ENDNOTES

PREFACE

1.      Though people think her name was Mary Magdalene—that is, that Magdalene was her family name—the reality is that “the Magdalene” was a title, not a name. It may have served as a nickname but, literally translated from its original Hebrew/Greek, it means “Mary the tower lady.”

2.      B.C.E. stands for “before the common era;” C.E. stands for “common era.” Many scholars prefer these neutral designations of time to the Christian abbreviations B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord).

3.      James D. Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 44. For a discussion of the Didache, see also Barrie Wilson, How Jesus Became Christian. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 156–162.

4.      Tabor, op. cit., 46.

5.      The Hebrew Bible is called the Old Testament by Christians.

6.      Quoted in Margaret Starbird, “Templars, Tombs and the Resurrection,” Sacred Union in Christianity (blog), 19 May 2013, margaretstarbird.net/blog.html

7.      Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 225.

8.      Simcha experienced this kind of response when his film, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, and his book with Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb, came out in 2007 (New York: HarperOne). Basically, the film and book argue that a tomb found by archaeologists in 1980 in Talpiot, a suburb of Jerusalem, is the final resting place of Jesus and most of his family. Although many scholars supported the thesis, the idea of a Jesus-family tomb met with derision in many quarters. One year later, at an international conference sponsored by the Princeton Theological Seminary, fifty of the world’s top scholars could not find one thing in the film or book that they could all agree to publicly criticize. The conference passed only one resolution—that the Talpiot tomb needs further study. And yet, because of theological considerations and personal attacks in the press, both the film and the book were buried. Somehow, suggesting that a tomb has been found in Jerusalem belonging to a 1st-century Jewish family—if that family belongs to Jesus of Nazareth—is regarded in the same vein as suggesting that an alien landing site has been discovered. Nonetheless, Simcha’s 2012 film The Jesus Discovery/The Resurrection Tomb Mystery and the publication with James Tabor of The Jesus Discovery: The Resurrection Tomb that Reveals the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012) have gone a long way toward strengthening the original thesis.

9.      That is, John the Baptist. We prefer to avoid this potentially misleading expression, as if John were a member of the Baptist Christian denomination.

10.    Diane Apostolos-Cappadona refers to the process by which these encoding conventions get codified as “communal memory.” In the visual arts, for example, to this day, encoding a narrative is part and parcel of telling the story. In the words of Apostolos-Cappadona: “Over time, through artistic convention, recognizable codes developed: the Virgin Mary wears blue, Judas has red hair, Jesus appears in the center of The Last Supper, and Mary Magdalene is always seductively beautiful.” Quoted in Secrets of Mary Magdalene, Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, eds. (New York: CDS Books, 2006), 254.

11.    We know very little about Moses of Ingila (sometimes spelled Inghila or Aggel). According to William Wright’s A Short History of Syriac Literature (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1894), this Moses was a Monophysite Syriac Christian scholar who flourished around 550–570 C.E. (pp. 13–14). Wright further notes that this Moses translated Joseph and Aseneth from Greek into Syriac (ibid., 25) and also made a Syriac translation of Cyril of Alexandria’s work entitled Glaphyra (ibid., 112).

12.    Although there was a 12th-century Latin version of the story, in modern times the Syriac manuscript was translated into Latin in 1886 by Gustav Oppenheim. This version may not be helpful to most readers of this book.

CHAPTER 2

1.      C. Burchard, translation, “Joseph and Aseneth,” in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, volume 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 203.

2.      Ross Shepard Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 22.

3.      Ibid., 226. See also Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (Pantheon, 1953).

4.      Ibid., 228.

5.      Kraemer, op. cit., 37.

6.      Kraemer puts aside the scholarly near-consensus and states “the passage begins with a strange reference that led some earlier scholars to identify the text as Christian.” Instead of elaborating on this idea, she states: “the significance of this symbol and, indeed, the entire following scene, is not explained” in any version of the text. See Kraemer, op. cit., 38.

7.      For crosses on ossuaries see L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries: In the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: The Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994), 90 #56 (34.7753), 106 #114 (46.174), 223 #704 (80.503). In every instance, Rahmani tries to assure us that a cross is not a cross. For the most obvious cross of all, see Hannah M. Cotton, Leah Di Segni, et al., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinai, Volume I, Jerusalem. (De Gruyter, 2010), 289 #263. The cross is carved on a 1st-century ossuary but because the authors don’t believe that there are Christian crosses in the 1st century, they call it a “later addition.” This conclusion is based on no evidence whatsoever.

8.      Mark Appold, “Bethsaida and a First-Century House Church?” in Bethsaida: A City By the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee, edited by Rami Arav and Richard Freund, volume two, Bethsaida Excavations Project, Reports and Contextual Studies (Trueman State University Press, 1999), 383.

9.      For the cross at Herculaneum see C. Giordano and I. Kahn, The Jews in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae and in the Cities of Campania Felix, Bardi Editor (2001), 30–32. Also, Professor A. Maiuri lectured on this discovery before the Pontifical Academy of Archaeology in Rome in November 1939. He came to the conclusion that it was a Christian cult place and that the cross had become a symbol of veneration for Christians by 79 C.E. when Herculaneum was destroyed. See E. L. Sukenik, “The Earliest Records of Christianity,” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 51, no. 4 (Oct–Dec, 1947).

10.    Francesco Paolo Maulucci, Pompeii: I graffiti figurati (Bastogi, 1993), 194. Also, a clear, very large Christian cross was found in a Pompeii bakery. See Maulucci, Pompeii: Archaeological Guide to the Excavations of Pompeii with Itineraries, Plans and Reconstructions (Carcavallo, 1987), 69. Like Cotton et al., Salvatore Nappo was so perturbed at seeing this cross where it shouldn’t be that in his book on Pompeii he changed the cross to a pagan phallic symbol. S. Nappo, Pompeii: A Guide to the Ancient City (Barnes and Noble Books, 1998), 76. The idea, however, of pre-4th century Christian crosses is becoming a commonplace. Larry Hurtado, for example, sets the clock back to “as early as the mid/late 2nd century C.E.” He argues that the Staurogram, that is, the superimposition of the Greek letters tau and rho to create “a monogram-like device . . . [representing] a crucified figure hanging on a cross,” was well in use by the time of our earliest example of the Gospel of John on a papyrus, known as P66 (Biblical Archaeology Review, v. 39, no. 2 (March/April 2013): 49–52). Hurtado is right, but he seems unaware that a Christogram—the letters chi-rho referring to “Christ”—was found marked on an amphora at Pompeii, setting the clock on the Christogram back to the 1st century. See Maulucci, Pompeii, 191. See also Jacobovici, “Christians at Masada”: simchajtv.com/christians-at-masada/. The idea that crosses are not Christian symbols before the 4th century is still widely held among Israeli archaeologists who are a few decades out of step with historians of early Christianity. As a result, all kinds of clear references to Christians in the 1st century are overlooked.

CHAPTER 3

1.      This is British Library Manuscript Number 17,202.

2.      Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

3.      The dates are suggested by the text and Moses of Ingila’s letter. Many of the scholars who have studied the text (e.g., M. Philonenko) allow for a 1st century C.E. composition. Some, like Gideon Bohak, date it even earlier; wrongly, we think.

4.      The Cave of the Sleepers, by the way, can be visited in Ephesus, Turkey, even today.

5.      The Gospel of Mary [Magdalene] was not part of the Nag Hammadi treasure of documents. It was discovered independently, in Cairo, in 1896. Because of its subject matter—the religious authority of Mary the Magdalene over the apostles—and its Gnostic origin, it was probably also subject to suppression by the faction of Christianity that won imperial favor in the 4th century.

6.      See Ross Shepard Kraemer’s excellent book, When Aseneth Met Joseph (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). As Kraemer writes (on p. 6), “All our extant manuscripts of Aseneth are manifestly Christian (the earliest being seventh-century [sic] Syriac Christian), and we have no evidence that Aseneth was ever transmitted by Jews, or circulated by Jews, let alone composed by Jews.” Note, however, that the Syriac manuscript dates from the 6th century.

7.      Ibid., 24.

8.      For a discussion of the textual history of Joseph and Aseneth, including shorter and longer versions, see Burchard’s introduction in Charlesworth, op. cit., 180–181 and Kraemer, op. cit., Introduction.

9.      The copy in the British Library was clearly censored. At least a page and a half were cut out by a 13th century copyist. See discussion in the Appendix.

10.    For example, Mark confidently declares “Thus he [Jesus] declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). According to Mark, Jesus abolished kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws. Matthew’s Gospel, however, omits this phrase (Matthew 15:17). For him, Jesus had not abolished the dietary laws and they were still in force. This represents a major difference in understanding Jesus’ teachings and practices.

11.    See Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 90. As he notes: “There are more variations among our [New Testament] manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”

12.    Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark. Middleton, California: Dawn Horse Press, 2005. A translation of the secret ending to Mark’s Gospel is found in that book on pp. 14–17. The Secret Gospel was originally published in 1973 by Harper & Row.

13.    George Howard, Hebrew Gospel of Matthew (Macon, GA: The Mercer University Press, 1995).

CHAPTER 4

1.      Scholars date the original writing of all the canonical Gospels to the 1st century. The assigned dates for original composition, however, are all speculative and are based on arguments from “fit,” meaning we speculate as to which historical period they best fit into. We cannot prove that these were actually composed when scholars say they were. Even 2nd-century testimony is largely unhelpful. For instance, the church historian Eusebius tells us that Papias, in the late 2nd century, a man he describes as “very limited in his comprehension,” stated that “Matthew composed his history in the Hebrew dialect” (Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chapter 39). Even if Papias means that Matthew composed his Gospel in Aramaic (not Hebrew), it likely does not apply to the Gospel we know of today as Matthew. Our Matthew makes several errors for someone allegedly familiar with either Aramaic or Hebrew. He does not know, for instance, the nature of parallelism in Hebrew poetry—he has Jesus entering Jerusalem awkwardly straddling two animals, a colt and a donkey, not just one animal as the Hebrew poetry would imply. Our Gospel of Matthew was probably composed initially in Greek and is not the document that Papias had in mind. Such 2nd-century testimony regarding 1st-century Gospel authorship is unreliable. Basically, dating Joseph and Aseneth is no more or less reliable than dating the Gospels.

2.      Kraemer, op. cit. See also Rivka Nir’s excellent recent book, Joseph and Aseneth: A Christian Book (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2012).

3.      H. F. D. Sparks, The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 465–503. James H. Charlesworth, op. cit., 177–247.

4.      Charlesworth, op. cit., 187. For a recent discussion of the dating of Joseph and Aseneth, see Kraemer, op. cit., Chapter 8 (“The Dating of Aseneth Reconsidered”).

5.      Sparks (ed.), op. cit., 470.

6.      Charlesworth, op. cit., 177 and 187–188.

7.      Gideon Bohak, Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), xiii.

8.      Charlesworth, op. cit., 187. For her part, Kraemer sums up recent scholarly opinions this way: “a scholarly consensus of sorts has emerged . . . most recent scholarly reference works describe Aseneth as a Jewish text written sometime between 100 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. . . .” Kraemer op. cit., 5.

9.      Kraemer, op. cit, 237. In her earlier, partial translation of Joseph and Aseneth which she calls “The Conversion and Marriage of Aseneth” (1988), she dates the work to 1st century C.E.—Kraemer, Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 263. Later, in her 1998 publication When Aseneth Met Joseph, she tentatively moves its date forward to the 3rd century. She does this in part because the text is not quoted in either Jewish or Christian sources during the first three centuries of our era. That lack of citation does not at all surprise us, however. As a Christian writing, it would not have appeared on a Jewish radar. As for Christian citations, we suspect that the work contains a secret teaching, an encoded message, one that mainstream Christianity would have vigorously disavowed. So here, too, a lack of citations is to be expected. It is not likely that surviving sources would have referred to this text any more than they do to other so-called dissident writings.

10.    Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 2002), 249 n. 17.

11.    “It is clear that in the 140s and 150s Valentinus, as well as Marcion, was a prominent figure in Roman Christianity and that he led a group that had become separate from the main body of the church.” Bernard Green, Christianity in Ancient Rome: The First Three Centuries (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2010), 74.

12.    Jonathan Hill, The Crucible of Christianity: The Forging of A World Faith (Lion: 2010), 152.

13.    “According to Han Drijvers, all the available evidence indicates that Syriac-speaking Christianity in northern Mesopotamia and eastern Syria was mainly of Gentile origin.” Nir, op. cit., 179. Han Drijvers, “Syrian Christianity and Judaism,” in Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak (eds.), The Jews among Pagans and Christians: In the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1992), 134–46.

14.    Green, op. cit., 75.

CHAPTER 5

1.      See James D. Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 108.

2.      Kraemer, op. cit., 252.

3.      Ibid.

4.      Ibid. (emphasis added).

5.      Bohak, op. cit., xiii.

6.      Pierre Batiffol, “Le Livre de la Priere d’Aseneth” in Studia patristica: etudes d’ancienne literature chretienne (Paris: Leroux, 1889–90), 1–87.

7.      E. W. Brooks, Joseph and Asenath (London: S.P.C.K., 1918), xi.

8.      R. D. Chesnutt, “From Death to Life: Conversion in Joseph and Aseneth.” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Supplement Series, 16 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 73.

9.      Nir, op. cit., Chapter 1, especially pp. 39–48. Note that Nir also holds that Aseneth is a convert to Christianity.

10.    Kraemer, op. cit., ix.

11.    Robert A. Kraft, “Pseudepigrapha in Christianity” in John C. Reeves (ed.), Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1994), 75.

12.    See Appendix II for a first-ever English translation of this letter to Moses of Ingila and his reply.

CHAPTER 6

1.      Typology represents a different interpretive method to allegory.

Allegory is a theory of meaning. This method attributes a spiritual meaning to a passage, a deeper, truer meaning than the literal, superficial meaning. Thus the stages through which the Israelites left Egypt at the time of the Exodus to go to the Promised Land could be allegorically interpreted as stages in the soul’s progression toward God. Allegorical interpretation was widely adopted in the ancient world, from Plato onward, and was favored in Alexandria and its school of Biblical interpretation.

Typology, however, represents a theory of history whereby one event or person is interpreted as really referring to a later event or person. Thus Moses leading the children out of Egypt into the Promised Land could be interpreted typologically, not as referring to the Exodus a thousand or more years B.C.E. but as representing Jesus leading humanity out of sin into the Kingdom of Heaven. So the earlier event (the Exodus) is interpreted typologically as a foreshadowing of a later event (Jesus’ activity). For typologists, the actual later event is what the passage really signifies, not the earlier event. Typology was favored by Syriac Christianity in its exposition of the writings of the Hebrew Bible.

2.      Hill, op. cit., 71.

CHAPTER 7

1.      Kristian S. Heal, “Joseph as a Type of Christ in Syriac Literature,” Brigham Young University Studies 41, no. 1 (2002): 29.

2.      Archimandrite Ephrem (trans.), “Sermon on Joseph the Most Virtuous,” last updated on 03 November 2008, anastasis.org.uk/on_joseph.htm.

3.      Kevin Knight, ed., “Demonstration 21 (Of Persecution),” New Advent, newadvent.org/fathers/370121.htm

4.      Quoted in Heal, op. cit., 32 and 48 n. 23.

5.      Heal, op. cit., 38, and Sebastian P. Brock, “An Introduction to Syriac Studies,” in Horizons in Semitic Studies: Articles for the Student, ed. John Herbert Eaton (University of Birmingham, 1980), 4.

6.      Heal, op. cit., 39–45.

7.      P. Batiffol, op. cit.

8.      Kraemer, op. cit., 253. Kraemer also states that Joseph “in a Christian context is clearly a type of Christ, if not Christ himself.” Ibid., 267.

9.      Ibid.

10.    Ibid., 253.

11.    Quoted in Ibid.

CHAPTER 8

1.      The Gospels refer to Mary the Magdalene in Greek as “Maria hē Magdalēnē,” that is “Mary the Magdalene.” See Mark 15:40; Matthew 27:56; John 19:25; Mark 15:47; Matthew 27:61; Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:1; John 20:1; John 20:18. Similarly Luke 24:10 puts it “hē Magdalēnē Maria,” that is, “the Magdalene, Mary.” Luke 8:1–3 says “Maria hē kaloumenē Magdalēnē,” that is, “Mary, the one called Magdalene.” In all instances, Mary is spoken of as “the Magdalene,” not as Mary Magdalene or Mary from Magdala. The Coptic Gospel of Philip also has Mary the Magdalene; “. . . and the consort of Christ is Mary the Magdalene [Maria tē Magdalēnē].”

2.      Cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 136.

3.      Margaret Starbird perceptively relates Mary the Magdalene’s title to a passage in the Hebrew prophet Micah. There, the prophet looks forward to Israel’s glorious future and yearns for the restoration of the Davidic monarchy. In this context, Micah writes, “And you, O Migdal-eder [tower of the flock], outpost of fair Zion, it shall come to you: the former monarchy shall return—the kingship of Fair Jerusalem [alternate reading: House of Israel]” (Micah 4:8, Jewish Publication Society translation). See Margaret Starbird, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar (Rochester, VT: Bear and Co., 1993), 50.

4.      See, for example, Starbird, op. cit., 55.

5.      The parallels between Jesus and Dionysus are too many to enumerate. According to Pausanias, a Greek geographer who wrote in the 2nd century C.E., a miracle took place at a festival of Dionysus at Elis, Greece: “the priest brought empty jars into a shrine sacred to the god, and the next day the jars were miraculously filled with wine.” See Marvin W. Meyer, ed., op. cit., 95. According to the Andrians, this miracle repeated itself every other year at their feast of Dionysus.

6.      Quoted in Deirdre Good in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 302–303.

7.      Excerpted from Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdalene: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Polebridge Press, 2003), cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 105.

8.      Green, op. cit., 77.

9.      Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 63.

10.    The Gospel of Philip seems to indicate that, at least in the beginning, some of the disciples “were offended by this”—i.e., the intimacy between Jesus and Mary the Magdalene. Elaine Pagels in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 6.

Interestingly, the same mouth-to-mouth imagery we see in The Gospel of Philip occurs in Ephrem’s writings. There he elaborates on the encounter in the temple described in Luke 2:36–38 between the infant Jesus and the prophetess Anna: “[she] embraced Him and put her mouth to his lips.” (Quoted in Kraemer, op. cit., 65.) One wonders whether this Anna is a stand-in for Mary the Magdalene, given that kissing on the mouth is hardly consistent with embracing an infant.

11.    Karen L. King, The Place of the Gospel of Philip in the Context of Early Christian Claims about Jesus’ Marital Status, in “New Testament Studies,” Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 580.

12.    Ibid, p. 576.

13.    Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 3, emphasis in the original.

14.    Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 38.

15.    Allen H. Jones, Essenes: The Elect of Israel and the Priests of Artemis (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 65. The late Cyrus H. Gordon warned repeatedly that civilizations should not be compartmentalized simply because university departments are.

16.    Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 68.

17.    Arav and Freund, op. cit. Note especially the article by Mark Appold, “Bethsaida and the First-Century House Church?” 373–396.

18.    Owen Jarus, “Was Jesus Here? Biblical-era town Discovered along Sea of Galilee,” NBC News, September 17, 2013, nbcnews.com/science/was-jesus-here-biblical-era-town-discovered-along-sea-galilee-4B11184418.

19.    Robert Murray, trans., Symbols of Church and Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 136.

20.    Kathleen E. McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 353. Emphasis added.

21.    Athalya Brenner, “The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament (1985), 24 (emphasis added).

22.    Murray, op. cit., 136. In the 2nd-century text called The Shepherd of Hermas, a writing that was tremendously popular in the early centuries of Christianity, the church was also described as a tower. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 251–279, especially Vision Three (III, 3, verses 1–5). The Shepherd of Hermas is discussed later in this chapter.

23.    De Unitate Ecclesia 6–9. Green, op. cit., 155.

24.    Murray, op. cit., 147.

25.    Origen, Cels. 5.62 (Marcel Borret, ed., Origene: Contre Celse [5 vols.; SC 132, 136, 147, 150, 227; Paris: Cerf, 1967–76], 2:168–69 quoted in Stephen J. Shoemaker, “A Case of Mistaken Identity? Naming the Gnostic Mary” in Stanley F. Jones, ed., “Which Mary? The Marys of Early Christian Tradition,” Society of Biblical Literature, Symposium Series, No. 19 (2002): 14.

26.    Ibid., 14.

27.    Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 62, and James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici, The Jesus Discovery (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 96.

28.    Rachel Lesser, “The Nature of Artemis Ephesia,” Hirundo: The McGill Journal of Classical Studies, Volume IV (2005–2006), 46. Herodotus (Historiae 1.26 and Aelian Var. Hist. 3.26) reports that the sanctuary of Artemis in Ephesus was encompassed within the sacred space of the goddess, which was a protected place of refuge (Lesser, ibid., 47). Strabo (Geographia 14.1.23) reports how this sanctuary preserved its status as an asylum throughout its history (Lesser, ibid., 48).

29.    Act 1, Chapter 10, translated by Murray, op. cit., 160. (Emphasis added.)

30.    Cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 171–172.

31.    Daniel Boyarin argues that some of these ideas had already been introduced into the Judaic landscape prior to Jesus and that this is reflected in the Biblical Book of Daniel and the extrabiblical Book of Enoch. This may be, but they certainly were not mainstream or dominant views in the Second Temple Period. It is entirely possible, however, that some Jews saw Jesus as an anticipated angelic-type messiah and that these early followers, along with like-minded Gentiles, mostly Phoenicians/Canaanites, formed the nucleus of what became the “Church of the Gentiles.” See Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012).

32.    John C. O’Neill draws attention to the parallels between Joseph and Aseneth and The Shepherd of Hermas in his “What is Joseph and Aseneth About?” Henoch, vol. 16 (1994): 189–198.

33.    Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, 264.

34.    Ibid., 267.

35.    Ibid., 257.

36.    According to the 2nd-century pagan author Celsus, the soul passes through seven heavenly gates, each associated with a planet. The planets, obviously, are astrologically connected to the birth dates of the seven virgins mentioned here. Clearly, these seven attendants are there to help the soul ascend to its highest potential. Origen, Contra Celsum, 6.22 quoted in Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, 209.

37.    Ibid., 260.

38.    Ibid., 263.

39.    Kraemer, op. cit., 251. See also Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 7–12.

40.    Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, the First Apostle: The Struggle for Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 103–104.

41.    McVey, op. cit., 353.

CHAPTER 9

1.      In the story of Genesis, it is Potiphar’s wife who attempts to seduce Joseph. Clearly, the Potiphar of this story is not the Potiphar of that story. Here Potiphar welcomes Joseph and wants to marry him to his daughter. Aseneth’s reference to a rumored adultery has to do with a woman other than her mother. This is a dramatic difference that clearly demonstrates that the story in Joseph and Aseneth is not referring to the Biblical Joseph. But if this is the case, what rumor of “attempted adultery” surrounded Jesus? And is that rumor camouflaged in the text by referencing Joseph’s episode with Potiphar’s wife?

2.      The patriarch Joseph is never depicted as surrounded by an entourage of twelve. In fact, since he’s one of twelve brothers, at most only eleven could have surrounded him. In contrast, Jesus appointed twelve disciples to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, symbolic of Joseph and his eleven brothers.

3.      Rachel Elior, The Three Temples on the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (New York: Oxford, 2004), 61.

4.      St. Peter’s Basilica, Scavi, Tomb of Julii, Room M. See Pietro Zander, “The Necropolis Under St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican” (Fabbrica di San Pietro in Vaticano, 2007), 99–100.

5.      Six such mosaics have been found in total: Beit Alpha, Sepphoris, Tiberias, Na’aran, Sussiya, and Usifiyya. Also, a similar mosaic was found in Ein Gedi, minus the Helios, with the zodiac signs written instead of illustrated. See Walter Zanger, “Jewish Worship, Pagan Symbols: Zodiac Mosaics in Ancient Synagogues,” Biblical Archaeology Review, published as e-features online (Bar Magazine, accessed March 2014, bib-arch.org/e-features/synagogue-zodiacs.asp). See also Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988), 347–365.

6.      Nir, op. cit., 119.

7.      James Carroll, “Who was Mary Magdalene?” in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 29.

8.      Lesser, op. cit., 45, and Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 244.

9.      Lawrence Stager, “Why Were Hundreds of Dogs Buried at Ashkelon?” Biblical Archaeology Review, published as e-feature online, July–Nov 2010, bib-arch.org/e-features/dogs-buried-at-ashkelon.asp. Stager states: “. . . it was the Phoenicians, I believe, who were responsible for the dog burials at Ashkelon and who considered the dog a sacred animal.”

10.    Another echo of the connection between the early Jesus movement and Syro-Phoenician religion may be found in the famous Gospel story of the “daemonics.” According to the Gospels, Jesus exorcizes demons out of a daemonic or, in one version, daemonics (i.e., mad men) and proceeds to transfer these demons into a herd of pigs. The swine then go mad and jump off a cliff to their death in the waters below (see Matthew 7:6 and 8:31–32; Luke 8:32–33; Mark 5:11–16).

We have an interesting parallel in the 2nd-century writings of Claudius Aelianus (Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals [Harvard University Press, 1958], 12.22 and 14.20), who tells the story of dogs in Rhokkha going mad and throwing themselves into the sea. Aelianus goes on to say that boys who were bitten by the daemonic dogs were taken to the Temple of Artemis for healing. See also Sorita d’Este, Artemis (London: Avalonia, 2012), 55. Besides the pigs (or boars) in the incident of the daemonics, Jesus is associated with fish. Interestingly, Ephesus, the center of Artemis worship, was also identified with pigs/boars and fish. According to Herodotus, the founding of Ephesus is associated with the place where a boar was killed, fulfilling the words of an oracle that “a fish and a boar will show you the way” (d’Este, op. cit., 75). In Acragas in Greek Sicily, coins were made depicting Artemis on one side and a wild boar on the reverse (Diodorus Siculus 22.5).

In other words, here we see that the specific iconography of pigs/boars, dogs, and fish all involve both early Christian and Syro-Phoenician beliefs.

11.    C. Burchard, translation in Charlesworth, op. cit., 211.

12.    This style of eroticized spirituality is a Gnostic marker. We will return to this later in the text.

13.    Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 34.

14.    Also called the Sacrament of the Altar, Holy Communion is a reenactment of elements of the Last Supper.

15.    Paul picks up on this theme, but applies it to Christians who don’t agree with him. For him, the dogs metaphor is no longer applied against Canaanite idolaters. Rather, it is against the circumcising Jewish followers of Jesus. In some of the last words penned by him, he states: “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the true circumcision . . .” (Philippians 3:2–3). See also James D. Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, 221.

16.    See, for example, Janet Howe Gaines, “How Bad Was Jezebel?” Biblical Archaeology Review. Published as an e-feature online, July–Nov 2010, bib-arch.org/e-features/how-bad-was-jezebel.asp.

17.    This example of an Egyptian-looking but nonetheless Phoenician representation of a woman at the window can be viewed at the British Museum website, britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/c/carved_ivory_depicting_a_woman.aspx.

18.    See also 2 Samuel 6:16 and 1 Chronicles 15:29. There Michal, daughter of King Saul and wife of King David, is depicted “looking through a window” at David as he dances before the Ark of the Covenant. At that moment, she “despises him in her heart.” The Biblical author, in an attempt to criticize Michal, portrays her like a Phoenician priestess at the window. This is a powerful visual contrast to David, who is celebrating the Ark of the Covenant. In other words, if one is not aware of the significance of the “woman in the window,” the visual juxtaposition is lost. But it is not a value-neutral detail. It is used to blame her for her actions, while defending David. Basically, by placing her at the window at this critical moment, the Biblical author reduces Michal’s contempt for David to a form of idolatry.

19.    Pope Gregory I (pope 590–604), in a famous sermon on Mary the Magdalene given in Rome around 591, thought that seven demons meant every form of vice, i.e. total depravity, especially sexual. James Carroll provides a translation of a portion of his sermon in his “Who Was Mary Magdalene?” in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 35. Modern scholars tend to construe the seven demons differently. In this regard, see Bruce Chilton, “Possessed,” Mary Magdalene: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2005) for a discussion of what constitutes a daimon in the Mediterranean world, as well as his chapter 3, “Secret Exorcism.” The Talmud calls Magdala a place of “wealth and depravity.” See John J. Rousseau and Rami Arav, Jesus and His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1988), 189.

20.    Yediot Hachronot, Musaf le Shabbat (April 19, 2013), 18–19.

21.    Carole Mendleson, “Catalogue of Punic Stelae in The British Museum,” The British Museum Occasional Paper no. 98, Pu71.125324(57–12–18,37): 29–30 and 84.

22.    John J. Rousseau and Rami Arav, op. cit., 94 and 189.

23.    Plutarch, The Parallel Lives, The Life of Cato the Elder, Vol. II (Loeb Classical Library edition, 1914), 324.

24.    Callimachus, Hymn 3 to Artemis.

25.    Rose Lou Bengisu, “Lydian Mount Karios,” in Cybele, Attis and Related Cults. Ed. Eugene N. Lane (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), 10 n. 35.

26.    d’Este, op. cit., 77–78.

27.    Other towns include Capernaeum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Nain, and Cana. Many Galilean sites were built earlier in the Hellenistic period but abandoned after the Hasmonean/Maccabean conquest in about 100 B.C.E. Herod then resettled them. “One hundred and seventy sites were recorded from the Roman period. As compared to the 106 Hellenistic sites, this is a rise of 60%.” Rafael Frankel et al., “Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee” (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2001), 110–111.

28.    Sometimes this population is referred to as pagan. Some people feel that this is a derogatory term. They prefer the terms non-Jewish, Gentile, or Greco-Roman.

29.    Recently, a temple of the Roman imperial cult was discovered. It was built by Phillip the son of Herod the Great.

30.    For an overall archaeological understanding of this period, see John J. Rousseau and Rami Arav, op. cit.

31.    Interestingly, Morton Smith anticipated this discovery. In one instance, he states: “Of course Jesus was a Jew, and so were all his disciples—presumably.” Op. cit., 147. (Emphasis added.) Meaning, Smith wasn’t sure that all the disciples were Jewish. We now learn that at the very least, Mary the Magdalene was a Syro-Phoenician woman, probably a priestess.

32.    There is a tradition in both pagan and rabbinic literature that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier named Pantera. Most Roman soldiers were not Roman. The Roman army was made up of Roman officers commanding conquered peoples, usually serving in countries other than their birth. So it’s entirely possible that Aseneth here is referring to rumors that Jesus was the son of a Canaanite peasant who had been serving in the Roman army. See James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2006), 64–72.

33.    Literally, the Hebrew Messiah (Mashiach) translates into the Anointed One. In Greek, Anointed One translates as Christos, Christ in English. In other words, though many people think that Jesus Christ is a proper name, it translates as Jesus the Messiah. While both Christos and Mashiach are translated as Anointed One, they have different connotations. The Christos is a savior of humanity and, in the case of Jesus, a divine-human. A Mashiach is a human being.

34.    Graydon Snyder, Inculturation of the Jesus Tradition: The Impact of Jesus on Jewish and Roman Cultures (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 41.

35.    See Ketubot 72a. See also Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Fuchs, Salichot Bat Yisrael (Jerusalem, 1983).

36.    d’Este, op. cit., 66. See also Aphrodite Avagianou, Sacred Marriage in the Rituals of Greek Religion (1993), and Rush Rehm, Marriage to Death: The Conflation of Wedding and Funeral Rituals in Greek Tragedy (1994).

37.    She does this using Artemisian rites: anointing with perfume/nard rather than oil.

38.    In one of the great ironies of archaeology, the Archaeological Museum of Amman today houses a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, written over two thousand years ago by Jewish sectarians, which quotes this exact passage concerning the Balaam prophecy. On the same floor, just a few feet away, there is a non-Jewish inscription excavated in 1967 at Deir Alla in Jordan that preserves the exact same prophecy, from Balaam’s point of view. In this instance, there is perfect synchronicity between the Bible and the historical record. See Andre Lemaire, “Fragments From the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla,” Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept./Oct. 1985).

39.    Literally, the second half of the heavenly statement in Mark translates from the Greek as “my beloved, in you I take delight,” which is closer to the erotic language of Joseph and Aseneth.

40.    Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 14.

41.    Interestingly, The Gospel of Thomas only has six disciples, not twelve. Two of these are women, namely Mary the Magdalene and Salome, the latter being one of Mary the Magdalene’s companions.

42.    Kraemer, op. cit., 21.

43.    Murray, op. cit., 78.

44.    Morton Smith, op. cit. The content of this now-lost fragment was so shocking that some accused the late Morton Smith of either sensationalizing an ancient forgery or else resorting to forgery himself. Smith was one of the most important and gifted scholars of his generation. In 1980, the authenticity of the fragment was given a strong vote of confidence when a group of four eminent scholars testified that they had seen and photographed the fragment in 1976. The four were David Flusser, Shlomo Pines, Archimandrite Meliton, and Guy G. Stroumsa. If there is any doubt remaining about the authenticity of Morton Smith’s Secret Mark, the parallels with Joseph and Aseneth should dispel it. A translation of the secret ending to Mark’s Gospel is found here–here of Morton Smith’s publication.

45.    Later Greek manuscripts make the touching much more explicit: the heavenly man stretched out his right hand “and grasped her head and shook her head with his right hand” (16:12–13. C. Burchard, translation in Charlesworth, op. cit., 228).

46.    Joseph and Aseneth 15:14. C. Burchard, translation in Charlesworth, op. cit., 228.

47.    Quoted in David Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis (The Free Press, 2001), 24. See also Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, volumes 1 and 2 (Random House, 2012).

48.    Kraemer, op. cit., 170. The 1st century B.C.E. Roman poet Virgil compared bees to hovering spirits on the verge of reincarnation (Virgil, Aeneid 6:703–18). Also, it was believed that bees could not be defined as either masculine or feminine. This has interesting implications for the angel’s description of Aseneth as androgynous (see Appendix 15.1), neither male nor female. Porphyry, a late-3rd-century anti-Christian Syrian writer, states that “the most blessed offspring come from the virginal soul and unmated intelligence” (quoted in Kraemer, op. cit., 172). Since the most blessed offspring come from virginal births, and since bees were considered virginal, it stands to reason, therefore, that honey was considered holy food.

49.    There may be an echo in the Talmud of the erotic use of honey. The Talmud records that eleven kinds of spices were used in the incense mixture for the temple. According to the Talmud, you could add a “minute amount of Jordan amber” to this mixture, but if the priest making the incense “placed honey into it, he invalidated it.” Later, in the same discussion it says that Rabbi Bar Kappara taught that “had one put a kortov [1/20th of a fluid ounce, a minuscule amount] of honey into it, no person could have resisted its scent.” Why did they not mix honey into it? Because the Torah says (Leviticus 2:11) “for any leaven or any honey, you are not to burn from them a fire offering to God” (Talmud, kereisos 6a, yerushalmi yoma 4:5).

The Talmudic point seems to be that the Torah prohibits the use of honey in the incense offering because “no person could have resisted its scent.” What does the Talmud mean by “resisted”? Resisted what? This seems to be a hint alluding to the use of honey in erotic pagan rituals. Along these lines, Jones describes “the near absence of bees” in the literature of the early Israelites, as a result of a “conviction that by including them they would be following heathen practices.” See Jones, op. cit., 73.

Interestingly, the prophet Isaiah (7:15) prophesizes that Immanuel—i.e., the Messiah—shall come eating “butter and honey.” This implies that while no ordinary man can withstand the seductive powers of honey, the future Messiah will be able to. Meaning, the connection between bees, honey, and the Jesus movement implied in the Joseph and Aseneth text may be partially due to this prophetic passage in Isaiah, which links honey and the Messiah.

50.    Ephrem the Syrian (HNat. 16.7), quoted in Nir, op. cit., 90 (italics added).

51.    Ibid., 89.

52.    More recently Rivka Nir also points to these four central actions of the Eucharist. Nir, op. cit., 44–45. See also Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London, Dacre Press, 1945), 48.

53.    See Tabor, op. cit., 144–151; Wilson, op. cit., 160–163.

54.    Tabor, op. cit., 150. See also Preserved Smith, A Short History of Christian Theopagy (Chicago: Open Court, 1922).

55.    As in Joseph and Aseneth, Ignatius, the early-2nd-century bishop of Antioch, believed that Communion represented immortality. For him, however, what had to be consumed was not the honeycomb—with its suggestions of sexuality—but the flesh of the celibate god. He condemns Christian groups who “do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ” (Smyrneans 7). Quoted in Tabor, op. cit., 154. Justin, who lived in Rome around the same time, talks about the magical transmutation: the Communion meal, “from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh” (Apology 1.66). Quoted in ibid., 154.

56.    “The gods of the ancient Greeks lived on top of Mount Olympus, feeding on nectar and ambrosia. Today, we do not know for certain what these foods were. They were produced by the bees and taken to the gods by winged doves.” Luke Dixon, “Bees and Honey: Myth, Folklore and Traditions,” in Northern Bee Books (UK, 2013), 15.

57.    Quoted in Morton Smith, op. cit., 73–74.

58.    Jones, op. cit., 67.

59.    Quoted in Kraemer, op. cit., 170.

60.    Jones, op. cit., 72.

61.    Nir, op. cit., 43.

62.    Thomas J. Heffeman, “Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages,” Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 209. Critics of the agape were concerned that sex usually followed the partaking of milk and honey in the ritual.

63.    Green, op. cit., 176. In Rome, cremation gave way to inhumation (full-body burial) during the 2nd century. The Christian catacombs of Rome go back to at least the 3rd century. Even earlier, if the Vatican’s claims for the tomb of Peter, under St. Peter’s Cathedral, are accurate. See also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6067020.stm.

64.    d’Este, op. cit., 26–27.

65.    Mark Wilson, Biblical Turkey: A Guide to the Jewish and Christian Sites of Asia Minor (Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2012), 304.

66.    Pausanias, Description of Greece, Arcadia 13, line 2 (Essēnas).

67.    Jones, op. cit., 49.

68.    Jones, op. cit., 61. See also the discussion in Geza Vermes, “The Etymology of Essenes,” Revue de Qumran, 7 (June 1960).

69.    Jones, op. cit., 105.

70.    Ibid., 219.

71.    Ibid., 113.

72.    Jones, op. cit., 2–6. See Philo, Hypothetica, 11.9. See also Pliny, Natural History, Loeb Classical Library Edition, V. 73 (Cambridge: Harvard, 1969).

73.    Aristophanes, The Frogs, line 1274.

74.    Jones, op. cit., 52, and John Chadwick, The Mycenaen World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 125–126.

75.    This idea is supported by Pliny, who states that the Essenes have existed for “thousands” of years. Clearly, he could not have been simply referring to the sect described by Josephus that goes unmentioned in the Talmud. He must be harking back to an earlier Artemis/Ashera Canaanite cult. See Pliny, op. cit.

76.    In Jones’ words, “. . . the name for the priests of Artemis and for [this] Jewish community was the same: ‘Essenes’.” Jones, op. cit., 20.

77.    Robert Eisenman has long contended that the Essenes and Jesus’ followers were one and the same. See Robert Eisenman, The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, The Damascus Covenant, The Blood of Christ (London: Watkins Publishing, 2006), 4.

78.    John Kampen, E. L. Hicks, J. B. Lightfoot, A.H. Jones, and others have argued that the name Essene “is derived from a group of functionaries in the cult of Artemis at Ephesus.” John Kampen, “The Cult of Artemis and the Essenes in Syro-Palestine,” in Dead Sea Discoveries vol. 10, no. 2 (2003): 205.

79.    Jacobus de Voragine, “The Life of St. Ambrose,” in The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, Volume 3. This bee-swarming was also said to have happened to the philosopher Plato at his birth.

80.    Brock, op. cit., 131. See also Murray, op. cit., 329–330. In a Coptic fragment edited by Eugene Revillout, Mary the Magdalene is replaced by Mary the mother at the empty tomb. See Brock, op. cit., 134–135.

81.    Homer called Artemis “Parthenon Aidoine,” meaning “revered” or “holy” virgin (Hymn 27). The 4th century B.C.E. Greek poet Callimachus called her “Parthenos,” meaning “virgin” (Hymn 3 to Artemis). Euripides called her “most virginal” (Hippolytus). d’Este states: “if we consider the development of the worship at Ephesus, when Artemis became the dominant goddess . . . the sacred virgin became preeminent not the sacred prostitute.” See d’Este, op. cit., 64. So it seems that Mary the mother got the title of virgin and Mary the wife was left with the label of prostitute.

82.    In the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, for example, the term the blessed one, later identified with Mary the mother, “explicitly refers to the Mary who is not the mother” (Brock, op. cit., 95, emphasis added). Ann Graham Brock traces a “crisis of authority” in the Gnostic Gospels, depicted as a competition between Peter and Mary the Magdalene. This is a first step toward the ultimate substitution of Mary the Magdalene with Mary the mother (ibid., 103). Brock surveys several texts including certain Syriac texts of Ephrem, the Acta Thaddaei, and the Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew the Apostle. She concludes that in each of these narratives, “the figure of Mary Magdalene has been replaced by Mary the mother of Jesus” (ibid., 123). The idea that the daughter-in-law, not the mother, is the virgin may seem odd to those conditioned by the Pauline narrative, but in the ancient world it would have seemed strange to talk about the mother as the virgin. For example, in his history, written in the 5th century B.C.E., the Greek historian Herodotus states, “Every year the Athenians celebrate a festival in honor of the Mother and the Virgin” (History, Book 8.65). In Pauline Christianity, mother Mary became the Virgin, and the Virgin Mary the Magdalene was rebranded as a reformed prostitute.

83.    Independent of our insight, in mid-2008, Maria Kasyan also noted the following: “To my opinion, the ‘clusters’ of the frontal decoration of these statues represent a group of bee cocoons, not of the ordinary working bees, but of the Queen (King)-bees, i.e. Essenes as priests of the Ephesian cult.” Maria Kasyan, The Apocalyptic Scene In The Apocryphal Story Joseph and Aseneth And Artemis of Ephesus (Russia: Russian State University for the Humanities, 2008), REF: CJ/246. Available: ican2008.ul.pt/ICAN2008_pt/Programa/21_July/CJ_246_Maria_Kasyan.pdf. As we have seen, Kasyan is essentially correct but, more accurately, we are not talking about cocoons. Rather, we are talking about queen-bee cells.

84.    See Chadwick, op. cit., 125–126. One possible trajectory of this kind of earth-mother worship from Crete into Israel is the arrival of the Pelasgians—the Biblical Philistines—from the island of Crete (the Kaphtor of the Bible) into the land of Israel approximately 1200 B.C.E.

85.    Hilda M. Ransome, The Sacred Bee (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), 59–60.

86.    See Matthew 10:25, 12:24, 12:27; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15, 11:18, 11:19.

87.    Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 83.

88.    The Baalzebub play on words demonstrates that the bee references are early and also embedded in a Jewish context. Mainstream Judaism was objecting to the Jesus movement’s usage of Artemis and bee imagery. This kind of play on words, involving Jesus and bees, is still echoed—hiding in plain sight—in the regular Jewish liturgy. For example, in the section called Hallel, which is recited during all Jewish holidays except Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the New Year and the Day of Atonement), the rabbis have included Psalm 118:10–14. Here, hostile nations are compared to bees that act much in the way of the bees in Joseph and Aseneth: “All the nations surround me; in the name of God I cut them down! They encircle me, they also surround me; in the name of God, I cut them down! They encircle me like bees, but they are extinguished as a fire does thorns; in the name of God I cut them down” (emphasis added). In light of this Psalm, some of the Jewish imagery in the section where Aseneth is encircled by bees becomes clear.

In Joseph and Aseneth, it is the angel (Jesus) that rescues Aseneth (Mary the Magdalene). Meaning, in Joseph and Aseneth, salvation—Yeshua, in Hebrew—comes from Jesus. Jesus, after all, is simply the anglicized form of Yeshua.

The rabbis seem aware of Joseph and Aseneth, or at least of this idea. In the Hallel liturgy, therefore, they quote Psalms where salvation—Yeshua—comes only from God. The Psalm states: “You pushed me hard that I might fall, but God assisted me! God is my might and my song, and He shall be a Yeshua [i.e., a salvation] for me.”

In other words, once we are sensitized to the symbols, what we see here are subtle dialogues and word plays whereby the early Christians claim that Jesus is salvation, and the Jews retort that salvation comes only from God (see The Complete ArtScroll Siddur, Mesorah Publications, 1990, 639). Bees are at the center of this polemic.

89.    Kampen, op. cit., 209.

90.    Ibid.

91.    Ibid., N. 63, 215. It is noteworthy that, according to the Gospels, Jesus sailed to the land of the Gadarenes or Gerasenes (Mark 5:1; Luke 8:26; Matthew 8:28), variously identified with Jordan and southern Spain. According to Kampen, the identification of Artemis and Atargatis “grew with the spread of Nabataean trading interest throughout the [Roman] empire, especially in the east but also . . . as far west as Spain” (ibid., 215).

92.    Interestingly, in the Jewish catacombs of Rome at Villa of Torlonia, an elaborate tomb has been found that features perfectly preserved wall paintings depicting the Temple in Jerusalem, menorahs (temple candelabra), and dolphins. Is this tomb archaeological evidence of the fusion (syncretism) of Jewish and Atargatis/Artemis symbolism? See rome.info/ancient/catacombs/.

93.    Nelson Glueck, Deities and Dolphins (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1965), 359, 381–82; Philip C. Hammond, The Nabateans: Their History, Culture & Archaeology (Coronet Books, 1973), 97; John Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire (Cornell University Press, 1985), 19; and Ibid., 216.

94.    It turns out that we are not the first to realize that Aseneth is modeled on a pagan deity. Marc Philonenko makes an argument that Aseneth is modeled on the Egyptian goddess Neith (Philonenko, Joseph et Aseneth: Introduction, text critique, traduction et notes [Brill Leiden, 1968], 61–79). Isis is a better fit. Philonenko also associates Aseneth with the Greek goddess Selene (ibid., 81). Selene is a good fit because she is the lover of Endymion, the shepherd king, who comes to be associated with Jesus, e.g., in the catacombs of Rome. In the catacombs, Endymion is depicted as the Biblical prophet Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the great fish is seen as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ three days in the tomb, prior to resurrection.

95.    See discussion of findings in Hershel Shanks, “The Persisting Uncertainties of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” Biblical Archaeology Review (November/December, 2012). See also Julia Fridman, “Archaeologists Discover: God’s Wife?” Haaretz, September 15, 2013, haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1.547147.

96.    See Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, “Ancient Israelites Imported Honeybees From Turkey,” Jerusalem Post (June 24, 2010). Also, in what must be one of the most incredible cultural echoes of the association of Mary the Magdalene and bees, in 2005, singer/songwriter Tori Amos came out with her hit album “The Bee Keeper.” In her autobiography, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece, written in connection with the album, she has a chapter on Mary the Magdalene. Amos has done her homework and is more insightful than most scholars. Concerning bees she writes, “This feminine association of bees was known and honored in ancient times: priestesses of the goddess Artemis were called melissae, and Demeter was called ‘the pure Mother Bee’.” Concerning Mary the Magdalene she writes, “I realized that . . . she truly was the Lost Bride” (Tori Amos and Ann Powers, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece [Broadway Books, 2005], cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 271–275).

97.    Xenophon, An Ephesian Tale 1.1–3, quoted in Lesser, op. cit., 49.

98.    Luke 6:15; Mark 3:18 and 2:14; Matthew 10:3; Acts 1:13.

99.    d’Este, op. cit., 43–44. See also Strabo, The Geography of Strabo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 8.3.12.

100.  Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece, 5.14.6.

101.  Since the name Levi is a priestly name in Judaism, Alphaeus’ family must have Levitical background. Having said this, they could have been enmeshed with Canaanites through marriage and adopted a syncretic version of Judaism.

102.  Edward Lipinski, “Cult Prostitution in Ancient Israel?” in Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan/Feb 2014, volume 40, no. 1, pp. 54–55.

103.  The terms brother and sister, applied to husband and wife, occur in other apocryphal texts, for example in Greek Esther and Tobit. See Lawrence M. Wills, Ancient Jewish Novels: An Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 65. Famously, in the Book of Genesis, Abraham refers to his wife Sarah as his “sister.” In Genesis, Abraham is fudging his relationship with Sarah so as to save his own life. In Esther and Tobit, the term seems to refer to a relationship defined by respect, rather than lust. In any event, none of these people have claims to divinity. In the context of gods, we have to turn to Apollo and Artemis. Later, Paul reveals that Peter took his wife with him on his various travels (1 Cor. 9:5). He calls Peter’s spouse “a sister wife.” According to Green, “[t]he term ‘sister wife’ probably means a wife who is a believer” (op. cit., 45). It can also mean a wife who is a believer and has achieved a certain level of spiritual/physical intimacy, achievable only by modeling oneself on Mary the Magdalene, the Artemis-like “sister–wife” of God.

104.  The oracles of Apollo were called Sibyls. They are also identified first with Jewish prophecies, packaged in pagan terms, and then with Christian prophecies. In other words, we have a whole corpus of material called Sibylline Oracles that are Apollo/Artemis-related that we know for a fact are grounded in the earliest Jewish strata of Christianity. This connection between early Christianity and the cult of Artemis has been largely ignored, but it clearly fits nicely with Joseph and Aseneth. See Jones, op. cit., 53.

105.  In fact, at the highest level, they merge into one. “So it may well be more accurate to consider the twin gods of Artemis and Apollo as being both solar, and both lunar,” d’Este, op. cit., 102.

106.  First Apology 46.224, quoted in Green, op. cit., 85.

107.  Life of Apollonius of Tyana 6.20, quoted in d’Este, op. cit., 56.

108.  Pausanias, op. cit., 3.16.7.

109.  Pausanias, op. cit., 1.40.2, quoted in d’Este, op. cit.

110.  Cleopatra was the first ruler to identify herself with many different female deities throughout the empire that she ruled, first alongside Julius Caesar and then with Marc Antony. Augustus was the first to truly harness the rise of various religious and political movements in the Roman Empire by creating the Imperial Cult, the first large-scale acceptance of a man as a god in the West. Without Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Antony, and Augustus, a deified Jesus and Mary the Magdalene would have made no sense in 1st-century Judaea. With them, in the context of those times, it makes complete sense that Jesus and Mary the Magdalene would be deified, especially in opposition to the Imperial Roman Cult. See Robert Turcan, Cults of the Roman Empire (Wiley-Blackwell, 1997) and David Wray, The Secret Roots of Christianity: Decoding Religious History with Symbols on Ancient Coins (Numismatics & History, 2012).

111.  See Jacobovici and Pellegrino, op. cit., 18–19. See also Tabor and Jacobovici, op. cit., 112–116.

112.  L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries: In the Collections of the State of Israel (The Israel Antiquities Authority, 1994). Ossuaries #8; #327; #560; #468; #701; #868.

113.  Ibid., #8; #327; #560 (referring to two brothers).

114.  Ibid., #468; #701; #868.

115.  The first time a female’s ossuary was discovered with the word Mara on it (Rahmani, #468), the inscription read “Martha, also known as Mara.” Epigraphers then assumed that this Martha could not have been known as “the Master” or “the Lady,” in the sense of a teacher, or leader. Therefore, they concluded that Mara—when it refers to a woman—must be a nickname for Martha. From that time on, any female called Mara is assumed to also be a Martha. Clearly, this is circular thinking and pure sexism. “Martha also known as Mara” means what it means when the term is applied to males: “Martha also known as the Lady,” or the “Master.”

116.  Stephen J. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford University Press, 2002), 345.

117.  Also significantly, sixty meters from the Jesus Family Tomb, Simcha Jacobovici, James Tabor, and Rami Arav inserted a robotic arm mounted with a camera into a sealed Jesus-era tomb and discovered the word Mara written on one of the ossuaries. It seems that just as Jesus’ followers invoked him on their monuments, Mary the Magdalene’s followers invoked her on theirs. See The Resurrection Tomb mystery/The Jesus Discovery film (thejesusdiscovery.org) and The Jesus Discovery: The Resurrection Tomb that Reveals the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Shuster, 2012), 67–68.

118.  Quoted in d’Este, op. cit., 61.

119.  PGM IV: 2721–26.

120.  As a powerful example of how these traditions survive and morph, we have the late-11th to early-12th century historical phenomenon, in the region of southern France (an area traditionally associated with Mary the Magdalene), of a movement called the Cult of Amor, or more popularly known as Courtly Love, popularized by the story of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and the Round Table. The practitioners celebrated a mysterious woman called “The Lady” and addressed her as Domna, a shortening of the Latin Domina, the feminine form of Lord or Master. They regarded the object of their love as a lady in whom—in Gnostic fashion—their highest spiritual and carnal desires intersected. It may very well be that the entire Arthurian cycle is a metaphorical retelling of Joseph and Aseneth with Joseph/Jesus represented by Arthur; Aseneth/Mary the Magdalene represented by Guinevere, and Levi/the disciple Levi represented by Lancelot. On the connection between courtly love and Mary the Magdalene, see, for example, “The deep psycho/spiritual impact that produced the cult of romantic love came not from Jesus, but from his consort and counterpart, Mary Magdalene.” John Lamb Lash in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit. 133.

121.  David Parrish, ed., “Urbanism in Western Asia Minor: New Studies on Aphrodisias, Ephesos, Hierapolis, Pergamon, Perge and Xanthos,” Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series, Number 45: 179. See also John D. Grainger, Nerva and The Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99 (London: Routledge, 2004), xvi, Table 5A and Richard D. Sullivan, Near Eastern Royalty and Rome, 100–30 BC (University of Toronto Press, 1990), 291.

122.  Hannah M. Cotton, ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, Volume I Jerusalem, Part 1, 1–704 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 309–334, especially ossuaries #295, #296, and #297. There’s also another kyria (ossuary #302) in the tomb. Jonathan Price states that this “can be a name or title” (p. 325). Kyria, as stated, is the Greek version of Mara. In other words, it is clear that this family—like the principles in the Joseph and Aseneth story—is combining Greek, Jewish, and Canaanite/Phoenician traditions. For example, Ossuary #296—meaning the kyria/Mara has a bronze coin for Charon, the underworld ferryman of Greek mythology, in it. Shockingly, there are also cremated remains (completely against Jewish law) in the same ossuary. Ossuary #293 has the very un-Jewish name erotas carved on it. Most significantly, it also has carved on its side a bucranium, an ox-head. This too is clearly not Jewish, since Jews of the 1st century did not create what the Torah calls “graven images.” The bucranium is a well-known symbol of Artemis [p. 316, fig. 293.3(b)].

123.  Hanna M. Cotton, op. cit., #396, 420. The inscription is in a formal Jewish script. Ada Yardeni and Jonathan Price, who worked on the inscription, state, “if the reading is correct, a priestess, whose name has not been deciphered, was buried in this tomb.”

124.  Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 86.

125.  The Gospel of Peter also states that Mary the Magdalene went to the tomb to do “what women are wont to do for those beloved of them who die” (12:50). Quoted in John Dominic Crossan, The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (Harper & Row, 1988), 412.

126.  Clementine Recognitions, Book 2.

127.  Epiphanius, Panarion, 21.3.5.

128.  James Hastings, Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, Vol. 2 (T & T Clark, 1912), 496.

CHAPTER 10

1.      Wolfgang Roth, Hebrew Gospel: Cracking the Code of Mark (Oak Park, IL: Meyer Stone Books, 1988), 16, 17. Roth writes, “As Elisha extends by eight Elijah’s eight miracles, so now Jesus extends by another eight Elisha’s sixteen. It is interesting that Jesus does not double the number of Elisha’s miracles; direct continuity with the scriptural model is sought, and in this manner Jesus’ mission is conceptualized and legitimated.”

2.      Of course, Christian believers can claim that whereas all the others claimed a virgin birth, only Jesus actually had one. This is a matter of faith, but even such an argument serves our present point. Namely, Christians were—and are—perfectly comfortable arguing that the inauthentic claims that were made on behalf of pagan gods such as Helios foreshadowed the real thing.

3.      Mary, mother of Jesus, was also modeled on figures that 1st-century readers would have immediately recognized. In paintings and sculpture, she is often depicted as holding Jesus on her lap. This was patterned after the well-known figure of the goddess Isis holding Horus on her lap. That image—a kind of brand—originally Egyptian, was familiar throughout the ancient Mediterranean world (see, for example, British Museum website: britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/b/bronze_figure_of_isis__horus.aspx).

At the time of Jesus, there was even a prominent temple of Isis in the heart of Rome itself. As a result, the Isis/Horus depiction of Mary/Jesus conveyed much about Mary’s pre-eminent importance and that of her child. To a 1st-century audience, depicting Mary holding Jesus on her lap was iconographic shorthand. The message was that Mary and Jesus, like Isis and Horus, were divine beings.

4.      Translated by Murray, op. cit., 112. (Italics added.)

5.      Ibid. See also Aphrahat, in Demonstration 6, where he states:

Let us be planted as vines in His vineyard,

Who is the true Vine(yard).

Let us be good vines,

That we be not uprooted from that vineyard (ibid., 105).

6.      As already noted, the detail that there are four horses is missing in the Syriac but present in later Greek manuscripts—presumably added just to drive the point home.

7.      Kraemer, op. cit., 156.

8.      Ibid., 157.

9.      Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research (Brill, 2013), 388.

10.    Kraemer, op. cit., 302. “Given the prominence of Helios in the center-floor mosaics of Hammath Tiberias and other late antique synagogues, it seems hard to imagine that it had no religious significance.”

11.    Some places of early Christian worship were called synagogues. See Letter of James 2:2 where the word synagogue is used instead of church.

12.    Jonathan Hill, op. cit., 106.

13.    Clearly, this is an abomination in a synagogue. Perhaps it should be looked at in light of Secret Mark.

14.    As noted above, some scholars, such as archaeologist Rachel Hachlili, believe that one of the Biblical scenes in the mosaic of Sepphoris is the matriarch Sarah being visited by angels (Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends; Selected Studies [Brill Academic Publishers, 2009], 87). Hachlili’s reasoning is a prime example of seeing what you want to see. By any measure, this part of the mosaic is damaged beyond recognition. What remains visible is the top of a shrouded head in a doorway, next to what seems to be one or two figures. Based on this scant evidence and the assumption that this is a synagogue, Hachlili turns to the 6th-century C.E. Arian Christian mosaics from the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy. There she finds an image of Sarah, veiled and standing in the doorway of a hut. As a result, she concludes (along with other scholars) that the scene at Sepphoris also depicts angels visiting Sarah as in the Book of Genesis.

But Hachlili could have gone next door to the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, also in Ravenna. In the mosaics there, she would have also found a shrouded figure in a doorway. But this figure is not Sarah. It is Lazarus. The man standing next to him is none other than Jesus. Meaning, based on the evidence, the scene at Sepphoris can just as easily be depicting the raising of Lazarus as the Jewish matriarch Sarah.

What this demonstrates is that if you’re looking for synagogues, you’ll find synagogues, even when the evidence is not there. In any event, if the damaged panel depicts a New Testament scene, then clearly this is a Christian house of worship. However, in this context, even the “annunciation” to Sarah is more consistent with a Christian understanding than a Jewish one, and the closest mosaic parallel is not in another synagogue but in a church in Ravenna, Italy.

15.    Translated by Murray, op. cit., 79.

16.    Kraemer, op. cit., 302 and 291.

17.    See for example, Graydon F. Snyder, Ante-Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), especially p. 100 where he states that, after Constantine, the sacrifice of Isaac “became a central element in Byzantine art.”

18.    Nicole Winfield, Lasers Uncover First Icons of Sts. Peter and Paul (Associated Press, June 22, 2010).

19.    Conservatively, we’ve gone along with the common interpretation of this annunciation scene as depicting Sarah and the angels. We simply put it in a Christian context. But since sequentially it follows the sacrifice of Isaac (i.e., the crucifixion) and since it depicts a shrouded person standing in the doorway of what appears to be a tomb, the scene is most likely depicting Mary the Magdalene discovering the risen Christ as described in John 20:14–16.

20.    For pictures, see armageddonchurch.com.

21.    Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 88–89. Also, one of the finds in the church at Megiddo was a table dedicated by a woman. Interestingly, as Bruce Chilton points out, “Jews and non-Jews in Jesus’ movement could eat fish together without raising the question of whether it was kosher, always an issue in cases where meat was involved.” Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 100. In the Catholic tradition, eating the wafer during Communion somehow translates into partaking of Jesus’ body. Perhaps, as the table and mosaic at Megiddo might suggest, for the earliest followers the act of eating the fish translated into somehow partaking of both their bodies—the body of Jesus and the body of his wife, Mary the Magdalene. In fact, the earliest Christian art in Rome, dating back to the 3rd century, typically depicts a banquet scene where several figures typically dine on two fish. Scholars have speculated that this is some kind of messianic feast. But the symbolism of the two fish has eluded them. Robin Jensen has connected the meal to the Eucharist, but has not explained the presence of the second fish. We now know that some of the earliest followers were partaking of the bodies of Jesus and Mary the Magdalene and depicting them as fish. (See Robin Margaret Jensen, “Fish and Meal Scenes” in Understanding Early Christian Art [Routledge, 2000], 52–59).

22.    Cited in d’Este, op. cit., 69.

23.    G. M. Fitzgerald, “A Sixth Century Monastery At Beth-She’an (Scythopolis),” Publications of the Palestine Section of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1939), 1–19.

24.    Since the University of Pennsylvania sponsored the 1930 expedition and the artifacts were taken to its museum, Expedition, the publication of the Penn Museum, published two short articles in 1962 (Frances W. James [Fall]: 21–24) and in 2013 (Stephanie Hagan, Vol. 55, no. 1: 37–42). In late 2013, Rachel Hachlili’s Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research (Brill, 2013) came out, which includes Tel Istaba in this definitive work on synagogues, their archaeology, and art. See also R. Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

25.    Leah Di Segni, “Dated Greek Inscriptions from Palestine from the Roman and Byzantine Periods,” Volume I, PhD Thesis, submitted to the Senate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977, p. 405.

26.    Jonathan Hill, op. cit., 182 and 193. The fact that this baptistry is Arian is very significant. Arian Christianity followed Arius, who disagreed with the Nicene Creed. Put simply, the Arian Christians did not agree with what became mainstream Christianity, i.e., that Jesus (the son) and God (the father) were made of the same “substance.” Meaning, Arian Christians believed in the divinity of Jesus but made that divinity subservient to God. Arianism became a heresy after the Council of Nicea in 325. In other words, the mosaic in Tel Istaba has a parallel in a church mosaic in Ravenna. But it isn’t any church mosaic. It’s an Arian mosaic, which means that it is closer to the Judeo-Christian theology reflected in Joseph and Aseneth and in the other mosaics of the Galilee.

27.    Stephanie Hagan, in “Time, Memory, and Mosaics at the Monastery of Lady Mary,” Expedition, vol. 55, Number 1, p. 38, calls the mosaic “a hybrid Romano-Judeo-Christian iconography that appears to be unique to this city” (op. cit., 38). In other words, she sees that this has “Judeo-Christian” elements.

28.    Leah Di Segni, op. cit., 410.

29.    Ibid., 408. Can Maximus be a code name for Jesus or one of his sons? Interestingly, The Golden Legend, written by Jacobus de Voragine (1260), mentions that Peter entrusted Mary the Magdalene into the hands of Maximin and that, together, they made it to Marseilles, in Provence, France (vol 1. [Princeton, 1993]: 376).

30.    Ibid., 409.

31.    Stephanie Hagan, op. cit., 42.

32.    Leah Di Segni, op. cit., 410.

33.    There is a zodiac, but no apostles, on a mosaic in Sparta. At its center there is a depiction of a male and a female. This 4th-century mosaic seems to have been a kind of pagan precedent for the later 6th-century mosaic at Tel Istaba. By the 6th century, the pagan images had been appropriated and Christianized. See Rachel Hachlili, op. cit., 376–381. Interestingly, Hachlili thinks that Helios is depicted as a female at Tel Istaba (p. 379), but this clearly can’t be. The sun is always male. What throws Hachlili off is the fact that the male sun figure is somewhat androgynous. But this fits with Gnosticism. In fact, in the middle of the 2nd century a man named Montanus began prophesying and leading a new Christian group in what is now Turkey. Foremost among his followers were two women named Priscilla and Maximilla. They were collectively known as “the three.” One of them “had a famous vision of Christ in female form.” This early Christian sect, which survived until the 5th century, seems to have preserved the tradition that Jesus was resurrected as a woman, i.e., as Mary the Magdalene. See Jonathan Hill, op. cit., 148.

34.    Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (Revealing Antiquity) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

35.    Cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 288.

36.    Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 8.5.2.

37.    See Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel (Brill, 1988), plate 51. The few scholars who are aware of Sepphoris’ flipped gimels and the “secret” of Ein Gedi have dismissed the first as a spelling error and the latter as referring to a secret formula for perfume production. Can anyone really believe that a community that spends an incredible amount of money on a mosaic for its house of worship cannot even get the spelling right? Alternatively, is it really credible that in a house of worship, curses are embedded in its mosaic floors against members who give up corporate secrets involving perfume production? Clearly, the “secret” of Ein Gedi is a secret involving religious beliefs. It’s about faith, not business. And if we link this inscription to the Helios mosaics, and to the Joseph and Aseneth text, we are in a position to create a consistent narrative that explains the theological secret of the Ein Gedi community.

CHAPTER 11

1.      Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, 253.

2.      Pidyon Ha-Ben in Hebrew.

3.      After all, God struck down the first-born males of Egypt.

4.      The Torah is the Hebrew word for the Five Books of Moses.

5.      As we saw with the Galilean synagogues, theology and circular reasoning often dictate the conclusions on these matters. For example, speaking at the Princeton Theological Seminary Conference on the Talpiot tomb, which took place in Jerusalem, January 13–16, 2008, April D. DeConick managed to conclude that the ultimate proof that Jesus and Mary the Magdalene were not married can be found in the Valentinian Gnostic tradition where it is explicitly said that they were married. This strange twist of logic was published in DeConick’s paper “The Memorial Mary Meets the Historical Mary: The Many Faces of the Magdalene in Ancient Christianity,” which forms part of James Charlesworth’s proceedings of the conference (See James Charlesworth, “The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls” [Eerdmans, 2013], 267–290, especially p. 283). So what’s the reasoning? According to DeConick, men at the time of Jesus were, by and large, married. Jesus was not. After the fact, the Valentinian Christians wanted to retroactively marry the celibate Jesus to someone . . . but to whom? They had to find an unmarried woman to retroactively marry him to. Enter Mary the Magdalene. She must have been the only lady “available for marriage” from Jesus’ lifetime. She must have been single. Ergo, the fact that the Valentinian texts say that they were married proves that they were not. We respect DeConick tremendously, but on this point we have to respectfully disagree.

According to the above reasoning, since the Gospels say that Jesus was crucified, he must not have been. After all, Simon (Jesus’ brother) was crucified, and James (another brother) was stoned to death. The Gospels, therefore, must have wanted to crucify Jesus retroactively. He must have been the only member of the family retroactively “available,” as it were, for Pauline theology to crucify. He must have been the only one who lived a long life.

Obviously, this kind of reasoning gets you nowhere. Suffice it to say that if the Valentinian tradition claims that Jesus and Mary the Magdalene were husband and wife, this is a piece of evidence in favor of—not against—the idea that they were married. Put differently, Michael Jordan’s basketball skills may grow with the years, but that’s because there really is a Michael Jordan. Fans don’t willy-nilly make up a story and then find an unsuspecting player to attach it to. It’s history that gets mythologized, not the other way around. Even Paul doesn’t dare say that Jesus wasn’t married.

On this point, Ann Graham Brock seems more reasonable. In her words, “If we had incontrovertible evidence that Jesus had been married, then Mary Magdalene would be the most likely candidate by a long shot.” (Cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 142.) Because it was born in America, where freedom of religion is assured, Mormonism is the only Christian religion that was able to openly embrace a belief that Jesus was married and had children.

6.      See Margaret Starbird, The Woman with the Alabaster Jar (Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 1993).

7.      H. Pope, “St. Mary Magdalen” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910).

8.      Cited in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 162. See also Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002).

9.      Nir, op. cit., 153.

10.    Tosefta Ket. 1.4; b. Ket. 12a. Quoted in Nir, Ibid., 154.

11.    One of the blessings from the Orthodox wedding service includes the following: “Bless them, O Lord our God, as Thou blessed Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and all the Patriarchs, Joseph and Aseneth, Moses and Zipporah, Joachim and Anna, and Zachariah and Elizabeth.”

12.    The text is quite explicit: “Afterwards [i.e., after the wedding feast] Joseph had intercourse with Aseneth. And Aseneth conceived from Joseph and gave birth to Manasseh and his brother Ephraim in Joseph’s house” (21:9).

13.    Using typology, the authors of Joseph and Aseneth had no choice but to keep the names of the Biblical Joseph’s children as code names for Jesus’ actual children. Otherwise, there would have been no code to break and the text would have been explicitly about Jesus and Mary the Magdalene. Meaning, just as Joseph is a stand-in for Jesus, and Aseneth is a stand-in for Mary the Magdalene, Manasseh and Ephraim are stand-ins for Jesus and Mary the Magdalene’s actual children.

14.    According to Marvin W. Meyer, “all of modern Christianity is built on this New Testament concept [resurrection]. Yet, The Gospel of Mary and The Gospel of Philip, and the others we now know about and call either Gnostic Gospels or mystical gospels, don’t have a crucifixion, blood atonement, or a resurrection. . . .” Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 109.

15.    Jerome Murphy-O’Connor notes that the Galilean ancestry of Paul was affirmed by Jerome. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul His Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 2, 240.

16.    Acts 7:58. This is usually associated with the stoning of “St. Stephen.” Robert Eisenman argues that that this event is an echo of the stoning of James, brother of Jesus.

17.    Acts 22:26–30.

18.    Tacitus, Annals XV, 37–41.

19.    See Rose Mary Sheldon and Thijs Voskuilen, Operation Messiah: St. Paul, Roman Intelligence and the Birth of Christianity (Portland, OR: Mitchell Vallentine & Company, 2008).

20.    For a discussion of these significant differences, see Barrie Wilson, How Jesus Became Christian, chapter 9. Paul’s religion is a new religion, not that of Jesus or his first followers. See also James D. Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2012).

21.    For the demise of the Jesus movement (later known as Ebionites or Nazarenes), see Barrie Wilson, op. cit., chapter 11. See also Jeffrey J. Bütz, The Secret Legacy of Jesus (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2010).

22.    Realizing that Gnosticism is historical after all, Moritz Friedländer tries to push it back before Christianity and root it in Alexandrian Judaism. See Alan F. Segal, op. cit., 15. The fact is that Christian Gnosticism is reacting to something in the Christian tradition, meaning something somehow connected to Jesus.

23.    Stephen J. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption (Oxford University Press, 2002), 6.

24.    Valentinus was a gifted, hard-working intellectual who was educated in Alexandria, Egypt and who moved to Rome in the mid-130s C.E. There, he established a school and almost succeeded in becoming bishop of Rome, i.e., the Pope.

25.    For a translation of The Secret Book of John, see Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 149–183.

26.    Interestingly, according to The Secret Book of John, Barbelo forms a kind of trinity being called “the triple power, the androgynous one with three names.” Marvin Meyer, op. cit., 154.

27.    Marvin Meyer, op. cit., 159.

28.    Ibid., 16.

29.    See, for example: “. . . she wanted to bring forth something like herself . . . without her partner and without his consideration. The male did not give approval . . . nonetheless she gave birth . . . she had produced it without her partner,” in The Secret Book of John in Marvin Meyer, op. cit., 159.

30.    In later tradition, without male assistance, the wayward Lilith proceeded to give birth to demons, i.e., frustrated entities resulting from male ejaculations.

31.    One interpretation of Genesis 1:27 understands the first human as a male–female unity (note the Hebrew has “male and female he created him”), that is a single entity. Only later (Genesis 2:21–23) was this composite being divided into two separate genders and an imbalance occurred within humanity. Interestingly, in the Hellenistic world, the idea of a primordial gender splitting from an original composite human being is echoed in Plato’s dialogue, The Symposium. For Plato, love involves reuniting with the partner from whom we have been separated . . . and from coming to know the Form of the Good, what the Judeo-Christian tradition would call God.

32.    Sometimes Sophia’s lower aspects are called Achamoth. At other times she is Mary the Magdalene.

33.    Elior, op. cit., 55.

34.    DeConick, op. cit., 337.

35.    Ibid., 341–42. Sacred sex reached its highest expression in the version of Gnosticism taught by Valentinus. Another major stream were the Carpocratians, followers of the early 2nd-century teacher Carpocrates, who was based in Alexandria. He “was said to have taught that sin was a means of salvation. Only by committing all possible actions could the soul satisfy the demands of the rulers of the world and so be permitted to go to the heavens, its true home.” Morton Smith, op. cit., 13.

36.    Kraemer, op. cit., 266.

37.    It’s interesting that Paul, by his own admission a formerly orthodox Jew (Acts 22:3), is very liberal when it comes to food and diet. Meaning, he frees Christians from the dietary laws of the Hebrew Bible, which the Christians now dubbed the “Old” Testament. When it comes to sex, however, Paul is very strict and uncompromising. Why? Because being liberal on Biblical dietary laws positions him as anti-Torah; being strict on sexual matters positions him as anti-Magdalene.

38.    References to Syriac terms in The Gospel of Philip suggest an acquaintance with Syriac language and literature. See Marvin Meyer, op. cit., 54.

39.    Ibid., 45.

40.    Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, 236–237.

41.    Quoted in Marvin W. Meyer, ibid., 240.

42.    Ibid., 10.

43.    Ibid., 267.

44.    Ibid., 284.

45.    Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions, op. cit., 7.

46.    The exact find-site and the date of its excavation is unknown. Gregory Snyder follows Peter Lampe and others dating the inscription between 138 and 192 C.E. See Gregory H. Snyder, “A Second-Century Christian Inscription from the Via Latina,” Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 19, Number 2 (Summer 2011): 157.

47.    Ibid., 157–195.

48.    Ibid., 166.

49.    Ibid., 173.

50.    Ibid., 176.

51.    April DeConick argues that the bridal-chamber language in The Gospel of Philip is conceptual (True Mysteries: Sacramentalism in The Gospel of Philip VC 55 [2001], 230). In contrast, Nicola Denzey Lewis maintains that, at least for some Gnostic groups, the sex ritual was real (“Apolytrosis as Ritual and Sacrament: Determining a Ritual Context for Death in Second-Century Marcosian Valentinianism,” JECS 17 [2009]: 550). Ibid., 177 N63.

52.    Ibid., 192.

53.    Translated by Snyder, ibid., 191.

54.    Ibid., 193.

55.    See David Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis (The Free Press, 2001), 8.

56.    See Hearth Moon Rising, “Invoking Animal Magic,” Moon Books, 2013, p. 45. It seems that Paul substituted Mary the Magdalene, who was perceived as a queen bee by her followers, with a drone-like Jesus.

57.    Poem 63 quoted in Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, 126.

58.    Ibid., 114.

59.    Hill, op. cit., 114.

60.    Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 5.9.10, quoted in Marvin Meyer, op. cit., 147.

61.    Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis III, 9.6.3.

62.    See De praescriptione hereticorum.

63.    Gospel of Philip in Marvin Meyer, op. cit., 78.

64.    Meyer, op. cit., 163.

65.    Ibid. (Emphasis added.)

66.    Ibid., 82.

67.    Ibid.

68.    Ibid., 57.

69.    Ibid., 53.

70.    Interestingly, the transformation of Christianity from a movement celebrating Mary the Magdalene, fertile Bride of God, into a religion focused on God’s mother and her virginity, is a historical replay of the transformation of Artemis from a “fertility goddess with the usual fertility sexual rites” into a deity defined by her purity and chastity. See Jones, op. cit., 116.

71.    Ibid., 57.

72.    We are referring here to the fact that Valentinians and Joseph and Aseneth refer to a bride and a groom as brother and sister. The idea was that sexual attraction should be grounded in non-carnal love.

73.    Ibid., 63.

74.    Ibid., 64.

75.    Ibid., 65.

76.    Ibid., 79.

77.    Ibid., 68.

78.    New Eve was a title later appropriated by Pauline Christians and applied to Mary, Jesus’ mother.

79.    Ibid., 69. In Greek, the Bridal Chamber is called a nymphion.

80.    Ibid., 69. Note, too, that this description is not architecturally accurate of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which did not open to the west or south—only to the east. But it does correspond to the main architectural sections of the temple precincts: the outer court of the Israelites, the inner court of the priests, and the innermost holy of holies into which only the high priest could enter on the Day of Atonement.

81.    The Gospel of Philip is equating the believer’s spiritual process through the sacraments of Baptism, Redemption, and the Bridal Chamber with these architectural features of the Second Temple, from the court of the laity into the sanctuary of the priests and then into the abode of God into which only the high priest could enter once a year to make atonement for sin. In the bridal chamber, just as the people are reconciled to God through the actions of the high priest, so, too, the believers are reconciled to each other and to God through this sacred marriage.

82.    Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, 2009), 200. See also Jerusalem Talmud Niddah 2:5 and Babylonian Talmud Niddah 17b.

83.    Quoted in ibid., 46.

84.    Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 110.

85.    Panarion 26:8.8.

86.    Panarion 26:8.2–3.

87.    Ibid., 83. Here we have a reversal of the Jesus story in Mark (7:24–37) and Matthew (15:21–28). In Mark and Matthew, Jesus compares his teaching to bread for his disciples and the Syro-Phoenician woman compares herself to a dog deserving some of the breadcrumbs that fall off the disciples’ table. In the Panarion, in the Valentinian tradition, it is the “bride” who the people yearn for and, like “dogs,” they are only entitled to “crumbs,” i.e., her “voice” and the “fragrance of her ointment.” In this tradition, the masses are the dogs and the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mary the Magdalene) is what they yearn for. The Gospels reversed the metaphors, comparing her to a dog.

88.    See Smith, Clement, 257: “. . . libertinism, usually scandalous and occasionally criminal, was concealed. Consequently, scholars have neglected it.” See also the famous Mishna in Hagigah 2:1: “forbidden sexual relations may not be expounded by two/three.” Meaning, “Mishna Hagigah turns the subject[s] of forbidden sexual relations . . . into an esoteric discipline open only to a chosen elite of very few.” Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 182–183.

89.    Valentinus’ Letter to Agathopus, quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.59.3. See Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement of Alexandria on Trial: The Evidence of “Heresy” From Photius’ Bibliotheca (Brill, 2010), 96.

90.    Notions of promiscuity would, in theory, not apply to Jesus or any of his truly enlightened followers: “The Savior replied ‘there is no such thing as sin . . . whoever has ears to hear should hear’” (Gospel of Mary, in Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 37). Furthermore, in Galatians 3:28, Paul tells us that “there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus.” Judaism explicitly creates divisions between weekdays and the Sabbath, kosher and un-kosher, male and female. What would Paul’s extreme rejection of Torah law imply in a Valentinian context? Given the role of sex in their theology, it might have led to a secret teaching, which does not differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual sex.

91.    Achilles Tatius, The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon, Book 2.2–3 quoted in Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 93.

92.    Marvin W. Meyer, op. cit., 8.

93.    Quoted in Morton Smith, op. cit., 52.

94.    Andrew McGowan, “Eating People: Accusations of Cannibalism Against Christians in the Second Century,” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2:3 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994): 413–442. Available: unimelb.academia.edu/AndrewMcGowan/Papers/812380/Eating_People_Accusations_of_Cannibalism_Against_Christians_in_the_Second_Century

95.    Hill, op. cit., 96.

96.    Hyam Maccoby, Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and its Place in Judaism, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 112. Maccoby calls the use of the red cow’s ashes “a kind of resurrection.” Meaning, while other sacrifices had to be completely destroyed after their time of sacrificing or eating had elapsed, the red cow survived in changed form through the waters of purification.

97.    “The goddess Isis-Hathor in Egypt was a cow-goddess, often portrayed with a cow’s head. Her appearance with her child Horus in a cow-byre was the inspiration of the Gospel story of Jesus’ birth in a manger. In India, the cow was the holy animal who embodied the feminine principle, immune from normal slaughter for food, yet the most potent of sacrifices, whose death had cosmic significance.” Ibid, p. 109. Isis is the Egyptian equivalent of Artemis.

98.    Ibid, p. 110.

99.    Griselda Pollock, “Sacred Cows: Wandering in Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Anthropology” in The Sacred and the Feminine: Imagination and Sexual Difference edited by Griselda Pollock and Victoria Turvey Sauron, I.B. Tauris, 2007, p. 36

100.  The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, book 1, sects 1–46, quoted in Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, op. cit., 178.

101.  Ibid., sect 26.

102.  Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 95.

103.  The Biblical passage in question is Deuteronomy 32:33. See CD8:4–12 quoted in Michael O. Wise, The First Messiah (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 159. (Emphasis added.)

104.  See Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 254: “The libertine party or parties, whose tradition derived from Jesus himself, must have been widespread and influential.”

105.  Ibid., 262: “. . . libertine Christianity was widespread and ancient. It is attested in Ephesus . . . must have been important in Syria too.”

106.  Quoted in Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, 42–43. It is significant, as Eldad Keynan has pointed out to us, that Jesus may be turning holiness on its head here. By saying that a prostitute’s wages can be used for building a toilet for the High Priest, he’s either saying that the holiest of men can enjoy the benefits of the most humiliated of women or, if the prostitute is, indeed, sacred, then her status is higher than the high priest’s—she can help him deal with his carnal nature in the holiest precincts of the temple.

107.  Quoted in Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, 54. See also 1 Corinthians 5:1 where the Corinthians are arrogant concerning an illicit relationship being practiced in their church. Also see Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, 273. Concerning the Gnostic Carpocratians, Clement reports that they engage in orgiastic agapai, i.e., sacred sex.

108.  Ibid., 62.

109.  Quoted in Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, 183. Footnote to p. 66.

110.  James H. Charlesworth, trans., The Earliest Christian Hymnbook, The Odes of Solomon (Cascade Books, 2009), xxviii.

111.  Ibid.

112.  Ibid., 17 note E.

113.  Kraemer, op. cit., 256.

114.  Ibid., 257.

115.  Ibid., 260.

116.  Ode 36, ibid., 105.

117.  Ode 38, ibid., 109.

118.  Ode 40, ibid., 116. See also Ode 30 where Jesus’ truth is described as better than honey: “For more refreshing is its water [‘the spring of the Lord’] than honey, And the honeycomb of bees cannot be compared with it; Because it flowed from the lips of the Lord, And it assumed a name from the heart of the Lord.”

119.  Ode 3, ibid., 3.

120.  Verses 11–13, ibid., 111. (Emphasis added.)

121.  Smith, Jesus the Magician, 5.

122.  Ibid., 57.

123.  Henry Chadwick, “Alexandrian Christianity,” ed. H. Chadwick and J. Oulton (London, 1954), II.209.17ff. Quoted in Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, 273.

124.  Marvin W. Meyer, Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books About Jesus of Nazareth (HarperCollins, 2005), 63 and 302, footnotes 62 and 63.

125.  Ibid., 79.

126.  Ibid., 71.

127.  Ibid., 85.

128.  Ibid., 86.

129.  Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, 63. It is interesting that like Jesus Dionysus was seen as “a god incognito, disguised as a man.” This line is from Euripides: Bacchae, Book 5. In the play, Dionysus is associated with wine that, in Artemisian fashion, “runs with the nectar of bees” (5.140). He claims that he is a son of god, but others claim that his mother “lied” (5.25–30). In other words his mother, a virgin, is accused of prostituting herself. Because of that offense, Dionysus seeks to “vindicate” her by driving women crazy, compelling them to engage in orgies “when the holy flute like honey plays” (5.160). In effect, in order to clear his mother’s name, he uses orgiastic sex to turn women into veritable prostitutes.

130.  Clement, Stromata 3.59.3, quoted in Green, op. cit., 79.

131.  Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 50. (Emphasis added.)

132.  See Tabor, Paul and Jesus, 117. (Emphasis added.)

133.  We suspect that if they were around today, the Gnostics would be wearing small gold beds, not crosses, as jewelry around their necks.

134.  Joan Acocella, “The Saintly Sinner,” in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 40.

135.  If she had been a priestess of Artemis prior to meeting Jesus, this might have involved temple prostitution or “sacred sex” with kings, princes, warriors, and religious leaders. This was called “sacred marriage,” or hieros gamos. See Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 23.

136.  Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 77.

137.  Marvin W. Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 12. Gospel of Thomas, saying 22.

138.  Ibid., 25. Gospel of Thomas, saying 114.

139.  Ibid., 83.

140.  Ibid., 68. Also, it is incredible to see how these ideas survive and remain true to their original form. For example, in his 1951 book The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis articulates an exceedingly accurate view of the Gnostic concept of the “bridal chamber” when he puts in Jesus’ mouth: “Beloved wife, I never knew the world was so beautiful or the flesh so holy. It too is a daughter of God, a graceful sister of the soul. I never knew that the joys of the body were not sinful.”

141.  Maybe the disciples who did not like her reburied Jesus’ body without involving her. She certainly had her enemies among his “brothers” (see for example, Peter complaining to Jesus about Mary: “my Lord, we are not able to suffer this woman,” Pistis Sophia 1–3, quoted in Brock, Mary Magdalene, op. cit., 87). What they didn’t expect, however, is what happened when Mary was confronted by the empty tomb.

142.  Maximus, The Life of The Virgin: Maximus the Confessor (Yale University Press, 2012), Section 80, translated by Shoemaker, 107.

143.  Maximus, op. cit., Section 92, Shoemaker, 119.

144.  Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images (University of California Press, 1974), 182.

145.  Meyer, Ancient Mysteries, op. cit., 200.

146.  Gimbutas, op. cit., 182.

147.  Antigonos, Hist. mir. 19; quoted by Gimbutas, 181. (Emphasis added.)

148.  Hill, op. cit., 148.

149.  Ibid., 184.

CHAPTER 12

1.      See, for example, Mark 9:5, Matthew 26:29, and John 1:49.

2.      Josephus Flavius, Against Apion 2.282. See also Green, op. cit., 13.

3.      See Babylonian Talmud Gittin 56b.

4.      For a discussion about the role of God-fearers in the synagogues of Diaspora Judaism in the 1st century C.E., see John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul, New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004, Chapter 1 (“Jewish Faith and Pagan Society”).

5.      See Green, op. cit., 13–14.

6.      Green, op. cit., 13.

7.      Crossan and Reed, op. cit., 24. See also Angelos Chaniotis, “Godfearers in the City of Love,” Biblical Archaeology Review (May/June, 2010).

8.      The synagogue seems to have had sections for males, females, and God-fearers. The God-fearers section is almost as big as the Jewish male section. See so-called Study Hall on the synagogue plan, available: pohick.org/sts/ostia.html.

9.      See Mark R. Fairchild, “Turkey’s Unexcavated Synagogues,” Biblical Archaeology Review (July/August 2012): 40–41. The inscription has been dated to the Hellenistic period in 300–50 B.C.E., but not later than the Augustan period from 27 B.C.E. to 14 C.E. See E. L. Hicks, “Inscriptions from Eastern Silicia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 11 (1890): 236–254 and “Inscriptions from Western Silicia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 12 (1891): 225–273. Cited in Fairchild, op. cit., 65.

10.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 14, Chapter 7, Section 2.

11.    Snyder, op. cit., 9–17.

12.    See, for example, Acts 18:1–17 and Acts 19:8.

13.    Kraemer, op. cit., 273.

14.    Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, 26.

15.    James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2006), 49–51.

16.    The oral Torah, as recorded in the Talmud, states that this prohibition only involves male Moabites (Yevamoth 76b).

17.    See The Proto-Gospel of James (also known as The Infancy Gospel of James) in Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, 70. In this episode, a midwife comes out of the cave in which Jesus was born and says to Salome, “Salome, Salome, I can describe a new wonder to you. A virgin has given birth, contrary to her natural condition.” Salome replied to her, “As the Lord my God lives, if I do not insert my finger and examine her condition, I will not believe that the virgin has given birth.” She then proceeds to conduct the examination.

18.    Ibid., 63–72. In this mid-2nd-century C.E. writing, an angel of the Lord appears to Anna, Mary’s mother, and tells her “You will conceive a child and give birth, and your offspring will be spoken of throughout the entire world.” At this time, Anna’s husband, Joachim, is away from home. This is the origin of the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, i.e., Jesus’ mother was also born without male involvement. As with Joseph and Aseneth, there are always “angels” present at the moment of conception.

19.    Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 13.

20.    Talmud, Shab. 104b. Also see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, 20, 98, 138, 141, 158 n.9.

21.    Tosefta Hulim 2,22 and 2,24. Also Qohelet Rabbah 1:8(3).

22.    Celsus, True Discourse, written in approximately 178 C.E.

23.    The name is spelled differently in different sources: Pantera, Panteri, Panthera, Pandera, Panter. In several places the Talmud refers to “Jesus, son of Panteri” or “Jesus, son of Panter.”

24.    See Tabor, op. cit., 69. Also see Rousseau and Arav, op. cit., 223–225.

25.    See Israel Knohl, Messiahs and Resurrection in “The Gabriel Revelation” (New York: Continuum, 2009).

26.    Josephus Flavius, Jewish War, 2.57–59 and 2.43. Antiquities of the Jews, 17.278–284.

27.    It is possible that the Hebrew/Canaanite word “Abdes,” i.e., “slave” on the tombstone refers to Pantera’s religious beliefs, not his former status as a slave. Meaning, what testifies to the fact that he was a slave recruited into the Roman army is the adopted name “Tiberius,” not the word “Abdes.” The latter might refer to his status as a believer in the goddess Isis. This would mean that Pantera was a Canaanite, not a Jew, and might explain the influence on Jesus of the cult of Artemis-Isis. It would also explain Jesus’ ambiguous status in Jewish society.

28.    See the Shulchan Haruch, Even Ha Ezer, Chapter 4, Section 29.

29.    As Eldad Keynan has pointed out, a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew is not technically kosher according to Jewish law. Having said this, Jesus was probably married to Mary the Magdalene in the sense of making her koinonos, i.e., his companion. That way, their children could be converted to Judaism and not be mamzers. If Mary the Magdalene had converted, then Jesus couldn’t marry her and their children would be mamzers. We can still, however, speak of a marriage in a sense that Jesus and Mary the Magdalene lived as husband and wife, spiritually married as described in Joseph and Aseneth. For the various marriage strategies available to a mamzer, see Eldad’s Keynan paper “The Holy Sepulcher, Court Tombs, and Talpiot Tomb in Light of Jewish Law” in James Charlesworth, The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? Exploring Ancient Jewish Tombs Near Jerusalem’s Walls (Eerdmans, 2013), 424–433.

30.    “Now on the first day of the week Mary the Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb” (John 20:1).

31.    The idea that Mary the Magdalene was a reformed prostitute was put forward by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century and only reversed by the Vatican in 1969. If she was indeed a prostitute, her role as one of the major underwriters of the Jesus mission would have meant that both Jesus and the disciples lived off the avails of prostitution. Surely, this is not a conclusion that Pope Gregory would have wanted us to reach.

32.    Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 67.

33.    See Kraemer, op. cit., 260–261.

34.    Ibid., 261.

35.    Ibid., 263.

36.    Ibid.

37.    For example, Eusebius reports that the church father Origen castrated himself in order to be able to tutor young women and still remain above suspicion.

38.    Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chapter 11: “After the martyrdom of James and the capture of Jerusalem which immediately followed, the report is that those of the apostles and the disciples of our Lord who were yet surviving came together from all parts with those who were related to our Lord according to the flesh, for the greater part of them were yet living.” He goes on to indicate that Simeon, a relative of Jesus, was elected bishop.

39.    Eusebius, ibid., Book 4, Chapter 5, Sections 3, 4.

40.    It’s possible that some Jews—probably very Hellenized ones—conceived of Jesus as a divine, angel-like figure early on. There is a tradition, usually identified with the Book of Enoch, which allows for the “ascent” to heaven of certain humans, e.g., Enoch of the Book of Genesis, and their transformation there. By the 3rd century this tradition is identified with the angel Metatron. Furthermore, there is recent New Testament scholarship that argues for early Christology (i.e., that Jesus claimed to be divine early on in his ministry), appropriating for himself “the Name” (i.e., the Tetragrammaton) or the ineffable name of God. This is not the place to elaborate on all this. Suffice it to say that even if some Jews elevated Jesus during his lifetime, or immediately after the crucifixion, to some kind of divine or semi-divine status, this was not a mainstream Jewish position inside or outside the original Jesus movement. For discussions of early Christology, see April D. DeConick, “How We Talk About Christology Matters” in David B. Capes et al., Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity (Baylor University Press, 2007), 1–25. Also, Charles A. Gieschen, The Divine Name in Ante-Nicene Christology, Vigilliae Christianae, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Brill, 2003): 115–158. For the Enoch context see Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (The New Press, 2012), 91–95. For Metatron see ibid., 51 and Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (Brill, 2002), 61–68.

41.    See Eisenman, op. cit., 47–48. Paul is at pains in some of his letters to defend himself from the charge of lying—see, for instance, 2 Corinthians 11:31; Galatians 1:20.

42.    “I pursued them even to foreign cities” (Acts 26:11).

43.    “Up to this point they listened to him, but then they shouted, ‘Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live’” (Acts 22:22). Note that it is part of the agenda of the author of the Book of Acts to heighten the resistance of Jesus’ first followers toward Paul, the hero of this writing.

44.    Eusebius, op. cit., Book 3, Section 27 (“The Heresy of the Ebionites”).

45.    See Acts chapter 15 and Galatians chapter 2. The meeting between James and Paul is known by the confusing term Apostolic Conference, or The Council of Jerusalem. Essentially, as the Book of Acts makes clear, it was a failed attempt by the Jesus movement to control Paul and his new brand of Christianity.

46.    Some members of the original Church of the Gentiles must have also observed the Sabbath, keeping it as a day of rest, a holy day. After all, this was enjoined upon the Jewish people in the Ten Commandments, which many God-fearers honored.

47.    Meyer suggests that Joseph and Aseneth uses terminology similar to the pagan mysteries as well as to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of John. Scholars and researchers should follow up on his suggestion. Marvin W. Meyer, ed., The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, 227.

48.    We wish to thank Michael LaFond for drawing our attention to this important text. LaFond, in an as-yet-unpublished book, Kingdom Come, Christ Divided suggests that the “lady” in question may be Mary the Magdalene and that kyria in Greek, i.e., lady, is the same as the Aramaic “Mara,” a title that is repeatedly associated with Mary the Magdalene.

49.    Marvin Meyer notes that “a reasonable case can be made for a first century date for a first edition of the Gospel of Thomas” (The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 5).

50.    Ariel Sabar, “The Gospel According to King,” Smithsonian Magazine (November 2012): 82.

CHAPTER 13

1.      Quoted in Pagels in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 5.

2.      Quoted in Dan Burnstein and Arne J. de Keijzer, op. cit., 86.

3.      It is interesting that Rivka Nir, who astutely places the Joseph and Aseneth story in a Christian context, totally misses the point when it comes to “Pharaoh’s son.” The reason for this is that while Nir is willing to look at the Christian symbols behind the text, she’s not willing to look at the historical figures behind the symbols. In this way, she’s quite prepared to say that Aseneth stands for the church, but does not investigate the possibility that there’s a real historical female who stands behind the Church of the Gentiles. For Nir, everything remains on a symbolic level. In other words, she’s willing to say that Joseph and Aseneth is a Christian text, but she does not even consider the possibility that it is a lost gospel preserving the history of Christian origins.

This creates problems for her. For example, she’s convinced that the bees represent virginity, which they do, but she does not consider the possibility that we are dealing with a non-Pauline understanding of virginity. Because of this, she cannot reconcile the virginity that Aseneth supposedly represents, with the sexual intercourse that immediately follows her marriage to Joseph/Jesus. The same problem plagues her in her analysis of “Pharaoh’s son.” Since she is not looking at the text as history, she accounts for the clearly non-symbolic and straightforward treatment of this part of the story by imagining two different authors for Joseph and Aseneth (p. 160). According to Nir, one author wrote all the symbolism up to the “Pharaoh’s son” section, and another wrote the “Pharaoh’s son” story. When she has to account for what the story is telling us, she falls back on cliché, i.e., that the whole purpose of the meticulously detailed “Pharaoh’s son” section is to teach the reader that Christians should have “love for the enemy” (op. cit., 168). At the end of the day, Nir has to account for why the text is written mostly in code. If it’s not hiding anything, why is it written that way? She answers by quoting the Gospel of Philip, which says of symbols that “truth did not come into the world naked” (ibid., 179). In other words, Joseph and Aseneth is written in code because it’s cooler to write in code, even if you have no secret to encode.

4.      S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots: A Study of the Political Factor in Primitive Christianity (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967).

5.      In Matthew 8:14–17, Jesus is described as curing Peter’s mother-in-law. Similarly, Paul mentions that Peter, Jesus’ brothers, and other apostles were married (1 Corinthians 9:5) and that their wives accompanied them on their travels. The Acts of Peter also demonstrates a commitment to family ties. Here, Peter is portrayed as married and showing concern for his daughter. This is one of the few apocryphal stories that makes mention of the child of an apostle. See Brock, op. cit., 117.

6.      1QH 10:34–11:7, quoted in Wise, op. cit., 62–63.

7.      Jesus began his mission by proclaiming that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). Jesus also told his audiences that “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mark 9:1).

8.      Jesus tells his disciples that “at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Like Jesus, the Davidic king in the messianic era, the twelve disciples expected a political role as princes within the Kingdom of God. They, along with Jesus, would form the new Israel, the new world government of God’s kingdom.

9.      Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin, 1997), 220–228.

10.    “But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him” (Matthew 12:14).

11.    Jesus references this view in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43), the only clear place where he mentions a distinctive Essene teaching.

12.    The Essene graves in Jerusalem are less than a kilometer from the controversial “Jesus Family Tomb.”

13.    Eisenman identifies this teacher with James the Just, brother of Jesus. This would mean that at least some of the writings postdated the crucifixion. See his The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians (Castle Books, 2004).

14.    Marvin W. Meyer, op. cit., 10.

15.    Many read Iscariot as ish karayiot, i.e., “man of the city.” This has no precedent or parallel. We doubt that Judah was called “man about town.” On the other hand, Judah the Sicarius makes sense. The Greek inversion of Sicarii to Iscari is also consistent with other such inversions in translation. Finally, Judah’s suicide in Matthew 27:3–10 is not consistent with mainstream Judaism, but totally consistent with Sicarii practices such as the suicide of the nearly one thousand Sicarii at Masada (see Eisenman, The New Testament Code, 169). We suspect the ish karayiot rendering is an attempt to avoid troubling questions that arise if one of Jesus’ twelve disciples was a revolutionary assassin.

16.    A Zealot disappointment in Jesus would also explain the tradition that they preferred Bar Abba to Jesus in the famous incident where Pilate offers to release one of the Jewish leaders arrested by the local Roman authorities (see Matthew 27:15–23).

17.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 6, Section 9.

18.    Jesus and Herod Antipas eventually do meet face-to-face. According to the Gospel of Luke, after Jesus’ arrest, Pilate, on hearing that Jesus was a Galilean, sent him briefly to Herod Antipas, who happened to be in Jerusalem for Passover. Matthew notes that Herod was eager to meet Jesus, hoping that he’d perform some sign, and he questioned him at length. Jesus, however, refused to perform or be drawn into debate. Herod then mocked him in front of the priests and scribes who had accompanied him, and he returned Jesus to Pilate (Luke 23:6–12).

19.    Matthew 4:15, quoting Isaiah 9:1–2 (“Galilee of the Nations”).

20.    At the time of Jesus, the Jews didn’t like the residents of Samaria, who we know as Samaritans. Though these people saw themselves as descendants of the tribes of Israel, the Jews saw them as interlopers who didn’t belong. One of the ironies of the Gospel stories is that the story of the “Good Samaritan” is provided as an example of the exception to the rule, i.e., even Samaritans can sometimes be good. Now the Samaritans have become synonymous with goodness.

21.    Harold W. Hoehner, “The Withdrawals of Jesus,” in Herod Antipas (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972), Appendix IX.

22.    From the beginning of history, the most effective way of killing a ruler and getting away with it has been poison. For example, we see this reflected in the Book of Genesis when Joseph finds himself in jail with two individuals who are described as Pharaoh’s “baker” and wine “steward” (Genesis 41:23). It’s clear from the context that both these positions involved security responsibilities, and that one of them had attempted to assassinate the ruler. After an investigation, the “steward” is restored to the confidence of the Pharaoh, and the “baker” is decapitated.

23.    Soon after Jesus’ crucifixion, an early leader of the Jesus movement in Antioch was Manaen, a close relation, possibly a stepbrother, of Herod Antipas (Acts 13:3). Along with others in Antioch (Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius of Cyrene), Manaen plays a role in ordaining Paul. In other words, here too we see that Jesus and his movement—and, later on, Paul—were well known within governmental circles of the time and were very well connected with the highest echelons of power.

24.    In 37 B.C.E., King Herod used a staurogram—the superimposed Greek letters tau and rho which later Christians identified as a “symbol of the Christ”—on a coin. Why did King Herod use this symbol nearly seventy years before Jesus’ crucifixion? According to David Wray, author of The Secret Roots of Christianity: Decoding Religious History with Symbols on Ancient Coins (Numismatics & History, 2012), the staurogram was on King Herod’s coin because Herod was claiming to be the anointed one, i.e., the Christ. See Simcha Jacobovici, “King Herod a Messiah?” SimchaJTV, accessed April 2014, simchajtv.com/king-herod-a-messiah/.

25.    The Gospels tell us that Herod’s motivation for killing John was revenge for John’s criticism of his marriage to Herodias (Luke 3:19). In contrast, Josephus attributes Herod Antipas’ motivation to fear of John’s popularity and concern for the stability of his rule (Antiquities 18:5–2). Both motivations are plausible. According to Josephus, Herod Antipas imprisoned John the Baptizer in Machaerus, a fortress in Peraea, a few miles east of the Dead Sea. The Gospel of Matthew informs us that the daughter of Herodias, Salome, famously danced before Herod at a festive occasion. Being impressed with her, he promised to give her whatever she desired. Prompted by her mother, she requested John’s head (Matthew 14:1–12). In fulfillment of his vow, Herod had John beheaded. Some of John’s disciples—notably Andrew and Simon Peter—migrated to Jesus’ movement. Whatever his reasons, Herod Antipas appears to have feared not only John but also his cousin Jesus. The Gospels explicitly tell us that Herod Antipas wondered out loud if Jesus was John raised from the dead (Matthew 14:2). In other words, it seems that Herod Antipas thought that to put an end to John’s movement, he might also have to kill Jesus.

26.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 5, Section 2.

27.    For a novel about Sejanus, see Chris Seepe, The Conspiracy to Assassinate Jesus Christ (Syncronopedia, 2012).

28.    Mark 12:17; Matthew 22:21; Luke 20:25.

29.    Josephus writes that Agrippa appeared before his people dressed in a garment made wholly of silver that reflected the sun’s rays. At that point, he was declared a messiah by some of his followers. See Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 19, Chapter 8:2.

30.    Sometimes even common citizens had imperial access. All kinds of delegations went to Rome. Josephus reports that he too went to Rome prior to the Jewish revolt and got access to the emperor through the emperor’s wife, by befriending a Jewish actor that she liked. See Josephus Flavius, Life, 16.

31.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 7 (2).

32.    “Pontius Pilate was the fifth Roman prefect . . . he was a friend of . . . Sejanus, whose position as praetorian prefect of Rome was rendered even more powerful by Tiberius’s absence on Capri.” John Dominic Crossan, The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 33.

33.    Geza Vermes, Who’s Who in the Age of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 2005), 211–215.

CHAPTER 14

1.      Luke 23:7–11.

2.      Luke 13:31–33.

3.      Luke 8:2–3. Luke seems to be very familiar with the Antipas connection.

4.      The Gospel of Mark (6:17), followed by Matthew (14:3), calls his brother “Phillip,” but does not identify him as Phillip the Tetrarch. The story is told in Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 18. See also F.F. Bruce, “Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea,” The Annual of Leeds University Oriental Studies, 5 (1963/65): 6–23.

5.      She probably insisted that their subjects call him “king,” hence the confusion in Mark and, to some extent, in Matthew where he is called “King Herod” (Mark 6, 14, 22, 25, 26, 27; and Matthew 14:9). He was no king, a mere Tetrarch.

6.      Lucius Aelius Lamia was ostensibly the Roman governor during that entire period, but he never left Rome. Sejanus held him back and then sent Pilate to Judaea. Once Pilate was in place, Lamia continued to stay in Rome, making Pilate the de facto governor of Syria, as well as Judaea.

7.      Werner Eck, The Age of Augustus (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003).

8.      Suetonius, Tiberius, 39.

9.      Ibid., 43.

10.    Agrippa was probably in a position to know, having been close to Antipas and his wife Herodias.

11.    For these women, Jewish beliefs were not peripheral. See Green, op. cit., 15, “. . . there were women of very high rank with connections at [the Roman] court who were attracted to Jewish belief.” Green also states that “Judaism must have been seen as eminently respectable in certain elite circles.” (op. cit., 16.) The stage had already been set for Jesus and Mary the Magdalene. Later, Paul sends greetings “from those of the emperor’s household” (Philippians 4.21), which suggests that Christianity was rife among the staff in the imperial service. See Green, op. cit., 43.

12.    See Josephus, Antiquities 19: 343–350. Right after being declared Messiah by a huge crowd, he suddenly began suffering extreme cramps, keeled over and, basically, died. In retrospect, he might have been poisoned. A violent death seems to have been an occupational hazard with would-be Messiahs.

13.    Paul L. Maier, American Society of Church History, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Cambridge University Press, March 1968), 3–13.

14.    Maier, op. cit., 12.

15.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Ch. 6.

16.    In 23:5 he says to Simon and Levi “. . . if you hesitate . . . behold the point of my own spear is drawn before you.”

17.    But when Simon and Levi respond by attacking him, he cowers before them: “Pharaoh’s son was much afraid. He trembled and fell out of fear upon the ground before the feet of Simon and Levi” (23:15).

18.    The Twelve Caesars, Tiberius, Section 52. Suetonius indicates that Tiberius had no paternal feelings for his natural son, Drusus, let alone for his adopted son, Germanicus.

19.    Tacitus, Annals II.

20.    Ibid.

21.    Ibid.

22.    Aretas IV ruled Nabataea, a border state outside the Roman Empire, from approximately 9 B.C.E. to 40 C.E.

23.    Matthew 14:2.

24.    Annals II. With respect to magical spells written on bowls and placed on the floors and in the walls of houses, we have hundreds of archaeological samples mostly from the area of modern Iraq. As part of the incantations, many of them have the word Jesus written on them (see Dan Levene, A Corpus of Magic Bowls, Routledge, 2002).

25.    Kraemer, op. cit., 138.

CHAPTER 15

1.      This identification is also made in Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part II, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011.

2.      A few years later, Agrippa also experienced this type of dramatic and positive reversal of fortune. One day he was sitting in a Roman jail, incarcerated for sedition at the order of Tiberius himself; the next day—after Tiberius’ death—he was at the right hand of the new emperor, Caligula, and about to be crowned King of the Jews (see Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 18:6).

3.      Despite the secrecy, armed with our new gospel, we can compare text to facts, so as to ascertain whether there is, or is not, a fit or synchronicity. The more specific the event, the more likely the match, e.g., the presence of a Roman emperor’s son in the Galilee during the time of Jesus’ increasing fame, and a ruler referred to in Joseph and Aseneth and in Josephus as the “lion.”

4.      More precisely, it was often led behind the scenes by Caiaphas’ father-in-law, the High Priest Hanania, Annas in the Gospels.

5.      Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 18; 1.1; 17.10.4, War 2,4.

6.      See Israel Knohl, op. cit.

7.      See Morton Smith, Clement, op. cit., 248.

8.      See also Acts 6:14 where Stephen is charged for having said that Jesus would destroy the temple and change the Law of Moses.

9.      This explains why Judas “betrayed” Jesus. Although, given the circumstances, he must have thought that Jesus would be arrested but not crucified; after all, Jesus now had the rulers on his side. When Sejanus fell and Jesus was crucified, in Sicarii fashion, Judas committed suicide.

10.    See Schäfer, op. cit., 65.

11.    Mark 1:12–13; Matthew 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–14.

12.    In Matthew 4:5, Satan specifically takes Jesus to Jerusalem and to the highest point of the temple.

13.    Josephus, War 10:1.

14.    Luke 22:36–38.

15.    Matthew 26:52.

16.    Brandon, op. cit.

17.    In the Jewish Wars book 6, chapter 2, Josephus tells us that he was willing to abandon the revolution and play the traitor, if this could save the temple. He describes how he stood outside Jerusalem’s city walls and, speaking in Hebrew, he talked to the defenders: “. . . so he earnestly prayed them to spare their own city, and to prevent that fire which was just ready to seize upon the temple, and to offer their usual sacrifices to God therein.”

18.    John 11:35.

19.    Mark 11:9; Matthew 21:9.

20.    12:13.

21.    Until recently, the Good Friday prayer of the Roman Catholic Rite had Catholics praying for the conversion of the “perfidious Jews.”

22.    Mark 11:16. The day before he shut the temple down, Jesus scouted the territory. See Mark 11:12–25.

23.    John 18:13.

24.    See John 18:28.

25.    Lives of Illustrious Men, ch. 2.

26.    So much for the notion that Jesus’ followers did not kneel in prayer.

27.    Josephus, Wars 5:13. This also fits with the notion in Joseph and Aseneth that the goal of the anti-Jesus/Mary the Magdalene forces was to kill Jesus, but not before murdering his children before his eyes.

28.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 20, ch. 8.

29.    Josephus Flavius, War II, ch. 20 and War IV, ch. 5.

30.    Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus (Penguin Group, 1997), 963.

31.    Matthew 27:57–59; Mark 15:42–46; Luke 23:50–54; John 19:38–42.

32.    Mark 15:34.

33.    Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, ch. 12.

34.    Ibid., Book 3, ch. 19, 20.

35.    Ibid., Book 3, ch. 32.

CHAPTER 16

1.      In fact, they may have given rise to Islam. If one examines the Koran’s view of the “Old Testament,” it seems to have been distilled by early Judeo-Christians. The Koran’s view of Jesus, for example, as a prophet but not a god does not come from mainstream Judaism or Christianity—it is pure Ebionite theology.

2.      Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, 256.

3.      Ibid.

4.      Ibid., 257.

5.      Ibid.

6.      Ibid. (emphasis added).

7.      Ibid. (emphasis added).

8.      See Rabia Gregory, “Marrying Jesus: Brides and the Bridegroom in Medieval Women’s Religious Literature,” 2007, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

9.      Surveys of medieval Bride-of-Christ literature normally begin with Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs (1136). But they really seem to coincide with the earliest Latin translation of Joseph and Aseneth, which was popularized in a condensed form by Vincent of Beauvais. No doubt the Song of Songs helped influence the medieval Bride-of-Christ phenomenon, but it doesn’t explain it. (As we’ve stated, Joseph and Aseneth is a kind of Christian Song of Songs.) The term Bride of God does not appear anywhere in the Song of Songs. It appears only in Joseph and Aseneth.

10.    Gregory, op. cit., 4.

11.    Ibid., ix and 107.

12.    Quoted in ibid., 110–112.

13.    Quoted in ibid., 115.

14.    Quoted in ibid., 122.

15.    Ibid.

16.    Quoted in ibid., 132.

17.    Ibid., 139.

18.    Quoted in ibid., 140.

19.    Quoted in ibid., 141. This “mouth on mouth” kissing is later always associated with the mother, not the wife. For example, in the Homily on the Dormition attributed to Evodius of Rome: “Mary, his mother, came in a rush, and she advanced to him and kissed him, mouth on mouth” (Shoemaker, Ancient Dormition, op. cit., 403). We suspect this kind of kissing is an echo of Jesus’ relationship with Mary the Magdalene, not his mother.

20.    Gregory, p. 170.

21.    Ibid., 171.

22.    Ibid.

23.    Ibid., 176.

24.    Ibid., 177.

25.    Ibid., 182.

26.    Ibid., 225.

27.    Ibid., 215.

28.    Ibid., 273.

29.    Ibid., 288.

30.    Gregory, op. cit., 156. As another example, the patron saint of Spain, St. Teresa of Avila (16th century), wrote of her encounter with an angel as follows: “I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it” (quoted in Autobiography, ch. 29, part 17). St. Teresa was drawing on the erotically charged language of church father Origen, who describes his soul in female terms and who states that Jesus “pierced” it with “the loveworthy spear of his knowledge” (quoted in Jonathan Hill, op. cit., 143). The famous Renaissance sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini depicts St. Teresa and the spear-carrying angel in a marble statue housed in the chapel of the Santa Maria della Vittoria Church in Rome. Well before Freud, commentators on the statue pointed out that St. Teresa seems to be having an orgasm.

Bernini depicted another Bride of Christ in the midst of a holy orgasm in his sculpture of Ludovica Albertoni (1675). Albertoni was a Roman noblewoman who lived during the Renaissance. She was famous for her works of charity and religious ecstasies. Her statue is housed in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi a Ripa in Rome. Most commentators describe the look of ecstasy on her face as her death throes. But the orgasm could not be more explicit; her right hand is on her breast and the folds of her dress create a vulva in her crotch. See Fr. Antonio Del Vasto OFM, Church S. Francis of Assisi a Ripa Grande and its Saints Historical Artistic Guide, Rome (2009), 76–77.

31.    Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (University of California Press, 1988), 174–175.

32.    Ibid., 204.

33.    Russell Peck, ed., The Storie of Asneth, originally published in Heroic Women from the Old Testament in Middle English Verse (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval institute Publications, 1991). Available: lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/asnint.htm.

34.    See http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/asnint.htm, p. 3.

35.    Ibid., p. 5.

36.    Ibid., p. 7.

37.    Henry Noble MacCracken, “The Storie of Asneth. An Unknown Middle English Translation of a Lost Latin Version,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 1910): 224–264; 235, line 200.

38.    “The medieval interpretation presumed that all souls were feminine, whether they were associated with male or female bodies.” (Gregory, op. cit., 13.)

39.    Theologically speaking, an illustrated 12th-century commentary on the Biblical Song of Songs by Honorius Augustodunesis suggests that there were, in fact, four brides of Christ corresponding to four Biblical epochs and, in the end, Jesus would wed the antichrist. Here, again, we see a Gnostic interpretation of Jesus’ ultimate union with a wayward force (the antichrist) for the purpose of redemption. This metaphysical marriage is based on previous marriages. Anne E. Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 58–64.

40.    The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 61. Translation based on B. Blatz, The Coptic Gospel of Thomas, W. Schneemelcher, ed, New Testament Apocrypha, English translation by R. McL. Wilson, James Clarke & Co. Ltd.; Westminster/John Knox Press, Cambridge; Louisville, 1991, 110-133 (emphasis added).

41.    George W. MacRae, trans., “The Thunder, Perfect Mind” in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library, revised edition (HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1990).

CHAPTER 17

1.      Harvard Divinity School, “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus,” 2012, hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife.

2.      Meyer, Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, 40.

3.      Ibid., 25.

4.      Ibid.

5.      Ibid., 63.

6.      Karen King would later give a very “academic” explanation for this surprising silence in the face of a momentous discovery: “people interested in Egyptology tend not to be interested in Christianity . . . they’re into Pharaonic stuff” (Ariel Sabar, op. cit., 82). We think not.

7.      Karen L. King (2014). “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife . . .’”: A New Coptic Papyrus Fragment. Harvard Theological Review, 107, p 154. doi:10.1017/S0017816014000133.

8.      Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, 3.

9.      This parable too may be referring to sacred sex. To the modern ear, mustard seeds are all about being tiny, and Jesus is talking about a lowly seed growing into a giant tree (Matthew 13:31–32, Mark 4:30–32, Luke 13:18–19). But in the Hellenized world of the Galilee, the parable may have meant something altogether different. Colewort, a plant of the mustard family, was thought by the Romans to have erection-enhancing properties. A poem that survives from Imperial Rome has a man saying to his woman that he would love to rub “ten handfuls” of colewort into “the ditches of [her] groin.” Suddenly, Jesus talking about a man sowing mustard seed in the furrows of his field has a different connotation, especially since he likens this act to the Kingdom of God. See David Friedman, op. cit., 27.

10.    Quoted in Morton Smith, op. cit., 1–2.

11.    Kraemer, op. cit., 291.

12.    Mark Goodacre, “The Bride of God or the Lost Gospel of Joseph and Asyath, Richard Bauckham,” NT Blog, accessed March 2014, ntweblog.blogspot.ca/2013/10/the-bride-of-god-or-lost-gospel-of.html

13.    David Friedman, op. cit., 5.

14.    Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 9, 1.