Three books on Jesus and Christianity

From a Letter to a friend:

1. If you want a challenging book to read I suggest "James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Robert H. Eisenman.  1000 pages of historical analysis of rare texts and scholarship.   Dense and overwhelming, yet riveting and probably true.. 

 I got Bronchitis about 8 years ago was deathly ill for three weeks.  I lain on my couch and read the entire book.

Thesis: James was the first leader of the Early Christian church which was Ebionite Jewish Christian.   Apostle Paul was an "apostate" that introduced a different form of "Pauline Christianity" to appeal to Gentiles.   There was violent confrontation between the two people and groups instigated by Paul.

Eventually, "Pauline Christianity" became the dominant form of philosophical interpretation (as expressed by the Bible we read today) and James became largely removed from the bible story (except the Book attributed to him).   

This would explain why the gospels and books of the bible are written in Greek, when Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic.

2. According to Eisenman, all these events were obscured by the Jewish Wars against Rome in 66-70 CE and 126-130 CE.  In the second war, every tree in Israel was cut down and every book was burned.  Jerusalem was destroyed and no one was allowed to live there for 100 years.

Before the first revolt in 66 CE, the Jewish Christians left Jerusalem and migrated to Syria where they and their descendants lived until their form of Christianity was declared a Heresy 200 - 300 years later.   Many of their descendants were burned alive in their Churches by forces loyal to Rome.  Their primary text was called the Gospel of the Hebrews and no copies have survived to this day.  It was written in Aramaic and was similar to the Gospel of  Mathew with no Virgin Birth story.

Apparently Roman soldiers followed the group to Syria in 80 AD (or so) and killed all the members of Jesus's immediate family.  This was because Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews (which was capital offense crime against Rome).  This is when Jude died.  Thomas escaped and went to India where he is reputed to have founded a Church that exists to this day.

Jesus was not from Nazareth.  Nazareth, as a city, did not exist until around 200 AD. Most likely Jesus took a Nazerite vow, which was the same vow that Samson took to avoid linen, wine, and to keep his hair and beard long and not cut.  This would explain why Jesus is pictured with long hair.

3. Apparently the doctrine and practices of the Christian Church today are more similar to the Hellenistic Mystery schools than they are to the original practices and beliefs of the original Ebionite Jewish Christians.

There is a book called "The Christ Conspiracy - The Greatest Story Ever Sold" by Acharya S. that details the similarities of the Christian mythology with 19 other (and pre-existing) stories of humans that obtained divinity and were born again  (Osiris, Mithras, Krishna, Dionysus, Sol Invictus, are just a few).  It is astounding how similar all the stories are with a virgin birth, youthful insight, miracle working, magical signs, death and resurrection.

4. Another book called "You will not Taste Death – Jesus and Epicureanism" by Jack W. Hanna, details the similarity of Jesus philosophy to that of the Greek philosophical school of the Epicureans.  The Epicureans lived "outside of society" and had disdain for all common social conventions and norms, frequently living as beggars and making obnoxious commentary on current events.

He uses the Gospel of Thomas as reference and also does an amazing job of analyzing the last days of Jesus using the sequence of sayings in the text as a reference.   The Gospel of Thomas is a fascinating non-canonical work found at Nag Hammadi.   Possibly the most original text of all, it just consists of a collection of sayings.   About a third of the sayings are identical with the New Testament Gospel sayings.   The rest are more metaphysical in nature like Zen Buddhist Koans.

5. In conclusion, it seems to me that the fundamental concept in contemporary Christianity of "Salvation through Faith" is not what the original Ebionite Christians understood the message of Jesus to be.

To them, a spiritual life was "the practice;" which was an austere communal non-materialistic vegetarian lifestyle of philosophical contemplation, spiritual cleanliness, and prayer.   They believed that "faith follows practice," or   "enough practice will form the correct mind to develop true belief and deep understanding."

In contrast, you might say that Apostle Paul preached a doctrine of "faith inspires practice," or "desire for spiritual practice and lifestyle is a natural result of the understanding that is awakened by the faith shown in professing true belief."

There is a substantial philosophical difference between those two traditions. 

6) Curious facts: The followers of John the Baptist exist to this day; originally surviving in Iraq and recently migrated to Australia.   Called Mandeans, they have a Gnostic worldview and consider John the Baptist to be the prophet.

Most likely John the Baptist ate biscuits and honey.  The Aramaic word for biscuit being very similar to locust.  This was probably mis-translated to locusts to discredit The Baptist among early Christians.

7) Around 200CE the prophet Mani was born in Persia.  He claimed he was born to correct some teachings of Jesus.  Like Jesus he performed miracles, healed the sick and raised the dead.  Unlike Jesus, he wrote his own scriptures.  At one time his religion of Manicheism stretched from China to Rome and had more followers than the Roman Catholic Church..  In 1200AD the largest temple in the capital city of China was a Manichean Temple.  Saint Augustine was a follower of Mani for almost ten years before he converted to Christianity and later became its greatest theologian.

April 2, 2015

William A Schaeffer

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William Schaeffer