The Legacy of Solomon

by John Francis Kinsella

‘To understand Judea at the time the Romans destroyed the Temple it is necessary to examine the reasons why Christianity came into existence.’

  ‘Oh,’ exclaimed Laura, on the defensive given her Irish background, even though she was a rare churchgoer and her Jewish ancestors were more folklore to her than anything else she had inherited a rebels sensitivity to religious questions.

  ‘Jesus Christ was a revolutionary,’ said Shlomo.

  ‘A kind of Che Guevara I suppose!’

  ‘Yes, in a way of speaking he was.’

  ‘I didn’t know revolutionaries existed at that time.’

  ‘They were not called revolutionaries, they were wise men, messiahs, saviours and many other things. They did not promise riches, that was impossible, but what they could promise was a better after life.’

  ‘Didn’t existing religions promise that?’

  ‘No, Judaism was a harsh religion with a dominating, intimidating and vengeful god. The High priests and his priestly servants ruled with a rod of iron, demanding that the Jews following an almost impossibly strict way of life requiring constant purification, sacrificial offerings and forgiveness.’

  ‘Sacrificial?’

  ‘Yes, I will come back to that, first I will talk of a Judea that had been Hellenized since the time of Alexander the Great, that is over a period of three hundred years, the elite and educated spoke Greek , the Romans had only recently arrived. This paved the way for the development of Christianity since Greek culture and philosophy was more humanistic without an all powerful unique and intimidating, vengeful, God.’

  ‘Compared to the god of the Jews?’

  ‘Yes, in addition Imperial Rome brought change and what was then a more modern and materialistic vision of life, not forgetting the fact that life in the Roman Empire was for the majority was brief and arduous.’

  ‘So this was a breeding ground for your revolutionaries.’

  ‘It was an alternative to the domination of the Temple’s priests. The Jesus cult simply asked its followers to sell their possessions and give to the poor, in return promising them the treasures of heaven. All they had to do was follow him. This was extraordinarily simple compared to the complex and demanding rites of Judaism, it was a revolutionary concept, no fasting, no sacrifices, no purification, Jesus offered the first form of universal democracy for all whether they were rich, poor, slave or sinner.’

  Christianty offered brotherhood and friendship in a ritual gathering and shared dinner with philosophical discussions. Their God was a god of mercy and compassion, a god for all mankind, not just for the chosen people. He offered justice and salvation, in contrast to the angry demanding Jewish God.

  Jesus was born at the time of Herod the Great a client king of the Romans. In modern terms Jesus was a revolutionary, a Che Guevara, with a philosophy that offered freedom and promised a place in paradise for the poor and the good. Today that could seem a simplistic vision, but in those times the poor were downtrodden by the rich, the powerful and above all the priests wielding the threat of eternal damnation by an all seeing and vengeful god. The Jews were the Chosen People living the Promised Land, all others were excluded as shown by the inscription at the entrance to the Temple that threatened instant death to any non-Jew who dared entered their place of worship.

  The burning question for many is whether in fact Jesus had ever existed. Evidently for Christians this is a question of faith, but for objective scientific researchers there is little or no evidence that Jesus existed apart from what is written in the Gospels. There are no records whatsoever of Jesus' life and trial in the Roman records of that time and the earliest of the New Testament writings dated at the best thirty years after presumed date of his death. No other references is made to Jesus in any other Roman history, literature or inscription during his lifetime, something astonishing considering that the Gospels speak of the great impact he had on those times.

  The only other source from that time is that of Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities, a huge work that contains only two references one of which is a known insertion and the second one is very questionable. Josephus made several references to John the Baptist, but since his writings have come down to us from Christian sources the question of interpolation is always present. This mention is known as Testimonium Flavianum, a subject of much controversy since the seventeenth century.

  One of the suspected interpolations occurs in the Greek Version of Josephus’ Antiquities, where it is written; about this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not cease. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life. For the prophets of God had prophesied these and myriads of other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still up to now, not disappeared.

  Then in Agapios’ Kitab al-Unwan, an Arabic summary of Antiquities dating from the 10th century mentions: At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.

  High priests up to the time of the destruction of the Second Temple had been appointed by the Roman governor in Judea, something that many Jews considered as an unacceptable interference in their religion, many seeing the Temple and its institutions as an instrument of Roman power and domination. This resulted in growing political agitation and the appearance of politicised religious movements such as the Christians, which was not perceived as a new religion, since Jesus was a Jew, but a revitalised and more open version of Judaism. At that time other sects had appeared for similar reasons such as the Essenes of the Dead Sea scrolls, who had spoken of a miracle worker though without naming him.

  The destruction of the Second Temple had the effect of destroying the seat of Judaism, with its head, the High Priest together with the priesthood and its role as guardians of Jewish religious doctrine and its scared rituals. The consequence was a collapse of Judaism into factions with no one guiding leader.

  It appears that sometime around 50AD the followers of Jesus in Antioch formed the first Christian cult. There were several cults that gradually merged into one around the emerging Gospels and Epistles that were to become the canon of the church in the form of the New Testament. The gospel writers were converts to the new Christ cults.

  Christianity at the outset was a Jewish religion, but soon a Christianity broke away to become a distinct religion as it became the religion of Rome that had at one point considered Judaism before accepting the Jesus cult that was much more attractive to them. Judaism had too many constraints including circumcision. Christianity was a religion all could be a part of, without regard to ethnic origins or circumstances of social status, accidents of birth or location.

  The new movement, centred on the person of Jesus, was based on a model of that time, adopting and adding to the concepts and myths drawn from pre-existing religions and traditions. Life at that time of Christianity’s birth was steeped in mythology, superstition and miracles. For example crucifixion is linked to a number of Greek myths, such as for Dionysus, who is shown wearing a crown of ivy, dressed a purple, and given gall to drink before his crucifixion.

  The town where all Christians believe Jesus lived as a youth, Nazareth, was invented by Emperor Constantine's mother in the fourth century, who in her passion for building Christian churches in Palestine, gave the name to an existing village where she decided
to build a basilica dedicated to Jesus.

  The average Christian accepts the four Gospels as such, but there were many gospels, most were lost, but others have survived. If the canonic Gospels are examined it can be seen that Mark does not speak of the birth of Jesus as the legend of the manger in Bethlehem had not yet been integrated into the Christian story. Then Matthew drew on Mark’s gospel, followed by Luke who did likewise. As to John he wrote his gospel in the early years of the second century, four generations after the events

  Hellenic intellectualism in the Byzantine world gave birth to several Jesus movements that were transformed into cults, which were in conflict with each other developing heresies that spread with each local bishop having his own concepts of the new religion trying to impose them on his followers and others.

  The bishoprics of the main sects were situated in Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Carthage, which continued to wrangle with each other over dogma.

  Emperor Constantine and his co-emperor Lucinius prepared the Edict of Milan in 313AD, through a series of letters, which in effect of legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. Constantine himself was not a Christian, but he was baptised on his death bad, and his wife was a devout Christian. After Constantine had become the emperor of the whole Roman Empire, he convened the Council of Nicea in 325AD that resulted in the Apostolic Creed and the Catholic Church controlled by the emperor and organised on the lines of the government of the then Roman Empire, and the seat of the Church was established in Rome.

  Constantine gave Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, the task of preparing scriptures for his new festival of the resurrection, called Easter. Eusebius, one of the most notorious historical revisionists of ancient times, concerned by the contradictions in the profusion of texts, prepared a compilation that was to become the standard bible of the Eastern Church. The Bible for the Roman was compiled by Bishop Jerome of Dalmatia, at the demand of Damasus, the Bishop of Rome. His choice of New Testament works was governed by the works he'd already translated and standardized, which became known as the Vulgate Bible the standard Bible of the Roman Catholic Church until the sixteenth century.

  The Christian Bible is filled with errors and contradictions, though not all of them are accidental or poor translations. The problem was that the writers of the original documents used as source material often revised earlier material, which in turn, had been revised, then their work was revised again and again. With the problem of even more revisions were introduced, and almost always to suit some political or religious idea.

  The result is that it is impossible to know whether the words read have the same meaning as those intended by the original writers intended, in their long lost original texts, the is further complicated by the fact that many documents used were many generations removed from the originals. Therefore it can be reasonably assumed that the Bible as we know it today is the result of the innumerable revisions, translations, interpolations and cuts made by hundreds of people over centuries to countless lost documents.

  The Christian Church on which present day European philosophy and civilization is built was founded on the approximation of events that took place two thousand years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and the decisions of a vanished Roman civilisation based on religious concepts of nomadic Semitic tribesmen and their god Jehovah, whose origins are lost in the mist of time somewhere in pagan Mesopotamia.

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  Ancient Egypt