The Case for the Historical Jesus

What Your Marxist History Professor Didn't Tell You about Jesus Christ

Hey Folks,

Merry Christmas!

I’ve been taking a break from blogging lately, but yesterday I realized I have a number of pieces that are appropriate to the Christmas season, so I’m going to be posting them over the next few days.

As many of you know, I grew up religious. Specifically, I grew up Mennonite, which is a pacifist Christian denomination which began as a revolutionary peasant movement in the 16th century.

Unlike many people, my associations with religion are mostly positive. The church I grew up in was a true spiritual community, and its members were good people doing their best to live good lives.

When I got older, I learned about the dark side of Christianity, and I stopped identifying as a Christian. Around the same time, I started really questioning the veracity of scripture.

Once you start asking yourself “Is the Bible true?”, well, you kind of have to choose a path - rational skepticism or irrational faith.

For multiple reasons, an intelligent person cannot possibly take everything in the Bible at face value. There’s no historical or archaeological proof that King Solomon ever existed, for instance.

One Christian theologian famously said “I believe BECAUSE it is absurd.” He wasn’t joking.

(If you think that this is is stupid, I suggest meditating on the concept of the Holy Trinity. If you do so earnestly, aspiring to the simultaneous belief that God is one and that God is three, you may find that your brain short-circuits in a way that precipitates spiritual insight. Try it sometime!)

If you happen to have been raised with the Christian Mythos as your psycho-spiritual operating system, reconciling yourself to the fact that the Bible is not objectively true is very jarring.

Eventually, I suppose, most intellectual Christians reconcile themselves to the fact that we’ve got two hemispheres of our brains for a reason, and that there are different ways of approaching the Truth, which is ultimately beyond human understanding.

Other people, who are not so sentimental, will simply conclude that the Bible is a pack of ancient lies invented for the purposes of social control.

These people often don’t bother educating themselves about the history of religion, meaning that there are a heck of a lot of people out there who lack the basic tools for understanding the broad sweep of historical time.

Simply put, you cannot possibly even begin to understand the history of Western Civilization without understanding the Abrahamic religions, and you cannot begin to understand human culture, politics, or psychology without understanding the role that religion, spirituality, and Mythos has played in human societies since the beginning of time.

Many secularists today go so far as to believe that there never was such a person as Jesus Christ, and that the account of the life of the Christian Messiah was simply made up.

TWO QUESTIONS FOR SECULARISTS WHO BELIEVE THAT JESUS CHRIST IS A PURELY FICTIONAL CHARACTER

To those people, I have two questions.

1. Are you really so sure? Most people who believe that Jesus never existed don’t seem to have seriously investigated the question.

2. Which is more likely - that Jesus never existed, or that the Christ Mythos was based upon a true story which was subject to later distortions, embellishments, deletions, and additions?

I’ve taken an interest in this subject for a long time, and I have concluded that it is reasonable to assume that the story of Jesus Christ was based on the life of a real flesh-and-blood person, but many of the details of his life story are up for debate, including his actual name.

What you are about to read is an excerpt from a very amazing book called Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches by Marvin Harris, a giant in the field of cultural anthropology. The entire book is completely amazing, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. You can download it for free here.

The book is about “the riddles of culture” and deals with questions such why Jews have a taboo against eating pork and why Hindus have a taboo against killing cows.

Two of the chapters deal with the life of Jesus and the political context of the time in which he is supposed to have lived.

If you’re one of the people who think that Jesus Christ is a purely fictional character, I would suggest you do some homework. Might I suggest that you start with this Wikipedia page?

Here’s an excerpt:

The Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Jesus, his execution by Pontius Pilate, and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written c. AD 116), book 15, chapter 44.^[1]

The context of the passage is the six-day Great Fire of Rome that burned much of the city in AD 64 during the reign of Roman Emperor Nero.^[2] The passage is one of the earliest non-Christian references to the origins of Christianity, the execution of Christ described in the canonical gospels, and the presence and persecution of Christians in 1st-century Rome.^[3][4]

Pretty straightforward, wouldn’t you say? Your Marxist history professor didn’t tell you that Tacitus wrote about Christ, did he?

And we’re not talking about Biggus Dickus here, we’re talking about Tacitus, who The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature calls “one of the greatest historians of all time”.

Some kind of Christ figure was also mentioned by two other major non-Christian writers - Pliny the Younger and Flavius Josephus.

If you ask me, the belief that Jesus Christ was a real person is justified by the Principle of Parsimony.

To those who deny any historicity to the Christ Mythos, I’d like to point out that there are 28 historical figures mentioned in the New Testament.

I’m sure that some people will point out that the New Testament was written hundreds of years after Jesus was supposedly crucified. I would encourage such people to take a closer look at the evidence.

Some of Paul’s epistles, including 1 Thessalonians, Romans, Galatians, and Philippians, are believed to have been written between 50-60 A.D.

What’s more, the Gospel of Mark was probably written between 65-70 A.D., meaning that it was written 30 or 40 years after Jesus’s death. This makes it entirely plausible that it was written by a contemporary of the spiritual leader.

There are also numerous non-canonical Christian texts which date from the first and second centuries A.D., long before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.

Here’s a list of ten early Christian texts, courtesy of Chat GPT:

1. Didache (circa 50–100 CE)

• Full Title: The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.

• Content: A manual for Christian ethics, rituals, and church organization.

  • Covers topics like baptism, fasting, prayer (including the Lord's Prayer), and the Eucharist.

  • Provides practical advice for identifying true prophets and dealing with itinerant preachers.

• Significance: Offers a glimpse into the practices of early Christian communities and their efforts to maintain discipline and unity.

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2. 1 Clement (circa 96 CE)

• Author: Traditionally attributed to Clement of Rome, a bishop.

• Content: A letter from the church in Rome to the church in Corinth addressing a leadership dispute.

  • Urges unity and respect for church hierarchy.

  • Draws heavily on Old Testament examples and Pauline theology.

• Significance: Illustrates the early church’s concern with authority and order, hinting at the emerging structure of ecclesiastical leadership.

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3. Shepherd of Hermas (circa 100–150 CE)

• Content: A Christian allegory written in the form of visions, commandments, and parables.

  • Focuses on themes of repentance, sin, and forgiveness.

  • The protagonist, Hermas, interacts with a series of angelic figures and allegorical characters.

• Significance: Widely read in the early church and considered scriptural by some communities before the New Testament canon was finalized.

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4. Epistle of Barnabas (circa 70–130 CE)

• Content: An exhortative letter interpreting the Old Testament through a Christian lens.

  • Argues that Jewish rituals and laws were symbolic, pointing to Christ’s coming.

  • Promotes a stark contrast between Judaism and Christianity.

• Significance: Reflects early theological debates on the relationship between Jewish and Christian traditions.

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5. Gospel of Thomas (circa 50–140 CE)

• Content: A collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus.

  • Lacks a narrative structure; focuses on secret wisdom for spiritual enlightenment.

  • Contains parallels to the Synoptic Gospels but also includes unique sayings.

• Significance: Associated with Gnostic traditions, it provides an alternative view of Jesus as a teacher of esoteric knowledge.

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6. Gospel of Peter (circa 100–150 CE)

• Content: A fragmentary narrative of Jesus's trial, crucifixion, and resurrection.

  • Notable for its dramatic portrayal of the resurrection and anti-Jewish polemics.

• Significance: Offers insights into early Christian storytelling and theological emphases, especially concerning the Passion narrative.

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7. Infancy Gospel of James (circa 150 CE)

• Content: Focuses on the early life of Mary and the birth of Jesus.

  • Includes details about Mary’s miraculous birth, her upbringing in the temple, and the nativity of Jesus.

• Significance: Provides the basis for later Marian doctrines, such as the perpetual virginity of Mary.

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8. Acts of Paul and Thecla (circa 150 CE)

• Content: Narrates the adventures of Paul and his female disciple, Thecla.

  • Highlights themes of celibacy, gender equality, and martyrdom.

• Significance: Popular in early Christian communities, especially among women, for its portrayal of Thecla as a strong, independent Christian leader.

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9. Odes of Solomon (circa 100–200 CE)

• Content: A collection of hymns or psalms celebrating Christ and the Christian faith.

  • Rich in poetic and mystical imagery.

• Significance: Provides an early example of Christian worship and devotion.

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10. Apocalypse of Peter (circa 100–150 CE)

• Content: A visionary text describing the afterlife, focusing on the rewards of the righteous and the punishments of the wicked.

  • Likely influenced later depictions of hell and judgment.

• Significance: Shows the early Christian fascination with eschatology and divine justice.

WHO HAS THE BURDEN OF PROOF IN THE DEBATE ABOUT THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS CHRIST?

As I have pointed out many times before, it is impossible to prove a negative. That’s why the scientific method is based on disproving hypotheses.

The scientific method is all about approaching the truth through the process of elimination. By divesting oneself of one’s false beliefs, it is reasoned, one becomes more enlightened.

For that reason, you cannot engage in scientific inquiry without someone first making a positive assertion about reality (even if that assertion is tentative). A hypothesis is precisely that - a tentative positive assertion. One then seeks to disprove this assertion, and if no one succeeds in disproving it, it can be regarded as probably true.

So here’s my hypothesis:

The Christ Myth is based on the life of a real-live revolutionary who lived in Galilee sometimes between 50 B.C. and 50 A.D. In addition to being a political activist, he was also a spiritual teacher who was viewed by his followers as a messiah. He was executed by the Roman state and his followers went on to found a counterculture which later became a religion. When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, a brand new religion by combining elements of Zoroastrianism, Platonism, and Greco-Roman astro-theology onto the mythological foundation the early Christians had created.

In other words, Immortal Technique hit the nail on the head when he said:

“You murdered him, stole his religion, and painted him white”.

Anyway, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

for the Wild,

Crow Qu’appelle

P.S. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

(THIS IS MY FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS CAROL, BY THE WAY… ENJOY!)

And so long as we’re talking about Christianity, check out this interview I did with Derrick Broze!

THE CHRIST RIDDLE

(ON THE MYSTERY OF THE MESSIANIC TRADITION)

by Marvin Harris, excerpted from Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches

Christianity arose first among Jews living in Palestine. Belief in the coming of a savior called a messiah - a god who would look like a man - was an important feature of Judaism at the time of Christ.

The earliest followers of Jesus, almost all of whom were Jewish, believed that Jesus was this savior. ("Christ" is derived from krystos, which was the way Jews referred to their hoped-for savior when speaking Greek.)

To solve the riddle of the early Christian lifestyle, I shall first have to explain the basis of the Jewish belief in a messiah.

WHAT DOES THE WORD “MESSIAH” MEAN?

All ancient peoples--not unlike most modern ones- believed that battles could not be won without divine assistance. To win an empire, or merely to survive as an independent state, you needed warriors with whom ancestors, angels, or gods were willing to cooperate.

KING DAVID, O.G. MESSIAH, WAS THE OUTLAW LEADER OF A GUERRILLA ARMY

David, the founder of the first and largest Jewish empire, claimed to be in divine partnership with the Jewish God, Jahweh. The people called David messiah (Hebrew: mashia), a term which they also applied to priests, shields, David's predecessor Saul, and David's son Solomon. So messiah probably originally meant any person or thing possessing great holiness and sacred power. David was also called the Anointed One - the one who, by collaboration with Jahweh, was entitled to rule over Jahweh's earthly domains.

David was born Elhanan ben Jesse. The name David, meaning "great commander," was given to him to celebrate his victories on the battlefield. His rise to power from humble beginnings provided the basic inspiration - the life plan - for the ideal Jewish military-messianic career. He was born in Bethlehem and spent his youth as a shepherd. Later, he became the outlaw leader of a guerrilla movement in the Judean desert. He located his headquarters in a cave and achieved his victories against seemingly insuperable odds- epitomized in the fight against Goliath.

The Jewish priests insisted down to the time of Jesus that Jahweh had made a covenant with David. Jahweh had promised that David's dynasty would never end. But David's empire actually began to crumble shortly after his death. It disappeared temporarily when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and deported large numbers of Jews to Babylonia. Afterwards the Jewish state resumed a precarious existence as the dependent client of one or another imperial power.

WHY IS THE HOLY LAND LOCATED IN A MILITARY THRUWAY?

Jahweh told Moses: "Ye shall rule over many nations but they shall not rule over thee." Yet Jahweh's promised land was an unlikely spot from which to launch the conquest of the world. For one thing, it was a military thruway-the main corridor along which all the imperial armies of Asia, Africa, and Europe chased each other to and from Egypt. Before any indigenous imperial growth could take root in Palestine, it was stamped out by some million-footed monster of an army passing in one direction or the other. Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans sallied back and forth through the holy land, often burning the same place twice before they yielded to the next in line.

These experiences placed a considerable strain on the credibility of Jahweh's sacred books and his remnant priest- hood. Why had Jahweh permitted so many nations to become great while his chosen people were repeatedly conquered and enslaved? Why hadn't Jahweh kept his promise to David? This was the great mystery which the Jewish holy men and prophets kept trying to decipher.

Their answer: Jahweh had not kept his promise to David because the Jews had not kept theirs to Jahweh. The people had violated the sacred laws and had practiced impure rites. They had sinned; they were guilty; they had caused their own ruin. But Jahweh was a forgiving God and he would still keep his promise if the Jews, despite their punishment, continued to believe that he was the One True God. By realizing what they had done, by repenting and asking for forgiveness, the people could atone for their sin and Jahweh would reinstitute the contract, save them, redeem them, and make them greater than ever before. Mysteriously, when the atonement was complete at a moment known only to Jahweh-his people would be avenged. Jahweh would send another military prince like David, messiah, anointed one, to destroy the enemy nations. Great battles would be fought; the whole earth would heave with the clash of armies and the fall of cities. It would be the end of one world and the beginning of another, for Jahweh would not have made the Jews wait and suffer had he not intended to give them a greater reward than any previously known by man. And so the Old Testament teems with the promises of the redemptive prophets--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Zechariah, and others-all urging or sanctioning the adoption of a military-messianic lifestyle.

Isaiah speaks of a "wonderful counsellor, mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" who will reign forever on the throne of David. This savior will tread the Assyrian down "like the mire of the streets"; reduce Babylon to a deserted city inhabited by owls, satyrs, and other "doleful creatures"; make the people of Moab "bald and beardless, reduce Damascus to a ruinous heap," and provoke Egypt into civil war, "everyone against his neighbor, city against city and kingdom against kingdom."

Jeremiah has Jahweh say: "In those days and in that time, will I cause the Branch of Righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute Judgement and righteousness in the land." And then "the sword shall devour" the Egyptian "and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood." The Philistines "shall cry and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl." From Moab "a continual weeping will go up."

Ammon will become "a desolate heap and her daughters shall be burned in fire." Edom will be a "desolation." In Damascus "the young men shall fall in her streets." Hazor will become " dwelling for dragons." Elam is to be "consumed by the sword," and as for Babylon: "Come against her from the utmost border, open her storehouses; cast her up as heaps and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be left."

The Book of Daniel - written about 165 B.C., when Palestine was ruled by Syrian Greeks - also speaks of military-messianic redemption by an anointed one, the Prince, leading to a great Jewish empire: "I saw in the night visions, and behold the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and languages shall serve him . . . an everlasting dominion . . . [a] kingdom that shall not be destroyed."

What most people fail to realize about these vengeful prophecies is that they were made in conjunction with actual wars of liberation waged under the leadership of real-life military messiahs. These wars enjoyed popular support because they not only aimed at restoring the independence of the Jewish state, but also promised to eliminate economic and social inequities that foreign rule had exacerbated beyond endurance.

The cult of the vengeful messiah was born and continually recreated out of a struggle to overturn an exploitative system of political and economic colonialism. Only in this case, the natives the Jews - were militarily more of a match for the conquerors, and they were led by literate soldier-prophets, who remembered a far-off time when the "ancestors" had controlled an empire of their own.

During the period of Roman rule, if any lifestyle can be said to have been preeminent in Palestine, it was that of the vengeful military messiah. Inspired by the model of David's triumph against Goliath and the promise of Jahweh's military-messianic redemption, Jewish guerrillas waged a prolonged struggle against the Roman administrators and the Roman army. The cult of the peaceful messiah--the lifestyle of Jesus and his followers developed in the midst of this guerrilla war and in the very districts of Palestine that were the main centres of insurgent activity, seemingly in total contradiction to the tactics and strategies of the liberation forces.

The Christian gospels fail to expound or even mention Jesus' relationship to the Jewish liberation struggle. From the gospels alone, you would never know that Jesus spent most of his life in the central theater of one of history's fiercest guerrilla uprisings. Even less apparent to readers of the gospels is the fact that this struggle continued to escalate long after Jesus was executed. You could never guess that in 68 A.D. the Jews went on to stage a full-scale revolution that required the attention of six Roman legions under the command of two future Roman emperors before it was brought under control. And least of all would you ever suspect that Jesus himself died a victim of the Roman attempt to destroy the military-messianic consciousness of the Jewish revolutionaries.

As a Roman colony, Palestine exhibited all of the classical political and economic symptoms of colonial misrule. The Jews who occupied high civil or religious positions were puppets or clients. The high priests, wealthy landowners, and merchants lived in Oriental splendor, but the bulk of the population consisted of landless, alienated peasants, poorly paid or unemployed artisans, servants, and slaves. The country groaned under the weight of confiscatory taxes, administrative corruption, arbitrary tribute, labor conscription, and runaway inflation. Absentee landlords lived in pomp in Jerusalem while their tenants absorbed the 25 percent tax which the Romans imposed on agricultural production, on top of a 2 percent tax on the remainder claimed by the temple. The hatred of the Galilean peasants for the Jerusalem aristocrats was especially glaring and openly reciprocated.

In the Talmudic commentaries, true Jews are advised not to let their daughters marry the "people of the land," as the Galilean peasants were called, "because they are unclean animals." Rabbi Eleazar sarcastically recommended the butchering of these types even on the most holy day of the year, when no animals may be killed; and Rabbi Joahanan said, "One may tear a common person to pieces like a fish," while Rabbi Eleazar said, "The enmity of a common person toward a scholar is even more intense than that of the heathen toward the Israelites."

Popular enthusiasm for the military-messianic ideal went beyond a desire to see Jewish nationalists replace foreign puppets. The Galileans wanted to see David's kingdom restored because the prophets said that the messiah would end economic and social exploitation and punish the wicked priests, landlords, and kings. This theme was announced in the Book of Enoch:

Woe to you, ye rich, for ye have trusted in your riches and from your riches ye shall be torn away.... Woe to you who requite your neighbor with evil, for you will be requited according to your works. Woe to you, ye lying witnesses.... But fear not, ye that suffer, for healing will be your portion.

The dialectic of Jahweh's kingdom necessarily embraced the totality of human experience. As in the case of cargo*, secular and sacred components were indivisible; "this- worldly" and otherworldly themes were inseparable. Politics, religion, and economics were fused; heaven and earth were confounded, nature was married to God. In the new universe, life would be completely different; everything would be turned upside down. The Jews would rule and the Romans serve. The poor would be rich, the wicked would be punished, the sick would be healed, and the dead brought to life.

The Jews began their war against Rome shortly before Herod the Great was confirmed as puppet king by the Roman Senate. At first, guerrillas were identified by the Romans and the Jewish rulingclass merely as bandits (Greek: lestai). But these bandits were not so much guilty of thefts as of programs directed against the absentee landlords and the Roman tax collectors. The other term applied to the guerrilla fighters was 'zealots"-indicative of their zeal for the Jewish law and the fulfillment of Jahweh's covenant.

Neither term alone properly conveys the sense of what these activists were doing. It is only as zealot-bandits-guerrillas that their exploits can be related to the everyday context of their world. The zealot-bandit-guerrillas believed that with the help of a messiah they would eventually be able to topple the Roman Empire. Their faith was not a state of mind; it was a revolutionary praxis involving harassment, provocation, robbery, assassination, terrorism, and acts of bravery ending in death. Some specialized in urban guerrilla tactics and were called "dagger men" (Latin: sicarit); the rest lived in the countryside, ni caves and mountain hideouts, depending on the peasants for food and security.

Any description of the political and military events in Palestine during the first century AD. . has to be based largely upon the writings of one of the great historians of the ancient world, Flavius Josephus.

Since the matters that I am about to discuss are likely to be unfamiliar, let me say a word about the reliability of this source. Josephus was a contemporary of the authors of the earliest Christian gospels. Two of his books, The Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities, are recognized by scholars as no less essential to the history of first-century Palestine than the gospels themselves. We have definite knowledge of who Josephus was and of how he came to write his books - knowledge which we do not have about the authors of the gospels.

Josephus was born Joseph ben Matthias in 37 A.D., the child of an upper-class Jewish family. In 68 A.D., when he was only thirty-one years old, Josephus became governor of Galilee and a general in the Jewish liberation army in the war against Rome.

After his followers were wiped out in the seige of Jotapata, Josephus surrendered and was brought before Vespasian, the Roman general, and Vespasian's son Titus. Josephus thereupon announced that Vespasian was the messiah the Jews had been awaiting and that both Vespasian and Titus would be future emperors of Rome.

Vespasian did in fact become emperor in 69 A.D., and as a reward for his prophetic words, Josephus was taken to Rome as part of the new emperor's entourage. He was given Roman citizenship, an apartment in the imperial palace, and a life pension based on income from farms which the Romans had confiscated as spoils of the war in Palestine.

Josephus spent the rest of his life writing books explaining why the Jews had revolted against Rome and why he himself had defected to the Roman side. Writing in Rome for Roman readers many of whom, including the emperor, were eye-witnesses to the events described Josephus was unlikely to have fabricated the basic facts of his history. The distortions that have been identified are related in obvious ways to Josephus desire not to be labeled a traitor and can easily be discounted without impairing the credibility of the main narrative.

The events recounted by Josephus make it clear that guerrilla activism and the Jewish military-messianic consciousness rose and fell in synergetic waves. The dusty, sun baked backlands were filled with wandering holy men, strangely dressed oracles who spoke in parables and allegories and made prophecies about the coming battle for world dominion. Successful guerrilla leaders inspired rumors that flourished in the light and shadow of these perennially renewed messianic speculations. A steady stream of charismatic leaders stepped forward into the glare of history to claim messiahship; at least two of them precipitated insurrections that actually shook the foundation of the Roman Empire.

Herod the Great first attracted the attention of his Roman patrons because he waged a vigorous campaign against a bandit chief who controlled an entire district in northern Galilee. According to Josephus, Herod trapped this bandit chief, whose name was Hezekiah, and executed him on the spot. But we know that Hezekiah was a guerrilla leader rather than an ordinary thief because the bandit's sympathizers in Jerusalem were powerful enough to force Herod to stand trial for murder. A cousin of Julius Caesar intervened, obtained Herod's release, and gave him the recommendation that soon led to Herod's appointment as puppet king of the Jews in 39 B.C.

Herod had to fight more bandits in order to consolidate his control over Palestine. Josephus declares that "bandits overran a great part of the country, causing the inhabitants as much misery as a war could have done." So Herod "took to the field against the bandits in the caves." When trapped inside, the bandits turned out to have their families with them, and they refused to surrender. One old bandit stood at the mouth of an inaccessible cave and in full sight of Herod killed his wife and each of his seven children "and went so far as to sneer at Herod" before leaping to his own death.

Thinking himself "master now of caves and cave-dwellers," Herod left for Samaria. But his departure removed all restraint from the "habitual troublemakers in Galilee," who promptly killed a Roman general named Ptolemy and "systematically ravaged the country, establishing their lairs in the marshes and other inaccessible places."

Upon Herod's death in 4 .c. uprisings took place in all outlying areas. Hezekiah's son, Judas of Galilee, seized a royal armory. Simultaneously in Peraea across the Jordan, a slave named Simon "burnt the palace at Jericho and many magnificent country residences." A third rebel, a former shepherd named Athrongaeus, "declared himself king", which is probably Josephus' way of saying that he was considered a messiah by his followers. Before the Romans killed Athrongaeus and four of his brothers, one by one, these bandits succeeded in "harassing all Judea with their brigandage." Varus, the Roman governor of Syria, restored law and order. He captured 2,000 "ringleaders" and had them all crucified. This event occurred in the year that Jesus was born.

Judas of Galilee soon emerged as the leader of the main guerrilla forces. Josephus says he "aspired to royalty," and at times characterizes him as "a very clever rabbi."In 6 AD.. the Romans tried to carry out a census. Judas warned his countrymen to resist because the census would lead to "nothing less than complete slavery." Josephus has him say that "the Jews have no king but Jahweh." Therefore"taxes should not be paid to the Romans" and "Jahweh would surely assist them if they had faith in their cause." Josephus reports that those prepared to submit to Rome were treated as enemies: Their cattle were rounded up and their dwellings burned.

No information has survived concerning how and when Judas of Galilee met his fate. We know only that his sons continued to fight. Two were crucified, and another claimed messiahship at the beginning of the revolution of 68-73. The final act of resistance in that war, the suicidal defense of the fortress of Masada, was led by still another descendant of Judas of Galilee.

Jesus actively began to preach his messianic doctrines about 28 AD. At that time a "shooting war" was being fought, not only in Galilee, but in Judea and Jerusalem as well. The Jesus cult was neither the largest nor the most threatening of the rebellious situations with which Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who decreed Jesus' death, had to contend. For example, Josephus describes the appearance of an angry city mob joined by a huge influx from the country when Pilate transgressed the Jewish taboo on graven images in Jerusalem.

Later, Pilate was surrounded by another angry mob protesting the misuse of temple funds for the construction of an aqueduct. From the gospels we know that Jesus himself led an attack on the temple, and that some sort of uprising took place shortly before Jesus' trial, since the popular bandit leader Barabbas and several of his men were in jail at that point.

After Jesus was killed, the Romans continued to try to clear the Judean countryside of "bandits."' Josephus reports that another great bandit chief named Tholomaios was captured in 4 AD. Shortly thereafter, a messianic figure named Theudas appeared in the desert. His followers abandoned their homes and possessions and massed on the banks of the Jordan River. Some say Theudas intended to make the waters part as they had done for Joshua; others that this messiah was going the other way, westward, toward Jerusalem. No matter--the Roman governor Cuspius Fadus sent the cavalry; they beheaded Theudas and slaughtered his followers.

THE MOST FAMOUS FART IN HISTORY

During the feast of Passover in 50 AD.. a Roman soldier pulled up his tunic and farted into a crowd of pilgrims and temple worshipers. "The less restrained of the young men and the naturally tumultuous segments of the people rushed into battle," writes Josephus. The Roman heavy infantry was called in, creating a gigantic panic in which, according to Josephus, 30,000 people were trampled to death (some say he probably meant 3,000).

Jesus' attack on the temple had coincided with the Passover pilgrimage of 33 AD.. As we shall see, concern with the reaction of mobs of pilgrims like those who died in the panic of 50 A.D. led the Jewish and Roman authorities to wait until nightfall to take Jesus into custody. Something close to a general revolt developed in 52 AD.. under the leadership of Eleazar ben Deinaios, a "revolutionary bandit" who had been in the mountains for almost twenty years.

The governor, Cumanus, "rounded up Eleazar's followers, killing still more." But the disorder spread "and all over the country plundering went on and the bolder spirits rose in revolt." The Syrian Legate intervened, beheaded eighteen partisans, and crucified all of the prisoners who had been rounded up by Cumanus. Therevolt was finally crushed by a new governor, Felix, who captured Eleazar and sent him to Rome--probably to be strangled in public. "The bandits whom he crucified," says Josephus, "and the local inhabitants in league with them whom he caught and punished were too many to count."

In Jerusalem, assassinations by dagger men who concealed their weapons inside their garments now had become common. One of their most famous victims was the High Priest Jonathan. In the midst of all this bloodshed, military- messianic contenders appeared again and again. Josephus refers to one set of messianic leaders as scoundrels in act less criminal but in intention more evil, who did as much damage as the murderers cheats and deceivers. Claiming inspiration, they schemed to bring about revolutionary changes by inducing the mob to act as if possessed, and by leading them out into the wild country on the pretense that there God would show them signs of approaching freedom.

Felix interpreted this foray as the first stage of a revolt and ordered the Roman cavalry to cut the mob to pieces.

Next came a Jewish Egyptian "false prophet." He collected several thousand "dupes," led them into the desert, then turned around and tried to attack Jerusalem providing confirmation, if the Romans needed it, that all such people were politically dangerous. Josephus gives the following picture of the situation in Palestine about 55 A.D.:

The religious frauds and bandit chiefs joined forces and drove numbers to revolt. Splitting up into groups they ranged over the countryside, plundering the houses of the well-to-do, killing the occupants, and setting fire to the villages, till their raging madness penetrated every corner of Judea. Day by day the fighting blazed more fiercely.

By 6 AD. . the bandits were everywhere; their agents had infiltrated the temple priesthood and forged an alliance with Eleazar, the son of the High Priest Ananias. Eleazar issued a kind of declaration of independence: an order preventing the daily sacrifice of animals dedicated to the health of Nero, the reigning emperor. The pro-Roman and anti-Roman factions began to fight in the streets of Jerusalem: dagger men, freed slaves, and the Jerusalem rabble led by Eleazar on one side; the high priests, the Herodian aristocracy, and the Roman royal guard on the other.

Meanwhile, in the backlands, Manahem, the last surviving son of Judas of Galilee, stormed the fortress of Masada, equipped his bandits with Roman weapons taken from the armory, and marched on Jerusalem. Bursting onto a chaotic scene, Manahem took command of the insurrection--"like a king," says Josephus. He drove out the Roman troops, gained control of the temple area, and murdered the High Priest Ananias. Manahem then decked himself with kingly robes, and followed by a train of armed bandits, prepared to enter the sanctuary of the temple. But Eleazar, possibly to avenge his father's death, ambushed the cortege. Manahem fled but was captured and "put to death by prolonged torture."

The Jews fought on, convinced that the real messiah would yet appear. After the Romans had suffered several reverses, Nero called in his best general, Vespasian, veteran of the campaigns against the Britons. With 65,000 men and the most advanced forms of military engines and siegecraft, the Romans slowly regained control of the smaller cities.

On Nero's death in 68 AD.. Vespasian emerged as the favored candidate for emperor. Assured of all the men and equipment he might need, Vespasian's son Titus finished the war. Despite fanatic resistance, Titus broke into Jerusalem in 70 A.D., set fire to the temple, and looted and burned everything in sight.

Reflecting that the siege of Jerusalem had cost the Jews over one million casualties, Josephus bitterly denounced the messianic oracles. There had been terrible portents - bright lights on the altar, a cow that gave birth to a lamb, chariots and regiments in arms speeding through the sky at sunset- but the bandits and their execrable prophets missed these signs of doom. These "cheats and false messengers beguiled the people into believing that supernatural deliverance would yet be theirs."

Even after the fall of Jerusalem, the bandits still could not believe that Jahweh had deserted them. One more heroic effort- one more blood sacrifice- and Jahweh would at last decide to send the true anointed one. As I mentioned before, the last sacrifice took place at the fortress of Masada in 73 AD.. A bandit named Eleazar, descendant of Hezekiah and of Judas of Galilee, exhorted his remnant force of 960 men, women, and children to kill each other rather than surrender to the Romans.

ROMAN HISTORY RECORDS AT LEAST FIVE JEWISH MESSIAHS BETWEEN 40 B.C. AND 73 A.D.

To sum up: Between 40 B.c. and 73 A.D., Josephus mentions at least five Jewish military messiahs, not including Jesus or John the Baptist. These are Athrongaeus; Theudas; the anonymous "scoundrel" executed by Felix; the Jewish Egyptian "false prophet"; and Manahem. But Josephus repeatedly alludes to other messiahs or prophets of messiahs whom he does not bother to name or describe. In addition, it seems to me very likely that the entire lineage of zealot-bandit-guerrillas that descended from Hezekiah through Judas of Galilee, Manahem, and Eleazar were believed by many of their followers to be messiahs or prophets of messiahs. […]

The fall of Masada was scarcely the end of the Jewish military-messianic lifestyle. Continuously recreated by the practical exigencies of colonialism and poverty, the revolutionary impulse burst forth again sixty years after Masada, in an even more spectacular messianic drama. In 132, Bar Kochva -"Son of a Star"- organized a force of 200,000 men and set up an independent Jewish state that endured for three years. Because of Bar Kochva's miraculous victories, Akiba, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, hailed him as messiah.

The people reported seeing Bar Kochva mounted on a lion. Not since Hannibal had the Romans faced a military opponent of such daring; he fought in the front ranks and at the most dangerous points. A whole Roman legion was lost before Bar Kochva was cut down. The Romans leveled 1,000 villages, killed 500,000 people, and shipped thousands more abroad as slaves. Generations of embittered Jewish scholars thereafter spoke ruefully of Bar Kochva as the "son of a lie" who had duped them into losing their homeland.

History shows that the Jewish military-messianic lifestyle was an adaptive failure. It did not succeed in restoring David's kingdom; rather, it resulted in the complete loss of the territorial integrity of the Jewish state. For the next eighteen hundred years the Jews were a subordinate minority no matter where they lived. Does this mean that military messianism was a capricious, impractical, even maniacal lifestyle? Are we to conclude along with Josephus and those who later condemned Bar Kochva that the Jews lost their homeland because they let the messianic will-o'-the-wisp dupe them into attacking the invincible power of Rome? I think not.

The Jewish revolution against Rome was caused by the inequities of Roman colonialism, not by Jewish military messianism. We cannot judge the Romans as more "practical" or "realistic" simply because they were the victors. Both sides went to war for practical and mundane reasons.

Suppose George Washington had lost the American Revolutionary War. Would we then want to conclude that the Continental Army was the victim of an irrational lifestyle consciousness dedicated to the will-o-the-wisp called "freedom"?

In culture, as in nature, systems that are the product of selective forces frequently fail to survive, not because they are defective or irrational, but because they encounter other systems that are better adapted and more powerful. I think I have shown that the cult of the vengeful messiah was adapted to the practical exigencies of a colonial struggle. It was extremely successful as a means of mobilizing mass resistance in the absence of a formal apparatus for raising and training an army. I would not judge the zealot- bandits to have been duped unless it can be shown that the probability of their defeat was so great at the outset that no amount of effort could ever have led to any result other than the one that history now reveals. But there is no way of proving that the zealot-bandits could have predicted that their defeat was inevitable.

History reveals with equal finality that Judas of Galilee was right and the Caesars wrong about the alleged invincibility of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was not only eventually destroyed, but the people who destroyed it were colonials like the Jews, and vastly inferior to the Romans in numbers, equipment, and military skills.

Almost by definition, revolution means that an exploited population must take desperate measures against great odds to overthrow its oppressors. Classes, races, and nations usually accept the challenge of such odds not because they are duped by irrational ideologies, but because the alternatives are abhorrent enough to make even great risks worthwhile. That, I believe, is the reason the Jews revolted against Rome. And that is the reason why the Jewish military-messianic consciousness underwent a great expansion at the time of Christ.

To the extent that the cult of the vengeful messiah was rooted in the practical struggle against Roman colonialism, the cult of the peaceful messiah assumes the guise of an apparently inscrutable paradox. The peaceful messiah of Christendom came at a most improbable moment in the 180-year trajectory of the war against Rome. The Jesus cult developed while the military-messianic consciousness was still accelerating, expanding, soaring toward the untarnished ecstasy of Jahweh's grace. Its timing seems all wrong. In 30 AD, no major obstacle to the zealot-bandit revolutionary impulse had yet been encountered. The temple was intact and was the scene of great annual pilgrimages. Judas of Galilee's sons were alive. The terror of Masada was as yet unimagined.

Why should the Jews have yearned for a peaceful messiah so many years before the military-messianic dream had anointed Manahem and Bar Kochva?

Why surrender Palestine to the Roman overlords when Roman power had not so much as nicked the edge of Jahweh's sacred shield?

Why a new covenant while the old one was still capable of twice shaking the Roman Empire?

*This is a reference to Papua New Guinean cargo cults, which are examined in another chapter of Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches.

For more on the historicity of the Bible, I recommend this videos: