https://archive.org/stream/jesusmythorh ... p_djvu.txtAbout A.D. 26 Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee,
founded the city of Tiberias in honour of his overlord,
the emperor Tiberius. The city was built in Greek
style and had a large pagan population. Many of
the Galilean inhabitants left the place ; and Dujardin
thinks that some of these, for the most part fishermen,
migrated to Jericho in order to carry on their calling.
Filled with religious fanaticism by the profanation of
their motherland, they assembled at Gilgal to celebrate
their three-day ritual drama of death and resurrection.
A certain Simon of Cyrene may have personated the
victim. During the ritual meal, in the religious
ferment induced by the occasion, some of the company
believed that they saw the risen god. That apparition,
which Dujardin dates in A.D. 27, was the starting-
point of Christianity. The visionaries, Peter, James,
John, and the rest, began to spread the news that the
Lord Jesus had appeared to them. The message was
carried from city to city by Greek-speaking Jews of
the " dispersion " and provided scattered groups of
enthusiasts with a basis for the belief that the pagan
world-order would soon be destroyed by divine
agency and the kingdom of God inaugurated. Since
the god of a cult is only a personification of the group
itself, Dujardin holds that divine agency did not exclude
revolutionary action by the Christians. The
martyrs of the year 64 may really have set fire to Rome.
It seems that Dujardin has simply read behind the Gospel ''Jesus'' of Mark the real history of the his first followers:
1) the pre-christian adorers of a celestial Jesus came from Galilee (of Gentiles) to preach in Jerusalem.
2) in Jerusalem, a pre-christian Simon had personated the celestial Jesus during his death.
3) three Jews of Jerusalem saw independently an angel and identified him with the risen Jesus (the same one from Galilee).
4) from Jerusalem, the new Christian cult propagated everywhere.
Note that ''Mark'' put in parody the point 3: the ''women at tomb'' are the early community of Jerusalem, i.e. just the Pillars who exchanged their invisible angel with the same Jesus came from Galilee.
The point of Mark is that Galilee comes before Jerusalem, against the false illusion by the Pillars that they come before Paul.
Mark is saying that the angel of the tomb is ''another'' Jesus, one different from the one preached by Paul.
I wonder if in proto-Mark they were not the women, but the same Pillars to visit first the empty tomb (and to be terrified by the white-dressed angel, taking him for the real Risen Christ).
If the Galilee is allegory of the Diaspora, then who was that first Jesus-emulator in Jerusalem, ''Simon of Cyrene''?
Note that Rylands would agree generally with that view. The only difference is that for him the celestial Christ (one not still named Jesus) was who influenced local worshippers of Joshua redivivus in Jerusalem.