Now that I have finished the last segment…My God, It’s full of…

Cats? No that’s not right. Oh, yes…My God, It’s…

Full of Alex’s? I don’t think that’s right.

Tar? I’m trying to remember if that’s right but…

That’s right…no. If only I had something to jar my memory…

Full of dinosaurs? Actually, I think that’s it!

Sorry, I just can’t…

Rocket? That’s it! My God, It’s Full of Stars.

Enter Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis. He was born sometime during the period 310 - 320 AD and died in 403. Perhaps his main claim to fame is his role as defender of Christianity against heresies. Any heresy. All heresies. Heresies that weren’t heresies. Still, he knew what he was to do, and he knew how to do it. He wrote The Panarion, which means…Bread Basket. This was a large compendium of heresies diligently collected by the Arch Collector of Heresies. Others refer to this work as The Medicine Chest. I, for my part, don’t keep my bread in my medicine chest. I also don’t keep my medicines in my bread basket. But it makes a strange sort of sense given the rather lame literary device of comparing various heresies to various poisons, and then providing the name of the antidote to be used to keep yourself from being killed by Dangerous Things like Freedom of Thought and Free-Exploration of Spirituality. Fear not! Epiphanius won’t let you die, seeing how he is the doctor handing out prescriptions of Dogmatic Orthodoxy.

It is important remember that one man’s heresy is another man’s divinely, inspired truth. But that is my opinion, and there are many, many people who don’t share it. In the great theological wars waged in the early centuries of the Christian Church, things were just as vicious as they were in military conflicts. Epiphanius is a good example of this. He fueled the flames of the conflict, rooted in the views of Origen, that drew in John II, Bishop of Jerusalem; Jerome and his brother Paulinian; Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria; John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople; Deacon Pelagius…among others. This was the vicious infighting that was common Christians of the time. When The Way gave way to a hierarchical, official church…churches…the Roman Church was intent on winning. And that meant shutting down its competitors. Did Apostolic Groups fight their wars in the very heart of the Gospels? Were Peter and Judas flipped around? Was Judas set up and transformed into a Sort-Of Pontius Pilate? Betrayed with a kiss…or a washing of hands? Still, Pilate diligently sought to get around killing Christ. The Gospel of Nicodemus, one part of which is the Acts of Pilate, places emphasis on the fact that Pilate found nothing in Jesus that, under Roman law, was anything for him to have to deal with. In fact, Origen taught that Pilate’s wife, the lady who had the dream about Jesus and tried to warn her husband to have nothing to do with the fact that spineless men were attempting to get Pilate to do their dirty-work, who was known in Origen’s time by the name of…

Procula, or Claudia, or Claudia-Procula, or...Mrs. Pilate, later became a Christian. The Eastern Orthodox church recognizes her as a saint. Nicodemus, however, seeks to stress that it wasn’t Pilate who was ultimately to blame for the Murder of Christ. Pilate himself has even been made a saint in the Coptic church.

And which Gospel? We have 3, excluding John, which is a theological document. Yet the narratives found in John are traditions as well. Mark tells of John the Baptist, but only as far as need be. The Primitive Gospel of Matthew began at chapter 3 and provided more information on the Way-Preparer. John says this:

After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized. (This was before John was put in prison.)

That is John 3:22ff. These verses are highly problematic, and represent a conflated text, with an original text having been altered by a redactor’s marginal gloss. Why? He has attempted to fix a very perceivable problem. But in so doing, he has simply highlighted an impossible chronology. The chronology in these passages is diametrically opposed to what is said in Mark. I have made much of what Mark said about John. Following his baptism, Jesus disappeared into the wilderness for a period of time…perhaps contemplating the fact that the Living God had adopted him as His son. Yet more…waiting to take over for John. It was after John’s arrest that Jesus emerged from the wilderness, and, being John’s successor to the role of Leader of the Repentance Movement, he began his dynamic run through Galilee. Here is one possible earlier version of the text, if I may dabble in a bit of hypothetical textual criticism…

A redactor looked at this and realized that although John and Jesus were contemporaries, Jesus did not begin preaching until after John’s arrest. This puzzled him, and he decided that he would remind the reader that John’s activity described here must have been prior to his arrest and execution. What he does not address is that these two events can not have happened contemporaneously. So he has commented on John, but not on Jesus, and thereby inadvertently draws more attention to the chronological impossibility of these events. So…

Then a subsequent redactor or copyist made the next step…

…moving the marginal note into the text. And so the chronological problem before the redactor’s attempting to fix the chronology of John’s activity only accentuates the problem with the two verses. But there is only one word that creates the problem…also. If the material in John 3-4 is put together in the way it has been on the basis, not of chronology, but of a single, connecting theme, then the original structure of the work was not intended to be chronological. The material in question consists of:

1.  Jesus and Nicodemus; Nicodemus must be born of water and spirit.

2.  Jesus and his disciples are baptizing

3.  John is baptizing

4.  The Samaritan woman at the well

5.  Jesus returns to Cana

Small groups of material have obviously been grouped together, not on the basis of chronology, but rather on the basic element of…water. Nicodemus must be born of water…baptized. Jesus offers the Samaritan woman, arriving at Jacob’s Well to draw water from it, water that, if she drinks it, she will never thirst again. The vignette about the second visit to Cana is attached to the other vignettes because of what the redactor specifically says…

Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine.

The chronological indicators, which are problematic, were subsequently added by redactors and/or copyists.

So there were 2 vignettes, placed in a collection that ultimately would be called the Gospel of John. There is no chronological relationship between them…they are placed where they are because of the common theme…baptism, which equals…water. The word…also…connects the 2 vignettes chronologically…

The claims made about John baptizing at Aenon is also interesting in that he is associated with operating by the Jordan at Bethany Beyond the Jordan…not baptism at another location. So why was he baptizing at Aenon near Salim? Well there is an explanatory note embedded in the text…because there was plenty of water. But the Jordan river is full of water in general, so the convenient proximity of a large amount of water doesn’t actually provide a satisfactory answer to the question…why Aenon near Salim? In fact, look at the location of Aenon near Salim on the following map, and compare it to where Bethany Beyond the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee is located:

Bethany Beyond the Jordan is circled in yellow; Aenon is circled in red; and the blue arrow points to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus would appear first as John’s successor. John 1:28 says that John baptized Jesus at Bethany Beyond the Jordan. It should be noted that John omits the story of Jesus disappearing into the wilderness, and therefore does not refer to the arrest of John the Baptist. No mention of John’s arrest is made until the marginal gloss noted above; in fact, the arrest and execution of John does not appear in the Gospel of John at all. So! A different picture emerges of John the Baptist…without Jesus’s time in the wilderness and the inseparable connection with this to John’s arrest, Jesus and John are easily contemporaries after Jesus’s baptism, and both are active at the same time. This is a dramatic departure from Mark.

An attempt, albeit a subtle one, to explain the strange shift from Bethany Beyond the Jordan and Aenon may be behind the statement in John 10:40…

Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. Here he stayed and many people came to him.

Yes! This can be understood in different ways, such as…Jesus simply went back to where he had been baptized, the “early days” being Jesus’s early days. But John’s arrest is not recorded in John, leaving open the possibility that the idea is that John is still running around…unarrested. In that case, the idea might be that a redactor is seeking to explain why Bethany Beyond the Jordan and Aenon near Salim are places where John Baptized…i.e., Bethany Beyond the Jordan in the early days, and Aenon near Salim at some time after that. So…

Marginal note…

Finally…

I would also point out that one might wonder what specific thing John said about Jesus that proved to be true? I hope that they hadn’t found out that John suddenly doubted Jesus’s significance. And here’s another point…if John actually sent disciples to ask Jesus whether John should seek another…isn’t that a stupid question? Jesus could say…of course I’m the guy! You even said so. But I suppose he could say…Go back and tell John that I’m not the guy! Tell him to go find someone else. As I noted above, there is no way that John would ask this question. Disciples of John, on the other hand, could have such doubts.

This could indicate that the earliest material in the pericope derived from a tradition that had John unarrested and active at the same time as Jesus. Of course, John could have talked to Jesus himself. So why send a couple of guys instead? Hmm. But the Gospel of Matthew provides a story in which John, while in prison, hears about Jesus, and he sends his own disciples to ask…

When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you’ve heard and seen.”

This most perplexing. Why would John suddenly wonder if Jesus were the one? He already declared Jesus to be the one for which he merely prepared the way. Now he wants to know whether Jesus is the Christ? Should he look to another? How many significant men did John prepare the way for? Two? Four? Unless John’s time in prison has caused a severe memory problem, or he was suddenly full of doubt, this simply doesn’t make sense. Maybe Jesus didn’t live up to John’s expectations. Or do we have yet another fumble? According to Matthew, God didn’t know that one of Herod’s sons would succeed him, and so He calls Joseph back from Egypt prematurely. Mary forgets that she gave birth to Jesus while a virgin, and then apparently forgets everything that supposedly happens at the beginning of Luke. So now, does John the Baptist join God and Mary to stand among those who suddenly seem to have a significant disconnect? It’s even stranger when the Gospel of John states the following…

Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God." The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!"

A monumental disconnect! If we believe John, the Baptist not only bapitzed Jesus despite the fact that it should be the other way around. John didn’t just believe that he was simply the one who prepared the way for the Nazarene. No! He sees the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus…he declares Jesus to be the Son of God…he declares Jesus to be the Lamb of God. And then he later wants to know whether he should look to someone else? There may be a bit of apology in the passage from Matthew cited above, as it could explain why John’s Disciples, rather than John himself, went and asked the unaskable question. This is Luke’s version…

They were all filled with awe and praised God. "A great prophet has appeared among us," they said. "God has come to help his people." This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country. John's disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"

And the conclusion…

So he replied to the messengers, "Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me." After John's messengers left, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: "What did you go out into the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind?”

There is a huge difference here. Luke does not state that John was in prison when he sent these men to go ask the stupid question. That could suggest that a redactor of Matthew added…in prison…because he saw the problem that would result if John sent messengers to Jesus at a time that he wasn’t under arrest.

There is, however, an explanation that solves this problem admirably, that upholds the question posed to Jesus as a valid, non-stupid question. First, Mark does not record that John sent messengers to Christ to ask the Disconnect Question. So there is no disconnect in Mark. However, if, following the death of John the Baptist, a group of John’s disciples continued to exist, and I firmly believe that this is the case, then a crisis ensued. Just because John believed without any doubt that Jesus was the guy, that doesn’t mean that his followers didn’t have an issue with this. And so it is they…the Johnites who send messengers to Christ, not John, who is deceased. That is perfectly understandable. But why would there be traditions that suggested that John and Christ operated at the same time? Well, I have pointed out that there were rumors that Jesus was John brought back from the dead. And while that isn’t true, it nonetheless indicates that there were people who believed John was raised from the dead. So…a case of identification: John was raised from the dead…and he is Jesus. No, he’s not. But he has been raised from the dead, which is one way of believing that he is still running around. But the tradition has him baptizing in Aenon near Salim, whereas one might come to believe that it wasn’t John who was associated with Aenon, but rather the Johnites, who continued the ministry of John, despite the fact that the movement was now that of Jesus. And there is one good reason to believe that John the Baptist was still alive and well. But on this point, Jesus and John are in stark disagreement. Matthew 11: 12-15…

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.  He who has ears, let him hear!

Matthew 17: 10-12…

The disciples asked him, "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?" Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands." Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.

So there doesn’t seem to be much doubt about John being Elijah. And since Elijah didn’t died, and lived over 800 years before, that would explain why John’s arrest and execution didn’t slow him down. There is a slight problem…

Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed, not denying it…I am not the Christ. And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah? He said, “I am not.”

So John the Baptist and Jesus don’t seem to be on the same page. Actually, it’s Matthew and John, i.e. the groups represented by them, that aren’t on the same page. And Jewish children still await Elijah’s arrival at Passover every year.

Traditions about John the Baptist continued on in other forms. The rather amusing Life of John the Baptist adds bizarre elements to the story. John is able to mutter the condemnation of Herod Antipas and Herodias from very far away, yet it is heard by Herodias in her bedroom. She searches diligently but is unable to find the person who is speaking. Following John’s beheading, his severed head is said to be able to see as if he hadn’t been beheaded. Then his head flies around the room, pauses in front of the king and, the roof opening up, John’s head flies up into the air. A long quote, since I simply can’t resist…

As for Herodias, her eyes were pulled out from her head and fell on the ground. Her room collapsed on top of her, the ground opened its mouth and its throat swallowed her, and then she sank to the depths of Hell, still alive. Herodias’s daughter went mad and broke all the vessels that were there at the feast. In her madness, she went to a frozen lake and danced on it. The Lord ordered the ice under her to break and the lake swallowed her. Soldiers tried to pull her out and could not, because the Lord did not want her to be rescued. Finally, they cut off her head using the sword with which holy John was killed. At that very moment, a whale appeared and threw her out of the lake, dead. May God have no mercy on her! Immediately after that, Herod suffered a stroke in front of his dinner companions.

I can only say…wow! What a scene! It must have been quite a feat…finding a frozen lake in the desert! And I’m so thrilled…cephalaphor time!  In an earlier essay about The Exorcist, I mused about how odd it is that Regan’s head can turn around on her shoulders, although that didn’t really happen in the Artificial Reality of the movie, and it is a sign of demon possession when beheaded saints walk around with their severed heads in their hands, many preaching sermons as they go. I discussed many examples. But here is a twist…

This is saint Cuthbert. And as you can see, he still has his head on his shoulders, which makes him far more fortunate than true Cephalophores. But he had the habit of walking around carrying the head of St. Oswald. And as the old saying goes…two heads are better than one! Christian legend states that…

…St. Aphrodisius, an important person in Hermopolis, Egypt, had provided shelter to Joseph and his family when the Holy Family fled to Egypt. He then moved to Galilee to meet Jesus, and then became one of his disciples. Following the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit was imparted to Aphrodisius. He was beheaded, of course, and then in some bizarre ancient form of soccer, his head was kicked into a well. And I can’t help yet another small digression and point out that…

Ferenc Nasdasdy, husband of Elizabeth Bathory, and crusader against the Turks in central Europe, would supposedly behead Turkish prisoners and play kickball with their severed heads. Still, the well in question gushed up Aphrodisius’s head, so he naturally picked it up and carried it through town. Then it gets strange. He walks across a bunch of snails, without crushing any. Then some stonemasons mocked him, claiming that he was a madman. A madman? Some guy is carrying his severed head around and you think he’s crazy? Perhaps he’s sick in the head. Actually, God turned them into stone, and their seven stone heads were displayed on what is now called…the street of the heads. I wanted a cool picture, but instead, I could only find this weird drawing…

And a puzzling variation of the cephalophore is a saint who carries around the top of his head, with the bottom part of his head still attached…

That is St. Nicasius, who, I suppose is only a Semi-Cephalophore. Slightly wierder still…

And! Two half-heads are better than one! Actually, two half-heads are one.

And the head of John the Baptist had much to say…so much to say, it took him 15 years to say it…

His head, however, flew over Jerusalem and preached to the city for three years, saying, “Herod, you may not marry the wife of your brother while he is still alive.” Once three years of preaching over Jerusalem had passed, it left for the whole world to shout and announce Herod’s scandalous actions, with the words “Herod, you may not marry the wife of your brother while he is still alive” until 15 years since his murder had passed. When 15 years had passed, it stopped preaching and came to rest in the city of Homs.

And so the head of John the Baptist spent 3 years preaching above the city of Jerusalem, and 12 years flying around the world, still complaining about Herod Antipas and Herodias! Christian tradition has also sought to connect John the Baptist with other Christian leaders, not all of whom were particuarly orthodox. Tradition holds that Dosietheos of Samaria, the reputed teacher of Simon Magus, who was associated with Phillip, and who was declared by a heretic by Pseudo-Tertullian and Epiphanius, had personally known John the Baptist. Drawing such fictional connections was probably intended to give authority to those who otherwise didn’t have it. The claim that Dosietheos never died is clearly linked to John the Baptist, declared by Matthew to have been Elijah, who, as I’ve discussed, never died.

The Gospel of Mark is also out of chronological order. Ancient tradition states that, since Mark derives from Peter, we must understand why the events in Mark are so out of order on the basis of how Peter operated. And that tradition tells us that Peter taught by grouping things together by theme. And so the same thing appears to be happening in John. The desire for a Biography of Jesus, something that Peter, as reflected in the earliest version of Mark, was uninterested in, resulted in attempts to structure the different pericopes chronologically. In the case of Jesus baptizing and John baptizing, this resulted in a big problem. But there was more than one “big problem” perceived by a later redactor of John. I will quote one of the passages noted above for a second time…

After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized.

Jesus the Baptist! Wait! There is an intra-John conflict on this point.

The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.

The first quote indicated that Jesus was a Baptizer. Yet the second quote corrects that and gives Jesus a carveout. Why? That’s obvious. John himself said it…John baptizes with water, Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit, to which he must add…fire. So we have two different redactors, and they are not in agreement. Clearly, the earlier quote was present in John first, and a subsequent redactor sought to correct it. Perhaps the writer of the earlier verses misunderstood Jesus’s statements about baptism. Jesus speaks often of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Apparently, this was not a water-baptism. To avoid confusion on this point, the second redactor made what was probably a marginal note. This is a hypothetical reconstruction.

First, the original text…

So, no comment correcting the second verse. Then a redactor said…Wait! Stop! That’s not right. Jesus baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit, not water. His disciples did. Now stage 2…

Our redactor has entered a marginal note correcting the text he had in front of him. But subsequent to redactor number 2, another redactor…or a copyist…saw this as a corrupted text…a problem with the manuscript. So he was thinking…

He decided to “fix” a corrupted text, with the result being…

This is the text in our Bible. There is a slight problem. This redactor did not work with John chapter 3. So in fixing the perceived problem, he created a bigger one…a clear contradiction embedded in the text itself. A marginal note by a redactor does not have the same authority as the original text that he is glossing. You can take his note or leave it…it is commentary...nothing more. But if you move the marginal note into the text, you are now stuck with a marginal note having the authority of the original text, which can create significant problems. Now I am, hypothetically, the hypothetical redactor, and I will have to “correct” the correction of the Corrector. So I will do this…

As a redactor who is familiar with both chapters, I have easily seen the conflict, and decided to make a marginal note, asserting that the previous verses indicating that Jesus did baptize with water, is, in my opinion, right, and the guy before who believed it was wrong was…wrong. Hopefully, the guy who follows me will resist the urge to correct what may look like, to him, a text where a verse has been omitted, and replaced in the margin, and decide to fix it! Now I will look at one last thing. The verse from John Chapter 3 looks as though it has been redacted. Why? The following two words look like an after-thought.

The last two words look like they belong in parentheses. So a hypothetical pre-redacted text looked like this…

Now it is quite smooth, and, generally speaking, well-written. Enter Hypothetical Glossator. He is a scribe, and he, among others, is hand-copying an earlier edition of John for his own community. Now this community may be one that venerates John the Baptist, though confused about his role vis-à-vis Jesus. Or this community may be one that has established fixed, set rituals. In this case, baptism is the most important. So he decides that he will tailor the text to his community…

And finally…

John had access to traditions about John the Baptist that claimed that Jesus had begun his preaching before John the Baptist was arrested. Perhaps a fragment of this exists in Mark…Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by Satan offers the reason for why Jesus was in the wilderness…if Jesus was preaching before John’s arrest, then Jesus couldn’t have been in the wilderness for the reason that I have suggested many times…waiting for the imminent arrest of the Baptist. Only then can Jesus’s time begin. I firmly believe that the tradition found in John must be rejected in favor of what is recorded about this subject in Mark, as I noted above.

Why three gospels? Why not one? Do the three gospels themselves fight their own wars…Mark vs. Matthew, Matthew vs. Luke, Mark vs. Matthew and Luke…and that’s not a fair fight! Imagine if the Old Testament had three, rival versions of the Book of Exodus. Excluding any slight insurgency by Deuteronomy, of course. But there were so many gospels! Thomas, Phillip, Judas…yes, Judas…there was a rich and varied universe of Christian writings…a rich and varied universe of Christian groups…to whom I will apply the word…communities. They had their books…or you might even call them documents. But a concentrated drive to suppress communities and literature ultimately led to a set, fixed cannon. And then the other books were suppressed, targeted…eliminate your rivals by eliminating their literature…which you will then call…heresies. Jesus’s movement was a de-centralized, anti-Establishment dynamic force. So too Christian New Prophecy. But the Roman church, the Establishment, sought to drive Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilia out of business. And if the Inquisition needed its Inquisitors…the cutting force of religious violence, then the Culture of Heresy needed its Heresy Hunters.

Yes, there were many Heresy Hunters, but none like the Great Codifier of Heresies…none were like our friend Epiphanius.

What an amazing compendium is that created by the Great Keeper of the Bread-Basket of Heresy. It is true that he quotes written works that were ultimately suppressed, so ironically, his attacks against other religious works are the sole surviving vestiges of long-destroyed Christian literature. Epiphanius was a highly combative figure who essentially wrote long polemics against what he regarded to be heresies, having emerged as the most ardent critic of Origen. There are also reasons to believe that he misunderstood the views of others and may even have added his own suppositions as embellishments to his attacks against heretics. His attacks against the followers of Origen, and Origen himself, are one of the most notable things for which he is remembered…second only to the Bread-Basket, of course. For Epiphanius, Origen was the worst of heretics. He accused him of laying the groundwork for the Arian heresy and portrays him as the spiritual ancestor of many more heresies. It would be pointless to discuss the views of Origen that so inflamed Epiphanius, since the vast majority of modern Christians would find them to be theological quibbling over irrelevant things. The Council of Alexandria was held in the year 400, and despite the fact that Origen died in 253, 147 years before the meeting of this council, he was excommunicated. In 543, Justinian ordered that all his works be burned. This was the theological warfare of the time, and one is tempted to see in Epiphanius a mentally unstable man who looked for enemies everywhere, only to hit upon one of Christianity’s greatest scholars as his Devil-Like Figure. But one must admit that Epiphanius had read an amazing number of books, and among his reading it is clear that he read Jewish works as well.

What makes Epiphanius vitally important here is the fact that he was the one Christian writer who ended up providing a date for the year in which Christ was born that agrees with the time of Yeshu ben Stada in the Toledoth Yeshu. At this point, I will note that despite using the names Yeshu ben Stada and Yeshu ben Pandera interchangeably, I will no longer do so. I will now distinguish between two men; i.e. Yeshu ben Stada and Yeshu ben Pandera, seeing how I now believe that the use of the qualifier…ben Pandera vs. ben Stada, derived from the unflattering equating of Yeshu ben Stada with Jesus of Nazareth, to whom the qualifier…ben Pandera…belongs. That said…not in the way that one might think. But I will allow Epiphanius say something incredible…

"Now the throne and kingly seat of David is the priestly office in the Holy Church; for the Lord combined the kingly and high-priestly dignities into one and the same office, and bestowed them upon His Holy Church, transferring to her the throne of David, which ceases not as long as the world endures.  The throne of David continued by succession up to that time - namely, till Christ Himself - without any failure from the princes of Judah, until it came unto Him for whom were 'the things that are stored up,' who is Himself 'the expectation of the nations. For with the advent of the Christ, the succession of the princes from Judah, who reigned until the Christ Himself, ceased. The order [of succession] failed and stopped at the time when He was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Alexander, who was of high-priestly and royal race; and after this Alexander this lot failed, from the times of himself and Salina, who is also called Alexandra, for the times of Herod the King and Augustus Emperor of the Romans; and this Alexander, one of the anointed (or Christs) and ruling princes placed the crown on his own head.

The Great Sphinxian Riddle of Christian history! A Theological Snake-bite whose antidote must be found in the Great Medicine Chest? Could we find it among all the pills and bottles therein? By placing Jesus of Nazareth in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, Epiphanius takes a position that clearly reflects the patently fictional framework of the Toledoth Yeshu, i.e. setting the time of the story of Jesus of Nazareth in the same time as Yeshu ben Stada and the reign of Alexander Jannaeus. In the Toledoth, no equating of the two men is intended literally…it is simply making it clear that the work is a fiction. But this blending of the two men, which Epiphanius appears to accept in some form as historically correct as far as Jesus is concerned, though it clearly is not, is not quite the puzzle it may seem to be. The most likely explanation is that the Toledoth is a work based on a much older tradition, and that tradition was also known to Epiphanius. Or, perhaps more likely, a tradition that had affinities with the sources of the Toledoth. It is likely that the source could not be an exclusively Jewish one, as it seems impossible that Epiphanius would have used a Jewish source for this, so that tradition must have been a Christian source, or at least, a Jewish-Christian source. Epiphanius was obsessed with Christian Orthodoxy, and it seems unlikely that he would suddenly utilize a Jewish source on this point. And even stranger would be the fact that if the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew was in its post-Ebionite form, which it obviously was, it is simply the fact that the Prologue to the Gospel of Matthew clearly states, and this is certainly correct, that Herod was king when Jesus was born...not the Hasmonean Alexander Jannaeus. And Epiphanius indeed refers to Herod, Augustus, and the Romans. So it seems clear that he has a pre-Toledoth Toledoth source available to him, but this source may have been an early Christian source. And there have been scholars who have indeed suggested that at least some of the elements in the Toledoth Yeshu go back to a 2nd Century Christian work. In my opinion, their position on this must be THE correct one. Being a Heresy Hunter, the source in question would not have contained any of the highly objectionable content that is now found in the Toledoth Yeshu. However, there is one over-riding consideration that is very important here…the pericope in the Prologue to Matthew that states that Joseph took his family to Egypt. And the connection between Yeshu ben Stada, Yeshu ben Pandera, and Jesus of Nazareth may be inextricably linked by that vignette.

It is worth commenting on a related point. Celsus, in the True Logos, a strongly anti-Christian polemical work that may have had much to do with the Roman Government’s attitude toward Christianity, makes the claim that Jesus’s miracles were really sorcery learned in Egypt. This is, of course, perfectly consistent with the claims about Yeshu ben Stada, who was later conflated with Jesus of Nazareth. Celsus wrote in the 2nd century, very close to the time of Jesus, and certainly the time of his disciples. The miracles of Jesus are, for the most part, mainly absent of traditional markers of magic or sorcery.  But there is a strange miracle in Mark that is worth taking a look at…it is found in Mark 8. The chapter begins with the miracle by which Jesus feeds 4,000 people with only a small amount of food. This miracle is as Un-sorcery as you can get. As the food is distributed, it simply is enough…there are no incantations, no special magical acts. The food just keeps being handed out. This is exactly what one should expect from Jesus. But later in this chapter, Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida…and this miracle is radically different.

 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

This narrative is quite troubling. Instead of simply telling the blind man that he can now see, Jesus spits in his face. He then puts his hands on the man’s eyes and asks him if he can see. The man says that he can, but not clearly. Jesus puts his hands on the man’s eyes again, and now he can see. So this “miracle” has two stages…in the first stage, it only partly worked. Jesus had to take another crack at it to get the trick right. I can not think of any reason why Jesus should essentially fail the first time and need a second time to accomplish what at other times he accomplishes simply by speaking, except that what is being described is a form of magic. And with magic, if the act doesn’t work, then you did something wrong. The magical ritual has to be done perfectly if it is to work. So if at first you don’t succeed…

John 9:6ff recounts a very similar event…actually, two versions of the same event, and these two narratives are the only two narratives where Jesus uses his own spit to heal a blind man…

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam.”

So this story involves spit and dirt, and, thankfully, works the first time. The use of such elements is suggestive of magic. Contrast this with John’s account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus arrives, and simply declares…Lazarus, come forth! He simply speaks it, which, by the way, is the way that God creates the universe in Genesis 1…let there be! Then follows Genesis 2, which is a very different creation myth, where God brings order from chaos, rather than simply speaking things into existence. Ancient Near Eastern creation myths are really Re-organization Myths. Marduk slays the Dragoness Tiamat and cuts up her body to make the physical universe. That seems like a lot of work! Just speak it into being. Alas, only the Living God can do that, and Marduk is not the Living God. Oh, and the Living Son of God can do it as well. John 4:46ff tells the story of the nobleman from Capernaum, whose son was dying. He met Jesus in Cana, the place where he had turned water into wine. When the nobleman returned home, he found that his son was alive, just as Jesus said. With Lazarus, Jesus at least went to the scene. Now, he doesn’t even need to be present, and doesn’t have to spit on anyone. Let there be light! Let the sea teem with living things! Lazarus come forth! Let Marduk try doing that. With no notable proximity to the dying boy, Jesus simply announces…Go thy way, for thy son lives! And it was so, and God saw that it was good.

But what of the question of magic? There is yet a third interesting example, which is one of the most enigmatic narratives in the New Testament. And that makes it one of the most interesting. It appears in John, but only in particular manuscripts of John. In fact, the earliest Greek manuscript that includes this pericope is Codex Bezae, which dates to sometime within the period of the 400s or 500s AD. The earliest Latin manuscript with the pericope is Codex Fuldensis, which was produced in 546 AD. That is very late. But outside of the existing manuscripts, one church father, Didymus, referred to it. He lived during the years 313-398. That is still very late. Key manuscipts use an umlaut to indicate a textual variant, or missing text, or the awareness on the part of redactors that another source contains material relative to what is found in those texts in other works…

And…

A similar situation involving the short and long versions of the ending of the Gospel of Mark was discussed in another essay on this website. Here is the pericope…

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

 This is one of the coolest stories in the Bible, partly due to the fact that, in the opinion of your…

…friend and humble narrator, all attempts to explain the great woman in Flagrante delicto story have failed. It is of course the story of the woman caught in adultery, which appears only in John…as I said, in some manuscripts of John. In the middle of Jesus’s debate with the Pharisees, he inexplicably bends down, now ignoring everyone, and writes in the dirt. It is this act that prompts Jesus to say…

He who is without sin may cast the first stone.

Then equally inexplicably, he suddenly bends down to start writing in the dirt again. Being so thoroughly ignored, everyone slowly leaves…no doubt confused in the extreme. Jesus looks up and is surprised to find that everyone is gone, except the Adulterous Woman.

Hey, …up here! How rude! And you’ve never shied away from a confrontation with us before. Remember the Baalzebub thing? You were pretty gutsy then. What are you doing scribbling in the dirt?

Now there have been plenty of apologetic explanations for what is happening here…and none are convincing. In the narrative, it is the act of writing in the dirt that causes Jesus to come up with the brilliant…let he who is without sin cast the first stone. He could just say it. But instead, he obtains these words by something he is writing in the dirt. It is hard to see here anything except the same kind of magic-aided miracle involving spitting and making little blobs of mud. Perhaps these stories derive from a tradition of Christian magicians, and it will be remembered that Simon Magus…Simon the Sorcerer…not Simon the Wiseman…was one such Christian magician, and he had been associated with Phillip, a verifiable disciple. Another verifiable disciple was Thomas, and there is a gospel in his name that shows much interest in the Young Jesus, and I would suggest that it, like the Gospel of James, the Prologue of Matthew, and the Gospel of Luke, it too has drawn heavily on the Gospel of the Young Jesus. Here, Jesus is 5 years old…

This little child Jesus, when he was five years old, was playing by a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and then he purified the water simply by commanding it. And having made soft clay, he made from it twelve sparrows.

Now it was on the Sabbath that he did this.. And there were many other little children playing with him. And a certain Jew, when he saw what Jesus did, playing on the Sabbath day like that, went off and told his father Joseph:       

“Hey! Your kid is at the brook, and, mixing up some clay, he made twelve little birds. And that is a violation of the rules governing the Sabbath.”

So Joseph went to the brook and saw what Jesus was doing. Then he became angry.

“Why are you doing such a thing on the Sabbath? It isn’t allowed!”

But Jesus clapped his hands together and shouted at sparrows and said: “Go!” And they flew away, chirping as they went.

And when the Jews saw it they were amazed. Then they went and told their leaders about what Jesus had done.

Is this a miracle? If it were in our New Testament, we’d have to say yes, but we are probably grateful that it isn’t in the New Testament since many would very much prefer to say…no. It is magic. But! Note the connection between dirt and moisture, and hence the making of clay, which appears in one magic-miracle found in the Gospel of John. Thankfully, in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Jesus uses water from the brook, rather than spitting all over the place. Note too that poor Joseph gets more bad press…he becomes the Little Boy’s Foil. What would you expect from a guy who thought that the Perpetual Virgin Mother of God had been sleeping with another man? Mary, had she been present, could have pushed Joseph out of the way and handled it herself! Stay out of it…he’s my kid! The Infancy Gospel of Thomas has utilized traditions about Jesus that show the Young Boy to be quite a maniacal terror. For example, another little boy, trying to run past Jesus, accidentally bumps into him. Turn the other cheek you say? No…kill him…

After that, Jesus he walked through the village, and another child was running by. He accidentally bumped into Jesus, hitting his shoulder.

And Jesus became angry and said to the other boy: “You will not reach your destination.”

And suddenly, the boy dropped to the ground and died.

But certain men, when they saw what happened, said: “Just where did this kid come from? He does whatever he sees fit to do!”

And the parents of the boy who died went to Joseph, and blamed him, saying: “You can no longer live among us in this village because of your kid! Or at least, teach him to do good things and not evil things…for he is killing our children.”

Turning the other cheek is fine…but not the other shoulder! And so Jesus the Child Killer terrorizes Nazareth, and yet again, Joseph gets pulled into the middle of it. It is interesting that in these narratives, there is no trace of Mary, suggesting a community that venerated Joseph of Nazareth. It is easy to be offended by such vignettes, but it must be remembered that these were traditions held as true by early Christian groups. Someone has collected them. And it is clear that some of the difficulties found in vignettes from the same collection, used by Matthew, show inherent problems in the way they have been used. At least Thomas didn’t go looking for a Messiah-as-Child-Slayer-Prophecy in the Old Testament. Luke has the story of the Boy Jesus getting separated from his parents, who later find him teaching in the Temple. Thomas offers us another such story, only far less flattering. What about the men who complained to Joseph about Little-Clay-Bird Jesus?

But the son of Annas the scribe was standing there with Joseph; and he took the branch of a willow tree and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together.

And when Jesus saw what he did, he was angry and said to him: “O evil, ungodly, and foolish kid, what harm did the pools and the waters do to you? So! Now you too will be withered like a tree, and will not bear leaves, neither root, nor fruit.”

And immediately the boy withered up completely, but Jesus departed and went to Joseph's house.

But the parents of the boy who was withered picked him up, lamenting his youth, and brought him to Joseph, and accused him… “for it is YOU who has a child that does such things!”

So Jesus’s conflict with the scribes goes way back. And they stopped having play-dates in Nazareth. 

Of course, it could’ve been worse, he could’ve…

Hey kid! Try bumping into me!

Now, Sweetie, you behave! You’re in enough trouble!

Children weren’t the only ones to be sent to the Great Beyond to meet their Maker. There was also…

And the teacher said to Joseph: “First will I teach him the Greek alphabet, and then the Hebrew alphabet”. As it was, the teacher knew how smart the boy was, and was afraid of him. Still, he wrote out the alphabet and Jesus pondered it for a long time; but he said nothing to the teacher. Finally, Jesus spoke to the teacher saying, “If you’re really a teacher and if you’re so good with the alphabet, tell me what the power of the Alpha is and then I’ll tell you the power of the Beta.

That seems fair, seeing how we’re learning our A-B-Cs.

The teacher became angry and hit him on the head.

Hit him on the head? Corporal punishment? I wonder how this will turn out…

And the young child was hurt and so he cursed the teacher, and immediately the teacher fainted and fell face-down on the ground. And Jesus returned to the house of Joseph. And Joseph was upset and commanded Jesus’s mother, saying: “Don’t let him leave the house, because anyone who makes him angry seems to die!

Come on, Thomas! Jesus never did any of those things. Besides...

Regan and Pebbles did it!

And Mary finally makes her appearance, although it is interesting that she isn’t named. It is interesting too that Joseph, not Mary, is the one everyone complains to when Jesus is naughty. This is not the general image in Luke, where Joseph is essentially irrelevant. Perhaps he was spending all of his time apologizing to the other parents in Nazareth! And since I am moving toward the real background of Jesus, having referred to Simon Magus as a disciple of Phillip before butting heads with Peter, the Gospel of Phillip says something not only perplexing, but certainly something to horrify all Orthodox Heresy Hunters…

Some said, "Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit." They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman? Mary is the virgin whom no power defiled. She is a great anathema to the Hebrews, who are the apostles and the apostolic men. This virgin whom no power defiled; let the powers defile themselves! And the Lord would not have said "My Father who is in Heaven,” unless he had another father, otherwise he would have said simply "My father.”

Wow! What a statement…those who say that Mary conceived Jesus by the Power of the Holy Spirit are…wrong! Who’s wrong?

 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

That’s right! Phillip says that Matthew is wrong! Or, perhaps it would be better to say, the vignette in the Prologue to Matthew is wrong. And boy is Luke wrong! Just ask Phillip. It is the Orthodox belief that Matthew and Luke are right…

I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary…etc.

But Phillip is offended by that! Mary was not defiled! She simply was pregnant…so Luke isn’t the only one offended by the Prologue of Matthew as it relates to Mary. And I love the bit about Jesus’s father…he had two fathers…one on earth and one in Heaven! If he had only one father, then he wouldn’t have said…My father who art in Heaven, since he would only have said that to differentiate his Heavenly Father from another father, which is perplexing given the fact that Mary was undefiled in the extreme. So surely there isn’t an earthly father at all. Perhaps we now know why Simon Magus disassociated himself from Phillip! Perhaps he went back to Samaria looking for Dosietheos the Heretic! And it is worth noting that the author of the text seems to completely deny the authority of the faithless Hebrews called…apostles. Now that’s radical! It would seem that this writer is a thoroughly gentilic Christian…to such an extreme that he would reject Christ’s disciples as faithless Hebrews. But I noted in a previous essay that the tradition about the Virgin Birth pre-dates the Prologue of Matthew, and even the Original Collector himself. So if that is the case, then the use of the image of the Holy Spirit in the Prologue may simply be the interpretation of the redactors who created the Prologue. That leaves open the possibility that the original form of the tradition held that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, with no explanation as to how Mary became pregnant while still a virgin, i.e. the role of the Holy Spirit was not present in the original tradition. And! Mark knows nothing of anything in the Prologue. So Peter, in Mark, attributed the action of the Holy Spirit as descending down upon Christ after his baptism. Those in opposition to Matthew keep growing in number, though I am perfectly willing to toss Epiphanius over the fence and let him stand with the Prologuers. Thus the redactors of Phillip knew the pre-Prologue version of the Virgin Mary Tradition, and realized that the use of that tradition, and the explanation for the means by which Mary the Virgin became pregnant, comes from those who are in error…those trouble-makers called…apostles. In other words, Matthew uses the tradition but feels compelled to explain the mechanics of how Mary became pregnant…and Phillip takes offense at that. Purists would know that Mary was pregnant while yet a virgin simply because she was…end of story. No explanation was needed. No answer is needed if the question is stupid. So Matthew finds in Phillip yet another textual warrior arrayed against him. And we perhaps find ourselves staring at the Christian community from whom the original form of the Virgin Birth tradition originated…Mary Purists…a Christian community built around the person of the Mother of God…a community viewing itself as founded by Mary after the death and resurrection of her Son. She can now be the Virgin Mother of God, and any urge to explain how that happened might just seem as ridiculous as asking the question…where did God come from? From nowhere…He always existed. But things must come from something! Not God. How can something have always existed? Don’t know…but He did. The Virgin Mother of God was always a virgin and remained a virgin to the point of…cover your ears Phillip and Epiphanius…her vagina sealing up again after giving birth…or so the Gospel of James says. James and Phillip both better steer clear of Epiphanius, and perhaps stay out of Nazareth altogether. Perpetual Virgin Mother…just like Athena. But I’m sure that offends Phillip just as much as Matthew does. Still, if you go to the Holy Land on your vacation, and your child is playing in Nazareth, make sure he’s careful who he bumps into.