The Betrayal

by W. Michael Gear

  57 The arguments that follow, presented by Barnabas, are historically accurate. The Jewish and pagan traditions about Jesus’ illegitimacy were strong. Celsus’ version of this story, written in 178 C.E. in his work titled On the True Doctrine, says that Mary was pregnant by a Roman soldier named Panthera and was driven away by her husband for adultery. While much of Celsus’ work is clearly polemical, it’s unlikely that he made up Panthera’s name or occupation. He was probably reporting information he’d heard.

  In addition to the sources mentioned by Barnabas, the Toledoth Yeshu, the Jewish story about the life of Jesus that chronicles the ben Pantera story, dates to the 900s, though the Aramaic original may be from the 400s, and the work probably contains fossil remnants of traditions that date to the second century, and were perhaps influenced by Celsus’ work. For more on this see the Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 16, the entry by J. Dan, Toledot Yeshu.

  Also, the canonical gospels themselves provide evidence. In John 8:41, Jesus is sparring with his Jewish critics in Jerusalem and they say “We were not born of fornication!” as if to imply as you were. As well, in the Gospel of Nicodemus, which dates to the 300s, but probably has origins in the late 100s, there is an interesting reference. In the story, Jesus is on trial before Pilate and one of his enemies charges, “You were born of fornication,” which demonstrates the persistence of the illegitimacy stories.

  In fact, the ben Pantera tradition was so widespread and persistent that early Christians could not simply dismiss it as a malicious lie propagated by Jewish opponents; they had to find a way to explain it. So, for example, in the fourth century, Epiphanius gave Pantera a place in the holy family, claiming that Joseph’s father was known as Jacob Pantera. As late as the eighth century, attempts were still being made to explain it away, as we see when John of Damascus writes that Mary’s great-grandfather was named Panthera.

  The best synopses of the Pantera evidence can be found in three books: Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, pp. 46–61; Jane Schaberg’s book The Illegitimacy of Jesus, pp. 156–178; and James D. Tabor’s book The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 64–72.

  58 Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera was buried in Bingerbruck, Germany. His tombstone is still preserved in the museum of Roman antiquities, the Romerhalle, in the town of Bad Kreuznach, Germany. The tombstone says simply: Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40 years of service, of the first cohort of archers, lies here.

  59 The Essene Odyssey, by Hugh Schonfield, discusses the Marham-i-Isa in greater detail: p. 121.

  60 Psalms 114:3ff; 148:8 and PGM V. 136 f.

  61 See the Anchor Bible Dictionary entries for “Joses,” “Joseph,” and “Je-hozadak .” Also Schonfield, pp. 40–41, for the Suffering ben Joseph tradition.

  62 The word tekton is generally translated in the New Testament as “carpenter,” but it referred to anyone who worked in stone, wood, horn, or even ivory—and was particularly used for stoneworkers.

  63 Which Matthew 28:1 correctly reports. The Greek word for “Sabbaths” is plural in his gospel.

  64 The Gospel of Philip, 66:5–20.

  65 The Gospel of Philip, 63:1.

  66 See the Anchor Bible Dictionary entry for “Nazorean.”

  67 Josephus says (Antiquities 18.2.26) the census took place in 6 or 7 C.E. Also, see the Anchor Bible Dictionary entry for “Quirinius” for a full discussion of why Luke was mistaken.

  68 For both the murder of James and the Annas-Jesus family rivalry, see Tabor, pp. 284–288.

  69 The Second Apocalypse of James, 61:9–62:12.

  70 In many early writings, for example those of Augustine and Gregory the Great, as well as Gnostic texts like the Secret Gospel of Mark, Mary Magdalen and Mary of Bethany are identified as the same person. Actually, this makes more sense, especially if you think of “Mary of Bethany” as describing where she came from, and “Mary Magdalen” as describing her profession. See the following for more on this.

  71 The town Magdala, from which Mary Magdalen is supposed to have come, is not mentioned by this name in the Bible, though the supposed adjectival form, “Magdalene,” occurs. However, the town is generally identified with Migdal Nunnaya of the Talmud (b. Pesah. 46a), and the Greek city of Taricheae. The problem is that Migdal Nunnaya was one mile north of the city of Tiberias, but Josephus says that Taricheae was 3.6 Roman miles from Tiberias, which means they can’t be the same place. Because of this, Magdala has always been uncertain. The Talmudic documents, b. Sabb. 104b and b. Sanh. 67A, may provide the answer. They refer to “Miriam the hairdresser,” or in Hebrew, megaddela. This presupposes that the Greek writers of the New Testament just didn’t understand the Hebrew term. But if megaddela is the correct word, it may explain where Mary got the money to support Jesus’ ministry.

  72 Each of the four approved gospels mentions this town only once and always in the context of Joseph of Arimathea. Since there is no known town of this name, scholars have assumed it is most likely identical with either modern Ramathain, which Josephus mentions (Ant. 13.4.9), or Rathamein. However, in the fourth century, Eusebios identified it as Aramathem-Sophim, near Thamna and Lydda (Onomasticon, 144.28). Additional traditions urge Arimathea’s location at modern Rentis, which is fifteen miles east of Jaffa, or er-Ram, or perhaps el-Birah-Ramallah, near Jerusalem. The simple fact is that the Hebrew term haramata, or haramati, is not a town, but a description of an area, which would have been known at the time as “the highlands,” and is probably associated with the Shephelah hills area twenty miles east of Jaffa. More information is available in the Anchor Bible Dictionary under the entry “Arimathea.” See also Cohn, p. 237.

  73 Zechariah 6:13.

  74 She’s referring, of course, to the murder of John the Baptist.

  75 The Greek word pappas, became pappa, “daddy,” in Latin, and “pope” in English. The term pappas was used by early Christians of a bishop to whom they bore a filial relationship, that is a relationship where they stood as child to parent. For example, North African Christians called the bishop of Alexandria Pappas, but called the leader of the Roman church, “the bishop of Rome.” There has never been a single pope in Christianity, and this was especially true of early Christianity where many bishops oversaw regional churches. Until the fourth century the bishop of Rome’s authority rested in being the “successor of Peter and Paul,” because those evangelists had presumably been martyred in Rome. The narrow reading of Matthew 16:18, however, led Rome to drop Paul’s name. But it wasn’t until the year 1216, and Innocent III, that the title “successor of Peter” was changed to “vicar of Christ.”

  76 When Jesus declared that the “kingdom of God is at hand,” he was not being metaphorical. He meant it. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has taught us that there was a definite timetable according to which the events surrounding the End of the World would unfold, and Jesus was counting them down. He truly believed that his generation would witness the Apocalypse (Mark 13:30). His followers also understood this literally. In I Corinthians 7:29, Paul wrote that “the appointed time has grown very short,” and James said, “the Judge is standing at the door” (James 5:9). In I Peter 4:7, it’s proclaimed that “the end of all things in at hand.”

  77 Mark gives the impression that Jesus’ ministry lasted about a year, or perhaps a little longer. The reason for this assessment is that he mentions only one Passover feast, the Passover of Jesus’ death. John, however, says Jesus’ ministry lasted two or three years. Actually, as Meier points out in A Marginal Jew, vol. 1, pp. 403–05, the minimum amount of time necessitated by the events in John is two years plus a month or two. Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the first Passover in his ministry in John 1:35–2:12. At the feeding of the five thousand we are told that the second Passover was near (6:4), and Jesus goes to Jerusalem for his third and last Passover in 11:55; 12:1,12; 13:1; 18:28.

  78 M. Sanhedrin VI 4.

  79 We did not use the story of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus because it is suspect. The embarrassingly meager
sum he was paid could not have been a motivation. Not only that, no one needed to betray Jesus. While he was in Jerusalem, he was preaching openly in the Temple. He could have been arrested by anyone at any time. There is only one logical reason for Judas to have gone to the authorities that night, and that is if Jesus knew he was going to be arrested and selected Judas to contact the Romans specifically to avoid the riot and bloodshed that might surround his arrest. It is also possible that the story of Judas is a late-first-century attempt to fulfill the prophecies found in Psalms 41:9 and 55:12–14; Isaiah 53; and Zechariah 11:12–13.

  80 Luke, 22:54–55.

  81 A condemnation (guilty sentence) is found only in Mark 14:64. Matthew 26:66 records that the members of the Sanhedrin “said” he was guilty. Luke 22:71 has the members merely saying, “What need we any further witness?” And John deletes the entire trial, probably because he understood Jewish law better than the other Greek-speaking evangelists. In fact, the ignorance of Jewish law betrayed by Mark, Matthew, and Luke is colossal.

  It is simply impossible that there was a trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin. According to Jewish law, the Sanhedrin could not try a criminal case in a private house, even the high priest’s house; it was not allowed to try cases at night, or on festival days, or the eve of festivals—all of which the gospels say happened. The conclusion, therefore, must be that there was no trial before the Sanhedrin. However, it is likely that the Sanhedrin did hold a Council meeting to examine the charges upon which Jesus would be tried by Rome the next morning. Members of the court could and did consult with each other in their private homes at night. This was perfectly lawful (M. Sanhedrin V 5). The question, then, is why would they have bothered? It was the eve of Pesach, or Passover. They all had complicated ritual obligations to attend to, not to mention the burden of preparing for and hosting many family members who had arrived for the festival.

  It has been suggested that the Sanhedrin met to gather evidence for Rome. First of all, there was no Roman law requiring such a preliminary hearing, even for a capital offense. And to suggest that Pontius Pilate would have asked a Jewish court to conduct an inquiry about a crime under Roman law is ridiculous. It would have undermined Pilate’s supreme authority in such cases—a thing he would never have tolerated.

  There is only one reason that men of good conscience would have considered Jesus’ arrest to be a matter of utmost urgency that necessitated convening the Council on the eve of a feast day: There was more at stake than just one man’s life.

  Jesus was, according to all sources, beloved by the majority of the people, and certainly some members of the Sanhedrin felt the same way. At least Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus could have been counted upon to defend a beloved Jewish son against the hated Roman oppressors. But we also know that Pilate had already assembled three legions around Jerusalem specifically because he expected trouble over Passover. Or maybe because he wanted to provoke trouble.

  Our conclusion is that the Sanhedrin probably met for the reasons defined in this novel: It must have been trying desperately to find evidence to prevent Jesus’ crucifixion, which it greatly feared would spark a revolt that would result in the destruction of Israel.

  The finest analysis of this matter is found in Judge Haim Cohn’s book, The Trial and Death of Jesus, pp. 94–190.

  82 Codex Theodosius IX 3,1.

  83 B. Shabbat 88b.

  84 See the Anchor Bible Dictionary entry for “Annas.”

  85 Matthew 22:41–45.

  86 This is exactly the same argument Gamliel uses to defend Peter a decade later (Acts 5:26–39) in his trial before the Sanhedrin. There is no reason to assume Gamliel would have argued differently in Jesus’ case.

  87 Mark 14:56, 14:59.

  88 Psalms 4:2, 57:4; Jeremiah 49:18, 33; Ezekiel 2:1; and Daniel 7:13.

  89 Most scholars agree that Matthew’s “Son of God,” and Mark’s “Son of the Blessed” are later interpolations from a time when the dogma of the divine descent of Jesus had already been introduced into Christian belief. Please see the Anchor Bible Dictionary for more information on these terms.

  90 The Gospel of Philip, 73:22–23.

  91 The Gospel of Nicodemus, chapters XII–XIII.

  92 While Jews were not allowed to return to Jerusalem after the siege in the year 70, Christians were. Christians were at first expelled along with Jews, but were permitted to return a few years later because they proclaimed they were not part of the Jewish community, and said they welcomed the destruction of the Temple as the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecies. They were allowed to resettle the Mount Zion portion of the city. For more on this, see Meir Ben-Dov’s Historical Atlas of Jerusalem, pp. 142–52, and the Anchor Bible Dictionary entry for “Temple–Jerusalem.”

  Jews were finally given permission to return to Jerusalem in the year 362. The new emperor, who would become known as Julian the Apostate, gladly allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem. He hated Christianity. Right after he decreed the end of the Christian empire, he ordered the Jewish Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem. To place “one stone upon another” was—in Julian’s mind—to conquer the false messiah. He reigned for less than two years, dying during a failed invasion of Persia. More prophetic to Christians was the fact that Jews excavating the new foundation of the Temple touched off mighty explosions of gaseous deposits, which ended the last attempt to rebuild the Temple. Christians, naturally, saw this as the miraculous intervention of God. (See more on this in Carroll, pp. 205–207.)

  93 These are the oral legends that circulated at the time of the Council of Nicea. The best recommendation for all matters pertaining to Constantine is James Carroll’s book Constantine’s Sword. For more on his political agenda, see pp. 191–93.

  94 Yes, the Square of the Column is real. See Meir Ben-Dov, Historical Atlas of Jerusalem, p. 120.

  95 Most scholars hold that the probable location for Pilate’s Praetorium is Herod’s Upper Palace along the western wall of the city. We do not agree. There is a total lack of any early Christian tradition regarding that location. The earliest Christian writings say that the Praetorium stood near the western slope of the Tyropoeon valley, opposite the southwest corner of the Temple Mount. In 333 C.E., the Anonymous of Bordeaux, who provides us with the earliest pilgrim account, reported that the crumbling walls of the Praetorium faced the Tyropoeon valley, and in 450 C.E. a church was built on the site. If early Christian tradition is correct, the only thing that could have stood in these locations was the ancient royal palace of the Has-moneans.

  96 Judge Haim Cohn’s analysis of Roman law as it applied to the trial of Jesus before Pilate is fascinating reading, pp.142–90.

  97 In rabbinic literature the evidence for the term “rabbi” as a mode of address prior to the year 70 is scant. Before 70, men were apparently not referred to by the title “rabbi” (e.g. Hillel, Shammai), but after 70, they were. For example, Rabbi Aquiba. Though Luke does not use the term “rabbi” for Jesus, Matthew does, and it is apparently polemical, since Judas is the only person who calls Jesus “rabbi.” Mark and John also call Jesus “rabbi.” But these usages are probably anachronistic. After all, the gospels were written just before or after the year 70. We know of one literary reference in the period before 70 C.E. where rab is used to designate a teacher (t. Pesah. 4.13–14), and there is one ossuary in Jerusalem that also dates to around this time period that is inscribed RAB HANA. We have, as a result, chosen to use the term Rab in the same way that one would say “teacher.” For a more detailed discussion on this, please see Meier, vol. 1, pp. 119–20.

  98 The silence of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pilate has been seen as a fulfillment of Isaiah 52:13–53:12. Whether or not Jesus deliberately intended to play the role of the Isaianic servant by remaining silent “as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (KJV), or whether he was obeying the Jewish custom of proper behavior when insulted, we cannot say. But Jesus undoubtedly knew these passages very well.

  99 There i
s no report of Jesus’ trial in the imperial archives of Rome, though Pilate would have been required to make such a report. (See M. Craveri, The Life of Jesus, p. 392.)

  Does that mean there was no trial? It may. After all, a “confession” would have made an official trial unnecessary. Also, there is a letter quoted by Philo, a contemporary of Yeshua’s, regarding Pilate. In his De Legatione ad Gaium, Philo quotes a letter from King Agrippa I to Emperor Caligula, which describes Pilate’s government as characterized by “his venality, his violence, his thefts, his assaults, his abusive behavior, his frequent executions of untried prisoners and his endless savage ferocity.” Pilate was well known for executing prisoners who had never seen trial. Add to this the fact that the Roman historian Tacitus (c. 55–115 C.E.) writes in his Annales, 15:44, only that Pilate had Jesus executed. He mentions no trial.

  100 The date was Nisan the 14th, or, by our calendar, April 7, the year 30. See Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 1, pp. 401–02. Keep in mind that at around 7:00 P.M. that night the date changed to Nisan the 15th, and Passover began. If Jesus “rose” on Sunday, it had technically only been two and a half days.