by isachar » Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:50 pm
Found a few per below synopsized from another site. As you can see these issues, some recently popularized by the Da Vinci Code are not new. They've been swirling about for the last 100 or so years now.<br><br>1961, Paul Winter, On the Trial of Jesus, Berlin, 1961. <br>He analyses the gospel materials in detail and proves that the Jewish authorities did not condemn Jesus to death, though they were quite competent to do so if they had found him guilty of blasphemy. They handed him to Pontius Pilate simply because they were afraid that his activities might lead to an insurrection and bring about a heavy-handed Roman intervention.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1963, J. Carmichael, The Death of Jesus, London, 1963.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br>He showed that Jesus was a guerrilla leader who first collaborated and then broke with another Jewish rebel, John the Baptist. John recognized his superiority when he seized the temple in Jerusalem as a preliminary to seizing the city and leading an anti-Roman uprising. But the Roman soldiers stormed the temple and Jesus had to go into hiding from where he was betrayed by Judas. He was then crucified by the Romans along with other leaders of the rebellion. He cites Sossianus Hierocles, the prefect of Egypt who wrote in the reign of Diocletian (245-315 AD) and who had stated that “Jesus was the leader of a band of highway robbers numbering more than 900 men”, and also a lost version of Josephus which stated that “Jesus had more than 2,000 armed followers with him on the Mount of Olives”.23<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1963, Hugh Schonfield, The Passover Plot, London, 1963.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> This international best-seller of which more than three million copies have been sold shows that Jesus arranged his own mock crucifixion in order to pass as the Messiah according to the prophecy in the Old Testament. The crucifixion was arranged by Joseph of Arimathea who gave him a drug in a sponge in order to induce the appearance of death. The plan was to take him inside the well-prepared tomb, and revive him. But the plan misfired because of the lance-thrust by the Roman soldier in Jesus’ side. Jesus died and was buried secretly elsewhere. The man seen by Mary Magdalene standing by her side was not Jesus but someone else who had come to help in reviving Jesus. It was a case of mistaken identity. There was no resurrection.<br><br>1965, Samuel Sandmel, We Jews and Jesus, London, 1965. <br>This Professor of Biblical Studies in the Jewish Institute of Religion in London, had protested indignantly against Paul’s view, parroted by Christian tradition, that the Jewish Law at the time of Jesus was sterile, and had become a burden so that Jews were ready to be liberated from it. He took great pride in the ancient Jewish Law, and dismissed Jesus as someone whom the Jews did not care to remember.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1967, S.G.F Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, Manchester, 1967. <br>1968, S.G.F Brandon, The Trial of Jesus, Manchester, 1968</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br>This Professor in the University of Manchester, England, argued that Jesus was an ardent Jewish nationalist who led a rebellion against the Romans. The inscription — King of Jews — affixed to the cross was genuine because it occurs in all the gospels. He had many Zealots among his disciples, including Judas Iscariot. He failed, and was crucified by the Romans. This was the whole story. Jesus, the risen Christ and Saviour, was an invention of Paul for the consumption of Gentiles.<br><br>1969, S.S. Levin, Jesus alias Christ, New York, 1969. <br>He argued that “the miracles, ethical teachings, and warnings that the world will shortly come to a catastrophic end are wrongly ascribed to Jesus in the gospels, and in fact represent actions and sayings of John the Baptist”.24 Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a political demonstration, and his effort to clean the temple was an effort to seize it after surveying its defences. But the Romans foiled his insurrection, and crucified him. That was his end.<br><br>1970, Carlo Fuento, Terra Nostra, New York, 1970. <br>The Mexican novelist showed that Jesus survived the “fraudulent crucifixion” which involved a substitute, and was no saviour.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1970, W.E. Phipps, Was Jesus Married?, New York, 1970.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br>The author, a Professor of Theology, proved that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus, particularly with reference to the recently discovered Gospel of Philip which preserves a tradition that she was his spouse.<br><br>1970, Carlyle Slaughter, Magdalene, London 1970. <br>It is a novel which presents Mary Magdalene as a lover of Jesus.<br><br>1971, Haim Cohn, The Trial and Death of Jesus, New York, 1971. <br>Cohn was an ex-attorney-general of Israel and a member of its Supreme Court when he wrote this book. He dismissed the Jewish trial and condemnation of Jesus as a ridiculous fiction. The Jewish authorities, in fact, had tried to save him by advising him not to proclaim himself as the Messiah. It was Jesus who invited death by such a proclamation before Pilate. So crucifixion is the central theme in the story of Jesus. He was killed by the Romans. And he was not buried because victims of crucifixion were not allowed that rite.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1973 Haim Maccoby, Revolution in Judea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance, London, 1973.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br>He showed that the first-century generation of Jews which Christian tradition has blackened as “wicked” was, in fact, “the greatest generation in Jewish religious history”, and that “to dissociate themselves from this generation would be for the Jews to dissociate themselves from Judaism”.25 For him Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary who “staged an uprising against the Roman” after the precedent set by Judas of Galilee in 6 AD. Kingdom of God meant an independent Jewish state. Pilate was cruel by nature, and crucified Jesus. The gospels were written by “death-worshipping mystagogues” who “exalted the Roman cross into a religious symbol” and “saw more meaning in Jesus’ death than in his life”.26 He names Paul as the chief culprit in this conspiracy.<br><br>1973 W.E. Phipps, The Sexuality of Jesus, New York, 1973. <br>He says that according to the Mishnaic law an unmarried Jew could not be a teacher. So Jesus was married, and Mary Magdelene was his wife. Analysing John 20.17, he concludes that here Jesus asks Mary to cease from sexual intercourse in which they used to be engaged earlier.<br><br>1973, J.A.T. Robinson, The Human Face of God, London, 1973. <br>This Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, says that Jesus’ birth through normal sex is not ruled out by the gospels. It is clear that Joseph was not the father of Jesus but it does not mean that there was no “prior intercourse between Mary and some unknown male which Joseph subsequently condones”.27<br><br>1973, Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark, Harvard (USA), 1973.<br><br>“In 1958...Professor Morton Smith of Columbia University discovered, in a monastery near Jerusalem, a letter which contained a missing fragment of the Gospel of Mark. The missing fragment had not been lost. On the contrary, it had apparently been deliberately suppressed — at the instigation, if not the express behest, of Bishop Clement of Alexandria, one of the most venerated of the early Church fathers.”28 The fragment showed Jesus and Lazarus spending several days and nights together in a state of utter nakedness. The Bishop had received a complaint that this episode in the gospel was enabling some heretic sects to indulge in immoral practices. Professor Smith published the fragment with the historical background, and opined that the “whole episode refers to a typical mystery initiation”.29<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1973, G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, London, 1973</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> This Reader in Jewish Studies in the University of Oxford maintained that Jesus was very much a Jew in all his doings and sayings, and a great teacher. He was not a guerrilla leader. He could not have been tried by the Jews for blasphemy which he had never committed. The gospel accounts of a Jewish trial of Jesus must have been invented by Hellenized Jews like Paul. Jesus was persecuted and executed by the Romans.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>1975, Donovan Joyce, The Jesus Scroll, London, 1975.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <br>The author, an Australian journalist, claims to have seen a scroll stolen from the Masada excavations. “It was signed Yeshua ben Ya’akob ben Gennesareth who described himself as eighty years old and added that he was the last of the rightful kings of Israel. The name when translated into English became Jesus of Gennesareth, son of Jacob. Joyce identifies the author as Jesus of Nazareth.” It means that Jesus survived the crucifixion, and fought in the Roman siege of Masada during the Jewish revolt of 66-74 AD.31<br><br>NOTE: The above is most interesting - though probably among the most conjectural<br><br>One would also want to add Freud's amazing book "Moses and Monotheism" to the list to gain an historical appreciation of the origins of monotheism and Pagel's books on When God was a Woman and the Gnostic Gospels.<br><br>I would highly recommend Brandon and Vermes as a good starting point. Then, if you're still interested, get Vermes books on the DSS and other and read the translations yourself so you can get an idea of the vast diversity of thought at the time and that preceeded it. Read Pauline sources for historical perspective, but realize they largely consist of disinformation and propaganda.<br><br>It would also be helpful to have a background in the Maccabean revolt of about 200 years earlier and the Bar Kochba revolt (culminating at Masada and the destruction of Jerusalem) to understand Jewish religio/revolutionary and insurrectionist movements against Roman and Greco-Assyrian post-Alexander occupiers. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=isachar>isachar</A> at: 4/10/06 11:23 am<br></i>