The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-up in History

Under the stone-paved platform of the fortress was a warren of tunnels. After the fall of the fortress to the Romans, the defenders retreated to these tunnels, which we crawled along on our hands and knees. They would have been able to hear the Romans talking just a few feet above them. A curiosity of the site lay in the design of the cisterns: those supplying the fortress were accessible from above through a hole in the paved platform, rather like a well. But these cisterns were roughly circular and bulbous, that is, water stretched beyond the access hole for some yards underneath the paved platform. The tunnels beneath allowed the former defenders access to the edge of the bulbous cisterns out of sight of the Romans so that they were able to live beneath the fortress for some weeks, drawing water without the Romans suspecting their presence. But their main refuge was even deeper in the hill, in underground tunnels reached by only one entrance from the upper level of tunnels. The Bar Kochba fighters and their families would probably have come up only to draw water.

When the Romans finally discovered what was happening beneath their feet, they filled the cisterns with stones, destroying the water source. Then they broke into the tunnel complex and crawled in seeking to destroy the Bar Kochba fighters who had fled down to the deeper levels.

Gichon asked me to follow him as he crawled along ahead of me through the claustrophobic tunnels. We then reached one that turned down into the rocky hillside at a steep angle. It had been sealed up with stone and mortar.

“The Romans sealed this up permanently,” he explained to me. He paused for a moment. “This tunnel has never been opened. All the defenders are still down there.”

It took me a moment to realize the magnitude of what he was saying. And then I was struck by the scene of tragedy and horror that would await the first archaeologist to remove the stonework and crawl down into the tunnel. I have never forgotten that small bricked-up entrance to the refuge that, in a few minutes almost 1,900 years ago, became a sealed tomb for the living.

This, then, was the world within which Jesus, his followers, and at least the first of his later biographers lived. It was also the world out of which Christianity emerged. And it is the connection between these two parts of that world that is so contentious. It was, as we have seen, a time when belief was everything and the wrong belief in the wrong context could bring a sudden death, either from the Romans via crucifixion or from the zealous Sicarii via lethal dagger.

Few of these events have found their way into the Gospels. Instead of history, our New Testament gives us a sanitized, censored, and often inverted view of the times. But even those who brought us the New Testament were unable to entirely cut away the world in which their characters moved. Jesus was born and spent his formative years in the era of the early Zealot movement. When he began his ministry around the age of thirty, some of his closest followers were known to be members of this messianic movement, a movement in which Jesus was born to play an important role. In the New Testament, we can see the arguments against the Romans, and we can pick up a dulled sense of the violence that permeated the era—a sense that sharpens, of course, when we reach the end of the story with the crucifixion of Jesus.

But this crucifixion in their telling has quite deliberately had its political context expunged. This is proof that later censors made a concerted attempt to separate Jesus and his life from the historical times in which he was born, lived, and died—however he eventually met his death. In so doing, these later censors did something far more pernicious: they removed Jesus from his Jewish context. And today a large number of Christians remain completely unaware that Jesus was never a Christian; he was born, and lived, a Jew.

A generation after the crucifixion of Jesus—or, at least, the removal of him from the scene—Jerusalem and the Temple were lost to Judaism. The faith was instead centered upon the rabbinical school at Jabneh. At the same time began the manipulation of Jesus’s story that ultimately created a tradition centered upon Jesus rather than upon God. This was a point upon which many early chroniclers did not agree but one that would eventually take over all alternative explanations. The Jewish origins of Jesus became subsumed within an increasingly influential pagan context introduced by converts to Christianity from among the Greeks and Romans. This pagan influence drew Christianity and its view of Jesus a long way from Judaism in the succeeding centuries.

The audience for the Christian message had clearly changed: it was no longer intended for Jews but rather addressed pagans—believers in gods and goddesses like Mithras, Dionysius, Isis, and Demeter—and as such it needed to be presented in a new package, one laced with an anti-Jewish flavor. The field was ripe for the reinterpretation of history and the beginning of the triumph of the artificial “Jesus of faith” over the true “Jesus of history”—a man who spoke of God, who expressed a divine message, but who did not himself claim to be God.

In what is probably a true miracle, one of the Gospels, while creating a distance between Jesus and his Jewish context, still maintains elements of the Jesus of history and the inclusiveness of his teaching on divinity:

The Jews fetched stones to stone him, so Jesus said to them, “I have done many good works for you to see…for which of these are you stoning me?” The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for doing a good work but for blasphemy: you are only a man and you claim to be God.” Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your Law: I said, you are gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed.” (John 10:31-35)

Between the time these words were spoken and committed to writing, perhaps near the end of the first century A.D., Jesus had been made a Christian. And to be a Christian meant to follow teachings far removed from those of Judaism. This is clearly evident in a recorded dialogue between the second-century church father Justin Martyr and a Jewish teacher named Trypho. The latter makes the very reasonable point that “those who affirm [Jesus] to have been a man, and to have been anointed by election, and then to have become Christ, appear to me to speak more plausibly.”36 To further his point he poses a challenge to Justin: “Answer me then, first, how you can show that there is another God besides the Maker of all things; and then you will show, [further,] that He submitted to be born of the Virgin.”37

Leaving aside the particulars of the debate and Justin’s responses—ambiguous and weak, according to Trypho—what is clear is that a distance had evolved between the two religions that was now unbridgeable. There was little point of compromise left among those who were marching resolutely into that horizon that would become Christian orthodoxy. For Justin, only belief in Christ mattered, and such belief could bring salvation to anyone, “even although they neither keep the Sabbath, nor are circumcised, nor observe the feasts.”38

As we can see, the Jewish law had been left far behind—along with the true history of Jesus.

JUDAEA, JESUS, AND CHRISTIANITY

Before 4 B.C. Birth of Jesus, according to Matthew’s Gospel (2:1). 4 B.C. Death of Herod the Great. A.D. 6 Birth of Jesus, according to Luke’s Gospel (2:1-7). Census of Quirinius, Governor of Syria. A.D. 27-28 Baptism of Jesus (traditional date) in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius (Luke 3:1-23). A.D. 30 Crucifixion of Jesus, according to Catholic scholarship. c. A.D. 35 Following the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias in c. A.D. 34, John the Baptist is executed, following the evidence in Josephus. A.D. 36 Passover—crucifixion of Jesus, according to Matthew’s timetable. A.D. 36-37 Conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. c. A.D. 44 Execution of James, the brother of Jesus. A.D. 50-52 Paul in Corinth. Writes his first letter (to the Thessalonians). A.D. 61 Paul in Rome under house arrest. c. A.D. 65 Paul supposedly executed. A.D. 66-73 War in Judaea. The Roman army under Vespasian invades Judaea. c. A.D. 55-120 Life of Tacitus, Roman historian and senator, who mentions Christ. c. A.D. 61-c. 114 Life of Pliny the Younger, who mentions Christ. c. A.D. 115 Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, quotes from letters of Paul. c. A.D. 117-138 Suetonius, Roman historian, mentions “Chrestus.” c. A.D. 125 Earliest known example of a Christian gospel, John 18: 31-33, Rylands Papyrus, found in Egypt. c. A.D. 200 Oldest known fragment of Paul’s letters, Chester Beatty Papyrus, found in Egypt. c. A.D. 200 Oldest virtually complete gospel (John’s), Bodmer Papyrus, found in Egypt. A.D. 325 Council of Nicaea is convened by the Roman emperor Constantine. The divinity of Jesus is made official dogma by a vote of 217 to 3. A.D. 393-397 Council of Hippo, formalizing the New Testament, is finalized at Council of Carthage.

THE SECOND CENTURY

c. A.D. 55-120 Life of Tacitus, Roman historian and senator, who mentions Christ. c. A.D. 61-c. 114 Life of Pliny the Younger, who mentions Christ. c. A.D. 115 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, quotes from letters of Paul. A.D. 115 Revolt in Alexandria is led by Lucuas, the “King of the Jews.” The Jewish community in Egypt is destroyed. c. A.D. 117-138 Writing years of Suetonius, Roman historian, who mentions “Chrestus.” c. A.D. 120 The Gnostic teacher Valentinus is educated in Alexandria. A.D. 131-135 Simon Bar Kochba leads revolt in Judaea. A.D. 133 Nine to twelve Roman legions invade Judaea from the north. A.D. 135 Jewish forces are defeated. The Roman emperor Hadrian changes the name of Judaea to Palaestina (now Palestine). c. A.D. 135 The Christian theologian Justin Martyr argues with the Jewish intellectual Trypho. c. A.D. 140 Marcion arrives in Rome and begins teaching. He rejects the Old Testament and uses only Luke’s Gospel and some of Paul’s letters. c. A.D. 150 First Christian writers begin to condemn the Gnostics. A.D. 154 Justin Martyr names Simon Magus (mid-first-century A.D.) the source of all heresies. c. A.D. 180 Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, writes against the Gnostics. Produces the first list of texts for a canonical New Testament. c. A.D. 195 Clement, bishop of Alexandria, writes about the secret Gospel of Mark and against the Gnostics, but maintains a sympathy for the secrets, mysteries, and initiations within Alexandrian Christianity. c. A.D. 197 Tertullian converts to Christianity; is militantly opposed to heresy and to women in leadership roles in the Church.

5 Creating the Jesus of Faith

Modern Christian illustrations depict the popular image of Jesus wandering around ancient Israel—the sun gilding his blond hair yet never burning his fair skin. They portray him as a Christian missionary accompanied by his disciples, some of whom were already scribbling down their Gospels in order to record the sacred words of a living god.

We have already pointed out the obvious flaw in this picture: Jesus was a Jew. He was a dark Palestinian, not a fair northern European. But there is another profound error in this image, one equally significant but less well known: there was no such thing as a gospel at the time, let alone a “New Testament”; there was no “Christianity.” The sacred books that Jesus and his disciples used were those of Judaism—as is immediately apparent to anyone who reads the New Testament and notes how familiar Jesus was with the Judaic scriptures, the ease with which he quoted from them, and the assumption of familiarity on the part of his audience—presuming, of course, that the events depicted in the Gospels actually happened.

Because we’ve always been told with such confidence that the various Gospels had been written by the latter part of the first century A.D., it is a surprise to discover that there wasn’t a New Testament in existence at the beginning of the second century A.D. Or even by the end of that century, although by that time some theologians, nervous about what they considered to be the “truth,” were attempting to create one. Despite these theologians’ best efforts, Christians had to wait almost two more centuries for an agreed-upon text. So what was it that they were really waiting for?

This delay in arriving at an official collection of Christian texts calls into serious question the widespread Christian belief over the last 1,500 years that every word in the New Testament is a faithful transmission from God himself. To an independent observer, it seems more likely not only that the New Testament was deliberately imposed upon a god who was actually quite happy with a wide expression of teachings, but that it was deliberately imposed by a group of people who wished to control the divine expression for their own profit and power.

The delay, as it happens, occurred while the theology was catching up with the demand for a centralized orthodoxy. Until key decisions were made with regard to the divinity of Jesus, the leaders of the Church lacked the officially sanctioned criteria by which to choose the texts designed to represent their newly created religion.

Even more crucially, many people today consider the New Testament texts sacrosanct. They believe them to be the divine words of God written as the only means by which we might be saved, words that cannot be changed or taken in any other way than literally. No one has ever told them that this was not the intention of the early compilers of the traditions about Jesus that make up the collection. In fact, for the first 150 years of the Christian tradition the only authoritative writings were those books now called the “Old Testament.”1

A good example of the early attitude toward scripture is given by the second-century Christian writer Justin Martyr. For him our so-called Gospels were simply memoirs of the various apostles that could be read in church and used in support of the faith but were never considered as “Holy Scripture.” The term “Holy Scripture” was reserved for the books of the law and the prophets—that is, the Old Testament. Bluntly, Justin Martyr “never considers the ‘Gospels’ or the ‘Memoirs of the Apostles’ as inspired writings.”2 Justin reached the pinnacle of sainthood, but his position would be considered radical if held by any member of the Christian Church today.

It is certainly true, however, that during the later first century and the entire second century A.D., traditions about Jesus began to be recorded. Sayings and stories about the events of his life were collected, but none were deemed the official or authorized collection at that time. It is also true that the texts that now appear in our New Testament were written in that span. During the late first and second centuries A.D., the whole concept of “Christianity” crystallized out of messianic Judaism, and this leads us immediately to a number of logistical challenges, some of them quite radical.

A curious phenomenon began in the second century B.C.: the Aramaic word meshiha—messiah—which is otherwise devoid of any explanation, began to be used as the name of the true ruler of Israel. In particular, it denoted the expected king of the royal Line of David.3 A general hope that a descendant of King David would arrive found expression in the books of the prophets in the Old Testament. Thus, the Christian use of the term christos, or “Christ,” a Greek translation of the Aramaic meshiha, along with the transliteration into Greek Messias—now “messiah”—came from a Jewish context and usage that was already well understood by Jesus’s day.4

The most radical logistical challenge is answering a charge that has regularly been made, particularly over the last 150 years: that Jesus didn’t exist at all and the stories about him are simply tales of various messianic leaders that were later gathered together in order to justify, first a Pauline position, and later, a Roman-centered tradition wherein the Jewish messiah was turned into a deified imperial figure, a kind of royal angel. William Horbury, reader in Jewish and Early Christian Studies at Cambridge University, recently noted, “A cult of angels…accompanied the development of the cult of Christ.”5

Can we really be sure that Jesus existed? Is there any proof of his reality beyond the New Testament? If not, if the New Testament was put together long after his time, how do we know that the whole concept of Jesus Christ is not just an ancient myth given a new spin? Perhaps it was some rewriting of the Adonis myth or the Osiris myth or the Mithras myth: all three were born of a virgin and raised from the dead—a familiar story to Christians.

There is considerable reason, according to Horbury, for seeing, within early Christianity, “a cult of Christ, comparable with the cults of Graeco-Roman heroes, sovereigns and divinities.”6 And as mentioned earlier, this cult was accompanied by a cult of angels. Horbury explains that it appears likely that the title given to Jesus, “Son of man,” linked him with “an angel-like messiah.”7 In fact, “Christ, precisely in his capacity as messiah, could be considered an angelic spirit…It seems likely that messianism formed the principal medium through which angelology impinged on nascent Christology, and that Christ, precisely as messiah, was envisaged as an angel-like spiritual being.”8 So are we dealing solely with an ancient myth revisited for the purposes of Christianity?

We have seen that the word “Jesus” derives simply from the Aramaic Yeshua, which can mean Joshua but also can mean “the deliverer,” the “savior.” Therefore, it could just be a title. We’ve also noted that “Christ” comes from christos, the Greek translation of the Aramaic meshiha, meaning “the anointed one.” So we are dealing with a double title: “The deliverer (or savior), the anointed one.” In that case, what was his name? We really don’t know—someone “ben David” we would assume, but that is all we can glean.

We cannot appeal to the New Testament for evidence because we have no idea how much history and how much fantasy is incorporated into the texts. And in any case, the earliest fragments we have are from the second century A.D.—around A.D. 125 for some pieces of John’s Gospel. But what about the letters of Paul? After all, they were written before the first war against the Romans. The earliest—Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians—was written while he was resident in Corinth from the winter of A.D. 50 to the summer of 52.9 The rest of his letters were written between A.D. 56 and 60, perhaps even later when he was in Rome and supposedly executed around A.D. 65—although no one knows the truth about this since the Book of Acts, our only source for details of Paul’s travels, breaks off with him under house arrest in Rome.

Unfortunately, we cannot be sure about the authenticity of all Paul’s letters within the New Testament either, since the earliest copies we have date from the early third century.10 In the letters written in A.D. 115 by Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, on his way to Rome, he quotes from various letters of Paul, so we know that some were in existence by this time, but we do not know whether they might have been edited, before or after. In any case, Paul did not know Jesus, and unlike the Gospels, he did not show any great concern about what Jesus may have said or done. We get no information about Jesus from Paul, whose letters proclaim the gospel of, well, Paul: that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus marked the beginning of a new age in the history of the world, the most immediate practical effect being the end of the Jewish law—quite a different stance to that taken by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).

No records from Pilate have survived either; there are also no records from Herod, and no records from the Roman military or other administrative bodies. But this is not surprising, as the records office of the Herodian kings in Jerusalem was burned during the war. The official Roman records would have been in their administrative capital, Caesarea, and it too was caught up in the fighting. Copies and reports would have gone back to Rome, but even if they survived the various destructions by later emperors like Domitian, they would have been lost in the sack of Rome by the Goths in A.D. 405, when so many official archives were destroyed—those that had not been taken to Constantinople. Of course, by that time Rome was Christian, and so we can be certain that any documents that compromised the developing story of Christ would have already been extracted and destroyed. And there is good reason to think that Pilate’s reports would have been among such documents.

But all is not lost: Josephus certainly had access to Roman records, and if Jesus had been mentioned, he would have been able to read of him. In fact, Josephus does mention Jesus, but in such a manner as to lead everyone who has looked at the text to consider it a later Christian insertion, although there is probably a kernel of truth in his discussion somewhere. But Josephus cannot help us entirely, for he has proven to be an unreliable witness and chronicler. Our other Jewish chronicler and philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, who died around A.D. 50, does not even mention Jesus. This is a curiosity for which there is no good explanation beyond taking it as evidence either for the lack of Jesus’s reality or for his irrelevance to the lives of educated Jewish Alexandrians.

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