Tag Archives: yohanan ha matbil

Yeshua/Jesus Not Mark or Matthew but Eusebius [part 31]

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Yeshua/Jesus Not Mark or Matthew but Eusebius [part 31]
Author: C.C. Saint-Clair
Eusebius behind the gospels
In the fourth century AD, Eusebius, protégé of Emperor Constantine the Great  and the force behind the creation of the gospels in his role as Church Father, orchestrated a massive manipulation of highly sensitive Jewish texts – his venture paid off grandiosely.
A stroke of genius came to Eusebius when he ordered his scribes to mash together the unassuming characteristics of an orthodox preacher, one with a bit of a temper, who lived in the plains of Galilee with superior abilities that only the ones trained in the highest forms of mysticism were known to possess. The mystics in question were the Jewish Issiyim who lived in the Negev region. Once Jesus, the character, had been made strong by an arsenal of miracle-producing skills, Eusebius set his hero on the path of becoming a man-god – another essentially pagan concept.
Out of a number of ancient scrolls, Eusebius’ scribes plucked out snippets that they had to rearrange cleverly so as to provide them a solid, ancient background – one that in reality had been slowly ‘cured’ over millennia, one karmic experience at a time, one generation at time, one patriarch at a time, one God-deed and one God-commandment at a time, one prophet’s proclamation at a time – against which the Church fathers would cast their paper-hero.
This character emerged, fully formed [except for a brief mention regarding his improbable birth] and with an impeccable pedigree that had roots as ancient as the world itself. Indeed, Genesis, too, is originally a seminal text in Jewish Scriptures. It is the first of the five books of Moses which constitute the core of the Torah.
Did Mark come up with the first gospel prototype 30 years after Yeshua’s death?
Did Matthew use Mark as a springboard for his own text?
Could Mark have anticipated how his hero’s character would be ‘deepened’ by Luke, an avid reader, a traveller, a highly educated man who enjoyed important connections?
Did John use all the three texts to create his own  – by adding and deleting  – as he followed his own muse?
Or was it Eusebius, the dark eminence behind the creative power of his scribes who, centuries after the death of Yeshua, engineered and released the four texts of the first ever Christian manuscript under four anonymous names?
Why release the documents in this manner?
Had Eusebius come across Marks’ original text?
Could it be that the text now called Mark’s gospel is actually not Mark’s original work?
Truthful answers to any of the above questions should, by now, be quite irrelevant to all but mystery solvers because the process followed by one or the other is similar and the end result is … as it is.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ezine/5969125

Yeshua/Jesus – Josephus Jewish Antiquities[part 27]

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Yeshua/Jesus – Josephus Jewish Antiquities[part 27]
Author: C.C. Saint-Clair
The Temple Mount compound, in Jerusalem, the site of Yeshua’s altercations with the priests and the money lenders made famous in the New Testament, was very much unlike modern day synagogues and churches. It was not only Ancient Israel’s single religious centre, but also a financial turning plate where people came to pay their taxes and tithes.
Knowing that the Temple was the hub of all things Jewish, including political networking, the Roman procurators, through their prefects and their spies, kept a close watch on all manner of activities in that area and its surrounds.
It is said that some three years after he began his ministry, Yeshua, himself was at the Temple during the compulsory pilgrimage of Pesach/Passover. This is what he would have seen: thousands of pilgrims and their families arriving from all over the region and far beyond milling around amongst the crowd of local Jews and Roman soldiers. The men were as much praying as they were conducting their financial affairs. In the Outer Court, they wove their way around cattle and cages of fowl.
They patted and checked the animals to find the best one they could offer in atonement for their sins. This court was also a place of prayer open to all, including the local pagans who were allowed to pray there, among the cacophony of animal sounds – as there was no Roman temple in Jerusalem.
All this may appear quite convivial until we remember that if any pagan ventured beyond the enclosure of the Outer Court and into the Second Court, he or she would be liable to death by stoning. Everyone knew that.
Yeshua, himself would have made his way to the Second Court. He would have walked past the pillar corner stone that carried a dire warning to the non-Jews: No foreigner is to go beyond the balustrade and the plaza of the temple zone. Whoever is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his death which will follow – presumably by stoning.
That warning would not have worried Yeshua in the least, as he kept on walking to the Third Court. He, a circumcised man, who lived by the Torah and who, accordingly, immersed himself in flowing water in the daily ritual of tevilah, was a part of the religious ‘elite’ of men allowed in the Third Court. Only the priests in their vestments were allowed in the Fourth Court, the inner sanctum, where lay the tabernacle that housed the Ark, the Holy of Holies.
Understandably, the mere sight of tetchy Roman soldiers in the heart of their religious celebrations annoyed the people no end. Resentment was high and it is within this snapshot of a Pesach festival at the Temple that, according to the historian Josephus, a very tragic incident occurred there a few years before Yeshua was born.
Picture this: Temple Mount and the surrounding area are teeming with Roman cohorts whose duty it is to apprehend anyone showing signs of disrespect to Roman rule and to immediately quell any sign of insurgence against Rome. These areas, particularly at times of high people concentration such as occurred during religious festivals were ‘Code red’ and soldiers were on high alert.
As can be expected, ogling the Israelite maidens, taunting the men and jeering was many a soldier’s favorite pastime on a quite watch. One day, though, one such game of taunting ended tragically.
A group of young Roman ‘flat-foots’ were indulging in loutish behavior, laughing at the men’s dark long robes, uncut hair and beards worn as signs that there was no place for vanity in their lives – another commandment from their god. The Israelites used to such antics deliberately ignored the soldiers. They knew that any reply, no matter how provoked, would be severely punished. It was simply not worth their while and, on their side, self-control usually prevailed.
Some in the group of soldiers upped the anti that day, and the men nearest them kept a wary eye on the louts. The soldiers began making insulting gestures and in a reckless game of one-upmanship, one young soldier suddenly lifted up his tunic and aimed his backside at the men. No content with that, with his backside deliberately still pointing at the Israelites, he emitted very loudly an imitation of breaking wind.
Some men clamored for the removal and punishment of the offensive soldier, but the younger men lost their self-control. They picked up stones and hurled them. A huge melee ensued. Fearing to be overrun and fearing this moment would be the one they had been apprehending – the spark that would ignite the powder keg on which Rome had been keeping a very tight lid – the soldiers raised the alarm. Swords drawn and in formation, reinforcements arrived briskly from all directions.
An incredible panic gripped the Israelites. A stampede broke out. With only one point of entry each, the various courts and adjacent rooms and workshops became traps. Men women and children, whoever fell to the ground, were unable to regain their feet. They were trampled. Those closest to the walls and narrow exit doors were crushed to death as the panicked pilgrims tried to out-run the Roman cohorts bristling with their swords and lances.
In Jewish Antiquities, Josephus wrote that on that day of Pesach, some 30,000 lives had been lost.
Over the next forty years, the rift between the ruling Romans and the Israelites had widened further. Hence the rebellion led by the Issyim and the dagger-men, the Sicarii, that was fomenting in the hills of Galilee. Hence, too, both Yohannan ha-mabtil’s and Yeshua’s involvement with the insurgents and the news they propagated, each in his own way that the hour of deliverance was nigh.
The primary cause of the arrest and execution of Yeshua a few years later was the series of incidents he created at the Temple in Jerusalem. It has been suggested that Yeshua capitalized on the level of civil unrest by intentionally provoking his arrest. After the grand entrance he had made a few days earlier through the eastern gate of Jerusalem, riding astride a lowly donkey – as proclaimed by the Hebrew prophet Zechariah and Isaiah centuries earlier -Yeshua’s arrest was the next essential act in a series.
One day soon, with the cooperation Judah, his favorite disciple, he would transform from a humble preacher with an uncanny conviction that eternal Greatness awaited him, into the messiah, savior of the downtrodden Jewish people.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ezine/5866608

Yeshua/Jesus – baptism – tevilah in the mikveh [part 25]

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Yeshua/Jesus – baptism – tevilah in the mikveh [part 25]
Author: C.C. Saint-Clair
It is difficult to make sense of Yeshua’s arrest, the lightning-quick trial and the sentence of death by crucifixion – the most humiliating and the most horribly painful sentence in the books. One way to inject a modicum of logic into the series of events that lead to his death is to place them within a context of sorts.
It was only 60 years earlier that the Roman general, Pompey, had captured Jerusalem. That act put an end to the independent Jewish state of Palestine. In one sense, it also put an end to the self-governed, Hebrew, Hasmonean dynasty.
Though Agrippa II, the grandson of the last king Agrippa I, found himself on the throne, it was by the good grace of Rome. For him, the concession of that crown implied walking a thin, tight rope held at one end by Tiberius and at the other, by the Israelites, his people.
By the time Yeshua was born, this dynasty had been well and truly terminated and, more and more, oppressed Jews dared voice their discontent. The fundamentalist Issyim, however spiritually enlightened, were zealots in their own right and they were at the heart of a fomenting rebellion. It has been said that they were the quiet brain of the rebellion while the dagger-wielding, fanatic Sicarii were the brawn.
Then as now in many parts of the world, citizens have rebel led however passively or however violently to eke a degree of independence from authoritarian regimes in situ. Frequent skirmishes broke out between Hebrew civilians and the Roman army.
Yohannanha-matbil/John the Baptist was the voice of the Israelite rebellion. The New Testament cast him as a visionary man, as a prophet. A prophet, he probably was not, but a visionary freedom fighter, he probably was. Through ‘preachings’ in his native Hebrew, a language not understood by the Roman soldiers, he spoke of an apocalyptic end and the arrival of a mashiach who would be the leader of flesh and blood proclaimed in so many ways by the prophets a few centuries earlier.
No doubt, some of Yohannan’s talks contained ‘news of the front’ intended to connect and hearten the men and women of Judea. In the eyes of many of his compatriots, he was the one, the leader, the mashiach, designated by karmic decree to lead the Zealot rebellion to an apocalyptic conclusion that would see the total destruction of the Roman political rule over the ancestral of the Jews.
Out of Roman earshot, while performing in a body of flowing water the Jewish ritual of tevilah immersion with others, Yohannan was in all likelihood also networking as a militant activist. The added act of pouring a palmful of pure water on his companions’ heads symbolised the bond of brotherhood between them. Yeshua eventually came down from Galilee and joined Yohannan in the communal act of mikveh-liaising.
Ready or not, the writing was on the wall! Soon after the political killing ordered by Herod cut short Yohannan’s life, Yeshua stepped into the breach. He began what, in the New Testament, is referred to as his ministry.
In his sermons, also in Hebrew, the only language he spoke, Yeshua urged the people to live their lives by the 613 mitzvots. He urged them to not become lax in keeping the Sabbath, in performing the circumcision of their male children on their eights day, in eating only bloodless meat and to refresh their total faith in YHWY [Yaweh], Adonai – their one and only God.
In his own way, he took over where Yohannan had left off. For all who understood the subtext, he confirmed the imminent arrival of the great leader, the mashiach/messiah that all Jews, young and old, had been taught to pray for.
It has to be understood that by then there had already been a couple of messianic-claimants, men whom others had designated in their lifetime – and despite the lack of any specific achievement – as a god-sent messianic leader.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ezine/5816356

Yeshua/Jesus – The Prophets and Eusebius [part 21]

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Yeshua/Jesus – The Prophets and Eusebius [part 21]
Author: C.C. Saint-Clair
Besides switching the dark powers of Yeshua, the sorcerer, to the occult white magic of the good Jesus, miracle-worker, switching the charge of profanation to the charge of blasphemy, changing the mode of execution from the stoning of the Hebrew culture to the crucifixion favored by Roman law, and changing the site of the execution from Lud to Jerusalem, the main plot beats of the gospels were indeed as familiar to the Jews then as now.
As an aside, it is quite likely that in today’s Courts of Law, the writers of the New Testament, from Mark to John and Eusebius, would be charged with the offence of plagiarism.
If there is to this day no proof of an historical Jesus having ever existed, it does make reasonable sense to assume that the prototype inspiration was derived from a few, real or mythical, heroes gleamed mostly from the multitudinous pages of Jewish Scriptures and related Rabbinical treaties.
In fact, one pernicious possibility is that the aim of the gospel writers from Mark to John and later by the Church Fathers might have been to create a spiritual hero in such a way that through the narration of their cumulative writings his life and his destiny – as a Christian emblem – appeared to be the unequivocal realisation of Jewish prophecies such as those of Isaiah 2:11, 42, Isaiah 53 and Micah 5:2 and Jeremiah 30 and a plethora of other verses written five hundred years earlier.
Why reinvent the wheel, the Church Fathers might have thought, and create a new dogma when that of the Israelites spun such good values and had been made them resilient through centuries of utmost adversity?
All except but the truly hard signs of commitment to the Faith could be adapted. The truly hard signs such as the compulsory circumcision of infants at the age of 8 days and of any adult wishing to ‘convert’, the mitvots and the mikvehs could all be dispensed and presto – the Church Fathers had a new, easy, very accommodating religion to push through their interpretation of a mashiah.
 As it is, the prophets’ visions were mostly focussed on the much anticipated arrival of their Jewish messiah – a person of flesh and blood – a true leader of men and of their hearts who would redeem Israel and those who had lived by the Torah. There is no allusion to any resurrection in either Talmud of Torah.
No Jewish scripture and no orthodox Jew can ever conceived the notion of a supernatural savior born from a god to form a holy trilogy/trinity. Not anymore than finding acceptable the shedding of blood, the symbolic drinking of blood, the worship of idols, be they on a cross or in any other form. Such notions would have been understandably a lot more relevant and appealing to freshly converted pagan minds than to Jews who had been steeped in their religion-driven culture for millennia.
In fact, the words in Jeremiah 30, as understood by the people from within which they originated many centuries earlier, are about the abandonment of Israel by all and the promise of its restoration as a nation – not about the Suffering Servant of God:
12 “This is what the LORD says: “‘Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing.
13 There is no one to plead your cause, no remedy for your sore, no healing for you.
14 All your allies have forgotten you; they care nothing for you.
Ultimately, it is Eusebius of Caesarea, a Roman historian who became a leading Church Father circa 300 BC who gave these texts the final ‘brush over’. The favor he carried with the then Emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great, encouraged him to canonize what was to become known as the New testament – four hundred years AD.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ezine/5730256