Gospel, page 102
12. Echoing Ezekiel 16:33.
13. In his late teens, Josephus attempted the ascetic life under the hermit Banus, according to his Life, 2. It is unlikely, from Josephus’s description, that Banus was an Essene.
14. As in all Ebionite scriptures, the Jewish Christians considered Paul the Great Heretic and innovator. For the author’s more detailed attack on Paul, see below 3:11–12.
15. The incident alluded to is unknown in the Scriptures. Ophists (from the Greek ophis, for snake) have a pedigree as old as Minos and Ancient Egypt; some degree of snake cults occurred wherever Judeo-Christianity and Egyptian or Cycladic cultures met.
One still finds the snake and the cross intertwined today in Haiti, Africa, in the santería of Brazil and Latin America, and in the Southern United States (the Holy Ghost People in West Virginia and Pentecostals in the Carolinas), where Christians practice snake-handling as sacrament, taking as their inspiration Matthew 10:16 (Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,) as well as John 3:14 (And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the Son of Man be lifted up.…) and the latter-day affixed ending of Pseudo-Mark, 16:18 (They will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them.) Paul escapes the consequences of a snake bite in Acts 28.
16. Crete and Cyrenaica had been centers of the Minoan snake and fertility. There is little difference today from the popular Mediterranean statuary image of the Virgin Mary treading upon a serpent (having redeemed the sin of Eve) and depictions of ancient Minoan priestesses (ca. 2000 B.C.E.) treading upon a serpent.
17. The semi-Zoroastrian cult of Mithra (from the 500s B.C.E.) was direct competition for Christianity, and hence Christianity compromised with it. Mithra, born of the Heavenly Virgin, was a Sun god, born on December 25. The Mithraic birth ritual involved the chant: “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!” Vermaseran (Mithra the Secret God, London, 1963) identifies the Communion-like meal with Mithra’s prayer, “He who shall not eat of my body and drink of my blood … shall not be saved.” Mithra performed miracles and healings, and the cult emphasized chastity, charity, and an afterlife. Underneath one of the earliest Christian basilicas in Rome, St. Clement, the catacombs have as their centerpiece a Mithraic altar, suggesting there was a Mithraic variation on “orthodox” Christianity.
The Church’s line on Christian appropriation of Mithraism has never been convincing, i.e., Tertullian, who claimed Mithra and Attis were made to flourish before Christianity by design of Satan, so that future Christians would wonder about the similarities and have doubts!
18. Second to Mithra, the cult of Attis, a variation of Adonis, also influenced and detracted from the Early Church. Attis was the son of the Great Mother born through Nana, a virgin. Attis castrated himself under a pine tree and then bled to death in the prime of life. Three days later the divine Son was resurrected on March 24—the date most of the Early Church chose to celebrate Easter for centuries. All this coincided with the spring equinox and innumerable vegetation-god ceremonies for the renewed blooming of the land.
19. In an age when one plague, war, or earthquake could eliminate a people, an age in which fecundity was worshiped as the means to perpetuate the tribe, nothing could have been more radical and unthinkable than self-castration. Yet for all the patriarchal weight against it, it caught on in most ancient societies during the First Century, as did flagellation and masochistic rites. Jesus’ suggestion that there are eunuchs that have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12) found a receptive audience among ascetic young men.
Origen, it is thought, castrated himself to remain pure; Justin Martyr recorded many who volunteered to castrate themselves so that no rumors of sexual misconduct could obtain; see H. Chadwick, The Sentences of Sextus or R. Koenig, Female Eunuchs and Castration (New York, 1989), which shows castration-mania having its last peak in the 200–300s C.E.
20. Compare the rites of Attis in Rome. During frenzies of bloodletting and flagellation, the celebrants severed their genitals (penis and testicles, often) and flung them upon the revered pine tree or the image of the Cruel Goddess, jagged and blood-soaked. In the self-castration rites of Cybele in Syria, the celebrants would run through the town and hurl their organs into a house, which would mean the family had the honor of supplying the novice with new robes for his priestly role.
21. Sporus had himself castrated for the love of Nero and disguised himself as the late Empress Poppaea (whom the Emperor had personally kicked to death); Pindymion is unknown, and Dareus is likely the boy-eunuch who accompanied Caligula (Gaius Caesar) in his costumed pageants, Bagaos to the Emperor’s Alexander the Great. (See Suetonius, Gaius 19, Nero 28.)
For someone who declares himself above Rome and its degeneration, the author has an amazing depth of knowledge concerning her gossip.
22. Aρσɛνοκοται, which is not “homosexual” strictly, for which the ancients had no word or concept, but rather the passive male prostitute Paul condemns in 1 Corinthians 6:9.
23. Probably modern-day Somalia, the Horn of Africa.
24. Matthew 5:18.
25. Carmania was the Iranian side of the Straits of Hormuz. A rebah had the importance of, say, the U.S. nickel.
26. Parthia was the irresistible magnet of Roman vainglory. Crassus, of the First Triumvirate, lost 20,000 men there ignobly, another 10,000 to slavery; was killed in 54 B.C.E., carved up, and his body parts used as props in a performance that night of Euripides’ The Bacchae.
27. Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Peter? 1 Corinthians 9:4–5.
28. The Wisdom of Solomon, 7:24.
29. Thomasine writings all make use of the Apostle’s journeys to India. Less authentic are an Acts of Thomas recounting Thomas’s miraculous adventures in India (its origins are ancient but obscure); and there is an Apocalypse of Thomas (there is a 5th-Century Viennese fragment, probably originating from that time but some make a case it is quoted in Jerome in the 4th Century).
But more interesting is the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas, which seems to have elements of the First Century, and is certainly no later than 140 C.E. Koester at Harvard suggests parts of Thomas may even precede the Synoptics; see Nag Hammadi Library, Koester’s introduction to the Gospel of Thomas (New York, 1977).
30. The Disciple Judas/Jude/Lebbaeus/Thaddeus was the son (according to Acts 1:13 and Luke 6:16) or the brother (according to Jude 1) of James bar-Alphaeus. This gospel sheds no light either way. Matthew and Mark list him but do not give any relation. Jesus had a brother named Judas, too. “Is not this the … brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?” say Jesus’ countrymen in rejecting him, Mark 6:3. As the Scriptures can agree neither on the name nor relation of this man, later attempts can only be legendary; hence, his being titled “the Obscure” and his patronage of lost causes. He and Simon the Zealot were supposed to have converted the Persians and to have been martyred there, but one gathers from this account that this never happened.
31. Exodus 4:10.
Chapter 3
1. For the Greek, see Appendix A. Matthias has lifted these notions from the far superior Book of Tobit (100s B.C.E.); i.e., For Jerusalem will be built of sapphire and emerald/And her walls of precious stones/her towers and battlements of pure gold/and the streets of Jerusalem will be paved with beryl … and all her lanes shall say “Hallelujah” (Tobit 13:16–18).
2. This is highly derivative of Song of Solomon 1:12–14, and one suspects the author had no clue as to the sexual nature of his borrowed descriptions.
3. There is no other interpretation that can be put upon the words σɛι αματος; one cannot construe this as a raising of the dead. The phrase is identical to the phrase used for the woman with an issue of blood in Mark 5:25. It is curious in any event that Mark, the first gospel, and Matthew (the orthodox rewrite of Mark) have no mention of Lazarus’s raising; it is only in the later Luke and John.
4. Numbers 19:11 declares a person unclean for a week if he touches or prepares a corpse; a task usually left to the women.
If Jesus’ “Nazirene” followers were indeed associated with the “Nazirite” movement, they were forbidden by the Law (Leviticus 21:11 and Numbers 6:6) to attend his funeral or execution (or for that matter, the funerals of their own mothers or fathers), explaining a near-total absence of his disciples from Calvary and the anointing ceremonies of the crypt.
5. Yavneh was the escape of the Sanhedrin while Jerusalem was under siege. Under the great rabbis Yochanan ben-Zakkai and Gamaliel II, Yavneh flourished as a peaceable intellectual community, and would have remained peaceful except for Hadrian’s unfortunate decision to outlaw the Torah in 132 C.E., which plunged the obliterated region into another war.
The Nazirene/Christian community fled to Pella.
6. What follows is the classic Ebionite argument against Saul/Paul one finds in the late Second-Century Kerygmata Petrou (The Preachings of Peter; trans. R. L. Wilson, Hennecke’s NTA, Philadelphia, 1965). In the “Homily,” there is a fictionalized letter from Peter to James. Jesus, Peter recalls, explained to us how the Evil One, having disputed with [Christ] for forty days, promised to send apostles in his retinue for the purpose of deception (11:35).
There were anti-Paul numerological arguments as well, arguing that twelve apostles were perfect, and Paul as number thirteen was evil; see 4:23–24 below when the author considers this as well.
7. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconness of the church at Senkrae so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints.… (Romans 16:1–2). Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters in Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. (Colossians 4:15). In the earliest and undisputed Pauline letters, there are no prohibitions about women in leadership roles in the Church. Remember, the concept of “priest” was anathema to Early Christians, who wished to escape the theocracy of the Temple. In the Early Church deacons and elders, apostles and evangelists, and those with the gifts of prophecy (men as well as women, apparently) were the sole authorities—no priests.
8. The author, with untypical aptness, compares Paul to Typhon (both were Cilician, from Tarsus), one of the Titans who fought with Jove.
9. Nathanael (found in John) has traditionally been associated with Bartholomew (Matthew, Mark, Luke). Eusebius has an account that places Bartholomew in India, like Thomas, but tradition has his martyrdom, by flaying, take place in Armenia.
10. This evangelist seems to have been an enthusiast for many of the cult obsessions of the day—Crowns, Diadems, the Chariot (the all-important merkavah of Ezekiel, source of much Jewish mysticism), and the Throne of God, traditionally the residing place of the human soul (female, and willful), either under or within YHWH’s throne. The Sefer Yetsirah may be as old as the 200s, and is a culmination of these ancient preoccupations. Here is a particularly descriptive example of this literature from the 4th-Century “Heikhalot Rabbati” (see the brilliant Shafer trans., Leiden, 1981): [Rabbi Nehunyah] at once revealed the secret of the world, the measure that appears to one who is worthy of gazing on the King, on his Throne … on the swift lightning, on the terrible Hasmal, on the River of Fire which surrounds his Throne, on the bridges, on the fiery flames that blaze up between one bridge and the next, on the dense smoke, on the bright wind that raises up from the burning coals the pall of smoke which covers and conceals all the chambers of the palace [the heikhal] of Aravot [the Seventh Heaven] … Etc. These mystical objects enthralled Jewish esotericists through the Middle Ages and to the age of Kabbalah.
11. In the Jewish martyrdom cult of the period, as through the Christian Middle Ages, a special Crown was awarded to the martyrs. Στφανος, the name “Stephen,” means crown. This convenient coincidence would seem to cast suspicion on whether a historical Stephen existed, or whether the Protomartyr was a composite Greek creation, invented to deliver the polished speech in Acts 7, and be awarded the martyr’s prize.
12. Jesus joins the centuries of holy men to predict the destruction of Jerusalem (notably, Mark 13:1–9, Luke 23:28).
13. Like the Marys, there is a profusion of Jameses. By this gospel, it is confirmed that there are three main Jameses: 1) The James bar-Zebedee who was the brother of John, the first disciple to be martyred in 44 C.E. 2) The James of the pastoral letter in the New Testament, and brother of Jesus, first bishop of Jerusalem, clubbed to death under the Procurator Albinus in 62 C.E.
There is no reliable account of 3) James “the Less,” and for convenience the Church has grouped him with Jesus’ brother James, though it is clear from Luke that James the Less is the son of Alphaeus. (For an array of iconography, see the complete R. P. Bedford, St. James the Less.) However, this document suggests that James bar-Alphaeus may well be the source of the Protoevangelium of James with surviving copies in Armenian, Coptic, Greek, and the oldest, Syriac. James was the most popular apocryphon in the Middle Ages, in which a birth narrative, legends of Mary, Hannah, and Joachim appear.
14. Mary, the mother of James bar-Alphaeus, according to Luke and Mark attended the funeral preparations of Jesus and went to the tomb on the day of the Resurrection.
15. Here we see an evidence of the pervasive obsession with the Tree from which the Cross was made. One of the oldest churches of Jerusalem, the Georgian Church of the Holy Cross (from the 400s), contends it marks the spot of the tree. In cultures as diverse as Anglo-Saxon-Germanic (see “The Dream of the Rood”) and Ethiopian, Cross and Tree-of-the-Cross fetishism thrived. After the 80-year-old Empress Helena returned from Jerusalem in 326 convinced she had the True Cross, it was thought that a Piece of the True Cross upon touching a normal piece of wood made the normal wood holy as well (hence the proliferation of the True Cross all over Europe).
16. Josephus, Life, par. 3: [I] became known to Poppaea, [Nero] Caesar’s wife, and took care as soon as possible to entreat her to procure that the [Jewish] priests might be set at liberty; and when, besides this favor, I had obtained many presents from Poppaea, I returned home again.
17. Metilius, a Roman commander in the region, mentioned by Josephus (War II.xvii.10).
18. To be “unwound” was perhaps the most unimaginable torture the Romans devised, in which the abdomen was cut into, the colon was located and then nailed to a spool. By winch all one’s intestines were wound out of one slowly.
19. Martyrs and their cults abounded in the Graeco-Roman persecutions of Judea.
Simon the High Priest, last of the Maccabees, was killed (with two of his sons) by his own son-in-law for the Ptolemies in 134 B.C.E. Under the despotic King Alexander Jannaeus (reigned 103–76 B.C.E.) some 800 Pharisees and detractors were crucified while he feasted with his concubines and looked on. As a final gesture, the Jewish King commanded that the pietists, while dying on the crosses, observe the throat-slitting of their own wives and children. He may be the model for the Wicked Priest of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Onias the Just is perhaps the model for the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls, inspiration to John the Baptist and perhaps Jesus himself. He was a miracle worker who delivered a tirade against the corrupt establishment and was stoned during Passover, 63 B.C.E. (Josephus, Antiquities XV.ii.1).
20. Josephus indulged in martyrology himself. Racked and twisted, burned and broken, and made to pass through every instrument of torture in order to induce [the Essenes] to blaspheme their Lawgiver or to eat some forbidden thing, refused to yield to either demand, nor ever once did they cringe to their persecutors or shed a tear. Smiling in their agonies and mildly deriding their tormentors, they cheerfully resigned their souls, confident that they would receive them back again. (War, II. vii. 3)
The early martyrdom of James, then Symenon, most of the Apostles, then Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin, and the persecutions in Lyons and Scilli firmly established martyrdom as the currency of the newly emerging Christian faith. Forty years after Matthias writes, Ignatius embodied the desire for martyrdom in this letter written before he was killed in the arena: Suffer me to belong to the wild beasts, through whom I may attain to God. I am God’s grain and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread. Rather entice the wild beasts to become my tomb, and to leave naught of my body, that I may not, when I have fallen asleep prove a burden to any man. (“Epistle to Polycarp,” 115 C.E.)
21. The perushim, Piestists (root of Pharisee), were persecuted under Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV beginning in 175 B.C.E.
The “sinful sprout” reference reflects First Book of the Maccabees 1:10. In an age where the merest slight could result in civil war, the five-year persecution (90–85 B.C.E.) of would-be priest-king Alexander Jannaeus was extraordinary, with some 50,000 pious Jews martyred for yet another Sukkot-based incident, in which the monarch was pelted with lemons after having botched the Pharisees’ libation ritual.
22. The Infancy Gospel, attributed to James sometimes, Thomas other places, are popular fantasies of the 100s, and in some Oriental Monophysite congregations are still given great credence.
Jesus raises His fallen playmates from the dead (Infancy 7:1), Jesus rescues a bewitched man turned into a mule and converts him back into a man, only to have him marry a leprous woman He has also cured (7:12–35), Jesus cures a man of impotence with his wife by sleeping in his house overnight (7:1–3). Jesus as a boy meets nearly all the Disciples He will teach later, healing them and saving them as boys. Judas Iscariot comes over to play and hits Jesus and makes Him cry.
No tale seems to have had a life of its own quite like the birds, and other animals, being made out of clay (15:6) just as Adam was formed from clay (Job 33:6). This Jewish showstopper lived on in the Jewish Sefer Yetsirah (ca. 200s?), where animals from clay could be given life, the Ebionite Christian Pseudo-Clementines (ca. 300s), where Simon the Magus’s recipe for creating life is found, to Paracelsus’s homunculus, Judeo-Arabic alchemy, and Jewish kabbalistic mysticism for 1500 years, even up to Meyrinck’s The Golem and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Jew and Moslem alike credit Jesus with this, oddly enough: Jesus makes clay birds in the medieval anti-Christian Jewish tract Toledoth Yeshu, and the Prophet Mohammed mentions the episode in the Quran; Jesus says, Now I have come … to you with a sign from your Lord: out of clay will I make for you, as it were, the figure of a bird. And I will breathe into it and it shall become, by Allah’s leave, a bird (Surah 3:44).
