I have been wanting to get back to my Search for the Panther, but I temporarily lost him. But I’m on the trail again, and so I decided to write Episode 3 of Strange Books. And when it comes to the Bible, there are strange books aplenty. I wrote about…
…Deuteronomy in an earlier Strange Books episode. What makes Deuteronomy a Strange Book? Well, if it is indeed the book found during construction work in the Jerusalem Temple…the one the High Priest Hilkiah apparently found, who then gave it Shaphan…King Josiah’s accountant…and was finally given to the king, who then launched a reform of Judahite religious practices…then it is a Strange Book. The narrative of the finding of the book is the first…and only…time that it is hinted that it was lost. And that means this book may have been intentionally hidden from view, which would be strange because if you want people to not have access to the book you could just take it with you when you left the Temple. Stealing library books is against the rules! So too with holy books. But no one did this, and so no one intended the book to simply disappear…that would have been easy to do. And hiding-rather-than-stealing is puzzling because the culprit wanted a temporary disappearance of the book. You could hide it in the Temple, but it would eventually be found. It is also the case that the area where the book would have been in the first place was off limits to everyone except the top members of the Levitical, priestly class. That would mean that it was a priest who made the book temporarily disappear. Equally puzzling would be the loss of the book in a place where there weren’t many books at all. Lost in a closet? Perhaps it fell through a crack in the floor? It simply doesn’t seem feasible that you could lose a holy book inside the Temple that no one had a reason for hiding anyway. It’s widely believed that, as I indicated, the book that suddenly appeared in the reign of King Josiah was some form of Deuteronomy. I see no reason to dispute that. The book found during the temple renovation work is called the Book of the Law. And this would fit well with what Deuteronomy 31:26 calls itself…
Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant.
The connection between the Book of the Law and the Temple would seem to lay in the connection between the book and the ark. Deut 28: 15-68 provides a list of curses against the Hebrews should they failed to live according the terms of the book, and Josiah’s response to hearing the book read to him supports the book being Deuteronomy, although obviously a much shorter, and earlier, version of it. There is another connection. Deuteronomy 31: 10-11 dictates that the book be read aloud during a public ceremony. This is what Josiah did. Deuteronomy calls for the destruction of sites known as bamot…hills where indigenous deities were worshipped. Josiah would carry this out. On the subject of curses, it would seem that the prophet…
…Jeremiah, no longer smarting over the ludicrous idea that a prophetess named Huldah was sought out to determine the validity of the book, was present for the reading…
The word of God that came to Jeremiah…Hear the words of this covenant and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and say to the inhabitants of Jerusalem…Thus says Yahweh, God of Israel! Cursed is the man who does not obey the words of this covenant, which I gave to your forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt…the words I commanded from the iron furnace…Obey My voice and do everything I tell you. If so, I will be your God and you will be my people. Then I will uphold the oath I swore to your forebears and give you the land of milk and honey…this very day.
Then I answered and said…Amen, Yahweh.
The description of Egypt as the iron furnace appears in Deut. 4:20. The importance to Jeremiah of the image of the iron furnace may well have to do with the fact that he appears to have been a smelter or assayer by trade (Jer. 6: 27-30). And upon having curses found in Deut. 27 read to them…
And all the people shall respond by saying…Amen.
This response is demanded after each of the curses found in Deut. 27: 15-26. It would seem that Jeremiah was actually present at Josiah’s reading of Proto-Deuteronomy and responded in the affirmative.
But the story of the book would suggest that the book in question, Proto-Deuteronomy, certainly chapters 27 – 28, perhaps the kernel from which a much bigger Deuteronomy was created, is strange nonetheless. It seems that the book had been hidden or lost. When Josiah’s accountant, Shaphan, brought orders from the king to the High Priest Hilkiah, the latter gave the book to Shaphan. It is only after Shaphan discusses the money with Josiah does he mention a book, which he then…
…reads to the king, or at the very least, held up the book. So it would seem that the book suddenly appeared in Hilkiah’s hands out of nowhere. The High Priest gives the appearance of not being very impressed with the book, seeing how he simply gave it to the accountant. Nor is the accountant impressed, simply calling it a book. And then when it was read to Josiah, he did the inevitable…wanting a prophet to sign off on the book as valid before he did anything. This involved a heady delegation: Hilkiah, Ahikam, Shaphan, Achbor, and Asaiah. In other words, there are suddenly three more guys involved with the book once it was given to the king…all royal officials. And then another rather official thing happened…in order to obtain validation, the delegation went to an otherwise unknown prophetess named…
…Huldah. And what a coincidence! Huldah is the wife of another royal official…Shallum, keeper of the royal wardrobe. This story makes a great deal of sense if the book that Hilkiah gave Shaphan was a totally new book. Hilkiah didn’t want to stick his neck out right away, best let Shaphan take the book to the king. He wouldn’t want to make it look like a big deal…yet. The book being new, and not some lost sacred tome, Shaphan gave financial matters precedence over it when meeting with the king. How would Josiah respond? Better find out first….
Now it happened that when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes.
Would Huldah’s husband please report to the throne room with a new robe! But the king clearly showed that this book found the right guy, and then more officials became associated with it. First Hilkiah, in an indefinite way, then Shaphan, Ahikam, Achbor, and Asaiah. But what prophet to ask? Josiah wanted to avoid the calamities threatened in the book from occurring during his reign. But this would hardly be credible. However, you could head off a…If-I-can’t-change-anything-now-then-why-should-I-care…by making a sort-of-deal…
Surely, therefore, you will die in peace, and your eyes will not see the calamity I will bring on this place.
This was what the king wanted to hear, and he, as 2 Kings presents it, began an intense campaign of reform that stood a chance of lasting after his death. It was clever to uphold the terms of the book, but give the king what he wanted at the same time. The most important part of this was obtaining the right prophetic word since Josiah would be clearly breaking with the religious practices of his father Manasseh, who reigned a whopping 55 years. I found it telling that a royal delegation made of royal officials went to the wife of another royal official to obtain the only response that would induce Josiah to take the measures he did. But there are two notable issues. The first…Huldah was wrong…
In his days, Pharaoh Necho went to the aid of the king of Assyria, to the river Euphrates (Harran). Josiah fought against Necho, and during a confrontation, Necho killed him.
Being killed on the field of battle by a heathen king is not going to your grave in peace…very much not so. But, there is another point. 2 Kings gives the impression that the religious practices under Josiah were those of his father Manasseh, and that this went on for 18 years until the book suddenly appeared. But that is not what 2 Chronicles says…
For in the 8th year of his reign, while he was still young, he sought the God of his ancestor David, and in the twelfth year he began purging Judah and Jerusalem of the high places (bamot), the wooden images, the carved idols, and the molded idols. He broke down the altars dedicated to Baal, including paraphernalia and idols, and even scattered the dust on the graves of those who worshipped them. He even burned the bones of the priests on the altars he was destroying.
What 2 Chronicles is doing is righting the record. 2 Kings presentation of the run up to the finding of the Book of the Law is not the case…Josiah had already carried out substantial reforms…all of which were more than consistent with Deuteronomy, before the Book of the Law suddenly appeared. And, in fact, a young Josiah didn’t need Deuteronomy do what he was doing…his grandfather Hezekiah had done the same things without a holy book spurring him on. For six years religious reforms were going on prior to the finding of the Book of the Law. What the Book of the Law did was give divine sanction of the most important principle of the Deuteronomists…those responsible for putting together the books Deuteronomy – 2 Kings…no worship could take place anywhere except in the Jerusalem temple. It seemed more than possible that the book was written by Hilkiah and others, and that this book was made to appear to be ancient. The book couldn’t have been put next to the ark of the covenant. The ark hadn’t been mentioned since the reign of Solomon, because it was during the pulverizing campaign of Pharaoh Shesonq I (Shishak, in the Biblical account)…which made its way into…
…the Raiders of the Lost Ark, that Rehoboam had to plunder the temple to obtain enough booty to give to the king of Egypt. With Proto-Deuteronomy, this concept was enshrined in Holy Writ, making Deuteronomy a Strange Book indeed.
I have written about the first two chapters of Matthew…the Gospel of the Young Jesus. Originally, Matthew began at chapter 3, making Proto-Matthew begin where Mark begins, and is consistent with the version of Matthew used by the Ebionites. I will not rehash other things I have written about the first two chapters of Matthew. But Luke very much has a Prologue with stories about the birth and youth of Jesus…a Lukian Gospel of the Young Jesus. Surely the two prologues match! Right? They couldn’t possibly differ more. In Matthew, the Holy Family is under constant threat. But Luke? In Luke’s prologue, there isn’t a single negative thing. No fleeing to Egypt…no Massacre of the Innocents…no ending-up in Nazareth because Herod’s son wishes to follow in his father’s footsteps by killing the Messiah. There is not one single negative thing…no threat of any kind, in the Prologue of Luke. There is no way around it…either Matthew is wrong, or Luke is wrong. Well, there is a way around that. Enter…
Marcion of Sinope. He was a highly influential early Christian…born only 15 years after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD (85-160 AD). Marcion fell out with other branches of Christianity, and was excommunicated in 144. The other controversial elements of the history of Marcion aside, what is known is that Marcion was using a gospel that was essentially a version of Luke. But you can guess what was missing…the first three chapters of the current version of Luke were not in Marcion’s version. The same can be said of Matthew, not just as it relates to the Ebionites…but also as it relates to Mark. So did Marcion remove the prologue? If so…why do it? And what about Mark…did Mark leave off the prologue…one of two radically different prologues? If so…why do it? I can find no compelling reason why you would leave off either prologue. The gospel tradition is used within a Christian community in the world of ancient Christianity. You inadvertently create a Christian world full of different groups with their own gospels. Those with a scaled down version are going to claim that theirs is not scaled down…the others are scaled up. With Biblical books…they don’t get smaller…they get bigger. Epiphanius accused the Ebionites of cutting material out of the Gospel of Matthew. This is absurd…the Ebionite Matthew began where it should…exactly where Mark begins. Luke 3 begins exactly where Mark and Proto-Matthew began…John the Baptist. Contra Epiphanius…the Gospel of Matthew did not originally have the first two chapters, which is well supported by an analysis of the material found in them. I’ve discussed those in other essays. In the case of Luke, the first 3 chapters are jam-packed with references to Mary, more than enough to fuel a child’s Christmas Pageant. But the only time she is mentioned outside of the prologue is 8: 19-21, a Lukian version of the story in Mark that is diametrically opposed to the idea of the virgin birth…she’s not my mom because she doesn’t believe me. In fact, the prologue to Luke, along with the Protoevangelium of James, clearly is consistent with the Cult of the Virgin Mary reaching critical theological mass. Without the prologue, the insignificance of Mary would match that of the one held in Mark…the first gospel. You cannot have the prologue to Matthew and the prologue to Luke at the same time. They are completely contradictory, and both even offer two, conflicting genealogies. Clearly, the version of Luke used by Marcion did not have the prologue removed. No, Marcion had a version of Luke that pre-dated the adding of the prologue. Thus all three gospels: Mark, Proto-Matthew, and Marcion-Luke started roughly at the same point...Jesus baptized by John. As noted earlier, the prologue to Matthew and the prologue to Luke are irreconcilably different. In fact, I would assert that the Gospel of the Young Jesus was added to the Gospel of Matthew in the post-Ebionite Christian world, primarily to answer the question…what was his birth like? What was he like as a child? Questions like these arose when Christianity moved beyond the confines of the Jewish-Christian community and into the Pagan-Christian community. For those who grew up in the pagan world, the story of a divine figure was of paramount importance. They were used to a divine biography for every god, demi-god, and hero. How could a spiritual figure of any merit be without a life history? For the pagan mind…he couldn’t. And so elements were taken from different sources to create the Gospel of the Young Jesus. I see the gospel of Matthew as a revised and expanded edition of Mark that at some point had the Gospel of the Young Jesus attached to it. Luke was a revised and expanded edition of Mark + Matthew, that originally pre-dated the adding of the Gospel of the Young Jesus to the Book of Matthew. At around the same time, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas…which has nothing about a virgin birth…appeared, offering a collection of stories about the young Jesus.
I think the redactors of Luke found the material in the prologue to Matthew offensive…first that Jesus’s birth and youth could have been anything other than miraculously wonderful, and especially with the belief on Joseph’s part that Mary was pregnant as a result of pre-marital sex. Then the Infancy Gospel of Thomas came along, leaving the redactors of post-Marcion Luke utterly…aghast.
Did I say…the Infancy Gospel of Thomas? I think I’m sure I think I did. Strange Books? Strange Book. It offered little vignettes of Jesus’s life before his baptism. It starts when Jesus was only five years, and makes no reference to his conception, his birth, Mary’s virginal state, or anything that happened in the first 5 years of his life…
The stories of Thomas the Israelite, the Philosopher, concerning the events of the Childhood of the Lord. I, Thomas the Israelite, write this account for you so that all the gentile brothers know the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ in His childhood, which he did in our country.
Notice that the original Infancy Gospel of Thomas did not even know where Jesus was born, although later versions re-worked this to bolster the Bethlehem connection. And what makes that even more interesting is that this gospel was intended to be used by gentile Christians…no claims are made about any Jewish-Christian elements. Interesting? Yes, whereas Jews would be offended at the idea of a man born as the son of a god and human mother, gentiles would not. This is the idea underlying the Greek concept of the demigod, for example…Heracles (known to the Romans as Hercules). But a far better example was Alexander the Great. His father, Phillip II, was Macedonian and traced his lineage from Heracles. His mother…
…Olympias was from Epirus, and so Alexander was only half-Macedonian. Olympias’s family was descended from Achilles…whatever. All the powerful families in Greece and its environs traced their origin back to some divine or semi-divine figure from mythology. But! Olympias had a little something to share with her son just before he left to take on the Persians and become one of history’s great kings…and that had to do with Alexander’s conception. As the story goes, she was asleep in bed when a clap of thunder woke her up. Then a bolt of lightning struck her womb…yes…Alexander’s father was Zeus…not a descendent 12 times removed…no, Zeus was his actual father. So he had a divine father (Zeus) and a mortal mother (Olympias). With the fairly common belief in individuals who had God As Their Father among non-Jews, the writers of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas would have been more than willing to share the belief that Jesus was the son of God and a human mother. That the woman was a virgin at the time would have found widespread favor among the demographic. Yet there are no claims about a divine conception, and no story about the birth of Jesus with all the finery found in the Gospel of Luke. I don’t think this means that myths about the virgin birth had not appeared yet…I think they had. My belief on this point is that the redactors of Thomas did not credit them…except in a few cases. The following vignettes I offer to you now. When Jesus was five years old, he…
…made clay sparrows which he brought to life, earning a rebuke from Joseph since it was the Sabbath. Jesus made the birds using clay from the creek, and the son of Annas the scribe made the very unfortunate decision to take a stick and release the water Jesus used to make the clay. Since the waters dried up, he declared that Little Annas would be dried up…and it was so. Jesus went back to Joseph’s house. The parents of Little Annas took the body of their child to Joseph although, one might point out, there really wasn’t much he could about it.
Jesus was walking through the village when a boy ran past him, who had the misfortune of bumping into him. Jesus rebuked him and he died. The parent of the child then brought his body to Joseph and declared…
Seeing that you have such a child as this, you can no longer live among us unless you teach him to bless rather than curse!
That wasn’t the end of it. Joseph gave Jesus a talking-to. But that didn’t come out as one might have hoped. Jesus told Joseph that he knew the others had complained about him, and so they must be punished. Yes? Yes! And they all went blind. Jesus was punished too, Joseph giving him a hard tug on the ear.
There was a local teacher named Zacchaeus, and he learned about the naughty things Jesus had done.
So he proposed that he should be Jesus’s teacher, something with which Joseph readily agreed. He intended to teach him not only letters, but also to respect his elders and not kill other children. But the teacher! He had no idea what he was getting himself into. First, he attempted to teach Jesus about the alphabet. Jesus accused him of knowing nothing about the letter A, so why should he believe him about the Letter B. Then Jesus launched into an allegorical interpretation of the Letter A.
The lamentations of the teacher, as he complained to others who were present, state something that is most remarkable…
Assuredly he was born before the creation of the world.
Why is that remarkable? Because of this…
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning of God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Those are the first three verses of the Gospel of John, and they say exactly the same thing. Finally, Jesus got his turn, and after a small lecture, reversed the things he did before. This would suggest that Little Annas, the Unfortunate Sprinter, and all the blind folks were restored to health. But matters would not end there.
A few days later, Jesus was playing with some kids on the roof of a house. One boy, Zeno…
…managed to fall off the roof, or fall out a window or possibly even…
…fell off the porch; and perhaps he was given a little assistance. The other children ran away, but the parents of the dead child appeared and shouted threats up at Jesus while he was still on the roof. It would appear that the other children…
…told Zeno’s parents that Jesus pushed Zeno off the roof. Jesus jumped down from the roof, and ordered…
…Dead Zeno to tell his parents whether he had pushed him or not. Zeno came to life and swore that Jesus hadn’t push him. This left Zeno back in the Land of the Living.
A man in the village was chopping wood, and inadvertently chopped his foot in half, though in this instance Jesus wasn’t present at the moment. But the man died of excessive blood loss. A crowd gather round, and Jesus suddenly appeared. He touched the man’s foot and he came back to life.
When Jesus was six, he performed a miracle on behalf of his mother. Jesus’s mother is not called by her name until the very end, where we find ourselves in Lukian Territory. The name Joseph is used throughout. And the miracle in question appears to be a variation of the miracle performed at the Wedding In Cana…which only the Gospel of John relates.
Jesus was given a pitcher, and sent to draw water from the well. But there was a crowd around the well, and someone bumped into him, causing him to drop the pitcher, which shattered when it hit the ground. I hope Zeno didn’t do it. Thinking on his feet, he stretched out the shirt he was wearing, poured the water into, and carried the water back home in his shirt…which he wore the whole way home.
And…
This is clearly reminiscent of John’s Wedding at Cana. But now let’s bring Luke into the fold…no pun intended…
And his mother, seeing the miracle he had done, kissed him, and kept within herself the mysteries which she had seen him doing.
That’s Thomas…time for Luke!
But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
When Jesus was 8 years old, Joseph took Jesus him along when it was time to sow the fields…
Jesus’s meager contribution changed dramatically when the reaping was done…like the loaves and fishes, what Jesus reaped became an abundance. And here we find something clearly visible later…
And calling all the poor of the village to the threshing-floor, he gave them the corn, and Joseph took away what was left.
Then Jesus decided to help Joseph in the family business. Don’t give him dangerous tools! Joseph was making a couch, and it turned out that one of the wooden cross-pieces was too short.
So Jesus simply stretched the cross-piece until it was the right length. So things started looking up, but then we decided to try the teacher-pupil thing again.
This time it was Joseph who arranged for a teacher. Discussing Greek letters, Jesus ordered the teacher to tell him about the power of the Alpha, and he would tell him about the power of the Beta. The alphabet seems to be getting a staring role. The teacher reached out…
…and struck Jesus across the face. Then Jesus cursed him, the teacher dying on the spot. Then Joseph resorted to a tried-and-true measure, take it out on the wife…
Joseph was angry and ordered Jesus’s mother saying, “Do not let him go outside of the door, because those that make him angry die.”
Wait a minute! Aren’t you the head of the household? Aren’t you the patriarchal figure? Seems to me that Joseph should handle this himself. Besides, dear…he hasn’t caused me any trouble!
Queue up another teacher! Two down and one go! This time the teacher suggested it, telling Joseph that he would try flattery. But Jesus, finding an open book, for some reason began shouting terrifying, holy words. All who heard him were impressed, suggesting the story found in Luke about Jesus disputing with the teachers at the Temple and putting them to shame. The teacher lived and told Joseph that he had brought him a teacher, not a pupil.
Now for a family matter. Joseph sent Jesus and James to get firewood. James, picking up some sticks, was bitten by a snake. Jesus acted quickly. He blew on the bite, healing James and killing the serpent. This story I am inclined to accept as historical. I said elsewhere on this site that I believe that Mary had two husbands. The first was a carpenter named Joshua, and he was the father of Jesus (Joshua) and James (Jacob), making them full-blood brothers. The list of the first 3 sons of the Holy Family always follow the same order…Jesus, James, and Joseph. Assuming the validity of the practice of naming the first male child of a marriage after the father, then Jesus was the eldest son, followed by James. The son named Joseph was the first son Mary bore to her second husband…Joseph. James, called…the Brother of the Lord…became the leader of the Jewish-Christians in Jerusalem. And! I can’t help giving out a spoiler alert, but Jesus and James had a cousin named Simeon, who figured in the debate as to the rightful successor of James. And it is in this context that the elusive panther will finally be caught! It would seem that James and Jesus were closely associated with each other throughout their youth. Jesus follows the healing of his brother with the resurrecting of a small child and a man who died while building a house.
Our strange book takes us to the Passover celebration in Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old. Now we come to a very Lukian part of the story. As the family was leaving, Mary and Joseph hadn’t seen Jesus in a while, assuming that he was with the caravan heading home. After a day passed, they looked for him. Not finding him, they sped back to Jerusalem. There they found him debating with the learned ones at the Temple.
After three days they found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions. And those listening to him were amazed how he questioned the elders and explained the main points of the law and the riddles and the parables of the prophets.
And his mother said to him, “Child, why did you do this to us? Look, we have been searching for you in great anxiety and distress.” Jesus said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
And the scribes and the Pharisees said to Mary, “Are you the mother of this child?” And she said, “I am.” And they said to her, “Blessed are you, because the Lord God has blessed the fruit of your womb. For such present wisdom and glory of virtue we have never seen nor heard.”
And Jesus rose from there and followed his mother and was obedient to his parents. And she treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in grace before God and men. To whom be the glory forever, amen.
The Infancy Gospel was regarded as apocryphal and heretical as early as Irenaeus (185 AD), and by Christian scholars such as John Chrysostom, Eusebius, Pope Galasius I, and my old favorite…Epiphanius, who put it in his Heretical Bread Basket. I find it fascinating that…
I better hurry…I find it fascinating that my good buddy Epiphanius did not object to the actual stories, but simply to the fact that it contradicted the assertion found in the Gospel of John that the Wedding at Cana was Jesus’s first miracle. Like other works, Thomas comes in different recensions, and there are additional stories, but it seems clear that Thomas is intended to provide details not found in the Gospel of the Young Jesus. But in this case, nothing is said about his birth, the reason for that being, or so I think, he came into the world in the usual way…paraphrasing what the Apostle Paul had to say about it. Instead, he focused on events happening when Jesus was five, six, and twelve years old. Much can be said about the nature of the stories in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, but I would offer an interpretation. Jesus behaved badly…but he was a child, and what else do you think a small child might do if he had the power of God at his disposal? At his every whim? What Little Jesus learns is how to control that power and exercise it in such a way that he would fulfill the will of God. It is also clear that, taking Matthew, Luke, and Thomas into account, there were various legends about Jesus circulating in the first part of the second century, and one was free to pick and choose whichever stories one wished when creating one’s own Gospel of the Young Jesus. Thomas has vignettes, Matthew has vignettes, and Luke has vignettes. And Thomas shows similarities with other gospels. The main parental authority in Thomas is Joseph. This agrees with Matthew, where Joseph is the driver of the stories. This stands in contrast to Luke, who silences Joseph and makes Mary the Queen of the Christmas pageant. Like Mark and John, there is no virgin birth. Thomas and Luke recount the story about the confounding of the learned, whereas Matthew didn’t use that legend. There is wording in Thomas suggestive of John, and the story about the Watery Tunic suggests the Wedding at Cana. But there is also clear wording in common with Luke as concerns Mary treasuring things in her heart.
However, it may have been that the appearance of Thomas horrified the redactors of Luke, who sought to right the wrongs by crafting the current prologue to the Post-Marcion version of Luke, ending up with the warmest, fuzziest, warm fuzzy version of Christ’s life before he appeared at the Jordan…nothing ever went wrong…everything was glowingly positive…Mary was never suspected of doing anything naughty…and Jesus was never a brat who killed people for bumping into him. The prologue to the Gospel of Luke was a later addition to it, discrediting Matthew, Thomas, and of course…Marcion. But it was also the first big step to ending up with the Protoevangelium of James, which takes the Virgin Mary myth and stretched it until it almost broke…Mary Ever-Virgin, complete with her vagina closing back up following Christ’s birth…clearly a book that reflects a full-grown cult of Mary. So now we have three gospels (Mark; Proto-Matthew; Proto-Luke beginning at the same approximate point-in-time, and all lacking any information about Jesus’s life prior to his appearance at the Jordan, and all three lacking any virgin birth narrative.
Matthew as the source of special information about the virgin birth…the gospel that started the whole thing…John’s Gospel doesn’t have any of the material in Matthew or Luke. Wait…what? John knows nothing about a virgin birth? No…he doesn’t. John begins the story where Mark, Proto-Matthew, Ebionite Matthew, and Proto-Luke begin…with John the Baptist (1:6ff). John 1: 1-5 discusses the Word of God that also was God. Very briefly, obviously. At no time is Mary, who does feature in the story of the Wedding at Cana, ever called a virgin. She is an important figure is so far as if you are associated with her, you obtain a privileged status. The Wedding at Cana does not appear in the other three gospels, and is probably apocryphal. The character of Mary in it is meant to do something the Johnnites will do again.
After this He went down to Capernaum, He, His mother, His brothers, and His disciples…but they didn’t stay there very long.
The presence of Mary gives the disciples validity. In this case, all twelve disciples are present, including John. Later, at the cross, the Johnnites will make the ultimate grab by making John Mary’s son, and therefore brother of Christ. But I believe from the early part of the Gospel of John, the Johnnites were competing with another group of Christians…followers of John the Baptist. So if being associated with Mary gives you credibility, then why neglect to call Mary a virgin? Certainly the Johnnites knew the virgin birth myths, but it would seem that they didn’t believe them. It is also interesting that John does not name her, as if the Johnnites didn’t know her name. Contrast that with John 6:42, where the Johnnites prove that they knew his father’s name was Joseph…
And they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”
Unlike Mark, Mary has two stories in which she appears. But again, there are no claims about her virginity. This raises an interesting question…does the Gospel of John indicate a transition from Mary as the One Who Doesn’t Believe Her Son, to the Virgin Mary, to the Ever-virgin Mary? In other words, in John the unimportant lady became an important lady and then became the Virgin Mother of God found in the Gospel of the Young Jesus. The latter is a concern for Catholics, but not protestants, who view the Virgin Birth as a critically important fulfillment of a critically important prophecy, but are then content to allow Mary to be a normal Jewish woman after that. If Mark is allowed to be Mark, Jesus’s mother was of no significance other than as an example of someone who rejected his claims to be something along the lines of the messiah. It would be tempting to believe that everyone else would see it Mark’s way, but that was not the case. And the answer to why that is will be met with in the final part of the Search for the Panther. The Johnnites did do something interesting.
For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
Interesting? Yes, because this statement has been completely removed from its context…the statement that Jesus was rejected not only by the people Nazareth, but also by his own family…the other indication in Mark that Mary did not accept Jesus’s claims about himself. But then the Johnnites work their way back to that in a fascinating way, adding a bizarre story about Jesus’s brothers…
Now the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles was about to begin. His brothers said to him, “Leave here and go into Judea so that your followers also may see your works. For no one does anything in secret when he is attempting to be known openly. If you can do these things…go show the world.” For even his brothers did not believe him.
It’s strange to not believe what is being done right in front of your face. The brothers of Jesus were mentioned by Mark in combination with Mary in the statement that his own family didn’t believe him. John removed the family, leaving the people of the area as those who gave Jesus no honor. But then he doubles back to the family when it comes to not believing him, giving us the bit about the brothers, and leaving out…his mother. John has completely left out the biggest argument against the virgin birth as found in Mark…
Then his brothers and his mother came, and standing outside, they called for him. But a multitude was sitting around him, and they said to him…Look, your mother and brothers are outside seeking you. But he said, “Who is my mother, or my brothers?” Then he looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said…here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.
Why such a sharp repudiation? The answer lies a few verses earlier…
But when his family heard, they went out to lay hold of him, thinking he was crazy.
It is not the case that Jesus was simply rejected by his family…I think the proper understanding is that his family believed that he made the claims about himself that he made because he was mentally unbalanced. So in this one instance, they sought to save him from possible danger. Matthew and Luke include this passage, but they leave out the important part about Jesus being crazy. Without that, we have no reason for why Jesus would have said something of the magnitude that he did. Now we know why had no honor among his family, and if I correctly understand the reference to those who thought he was crazy, then we have the reason for the statement Jesus made. But even that aside, Jesus clearly implies that his brothers and mother did not believe the claims he made about himself, substituting anyone who would believe him for those who didn’t. John has left the entire thing out, introduced the story about the brothers, and leaving the only people who didn’t show him honor as those residing in his hometown, i.e. Nazareth.
As far as the location of Jesus’s birth is concerned, Matthew and Luke agreed…Bethlehem. In Mark, the implication would be Nazareth.
Others said, “This is the Christ,” but some said, “Will the Christ come out of Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem where David was born?”
Way to go, John! It was common knowledge that Jesus was NOT born in Bethlehem. The fact that he wasn’t born in Bethlehem was being used against the claim that Jesus was the messiah. It is clear that the Johnnites knew that Christ came from Nazareth (18: 5, 7). It also seems clear that not only does John not have any material akin to the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke, but also knew that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem. And thus Proto-John may represent a transition point between Mark’s portrayal of Mary as simply one who didn’t believe Jesus’s claims, and the Virgin Birth myths that sprang up very soon after his death…Mary is very important because of her connection to Christ, but there is nothing strange about the circumstances by which she gave Jesus birth. I will place them in order…
1. Mark
2. Proto-Matthew (e.g. Ebionite Matthew)
3. Proto-Luke (e.g. Marcionite Luke)
4. Infancy Gospel of Thomas
5. Proto-John
6. Prologue to Matthew
7. Prologue to Luke
8. The Protoevangelium of James
I placed Thomas before the Gospel of the Young Jesus because not only is there no virgin birth, but it is also the case that it’s Joseph, not Mary, who is the main parent involved in the action. The same is true in the Gospel of the Young Jesus in Matthew, whereas the Luke Prologuer made Mary the center attraction. The fictional claims about Jesus being born in Bethlehem may owe something to the objection raised in John that Jesus couldn’t be the messiah because he wasn’t born in Bethlehem. It is for this reason that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was later edited to reflect “the region of Bethlehem.”
But if Matthew’s prologue is a Not-So-Strange-Book, it must be said that there was supposedly a second prologue to Matthew! Don’t look! It isn’t there now, and it would seem that it never was there. What can that mean? Well, who are Parmenius and Varinus? Oh, well I don’t know either. They appear to have been mendicant priests or monks who just so happened to have turned up during a light-hearted conversation involving…
…Bishop Chromatius of Aquileia and…
…Heliodorus, Bishop of Altino. The two were discussing the baleful effects that apocryphal books were having on the topics of the birth of Christ, and the birth of Mary. It isn’t specified which books were specifically being attacked…sorry…referred to, but the number one contender would have be the Protoevangelium of James, which deals with the birth of Mary. Above I noted that it is really the next dramatic step in the cult of the Virgin Mary after the Prologue to Luke. But Heliodorus and Chromatius found themselves enthralled when Parmenius and Varinus walked into the party. They shared something amazing with them. One of the greatest biblical translators of all time was…
…St. Jerome. In 382, Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to produce a new Latin translation of the Bible. The “version” used up to that point consisted of different manuscripts comprising Old Testament portions based on the Septuagint, along with the New Testament. Jerome took the step of substituting a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament instead of the Septuagint…a rather edgy move at the time. No one had a greater reputation as a translator and scholar in all of Christendom. And Parmenius and Varinus, deciding to join the conversation involving Chromatius and Heliodorus, told the two bishops something amazing…Jerome had a secret, strange book. Ok, ok…they didn’t exactly call it a strange book…I used poetic license. “But what sort of secret book?” Chromatius and Heliodorus asked. One written in Hebrew. That wasn’t much of a rare thing by any means. But one written by the very hand of the disciple Matthew? That got the two bishops’ attention I’m sure. As the story goes, Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew, but he also wrote another book…in Hebrew. As much respect that I have for St. Papias, whose statements about the writing of the book of Mark I hold in the highest esteem, I part company with him on the question of Matthew. It was Papias who claimed that the disciple known as Matthew wrote the gospel, though the view must have pre-dated him. But he also made the claim that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew. I disagree with him on this point. I believe that Matthew was an expanded, supplemented version of Mark, one that was produced by gentile Christians…not Jewish Christians. In fact, the writers believed that they were correcting some parts of Mark, although they actually “uncorrected” it, to coin an expression.
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”
They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,
“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Yes, the Triumphal Entry. And it is a pretty straight-forward story…Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a young donkey. Now for Matthew’s version…
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
“Say to Daughter Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Matthew has added a citation of Zech. 9:9…
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
In Matthew’s eyes, Mark has failed to realize that the Triumphal Entry fulfilled a prophecy. Mark makes no mention of Zechariah 9:9 or any other Old Testament prophecy that had any bearing on the event. So the writers of Matthew have corrected what appeared in their eyes to be a rather re-Mark-able omission. As I’ve noted in earlier essays, the Matthewites loved to connect particular events with Old Testament passages, and had the vexing habit of simply ripping passages out of their greater context to accomplish this. In fact, they tore out verses that when you go back and look at the whole prophecy, you’ll find you’re wincing. A great example is from the prologue, where Joseph’s family is sent to Egypt so that the return from there would fulfill a prophecy:
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.
This is the larger context of the material in question…Hosea 11:1ff…
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
But the more they were called, the more they went away from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals, and they burned incense to images.
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize it was I who healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek,
and I bent down to feed them.
“Will they not return to Egypt, and will not Assyria rule over them,
because they refuse to repent?
Let the wincing begin. Can we apply the accusation of the practice of heathen religion to Jesus? Jesus worshipped Baal? Graven images? So Jesus came out of Egypt, but he will be sent back there because he refuses to repent? Wince away.
The Matthewites even went so far as to create their own Old Testament prophecy when attempting to explain why a Jerusalem family ended up in Nazareth…
And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth so that it would be fulfilled what was spoken the prophets…He shall be called a Nazarene.
Good luck finding that one. But they’ve done more than that, and the doing of that, that shows that, that was not done by a Jew. I will ask some of my friends to help me with this. How many animals are there in Mark’s version?
“Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.”
Answer?
Yes, one! How I love to count things! There is 1 young donkey. And Jesus will ride on this donkey as he enters Jerusalem. But what about here…
“Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.
How many animals are there now?
Right, Matthew has given us another animal. Notice how awkward Matthew’s reading is once he adds the other animal…
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
With Mark, Jesus will sit on one donkey. There’s no trick to that. But with Matthew, Jesus will sit on…both. Both? How is Jesus going to ride into Jerusalem on two donkeys? It would be rather difficult to sit astride two donkeys at the same time. Add to this the fact that Matthew seems to envision an adult female donkey with a smaller foal. This would be twice as difficult since the two animals wouldn’t be of the same height. The only alternative to a ludicrous image of attempting to ride two donkey’s into Jerusalem at the same time is to suggest something just as comical…Jesus rides into Jerusalem on one animal, then dismounts, runs out to the city gate, mounts the other animal, and then rides that one into the city. The writers of Matthew make a material change to the passages in question, and then don’t even realize how inexplicable their handywork is. The redactors who crafted the prologue did the same thing…
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet…the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).
So why are we naming him Jesus when we’re supposed to be naming him Immanuel? The redactors didn’t even realize the inexplicable result of their ham-fistedness. But no one ever called him Immanuel because he was named Joshua. So Matthew leaves the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists scrambling to explain how Jesus can ride into Jerusalem on two donkeys, whereas the truth of the matter is far simpler. Let’s look at the prophecy the Matthewites quoted…
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey…on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
So, How many animals are in Zech. 9:9?
What? I’ll ask again...how many animals are in Zech. 9:9?
Awesome guys! Yes, the gang’s right…there is only one animal in Zech. 9:9. In Hebrew poetic material, repeating the same thing in a slightly different way adds emphasis. So in the passage, the donkey and the colt are the same animal, repeated for emphasis. The expression “foal of a donkey” defines a colt. So the Matthewites sit back and think…ok, the Triumphal Entry is the fulfillment of Zech. 9:9, which the greater context of the passage would indicate it clearly isn’t. So they correct it, but then they realize that the passage they just dropped into the text appears to have two animals in it. So they make yet another error, by turning one animal into two animals, with no apparent realization that Jesus now has to ride into Jerusalem on two animals at once, or two animals in rapid succession. No one who understood Hebrew, particularly Biblical Hebrew, would have made this mistake. The Triumphal Entry appears in all four gospels. Luke simply follows Mark and doesn’t quote Zech. 9:9. John does, but nonetheless has only one animal, which suggests that the Johnnites knew Hebrew far better than the Matthewites.
I would add one last example of Matthew’s Trouble with Numbers. In one of his many adventures, Jesus crossed paths with a man who had been driven out of the town where he previously had lived, and was living in a cemetery. He was obviously mentally deranged, and since people with mental illness in antiquity were believed to be demon-possessed, he was dubbed…the Demoniac.
They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”
That is Mark 5: 1-9. And yes…Legion is a cool name. But it is also an allusion to the largest military unit in the Roman army. The number varied over time, from 4,000 to as many as 6,000 soldiers making up a legion at any given time. So the idea is that there was more than 1 demon affecting this man…indeed, a multitude. But one may ask the question…how many Demoniacs appear in the story in Mark?
Very good. Now for Matthew…
When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”
So how many Demoniacs did Matthew think there were?
Two. Why two? Notice something else…there is no use of the designation…legion. It would be strange if this is what happened…someone among the Matthewites knew that more than one demon was present in Mark’s story. But he also knew that there couldn’t have been, on average, 5,000 demons possessing one man. So he dropped the reference to “legion” and then increased the number of demoniacs. So more than 1 demon…more than 1 demoniac. And thus you have corrected Mark, except Mark didn’t need correcting because Mark was correct and it’s too bad that Mark couldn’t have corrected Matthew’s correcting of Mark, or at least have uncorrected the incorrect correction. I’ve discussed the Demoniac in a previous essay, and argued that the “multitude” symbolized by the expression “legion” actually refers to the townspeople who had driven the mentally-deranged man out of their town. And it is absurd to believe that demons take possession of animals…so the story is etiological at heart.
I feel it safe to say that although “Matthew” is a Hebrew name, and therefore the disciple bearing that name was Jewish, the actual writers, the Matthewites, were gentilic Christians with just enough knowledge of Hebrew to make them dangerous. The name Matthew appears in the list of the 12 disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, where he is identified as a tax collector. Mark also references Matthew, as does The Book of Acts. Luke lists Matthew too, but then states that there was a disciple named Levi who was a member of Christ’s inner circle, and says that he was a tax collector (Luke 5:27). Now let the apologists commence apologizing! Levi Matthew? A Jewish man of that time did not have two names, so they were obviously two different guys. True, he might have an epithet…like Peter being known as Cephas (the stone), and Judas being called Iscariot (man from Kerioth)…but not two actual names. And when Peter sought to cover up his betrayal of Christ by foisting the guilt onto Judas and a replacement was chosen, the only guy not picked by Jesus was named Matthias…essentially the same name as Matthew. It is interesting to note that the Gospel of Mary Magdalene describes an exchange involving Mary Magdalene, Peter, Andrew, and Levi…with no reference to Matthew, supporting the obvious conclusion that Levi was a totally different man from Matthew and Matthias, assuming that the latter two names don’t refer to the same man.
But what about the very strange, secret book written in Hebrew by Matthew…how did Parmenius and Varinus know about this book? Of course…they had either met history’s greatest biblical translator and found out about the book, or they found out about it from someone who found out about it from Jerome. The book in question is now known as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew…a very boring and stilted name. But it has also been called the Infancy Gospel of Matthew and The Book About the Origin of the Blessed Mary and the Childhood of the Savior, presenting the reader with another incarnation of the Protoevangelium of James with additional details about Joseph taking the family to Egypt. The details about Parmenius and Varinus are set within a letter written to Jerome by the two bishops recounting what they had been told, and asking him to make a Latin translation from the Hebrew. There are two different letters that purportedly come from Jerome. That’s when it gets strange. In the first letter, Jerome makes the bizarre claim that Matthew wrote the book with no intention of publishing it. So, why write a book like this with no intention of making it known? First he wrote a gospel for all the world to see, and then wrote his own Protoevangelium to keep in his personal book collection? And if so, how would anyone ever know it existed? It gets better…the book was kept like a secret relic akin to…
…the Holy Grail…a secret order of holy men…an elect…an elite…had guarded the book and were sworn to divulge nothing about it to the world. Then! A renegade named Leucius, by religion a Manichean, a branch of Gnosticism founded by the prophet Mani in the third century, was able to get a copy of Secret Matthew and publish it. Leucius is identified with the writer of a series of books known as the Acts of the Apostles, which are unrelated to the canonical book of that name. The books were, according to …
…Photios I of Constantinople (ninth century), written by a mysterious and otherwise unknown man named Leucius Charinus, as distinct from just Leucius, with “Acts” including John, Peter, Paul, Andrew, and Thomas. The Acts of John were very popular in medieval times, and it is there that one comes across Donald Trump’s Doral hotel…well, at any rate, a terror to all business travelers…the apostle carrying on a conversation with bed bugs.
The authenticity of these books was rejected at the Council of Nicaea in 787 A.D., though they had been popular up to that point in time. Epiphanius forwarded the claim that Leucius was a follower of the Apostle John, a claim he also made on behalf of Marcion. There is no indication as to how Leucius was able to get a copy of Matthew’s secret book. And it seems strange that if Leucius had published a copy of Pseudo-Matthew, Chromatius, Heliodorus, and everyone else in Christendom would already be familiar with it. The letter ends with Jerome agreeing to make a Latin translation of the book for the two bishops.
The second letter attributed to Jerome is quite different. It gives the appearance of a response to a request for validation of the book. Jerome claims that…there is much in it that is false…having been written by a man named Seleucus, author of the Sufferings of the Apostles (i.e. Leucius and the Acts of the Apostles), with Jerome going so far as to say that this Seleucus had…invented many untruths out of his own head. Jerome claims that it was Seleceus who claimed that Matthew wrote it, and, of particular significance here, had intended to attach it to his gospel as a prologue. Yes…a prologue to a prologue…and Matthew is again ground zero. Matthew didn’t write the book, and the letters involving Jerome, Chromatius, and Helidorus are fake, although all three were well known to each other during their lives. In fact, Chromatius had spurred on Jerome’s desire to make translations and write commentaries. Heliodorus travelled with Jerome, and appears in some of Jerome’s genuine letters. The dominant view is that the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew was written no earlier 650 AD. And while I won’t dispute that in this context, it does seem strange that two different letters from Jerome would have been forged. One letter, the first letter, of Jerome would have sufficed to make a spurious claim of authenticity. But the second letter not only negates the first letter, it tramples on the idea that any such book had any claim to value or validity. If so, then at least one of the letters is undeniably fake, and it would seem that it would be the first letter that was fake, and given what is said in the second letter, any book supposedly written in Hebrew by Matthew and translated into Latin by Jerome at the request of Chromatius and Heliodorus would be completely without any merit. I admit to being puzzled why a second forged letter from Jerome along the lines we find in this case would have been written and attached to the book. The first letter supports false claims of authenticity for a work that forgers wanted to be viewed as authentic, whereas the second letter leaves the work being full of untruths invented in the mind of Leucius Charinus Seleceus…etc. This prompts me to wonder if there isn’t more to the book and the second letter than something concocted in 650 AD. Certainly a new version of the Protoevangelium of James with extra stuff about Egypt thrown into the mix could have come into existence before that time. It is actually the case that there is a direct parallel between a hesitant Jerome producing a translation of a book he otherwise wouldn’t have translated or responded to because of a direct request from a friend exists in the next essay in the Panther series…Origen writing a refutation of the king of all Strange Books…the True Logos, whose supposed author is as mysterious as the Man With Three Names. And the next installment, discussing the True Logos and offering a very strange explanation for the circumstances surrounding the True Logos will be the last step before the Panther is finally caught.