On the expulsion of Jesus by the Jews according to Hierocles
Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2021 12:29 pm
- Hierocles claims that Christ was expelled by the Jews, collected 900 men and committed robberies (Lactantius, Inst. 5.3.4).
- The Toledoth Yeschu claims the same thing, only it reports that, after the expulsion, Jesus collected 12 evil people and not 900 men.
- Now, it is a fact that precisely the Gospel where Jesus is continually "expelled" by the Jews, and therefore is witness of this contrast, is the Fourth Gospel.
- In whiletime, Stahl/Couchoud have proved that Jesus Barabbas was a caustic parody of the Jesus "Son of Father" of the Fourth Gospel.
- Hence the Pagan attack against the Jesus "expelled by the Jews" finds his equivalent in the Synoptics's attack against the Jesus Barabbas "expelled by the Jews" in order to crucify Jesus called Christ: which means that both the Pagan polemists and the Synoptic tradition agreed in their accusation of sedition and robbery thrown against the same Jesus of the Fourth Gospel. The only difference is that the Pagan polemists meant, as the "Jesus expelled by the Jews", the Jesus of all the Christians, not only of a particular sect.
- It is more probable that the editors of the Synoptics have adopted the Pagan accusation of sedition against the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, by reducing him to a robber called Barabbas, rather than the remote possibility that the accusation of sedition was born independently in the mind of the editors of the Synoptics and in the mind of the Pagan polemists.
- Therefore: it is correct to claim that the Barabbas episode had been invented to concede to the Pagan polemists that yes, Jesus was a robber and a seditionist, only he was the Jesus Barabbas ("Jesus Son of an Unknown Father") adored by those rival marcionites, not the Jesus adored by the Catholics.
- Falling that difference between rival Jesuses for us moderns, we are titled to recognize that that concession above is equivalent to an embarrassing confession of a historical fact.