JESUS, THE TRADITIONAL VIEW

It is necessary that in order to get a better understanding of the historical Jesus, the Jesus of tradition and faith must undergo a thorough re-examination, the focus now must be the details of his life as handed down through the Gospels. It does very little good to try to understand the message without first understanding the man, and it is only by refuting much of the tradition and dogma surrounding him that one can see Jesus for who he really was. The portrait that emerges will be far different from the Christian portrait of Jesus, yet it is developed from the same writings that have shaped the traditional view. Interpretation is the key here, the ability to look at the accepted ‘facts’ of his life without the restriction of tradition and arrive at a conclusion based on the real story hidden within the Gospels. Much of what has been accepted as fact about Jesus is actually based upon the speculative interpretation of questionable translations. As previously noted, the traditional choice to translate ‘Iudeous ’ as ‘Jew’ rather than the correct ‘Judean’, so too other traditional choices of other translations have hidden the truth about Jesus.

The traditional view of Jesus, the view accepted by most Christian churches and scholars and Christians in general is one of a poor carpenter, born in Bethlehem in Judea, raised in a small, remote village in Galilee, the eldest or perhaps only son of Mary, a simple peasant girl and an older stepfather, also a carpenter, from whom Jesus presumably learned the trade. He was an itinerant preacher and miracle worker who roamed the countryside teaching a message of God’s love and the vaguely timed arrival of God’s kingdom of heaven sometime in the near future. To facilitate the spread of his message, he gathered about him twelve disciples, who, although unable to grasp the full import of the message in all its details, nevertheless managed to assist him in his ministry. Jesus and his message ultimately presented enough of a threat to the established order that he was arrested and executed on a charge of sedition, rising bodily from death on the third day after his crucifixion. Such are the prominent traditional facts of the life of Jesus, but do they accurately tell the story of the man? Much of Western culture, its moral code and its cultural imperative as it were, are based on these simple, limited biographical datum and it would seem essential, given their importance, to get the facts right about the man regardless of tradition, but has the truth been lost in translation? Two examples will help in understanding and reshaping the view of the Gospel Jesus: his name and his profession.

To begin, a fresh study of his name must first be made. What was this historical figure called and are the traditional references to him correct? Certainly he is most frequently referred to simply as Jesus, although he is known more formally and almost universally as Jesus of Nazareth. This is the name used for him in translated versions of the Gospels, the name used by biblical scholars and historians, by clergy and by the general populace. It is used more frequently than any other name, except perhaps Jesus Christ (which refers more to the Christ of faith than to the historical Jesus) and it is the name that has come to be used over the centuries as the correct form of address, the name that tradition indicates he generally should be called. Yet, like the preference for the traditional term ‘Jew’ rather than the actual translation ‘Judean’ used so haphazardly both in the bible and in general reference, it is both misleading and incorrect.

Throughout the earliest Greek Gospels, Jesus is referred to as; Iesous ton Nazarenon (or its variations as transliterated from the Greek) which most English bibles casually translate as: Jesus OF Nazareth, but which is more precisely rendered as: Jesus THE Nazarene. As in the case with Jew/ Judean, the distinction between ‘of Nazareth’ and ‘the Nazarene’ has profound consequences that impact the ability to accurately assess the man and understand the context of his life. While ‘of Nazareth’ denotes a connection to a geographical place, ‘the Nazarene’ incorporates connections beyond geography, connections that imply prophetic political associations. The distinction between the two has produced over the years an ongoing debate among scholars as to the correct usage of the term and while many have opted for ‘of Nazareth’ as noted above, to adhere to tradition, ‘the Nazarene’ seems to be the more accurate translation. Due to the subjective nature of translating Hebrew, a written language without vowels, context, usage and familiarity with usage are essential for accurate translation. However, in the case of the distinction in translation between Nazareth and Nazarene there is greater concern with the Greek transliterations that occur in the New Testament and so the difficulties are much less severe, rendering the traditional choice of Nazareth over Nazarene to be one of redaction rather than linguistics.

In Hebrew, the roots of words play an important role in their translation and while transliterating Hebrew words into other languages depends heavily on a prior knowledge of the context of their usage there is often a great deal of supposition involved with determining the correct or intended meaning. For example, the Hebrew root: n-ts-r , or nun-tsade-resh , is the root for several different words of different meanings that all might be applied to Jesus. It is the root of natsar (guarded, kept, preserved) and natsoor (beleaguered, besieged) and netser (descendant, offspring, branch) and also Natsrat (Nazareth). Without hearing the word vocalized within its proper context the ability to correctly surmise its definition becomes extremely problematic. Jesus, as the Nazarene (also taken from the n-ts-r root), might rightly be identified by any of the above definitions; a descendant of David from Nazareth who found himself beleaguered and yet guarded the Covenant. The same root can also be used for watchman, watchers and hidden things. So the tradition of referring to Jesus as ‘of Nazareth’ while ostensibly correct in Hebrew is not necessarily warranted in the Greek transliteration of ‘the Nazarene’. Since the earliest Greek renditions refer to him as ‘the Nazarene’ and not ‘of Nazareth’, it must be assumed that those early writers were possibly aware of vocalizations and context that indicated a usage other than ‘Nazareth’. While Nazareth and Nazarene may produce a similarity of sound in their roots, that similarity does not automatically indicate a commonality of definition. Add to this the possibility that the Greek Nazaraios , (for Nazarene) may be a play on the transliteration for the Hebrew term for nazarite , (a person who has taken a specific vow to God (Numbers 6:1-21) and is therefore consecrated or set apart from others), with a root of nun-zayin-resh , rendered nazeer or nazir and the question of Jesus’ cognomen becomes even more complicated. There are two terms that most readily describe Jesus and are therefore words that better suit the n-ts-r root. They are netser (for branch) and natsar (for keeper or preserver). They are descriptive of who he was and how those around him viewed him and display the Mosaean penchant for multiple meanings.

Jesus was not a Nazarene because he was from Nazareth. He was called a Nazarene in the Greek Gospels because it signified whom he was, not where he was from. The tradition that he was from Nazareth is based upon the early Christian need to distance him from his historical roots and by the insertions of later redactions by Christian interpolators. It continues today because it has become so firmly entrenched as to become truth. If one looks closely at the Gospel of Mark and its supposed references to Nazareth there is only one direct reference, Mk 1:9; “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth [Nazaret] of Galilee…” Interestingly, it does not directly associate Nazareth with his home, only that in those days he came from there. If one subtracts what might possibly be a later addition to the passage, “Nazareth of”, the passage works quite well without it, indicating that at that time Jesus came from Galilee (not necessarily from Nazareth) to be baptized by John. Continuing the examination of the other Markan references to Nazareth one finds that they actually refer to Nazarene rather than Nazareth. Mark 1:24 = Nazarene, Mk 2:1= “…it was reported that he was at home…” (no mention of Nazareth), Mk 10:47= Nazarenos , Mk 14:67= Nazarenou , Mk 16:6= ton (the) Nazarenon . Since Mark is considered to be the earliest of the Gospels, it must be assumed that from the very earliest recording of Jesus’ story, he was more regularly referred to as the Nazarene and while later Christian redactions to the Gospels may have tried more aggressively to make the connection to Nazareth, for reasons that will become apparent, the truth seems to be that Jesus was during his lifetime referred to as the Nazarene.

It is part of the Jesus mythos that he came from a very small, remote place, far from any connections or influences that might have tarnished him had he been closer to the socio-political mainstream of his time. In the Christian tradition, his uniqueness requires that he be set apart from his environment, untouched in a sense, by the culture of his time, coming from nowhere, both figuratively and literally to set things right, the prophet from the wilderness who, untainted and uncorrupted, can set the Mosaeans back on the right path towards God’s kingdom. The archaeological fact that Nazareth in all probability did not exist in Jesus’ time and if it did, was such a small village (Dr. Stephen Pfann, of the Center for the Study of Early Christianity , concluded from the questionable archaeological evidence available that Nazareth was “tiny, with two or three clans living in 35 homes spread over 2.5 hectares”) as to be incapable of supporting one, let alone two carpenters as must have been the case with Jesus and Joseph seems not to bother Christian apologists in the slightest. Nor can the argument be made compellingly, as some have attempted, that perhaps Jesus and presumably Joseph lived in the tiny village of Nazareth and walked the few miles to Sepphoris in order to obtain carpentry work there. Sepphoris stood approximately four miles to the northwest of the supposed site of early Nazareth. Walking at a brisk and steady two and a half miles per hour, it would have taken Jesus and Joseph about one hour and forty minutes to travel between home and work, one way. Daily, it would have required three hours and fifteen minutes at a constant two and a half miles per hour and this over uneven, rocky ground carrying the heavy tools of the building trade. Factor in a more reasonable and comfortable walking speed of two miles per hour and the round trip jumps to four hours per day just in transit time. One wonders when they found the time to earn a living.

No, if Sepphoris were where the work was Joseph and his family would have moved there. This is a family it must be remembered that had relocated to Egypt (possibly Alexandria, where there would have been a large Mosaean population, a trip of some four hundred miles from Jerusalem). They were not anchored to the land, as farmers and some others might have been. Sepphoris, at the time, was a large city, a regional capital and would have provided a much greater opportunity for finding carpentry work than Nazareth ever could. Time spent walking to and from a jobsite was time and money lost and as carpentry at that time was a very marginalized profession, somewhat below subsistence farming that at least provided some amount of food, it seems hard to imagine such a counter productive approach for the two carpenters as living in Nazareth and commuting to Sepphoris, or not commuting and trying to find enough work to sustain their family in such a small community as Nazareth

The questionable existence of the traditional Nazareth during Jesus’ life is only one reason to suspect it as the place where Jesus lived or that it was an ancestral home of either Mary or Joseph, though that, by itself, should be enough. The Gospel of Matthew indicates that the family’s home was for a time in Judea and that Nazareth was merely an afterthought, a distant, obscure location where they might hide out from Archelaus, Herod’s son. Matthew 2:19-23 states quite plainly that Joseph and his family, after being recalled from Egypt by an angel of the Lord, were in fact heading to Judea, presumably their home, when Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning there. Fearing a continued threat to his son, Joseph, and his family withdraws to Galilee. Matthew 2:23 further explains that they went to Nazareth so that “…what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled: “He shall be called a Nazarene.” The problem with this Gospel statement is twofold; first, as has been mentioned, ‘a’ Nazarene or ‘the’ Nazarene is not interchangeable with ‘of’ Nazareth; they are two different words and concepts. Secondly, there is no prophetic pronouncement anywhere in the bible that mentions Nazareth as the place where the Messiah will abide. The idea that the Messiah would be referred to as ‘a Nazarene’ will be examined but there is nothing that supports a reference indicating his connection to a village in Galilee. Joseph and the family may well have gone to Galilee to avoid any possible conflict waiting for them at home in Judea, but the idea that they settled in such a small (if existent) village of subsistence farmers, seems highly unlikely, just as it is equally unlikely that anyone would use the name of such an insignificant geographical location as an identifier, as in Jesus ‘of Nazareth’. No doubt the response to such a title during and immediately after his lifetime would have been, “Jesus from where?” Geographical identifiers are used primarily because they are recognized by a majority of the population, not because they are remote and obscure. More likely is the idea that Matthew 2:23 was a redaction added later by a non- Hebrew speaking author, unaware of the distinction between the two words, who was eager to make the connection between Jesus and the appellation ‘the Nazarene’.

Regardless of the existence or non-existence of an historical Nazareth during the time of Jesus, the more telling point is that he is referred to as ‘the Nazarene’ throughout the Gospels, thus making the title Jesus ‘of Nazareth’ a misnomer. That noted scholars and Christian apologists continue to use the incorrect term, consistently and continuously, again demonstrates the power of tradition to misdirect consensus and to obscure, if not outright destroy, serious scholarly study of the historical person. ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is a comfortable traditional reference to the Christ of faith but it is not a reference to the man recorded in the Gospels. The man of the Gospels is a Nazarene and it is this reference that helps to define him and place him in his correct context. As a Nazarene, his geographical connections were secondary to those socio-political associations that the term Nazarene brought front and center, as they were intended to be and although the exact etymology of Nazarene is open to debate today, in his own time it must have made an unambiguous statement about Jesus and who he was and what he believed.

The word Nazarene has been linked variously to nazarite / nazirite , the title given to a Mosaean who individually or through his parents had been consecrated in a vow to God that required specific and distinct actions; or to netser / netzer the word for ‘branch or descendent’ that indicated a close association either genetically or politically with the line of King David. One of the most significant criteria for the hoped for Messiah was that he would be a descendent or netze r of David, hence an offshoot or branch. Either of these designations, nazirite or netzer would have been of far greater importance as an identifier of who Jesus was than ‘Nazareth’ ever would have been and, as has been mentioned, it is conceivable that both identifiers applied to Jesus; he very easily could have been a nazirite and a netzer simultaneously. In fact, proclaiming a nazirite vow, as a descendent of David, would have only served to reinforce Jesus’ righteousness and help to confirm him as the anticipated Messiah. Taking a nazirite vow with its physical requisites and its vow of extreme piety would also serve Jesus well when it was time to enact the resurrection.

Even more significantly than being recognized as a nazirite , which would have carried profound importance for a First Century Mosaean and at least equally as significant as being a descendant of King David, would have been Jesus’ acceptance and recognition as a ‘keeper of the Covenant’ or Nazarene. His association with the term Nazarene, from natsar (to keep, to preserve, to safeguard), was primarily in such a role, as a keeper of God’s covenant with his people. Jesus saw himself, and his teachings reinforce this image, as the ultimate preserver of the Mosaean people’s promise to strictly conform to Mosaean law as he interpreted it. In Matthew 5:17-20 the Gospels make Jesus’ stance on the subject very clear: it is only through complete obedience to Mosaean law that the kingdom of heaven can be established on earth:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The restoration of David’s kingdom could not take place unless and until a majority of the people re-consecrated themselves to the task of living by the Torah and re-establishing the all pervasive influence of the Covenant in their daily lives. Jesus the Nazarene, the keeper, as the Messiah, saw it as his responsibility to bring the people back to that righteousness. As a nazirite and as a branch of the House of David also, he was uniquely qualified to stand as an example of a preserver of that covenant.

Ironically, although a small and remote village called Nazareth may not have existed in Jesus’ day, the name may have applied in fact to a place where he lived. It is far more likely that Jesus, as the Nazarene, lent the appellation to a place of his residence rather than to be named after an obscure hamlet. Nazareth didn’t lend its name to Jesus; Jesus lent his name to Nazareth. Nazareth was a place where the Nazarene lived. It was a reference to a specific place where Jesus and sometimes his family stayed. As members of the royal Davidic line under the rule of the paranoid Herodians, their positions within their society were precarious at best, as is seen in their earlier flight to Egypt, which required them to shelter in places of safety with people they could trust. In short, tribal lands. To fully understand where Nazareth was located, it is first necessary to locate and examine another town that the Gospels also called Jesus’ home, Capernaum.

The earliest written record of the town called Capernaum is considered to be in Josephus, first in The War of the Judeans written about 75CE. Now, with a much earlier dating of the Gospels, their inclusion of Capernaum may be the earliest written records of the place, although it is hard to be definitive since so much redacting took place in the first centuries of these works that it is possible that their references to Capernaum may have been later additions. The references to Capernaum in Josephus seem to be original to his works War and his autobiography, The Life of Flavius Josephus (c.99CE) and based upon the first hand experience of the author, although in the twenty-four years between War and Life (his second reference to Capernaum) an uncertainty as to the exact name of the place developed. It is therefore difficult to determine the precise etymology of the place name Capernaum and whether it was first recorded in Josephus in War or in the Gospels. The Gospels are rather consistent in their rendering of Capernaum in the Greek as Kapharnaoum while Josephus renders it likewise in War but deviates later in Life to either Kapharnaoum or Kepharnomen . It is this aberrant spelling that helps to delineate the etymology of the place name.

Current scholarship places the site of Capernaum at the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee about three and one third miles from the mouth of the Jordan River. The accepted etymology of the name derives from the Hebrew/Aramaic kaphar Nachum or the ‘village of Nahum’, although no historical connection has ever been made to the Old Testament prophet Nachum. Over the years, various sites have been suggested as the original Capernaum, all within that surrounding area close to the Jordan, with the currently accepted site gaining widespread support because of the archaeological discovery of what has been referred to as ‘Saint Peter’s house’, a ruin containing ancient items of the fishing trade and iconic Christian graffiti. The remains of a large, possibly Second/Third Century synagogue are located nearby to the ancient dwelling with the foundations of a First Century synagogue as a sub strata and while the locations of both the house and the synagogue in a relatively small town near the shores of the lake seem to meet the Gospel criteria for Capernaum and indeed, the overall geographical topography seems to meet the references written in Josephus, there are one or two items that seem to indicate that the historical place might be located elsewhere.

To begin with, it is important to fully understand the village name of Capernaum. As with Jesus and Nazarene, it is essential to determine the correct or intended usage of the name in order to fully appreciate its historical significance. The first hints that the name may represent something other than what has been handed down traditionally are clearly apparent. Capernaum, as represented within the Gospels, is not a village. It is referred to as a city (Lk 4:31). It is large enough to have its own synagogue, large enough to require the services of a centurion (Mt.8:5) and large enough to house (albeit perhaps only temporarily) a nobleman (Jn. 4:46). It apparently was a focal point for a fairly robust fishing industry and geographically nearly straddled one of the prime highways in the area for traveling not only along the shore of Galilee but also for reaching the north and west. These are hardly the earmarks of a small village. Josephus, writing Life in 99CE refers to the place as a village, but it must be remembered that his earliest awareness of the place was some thirty years after the Gospels make mention of it, at a time when war may have driven the population of Capernaum, that was apparently unfortified, to other, more fortified towns, leaving only a small, village sized population behind. Granted, the designation kaphar (village) may have survived from antiquity and carried over as the village prospered, but the reverse may also be true that what was once a city in the Gospel stories had been reduced to nothing more than a village by the time Josephus was there. Since there are no historical records of the place before the events of the Gospels, there is no real way to ascertain the size of the place or its designation. To classify the Capernaum of the Gospels as a village seems more than a stretch, while to accept it as a village in Josephus’ time seems possible.

Secondarily, it is named for a minor prophet of the Old Testament even though no clear connection to Nachum in the biblical record can be made. Certainly, not all local history was contained within the bible and the possibility exists that there was at sometime in the distant past, known to the local inhabitants, a very real connection between Nachum and that place. However, such a possibility, without corroborating biblical evidence must remain suspect and remote. A connection to the prophet must have been more than a casual association in order for the place to acquire his name. The ‘village of Nachum’ denotes a patristic association of some import, important enough anyway to wind up in the historical record, not just a casual visit or incidental involvement. So Capernaum, kaphar Nachum , was larger than a village and was seemingly not associated with the prophet Nachum. Then why call it Capernaum?

The task of translating and transliterating the Hebrew and Aramaic of that time was difficult to say the least. So much was dependent upon context and vocalization that accurately recording and conveying what was meant was very problematic. Then too, Greek was not a static language at the time, developing and changing many of its vocalizations and rules during that period, so that it is not surprising that original meanings may have become lost or corrupted during translation. Capernaum is such a case. While kaphar Nachum makes perfect linguistic sense it does not make etymological sense. As a result, it is necessary to delve more deeply into other possible etymologies to find its true meaning. One of Greek’s key linguistic features that impacts the etymology of Capernaum is that when syllabifying words, consonants are connected to the following vowel. Thus Capernaum, transliterated from the Greek is generally considered to be Kapharnaoum or phonetically, kah far nah oom , with the first syllable dissociated from the first consonant, ph/f. This practice is still seen today in the Hebrew word for village used on maps and signs, kfar , the ‘k’or kaph dissociated from the first consonant by a dropped vowel. Because of this, it has been understood that Capernaum was the intended translation based upon kaphar for village. It is only upon recognizing Josephus’ use of Kepharnomen (Cepharnome ), as a possible alternative name, that Capernaum’s true etymology can be discerned.

Kepharnomen , Josephus’ transliteration in Life for the Hebrew/Aramaic place, may have been based upon his recollection of the vocalization, so many years earlier, of what the place had been called by the locals, even though he had used Kapharnaoum in War and Life as the rendering. The difference between the two choices may have been nothing more than a matter of confused memory. Kapharnaoum made sense linguistically. Kepharnomen jogged an old recollection. Had Josephus been certain of the correct name, Kepharnomen would not have been included and Kapharnaoum would not have been questioned. As it is, the inclusion of Kepharnomen points to the correct etymology. Under the Greek grammar of the time, Kepharnomen would have been broken down as kay-far-no-men . In Aramaic, however, it would have been vocalized as kayf-har-no-men or transliterated as keph-har-no-men , a corruption of: keph (rocks or idiomatically: cornerstone) har (mountain) nome (Greek:district), Kepharnome , so that Capernaum, in the language of the locals was a reference to the ‘cornerstone mountain of Nahum’ but in Josephus’ recollection late in life it became ‘the cornerstone mountain district’ referring to an area and not a specific town or village. While this may, at first glance, seem a more awkward rendition linguistically, upon closer examination it makes much greater sense etymologically. Vocally, the distinction between the two words is predominately between two sounds, kaph or kayf .

According to Gesenius’ Lexicon, the etymology of kaphar (kah far: village) stems from the root kaphar (kah fair: to cover over, as in to cover over sin or atone for sin or to pacify). It is also connected to the idea of covering over (with pitch or tar), presumably as in covering a roof with pitch, thereby signifying a permanent structure, a building of a village. In the Old Testament, the word is used predominately in reference to atonement for sin (in the 94 verses where it is found, it is used 68 times as atonement for sin). It is used once as a reference to building technique in Genesis 6:14 in regards to the building of Noah’s ark and the sealing of seams with pitch. It is an awkward etymology, and does not account for the fact that tents as well as buildings also serve to cover over their inhabitants but without pitch and therefore does not distinguish between a village made of buildings, per se, and a camp comprised of tents. A more logical and therefore reasonable etymology would seem to be that kaphar was actually drawn from the root keph and that the concept of ‘village’ that it was designed to convey was based upon the fact that villages, with permanent structures made of rocks (probably the undressed black basalt that is so prevalent in and around Galilee and the lake), were uniquely different from camps made of tents. In other words, for the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the area, kaphar attached to a place name indicated that they could expect to find a permanent settlement with buildings made of rocks and not tents. As mentioned above, the two words, keph and kaphar , have similar base spellings (kp and kpr) and similar vocalizations.

If such is the case and kaphar is based upon keph , then Kapharnaum or Kepharnomen and in fact, all place names incorporating kaphar or kfar or kefr are better understood as villages that were initially constructed, at least in part, of rock or stone in their geographical settings rather than just as temporary geographical sites of migratory camps. Specifically in the case of Capernaum, the use of kaphar leans more heavily on its idiomatic use, rock as in cornerstone, the cornerstone mountain of Nahum. Rock and stone imagery was prevalent in Jesus’ ministry, from repeated references to cornerstones and foundations to Peter as both a rock and a stone and it has always been accepted that such imagery was the result of his familiarity with the building trades, that as a carpenter such imagery would be second nature to him. However, with the proper location of Capernaum determined, the familiarity with such imagery becomes increasingly clear and the inspiration for his use of the cornerstone image in connection with God becomes easy to understand.

Using Josephus as the only contemporaneous record of the geographical location for the town (beyond the Gospels’ imprecise references that Capernaum was by or close to the Sea of Galilee and close to the borders of Naphtali and Zebulun) requires a careful analysis of his references. The following passages record his references to Capernaum.

From The War of the Judeans , Book 3, Chapter 10, Stanza 8:

“The country also that lies near to this lake (Sea of Galilee, also: Lake Gennesareth) has the same name of Gennesareth; its nature is wonderful as well as its beauty; its soil is so fruitful that all sorts of trees can grow upon it and the inhabitants accordingly plant all sorts of trees there; for the temper of the air is so well mixed that it agrees very well with those several sorts, particularly walnuts, which require the coldest air and flourish there in vast plenty; there are palm trees also, which grow best in hot air; fig trees also and olives grow near them, which yet require an air that is more temperate. One may call this place the ambition of nature, where it forces those plants that are naturally enemies to one another to agree together; it is a happy contention of the seasons, as if every one of them laid claim to this country; for it not only nourishes different sorts of autumnal fruit beyond men’s expectation, but preserves them a great while; it supplies men with the principal fruits, with grapes and figs continually, during ten months of the year and the rest of the fruits as they become ripe together through the whole year; for besides the good temperature of the air, it is also watered from a most fertile fountain. The people of the country call it Capharnaum. Some have thought it to be a vein of the Nile, because it produces the Coracin fish as well as that lake does which is near to Alexandria (Lake Mareotis?). The length of this country extends itself along the banks of this lake that bears the same name for thirty furlongs and is in breadth twenty. And this is the nature of that place.”

There are several significant points within Josephus’ recounting of the area that need to be highlighted. First, from the first line of the paragraph he makes clear that the tract of land that he was referring to had the same name as that of the lake, Gennesareth. Historically, that tract of land ran along the western shore of the lake in a roughly half moon shape some three and a half miles long by two and a half miles deep or the thirty furlongs by twenty furlongs that he mentions in the last line (one furlong equals approximately 1/8 of a mile). It began in the north about a mile southwest of Tabgha and ran along the coast until it was stopped by the Arbel cliffs. According to Josephus, it was a remarkably fertile stretch of land, full of various fruit and nut trees. It was also watered by ‘a most fertile fountain’, that the ‘people of the country’ called Capharnaum. Which brings us to the second point: at least initially, in The War of the Judeans written about 75 CE, Josephus did not understand Capharnaum to be a village but rather a source of water, a feature of the topography. Yet strangely, he did not question the use of kaphar /village within the name of a watercourse. Twenty some years later, while recalling the events in Life he reconnects the name with a village.

From The Life of Flavius Josephus , stanzas 72 and 73:

“As soon as I had gotten intelligence of this, I sent two thousand armed men and a captain over them, whose name was Jeremiah, who raised a siege bank a furlong off Julias near to the river Jordan…And I had performed great things that day, if a certain fate had not been my hindrance for the horse on which I rode and upon whose back I fought, fell into a quagmire and threw me on the ground and I was bruised on my wrist and carried into a village named Cepharnome (Kepharnomen) or Capernaum (Kapharnaoum). When my soldiers heard of this, they were afraid I had been worse hurt than I was and so they did not go on with their pursuit any further but returned in very great concern for me. I therefore sent for the physicians and while I was under their hands, I continued feverish that day and as the physicians directed, I was that night removed to Taricheae. When Sylla and his party were informed what happened to me, they took courage again…Yet they did not go off with victory at last; for when they heard that some armed men had sailed from Taricheae to Julias, they were afraid and retired.”

The events described in Life are not as detailed as they might have been, omitting distances from the quagmire to Capharnaum and from there to Taricheae, leaving his precise movements during the engagement uncertain. What is of note is that he referred to Capernaum uncertainly as well. He proposed two slightly different names for the place although, as has been mentioned, he seemed definite in their association to a village and not a watercourse. Nor did he mention the reason why the physicians required to move him from Capernaum to Taricheae and whether, as commander of the forces, he was responsible for sending the armed men across the lake to Julias. In fact throughout the passages in Life , the disposition of his troops is unclear. Also, while in 75 CE he was content to accept the knowledge of the locals regarding the place name, by 99 CE he had become uncertain as to the correct name and perhaps was also uncertain whether it represented a village or a topographical feature, even though the passages from both works correspond closely to the same timeframe in his life. If he had been uncertain while writing Life about the place and its name, he had only to consult War to verify it. That he did not would seem to allow for a certain lack of concern on Josephus’ part during the later work and consequently indicates that the earlier work, at least as far as Capernaum is concerned, is probably the more accurate of the two.

With these points in mind and with the understanding that kaphar’s etymology springs from keph rather than kaphar for ‘covering with pitch’ and more especially in Kapharnaum’s case from the idiomatic use of keph as cornerstone, the actual location of Capernaum can be reassessed. Tradition and modern scholarship may place the city at the northwest corner of the lake, closer to the inflow of the Jordan into the lake, but Josephus does not place it there, nor does the Gospel account that places it near to the borders of Naphtali and Zebulun (a nexus that would have been farther south). Capernaum, according to the earliest sources, was on the west bank of the Sea of Galilee and was associated with a natural spring or fountain of substantial outflow amidst a fertile tree filled land. One location along that tract of land that seems to fit all the criteria is Mount Arbel, a unique and prominent feature that stands out clearly in the region’s topography.

Mount Arbel and its environs, which include the cliffs of Arbel and their caves, Mount Nitai, the village of Hattin, Wadi Hamam and the village of Hamam is not so much a mountain as it is an escarpment or line of cliffs shaped like a chevron that points north. Rising some 1247 feet above the surrounding area, it dominates the landscape in a way that no other local topographical feature does and the view from the top of the peak encompasses almost all of Galilee, including all of the immediate area and most of the Sea of Galilee. As a strategic lookout in lower Galilee it is unmatched and it would have been nearly impossible for a force of any size to approach the mountain and cliffs without being recognized while still miles away. To the north of the escarpment stretches the Plain of Gennesareth with its fertile fields crowding the lake while to the southwest lie the Horns of Hattin and to the southeast, along the shore within close proximity, the city of Tiberias. The cliffs themselves, porous from both natural and manmade caves, have a sheer drop of about three hundred feet and can be reached by a steep trail that begins near the end of the Wadi Hammam. The cliffs and their caves are a natural fortress that had been improved and expanded in antiquity, both before and after the beginning of the Common Era.

The significance of the mountain to the early locals cannot be overstated and is readily seen in certain of the place names for the various villages, towns and topographical features that make it up. Primary among these is the town of Migdal-el, known also as Migdol or more commonly as Magdala and also by Josephus as Taricheae or Tarichee. The Hebrew/Aramaic word migdal generally defined as tower, can also refer to watchtower, fortress, walled city or castle or an elevated place like a pulpit, rostrum or even a raised geological feature. The town was located at the foot of Mt. Arbel along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and while historians and scholars persist in attributing the etymology of the name to the prosaic notion of a wooden tower meant as a drying rack for fish, the fact of the matter is that the name was applied to Mt. Arbel. Standing at the ancient site of Magdala it would have been nearly impossible to ignore or disregard the presence of Mt. Arbel so close at hand. It looms over the site and is the key topographical feature of the area. The idea that any group of people or any single person could stand on that shoreline beneath those cliffs and find greater significance in a wooden drying rack seems unlikely, but if they were the only two criteria that possibility would have to be accepted.

However, biblical precedence indicates that the term migdal was applied much earlier to another topographical feature and that the naming of Migdal-el was in reference to that. Exodus 14:2 records that God told Moses “Tell the sons of Israel to turn back and camp before Pi-hahiroth between Migdal and the sea; you shall camp in front of Baal-zephon, opposite it, by the sea.” The migdal referenced here is at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, at the confluence of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez. It is another chevron shaped rocky landmass that rises from its surroundings about 1500 feet that made an excellent lookout and fortress of that area. If Pi-Hahiroth, or ‘mouth of water’ corresponds to the bay at the very tip of the peninsula and Baal-Zephon corresponds to Mount Tiran at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, then the spot at which God directed Moses to camp was a place between the migdal and the Gulf of Aqaba on the eastern tip of the peninsula. Migdal-el then was a reference to this earlier ‘migdal ’ and was located accordingly below the migdal of Mt. Arbel between it and the Sea of Galilee. Clearly, this was in homage to Moses and a reference to one of the camps during the Exodus. The question then becomes, was the etymology of the word based upon the land formation or was the land formation named for the word? Was the migdal of Exodus named because it resembled a tower or fortress or was the word derived from the place name Migdal, itself a towering landmass?

The confusion historically over magdala as a fish-drying tower is not too difficult to understand when it is considered that another early rendition of the city’s name was Magdala Nunayya, which was rendered as Fish Tower or Tower of Fish, taken from the Aramaic nuwna for fish. With the fishing industry so prevalent throughout the Sea of Galilee the connection no doubt seemed obvious. However, once Josephus rendered the same place as Taricheae, which is Greek for fishery, the source of the confusion became clear. The Hebrew for fishery is midgeh or phonetically meed geh , which is similar to the phonetic meeg doll for tower. The fishery located there that must have been responsible for a large part of the local economy was rendered simultaneously both in Hebrew and Aramaic as midgeh nunayya or ‘the fish fishery’ by early translators rather than the migdal-el nunayya or ‘the fishery by the tower of God’ that was its full correct name. Later, midgeh nunayya became migdal nunayya to resolve the repetition of ‘fish fishery’ and became, again incorrectly, Magdala Nunayya, Tower of Fish and ultimately simply Magdala. In any event, as will be seen, it was not the home of Mary the Magdalene. Migdal-el Nunayya was a much more specific geographical locator than Magdala Nunayya, the former calling attention to a distinct topographical feature, Mt. Arbel, the latter a reference to a manmade structure that was useless as a locator since similar drying towers must have been present at the time throughout the area around the lake.

Migdal-el is recorded in the Old Testament as one of the fortified cities that were included in the land grant awarded to the Naphtali tribe (Joshua 19:35-38), and while the exact location of each town is not given nor does the order in which they were recorded help in determining that, it is clear from some of the other towns that Migdal-el certainly could have been in the vicinity of Mt. Arbel. Kinnereth would have been just a few miles north, while Hammath would have been a few miles south. Ziddim, thought today to be Kfar Zeitim (historically also: Hattin or Hittin), would have been about three miles from Migdal-el on the opposite side of the mountain. So at least several of the Naphtali fortified towns were in close proximity to the site of Migdal-el. The ‘Tower of God’ had been an important location from antiquity, even in Jesus’ time, a walled or fortified city that must have straddled the coastal road that ran between the Sea of Galilee and Mt. Arbel and served as a hub for the local fishing industry.

Another example of the importance of Mt. Arbel to the early Mosaean inhabitants is the name Arbel itself. It is associated with a small fortress or lookout that was perched high on the edge of the Wadi Hamam along the western edge of the mountain and means ‘the ambush of God’. It was no doubt used in that capacity, as it loomed over the natural pathway that ran down the wadi that was one of the routes that connected Lower Galilee to the Plain of Gennesareth, Migdal-el and the caves of Mt. Arbel. In times of war, the wadi would have been one of two southern routes around the mountain, the other being the coastal road, and as such, would have been vulnerable to attacks from ‘God’s ambush’. Arbel was also in a position to aid in the protection of the main water source for the Plain of Gennesareth and Migdal-el, the watercourse that began at the two fountains of Hattin and ran northeast through the wadi, irrigating much of the plain and emptying into the Sea of Galilee. These fountains are the source for the ‘fertile fountain’ recounted by Josephus.

Josephus’ reference to the fertile fountain and its ability to irrigate much of the plain firmly places the water source at the fountains of Hattin / Ziddim. Although there were many springs and fountains scattered throughout this geological area, few had outflows substantial enough to water large tracts of land. The two at Hattin that combined into one river and flowed through the Wadi Hamam had a considerable outflow that drained north and east over the plain, that still can be seen from satellite photos. They are mentioned in the medieval records in the battle of the Horns of Hattin where Saladin defeated a large crusader army in 1187 CE. At that time, eleven centuries after Josephus, their outflow was substantial enough to serve as a possible destination for the waterless crusader army, numbering in the thousands, to try to reach. In fact, in the surrounding region there were only two sets of springs that produced substantial outflows; the springs at Sepphoris and those at the village of Hattin. According to measurements taken in the late 1940s, one of the Sepphoris springs, ‘Ein Zippori / Ayn al-Qastal’ discharged approximately 108,000 liters/hour on August 7, 1949, and the springs at Hattin discharged 33,840 liters/hour on July 4, 1949 in the middle of summer measurements (The Battle of Hattin Revisited by Benjamin Z. Kedar), and this was two thousand years after Josephus. The discharge of other springs in the region was far more limited and could not have been mistaken for the fertile fountain mentioned in his account.

Further concurrence between Josephus’ fountain and the springs of Hattin is found in the fact that the springs flowed roughly from the southwest to the northeast, mimicking what many of Josephus’ time imagined was a tributary of the Nile, that would have been found in the southwest and flowing northeast (at that place). No doubt, the river created by the two springs was large enough during that time to support the habitat necessary for the Coracin fish also mentioned. These fish, the tilapia zilli or Saint Peter’s fish (sarotherodon galilaeus galilaeus) of the Sea of Galilee, are similar to the Nile tilapia (oreochromis niloticus) found in that river and Lake Mareotis, south of Alexandria. The direction of the Hamam or Arbel River and its outflow into the Sea of Galilee took it very close to the fishery of Migdal-el/Taricheae, a convenience that could hardly be overlooked. Added to the Hattin springs outflow and contributing to the habitat for the Coracin fish, recent archaeological digs have uncovered the remains of an ancient spring located at the northern opening of the Wadi Hamam, close by Khirbet Hamam. This spring would have joined the watercourse of the Hattin springs flowing to the plain and would have increased the river’s volume even more. With the substantial outflow from three springs spreading out across much of the southern half of the Plain of Gennesareth, it is not hard to imagine that such a place would have been seen as a veritable Garden of Eden filled with fruit and nut trees and crops as described by Josephus and suits the etymology of its name Gennesareth, from the Hebrew: ginnah (garden) and athereth (abundance).

So the ‘kapharnaoum ’ of which Josephus wrote would seem to be most closely associated with Mt. Arbel and its immediate area. As is clear from even a cursory glance at the mountain from the northern side, its chevron shape lends itself best to the image of a huge rock or stone foundation with the point of the chevron representing the cornerstone of the foundation. To the locals in the time of Josephus, it was not called Mt. Arbel but was referred to by the name that had the most significance for them, Keph har Nachum , the cornerstone mountain of Nahum that included not just the mountain but its surroundings as well, which is why Josephus understood it to mean the water source. Just as today the area is comprised of Mt. Arbel, the Arbel River and Wadi Arbel by some sources, so too in Josephus’ time Kapharnaum could be applied to several geological features. This was a familial or tribal name for the area and arose from its connection to one of Jesus’ ancestors, Nahum, taken from Jesus’ genealogy in Luke (Lk. 3:23-25). Jesus was a tenth generation descendent from Nahum that, depending upon the number of years used to define a generation, could have been anywhere from 150 to 400 years before Jesus was born. If, as is used today, twenty years was considered a generation, then Nahum lived sometime around 200-150 BCE. This would have possibly placed him as a contemporary to the events of Bacchides’ military thrust through the region and subsequent slaughter of the local population that had sought refuge in Arbel’s caves around 161 BCE, as mentioned in Josephus (War; 12:11,1).

With Capernaum accurately located at Mount Arbel and its surrounds, the Jesus family’s movements during his childhood become easier to understand. Their return to Galilee in the face of threats from both Herod the Great and later his son, Archelaus, to their ‘home’ in Nazareth instead of Judea makes sense when understood as a return to their ancestral/tribal home near Mount Arbel rather than the obscure, theoretical traditional village of Nazareth. When under threat of capture and probable execution, it makes much more sense for a family to go to a region where tribal relationships are available for support and protection, and more importantly where the topography allows for a measure of safety (the caves) and for multiple avenues of escape (the family could have traveled in any direction from Mt. Arbel, including over the Sea of Galilee to points north, south or east). It seems highly unlikely that a family on the run from the most powerful men of their time and place would have chosen a small, unfortified village as a place of safety that had only one or two roads available to facilitate further escape. It goes against common sense. Consequently, the Nazareth alluded to within the Gospels must either have been nearby to Mt. Arbel or been a component of the immediate area, like the caves. Since the name Nazareth is derived from the presence of the Nazarene, it would not have been used as a geographical place name, but instead as a coded reference by and for members of the inner circle of Jesus’ followers. Under such circumstances, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to definitively establish its exact whereabouts within the Mt. Arbel area.

Jesus was known as the Nazarene during his lifetime and while that designation may have had derogatory overtones to various segments of the Mosaean society (such as the Romans, the ruling Mosaean hierarchy and the Jerusalem priesthood), as evidenced by its inclusion in the wording of the titulus, the opposite is also true, that other segments of the society held it in high regard, as evidenced by its inclusion in the Gospels. Commonly abbreviated as INRI, the message of the titulus, the sign placed atop Jesus’ cross intended to inform the citizenry about the nature of the victim’s crimes, is almost always translated in English as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’. The original Greek version, from John 19:19-20, which is the closest to that English translation, reads as transliterated into English, ‘Jesus the Nazarene the King of the Judaeans.’ In Mark 15:26 the message is simply ‘King of the Judaeans’ written in Greek. In Luke 23:38 the titulus is presented as saying ‘This is the king of the Judaeans’ in Greek and Hebrew and in Matthew 27:37 it is ‘This is Jesus the king of the Judaeans.’ John indicated that the message was written in all three of the official languages common to the time and place of the crucifixion: Latin, Greek and Hebrew, omitting only Aramaic, the language of the streets and countryside.

What is of interest is that Jesus is presented in the earliest three Gospels, the synoptics, as a king and in John as both king and Nazorean (the Synoptics make no mention of Nazareth/Nazarene/ Nazorean being on the titulus). While the general consensus among biblical scholars and historians seems to be that the Nazorean is a synonym for ‘of Nazareth’ and that ‘king’ was originally intended in mockery of Jesus, both terms were intended to clearly identify the victim on the cross and named him specifically with titles he either used himself or was known as by a majority of the people. There was no mockery intended, the man on the cross was Jesus, the Nazorean who claimed to be or was known as the king of the Judeans. Perhaps because of his elevated social status, or perhaps because the Gospel accounts edited the wording of the titulus, no crime was listed in their recording of the event. It was not automatically a crime to be a Nazorean or Nazarene since the term itself would have been ambiguous to anyone outside the Mosaean community. Those Mosaeans of sufficient learning or connections would grasp its significance and its association with a nationalistic movement based upon preserving Mosaean law, but whether the Romans knew it is uncertain. Regardless, simply to claim that one was a preserver of Mosaean law only would have been a crime had they taken political action in association with the title.

Nor was it automatically a crime to claim to be king, as many historians insist. There were other claimants, contemporary or nearly so to Jesus, who petitioned Rome for the lands and title of king. It only became a crime when the claimant acted and behaved as though he were king without first securing Rome’s approval. Such behavior would have been deemed subversive to Rome’s authority and would have been punished accordingly, but it was the behavior that was punishable, not the claim. This would seem to indicate that there was something in Jesus’ activities that the authorities considered subversive and by naming him as king on the titulus they were making it clear to the people that no one was above Rome’s authority, not even a king of the Judeans. Such a characterization of Jesus by the Romans seems to stand in contradiction to the traditional view that while he was considered to be descended from the Davidic line and was therefore truly a king, Jesus himself did not attach any socio-political importance to the claim. The traditional view regards his descent from David as a theological stamp of approval and little more but the actual Gospel stories, before their subversion by tradition, indicate that his kingship was a real and viable socio-political office that carried with it a sovereignty over the Judean people.

There are several Gospel references to Jesus’ kingship beyond his Davidic ancestry that make it clear that he was considered to be an earthly king. Aside from the wording of the titulus the nativity stories recounted that his parents were given gold, frankincense and myrrh by the magi after his birth. These were very expensive gifts to receive, gifts that were suitable to a royal heir, a king, but would have been a death sentence to an impoverished family of the time. No thinking man would have handed over to a poor family, alone and away from home, such costly gifts. They would have been robbed and perhaps beaten and killed had it become known that the magi had bestowed upon them such wealth. Thieves and robbers were everywhere back then, scattered across the land in such numbers that they were a plague upon the population. The fact that the Gospels say that Joseph and Mary were given gold, frankincense and myrrh upon the birth of their son indicates that they were considered a royal family, and as will be seen later, that they came from families of wealth and power. For them, these gifts were the expected tribute awarded them for producing a royal heir, a customary offering to powerful parents.

The Gospel story that Herod the Great was threatened by the birth of a royal Mosaean heir also indicates that Jesus, from his birth, was seen as a Judean king. Whether the story in Matthew 2 about the slaughter of the innocents is true or apocryphal, its inclusion in the Gospel is there for a reason. The essential point to the story is that Herod believed that a true, fully Mosaean, Davidic king of the Judeans had been born and that the birth of such an individual posed a serious, immediate threat to him. He had been told this by the magi or wise men who had been searching for the new king. It is hard to imagine that Herod would have given much thought to a newborn child of desperately poor people, even if they were distantly related to King David, simply because they would have been disconnected from the ruling elite of Jerusalem and it would have taken them years to build credibility and establish their credentials as descendents of David in order to develop a following among various segments of that society strong enough to support their claim. A poor family was not going to walk into Bethlehem or Jerusalem, announce the birth of a Davidic heir and reasonably expect large portions of the Jerusalem hierarchy to come out in their support, especially while under the rule of a despot such as Herod. It would take years to develop such support, and Herod was already in his late sixties when Jesus was born. He would have known that his life was nearing its end and that such a threat was in reality meaningless to him.

What would have garnered his full attention, even late in his life, was word that a Davidic heir had been born of wealthy, connected parents, who were already members of Jerusalem society. Such a birth would have posed an immediate threat to Herod’s rule because even though the child would have been far too young to accede to the throne during Herod’s life, the knowledge that a Davidic heir existed would have been enough to polarize the hierarchy in support of Jesus enough so that the overthrow of Herod would have been a distinct possibility. Herod was almost universally hated among his own people and it wouldn’t have taken much in the way of a focal point to rally his enemies against him. Certainly the birth of a Davidic heir and potential king of Judea would have been enough. As will be seen below, Jesus’ parents were two very prominent and politically involved members of Jerusalem society. It is no wonder that Herod felt an immediate threat to his rule. He was not fully Mosaean or Judean himself, but Idumean and the thought of a legitimate competitor who was both Judean and of the Davidic line must have troubled him greatly. Regardless of whether or not he had all the male children two years and under in Bethlehem killed, the story is important in that it helps to confirm that Jesus was accepted as a king.

Another example in the Gospels that Jesus was understood to be and accepted as the Judean king survives in the passage from Mark 15:16-26 that chronicles the time leading up to the crucifixion:

“And the soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is the governor’s headquarters, and they called together the whole cohort and they clothed him in a purple cloak and twisting together a crown of thorns they put it on him. And they began to salute him; Hail, King of the Judeans! And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means Place of the Skull. And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, the king of the Judeans.”

Aside from the recording of the inscription on the titulus, which has been mentioned above, the whole tone of the passage and its details reinforces the contemporary attitude that Jesus was considered, at least by some segment of the Mosaean population to be a king. Even though the over-all tone of the soldiers is one of mockery and derision, it is difficult to imagine that such a tone would have been reserved for a poor peasant from Galilee. For mockery to have any bite it must be based, at least in part, on a factual possibility, in this case that Jesus and or his followers really considered him to be a Judean king. Mocking a poor peasant preacher for claiming to be king would have come across as pathetic and insipid much the same as mocking a delusional person who considered themselves to be Napoleon would be pointless and shameful. The soldiers mocked Jesus precisely because they knew that the claim of kingship had held some merit; either they had been informed by their commanders of his claim or they had perceived it in Jesus himself in his bearing or speech.

This attitude is supported elsewhere in the passage by several details, the first being that they clothed him in a purple cloak, the sign of royalty, and place a crown of thorns on his head. These are the actions of men deriding someone of prestige, not an impoverished preacher. A poor carpenter from Nazareth would hardly have warranted such attention, regardless of the charge against him. If the soldiers would have taken the time and effort to deride such a member of the Mosaean society, then the possibility existed that they would have taken the time for such derision for any and any criminals that came there way, a very time consuming entertainment. It is hardly likely that the soldiers would have spent the time and trouble to dress up and mock a criminal who was of such little importance to them. The traditional Jesus to them would have been nothing more than another crucifixion, another body to nail to a cross and not worth any extra expenditure of their energy. They mocked him because his claim to be king of Judea held some truth and made him stand out from the run of the mill criminals they were used to seeing.

The soldiers also offered Jesus a drink of wine mixed with myrrh, an expensive mixture to offer a peasant, but understandable as another act of derision directed at a failed claimant to the throne. The chances that a poor carpenter would have had the opportunity to taste wine with myrrh would have been very slim and so the offer would have meant nothing, but not so with someone of place and prestige. Jesus, as a royal heir, would have been familiar with such a drink, thus making the offer that much more spiteful as a taste of the life he was leaving behind. Then too, there is the suggestion that this offer of doctored wine might have been presented to Jesus as a means of mitigating some of the discomfort he was to face on the cross, a mild sedative or even poison to lessen the tortures of the crucifixion, offered in a final recognition of his prominence in society. Again, it is hard to imagine that such an offer would have been made to an obscure rabbi condemned for sedition.

Almost the entire passage in Mark, from 5:16 to 5:39 seems to have been written with the idea that it mimic the specifics of a Roman triumphal march or procession, which were generally accorded to emperors and conquering generals. The individual items included in Mark’s rendition are remarkably similar in their way to historical details found in ancient references to Roman triumphs. This has been duly noted and recorded by Thomas Schmidt in his 1995 article, “Jesus’ Triumphal March to Crucifixion: The Sacred Way as Roman Procession” (Cambridge University Press; reprinted March, 2010 Biblical Archaeology Review), and while it is reasonable to assume that the writer or writers of Mark were consciously trying to emulate such a Roman tradition as a means of reinforcing Jesus’ prestige, it is also likely that they did because they felt it was Jesus’ due as royal heir.

Furthermore, the Gospel of John (19:39) records that Nicodemus brought a ‘mixture of myrrh and aloes about seventy-five pounds in weight’ after Jesus had been crucified in order to prepare the body for burial. Both of the spices were extremely costly (the myrrh alone would have been worth its weight in gold) and so constitute the ingredients for a royal burial. Again, it seems unlikely that a poor carpenter from Galilee would have warranted such expensive treatment no matter how well he might have been regarded as a teacher and prophet, especially since a prominent theme of his teaching was that only the poor would enter the coming kingdom of heaven. To record that Nicodemus was bringing enough spices to prepare his corpse for a royal burial was meant to convey just that message; that Jesus was in fact a king.

Added to that are the Gospel references to the type of stone that was used to seal his tomb. In the Synoptics, the stone used to seal Jesus’ tomb was ‘rolled’ either over the entrance or away from the entrance. In Mark and Matthew, the Greek word used was transliterated as proskulio , to roll to or rolled. In Luke the transliterated Greek used is apokulio , to roll off or away. Only in the later John is a different inference made by the use of airo , to raise up, to raise from the ground, to elevate. In the Synoptics the inference is clear, a rolling stone was used to block the entrance to the tomb. What is significant is that in all of the hundreds of First Century tombs unearthed by archaeologists in and around Jerusalem only a few had round or rolling blocking stones, and in each of those few cases they were associated with royal tombs or tombs of the wealthy. The majority of First Century tombs uncovered had small, square or rectangular plug like blocking stones that fit into the tomb entrances. That the Synoptics speak of rolling stones indicates that the tomb into which Jesus was placed was either a royal tomb or the tomb of a fairly wealthy individual or both. If the tomb belonged to Jesus’ family, as may have been the case, he was interred possibly in a royal tomb, one that may have been carved out of the surrounding stone specifically for him as king.

The profound irony of the New Testament is not just that Jesus was transformed from a legitimate Judean king into a spiritual and theological king of a new movement but that the two opposing political sides in a great conflict are represented together as two slightly different versions of the same peaceful sect. The Synoptics record Jesus’ attempt to unify the Mosaean people with the ultimate goal in mind of overturning the established order while the Gospel of John and much of the rest of the New Testament record Paul’s and other’s attempt to usurp Jesus’ movement and alter it into a nonviolent spiritual revelation. In John, the misleading English translation of the titulus is just an example of what was really the continuation of a process that had begun not long after the resurrection by Paul and other Herodian factions to redirect the Zealot movement away from violence against the Romans and revolution. This manipulation of the intent of the message was not accidental nor was it inadvertent but was a reflection of the need of later writers who hijacked the written record of the historical events in order to substantially alter Jesus’ original political goals. Changing Jesus, who was a Nazarene, to a citizen of Nazareth and changing him from a king of the Judaeans to a king of all Jews was a necessary and purposeful attempt to alter the facts. A Nazarene, a nazarite and/or a netzer of David, although factual, was too Mosaean, too ethnically connected to allow Jesus to be divorced from his historical context as the anticipated military messiah. Again, the need by later translators to separate Jesus from his context becomes apparent. Jesus as a righteous, pious, vow taking Mosaean would not serve the need for the peaceful, socially ambivalent God-man leader that was so necessary after the schism between the Jesus cult and the ruling Mosaeans, especially after the First Jewish Revolt made all things Mosaean animus to the ruling elite. To put it bluntly, once the historical Jesus ceased to be of value as the political leader he was (sometime shortly after the resurrection), he steadily and purposefully became the Christ of faith in order to move him from his Mosaean background to the more ‘Christian’ ‘history’ that de-escalated any threat to the Romans. Such a shift in context required altering the record subtly to move him from a devout Mosaean involved in the mainstream politics of his time to an obscure backcountry outsider, unaffiliated with the religious or political workings of a society that, by the time of the greatest redactions, had been destroyed by its beliefs. We see this shift, this camouflaging of the historical Jesus over and over again within the translated Gospels, where subtle choices in translation instigate profound changes in the truth and where the original, messianic message of the Synoptics has been diluted to the point of obscurity (losing the intended messages of the parables) to form the then new Christology of pacifism.

These primary redactors of the Gospels, coming along soon after the primary writers, with different political goals of their own, misinterpreted or decidedly altered Luke’s version of the nativity that had been intended by the original writers as a metaphorical attempt to link the political motives of Jesus’ Zealotism to that of the founder of the ‘fourth philosophy’ of Judean belief, Judas the Galilean. The difficulty in resolving the apparent contradictions of the Synoptic nativity stories is only a difficulty if one accepts them as history rather than what they were intended to be, namely metaphor. The linkage of Jesus to Judas through his metaphorical birth during the Quirinius census of 6 CE, years after his actual birth in 6 BCE, was meant to drive home the point to the audience that Jesus’ movement was in fact one and the same with Judas’. From this attempt to legitimize Jesus and his political aims developed the mistaken notion that he was born and raised in Galilee and as has been mentioned above, it then became expedient to develop his connection to the historically ambiguous Nazareth for imagined prophetic reasons.

Another example of the impact of altered political intention can be seen in the traditional translation of the Greek word tekton , the word used within the Gospels that defines Jesus as a carpenter. As written in Mark 6:3, tekton can be translated as carpenter in a very narrow sense, though the word might just as easily be translated as stonemason or plumber. Tekton , in its fullest definition, means a builder in a general sense, the equivalent in our times to a construction worker or even general contractor, and is the base component of the English word architect, which is taken from the Greek: arkhitekton or master builder (not necessarily master carpenter), arkhi (from archon ) meaning chief or ruler and tekton meaning builder. The translation of tekton into carpenter in regards to Jesus again helps shift him away from his historical context. First, it subtly minimizes his role in society. By making Jesus a carpenter rather than a stonemason, the translators have emphasized his rural roots where carpentry would have been nearer at hand than stonemasonry or plumbing, that belonged more commonly to cities and larger towns. A poor carpenter from the backcountry was about as marginalized in First Century Middle Eastern society as an individual could get. A stonemason on the other hand suggests greater things, more substantial work, done in towns and cities, a craft of perhaps finer talents, more precise abilities. Jesus as a carpenter would not necessarily be involved in the erection of prominent edifices. Jesus as a stonemason might be so employed. Second, by making tekton mean carpenter and by shunting him to the backcountry in Nazareth, the translators have hidden or at least deflected the idea that there was a possible connection between Jesus (and also his father) with the Temple in Jerusalem prior to the start of his ministry. While Herod the Great had begun building the Jerusalem Temple sometime around 20 BCE and the Temple itself was completed some few years later, the temple complex as a whole was not completed for some further 80 years. The work on the Temple itself was accomplished by the kohanim or priesthood in order to maintain a certain purity and holiness for the immediate house of God, but its environs, its plazas and the other buildings that made up the Temple Mount were a matter of continuous construction performed almost entirely by what the ‘Jewish Encyclopedia’ and other writings refer to as tektons . The possibility that the designation tekton in reference to Jesus might imply that he was in fact one of these Temple builders certainly exists and should not be overlooked or quickly dismissed as improbable simply because tradition seems to indicate otherwise. That Jesus might have worked as a tekton during the final building phases of the Temple is well within reason and makes greater sense, given the context of his family and home, than the manufactured tradition that he was a poor carpenter from Nazareth.

Paul, in his role as a supposed convert to Jesus’ teachings, could have recorded the historical truth about Jesus. He could have laid claim to him as a prominent son of prominent families, as an heir to the Judean throne, as a priestly builder of the Temple, the long awaited Davidic military messiah or even as a Zealot leader preaching rebellion but he didn’t. As a Herodian, his sympathies were in direct opposition to Jesus’ Zealot message. From the Herodian political point of view, the Herodians were eager to preserve the status quo with the Romans in order to maintain the limited hegemony they enjoyed. To perpetuate the historicity of Jesus and his movement would have meant Paul risking not only a lifestyle that he embraced but also incurring the wrath of Rome, a decidedly unpleasant possibility. It is hardly surprising that Paul went from violently persecuting the followers of Jesus to championing what came to be a distinctly different characterization of their teachings. He went from trying to stop them outright to subtly changing their message from violent rebellion to one of social disobedience, in effect, neutering their cause and achieving the same political gains. He converted the Jesus movement to a non- threatening spiritual crusade with its primary focus on the afterlife not on Roman oppression.

As a clearer picture emerges, it is obvious that the traditional view of Jesus as a poor carpenter from a backwater town in Galilee may not in fact truly represent the real, historical figure. The agenda of the earliest redactors, editors and translators to separate him from his real background and his deep connections to Mosaean beliefs influenced their translations and recast his biography as one more suitable to the post resurrection myth of Jesus and later to the devastated post revolt society that remained. During his own lifetime, some attempt was probably made to obscure his background and filial associations as well, as a means of protecting those closest to him from the authorities. However, placing him in Nazareth when in fact he was a Nazarene and establishing him as a simple carpenter when in fact he was a builder of the Temple were important steps in moving him away from his personal history and his essential ‘Jewishness’. As the Gospels and other early sources are re-examined, other changes made to his history that are more profound and more misleading. The truth about his family, his age and his political activism will do much to put him back into his proper context and to explain who he really was and what he was trying to accomplish.

Another of the more obvious mistakes made by traditionalists (and one of the easiest to correct) regards the matter of Jesus’ age and the subsequent timing of his ministry and ultimately his death. It is a matter of some conjecture as to the year of his birth, with suggestions ranging anywhere from 6 BCE to 6 CE depending upon the criteria used. If the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE is taken as accurate, and his attempt to murder the baby Jesus, during the episode known as the Slaughter of the Innocents, sometime just prior to his death is accepted as factual, then the two years before his death are regarded as the most likely time for Jesus’ birth, generally acknowledged to be 6 or 5 BCE. If, on the other hand, the timing of the census under Quirinius and the concurrent necessity for Joseph to relocate the young family back to Bethlehem is considered, a date in 6 CE is likely, though less generally accepted. These scenarios amount to a twelve-year window during which the son of God might have been born. Not too exact, by any standards and certainly not precise enough to aid in dating accurately any of the gospel stories. Both of these scenarios are predicated in part, though not qualified, by the circular logic that he had a ministry of between one and three years and that he was “about thirty” when he began his ministry, so that by working backward from a supposed date in the late 20’s or early 30’s a date for his birth can be suggested. If a birth date of 6 BCE is assumed, then Jesus started his ministry in or around 24 CE and was crucified in either 25 CE or 27 CE, early dates by traditional standards. If, however, he was born in 6 CE and started the ministry when he was about thirty, he began his public mission sometime around 36 CE and was executed in either 37 or 39 CE, late dates by traditional standards which assume a crucifixion date sometime between 30 CE and 33 CE (based upon the original but faulty idea that Jesus’ birth actually began the millennium sometime in the year 1, not in 6 BCE or 6 CE).

There are many arguments that seek to prove one or the other of the dates as the correct one or to place the birth somewhere in the intervening years. These arguments are usually well thought out and believable, some even relying on celestial events and extra biblical sources to confirm their positions which only helps to illustrate the difficulties in confirming any of them. The main problem with a date of 6 BCE is that Herod’s slaughter of the innocents is unrecorded outside the Gospels in contradiction of what would be expected of such a heinous act, even though it is argued that the actual number of murdered children might have been quite low given the demographics and location involved and so might reasonably have gone unrecorded. The main problem with the argument for a date of 6 CE is the question of the authenticity of the Quirinius census; was there in fact such a census and what Mosaean or Roman law required the populace to return to their ancestral homes in order to be recorded? The celestial events arguments that try to pin down the birth by its association to unusual or significant celestial observations carry a certain amount of weight, but are hindered by the sometimes subjective nature of their connections, assuming as they do that the brightness of various heavenly bodies in or around the beginning of the millennium automatically portended prophetic human events when no such claim is recorded outside the Gospels. What is missing from these various positions is further corroboration from within the Gospels that might help in establishing one or more of the major dates in Jesus’ life.

What traditionalists fail to understand is that there are certain markers within the Gospels that firmly place Jesus in a specific time (to within a year) and other markers that help corroborate his age. Some of these markers have been overlooked because the traditional stories obscured their true meaning or because the marker, though clearly evident in the Gospel, went against the traditional view. Also, it has been the traditional view to assume that the story transmitted by the Gospels reveals Jesus’ ministry in its entirety, rather than only a segment of it, so that if it is assumed that he started his public ministry at about the age of thirty then that signifies where the Gospel stories begin his ministry as well, when he is about thirty. However, the ambiguities about Jesus’ age and about the length of his ministry, fostered by traditional thinking, can be resolved if the stories are placed in their historical context.

One of the clearest indicators of Jesus’ age during his ministry is John 8:57; “So the Judeans said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old…’” This seemingly innocuous statement, that is routinely overlooked or ignored clearly seems to indicate Jesus’ age to be in his forties at this point in the Gospel story, and while an argument might be made that the age of fifty represents a social milestone at which certain social and spiritual levels of maturity and knowledge could be expected to be met, thereby making the Judean admonition inclusive of everyone under fifty, it cannot be proved. It is equally likely that the Judean comment on his age is nothing more than a simple comment upon the fact that he had not attained an age great enough to acquire the wisdom with which he seemingly spoke. If Jesus had been in his thirties during the confrontation recorded in John, the Judeans might well have said, “You are not yet forty…” so their direct mention of “fifty” seems to indicate an age somewhere in the forties for Jesus. As Jesus’ ministry was one of rebellion in order to restore the United Monarchy of David, it may well have been that Jesus needed to be in his forties as he began the more intense chapter of his ministry in order to have the maturity and knowledge required by the populace to assume such a position of leadership. Certainly, within the War Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is evidence that, at least militarily, there were age requirements for holding key military positions (the age of the soldiers and their leaders; 1QM, 1Q33, 4Q491-7, 4Q471). John 8: 57 taken by itself is certainly not enough to warrant a revision in the traditional understanding that Jesus was in his thirties when performing his ministry and when he was crucified, but when taken with other indicators John 8:57 helps to substantiate the view of an older, more mature figure, a person presumably in his forties.

If the youngest age indicated for Jesus by John 8:57 was 40 and assuming a birth in 6 CE (thus providing latest margin advanced by the Gospels between John’s remark and the earliest suggested birth year for Jesus) we arrive at a date of 46 CE, far later than any scholar or traditionalist would accept and far later than any indications in the New Testament can confirm. If, however, the same age of 40 is used with the earliest margin advanced by the Gospels with a 6 BCE birth, we arrive at a date of 34 CE, late by traditional standards but not so late as to be untenable. Using the oldest age as might be indicated by John 8:57 of 49, establishes dates of 55 CE and 43 CE respectively, both too late to be acceptable, thus suggesting an age for Jesus at the time of the confrontation with the Judeans in his early forties. Traditionalists will f course argue that an age range in his early forties is too old and that the Gospel story seems to indicate an age in his thirties, but again, this is an argument based upon the initial tradition that Jesus’ birth began the new millennium, that he began his ministry at about thirty and that his ministry lasted from one to three years, thereby placing his crucifixion sometime between 30 CE and 33 CE. The idea that by using the Gospel date range of 6 BCE to 6 CE would necessarily place the beginning of his ministry at either 24 CE or 36 CE and his subsequent crucifixion at either 24-27 CE or 36-39 CE seems not to matter. The fact that this tradition rolls on, in spite of other indicators to the contrary, is again a testament to the power of people to believe what they want to believe, regardless of conflicting evidence. Yet aside from John 8:57, that may or may not be a real indicator of Jesus’ age, there are other indicators within the Gospels that seem to point to an older man.

As seen throughout this work, Jesus was a political subversive, a freedom fighter focused on restoring the United Monarchy of King David and freeing the land of the Mosaeans from the foreign tyranny of Rome and the domestic tyranny of Rome’s client tetrarchs who ruled the people. This view of him runs throughout the Gospels but has been buried for so long as to disappear from history, leaving biblical scholars to surmise that much of what was written about him and what he said was either an invented religious agenda or later redaction meant to flesh out the man, and while Christian fundamentalists have maintained their belief in the Jesus of the Gospels and traditionalists have clung to Jesus as the Prince of Peace, the truth is far different. As a consequence of this insistence to view Jesus as an advocate of peace and understanding, a dichotomy has arisen, fostered first by Paul and then by succeeding generations of believers and scholars desirous to make the man of history what their needs required; a God of pacifism. The reality is that Jesus was a man of violence, the warrior messiah who was prophesized to lead the people to freedom and the Kingdom of Heaven. As such, he spent some of his time confronting the opposition, condemning their actions and speaking out against their willful disregard for the piety and righteousness of the common Mosaean. Naturally, under the circumstances of a subjugated people, Jesus could not openly preach sedition but his message could be sent far and wide through cleverly disguised means, stories and parables that conveyed his message of rebellion and anger to those who could interpret their meanings.

One such message that stands out that is fairly easy to date, thereby indicating an historical moment in time during Jesus’ life, involves a group of several healings or more precisely, an exorcism, a healing and a resurrection. The three incidents are grouped together for specific reasons that were similarly grouped when Jesus spoke of them primarily as a means of strengthening his political point through the connectedness of the stories. They deal specifically with the building and colonizing of the city of Tiberias and, as a consequence, with the years 24 CE and 36 CE, dates that carry some significance in the life of Jesus; the year 24 CE when a birth in 6 CE is assumed and an age of about thirty as the beginning of his public life, and the start of his ministry and 36 CE as nearing the end of his ministry and his life if John 8:57 is accepted as indicating his age in his early forties. That Jesus felt very strongly about Tiberias, especially its forced colonization by Herod Antipas will become evident as detailed in the stories, so strongly, in fact, that it could be said that Antipas’ handling of the Tiberias colonization may have served as the catalyst for Jesus to begin his ministry in 24 CE.

Begun around 20 CE, Tiberias was built and named by Antipas in honor of his patron, the Roman Emperor Tiberius. It was built along the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, some miles to the south of Capernaum, perhaps as a resting point along the Via Mares, a main north-south travel route of the time. Construction of the city, begun perhaps as early as 18 CE, was probably completed sometime around 24 CE, though a later date of 25 CE is sometimes mentioned. What is important to understanding its impact on Jesus and his movement was that at the time of its construction, it was rumored that it was built upon a cemetery. This in itself would have been of extreme concern to the stricter Mosaeans of the area, who would not live in such a place, because the Mosaean laws forbade contact with the dead or with graves (Numbers 19:11-13). Compounding the problem, however, was Antipas’ commitment to populate the new city any way possible and at any cost, ultimately forcing hundreds of both Gentiles and Mosaeans to relocate and take up residence in Tiberias. As galling as it must have been to be a member of a subservient population under the Romans, it would have been even more so as a Mosaean to be forced into a state of continuous ritual impurity in a city named for a Roman by the decree of someone who was, at least nominally, a fellow countryman and Mosaean. Such an act of betrayal would have settled harshly on the hearts of the people and consequently would have easily served as a focal point for the teachings of Jesus. The focal point that emerges begins with Mark 5:1-20 and continues through the raising of Jairus’ daughter.

In Mark 5:1-20 there is the story of how Jesus exorcises demons from a man who lives in the country of the Gerasenes (some manuscripts; Gergesenes or Gadarenes). The man, who lives in the tombs has an unclean spirit and is so far gone in his demonic possession that he could no longer be bound, not even with chains. Night and day, “among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones…”, sure signs of his torment. Although the man tells Jesus, in the name of God, to leave him alone, Jesus ignores him and tells the demon to leave the man. Jesus asks the unclean spirit its name, to which it replies, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” Jesus, upon the demon’s request, exorcises all the unclean spirits by having them enter a herd of two thousand pigs that subsequently “rushed down the steep bank into the sea” and were drowned. Herdsmen, who had witnessed the event, spread the word of the exorcism “…in the city and in the country and people came to see what it was that had happened.” Soon both eyewitnesses and later onlookers were afraid and began to “…beg Jesus to depart from their region,” although the demon possessed man begged that he might join him. While refusing the man’s plea to join his ranks, Jesus tells him to go home to his friends and tell them what has happened. The man departs, going to the Decapolis to tell everyone what Jesus had done. These, then, are the salient points of the story. They are not entirely fiction and while their true meaning has been hidden by traditional interpretation they can still be read in the manner they were designed to convey. As with the more correct understanding of the three levels of the Gospel stories and with the knowledge that male characters represent Mosaean institutions and females stand for groups of people or geographic locations, the message that Jesus intended can be interpreted and better located it in its time and place.

The first two levels seem to be self-evident and require little examination. The story is simply told on the first level and needs no examination to understand, although the public reaction to the miraculous exorcism, that of fear and a desire for Jesus to quit the region, seems unusual, even surprising given the gift that Jesus has given the man and the local population. The second level requires only slightly more imagination to disclose that the theme is about Jesus’ power to chase out unclean spirits and exorcise demons, a power thought at that time to rest only with God or his prophets. The twofold awareness of those witnesses to the exorcism and the audiences that would hear of it later was that Jesus not only had great power, but that this power was vested by God. It is an easily attained level of understanding making clear that Jesus was a unique individual with a unique relationship with God. Had the Romans heard this story being preached, or had they managed to get their hands one of the written copies that no doubt would have been disseminated throughout the countryside, they would have been no wiser about the actual message. Had Antipas or any other Mosaean leader come in contact with the story, they may have suspected the true meaning, they may have even confronted Jesus or his followers about the story, but without some powerful form of corroboration they would have had little proof of its intent and would have done little or nothing in response. As Jesus had told his disciples in Mark 4:11-12, “To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand…” The key, as with all the Gospel stories, is the third level, the socio-political message buried beneath the layers. It is important to remember that while the story of the demon possessed man stands by itself as a specific condemnation of Antipas and Tiberias, it is also a part of a triad that defines Jesus’ message and his historical existence.

The first examination that must be made is that of the location of the story. In the very first line of Mark 8, the story is placed in “the country of the Gerasenes” (from the earliest manuscripts of Mark, though later versions used Gadarenes), a rather vague and uncertain location. The peoples named in the various synoptic accounts, the Gadarenes, Gerasenes and the Girgesenes seem to be associated with different cities or towns of the region around the Sea of Galilee. Traditionalists have variously located the land of the Gerasenes as indicating areas surrounding one of three cities: Gerasa (modern Jerash in Jordan), Gadara (modern Hammat Gader or Umm Qays or Qais in Jordan) or Gergesa (modern Kursi, also; Khersa, Kersa in the Golan Heights). The problem with all three of these locations as the site of the exorcism is that none of them substantially agree topographically with the Gospel accounts. Gadara is roughly six miles from the shore of the Sea of Galilee while Gerasa is some 30 miles away, a long way for swine to run in order to drown. Christian apologists argue that in the case of Gadara, at least, the city was large enough to have under its control a smaller city, a port of sorts, on the shoreline, where the miracle actually took place, hence “in the country of the Gadarenes” was used as the larger city was a better locator to a wider audience unfamiliar perhaps with the area. The rebuttal to this argument is, of course, that if the small, rural village of Nazareth was a sufficient locator geographically to help identify Jesus, why wasn’t a trading port on the Sea of Galilee sufficient to locate the miracle? There is no such possibility for similar maritime associations for Gerasa, being as it is, thirty miles away from the lake and so its inclusion has more to do with the similarity between city name and Gospel reference. Gergasa stands the greatest chance of Gospel association, meeting as it does some of the topographical requirements (slopes that run down to the sea, tombs, etc.) but it suffers from the fact that there are no mountains nearby (a plateau and cliffs are the prominent geographical landmarks) and while it might be disregarded that one omission is only a trivial oversight, there are other factors at play that seem to indicate that the location of the miracle belongs elsewhere.

In Luke 8:26 the first line states that, “the country of the Gerasenes is opposite Galilee” or geographically on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, as the eastern edge of Galilee ran along the western shore. Traditionalists have clung so firmly to this description that all of the cities listed above and therefore all the potential sites for the miracle have rested east of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River, but again, translation has influenced perception and dictated misunderstanding. The Greek word used in Luke 8:26 to indicate ‘opposite’ is transliterated as antipera , a compound word derived from the Greek roots; anti , meaning against and pera , meaning over, against-over or in English, ‘over against.’ Far from being on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the location of the scene seems to have been, if Capernaum was the starting point for Jesus and his disciples, ‘over’ the sea and ‘against’ Galilee on the western shore of the lake, not ‘opposite’ Galilee on the eastern shore, as the translation has been traditionally accepted. Knowing this and the fact that Galilee, as a part of the historical Canaan, may have been home not to the Gerasenes or the Gadarenes but to the Girgasenes or Girgashite tribe, a new picture begins to emerge. Was there a location on the eastern edge of Galilee, a place of mountains and steep slopes to the sea, where tombs were prevalent and a city close by that lay over the water from Capernaum? Was there such a place, a place that Jesus, even though he preached there and the Gospel writers after him hesitated to name outright, might want to obscure for reasons unfamiliar to us?

That place of course is the city of Tiberias. Geographically and topographically, it meets all of the criteria of the Gospel stories and beyond that, it meets the socio-political message Jesus attempted to convey in the miracle story. From Capernaum, it would have been far easier to sail south, around Mt. Arbel rather than going over it, to Tiberias that is against (or on the shore of) eastern Galilee. The city of Tiberias in Jesus’ time stood some distance to the south of modern Tiberias, at the foot of Mount Berenice (modern Berniki) whose slopes run steeply down to the Sea of Galilee ending finally in the water. While all human habitation must, in some manner, share a proximity to graves, tombs and cemeteries, what set Tiberias apart in that age was that it had been built upon an ancient cemetery, human bones having been found during its construction. The importance of the tombs as the place where the demoniac lived, the city and the mountain and the slopes all close to the sea, all this, coupled with the idea that it was located in the country of the Girgashites should lead even the most skeptical of traditionalists to re-examine Tiberias as the site of the exorcism performed by Jesus, but more than just that, the third layer message imbedded within the story points strongly to Tiberias as the location.

If we take the already mentioned premise that male figures in many of the Gospel stories represent Mosaean institutions and if we consider Antipas’ determination to populate his new city by force if necessary, the story of the exorcism takes on new meaning. The demon possessed man becomes under this new light, the Mosaean institutions of the new city, the synagogue and the courts and the other bureaucracies that would have been required to organize and furnish a substantial Mosaean population with the appropriate government infrastructure. That the man lives among the tombs (Tiberias) and is chained (forced to live there) clearly indicates Jesus’ response to the situation. Any bondage, even in its most rudimentary forms is an act of removing self-determination from the victim while establishing the control of the dominator. Clearly, that is what Antipas hoped to achieve by forcing Mosaeans (among others) to live in an environment that would leave them continuously and permanently impure. He could not have been overly concerned as to the reaction his actions might produce within the greater population of his tetrarchy or else he would never have instituted the action in the first place. His goal was to colonize the new city as quickly and efficiently as possible. If the righteous and pious Mosaeans living in Galilee or Peraea or the Decapolis (as is indicated in the story) or in Palestine in general took exception to his decision, so be it. He was prepared to deal with that outcry. That Jesus was prepared to speak out against such betrayal and infamy, poised as he was as the Davidic heir to the United Monarchy, seems only natural. What is surprising is the vitriol Jesus poured out on those Mosaean bureaucrats who followed their institutional leaders and acquiesced to living in Tiberias as well.

Jesus, as a Zealot during what became a transitional period between the more ethnocentric approach of Judas the Galilean and the violent, sociopathic activities of the Zealots later just before and during the First Jewish Revolt, was radical enough in his piety and position to expect that any activity designed by human agency that directly or indirectly lead to the breaking of any Mosaean law needed to be dealt with in the quickest and most extreme way. If civil disobedience was called for, then a righteous Mosaean, especially in leadership roles, should be prepared to stand firmly for their beliefs. If that disobedience was required unto death, then an obedient Mosaean should be prepared to die. If the Mosaeans of Tiberias could allow themselves to be forced to live in a ritually impure state, then Jesus was prepared to show them the error of their ways. This is seen in the stories as the Legion of evil spirits leaving the possessed man, the bureaucrats leaving the institutions. Jesus did not blame the Mosaean institutions for the state of affairs in Tiberias, but he most certainly blamed the leaders of those institutions. That they had not chosen death over allowing themselves and those they lead to be forced to live under such conditions was unacceptable to Jesus. As such, the bureaucrats, portrayed as evil spirits, ask and are transferred by Jesus’ direction to a herd of pigs (an animal that was ritually impure and that was associated with pagan or Gentile society, the suggestion being that the bureaucrats were prepared to renounce their Mosaean obligations in order to survive Jesus’ condemnation) that then dash down the slopes and drown in the sea.

Whether or not Jesus actually caused the bureaucrats to commit suicide or whether he was the actual cause of their deaths or whether he told the story as a warning with its concurrent threat is impossible to tell at such a remove as twenty centuries, but the idea that a group of Mosaeans in a similar situation might affect mass suicide is not without precedent and may be closely linked to this present examination. As Josephus documented in The Antiquities of the Judeans , 15-10:3: “…for as the Gadarenes saw the inclination of Caesar and of his assessors, and expected, as they had reason to do, that they should be delivered up to the king (Herod the Great), some of them, out of a dread of the torments they might undergo, cut their own throats in the night time and some threw themselves down precipices and others of them cast themselves into the river and destroyed themselves of their own accord…” This incident took place in the seventeenth year of Herod’s reign (about 20 BCE) and might have been familiar to the people of Tiberias. The fact that in Josephus’ story the suicides were Gadarenes, the name later connected with the exorcism of the demoniac, may have been used by later Gospel writers as a warning to other Mosaeans. As the miracle story circulated, its message was that the price of ignoring the laws of purity, of disrespecting God’s covenant with his people, was either an ignominious death at one’s own hands or a violent death by those in Mosaean society who were prepared to enforce God’s dictates, namely the Zealots. That Jesus saw himself as just such an enforcer will become more obvious as his connection to the Zealot movement and its violence is understood.

With such a proposition before them, the people of Tiberias were truly trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Facing them, the fanaticism of the Zealots in the form of Jesus, condemned them for their choice of avoiding Antipas’ wrath by living in Tiberias while at the same time realizing that because of that wrath they were trapped into staying there. This is evidenced in the story by the fact that the herdsmen and other eyewitnesses to the exorcism along with later arrivals were so afraid of what Jesus had done (condemning the Mosaean leadership for allowing their followers to live in an impure state) and yet were also afraid that Antipas would find out about the incident that they begged Jesus to leave their territory, this in light of the fact that he had ostensibly rid them of a local nuisance in the form of the demoniac. The idea that Antipas might become aware of Jesus’ “preaching” to the populace of Tiberias, which was tantamount to subversion, and the very real idea that Antipas might inflict the severest of punishments on the people because of it, certainly explains their eagerness to be rid of Jesus. It was bad enough for the people to imagine the possible violence inflicted upon them by Jesus and his followers for their impiety but that would have paled in comparison to the retribution meted out by Antipas and his army. That Jesus and his followers were also keenly aware of the dangers in provoking Antipas is also clear by the fact that they were either afraid or unwilling to name Tiberias outright in the story, showing once again the necessity for the plausible deniability that runs through the Gospels. To the authorities, both Roman and Mosaean, the story is simply the recounting of a supposed miracle exorcism and while they might have suspected a deeper meaning, might even have guessed at its true purpose, those conveying the story could easily deny any deeper meaning or political agenda that might seem to be contained within it.

That Antipas mitigated at least some of the risk in populating Tiberias is seen in the story’s reference to the Decapolis. Mark 5:19 tells us that Jesus, while not accepting the healed man into the ranks of his disciples, still encouraged him to tell others of what he had seen, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him and everyone marveled.” There are several things in the passage of interest that bear upon the story. That the man was not accepted into the ranks of the disciples indicates that Jesus recognized a substantial difference between his own philosophy and that of the then current Mosaean institutions, a rift that, while probably not deep enough to cause a major schism between the two, was still enough to warrant an acknowledgement of an independence for Jesus’ group from the mainstream institutional approach then current. The man is directed by Jesus to go to ‘his friends’ (his family is not mentioned) and tell them what has happened, the implication being that friends are individuals of like minded thinking and shared common philosophy not obligated by the ties of blood to support or defend the healed man, in other words, the other similar institutions (synagogues, etc.) of the Decapolis needed to be informed that straying from God’s covenant (i.e. becoming too Helenized in their case) must not be allowed to continue and that there are implied repercussions if they do continue.

In reality, Antipas, in order to avoid difficulties with the colonization of Tiberias, probably chose people from the Decapolis rather than from elsewhere in Galilee precisely because they were more Helenized, Mosaeans included, and were therefore less likely to stage any uprising in response to the discovered human bones. The fact that from the first there was a substantial Galilean Mosaean community in Tiberias was confirmed by Josephus in Antiquities (18:2:3). However, the mention of the Decapolis within the story seems to indicate that a fairly large number of Decapolis Mosaeans also were living there. That Antipas would have had enough control of any cities in the Decapolis in order to encourage or coerce its citizens to relocate to Tiberias is suggested by the fact that Hippos and Gadara, two cities of the Decapolis, were, in a sense, given to his father, Herod the Great, by Augustus Caesar in about 30 BCE for Herod’s help in the war against Marc Antony and Cleopatra (Antiquities , 15:7:3). How much control of the citizenry of those cities Antipas still maintained by the time of the building and colonizing of Tiberias is hard to say but clearly, a connection was there. Had Galileans alone been forced to populate the city with their tendency for independence and political free thinking no doubt an uprising would have taken place and they might have echoed Jesus’ attitude of death before dishonor and either been martyred for their stand by Antipas or taken their own lives rather than submit to his will. With more Helenized Mosaeans living side by side with the Galileans perhaps the hope was that they might help to mitigate or diffuse any unrest that might result from the more radical Galileans. Then, too, Tiberias, because of its geographical situation, was probably more closely linked to the cities and peoples of the Decapolis than to the rest of Galilee, over sea transportation and communication being far easier then than overland connections. That the demoniac’s home seems connected more to the Decapolis than to Tiberias in the story seems to hint at that bias and also at the timing of the event as sometime soon after Tiberias was completed, around 24 CE, a time when the man’s association with his home in the Decapolis was still stronger than his association with his enforced habitation in Tiberias.

Having established the real location of the story and a point in time when it seems to have taken place, it is necessary to examine the other components of the triad to understand their contribution to the real story. The goal here is to try to establish specifics in places and times in order to define the actual timeframe of Jesus’ ministry. That the components of the three healings are linked becomes apparent, but establishing Tiberias as a point of departure is key. Knowing where Jesus was and what he was preaching will help clarify the next segment and pin down a timeframe for the third. It will also lead to a more accurate understanding of whom he was and what he hoped to accomplish.

In Mark 5:21 and Luke 8:40 the stories of the healings of the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter (Matthew’s version of the same stories differs in significant ways from those of Mark and Luke, indicating a later possible date for its composition and consequently a greater distance in time from the historical Jesus). What is important about these stories (unlike those in Matthew) is the specific use of names and timeframes. The length of time the woman has suffered from bleeding (twelve years) and the age of Jairus’ daughter (also twelve years), go a long way to placing the events in time. It is not coincidental that the time span of twelve years is associated with both of the main female characters in the stories. Those time spans were meant to inform the contemporary audience of the link to Tiberias and so the intended meaning of the story. That the name Jairus is used in Mark and Luke but not Matthew also helps in determining when events took place, giving them an immediacy hardly considered before in biblical studies. More importantly, in the case of Jairus, the use of a specific name determines a specific geological location as well. This geological location, though somewhat removed from Tiberias, helps to complete the thread of Jesus’ agenda that runs through the stories; his condemnation of Tiberias and consequently Antipas for breaking the Mosaean covenant with God to his call for open rebellion towards the end of his ministry. Together, the stories form a neat package that indicates when and why he started his ministry, what the focal point was, and finally what the solution needed to be.

Within the story of Jairus’ daughter, the subtext of the bleeding woman seems almost like an afterthought, a later, less important insertion to the main story that simply underscores Jesus’ miraculous healing power and also the power of faith available to true believers. A woman, who has had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who has been left uncured by many physicians, slips through the crowd surrounding Jesus as he moves to see Jairus’ dead (or dying) daughter, and by simply touching the hem of his garment, is miraculously healed of the discharge. Jesus, sensing the contact, turns to discover who has drawn power from him. The woman, trembling and in fear, at once admits to the contact and tells him “the whole truth” of her ordeal, to which Jesus replies, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease”.

On the face of it, this may seem to be just another example of Jesus’ miraculous power to heal until one takes a closer look at the components of the story. First and foremost, the event concerns a woman or in the nature of the Gospels, a group of people, the rank and file citizens of the countryside. That ‘she’ is ‘bleeding’ indicates an ongoing condition of impurity (the suggestion is that she is menstruating), an impurity that would, according to Mosaean law, require the same acts of purification as would be required of someone coming in contact with a corpse or a grave, namely a week of isolation along with specific bathings and other rites that were time consuming and rather involved as they were required to restore an individual’s purity. The fact that she had been bleeding for twelve years tells us that she was continually and perpetually unclean or impure, or essentially in much the same state that afflicted the residents of Tiberias. Coming as it does after the story of Tiberias, the link between the two stories seems obvious and calculated. The bleeding woman, ritually unclean for twelve years, represents the people of Tiberias equally unclean and ritually impure. That the residents of Tiberias have been impure for the twelve years indicated by the bleeding woman would seem to indicate a specific date around 35 or 36 CE (twelve years from the completion of the city in 23 or 24 CE) as the date of this message from Jesus. While it might be argued that the inclusion of the bleeding woman segment into the exorcism of the demoniac rather than the healing of Jairus’ daughter would have been equally affective in establishing Jesus’ agenda, the necessity of obscuring the real message would preclude too many specifics in any one story. The more information that is leant to a story, the easier it becomes to decipher its intent. By placing bits of information into different stories and then combining those stories sequentially, the information is preserved without becoming too obvious.

Again, the theme of fear associated with those whom Jesus has helped is evident in the reaction of the bleeding woman. Just as the witnesses to the exorcism were afraid of what Jesus had accomplished and wanted him to leave their territory, so too, the woman, ‘knowing what had happened to her (that her faith in Jesus had healed her) came in fear and trembling and fell down before him.’ Her healing and its dependent faith made clear a connection between the woman and Jesus, an involvement on a spiritual-political level that spoke of her commitment to his agenda. This is true of all the healings, that the healed person (or peoples) had accepted the idea that the restoration of the United Kingdom that was essential to Jesus’ agenda could only take place if rebellion by the true believers occurred. To accept that teaching put the true believers in real jeopardy from nearly everyone in authority, so much so that to accept Jesus meant accepting a life of fear and uncertainty. This fear would have been readily recognizable to the contemporary audiences for whom the early Gospels were intended. Jesus’ message, that the necessity to become ritually pure in order to restore God’s covenant with the Mosaean people came with great risk, implying, as it did, the need to break with the established order. No Mosaean hearing Jesus speak could have missed the point that by being spiritually healed by him would have placed them in direct opposition to the Romans and the Mosaean hierarchy. Retaliation from the ruling entities was certainly to be expected if one was to follow Jesus. What he preached was sedition and as we shall see in the next segment, towards the end of his ministry, he was quite capable of calling for open rebellion. No small wonder then that fear was close at hand when Jesus performed his purported miracles.

The final segment of the trilogy, the healing of Jairus’ daughter, is the most overtly rebellious of the three and ties into Tiberias specifically. It is dated to the same time (35 or 36 CE) through its inclusion of the bleeding woman, who serves as a bridge between the situation in Tiberias and Antipas’ forced colonization, and the necessary conclusion required for all such impieties that is hidden within the story of Jairus’ daughter. What is important to understand while examining this segment is that Jesus’ goal in order to re-establish the United Monarchy was to reunite all the various political and geographical pieces of the original kingdom. That he was the most strident about areas controlled by Antipas can be readily seen in this story. Jesus was so angry at what Antipas had done to the people of Tiberias and to John the Baptist, nearly derailing as they did hopes for the United Monarchy that Jesus responded with a call for open rebellion. Fortunately, that call has been preserved for us in the story of Jairus’ daughter.

The story of Jairus’ daughter is similar to other miracle healings and resurrections performed by Jesus elsewhere in the Gospels. On the surface, it is the resurrection by Jesus of a young girl who has died. Her father, one of the rulers of the local synagogue had come to Jesus, ‘imploring him earnestly’ to save his daughter who is at the point of death. The father is so convinced of Jesus’ power that he directs Jesus to “come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” Before they can reach the girl they are informed that she has died. Unconcerned, Jesus informs those who have gathered by the girl’s room “The child is not dead but sleeping.” Taking the girl’s hand, Jesus says to her, “Talitha cumi ” which is Aramaic for ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’ Immediately, the girl gets up and begins walking. It is at this point in the story that we are informed that she is twelve years old. Jesus then tells the parents and several of his disciples who are in the room not to tell anyone what has taken place and to feed the girl.

As with the story of the demoniac, it is important to establish the location of the healing before looking more closely at the event and while it is not made plain where this miracle takes place, it can be deduced from clues that are imbedded in the story. In Mark 5:21, the first line of the story states that “Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side…” Since it has been determined that Jesus was in Tiberias in the previous story, it seems logical to conclude that ‘crossing again’ means crossing the Sea of Galilee and ‘to the other side’ would indicate the eastern shore; Tiberias, being located on the western shore. While these directions are certainly less than specific, they do point to the correct direction, east. The next line of the pericope, Mark 5:22, gives us the next clue to the location; the ruler of the synagogue is named Jairus. It must be realized at this juncture that while the Gospels are a record of actual, historical events, they are not history as defined in the modern age. They are not an historical record of the events they report wherein names, dates and locations are registered accurately and precisely as would be expected but instead are the creatively altered and propagandized accounts of specific historical events. As such, the facts they seemingly include should not be taken necessarily at face value but should be seen for what they are, indicators to the hidden story within. The name Jairus is a prime example of this approach and the fact that it was creatively chosen for this application, tells us the most important information about this story. While it might be easier and simpler to accept that the father was named Jairus, and while traditionalists and scholars might insist that it is so, the fact is that the inclusion of the name has profound meaning and represents a conscious attempt by Jesus and the Gospel writers to inform their audience of the true nature of the story.

The name Jairus is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Jair, the ‘u-s’ being added in Greek to preserve the masculine gender. It is not an unusual name in Hebrew but it is hardly common, being notable in the First Century as the name of two of the leaders of the First Revolt, Menahem ben Jair and Eleazar ben Jair. It is also the name of several persons of the Old Testament and it is to one of these references that attention be given. Judges 10: 3-5 recounts the story of one Jair, a successor to Shamir who had been Israel’s chief judge for twenty-three years. Jair, from Gilead, went on to be chief judge for twenty-two years. He had thirty sons who rode around together on thirty donkeys and they owned thirty cities in the land of Gilead, that were called The Cities of Jair. They were not precisely cities as such, for this took place when the Hebrew culture was still connected to its nomadic heritage. The cities were probably little more than tent encampments or in Hebrew, chawwoth or as it would later be written, havoth . So the thirty cities of Jair ultimately became known as the Havoth Jair. The Havoth Jair was nearly the same geographically with Gilead, an area that spread about sixty miles north to south and twenty miles east to west along the eastern banks of the Jordan River, from the southern banks of the Sea of Galilee to the northern banks of the Dead Sea. What is of interest to this current examination is that the Havoth Jair was the same territory as the lands later controlled by Antipas; namely Peraea and the lands surrounding the Decapolis cities that had been ceded to his father, Gadara and Hippos. Almost all of the lands on the eastern banks of the Jordan that were under Antipas’ dominion during Jesus’ time had been known previously as the Havoth Jair.

Keeping in mind that the events related in the Gospels, including names and numbers, etc., are not coincidental but are intentional choices, the connection between the Jairus of the story and the Havoth Jair starts to take on meaning. Clearly Jesus in his preaching and the Gospel writers who recorded his message intended for the enlightened or more knowledgeable in their audience to understand whom they were talking about without naming anyone outright. Their use of the Hebrew Jair would have made a connection for their audience to the geographical location of the Havoth Jair and then to Antipas, the tetrarch of that land. That Jairus is the ruler of the synagogue (male characters= Mosaean institutions) it is likely that Jairus specifically refers to Antipas who was technically, as ruler or tetrarch of the area, also ruler of all institutions, including the synagogues. Knowing then what lands are being referred to in the story, the Havoth Jair, we can more precisely locate where Jesus went once he left Tiberias. Sailing due east from Tiberias, one lands at Hippos, a city under at least the nominal control of Antipas, within what had been the Havoth Jair.

While it may seem contradictory at first that although Jairus seems to be a sympathetic character in the story, believing as he does in Jesus’ power to save his daughter, that such a sympathetic portrayal seems to be in direct contrast to the reality of the man Antipas, whom Jairus represents (Antipas was clearly a leader who had little regard for those under his control). It must be remembered that immediately following the introduction of Jairus/Antipas into the story comes the interjection of the substory about the impure woman, thus reminding the audience of Jairus’/Antipas’ connection to Tiberias. As the father of the dying girl and as the leader of the synagogue, a position of great spiritual responsibility, Jairus would have been seen by first century audiences as possibly being responsible for her condition since illness was often viewed as a judgment from God as a punishment for sin. That the girl represents the people of the Havoth Jair is in keeping with what has been described as the underlying meaning within the Gospels, so that the story becomes a political observation by Jesus of the social conditions within Peraea and adjacent lands under the rule of Antipas. Antipas, by his Helenistic rule and his abandonment of Mosaean law, had incurred God’s anger thereby making his subjects spiritually sick, to the point of death. That the girl is said to be twelve only reinforces the timeline indicated by the bleeding woman back to the beginning of the forced colonization of Tiberias in 24 CE, consequently placing this teaching to around 36 CE.

What is even more remarkable about these stories is the fact that Jesus uses them to call for open rebellion. The Aramaic phrase, Talitha cumi , at Mark 5:41, translated as “Little girl, I say to you, rise up,” can be seen, with a new understanding of the Gospels, for what it is, a call from Jesus for the people under Antipas to rise up and rebel. These stories about the anti-Mosaean attitude of Antipas were used by Jesus as incendiary speeches to agitate and mobilize the populace, culminating in an obvious declaration of rebellion: “Talitha cumi ---people of the Havoth Jair, rise up against your oppressor.” The culmination of this triad of stories in a call for rebellion also confirms a date late in his ministry, indicating as it does a blatant disregard for the authorities, an attitude that only would have been understandable once Jesus had committed to a specific time and course of action for the attempt to begin the process for the restoration of the United Monarchy. Jesus may have charged the onlookers who had witnessed his command to ‘rise up’ to keep quiet about the call to rebel, as he does in Mark 5:43, but he must have been prepared for the fact that at that point the secret was out and that the authorities would find out. His further call to ‘feed the girl’ at the end of the story is merely a thinly veiled directive to inform the people about what is to transpire politically and to mobilize accordingly. That such an obviously seditious directive by Jesus has been ignored or overlooked for twenty centuries only speaks to the power of tradition and to the desire of Christian apologists to view their hero in a peaceful, non-aggressive light, however the truth of his ministry was far from peaceful.

As a result of this new analysis of these stories, a more accurate understanding of the time frame of Jesus’ life and ministry can be appreciated. Given a birth in or around 6 BCE and a beginning of his ministry about thirty years later in 24 CE, the possible connection between the beginning of that ministry and the problematic colonization of the city of Tiberias is visible. Tracing the twelve year span imbedded within the previously examined Gospel stories and taking into account a Gospel reference to an age under fifty, the date of about 36 CE is supported when Jesus would have been forty-two years old and a ministry that would have lasted twelve or more years. These facts seem to fly in the face of traditional computations regarding Jesus that indicate his age at the crucifixion as between thirty and thirty-three and a ministry of between one and three years. As mentioned above, these traditional calculations are based in part on the erroneous idea that his birth took place in the first year of the Common Era and that the Gospels cover the entirety of his ministry, both of which assertions are wrong. While it may seem trivial to some to try to precisely date both his life and ministry, and while this re-dating will no doubt inspire traditionalists to refute it, it is essential to our understanding of Jesus to place him properly in time and place. Some historical accounts, that might have served to define his biography, have been rejected by traditionalists because those accounts did not match the traditional time frame. This new timeframe, from 6 BCE to at least 36 CE, provides an opportunity to re-assess some of those accounts and to re-evaluate their impact on his story.

Another facet of the Jesus story that must be re-examined is Jesus as the Prince of Peace, the peaceful, non-violent teacher who urged his followers to ‘turn the other cheek’ in response to violent confrontation. The serene shepherd, tending to his flock, the pastoral gentle soul that the Gospels seem to recount could not be further from the real man. As discovered in the story of the demoniac and the healing of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus was an outspoken political radical aiming at revolution and who realized that violence would be a necessary part of the process. That his treatment of the ‘Legion’ of evil souls driven from the demoniac hints at a violent response to their impiety (there is the suggestion that Jesus had the actual bureaucratic leaders of Tiberias tied into pigskins and thrown into the Sea of Galilee to drown) and reveals the violence to which he was prepared to resort seems more than possible, and there are other Gospel references that also point to a decidedly violent man. It is important to realize that the idea of the peaceful savior springs initially from Jesus’ own failure to adequately incite the revolution he preached and later from the need before and after the First Jewish Revolt to assuage the Romans and to break from the Mosaean authorities. It became absolutely essential in light of these two revolutionary failures to recast Jesus in a completely different mold, one much less threatening than the historical man.

In spite of the recasting of his image into the Prince of Peace, (the traditional view that remains today), clues as to the real character of Jesus remain within the Gospels. Some of these clues are more obvious than others and have required clever and misleading explanations by Christian apologists to resolve, while others are less obvious or are hidden once again by questionable translations. Regardless, upon re-examination of the references and taken together as a whole, the Gospel record of Jesus’ violent pursuit of his political agenda is clearly visible. To start, it is necessary to take a closer look at the people who surrounded Jesus, those people of the movement, both in a narrow sense, (as in his disciples) and the broader view, (those people who shared his revolutionary view), the Zealots. The Zealots will be examined in more detail later in this work, but for now, the disciples must come under greater scrutiny. It is important to remember that since much of the Gospel story is framed in metaphor, people of significance in one instance might represent a literal record of his companions, in another they might represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Also, as has been mentioned, names often serve very specific functions and should not necessarily be taken at face value.

It is the subject of the names of the disciples that must draw critical attention at this point. The old adage that you are known by the company you keep was equally true in the First Century, and the names and nicknames of Jesus’ closest followers bear some distinctive properties. There is a suggestion of violence intrinsic within some of the names that would seem to indicate that the agendas of some of the disciples were less than peaceful. If the names of the twelve apostles were the only indication of a violent trend, that would not be enough on its own to coincidentally label Jesus violent as well, but Jesus himself showed violent tendencies according to the Gospel stories as did Simon Peter and others of the inner circle. From Jesus’ comment about carrying a sword to Peter slashing off the ear of a servant to James and John asking Jesus if he wanted them to bring down fire upon a village, violence runs through the stories. In addition to these overt references, some of the names of those closest to him give indication that the movement was far from peaceful. It is only as another piece of a larger picture that these names take on any real significance, but under such criteria they are significant.

The names of the twelve as given in the Gospels are generally accepted to be: Simon (Peter), James and his brother John (sons of Zebedee), Andrew (Simon Peter’s brother), Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew (tax collector), Thomas, James (son of Alphaeus), Simon (the Canaanite or Zealotes), Judas (Iscariot) and Thaddeus/ Lebbaeus/ Judas (the brother of James). Aside from the seeming confusion over the actual name of Thaddeus/Lebbaeus/Judas and the dual appellative granted to Simon, Canaanite/Zealotes, all the other names are consistent throughout the synoptic Gospels. Acts 1:13 records an almost identical list of the twelve, dropping only Judas Iscariot, for obvious reasons. Of these twelve members of the inner circle of Jesus’ closest associates, men that he hand picked, fully half (not including Simon Peter’s violent temper) either through profession, name or nickname, had violent associations. That Christian apologists try to circumvent this Gospel fact by pointing to Jesus’ admonition that it is the sick who need a doctor, that is, while these men may have been violent in their lives their association with Jesus will convert them to more peaceful ways, flies in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Jesus spoke and acted violently, as did Simon Peter and others. The idea that Jesus chose men of violence because he knew that he could convert them seems plausible only if one clings to the concept of Jesus as the Prince of Peace, but the evidence is that such a view is no longer tenable. Jesus the revolutionary was prepared to use whatever means necessary to accomplish his goals, even violence, and he was more than willing to surround himself with men of equal character and intention.

The first apostle to be examined is Bartholomew, though the etymology of his name is the most problematic and tenuous. Bartholomew is an English rendition of the Aramaic name, bar Talmai , that is a rendition of the Greek (bar , son of) Ptolemaios or Ptolemy. Bar Ptolemy equals Bartholomew. It is then, ostensibly, a Greek name or nickname, certainly not unheard of in Jesus’ time but unusual in that it is a Greek name rather than a Hebrew name, as are Andrew, Philip, Thomas Didymus and Thaddeus/Lebbaeus. Since Jesus’ avowed mission according to the Gospels (Mt. 10:1-6 & 15:22-24 and Lk. 22:30) was to preach only to those of the House of Israel thereby seemingly requiring that those closest to him be Mosaean, it might be assumed that these Greek names were more than likely nicknames given these apostles by Jesus himself. In the case of Bartholomew, the etymology of the name to its Greek origin ptolemy is significant in that the definition of ptolemy means ‘warlike’, rendering Bartholomew as, ‘son who is warlike’, an odd nickname for a peaceful Jesus to give to one of his soon to be converted apostles. Clearly, the etymologies of most names carry meanings that are incidental to the bearer of the name and Bartholomew’s etymology may be just that, incidental, however, in many cases the etymology or meaning of a particular name, especially a nickname, is an intentional choice meant to draw parallels to specific personal traits or attributes that the recipient may hold. In the case of Bartholomew more may have been involved than simply the Greek etymology of the name. The association to a real, historical figure may have been chosen to make a more fearful connection in order to intimidate the populace.

‘Son of Ptolemy’ as a nickname early in the First Century would have carried with it a sense of dread and horror to most Mosaeans. It would have been a reminder of an earlier time in their history when Ptolemy Lathyrus, also known as Ptolemy Soter II and Ptolemy VIII, (died 81 BCE) king of ancient Egypt, ravaged the Judean countryside in his attempt to recover his lands. As Josephus records in The Antiquities of the Judeans , book 13:12,6; “After this victory, Ptolemy overran all the country (Judea); and when night came on, he abode in certain villages of Judea, which when he found full of women and children, he commanded his soldiers to strangle them and to cut them in pieces and then to cast them into boiling caldrons and then to devour their limbs as sacrifices…” Certainly, the reference to Ptolemy in the nickname Bartholomew carried with it a reminder of past violence and cruelty that could hardly have been forgotten in the intervening one hundred plus years, much the same way as the pejorative ‘Attila’ retains its association with violence and cruelty after so many centuries still to this day. That Jesus chose to nickname one of his apostles Bartholomew may be merely coincidental or it may make a clear statement about this particular apostle and how Jesus viewed him. As discovered throughout this re-examination of the Gospels, names are seldom incidental and are almost always chosen to convey a message or transmit a fact.

Another such case reflects the meaning behind the nickname for the brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. In Mark 3:17, Jesus bestows the Greek nickname Boanerges upon the brothers, or, as Christian tradition would have it, ‘the sons of thunder’. This seemingly playful reference to James and John seems to recognize a particular facet of their personalities. Perhaps they were loud or rambunctious or impetuous or perhaps their demeanors were somber and threatening, something in keeping with the attributes generally assigned to thunder, but is the accepted, traditional rendering of boanerges as the ‘sons of thunder’ correct? Here again we see translation as agenda, choices made to harmonize with a desired or politically necessary image. The commonly excepted etymology of boanerges derives from two Aramaic terms: bnai regesh or more specifically: bne (sons of, plural of the Aramaic bar ) and the root rgz (anger), rendering ‘sons of anger’. There is also the suggestion that the Aramaic root rgs (tumult) may be considered, rendering ‘sons of tumult’. Either would be a more accurate translation than the traditional ‘sons of thunder’ which is based upon the contention that the final letter of the root word is an m rather than the z or s of the Aramaic, thus rendering bnai ra’ ma the Hebrew for ‘sons of thunder’. The problem with this contention is that it depends on the early assumption epigraphically that the final letter in the Hebrew transliteration of the Aramaic is a mem and not a samech , not too surprising since the letters’ appearances are very similar. The Greek transliteration of the Hebrew then becomes huioi brontes (sons of thunder) rather than the intended huioi bronton , which in English becomes ‘sons of carnage’ or ‘sons of slaughters’, much closer to the original Aramaic ‘anger’ or ‘tumult’ than to the presupposed ‘thunder’ of the Gospels. Add to this the corroborating mistranslation of Zbdi (Zebedee) for the intended zbhi (slaughter) because the hay of zbhi was mistaken for the dalet of zbdi (also because these letters are very similar in appearance) and the idea of the nickname ‘boanerges’ is reinforced; the sons of anger, tumult are also the sons of Zebedee (correctly: zbhi ) or the sons of slaughter, a further violent reference to members of a seemingly violent group.

The last two members of this nicknamed group can be examined together as they are really two sides to the same coin. Simon Zealotes (also Simon the Canaanite, etc.) and Judas Iscariot (also Judas Iscariotes) both bear references to their violent connections. In the case of Simon, he carries the appellative Zealotes to denote membership in the Zealot movement (the otes ending in Greek signifying inclusion in a group), one of the four major religio-political divisions of First Century Mosaean society mentioned by Josephus, while Judas is referred to as Iscariotes (again note the otes ending) in early Greek copies of the Gospels, denoting his membership in the Sicarii movement. Both the Zealots and the Sicarii were politically active nationalistic groups during Jesus’ time, motivated by their religious zeal to oust the oppressive Romans from their homeland. The Zealots and the Sicarii and even the Essenes were essentially all members of the same Mosaean group of nationalists, separated only but significantly by two things; their varying beliefs in the extent to which God would directly intervene in their affairs and their varying capacities to accept violence to achieve their political goals. On one end of this spectrum, the Essenes believed that God would manifest himself directly in their attempt to achieve freedom and establish a new Israel. Their defining tenet was that God’s will was directed by God alone, without human intervention, so that they were in a very real sense at the mercy of His will, the pawns of whatever destiny God should ordain for them. The Zealots, on the other hand, shared no such belief and were prepared to be as politically active as they could be, up to and including the recognition for the need for war. That they began in the early part of the century as a loosely cohesive band under Judas the Galilean in response to the Roman restructuring of the tax system and ended some seventy years later as the driving force behind the First Jewish Revolt, gives some idea of the group’s development along the way and their increased reliance on violence as a means of confronting their enemy. The Sicarii, the most violent and proactive of the three groups, is, in a sense, an offshoot of the Zealot movement. They were made up of those Zealots for whom violence was not just the means but was the very specific key to achieving their goals. The name Sicarii itself refers to the short stabbing blade, the sicae and hence is the plural of sicarius , one who carries the blade and uses it for assassination or terrorism, as was the case.

That both Judas and Simon should be identified with ultra-nationalistic groups of the First Century would seem to be counter productive to their positions as apostles within Jesus’ inner circle. The contrast could not be greater if the traditional view of Jesus and his apostles is accepted. The violent and rebellious nature of both the Zealots and the Sicarii would be in direct conflict with the peaceful and non-violent essence of the traditional Jesus movement and one must wonder why such names, let alone such men, would have been included in Jesus’ closest followers. Even had these men been prior members of such violent groups and had since changed their ways before or even after joining Jesus, the inclusion of their nicknames in the list of apostles would seem problematic and hardly conducive to encouraging new followers to a supposedly peaceful, non-violent movement. The designations Zealotes and Iscariotes were tantamount to describing them as ‘Simon the rebel’ and ‘Judas the assassin and terrorist’ and while traditional biblical scholarship may try to glance over Zealotes and may try to redirect Iscariotes to be a place name like Kerioth, or rendering Iscariot as ‘Ish-Kerayot ’ (a man from the townships) in Hebrew, the fact remains that in the earliest Greek copies of the Gospels both names seem to reference inclusion in the above named groups.

Add to these etymologies the outright fact that Matthew was a publican or tax collector, a position that would have encompassed not only the disagreeable task of collecting taxes from recalcitrant citizens but might also have engendered certain strong arm tactics that no doubt bordered on extortion or coercion and it becomes evident that fully half of Jesus’ apostles were either nicknamed for or directly involved in violent pursuits. Include a sword wielding Simon Peter cutting off an ear in the Garden of Gethsemane and you have more than half. Such a percentage seems to go beyond the need to define his ministry as one for “the sick”, as he does in Mt. 9:10-13, especially when it is considered that not one Temple priest nor Pharisee nor wealthy individual, etc., all of whom might have been considered sick by Jesus’ standards, was similarly chosen to be a member of the twelve. His apostles were chosen and nicknamed because of, not in spite of, their violent tendencies.

Christian apologists correctly point to such instances as Mt. 9:10-13 to explain Jesus’ association with such men, claiming that the inclusion of sinners, be they tax collectors or fanatics or members of society’s fringe, within the apostolic group was a natural and necessary facet of Jesus’ preaching the before and after examples of what might be accomplished by following the words of the teacher. The argument is not without merit except as mentioned previously and dovetails nicely into the traditional view of Jesus and his ministry. What better way to advertise the benefits to be attained in the coming kingdom than by having the poster children for rebellion and violence display their new awareness and profound personal changes by preaching the gospel right alongside the master, and if the past histories of these few men were the only indicators or suggestions of a violent component associated with Jesus, no doubt the traditional peaceful, non-violent view would remain intact and overpower such intimations. However, as seen already and will continue to be evident as the Gospel stories are re-examined, Jesus’ own righteous anger, his direct comments (Mt. 10:34, Lk. 12:49-53, Lk. 14:26, Lk. 22:36) the comments of others (Lk. 9:54) and the actions of his followers (Jn. 18:10), all indicate that the association of violence to Jesus’ movement was not limited to a few members of his followers but was an important component of his nationalistic mission. Try as they might, Christian apologists have a difficult time claiming that these references to violence scattered throughout the Gospels are merely metaphors for other lessons but the references are too widespread, too intrinsic to the nature of the stories to stand as metaphors. The violence was included as a warning and the apostles were nicknamed as a warning. As a First Century Mosaean listening to these stories, it was very clear that one was either with Jesus in his pursuit of a reunited monarchy or against him. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground.

The traditional story of Jesus’ family, his mother Mary, his father, Joseph, and his siblings (or cousins) is, like the uncertain Nazareth and the misleading tekton , an attempt to subtly move Jesus away from his real history and disconnect him from the Mosaean mainstream of the time by making him a pastoral outsider. His older “father”, supported the family by carpentry and his mother, a very young, virginal girl, according to the tradition lived in a small, out of the way village. They were God fearing Mosaeans, as evidenced by their belief and acquiescence to what the angels told them to do and judging by their need to return to their ancestral home in Bethlehem for a census and their somewhat confusing genealogies, they were clearly descendents of one of the most revered men in Mosaean culture, King David. Yet, they were not politically minded, according to the Gospels and though they lived in Galilee, a province known then as a place of political turmoil, neither Joseph nor Mary seemed to show any subversive tendencies. They are presented in the Gospel story as quiet, peaceful people, scratching out a hard life in a remote place. Faced with the Herods’ threat towards their son they showed themselves to be loving, concerned parents by moving out of the province of Judea (and presumably out of Herod’s reach) and going to Egypt, living there for an unspecified amount of time. Joseph disappears from the Gospel accounts quietly without mention sometime after Jesus’ escapade in the Jerusalem Temple at the age of twelve, while Mary and her other children seem to remain in Nazareth for some time until later they become more closely associated with Jesus’ ministry as evidenced by the life of his brother, James. Ultimately, Mary outlives Jesus, although finally she is also lost to history. The story is vague in many of its points (what happened to Joseph, how long were they in Egypt, if Herod’s son was still a possible threat to them, why not return to Egypt, etc.?) and while it does what it can to disassociate the family from their context, it finally raises more questions than it answers. The vagueness of the story was meant to hide the truth back then, as it still does today, while providing enough in the way of details to satisfy certain prophetic requirements that were essential to the confirmation of Jesus as the Messiah, (his genealogy from David, his place of birth in Bethlehem, his residency in Nazareth, etc.). What then can be realistically gleaned from the Gospels that might allow one to discover the real story behind the traditional story?

As we have seen with the contrast between the peaceful Jesus of the Gospels and the violent Jesus of history, the same is true of his family biography. The poor, disenfranchised, obscure peasants of the Gospel stories are almost diametrically opposite to Jesus’ historical family, and while it must keep in mind that while the Gospels do, in fact, record historical events, they do so through metaphor, symbolism and later alteration. This was done at first to hide the facts while retaining them in order to protect many of the principles and later to change the facts in order to reinvent both the message and character of Jesus. The idea that anyone of Davidic descent might live in relative obscurity at a time when most Mosaeans were desperately searching for any sign of a leader with just such a genealogy is an example of the hidden truths that are buried within the Gospels. The Gospel record of Jesus’ Davidic descent would seem to stand in conflict with the same Gospel record of his obscure early life in Nazareth. Something seems amiss. Had his birth been truly miraculous and had his genealogy indicated Davidic ancestry, it seems impossible that the child Jesus would have been left to grow up so far from Jerusalem in the relative obscurity of the Galilean countryside. Since we have discounted Nazareth as the family’s hometown, where do the Gospels indicate that Jesus lived?

The earliest chronological indication occurs in Matthew 2 in regards to the visit of the magi to the recently born Jesus. Matthew 2:1-2 begins; “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod behold wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews [Judeans].’” Several things of note in the passage seem to confirm that Jesus was not only born in Bethlehem of Judea , as is stated outright, but was a Judean not a Galilean. The magi, after traveling from somewhere in the east, went to Jerusalem to inquire about Jesus who had apparently already been born before their arrival. They began their journey in response to ‘his star when it rose’, a reference to the Star Prophecy of The Book of Numbers 24:17; “There shall be a star out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel”, a reference to the long awaited Messiah. This concept is echoed in Luke 1:32-33; “And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever…” and Matthew 2:6; “And you O Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah for from you shall come a ruler (scepter) who will shepherd my people Israel.” The magi, aware of the prophecy, were also aware of the pregnancy of someone in the royal line of David and the pending birth of a child who might fulfill messianic expectations, that is why they traveled to Jerusalem. The idea that the magi were guided by the astronomical event of some celestial occurrence, either an unusually bright star or comet or the significant alignment of important planets in certain astrological signs is nothing more than fanciful mythology derived from the Star Prophecy and added later to lend a miraculous element to Jesus’ birth. The origin of the story is that three magi (probably Mosaean) or wise men (kings, in some interpretations) came from the east (either Babylon or Persia) to Jerusalem to record and pay homage to the birth of a son to a couple of royal lineage, a son, who because of his ancestry, stood a chance of becoming the longed for Messiah (the Star Prophecy was such an integral component of the search for the Mosaean Messiah that it was still significant enough one hundred years later to dust off and apply to Simon bar Kosiba, leader of the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 CE. Certain Mosaean leaders, thinking him to be the awaited Messiah, renamed him Simon bar Kokhba or Simon ‘son of the star’, directly connecting him to the Star Prophecy).

The family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus were not obscure, Galilean peasants nestled crudely in a manger in Bethlehem under the miraculous glare of some wayward star whose light was focused sharply enough to guide the magi (and Herod, presumably) to their location. They were Judeans of royal and priestly lines, people of prestige and notoriety whose child, as a Davidic heir, stood a very good chance of ascending to the throne of Judea. “Where is he who has been born king of the Judeans?” is not a reference that would have been used of Galilean peasants from Nazareth or to the later holder of the religious title ‘king of kings’ as Jesus was later portrayed. It is an immediate, time and place specific reference to someone of royal birth, the future king of Judea. Herod was not concerned with the possible ascension of a Galilean child to the throne, an ascent that would have been derided and refuted and perhaps prevented by Judeans who would have been disinclined to allow a non-Judean to reach the throne, just as Herod himself had been castigated for being partially Idumaean (and as such, not fully Judean and consequently not qualified to be king) throughout his reign. He was concerned with the possibility that someone of royal ancestry, of Davidic lineage and therefore eminently qualified to be king, had been born in Bethlehem of Judea that was only several miles from his capital, Jerusalem, thereby fulfilling messianic prophecy.

That only the Gospel of Matthew mentions Herod and the threat he posed to the young family is again a sign of the historical accuracy of the story and the historical placement of this Gospel, sometime shortly after 39 C.E. when the Herods were no longer in immediate power and it was safer for the gospel writer to name names and come closer to the truth of what had actually transpired. Herod no doubt did fear the birth of a legitimate Davidic heir to the Judean throne, and in fact may have been responsible for giving the order that resulted in the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem. While that crime seems so heinous to modern sensibilities as to be unthinkable, it was not unbelievable within the context of the times (consider the actions of Ptolemy Soter II) and since the number of male children killed was far lower than most people today realize based upon the statistical estimate derived from the low population numbers of a small town like Bethlehem it is quite possible that the Gospel record of the slaughter is historically accurate. That no other historical reference exists to record such an event is hardly surprising given the small number killed (perhaps twenty) and the general lack, if not complete absence, of reliable, extra biblical, historical documentation from that place and time. If the new sequence of the Synoptics is followed, we find that Mark, earliest of the stories, has no mention of Jesus’ birth. Luke, the next to be written, records the birth story as a more pastoral event with shepherds and angels and a greater connection to Nazareth and Galilee as one would expect of a document written when sons of Herod the Great were still in power and it was necessary to obscure the truth. Matthew’s version that includes Herod as the villain and connects the event to both Judea/Jerusalem directly and the visit of the magi looking for a royal heir, a work that is clearly less concerned about any retaliation by Herodian power and more concerned with what actually happened. In such a case, the implication within Matthew that Jesus was a Judean and not a Galilean takes on more credibility.

Another clue can be found in Matthew 2:19, a point in this Gospel story when Joseph and the family are attempting to return home after their time in Egypt. The story has a somewhat absurd element to it in that Joseph, while still in Egypt, is first told by an angel in a dream to return to Israel and then, once there, he is warned in a further dream of further risk from Herod’s son, Archelaus, and so instead of returning home, takes the family to Galilee. One wonders why the angel was not sufficiently aware of the circumstances in Judea to warn Joseph of the threat at the same moment that it recommended the return to Israel. The first angelic dream indicates that any threat to the child seems to be over. In Matthew 2:20 the angel informs Joseph that, “…for those who sought the child’s life are dead” without caveat. Yet in Mt.2:22 the second angel appears to contradict the first by warning Joseph of some threat imminent enough to scare Joseph into redirecting his course to head to Galilee. What the specific warning was is not elucidated in the story but is somehow connected to Archelaus, son of Herod. Apparently, all those who sought the child’s life are not in fact dead and the first angel was clearly mistaken. The clumsiness of the two angelic warnings seems to hint at a later addition to the original story, an addition that was required to relocate the family from Judea to Nazareth of Galilee so that the erroneous prophetic announcement that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene” might be accomplished.

The essential point to the story is that the home for this family appears to be Judea. Matthew 2:22 states; “… but when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod he was afraid to go there and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee.” The family had left Bethlehem of Judea when they went to Egypt and now, returning from Egypt, they are heading back to Judea, not Galilee. The idea the Nazareth in Galilee was somehow home to either Joseph or Mary or both seems to lack confirmation by this account, as Galilee is mentioned only as a secondary destination in response to the continued threat to Jesus. The family’s true destination is clearly Judea, whether to Bethlehem or some other town is not made clear but since in the nativity accounts Joseph and the very pregnant Mary are made to travel to Bethlehem in order to fulfill their social obligation during the census, their true home in Judea was probably not that far from Bethlehem. As one looks more closely at Joseph, the possibility that the family hailed from Jerusalem, a scant two to three miles from Bethlehem, seems quite plausible. The suggestion, then, that Joseph and Mary walked those few miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to insure the birth of their son in the city of David seems much more credible than the manufactured story that a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy was willing to walk the eighty or ninety miles between the supposed Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea to satisfy Roman census demands.

The implication inherent in Matthew 2:22 that the family’s hometown was in Judea seems to be bolstered by another incidental reference elsewhere in the Gospels. In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), the woman makes a direct observation about Jesus that indicates where he is from and where he has grown up. In John 4:9, the woman remarks to Jesus, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me a woman of Samaria?” Up to that point in the story, Jesus has made only one comment to the woman, “Give me a drink.” Here again, erroneous translation obscures meaning. The Samaritan woman is not talking to a Jew; she is talking to a Judean. The difference is profound. John 4:9 should be read, “The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Judean, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’” With the correct translation, Jesus stops being an ambiguous Jew and becomes a very specific Judean, thus establishing the dynamics of the relationship. Samaritans were not necessarily at odds with other Mosaeans but they were certainly at odds with Judeans, a demographic that had usurped the temple from them and had classified them as racially impure and therefore incapable of being true Mosaean believers. The fact that Samaria and Judea were geographically neighbors only served to heighten the animosity between the two groups.

What is of interest to the current examination is that the Samaritan woman (or the writers of the pericope) recognized Jesus immediately as a Judean, not as another Samaritan or a Galilean or any other ethnic member. There were only two ways in which she might have recognized him as a Judean within the context of such a casual encounter, his style of dress and the manner of his speech, since they apparently had not had any previous contact. Clearly the mode of his attire and the dialect of his speech informed her at once that he was from Judea. Consequently, the question must be asked, if Jesus was from Galilee, if he had grown up there and if his parents had lived there, and their ancestral homes were there in Nazareth, why did he look and sound like a Judean? In any widespread geographical area, the native population will develop differences in dress and speech based upon topographical features such as mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, etc. that physically isolate or separate different groups, even groups of shared ethnicity or religious/spiritual beliefs. Also, as with the Middle East of the First Century, divisions in homo-ethnic groups can occur due to political or philosophical differences, ultimately resulting in differences in speech patterns (regional accents) and clothing styles (traditional regional garb) that mark their members as clearly as sign posts. During Jesus’ life there were no fewer than seven dialects of Western Aramaic spoken in and around Palestine, each distinctly identifiable yet mutually understood (the seven were: Old Judaean, South-east Judaean, Samaritan Aramaic, Galilean Aramaic, East Jordanian, Damascene Aramaic and Orontes Aramaic, each spoken within specific geographical areas). Just as a native of New York’s Bronx or a New England Yankee or someone from the deep South once all spoke with distinctive regional accents that helped to pinpoint their respective places of origin, so too did Jesus’ patterns of speech and dress mark his geographical home. The Samaritan woman saw and heard him for what he was, a Judean, not a Galilean.

Though he may have been born and raised in Judea and may have been marked as such by his speech and dress, his background indicates that he was also considered a Galilean, both genealogically and politically. This apparent dual citizenship within the Gospels can be resolved by the realization that his parents were from two different provinces so that while he was Judean by birth and custom, his parents were from Galilee and Judea. If such were the case, it decreases the likelihood that his mother and father were from the same small village. As indicated above, one of his ancestral homes through his father was Capernaum in Galilee and there is some suggestion that while Jesus may have been born and raised in Judea, his siblings were born and raised in Galilee (Matthew 26:73 seems to indicate that Simon Peter, Jesus’ brother, and other members of his group of followers that would have included his other brothers, spoke with a common accent). The dichotomy regarding Jesus’ accepted place of origin manifests in Mark 6:1, the pericope variously titled Jesus Rejected at Nazareth or A Prophet Without Honor depending upon which bible is used. Mark 6:1 reads: “He went away from there and came to his hometown…” or in others, “He went away from there and came to his own country” and in some few others, “He went away from there and came to Nazara”. The implication here that has been encouraged for centuries through the later use of chapter headings is that Jesus arrived in Nazareth at this point in the Gospel. The original Gospels carried no chapter headings, no summaries of the pericopes, nor instructions or guidelines for the written material. Such literary conveniences were later additions meant to draw attention to certain aspects of the stories. The originals were written in one continuous stream, without punctuation, page breaks or paragraphs, so there would not have been any indication that the hometown referenced in 6:1 was meant to be Nazareth. Luke is the only Synoptic to refer to Nazareth as Jesus’ hometown in this pericope and yet later in Luke’s version at 4:29-30, reference is made to throwing Jesus from “the brow of the mountain”, the orous , (Greek for hill/mountain. Mountain is the preferred translation, occurring 41 times in the New Testament while ‘mount’ occurs 21 times and ‘hill’ only three), “on which their town was built”, an act that would have been nearly impossible at traditional Nazareth because there is no such topographical feature at the traditional site. There is at Capernaum with Mt. Nitai and Mt. Arbel and the cliffs of Arbel close at hand. Nazareth, or at the least, Jesus’ hometown where he was rejected, was built near or upon mountains with cliffs or brows from which he could be thrown.

The inclusion of the word ‘hill’ rather than ‘mountain’ in later translations was an attempt to reconcile the topography of Luke 4:29-30 with the fact that the location of Nazareth had been subsequently moved to what is now the traditional location in order to once again distance Jesus from his historical roots. It did not serve the political aims of later redactors to have Jesus associated with Capernaum and Nazareth in their true locations, very near the rebel stronghold of Mt. Arbel, and it must be remembered that the Gospels were originally Mosaean documents that could be seen by the Romans to be representative of Mosaean attitudes. As such, they were extremely problematic for the Mosaeans of the time and needed to be washed clean of any subversive overtones. The initial conversion of the historical Jesus into Jesus Christ, the fictionalized pacifistic outsider figurehead, was just another facet of Mosaean society representing the conciliatory and non-threatening agenda of the Herodians and the Mosaean hierarchy before the First Jewish Revolt. Peter and James and others may have clung to Jesus’ original theme of rebellion and reunification for a time after he had left the political stage, but Paul quickly sidetracked that agenda by altering the message. Jesus did not need to be linked to an area that had been connected to rebellious and nationalistic Galileans. It was a simple matter to translate orous as ‘hill’ rather than ‘mountain’, thereby subtly shifting the focus of the episode away from its historical context of Mt. Arbel and redirecting it toward the small, isolated, non-threatening Nazareth.

Also, the Greek word used for ‘hometown’ or ‘own country’ is patrida , which is more correctly understood to mean ‘fatherland’ or ‘land of the father’. It is a subtle distinction but one that merits a closer examination of Jesus’ father, Joseph, and his impact on the historical events. The idea that Jesus went to his father’s land helps to confirm that he was in and around Capernaum, his father’s ancestral home and yet, he was being rejected by his relatives and people familiar with him and his family, the Galilean side of his ancestry. This pericope, coming as it does on the heels of Jesus’ call for rebellion to the Mosaeans of the Havoth Jair and his condemnation of Tiberias, essentially surrounded the people of Capernaum with talk of rebellion. Jesus had been preaching to those Mosaeans closest geographically to Capernaum about overthrowing both Antipas and the Romans, and such a message would have been seen as extremely threatening to the local population even if they concurred with his basic principles. Jesus, as a relative of the people of Capernaum, apparently had the audacity to publicly call for rebellion, a call that he may have reiterated in their synagogue, and that most certainly would have impacted them negatively, without first apprising them of his intentions.

Their surprise and outrage that he would speak publicly in such a manner is recorded in their assessment of him and his response to their indignation. In Mark 6:3 they wonder, “Is not this the tekton , the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” Analyzing their statements, it seems clear that they knew he was sufficiently well placed in society as a tekton , (used as an identifier not because he was a carpenter or stonemason but because the term carried with it a certain prominence), a priestly builder of the Temple, a Temple that they must have known would be the focal point for Roman aggression if a rebellion should break out, thus their confusion as to why he would preach rebellion in the first place. Secondly, they understood his mother to be someone of importance and used her rather than his father or the epithet ‘son of God’ to identify Jesus. Thirdly, they were familiar with all the members of his family and were a bit shocked that he would put his sisters, who lived there in Capernaum, in jeopardy with such irresponsible and dangerous talk.

Jesus responded to them in Mark 6:4, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his father’s land and among his relatives and in his own household.” Of the several epithets that Jesus might have used for himself (rabbi, preacher, healer, etc.), the choice of prophet best suits the occasion. As a prophet (from the Greek prophetes ; spokesman for god) who had raised the ire of the local population by openly preaching rebellion, he was telling the people that the rebellion was a necessary event that was required by God and that while other groups of Mosaeans accepted or honored this doctrine through his teachings, his own ancestors and relatives could not, either through fear or complacency or egotism. Jesus’ teachings, his calls for rebellion, scared many people, people who understood the risks involved with such activism. The Messianic Secret noted by biblical scholars was that Jesus’ attempts throughout the Gospels to avoid publicizing his missionary work by requiring witnesses to refrain from spreading the word about him, was based, in part, upon this fear. While it was necessary to preach the word of rebellion throughout the land, stirring up panic in the populace in consequence of such teaching would only hinder his activities and put him and the people at risk from the various authorities.

Jesus’ suggestion that “a prophet is not without honor…” (A statement unique to him and found nowhere else in the Old or New Testaments) is a measure of his disappointment and disgust that the people who were closest to him from his father’s ancestral home, were unwilling to listen openly to what he considered the fundamental question of his time for the reformation of the nation state of Israel. Nor was it just Capernaum that had shown such apathy or unwillingness to support his nationalistic cause. Other cities, like Chorazin and Bethsaida were also condemned to hell (Matthew 11:23) for their indifference. These were cities, like Capernaum, that were situated on or near the shores of the Sea of Galilee and so had intense contact with heavily Hellenized areas such as the Decapolis and the tetrarchy of Antipas, areas that had found a comfortable existence under Rome’s rule and did not share the fierce nationalistic views of conservative Mosaeanism espoused by Jesus and the Zealot movement. Not only were these cities singled out for condemnation, but his own actual hometown, Jerusalem, suffered his disapproval as well.

Clearly, Jesus lacked acceptance by the people of Jerusalem/Bethlehem as well, as evidenced by Luke 13 and Matthew 23 when Jesus opined, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not.” This comment by Jesus gives the real reason for his rejection in his hometown of Jerusalem and also implies that such an attitude on the part of the people had been going on for some time (‘How often I would have…’ in the past perfect tense). The note of frustration evident in Jesus’ admonition was in response to the reluctance on the part of the Jerusalem hierarchy to take him and his agenda seriously, and perhaps more to the point the fear and obeisance they showed to Rome in the face of what he considered a directive from god to restore the covenant and the Davidic kingdom. What Jesus failed to understand, just as Karl Marx failed to grasp two thousand years later, was that those segments of society that are at least somewhat comfortably well off, as were the populations of Jerusalem, Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida, were much less likely to entertain the idea of a rebellion that might strip them of what few comforts they had. His real power base lay in the marginalized and disenfranchised poor of the Galilee and Judea and Samaria and not in the city-states that offered some measure of economic success and stability.

Jesus’ connection to Galilee was only partially genealogical, he was not born there nor was he raised there for long enough periods for it to implant its styles of dress and speech upon him. He went there during his childhood as a sanctuary from political threats and later as a necessary part of his ministry to preach rebellion and the reunification of the United Monarchy. His connection to Galilee and consequently to the political subversion present there was intentionally confirmed and strengthened in the Gospel stories by Luke’s nativity story and its obvious allusions to Judas’ tax revolt in 6 CE. Not much later and perhaps simultaneously, the need to strengthen Jesus’ position as the Messiah required the addition of Nazareth in Galilee to erroneously fulfill prophecy. Later still, when the idea of the reunited Davidic kingdom had lost its leader in Jesus and had fallen by the wayside, the further strengthening of the Galilee connection served to distance the then legendary figure of Jesus from the Jerusalem leadership by making him a socio-political outcast from an obscure part of a politically radical province. Thus, Jesus was moved away from mainstream Mosaean thought and practice that allowed his political message to be reworked into the philosophical and religious message seen in the Gospels today.

That the initial goal of the earliest writers was to obscure his true identity should not be overlooked as a reason for disassociating him from his true home in Judea and placing him in Galilee as well. The need to alter his biography, both during his lifetime and beyond, the need to shape his history for political and religious reasons have over shadowed the historical references that connect him to his true home. This disassociation is true of his family as well. As previously mentioned, the use of patrida certainly suggests the possibility of such an historical geographical link. That he and his father were both referred to as tektons with the realization that such a reference referred not to a specific trade but to their involvement with the building of the Temple also hints at the historical biographical details of his life. Far more importantly, the historical Joseph and the role he played in First Century Jerusalem seems to clearly connect the family with that city. How much of his life Jesus lived in Jerusalem is open to debate. He was born in Bethlehem and early in his life he lived in Egypt and in Galilee and later, once he began his public ministry at the age of thirty, he traveled the countryside preaching his political agenda so that determining how much of his life was actually lived in Jerusalem is difficult at best. One thing is certain; his father spent much of his own adult life living in the City of God.

The Gospel story of Joseph is limited and vague. As the nominal father of Jesus, he was responsible for the child’s upbringing, especially in the very earliest years when the threat from Herod had such an impact on the young family’s movements, but beyond his influence in taking the family first to Bethlehem, then to Egypt and then back to Judea and at least theoretically to Galilee, he seems to have had little confirmed influence on Jesus’ development. In fact, after the incident in the Jerusalem Temple when Jesus was twelve years old, Joseph drops out of the Gospel story all together and is lost to history. Legendary accretions have suggested that he was very old at Jesus’ birth and may have died of old age sometime during Jesus’ youth. Other accretions have it that he had been married prior to his marriage to Mary and had fathered an entirely separate family, while other legends insist that the opposite was true, that he was so righteous in his faith that he remained a virgin throughout his life which supposition helped preserve the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary. So little is known of him that almost anything can be fabricated about him to fill in the blanks. If one believes in the divine intercession in Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph becomes the stepfather of Jesus, a temporary caretaker of God’s son. If one sees Joseph as an historical figure and Mary’s pregnancy as a completely human enterprise then Joseph becomes the actual father of Jesus, the flesh and blood man responsible for Mary’s conception. Some few scholars posit the suggestion that he was nothing more than a literary invention, a Gospel necessity to get the mother and her divine son from place to place in order to fulfill biblical prophecy (son out of Egypt, Nazarene, etc.). With such a wide divergence in possible biography and with a very nearly blank slate, is it reasonable to try to recapture the Joseph of history?

Like all else involving the historical Jesus, the real Joseph and his role in Jesus’ life have been obscured purposely from the beginning for political reasons. The fact that he disappears from the story so early and without comment seems a strange fate for either the real father of the Christ or the stepfather of God’s son. Mary apparently remains with Jesus throughout his life as do his siblings, but Joseph simply ceases to exist, excommunicated as it were from his son’s life and ministry. It is an especially odd end in light of the importance of the father-son relationship in the Mosaean culture of the time. In a strictly patriarchal society, as the Mosaean society of the First Century was, the relationship between a father and his son carried with it responsibilities and obligations beyond what might be considered normal in the raising of a child. The bond took on the qualities, not just of parent and child, but also of teacher and student, master and apprentice, spiritual guide and novice. Joseph’s unmentioned disappearance from his son’s life takes on a greater significance as a result. Partly, his excision from the story was due to the necessity to have Jesus stand alone, free of earthly influences, uncorrupted by human associations, his teachings, like his birth, divinely inspired. Even so, the sudden absence of Joseph is curious.

Why then the void in the Gospel record regarding Joseph? Is his absence the result of later theology based upon the need to minimize the human element in the birth and life of Jesus that put Joseph in conflict with the idea of the Virgin Mary, a too human reminder that Jesus’ divinity might be compromised? Or did the writers of the Gospels drop this most important of familial relationships from the story for other, divine reasons, thereby establishing the pre-eminence of the God/son relationship? Was there some scandal, some conflict that necessitated Joseph’s removal from the biography, some awkward fact or connection that was better left unexplored by curious audiences? Certainly, he was not omitted from Jesus’ story because he was a poor, marginalized carpenter from an obscure village far off the beaten path. Regardless of his personal circumstances, he carried the significance of being the human father figure to the Christ; a position that we must assume held an importance above a normal father. Even had he died while Jesus was very young, his death warranted some mention, some acknowledgement to reassure early audiences that such a significant role model in the young Messiah’s life had passed from the scene. Even his mother was allowed a continuing presence with him at the wedding at Cana, but where was Joseph?

To find Joseph in the Gospel record some key points must be recalled. First, the Gospel stories are not history in the modern sense; an accurate record of specific events and people located as nearly as possible in their correct place and time. Rather, they are history as metaphor, actual events and people recorded in such a way as to hide the reality while preserving the truth. The truth of what happened back in the First Century is preserved within the lines of the Gospels, but the reality of the story, the historical events that precipitated the Gospels have been hidden in metaphor. Consequently, the truth that might be recovered from the Gospels as traditionally historical or accepted as fact must be re-examined under different criteria. It is no longer enough to say that Joseph was Jesus’ father or that Caiaphas condemned him to death without first asking if these figures represent something more. Secondly, it is necessary to remember that names within the Gospels are not solely the product of the historical record, but are a means by which the earliest writers conveyed meaning and significance, as noted earlier with the nicknames of the apostles. Names were used to tell the real story about real people, but done in such a way as to mask their true identities. Jesus remarks repeatedly throughout the Gospels that there is a deeper meaning to what is being said and done and that only a few will ever understand. He understood better than anyone the use of metaphor within his message. Lastly, because the Gospels are metaphor, and consciously created stories and not just factual recordings of actual events, certain scholarly expectations do not apply. The idea of statistical probability as a means of determining historical veracity ceases to carry much weight. For example, the historical relevance of the commonality of certain First Century names as in the purported Jesus Family Tomb, while important in that instance as a reflection of the times and the striking coincidence of the usage of many names, bears little impact on the Gospel record. The names used within the Gospels are consciously chosen to either hide or make a point and so are not subject to the statistical laws of coincidence. What might be of statistical importance in direct history does not necessarily bear the same importance in metaphor. With this in mind, it is necessary to re-evaluate some of the people of prominence in the Gospel story.

It is not a statistical coincidence that the three men who had the most profound affect on the life of Jesus were all named Joseph; Joseph his father, Joseph Caiaphas, who condemned him to death and Joseph of Arimathea, the man who hurriedly took him down from the cross. If their inclusions in the story were the result of historical happenstance, the statistical coincidence would be mildly surprising. The name Joseph was common during the First Century (statistical studies of First Century ossuaries indicate that the name Joseph occurs 14% of the time in the male population) but the fact that three different men named Joseph might individually have had such dramatic influences on the life of one person would still seem statistically unusual. A similar occurrence today would be the same as having Mr. Smith as one’s father, a Mr. Smith as the presiding judge in one’s trial and a Mr. Smith as one’s parole officer, certainly not historically impossible but remarkable nevertheless. In the metaphorical works that are the Gospels, however, such a remarkable coincidence should not be viewed as accidental or incidental, but must be seen as contrived and a purposeful selection intended to impart information. The intended message that the three Josephs are meant to convey is that they are all one and the same man. Joseph the father is Joseph Caiaphas, the high priest, who is Joseph of Arimathea, the rescuer.

On the face of it, such a claim seems extraordinary to say the least and down right impossible under any traditional evaluation. The idea that three such disparate men of such different backgrounds and positions, and who served such different roles in the Gospel stories might in fact portray the same individual seems the stuff of fantasy and wild conjecture, but on closer inspection reveals connections that confirm the link between them. Joseph the father drops from the Gospel record before the emergence of Joseph Caiaphas, and while it is intimated that Caiaphas and Joseph of Arimathea share a connection within the Sanhedrin through their individual memberships in that group, they are never referred to as being together simultaneously. Joseph the father raises Jesus and is in a position to influence his son’s education, philosophical and political beliefs, while Caiaphas, as high priest, is in a position to influence the method of execution Jesus must face that is essential to the outcome of the plan to feign death and fake the resurrection as part of the restoration of the United Kingdom. Joseph of Arimathea is in a position to go to Pilate and have Jesus removed from the cross early in the crucifixion, a position more frequently granted by the Romans to parents or close relatives and not necessarily to secret admirers (Christian apologists have traditionally suggested that Joseph of Arimathea must have had some special relationship with Pilate that afforded the opportunity for Joseph to make such a request of the Roman governor). These links to Jesus, these separate influences on his life are tremendously important in the telling of the Gospel story, recording as they do the familial connection, the father-son relationship that drives their political ambitions forward. The suggestion that the three Josephs are really one man is not so far fetched as it might first appear.

As has been mentioned, not much is known for certain about Joseph, Jesus’ nominal father. He is not assigned a direct familial connection to his father through the use of ‘ben’ or ‘bar’, that would have rendered him Joseph ben Heli since he is given a genealogy in Luke 3:23-38 that connects him directly to Heli as his father. Nor is he given a nickname that might have served to identify him in some way or other. He is simply Joseph, a righteous man that God has chosen (if the Gospels are to be taken at face value) to serve as the stepfather of the Lord, if the Gospels are to be taken at face value. He disappears from the Gospel record without remark sometime after Jesus is twelve, and though traditionally he is assumed to be elderly, there is no confirmation of this in the Gospels. There are, however, two references that help to define him.

First, if Jesus was recognized as a Judean by the Samaritan woman it is quite likely that Joseph was Judean as well due to the many years of Jesus’ early life that would have been required to ingrain those attributes that were clearly Judean. Joseph must have lived there during those years as well. This is in addition to the Gospel indications that one of Joseph’s ancestral homes was Bethlehem and that he was trying to return to Judea, not Galilee, with the family after their Egyptian sojourn. Though tradition indicates that the family was Galilean, these three subtle markers seem to point instead to a Judean connection. Since it became politically necessary for the Gospel writers to classify Jesus as Galilean, it was automatically assumed that Joseph and Mary were Galilean as well and were labeled ‘from Nazareth’ instead of ‘the parents of the Nazarene,’ but this is only a traditional association. The nuances of the story, the inferred references, seem to imply that Joseph was a Judean.

Secondly, Joseph, as a tekton , was being labeled as a man with special qualities. It is important to re-examine these tekton references to both Jesus (Mark 6:3) and Joseph (Matthew 13:55) to fully understand why the references were made. Jesus and Joseph are not being labeled as carpenters as a means of identifying them within a small crowd of their neighbors and relatives in Nazareth. It is ingenuous to assume, as tradition does, that in such a small village as Nazareth (had it existed) that the local population of perhaps several dozens of family groups would have required the indicator tekton for either Joseph or Jesus when the list of their family members (Mary, James, Joseph, Judas and Simon and their sisters) had been provided as well. The statistical probability that any other family group in that village would have contained that collection of names would have been astronomical, regardless of how common the names were at that time. The traditional view of Nazareth is that it was so small that probably only a couple of hundred people lived there (and that is an estimate on the high side), and in fact the village may have been much smaller. To suggest that either Jesus or Joseph required the mention of their trade as a means of identifying them, given the size of their family group and Jesus’ notoriety, seems improbable at best. The inclusion of tekton in their descriptions seems to hint at a deeper meaning as to why these two men were thought of as builders.

In both Mark 6 and Matthew 13, the designation tekton is used not simply as a neutral adjective to further describe Joseph and Jesus, but also as a means of conveying surprise or shock. It is not enough for the witnesses to the event to merely describe Jesus and Joseph through their familial connections; the witnesses find it important to call attention to the fact that these men are ‘tektons’. Such a revelation only could have been significant if the reference carried with it some mystical or religious bias, such as Honi the Circle Drawer or Annas the High Priest, since in general people were primarily identified by their familial connections or their geographic place of birth or residence as in Judas the Galilean. Joseph or Jesus the tekton seems to fall into the first category, their association with the construction of the Temple identifying them on several levels as righteous men and probably as special or prominent local men who had achieved a certain distinction within the community. As a result, the discovery by that same community that Jesus, a righteous man who had worked on the Temple was now preaching sedition and the overthrow of the accepted authorities would have engendered not only surprise from the witnesses but fear and anger as well, which goes to explain why they took offense at him.

With this association to the Temple in mind, it is possible that Joseph (and Jesus) was not only a generic tekton , but may have been one of the priestly ‘tektons’ involved in building the Temple grounds. The historical records are not sufficiently detailed to determine how long Herod’s priests worked on the Temple nor whether they worked on any aspects of the grounds beyond the main temple. Nevertheless, the possibility exists that the use of the term tekton to describe both Joseph and Jesus indicates their individual connections to such work. Joseph then becomes more than just the nominal father to Jesus but is also a distinguished member of the community, a builder of the Temple and possibly a priest as well. The idea that Joseph may have been a priest is reinforced by the genealogy set forth in Matthew 1:14 where he is linked ancestrally to the priestly line of Zadok. As a descendent of that line, Joseph was at least nominally qualified (after meeting certain stringent criteria) to become a member of the priesthood, a career far more lucrative, rewarding and prominent than that of being a carpenter from a small Galilean backwater village. That the individual members of his immediate family were directly mentioned within the Gospel story indicates the prominence of the family. Joseph the father was no mere carpenter, and there is every chance that he was both a priest and a man of some distinction within his community. He has been hidden from history for both practical and theological reasons, first as a means of insuring success for Jesus’ fake resurrection and later as a means of bolstering the concept of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

Joseph of Arimathea was also a distinguished member of the community and though his references in the Gospels are brief, it is still possible to glean a certain amount of information about him. As with Joseph the father of Jesus, very little is known of Joseph of Arimathea’s history. He is identified within the Gospels as a wealthy and respected member of the council (or euschemon bouleutes in Greek), that has been understood to refer to his membership in the Sanhedrin. He is also referred to as a secret disciple of Jesus, who was also ‘looking for the kingdom of God’, an indication that he was supportive of Jesus’ plan to restore the United Monarchy, support that for a member of the Sanhedrin clearly required secrecy. He is identified geographically as being ‘from Arimathea’, an English rendering of the Greek transliteration harimathaias though no such town has been found recorded in any historical documents of the time suggesting that, like Nazareth, Arimathea is a corruption of a different word or words with a different meaning, used perhaps as a nickname or a title of respect. However, since Arimathea is preceded consistently by the Greek apo or ‘from’ the indication seems to be a location. There is some scholarly support for Arimathea actually referring to the town of Ramah which lay about five miles from Jerusalem and was listed in the historical record at the time but with a loose connection that seems contrived and linguistically awkward. A stronger definition, although used as a nickname and so is questionable, would be that Arimathea is the conjunction of two Hebrew words; ari , from ariy meaning ‘lion’ and mathea , a root for Mattathias or Matthew, meaning ‘the gift of God’, hence, ‘the lion that is the gift of God’. The use of ari as a title of respect is well documented in Hebrew culture in history and was taken from the Assyrian symbol for strength, the lion. It was used to identify those men of great distinction, prominence or notoriety within a community. Rabbi Eleazar ben Simeon was referred to as ‘a lion the son of a lion’, Rabbi Hiyya ben Abin was exalted as ‘the lion of society’, Samuel was known as ‘the lion of Babylon’ and there are references to the ‘lion of wrath’ found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. That Joseph was known as ‘the lion that is the gift of God” would be in keeping with his position on the Sanhedrin and within his community as a wealthy, prominent individual. The nickname, ‘Arimathea’, might have been used by the writers of the Gospels as a way to signify that Joseph was a prominent man who, by his actions in asking Pilate for Jesus’ body, was a gift from God in burying Jesus properly.

A third definition that seems the most plausible is that, like the conjunction of ari and mathea , Arimathea stands for a slightly different conjunction, in this case, ar and mathea . This comes closer to the Greek transliteration of Harimathaias and is a location, as opposed to a nickname. In this etymology, ar is the English rendering of har , the Hebrew and Greek word for ‘mountain, mount, height or high place’ (just as the English ‘Armageddon’ is transliterated from the Hebrew/Greek har Meggido or ‘mount of Megiddo’) and indicates a geographical location. The English ‘mathea’ is the Greek mathaias , the transliterated rendering of the Hebrew mattithyah , itself a conjunction of two words, mattan (gift or offering) and yahh (an abbreviated form of Jehovah). Arimathea then becomes in Greek Harimathaias, which was derived from the Hebrew, har mattan yah or ‘high place that is the gift/offering of or belonging to God’, the intended meaning seemingly being the Temple Mount. This seems to echo or is a play on the Hebrew term for the Temple Mount, which is; Har ha Moriyah , or in English, the Mount of Moriah, the name of the hill on which the Temple was built. Har Mattithyah then is an echo of Deuteronomy 17:8, which, in reference to seeking judgment in certain cases, directs the people, “you shall then go up to the place which the Lord your God chooses”, or, in other words, a high place that God has offered to his people for such purpose. That Joseph from har mattan yah or ‘Arimathea’ was identified as a member of the Council or Sanhedrin would seem to be an affirmation that he was a man of great distinction. This is confirmed by the fact that the criteria for membership in the Sanhedrin required distinguished knowledge of the Torah, great wisdom, humility, indifference to monetary gain and a righteous fear of God. In addition, members were required to have knowledge of science and mathematics and other religions, including any teachings of idolatry and the occult arts so that even knowledge that might have been forbidden to them under Mosaean law was permitted to the members so that they might render proper judgment in all cases. This necessity takes on great significance in regard to Joseph and his abilities to both teach and facilitate Jesus’ abilities to perform magic and utilize drugs that would become so important later. Joseph’s inclusion in the Sanhedrin might also indicate that he was a member of the priesthood and that being from har mattan yah might be synonymous with being ‘from the Temple’, an appellative that only a priest could carry as they were the only people allowed in and around the Temple itself (to warn those visitors unfamiliar with Mosaean law and Temple protocol an inscription in Greek was strategically placed just outside the Temple enclosure which read “No gentile may enter beyond the dividing wall into the court around the holy place. Whoever is caught will be to blame for his subsequent death”).

Beyond the apparent significance of his name, what is remarkable about Joseph from Arimathea within the Gospel story is his ability to approach Pilate and request the body of Jesus after death. This member of the Sanhedrin, a group that only hours before had coerced Pilate into crucifying Jesus (John 19:12) seemingly takes it upon himself to go to the governor and request the victim’s body. Such a request would have been completely acceptable under circumstances where the body had been left unattended or, as in the case of a criminal execution, Roman authority had control of the corpse, as the obligation under Mosaean law (Deuteronomy 21:22-23) required that a criminal’s corpse “shall not hang all night on the tree but you [all inclusive] shall surely bury him on the same day…” Josephus confirms this Mosaean law in War , 4:5,2, where he records, “Nay, they proceeded to that degree of impiety as to cast away their dead bodies without burial although the Judeans used to take so much care of the burial of men that they took down those that were condemned and crucified and buried them before the going down of the sun.” In such a case and in the absence of any relative (the Synoptics seem to indicate that no family of Jesus were present at the time of the crucifixion, while John states clearly that his mother was in attendance), the obligation to care for the body would have fallen to the Sanhedrin in the case of Jesus. Since all the Gospels agree that there were at least some of Jesus’ followers in attendance at the crucifixion, the fact that a member of the Sanhedrin chose to directly involve himself in the disposal of the body seems somewhat unusual. While in point of fact, any Mosaean, from the lowliest beggar to the High Priest, was obligated to respectfully and properly dispose of any unattended corpse they might encounter, Jesus’ body was not an unattended corpse. The crucifixion was watched by Roman soldiers, by the followers of Jesus and by other Judeans, presumably members of the Sanhedrin (John 19:31). Immediately, at the moment of Jesus’ apparent death, Joseph from Arimathea, seemingly at once, “took courage” and went “boldly” to Pilate to ask for the body, usurping the right of Jesus’ followers and perhaps his family to care for the body. What is even more remarkable in this sequence is that if Joseph was acting out of the stated obligation intrinsic within Deuteronomy 21:22-23 to bury corpses before nightfall lest the land be defiled, why didn’t he request the bodies of the two lestai or Zealots that were crucified along with Jesus?

It is an easy argument to say that perhaps Joseph did request the other bodies, but since the Gospel story is about Jesus such a request was not recorded as pertinent. However, the introduction of Joseph from Arimathea into the Gospel stories is precisely because of Jesus’ importance and Joseph’s subsequent actions take on importance in direct relation to whom he is helping. The omission, therefore, of the two lestai in regards to Joseph’s request is both purposeful and meaningful; Joseph requested only Jesus’ body and that is why he is named in the Gospels. Had Joseph requested all three bodies, Jesus’ removal from the cross would have been incidental to the general caring for the three corpses and whoever had made the initial request of Pilate would have remained unnamed. It would have been nothing more than the required fulfillment of the Mosaean law. It is Joseph’s particular connection, in this instance, to Jesus that grants him grace and a place in the story. That a prominent man, a member of the Sanhedrin and a secret follower of Jesus should step forward, subject himself to the possibility of Pilate’s anger and derision and request the body of a criminal on the eve of one of the holiest days in the Mosaean calendar is of great significance.

Two things stand out immediately. The first is that once Joseph went to Pilate and made the request, he was a secret follower of Jesus no longer. His sympathies to Jesus and his cause were on display from that moment, along with all the danger, derision and social stigma that that entailed. His willingness to publicly and personally care for the corpse of a criminal and blasphemer would have raised suspicions about his motives throughout the Sanhedrin and Jerusalem. An important factor not mentioned in the obligation of Deuteronomy was that the Mosaean laws of purity were still in force. Any Mosaean coming into direct or close contact with a corpse would be ritually impure and would have to go through the week-long process of cleansing, prayer and isolation required to regain their purity. For a prominent man, a member of the Sanhedrin and possibly a priest, this would have been unthinkable most times (as seen in the story of the good Samaritan) and impossible on the eve of Passover if there were any other possibility available, like the criminal’s family or friends who might be more inclined to accept impurity at such a time. If, as seems possible, Joseph from Arimathea was in fact a priest, Mosaean law was very clear as to which corpses he might have contact with, as written in Leviticus 21:1-4; “The Lord said to Moses ‘Speak to Aaron’s sons, the priests and tell them: None of you shall make himself unclean for any dead person among his people except for his nearest relatives, his mother or father, his son or his daughter, his brother or his maiden sister who is of his own family while she remains unmarried; for these he may make himself unclean.’” The law was unequivocal; priests could only touch corpses of their immediate family and as Joseph only requested the body of Jesus, leaving the two lestai on their crosses, the implication seems to suggest some familial relationship between the two. Even if Joseph was not a priest, it was certainly not incumbent upon him to assume responsibility for the corpse. The Romans themselves might have been called upon given the circumstances of Passover and Joseph’s position to dispose of the body.

In order for Joseph to make such a visible social commitment in the case of a criminal spoke volumes about his connection to Jesus. His request to Pilate and his subsequent assumption for the responsibility of the body were not casual nor were they dictated by Mosaean law, as in the case of an unattended corpse. The fact that he was prepared to expose himself to ridicule, censure and possible expulsion from the Sanhedrin gives some indication of the import of his decision. Joseph took charge of Jesus’ body because he had a deep, personal connection to him that went beyond a simple political association or shared philosophical or theological views. His deeper connection is all the more obvious when his actions are compared to those of Jesus’ purported closest, not secret, followers, the disciples, who although they had been publicly associated with Jesus for some time and had followed him back and forth across Palestine had run away at the first real sign of trouble. Joseph, on the other hand, bravely accepted the risks inherent in his association with Jesus and committed to a course of action that was sure to brand him as a possible blasphemer as well. Joseph looks after the body of Jesus by wrapping it in fresh linen, not as a prominent man might look after a criminal or a secret admirer might look after a failed messiah (which at his death, Jesus was seen to be), but much as a father might care for his son.

This seeming father/son connection between Joseph from Arimathea and Jesus is only strengthened by the fact that the Greek terminology used in two of the Gospels to indicate Pilate’s action in handing over the body to Joseph seems to show a deeper meaning. In Mark 15:45 the Greek word used to describe Pilate’s action is taken from the transliterated Greek word doreomai which means to ‘present or bestow’ from the Greek base doron , which means a ‘gift or present’. Doreomai is found only three times in the New Testament, once in Mark and twice in 2 Peter, each time rendering the idea of giving as a gift. Luke does not specify directly Pilate’s action and John 19:38 uses epitrepo , to give permission or allow, as a neutral or passive act while Matthew is very clear in its reference. In Matthew 27:58, the word used is apodothenai from apodidomi , to give back, restore or to pay off as in things promised under oath. It is used 48 times in the New Testament, most interestingly in Mark 12:17 when Jesus proclaims “Render [or give back] unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” implying that the item that was being given previously belonged to the recipient originally and so was being restored to its rightful owner. The implication in both Mark and Matthew is that Pilate is actively returning to Joseph, as a gift or as a favor, something that had belonged to Joseph originally. Pilate’s action in these two Gospels is not a passive permission as it is in John, that would have made more sense in a traditional interpretation of the event, nor is it glossed over as it is in Luke. In Mark and Matthew it is implied that there was a connection between Joseph and Jesus and that Pilate was aware of it.

The writers of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew chose those words specifically to imply a meaningful relationship between Jesus and Joseph. If, as traditionalists would have us believe, the Gospels are the reverential recordings of Jesus’ time on earth, whether as factual history or as redacted theological commemoration, such words as doreomai and apodothenai might have been used to convey the proper reverence for Jesus’ body, that as the son of God, Jesus’ body was a gift to be given to Joseph to care for, however, since the Gospels exist as ‘history as metaphor’, such cannot be the case. Just as the names of the apostles each held a deeper meaning and the concept that the three Josephs are in fact the same individual, so too doreomai and apodothenai were calculated to convey a message. The implied message inherent in those words is of a deeper connection between Joseph and Jesus. Such a connection could hardly have been Joseph’s secret discipleship to Jesus, a discipleship that at that moment only could have landed Joseph under arrest as a co-conspirator. Pilate would have been keenly aware that any followers of Jesus could have presented the same risks to the peace and stability of Jerusalem as had Jesus. To step forward as Joseph did and admit to discipleship would have been wildly irresponsible and counter-productive to his attempt to lay claim to the body and he would have been arrested at once. If, as a father, however, Joseph requested the body, Pilate might have been more disposed to accede to his request even though Pilate would have been highly suspicious of Joseph and any possible connection he might have shared with his son’s politics. In Mark and Matthew then, Pilate is bestowing the body of the son to the father as he was legally obligated to do.

Another curiosity that seems to strengthen the father/son connection is the account of Joseph choosing to have Jesus buried in his own, new tomb (Matthew 27:60) not far from the site of the crucifixion. Much has been made by scholars in recent years about the disposition of Jesus’ corpse in relation to Mosaean law of the time, the various suggestions ranging from no burial at all (the body was either left on the cross to rot or to be devoured by scavengers), to burial in a pit/trench common grave, to burial in a common grave in a cemetery set aside strictly for criminals, etc. However, these are arguments posed mostly in opposition to the possibility that Jesus could have been buried in a normal family grave to begin with. These arguments lost most of their validity in the face of Mosaean law and especially Deuteronomy (that a criminal’s corpse must be taken down before the night has passed). In the archaeological discovery of the remains of a crucified young male of the First Century, Johanan ben Hagol, found within a family tomb in Jerusalem. As a result, it was clearly possible that a criminal in the First Century might, in fact, be buried in a normal family tomb.

That Jesus’ corpse was not left to rot or be eaten by dogs and vultures (a fate more likely beyond Judea, elsewhere in the Roman Empire where Mosaean law held less sway) would seem to be confirmed by Deuteronomy, and while it is quite possible that he was thrown into a pit grave or buried in a criminal’s cemetery, the more likely possibility, after ben Hagqol’s discovery, is that the Gospel story is correct and Joseph caused Jesus’ body to be taken down from the cross and placed in Joseph’s rock hewn tomb (Matthew is the only Gospel to ascribe ownership of the tomb directly to Joseph. Mark, Luke and John simply reference the tomb as new or one in which no one had yet been laid). What is worth noting about this scenario is that Joseph, supposedly from the town of Arimathea had had a tomb already carved out of the rock in Jerusalem (Matthew), or at the very least, had access to someone else’s tomb (possible in Mark, Luke and John). This presupposes several things; that he never planned to return to Arimathea, choosing instead to live and die in Jerusalem or that he was a very careful man who planned for any eventuality, including his death and so had a tomb prepared or that he was sufficiently prominent within the community to commandeer someone else’s tomb (disregarding Matthew’s assertion of ownership) even if only temporarily due to time constraints before reburial of the corpse in a different grave or finally, that he was from Jerusalem to begin with and consequently had his tomb prepared in his ancestral home.

Each of these possible explanations suffers from inherent individual weaknesses except the last.

The second item that stands out in this story is the apparent control that Joseph seems to exercise in achieving his desired goals. It is hard to imagine that Pilate, in his role as governor and with his apparent disdain for the Judeans, had anything like an open door policy that would have allowed just anyone access to him. Yet Joseph, upon Jesus’ death, marches directly to Pilate and gains audience with him. It is easy to surmise that perhaps the Gospel record omitted any difficulties Joseph may have encountered while trying to meet with Pilate but considering the time constraints indicated in the story any delays due to protocol must have been brief or non-existent. Joseph goes to Pilate and seemingly is brought before him at once without delay. This would seem to indicate a number of possible scenarios; that Pilate considered Joseph to be in nominal charge of the Judean aspects of the affair, or that Joseph and Pilate were on better terms than Pilate was with most of the Judeans perhaps even friends, or that Joseph was related to Jesus in some way. These three possibilities were customarily the reasons why someone might request the body of a crucified victim; that they were somehow in authority, that they were friends with the Roman authority or that they were family to the victim. In the case of Joseph, all three reasons may have been in effect, that would explain the ease and control he displayed in assuming control of the body. It is hard to imagine that Pilate would have released the body to him if Joseph had not met at least one of the criteria.

In addition to the control Joseph exhibited in dealing with Pilate, there is the matter of his control in dealing with the followers and family of Jesus as well. Regardless of any fear or trepidation those closest to Jesus might have felt in light of the execution by the Roman authorities, the family and friends of Jesus who had been in attendance would have wanted to take responsibility for the body. The cleaning and preparation of the body for burial would have been a sacred duty for his family and friends, one that they would not have abdicated lightly nor deferred casually to a member of the Sanhedrin. As with his interaction with Pilate, Joseph must have had some similar discourse with the friends and family of Jesus suggesting that he assume responsibility for the body, and just as with Pilate, there must have been some mitigating factor that made it more prudent or more acceptable for Joseph to assume such a role in the presence of family and friends. In this situation, however, Joseph’s membership in the Sanhedrin would have counted for little in the family’s decision to allow him to care for the body considering the animosity the Sanhedrin felt towards Jesus and the hatred Jesus’ followers must have felt at that moment towards the Sanhedrin. The same is probably true of any prominence Joseph enjoyed within Jerusalem, since Jerusalem had hardly embraced Jesus and his teachings. The followers were hardly likely to stand idly by while a Sanhedrist took control of their loved one and buried him in his own tomb unless that Sanhedrist was a known, not secret, member of the Jesus cult and or a member of Jesus’ family. It is ingenuous to assume, as many Christian apologists seem to, that Joseph from Arimathea was strictly a Sanhedrist who coincidently was also a secret admirer of Jesus who then took responsibility for the burial. He clearly was something more to the loved ones of Jesus if the family condoned his exclusive handling of the preparation and burial of Jesus. The crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus did not take place in a vacuum. The family and friends must have known what was happening and the involvement of someone outside the family in caring for the body would have been seen as an intrusion at the least and an insult of the highest order at the worst, even if that person was an admirer. Again, the probability arises that Joseph held some special relationship with either Jesus or his family and his followers.

It is with the understanding that both Joseph the father and Joseph from Arimathea share similarities in prominence and position as possible priests and family members that the role of Joseph Caiaphas in the Gospels and the life of Jesus can be examined. Far and away the most prominent and significant of the three Josephs, Joseph Caiaphas is also notable as the only one of the three who is mentioned in nearly contemporary extra-biblical sources and so seems to be the most historically factual (Josephus, Antiquities 18:2,2, 18:4,3). It must be remembered though that with a much earlier dating of at least parts of the Gospels it is entirely possible that Josephus used them as a source for some of his material, even if only as corroborative of other sources. This seems to be hinted at in Josephus’ references. In the presumably first reference to Caiaphas in Book 18, Chapter 2, paragraph 2 the reference is straight forward, “…and when he had possessed that dignity no longer than a year, Joseph Caiaphas was made his successor.” Later, in 18:4,3, the reference is clarified, “Besides which, he also deprived Joseph, who was also called Caiaphas, of the high priesthood…” This later remark seems to indicate a greater understanding of the high priest’s name, that Caiaphas was a secondary name or nickname and not originally part of his family name. He is never referred to as Joseph ben Caiaphas or Joseph bar Caiaphas, which would have been expected had Caiaphas been a family name nor is he ever referenced as being from a geographical location as is Joseph from Arimathea. Caiaphas, then, serves as a nickname, the name by which he is known in the Gospels and in Josephus (the name Joseph bar Caiaphas has been found on a First Century ossuary from a tomb in Jerusalem and this may represent the ossuary of the son of the Gospel Caiaphas, as it was possible for nicknames to develop into family names in the following generation).

The etymology of the name Caiaphas is somewhat uncertain and has allowed for several interpretations (the Mishnah, Parah 3:5 refers to the name in a derisive sense as ha Koph , the Monkey, while translations of the name in Aramaic render; ‘comely’ or ‘rock’ and Chaldean renders it as ‘dell’ or ‘topographical depression’) the difficulty in exact translation arising, as with all translations from the Hebraic and Aramaic languages, from the fact that in their written form words were built using only consonants, the vowels being added in speech as suggested by the familiarity of common use (such familiarity with certain pronunciations has long since passed away after two thousand years). Caiaphas is the English transliteration for the Greek Kaiaphas or Kaiphas , which are taken from the Hebrew Kaiapha or Kaipha , which in turn are taken from the rendering for the Aramaic Qayapha or in written Aramaic, qyp . Two separate renderings of the name were found on the ossuary above, qyp and qp and a second rendering of qp was found on a separate ossuary in the same tomb. To give an example of the difficulties in determining the precise rendering of a Hebraic/Aramaic word, if we take the name qp , the possible alternate spellings might be; qaph , qapha , qeph , qepha , qoph , qopha , qooph , qoopha and quph , qupha (when the Aramaic is translated, the Q is often replaced with a K, so all of the preceding, upon transliteration, could be spelled with a K). Add to this the distinct similarity between two written Aramaic letters, the yod (also yodh or yudh ) and the waw (also vav ) and imagine an English letter ‘Y’ where the only distinction between the two Aramaic/ Hebraic letters is the length of the tail and the task of determining the intended word becomes that much more difficult. Indeed, since qyp is written on the ossuary there is the possibility that the intended written middle letter was the waw , which had the longer tail and might, when used in certain circumstances, drop out or be silent, rendering qapha or qepha , etc. and would have been similar in sound to the simpler qp , rather than the presumed qayapha based on a middle yod . The two words appear to be linked, not only by their combined usage on a single ossuary but also apparently by phonetics and spelling.

Scholarly opinion on whether or not the name Caiaphas is in any way connected or representative of the Aramaic word for rock/stone, i.e. qapha ‘ or qepha is divided even though two out of the three spellings on the ossuaries render the Aramaic for rock or stone and are clearly associated with the third spelling which apparently renders qayapha or Caiaphas. Professor Ronny Reich, in an article for Jerusalem Perspective Online , (published Jan.1, 2004), states unequivocally, “The inscriptions found on Ossuaries 3 and 6 establish the name’s original Semitic form: apyq [written correctly from right to left]. This rules out the spelling kefa, rock, stone; Cephas, the Hebrew equivalent of the name Petros, Peter, which had been thought by some scholars to be the Hebrew equivalent of Caiaphas.” Andre Lemaire, a noted epigrapher, responded (mistakenly) to what he perceived as Reich’s attempt to associate Caiaphas with qapha in his paper, The Ossuary and Inscription Are Authentic (April 21, 2004), by weakly and inadvertently confirming Reich’s true position. Lemaire stated, “Yet this identification (between the two words) has been discussed and is somehow problematic since, twice, the spelling does not fit exactly and the title ‘high priest’ (in response to a suggestion that the ossuary belonged to the New Testament Caiaphas who was a high priest) is not written. Although the identification cannot be excluded, especially since these names, ‘Qafa, Qaifa or Qofa’ and Caiaphas are very rare, one may hesitate and it is difficult to consider it as certain in the present state of the documentation.”

The arguments against the positions of both Reich and Lemaire are simple and clear. Reich bases his acceptance of the “original Semitic form” not on the two examples of qp , as might be expected, but rather on the single (seemingly) aberrant spelling qyp as the true spelling, thereby relegating the two qps to irrelevance. How he came to such an understanding is left unexplained. Numeric superiority in such an instance, even if only by a two to one margin, would generally indicate the more prevalent usage and/or accepted spelling. Furthermore, less than two complete paragraphs later in the same article, he refers to Tosefta, Yevamot 1:10, a Jewish reference to the family name of Caiaphas in which a direct association is clearly made between kefai / kayafai or Cephai / Caiaphai (Cephas/Caiaphas), the transliterations of the two names scratched into the ossuary, thus negating his initial position that kefa is not the equivalent of Caiaphas. Lemaire’s two points in opposition to the conjunction of the two words is equally tenuous. The fact that ‘high priest’ is not found on the ossuaries plays no part in identifying the words, it is only important in identifying or disproving the ossuary as that of the New Testament Caiaphas. The actual ossuary inscriptions refer to bar Qayapha , or ‘the son of Caiaphas’, not necessarily to Caiaphas himself. In such a case, the omission of ‘high priest’ is to be expected unless the son of Caiaphas was himself a high priest. Secondly, Lemaire’s point that the “spelling does not fit exactly”, on closer inspection, seems to confirm rather than negate the similarity between the two words. The inclusion/exclusion of the waw in the variant spellings on the ossuaries is an indicator of a commonality between the words that was a grammatical property in Hebrew and Aramaic.

An example of a similar grammatical usage exists in the Hebrew words for David and beloved. Both words mean the same thing, beloved, and are spelled the same, dwd or dalet waw dalet but are pronounced differently. Beloved, transliterated as dowd , is pronounced ‘dode’ while David is pronounced ‘dahveed’ using five vocal sounds, ‘d-ah-v-ee-d’ which registers both an increase and change in vowel sounds from ‘dode’. What is similar to the case for kepha and Caiaphas is the exclusion of the waw in beloved and its inclusion in David. In beloved, the waw drops out and is silent, producing ‘dode’ as a vocalization, yet in David, the waw is retained, serving as a matres lectionis , retaining its vocalization as a ‘v’ sound while incorporating two vowels sounds, ‘ah’ and ‘ee’, produced perhaps by an aleph positioned before and after the waw . With regard to kepha and Caiaphas, or qp and qyp as found on the ossuaries, if (and it’s a big if) the middle letter is in fact a waw then qyp becomes qwp and retains the waw (as in David) and thus picks up a middle vowel sound while qp drops the waw (like beloved) and is limited to a single middle vowel sound. The vocalization for Caiaphas then might become ‘kah-vah-pha’ or ‘kah-vee-pha’ in Hebrew or Aramaic. If, on the other hand, the middle letter is a yod , the same grammatical rules may apply, rendering the more familiar vocalizations of ‘kayapha ’ or ‘kaipha ’.

The determinate for why in certain usages the waw either remains or drops out and whether or not this is also true of the yod is unclear though a case can be made that it may be a way to differentiate between literal and figurative usages or more simply, between a noun and a proper noun. As can be seen with beloved/David and kepha /Caiaphas, the shared meanings between each pair, beloved and rock, have similar usages, as well. Beloved is a literal usage, an actual representation that someone or something is loved while David, meaning beloved, is a figurative usage, a name or nickname not meant to represent an actually beloved person like a family member or friend but used as a figurative or general designation or simply as a name. The same seems to be true of kepha and Caiaphas, with kepha standing for a literal rock or stone and Caiaphas standing for the figurative word for rock or stone as used in a metaphor or nickname or family name. The decision to include or exclude the waw or yod was determined then by the word’s intended use. If the usage was literal, concrete, the waw or yod was left out in vocalization, if the usage was figurative or metaphorical the waw or yod was retained, altering the vocalization in order to clarify meaning. To vocalize kepha , a stone, when the high priest was meant would be awkward and confusing. To change the vocalization to kayapha in reference to the high priest, who was like a stone, was much clearer.

These explanations go a long way towards understanding the real meaning of the name Caiaphas but they do not explain the fundamental difference between the traditional vocalizations of the name, ‘kai-yah-phas’ or ‘kai-phas’ and the vocalization suggested here, ‘kah-vah-pha’ or ‘kah-vee-pha’. It is important to remember that with the earlier dates assigned to the Gospels presented here coupled with the destruction of most, if not all, Mosaean records of the First Century during the First Jewish Revolt, the Gospels quite probably served as the only extant resource material regarding Caiaphas for any writings that followed, including Josephus and any later Jewish works such as the Tosefta, etc. Consequently, any mistakes in translations or copyist errors that occurred while translating from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek would have become permanently set once the Hebrew and Aramaic originals had been destroyed in the revolt. Caiaphas is an example of this. Given an original spelling of qwp or qoph waw pe in Aramaic and a vocalization of ‘qoph aleph waw aleph pe’ a Greek translation could easily have mistaken the written waw of the original as nearly identical to the Greek iota and transliterated it as kappa alpha iota alpha phi or Kaiaph / Kaiapha , which is what is seen in the Greek Gospels. The Aramaic qepha , rock or stone, then becomes Qavapha / Qaveepha , a nickname that means like a stone that ultimately becomes Kaiapha when mis-transliterated into Greek and Caiaphas when ultimately transliterated into English.

The Mosaeans of the time took a certain cynical delight in word games and double meanings as evidenced by ha Koph , mentioned earlier, Matthew 3 and Luke 3; “God is able from these stones (avanim ) to raise up sons (banim ) to Abraham” and nicknames as evidenced by the apostles. Nicknames were a necessary function in a society that revered its past leaders to such a degree that their names were used so commonly and frequently among the population that nicknames or secondary names were needed to avoid confusion. As Dr. Helen K. Bond has pointed out in her work, Caiaphas:Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus? (2004, pg.4), “To avoid confusion, it was common to use nicknames to distinguish between them. Sometimes these derived from a person’s origin, sometimes their occupation, characteristics, or even a physical defect. Examples are ‘the Weaver’, ‘the Wine Merchant’, ‘Goliath’, or, less flatteringly, ‘the Stupid’ or ‘the Fool’”. Also, nicknames could change based upon the changing fortunes of an individual as is seen in the case of Simon bar Kosiba who was referred to as bar Kokhba, ‘son of the star’ (as mentioned above) when his rebellion was going well, but became bar Chosiba, ‘son of the lie’, once the war went badly. The name Caiaphas, then, was a way to distinguish Joseph from all the others who bore the same name by use of an association with a personal characteristic, in his case, a stone. Since he maintained his position as high priest longer than any other high priest of the First Century, from 18 CE to 37 CE, the natural inclination would seem to be that he was compared to a rock or stone; solid, dependable, eternal. This supposition is reinforced when we look at an interesting coincidence between the nicknames of Jesus’ brother, Simon, and Joseph his father.

Both Joseph the father and Simon the brother are nicknamed for stone or rock. Although the Gospel stories mainly portray Jesus’ actual brother, Simon, as an unrelated fisherman from Capernaum, Simon Peter, the two Simons are, like the three Josephs, one and the same, as is Simon from Cyrene who metaphorically picks up Jesus’ burden and position (leadership of the movement) by carrying the cross. The same metaphor is applicable to Simon Peter and, although not recounted in the Gospels, to Jesus’ brother Simon in a dynastic continuance. Just as Caiaphas, the stone, is a nickname for Jesus’ father, so to is Peter or Petros, the rock, a nickname for his brother but there are subtle differences between the two references. While Joseph is referred to by the Aramaic kepha Simon is named specifically by Jesus (Mark 3:16, Matthew 16:18) using the Greek term petros not kepha . The distinction becomes clear by understanding what petros actually means.

According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (1981, Volume 4, page 76) “Petros denotes a piece of rock, a detached stone or boulder, a moveable stone, in contrast to petra , a mass of rock.” In other words, Simon is nicknamed Petros as a metaphor for a piece of a larger rock, petra . This is made evident in Matthew 16:18, when Jesus tells him, “… I say also to you that you are Peter [Petros ] and upon this rock [petra ] I will build my church…” Jesus, knowing that he must soon vacate the political landscape is defining the dynastic line; Simon must succeed him, must continue their father’s work, must be the piece of rock from the greater rock Caiaphas, or in modern vernacular, a chip off the old block. Only by using the Greek petros / petra could Jesus convey the deeper meaning intended by the nicknames.

Jesus, or at least the Gospel writers, chose the terminology as a clever way of pointing to a hidden truth; Joseph Caiaphas was Simon’s father. He was the stone that had anchored the high priesthood, the Sanhedrin and the Judean society as a whole for many years and Simon, as his son, was a part of that, and an important piece of their plan to re-establish the United Monarchy. Joseph, the father (Greek patros ) was the foundation, the cornerstone (Aramaic idiomatic usage of kepha ) from which his son, Simon (Greek nickname Petros ) would begin the revolution that, with God’s help, would drive the Romans from their land. Simon would replace not only Jesus but eventually Joseph as well. This can be seen in John 1:42 when Jesus says to Simon, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas which is interpreted Peter.” The reason for the shift from Petros to Cephas to allude to the same nickname was that by the time the Gospel of John was written Caiaphas was no longer in power and so the word play on Petros / petra/ patros no longer applied and equally, with Caiaphas gone, Simon literally became ‘the rock’, the foundation of the movement and was no longer the smaller petros to his father’s kephas . He was the kepha .

A further association between Caiaphas /stone and their connection to the United Kingdom of David seems to exist in the Aramaic place name Khirbet Qeiyafa, a small, fortified position overlooking the Elah Valley, the biblical site of David’s battle with Goliath. The archaeological site is of a stone fortress from roughly the same period as the foundation of David’s United Kingdom, about 1000 BCE, and while the currently accepted translation of Khirbet Qeiyafa is rendered as ‘the Beautiful Ruins’ this seems to ignore the very real similarities between the two names; Qayapha (Caiaphas) and Qeiyafa (beautiful). The local usage of Khirbet Qeiyafa to identify this site goes back at least 400 years and possibly 800 and possibly further, though the chief archaeologist currently studying the site, Professor Yosef Garfinkel, suggests that the biblical name for the fortress was probably Sharayim , or ‘two gates’ referring to one of its architectural features. Still, the local Aramaic usage of Qeiyafa that goes back for hundreds of years may have been derived by the ancient local population usage based upon the site’s proximity to the legendary biblical battle where David killed Goliath with a qepha . Again, as with ‘beloved’/ David and qeph / Qayapha , the alternative spelling and pronunciation have been used in the place name to distinguish it from literal usage (qeiyafa rather than qeph ) and while ‘Beautiful Ruin’ may be the accepted translation for Khirbet Qeiyafa, there is more to recommend ‘Ruin of the Stone’ as the actual meaning since as a place name it lends more geographical information through its implied connection to David’s stone. As such, it may also clarify the distinction between the choice of a ‘waw’ or ‘yodh’ in ‘Caiaphas’ through the similar pronunciation of qeiyafa .

Another hidden truth that is referenced in John 1:42 regarding the familial relationships of Jesus was when Jesus referred to his brother Simon as “the son of John.” This reference harkens back to when Jesus referred to Simon in Matthew 16:17 as “Simon bar [son of] Jonah”, the two comments obviously related since Simon could not be the son of both John and Jonah, so that clearly, the two men are intended to refer to one and the same man. Upon closer study, what is revealed is that the earlier reference to Jonah in Matthew was not a simple, straightforward association to the Old Testament character who was swallowed by a great fish but was intended as another example of Simon’s dynastic justification and familial connection. It was the Gospel writer’s way of telling his audience that Simon Peter was, like Jesus, descended from King David, that he was a member of the Davidic line. The etymology of the name Jonah bears this out. The English Jonah becomes Iona in Greek, transliterated from the Hebrew Yona , the word for dove, a reference to David from Psalm 55:6 as has been noted. John, on the other hand is Ioannou ‘ in Greek, so that in Matthew, Simon is ‘bar Iona’ while in John, he is ‘bar Ioannou ’. Ultimately, the inference was that Simon Peter was ‘ the son of the dove’ or a descendent of David. This fact, coupled with the father-son association between Caiaphas and Peter, reinforces that Simon Peter was Jesus’ brother.

Joseph Caiaphas in his role as high priest of the Sanhedrin (Gospels; ‘council’) was well positioned to control the events leading up to his son’s crucifixion. There is some confusion about the exact nature of his position, whether or not it was a shared responsibility with Annas (also: Ananas) the high priest or whether Annas was, in effect, the power behind the throne, a ‘high priest for life’ as far as the Mosaeans were concerned, in spite of Roman machinations to place into power their own choices for high priests to the contrary. This issue can be resolved comfortably if it is realized that there were two Sanhedrins, with two chief priests; the Great Sanhedrin, the supreme Mosaean religious authority, a governing council that oversaw all religious and philosophical questions and crimes (such as blasphemy), and the provincial Sanhedrins, that had been established by the Roman prefect, Gabinius, around 57 B.C.E. (Josephus; Antiquities 14,5,4) and were responsible for all civil and criminal matters in a limited, geographical area (the five specific cities that each held a provincial Sanhedrin were; Gadara, Amathus, Jericho, Sepphoris and Jerusalem) . While the Great Sanhedrin was a single, august body that ruled over Mosaean belief and thought, the provincial Sanhedrins dealt with the day-to-day operations of their respective territories. The Romans, content as they were throughout their empire to allow local citizenry to follow their singular religious beliefs as long as those beliefs were non-threatening to Roman authority would have left the Great Sanhedrin to its own pursuits, including any designation for the high priest to retain that position for life. The Roman inter-face with the provincial Sanhedrins, however, was of a much more immediate and practical focus that required a more ‘hands on’ approach. The provincial Sanhedrins were the direct link between the Romans and the populace through which Roman control was disseminated to the people. Consequently, it was imperative for the Romans to have those Mosaeans in charge of the local Sanhedrins with whom they could work easily and efficiently and who were responsive to Roman requirements. As a result, the high priests of the local Sanhedrins were installed or removed by the Romans based upon their individual performance and the political climate of the citizens, frequently as often as every year and occasionally sooner.

The seeming confusion in the Gospels regarding two high priests in power simultaneously is only the result of the fact that the stories take place in Jerusalem, the center of Mosaean authority and the only city in the Middle East that would have had two Sanhedrins, the Great Sanhedrin and a provincial Sanhedrin. Annas, as high priest of the Great Sanhedrin, held his position for life according to Mosaean tradition (Josephus; Antiquities 15,3,1), while Caiaphas as head of Judea’s provincial Sanhedrin served at the pleasure of the Roman authorities. That Caiaphas served as head of the Sanhedrin for nearly two decades indicates quite clearly the level of his political and judicial skills. He was someone trusted and accepted by both the Romans and the Judeans, someone who was either savvy and clever enough to placate both sides year after year or fair and trustworthy enough to secure their respect and support or both. In any case, the fact that Annas and Caiaphas ruled simultaneously, as written within the Gospels, is far from being unusual and their joint ruler ship of Mosaean matters within the Gospel stories seems to make historical sense. The Great Sanhedrin, sitting in judgment of all religious, philosophical and spiritual questions throughout the widespread Mosaean culture could hardly have been expected to hear cases pertaining to mundane civil law as well. It would be as impractical as if the United States Supreme Court was responsible, in addition to all its other duties, for resolving outstanding parking tickets. However, in the criminal matter that the accusations against Jesus presented with their implication of blasphemy, both high priests would have been required to bestow their judgments. Annas would have analyzed the case as a religious matter in light of his position with the Great Sanhedrin, while Caiaphas would have studied the civil law implications inherent in the case. The necessity for their combined responsibilities warranted their mutual inclusion, which is what is presented in the Gospels.

It is misleading, however, to assume that Caiaphas was just doing his job as high priest of the civil Sanhedrin when he passed judgment on Jesus. The outcome of Jesus’ trial, his guilty verdict, not on charges of blasphemy as might be expected, but rather on sedition, points to a greater involvement on Caiaphas’ part than what would have been normally required of him. Christian apologists and biblical scholars often point out the fact that the trial and in consequence the sitting of the Sanhedrin late at night of a high holy day, was illegal by Mosaean law. This again though, like the two priests in power together, may be a misunderstanding of First Century Mosaean culture, the suggestion being that while it may have been illegal for the Great Sanhedrin to sit under such circumstances, it may have been well within reason for the provincial Sanhedrin to hear cases. If such were in fact the situation, Caiaphas’ acquisition of the case rather than Annas’ appears the less straightforward. The only Mosaean crime that Jesus might have been accused of was blasphemy when he claimed to be the son of God, and that blasphemy was clear cut enough to require the Great Sanhedrin to hear the case. Since it could not sit to hear the case due to the circumstances, Jesus should have been held over until the Great Sanhedrin was available, but he was not. Instead, the charge was changed to one of sedition and he was taken before the Roman governor. Why the change and why the hurry?

The traditional view that the Mosaean authorities were in a rush to dispose of the matter for fear that rioting might break out in the Passover crowded city should there be a lengthy trial followed by an execution does not stand up to even mild scrutiny. The way to mitigate any violent outburst by the followers of Jesus (and by extension the citizens of Jerusalem) would have been to secure Jesus in custody until after Passover and hold his trial then, after the crowds had left the city. Better still, if fear of an uprising was so pre-eminent in the minds of Jerusalem’s leaders, why not wait and arrest Jesus when he was speaking to the crowds (and perhaps openly blaspheming), which would prove their accusation. At the very least, once the holiday was over and the risk of rioting was greatly reduced, a conventional trial by the Great Sanhedrin would have posed little risk, but the question persists, why drop the charge of blasphemy?

The traditional, scholarly view is that the Mosaeans had lost the ability to condemn convicted criminals to capital punishment but this view is dishonest or at the least, disingenuous. The Mosaeans, or more precisely, the Judeans, maintained they had the right and determination within their society to execute those citizens found guilty of certain crimes. Even the Gospels confirm this with their stories of the beheading of John the Baptist, the stoning of Stephen and of the adulterous woman and even the threat of assassination to Jesus himself, as seen in Mark 14. Judean authorities were quite prepared to execute those individuals who had broken Mosaean law either by strangulation, decapitation, stoning or drowning, as long as due process was observed and as long as the Romans did not know, even if it meant hiding the execution from them or making it look like an accident. The Judean authorities were prepared to continue the use of capital punishment. What they could not do, which had been done in the past, was to crucify anyone because that could not be hidden or done secretly. Crucifixion, once used by Mosaean leaders as a deterrent, became a strictly Roman form of punishment, reserved for slaves and non-Romans convicted of sedition and other crimes. The Romans may have overtly taken away the Mosaean right to publicly perform capital punishment (“A little more than forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the power of pronouncing capital sentences was taken away from the Jews”; Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin, folio 24), but covertly, as a means of maintaining their tribal identity and sovereignty (Genesis 49:10), the Judeans still executed the convicted.

It is not surprising then that Jesus’ arrest and trial were initiated late at night on the Sabbath during one of the most important festivals of the year and someone in authority had to be the one to set it all in motion. Even if Judas Iscariot, a member of Jesus’ inner circle, might be considered as the person that actually started the immediate chain of events that led to Jesus’ crucifixion, someone in Mosaean authority had to first accept Judas’ offer of betrayal and subsequently agree to send the necessary men to affect Jesus’ arrest. These decisions would seem to fall under the auspices of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin as civil matters and not the Great Sanhedrin. In fact, as nervous as all the authorities, Roman included, were during Passover when disturbances and rioting had often broken out in the past, it would seem quite natural for the local Sanhedrin, perhaps in possession of a small contingent of armed Temple guards, to perform as a police force in trying to maintain the peace and remove those individuals it considered likely threats. Caiaphas, then, as high priest of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin was ideally situated to have ultimate and absolute control of the events leading to the arrest and trial of Jesus and even though he might involve Annas as high priest of the Great Sanhedrin out of respect and political necessity (and as his father in law), the final responsibility for the decisions regarding Jesus belonged to Caiaphas.

What is of particular interest about Caiaphas’ handling of the situation is the seeming manipulation of the accusations against Jesus both before the Sanhedrin and later Pilate. When Jesus is on trial before the Sanhedrin, false witnesses are brought forth to accuse him, though they botch the job so badly that their testimony is largely ignored. In Mark and Matthew, he is quite clearly condemned for blasphemy after acquiescing to the Sanhedrin’s charge that he considers himself to be the Christ, the Son of God. Luke is vague on this point and while blasphemy seems to be the charge, it is not stated. John is more vague still, the Sanhedrin failing to develop any charge at all other than the suggestion that Jesus is doing evil. In Mark and Matthew it is clear that the Sanhedrin feels that Jesus deserves death for his actions, that as a consequence of blasphemy, should have required the involvement of Annas, the high priest of the Great Sanhedrin and ultimately, a trial before that body. The fact that it is not should be seen for the manipulation it is by Caiaphas to maintain control of the proceedings. Blasphemy should have been tried before the Great Sanhedrin and would have been a capital crime under Mosaean law but certainly not under Roman law. The Mosaeans would have wanted a death penalty while the Romans would have seen the charge as a religious dispute, an internal affair, and would have remained neutral. By keeping the trial under his management, Caiaphas insured that Jesus would be convicted of blasphemy and any death sentence imposed would be his to make, not Annas’. Caiaphas could then insure that the death penalty would not be stoning, drowning or decapitation, all forms of execution that would be impossible to fake. What he needed was crucifixion, a death penalty that could, in fact, be faked. What he needed was Roman intervention.

It is at this juncture in the proceedings that Caiaphas manipulates the trial again. In Mark 15:1 the Sanhedrin holds a consultation with all its members and as a result, they bind Jesus and lead him away to Pilate. The suggestion inherent within their consultation seems obvious; even though they have charged and condemned Jesus on the grounds of blasphemy and could rightly execute him, regardless of Roman stricture to the contrary, the council has decided to abrogate its own findings and instead, present Jesus to the Roman authorities. At that moment, the charge of blasphemy virtually disappears from the trial, and is replaced by the charge of sedition in regards to Jesus’ claim to be the king of the Judeans and his admonishment forbidding Judeans to pay tribute to Caesar. Regardless of the specifics of the Sanhedrin’s consultation, there was only one man who could have made the final decision to ignore the charge of blasphemy against Jesus and turn him over to Pilate with the new charge of sedition and that was Caiaphas. Caiaphas, as the high priest, would have had the final word on the legal disposition of Jesus and would have been fully aware that the Roman punishment for sedition was crucifixion.

Caiaphas, then, in his role as high priest of the civil Sanhedrin had been in complete control of all facets of the arrest, trial and conviction of Jesus. He had dictated, in conjunction with Judas, the time and place of the arrest, (late at night on the eve of Passover), and away from any co-conspirators like the owner of the room where the Last Supper was eaten. He had manipulated the outcome of the trial by taking the initial charge of blasphemy and changing it to one of sedition and by keeping it out of the hands of Annas and the Great Sanhedrin. Most importantly, he had guaranteed that the conviction would be based on Roman law and not Mosaean, thereby insuring that Jesus would not be stoned or beheaded or drowned, but instead would face crucifixion. As Jesus’ father, he had done all that he could do to insure that events had taken their proper course and he had given his son his greatest chance at survival from the ordeal that was to come. There was only one thing that he could not control and that was the sentencing. Once Caiaphas involved Pilate in the case against Jesus, his ability to control the Roman trial left his hands. He could only stand ready to react to whatever decisions Pilate made and hope that he could manipulate the situation to their advantage.

The uncertainty of Caiaphas’ situation at this point is made clear in the Gospels stories when Pilate, after interrogating Jesus pronounced that he found no guilt in him and planned to release him. Whether or not Caiaphas was prepared for such an eventuality is not clear, but the problem was resolved by the fact that the Judeans, who less than a week before had welcomed Jesus into their city as their king and messiah, suddenly and without explanation completely reversed their sentiments and clamored for his death. That this incident seems contrived either in fact or in retelling seems to bolster the notion that someone had enough clout to have a sufficient number of people ready to make a boisterous show against Jesus, thereby insuring his execution. Pilate, unconcerned as he must have been with the welfare of one Judean and eager to avoid any civil unrest, acquiesced to their demands in spite of the fact that he could not find Jesus guilty of anything, even sedition. The historical portrait of Pilate as a tough, insensitive, callous overlord, precludes any suggestion that he was swayed in his decision making by the insistence of what he considered rabble. Someone in authority, someone that Pilate must have respected or at least accepted, must have convinced him through whatever means to carry out the execution, regardless of the prisoner’s seeming innocence. Again, Caiaphas stands out as the most likely candidate to influence Pilate in such a decision. He and Pilate had served together in their individual roles longer than any other high priests and prefects had managed to do, nearly ten years. If any Mosaean had Pilate’s ear during his tenure as prefect it would have been Caiaphas and if anyone could have assisted Pilate in controlling Jerusalem’s crowds, it would have been Caiaphas.

If Caiaphas had not been personally involved with Jesus as his father, if he had been just a high priest doing his job, the story of Jesus in the Gospels would have been much different. Jesus would have been arrested much sooner, perhaps before the start of the Passover festival, before Jerusalem had become swollen with crowds of pilgrims. Certainly, the Gospels suggest this in Mark 14; “It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him for they said ‘Not during the feast lest there be an uproar from the people.’” Yet no action was taken. Even earlier, when Jesus cleansed the Temple by driving out those who engaged in commerce on the Temple grounds and he upset the tables of the money-changers, no arrest was attempted, even though the Temple guards were on duty specifically to control just such an event and stop any outbursts just like that of Jesus’. They would have been literally seconds from him and could have affected his arrest quickly and easily. Yet again, no action was taken even though, as Mark 11:18 indicates, the chief priests and scribes were “seeking a way to destroy him.” Any normal high priest with Temple guards at his disposal would have arrested Jesus on the spot, if only for that singular disturbance regardless of any past history of heretical preaching, agitating crowds or threats to the peace. That Jesus was not arrested prior to his arrest at Passover is a clear indicator that Caiaphas was choosing the time and place of the arrest very carefully. Caiaphas must have told the Temple guards not to get involved during Jesus’ outburst at the Temple, and must have found plausible reasons to satisfy the chief priests, elders and scribes as to why he should not be arrested earlier. Jesus had to be arrested on the eve of Passover, at night when there would be fewer people in the streets and the risk of rioting would be far less, and he had to be crucified on Passover to establish himself as the sacrificial lamb. As Caiaphas himself indicates in John 11:50, “…it is better for you that one man should die for the people not that the whole nation should perish.”

While it is reasonable to suppose that Caiaphas could have accomplished his machinations and not been Jesus’ father, it is nearly impossible to imagine that a high priest not intimately associated with Jesus and his movement could have arranged things so neatly and conveniently coincidently. Yet it is also very difficult to imagine that Caiaphas, as the high priest and not the father, would have put himself at such risk and with so much to lose after nearly twenty years in his position, a tenure that must have been based on a conservative ideology. To be that successful, and by helping Jesus, a radical nationalist, (and especially in light of the fact that the closest followers of Jesus were people who were openly committed to the movement but fled at the first sign of real danger and so could not be trusted) Caiaphas, as high priest would have put in jeopardy everything that he had stood for and accomplished. Caiaphas moved in the other direction, in his role as Arimathea, and openly committed at a time when the danger from such a move was at its greatest, when Jesus had been convicted and executed and the authorities would have been on the lookout for others sharing his political views. It seems more reasonable to assume, then, that Caiaphas’ manipulation of events and Arimathea’s determination to care for the crucified Jesus stemmed more from a father’s connection to his son than from strictly political motives. Once Jesus had died on the cross, the chances are that the movement, at least immediately following the crucifixion, was dead and further association with its dead leader could only bring about greater scrutiny from authorities who were more likely to punish first and ask questions later. That political associates took it upon themselves at great risk to do these things seems less likely than if they were more emotionally connected, as a relative might be. That Caiaphas did pay a high price for his involvement with Jesus is born out by his removal as high priest very shortly after these events occurred but he could hardly have expected otherwise. He must have known his time as high priest was very short as soon as he went to Pilate and asked for the body of his son.

A further note of interest regarding Joseph Caiaphas as the biological father of Jesus comes in the form of his marriage to the daughter of the high priest Annas. Mentioned in John 18:13 when Jesus was taken to Annas to be interviewed, the comment is made that Annas was the father in law of Caiaphas which would have made Jesus’ mother, Mary, the daughter of Annas (Greek) or Hannan in Hebrew. It is significant to note that in early Christian writings, especially the Protoevangelium of James (which contains the earliest reference), Mary is traditionally considered the daughter of Anna (Anne) or Hannah in Hebrew. The coincidence of the Christian Mary having a mother named Hannah and the wife of Caiaphas having a father named Hannan is too striking to be ignored. Clearly, there was a very early tradition that Mary was the daughter of Hannan/Hannah (whether father or mother was either purposely altered or perhaps forgotten) and that tradition developed into the mistaken supposition by later followers that Hannah was the mother and was recorded as such in the Protoevangelium of James. The tradition recorded in that work also remarks that at the age of three, Mary was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem to be raised as a gift to God, thus placing her where presumably the daughter of the High Priest Annas would have spent some of her youth, in the Temple.

Further corroboration of the marriage between Caiaphas and Mary exists in the tradition of Mary’s virginity, so long debated in scholarly circles. All arguments to the contrary, Mary’s virginity was not solely a matter of theological importance regarding her son’s purity, although that was certainly a factor, nor was it originally meant as a factor in determining her future divinity. What was of great importance, at least initially, was that she was a virgin regarding her marriage to Caiaphas, a priest. Leviticus 21:13, which speaks to the sanctity of the priesthood, is very clear in its admonition; “The priest shall marry a virgin. Not a widow or a woman who has been divorced or a woman who has lost her honor as a prostitute, but a virgin, taken from his own people, shall he marry, otherwise he will have base offspring among his people. I, the Lord, have made him sacred.” Caiaphas, as a priest, was required by God to marry a virgin from his people. “From his people” would seem to indicate that his bride had to be taken from another priestly family, descendents of Aaron, who Mary, as the daughter of the High Priest Annas, certainly was. The concept of base offspring among his people, the priestly class, was a threat to the future of that class maintaining its sanctity in order to remain priests. Too many base offspring would dilute the pool of potential priests in all future generations, further limiting who might qualify for the priesthood. It was therefore essential that all priests marry virgins to insure the purity of succeeding generations. Mary’s virginity, as recounted in the Gospels, was initially just a means of confirming that Caiaphas’ marriage to Mary was sanctified and that their offspring were not base and were therefore qualified to assume the priesthood. That Mary’s virginity later became her outstanding quality and an adjunct to the divinity of both Mary and Jesus was simply legendary development based upon cultural expectations, that great men were born of gods sometimes through mysterious or divine means.

As in the case with multiple Josephs representing a single individual, such is also true of the Gospel Mary. The confusion about and profusion of multiple Marys within the Gospel stories has given scholars pause over the centuries as they tried to explain the implied and stated familial relationships between the women named Mary and Jesus.

Once again, tradition has prevented the truth from being seen, obscuring the historical events to the point of gibberish. The classic example of this confusion is recorded in John 19:25: “But there were standing by the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.” Upon initially reading this passage, the impression is made that Mary, Jesus’ mother, had a sister, also named Mary, who was the wife of Clopas while Mary Magdalene stood close by. The idea that two sisters from the same family might both be named Mary, while not entirely impossible (witness the Herod family for a similar confusion), seems highly unlikely based upon normal marriage practices with no divorces. Explanations for this seeming confusion ran the gamut from the assumption that the name Mary was actually an honorific title taking the place of ‘priestess’, thereby rendering all the Marys as priestesses, to a clarification of the lack of grammar available in Semitic languages, whereby Jesus’ mother’s sister went unnamed and Mary the wife of Clopas became a separate individual. Even given the fact that the name Mary was very common in the First Century, the statistical probabilities that three women out of a group of four would be named Mary seems unusual, even more so if the sister and Clopas’ wife were one and the same so that all the women standing by the cross were named Mary (and this does not account for Mary of Bethany who was also part of Jesus’ entourage).

However, the idea that all the women standing by Jesus’ cross were named Mary ceases to be a difficulty if, as with Joseph, they all represent the same individual, who was his mother. That Mary, Mary’s sister, the wife of Clopas or Cleophas and Mary Magdalene might all refer to the same person may seem unrealistic at first until tradition is stripped away and the various identifiers used for the women are examined objectively. For example, the name Clopas/Cleophas that is used in the different Gospels when rendered in Aramaic as qlp is surprisingly close to the Aramaic for Caiaphas, qyp . As has been noted above with the several names used for bar Kokhba, slight variations in spelling and meaning were used at that time to refer to the same individual, thus Clopas/Cleophas actually represents Caiaphas, making the Gospel Mary, the wife of Clopas/Cleophas, the very real wife of Caiaphas and the mother of Jesus. That coded reference is supported and strengthened by the fact that the inclusion of Mary Magdalene in the group refers not to Jesus’ imagined lover or wife or special follower, but to his mother, Mary the Magdalene, a further reference to the same woman.

It is essential when reading the Gospel stories to interpret them in the original Greek. Faulty transliteration and translation combined with the emotions of tradition have altered the meanings of many passages so much that the original meaning has been lost. In the case of Mary Magdalene this is abundantly clear. Though tradition would insist that she was referred to as Mary Magdalene, indicating that she was from the town of Magdala by the Sea of Galilee, this is not what was written in the original Greek. Throughout the Greek Gospels, this woman is referred to as Mary THE Magdalene. In fact, in all of the twelve separate mentions of her in Mark, Luke, Matthew and John (Mk. 15:40, 15:47, 16:1, 16:9; Lk. 8:2, 24:10; Mt. 27:56, 27:61, 28:1; Jn. 19:25, 20:1, 20:18), she is always called ‘the Magdalene’ except in Luke 8:2 where she is called “the one being called Magdalene”. In order for her to be referred to as being from Magdala, she would have been called Mary ‘from Magdalaia ’, just as in the original Greek Joseph of Arimathea was called ‘from Arimathaia ’, the ‘from’ and ‘aia’ ending indicating a place name. Mary is always referred to as “the Magdalene”, indicating that the reference is to a nickname as in Luke 8:2. The nickname that is intended is ‘tower’ from the Hebrew word migdal meaning tower, thus rendering ‘Mary the Tower’ or ‘Mary of the Tower’ (although some contemporary accounts endeavor to explain the use of Madgala as referring to both a town and a tower used for drying fish within the town, thus giving the town its name). However, such creative explanations do not account for the lack of ‘from’ and the ‘aia’ ending in the original Greek necessary to sustain the argument. Mary, Jesus’ mother, was referred to as “the Magdalene”, the Tower, just as her husband, Joseph, was referred to as “Caiaphas”, the Rock.

This realization would have been impossible without first understanding the actual familial connections between Jesus and Joseph Caiaphas and Caiaphas and Mary, the daughter of Annas the High Priest. Knowing that Joseph was married to the daughter of the high priest allows for a re-examination of an ancient document that sheds new light on their relationship and confirms their positions in society. The document in question, The Story of Joseph and Aseneth , so closely parallels the story of Joseph and Mary that it might have been biographical, which, in a sense, it was. Clearly it was written as a means of establishing and justifying Caiaphas as a man of prominence in opposition to the establishment but also as an apologetic to explain the marriage between two individuals from seemingly opposite political camps, Caiaphas from the Zealot faction and Mary (through her father) from the Herodian/establishment faction. In the course of telling the story, it also explains why Mary, the mother of Jesus, wife of Caiaphas and daughter of Annas would later be known as Mary the Magdalene.

The story of Aseneth is considered by some to be a work of Greek apocrypha of Mosaean or Jewish character with later Christian interpolations. It is, on its surface, an interpolation of the story of Joseph and Aseneth found in Genesis. The earliest extant version is in Syriac and dates from the Sixth Century CE but the original story, which most modern scholars regard as a strictly Mosaean work, dates anywhere from the First Century BCE to the Second Century CE, although some scholars see it as a fully Christian work dating from the fourth or fifth centuries. In the extant manuscripts it is variously titled: The History of Joseph the Just and Aseneth His Wife , The Confession and Prayer of Aseneth the Daughter of Pentephrethe Priest , and The Wholesome Narrative Concerning the Corn Giving of Joseph the All Fair, and Concerning Aseneth and How God United Them . The extant manuscripts provide two versions of the story in short and long recensions. The translation used here is from that done by David Cook (taken from H.F.D. Sparks, ed., The Apocryphal Old Testament ; Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 473-503)). It is, primarily, the Midrashic story of the conversion of Aseneth, the bride to be of Joseph, son of Jacob, into the Mosaean religion. Considering its parallels to the story of Joseph and Mary and its inherent apologetics regarding Mary’s familial relationships and her connections to the Jerusalem Temple, a narrower time frame for its creation would seem to be in order; most probably late in Jesus’ ministry to sometime shortly after his crucifixion (mid 20s to mid 30s CE) while Caiaphas might reasonably still have been on the scene. It is a parody of actual historical events and like the Gospels, should be viewed as biographical source material for Jesus and his family.

As written, the story develops in two parts: the first part records the introduction of the characters both to the audience and to each other, their initial mutual attraction, the nature of the initial conflict between the two, that Joseph as the ‘son of God’ cannot have any contact with the idol worshipping Aseneth and its ultimate resolution, that Aseneth, deeply attracted to Joseph, repents of her idol worshipping ways and through penance and prayer converts to Mosaeanism, thus allowing their union. Part two deals with the subplot of the piece, in essence the impact that the union between Joseph and Aseneth created for those around them, specifically her former suitor and the brothers of Joseph who when called upon by Pharaoh’s son, Aseneth’s rejected suitor, to aid in capturing Aseneth for himself are conflicted about Joseph’s involvement with an idol worshipper and the betrothed of the Pharaoh’s son. Scholars today see the tale as indigenous to Egypt (it is suggested that it was written there due to the internal evidence of its setting and characters) and see it as representative of Mosaean requirements for Gentile conversion, as well as an admonition against idol worship and for food purity observance in close and continuous proximity to Hellenistic or Gentile cultural threats; a cautionary tale to both Mosaean and Gentile populations of the difficulties inherent in such unions. While there is much to be said for such reasoned analysis, once the metaphors, place names and agendas are fully understood, the precise meaning of the piece becomes readily apparent.

It is the first part of the story that is most relevant in determining its association with the New Testament characters of Joseph and Mary because it serves as an introduction to Joseph and Aseneth. What is immediately apparent from the ancient titles of the piece is that Joseph is referred to as ‘just’ (or ‘righteous’ as the terms are nearly interchangeable). Joseph is called ‘Joseph the Just’ or ‘Joseph the All Fair’ (which is synonymous with ‘Just’) in the titles. This uniquely honorific title that is associated in the Mosaean culture with only the most respected and righteous of individuals is not attached to Joseph in the Old Testament accounts but is only a later embellishment that is first made in Jubilees , written as a Midrashic commentary on Genesis sometime during the reign of John Hyrcannus (135-105 BCE). While the use of ‘just’ as an honorific title in the story of Joseph and Aseneth may be a continuation of that usage found in Jubilees , there are other associations that seem more pertinent to the present discussion.

New Testament usage of the term is almost solely in connection with Jesus and members of his family. Jesus is referred to in Matthew 27:19 as a ‘righteous man’ by Pilate’s wife, (the Greek word used for ‘righteous’ being dikaio , the same word that is used for ‘just’) and Jesus’ brother, James, is repeatedly referred to as ‘James the Just’ throughout the New Testament. Joseph of Arimathea, who stands as an alter ego for Joseph and Joseph Caiaphas, is also considered a “righteous (dikaios ) man” in Luke 23:50. The most telling and pertinent reference to a ‘just’ or ‘righteous’ member of Jesus’ family is to his father, who is given the honorific in Matthew 1:19, “And her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame resolved to divorce her quietly.” In Jewish marriage tradition, the betrothal, which lasts two years, was considered a binding contract and could only be broken by formal divorce, so that even though Joseph had not yet married Mary, it would have been necessary for him to obtain a divorce from his betrothal. As will become evident, the ‘just’ honorific, attached to both Joseph, Jesus’ father, and Joseph, betrothed of Aseneth, are the first indications that the two are representative of the same man.

That Joseph, the son of Jacob, is used as a parody for Joseph, the father of Jesus, may seem an unlikely choice at first until it is remembered that the association is in fact to Joseph Caiaphas, the high priest, and very prominent member of the Jerusalem community. The Joseph of the story is described as a man of royal bearing who wore a mantle of purple, the color of royalty and thereby associated with the royal line of David. In a prophetic comment, Aseneth, in referring to Joseph, says, “ No captive shall ever be my husband but only the son of a king”, a clear reference to the Davidic line. Also adorning Joseph is a gold circlet or crown set with twelve stones (the twelve tribes) with each stone set with a golden star, a reference to the Star Prophecy and the reunification of the people of Israel. To complete the implication he holds in his hand the royal scepter, another reference to the Star Prophecy. Upon seeing Joseph for the first time, Aseneth remarks, “Behold the sun and the chariot of the sun. Certainly this Joseph is the child of God for what father could beget so fair an offspring and what womb of woman could carry such light”, hinting at the divine birth stories of Jesus and the prominence of Caiaphas.

Caiaphas, in his role as a high priest, a Zealot and a descendent of David, would have embraced the idea of the Star Prophecy, and the concept of reunification and would have rebelled at the incursion and ultimate dominance of a foreign power over his people. More than this, he would have rebelled at any form of government not strictly an absolute theocracy, including the contemporary Judaean establishment ruled by the high priests of the Great Sanhedrin who accepted Roman rule complacently. Within the story, the xenophobic attitudes of both Caiaphas and Mary are brought forward when Poti-phera, Aseneth’s father, introduces them. “Salute thy brother”, he tells her, “who hateth the strange woman even as you hateth man.” Even though Aseneth is represented as a confirmed virgin in the story, never having so much as seen another man, other than her father, and even though Joseph is represented as so completely righteous as to refuse an initial kiss from the idol worshipping Aseneth, the suggestion that they both hate members of the opposite sex is merely introduced as a metaphor for the deeper political and theocratic positions they hold. As was determined in the Gospel metaphors, women are used in stories to represent populations as a whole, while men are used to represent higher institutions and leadership roles. Seen in this light, their introduction and the comment by her father serve to delineate their positions, that Joseph hates foreigners or non-believers (strange women) and Aseneth hates men (all leadership or government that is not wholly and fanatically theocratic in nature).

Joseph, within the story as Caiaphas, shows that he is a high priest when her father commands that Aseneth kiss Joseph. As she moves towards him, Joseph places his hand on her chest and stops her further advance, saying, “It is not right that a man who worships the living God and eateth the bread of life and drinketh from the chalice without corruption should embrace the strange woman (un-believer) who bows down before deaf and dumb idols; who serves them with kisses of her mouth; is anointed with their reprobate oil and eats an accursed bread and drinks unsanctified wine from their table.”

These are references to what Caiaphas considered the extreme impurity of the Jerusalem Temple during the First Century brought about by the Roman invasion and subjection of the Mosaean people and to the inability or unwillingness of the Mosaean authorities to protect the Temple purity. Aseneth, as Mary, the daughter of Annas, is infected with the same impurity through her father’s acquiescence of the situation and her life spent within the Temple grounds. Frustrated by Joseph’s rejection Aseneth begins to cry, at which point he takes pity on her and “blessed her, laying his hand upon her head”, the act of a high priest (Caiaphas) absolving her of her sins.

While the parallels between Joseph and Caiaphas are important to the full understanding of the story, it is really through the parallels between Aseneth and Mary that the connections between the parody and history are reinforced. Aseneth, the daughter of the high priest Poti-phera lives in a tower located in the city of Heliopolis/On. She is a committed virgin until she sees and meets Joseph, son of Jacob. Joseph is a distinguished and trusted member of the Pharaoh’s council, a man of great prestige who is misogynistic (xenophobic) in his views and one who is extremely righteous and pious in all facets of his life. She is of royal blood (Davidic ancestry) because within the story she sleeps on a purple coverlet. Seven virgins also live in the tower with her and it is made clear within the story that she and her family are quite wealthy. It is suggested within the story that she seemed rather “to be a daughter of Israel rather than an Egyptian” and she is compared favorably to the assets of Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel, Mosaean women of renown, rather than to any Egyptian goddesses or queens. Though at first she is considered by Joseph to be an idolater and therefore impure, she is so attracted to him that she converts of her own volition to Mosaeanism through penance, prayer and observance of food purity, ultimately she marries Joseph.

The similarities between Aseneth and Mary, the mother of Jesus, can more easily be seen in the following chart:

Aseneth Mary the Magdalene

Father: Poti-phera, High Priest Annas, High Priest

City: Heliopolis/On Jerusalem/ Temple

(On= ‘place of many pillars’) (Temple was a place of many pillars)

Home: Strong tower (Heb.: migdal) (Magdalene: ‘of the tower’)

Attendants: Seven virgins Seven demons

Betrothed/husband: Joseph, son of Jacob Joseph, High Priest, and counselor to Pharaoh of the House of Jacob and

Counselor to Annas

Ancestry: Of royal blood Davidic line/royal blood

Proselyte: Converted from paganism to Converted from Herodian Mosaeanism Mosaeanism to Zealotry

Divine intervention: Angel informs her Gabriel informs her of her of her future marriage to Joseph conception with Jesus

Divine relationship: Wife of the ‘son of Mother of the ‘son of God’

God’

A further curiosity that links Aseneth (as Mary the mother of Jesus) directly to Jesus is that when first informed by her father that she is to be given in marriage to Joseph (chapter four), the stress of the realization causes a ‘great red sweat’ to come over her, echoing the bloody sweat that Jesus produced while under great stress in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44). The medical term for such a physical reaction to stress is called ‘hematohidrosis’ (alternatively, hematidrosis or hemathidrosis), a condition whereby the capillaries near sweat glands burst allowing blood to mix with sweat before reaching the surface of the skin. It is a very rare condition that is not fully understood, though apparently when it does occur, it is in conjunction with intense stress. That Aseneth and Jesus both should have attributed to them bouts of bloody sweat in the absence of any other biblical or extra-biblical references to the condition is very telling, and when taken together with the other coincidental connections between Aseneth and Mary would seem to draw a line between mother and son. Whether or not there are any genetic links indicated by the coincidence is impossible to say, although that would appear to be the case based upon the rarity of such occurrences and the non-existence of any other biblical mentions. However, as will be discussed in a later chapter, there is every reason to believe that the shared occurrence of hematohidrosis for Aseneth and Jesus is based upon a genetic link of a different kind, one that is passed down from mother to child.

Furthermore, Aseneth in her early incarnation as the goddess Neth, was the mother of the Sun god Ra, one of the chief Egyptian deities and ultimately the model for monotheistic belief. Since Neth was never associated with any male deities who might have fathered Ra, she was known in antiquity as the Virgin Mother Goddess, thus presaging Mary as the Virgin Mother and consequently drawing another line of coincidence between the two. Yet the eleven strands of coincidence outlined above could hardly have been incidental. There was a purpose to the characteristics chosen to elaborate Aseneth’s character, characteristics that closely mirrored those of Mary the mother of Jesus. Eleven profound similarities between two people, whether the people were fictional or real, could not have been accidental. Aseneth and the characteristics used to describe her was designed as a metaphor for Mary in order to tell the real story of Jesus’ parents, just as the Gospels are metaphors used to tell the real story of Jesus’ political ambitions.

If Egypt in the Aseneth account represents Jerusalem in the historical account and the city of On, meaning, literally, ‘the place of pillars’, represents the Jerusalem Temple, which was a structure surrounded by colonnades of many pillars, the parallels between the two stories become quite clear. Poti-phera, the high priest and father of Aseneth, becomes Annas, the high priest and father of Mary. Joseph, the son of Jacob, becomes Joseph Caiaphas of the House of Jacob and Aseneth, the proselyte, becomes Mary the Migdalene, wife of Joseph, mother of Jesus. That Aseneth lives in a tower (Hebrew: migdal) is mentioned numerous times in the story suggesting a greater importance to the fact than a mere fictional place of residence. Again, the fictional reference was meant to draw attention to the connection of Aseneth to the real Mary, who, as the daughter of Annas, may have lived in one of the towers of the Antonia Fortress at a time (sometime before the Romans billeted troops there and took complete charge of the facilities and the priestly vestments) when it was used both as a repository for the Temple treasure and as a palace for the chief priests and their families. It is important to understand that the Antonia Fortress (built by Herod the Great in 35 BCE) was meant to replace a prior palace/fortress on the same site built much earlier by the Hasmoneans. This earlier edifice, referred to as the baris (Greek for ‘height’ or ‘tower’) or Citadel by Josephus (War : 1, 3,3) was known in earlier times as the Birah , an Aramaic term that can mean either fortress or capital city, that, during the theocracy of the Hasmoneans, it no doubt was. The point is that the Antonia during Mary’s early years served several functions: as a palace or home to the high priest and his family, as a secure repository for the temple treasure or corban and as a military barracks for the Temple guards who watched over both the treasure and the Temple grounds.

Again, according to Josephus (War; 5,5,8:241), “The inward parts [of Antonia] had the size and form of a palace, it being parted into all kinds of rooms and other conveniences, such as courts and places for bathing and broad spaces for camps; insomuch that by having all conveniences that cities wanted, it might seem to be composed of several cities.” The references by Josephus to palace and camps seem to indicate the various uses for which the Antonia had been built, as both a place befitting the highest -ranking Judean official and also a place that would accommodate a necessary military force. As he continues, (245),”for the Temple was a fortress that guarded the city as was the tower of Antonia a guard to the Temple; and in that tower were the guards of those three [the city, the Temple and the Antonia].” That the Antonia was also the residence for the sitting high priest is confirmed by the fact that beneath the Temple, a secret passageway running from the Temple to the Antonia, existed in order to facilitate the movement of the high priest (no-one but the high priest would have been allowed entry into the Temple, so that the passageway could only have been meant for the high priest). Clearly, the Antonia was designed and used as both a palace/residence for the high priest and as a military camp/barracks for the Temple guards. It is only later when the Romans took control of the fortress, that the high priest was forced to live elsewhere, although the sacred vestments of his station appear to have remained within the Antonia under Roman guard.

That Aseneth was inferred to be living in the Antonia was remarked in the story from the beginning. Within the description of her living space, the tower and specifically the ten chambers of the top storey of that tower, is a description of the third room in which ‘all the good things of the earth’ or ‘the wealth of all the world’ are stored. Translation here is crucial and not all translators arrive at the same conclusion. In David Cook’s translation, the third room is referred to simply as ‘Aseneth’s store-house’ while in Eugene Mason’s version, (The Story of Aseneth , In Parentheses Publications, Old French Series, Cambridge, Ontario, 2001) the room houses “the aumbries of Aseneth”. The word ‘aumbries’ carries a much more specific connotation here than does ‘store-house’ since it implies a place of storage near the altar of a church for keeping sacred vessels and vestments, like a sacristy, and as such it is probably closer to the original intent of the story, that is that Mary lived very close to where the sacred vestments of the high priest were stored within the Antonia.

Further support for the connection between the historical Mary and the metaphorical Aseneth comes later in the story when an angel arrives as a spiritual guide. Once the angel appears to Aseneth to help her with her conversion he indicates that she should have a new name. The name he assigns is the Hebrew word Manos , which translated means ‘refuge’. This rather curious and obscure reference, while associated with the idea that as a result of her own conversion, many Gentiles or pagans would seek refuge under the wings of the divine Shekinah (Hebrew for district or neighborhood) has a deeper meaning within the context of the First Century. The implication to the name Manos refers to a ‘city of refuge’, a specific place or places set aside by Mosaean law to harbor fugitives that have taken someone else’s life in order to protect them from revenge killing by the family or tribe of the deceased, at least until the authorities had a chance to review the circumstances.

Initially, there were six accepted cities of refuge scattered throughout Palestine: Golan, Ramath, Bosor, Kedesh, Shechem and Hebron. However, during the time of the Roman occupation with the Mosaean hierarchy at least nominally submitting to their dictates, there is the suggestion that these cities were no longer accepted as refuges and that Jerusalem was then considered the sole city of refuge left. The Jerusalem Temple had been accepted as a place of refuge along with the six cities, but apparently only for priests. At the time the story of Aseneth was written, the implication seems to be that the Temple would serve as a place of refuge for all the people. This can be seen in the Syriac version of the account when the angel tells Aseneth, “…but you shall be like the walled mother-city (the Temple) for all who take refuge with the name of the Lord God, the King of all worlds.” If such is the case, the wings of the divine Shekinah stand for the porticoes of the Temple grounds and a place of refuge for those trying to find asylum not only from the blood vengeance of the relatives of the deceased, but more particularly from the chaos of war that loomed in the near future. That Aseneth was renamed Manos again connects her to the Jerusalem Temple, not to any locale in Egypt. Historically then, Mary, as Aseneth, was seen after her conversion to Zealotism, as a major figure in the movement, one who with her life long connections to the Temple would use the Temple in an egalitarian way as a rallying point or safe haven for all the people and not just the Temple priests.

Understanding the metaphorical connections between the story of Joseph and Aseneth and the historical context of Caiaphas and Mary sheds new light on the parents of Jesus and helps to expose the truth behind the traditions. Far from being poor, marginalized members of a society that viewed them as the lowest caste, they were instead members of the ruling class from not just prominent families, but from the Davidic line of ancestors from whom the longed for Messiah was destined to come. They were both of royal blood and both closely connected to the most important place in the Mosaean universe, the Jerusalem Temple. As far as Mosaean society was concerned they could not have been more highly placed or regarded and their marriage, though it resulted in a major schism within the ruling elite when Mary broke away from the Herodian hierarchy that must have been seen, at least at first, as the union of two great families, the House of Annas and the House of Caiaphas and also as the union from which the Messiah might come. Jesus was, by all reasonable criteria, presented within the Gospels as a king, a member of Mosaean, not Herodian, royalty, a son of wealth and prestige. He was feared by Herod the Great as the coming king of Judea. He was referred to as a descendent of the royal line of King David. Pilate asked him outright if he considered himself king and he was ultimately executed by the Romans for claiming to be king. The titulus atop his cross, labeled him as the “King of the Judeans”. He was taken to the rock cut tomb of a wealthy man that, as shall be explained later, was sealed by a round stone, indicating a tomb of wealth and royalty. In John 19:39, Nicodemus brings a 75 pound mixture of aloe and spices to dress Jesus’ corpse, the amount and its inherent cost making it clear that the mixture was intended for a royal burial.

Additional confirmation of Jesus’ elevated status within Mosaean society comes from the story of his nativity in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 2:8-21, the presence of shepherds is a metaphorical reference of the time for heads of state or men in leadership roles. Philo records in On Joseph that the characteristics of a shepherd were synonymous with political leadership:

(1) “Accordingly, proceeding in regular order, I will now describe the life of the man occupied in civil affairs. And again, Moses has given us one of the patriarchs as deriving his name from this kind of life, in which he had been immersed from his earliest youth. (2) Now this man [Joseph] began from the time he was seventeen years of age to be occupied with the consideration of the business of a shepherd, which corresponds to political business. On which account I think it is that the race of poets has been accustomed to call kings the shepherds of the people; for he who is skillful in the business of a shepherd will probably be also a most excellent king, having derived instruction in those matters which are deserving of inferior attention here to superintend a flock of those most excellent of all animals, namely, of men. (3) And just as attention to matters of hunting is indispensable to the man who is about to conduct a war or to govern an army, so in the same manner those who hope to have the government of a city will find the business of a shepherd very closely connected with them, since that is, as it were, a sort of prelude to any kind of government.” (On Joseph, 1:1-3)

Philo’s connection between shepherds and political leaders makes it clear that during the first part of the First Century (at least) such a metaphor was known and probably was an idiom of the time. Again, as with much that was written in the Gospels, nothing can be taken at face value. A deeper, metaphorical meaning was always just beneath the surface, so that the story could be told but in ways that were obscured from the uninitiated. The same is true of the story of Joseph and Aseneth. Beneath the metaphors the true story of Jesus’ parents lies recorded, there for the initiated to read and recount without fear from Rome or any political rivals.

It is interesting to realize that while on the one hand the Gospel writers were intent on obscuring much of the truth behind Jesus and his activities, on the other hand they were quite prepared to openly proclaim much that was true and accurate about him. This seeming contradiction in their approach might be misinterpreted at first to conclude that the kingly references were designed to be read as a spiritual office in the ethereal kingdom yet to come, and not as the earth bound and very real seat of authority it was, until it is understood that the Gospel writers were also intent on thumbing their noses at their Roman overlords. Though much of the message was hidden within metaphor with many of the facts of his life obscured, many of the facts, especially his kingship, were laid bare. In this way, the Gospel writers could secretly taunt their oppressors with the knowledge that if they, the Romans, had only taken the gospel stories more seriously they would have understood the seriousness of Jesus’ movement and its threat to their authority at once. That they were still questioning Jesus about his kingship right up to his crucifixion indicates that they never fully grasped what Jesus was doing.

Traditionalists, Christian apologists and scholars will find it difficult, if not impossible, to discard the centuries old view of Jesus and his family and accept this new rendering of the man but that is only because the traditions about Jesus have become so ingrained that they are now nearly impossible to dislodge. If those who study, write, analyze and preach about Jesus continue to refer to some of the Mosaeans of the First Century as Jews instead of Judeans, if they choose to translate tekton as carpenter rather than builder, if they ignore or deny the root commonality between kephas and Caiaphas and that Mary was “the Magdalene” rather than being ‘from Magdala’, if they reject the idea that Jesus was a Judean in looks and speech and history rather than a Galilean and that his parents were people of the highest social and political standings, it must be realized that these are choices made from habit, tradition and desire not from facts. The refutation of the traditional Jesus (and by consequence the new rendering presented here) are based upon the same sources and works that initially were used to develop the Christian Jesus, primarily the Gospels and Josephus. What is different in this view is that nothing was taken at face value and it was not assumed that the Gospels were straightforward history or biography. Also, the Romans regained their place in the story by the nature of their impact on every detail of everyday life in First Century Palestine and its peoples. Nothing of political or social intent could have been written back then without first scanning it through the filter of Roman occupation, especially not the politically charged Gospels. Any public communication, from speeches to preaching to records of these activities, would have been self censured, encrypted or disguised in some way before it was exposed to the Romans. To ignore the Roman impact is to misinterpret the story. To interpret the Gospels without completely understanding the Roman influence on the writers of the Gospels and the Jesus movement itself is to miss their intended point. The Mosaeans were an occupied people, ruled over by a tyrannical empire. They lived and wrote accordingly.

MIRACLES

As presented in the Gospels, the miracles attributed to Jesus are a profound statement of his divinity and the uniqueness of his identity, a calling card as it were, introducing him as both god and savior. They define him in his role as Messiah, a man of special abilities and great power whom God has placed within the Mosaean community to right the spiritual ship of the people and prepare them for the coming Kingdom of God. Without the ability to perform these miracles, without the extra-human gift associated with the capability of accomplishing what Webster’s Dictionary defines as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs”, Jesus becomes little more than a rabbi of the First Century, a teacher of profound but not unique truths, an itinerant teacher, a socio-political agitator. The miracles, especially the resurrection, are a cornerstone of the Christian faith, foundational references to occurrences upon which the entire belief system rests and without which the divinity of Jesus falls into serious and irrevocable doubt. That the faithful who support and reinforce Christian tradition are reluctant to thoroughly examine these events is hardly surprising given the potential risks for exposing Jesus as less than divine. Nevertheless, and as heretical as it may seem, the miracles associated with Jesus should be re-examined with a critical eye and, in light of his political aims, in the context of his times.

Examples abound of Christian apologists either glossing over the topic entirely, knowingly or unknowingly disregarding pertinent facts and clear cut cases of obvious magic, or of viewing the subject so esoterically that they transform the study from a practical examination of the actual miracle stories ascribed to Jesus into a philosophical dialogue about the dynamics of belief in miracles in First Century Palestine and throughout history. Such casual, nuanced or deceptive handling of such an important topic can only lead to one of two conclusions: that Christian apologists, bible scholars and historians are afflicted with the ignorance of blind faith or they are consciously trying to obscure the truth. A quote from Christian illusionist Brock Gill captures the current Christian attitude towards Jesus’ miracles precisely: “Yes, it is possible for modern day magicians to imitate Jesus’ miracles but only by using high tech equipment and advanced scientific knowledge… all of which were unavailable during Jesus’ time. How was Jesus able to perform them? Only someone with God’s power can do such things,” (from the DVD Miracles of Jesus by Brock Gill). Such a naive approach to this subject, especially by someone promoting a Christian agenda, is endemic in Jesus studies and shows the cultural egotism that hampers the search for the historical man. Just because Jesus lived two thousand years ago does not automatically guarantee that the culture of the time was any less sophisticated in their thinking or their approach to life and certain technologies were in fact available to Jesus that aided him in performing his miracles along with scientific knowledge in the form of botanical knowledge that was also available. Some of the miracles were accomplished by basic tricks using age-old magic fundamentals like slight of hand and misdirection, and some were not miracles or magic at all, but were simply staged events meant to convey miraculous power.

Another interpretation suggested by many scholars is to discredit the miracles by claiming that they are merely the attempt by the Gospel writers to incorporate Old Testament events into the story of Jesus, a continuum of miracles, as it were, that link Jesus with the biblical past. The idea that the miracles of Jesus had precedence in Old Testament miracles is not new and certainly the association of many of his miracles with events and miracles from the biblical past is obvious and obviously purposeful and meant to increase his significance and stature with his audience. They serve as a double affirmation of his divine existence; the miracles themselves as actual events that people witnessed and the miracles as echoes of the Old Testament prophets. As many scholars have noted, many of Jesus’ miracles seem to be drawn from the Elijah-Elisha cycle of the Old Testament and therefore should not be assumed to be original events in his life. The problem with the fundamental argument of those scholars, that the Gospel miracles represent a fictional construct based solely upon Old Testament stories and are therefore nothing but fiction is twofold: the motives of the Gospel writers can never be ascertained; did they create the miracle stories as a completely fictive attempt at elevating Jesus to the level of Old Testament prophets or did Jesus knowingly set up and perform miracles based upon the Old Testament examples in order to impress his audience and position himself as an equal to Old Testament prophets? Secondly, the inherent political messages of some of the miracles would seem to argue against a strictly Old Testament connection and would seem to indicate a conscious effort on Jesus’ part to incorporate an Old Testament connection in order to strengthen his message. Just as modern politicians often point to politically relevant predecessors in order to strengthen their positions and policies, so too, Jesus may have encouraged his own connection to past prophets by duplicating certain of their miracles in order to confirm his righteousness and to strengthen his political position. That the Gospels record these events as divine miracles again simply speaks to the need of Jesus and his followers to obscure the real message and to promote the messenger. With that in mind, it is necessary to re-examine several of Jesus’ miracles to determine their actual meaning, and while they may be referred to as miracles, there is much more of magic and metaphor at their core than divine intervention.

The miracles of Jesus, whether they are healings or restorations to life or mass feedings or turning water into wine, fall roughly into three categories: magic, pseudo miracles and metaphors, each one serving an important function of his ministry. Sometimes, these categories may overlap in one event, as when a show of magic as a means of inspiring awe may also carry a deeper message through metaphor, but almost invariably each miracle event can be recognized as fitting one of the three categories. Jesus manipulated these events in order to both bolster his credibility as a “doer of wonderful deeds” and to advance his political agenda. Gender roles, as mentioned above, can be used to determine underlying content, as can names, ages, time spans and Old Testament coincidence. These factors help to establish in some cases the specific time frame of the message/event within a few years, while in other cases they simply serve to send the message. In some cases the interpretation required to fully understand the individual message may be lost to us, as Jesus’ teachings were very much time and place specific and many of the contemporary references that he would have used with his audience have been lost or are too vague to establish their true meaning. Enough are left, however, to clearly grasp the underlying meaning in many of his miracles. In a few cases, the focus of the event is so specific that it leaves little doubt about the human agency involved with its operation, making it obvious that these events are marked by the touch of a human, not divine, hand and that they are from a specific time and place, thereby lending considerable weight to the idea of a real, historical individual.

The first and most obviously manipulated ‘miraculous’ event that needs to be re-examined is Jesus turning water to wine at the marriage in Cana. It is, along with the feedings of the masses, one of the best known of Jesus’ miracles and is, perhaps, the single most important of the miracles performed by Jesus in that it establishes his divine power very early in his ministry according to the Gospel of John (the story is absent from the Synoptics). It is an iconic event and is seen as one of the seven miraculous ‘signs’ by which Jesus’ divine nature is confirmed. Because the miracle took place at a marriage feast, the event is often put forward as confirmation that Jesus was married (various intrinsic items being taken as indicators that Jesus was the groom), though this analysis is tentative at best (Jesus leaves his own wedding, apparently with only his disciples, to continue teaching elsewhere). The location of the historical (traditional) Cana, like Nazareth, is also speculative and therefore tentative, with several possible archaeological sites proposed (archaeology can neither confirm nor deny any of the sites as being the Gospel Cana), though tradition accepts that the town existed and was a real, geographical location. What are of primary interest, however, are the stone jars that held the water and the wine. Understanding the jars will help to clarify the intention of the pericope, will help to decipher the metaphor behind the ‘miracle’ and will help to resolve the question of divine intervention.

According to John 2:6, “…there were six stone jars there for the Judean rites of purification each holding twenty or thirty gallons.” Aside from the large capacity of water the stone jars represented (a maximum of 180 gallons), it is important to note that they were made of stone. Due to Mosaean purity rites, stone was the only material suitable in which to store the water necessary for the rites. Unlike clay jars or animal skins or other vessels, which might absorb a measure of whatever liquid was kept in them, stone was considered to be impervious to cross contamination, so that the water kept in stone jars maintained its purity. As a result, however, stone jars, in comparison to other vessels, were difficult and time consuming to produce. Clay vessels could be formed by hand and animal skins could be sewn into shape, but stone jars had to be shaped and finished slowly, laboriously and often on a lathe. Because they were somewhat labor intensive to manufacture, they would have been costly to produce and own. Six of the jars would have represented no small investment, especially large jars like the ones in John’s account and jars like that, configured to turn water into wine would have been more costly still to make because they required extra work and special knowledge. Their appearance might have been different from other stone jars of the time, perhaps incorporating large handles and some form of spout and internally they would have been much different, bisected down the middle making two separate chambers. No doubt, once they were used to turn water into wine, they would have been taken away secretly and destroyed to preserve the nature of the ‘miracle’. The Cana jars are known today as Heron’s amphora and they were designed two thousand years ago as a simple magic trick.

Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician, engineer and hydrologist who lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria during the early part of the First Century C.E. The exact years of his birth and death are unknown, but it is thought by historians that he was active during the years 10-70 C.E. or very nearly contemporary to Jesus. He is credited with inventing the first steam engine, the aeolipile ; the first coin operated vending machine for use in a temple and the wind wheel, the first wind-powered machine. It is difficult to be exact in his biography because very little material exists recording the specifics of his life. What is known of him primarily comes to us second hand from other sources that referred to his work that was copied from ancient texts since lost, that contained his notes on various subjects and inventions. It is known through such sources that he had designed cleverly engineered amphora that allowed either of two fluids to flow by occluding or opening hidden holes; Heron’s amphora [See Fig. 1]. Whether or not he was the first to invent the trick amphora or whether he merely was the first to record and develop an existing technology and so lay claim to it is unclear. What is important to note is that the knowledge and technology necessary to create the trick amphora was available in Jesus’ time [See Fig. 2&3]. Not only was such information available during Jesus’ life, but he and Joseph would have had access to it in Alexandria, the largest Mosaean community of the First Century, when they traveled to Egypt.

That Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt is recorded in the Gospels, although their reasons for the trip may have been clouded by the Gospel accounts blaming Herod the Great and Herod Archelaus for their departure, return and subsequent move to Galilee. What is not recorded is where in Egypt they went or how long they stayed. The Gospel accounts seem to indicate that the family left Bethlehem shortly after Jesus’ birth that would have been in 6 B.C.E., although a date of 4 B.C.E. is not out of the question based upon the death of Herod. Also, their return, based upon Herod’s death, may have been as early as 4 B.C.E. or soon after and their move to Galilee based upon Archelaus’ ascension to his father’s throne might similarly have taken place early, in 4 or 5 B.C.E. However, it seems unrealistic to assume that a young family burdened by poverty would make the lengthy walking trip to Egypt, back and forth in so short a period of time. The presence of Archelaus as ruler of Judea from 4 B.C.E. to 6 C.E., the mitigating situation that directed the move to Galilee, could be construed to imply that the family’s return might have taken place at any time during those ten years. Regardless, the dearth of information about Jesus’ childhood allows for the fact that the family may have spent a considerable time in Egypt, certainly long enough to become acquainted with two of the main centers of learning and healing in the ancient world; the library at Alexandria and the nearby Lake Mareotis, the enclave of the Therapeutae, a Mosaean sect somewhat like the Essenes.

What is of interest is that given the Gospel reference to Egypt, Joseph and Jesus as a young child, were physically in Egypt at a time when Heron might have been constructing his amphora, and even if Jesus was too young to learn anything substantial, Joseph certainly was not and could easily have been exposed to the trick of the miracle amphora, knowledge that at a later date he could have presented to an older Jesus. Even if Joseph and Jesus preceded Heron in Egypt by a number of years, it is still within reason to assume that they found access to the knowledge of the amphora through other means, before Heron laid claim to an existing technology. Likewise, Joseph’s exposure to the extensive knowledge of drugs, medicinal plants and cures of the Therapeutae, who were considered to be some of the finest physicians of their time, was literally only a stone’s throw from Alexandria at Lake Mareotis, the two separated by a mere sliver of land. Although ancient sources are not specific about the location of the Therapeutae encampment at Lake Mareotis, it was no doubt in close proximity to the Mosaean population in Alexandria, or at the very least, in close enough proximity as to make convenient accessibility reasonable. The accessibility to these stores of knowledge would have presented a profound opportunity for Joseph to learn and develop the abilities necessary to both train and aid Jesus in their attempt to restore the United Monarchy of David, and since the family was not poverty stricken but of royal and priestly lineage they would have had the means to acquire whatever knowledge they sought through the help of tutors and specialists.

Given that Joseph and later Jesus had access to this technology, it is not hard to accept that they put their knowledge to good use as Jesus came of age and began to assume a leadership role in those groups, primarily the Zealots, who were dedicated to restoring national self determination and ridding their country of foreign invaders. As a first step in such a process, Jesus would have needed to establish himself not only as a righteous individual but as a man of great power and even divine selection, a man, not only qualified through birth right and ancestry to lead the Mosaean people but also one anointed or chosen by God to lead a fiercely nationalistic movement. The fastest, simplest way to achieve such recognition would be for him to perform miracles, acts of seemingly divine intervention that would cause the people, especially those involved in the Zealot movement, to take notice. Turning water into wine was, with the doctored stone jars, a simple and effective way to perform such a miracle, although the setting for the miracle was far from a marriage feast in a small town in Galilee; it was a gathering of Zealot leaders.

The metaphor of a marriage served once again to hide the truth from the uninitiated yet allowed those people in the know to understand what had taken place. As mentioned earlier with the multiple marriages of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, marriages in the Gospels often stood as metaphors for political leadership roles. The marriage at Cana was such a metaphor, proposing as it did the ascension of Jesus to the role of leader of the Zealots. One of the reasons he is often suspected of being the bridegroom in this story is because he is in control of events that as a mere guest he would not have controlled (his control over the steward and those servers handling the water jars), but the truth is that he was in control of those aspects of the ceremony because he was controlling the performance of the magic trick in order to impress the Zealot leaders. It is important to remember that Cana, like Simon the Canaanite or Zealotes or Kanaanean, was another form of the word for Zealot, a sort of shorthand that would have been understood by the initiated to represent the movement and not some small town. The marriage at Cana then becomes the election of a Zealot political leader. Since Jesus is presented as being in control of some of the proceedings, it must be assumed that the election refers to him. That his mother is present and directs him to perform the miracle indicates her support, as the genealogical link to the Davidic line, for his ascension, a role no peasant woman from Nazareth could have hoped to assume. It is only Mary’s royal lineage and consequently Jesus’ that allows them to assume their positions of control within the ceremony and subsequently Jesus’ leadership of the Zealot movement.

The Gospel story does not indicate the size of the metaphorical wedding or how long it lasted (traditional Jewish weddings can last for a week) so it is difficult to determine the number of people involved. The total volume of water and wine necessary to fill the stone jars would seem to indicate that there were many people in attendance. Six stone jars with a possible maximum capacity of 180 gallons of water would imply that the jars were for use by a single wealthy household, were gathered from individual residences or were either brought to Cana specifically for the marriage feast. Each jar probably stood about three and a half feet high (similar stone jars of the First Century found in the ruins of the ‘Burnt House’ in Jerusalem with smaller capacities of only seventeen gallons stood at two to two and a half feet tall) and might have weighed well over one hundred pounds empty. The weight of water is eight pounds per gallon, so that the jars when full would have had an extra 240 pounds added to their dry weight for a possible total of nearly 400 pounds each. These were not vessels that could be moved or tipped easily. The volume of wine necessary to perform the trick would have been half the volume of the jars, 90 gallons total or 15 gallons per jar, a substantial quantity that would have rendered 1,920 6oz. portions (or 2,880 4oz. portions) and this volume would have been in addition to the wine already consumed at the feast. Even if the marriage feast lasted many days, the number of guests must have been quite large to require that much wine, perhaps more than the entire population of a small town like the traditional Cana.

An interesting and important insight into this story is the greater understanding it gives as to the nature and depth of the organization that Jesus had at his disposal. Far from being a rustic carpenter from Galilee, Jesus’ ability to plan, set up and perform the trick of turning water into wine shows him to be an individual who was well supported both financially and physically. A poor rabbi from Galilee could hardly have had the means to manufacture six expensive stone jars or afford the manpower to transport and oversee them or the wine to fill them. It either took a fair investment of money or the dedicated assistance of political followers or both to set up and perform this trick. Jesus could not have done it alone. A group of well-organized and extremely loyal followers must have worked behind the scenes to enable Jesus to turn water into wine and then destroy any evidence of the trick. The fact that Jesus rose to the prominence that he did indicates that those people working behind the scenes were accomplished at their tasks. No one ever spoke of the deception, no one discovered the trick, and no one stopped Jesus’ rise to power by claiming fraud. Money may have bought cooperation and probably did, at least as far as the manufacture of the stone jars and the purchase of the wine was concerned, but only a shared dedication to a political view could have bought lasting silence. The trick became a miracle.

Could the story be nothing more than metaphor or myth? Could it truly be a miracle? Perhaps, but several things stand out that seem to indicate otherwise. It is hard to imagine that a completely fictitious, mythic or miracle event such as this would incorporate into its story something as prosaic and human as a magic trick to promote its main character’s abilities. If it is important to proclaim the miraculous capabilities of Jesus within a gospel why settle creatively for turning water into wine? Why not have him perform something really awe inspiring or profound, like parting the Red Sea or moving a mountain? This same argument can be applied to many of his ‘miracles’. They are, in a sense, mundane, earth bound and easily explained, certainly not beyond human understanding or machinations or the divine interventions into human affairs. If an all knowing God chose to have Jesus turn water into wine in an attempt to announce His earthly presence, wouldn’t that God have been aware of Heron’s amphora too, and wouldn’t that knowledge have suggested that perhaps a greater, less suspect miracle was called for? In other words, why would God choose to perform a miracle that could so easily be duplicated by a simple trick? Doesn’t the very nature of a miracle presuppose that it cannot be a trick or of human intervention, throughout eternity? Is there ever a statute of limitations on God’s miracles that they remain miraculous even past the point where human knowledge and technology can simulate the same miracle? Is a miracle of the First Century still a miracle if we humans can perform the same feat in the Twenty First Century? As long as the physics of fluid dynamics makes Heron’s amphora work, the ability to seemingly turn water into wine ceases to be a miracle. Jesus needed to perform a magic trick in order to impress the witnesses with his extraordinary powers. To suggest that he performed a miracle in Cana is to choose to ignore the very real possibility that he was aware of the technology that made such a feat a practical reality.

While the trick of turning water into wine should no longer be viewed unquestionably as a miracle, it does help to establish Jesus as a real, historical figure. As mentioned, the idea that the writer of John’s Gospel would have chosen a fictitious event of such obvious human agency to present as the first wondrous sign of the coming Messiah seems to be a case of damning with faint praise. The miracle does not rise to the occasion; it is insufficient for its intended purpose and creatively vapid unless, of course, the miracle actually took place. The fact that the event was recorded by a Gospel writer suggests that, far from a failure of creative hyperbole, he was writing about an event that actually had happened. The event may have been recorded through metaphor in order to disguise its real intent, but the core of the story, the magic trick that is the foundation, must have occurred in real life. Put simply, if the episode was nothing more than an exercise in creative writing, why not choose something grander, more attention grabbing? By choosing to record a very human magic trick as miracle, the writer stepped away from creativity and wrote about a real event. Whether or not he incorporated the story from another source not associated with Jesus, from the life of some other miracle worker perhaps, or from some other written account of magic and cobbled it to his gospel about Jesus seems unlikely. That approach might have opened Jesus up to the charge of being just another miracle worker performing the same type of miracle others had performed and therefore hardly demonstrative of his divine uniqueness. Precisely because the ‘miracle’ is so pedestrian and so easily accomplished by human hands it seems to verify that it must have been an actual event, a trick that a real, flesh and blood Jesus could have performed.

It is possible, of course, that the entire episode is metaphor, that beyond the Cana/Zealot, marriage/ leadership metaphors used to convey the necessary political message, the water to wine trick was also a metaphor representing, as in the parable of new wine into old skins, that there is a change coming and that the old laws regarding purification are to be supplanted by a new code and that consecration with Jesus’ miracle wine will supersede traditional purification with water. Such a metaphor would be in keeping with Jesus’ lessons about changes in food purity rites and the need to disregard the dietary injunctions that the Mosaeans insisted would protect one from defilement. Certainly, changing water into wine falls into that category of metaphor. The problem with this view is that nearly all of the incidents in the Gospels can be placed in the same category, metaphor as reality, ultimately concluding with an imaginary Jesus and Gospels that are entirely fiction. The question then becomes, would people change their lives, and ultimately their behavior, based upon a work of fiction? As we have seen above and will continue to see throughout this work, there are many historical markers such as dates and historical personages buried within the metaphors that point to a real Jesus of the First Century. Just as nuclear physicists look for sub-atomic particles by looking for the path they have left behind, so too, when searching for the historical Jesus it is the evidence of his path, his impact on the people and the subtle shifts in the careers and politics of those around him that help to define his existence. The simple truth of a magic trick may be one of those markers.

One miracle story that is entirely metaphorical and consequently never happened is the feeding of the five thousand found in all four of the Gospels (Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17, Matthew 14:13-21 and John 6:5-15). It is the only miracle story other than the resurrection that is found in all four Gospels, and as a result seems to carry a special significance. Scholars have debated the reality of this episode and the similar miracle of the feeding of the four thousand and the real meaning of their intended messages. Numbers play a large part in understanding these metaphorical stories. Five thousand and four thousand, five loaves of bread and two fish, seven loaves and some small fish, twelve baskets and seven baskets of crumbs, groups of hundreds and fifties, all these numerical references have meaning and importance. Interpretations of these miracles are varied and not particularly conclusive in their views, ranging as they do from the traditional view of an actual miracle where Jesus manages to feed thousands of people with a scant amount of food, to biblical allusions of other feedings, to the suggestion that the crowds were subjected to mass hypnosis and were deluded into thinking that they had been fed, to various theological and religious metaphors that indicated the rise of Christianity and its ultimate supremacy over Judaism. These conclusions are vague and heavily influenced by the traditional view of Jesus and situate the miracles in the early Christian development period. However, when these stories are placed within their proper time and place (the mid thirties of the Common Era in Palestine before the advent of Christianity), and when they are evaluated within the proper context (the Mosaean nationalistic movement) they can be seen for what they are; communications that were meant to be disseminated across the land that delineated the structure and provenance of the military forces required by the nationalistic leaders, namely Jesus and the Zealots.

As in any culture that regards the accurate transmission of information to be essential to its well being, the memorization of facts is problematic, especially in those societies where the technology to record and share information is crude or non-existent as in Palestine of the First Century. The precise preservation of common history, genealogy, even simple record keeping in predominately oral cultures is dependent upon linguistic solutions to the pedantic rules of rote memorization. Although the Torah had been effectively handed down for generations through strictly oral transmission, information of a more immediate and temporal nature required other methods to insure its accurate communication. Just as nursery rhymes have recorded historical catastrophes (“Ring Around the Rosies” memorialized the Black Plague) and poems have helped in recalling dates of significance (“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”) and simple stories have preserved, through metaphor, essential, singular qualities (George Washington chopping down the cherry tree), the miracle stories of the mass feedings were designed to impart important information in a form that was easy to convey and to retain. They were also presented in a manner that hid the truth without being so obscure as to become lost in transmission. These stories were the keys to informing the general population about the military dispositions for the upcoming rebellion, where the troops were coming from, how they would be organized, how many could be expected. In effect, the stories were communiqués dictating the order of battle and Jesus, as the leader of the Zealot movement, was putting out a call to arms in response to his call for rebellion, “Talitha cumi! I say to you, rise up!”

In Mark and Matthew both feedings are recorded, while in Luke and John only the feeding of the five thousand is recorded. The uncertainty by many scholars over the inclusion of two seemingly identical miracles in Mark and Matthew with seemingly only minor changes disappears once their true purpose is seen. Both stories are necessary to fully understand the scope of what Jesus was trying to accomplish, and both stories, though separated within Mark and Matthew by other pericopes are really two parts of one whole. In Mark the feedings take place; after Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter (the call for rebellion), after Jesus is rejected in his home town (rejection of the United Monarchy by Jerusalem leaders), and after the death of John the Baptist (the second Messiah and co- leader of the rebellion), all signs that events are coming to a crisis. Also in Mark, the feeding of the four thousand takes place; after Jesus heals a deaf man in Decapolis (conversion of the Hellenized Mosaean leaders beyond the Jordan to the idea of the United Monarchy and the rebellion), and after Jesus accepts the faith of the Syro-Phoenician woman (conversion to the idea of the rebellion by the Phoenicians). As will be seen, the positioning of these pericopes prior to the miracle feedings are not accidental but are meant to help explain and reinforce the intention of the metaphors and the inclusion of the pericopes about non-Mosaean peoples and Helenized Mosaeans used as precursors to the miracles very clearly designated certain geographical boundaries. It is important to remember that Jesus’ first priority was not necessarily rebellion. His first priority was to re-establish the United Monarchy of David and Solomon. From that, rebellion and subsequently the defeat of the Romans would follow with God’s help.

Re-establishing the United Monarchy meant re-establishing its geographical boundaries and incorporating all the peoples within those boundaries into a united and unified whole; a nation. Of all the stories within the Gospels, none show Jesus’ attempt at reunification quite as clearly as the feeding miracles. Other stories speak to his attempts to seek unity between individual provinces and peoples, but the feeding miracles are the only ones that show his broad based efforts to include all the provinces and all the peoples that had originally made up the United Monarchy. This is shown clearly in the metaphor of the bread and fish, the five loaves of bread representing the five provinces extant during Jesus’ time (Judea, Idumea, Samaria, Perea and Galilee) that geographically made up a large part of the territory of David’s Kingdom and the bread a metaphor for David, born in the city of Bethlehem or ‘the house of bread’. The two fish represent those areas or city states not intrinsic parts of the original kingdom but contiguous to its borders (Tyre and Sidon) during Jesus’ time, identifying them as coastal locations against the Mediterranean Sea. The remaining lands of David’s, and later Solomon’s kingdom, those lands to the east of the Jordan River and Perea and to the north of Galilee (comprising what became Herod Philip’s tetrarchy during Jesus’ life), were accounted for in the feeding of the four thousand where the seven loaves of bread (David’s Kingdom) and some small fish represented the seven provinces (Decapolis, Auranitis, Batanea, Trachonitis, Gaulanitis, Iturea and Abilene) and some small city states around the Sea of Galilee, probably Hippos, Gadara and Bethsaida. The land areas represented by all these various provinces and city-states, metaphorically represented by bread and fish, more than cover those same land areas that made up David and Solomon’s kingdom that was the United Kingdom (see Fig. 5).

The idea that the metaphorical ‘bread and fish’ represented the geo-political divisions of the various provinces in Palestine at that time is demonstrated very subtly by a seemingly minor word choice between the two feedings. In the feeding of the five thousand, the Greek word used for basket is kophinos , which describes a small, wicker basket used by the Mosaeans for general purposes. In the feeding of the four thousand, however, the Greek word for basket becomes spuris , which describes a small, reed basket used by Greek speaking Mosaeans and Gentiles, also for general purposes. The difference between these two words of similar meaning is telling. In the miracle of the five thousand, designed to communicate to the Mosaeans of the five traditional Mosaean provinces, a Greek word of Mosaean etymology was used, while in the miracle of the four thousand, designed to communicate to those Hellenized Mosaeans living in the largely Greek speaking seven provinces, a Greek word of Greek etymology was used. This word choice is explicit in Mark 8:19-20; ‘“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand how many baskets (kophinos ) full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him “Twelve” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets (spuris ) full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him “Seven”.’ This subtle marker was purposefully left in to make a distinction between the two stories and between the two regions. Their inclusions were based upon the geographically separate audiences’ familiarity with the different baskets and to reinforce the distinction between the very similar stories.

The difference between the numbers of men being fed, four and five thousand, also reflects the difference between the geographical areas once it is understood that these men were a metaphor for the number of men to be supplied by the individual provinces and city-states to help establish the rebel army. The specificity of the numbers is too precise to reflect an incidental fact of a mass feeding. The point of the story could have been as easily made by an approximation such as, “and those who ate the loaves were about [author’s italics] five thousand men,” (Mark 6:44). The need to include an exact number was determined by the need of the rebel leaders to both firmly require of the provinces a conscription quota and also to know the precise number of troops that would be available. The intended difference between what was expected of the traditional Mosaean provinces (five thousand troops) and those of the Hellenized provinces (four thousand troops) was just that, a recognition that more could be expected of traditional Mosaeans than of the less committed Hellenized Mosaeans who were living beyond the Jordan. Traditional Mosaeans would bear the brunt of the fighting by a slight margin, but Hellenized Mosaeans were expected to do their fair share. This nominal equality in drafting troops from the provinces also helps to explain Jesus’ admonition to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” in Mark 8:15, the reference to leaven a metaphor for additional troops (as leaven increases the amount of dough for bread, the leaven of Herod and the Pharisees would increase the amount of troops available) that might be sent by the Pharisees and Herod (either Philip or Antipas, it is unclear from this remove to be certain) to join forces once the rebellion had begun. Those additional troops were not to be trusted, coming as they did from sources too closely aligned, too dependent on Roman support to be dependable. The holy war that Jesus envisioned was to be fought by righteous Mosaeans, not Roman lackeys.

The total number of troops under this system would have been, at a minimum, 63,000 (35,000 from the five traditional provinces and two Phoenician territories and 28,000 from the seven Hellenized provinces and city states), the exact number is uncertain because it is not known how many troops were expected from the city-states (the several small fish) which were also included. Perhaps a few more thousand could be expected, maybe as many as five to seven thousand more making a possible total of 70,000. An interesting coincidence at that time was that in 39 C.E. Herod Antipas was removed from power by the Roman authorities ostensibly on the accusation that he had a stockpile of enough weapons cached away to supply 70,000 troops. There is, of course, no way to determine if Herod’s equipment had been destined for the aborted rebellion planned by Jesus a few years earlier, but there is no other explanation for the cache of arms either. Further suggestion that these miracles were metaphors disguising their military nature is revealed in the disposition of the baskets of leftovers. In the feeding of the five thousand, five loaves and two fish rendered twelve baskets of crumbs while in the feeding of the four thousand, seven loaves and several small fish rendered seven baskets. If these items are metaphors for troops, the implication seems to be that the troops of the traditional Mosaeans were to be divided into twelve divisions and most probably commanded by the twelve tribal leaders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, while the Hellenized Mosaeans (the seven baskets of crumbs), were to be commanded by seven provincial leaders, perhaps due to their shared ability to speak Greek.

Another example that these miracles are metaphors for military arrangements is in the parallels between Mark 6 and the Dead Sea Scroll 4Q491, fragments 1-3, part of the War Scroll. The similarities between the two works help to explain the significance of the numbers in Mark and confirm that they were military divisions. The War Scroll fragment is a brief account about how the troops of the army of the Sons of Light were to form up on the day of battle:

“On that day, some men from all their tribes shall set out from their camps towards the House of Meeting….the [Priest]s, the Levites and all the chiefs of the camps shall go out towards them. They will pass there before… according to the Thousands, Hundreds, Fifties and Tens.”

(The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English , translated by Geza Vermes, Penguin Books, 2004).

In Mark 6, if ‘town’ is a synonym for ‘camp’ and if Jesus and his apostles are considered as the ‘Priests, the Levites and all the chiefs, the passages are strikingly similar. The men “from all the towns (camps)” run ahead of Jesus who is traveling by boat (a metaphor to indicate that he is free of the land and consequently politically disassociated from any particular province) and eventually meet up with him and his retinue. The men, in their thousands, are at once organized into groups of hundreds and fifties as if for inspection, much as the men in the War Scroll pass for inspection before their leaders on the day of battle. That Jesus, or at the very least the writers of the Gospels, seem to be familiar with the War Scroll seems a reasonable conjecture given the similarities of the passages, and it must be wondered what was the relationship between Jesus and or the Gospel writers with the people who wrote the War Scroll. Was Jesus familiar enough with the Qumran scrolls to incorporate them into his metaphorical teachings, or were the Gospel writers? While it is possible that the two passages are merely linked through coincidence, that seems less likely than Jesus, aware of the scroll and aware of some of the military strictures provided by it regarding the disposition of troops, simply incorporated some of them into his own commands. Whether or not Jesus’ familiarity with the texts was because he was a member of the Qumran community at one time is more difficult to say.

Certainly, the idea of miracles as metaphor and magic as evidenced previously, was part of Jesus’ teaching, a necessary component to his political agenda for reunification, but what of miracles as mystical interventions, pseudo miracles and healings designed to showcase his power and hint at his divine nature, can they too be explained? Jesus was almost as well known for his healings as he was for turning water to wine, feeding the masses and rising from the dead. Yet many of these miracles would hardly pass scrutiny today as anything more than artifice and sham, clever deceptions geared to make the unsophisticated gasp in wonder. As has been detailed, many of the miracles are actually metaphors, hidden lessons masking a political agenda. The restoration of sight and hearing miracles fall into this category as they are clearly metaphorical allusions to incidents of conversion; Jesus enabling someone or some group to cast off their doubts (their blindness or deafness) and fully embrace (through restored sight or hearing) the importance of re-establishing the Mosaean covenant with God and rebuilding the United Monarchy. What is interesting to note in these episodes is that while Jesus restores, he never replaces. No missing limb is ever replaced, no lost arm or leg ever miraculously reappears, no gouged out eye is ever returned to its socket, no person dead beyond corruption is raised to wholeness. As with turning water into wine, these are miracles of human agency that are used as metaphors to instruct those people who had been trained to decipher them. Real miracles, miracles of divine intervention in human affairs would have replaced a leg or an arm or put corrupted flesh back on bone. The rest of Jesus’ miracles, those designed to impress the people and glorify Jesus as divine, are nothing more than staged events.

An example of this is the ‘Raising of Lazarus’ story found in John 11:1, and while it may record an actual event, its design and purpose in the Gospel is to convince a First Century audience of Jesus’ divinity. This is stated very clearly early on in the pericope when Jesus states, “ It is for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” A clearer statement of intent could not have been made. Both in the actuality of the event (the historical occurrence) and the Gospel recording of it, the intention was to convince an audience that Jesus had divine power through his ability to raise the dead. However, as with changing water to wine, the human agency involved with the raising of Lazarus is so patently obvious that the suggestion this resurrection is anything more than a planned attempt to impress onlookers is tenuous at best. The people central to the event (Mary, Martha and Lazarus) were siblings from Bethany, all of whom were friendly with Jesus, had entertained him at various times in their home and one of whom, Mary, had anointed him with precious oil and another, Lazarus, was considered beloved by Jesus. These were not random strangers disconnected from Jesus and his movement. Far from it, they were individuals intimate with Jesus, closely associated to him and trusted enough to play their roles in helping to establish him as the Messiah (Mary’s anointing of Jesus) and his divinity (raising Lazarus). That they were a part of his inner circle seems certain. That they were a part of the movement to re-establish the United Monarchy seems equally assured.

It must be remembered that Jesus had miraculously healed from a distance before Lazarus became ill. In John 4:46-54, he had healed an official’s son many miles away, so it is curious that he was either unable or unwilling to perform the same act for a beloved friend. That he does not heal Lazarus from a distance is an indicator that a greater miracle was called for, that a more impressive, unambiguous show was required. The people of Cana and Capernaum who had witnessed his healing of the official’s son were a less skeptical lot, and more inclined to accept Jesus as a miracle worker, because of their unconventional thought and being less hampered by the ultra conservative Mosaean views held by most Judeans and Jerusalemites. A healing from a distance would not suffice under the skeptical eyes of conservative Mosaeans. Consequently, the raising of Lazarus was planned to take place in Bethany of Judea, two miles from Jerusalem, literally in the back yard of conservative Mosaean thought and practice. Jesus needed to resurrect the dead and he needed an audience of Judeans (preferably those same leaders who were planning his death) to witness the miracle so that they might accept him as Messiah and more importantly, he needed to be in attendance in order to be indisputably associated with the event. The resurrection of a person who had died from an illness was far easier to fake than one who had been killed violently or had suffered capital punishment. Feigning the death of Lazarus and subsequently faking his resurrection would not have posed any problems for Jesus and his followers and the potential benefits in terms of newfound prestige within the Judean community would have been enormous.

Like performing the water to wine trick, the raising of Lazarus from the dead required the behind the scenes efforts of committed followers to accomplish it and an audience to observe it. The family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus was ideally situated in Bethany to facilitate the deception and control the major aspects of the event; Lazarus to play the corpse, Martha and Mary to stay in Bethany in order to retain the crowd of Judean mourners (without Martha and Mary and with Lazarus safely in the tomb, there was every reason to anticipate that the crowd, in the absence of all of the principles, might have wandered away leaving Jesus, upon his arrival, without an audience). The fact that the mourners who had come to console Mary and Martha were pointedly referred to as ‘Judeans’ seems to indicate that they had arrived from somewhere else, presumably Jerusalem, since Bethany was located in Judea and the mourners would have been understood to be ‘Judeans’ because of that and there would have been no need to refer to them as such, they would have been simply ‘townspeople’ in the Gospel account. As has been noted above, with Johanan ben Zakkai and with Jesus, the idea of feigning death to accomplish specific goals was not unheard of in First Century Mosaean culture. It would have required very little effort for Lazarus and his sisters to feign his death in his own home and with his own family around him. Similarly, it would have required very little effort to prepare the body and have him buried in a cave tomb, that unlike traditional Western in-ground burials, allowed the person feigning death plenty of space and air to survive the burial for any number of days, the only limitations being access to food and water.

There is an oversight within the Gospel account that seems to confirm that Lazarus was in fact alive when he was placed in the tomb, a single oversight that is not found elsewhere in the story and one that is avoided neatly throughout the rest of the Gospels. Both Martha and Mary, although they seemingly had close contact with Lazarus during his illness and at his death and burial, retained their ritual purity throughout the episode, their implied contact with their brother’s corpse never making them ritually impure (tumat met ). The events as recorded in John would seem to corroborate this. The two women were in the house where presumably the sick Lazarus lay until his ‘death’, a fact that would have rendered them ritually impure. However, both seemed to move freely among the mourners, and Jesus and his disciples, when in fact, according to the customs of their times, had they been in a building or roofed structure that contained a corpse they would have been ritually impure (tumat ohel ) and would have remained so until they had obeyed the rites of purification, a combination of isolation, ritual bathing and prayer that would have lasted nearly a week and would have kept the women separate from others; relatives, friends and strangers alike. Assuming that Jesus was “across the Jordan” in “the place where John had been baptizing at first” (John 11:40), and that that place was nearly due east of Jerusalem, he would have been approximately twenty miles from Bethany when Martha and Mary sent word to him, one hard day’s travel away suggesting that Jesus was at ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’, the place where John first began to baptize, (John 1:28). Scholars and archaeologists have searched in vain trying to locate this ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’, ascribing to it locations up and down the Jordan River on both west and east banks without realizing that the name was merely a nickname used by Jesus and John for John’s original location on the Jordan on the Wadi el-Kharrar near the Hajlah ford.

‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ and Bethany near Jerusalem shared the commonality that they were both ‘houses of the poor’ (or beth ani in Hebrew) and as such were headquarters in a sense for Jesus and John. They shared topographical features as well, since both were located to the south-east of cities of major importance, (Jerusalem and Jericho), and were separated from those cities by similar topographical features; the seasonal watercourse of the Kidron Valley at Jerusalem and the Jordan River at Jericho, that meant that they both could be cut off from those cities during seasonal flooding. They were also both located on major travel routes that allowed for the broadest exposure to the population and the greatest ease in reaching them, the main road between Jerusalem and Jericho. The Gospel of John’s reference to ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ was not a reference to another city but to the seasonal camp (due to the seasonal flooding of the Jordan) east of the Jordan that John had established to perform his baptisms, a camp that was just as closely associated with John’s movement as Bethany by Jerusalem was associated with Jesus and his activities. Just as Richard Nixon had the nicknamed ‘Western Whitehouse’ in California in addition to the official Whitehouse in Washington DC, John and Jesus had ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ in addition to Bethany near Jerusalem. That being the case, if Jesus was at Bethany beyond the Jordan, it would have taken one day in an emergency for the message to reach Jesus; he stayed an extra two days beyond the Jordan and took one, maybe two days to reach Bethany, for a total of four to five days before he was with Martha and Mary, a time when they still should have been ritually unclean and isolated. The fact that they were able to greet Jesus directly and that they were surrounded by mourners indicates that either they had not been in close proximity to a corpse (either Lazarus had died outside of their house or Lazarus was not in fact dead) or that they were ignoring the purification rituals.

In direct contradiction to this seeming lapse on the women’s part is Jesus’ behavior upon reaching the tomb. In John 11:39, Jesus said, “Take away the stone”, ordering someone else to approach the tomb and touch it while maintaining his own distance in order to preserve his purity (the purity laws required maintaining a distance of four cubits or approximately six feet from a corpse or tomb). This maintenance of the required distance was important for the Mosaean audiences that would have first heard this story because they would have recognized that had he approached the tomb he would have been impure and would have required purification. This is in contrast to Jesus’ behavior when he was in the presence of Jairus’ daughter where he directly approached her bedside. The difference between the two episodes seems to be that in the raising of Jairus’ daughter she is said to be ‘asleep’ while Lazarus is known to be dead, the identifications serving to inform the audiences that in one case it would have been alright to approach the ‘sleeping’ body without recourse to purification, while in the other it was required to stay some distance from the ‘corpse’. The Gospel writers must have been acutely aware of any situations in their works that might have compromised Jesus’ purity, but must have been much less aware of the same threat to Martha and Mary as principles in this story.

Certainly one explanation for the behavior of Martha and Mary was that they knew that their brother was alive and so were not concerned with purity rituals, allowing them to move among the mourners and Jesus freely. In a very real sense the miracle was dependent upon one of Jesus’ followers, someone closely related to Lazarus and thereby emotionally invested enough to warrant heartfelt sympathy, remaining either at the house or tomb to maintain a focal point for the Judean mourners to gather about in order to witness Jesus’ arrival and his subsequent raising of Lazarus. Mary and Martha, as siblings of the deceased, fit the need perfectly. Without them and their ability to maintain the crowd of mourners, the miracle might well have been ignored, forgotten or called off. Whether or not the crowd of Judeans ever questioned the ritual purity of the two women is left unanswered, although the fact that the crowd seemed to stay in close contact with them would seem to indicate that they were generally unconcerned, or that the writer of John’s Gospel simply failed to take note of the possibility that audiences might consider the women to be impure. Either way, the omission of ritual impurity regarding Mary and Martha suggests that Lazarus was not dead. This is corroborated by the simplicity and human agency of Jesus’ actions in performing the ‘miracle’. Instead of moving the stone blocking the entrance to the tomb by means of his divine powers, as might be expected of someone about to raise the dead, Jesus was required to have someone else move the stone, and rather than any elaborate, hands on method of restoring life to the dead Lazarus, Jesus merely yells at Lazarus to come out of the tomb!

While such a simplistic and earthly approach to this resurrection may have been divine, the involvement of the three siblings who were friends and associates of Jesus, the lack of concern for ritual purity, the two or three days that the Judeans stayed in attendance after the burial (Lazarus must have ‘died’ on the day that Martha sent word to Jesus about his illness and would have been buried that day or the next and the crowd was still there upon Jesus’ arrival four days after the burial), and the indication by either Jesus historically or the Gospel writer theologically (or both) that this miracle had an intentional purpose, and was not an incidental happenstance, seem to argue that the raising of Lazarus was a concocted event meant to establish Jesus’ divinity. More than that, coming as it did a matter of days before Jesus’ own death and resurrection, it strongly suggests that this was a trial or practice run for his own escape from the tomb, with Lazarus standing in his place. Although the means of death would be quite different in the two events, the transportation of the body, and feigning of death, would be similar, as would be the time in the tomb and the reaction of any witnesses to the perceived resurrection. Mainly it would have been important for Jesus to know from Lazarus how the time buried in the tomb had passed, how he had coped without food or water, and how well he could move and behave after the experience. Was it too cold or too restrictive? Could any movement within the tomb be heard outside? Would dogs, sensing someone alive, show undue interest in the tomb? These were things that would have been of the utmost interest to Jesus.

Christian apologists, fond of establishing the veracity of the Gospel accounts through imagined legalistic examinations and scenarios, often claim that if the miracles of Jesus were subjected to the same type of rigorous scrutiny as any modern court case provides, the outcome will be always in favor of a divine intercession in the events. They also claim that when presented with the Gospel facts, a judge and/or jury, through lack of any more plausible explanation, will find in Jesus’ favor, confirming his divinity and his miraculous powers. The reality, however, seems to present a completely different perspective, that presented with the Gospel claims, the judicial reason and rationality assumed to be a component of modern court cases would render a different verdict. Presented with the back bone of modern rational criminal analysis, that is, the motive, means and opportunity of such cases, many of the miracles ascribed to Jesus would fall far short of the miraculous and would instead prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was human agency involved, that human, not divine, motives were at play. In the case of raising Lazarus, Jesus’ motive was clearly expressed (establishing his divine power), his means (the involvement of his friends and associates, Lazarus, Mary and Martha) were clearly on display and essential to the outcome of the event and his opportunity (the feigned death of Lazarus in Bethany, so close to Jerusalem and Jesus’ own timely arrival) all combine to cast enough doubt upon the incident as to warrant a mistrial but more probably a resolution against the miraculous. That tradition continues to avow these events as divine only confirms the need of the faithful to believe what they want to believe.