So, what was the cover-up? How did Jesus the Jew become Christian? The Jesus Cover-Up Thesis explains the transformation. It’s time to put all the pieces of the puzzle together and see where it leads us.
We began this investigation by looking at Matthew’s portrait of the Jesus of history. A dynamic teacher in Galilee, Jesus proclaimed the imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God. That concept, an appealing alternative to the prevailing Pax Romana, unleashed huge expectations that God’s sovereign rule would soon be established over the entire world. Jesus practiced Judaism, interpreted Torah, and challenged his followers to a higher righteousness. In a radically innovative manner, Jesus coupled the promise of the Kingdom with the challenge for a stricter observance of Torah.
His followers began to think of him as the potential Messiah. They expected he’d be the Davidic king of a restored Israel, assisting God in bringing about world transformation. The newly minted world of the messianic era would be startlingly different from the sinful and evil world that existed before. Gone would be the emperor, his governors, tax officials, the military, and all the others involved in promoting Roman rule throughout the world. In their place would be the reign of the righteous, rewarded with eternal life, in a splendid new environment. It was a powerful expectation. Members of the Jesus Movement under James, Jesus’ brother—like members of the Dead Sea Scroll community—hoped they would live to see the day when the Romans would be swept from power. These occupiers, along with all evil people, would just disappear by a miraculously creative act of God and his Messiah. One day they would wake up to a whole new world.
Yes, that is what they were led to expect would happen: a brand-new world, in fact, an entirely new creation. Not a virgin birth. Not a resurrection. And certainly not the need for a return engagement.
But something strange happened. There was a massive power shift. The religion of Jesus and his earliest followers became upstaged as an imaginative and startlingly new religion entered the arena—Paul’s Christ movement. Shunning the Jesus Movement leaders, he crafted his own cult. He took as his source of inspiration mystical communiqués from the Christ—not the teachings of the Jesus of history or the practices of Jesus’ earliest followers in Jerusalem. He thought he enjoyed a separate and special pipeline to the divine, receiving different information and insights than others of his time. The mystical Christ, however, a dying-rising savior, shared many of the same characteristics as other figures well known within the Roman world through the cults of Dionysus, Isis, and Mithras. Paul’s group was not a form of Judaism but a separate Hellenized religion that paid no attention to the teachings of Torah or Jesus. In fact, his movement denied the ongoing validity of Torah, and this applied across the board, to all human beings, Jews included.
That should have been the end of the matter. They should have remained two separate, parallel religions, each with their own teachings and practices, fending for themselves in the multicultural Hellenistic world. But that was not to be. The religion of Paul became associated with that of Jesus. Why did it not just remain a separate religion? How did it become so confused with Jesus’ religion that people today have difficulty recognizing how truly different it actually was? That linkage, we will recall, was the amazing result of the Book of Acts. Years after the death of Paul and James, around A.D. 100, Luke, the gifted creator of both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, penned one of the most audacious stories of all human history. He brazenly attached Paul’s Christ Movement on to the Jesus Movement. This immediately linked Paul’s new religion to that of Jesus and, through him, to biblical Judaism. Brushing aside key differences, Acts gave this new Pauline religion legitimacy by forging an impressive pedigree back into ancient times. A non-Jewish movement thereby became grafted on to Judaism.
Ancient roots were vitally important for the proselytizing initiatives of Paul’s followers throughout the Roman Empire. Prospective Roman converts demanded a noble ancestry, and the author of the Book of Acts stepped up to the plate to provide the requisite credentials. Acts bent Paul’s activities out of shape to make them fit his revisionist history. We recognized that, once we noticed the differences between what Paul said about himself and what Acts wrote about Paul. Acts invented the fiction of the Jerusalem Conference. There James was alleged to have authorized a twofold missionary strategy— one directed to the Jews, which was Torah-observant, and one directed to Gentiles, which was not. Only the Seven Noahide Laws need be observed by the Gentiles.
There is a problem with the history Acts presented. No one knew about this conference. Paul didn’t. Nor did the rival teachers with whom he was disputing in his Letter to the Galatians know of this high-level meeting. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians, when discussing dietary food practices, Paul showed no awareness of the food requirements allegedly imposed on the Gentiles by James. These would have restricted the eating of meat slaughtered improperly, containing blood, or prepared in the context of idol worship. For Paul, what one ate was of no consequence; for him, eating did not carry the same religious significance as it did for Jews.
The Book of Acts dovetailed with Luke’s pro-Roman agenda, to present the new synthesized movement as a religion ripe for Roman believers. It showcased its values: antiquity and a special birth. It is not surprising that in Luke’s gospel we find that Jesus had a virgin birth. This placed him on a par with many Roman emperors and the hero figures of the mystery cults. Luke’s readers would have been impressed with these credentials. Luke’s gospel also portrayed Jesus as exemplifying the Roman trait of serenity. There Jesus dies without panic or consternation, saying calmly, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). This contrasts remarkably with the last gasp of desperation recorded by Matthew—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Luke’s noble death scenario, worthy of the calm rational Socrates or the serene Cleopatra in the face of death, would have appealed to the Roman audience more than an expression of utter despair at the failure of the whole enterprise.
As Acts presented the history, there was one common origin for the movements with divergent paths—first Jesus, and then, branching out from him, James and Paul. One origin; two missions. While this model for understanding early Christian history has passed into Christian self-understanding, it is simply fictitious. Once we understand Acts’ agenda and revisionism, the real model is not one of divergence from a common source, but convergence. Luke took two separate religions and spliced them together through the device of the Jerusalem Conference. The truer historical picture, however, would be that of two parallel religions, different in origin, that were then brought together, at least on paper. What Acts did would be comparable to us taking religious movements with different origins such as the Church of Scientology or the Unification Church and then linking them into a common history with such Christian denominations as Methodism or the Baptist Church. Just not credible or persuasive.
It was just that, however—a literary synthesis, not descriptive of historical reality. On the ground, there continued to be major differences in beliefs and practices as well as social reality. It just wasn’t history. The synagogues of the Jesus Movement and the congregations of the Christ were not suddenly brought together in an ecumenical gesture of goodwill and harmony.
Complex social problems still remained. Members of the Jesus Movement couldn’t have socialized with their counterparts in the Christ Movement. Dietary and purity requirements would have prevented this, as well as their perception that Paul’s was a non-Jewish, pagan religion. Frustrated by the Christ Movement’s claim that it was the authentic heir of Jesus, they would have been deeply angered that their perspective was increasingly ignored. We can hear them asking in a perplexed tone, How did this happen? Why would anyone think we had anything in common?
Members of the Christ Movement would have been equally frustrated. They would have asked, Why can’t the Jesus Movement people see the advantages of the Christ religion? They could easily have listed its many benefits. Gentiles could now be brought into the fold of Abraham without having to observe the law. They, too, can now experience the promise of the Kingdom. People can enjoy greater food selection with forbidden items removed. No male circumcision. Couldn’t the leaders of the Jesus Movement see, and be impressed by, the huge numbers of converts flocking to their movement? Didn’t this sound very much like the fulfillment of the parable of the Sower with its expectation of exponential growth? Didn’t this reflect the true will of God?
The Jesus Movement was beleaguered with major problems at a crucial time in history. It experienced a gap in leadership between the murder of James in 62 and the selection of Simeon some years later. It was caught up in the convulsions in Israel during the 60s. And, after 70, it inherited all the problems that Judaism faced after this massive blow delivered by the Romans. The writings that survive from the Jesus and Ebionite movements make it clear that they continued to regard Paul as a false teacher. Over time, they withered away, but that process took centuries. Never did they have sufficient resources or power to counter the growing influence of the Christ Movement. They must have felt that their religion had been hijacked. It had.
Contrast this with the experience of the Christ Movement. It was unaffected by the traumas that plagued the Jesus Movement. It expanded throughout the Diaspora unfettered by the requirements of Torah, the task of reconstruction, or the necessity of adult male circumcision. Bolstered by the credentials established by Acts, this religion gained momentum. Unconstrained by either the Jesus Movement or Judaism, it proclaimed its Roman-friendly message of a Torah-free Christ-focused religion.
The make over of the Jewish human Jesus, teacher of the higher righ teousness, into a Gentile, divine God-human, the savior of humanity, is the pro cess I call Christification.
The two realities—the Jewish teacher Messiah claimant and the Gentile Christ savior—have never coalesced properly. There have always been many puzzles. How did Jesus come to be a Christ? Why was Jesus, conceived of as a Christ, considered a Messiah when the expectations for the latter had not been met? How did the teachings of Jesus become obscured by doctrines about the Christ?
None of these dilemmas makes sense without the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis. The explanatory power of this approach unravels the mysteries. While the Christifying religion had a separate origin in Paul’s experience, through Acts’ creative efforts, it became associated with the heritage and lineage of the Jesus Movement. It wasn’t, but all it took to create the illusion was a bit of historical fiction on the part of Acts. The author of Acts told such a wonderful story that we conflate the Christ with Jesus. We relate the Christ Movement with the religion of Jesus. Helpful confusions, the author of Acts would have called it. And yet the evidence was there, all along, for everyone to see: Acts’ account of Paul distorts what we know of Paul from Paul himself. Once we recognize this, the deception is unmasked. We begin to see how separate and different the two religions really were and appreciate the marvelous work of Acts in attaching the two.
Acts’ masquerade may not have been a bad move historically. It gave the Christ Movement the credentials it required to make headway in the Roman world. Had Christianity been derived from the Jesus Movement instead, it would probably have remained a sect of Judaism, sitting uncomfortably within the Jewish family. It would have waited—decades, centuries, even millennia—for the Messiah claimant to make good on his word. It would also have been relegated to the edges of Judaism, watching while that religion was being reconstructed by the rabbinical sages at Yavneh and subsequent Jewish centers of learning. The Jesus Movement was isolated and bypassed—by Rabbinic Judaism on one side and by the Christifying religion on another. It must have been exceptionally uncomfortable being an Ebionite in the second through fourth centuries, with few friends in either camp.
The Christ Movement occupied a powerful positioning: an attractive Graeco-Roman mystery religion combined with an impressive Jewish pedigree. In this, it successfully buttressed itself effectively against its two main competitors—Judaism and the pop u lar mystery religions. Leaders of the Christ Movement could congratulate themselves that they enjoyed the best of both worlds—Judaism’s respectable ancient lineage but without Torah obligations on the one hand, and mystery religion beliefs and practices on the other. A powerful religious mix.
The new religion denounced, eradicated, or appropriated everything Jewish. Decade by decade, the Christifiers stripped Judaism of its legitimacy and validity—Torah observance, leadership, worship, and understanding of scripture and God. Matthew, Ignatius of Antioch, the Epistle of Barnabas, and Justin Martyr swept away this ancient faith, at precisely the same time—post 70, when Jewish leaders were hard at work revamping the religion. The church was the true Israel, heir to all the promises made to Abraham, the Christifiers proclaimed. The Jewish priesthood had been eliminated, replaced by the new Christian ministry. The Temple had become the church, and thus the locus of true worship had been shifted from one institution to the other. The scriptures of the Hebrew Bible had been ransacked and reinterpreted, as pointing directly to Jesus. As far as these early Christifying leaders were concerned, there was nothing left for Judaism and the synagogue to represent. Everything of value had been shifted over to the new religion; the rest was discarded. From the point of view of the Christifiers, it was a mystery why Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Jesus Movement continued to exist at all.
Marcion possessed the clearest grasp into the dynamics of early Christian history. He recognized that Paul had experienced a unique revelation. That insight provided Marcion with the clue concerning what had really happened. Why did Paul have a separate revelation? Why did the others not receive the same information? Marcion had suggested that the followers of the early Jesus Movement failed to grasp the real message. They thought the movement was about the Kingdom of God, an expression of Judaism, messianic in nature, a political alternative to the Pax Romana that would usher in the advent of a whole new world order. What fools, said Marcion. They were dead wrong. That political understanding of Jesus encapsulated a huge misperception. The disciples in Jerusalem—including James—just didn’t grasp the importance of the Christ and his cosmic message of liberation.
The effect of the Christification process was to change the character of the religion, from one focused on the teachings of Jesus to one about the Christ. The contrast is most readily seen when we compare passages from the gospels— the Sermon on the Mount, for instance—with the creeds of Christianity. Three creeds are operative within historic Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Reformation Protestant churches. These authoritative pronouncements consist of the Apostles’ Creed, dating from the second century, along with the fourth-century Creeds of Nicea and St. Athanasius. These creeds came to define what is meant by Christianity. Those who assent to these statements are Christians. Those— like the Ebionites, Arians, Gnostics, Nestorians, Monophysites, and many others—are excluded. The creeds represent a defining moment in early Christianity: they crystallize what a believer had to affirm in order to be counted as a “correct” or “orthodox” believer. Even today, the flagship creed, the Nicene Creed, is uttered by the faithful at Mass, the Divine Liturgy, Holy Communion, or the Eucharist in traditional forms of Christianity, usually as a congregational response to the hearing of the word through the reading of scripture.
The Nicene Creed structured the faith on the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity. Drafted under duress during the reign of Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicea in 325 and later reaffirmed with some additions in 381, this important statement makes no references to the teachings of Jesus, its focus being on who Jesus is thought to be:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made…1
Similarly, the Creed of St. Athanasius focuses on the divinity of Jesus, while also mentioning his humanity:
Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. However, there are not three gods, but one God. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Spirit is Lord. However, there are not three lords but one Lord. For as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge every Person singly to be God and Lord so too are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords. 2
Creedal affirmations emphasize the need for correct beliefs about the person of Jesus—who he was, not what he said, did, or taught. In these highly influential statements of faith, the historical Jesus is covered over by layers of hard-fought beliefs about the person of Jesus. These creeds also transform the religion, shifting the emphasis away from the teachings of the historical Jesus to beliefs about Christ—preexistent, creator, God incarnate, having a virgin birth, and so forth. This is consistent with the work of Paul and the efforts of later Christifiers.
Many of these beliefs find expression not only in the creeds, but also in the pages of the New Testament. That collection of documents, however, was reflective of the Proto-Orthodox position and simply reinforces its Christifying stance. It is not a neutral library of early Christian writings, for it ignores documents and stances that represented other points of view. As we now know, other communities such as the Ebionites, Gnostics, and Marcionites had their own favorite writings. The contents of the current New Testament, decided upon by Proto-Orthodoxy in the late fourth century, reflect the writings favored by the one group that became the official religion of the Roman Empire. It contains the writings of Paul plus the books of Luke/Acts. The New Testament, too, is riddled with Christification.
The Christifying religion was a substitute religion, however, not that of the founder, if one thinks of the originator of Christianity as Jesus. It became the religion about beliefs about the Christ, not the teachings of Jesus. That became the standard of orthodoxy—what one believed about the Christ, not whether one practiced what Jesus challenged us to do. This new religion grew out of that created by Paul.
The older claim, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah who would help usher in the end-time, was buried beneath the vastly different superstructure of the dying-rising savior God. The image of Jesus was repackaged as the Christ, another divine-human figure so familiar to the Roman world. The similarities between the portrait of Jesus as it emerged within the Gentile Christian movement and other cults of the time were so close that leaders were hard-pressed to explain the commonalities. Some saw the pagan cults as anticipating the truth of Christianity. That was one way of handling the similarities. Another option, however, was to dismiss the mystery religions as the work of the devil who was busily sowing confusion.
The latter point of view is evident in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. This treatise reflected what Proto-Orthodox Christians of the 130s believed Jewish leaders were thinking and teaching. In this dialogue, as we have observed, Rabbi Trypho made important charges against the Christian misuse of the passage from Isaiah in support of a virginal conception of Jesus. He also pointed out the many similarities between the Roman and Christian cults of the divine-human. There are simply too many divine-humans and too many virgin births within the Roman world to mark out the Christian movement as in any way unique.
Justin Martyr’s response was that the devil invented these non-Christian tales. So, too, had Satan devised figures of previous divine-humans—Bacchus, Hercules, Dionysus, and many others. The whole intent was to confuse Christians. Likewise the mysteries of Mithras arose to create confusion.3 Clearly Justin Martyr was embarrassed by the similarities between the virgin birth and divine-human tales from his own culture. He concluded with the following words, designed to reassure Trypho: “And when I hear, Trypho,” said I, “that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving spirit counterfeited also this.”4
But what of Jesus as the Messiah? Was Paul’s Christ a Messiah?
As one scours the writings of Proto-Orthodox Christianity, it is truly remarkable how little its leaders tried to match the Christ with authentic Jewish messianic expectations. It virtually disregarded the criteria, so much so that we begin to suspect that as soon as they latched on to the Christ-figure, they quickly forgot about what it meant to be the Messiah.
It’s important to remember how people conceived of a Messiah in the first century. The Psalms of Solomon, from the first century B.C., provides the job description. That writing, building on earlier end-time visions of the prophets, had set forth the relevant criteria concerning what a Messiah had to do. The circumstances were as follows. In 63 B.C., the Roman leader Pompey captured Jerusalem. Welcomed into the city, he seized Temple Mount by force, executed the Jewish resisters led by the high priest, and entered the Temple. The Psalms of Solomon, an eyewitness document, adhered to the threefold framework established by Zechariah for the end-time: a period of exceptional evil followed by world transformation and just desserts.
In actions recalling the earlier events of Antiochus Epiphanes, Psalm 2 of the Psalms of Solomon lamented the loss of national sovereignty—Romans arrogantly trampling on Temple Mount, “insulting” Jerusalem (Psalms of Solomon 2:19). Psalm 17 reminds us of the perpetual covenant with David and then provides us with a “status report” of the situation. The times were clearly evil—devastation, massacres of Jerusalem’s inhabitants, exile, worship of false gods, leaders misleading the people. Knowing the end-time scenario, we immediately recognize where this analysis is heading. Following Zechariah’s eschatological agenda, the writer of this psalm envisaged that world transformation was about to happen. The Messiah was the righteous Jewish king, a descendant of David, who would assist God in bringing about a radically changed environment. The Messiah must become involved in massive political and religious changes. The world after the work of the Messiah will differ vastly from the world before—Israel preeminent, God universally worshipped, evil eradicated, the righteous rewarded, along with universal peace. That’s the expectation. That’s what other Jewish communities understood by the Messiah—the Dead Sea Scroll group among them. That, too, is what the original followers of Jesus expected, waiting patiently after his death for him to make good on his promises.
Paul, however, changed all that. Paul referred to the Messiah as Christos. Christos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiach, but much is lost in translation. Paul advanced his views of the Christ in his Letter to the Philippians, written sometime either in the late 50s or early 60s. The view of the Christ that he presented there is that he was a preexisting being born in human form. He was obedient to God. He died. He was exalted so that all humanity can worship him. Those who become like him in death can attain resurrection (Philippians 2:5—11).
Paul thus focused on who the Messiah was: the Christos or Messiah was a dying-rising savior. His task, according to Paul, was to save those who participate in his suffering and death. The focus for Paul was on personal salvation. “Living is Christ,” he said (Philippians 1:21), and he stressed he wanted
“to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:10—11)
A believer lives “in Christ” and so, in life and death is united with Christ. It is because of this mystical unity and also because Christ himself was raised from the dead that the believer can experience resurrection.
Paul probably recognized, however, that this idea of the Christ was insufficient to meet established criteria for being a Messiah. Where was the expected world transformation? Where were the “just desserts”? In some passages, Paul indicated that he expected the Lord Jesus to return. When “the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6) arrives, Christ will “hand over the kingdom to God the Father” (1 Corinthians 15:24). At this time, the dead will be resurrected, those who are alive and righteous will assume a “spiritual body,” and all evil powers will be destroyed, including death (1 Corinthians 15:20—57).
Thus we see that Paul proposes a two-stage messiahship for Christ. In stage one, the Christ is the savior. He is the dying-rising savior, redeeming those who participate in his suffering and death. That gave a very important present purpose to the Christ figure: he can save. No need to wait for world transformation. In stage two, however, Christ will return to destroy evil, conquer death, and reward the righteous with eternal life. At that time the righteous dead will be resurrected. Then he will be the Messiah in accordance with existing expectations of what a Messiah must accomplish. This second stage has yet to occur.
The development of a two-stage messiahship was Paul’s contribution. Clearly Jesus had not fulfilled the requirements for being a Messiah during his life. World transformation had not occurred, and the righteous had not been truly rewarded. So, Paul contended, there had to be a “return” when Christ will reappear to complete the tasks expected of a Messiah. There was, however, no antecedent in Jewish thought for a two-stage messianic operation. If he did bring about world transformation, then he would be the Messiah. If he didn’t, then he was just a Messiah claimant. In Paul’s case, the Christ was simply a Messiah who is yet to be. He had not yet performed the deeds necessary to qualify as a Messiah. The correct way of describing Paul’s Christ, then, is as a Messiah claimant. The Christ of Paul is in the same situation as Bar Kokhba or Rabbi Schneerson, who are also said by some to be prospective Messiahs and who have yet to return.
There are further innovations as Paul reshaped the definition of what it means to be a Messiah.
As we have seen, Paul’s savior figure derived from Graeco-Roman mystery religions. Paul placed the Christ’s death and resurrection as central to his concept of the Messiah, a notion foreign to all previous Jewish views of the Messiah. Prior to Paul, there was no requirement that the Messiah be resurrected. Nor was it expected that he would act as the “savior vehicle” through whom all humanity will be saved. These represent important new twists on the idea of a Messiah. Paul built his view of the Christ on models found outside Judaism, in the mystery religions of the time. The Christ is like Dionysus or Mithras or many other figures—heroes who die and rise again to save humanity and whose followers can achieve salvation through participation in the hero’s life and death. When Christos translated Mashiach, it transported the concept from a Jewish environment into a vastly different world.
Paul’s Christ, even if he were to return, would not fully correspond to Jewish messianic expectations. Some crucial elements were missing in Paul’s description of the Christ versus messianic expectations as outlined in the Psalms of Solomon. For one thing, Paul’s concept ignored the political dimension of the Jewish Messiah. On his approach, the Messiah would not be the Davidic king who governs Israel and assists God in bringing about world transformation. Instead the Christ was a cosmic savior, a spiritual being who preexisted his earthly life and whose only task was to redeem those who participate in his life and death. There was nothing particularly Jewish about him. Paul would probably have argued that he was universalizing the messianic notion, but that wasn’t the expectation. The Messiah had to be the Jewish monarch who had come to restore Israel to prominence, overthrow Roman rule, and encourage the return of Jews from the Diaspora. He wouldn’t be a universal figure of goodness.
There were other important differences as well. For Paul, the Christ was not primarily human. The expectation, however, was that the Messiah would be human. He would be born, live, and die, but be chosen by God to assist in bringing about a new world order. Paul’s concept presented in Philippians was that of a preexisting spiritual or divine being who appears in human form. For Paul, the Christ had to be a divine figure in order to act as a means of salvation, redeeming all who participate in his life and death and eventually overcoming all cosmic forces of opposition to God’s will.
Finally, proclaiming the Christ as Messiah now, in advance of world transformation, ignored the end-time dimension of the Jewish expectation. The world before and after Jesus appeared looks very much the same. Paul would probably have argued, however, that at least for the individual who is “in Christ,” there were new possibilities for salvation that did not exist before. But on a political level, the world was the same. Israel was still ruled by Rome; the righteous continued to suffer; and the end-time had yet to appear.
So is Paul’s Christ a Messiah? Kindly put, Paul “jumped the gun,” proclaiming the Christ figure as Messiah when he wasn’t that yet.
The Jesus Cover-Up Thesis also exposes the deep anchors of Christian anti-Semitism. The Jesus Cover-Up Thesis contends that early Christianity effectively killed off the historical Jesus.
The suggestion that Jesus was a human teacher and Messiah claimant is apt to be met today with skepticism or even jeers from many believers who have been taught differently. Part of the hostile reaction to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code—other than its distorted depiction of the Opus Dei movement— consists of its suggestion that Jesus was human, married Mary Magdalene, and had sexual relations with her. The fact that Jesus was human and that rabbis of the era were supposed to marry just doesn’t seem to count. It violates sensibilities of what is appropriate behavior for the divine.
The transformation brought about by the Christification process was so successful that the religion of the historical Jesus was replaced by the cult of the Christ. In so doing, the early church “killed off” the historical Jesus, focusing, instead, on the worship of the Christ. The myth of the Christ was so effective that it is very difficult now to reconstruct the contours of the authentic teachings, sayings, and doings of the historical Jesus. To get at the Jesus of history, we have to leap over Paul and try to peel away the layers of Christifying efforts to see the Jewish, human Jesus underneath. No wonder that the heroic task of Swentieth-century biblical scholarship—the quest for the historical Jesus—has proven so difficult. The prism of Paul and the Christifiers stands in the way, blocking our view.
The only witnesses to this transformation were the Jews, as well as Torah-observant Ebionite communities. The latter were quickly marginalized. Paul won the historical debate with James, the brother of Jesus, so much so that for most of Christian history, the role, influence, and authority of James have been overlooked. The earliest followers of Jesus followed Torah, held that he was born naturally, resisted attempts to make him into anything other than a superior teacher, and looked forward to his returning to fulfill the messianic dream. They were eventually condemned as heretics by the majority movement, Proto-Orthodoxy. Leader after Proto-Orthodox leader castigated them and others within their own ranks for continuing to observe Jewish customs, festivals, and laws.
Attitudes on the part of the Christifiers toward these “deviant” forms of the religion solidified over time. In the 130s, Justin Martyr contended that Christians who were Torah-observant were “weak-minded” but harmless so long as they continued their practices privately. He quickly added, however, that those who tried to persuade others to follow the law given through Moses should be shunned.5 Presumably Justin Martyr hoped these Torah holdouts would die out in time. The Ebionites, on the other hand, probably thought that the growing move to create Christology—elaborate doctrines about the Christ—represented “Christolatry,” that is, idolatry, making that which is not divine into deity.
By the turn of the fourth century, however, attitudes had hardened. Look at what Eusebius wrote about the Ebionites:
The spirit of wickedness, however, being unable to shake some in their love of Christ and yet finding them susceptible of his impressions in other respects, brought them over to his purposes. These were properly called Ebionites by the ancients, as those who cherished low and mean opinions of Christ. … With them the observance of the law was altogether necessary, as if they could not be saved only by faith in Christ and a corresponding life.6
For Eusebius, the Ebionites were evil in origin, led by the “spirit of wickedness.” So much for the original followers of the historical Jesus. According to the Christifiers, they simply got it entirely wrong.
Essentially only the Jews remained witnesses to “the crime.” If Christianity had remained Torah-observant, even with reverence for Jesus as a potential Messiah, there would have been no grounds for excluding the movement from the family of Judaism. Belief in a Messiah was not incompatible with Judaism, so long as the messianic candidate eventually succeeds in bringing about the eschatological era.
In the latter part of first century, however, the Jewish community recognized the dangers that stemmed from the Christ Movement. They sensed that members of this group did not observe Torah, dismissed its legitimacy and displayed a growing inclination to speak of Christ in terms befitting divinity. Any one of these positions would have constituted reasonable grounds for disassociating this movement in particular from Judaism. Moreover, members of the Christ Movement—Paul included—had infiltrated synagogues in the attempt to detach the God-fearer segment. Much was at stake and this new aggressive religion had to be confronted.
At some point in either the late first or early second century, Jewish leaders took steps to distance their religion and that of the sectarians. A prayer was added to the Shemoneh Esrei (Eighteen Benedictions):
AGAINST HERETICS: And for slanderers, let there be no hope; and may all wickedness perish in an instant; and may all Your enemies be cut down speedily. May you speedily uproot, smash, cast down and humble the wanton sinners—speedily in our days. Blessed are you HASHEM [God] Who breaks enemies and humbles wanton sinners.7
This had the effect of removing sectarians from Jewish synagogues. It also demonstrates the degree to which Jewish leaders were concerned about the growing success of the Christ Movement. After all, Judaism would not have changed the structure of its central prayer, the Amidah or Shimonei Esrei, to include a nineteenth petition against sectarians unless it faced a substantial threat from the new movements.8
In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr demonstrated how aware each community was of the other. In the following passage, Trypho articulated some of his best lines. He expressed utter amazement that Christians expect favors from God when they do not observe his commandments:
Trypho:
Moreover, I am aware that your precepts in the so-called Gospel are so wonderful and so great, that I suspect no one can keep them; for I have carefully read them. But this is what we are most at a loss about: that you, professing to be pious, and supposing yourselves better than others, are not in any particular separated from them, and do not alter your mode of living from the nations, in that you observe no festivals or Sabbaths, and do not have the rite of circumcision; and further, resting your hopes on a man that was crucified, you yet expect to obtain some good thing from God, while you do not obey His commandments. Have you not read, that soul shall be cut off from his people who shall not have been circumcised on the eighth day? And this has been ordained for strangers and for slaves equally. But you, despising this covenant rashly, reject the consequent duties, and attempt to persuade yourselves that you know God, when, however, you perform none of those things which they do who fear God.9
Good question: How do you expect “to obtain good things from God, while you do not obey His commandments”? Arguing on the basis of the ancient scriptures, Rabbi Trypho expressed concern with the lack of Torah observance. While he did not explicitly draw the comparisons, we can imagine him wondering how this new sect differed from the ancient Israelites who had abandoned the covenant with God and had wandered off into Canaanite religion. Or how these new sectarians were really different from other religions of the Hellenized world.
Rabbi Trypho raised other concerns as well—for example, how Jesus fulfilled the mandate of a Messiah as well as how he was resurrected and ascended into heaven.10 We have already noted Trypho’s observation concerning the amazing parallels between the virginal conception stories and the divine-human birth narratives of Jesus alongside Dionysus, Perseus, and Mithras, so much so that Trypho was amazed that Christians were not embarrassed by the parallels. Trypho accused Christians of blasphemy, supposing that Jesus was a preexistent divine being who should be worshipped:
For you utter blasphemies, in that you seek to persuade us that this crucified man was with Moses and Aaron, and spoke to them in the pillar of the cloud; then that he became man, was crucified, and ascended up to heaven, and comes again to earth, and ought to be worshipped.11
Proto-Orthodox church leaders recognized that they could not hide their escalating Christological beliefs about Jesus from the rabbis. The latter were well aware of the growing claims being made about Jesus as the Christ, that he was being spoken of in terms that befit divinity, and that he was worthy of worship. Early Christianity had created a substitute, counterfeit religion, one vastly different from that of its founder. We have traced the contrast—from an original religion that was Torah-observant and that viewed Jesus as a teacher and Messiah claimant to one that rejected Torah observance and advanced strong claims about Christ as having a special birth and being a divine-human.
In making this transition, early Christianity effectively killed off the historical Jesus. The Christ of faith became the focal point, belief in whom was sufficient for salvation. Gone was the covenant between God and the Jewish people, and Christians were on the cusp of talking in terms of an “old” versus a “new” covenant—a distinction that emerged in the latter part of the second century, in the writings of Irenaeus.
The Jews were the only ones around, other than Torah-observant Christians, who recognized what had happened. For a successful crime to take place, witnesses have to be eliminated. Guilt at having killed off the historical Jewish Jesus in favor of a Gentile God-human—along with recognition that the Jews were the witnesses to this act—accounts for the deep roots of Christian anti-Semitism, whether directed against the Jewish people or the religion of Judaism. The Jews are the only people whose persistence on the world stage exposes the Christification process for what it was: a cover-up. They and they alone recognize the transformation early Christianity underwent, how it switched the divine Gentile Christ for the human Jewish Jesus. They’re the only ones who could “blow the cover” off this historical manipulation.
We are familiar that fear and guilt represent powerful emotions that can drive actions toward the elimination of the offending party, especially when that party remains visible and present. We see this in contemporary mass media. Witnesses and informants who come forward to testify against gangs or members of organized crime often face the threat of reprisals. They fear for their lives and those of their family. Some require round-the-clock protection prior to trial in order to guarantee their safety and, even then, live in fear of an acquittal or a revenge slaying by gang or mob associates at some point in the future. In extreme cases, some need to be put into witness protection programs, with changed identities and relocation. Witnesses have good reason to fear retribution from those whom they could potentially expose.
The Da Vinci Code follows the same plot line. There was a cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church which allegedly knows that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and together they had children who became rulers in Europe. There are witnesses who know the truth and who are charged with safeguarding it, the Priory of Sion. Finally, there is revenge, with the perpetrators of the cover-up (represented by a deranged member of the Opus Dei movement) bent on killing the witnesses so as to avoid exposure of the secret information about Jesus that, allegedly, could destroy the foundations of Christianity. While not history, this story illustrates the lengths to which someone who fears exposure will go to cover up the truth.12
We find the same dynamic at work in other stories in contemporary media. Some violent criminals claim that they killed the victims they raped or robbed so that they would not be able testify against them. Perpetrators of some crime, fearful of detection, intimidate, harass, or inflict retribution upon witnesses whose only mistake was having witnessed an event. Witnesses are vulnerable—their only fault having been at the scene of the crime.
According to the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis, the guilt dynamic, lashing out at the witnesses, provides an explanation for the sustained attack on Judaism throughout Christian history. There was “a crime,” that is, a transformation of the religion by the Christifiers. There were witnesses, the Jews. There was the psychological need on the part of the Christifiers to eradicate and silence the Jewish witnesses, so as to avoid detection.
Christian anti-Semitism was not a one-time event, by isolated Christian leaders. It represents a sustained assault in ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern times—from Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant forms of Christianity. The anti-Jewish sentiment within Christianity is not just a matter of differentiation, of positioning Christianity as distinctive from Judaism—as if the issue were simply how to tell a Democrat from a Republican or a liberal from a conservative. The assault stems from a deeply rooted inner feeling that manifests itself on an ongoing basis. The various contributing factors we noted in the previous chapter for Christian anti-Semitism are simply symptoms of a pervasive underlying guilt.
The root issue is Christification: the supplanting of the Jewish Jesus, the human teacher and Messiah claimant, by a Gentile God-human, savior of humanity. The Jesus Cover-Up Thesis alone makes sense of the persistent attempt to discredit Jewish leaders and their interpretation of their own writings, and to deny the ongoing validity of Judaism as a religion in its own right. From the time of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, the contention has been that Judaism has no right to continue to exist. This thinking is a logical outgrowth of Paul’s handiwork— his elimination of Torah observance and his substitution of the Christ of faith for the Jesus of history. The attack, moreover, is rooted in the Christian scriptures, not isolated early church leaders. It is its Christification texts that continue to give power and expression to Christian anti-Semitism today.
The Jesus Cover-Up Thesis also explains why rational attempts to situate biblical texts in historical context do not eliminate the motivation toward anti-Semitism. While statements by church leaders situating strident biblical passages in historical context are helpful, they do not ferret out the underlying root cause of Christian anti-Semitism. The root problem is psychological.
So Jesus did become Christian. But the transformation of the religion and of the portrait of Jesus was not without a harsh price.