The Sun God
As we have seen, investigating who the Joseph in our manuscript might be patterned after led us to the New Testament. Our reasoning is straightforward. Modeling was a problem not just for someone who wanted to write about Mary the Magdalene; it concerned Jesus as well. There are two levels to this argument. First, if someone is burning your books, you have to hide them or encode them. After the 4th-century victory of one form of Christianity over all others, the losers could give in, actively oppose the dominant stream, go underground, or hide in plain sight. We think we’ve demonstrated that, using the tools of typology, the author of Joseph and Aseneth decided to do the latter. Nonetheless, that only gets you half way. There’s a second consideration. Hiding Jesus behind the Biblical Joseph allows your text to survive, but it does not dictate what you’re going to say about him. There were a number of options. The depiction of Jesus could draw on actual history, Christian theology, Jewish theology, pagan mythology, and more. In other words, the author of Joseph and Aseneth had to do more than simply hide Jesus behind Joseph. If he was going to tell us who or what he thought Jesus really was, he had to elaborate on Joseph in ways that clearly had nothing to do with the story in Genesis. Presumably, he thought his readers would catch on.
In some ways, the authors of the New Testament Gospels were faced with a task similar to the author of Joseph and Aseneth: how best to represent Jesus in terms that their audience would grasp. To this end, they literally ransacked the Jewish and Roman worlds to find suitable models of famous individuals to whom Jesus could be compared. The four canonical Gospel writers appear to have given considerable thought to this question, and they arrived at different conclusions.
The author of the Gospel of Mark, for instance, positioned Jesus as a miracle worker, devoting about a third of his writing to such feats—healing people, feeding five thousand, and walking on water. He portrayed Jesus as a superior version of the great miracle workers of the Hebrew Bible, such as Elijah and Elisha—they were his role models. According to one scholar, whereas Elijah performed eight miracles and Elisha sixteen, Jesus got to twenty-four.1 In other words, for Mark, Jesus was the greatest miracle worker of all time. That was his model and that’s how he portrayed him.
In contrast, although they differ in details, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke both emphasize Jesus’ virgin birth. This is not a Jewish concept. It is derived, however, from a common idea extremely familiar to people in the 1st century C.E. In that era—and this may surprise people not familiar with this history—Roman emperors claimed virgin/divine births. Similarly, founders of major religions such as Dionysus and Mithras were also regarded as the offspring of virgin births. All these individuals were said, like Jesus, to have had divine fathers and human mothers. Even the philosopher Plato, some said, had a virgin birth. In other words, to be somebody truly significant in the Roman world, an individual had to have had a virgin birth. Somehow, he had to have been fathered by a divine, not human, seed.
In religious terms, therefore, the virgin birth story doesn’t make Jesus unique. In the Roman world, such births—when it came to rulers and religious founders—were commonplace.2 Virgin birth was the price of entry, so to speak, into the ranks of the most notable. Hardly biology or history, this mythological narrative was a way of saying that Jesus—at the very least—was on a par with none other than the Roman emperors and the founders of the most popular religions of the time. It signaled to contemporary readers the immense importance the Gospel writers attached to his birth.
The Gospel of John goes in a different direction, modeling Jesus on the Logos or “the Word.” The Logos is a Greek philosophical concept, a phrase denoting the expression of God. This represents something far beyond anything that Mark, Matthew, or Luke imagined. John makes it clear that, in his view, the Logos is not only “with God” but “is God” (John 1:1). From John’s perspective, the abstract divine manifestation—the Word—became incarnate, that is, it took on human form. Thus, for John, Jesus is not merely a miracle worker or even a Son of God but—as many Roman emperors claimed about themselves—he is God who became flesh (John 1:14).
As these examples show, any writer setting out to write a Gospel such as Joseph and Aseneth would have had to shape his Jesus according to pre-existing concepts concerning messiahship and divinity.3
So what does the manuscript really tell us about Jesus? Who is he modeled after? Is there any hidden teaching or history to be gleaned from the text?
Jesus as the Roman Emperor
From the outset, the figure of Joseph as presented in Joseph and Aseneth is impressive. The symbolism is carefully crafted to reveal Joseph’s true essence. In modern film parlance, it’s a gradual build. Detail upon detail is disclosed so that we take in the true measure of the man. First of all, the Joseph figure in Joseph and Aseneth appears wearing a white tunic, a purple robe, and a golden crown with twelve precious stones. Above the crown there are golden rays. This isn’t Egyptian dress, as a superficial reading might imply. This is undisputedly the garb of a Roman emperor—white tunic, purple robe. No one reading this text in the first centuries of the Common Era would have missed the point. Basically, what this encoded Gospel is telling us is that Jesus is the true ruler of the world. But there’s more.
Though Joseph/Jesus first appears to Aseneth/Mary the Magdalene as a Roman emperor, the text tells us that he is more than a mere Roman ruler. He is the true king of Israel, God’s anointed one. Instead of a crown of thorns, however, in Joseph and Aseneth Jesus is wearing a golden crown emblazoned with twelve stones, representing the twelve Tribes of Israel. Essentially, Jesus is depicted not only as a King, but also as a Jewish high priest (Exodus 28:1–31).
The Jewish high priesthood was made up of descendants of Aaron. The high priest wore a breastplate decorated with twelve stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel (Exodus 28:15–19). Until the Maccabees in 165 B.C.E., King and Priest were different people representing some kind of system of checks and balances. After the Maccabees, also known as the Hasmoneans, the two roles were collapsed into one. By wearing both the crown and the stones, Jesus is being represented as King and High Priest. In other words, he is depicted in Maccabean fashion as both Moses and Aaron. Of course, the twelve stones also represent Jesus’ twelve disciples who were chosen to spread his message to the far-flung corners of the world.
Jesus as the True Vine
In the text, Joseph/Jesus carries a royal scepter as well as an olive branch. The latter is not simply a gesture of good will—extending the olive branch, so to speak. The olive tree is a code word for faithful Christians, those who persevere in spite of obstacles like persecution directed at them from fellow Christians. While it may sound somewhat strange to our ears today, the “olive” is none other than Jesus himself. Ephrem the Syrian, for example, explores the symbolism of the olive tree in one of his hymns:
The prudent olive has no fear
Of the cold which terrifies all
Under the scourges of the freezing winter
Its leaves stand fast, as though faithful.
They are an image of the faithful
Who persevere in Christ the Olive.4
So, once again, Ephrem’s typology comes in handy: the Olive = Christ. The identification is apt. The olive is hardy and long-lasting and can withstand the rigors of many different hostile environments. It is an image that grows out of both a Roman as well as a Jewish environment. Cultures around the Mediterranean world grew the olive tree and it was a staple of trade and diet, then and now. It was emblematic of human existence and so presented a suitable image for Jesus. Remember, “Christ” means “Anointed one,” the anointing consisting of having ritually pure olive oil poured over one’s head as a symbol of divine election.
The image of the olive tree emerges from a specifically Jewish matrix. In this context, the vineyard—like the olive grove—also represents a central metaphor for God’s people, those whom He carefully tends and nurtures—“For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting” (Isaiah 5: 7). When devastation threatens the Jewish people, the image used is that of the vineyard becoming desolate (Isaiah 5:5, 6). God prunes Israel, so to speak, cutting off shoots with pruning shears and hewing away the spreading branches (Isaiah 18:5). In this way, God forms the vine into any shape He desires. Disobedient Israel is referred to as a degenerate vineyard yielding “wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2; Jeremiah 2:21). Conversely, the righteous are referred to as “the shoot that I [God] planted, the work of My hands” (Isaiah 60:21). The righteous are the shoot, or branch, of the vine that yields good fruit. The members of the Dead Sea Scroll community envisaged themselves as a new planting, in fact, “an everlasting plantation” (Community Rule 8).
From a Christian perspective, while Jesus was the olive, Jesus’ followers saw themselves representing the “true vine” of Israel. This is the vine of righteousness, the branch of David, the shoot that God tends and cares for and which yields good fruit. In Hebrew, a branch or shoot is called a Netzer and, to this day, Hebrew speakers call Christians Notzrim, that is, the “followers of the shoot.” In fact, the name Nazareth probably means “place of the branch,” signifying the village to which a Bethlehem-based branch of a family claiming Davidic descent was transplanted at the time of Herod the Great. More than a mere emperor, the symbolism in Joseph and Aseneth makes it clear that, for his followers, Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes and dreams—even humanity’s hopes and dreams. According to this view, the church is the place where God nurtures his people through good times as well as times of persecution. Ephrem’s hymn, quoted above, goes on to say:
In persecution the faithless have fallen like leaves
Which do not abide on their trees;
But Christians, hanging on Christ,
Are like olive-leaves in winter,
All of them planted wholly in him.5
According to this model, Jesus is the olive tree, the giver and sustainer of life, the reliable root from which many will grow and flourish. In other words, every single symbol associated with Joseph in our manuscript points to Jesus, and to Jesus alone.
Jesus as Helios the Sun God
Most importantly, as previously noted, in our text we find Joseph modeled on the Sun god—Helios—also known as Sol Invictus or Apollo. Indisputably, Joseph in Joseph and Aseneth is portrayed as a Sun god, with twelve rays of sunlight emanating from his crown (5:5). His chariot is also impressive: it’s covered with gold and pulled by white horses—again a symbol of the sun whose movement across the sky was thought to be caused by mighty steeds pulling a magnificent celestial chariot (5:4).6 By this point in the narrative, everyone should realize that this is not the Biblical Joseph who is paraded by Pharaoh through the streets on a chariot. It is Jesus depicted as Helios. In fact, Aseneth—facing east—welcomes Joseph with these words: “Now I see the sun shining from his chariot that has come to us, and its radiance lights up our home” (6:2). In other words, the Sun god has deigned to come down to earth, to court, marry, and eventually procreate with her.
In Christian terms, Jesus is equated with the sun’s light, and this is part and parcel of the agenda of the early church in order to assert his divinity. Jesus is said to be the “Light of the World” (John 8:12). His followers “will have the light of life” (John 8:12). And when he was crucified, the Gospel of Luke tells us that “the sun’s light failed” (23:45)—perhaps a reference to an actual eclipse, but metaphorically suggestive of the sun dying. In other words, in Joseph and Aseneth, Helios is clearly the prototype chosen to represent the power and significance of Jesus.
The choice is an interesting one, for Helios was the model for at least one Roman emperor and one major Roman religion. Julian, the 4th-century Roman emperor, composed a Hymn to Helios in praise of the power of the Sun god. There he proclaimed his allegiance to King Helios, describing him as the intellectual god, the source of all truth and goodness. For Julian, Helios was like Plato’s Form of the Good. In The Republic, Plato had compared the highest “form,” or foundational concept, to the sun which illumines both the World of Reality and the World of Appearance. Julian’s attempt to reinvigorate ancient Graeco-Roman religion was not long-lasting. He was overshadowed by Christian emperors before and after him, and his brief foray into pagan revivalism earned him the nickname the apostate. For his efforts to resurrect sun worship, Julian was assassinated on the battlefield, allegedly by a Christian soldier. Before and after Julian, Helios imagery was applied by Christians not to a Sun god, but to a “son” god—to Jesus and Jesus alone.
A more robust and long-standing tradition of Helios can be found within Mithraism, a Roman religion of Persian origin. Mithraism was a strong competitor to Christianity in the first few centuries, and there are many similarities between the two faiths, Mithraism being the older of the two religions. In fact, it seems that Christians deliberately borrowed Mithraic images to bolster their religion and, essentially, to put Mithraism out of business. For example, Mithras was born in a cave. Jesus too is said to have been born in a cave-like grotto or manger. Like Jesus, Mithras had a divine father and a human mother. Also, he was worshipped in a ceremony of bread and wine during which his followers celebrated his victory over death. Central to Mithraic mythology was the sacrifice of the primordial bull whose spilled blood redeemed the world. The parallels to Christianity are obvious. In Christianity, it is Jesus himself who is the sacrifice and it is his blood that redeems the world. Most interesting for a modern audience, Mithras’ birthday was December 25th, the time during which the days in the northern hemisphere become longer, representing the victory of light over darkness. As a result of all this, Mithras, too, came to be pictured as the Sun god—as Helios or as Sol Invictus, the Conquering Sun.
As can be seen from the above, early Christianity borrowed much of its imagery from Mithraism. In fact, there is an echo of the conflation of Mithras and Jesus in the story of the three wise men or Magi. The Magi were, after all, the priests of Mithras. In the Gospel of Matthew (2:1), when they show up in the manger of Bethlehem for the “adoration” of the divine child, what they are in fact doing is equating Mithras with Jesus. An ancient depiction of Mithras exists to this day underneath the Church of St. Prisca in Rome. Appropriately, the church was built over a huge mithraeum, a temple devoted to the worship of Mithras.
In When Aseneth Met Joseph, Ross Shepard Kraemer writes, “that Helios imagery is central to the tale of Aseneth is obvious from the outset of Joseph’s actual appearance on the scene. . . .”7 She also makes the point—just in passing, mind you—that Artemis was the moon goddess of those times.8 All that remained for her to say is what we are saying now: by depicting Joseph/Jesus as Helios and Aseneth/Mary the Magdalene as Artemis, the manuscript in the British Library called Joseph and Aseneth reveals that for their earliest followers, the marriage of Jesus to Mary the Magdalene represented nothing less than the sacred union of the sun and the moon.
Helios and the Zodiac in Ancient Jewish “Synagogues”
If Joseph and Aseneth represents, in essence, a lost gospel in which Jesus is modeled after Helios and Mary the Magdalene is modeled after Artemis, why is there no physical evidence—for example, houses of worship—of the community for which this text would have been holy writ? Surprisingly, there is. At least six houses of worship excavated so far in the land of Israel have yielded 3rd- to 6th-century mosaic zodiac floors: Hammath Tiberias, Beit Alpha, Isfiya, Sussiya, Na’aran, and Sepphoris. At the center of the zodiacs, we have various depictions of Helios, sometimes riding his chariot. Because some of these mosaics also have “Jewish” imagery, such as a menorah/candelabra, a ram’s horn/Shofar, and temple paraphernalia, these houses of worship have been categorized as “synagogues.” Since Jews are forbidden by the Torah to depict “graven images”—that is to say, human figures or pagan gods—scholars have argued that these images don’t mean anything—they are purely decorative. According to these scholars, the zodiacs and Helios are an ancient case of keeping up with the Joneses—since the non-Jews had mosaics, zodiacs, and Helios, the Jews had to have them too. One scholar who disagrees with this interpretation is the foremost expert on synagogue mosaics in the Galilee, Professor Rachel Hachlili. In her seminal book on the subject, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, she writes that the community that created the mosaic “was not interested merely in a purely decorative design for its floors. There must have been something unique about this particular design . . . [it] had more than a merely decorative function.”9
Professor Ross Shepard Kraemer agrees with Professor Hachlili. When writing about Joseph and Aseneth, Kraemer notes the similarities between, for example, the depiction of Joseph in the text and the depiction of Helios in the Galilean mosaics. She argues that these images could not be merely decorative. They must have religious significance.10
We think Kraemer is on to something very important. Maybe—just maybe—these Galilean buildings are not synagogues. Maybe they are something different. Perhaps they are the synagogues—or, more properly, churches—for Christians for whom Joseph and Aseneth was a sacred text.11 After all, “Christian art was about conveying a message, often one that a casual viewer would not understand.”12 Perhaps here, in these mosaics, we have another secret code to be deciphered. And maybe, if we succeed in deciphering the mosaics, we will find the houses of worship of those followers of Jesus for whom Jesus’ marriage, not his crucifixion, was the key event in his life.
Let’s first consider Beit Alpha, which, as Kraemer notes, is the best-preserved of the mosaics. Beit Alpha is located in the northeast sector of Israel, in the Beit She’an Valley not far from the base of Mount Gilboa. Near the entranceway to this building there are two inscriptions. One in Aramaic says that the building was built during the reign of the Emperor Justinian (527 to 565 C.E.) with funds provided by local people. The other, in Greek, mentions two craftsmen by name.
The main floor of the sanctuary is divided into three areas of mosaics. Starting at the north end of the building, the entranceway, and moving south, we first encounter a Biblical scene: the near-sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. It shows Abraham with a knife; he is about to kill Isaac on the pyre, but is prevented by the hand of an angel. There is a ram caught in a thicket. The figures are labeled in Hebrew.
As we move farther into the building, the next panel of mosaics that we encounter is the largest one. Surprisingly, it features Helios surrounded by the twelve figures of the zodiac, every one of them named in Hebrew. At each of the four corners of the panel is one of the four seasons. They are depicted as women with wings.
Finally, at the south end of the room, there is a mosaic of the Holy Ark of the Covenant, the aron ha-brith which once housed the Ten Commandments. The Ark is surrounded by menorahs (temple candelabras), birds, two lions, and various vessels used in temple worship. These include a shofar (ram’s horn), a lulav (palm branch), etrog (a large citrus similar to a lemon), and an incense shovel. The building is aligned southwest, in the general direction of Jerusalem.
Because of the presence of Jewish images such as the sacrifice of Isaac and the Ark of the Covenant, many scholars have dubbed the building a “synagogue.” They have ignored the many pagan images: Helios, the four seasons, the zodiac, and so on. In fact, by circular argument, Beit Alpha is called a synagogue because it is similar to the mosaic found in Tiberias, which in turn is called a synagogue because it reminds one of Beit Alpha.
Let’s think outside the box for a moment and revisit the symbolism in the Beit Alpha mosaic.
Any investigation of the mosaic has to start with the impressive central panel. If we stand in front of this huge mosaic and look at the center circle, what we see is Helios. Remarkably, as Kraemer notes, it’s exactly like the description of Joseph/Jesus depicted in Joseph and Aseneth. Helios is riding a chariot pulled by four white horses, two on either side. There are rays of light streaming out from above his head. There are some stars but not many—most are below Helios indicating that it is now dawn and Helios is ascending. Even the crescent-shaped moon appears to be waning, as it is positioned lower than Helios’ head. Outside the inner circle are the twelve figures of the zodiac. Pisces is represented by two fish, for instance, and in Gemini the twins look conjoined. Faces are clearly depicted along with the conventional animals and insects that comprise the zodiac figures.
Why is Helios, a Sun god, here? A pagan divinity in what is ostensibly a Jewish synagogue? Why the zodiac? The Torah explicitly forbids the study of astrology: “and when you look up to the sky and behold the sun and the moon and the stars, the whole heavenly host, you must not be lured into bowing down to them or serving them . . .” (Deuteronomy 4:19). Some kind of astrology is, indeed, developed within mystical Judaism, but its study is regarded with suspicion and it certainly does not involve physical representations of pagan deities. So, why were these zodiacal images chosen to adorn what is supposed to be a Jewish place of prayer, where graven images are strictly forbidden? Here, at Beit Alpha, we have a strange mixture of Jewish and non-Jewish art. Why? And why do Helios and the zodiac dwarf in size the depictions from the Bible, even God’s temple in Jerusalem?
If this is indeed a synagogue, this is truly a shocking scene.
As stated above, Beit Alpha is not the only place in which Helios and the zodiac are to be found. There’s a similar mosaic in a building at Hammat Tiberias, located on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, about two miles south of the city of Tiberias, not far from Magdala. As with Beit Alpha, Hammat Tiberias also has a representation of the Ark/temple, complete with two menorahs (candelabras), two rams’ horns, and various plants. But here again we see a depiction of Helios riding across the sky, complete with a halo of light and rays streaming from his face. As we examine the mosaic, Helios is looking out toward his right. His right hand is raised, and in his left hand he holds the earth and a whip. He appears to be riding a chariot but the details here have been obliterated. Nine of the original twelve zodiac figures are distinguishable and, shockingly, they include nude depictions of youths. Oddly, Libra (the Scales) appears to be drawn as an uncircumcised male. In addition, some of the Hebrew inscriptions appear to have been purposely misspelled.
All this adds up to a monumental mystery. Again, why the figure of Helios and the zodiac in what is supposed to be a synagogue? Why the spelling errors—didn’t someone have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to instruct the mosaic-maker in proper spelling? And why, of all things, an uncircumcised naked male in what’s supposed to be a Jewish house of worship?13
Another representation of the sun and the zodiac within what appears to be a 5th- or 6th-century synagogue can be found at ancient Sepphoris—“the ornament of the Galilee,” in Josephus’ apt description. This impressive Hellenistic city is just a few miles north of Nazareth. Jesus could have seen this city from any hill next to Nazareth. Perhaps he and his father, a contractor, were engaged in building projects in this magnificent Roman center that is now gradually being excavated.
One building at Sepphoris is relevant to our investigations. It, too, is said to be a synagogue. And, as you might have guessed by now, it includes various mosaic depictions, some of which represent Biblical scenes. One mosaic illustrates the near-sacrifice of Isaac. Another badly damaged one has been described by scholars as a depiction of the visit of angels to Sarah, Abraham’s wife. There are also menorahs, shofars, and other items used in temple sacrifice. In addition, there is a panel with the name “Aaron” beside it, probably referring to Moses’ brother, the priest.
The main mosaic in this building, however, is the sun-and-zodiac panel. Human figures are present in each of the panels, and the month that corresponds to the zodiac name is depicted. Thus for Scorpio, not only is there a scorpion but also a man, the Hebrew name for Scorpio (‘akrav) and the Hebrew name of the month (Cheshvan). Portions of the zodiac, however, are no longer observable. In the center of the zodiac there is—of course—the Sun god. Here there is no human figure for Helios. Rather, he is represented simply as the sun, accompanied by a moon and a star.
As we’ve noted, identification of these sites as “synagogues” results from contradictory and circular reasoning. Since there are Jewish religious symbols here, scholars reason, these must be synagogues. But we can just as easily say that since there are pagan images here, these must be pagan places of worship. In fact, on the simplest level, the latter statement makes more sense because paganism does not preclude the use of Jewish symbols, but Judaism absolutely forbids the use of pagan symbols.
So what are the possible explanations for these strange mosaics which broadly correspond to our text?
Let’s look at the synagogue option again: one possibility is that these represent synagogues of highly assimilated Jews who, forgetting the Biblical injunctions to shun pagan practices, make the Sun god the central image within their houses of worship. That is, of course, possible, but it would represent a very high degree of assimilation and, essentially, the abandonment of basic Torah prohibitions. If the people worshipping in these synagogues are Jewish, they don’t practice any Judaism that is attested to in any text.
The other option is that these are pagan houses of worship, but by the time some of these were built—the 6th century—Christianity had already been firmly ensconced for hundreds of years. This kind of paganism would simply not have been tolerated. Also, we have no record of a Judaized paganism flourishing in Israel from the 3rd to 6th centuries.
But perhaps there’s another way to look at the Biblical scenes depicted in the mosaics. If we reconsider these scenes, we come to the same realization that we arrived at when decoding Joseph and Aseneth. Simply put, these images are consistent with Christian, not Jewish, iconography.
Let’s look at the panel on Sarah and the angels. In the Book of Genesis (18:10), Sarah is visited by angels who tell her that she will give birth to Isaac. In Christian theology, this episode is a foreshadowing—a type—of the annunciation to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus.14 As for the mosaic of the temple, this too can be understood in a Christian context. After all, Jesus predicted that the temple would be destroyed and that he would rebuild it in three days (John 2:19). Orthodox Christian theology has interpreted Jesus’ reference to the temple as a reference to his own physical body and the reference to three days as a veiled prediction of his own resurrection. But it seems that the earliest followers of Jesus did not understand Jesus’ prediction metaphorically. They understood it literally. And they waited for the Second Coming so as to see the rebuilding of the Temple of God.
Alternatively, some Christians began to think of the church and even its members as the new temple. The First Letter of Peter, for example, urges members to be “built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Ephrem the Syrian composed a hymn comparing the church to the tabernacle Moses built in the wilderness, the forerunner and pattern on which the First and Second Temples were constructed. The hymn goes as follows:
Moses built a tabernacle
In the desert for the Godhead;
Because He dwelt not in their hearts,
He shall dwell in the Holy of Holies.
For the Gentiles the Church was built,
A gathering for prayers.15
We suggest that Kraemer was on to something when she linked the figure of Helios in Joseph and Aseneth—it’s the cover art of her book—with the so-called synagogues in northern Israel. In Kraemer’s words, “one might wonder whether it is precisely the association of Christ with Helios and of Joseph with Christ that could ground the representation of Joseph as Helios.” By not pursuing the insight, she remained just one step away from the explicit identification of Helios with Joseph and the latter with Jesus in Joseph and Aseneth.16
Unlike Kraemer, archaeologists were thrown off by the so-called Jewish symbols in the mosaic and mislabeled the buildings as synagogues. What they forgot is that many early Christians were Jews, and that early Christianity appropriated Jewish symbols such as the temple for its own agenda. In fact, all the Biblical depictions in the mosaics are Old Testament scenes that were used to serve a Jesus narrative at the beginning of the Christian movement.
In light of all this, the depiction of the near-sacrifice of Isaac can now be seen as a Christian representation of Jesus in the role of the sacrificial offering. He is the ram in the thicket, offered to God as a sacrifice for human sin: that is, as “the lamb of God.”
If you think that looking at the sacrifice of Isaac as a metaphor for the crucifixion of Jesus is the product of an imagination gone wild, think again. There are many examples that establish Isaac as a “type” for Jesus in early Christianity.17 From this perspective, both were sons of a righteous father, and both were descendants of Abraham. Both were offered in sacrifice in the same geographic area (i.e., in the Holy Land). And both carried the material on which they were to be offered to God—wood in Isaac’s case, and a wooden cross in the case of Jesus—to the place of the intended sacrifice. Moreover, Isaac’s ordeal lasted three days before he was restored whole to his father and the Gospels report that Jesus rose from the dead after three days, before he was restored to his father. Scholars all agree that early Christians saw in the story of Isaac a foreshadowing of the sacrifice that Jesus willingly made on behalf of all humanity.
Most recently, the Vatican announced the use of laser technology to reveal a previously unseen painting in the Christian catacombs in Rome. One of the images is considered to be the earliest image of St. Paul ever found. Right next to it, restorers discovered a panel depicting the sacrifice of Isaac.18
Seen in this light, the mosaics discovered at Sepphoris depict the annunciation19 (Sarah/angel), the crucifixion (Abraham/Isaac), the resurrection (the “reborn” sun), and the future temple of God—to be rebuilt after the Second Coming. In other words, the so-called Helios synagogues in Israel seem to be Christian places of worship. We might call them “Christian synagogues,” or Judeo-Christian synagogues. They are mosaic parallels to our Joseph and Aseneth manuscript.
We are not saying that we know for sure that the Gospel that became Joseph and Aseneth was read in these houses of worship. What we are saying is that the manuscript and the mosaics belong to the same cultural and religious milieu, and that they reflect similar theologies. The fact is that the depictions of Helios in these buildings are exactly like the depiction of Helios in Joseph and Aseneth. As in our manuscript, these mosaics feature Jesus as the central figure, imaged as the Sun god. It seems, therefore, that the people who worshipped in these buildings belonged to some kind of early Christian sect, such as the one for whom Joseph and Aseneth was a sacred text. The mosaic and the text use almost the same iconography. This is actually the only explanation that makes sense of pagan symbols, such as Helios and the zodiac, being intermingled with traditional Jewish icons.
The Secrets of the Mosaics
What all this means is that Joseph and Aseneth has led us to a community of early Jesus followers that had been lost to history. This insight, in turn, has made us realize that the houses of worship of this community have already been discovered. But now that we know who created the Galilee’s mosaic floors, what secrets are these mosaics willing to share with us?
It’s in the iconography—explicit and implicit—that the key to the secret code embedded in the mosaics can be found. The ultimate clues are the spelling errors or, more precisely, the incorrect renderings of Hebrew letters that occur in the Hammat Tiberias zodiac in the word fish.
Before the cross became the symbol of Christianity, the sign of the fish served that purpose. In the singular, the Hebrew word for fish is dag. In the plural, it is dagim. It’s the plural that appears in the zodiac mosaic at Hammat Tiberias—but with a twist. And this is significant. The letter “g” in dagim is the Hebrew letter gimel. In the Hammat Tiberias mosaic, the letter gimel in the word dagim is rendered as its mirror image.
In other words, at Hammat Tiberias, in the one image of the mosaic that can be explicitly linked to Christianity, we are invited to flip the entire zodiac, so to speak. We are invited to look for a deeper meaning than the surface meaning. Simply put, you can look at the fish in the mosaic and think they are Jewish, written incorrectly by a person who does not know how to make a gimel, as the majority of scholars have so far concluded—or you can focus on the only symbol of Christianity on the mosaic floor and flip the imagery as it invites you to: you can extract the Helios out of Judaism and place it in the Christian context where it belongs.
But even if one doesn’t accept the use of Helios and the encoded fish in Hammat Tiberias as early Christian, there is no argument about the mosaic at Megiddo (the place the New Testament calls Armageddon). The mosaic here was found in the earliest confirmed church ever excavated in Israel. In this context, we have a 3rd-century inscription that explicitly refers to Jesus as a god. At its center, the mosaic has two fish that are virtually identical to the ones in Hammat Tiberias. Both, for example, are positioned head to tail.20 In the catacombs in Rome, the earliest Christian symbol is a single fish identified with ICHTHYS, which means fish in Greek. The letters are presumed to be an acronym for “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Savior.” But in Israel the symbol in all the zodiacs that have survived, and in the church at Megiddo, are two fish, not one. In Margaret Starbird’s words, “this discovery [Megiddo church mosaic] confirms that early Christians honored the zodiac symbol for Pisces long before they chose to identify themselves with the cross . . . I have long asserted that Mary Magdalene represented that ‘other fish’.”21
The Artemis tradition supports Starbird’s conclusion. As is well known, Jesus is associated with fishing. In one instance, he tells his disciples, who have failed to catch any fish, where to cast their nets (John 21:6). In another instance, he finds a coin in a fish’s mouth (Matthew 17:27). He famously feeds a multitude with two fish (Matthew 14:16–19). Then, when he recruits two of his disciples, he tells them that he will make them “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19), meaning that they should put down their nets, follow him, and cast a wider net, one aimed at recruiting people to their movement. It shouldn’t surprise us, therefore, that Artemis was a huntress of fish and had the title Diktynna—“Artemis of the nets.”22 So it seems that the two fish that fed the five thousand were Jesus and Mary the Magdalene, and that the two fish at Megiddo commemorated that miracle for their followers.
Lest anyone think we are seeing Jesus and Mary the Magdalene where there are only fish, consider this: in the ruins of the monastery of “Lady Mary” (that is, Mary the “Mara” at Tel Istaba, which was first excavated in the autumn of 1930 near Beit She’an in the lower Galilee), archaeologists discovered a calendar mosaic in the shape of the Galilean zodiacs with which we have become familiar. The disc does not have zodiacal signs but, rather, twelve males representing the various months and Jesus’ twelve disciples.
The Tel Istaba mosaic is off the beaten track. The site is behind a shopping plaza in a locked and fenced-off area. There is not a single sign indicating the identity of the place. Even the people working in the shopping plaza are not aware of the existence of Tel Istaba behind their parking lot. In fact, for the sake of “preservation,” the mosaic has been literally covered up.
It is very hard to track down any information whatsoever on Tel Istaba. After much digging we learned that a group from the University of Pennsylvania, led by archaeologist Gerald Milne Fitzgerald, excavated the place in 1930. He published his findings in 1939,23 and there have hardly been any articles on the site since then.24 At the time, the area was part of British-mandate Palestine. To protect Tel Istaba, the British built a protective wall with a corrugated tin roof on top of it. The roof has since disappeared, and rain is damaging the ancient monastery. In 2013, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) undertook some minimal preservation work and temporarily re-exposed the mosaic. We immediately drove to the location.
Though the roof has fallen off, the metal structure is still standing, making the overall effect somewhat surreal. The mosaic is really quite big and impressive. Archaeologist Gaby Mazor, until recently the director of the Beit She’an excavations, told us that Tel Istaba sits just outside of the ancient city of Beit She’an. The area boasts three archaeological sites, dating to the 6th century: the monastery that houses the mosaic, another monastery, and a Samaritan synagogue. The Samaritan synagogue also had a disc mosaic in it, but no human figures, no zodiac, and certainly no gods and goddesses. It did, however, have some images of the Jerusalem Temple. Because Israeli archaeologists believe that temple images can only be found in Jewish contexts, the Samaritan synagogue mosaic has been removed and is now part of the Israel Museum collection. Take note: mosaics that fit the accepted wisdom are put on display, while those that don’t are covered up with earth and left to the elements.
The Samaritan synagogue is totally inaccessible now, as is the second monastery. One of the mysteries of nearby Beit She’an (a.k.a. Scythopolis) is that, unlike other cities in the Decapolis (the ten Gentile cities leagued together in the land of Israel and modern-day Jordan), no churches or cathedrals were found in the city itself. All the churches that have been found are part of monasteries at the edges of the city. Kiya Maria (the monastery of “our lady” at Tel Istaba) is only a few meters from the Beit She’an city wall. Dr. Mazor also told us that there was a tower near the Tel, which formed part of the city wall. Some scholars speculate that the monastery was built there because a monk named Elias, named in the mosaic inscriptions, had practiced solitude in the tower.25
Put simply, at Tel Istaba we have a monastery linked to a “tower” and a “lady,” in an undisputed Christian context. As in the other Galilean mosaics, at the center of the Tel Istaba mosaic you have the image of a Sun god. All around, there are twelve men depicting the months of the year. Since the context is Christian, here Helios undoubtedly represents Jesus and the twelve men are his first disciples. A similar image, with Jesus at its center and the apostles in a circle around him, appears on a mosaic in an Arian baptistry of the 5th or 6th century from Ravenna, Italy.26 But there is something different in the Tel Istaba mosaic. Something that differentiates it from all other Christian art—next to the god there is a goddess.
Dr. Mazor, reflecting the prevailing view of Israeli archaeologists, has no opinion on the god and goddess at the center of the Tel Istaba mosaic, except to say that the calendar was decorative. According to Mazor, the reason that nearly identical images appear in a church and in the so-called synagogues is because both sites were drawing on Hellenistic culture.27 Again, they are just decorative. They don’t mean anything. People put them in their houses of worship to express their Hellenistic culture and nothing more. But this idea makes no sense whatsoever. The fact is that if people go to great expense and effort to put images in their places of worship, these must mean something to them. Also, one of the Ten Commandments is: “you shall not make for yourselves idols, nor shall you set up for yourselves an image or a sacred pillar, nor shall you place a figured stone in your land to bow down to it; for I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 26:1). This is hardly an endorsement of pagan gods in your houses of worship. In other words, Jews would never put such a mosaic in their synagogue for merely decorative reasons, and Christians would not draw on the same images for no reason at all. So who are the figures at the center of the calendar? If the male is Jesus depicted as Helios, who is the woman?
The monastery is called Our Lady Mary. From the inscriptions, it’s clear that the name is not referring to Jesus’ mother. Rather, a monk named Elias dedicates the inscription to “the lady Mary” who, he says, “founded this church.”28 The excavator of Tel Istaba, G. M. Fitzgerald, interpreted “founded” as “paid for.” Meaning, according to the original excavators, the monastery is named after a 6th-century lady who paid for the construction of the church. But the inscription says “founded,” not “paid for.” More than this, the monk Elias says that “the lady” is buried with her son “Maximus,” which means, the “greatest,” under a stone with a wreath and a cross on it.29 The Pennsylvania University team found such a grave and removed two skulls from it.30 Curiously, although there is a cemetery outside the monastery, the lady and her descendants were buried in the church itself. More than this, Stephanie Hagan notes, “The location of a burial near the altar is highly unusual for a Byzantine church: interments were typically only allowed in the nave or the narthex, away from the sanctuary.”31 In other words, these people were interred in an unusual place. Not only this, but the burials seem to have been very controversial because Elias curses anyone who opposes our lady or her descendants being buried in the church.32 Clearly, this has nothing to do with a rich lady who paid for the mosaics. It has everything to do with a controversial foundress of a movement.
One way to read the inscription on the Tel Istaba mosaic is that the builders of the church and monastery transferred Mary the Magdalene’s bones from her original resting place and—over the objections of her opponents—buried them in the monastery. This would mean that Mary the Magdalene and some of Jesus’ descendants were buried in this early Christian site. But whatever the identity of the Mary who was buried in the church, the fact is that there is a woman at the center of the mosaic, next to Jesus.33 Clearly, she is none other than Mary the Magdalene depicted as the Moon goddess, the Bride of God. Put simply, this is the only mosaic that is clearly in a Christian context and in a house of worship that depicts Jesus with a female partner. It is a perfect depiction in stone of the theology of Joseph and Aseneth. If we’re right, this is the only depiction—anywhere—of Jesus and Mary the Magdalene as a divine couple.
Why the curses and the code? Why did the builders of the monastery have to keep the “holy couple” a secret? The answer is simple: as Orthodox Christianity won the day, it forced congregations that espoused a “heretical” Christian theology to go underground. Otherwise, the price exacted was heavy indeed. Consider the case of Hypatia of Alexandria. She was born around 355 C.E., she was the teacher of at least two bishops of the Christian church, and she was a confidante of the Christian prefect of Alexandria. She was renowned in her world as a teacher and philosopher. She was also a Gnostic. For her beliefs, she was murdered by the order of Cyril, the patriarch of the Alexandrian Church, but not before she was stripped, beaten, dragged through the streets of the city, and finally burned. According to tradition, a lot of this took place in the local church.34 So if you didn’t want to end up like Hypatia, you kept your traditions encoded or oral. You did not commit them to writing. As Kathleen McGowan puts it, much of Mary the Magdalene’s story has been passed on “. . . as oral traditions and have been preserved in highly protected environments by those who have feared repercussions . . . the ancient followers of Mary Magdalene, known as the Cathars . . . were hunted down by the medieval church, brutally tortured and executed in the most horrific ways. Over a million people were massacred in the south of France for their ‘heretical’ belief in the role of Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus and subsequently as the true spiritual founder of Christianity in the Western world.”35
Given all this, if you wanted to commit your theology to writing, under the circumstances, you had to know how to hide it in plain sight. Those Jesus followers who had a different story to tell learned to use pagan and Jewish imagery to tell their version of the Christian narrative. They had to learn to keep secrets, even while preserving their traditions. They had to learn to write books like Joseph and Aseneth and to pray in churches that looked like synagogues.
Interestingly, it seems that Jesus also had to speak in code about Mary the Magdalene in his own lifetime, and that an echo of this is preserved in the Gospels themselves. At one point, the scribes and Pharisees approach Jesus, asking for a “sign.” Jesus then makes reference to the “Sign of Jonah.” He says to his audience that someone greater than Jonah is present, referring to himself. The reference to the Sign of Jonah is, more or less, common knowledge, but what follows is typically ignored. Immediately, in the same breath, so to speak, Jesus makes another statement: “the Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!” (Matthew 12:38–42). Since the Queen of the South is referred to in conjunction with King Solomon, she’s identified as the African Queen of Sheba. In other words, Jesus himself is using typology. He is speaking in coded language referring to himself as greater than Solomon. But if that’s the case, who is the Queen of the South? Who is Jesus’ Sheba?
Building upon the portrait of the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon (1 Kings 10:1–10), we can surmise that Jesus’ Sheba is also a foreigner. According to the 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus, the Queen of Sheba is powerful and independently wealthy.36 She’s an intellectual—she quizzes, challenges, and tests Solomon with “hard questions,” and she blesses him (1 Kings 10:9). The Bible notes that “King Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba every desire that she expressed” (1 Kings 10:13). Later legends associate the Queen of Sheba with Solomon’s lover in the Song of Songs, and an Ethiopian tradition explicitly contends that they engaged in sexual relations and had a child together.
We suggest that Jesus’ Sheba is none other than Mary the Magdalene. The portrait fits: Mary the Magdalene is a wealthy woman, non-Jewish, a person with a mind of her own, and the one who is closest to Jesus. By referring to himself as greater than Solomon, Jesus is also saying that his consort is greater than Sheba. By speaking in code, he is saying to his audience: “you don’t know who we are. You don’t see us for what we represent. And my female counterpart will judge you.”
Finally, lest anyone conclude that we are seeing secrets where none exist, consider this: the only so-called “synagogue” in which the zodiac is referenced, but not depicted, is in Ein Gedi, on the shores of the Dead Sea, close to where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. It is here where the proto-Christian Essenes used to live. At this location, the mosaic does not depict the zodiac but references it in a long text. Right under the inscription there is an ancient curse, a Judeo-Aramaic inscription warning inhabitants against “revealing the town’s secret.”37 If these were ordinary synagogues, there would be no secret to keep. But there is a secret, and we’ve deciphered it.