The strongest chronological clue proving that Jesus == Judas the Galilean

[Giuseppe]

This is a rational answer (see the comment by Jemma Bat-Anat Page here). Your is not.

[StephenGoranson]

I am not on facebook, so I do not see what you (apparently) consider a "rational answer."

[Giuseppe]

She writes:

High priests retained their title for the rest of their lives, similar to American presidents. And in the case of Annas this especially makes sense, because he was one of the most respected high priests of the century, had multiple sons who also became high priests, and was very politically active for decades.

What surprises me is that:

• one has argued in past that the ping pong in Luke between Herod and Pilate is the fruit of a fusion of two different trials, one before Pilate and the other before Herod.

• By applying the same identical logic, the passage from Annas to Caiaphas in GJohn should reflect a similar fusion of two trials, one before Annas and the other before Caiaphas.

[Baley]

That's an interesting observation, Giuseppe. I'm sympathetic to the view that the biblical Jesus is a composite figure, comprising elements of figures like Jesus ben Ananias, Jesus ben Saphat, Judas the Galilean and others. The connection between bibical Jesus and Annas certainly points towards the early first century, the time that Judas was active and, according to Josephus, the Fourth Philosophy took root.

[Giuseppe]

I was thinking the same thing (about the Gospel Jesus being basically a composite), indebted strongly, in this, to this important article by prof Christophe Batsch (unfortunately, he isn't answering to my polite questions about what he thinks on Paul).

At the moment my reconstruction of the Christian Origins is the following (the first 4 points are clearly derived from Batsch's article):

• 1) before the 70 CE, the term 'Christiani'/'Chrestiani' was used by Romans against the Jewish rebels active in Rome.

• 2) the crucifixion was the fate usually reserved to would-be kings and messiahs, becoming so a tropos already before the 70 CE: a "king of Jews" is quasi by definition "crucified".

• 3) after the 70 CE, the Zealots went to Masada and there they died, the Pharisees went to Jamnia, while the last followers of the various pre-70 Messianists (Judas the Galilean, Theudas, the 'Egyptian', the Samaritan pseudo-prophet, etc) went to Alexandria.

• 4) in Alexandria, as theodicy, an enormous (oral and/or written) collection was made of all the sayings and actions of the various pre-70 Messianists, by attributing them to a generic 'Jesus' and 'Christ'. The more or less confused memories of all the pre-70 Messianists were merged in that collection.

• 5) between the 70 and the 100 CE, various Jewish and Gentile sects were going to interpret the Jesus connected with that collection in the light of their different theological views. Still not a Gospel, only the same collection of sayings and actions from different origins connected artificially to a name ('Jesus').

• 6) In 100 CE, the need of an organized Church was in nuce behind the total fabrication of pauline epistles: the only common denominator able to unify all the different Jesus sects under a gentilizing orientation was the belief that the Jesus was crucified (in Judea) and risen. I assume here a version of the epistles where at least 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 was still absent (since that passage can assume only a celestial crucifixion in heaven, hence it could be introduced only in late second century, under Valentinian Gnostic influence).

• 7) between 100 and 150 CE, the first gospels.

The beauty of this reconstruction is that it dispenses me from the research of a single historical Jesus, since even if in that collection (points 3 and 4) the partial memory entered about a Jesus crucified by Pilate, it is basically indistinguishable from the memories of different historical models. For example, the name itself of Pilate is doubtful whether it can be traced back to the memory of a Judean 'king of Jews' crucified in Jerusalem or, in alternative, to the Samaritan false prophet posing as the Taheb on Mount Gerizim.

Note also the curious parallelism between two different actions:

• if you like the memory of X (where X is only one of many), then you will place the memory of him in the collection, and you will call him 'Jesus' and 'Christ in order to honour forever his memory.

• if, at contrary, you don't like the memory of a particular Jesus (where Jesus is the interpretation, by a particular sect, of the "Jesus" of the collection), then you will call him not more Jesus, but another name (for example: John the Baptist) and you will reduce him to the figure of a mere Precursor.

I mean: the positive judgement on someone lead to the rapid absorption of him into the final composite portrait, while the negative judgement on a particular version of the same composite portrait lead to the separation of it from the rest of the portrait.