The myth of Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus

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Giuseppe
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The myth of Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

Alternative title of this thread: Reading Doujardin Again For The First Time

What is the origin of the Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus as described in the first Gospel or in the Apology of Aristides?
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 historicists argue that it was an apology to justify the Roman responsability behind the death of a historical Jesus.

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):



...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
.
(The Fabrication of the Christ Myth, p. 31, my bold)

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:
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...
(from Ancient History of the God Jesus)

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:

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.
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives ... ment-12198

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.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: The myth of Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

In Deconstructing Jesus, Robert M. Price talks about the correct use of Girard's theory of the Sacred Scapegoat, against the Girard's use of the same theory in an apologetical way (in order to distance Jesus from other gods who die and rise).

And Price talks in particular about the Josua-emulators, by him described as ''imitators of Jesus'': the same disciples of Jesus in the Gospels.

The disciples of Jesus have
been imitators of Jesus
and thus rivals of one another, and as Jesus continues to frustrate
them, what is their next step going to be? Girard should expect them to unite against him.
No more bickering about who is to be greatest! We will not have this man to reign over us!
They share harmonious fellowship once again as they jointly devour the flesh and blood of
their erstwhile master, their scapegoat, the lamb of God who took away their sins. Theodore
J. Weeden argued that Mark portrays the disciples finally becoming the enemies of Jesus,
betraying, denying, abandoning him, not even visiting his tomb. I believe that a
neo-Girardian scrutiny of the Passion will make that description seem mild indeed. In what
follows I will attempt to show how Girard's methods should disclose an earlier version in
which it was none other than the disciples of Jesus who conspired to kill him.
(p. 381-382, my bold)

Note the extraordinary irony: just who wanted to pose as Joshua-emulator, just he ends to become a killer of Jesus.

For example:
Is the role of the chief villain Caiaphas a complete fiction, too? Again, no. His priestly
miter is on the wrong head, though. His vestments do not quite fit their wearer, any more
than Saul's armor fit David. If we lift the turban from over the concealed brows, we
recognize a familiar face, for "Caiaphas," at least here, is yet another double of "Cephas,"
Simon Peter, binding and loosing as he sees fit. The "real" Peter, the Simon Peter persona,
who from the standpoint of a later piety cannot be imagined leading a drumhead courtmartial
against the Christ, is nonetheless on the scene. He has been moved from center stage,
but not very far! We find him only a few yards away, in the high priest's courtyard.
(p. 398, my bold)
But I am urging a comparison between Caiaphas inside and Cephas outside. Just as
Caiaphas condemns Jesus to death, so does Cephas: "I do not know the man!" Do we not
here catch an echo of Jesus' own sentence of doom upon his enemies? "Depart from me; ye
cursed; I never knew you!"
(p. 399)

En passant, here there is a good answer against Ben's hypothesis that the disciples are redeemed: at contrary, Cephas is condemned as Satan, just as Caiaphas is condemned as talking against the Holy Spirit (in Mark 14:63-64).

Price continues:
It is common to suggest that the blame for Jesus' death has been passed from the
Romans, whom Christians thought it best not to offend, to the Jews. But scholars are finding
it increasingly difficult to produce a plausible reason that either Jewish or Roman authorities
should have wanted Jesus dead. Perhaps that is because neither of them did. The Romans may
as easily have been the secondary scapegoat used by early Christians to shift the blame from
themselves. And that should come as no surprise, the scapegoat game being what it is. Girard
remarks that "there is reason to believe that the wars described as 'foreign wars' in the mythic
narratives were in fact formerly civil strifes.
Girard himself identifies the Praetorium crowd with that in the Triumphal Entry, but he does not
make the final step: It was Jesus' own disciples who put him to death.

The element that Jesus had been "delivered up out of envy" (Mark 15:10) also has
Girardian resonances of mimetic desire. Suppose we try one of Girard's reversals and posit
that in the earlier version the choice being made here was not which will live, but rather
which will die. And was the choice originally between only two candidates? Not necessarily.
The two Jesuses, remember, are mimetic twins, mythic ciphers for a condition where, things
having degenerated to a spiral of reciprocal violence, everyone is everyone else's twin. The
victim might as well be anyone, chosen from the whole group.
(p. 405-406, my bold)

I think that Price goes very near to find the real reason why an archangel named Joshua was believed ''crucified''.

The archangel Joshua had to be crucified in heaven...

...because his Joshua-emulators on the earth were crucified by the Romans.


The logic is the following:
1) Josephus is evidence that some Jews wanted to be imitators of Joshua.

2) but these Jews were killed (crucified or beheaded) by the Romans.

3) therefore: also Joshua had to be killed.
The point 3 follows only from point 2, since nowhere in the Old Testament there is a reference to Joshua as a dying being. But then, if the point 3 follows really from the point 2, it is explained why in the original version of the Gospel (in Girardian terms as described above by Price), they were the same Joshua-imitators to figure as killers of Jesus.

Therefore Dujardin was right: the historical Roman crucifixion of a lot of Joshua-emulators was, in a some point in the real History, considered by some Jews as a ritual crucifixion imitating a celestial crucifixion of a celestial Joshua.

I may correct the Dujardin's words with my words (in red):
Believers in Jesus represented him as crucified [by the celestial archons of this age] because they practised the rite of the crucifixion of their god [in the form of a Roman crucifixion of Joshua-emulators]. They did not crucify him because they represented him as crucified; they represented him as crucified because their rite was to crucify him [a ''rite'' done by the unaware Romans and described by the unaware Josephus], a perennial rite of expiatory sacrifice, which had [from on forward] its base in the totemic sacrifice and his completion in the sacrifice of the Mass.
Therefore the Gospels precede the Epistles only relatively to this precise point: the original unaware killers of Joshua were just his earthly Joshua-emulators.


The evolution is the following:

1) if some Jews wanted to pose as Joshua-imitators, it is because they considered already Joshua celestial as archangelic as Moses.

2) but these Jews were crucified by the Romans.

3) therefore some Jews (the original Pillars) started to consider the death of the Joshua-emulators (executed by the unaware Romans) as the earthly ritual parallel of a celestial death of an archangelic Joshua himself in heaven (executed by the Archons of this Age).

4) when the archangel Jesus was euhemerized by the first Gospel, the not-so-well-hidden scapegoat for the death of Jesus continued to be NOT THE ROMANS but the same Joshua-imitators, i.e., the original believers in the myth of Joshua redivivus.
This may explain why terms as ''Simon the Zealot'' appear in the Gospels.

Clearly the influence of Dujardin on this my hypothetical reconstruction is in point 3: someway, the historical deaths of historical Joshua-emulators gave origin to the Myth of Jesus from the precise moment when these deaths were considered RITUAL deaths, where the victims killed, by their death, what they represented (the celestial Joshua).

The victim - a Joshua-emulator - was at the same time a killer of Joshua insofar he was killed by the Romans.


The same belief is at the origin of the disciples of Jesus being his real killers in the original version of the Gospels.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: The myth of Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

What did Paul write about the imitatio Christi?
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.


Paul, differently from the authors of the Philippians Hymn (the PILLARS?) considered as Joshua-emulators not more the Josephian list of "Jesuses" crucified or beheaded by the Romans, but the Christians themselves. The new ritual crucifixion became the Eucharist in replacement of the real crucifixions described by Josephus.

Therefore there is reason to believe that the Pillars emulated Joshua by ending deliberately on the Roman cross (just as the various Theudas, etc).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: The myth of Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus

Post by Giuseppe »

Other evidence of Joshua-emulators comes from Hyppolitus about the ebionites:
The Ebionaeans, however, acknowledge that the world was made by Him Who is in reality God, but they propound legends concerning the Christ similarly with Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They live conformably to the customs of the Jews, alleging that they are justified. according to the law, and saying that Jesus was justified by fulfilling the law. And therefore it was, (according to the Ebionaeans,) that (the Saviour) was named (the) Christ of God and Jesus, since not one of the rest (of mankind) had observed completely the law. For if even any other had fulfilled the commandments (contained) in the law, he would have been that Christ. And the (Ebionaeans allege) that they themselves also, when in like manner they fulfil (the law), are able to become Christs; for they assert that our Lord Himself was a man in a like sense with all (the rest of the human family).
Were the original Christians simply the original Joshua-emulators (the same Jesuses described by Josephus?)? Was their anti-Roman martyrdom their ritual crucifixion resembling the crucifixion of a celestial Joshua?

A guy who wanted to be remembered as a Christian,
Simon Magus, claimed to be a Joshua-emulator in land of Judea...

So Paul:

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”

1 Corinthians 11:1
Was Paul saying so because there was a different meaning for the imitatio Christi?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
lsayre
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Re: The myth of Jewish Conspiracy against Jesus

Post by lsayre »

I think you are making good sense here.
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