicious as Yahweh in his early days, who is vastly different from the God of love and forgiveness apparently promoted by Jesus. However it was a disciplinary hearing that resulted in tow members being thrown out, i.e. sent amongst the ‘dead’. The term ’young men’ was a Qumranian description for ‘novices’ – the opposite of ‘elders’. To be cast out amongst the ‘dead’ at this crucial time was a terrible punishment to those that believed the ‘kingdom of God’ was only days away; they had lost their ticket to the new order that was about to arise in Israel.
Sometimes people underwent ‘temporary death’ by leaving the inner group and then being readmitted. Lazarus lost his nerve when the going got tough towards the end of Jesus’s life. He explained to his sisters Mary and Martha that he was afraid and would have to leave the inner group. Four days later Jesus arrived on the scene. Mary said to Jesus that Lazarus would not have become ‘dead’ in the first place if Jesus would have been there to talk to him. Jesus then went to find Lazarus and persuaded him to be bold and rejoin the ‘living.’
This kind of expression of the ‘living’ and the ‘dead’ has been shown, beyond all doubt, to have been the terminology used at the time of Jesus and those that insist upon taking it literally not only deny all the evidence but also do a great disservice to a unique and brilliant teacher. The idea of a rotting corpse being brought back to life would have been a disgusting concept to all Jews of the age, and for modern Christians to think there was ever an age when such things were spoken of in a matter-of-fact way is as foolish as thinking that magic carpets really were once the usual mode of transport in Baghdad.
The reality is that Jesus was no fluffy softy, dispensing love and kindness wherever he went. He was tough. He required his inner group to cut all ties with their family as he himself had done. Matthew 8:21-22 has always defied explanation by the church:
’And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury the dead.’
Jesus meant, ‘Let the outside world (the ‘dead’) take care of itself because we have more urgent business. In Luke 14:26 he actually requires his followers to ‘hate’ their families.
The Bible makes a number of references to a strained relationship between Jesus and his mother and brothers. Matthew 12:46-50:
’While he yet talked to the people behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? And who are my brethren?
And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said. Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.’
Jesus was known as Yahoshua ben Joseph, meaning ‘savior the son of Joseph’ but in the New Testament there is no report of Jesus mentioning his own father. This is hardly surprising since he had told his disciples to call no man father on earth (Matthew 23:9). The disciples were required to reject their families so that all of their loyalties could be focused into the group. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught to the apostles that they were instructed to refer to God as our ‘Father’ as a complete replacement for their genetic parent. This description of God as the Father and himself as the eldest or first son can be seen to make perfect sense, because as the man due to become the new Davidic king of the Jews, he would only be an earthly regent for Yahweh.
The Lord’s Prayer – given in the King James Bible:
’Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.’
Translated from the terminology of Jesus and his group as follows:
‘Yahweh,great is your name. Israel will become your kingdom. The requirements of holy living that you abide by will be instituted in Israel. Sustain us in the time before your kingdom is in place. Forgive us if we fall short of your holy requirements, as we forgive those that let us down. And do not make life too harsh for us to test our resolve, but help us to avoid errors in our own holy endeavors. Israel is yours, and the power to rule us and the splendor, for all time. Let it be so.
‘Temptation’ meant ‘test’, in the sense of turning up the pressure to see how much punishment a person can take, rather than the modern sense of resisting pleasures.
It was only ever intended as a request to a Jewish god to create self-determination in Israel, as Jesus had no interest in anyone outside his little kingdom. Other terms he used, such as ‘brothers’ and neighbors’ were also only intended to refer to those in the Community, not the world at large. Jesus was talking about his political struggle in freeing the Jews from foreign domination forever.
The New Way to the Kingdom of God
Yahweh would not assist until a greater state of holiness existed in Israel.
The first thing that Jesus did in his ministry was to go to a large wedding to find converts to his cause. The amazing that that he did, astounding the strict Qumranians, was to allow in the ‘unclean’ – such as married men, cripples and, most surprising of all, even women. To Jesus they were all equally able to sin in the sight of God and therefore had as much, if not more, need of salvation than others. This idea of equality was revolutionary for the time and became the hallmark of his teachings.
Jesus needed money and to get it he had to go to the rich to find it. Following the destruction of the Temple in 586 BC, pious Jews kept Levitical purity laws and Pentateuchal dietary laws very carefully. A member of the Qumran Community would never enter in the house of someone outside (a ‘dead’ person)because they could be exposed to all types of uncleanness. Jesus offended ‘worthy’ Jews by entering into the homes of such people as tax collectors, and as a result was being accused of mingling with ‘sinners’ and ’harlots’, ‘drunks’ and ‘prostitutes’. In truth, these people were perfectly respectable and very wealthy, but their devotion to ‘the way’ was not established. The term ‘harlot’ meant that they mingled with Gentiles, rather than any observation of their sexual promiscuity.
One tax collector became an apostle of Jesus and another Zaccheus, was actually a chief tax collector before being ‘raised’ from the ‘dead’. He gave half of his wealth to repay for past injustices and the other half to ‘the poor’, which was the term for the Qumran Community.
The original gospel ‘Q’ was not constructed in a story format. Whilst most of the teachings of Jesus were woven into a biography by the New Testament writers, a sizeable number appear in list form in what is called the ‘sermon on the mount’. Matthew’s ability to weave all of Jesus’s teachings into a story line ran out of steam, so he stuck all kinds of passages together as though they were spoken one after another to a crowd on a mountain top. These sayings and instructions were drafted into this one ‘occasion’ to avoid interrupting the flow of the overall story.
’Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’
Rendered as ‘the poor’ in Luke, and in both cases means the Qumran Community.
’Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.’
In Luke ‘those who mourn’ is expressed as ‘you that weep’ and refers to the Qumran Community who grieved for the Temple of Yahweh.
’Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’
‘The meek’, used by the Qumran Community because the members were required to behave in a humble manner to cause the ‘kingdom of God’ (their inheritance) to arrive. To pretend that it could mean any humble person is to deliberately abuse truth.
’Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.’
The Qumran Community sought ‘tsedeq’ (righteousness), but until the ‘kingdom of God’ arrived, they would not be fulfilled.
’Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’
The Qumran Community were taught to keep clean hands and a pure heart because that was the requirement to witness the coming of the ‘kingdom of God’.
’Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.’
‘Peacemakers’ were those working for ‘shalom’, the state of peace. Once again, the Qumran Community. As we already know, Jesus taught his followers to cut themselves off from their families and consider Yahweh as their father; they became therefore the sons of God.
’Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’
The Qumran Community had always suffered persecution; John the Baptist had been taken from them the previous year.
’Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.’
Luke uses the word ‘hate’ in place of ‘revile’, and refers to enmity from the supporters of James within the Qumran Community. It was written a few months before the crucifixion, when the rift between the brothers was at its height.
They are a series of recruitment slogans which all boil down to ’become one of us and be part of the ‘kingdom of God’ – or be nothing. They worked well. Christians have used the literal text of Jesus’s statements in support of their own belief system. This may often have been a good thing, but it is NOT what Jesus meant.
In logan 114 of the Gospel of Thomas (Jesus’s twin brother) Jesus explains his belief that even women are equal to men:
’Simon Peter said to them, “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.” Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’
Simon Peter was not suggesting that all women should be killed by ‘not worthy of life’; this was a reference to the fact she needed to leave the room whilst members of the high order of the movement (the ‘living’) discussed secret matters. Jesus replied that he would personally ‘raise her from the dead’ to be the first woman member of the elite and that every woman had the right to do the same. This passage is from the lips of the radical teacher whom Christians call Jesus the Christ and it is disappointing to see many male priests currently vigorously objecting to women entering the priesthood.
In the Secret Book of James , written by James after the crucifixion, Jesus is quoted as explaining how his followers must understand his teachings:
’Pay attention to the Word. Understand knowledge. Love life. And no one will persecute you, nor will any one oppress you, other than yourselves.’
This man was amazing.
The Arrest of the Kingly Pillar
Jesus knew that time and stealth were of the essence. He needed to incite a mass revolt against the Romans and the Sadducees in Jerusalem and to arm as many people as he could. This had to be achieved without forewarning the enemy of the strength of the movement, so Jesus and his followers met in secret and preached in out-of-the-way places. Jesus’s network of spies reported that there was no special activity planned against him in Jerusalem.
Jesus needed a show of strength in the capital to demonstrate that he was not afraid to challenge the authorities head on and to establish his right to the throne of Israel. His entry into Jerusalem riding on a young ass was a deliberate enactment of the well known prophecy made in Zachariah 9:9.
’…thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.’
The palm branches had no significance and were used by Jesus’s supporters to draw attention to the event. To ensure that he gained maximum publicity, Jesus proceeded to the Temple and caused a riot. A team of Jesus’s men placed themselves around the area to ensure that the place was safe before the signal was given for the kingly messiah to walk in surrounded by his five ‘minders’. He immediately set about kicking down the tables as his followers threw the stallholders to the ground. Jesus shouted out his views on their ungodly behavior; then beat a swift retreat to Bethany, two miles to the east of the city. The mission was a great success, but the beginning of the end. The Roman and Jewish authorities decided to act to end the trouble from this sect at Qumran before it got too big to handle.
James was arrested and a wanted poster was issued for Jesus, giving a visual description of the man. All copies and references to this were destroyed a long time ago, because to have a description of a less than perfect god would never do for a growing church. It was, however, reported by Josephus in his Capture of Jerusalem. Josephus drew his information directly from the ‘forma’ produced by Pontius Pilatus’s officers.
Despite Christian censorship, a copy of Josephus’s description survived in Slavonic texts:
’…a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked with a long fact, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard.’
A height of three cubits would put him at under four feet six inches, which combined with a hunchback and severe facial features would make Jesus the Christ a very easy person to recognize. If Jesus had been a small and ugly man, the Hellenised world would never have accepted him as a god, so the early Christians hid the fact. The Acts of John (which was excluded from the New Testament) says of Jesus: ’I was afraid and cried out, and he, turning about, appeared as a man of small stature, and caught hold on my beard and pulled it and said to me: “John, be not faithless but believing, and not curious.”’
Jesus was arrested at the Garden of Gethsemane. The choice of location was no accident.
The Garden of Gethsemane is just three hundred and fifty years away from, and directly in front of, the eastern gate of the Temple – the ‘righteous’ gateway. Jesus was high enough to see across the valley the two physical pillars that he represented in the building of the new Jerusalem. He knew full well that he would be arrested that night. From the passages in the Bible it is clear that Jesus was worried and on edge in the expectation of his arrest.
Jesus had chosen the timing and location with great care. The eastgate, the gate of ‘tsedeq’ or righteousness, was the main gate for the highly important celebration of the New Year, which was the Passover at the new moon nearest the spring equinox that fell in late March or early April. It was this gate, so important in Ezekiel’s vision, that Jesus, and all of the Qumranians, held so dear. In chapters 14 and 15 of Ezekiel we can read the special importance of the east gate in his vision that he starts by saying happened ‘at the beginning of the year’:
…Thus sayeth the Lord God; the gate of the inner court that looketh toward the east, shall be shut the six working days; but on the Sabbath it shall be opened, and in the day of the new moon it shall be opened. And the prince shall enter by way of the porch of that gate without, and shall stand by the post of the gate, and the priests shall prepare his burnt offering and his peace offerings, and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate: then he shall go forth…’
That is exactly what Jesus did. He worshipped as near as he dared to the threshold of the east gate on the night of the new moon at the beginning of the New Year. He saw himself as the prince of Israel awaiting to be crowned to undertake the duty given by Ezekiel to ‘execute justice and righteousness’ (mishpat and tsedeq). Through that night Jesus waited for the morning star to rise, the star that rises in the east that once heralded the arrival of the newly created king of ancient Egypt and in Qunranian belief would be the mark of their new king. This ‘star prophecy’, found throughout the scrolls and in Numbers 24:17, says ‘a Star will rise out of Jacob, a Sceptre to rule the world’; it had a precise meaning for Jesus, but later became confused by the Gentile Christians as a feature of his birth rather than his brief moment of kingship. The author of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, called Jesus:
’The root and branch of David and the bright star of the morning.’
Jesus thought that in living out the prophesied steps toward the war, he would cause a popular uprising that would be the opening shot of the ‘war to end the age’.
The disciples of Jesus knew that he did not expect to survive the confrontation that he was engineering with the Temple and Roman authorities. The Gospel of Thomas purports to be the secret saying of Jesus as written down by Judias Didymos, who is the twin brother of Jesus and therefore called Thomas, which meant ‘twin’. This gospel was not a narrative; it is a list of the words spoken by Jesus as leader. In saying number 16, Thomas tells us:
’The disciples said to Jesus, “We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?”
Jesus said to them, “Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.
The rift between the brothers was over and Jesus had a gloomy view of his own future. Three hundred years later, Constantine rejected the Gospel of Thomas from his ‘official’ Bible as the preferred line of the Roman Church was that Peter, not James, became the next leader: a claim that can new be seen as transparently false.
That night Jesus intended to wait for the morning star to rise as he did not expect to be spotted by the Temple guards before daybreak, and despite his impending arrest he conducted a ‘third degree’ raising ceremony. Who the young initiate was we do not know, but the initiation may not have been completed before the arrest occurred. Mark 14:51-52:
‘And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked.’
This incident has hitherto defied explanation, but now its meaning is clear.
The Trial and Crucifixion
The powers in Jerusalem now had both pillars of this dangerous messianic movement that was intent upon overthrowing the Sanhedrin and the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilatus. The Jewish priests feared the claim that James made over their right to the Temple and the Roman was probably more than uneasy about the politics of the situation. He had lots of troops; unfortunately, most of them were two days away in Caesarea. While that meant that any uprising could be put down within three days, it was long enough for him to be hanged from the city walls. Pilatus was no fool. He came up with a plain that satisfied everybody.
The Roman Procurator had James and Jesus, the two who claimed to be pillars, under arrest and both stood to be executed. Pilatus knew that he only needed one to undermine the plan, so he offered to let one of them go and he gave the substantial crowd in front of him the choice. Remember that whilst we call the ‘kingly messiah’ Jesus, that was not his name; it was a description of his role as ‘savior’ which in Hebrew was Yahoshua. James’s name in Hebrew was J’acov, but he too was referred to as ‘savior’ – that is, ‘Jesus’. The two people on trial were both called Jesus – Jesus ‘the king of the Jews’ and Jesus, ‘the son of God’. James was called Barabbas – literally, ‘the son of God’. He was the priestly messiah and therefore the one more directly in line to his ’father’.
It is a complete invention of the later Church that there was a custom of releasing a prisoner at the Passover. That simply did not happen. The reality is that this was a unique plan of Pilatus’s. Most of the crowd were from Qumran and supporters of James, or as he was described on the day, ‘Jesus Barabbas’.
‘Jesus – the king of the Jews’ did not have enough voices shouting for him, so he was found guilty, scourged, crowned with thorns and crucified on the ‘T’ cross with the words ‘King of the Jews’ above his head. He died unusually quickly, and if he were a hunchback as described in the wanted notice, that could be expected. The process of crucifixion makes breathing very difficult and it is necessary to heave the chest upwards continually, to expel air from the lungs. With a curved or hunched back this would have been very difficult, and suffocation would quickly result.
A rabbinical text known as Tosefta Shebuot, which dates from the early centuries AD, records the memories of the surviving Jerusalem Jews and tells the story of events that preceded the calamity of AD 70. Because it comes from a nonChristian tradition, it is authentic and untampered with. In Tosefta Shebuot 1:4 a powerful description shed a remarkable new light on what happened between Jesus and James at the crucifixion.
’Two priests who were brothers were running neck and neck up the ramp, and one of them got within four cubits of the altar before the other.’
It is a reference of the race between the two brothers to establish which of them would be the priestly messiah. Jesus was almost there when he died on the cross.
’He took a knife for the killing of sacrificial animals and stuck it into his own heart.’
This next line confirms the Christian idea of Jesus deliberately sacrificing himself before God. Jesus did deliberately lay himself open to arrest. When Jesus died on the cross he was viewed as a ‘Paschal lamb’ as identified in 1 Peter 1:19.
The last part of the Tosefta Shebuot passage:
’Rabbi Tsedeq came and stood on the steps of the portico of the Temple mount and said,
“Hear me out, O brothers of ours, House of Israel! Lo, it says, When a corpse is found, and your elders and judges go forth and measure. Now as it is to us – whither and whence shall we measure? To the sanctuary? or to the courtyard?”
All the people groaned and wept after what he said.’
Words spoken by James within minutes of Jesus being lifted down from the cross. They ought to be in the Bible, but they are not.
James referred to an instruction in Deuteronomy 21:1-9 that deals with assigning guilt for a murder by establishing which city or town is the closest to the corpse. When asking the assembled Jews of the Community whether to measure ‘to the sanctuary or the courtyard’ he was saying that they, the supposedly worthy Jews, were as guilty as the Sanhedren who made the request for the killing, since they had made a choice for Jesus to die.
Herod’s Temple did have a ramp up to its altar. The altar itself was over fifteen feet high with a fifty-two-foot long ramp rising from the south. This translates to a slop of thirty-six cubits, which means when the leading brother chose to sacrifice himself he was, very symbolically, eleven twelfths of the way to success.
We can date the ‘race’ of these brothers to between around AD 20 and 70, very soon after its completion.
At the top of the ramp, in the southwest corner of the altar, there were two drain holes for the sacrificial blood and a large marble block with a ring at its center. This block could be lifted by its ring to gain access to a cave beneath the altar. In the First Degree ceremony of modern Freemasonry the candidate is addressed by a brother standing in the south-west corner of the Masonic Temple. In front of the brother is a marble block with a small ring at its center, suspended from a pulley in a tripod lifting device.
James’s words were omitted from the New Testament accounts deliberately. There was a definite policy of downgrading James’s position in the Church after the death of Jesus, in favor of Peter, who came under the influence of Paul.
Proof that this text contains the words spoken by James is given by the story of Pontius Pilatus washing his hands to show that whilst he gave his authority for the crucifixion, he would not accept responsibility for the killing. The technique of washing hands to demonstrate innocence was not a Roman practice, it was a Qumranian/Essene procedure, and therefore it is a later addition rather than a true description of events. It actually comes from the exact passage of Deuteronomy that James was referring to and only applied as a sign of innocence after a murder; certainly not before it. Once a body had been found and measurements taken to identify the nearest town, the elders of that town were required to take a heifer that had never drawn a yoke and strike off its head and then to wash their hands over its body whilst reciting the words ‘our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it’. The next verse then calls upon the Lord ‘not to lay innocent blood unto thy people of Israel’s charge, and the blood shall be forgiven them’.
This Old Testament means of claiming innocence of a murder was clearly in the mind of the synoptic gospel writers. Matthew puts words in the mouth of Pontius Pilatus in chapter 27, versus 24-25:
’When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.
Then answered all the people and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.’
The Deuteronomy passage:
’our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.’
I am innocent of this just person: see ye to it.’
The Old Testament claim of innocence relies on a person not having done or seen a murder; here we have Pilatus saying that he is not guilty of doing the deed and it is the Jews who see it. Whoever wrote this version of events was aware of James’s words and built on his reference and accusation of partial guilt to the assembled crowd. James’s words were twisted by the Gentiles to lay a charge of ‘theoside’ on the whole Jewish nation for all time. The claim that the assembled crowd damned themselves with the words ‘His blood be on us, and on our children’ is a wicked lie, responsible for two thousand years of anti-Semitism.
Mishnar Sotah 6:3:
’Forty years before the destruction of the Temple the western light went out, the crimson thread remained crimson, and the lot for the Lord always came up in the left hand.’
It was this period that Jesus was killed. The light that went out was the kingly messiah signified by the royal color – crimson – and the lot for the Lord coming up in the left hand refers to the decision of the crowd (the lot) to vote for James, the ‘right-hand pillar’ in preference to Jesus, the ‘left-hand pillar’. The crimson thread remaining crimson tells us that James was the inheritor of his deceased brother’s right to be considered the new head of the royal line of David, as well as the Teacher of Righteousness.
Two sons of Mary stood trial together and both had recently claimed to be the savior or messiah; both, therefore, had the name ‘Jesus’. One died on the cross and one did not. The one who did not die was James, the lesser of the two but the one with the higher profile.
The Symbols of Jesus and James
The Star of David is the symbol of Judaism. The hexagram is actually two symbols superimposed to create a new meaning, and its origin is not Jewish. The top and bottom points of this star are the apex of two pyramids, overlaid one upon the other. The upwards pointing pyramid is an ancient symbol for the power of a king, with its base resting on Earth and its summit reaching Heaven. The other represent the power of the priest, established in Heaven and reaching down to Earth. This overlapping form is the mark of the double messiah. It is the only true sign of Jesus, and it carries the extra meaning as being representative of the bright star of David’s line that arose in the morning.
It is called the Star of David because Jesus used it and he positioned himself to be the ‘Star of David’. This symbol does not appear in any ancient Hebrew books on religious life. Its only use was decorative along with other middle-eastern images, including (ironically) the swastika. The earliest examples were on buildings erected by the Knights Templar. Its use in synagogues came very much later. Alfred Grotte, a famous synagogue builder of the early twentieth century wrote the following:
’In the nineteenth century, mostly non-Jewish architects strove to build these houses of worship. They had to look around for a symbol which corresponded to the symbol of the churches, and they hit upon the hexagram. In view of the total helplessness of even learned Jewish Theologians regarding the material of Jewish symbolism, the megan david was exalted as the visible insignia of Judaism. It has now been for three generations an established fact, hallowed by tradition, that the megan david for the Jews is the same kind of holy symbol that the Cross and the Crescent are for other monotheistic faiths.’
History is often made of a wonderful series of misunderstandings and cock-ups!
If the two lateral lines of the Star of David are removed, the result is the Freemasons’ square and compasses. The priestly or heavenly pyramid becomes the stonemason’s square, an instrument used to measure and ascertain the trueness and uprightness of buildings, and, figuratively, human goodness; the quality that the Egyptians called Ma’at. The kingly or earthly pyramid is depicted as the compasses which, according to Freemasonry, marks the centre of the circle from which no Master Mason can materially err; the extent of the power of the king or ruler.
The symbol of Judaism is the T-cross.
This is the mark of the ‘tau’ and it is this shape of cross upon which Jesus was crucified, rather than the assumed four-armed cross with an extended lower section rising above the cross bar. ‘Tau’ was the mark of Yahweh the Kenites bore on their foreheads long before Moses came across them in the wilderness of the Sinai; it is also the magical symbol that was painted on doors during the Passover.
The crucifix-style cross used by the Christian Church was an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph that carried one very precise meaning – ‘savior’, which translates to the Hebrew ‘Joshua’, which translates in Greek to ‘Jesus’. The shape of the crucifix is not a symbol of Jesus; it is his name!
The most important symbol of the Royal Arch Degree is the ‘Triple Tau’, which can be seen between the banners of Reuben and Judah. These three interlocking taus represent the power of king, priest, and prophet.
The sign of the fish has enjoyed a comeback as a mark of Christianity.
Nasorean Christians used it to identify their holy places towards the end of the first century, it was the only mark that existed for them. It was adopted by John the Baptist, The name ‘Nasorean’ is a form of the word ‘Nazrani’ which means both ‘little fishes’ and ‘Christians’ in modern Arabic, just as it did in Aramaic two thousand years ago.
James the Just became the first bishop and took to wearing a mitre as a badge of office. This device is now worn by all bishops and there can be no doubt of its origin; it came with Moses from Egypt.
The mitre with its split front and rear sections and its tail is identical to a modern bishop’s head-dress. This was the hieroglyph that stood for ‘Amen’, the creator god of Thebes that merged with the sun god Re as Amen-Re. Amen is still vocalized today at the end of each prayer. Originally it was used to draw the blessing of the god Amen. As Thebes was the city of Seqenenre Tao we would expect such a prayer ending to pass down to the Israelites via Moses in the resurrection ceremony. The Hebrew language used the word ‘amen’ to close a prayer with the meaning ‘let it be so’, and Christians adopted it from them.
The Rise of the Liar
After the death of Jesus, James the Just retired to Qumran. He abstained from absolutely anything and anybody that could contaminate his pureness. That James was now important in the early Church is confirmed by Acts 2:17 where Peter sends news of his release from prison to James and the brethren:
’But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he departed, and went into another place.’
The killing of 'the king of the Jews’ by a Roman Procurator created a lot of publicity. People became interested. One such person was a Roman citizen by the name of Saul who came from an area that is now southern Turkey. The idea that his job was to persecute Christians is nonsense as there was no such cult at that time. Saul’s task was to putdown any remaining independence movement on behalf of the Romans. The Mandaeans are Nasoreans who were driven out of Judah whose migration can be accurately dated to AD 37. The man that persecuted them was Saul (alias Paul) himself.
Saul was the scourge of the Jewish freedom movement for seventeen years as it was the year AD 60 when he was struck blind on the road to Damascus. Saul would not have had the authority to arrest activists in Damascus. His destination was Qumran, often referred to as ‘Damascus’. His blindness and regaining of sight was symbolic of his conversion to the Nasorean cause. The fact that Saul’s destination was Qumran is borne out by Acts 22:14 where he is told he will be introduced to the ‘Just One’ – James.
’Andhe said, The God of our father hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see the Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.’
’Wherefore observe the greatest caution, that you believe no teacher, unless he brings from Jerusalem the testimonial of James, the Lord’s brother. (6)
Paul was the ‘Spouter of Lies’ who battles with James, the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’. The Habakkuk Pesher makes clear that this individual ‘pours out on Israel the waters of Lying’ and ‘leads them astray in a wasteland without a Way’. The word-play on ‘Way’ relates to ‘removing the boundary markers’ of the law. (7)
The ‘Liar’ and the enemy of James was Paul; the man who lied about his training as a Pharisee, lied about the mission of Christ, taught that the Law of the Jews was not important and admitted the uncircumcised. It is clear from Paul’s letters that Apostles from Jerusalem were sent to his chosen territory to disclaim his authority and contradict his teaching. Paul speaks of opponents of unquestionable prestige who were ‘reputed to be something’ and as ‘reputed pillars’. He describes them as ‘servants of Satan’, ‘false apostles’ and ‘spurious brethren’. He is astonished that his Galatian converts are turning to a ‘different Gospel’ and tells them, ‘If anyone is preaching to you a Gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.’ He calls the emissaries of James ‘false brethren privily brought in … to spy out our liberty which we have in Jesus Christ, that they might bring us into bondage’.
Paul was never a Pharisee rabbi, but a simple adventurer from an obscure background. Ebonite writings confirm that Paul had no Phariasaic background or training; he was a convert to Judaism, born of Gentile parents in Tarsus. (8) He came to Jerusalem as an adult, and became a henchman of the High Priest. When he was disappointed in his hopes of advancement, he split with the High Priest and founded his own new religion.
Paul acknowledges that there were two opposed versions of the life and mission of Christ: the ‘false’ teachings of James, the brother of Christ; and his own Hellenistic mystery romance that disregarded the very core beliefs of Judaism. In 1 Corinthians, 9: 20-25 he's not shy of admitting his disregard for the Jerusalem Church, and openly states that he is an unscrupulous liar:
’I made myself a Jew to the Jews to win the Jews … To those who have no Law I was free of the Law myself … I made myself all things to all men … That is how I run intent on winning; that is how I fight, not beating the air.’
Paul went out of his way to legitimize the forces of occupation that had driven the branch of David out of Jerusalem and had murdered their king/messiah. ‘You must obey the governing authorities. Since all government comes from God, the civil authorities were appointed by God.’
Paul’s Roman citizenship was clearly well earned.
His ready access to the circle of Herodian power at Jerusalem is clear in Acts, and marks Paul out as a conspirator against James. Paul continued to steal the ‘secrets’ of the Qumran Community for his own teachings. In 1 Corinthians 3:9ff Paul uses the ‘building’ and ‘laying the foundations’ imagery of the Habakkuk Pesher when he describes his community as ‘God’s building’, and he refers to himself as ‘the architect’ and Jesus Christ as the ‘cornerstone’. (9)
Anger amongst the Nasoreans at Qumran was created by Paul’s false claim that Peter was leader of the Jerusalem Church. Paul tried to take the leadership for himself with his false claims of training as a Pharisee under Gamaliel (a great doctor of the law), but he would not make it himself. Just how unpopular Paul was with the people of Jerusalem is evident in chapter 21 of Acts. Paul misjudges his authority and enters the Temple, but is dragged out to be lynched by the assembled crowd, who recognized him when he was at Ephesus. The riot was on a huge scale, as the Bible tells us that ‘all of Jerusalem was in uproar’ and Roman troops were turned out.
Paul addressed the massed crowds and misjudged the occasion. Ephesus had a cosmopolitan population, including theraputes, a sect of healers closely connected with the Essenes of Qumran. In the ruins was a large stone inscribed with the mark of the Therapeutai, a staff and serpent, which has become the symbol of medicine across the world. These highly intelligent and well informed Jews had no time for Paul and his foolishness, and the self-appointed preacher was incarcerated in a small building on a barren hilltop just visible from the amphitheater.
In the year AD 62 it was James’s turn to be attacked at the Temple in Jerusalem. The writings of Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia (AD 315 to 403) tell us that eye witnesses claimed that James took to wearing the breastplate and mitre of a high priest, and claimed, as the first Bishop of Jerusalem, the right to enter to Holy of Holies once a year. James followed in his elder brother’s footsteps and forced his way into the Temple unannounced, and was promptly arrested. The New Testament was assembled to exclude the details of the assassination, but a gospel reject by the pagan Emperor Constantine, The Second Apocalypse of James, does record the event:
’…the priests …found him standing beside the columns of the temple, beside the mighty corner stone. And they decided to throw him down from the height, and they cast him down. And… they seized him and struck him as they dragged him to the ground. They stretched him out, and placed a stone on his abdomen. They all placed their feet on him, saying, “you have erred!” Again they raised him up, since he was still alive, and made him dig a hole. They made him stand in it. After having covered him up to his abdomen, they stoned him.’
Parts of the Temple were still under construction and the stone that was placed on the abdomen of James was in a state of preparation for its purpose in the building; as such it was a rough ashlar, which is the term to describe an approximately shaped block hewn from the quarry. In a Masonic Lodge a rough ashlar is placed at the north-east corner of the Lodge.
Hegesippus, a second-century Christian authority, wrote:
’So they cast down James the Just, and they began to stone him since he was not killed by the fall; but he kneeled down, saying, “O Lord God, my Father, I beseech thee forgive them, for they know not what they do.” While they were thus stoning him, one of the priests of the sons of Rechab, of whom Jeremiah the prophet testifies, cried out, “Stop! What do ye? The Just is praying for you.” But one of them, who was a fuller, smote the head of the Just One with his club.’
The killing blow was a tradition added by the Qumranians to create an exact pesher of Hiram Abif. In this way the martyrdom of James, the Teacher of Righteousness was viewed as a rerun of the death of the architect of the first Temple of Solomon (and therefore Seqenenre Tao). A blow to the forehead killed both Hiram Abif as he stood in the almost-complete first Temple, and James in the almost-complete final Temple.
The tomb of James is in the Kidron Valley. It still stands with its entrance dramatically marked by a pair of splendid pillars.
Josephus recorded that Jerusalem was offended by the killing of James and they secretly contacted King Agrippa, urging him to punish the high priest Ananus for his wicked and unlawful actions. Ananus was deposed.
The source of the Masonic names of Hiram Abif’s murderers are given as Jubelo, Jubela and Jubelum. Professor Eisenman, referring to the Habakkuk Pesher says:
’The Pesher, which turns on the reference to “wrath” and “feast days” in the underlying texts, discusses how ”the Wicked Priest pursued the Righteous Teacher to confound” or “destroy him with his angry wrath at the house of his retreat” or “at the house where he was discovered”. The usage “leval’o does not appear in the underlying text, but it indicates strong action, and as it issued in a seemingly violent context, probably signifies “destroy”.’ (10)
The sense of “teval’enu” here, and as a consequence that of “leval’o/leval’am” earlier, is certainly that of destruction…’
‘Leval’o’, ‘leval’am’ and teval’enu’ were the origin of Jubelo, Jubela and Jubelum? Possibly.
The Treasure of the Jews
The Jewish war of AD66-70 was caused by the tensions created by the murder of James the Just. This was borne out by Josephus. The third-century church father, Origen, made reference to Josephus’s observations because they confused him:
’Although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, Josephus, when searching for the true cause of the fall of Jerusalem, ought to have said that the persecution of Jesus was the cause of its ruin, because the people had killed the prophesied Messiah. Yet, as if against his will and not far from the truth, he says that this befell the Jews in revenge for Jacob the Just, who was the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, because they killed him, although he was a perfectly just man.’
The position and influence of Jacob as Jesus’s brother is referred to in the ancient records, but is suppressed in Catholic teaching, so that laymen and even many clergy are denied information about it. (11)
The war that broke out in AD 66 started four years of wild ferocity with terrible acts committed by Jews against Romans, Romans against Jews and Jews against Jews. Josephus, the historian of the Jews, was the Jewish commander in Galilee – until he changed sides and hunted down his own former officers with great passion.
The Nasoreans who believed in the power of the sword to restore the rule of God were called Zealots. They took Jerusalem and the Temple in November AD67. Led by John of Gischala, the Zealots discovered that many of the priests of the Temple and city leaders wanted to make peace with the Romans. Such thinking was not tolerated and everyone with such views was immediately put to death. The Roman forces were closing. In the spring of AD 68, the decision was made to hide the Temple treasures, the sacred scrolls, vessels and tithes, so that they should not fall into Gentile hands. By June the Romans destroyed Jericho and the settlement at Qumran. Two years later Jerusalem fell to Titus, and the Zealots were killed or taken captive. The last of the Jews who knew the secrets of the Nasoreans died when the entire population of Masada committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.
The secrets passed down to the Nasoreans from Moses were deposited, as the prophet had instructed, in a vault under the foundations of the Temple as near to the Holy of Holies as they could get. Other works were secreted in at least five other locations around the country. One of the scrolls found in those caves was made of a sheet of copper eight feet long and one foot wide which had been rolled from its edges to the centre to form a twin scroll that had now parted in the middle to form two tubes. It was opened by cutting into strips and reconstructed by a team at Manchester College of Technology in 1955. John Allegro explained the excitement:
’I resolutely refused to credit the obvious until more strips had been removed and cleaned. However, after another column or two of the script had been deciphered, I rushed air letters to Harding with the news that the Qumran caves had produced the biggest surprise of all – an inventory of sacred treasure, of gold ,silver, and jars of consecrated offerings, as well as sacred vessels of all types…’(12)
The ‘Copper Scroll’ indicated that there was at least one other copy, deposited in the Temple itself:
’in the Pit (Shith) adjoining on the north, in a hole opening northwards, and buried at its mouth: a copy of this document, with an explanation and their measurements, and an inventory of each thing, and other things.’
The scroll the Templars found was a perfect treasure map. The ‘Shith’ (meaning pit or cave) was directly beneath the altar of the Temple; the cave we knew was capped with the marble block with a ring at its center.
The ‘Copper Scroll’ lists huge amounts of gold, silver, precious objects and at least twenty-four scrolls within the Temple. Directions are given to sixty-one different caches:
’in the inner chamber of the twin pillars supporting the arch of the double gate, facing east, in the entrance, buried at three cubits, hidden there is a pitcher, in it, one scroll, under it forty-two talents.
In the cistern which is nineteen cubits in front of the eastern gateway, in it are vessels, and in the hollow that is in it: ten talents.
In the Court of [?] …, nine cubits under the southern corner: gold and silver vessels for tithe, sprinkling basins, cups, sacrificial bowls, libation vessels, in all six hundred and nine.
Etc, etc. (13)
Now we understood why the original Knights Templar had spent another eight years digging away under the ruins of the Temple.
After the Jews lost the war and the Temple was destroyed for the last time, the buried scrolls lay forgotten and the teachings of Jesus and the Nasoreans were replaced by Christianity, which would be better described as ‘Paulianity’. These doctrines which Paul invented were totally different from the revolutionary egalitarian ideas of Jesus. (14)
Jesus was a revolutionary and a pioneer of democratic thinking. Thanks to Paul and the non-Jewish hierarchical cult that he developed, Jesus’s teaching were buried and forgotten.
But, the remnant of the Jerusalem Church after the Roman destruction was linked with the Celtic Church!
CONCLUSION
‘Sinners’, ‘harlots’, ‘drunks’, and ‘prostitutes’ meant people who mingled with Romans. Even the Lord’s Prayer could be translated back to its true meaning.
Qumranians used simulated resurrection as a means of admittance to their highest grade, initiates being known as the ‘living’ and everyone else being referred to as the ‘dead’. The story of Ananias and Sapphira had shown that membership was reversible. The tale of Lazarus had shown that a person could join, leave and join again; the leaving was described as a ‘temporary death’.
The hypothesis of two Jesus Christs was proven and the one that died was Yahoshua ben Joseph – ‘the king of the Jews’ and his brother James, Yacob ben Joseph, was ‘Jesus Barabbas’, referred to that day as ‘the son of God’. The long-lost speech given by James after the crucifixion in the Courtyard of the gentiles was twisted by later Christians to create a basis for anti-Semitism that was to last for two thousand years.
That Christian concept of the Holy Trinity as three persons in one Godhead proved Christianity to be a non-monotheistic religion. Who was the Holy Spirit? Christians avoid thinking too much about the Trinity concept because it does not make sense. The origin of the Trinity is the pillar paradigm. God the Father is the ‘shalom’ keystone, the son of God is the ‘tsedeq’ pillar and the king of the Jews is the ‘mishpat’ pillar.
The Christian cross symbol turns out to look nothing like the structure on which Jesus died – instead, it is the shape of an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph meaning ‘savior’. The regalia of a bishop, worn by James and still worn today, turns out to be another hieroglyph meaning Amen, the creator god of Thebes.
The beginning of the Christian Church had nothing to do with Jesus; it was the invention of a foreigner named Saul, or later Paul. He is the character identified in the Dead Sea Scrolls as the ‘Spouter of Lies’. Paul ended up trying to rationalize Jewish thinking by inventing the peculiar, and highly unJewish, idea of the Holy Trinity.
The Nasoreans at Qumran believed that the end of the age had arrived, so they hid their most secret scrolls in a vault under the foundations of the Temple. In the war that followed most Jews around Jerusalem were killed or fled, and the buried scrolls lay forgotten until a Templar crowbar broke through to rescue them.
(1) G.W. Buchanan: Jesus: The King and His Kingdom
(2) G.W. Buchanan: Jesus: The King and His Kingdom
(3) Robert Eisenman speaking on the BBC ‘Horizon’ programme, 22 March 1993
(4) Morton Smith: The Secret Gospel
(5) George Wesley Buchanan: The King and His Kingdom
(6) Hugh Schonfield: Those Incredible Christians
(7) Robert Eisenman: The Habakkuk Pesher
(8) Hyam Maccoby: The Mythmaker
(9) Robert Eisenman: The Habakkuk Pesher
(10) R. Eisenman: Habakkuk Pesher Textual Exegesis
(11) Hugh Schonfield: The Essene Odyssey
(12) John Allegro: The Dead Sea Scrolls
(13) John Allegro: The Treasure of the Copper Scroll
