Gospel (136 page)

5
. From the time of Antiochus IV, there was an operation that would render the circumcised apparently uncircumcised, which prevented social embarrassment when Jews and Greeks engaged in gymnastics. Years of Jewish unrest resulted from the clash of pro- and antigymnasium parties in the 100s
B.C.E.
See H. H. Ben Sasson, ed.,
A History of the Jewish Peoples
(Harvard, 1976).

6
. Nazirene (or Nazarene, as Paul claims for himself in
Acts
24:5) is used throughout to denote the Jewish purity-cult (whose strictures are listed in
Numbers
6), which evolved into the Christian sect of still-observant Jews in the 100s, also termed the Ebionite Church.
   Nowhere in this gospel does the Greek term “Christian” appear. Eκκλ
ɛ
σ
α is the term used for the whole Church throughout;
Συναγωγ
for the individual church buildings.

7
. Interesting as well, nowhere in this gospel account does the proper name “Jesus” occur, though there could scarcely be any doubt the figure is Jesus. “Teacher of Righteousness” as a title appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls (the
Habakkuk Commentaries,
1950 Burrows trans., St. Mark's Monastery) honoring an unknown master, and suggests a preexisting cult of persecuted rabbis that came to include John the Baptist and Jesus.

8
. Micaiah warned Jehosophat, not Jeroboam.
2 Chronicles
18.

9
. The author reckons the history of Xerxes's campaign was the historian Herodotus's last volume.

10
. None of these works is extant. Quite likely
All Heresies Refuted
was among the first
odia theologica
in a tradition followed by Irenaeus in his
Heresies Answered
(ca. 185
C.E.
,) or Hippolytus in his
Refutation of All Heresies
(ca. 222
C.E
).

11
. It is tempting to speculate that this is perhaps a descendant of Simeon (or Jesus) Ben Sira, the greatest literary figure of the age, whose grandson in Alexandria translated and disseminated his Wisdom,
Ecclesiasticus,
in the 100s
B.C.E.

12
. The author mordantly refers to the quibble over a pot blocking the access to a synagogue in Caesarea, which began the war that destroyed Jerusalem; see
The Jewish War,
II.xiv.4.
   The Sicarii (after
sica,
for dagger) were the fanatical fringe of the Zealots of the First Century, who assassinated any dissenter or perceived Roman collaborator. They evolved to be little better than terrorists and robbers, forming and betraying countless alliances as they saw fit, fighting to their virtual extermination at Masada in 73
C.E.

13
. A word about the respective ages of the two brothers.
   According to Josephus's own geneaology in the
Life,
par. 1, he was born in 37
C.E.
(“the first year of the reign of Gaius Caesar”). It can be deduced from the following (see 2:11) that Josephus's brother, the putative author of this document, was born in 14
C.E.
, making a gap of twenty-three years between the brothers. Josephus writes in
Life,
par. 2, that “I myself was brought up by my brother,” and seems to have been the offspring of his father's second marriage.

14
. The author intends Seir,
Genesis
33:14.

15
. Meroe is 120 miles northeast of modern-day Khartoum in the Sudan.

16
.
παρακαλ
ω
an exhortatory constant for First-Century irenic writings.

17
.
πορν
ɛ
α
and “sodomies.” Much has been written about the First-Century obsession with
porneia;
see the excellent R. M. Werner,
Die antiken Klassiker und die Unanstandigheit
(Freiburg, 1982). “Sodomies” should be taken as any improper act or inhospitality; a refusal to feed a stranger in this era could be termed a sodomy.

18
.
μαλακ
α
This can mean “masturbation” but was also used by First-Century writers to mean any weak-willed descent into carnality.

Chapter 2

1
. There are three Christian references in the thousands of pages of Josephus: 1) a passage declaring Jesus the Messiah (
Antiquities
XVIII.iii.3), which was unconvincingly interpolated by later Christians in one little paragraph in the middle of an irrelevant explanation. 2) Another reference to the fanatical high priest Ananus and his stoning of James, “the brother of Jesus who was called Christ” (
Antiquities
XX.ix.1), which is probably untampered-with except for the above quote. And 3) a final reference mentioning John the Baptist (
Antiquities
XVIII.v.2), which, though perhaps doctored, is almost surely legitimate. John the Baptist is mentioned as a martyr of Herod and his connection to Christianity is never noted. It can be truthfully said that there is no credible evidence Jesus existed in the most meticulous, if subjective, historian of the period.
   However,
Antiquities of the Jews
was written ca. 93
C.E.
and it is odd to the point of suspicion that Josephus, a former priest of the Pharisee party (who attended every intricacy and subsect of Judaism), could fail to notice a sect that, at that point, was rivaling orthodox Jews in population in many Judean towns, had been the subject of Roman and, as with Ananus, Jewish persecutions, and had garnered ritual curses from famous, traditional Yavneh rabbis (from the Amidah, “May the Nazarenes and the
minim
[heretics] perish in an instant!” ca. 90–100
C.E.
)

2
. The author has not read Josephus's account attentively. Some 2000 deserters from the Siege of Jerusalem fell afoul of Arabian and Syrian troops who dissected them alive looking for swallowed gold (
Jewish War,
V.xiii.4). Josephus records that Titus forbade this practice and made the dissections punishable by death, but this gospel's account might be accurate because, as accused, Josephus wrote to curry Roman favor.

3
. The execution of Jesus' brother, James (and many other Jews who disagreed with the Sadducees), in 62
C.E.
, led to a toppling of Ananus, the High Priest responsible, suggesting some degree of tolerance for Early Christians in the Jewish mainstream, or perhaps merely Roman ire at the Jews conducting their own executions.

4
. Hegesippus (ca. 110–180
C.E.
) is unreliable on many things, but he records a Simon/Symenon, son of Cleopas (
John
19:25 and maybe
Luke
24:18), as second bishop of Jerusalem. He was martyred, according to tradition, in 104
C.E.
The elevation of Simon/Symenon shows a tendency of the Early Church to keep the bishop's throne in the actual extended family of Jesus, since
John
19:25 also has it that Cleopas was Jesus' uncle, making Symenon Jesus' cousin. The Galilean Nazirene community claimed descent in Trajan's time from Jesus' second of three brothers, Judas (who is mentioned in
Matthew
13:55).

5
. One sees that many Jewish Christians (later termed the Ebionites) attended Temple and had a now-obscure ceremony before the Sabbath on Friday, the day of the Crucifixion.
   The Christian Sabbath was moved to the worship-day of the sun cult, Sunday, the Emperor Constantine's preference in the 300s. Jesus' birth was fixed on December 25th, the long-held birthday of the Sun god and Mithra, the Persian messiah-figure. Constantine continued to worship the Sun god and Jesus concurrently in his reign. As late as the 500s, Gregory the Great chastises his flock for sun-worship rites at St. Peter's. Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian all found the common ritual of Sunday worship propitious for the spread of Christianity, since Christ himself said he was “the Light.” The lighting of Advent and Christmas candles is a survival of the pagan festival of lights and has no Christian source.

6
. Epaphrodius is perhaps Epaphroditus of
Philippians
4:18.
“Kuthim”
was a favorite derogatory reference to the savage Samaritans.

7
Matthew
8:28.

8
.
Sophia
is the Hebrew spirit of Wisdom, whose Graeco-Jewish and Christian cult peaks from 100
B.C.E.
–100s
C.E.
; she became popular enough to threaten the all-masculine theology of the time. The
Wisdom of Solomon,
a song of praise to this female spirit of wisdom (ca. 100
B.C.E.
), was the most pervasive work concerning
Sophia
and elements show up in this document, in Philo and
John
(who both borrow the preconceived
logos
), and in Deutero-Paul's epistles
Ephesians
and
Hebrews. Sophia
and the Holy Spirit were synonymous for much of the Early Church; Byzantium's greatest church, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, built by the Emperor Justinian in 548, is not to a female St. Sophia (as was later claimed) but to the divine, female spirit of Wisdom.