Jesus did not die on cross, says scholar

I have been pointing this out for years -- JR



Jesus may not have died nailed to the cross because there is no evidence that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago, a scholar has claimed. The legend of his execution is based on the traditions of the Christian church and artistic illustrations rather than antique texts, according to theologian Gunnar Samuelsson.

He claims the Bible has been misinterpreted as there are no explicit references the use of nails or to crucifixion - only that Jesus bore a "staurus" towards Calvary which is not necessarily a cross but can also mean a "pole".

Mr Samuelsson, who has written a 400-page thesis after studying the original texts, said: "The problem is descriptions of crucifixions are remarkably absent in the antique literature. "The sources where you would expect to find support for the established understanding of the event really don't say anything."

The ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew literature from Homer to the first century AD describe an arsenal of suspension punishments but none mention "crosses" or "crucifixion."

Mr Samuelsson, of Gothenburg University, said: "Consequently, the contemporary understanding of crucifixion as a punishment is severely challenged. "And what's even more challenging is the same can be concluded about the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus. The New Testament doesn't say as much as we'd like to believe."

Any evidence that Jesus was left to die after being nailed to a cross is strikingly sparse - both in the ancient pre-Christian and extra-Biblical literature as well as The Bible.

Mr Samuelsson, a committed Christian himself, admitted his claims are so close to the heart of his faith that it is easy to react emotionally instead of logically.

Mr Samuelsson said the actual execution texts do not describe how Christ was attached to the execution device. He said: "This is the heart of the problem. The text of the passion narratives is not that exact and information loaded, as we Christians sometimes want it to be." Mr Samuelsson said: "If you are looking for texts that depict the act of nailing persons to a cross you will not find any beside the Gospels."

A lot of contemporary literature all use the same vague terminology - including the Latin accounts. Nor does the Latin word crux automatically refer to a cross while patibulum refer to the cross-beam. Both words are used in a wider sense that that.

Mr Samuelsson said: "That a man named Jesus existed in that part of the world and in that time is well-documented. He left a rather good foot-print in the literature of the time. "I do believe that the mentioned man is the son of God. My suggestion is not that Christians should reject or doubt the biblical text.

"My suggestion is that we should read the text as it is, not as we think it is. We should read on the lines, not between the lines. The text of the Bible is sufficient. We do not need to add anything."

SOURCE

An extensive exegesis of Matthew 16:18 based on the Aramaic

I have received the following exegesis from Alfred Persson [alpersso1@roadrunner.com] and reproduce it below as received

I will prove the double entendre in Mat 16:18 is an elegant Janus Parallelism on PETROS.

"Thou art PETROS and upon this PETROS I will build"

-hypothetical Aramaic speech of Christ in Mat 16:18

"You are PETROS-Firstborn (of the divine revelation of Me)

and upon this (revelation) THE PETROS (the life giving rock) I will build my church."

The most parsimonious interpretation is most likely correct.

The supposed ambiguities of Matthew 16:18 vanish when we interpret Jesus’ double entendre historico-grammatically as an Old Testament style Janus Parallelism on the Aramaic/Greek homonym (Aramaic PeTRos / Firstborn ; Greek PETROS / petra / rock). Among competing explanations, this alone achieves maximum parsimony, the universal characteristic of truth.

What is a Janus Parallelism?

"Janus Parallelism. This type of parallelism hinges on the use of a single word with two different meanings, one of which forms a parallel with what precedes and the other with what follows. Thus, by virtue of a double entendre, the parallelism faces in both directions. An example is Gen 49:26."-Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (5:157). New York: Doubleday.

The transliterated Aramaic PeTRos(firstborn) and Greek PETROS(stone) are spelled the same in Greek, so it is likely the Greek speaking Church would confuse them

After the Jewish revolt was crushed about AD. 135, Judea was renamed Syria Palestina, and Jerusalem became a pagan city Jews were forbidden to enter. Soon Jewish Christians familiar with Palestinian Aramaic names had vanished from the church. Therefore it is certain they would confuse the Aramaic PETROS ("firstborn") with the Greek PETROS ("stone"), not only are they spelled the same, Jesus called Simon "KEPHA" in John 1:42, which John interpreted to be, in Greek, a PETROS.

When we test the proposition these were confused, that PETROS is in fact a homonym with radically different meanings, all alleged ambiguity vanishes from the relevant texts---proving beyond reasonable doubt they did confuse this homonym.

The Aramaic PETROS "Firstborn" and Greek PETROS "Rock" are homonyms

"And a surprising discovery among the Dead Sea Scrolls proves the existence of the Greek form, Petros, even among Aramaic-speaking Jews some time before the dialogue at Caesarea Philippi took place. The leather fragment 4QM130, an Aramaic writing exercise in the form of several names like Aquila, Dallui, Eli, Gaddi, Hyrcanus, Jannai, Magnus, Malkiha, Mephisbosheth, Zakariel—in other words, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and even Latin names—includes Petros, in a precise Aramaic transcription of the Greek spelling.36 It is safe to say that Jesus did not have to invent the name and its Greek form. Jews knew it and used it, even in a cross-cultural writing exercise." Thiede, C. P. (2004). The Cosmopolitan World of Jesus : New findings from Archaeology (p.69). London: SPCK.

There was, on the contrary, as already mentioned (note 12), an Aramaic name פטרוס (Petros), which perhaps is to be connected with פטר (patar) "firstborn". -PETER Disciple-Apostle-Martyr, by Oscar Cullmann, translated from the German by Floyd V. Filson (Westminister Press, Philadelphia, 1953), p 19, Note 14.

An Aramaic PETROS resolves all alleged ambiguity of the antecedent

Matthew preserved the succinct elegance of Christ's double entendre by changing the gender of the usually masculine idiom KAI EPI TOUTOIS to KAI EPI TAUTEE, disqualifying the masculine PETROS as its antecedent.

The demonstrative pronoun has Christ leaving direct address (SOI, SU), speaking TO Peter ABOUT "The Rock"---literally "upon this the rock" (KAI EPI TAUTEE TEE PETRA). Usually masculine KAI EPI TOUTOIS (Lev 26:23; 1 Ma 10:42; Sir 32:13; Amo 8:8; Zec 14:18; TOUTW Joh 4:27), its antecedent implied, not supplied by the context (Lev 26:23; Sir 32:13; Amo 8:8 John 4:27).

By attaching verse 17 to v.18 (KAGW DE SOI) "And I also unto thee", Matthew carried forward the antecedent, italicized as "it" in the KJV, which is feminine being the APOCALUPSIS (revelation) or ALEETHEIA (truth) "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God", that Peter just confessed changing his status. (cf the Makarism "blessed"; the Aramaic Barjona, see below).

Therefore, Matthew designed the context to disqualify the masculine PETROS as the antecedent. The article strengthens this disqualification as Jesus is speaking TO Simon ABOUT "The" rock.

This is corroborated by his including Peter's embarrassment---Jesus "said unto PETROS, Get thee behind me, Satan" (vs. 23); obviously written against PETROS being "the rock", for then Christ built upon Satan.

This exegesis is consistent with the overriding theme of the context---Jesus' identity (16:13-17,20); While Peter's confession is the occasion for discussing this, he remains a digression Christ quickly leaves, to return, using the short form, to what is important: "tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. (Mat 16:20 KJV)"

This is that "saying" upon which Christ built His church--- a parallel use of PETRA:

KJV Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings (LOGOS) of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built (OIKODOMEW) his house upon a rock(PETRA).



PETRA as the rock fountain of life to the dead:

KJV 1 Corinthians 10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock(petra) that followed them: and that Rock(petra) was Christ.

"The currency of Peter's name {PETROS} is confirmed"

"…The currency of Peter's name {PETROS} is confirmed in Tal Ilan's identification of three additional first and second-century Palestinian Jewish individuals who bear the name Petros.[90] It is worth noting that the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim repeatedly feature an early Amoraic Rabbi Yose ben Petros, whose father constitutes proof that even this Greek name was by no means unknown in the early rabbinic period. A Jewish convert called Petrus also appears in a fifth-century Christian inscription from Grado in Italy.…

90 Ilan 2002 s.v. The first of these is Petros (c. 30 CE), a freedman of Agrippa’s mother Berenice, whom Josephus mentions in passing in Ant. 18.6.3 §156 (v.l. Protos). The other two names are Patrin פטרִין son of Istomachus at Masada (ostracon no. 413, pre-73) and Patron פטרון son of Joseph in a Bar Kokhba period papyrus deed at Nahal Hever (P.Yadin 46, 134 CE). Although these two names seem at first sight different from Petros, the Aramaic rendition of Greek names in –ος as ון- or ין- was in fact well established, as Ilan 2002:27 demonstrates (cf. similarly Dalman 1905:176).

91 E.g. y. Mo _ed Qat.. 3.6, 82d (bottom); y. _Abod. Zar. 3.1, 42c; Gen. Rab. 62.2; 92.2; 94.5 Exod. Rab. 52.3; Lev. Rab. 7.2. For additional references and discussion see Bacher 1892–99:1.128, 2:512, n. 5, and 3:598. The phenomenon of the Greek name פיטרס is also discussed by Dalman 1905:185. Cf. further Jastrow s.v.: the spelling varies from פיטרוס to פיטרס and פטרס. This in turn would account for the wide range of vocalisations encountered in the various English translations. פטרוס in t. Demai 1.11 is a place-name. -Bockmuehl, Markus. 2004. Simon Peter's Names in Jewish Sources. Journal of Jewish Studies 55:71-72

The existence of an Aramaic PETROS means the sample considered was too small

"PETROS…Fr. the beginning it was prob. thought of as the Gk. equivalent of the Aramaic Keph Keephas; J 1:42; cf. Mt 16:18"- A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Bauer; University of Chicago Press, 1979) p. 654.

"Probably thought", not "is". The conclusion is a hasty generalization---the sample too small, there are other relevant words, for example, the Aramaic PETROS which in transliterated Greek, is spelled PETROS but has a radically different meaning.

Simon called PETROS before Christ surnamed him Cephas in John 1:42

KJV John 1:40 One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's (PETROS) brother. (Joh 1:40 KJV)

17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

18 And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

20 And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

21 And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.

(Mat 4:17-21 KJV)

Simon "who is called Peter" ( ton legomenon petron), cp Mat 27:17 Jesus "who is called" Christ (ton legomenon christon).

While some argue the present tense describes what was happening as Matthew wrote---"the one commonly called Peter" (now), that is less parsimonous, unhistorical, contrary to accurately describing the event as it happened.

It follows Jesus did not give Simon the name PETROS in John 1:42

When John translates Aramaic into Greek, it is METHERMENEUW, when he explains what the Aramaic means it is HERMENEUW:

38 Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted(HERMENEUW), Master,) where dwellest thou?

…

41 He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted(METHERMENEUW), the Christ.

42 And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation(HERMENEUW), A stone.(Joh 1:38-42 KJV)

Compare:

KJV John 9:7 And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation(HERMENEUW), Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing. (Joh 9:7 KJV)

Although HERMENEUW can be found outside scripture as "translate," that is not John's usage. It is unhistorical to read into KEPHA what it became later, a proper name. Here it is an epithet, an idiom, not a name; therefore, John would not translate it into a proper name, rather he is interpreting it to be a stone.

It is parsimonous Christ meant KEPHA as it is found in the Aramaic Targums, and so John chose the Attic Greek "petros" because it means "small stone":

Pr 3:15 "more precious than rubies," Aramaic KEPHA Heb. paniyn, lxx lithos;

Pr 17:8 "stone of grace," Aramaic KEPHA; Heb. eben cheen, lxx misthos charitwn, gracious reward. [That is, a stone for a bribe, to buy favor].

-"Dictionary of the Targumim Talmud Babli, Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature," Marcus Jastrow [Judaica Press, NT, 1996], pp. 634-635).

As KEPHA=PETROS (Attic)=LITHOS (Koine) it follows Christ called Simon a precious "lively stone" which Simon later applies to the church:

4 To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,

5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

6 Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.(1Pe 2:4-6 KJV)

The imagery is derived from Christ---the Rockmass KEPHA/PETRA, which Moses was to strike once (Ex 17:6; 1 Cor 10:4) for living water to come out…

4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock PETRA that followed them: and that Rock PETRA was Christ. (1Co 10:4 KJV)

Believers are little christs" (CHRISTIANOS), lively stones that figuratively purchase favor from God preaching the immutable truth of Christ's Name---mediating life to all who believe.



38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (Joh 7:38 KJV)

18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (Joh 3:18 KJV)

Jesus surnamed Simon by putting upon him an epithet

16 And Simon he surnamed (EPITITHEMI) Peter (PETROS);

17 And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed (EPITITHEMI) them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:

(Mar 3:16-17 KJV)

Boanerges is an epithet, idiom, not a proper name, hence neither of these men are ever called this name. Jesus put the meaning "of sons of thunder" on the pair… It follows Jesus also put upon Simon a meaning, not a proper name.

The only place in Scripture where Jesus says, "Thou art PETROS," is Matthew 16:18, not John 1:42 where He called him "Cephas".

What meaning did Jesus put upon Simon? Scripture says all who confess Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, via divine revelation, are born again (Rom 10:8ff; John 1:12; 1 John 4:15). It follows Jesus called Simon "Firstborn of the Gospel of Christ". Context supports this exegesis:

KJV Matthew 16:17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. (Mat 16:17 KJV)

In this Makarism we find an undeveloped double entendre, rather than writing "Son of Jonah" in Greek (huios Iwna, Joh 1:42 TR), Matthew conveys Jesus’ EPITITHEMI via the epithet BARIWNA---Simon is "blessed" for receiving and proclaiming divine revelation just like Jonah the Prophet (cp Mat 12:39-41; 16:4). Having risen from the dead speaking the Word of Life, Simon is just like him = born again. Compare:

5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

10 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

3:1 And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

2 Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

(Jon 2:5-2:2 KJV)

Only a child of God is given keys to His Kingdom, as Peter was promised the keys then, it follows he was born then.

KJV Matthew 16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: (Mat 16:19 KJV)

Matthew CONFIRMS Simon is the First (PRWTOS):

2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first (PRWTOS), Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;

-Mat 10:2 KJV

As "First Simon" is not followed by "Second Andrew", "Third James" etc... This is not a numbering system. In addition, the LORD expressly forbade thinking any were PRWTOS in the "Chief" sense:

27 And whosoever will be chief (PRWTOS) among you, let him be your servant: (Mat 20:27 KJV)

Only one likely meaning remains: Simon is the FIRST of the group born of the Gospel of Christ, and Matthew emphasized that by calling Simon "First" and so lists him first.

Peter's confession was unique, the first (PRWTOS) of its kind

Peter's confession was a product of divine revelation of Christ's Name in the heart and mouth hence archetypical of the entire Church (16:17 cp Rom 10:8f)), unlike others which preceded it in time (14:24-33; Mark 6:49-52) but were the product of human emotion and intellect (cf James 2:19f). Observe John doesn't mention a confession when relating the same event (John 6:19-21) and none of these result in a Makarism:

49 Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. 50 Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. (Joh 1:49-50 KJV)

The parallels between this event and Romans 10:8ff indicate dependence:

8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Rom 10:8-10 KJV)

Divine revelation of Jesus' Name is put in Peter's heart and mouth, the word of faith John says is required for eternal life. Peter confessed this publicly, he was the first to do so via divine inspiration.

Corroborating this is Paul's switch from PETROS to KEPHA, in Gal 2:9:

And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars -KJV

Evidently Paul switches from PETROS to Cephas in Galatians 2:9 (TR) because PETROS("Firstborn") didn't covey the stone metaphors Paul wanted for his caustic review of "those who seemed to be somewhat…seemed to be pillars", these lamps of fire guiding the people imparted no light to Paul (cp Gal 2:6,9 with Ex 13:21; cf also Berachoth 28b). Peter is both a pillar and a KEPHA stone of grace, a small precious stone benefiting the holder:

Therefore Peter failed both as a pillar and as a stone of grace. Rather than a guiding light to the Gospel of Christ, Peter cowers in fear following followers James failed to guide correctly, into error…even against the vision God gave him! (Ac 10:34). Ironic indeed for a pillar and a kepha.

As would be expected in unsound eclectic texts, the change from Cephas (Gal 1:18; 2:9, 11, 14) to petros (2:7, 8) is purely random, a property not found in Paul's expositions, who arguably had a reason for every word carefully chosen. That contradicts the claim these are accurate copies.

However, in a footnote Professor Cullmann argues for dependence from these texts:

14 …’The proper name Peter does not appear at all in pagan literature; it first appears in Tertullian.’ There was, on the contrary, as already mentioned (note 12), an Aramaic name פטרוס (Petros), which perhaps is to be connected with פטר (patar) "firstborn". The theory that the Greek Petros was first derived from it and gave occasion for a false retranslation Kepha into Aramaic is quite impossible, in view of the fact that in Paul’s letters Cephas is already the usual designation and Peter clearly was only a derivation from it."-PETER Disciple-Apostle-Martyr, by Oscar Cullmann , translated from the German by Floyd V. Filson (Westminister Press, Philadelphia, 1953), pp18-19.



However, as Prof Cullmann’s argument would yield the opposite conclusion in John--Cephas appears only once, but PETROS 35 times, it must be unsound. The middle term is undistributed and the reasoning circular as its conclusion also one of its premises.

When we suppose the Early Church "fathers" confused PETROS (Firstborn) as PETROS (stone), the reason for their similar interpretations of "the Rock" is clear--- They tried to remain true to apostolic exegesis, and somehow include Peter. Later Peter supplanted all reference to the content of his confession

Roman Catholic Archbishop Peter Richard Kenrick prepared a paper to be delivered at Vatican I (1870), in which he noted that five interpretations of the word "rock" were held in antiquity:

1. The first declared that the church was built on Peter, endorsed by seventeen fathers.

2. The second understood the words as referring to all the apostles, Peter being simply the Primate, the opinion of eight fathers.

3. The third asserted that the words applied to the faith that Peter professed, espoused by forty-four fathers, some of whom are the most important and representative.

4. The fourth declared that the words were to be understood of Jesus Christ, the church being built upon him, the view of sixteen fathers.

5. The fifth understood the term "rock" to apply to the faithful themselves who, by believing in Christ, were made the living stones in the temple of his body, an opinion held by only very few (107–108).- Journal of Biblical apologetics : Volume 3. 2001 (16). Las Vegas, N.V.: Christian Scholar's Press, Inc.. p. 16.

TERTULLIAN: If, because the Lord has said to Peter, 'Upon this rock I will build My Church,' 'to thee have I given the keys of the heavenly kingdom;' or, 'Whatsoever thou shalt have bound or loosed in earth, shall be bound or loosed in the heavens,' you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has derived to you, that is, to every Church akin to Peter, what sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of the Lord, conferring (as that intention did) this (gift) personally upon Peter? 'On thee,' He says, 'will I build My church;' and, 'I will give thee the keys'...and, 'Whatsoever thou shalt have loosed or bound'...In (Peter) himself the Church was reared; that is, through (Peter) himself; (Peter) himself essayed the key; you see what key: 'Men of Israel, let what I say sink into your ears: Jesus the Nazarene, a man destined by God for you,' and so forth. (Peter) himself, therefore, was the first to unbar, in Christ's baptism, the entrance to the heavenly kingdom, in which kingdom are 'loosed' the sins that were beforetime 'bound;' and those which have not been 'loosed' are 'bound,' in accordance with true salvation...(Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), Volume IV, Tertullian, On Modesty 21, p. 99).

Theodore of Mopsuestia: This is not the property of Peter alone, but it came about on behalf of every human being. Having said that his confession is a rock, he stated that upon this rock I will build my church. This means he will build his church upon this same confession and faith.-Fragment 92, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002).

"And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church;" that is, on the faith of his confession. "-John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew LIV.3

"… when Simon Bar Yona {St. Peter} declared that Our Lord Jesus Christ is the son of God, and on this specific point in FAITH Our Lord Jesus Christ built the Holy Church." -V. Rev. Fr. Boutros Touma Issa, St Ephraim Syriac Orthodox Church

"Upon this rock I will build my church" (Matt. 16:18). That the rock spoken of was the faith, not the person of Peter, was a common explanation of the fathers. Owen (Person of Christ, preface) cites the following: "Origen (tractate in Matt. 16) expressly denies the words to be spoken of Peter: ‘If you shall think that the whole church was built on Peter alone, what shall we say of John and each of the apostles? Shall we dare to say that the gates of hell shall not prevail against Peter alone? Hilary (Concerning the Trinity 2) says: ‘This is the only immovable foundation; this is the rock of faith confessed by Peter, You are the Son of the living God.’ And Epiphanius (Heresies 39) declares, ‘Upon this rock of assured faith (epi tē petra tautē tēs asphalous pisteōs)  I will build my church.’ ’ One or two more out of Augustine shall close these testimonies (Sermon concerning the Words of the Lord 13): ‘Upon this rock which you have confessed, upon this rock which you have known, saying, You are Christ, the Son of the living God, I will build my church, that is, on me myself, the Son of the living God, I will build my church." Shedd, W. G. T., & Gomes, A. W. (2003). Dogmatic theology. "First one-volume edition (3 vols. in 1)"--Jacket. (3rd ed.) (p. 791). Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Pub.

PETROS should be added to any list of Aramaic/Hebrew transliterations in the NT---abba; bar; batos; elooi; ephphatha; kokrban; korbanas; lama; mamoonas; maran atha; rhabbi; rhabbouni; rhabitha; rhaka; sabachthani; talitha koum, SIMWN, IAKWBOS, ZEBEDAIOS, IWANNES, BARTHOLOMAIOS, THWMAS, ALPHAIOS, IOUDAS ISKARIOTES (Mat 10:2-4) etc.

39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. (Luk 5:39 KJV)

The old wine accepts "Peter is the Rock" and then argues it does not follow Rome's pope is Peter's successor. Many will resist changing their apologetic. However, it is inefficient to refute a lie after agreeing with it.

The "Peter is the rock" theory is pernicious novelty, not this exegesis.

KJV 1 Corinthians 4:6 And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another. (1Co 4:6 KJV)

Like the Flat Earth and global warming theories, the Peter is the Rock consensus is certainly wrong, a tradition of men.

END

The Bible proved right again

The revelation came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force. 'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.' The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

Such was the starting point of Parker's jaw-dropping new book, The Genesis Enigma: an astounding work which seeks to prove that the ancient Hebrew writers of the Book of Genesis knew all about evolution - 3,000 years before Darwin. It takes a journey back through aeons of geological time, and also into the minds and imaginations of the ancient Israelites.

Andrew Parker is a leading scientist in his field: a research fellow at Oxford University, research leader at the Natural History Museum, and as if that weren't enough, a professor at Shanghai's Jiao Tong university. As a scientist he never paid much heed to the Book of Genesis, assuming, like most of his colleagues, that such primitive mythology - which is believed to have been compiled from several sources between 950 and 500 BC - has long since been 'disproved' by hard scientific fact. But after his Sistine Chapel moment, he went back to look at Genesis in more detail. And what he read astonished him. It was even, he says, 'slightly scary'.

Somehow - God alone knew how - the writer or writers of that ancient text had described how the evolution of life on earth took place in precise detail and perfect order.

It is always disturbing and haunting to encounter an ancient wisdom that seems to anticipate or even exceed our own. More fanciful writers immediately start to theorise wildly: that those who built the pyramids, or Stonehenge, must have been guided by super-intelligent aliens, that sort of thing.

Andrew Parker, a scientist and proud of it, has no time for such twaddle. But he does gradually come to understand, in the course of his investigations, that our ancestors of thousands of years ago, though they may not have had iPods and plasma-screen televisions, nevertheless possessed a wisdom that was, quite literally, timeless: as true now as it was then.

In the Book of Genesis, God first and most famously creates heaven and earth, but 'without form', and commands: 'Let there be light.' A perfect description of the Big Bang, that founding moment of our universe some 13 billion years ago, an unimaginable explosion of pure energy and matter 'without form' out of nothing - the primordial Biblical 'void'.

He then creates the dry land out of the waters, but it is the water that comes first. As Parker points out, scientists today understand very similarly that water is indeed crucial for life. When 'astrobiologists' look into space for signs of life on other planets, the first thing they look for is the possible presence of water.

On the third day, we are told: 'God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."' Now factually speaking, grass didn't evolve until much later. In the Triassic and Jurassic epochs, the dinosaurs knew only plants such as giant conifers and tree ferns. But since grass did not in fact evolve until much later, a sternly literal-minded scientist would declare the Bible wrong, and consign it to the nearest wheelie bin.

But wait a minute, says Parker. If you take 'grass, herb and tree' to mean photosynthesising life in general, then this is, once again, spot on. The very life forms on earth were single-celled bacteria, but the first truly viable bacteria were the 'cyanobacteria' - those that had learned to photosynthesise. As a result, they began to expire oxygen, creating an atmosphere that could go on to support more and more life. They were the key to life on earth.

Naturally, says Parker, 'the ancient Israelites would have been oblivious to any single-celled life form, let alone cyanobacteria', but 'grass' as a loose description of life forms that photosynthesise?

On the fourth day, Genesis famously becomes confusing. On the first day, remember, God has already created light, and made Day and Night. But it isn't until day four that he makes the lights in heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser the night. Hang on - so he made 'Day' three days before he made the Sun? Houston, I think we have a problem.

Yet the writers of Genesis were just as well aware as us, surely, that the sunrise causes the day. You don't need a degree in astronomy to work that one out. What on earth did they mean? Here, The Genesis Enigma comes up with a stunningly ingenious answer. For Parker argues that day four refers to the evolution of vision. Until the first creatures on earth evolved eyes, in a sense, the sun and moon didn't exist. There was no creature on earth to see them, nor the light they cast. When Genesis says: 'Let there be lights... To divide the day from the night,' it is talking about eyes.

'The very first eye on earth effectively turned on the lights for animal behaviour,' writes Professor Parker, 'and consequently for further rapid evolution.' Almost overnight, life suddenly grew vastly more complex. Predators were able to hunt far more efficiently, and so prey had to evolve fast too - or get eaten. The moment that there were 'lights', or eyes, then life exploded into all its infinite variety.

And yet again, that's what Genesis says happened, and in the correct environment too. In the sea. For on the very next day of Creation, the fifth day: 'God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life."' That is exactly what happened. Life that had hitherto been lived in the dark, by simple, slow-moving, worm-like creatures, erupted into dazzling diversity. We know all about it from the world famous Burgess Shale fossils. They were discovered in the summer of 1909 by one Charles Doolittle Walcott, on holiday with his family in the Canadian Rockies. Walcott began to chip away at the shale with his geological hammer, and quite by chance stumbled upon one of the greatest finds in all science.

For the shale records what happened on our planet around 508 million years ago, long before the first dinosaurs: the 'Cambrian expolosion,' which most scientists now think was indeed the direct result of the evolution of vision. The life-forms discovered look like nothing else: fabulous, phantasmagoric, alien beings. One had five eyes, and a long wavy snout with jaws on the end. Another looked like an octopus with its head stuck in a beaker, and another can only be described as 'a swimming pea with a pair of beady eyes, bull's horns, a pair of "hands" and a fish's tail.' Others resemble balls of spines, vase-shaped pin-cushions, or badminton shuttlecocks with chameleon-like tongues. Anyone who doubts the power of evolution by natural selection only has to look at the Burgess Shale fossils.

How does Genesis describe the teeming aquatic life of the Cambrian explosion? 'And God said, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life." ' Immediately following the creation of vision.

How did the writer/writers know that life suddenly diversified into this rich and staggering variety, under the oceans, not on land? Why would a very much land-based people, pastoralists and shepherds, even think like this?

After the Cambrian come the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods - or the appearance of 'great whales', as Genesis succinctly puts it. How better to describe those epochs which gave us such monsters of the deep as Dunkleosteus, a carnivorous armoured fish whose appearance, says Parker, was 'simply terrifying'. Some 35ft long, 'the size of a small coach', with massive, bone-crunching jaws, even its eyes were armoured.

And after the sea monsters come the birds, the animals, cattle, and finally, homo sapiens. All present and correct, and all still in the right order. Once again, 'In describing how the planet and life around us came to be, the writer of the Genesis narrative got it disturbingly right'....

More HERE

THE PISHON RIVER--FOUND!

by Calvin R. Schlabach



Where was the Garden of Eden? Every believer in the Bible has wondered at one time or another about the location of this idyllic home of our first parents. Moses wrote that it was "in the east, in Eden" (Gen. 2:8), and he named four rivers that converged there: the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates (2:10-14). The courses of these last two are known to all, but the other pair have been impossible to identify--that is, perhaps, until now.

The Pishon River (2:11-12) has been variously identified by scholars with the Nile, the Indus, the Ganges, or other rivers. The lack of any general agreement stems from the fact that no known river matches Moses’ description: "it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and onyx stone are there."

"Havilah" itself is of uncertain location, but is generally associated with the western or southern regions of the Arabian peninsula. "Bdellium" is usually understood to be a fragrant resin, found in abundance in Arabia, as are various types of precious and semiprecious stones (the identification of the "onyx stone" is uncertain). The only known Arabian source for "good gold" is the so-called "Cradle of Gold," (Mahd edh-Dhahab), located about 125 miles south of Medina, in the Hijaz Mountains, which currently produces more than five tons of gold a year.

The problem is that there is no river flowing today from this area toward the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. But once it was different. A scientist from Boston University, Farouk El-Baz, taking clues from alluvial deposits in Kuwait, carefully examined satellite photos of the Arabian peninsula. There he spotted the unmistakable signs of a river channel cutting across the desert. Originating in the Hijaz Mountains near Medina and the Cradle of Gold, the ancient waterway, currently concealed beneath sand dunes, runs northeast to Kuwait. Dubbed the Kuwait River by its modern discoverer, it once joined the Tigris and Euphrates at the head of the Persian Gulf. Then because of climate changes, it dried up, the archaeologists say, sometime between 3500-2000 B. C.

The agreement of all of these details of the Kuwait River with the biblical description of the Pishon, has led some scholars to make the obvious connection. James A. Sauer (former curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum, archaeologist, author, and a research associate at the museum), a man who describes himself as "a former skeptic," wrote that "the Kuwait River . . . may well be the Pishon River, one of the four rivers, according to the Bible, associated with Eden." That such a near-confession could be coaxed from a reputable archaeologist is nothing short of amazing. Those of us who believe that the Bible stories are literally true will show much less hesitation in the identification.

Does this mean that the Garden of Eden itself can now be located? Probably not. When we understand the destructive and scouring effects of modern, limited floods, we realize that whatever of the Garden remained in Noah’s day was certainly erased by that catastrophic, worldwide Flood. We may, however, with some degree of confidence suggest that the territory at the head of the Persian Gulf (where Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran meet) is the general locale of the Garden.

The real importance of this discovery is in the confirmation of the accuracy, historicity, and literal veracity of the Bible. While many scholars feel no compunction about relegating the stories in the Bible to the realms of fable and myth, this find substantiates the literal, historical nature of the records in the Scriptures. Many people have long doubted it, but the Bible is true.

(For more information, see James A. Sauer, "The River Runs Dry," Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August, 1996. In addition, see articles on "Pishon," "Havilah," and "Eden" in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, and The Illustrated Bible Dictionary.)

SOURCE

The Church of England and Die Judenfrage

I should have mentioned yesterday that the "learned" British judges who ruled that Jews are a race do have on their side one authority who is much respected to this day in academe: Karl Marx. Marx was of course the original self-hating Jew. He was furiously antisemitic. But Marx was a sponger. He rarely earned enough to keep himself and his family so was always "borrowing" money from someone. It was initially his father (Heinrich Marx was a real gentleman, a lovely man. How he ever had such a monster as Karl is hard to imagine) and he was in later years supported by Friedrich Engels out of the proceeds of the Engels family business. One therefore imagines that when he wrote a letter to his Jewish uncle in Holland he had in mind ingratiating himself for future borrowing. The letter was about Marx's excitement over the American civil war and his contempt for Benjamin Disraeli but in the course of his comments about Disraeli he does refer to "our race".

As I briefly touched on in the opening sentence to my post yesterday, I am not wholly unsympathetic to self-hating Jews. It must be appalling to realize that by the accident of your birth you are a member of a widely suspect and even hated group -- regardless of what your personal characteristics might be. Distancing oneself from that could even be a perfectly healthy reaction. But it is when such Jews extend the dislike of their origins to undermining Israel that they really get my goat. Why do they have to be so extreme? Why not simply become an Anglican, as Disraeli did? The Anglicans (Episcopalians in the USA) have lovely buildings, colourful services and the sermons demand nothing and in fact mean nothing at all. Why not just treat it as a pleasant Sunday morning time of relaxation and have a whole new identity to show for it? Many Anglican bishops are barely-disguised atheists so you certainly don't have to believe anything to be an Anglican. It is sometimes said that the only requirement for being an Anglican is good taste.

By the way, "Die Judenfrage" is German for "The Jewish Question" and is an expression used by both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler so there is an allusion to history in the title I chose yesterday and today. It is actually a bit of a tease. Any stray Leftist coming by my writings would expect something antisemitic under that title -- but, as you can see, such an expectation would have been disappointed.

In my peculiar position as a atheist with an interest in religious matters, I take a continued interest not only in Jews but also in the Church of England. And I have recently put up on my Paralipomena blog an article by a Church of England bishop that makes doleful reading. He notes the steady decline in adherents to his church and suspects that his church will not exist at all in 30 years' time. But he has no real answer to that problem. So will the Church of England eventually disappear up its own backside? I think not. The problem, as I see it, is that they have somehow become dominated by dress-up queens. People go there for a show rather than for a boost to faith.

But amid such desecration of a great heritage, real faith does survive in patches. The Sydney diocese is the most vivid proof of that. Their churches are full and their seminary is overflowing with people with a religious vocation. So how do they do it? Simple. They have returned to their roots. The original faith of the New Testament is a mightily powerful one and the closer you get to that the more empowered you will be. And the 39 "Articles of Religion" that were the original definition of Anglicanism are a very powerful expression of early Protestant faith -- a faith that was very Bible-based. So my expectation is that the show-ponies of Anglicanism will wither away eventually and a core of real believers will remain.

They may even evangelize. Priests ordained in Sydney already do. They go into neighbouring dioceses and set up "Family Churches", much to the irritation of the local bishops. The Sydney priests end up having more people in their pews than the local Bishop does! So the vitality is there if you drink from the waters of the original New Testament faith. The knowalls may dismiss such faith as "old-fashioned" and "irrelevant to the modern world" but it still has a great power to bring blessings to its people.

I'm at it again: Die Judenfrage and religious identity

Most Jews must be heartily sick of being forever singled out for discussion and scrutiny but it seems that it was ever so and ever will be. And in my utter folly, I am once again going to voice a few thoughts on one of the most hotly contested topics among Jews: Who is a Jew?

My present thoughts arise from the "wise" British judges who recently decided that Jews are a race. Since there are Jews of all races -- including black ones -- that is arrant nonsense. Yet it is also partly true -- in that various genetic studies have shown that many Jews do still have in them some Middle Eastern genes. So for Jews as a whole it is true that Israel is their ancestral home as well as their religious home.

Nonetheless, it seems clear that Jews are a religion, not a race. And the test of that, it seems to me, is that Jews do accept converts. Try converting yourself into another race: It can't be done.

But many Jews are atheists or something close to it, so how can Jewry be a religion? The easy answer to that from an Orthodox viewpoint (with which I am broadly sympathetic) is that being Jewish is not a matter of belief but of practice. A Jew is someone who follows Jewish law (halacha). What you believe is very secondary. Deeds speak louder than words. Christianity is belief based but Judaism is practice based.

But there is also a much simpler answer: MOST religion is hereditary. And those who inherit it are often not zealous practitioners of it. My late father, for instance, always put his religion down on official forms as "C of E" ("Church of England") and had no hesitation in doing so. He in fact seemed rather proud of it. Yet in all the time I knew him, he never once set foot inside an Anglican church.

So why cannot Jews be the same? Even if you are not religious, you can still have a religious identity.

Because I am an atheist, I never bothered with getting my son Christened but I considered that a knowledge of Christianity was an important element of his cultural heritage so I sent him to a Catholic school -- in the view that Catholics still had enough cultural self-confidence to teach the Christian basics. And they did. And my son greatly enjoyed his religion lessons -- as I hoped he would.

When he was aged 9 however, he said that he wanted to become a Catholic, which of course I was delighted to arrange. So he was baptised and subsequently had his confirmation lessons and was confirmed. These days many years later his beliefs seem to be as skeptical as mine -- which I also expected -- so what motivated his desire to become a Catholic? He wanted to have a religious identity. There was no pressure on him but he was greatly impressed by some very faith-filled people in the church and he wanted to identify with that. And I imagine that he still puts himself down on forms as "Catholic".

So a religious identity can be quite a significant thing for many people, not only Jews. It is a part of belonging -- and that is a very basic human need. Jews in a way are lucky there. No matter what their beliefs are, they still know that there is always one place where they belong, if they ever want to acknowledge it.

Once or twice a year I still attend my local Presbyterian church (at Easter etc.) and I certainly feel that I belong there. I feel at home with all aspects of it. My mother was a Presbyterian of sorts so that was where I was sent as a kid for Sunday School -- and that has stayed with me even though I no longer believe. So, again, one can have and value a religious identity even if one's beliefs have very little to do with it.

And the lady in my life -- Anne -- is only very vaguely religious but her background religion is Presbyterian and there are many habits of mind she has which I know well from my own family, and with which I am therefore very much at ease. Sometimes when she speaks, I hear my mother and my aunties speaking too. She has a Presbyterian mind, or a Presbyterian way of thinking -- perhaps Presbyterian assumptions. I think that in a similar way, most Jews probably have a Jewish mind too. Attitudes and habits of thought may in fact be the most important parts of a religious heritasge.

I am sure that everything I have said above will be mumbo jumbo to most Leftists but, if so, that is their loss.

The Decline of John Calvin

As I was brought up in a Calvinist faith, this has some relevance to me -- JR

HE is a byword for bigotry cast in the role of the austere, humourless and cruel preacher of an austere, humourless and cruel God. He was held responsible by Max Weber for the rapacity of late capitalism. He is remembered as the persecutor of his opponents, including the hapless heretic Michael Servetus, for whose burning John Calvin is held responsible.

Calvinism, the form of Christianity he spawned, allegedly shares its fatalism with Islam. It is a church of prigs and wowsers, of Talibanesque idol-smashers and woman-haters, of middle managers and bean counters. It is a faith that broods on the depravity of humankind rather than celebrating its glorious capacity to build, to create and to redeem. It is the religion of Ned Flanders and the ironically named Reverend Lovejoy.

In his famous series of novels, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman placed the headquarters of the demonic anti-church in Calvin's city, Geneva.

But if this is how we think of Calvin, it is only because we are happier with the cardboard cut-out version of history mainly written by Calvin's detractors than with what history actually records. It is like accepting a biography of Kevin Rudd written by Malcolm Turnbull (or vice versa).

The real Calvin was a scholar steeped in the humanist intellectual culture of his day. In this he followed the great Erasmus. He was a man of texts, of the original sources read in the original languages. He was expert in classical literature as well as in the Bible. Not only did he learn Greek but also Hebrew and he consulted Jewish scholars about their interpretations of ancient writings. He was no obscurantist, no anti-intellectual.

Calvin's great work was his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which must surely count (with the Bible) as one of the great unread classics of Western thought.

It was translated into English as early as 1561 and has been of inestimable influence in Anglo-Saxon politics, science, liturgy and literature since. The God of the Institutes is not the remote, harsh deity who delights only in his exercise of arbitrary willpower. Actually reading the text, you encounter everywhere a tender-hearted father-figure, a divinity overflowing with love for his creatures. Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson wrote: "Any reader of the Institutes must be struck by the great elegance, the gallantry, of its moral vision, which is more beautiful for the resolution with which its theology embraces sorrow and darkness."

Calvin is a moral realist. For all their created nobility, human beings are tragic figures, impaled on their own pride. That is why, although Calvin upheld the freedom of the individual conscience, he was also an advocate of collective and democratic decision making. It is not accidental that his followers have been some of the greatest promoters of republicanism and democracy in the modern era.

Calvin was not without flaws, some of them serious. Yet if we are to judge him cruel, we are failing to recognise that he was a man of remarkable moderation in an age of often extreme judicial cruelty. If we are to judge his view of humanity too bleak, we are seriously overestimating our own capacity for moral heroism. If we are to celebrate the waning of his influence, it is quite possibly because we have accepted too lazily the caricature of his critics. As Robinson reminds us: "There are things for which we in this culture clearly are indebted to him, including relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in the humanities. How easily we forget."

SOURCE

A small meditation for the Jewish New Year

Although I am an atheist, I am acutely aware of the vast influence that the New Testament has had on my thinking. And I regret not one jot or tittle of that. Whenever I follow the teachings of Christ (alas far too seldom) I get a blessing -- sometimes very rapidly.

I also however have great respect for the Old Testament and often read it with pleasure. One book however stands out for its difficulty: The book of Job. However you explain it, the fact of the matter is that the God of Israel placed great burdens and afflictions on a good and holy man.

If I were a Rabbi, I would see that as a metaphor for the relationship between the God of Israel and his people as a whole. The God of the Jews has given his chosen people enormous gifts but in his wisdom he has also given them one enormous handicap: political stupidity. Israel and the Jews have only ONE powerful friend in the world: American evangelical Christians. And yet Jews generally despise them. Through the despicable Abraham Foxman, they do all they can to thwart evangelical Christians and they vote in droves for the antisemitic Democratic Party, the party that also despises evangelical Christians.

Now that seems to me to be a curse from on high but I speak from a particular perspective. What Jews do politically is virtually inexplicable from an Anglo-Saxon viewpoint but to the rest of the world it may not be so at all.

This is not the time or place to spell it out in historical detail, but a large element in Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism is the way they value alliances. When Anglo-Saxons go to war they generally do so as "Allies". They in fact refer to their side of a conflict as "the Allies" or "Allied forces". They have an instinctive appreciation of the importance of friends, banal though that may seem. There is much egotism in the world that causes both people and nations to "go it alone" at times but that is something that seems to be missing in Anglo-Saxon thinking.

And that seeking of alliances even overcomes old wounds. There is only one country that has burnt Washington to the ground and that is Britain -- in 1812. But, despite that bad start, the commonality of attitudes and values has prevailed and the USA and Britain have fought alongside one-another repeatedly since then.

Why cannot Jews do the same? Christians were once a plague upon Jewry but they are not so now. Both fundamentalist Christians and Jews want to see Jews in Zion but very few Jews will grasp the hand of friendship that is held out to them by the Christians. That blindspot does seem to me very much like a curse from on high.

There are of course some Jews who fight the good fight: Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Jeff Jacoby, Dennis Prager etc. But on some accounts 88% of Jews voted for the Islam-loving Democratic party at the 2006 mid-terms -- so the curse is pervasive despite that.

There has always been antisemitism on both sides of politics but at least since Karl Marx it has always had its principal home on the Left. Jews can remember conservative businessmen keeping them out of country clubs but forget that Hitler was a socialist. One should be able to expect better than that from a generally clever people. In the late 19th century, the British Conservative party made a Jew (Disraeli) their Prime Minister. About 50 years later the socialist Hitler incinerated 6 million Jews. Can anybody see a difference there?

In 1939 Germany went to war with a powerful ally on its side: Soviet Russia. The German Panzern that stormed through France were powered by Soviet fuel. Germany later however turned on its ally, with disastrous results for itself. One hopes that Jews will not similarly antagonize THEIR best ally. Abe Foxman, take note.

Wow! Reformation Christianity still lives in Sydney

It's just sentimentality on my part (although my own background is Protestant fundamentalist, I am an atheist and brought my son up as a Catholic) but I must admit that I still do enjoy smelling a whiff of the old fire and brimstone in the article below by immensely-influential Sydney Anglican clergyman Phillip Jensen. Beliefs such as his have transformed the world

Roman Catholicism is a very diverse thing and what you see in the Philippines is not necessarily what you see in the streets of Sydney. It has a Protestant face in the Protestant world. Recently we've been getting into the Stations of the Cross here in Sydney with World Youth Day in 2008, but not all 14 Stations of the Cross are going to be done, only I think eight of the Stations of the Cross - I can't remember the exact number.

The ones that are going to be done are the ones that are in the Bible, but the extra ones, like Veronica, well they're not in the Bible. They're not going to be done in the streets of Sydney. Now in one sense it is because they haven't got time, space and energy to do all of them, and in one sense it is out of courtesy to Protestants that they choose to leave out the ones that are not in the Bible.

But if Martin Luther came into Sydney and saw Roman Catholicism and its Stations of the Cross, he'd say, "Ah, they've cleaned up their act." So there are certain aspects of Catholicism in the Protestant world which are much more acceptable to where Luther would have been.

But no. Things are actually worse than in Luther's day because since Luther's day the Roman Catholic Church not only calcified itself explicitly against justification by faith alone, or the authority of the scriptures alone, or salvation by grace alone, etcetera; not only calcified itself against that back at the Council of Trent but since then you've had the Vatican I Council in 1870, which clarified the idea that the Pope can speak infallibly.

A faithful Roman Catholic would say, "Well, they're just saying what we've always believed," but in fact it was not until 1870 that it was ever said that this is really what the belief is. Since then we're not too sure how often the Pope has spoken infallibly but the one occasion on which everyone agrees he did was in the 1950s when he declared that Mary had been bodily assumed from the grave. Well, that's not in the Bible anywhere. And why would she be bodily assumed from the grave? It's all part of the Maryology that has come in. It has also identified the immaculate conception of Mary; that is, that Mary was without sin. Well, that's nowhere in the Bible.

So since the Reformation we've had the infallibility of the Pope, the sinlessness of Mary, the bodily assumption of Mary. These things show you that Roman Catholicism has moved since the Reformation - but it has moved further away from us, not closer to us.

NOW in Vatican II there was an opening up - people were "separated brothers" and things like that - but with all due respect to the genuineness of their attempts to be more ecumenically open - and certainly I'm appreciative of the sense of which we can live in a tolerant acceptance of each other - it was only a year or two ago that the Pope made quite clear that the Anglican Church, Presbyterians, are sects, cults; we are not the true church.

So you can't get salvation through us; you are moved into fairly serious deviation. And so Protestants can be very warm and fuzzy towards Roman Catholicism but it's not actually reciprocal. We are not really seen as God's people in Christ Jesus because the Pope is seen as the vicar of Christ. Now from a Bible-believing point of view, that is an appalling blasphemy because the Holy Spirit is the vicar of Christ.

Source

Bible publisher faces $60M federal lawsuit over homosexuality

In the article indented below, we read that a homosexual is upset that some Bibles translate the Greek word "arsenokoites" in 1 Corinthians 6:9 as "homosexual" instead of "sodomite". Politeness gets you nowhere, it seems. My Abbott-Smith Greek Lexicon just gives "sodomite" as the meaning of the word. The word that Americans spell as "ass" (NOT meaning a donkey) is spelt and pronounced in the British Commonwealth as "arse". It is tempting to see a convergence with the Greek there!

I note that the highly-regarded New English Bible published by the Oxford University Press renders the passage as "homosexual perversion". Wow! Are they in big trouble! Actually, nobody is in big trouble. The lawsuit is so thin that it is obviously just "go-away" money that the guy and his lawyer want. I hope Zondervan resists.

Some more points: The historic Geneva Bible translates the word as "buggerers" so that is pretty frank too. And note that in the original Greek, St Paul groups together for condemnation both sodomites and effeminates ("malakoi oute arsenokoitai") so it is perfectly clear that he is condemning homosexuality generally -- JR

Christian publisher Zondervan is facing a $60 million federal lawsuit filed by a man who claims he and other homosexuals have suffered based on what the suit claims is a misinterpretation of the Bible. But a company spokeswoman says Zondervan doesn't translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations. Instead, she said in a statement, the company relies on the "scholarly judgment of credible translation committees." That is to say, setting aside whether the federal civil rights lawsuit is credible, the company says Bradley Fowler sued the wrong group.

His suit centers on one passage in scripture -- 1 Corinthians 6:9 -- and how it reads in Bibles published by Zondervan. Fowler says Zondervan Bibles published in 1982 and 1987 use the word homosexuals among a list of those who are "wicked" or "unrighteous" and won't inherit the kingdom of heaven. Fowler says his family's pastor used that Zondervan Bible, and because of it his family considered him a sinner and he suffered.

Now he is asking for an apology and $60 million. "To compensate for the past 20 years of emotional duress and mental instability," [I can believe the mental instability] Fowler told 24 Hour News 8 in a phone interview. He claims the company is misinterpreting the Bible by specifically using the word homosexuals. Fowler admits that every Bible printed is a translation, interpreted in some way, but he says specifically using that word is not a translation but a change. "These are opinions based on the publishers," he said. "And they are being embedded in the religious structure as a way of life."

More here

The anarthrous predicate in John chapter 1

Apologies for that technical heading. I am just following up on the point of Greek grammar that I raised yesterday. What it is all about is the way ancient Greeks used their word for "the" (the definite article -- which is "ho" in our Greek case in John 1:1). In New Testament Greek, the classical Greek usage of referring to "The god" (ho theos) was adopted, rather than using simply "God" (theos). "Theos" was in other words treated as a noun rather than a name. So the god of the Hebrews was referred to as "The god", just as Zeus in the Greek pantheon was referred to as "The god".

So whether anybody is referred to as "The god" (ho theos) or not is significant. In the NT it is the Greek equivalent of our name "God". I hope that is not too obscure.

And the point about John 1:1 is that the Logos (word) is NOT refered to as "The god" (ho theos) but rather as "god' (theos). So the Logos is of the substance of gods but not "The god".

An objection that sometimes arises to that interpretation, however, is that there is a custom in Greek writing, perhaps a lazy or an economical custom, of omitting the definite article in the predicate (the anarthrous predicate) if it is already given in the subject. This is sometimes urged as the explanation for the missing definite article in the predicate of John 1:1.

While that may be true in general, however, it is clearly not applicable to John's writing in the passsage concerned. Just a few lines down in John 1 we read: "kai ee zoe een to phos ton anthropou" ("and the life was the light of men"). The article is used in BOTH the predicate and the subject. And note that John is again there referring elliptically to the same guy whom he earlier referred to as the "logos" (word). In both cases he is referring to Jesus Christ. So John was writing carefully there and was clearly NOT adopting the anarthrous predicate convention.

The Geneva Bible

A great pleasure! I have just received my copy of the recently reprinted Geneva Bible, the translation that the Pilgrim Fathers mainly used. The Geneva Bible was the popular version in the English-speaking world until the "official" King James Bible gradually supplanted it.

I bought my copy via World Net Daily and it cost me rather a lot, which may seem rather mad since I already have many Bibles, including three recensions of the Greek New Testament (i.e. in the original Greek) and some excellent modern translations. But it is exciting to read the words of the Bible just as they were read by the great English Protestant reformers who changed the world and whose reforms are the basis of our entire modern civilization.

Because it was so popular in its day, the Geneva Bible underwent many printings, not all of which were identical. The version I have is a reproduction of a 1599 printing. The King James Bible, of course, was first printed in 1611.

I tend to judge Bible translations by their translation of the first few verses of the Gospel of John. John 1:1 is much used by afficianados of the originally pagan Trinity doctrine to justify their nonsensical dogma. So I was most pleased to see that the Geneva translators gave in their footnote a much better sense of the original Greek than we usually see. The Geneva Bible was renowned in its day for its many informative footnotes and they are still a useful resource. The explanatory footnote for John 1:1 reads: "The son of God is of one, and the selfsame eternity or everlastingness, and of one and the selfsame essence or nature, with the father". That puts the sense of the original much more clearly than the literal translation of the original text itself. The underlying idea in the Greek original -- that the Logos was of divine essence -- is clearly there in the Geneva footnote.

If I were to express the meaning of the original Greek in a purely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, I would translate it as "And of god-stuff was the word". (See also my many previous exegetical comments on John 1:1 -- e.g. here and here)

So the Geneva Bible did allow the people of the 16th century to get close to the original meaning of the New Testament. And the transformative power of doing that was evident then and continues to this day. Those now ancient words still have enormous power to move the minds of men. The many clergy of the "mainstream" churches who think they have a better or more "modern" message to preach from their pulpits are just self-defeating fools. There is no substitute for the original Gospel.

ISLAM IS A JEWISH PLOT

With their love of conspiracy theories and their revived antisemitism, I wonder that the Left have not come up with the accusation implied in my heading above. Because there are in fact reasonable grounds for viewing Islam as a reactionary form of Judaism. There is not a lot in the teachings of the Koran that cannot also be found in the Torah: Stoning homosexuals to death, acceptance of slavery, subordination of women, prohibition of "graven images", killing unbelievers, "I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" etc. And, of course, monotheism. Even the Arab word for God is also Hebrew: "Allah" and "Eloah".

Israel has always had great prophets and Rabbis, however, and a great Jewish theologian -- known to Christians as St. Paul -- transformed Judaism into a much more humane faith -- a faith we now know as Christianity -- and he took that faith to the world.

But there was a backlash. The old faith still had power and Mohammed felt it. And, like St Paul, Mohammed was a proselytizer. The old mainstream Jews could not be proselytizers, of course. You were either of the "chosen people" or you were not. But there was a tremendous power in the idea of the one invisible God and it should not be surprising that TWO great proselytizers took it to the world. And it was Mohammed that stayed closest to the original. He was perfectly aware of Christianity. Powerful Christian fanatics lived not far from him in the form of the Byzantine empire. But Mohammed was a much less powerful thinker than St. Paul so he mostly just took a return to the old faith to the world.

St. Paul and his Rabbi -- Jesus Christ -- were however the ones who laid the foundation not just for military conquest (which was Mohammed's achievement) but rather for a major advance in human thinking. And other Jewish theologians have had no difficulty in also taking on board most of his ideas -- so that Paul has in fact humanized Judaism too. It is left to Islam to represent the "old" version of Judaism.

St. Paul did of course have to have a foundation for his transformation of the faith and a strong foundation was of course already there in the Torah. There is much in the Torah that is humane. Paul chose the humane side. Mohammed chose (mostly) the dark side. What an amazing body of thought to have had such huge and varied influence!

NOTE: In what I have said above, my thinking has partly been formed by what is, I believe, the universal conclusion of the textual critics: That the Pauline epistles were the earliest Christian documents. The Gospels came later.

An only tangentially related thought: I read with great interest Murray's exploration of the various reasons for Jewish brilliance. And his final suggestion did have some resonance despite the fact that I am an atheist: That maybe they really are God's chosen people! But that resonance probably has more than a little to do with the fact that I spent my early years steeped in the Bible -- years which I still remember with great joy.

Final note: The "graven images" commandment is perhaps emblematic of the great interaction between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Mohammed of course insisted on a purer form of Judaism -- i.e. keeping that commandment with great strictness -- which caused much heartburn in nearby Christian Byzantium. Byzantium was in fact for a long time racked by a controversy between the iconoclasts (tearers down of images) and the iconodules (guys who thought that pictures and statues of Christ and the saints (icons) were perfectly OK). Civil wars were fought over it.

And I cannot be too smug about all that, either. My old church (Ann St. Presbyterian -- where I still go on rare occasions and where I always feel at home) was built by men sympathetic to the "Wee Free" (Free Church of Scotland -- a very puritanical group) persuasion and it features a large circular window (Rose window) of coloured glass. But is not stained glass. It has only abstract patterns in it. No pictures. No "graven images" in fact. Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism are very different -- as different as night and day most of the time -- but their common Jewish origin does occasionally give them some surprising points of contact.

But the prohibition of alcohol is a quite surprising point of contact. There is no prohibition in the Bible -- rather the reverse in fact (John 2: 3-10; 1 Timothy 5:23; Ecclesiastes 8:15). But Muslims are strictly "dry" and so are zealous Presbyterians. I remember once in my early years taking out a very nice girl (Rhoda) from the Ann St. church and suggesting unseriously as we walked past a bar that maybe we could go in and have a drink! As a result of that heinous suggestion, I was banned by her parents from ever taking out Rhoda again! Those were the days!

Why seven days?

This blog has always been an iconoclastic one so I am sure a little bit more iconoclasm will not hurt.

Most people seem to think that there are seven days in the week because it says so in Genesis. That is not so. There were seven days in the week long before either of the two creation accounts in Genesis were written. The account mentioning 7 days (from the first verse up to chapter 2 verse 3) is in fact a later add-on. The original creation account in Genesis (from chapter 2 verse 4 onwards) says that the heavens and the earth were created in ONE day! And, yes, I do know the theological ways of getting around that. They are theological rather than scholarly, though.

But at any event, the division of the week into 7 days is very ancient. The later Genesis writer was just setting up a Hebrew story to explain a long-standing pagan custom. The custom goes back to those great stargazers, the Babylonians (and possibly further back to their Sumerian predecessors). Mesopotamia is basically desert -- made habitable by irrigation. So when you look up into the sky at night there the stars are very bright. And with no TV, movies or internet that is about all you had to look at during night-time way back then.

And the most striking thing you notice about the stars is that their position in the sky is very fixed -- EXCEPT for just five pesky stars that move about. I don't know the Babylonian names for them but we call them Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn -- which are the Roman names for them (more or less). They are of course planets, not stars. But the Babylonians didn't know that so they thought it was obvious that they must be gods. Who else could move about among the stars? So we clearly have five gods there.

But there are two OTHER moving objects in the sky -- the Sun and the moon -- with the sun obviously being the big chief. So if there are 7 gods (5+2), to be on the safe side each one had to have day devoted to him/her. One could not risk offending a god. So the 7 days of the week were named after the seven movable objects that the ancient Iraqis could see in the sky!

And because the sun was clearly the big guy he had to have the FIRST day of the week named after him and have that day especially sacred. And we perpetuate that to this day. We still see Sunday as special.

THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN MESSAGE IS MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN YOU MIGHT BE AWARE OF

I originally posted this on Dissecting Leftism but thought I should post it here for those who come to this site via a Google search

Although I am an atheist, I grew up steeped in the New Testament so reading the Bible is for me like visiting an old friend. I do not however know the Old Testament as well as I should so I recently read right through the Book of Deuteronomy. Its main theme is avoidance of false gods and when I think of the many false Gods around today -- socialism, global warming, anti-"obesity" etc. -- it is clear that people have not changed much and we do still need to be alert against false gods.

Another prominent theme in Deuteronomy however is what some might call "Christian" charity. There are frequent instructions to be kind, forgiving and generous to the poor. The compassion and concern for the outcast shown by Jesus was very Jewish.

But giving the poor your OWN goods is very different from giving the poor OTHER people's goods, which is what the Leftist wants to do and which would once have been called robbery.

And the Torah does make clear that abstract justice is an absolute -- a duty. Where PUBLIC matters are concerned (as distinct from deeds in private life), you are NOT allowed to favour the poor. Exodus 23:3 is clearest about that. The NIV probably gives the most accurate interpretation of the text. It says: "Do not show favouritism to a poor man in his lawsuit". So, just because a man is poor, the law is not allowed to be biased in his favour. Moses was clearly not a Leftist.

I probably should leave it at that but the pedant in me causes me to note further that the Hebrew word rendered as "lawsuit" above has a rather broader application than that in the original. The KJ renders it as "cause" and it could refer to any controversy. So again we see that special favour towards the poor in any public way is OUT. Private charity is the proper response to the poor.

Being a bit of a language freak, I wrote about the interpretation of Exodus 23:3 to David Boxenhorn, an Israeli who often blogs about the interpretion of Hebrew and the Hebrew scriptures. I received his comments after I had written the above and his comments would seem to broaden even my interpretation. He wrote (inter alia):

"That quote refers to favoring the poor in court, one of many possible dangers to justice cited in the Bible - see previous and following passages. Not distorting judgment is a major theme of the Bible....

But the word translated as "poor" - dal - is probably better translated as "weak", the usual Biblical word for poor is evyon, as you see three verses down in 23:6. Also, the word translated as "cause" - riv - is more simply translated as "argument", and the word "favor" - tehdar - I might translate as "make more wonderful or enhance". So I might translate the passage as: "and you will not enhance [the testimony] of the weak, in an argument"

So it is the disadvantaged generally that the passage applies to and it is arguments generally that the passage applies to. So you are not allowed to glorify the disadvantaged beyond what reality shows -- no absurd accounts of the glories of African history, for instance. Truth is paramount -- not the distorted and selective truth that is the stock in trade of the Left (Noam Chomsky take a bow).

You can see the original Hebrew (with accompanying translation) here.

The Gospel According to Saint Marx

The catechism of taxation, and how the Left misuses it

By Jerry Bowyer

After seeing the failure of Washington-backed capitalist reforms in Latin America, I no longer think a third way between capitalism and socialism is possible. Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ - who I think was the first socialist - only socialism can really create a genuine society.

- Hugo Chavez, Dictator cum Theologian, Time Magazine, September 22, 2006

I can't find anything in any religion anywhere, I certainly cannot find anything in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ, that says you ought to take health care away from poor children or money away from the poorest people in the country to give it to the wealthiest people in the nation.

- John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts, Des Moines, Iowa, October 9, 2005

A Biblical scholar once said that if you torture a text long enough, you can get it to confess to anything. I thought of this as the Left tried to drive a wedge between "values voters" and President Bush's economic policies in the run-up to Election Day. Having learned that little electoral success comes from insulting evangelicals, the Democrats adopted the adage, "If you can't beat 'em, try to make 'em join you."

The text I most often hear stretched on the rack is the one in which Jesus tells a rich young "man" that he should sell all he has and give it to the poor. The socialist hawk Christopher Hitchens used this one last summer in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. His interpretation seems to be that Jesus is damning rich people in general, and that hostility to riches implies hostility to markets.

But this is an oft misquoted passage. "And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke: 18:19) He's not just a rich young man; he's a rich young ruler. Luke calls him an "archon," which my Greek/English lexicon defines as "a ruler, a judge . a member of the Sanhedrin." The Gospels, like all ancient texts written before low-cost book reproduction, were written very carefully and avoid extraneous details. It seems a stretch, at the very least, to use this story as a bludgeon against the institutions of the marketplace when the author goes to the trouble to tell us that the subject in question is not a man of the marketplace at all, but instead a man of the government.

Actually, Jesus encountered many people who had made their way in the marketplace. He was friendly with a wealthy merchant (according to tradition, a tin trader) named Joseph of Arimathea. They were so close, in fact, that Joseph donated the chamber in which Jesus was buried. Throughout the Gospels Jesus extols the example of the patriarch Abraham, whom the Torah says was a very wealthy man. If Jesus had a problem with wealth, where were the confrontations with the wealthy importer of metals? Where were the condemnations of the wealthy sheikh?

The wealthy men that Jesus does confront weren't men of pure commerce. There is the tax collector, Zacchaeus, who actually does obey Jesus and sells half his possessions in order to give definitively to the poor; there are the money changers getting rich off their monopolistic franchises on the property of King Herod's Temple.

This makes sense. First century Judea was a kleptocracy all the way to the top. The quisling King Herod was put there by Rome because he was such an excellent tax collector. As such, Herod created a centralized system of plunder and control through which he and his cronies could become very wealthy. There were some places for honest commerce. Jesus' home town of Galilee was a hot bed of entrepreneurship, which is probably the reason why so many of his parables drew on the language of the venture-capital market of masters and stewards. However, the closer you got to Herod (geographically and socially), the tougher it was to be honest and rich at the same time.

It's hard to believe that recent attacks on the religious right in America are attacks on wealth itself. Where would the Left be if George Soros had sold all his possessions and given those proceeds to the poor? Where would John Kerry be if Henry John Heinz had done the same a hundred years ago?

It seems more likely that many of Bush's American critics are not really calling for the elimination of all wealth accumulation, but more likely using (or misusing) these passages for their rhetorical value in a battle over the president's tax cuts. I'm afraid, however, that the Biblical tradition offers no more succor to opponents of tax cuts than it does to opponents of wealth in general.

One day, a left-leaning rabbi called my radio program and announced proudly that although his congregation had many wealthy members, they had opposed the president's tax cuts because of their devotion to Judaism. I asked him for examples from the Torah that endorse high taxes. He had none. On the other hand, I can think of lots of passages that seem to treat high taxes with suspicion. When the patriarch Joseph became the vice-regent of Egypt, we are told that he imposed a tax rate of one-fifth on the income of Egyptian citizens. According to the Torah, they "became his slaves." If a 20 percent tax rate is tantamount to slavery, what about a top rate of near 40 percent?

Much later, shortly before the emergence of the Davidic dynasty, the people of Israel asked for "a king, like the other nations." The prophet Samuel warned that, among other curses, the king would impose a tax of 10 percent on their incomes. The prophet was right, of course, and the line of kings became increasingly heavy taxers. One of them, Rehoboam, son of King Solomon, found himself on the receiving end of a tax revolt. The northern ten tribes of Israel approached him about reducing their unsustainably high tax burden. (Let's call it "Proposition 10.") His older advisors urged him to cut rates; his younger advisors urged the opposite. Rehoboam ignored the gray heads and raised taxes, the northern tribes seceded, and the tribes were never again reunited. Ultimately, they were carried off by the Assyrian Empire; they are now known as "the lost tribes of Israel." This is hardly a ringing endorsement of high taxes.

Do I think that our modern tax code should be adopted from the Torah? Of course not. But examining the Torah's teaching regarding kingship, power, and taxation is a good starting point for anyone seriously trying to figure out what Moses and the prophets meant when they used the word "justice."

John Kerry's comment of a year ago that the Bible doesn't recommend taking health care from the poor and giving it to the rich [Nor does anybody! It's a straw-man argument] wasn't his first in the faith-against-freedom vein. Months earlier he said, "I went back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all, ever, anywhere, in any way whatsoever, that you ought to take the money from the poor, the opportunities from the poor, and give them to the rich people. [Through their taxes, the rich give vast amounts to the poor and there is no mainstream proposal anywhere that aims to alter that. A straw-man again]"

Rereading the entire New Testament in one day is a formidable feat [Sarcasm]. But it should come as no surprise when Kerry tries to use the Bible to argue against the president's tax cuts. After all, three years ago at the Democratic National Convention, he tried to use the Ten Commandments against the president's Social Security plan: "We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: `Honor thy father and thy mother.' As President, I will not privatize Social Security." [A good twist: A responsibility of the children suddenly becomes a responsibility of the government!]

Of course, the same Moses who delivered that commandment went on to establish a regime with a heavy emphasis on private property - let's call it the "Old Ownership Society." Jesse Jackson famously observed that Mary and Joseph should be thought of as the "homeless," which placed the tax-cutting Ronald Reagan in the role of wicked King Herod. But Jackson left out the fact that the only reason Mary and Joseph were away from home in the first place was that "A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed."

Source

How Jesus Survived the Crucifixion

By Chris Brand

A) After the Resurrection

While the Gospels offer ample testimony to Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances, they leave a nagging question about the crucial first day of Jesus' new life. Whether to Mary Magdalene - in St John's account - or to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus seems to have been initially unwilling to identify himself. Indeed, it appears from both of the accounts offered that in these early encounters he may have been in disguise. Mary mistakes him for a gardener; and the two disciples walked with him for several miles without appreciating anything but his considerable knowledge of Old Testament prophecy. Further, his having to be `constrained' (Lk. XXIV 29) to stay with his disciples in the evening suggests that Jesus had a purpose on the road to Emmaus that is quite consistent with such furtive behaviour. Quite simply, he may have been fleeing the country. Allowing ourselves the liberty of a materialist interpretation of the Ascension, it is possible that he went on to do just that: having survived one crucifixion, who would willingly put himself at risk of another? Prior to that, his object was at least to leave Jerusalem. And the plan he adopted seems to have been to have a reunion with the disciples in Galilee (Matt. XXVIII 10). But, if Jesus was fleeing, what made him adopt the attention-getting role of a resurrected man?

Whatever the time-scale of Jesus' post-Resurrection ministry, it seems that it was his discovery by the disciples at Emmaus that tempted him to risk one final coup. On finding that the disciples were indeed prepared to accept the possibility that he might have risen from the dead, Jesus - after at first `vanishing out of their sight' (Lk. XXIV 31), possibly to manufacture some stigmata - clearly resolved to give a convincing impression that his own prophecies had been fulfilled. It may seem unlikely that Jesus would - or could - have manufactured the necessary symptoms of a recent crucifixion. Certainly, as some scholars have recently pointed out, it is unlikely that the Romans would have driven nails through the hands - rather than wrists - of a crucified man. But, according to the Gospel records of the stigmata, there is at least some possibility that he did not possess them during his first two post-Resurrection appearances. First, they are not mentioned; secondly, there is a remarkable change in Jesus' attitude to receiving bodily contact over his first resurrected day. To Mary Magdalene, Jesus says "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father" (Jn. XX 17). But on his re-appearance to the disciples after `vanishing' from Emmaus, he advised them to "handle me and see" (Lk. XXIV 39). In fact, the Gospels contain no explicit record of anyone taking up that invitation - not even Thomas, eight days later. But Jesus' change in attitude is at least consistent with the notion that the exploitable potential of the disciples' gullibility was only apparent to him after the careful sounding-out on the journey to Emmaus. In short, there is some reason to believe that Jesus' early encounters with his disciples led him to change his mind about revealing his physical condition.

Whether such fanciful stories have any validity must in turn depend on just what his condition was. What could Jesus have initially had to hide? If the Gospel records of Jesus eventually displaying his stigmata are to be given any credence, then to suggest that he had not died during crucifixion does not square with his change of heart. Why need he have waited? The same question arises for the traditional Christian interpretation. To account for Jesus' reluctance to reveal himself on his triumphal day, we are driven inexorably to consider a third alternative. Perhaps Jesus had not been crucified at all? Perhaps he had escaped crucifixion but, as a result of his chance meetings, had come to realize that none of his disciples would be likely to challenge the attractive version of the previous three days that he eventually proceeded to offer them? (More charitably, it is likely that the disciples' own enthusiasm at his re-appearance would have placed him in as embarrassing position: he might thus have felt socially constrained to provide a Messianic performance.) Even Thomas may not have been beyond succumbing to emotionally-charged intimidation from whatever combination of Jesus and the other disciples. Too diffident, perhaps, to subject Jesus to a proper medical at such a time, he preferred to simply acknowledge "My Lord and my God".

Just who could have rolled the stone from the tomb and removed the other body that Joseph of Arimethea had originally put there is a crucial problem to which we will return. It could have been Jesus himself - with helpers such as Joseph and Nicodemus. Even if he had not intended to reveal himself, he might have felt that the mere disappearance of his `body' from the tomb might ensure the perpetuation of his legend during the self-imposed exile that he anticipated. Removal of the body into the councillors' safer keeping would have prevented its identification by any suspicious Jews or Romans. If we accept St John's account of Jesus' meeting with Mary, this is a reasonable hypothesis which gives Jesus a motivation for visiting the tomb. Alternatively, we shall see that there are two other possibilities. One is perhaps unlikely in that it might seem to burden Jesus with the murder of a most trusty friend. The other is calculated to preserve the maximum integrity for both Jesus and his disciples; and its likelihood can only be seen as part of a coherent story of what had happened to all the major figures of the Gospel story during the previous three days. Even if such an opening of the tomb could have been arranged, we must clearly first consider what further reason we have to accept the tentative possibility that it was not Jesus' body that had been buried. In fact, it is only in the course of such a fresh look at old evidence that it is possible to show not only how the Resurrection happened but why it had to happen.


B) The Crucifixion

Ruling out the remote possibility of Jesus having genuinely survived a crucifixion without actually dying, it now behoves us to examine the hypothesis that he never went to the Cross at all. What evidence do the Gospels offer as to whether he attended the Crucifixion? While there is virtual unanimity that three women were witnesses to the Crucifixion, there is disagreement between the Gospels as to how near to the Cross they were. St Mathew and St Mark record them as being `afar off', whereas St John says they were `near' or `by' the Cross; St Luke does not commit himself. Having regard to the majority opinion - as also to likely Roman practice at crucifixions - it would seem reasonable to believe that these observers from Jesus' Galilean ministry were probably not in a very good position to observe just who was actually being crucified. Additionally it should be remembered that - as is the case for religious attendance in our own day - many of the adult followers who were keen enough to make the trek to Calvary were probably middle-aged women (Lk XXIII 27). Without spectacles, the vision of many of them would have been poor; and, doubtless, those who had known Jesus well would have been so distraught with grief as to be quite incapable of reliably recording what proceeded. Mary Magdalene may have been rather younger: only she, amongst the three explicitly mentioned as being present, was not a mother. But, by the traditional Christian account itself, she was no expert at identifying Jesus when she saw him: she mistook him for a gardener on Resurrection morning. Moreover, it would be in accordance with tradition to suppose that Jesus - or his substitute - was so mutilated prior to crucifixion that he would have been less than readily recognizable to even an attentive and reliable observer.

Three further considerations were relevant to an assessment of whether a substitute could have passed for Jesus during the Crucifixion. The first is that it is by no means clear that Jesus was as well known a figure in Jerusalem as Christians are inclined to assume. Even the Jewish authorities themselves - concerned as they supposedly were at his preaching - had to resort to Judas to identify the man they wanted to arrest after Jesus had overthrown the tables of the moneychangers in the basement of the Jerusalem temple. It was not enough for them to be told his hiding-place: Jesus had to be personally identified - by a kiss from Judas. Secondly, had a substitute for Jesus been provided at some stage in the Crucifixion story, the planner of such an operation would certainly have tried to ensure that the substitute was a reasonable physical and psychological match. Of course, it would have required great good fortune to get all the necessary details right - or to get all the discrepancies omitted from the historical record: and at least one mistake seems to have been made. According to St John, the man on the Cross was not sufficiently obliging to refuse the sour wine that was offered him (Jn XIX 29, 30 (New English Bible)). He thus failed to fulfil Jesus' pledge that he would `drink no more of the fruit of the vine till he drank it new in the kingdom of God' (Mk XIV 25). This contradiction clearly went unobserved during the Crucifixion: a further testimony is thereby provided to the absence of the most vital witnesses. Thirdly, quite straightforwardly, it will be remembered that the Gospels themselves testify directly that all the disciples had forsaken Jesus at the time of the arrest (e.g. Matt. XXVI 56). The amazing absence of the disciples from the publicly accessible events of Calvary may further testify either their treachery or their complete ignorance that any arrest had ever taken place; but it certainly deprives the traditional account of the Crucifixion of an important source of confirmatory evidence.

The only exception to this general account is provided by St John. But his account of Jesus' conversation from the Cross with `the disciple whom he loved' (Jn XIX 26) is problematic in three ways. First, it does not identify Jesus with any certainty. In saying "Woman, behold thy son" and - to the disciple - "Behold thy mother", the man on the Cross may just have been commending a weeping, but unrelated woman to the care and attention of a younger man. The first saying does not definitely indicate that the crucified man thought Mary was actually his own mother. Secondly, one might take the commands to reveal a mistaken assumption of kinship between John and Mary. This would constitute direct evidence that the man on the Cross could not have been Jesus. Thirdly, the scene is none too plausible anyway. How could a man dying of lumbar collapse talk to anyone at all - yet alone to a person who, if she was Jesus' mother, would have been standing `afar off' according to St Mathew and St Mark? As with St John's chapter-long account of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane - which occurred, according to the other Gospels, while Jesus was physically apart from his disciples and while they were asleep - it is frankly reasonable to suspect St John of a vivid imagination. Of course, Jesus is supposed to have said other things on the Cross - either to the two thieves crucified with him or to nobody in particular. But these were not long-distance conversations; and their content - which may subsequently have been relayed by the soldiers guarding the Cross - was not such as to be peculiarly characteristic of Jesus. After all, if we suppose that some innocent bystander had been substituted for Jesus by Pilate or whomever, would we not expect him to say at his crucifixion something like "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me" - or words to that effect? Further, if Jesus' proper place had been taken by some unfortunate who was himself of a religious-paranoid disposition, why should such a man not have undertaken to `forgive' the more agreeable of his co-crucifixees?

In fact, the only point at which there appears to have close contact between Jesus' followers and the man who was crucified occurs on the removal of the corpse to the tomb. But, even here, St John records that the councillor who was able to approach Pilate to have the body removed from the Cross was only a `secret' disciple (Jn XIX 38). It is perhaps unlikely that a man in such a position would ever have been able to afford much time to consort with humble Galileans. And the same might surely be said of Nicodemus - if St John's lone account of his appearance is correct: he had only once previously seen Jesus, and that was at night for fear of his position. Moreover, these two Jewish worthies may well have belonged to the priestly castes who were not allowed to handle the dead in person: in that case, only their servants would have been in close contact with the body. Alternatively, two such capable and responsible dignitaries would have been ideal partners in one of the most successful conspiracies of all time. For their unique position would have been that they could have been expected to guard the body from the prying eyes of suspicious Jews by virtue of their civil authority and contacts with Pilate; while also guarding it from anything but a major enquiry by the civil authorities on the grounds that Jesus had already suffered enough indignity. (It can remain a matter for speculation whether they would have been subsequently embarrassed by the Resurrection. But Jesus would at least have aimed to oblige them by keeping out of the way of both Roman and Jewish authorities until his final disappearance -- if the Resurrection had occurred in the way in which any of the disciples might have planned it. In the event, as we will see, such speculations are idle and the dignity of the councillors would have had many Jewish defenders so long as they kept silent about the real goings-on in the sepulchre.) They would certainly have had little difficulty in keeping the secret from the women who attended Jesus' interment: for, by the time the grief-stricken women were on the scene, the body had already been dressed and wrapped in linen. But it may seem preferable to assume complete innocence of a substitution on the part of Joseph and Nicodemus. The councillors were hardly familiar with Jesus; the man they took from the Cross had been disfigured by the Roman soldiers; and there are other figures who can be called on to play the role of resurrection-men. Even had the disciples planned to steal away the substitute body so as to give the impression of a Resurrection when the real Jesus finally re-appeared from hiding, we shall see reason to trust the Gospels' indignant assertion that this was not how the Resurrection happened.


C) The Trial

Since it may have passed unobserved, it is perhaps only fair to remark that - by contrast with the events of Resurrection day - the events that constitute the central Crucifixion story seem to stand in only occasional need of any kind of re-interpretation. Thus the above account - or collection of possible accounts - may look rather like a piece of special pleading. Doubtless, with very little imagination one could re-interpret a great many supposed historical events so as to put their central characters in a new and unsavoury light. Such efforts would be unworthy of the name of even the most speculative historical revisionism. The only point in new stories or theories is that they cope with problems that arise with existing accounts. In this respect it is with greater satisfaction that the serious revisionist can proceed to consider the Gospel record of Jesus' conviction and sentencing. For here - as with Jesus' re-appearances - there are once more some very substantial problems demanding explanation.

The paradoxes to be considered take us back one stage further. Although it may be only barely plausible to suggest that Jesus was never crucified, we shall now see rather reason to believe that he was never tried or even arrested. Now, one strong link does not make a chain; but one weak link is enough to allow a break. It is just at the point where the Crucifixion - Resurrection story is forced into the light of society's legal processes for establishing truth that we find a particularly weak link.

Although the person best placed to arrange a substitute was undoubtedly Pontius Pilate, there is little reason to think that he took such action. He had a motive; but conflicting considerations of justice and expediency would also have carried weight with him. And his opportunity would have been limited once he had shown Jesus to the mob in an attempt to appeal for mercy. Moreover, to suppose that a substitution might have occurred so late in the day would still leave unresolved two other major paradoxes of the trial. Peter's denials and the character of the accused during the court hearings suggest that Jesus may never have appeared at his trial at all.

The Gospels again give little help in establishing just how their record of the court proceedings might have been obtained: as during the arrest and crucifixion, the disciples are largely conspicuous by their absence. Only St John records that any disciple other than Peter was in attendance. This `disciple' is supposed to have had the rather surprising distinction of being `known to the high priest'; and indeed of being on such good terms with the Jewish authorities that he was able to secure Peter's admittance to Caiaphas' court (Jn XVIII 15, 16). As with Joseph and Nicodemus, the reliability of such a witness in making an accurate identification is at least open to doubt. A similar question-mark hangs over Peter's testimony. The Gospels are in general agreement that Peter never got very near to the centre of the action at court. So it could simply be claimed that he was in no position to make a trustworthy identification. This might explain why Peter's denials lay themselves open to the very general interpretation that he was denying ever having been a disciple of Jesus. For example, when Peter says "I know not the man" (Matt. XXVI 72), it might be supposed that he was talking of his previous relationship with Jesus rather than of his knowledge of the accused man in court. But in that case his denials could have occurred without his ever seeing the accused man at court. This would render less credible the traditional view that at least one intimate acquaintance of Jesus had some contact with him after the arrest. But there would have been little point in Peter denying discipleship of `Jesus of Nazareth' if he had not simultaneously implied that he was a disciple of the defendant. On balance, it is far more likely that Peter's denials explicitly referred to the particular man whose trial he and others were witnessing: that is, Peter was denying that he knew the man they had all seen. It is regrettable that the Gospels do not make this point clear. Yet this is only one among many failures to get the details right: there are flat contradictions as to the recipients of the denials, and as to the number of times the cock crew before Peter recognized his failing.

In view of Jesus' explicit warning to Peter during the Last Supper, it seems reasonable to suppose that only a very real doubt in Peter's mind as to his relationship to the accused could have led him into the three denials. Just such a doubt could most easily have arisen if the man undergoing trial had not been Jesus at all. Despite Jesus' prophecies, Peter found he could do no other than - as he later thought of it - `deny his Lord'. He just did not recognize the man. His eventual sudden upsurge of guilt is attributable to his accepting, once conviction had occurred, and once Jesus' `before-the-cock-crows' prediction had appeared to be fulfilled, that the convicted man must indeed have been Jesus. Peter would not have been the first to prefer interpretations that are ideologically convenient to the evidence of his own senses.

Quite apart from what the accused might have looked like at court, Peter might well have been amazed at what he had to say for himself. Here too, it is not just the absence of information in the Gospels that provides scope for re-interpretation. At this historic point, with the eyes of the world focused on him, the supposed Messiah was remarkably unwilling to rise the occasion. Throughout the Gospel records, it is clear that the most common action taken by the defendant was to `hold his peace' or to `answer nothing' in the face of the charges leveled against him. At least on some occasions, it appears that his reticence may have been calculated to annoy: "Answerest thou the high priest so?" (Jn XVIII 22). It is likewise remarkable that the accused so frequently answers the charge of claiming to be the Christ with a mere "You say that I am" (New English Bible). From the moment of arrest onwards, the accused shows the bitter resignation of man who recognizes that he is involved in a `put-up job'. His refusal to deny Messianic status might appear a natural part of a general refusal to co-operate in a rigged trial. In so far as he is recorded as extemporating on the theme that he is the Son of God, it is in terms that might have come naturally to any other messianically inclined compatriot. The only reference made to any detail of Jesus' ministry is that the defendant does admit to having preached in the temple; but, by the same token, so must many other Jewish evangelists of the time. The fact that Barabbas - whom Pilate eventually released to the mob in preference to Jesus - had been found guilty of murder in the course of sedition further testifies to the presence in Jerusalem at the time of the many revolutionaries whose efforts were finally to culminate in the Diaspora. The degree to which the Jesus of the trials one of many dissatisfied spirits is perhaps further witnessed by the absence of any mention in court - in his defence - of his `render-unto-Caesar' speech. The clear impression of the Gospel accounts of the trial scenes is that few people had any clear knowledge of Jesus or of his pronouncements in the temple. The real Jesus was a minor figure whose mistake had been to fail to make crystal clear that - though he could have done it - he would not actually destroy the temple (MK XIV 57-61). The authorities had to rely on Judas to identify their man with a kiss; and they then found it hard to provide evidence against him. Only at the end of the hearing before Caiaphas was the prosecution able to lure the accused into the ‘blasphemy’ that was to justify his death-warrant.

Even the accused's `blasphemy' in court seems to have taken a most non-assertive form. Although St Mark records the reply "I am" (MK XIV 62) to Caiaphas' question "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?", the other accounts represent Jesus as going out of his way to make a rather weaker claim. In Matt. XXVI 64 the reply is: "The words are yours. But I tell you this: from now on, you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God and coming on the clouds of heaven." It is hard to believe that this utterance does not really mean: `You're wrong at the moment. But just you wait and see.' Why the "but" unless some important modification is being made to the claim? A precisely similar problem arises with account of the replies to Pilate in John XVIII 33-37. Dealing with the enquiry as to whether he is "the King of the Jews", the accused - apart from going through the familiar `Thou sayest it' routine - asserts in particular that his kingdom is not of the present world and that his mission in life has been merely "to bear witness unto the truth". But it was just a few days previously that the real Jesus had prophesied in regard to `the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds with great power and glory' that `the present generation will live to see it all' (MK XIII 24-31 (N.E.B.)). Even if we can believe that these remarks were recorded by some competent observers - including, presumably, some close associates of Pilate - they leave us far from clear as to the precise nature of the accused's testimony. If the records are to be trusted, it seems that the accused - though behaving in a fatalistic and superior way that could hardly fail to annoy - at least made little effort to urge the `strong' claims as to his identity that we know from the Gospels to have been so characteristic of Jesus himself.

It is thus no wonder that Pilate found no fault in the prisoner whom he received from Caiaphas and whom he forwarded to Herod for a second opinion. Pilate must have been reluctant to crucify a man whose revolutionary fervour was so restrained that he would not even regularly incriminate himself. Unfortunately for Pilate, Herod's court was equally unsuccessful: the accused reverted to his previous silent treatment. Once more, Pilate was required to face the music. Just what was his real view of the prisoner is left uncertain by the Gospels. His final labeling of the accused as `the King of the Jews' - despite his prisoner's reservations about such a title - suggests that he was finally contemptuous of both the man and his accusers. But, in any case, it is unlikely that it was Pilate who provided the substitute for Jesus that our present story requires. The evidence already given is more compatible with the suggestion that Jesus was saved from crucifixion by another figure whose character has been blackened by the traditional Christian story to an even greater degree than the character of Pilate.

D) The Arrest

Judas, the disciple who was responsible enough to be treasurer and perhaps even conscientious enough to hang himself when he realized the enormity of his crime, appears to have been a most practical man. Having both the motivation and the opportunity to save his Master from the consequences of his rash preaching in the temple, he seems to have planned ahead. Alone amongst the disciples at a time when they were having to take special precautions to meet without being arrested - see the `secret hideout' arrangements of Lk XXII 1-13 - Judas saw the possibility of acting as a false agent. Far from betraying Jesus, Judas' approach to the chief priests established him as an agent and revealed the crucial opportunity for duplicity in such a role. Maybe the authorities took some persuading, but what Judas seems to have been able to arrange was that they should arrest whomever he identified for them. In accordance with this possibility, we might suppose that Judas never had any intention of betraying his Lord.

An alternative is that Judas changed an original plan of betrayal after the embarrassment of discovery or near-discovery at the Last Supper. But this would leave us with the double problem of explaining both Judas' initial lapse from grace and a subsequent repentance in addition to his final suicide. It is even more economic than the traditional account to assume that Judas had only one major change of heart - and that this precipitated his death. Like the other disciples, Judas had not bargained for a crucifixion - or a resurrection. At least, on this supposition it is easier to explain Judas' overwhelming remorse when the man of his choosing finally went to the Cross. If Judas' death was indeed by his own hand, it would have had a cause that the traditional story obscures. Judas, on our account, was not a man who would give up just when things were going according to plan. Perhaps he did not give up - perhaps the Gospel writers too easily believed the account of his death that was offered by the Jewish authorities? Alternatively - and adhering more closely to the traditional Christian version of events - he could be considered to have underestimated the concern of the authorities at revolutionary preaching. Thus he may have believed that the substitute for Jesus would escape with a light sentence. In that case, he would have finally had good reason for finally going back to the chief priests to confess "I have brought an innocent man to his death" (Matt. XXVII 4 (N.E.B.)).

Why should he admit to betraying an `innocent' man if it was Jesus whose arrest he had arranged? However regretful Judas may have been at betraying his Lord - if he did in fact do that - it is not clear why he should have thought he was innocent of such blasphemies as admitting to Messianic status or of seditious hopes of a kingship that would shortly come. It is a classic case of religious hypocrisy that, while Christians should properly have been proud of Jesus' `guilt' of the claims that he made, they have typically appeared to lament the contribution of Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod to the arrangement of a theologically necessary crucifixion. Perhaps Judas, too, was having it both ways: believing that Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah while simultaneously asserting his `innocence'? Fortunately, there is an alternative to resting a story on such self-contradiction. Judas' statement makes much greater sense if he had indeed sent an innocent man - albeit one selected to be like Jesus in revolutionary religious opinionation - to an unanticipated death.

As things turned out, Judas' choice of the timing of the arrest enabled the crucial substitution to be made without even the disciples realizing what had happened. In the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane in the small hours of the morning, and with the disciples either asleep or fleeing, Judas would have had sample opportunity to direct attention to the wrong man while still convincing the arresting agents that he had indeed led them to the right place. Whether Jesus himself was co-operative at this stage is not clear: we might imagine that he would have had to be virtually forcibly persuaded to abandon temporarily his prophesied crucifixion. But the man who was eventually arrested did not go without at least a little protest at the indignity of the arrangements. The complaint at being `arrested like a common thief' is at least surprising if it came from the mouth of Jesus. After his rampage at the temple, and having gone into hiding for the Last Supper, why should he have complained at being thus ferreted out? At every least, such a complaint would have been ungracious from the lips of a man whose life's mission was the Crucifixion. It has to be admitted that the real Jesus would have drawn attention to himself at the arrest by healing of the stricken Malchus. But we have already resolved that the miracle of the Resurrection is less convincingly demonstrated by recourse to other miracles than by an account which makes no such assumptions. As to the fighting that went on at the arrival of the police, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the substitute's own friends and associates would have put up a passably heroic struggle against his arbitrary arrest.

While the traditional account of the arrest presents few paradoxes on its own that justify a major re-interpretation, it would seem to be weak enough to accommodate quite easily a revisionary story that lends coherence to the many other problems that have been mentioned. To adduce Jesus' last pre-Crucifixion miracle to support it is hardly good enough. As we must now see, the account that we have offered does more than resolve the paradoxes mentioned so far. It also explains what must surely be the biggest problem surrounding the traditional story of the Resurrection. To anticipate what follows, it gives the most obvious motive for the Resurrection to just the people who had the power to bring it about. Just what happened to Jesus between his evading arrest and his appearing after the Resurrection must be a matter for speculation. Since the Gospels record him as keeping away from contact with the Jewish and Roman authorities after the Resurrection, it seems reasonable to assume that he went into temporary hiding which he only left when Judas' confession of what had really happened made him simultaneously a wanted man and a candidate in the eyes of faithful for the status of being newly resurrected.

E) The Resurrection

If the Crucifixion was a case of mistaken identity in one way or another, a number of important pieces of the Gospel jigsaw slip neatly into place. Certainly, some of the traditional pieces are inevitably displaced a little; but they are often either irrelevant pieces for the open-minded materialists or pieces that only owe their existence to St John's Gospel. Only St John fails to have Jesus identified personally by Judas; only St John records Barabbas as being merely a `bandit' - thus not admitting the presence in Jerusalem of dangerous criminals; only St John supplies an extra disciple to accompany Peter at Caiaphas' court; only here do we read of a conversation between the crucified man and a favourite disciple; and only St John's lengthy account of Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances suggests that Jesus did not flee the country just soon as he could. But there is one further unique Johannine story that our account has positively incorporated: Jesus' appearance at the tomb to Mary Magdalene. From the point of view adopted here, St John's other idiosyncratic stories might helpfully be dismissed; but this story is well worth retaining. It establishes - according to taste - either the general unrecognizability of Jesus or his use of disguise on the day of the Resurrection. At the same time, its retention is a reminder of a most important loose and that must now be tied up. What was Jesus doing at the tomb?

As already mentioned, a possibility is that he had gone to assist Joseph - and perhaps Nicodemus - to roll away the stone and remove the body. But this view has three major disadvantages. First, it puts Jesus in a dishonourable light. On the account that has been offered Jesus might be thought to have been almost forced into a `resurrection' by the circumstances of Judas' shrewdness and the disciples' gullibility and emotional dependence. But this could hardly be so if Jesus actively helped to conceal the evidence of the substitution. Having already tried to redeem the honour of Judas, it would seem hard if the alternative was to blacken Jesus' character. For this reason alone, it would be nicer to assume that Jesus - at a loss to know what was happening as a result of his disciples' contrivances - simply went to the tomb to find out what was going on. Even better, he might have wished to play his own last respects to the man (or, more particularly, ideological rival) who had died in his place.

Secondly, and more self-interestedly, to suppose the involvement of Joseph and Nicodemus in the substitution plot might seem to risk an ever-widening circle of disciples who were `in the know.' Now, given that the rest of Jesus' ministry was conducted either in secret or at some distance from Jerusalem, it could perhaps be supposed that Jesus' disciples were so physically separated after the great events in Jerusalem that some of them never heard the true account of the Resurrection that the conspirators could have made available. On this view it would have been the non-conspiratorial disciples who would have been responsible for the later promulgation of the myth. But this is at least a risky assumption that is perhaps best not made.

For, thirdly, if any of Jesus, Joseph or Nicodemus had been involved in removing the body, they would at least have had to evade, overpower or bribe the watchmen placed outside the tomb by the chief priests and Pharisees (Matt. XXVII 62-66). Now, according to the Gospel account, the soldiers placed on guard were certainly not beyond the reach of bribery (Matt.XXVIII 15). But it is also clear that they were directly responsible to the Jewish authorities. As the traditional Christian account has it, it would surely have been more than their jobs were worth to allow the tomb to be tampered with. Like the other points against the multiple-conspiracy view, this disadvantage is clearly not insuperable. Yet, as with the traditional story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the points seem to add up to make the account implausible.

An unlikely possibility that avoids the second of these disadvantages is that it was Judas himself who helped Jesus to remove the substitute's body from the tomb. But this would involve the assumption that the Gospels are inaccurate as to the timing of Judas's death. And, even had two men been sufficient to remove the stone from the sealed tomb, it would remain to be explained why Judas died at all. If his plans had come to fruition - and his plans would presumably have included a mock confession to the Jewish authorities - why should he ever have committed suicide? A truly iconoclastic revisionary might suppose that Jesus had known of the conspiracy from its inception: this might help explain how the arrest was staged. But though Jesus might reasonably be considered to have suffered grandiose delusions of a paranoid nature, there is no reason to believe that he was the kind of psychopath who could have finally brought himself to arrange a `suicide' for such a valuable friend as Judas.

It is for such reasons that we must proceed to the one every credible story of the disappearance of the body from the tomb and of the subsequent the truth of the Gospel record of Judas' confession and the councillors' good faith, there is only one way in which Christianity as we know it could ever have got off the ground. It is perhaps one of history's greatest ironies: `Jesus' was `resurrected' by the Jews.

Merely in answer to the question `who had the opportunity?' the Jewish authorities emerge as the most likely candidates. Throughout the watch on the tomb, it is clear that they were in control. It was the chief priests and Pharisees who asked Pilate for a watch to be set; it was they who supposedly received the report of the guards and issued the bribes that were designed to ensure that any story of a resurrection would be given little credence. Later, too, it was their police-work that obliged the disciples to remain in hiding after the Resurrection (Jn XX 19). As Pilate's own deference had originally made clear, the whole business was a Jewish matter in which the Roman authorities had little interest; and so it was to remain after the Crucifixion. Had the Jewish authorities wanted to remove the body from Joseph's tomb after the Crucifixion, they would have had all the time, all the men, and all the authority they needed. Of course, they would have had to bribe the soldiers to promulgate a rather different version of what happened: every detail of our revised story of the Crucifixion-Resurrection makes this likely.

Lest this is not clear, it is worth considering the last major paradox of the Gospel record of the Crucifixion. It was not until the Sabbath - the day following the Crucifixion - that it occurred to the Jewish authorities to ask Pilate for a watch to be placed at the tomb (Matt. XXVII 62). To say that Jesus had only predicted his own resurrection for rather later is hardly to meet the problem of their lack of preparation. If their fear was truly that the body in the tomb would be stolen (Matt. XXVII 63), they surely had little reason to suppose that the disciples would obligingly delay the theft until the third day? It is more reasonable to suppose that the thought of mounting a guard on the tomb occurred to them only after the Crucifixion: and the account that we have offered of Judas' behaviour makes it clear that their motivation would have been.

Far from wishing to keep the body safely in the tomb - though this may have been their first reaction till they found that the women were to return to anoint the body - Judas' revelation (whether voluntary or under torture) that an innocent man had been crucified would have made it imperative to get the body removed into secrecy as quickly as possible. Not only was the reputation of the Jewish authorities with Pilate at stake - after it had already been tarnished by their wilful refusal to have Barabbas crucified instead of the man sent to Pilate as Jesus. Even more importantly, a removal of the body from the tomb would have had to be arranged in order to partially undermine the stories of Jesus' `resurrection' that would otherwise gain credence on his being found alive. Once the real Jesus was discovered, the tomb would have had to be opened anyway - by the Romans, in the course of an official enquiry; then the substitution would have been revealed. So it became clear that there was little to be gained from even the most secure guarding of the tomb. Of course, the Resurrection could have been denied by the production of the body in the tomb. But the cost would have been the exposure of the injustice done to an innocent man. In this most embarrassing situation, the Jewish authorities had only one course of action open to them: to save face with both Romans and their own faithful, it simply had to appear that Jesus' disciples had stolen the body. Viewed historically, they blundered in underestimating the credence that the disappearance of the body would lend to a Resurrection story and in overestimating the likelihood that would subsequently be attached to their official version of events. But these were ordinary, weak people invested with authority they took to be unchallengeable. As far as they were concerned, Judas' revelation made some semblance of a `resurrection' inevitable. And, in fairness to them, interest in Jesus went markedly underground for more than a generation.

Clearly, the best `witness' of this `body theft' would have been some heavily bribed Roman soldiers whose story could not be attributed to Jewish anti-Christian prejudice and who could hardly reveal their own corruption. Only two further measures lay within the authorities' power. Though they could not actually afford to arrest the real Jesus without exposing their initial mistake, they could at least hound Jesus and his disciples from Jerusalem as quickly as possible. In this way, they could have hoped to prevent any rapid dissemination of the news of Jesus' survival. Secondly, one other step would have been mandatory. It is hopefully pardonable to suggest at this stage that the Gospel writers - misguided by the Jewish authorities and entirely without malice - might have got one detail of the Crucifixion-Resurrection story quite wrong. If they did, it makes our already-superior account of Judas' nature and motivations just that much better; and it clearly makes no crucial difference to the plausibility of the traditional Christian story. For the fact is that if Judas had not committed suicide, his murder would have been singularly convenient to the Jews. To suggest that a murder may have been more nearly the truth removes from Judas the unnecessary slur of a grotesquely fatalistic emotional over-reaction to what he had intended as only a moderately serious offence committed out of passionate and intelligent loyalty to his Master; and it shows more clearly the tragedy of Judas - an ordinary man overpowered by the engulfing waves of religious fervour and human history. Double agents are rarely understood; and they get little sympathy when they are discovered and their careers are brutally foreshortened. Judas is a classic case. It has always been easier to see him as a treacherous figure whose conscience finally took an exacting toll than as the brains behind Jesus' survival and the unwitting instigator of the myth of the Resurrection.

In the short term, the Jewish authorities were fortunate enough to be able to make the required arrangements. So successful were they that St Matthew tells us that the proffered story was "commonly reported among the Jews until this day" (Matt. XXVIII 15). But, perhaps like Jesus himself, what the Jews had not bargained for was the faith of the disciples that kept alive the tiny flame of an incredible alternative. Once there were no longer any survivors to tell the dampening story of what had really happened - even had the original conspirators been honest enough to do so - that flame was to ignite the Roman world. Eventually, after 314A.D., Emperor Constantine would cleverly insist on an agreed formulation of Christian doctrine to become a suitably non-revolutionary religion for his empire; but the main building block of Christianity, the Resurrection, was probably supplied by the Jews.