What is the origin of the Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus as described in the first Gospel or in the Apology of Aristides?
The historicists argue that it was an apology to justify the Roman responsability behind the death of a historical Jesus.But he himself was pierced by the Jews, and he died and was buried; and they say that after three days he rose and ascended to heaven.......
The mythicists argue that it was a theodicy to justify why the Jews were punished in 70 CE by the Romans.
I think that I have found a best explanation:
Josephus says that the Joshua-emulators were killed by the Romans.
I consider these Holy Words of Harold Leidner an authentic revelation (the topic is the Joshua-emulators described in Josephus: Theudas, the Egyptian Prophet, etc):
(The Fabrication of the Christ Myth, p. 31, my bold)
...we are told many times
by the scholars that there was a widespread Messianic Hope centered
on the advent of the Son of David. Prior to this there would be a
Forerunner symbolizing Elijah to proclaim this Advent. But the
frenzied emphasis on Moses and Joshua plainly means that this was the
only Messianic hope at that period. There was no Davidic Hope and
there was no "Elijah Forerunner. " The only saviors would be Moses
and Joshua.
Josephus has been accused by one and all of concealing the
Messianic Hope. He has received stern reprimands for his dishonesty.
But here he is shouting from the housetops that he knows all about the
Hope, and that it has been going on for thirty years. Only it is the
wrong Hope and the wrong Savior - that is the offense of Josephus.
As if in a Kafka novel, he is guilty because he doesn't confess to what
he doesn't know.
Note the analogy of what the first evangelist did with what Josephus did.
According to Josephus, who posed as saviours of Israel (the Zealots), really they destroyed Israel.
According to the first evangelist, who loved a Joshua-emulator (Joshua Bar-Abbas), really they killed Joshua.
This remembers the theory of Edouard Dujardin:
(from Ancient History of the God Jesus)Believers in jesus represented him as crucified because they practised the rite of the crucifixion of their god. They did not crucify him because they represented him as crucified; they represented him as crucified because their rite was to crucify him, a perennial rite of expiatory sacrifice, which had its base in the totemic sacrifice and his completion in the sacrifice of the Mass.
[...]
Our task is to establish from the documents that the death of Jesus was originally, not a judicial execution, but an expiatory sacrifice practised ritually and periodically in a sacred drama...
The problem for Dujardin is that he had to imagine totally ex nihilo the earthly Joshua-emulators in a sacred drama.
For example, so Richard Carrier denies the presence of a crucifixion ritual:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives ... ment-12198
No. At least, not as there proposed.
The earliest Christian crucifixion ritual was baptism. It did not involve any actual acting out of a crucifixion. And Hebrews is not describing such a thing, but explaining cosmologically what Jesus actually did.
And citing Galatians 3:1 is a major mistake, looking at English translations and not the original language: the word in the Greek is fore-written, not “openly set forth” or “displayed publicly” or any of the translations in print. Paul is simply referring to the fact that he personally showed them the scriptures foretelling the crucifixion (i.e. they saw the verses with their own eyes).
But still, one thing is correct: the first Christians almost certainly regarded the crucifixion of Jesus as an expiatory sacrifice just as Hebrews 9 explains. That was in fact fundamental to the gospel, without which there would have been no Christianity. And Christians shared in that through baptism, which for them was a symbolic death and resurrection.
But now I think that Dujardin was right: he had evidence of a crucifixion ritual, only he didn't see it.
The first evangelist ''read'' in Josephus the Jewish responsability behind the death of Jesus (via Romans):
1) Per Josephus, some Jews wanted to be Joshua redivivus,
2) the Joshua-emulators were killed by Romans,
3) therefore: in the first Gospel, Joshua/Jesus was killed by the Romans because some Jews (precisely who liked the Joshua-emulator par-excellence: ''Jesus Barabbas'') wanted the his death.
Therefore, the Joshua-emulators in Josephus were unaware actors of the crucifixion ritual.
In this sense the Jews ''killed'' Jesus.
Insofar they wanted to pose on the earth as the his emulators.