I was beset with hunger, and the Lord himself nourished me.
I was alone and God comforted me:
I was sick, and the Lord visited me:
I was in prison, and the Lord showed favor to me:
In bonds, and he released me.
Testament of Joseph 1:8-14
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison, and you came to me …
Matt. 25:35–36
In the version in the Testaments, the Lord releases the person praying, after he is sold into slavery, taken into captivity, and placed in bonds. The version in Matthew does not include these words but adds thirsty and naked. In other words, the prayer in Matthew is a version of the passage in Testament of Joseph but does not include the ideas that Rome would not have wanted. Matthew’s version is completely compatible with the teachings of the pacifist Messiah who urges his followers to turn the other cheek and to avoid even anger, let alone murder.
If literature found among the Dead Sea Scrolls was actually the inspirational theology for Judas the Galilean and his rebel movement, when we compare the differences between the two works above we are actually witnessing the Roman transformation of Judaic theology into Christianity. We are seeing the transformation word by word.
I would also point out the moral issue involved in the editing of the passages above. Not to include the prayers of slaves beseeching God to release them from their bonds is to remove from the religion its humanity.
Another example of the authors borrowing theology found with the Dead Sea Scrolls is in their description of the Messiah. In Luke 1:32–35 we read a description of the Messiah.
… Shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever;
and of his kingdom there shall be no end …
… He shall be called holy, the Son of God.
The scrolls found at Qumran also describe a Messiah.
… Son of God he will be called and Son of the Most High they will name him … His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom … he will judge the earth in truth … The Great God … will give people into his hand and all of them will cast down before him. His sovereignty is everlasting sovereignty.214
In the passage from the New Testament, Luke seems to have borrowed his description of the Messiah from the depiction of the Messiah found at Qumran. However, he did not borrow the militaristic, son of David nature of that Messiah, as per the following quote from the Damascus Covenant found at Qumran:
“Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered;
“but I will turn my hand upon the little ones”.
Zechariah 13:7
Now those who hear him are the flock’s afflicted,
these will escape in the period of [God’s] visitation. But those who remain will be offered up to the sword, when the Messiah
of Aaron and Israel comes, as it was in the period of the first visitation,
as he reported by the hand of Ezekiel:
“A mark shall be put on the forehead of those who sigh and groan”.
Ezek 9:4
But those who remained were given up to the sword of vengeance, the avenger of the Covenant …13
The Jesus in the New Testament is a tax-paying pacifist. As the Messiah was defined in the New Testament he was a savior with Roman values, not the values of the followers of the militant Judaism found in the scrolls. In fact, he called the Jews that he was purportedly preaching to, the “wicked generation” (Matt. 12:39, 45).
Christianity was created to be an alternative to the type of rebellious Judaism that swept across Judea in the first century C.E. At the time, there were individuals who were converting to the militaristic Judaism, and it was for them that Christianity was meant to be an alternative. Josephus has actually provided a description of these individuals. Notice he identifies them as the “wicked generation.”
… nor did any age ever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than this was, from the beginning of the world.
… They confessed what was true, that they were the slaves, the scum, and the spurious and abortive offspring of our nation …215
Josephus describes the Jewish rebels as slaves and scum. Christianity was developed to compete with militaristic Judaism for the faith of these people, to prevent the militant brand of messianic Judaism from spreading to them. It is clear, therefore, that the religion that was the basis of Western morality was invented for the pacification of slaves.
CHAPTER 15
The Apostles and the Maccabees
My analysis revealed that the Apostles John and Simon in the New Testament were lampoons of Jewish militants described by Josephus, which turned these leaders of the Jewish rebellion into Christians. I therefore attempted to determine if other distortions of history, either in the New Testament or Wars of the Jews, had been used in the creation of Christianity. The first thing that struck me after beginning this inquiry, was that there were simply too many characters in both works with the names Simon, John, Judas, Eleazar (Lazarus), Matthias (Matthew), Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
If you consult the Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names in Webster’s Unabridged, you will find hundreds of Hebrew first names. Notably, in both Josephus and the New Testament, the same few Jewish names proliferate. In Wars of the Jews there are nine Eleazars, three Jacobs (Jameses), six Jesuses, five Matthiases (Matthews), one Mary, four Mariammes, eight Johns, seven Josephs, ten Judases, and thirteen Simons. In the New Testament the same pattern occurs: there are seven Marys, nine Simons, two Johns, two Josephs, four Judases, two Lazaruses (Eleazars), two Matthiases (Matthews), two Jameses, and, at the minimum, three Jesuses. From the standpoint of probability, it is unlikely that this set of names would even overlap in two works that have so few named characters, let alone with this many duplications.
I suspected that the authors of the New Testament and the works of Josephus had deliberately used these particular names over and over. But if these particular names were used deliberately, what was the intent?
The answer lies in the fact that this same set of names was known to have been used by a third group, the Maccabees, the family that ruled Israel during the first and second centuries B.C.E., until they were replaced by the Romans with Herod. Within that family are found the same names that are so overused by Josephus and the New Testament. The founder of the dynasty was Matthias (Matthew), who had five sons named Simon, Judas, John, Eleazar (Lazarus), and Jonathan.
NOW at this time there was one whose name was Matthias, who dwelt at Modin, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of Asamoneus, a priest of the order of Joarib, and a citizen of Jerusalem.
He had five sons; John, who was called Gaddis, and Simon, who was called Matthes, and Judas, who was called Maccabeus, and Eleazar, who was called Auran, and Jonathan, who was called Apphus.
Now this Matthias lamented to his children the sad state of their affairs, and the ravage made in the city, and the plundering of the temple, and the calamities the multitude were under; and he told them that it was better for them to die for the laws of their country, than to live so ingloriously as they then did.216
Josephus also claims to be an ancestor of the Maccabees, by way of a daughter of Simon, son of Matthias, who is mentioned above. In charting his lineage, Josephus records that his branch of the family alternated the names of the males every other generation: Josephus’ father was named Matthias, while his grandfather had been named Josephus, etc. Therefore, the male names used multiple times in the New Testament are almost exactly the same as those Josephus says were used by the males of the Maccabee family. These names are Joseph, Judas, Simon, Eleazar (Lazarus), John, and Matthias (Matthew).
It
is interesting that Jesus, like the sons of Matthias, the founder of the Maccabean dynasty, was also said to be one of five sons. Notice how some of the names in Jesus’ family are Maccabean.
“Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses (Joseph), and Simon, and Judas?”
Matt. 13:55
The Maccabees were the creators of the Judea that Rome destroyed. For 376 years, from Zerubbabel to Jonathan Maccabaeus (537–161 B.C.E.), there had been only a negligible Jewish state. Many writers of this era were not even aware of the existence of Judea. The Greek historian Herodotus, painstakingly exact in his documentation of the nations and peoples of the known world, refers only to the Syrians of Palestine (“Philistia”) when he describes the area. But the embers of a Jewish national identity were never completely extinguished and in the second century B.C.E. the Maccabean family became the leaders of a movement that brought Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) back into existence.
The Maccabees conquered the territories of Samaria, Galilee, Edom, and Moab, and the cities of Gadara, Pella, Gersa, Gamala, and Gaza. The inhabitants of any area the Maccabees conquered were forced to convert to Judaism and the males were circumcised. Those who refused were executed.
The reign of the Maccabees ended in 37 B.C.E. when Herod, with Roman support, defeated Matthias Antigonus, the last Maccabean king of Israel. The original Herod was not a Jew but an Edomite Arab. His authority was challenged by the religiously zealous Jews who believed in the maintenance of a separate racial identity. “Whoso marries an Aramean woman, the Zealots lynch him.”217
The people of Israel dubbed Herod “the Edomite slave,” referring both to his slavish relationship with Rome and to his non-Jewish background. To many Jews, Herod and his descendants were thus unacceptable as the kings of Israel. Josephus describes a messianic movement that he calls the “fourth philosophy,” which was begun by Judas the Galilean (in the same year that Jesus was purportedly born), who led a rebellion against the Herods and Rome that continued until the fall of the Judean fortress Masada in 73 C.E.
As Josephus relates it, most of the leaders of this philosophy had “Maccabean” names, and in many instances were related to one another. For example, in addition to Judas the Galilean, who is credited with creating the “fourth philosophy,” Josephus lists someone named Eleazar as the person who actually starts the war. John and Simon were the names of the “Jewish tyrants” who controlled the rebels during the siege of Jerusalem. The movement ends at Masada when the Sicarii destroy themselves under the leadership of someone also named Eleazar, who was also identified as a descendant of Judas the Galilean.
Josephus records the names of the leaders of the Jewish rebellion at its onset in 66 C.E. Josephus’ list continues the pattern of “overusing” Maccabean names and includes a John, a Matthias, an Eleazar (Lazarus), a Simon, and a Joseph (himself). Notably, there is also a Jesus.
They also chose other generals for Idumea; Jesus, the son of Sapphias, one of the high priests; and Eleazar, the son of Ananias, the high priest; they also enjoined Niger, the then governor of Idumea, who was of a family that belonged to Perea, beyond Jordan, and was thence called the Peraite, that he should be obedient to those fore-named commanders.
Nor did they neglect the care of other parts of the country; but Joseph the son of Simon was sent as general to Jericho, as was Manasseh to Perea, and John, the Esscue, to the toparchy of Thamna; Lydda was also added to his portion, and Joppa, and Emmaus.
But John, the son of Matthias, was made governor of the toparchies of Gophnitica and Acrabattene; as was Josephus, the son of Matthias, of both the Galilees. Gamala also, which was the strongest city in those parts, was put under his command.218
Because the Maccabees were the royal family Herod defeated, and were religious zealots, it is logical that they would have been a focus of those zealous Jews who rebelled against Herod’s rule. Herod is also recorded as systematically killing members of the Maccabean family.
It seemed to me, based on their persistent use of Maccabean names, that the family of Judas the Galilean was descended from the Maccabees, though this is not recorded by Josephus or in any other extant history. I have yet another reason for reaching this conclusion. The discovery of the true identity of the Apostles John and Simon, as well as the original Messiah, Eleazar, had shown me that Josephus could deliberately have obfuscated their true identities to create the historical confusion in which Christianity was grafted onto the Sicarii movement. Therefore, if Josephus had omitted recording the fact that the family of Judas the Galilean was descended from the Maccabees, he would simply have been continuing this intentional obfuscation.
Josephus and the authors of the New Testament turned the Maccabean family, members of which had led the first-century revolt against Rome, into the Apostles and the family of Jesus, the Messiah of peace, whom Rome had invented to replace the warrior Messiah of Maccabean Judaism.
I suspect that within first-century Judea, the Maccabean family was regarded as messianic, and was similar to what is called a Caliphate throughout the Islamic world today—Caliph meaning “successor” in Arabic. Such a family needed to have a way of identifying its members, particularly its successors. The purpose of and the overuse of Maccabean names, ad absurdum, in Josephus and the New Testament was to interfere with this process and, in the confusion, to graft Christianity onto the movement that centered on that family. The fact that there were messianic families in first-century Judea is borne out by a quote from Eusebius citing an earlier work by Hegesippus.
Vespasian, after the capture of Jerusalem, issued an order to ensure that no one who was of the royal stock should be left among the Jews, that all the descendants of David should be ferreted out and for this reason a further widespread persecution was again inflicted upon the Jews.219
The previous quote shows that the Romans were indeed trying to eradicate at least one messianic family. Notice that the Messiah who was a problem for the Romans was identified as Jewish. Destroying the family from which this Messiah was spawned is described as a continuation of the persecutions of the Jews. This shows that Rome oppressed a Jewish, not a Christian, messianic movement in the first century C.E.
Supporting the contention that Rome saw the family of Judas the Galilean as part of this messianic problem, is that Josephus records that the anticipation of the “world ruler,” or Messianic prophecies, were what most stirred the masses to revolt, and that the only family specifically targeted for destruction by the Romans was the family of Judas the Galilean. Notice in the following passage that Judas’ sons are named James and Simon, just as two of the Apostles.
And besides this, the sons of Judas of Galilee were now slain; I mean of that Judas who caused the people to revolt, when Cyrenius came to take an account of the estates of the Jews, as we have showed in a foregoing book. The names of those sons were James and Simon, whom Alexander commanded to be crucified.220
Josephus also records that Judas’ descendant “Eleazar” was in charge of the Sicarii at Masada in 70 C.E. when the “fourth philosophy” was finally destroyed. It seems clear that a family that had led messianic revolutionaries generation after generation would have been the family from whom a Messiah would be expected.
The passage above suggests that the Zealots saw the family of Judas the Galilean as a messianic family. However, the Maccabees were of the seed of Aaron and not of the family of David. If the family of Judas the Galilean were descendants of the Maccabees, and therefore of Aaron, how could they have been seen as messianic by the Jewish rebels?
Though the son of David has come to be the Messiah’s epithet in both the Talmud and the New Testament, in the first and second centuries C.E. many Jews looked to a Messiah other than the one “coming” from the family of David. Rabbi Akiba, for example, believed that Bar Kokhbah, the revolutionary Jewish leader of the second century C.E., was the true Messiah, though nowhere was it claimed that he was of the house of David.
This is the exact statement of the statutes in which (they shall walk until the coming of the Messiah) of Aaron and Israel who will pardon their iniquity. 221
They shall depart from none of the counsels of the Law … until there shall come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel …222
Each work also refers to the family of Aaron in a way that shows it to be in a position of leadership.
But God remembered the Covenant with the forefathers and raised from Aaron men of discernment …223
The Sons of Aaron alone shall command in matters of justice and property …224
Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition Page 41