Jesus Alias Christ; a Theological Detection (by Simon S. Levin)

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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Jesus Alias Christ; a Theological Detection (by Simon S. Levin)

Post by Giuseppe »

I have ordered a copy of this book:

Image

...since I have read, in G.A. Wells's book "Did Jesus exist?", about the author's view on the priority of the Fourth Gospel and the seditious historical Jesus.


Levin seems to argue that GJohn preceded the Synoptics because Mark wants to deny that Jesus had been a follower of John the Baptist, by having Jesus "thrown" rapidly by the spirit in the wilderness, and returning only after John the Baptist can't more see him (being in prison).


Curiously, the idea that Jesus was with John for a more long period than the mere "baptism" is argued by Greg Doudna also (afterall, Jesus b. Sapphat was with John of Gischala during all the siege of Jerusalem by Titus).

Hence my interest about this book.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13658
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Jesus Alias Christ; a Theological Detection (by Simon S. Levin)

Post by Giuseppe »

This is a quote from the book.

FUSION

The writers of the Bible, unlike modern historians, did not have a particular devotion to historical objectivity. They were more concerned with a preconceived message or story than with writing a dispassionate account of events. Greek historians, no less than Hebrew writers, felt quite at liberty to put into the mouths of their heroes words which they considered would have been appropriate to the occasion. No form of conscious deception was involved in inventing these pious fictions. Famous figures had not only speeches put into their mouths, but whole books and chapters by lesser men were attributed to them. The best example is the collection of writings, beginning with Chapter 40, which were handed over en bloc to the prophet Isaiah, who had, in fact, penned only the first 39 chapters. King David is certainly not the author of all (or even most?) the Psalms imputed to him. Solomon's reputation was such that the writings - psalms, poetry, wisdom literature and even apocryphal medical works - of many lesser mortals were graced by his name. Not only chapters, but whole books in the Bible are inventions from beginning to end. The narrative books of Daniel and of Esther were written with a perconceived purpose. They are not historical documents; they are myth. Certainly not all the epistles attributed to Paul are his own work.

“What each of (the Gospels) exhibits ... is ... not what Jesus had said, hoped, and experienced ... (but) ... what was believed, thought, wished, and desired by Christian communities under the guidance of authoritative preachers at the turn from the first to the second century ... What is foremost and clearest in our Gospels is not so much the religion and fate of Jesus as the conviction and cause of the communities of that time ... Men envisaged the past in the perspective of their own days and painted it in the light of their own experiences, coloring it with their own hopes and concepts. The men who wrote down these Gospels wanted to bear true and enduring witness of themselves, of that which the Christ meant to them and should henceforth always mean to everybody ...” [7]

Much, if not most, of the words placed in the mouth of the gospel hero - and with the most noble (?) of motives: the propagation of a faith in which the biographer believed profoundly - are simply inventions.

Nor is it difficult to identify these Pauline or Johannine soteriological or mystical additions. For example, after the episode of Peter acknowledging Jesus as the Christ (in Jewish tradition messianism has a distinctly temporal, not spiritual, flavor), Mark (8:31-33) adds a theological homily which is certainly not from Christ but is derived from the mysticism of Paul or the fourth evangelist.

To take another, of many examples: Jesus ostensibly repudiates the Mosaic laws on forbidden foods (Mark 7:14-23). In fact, here are reflected the views of Mark taken in turn from the anti-Mosaic opinions of Paul (I Cor. 10:25-27, Gal. 5:19-21, Col. 2:16, 1Tim. 4:3,4). On the same subject we also find Luke making a pious Peter acquiesce to eating forbidden foods (Acts 10:14,15, 11:9).

Other passages, if not from Pauline-Johannine teachings, are an absorption into the principal hero of the words and actions of lesser men. Jesus the man absors John the man and becomes Christ the giant, the Superman, a product of a composite tradition.

Evidence of this absorption is available int he gospel record. There is no reason to dout that Jesus had spent some considerable period in the desert haunts of John (Mark 1:13). Such is not an unprecedented action. In his late teens an admiring Josephus had spent three years (probably interrupted rather than continuous) in the wilderness following Bannus (which means baptist), an Essene hermit teacher. John must have impressed Jesus sufficiently for Jesus to accept his baptism although - significantly - in his turn Jeuss baptized no-one (John 4:2): what use has a revolutionary for baptism of his followers?

Yet John must have left an impression. Perhaps Jesus had, in the back of his mind, a fond recollection of Baptist resignation; perhaps he had retained contact with him via his brother James, who is devoid of all revolutionary conenctions: certainly James must have played a greater role in the lives of Jesus and John than the Gospels admit to. Pheraps this “weakness” for the Baptist swayed Jesus to desist from further military adventures when his initial effort at insurrection failed.

Jesus in Galilee and John in the Jordan valley, both lived within the territory of Antipas. According to the Johannine gospel, Jesus' ministry was not so much in Galilee as in Jerusalem and the Jordan valley, precisely where John was preaching at the time. Indeed, their ministries are confusingly similar, paralleling each other in time and place.

The disciples of Jesus and John met for discussion of common problems (Matt. 9:14) and, indeed, they shared disciples (John 1:35-41); this is not an impossible claim when we consider the extraordinary ease with which modern zealots switch from one cause to another (Communism to Catholicism and vice versa).

Luke links Jesus and John even more closely by making their mothers cousings on visiting terms (1:39,40). He even makes their pregnancies contemporaneous (1:31,41, 2:5), so that John and Jesus are peers. Being related, is it also not possible that there was some physical resemblance between them?

Since John's father Zacharias had come to officiate at the temple, Luke has inferred that he lived in Judea, and an early but unverifiable tradition gives the birthplace of John as Ain Karim, west of Jerusalem. But Zacharias is of the priestly order of Abijah (Luke 1:5, 1Chron. 24:10), and an ancient tradition links this priestly clan with Kfar Uzziel, [8] some 10 miles north of Nazareth. This is a more reasonable basis for understanding Mary and Elisabeth to be cousins on visiting terms.

By the year 73, when Josephus published his History of the Jewish War, Jesus had already long been fused with John. In a Slavonic copy of an Aramaic version of Josephus (II, 9:3 & II, 11:6) discovered early this century, a wonder-working saintly rabbi is exhorted to lead an insurrection but is captured and crucified by Pilate. Shortly thereafter, and as early as about 46 C.E., many people believed that he had been resurrected and would free them from the Roman yoke.

Whether or not these claims are historical should not obscure the issue that they are to be seen as the expression of a wide-spread tendency towards the amalgamation of these two outstanding individuals, in very different spheres, into one giant of a man, a Superman, a hybrid, a chimera, a Christ.

And it was possible because Jesus, unlike John, was an entirely minor messianic claimant whose role in a puny insurrection, one among many, was soon forgotten. Had his been a major effort, the memory of Jesus would have found an echo in the works of Philo, Josephus, and Justus of Tiberias, and would not have permitted his fusion with another.

The deduction that Jesus and John were confused and fused in a single Christ seems so compelling that one might hope to find in the Gospels some evidence, a careless phrase, an idle remark, to prove this conclusion. Somewhere, surely we must find the clue to confirm that which seems so certain.

The proof exists. In two passages which have never been satisfactorily explained by theologians - indeed, they are usually quoted without comment - it is made abundantly clear that already during his lifetime, Jesus was being confused with John:

“And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesaria Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? And they answered, John the Baptist ...” (Mark 8:27,28; Luke 9:18,19).

“And Herod heard (of Jesus); (for his name was spread abroad.) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead ... But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead”. (Mark 6:14,16).

The parallel passage from Luke (9:7-9) has an informative variation: “Now Herod the tetrarch heard all that was done by (Jesus): and he was perplexed, because it was said of some, that John was risen from the dead ...”

Herod might well be perplexed; his perplexity is that of all questioners in every generation who have asked “Who was Jesus?” and have been confused with John allegedly risen from the dead. Not only Herod, but others, further north, at Caesaria Philippi, and still further, at Tarsus, mistook Jesus for John and fused them into a single hero. Here is the crux of the Christian confusion, here the crux of the Cross. If the Baptist was still known in Herod's domain and halw-way to Damascus, his name was lost on the road to Tarsus and only Jesus survived. In his own writings Paul nowhere mentions John the Baptist. He has been completely absorbed into the one who outlived him, into Jesus. The later evangelists, exploring the background of Jesus, uncover the Baptist.

Jesus and John must have been very close, must have collaborated often, met often, exchanged followers, perhaps even resembled each other for this syncretism to have taken place, for it certainly did take place. And the resurrection of Jesus was due, at least in part, to the rumored resurrection of John, accepted by a perplexed Herod. Perhaps it is in these rumors of resurrection, the resurrection of the alias, the shadow of Jesus, that we have the origin of the resurrection of Jesus himself.

So Christ is not one, he is two. Christ is a tale of two heroes. He is Jesus peeping through the veil of the Baptist. Christ is a palimpsest on which the partially erased John has been overwritten with Jesus. The adoration, adulation and worship of Jesus involves a degree - a very large degree - of mistaken identity. Veneration for Christ Jesus is misplaced; it is meant for Christ John. In just three significant words (1Cor. 1:13) Paul highlights the central problem in the understanding of Christian origins: “Is Christ divided?”

Emphatically, yes!

davidmartin
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Re: Jesus Alias Christ; a Theological Detection (by Simon S. Levin)

Post by davidmartin »

Well, the funny thing here is if one takes literally the Clementines that John had a female companion who became the companion of each of his successors including Jesus then the only one who is not divided is her! It's rather fascinating to imagine a constant like this, what stories could she tell and have the right to tell and perhaps did tell? The possibility exists, yet the chance of realistically expressing it is minimal with only the skimpiest evidence. still in the back of my mind that possibility lurks and retains its appeal and even helps me navigate the seeming impossibilities that are at hand
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