Gospel (140 page)

16
. Tradition holds that Rome launched ten Christian persecutions—a suspiciously significant number—until Christianity compromised with the sun-worshiping, relative-slaying Emperor Constantine in 313
C.E.
This cultish array of persecutions and martyrologies, as well as the total fiction of the Catacombs (which inconveniently do not bear but a handful of traces of Christianity), are fixtures of Early Church mythology.
   A Church endured in Rome and persecution was more exaggerated than actual in the first decades of Christianity. Paul, one may recall, began his mission calmly: “
And [Paul] lived [in Rome] two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered
(
Acts
28:30). Paul sends his love another time, writing
All the Saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household
(
Philippians
4:22). And this from
Romans
16:23 is extraordinary: “
Gaius who is host to me and to the whole church greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus greet you.
” If
Romans
is of the 40s, before Gaius (Caligula) Caesar became insane, might this be a conventional greeting of Caesar? Could someone as high up as Rome's treasurer have been a convert?

17
. This rather weak piece of rhetoric concerns Saul being from Tarsus and its similarity in sound to Tartarus, one of the depths of Hell, where Cerberus sat outside the adamantine gate.

18
. Again, could things have been so bad in Rome? We know a Roman Senator Pudens lent his home for the purposes of Christian gatherings, and this
titulus
has come down to us as the still-standing church of Santa Pudenziana. (From the 300s this church was misnamed, suggesting a female saint—some confusion over the Latin possessive).

19
. Indeed, Matthias was virtually “replaced” by Paul throughout Byzantium and the Middle Ages, due to Paul's greater importance, but also because Matthias's relics resided in the northermost apostolic shrines, in Trier (Germany), which soon fell to the barbarian world, effectively ending his cult. On Mt. Athos and in most pre-1400 Ascension scenes, one can count only eleven disciples gazing up at Christ; in medieval Pentecosts, one counts eleven disciples and Mary. On the porch tympanum of Malmesbury Abbey (from the 1100s) the Eleven Disciples and Paul ring the doorway, and this configuration is next to universal.
   Paul, in the popular mind, became the Twelfth Disciple.

Chapter 5

1
. The ancient world thought little of these vulgarities and one finds them commonly in Catullus and other saltier writers. (The proper understanding of Latin and Greek, in this editor's view, never recovered from the prim bowdlerization of the Victorians.) The πυγιξ
ɛ
ινσν is a place of anal penetration;
Cras vives?
means “Will you live tomorrow?” and as a popular expression of
carpe diem
found its way into Martial's epigrams (
Epigrammaton,
book V, 58); and
Quo Irrumbis?
means “Who will put out their penis to be sucked?”

2
. John the Baptist (ca. 4
B.C.E.
–28 or 29
C.E.
) All that we know of John is from the Synoptic accounts: a baptist-prophet figure who harangued Herod Antipas and his brother's wife Herodias for their adultery, and was beheaded at the request of Salome, who was granted any wish for her lascivious dance at Machaerus. While attempts to make him an Essene are improbable, his being a Nazirene (with long hair, and his father being given divine instruction to protect his son from wine in
Luke
1:15) is virtually certain.

3
. The Greeks had more specific words for gradations of sin than we use now; there were many kinds of adultery, theft, apostasy, etc., and these crimes figure largely in Paul's rantings as well.
Κατηλ
ɛ
ω
is adulteration, as a merchant might water down his product, but could also describe the whoring of oneself in adultery for gain (as opposed to
δ
λος
).
   The Baptist accuses the woman of covetings but does not use
π
θος
or
ρ
ɛ
ξις,
both negative but cerebral, but rather
ρμ
which suggests a rapacious grabbing.
   
πονηρ
ς
is to stir up mischief, rather than broadly evil, far which
κακ
ς
was preferred.

4
.
Ezekiel
16:15.
But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your renown, and lavished your harlotries on any passerby.

5
. Here is another odd clue to the Zechariah puzzle of the New Testament, which seems to be a certain proof of words interpolated in Jesus' mouth.
   The Baptist's father in
Luke
1:5 is the priest Zechariah. The Prophet Zechariah Barachiah of
Zechariah
and
Matthew
23:35 was
slain between the sanctuary and the altar
according to Jesus. Josephus mentions the martyrdom of Zacharias Barachiah (
Jewish War,
IV.v.4) where
two of the boldest of [the zealots] fell upon Zacharias in the middle of the temple.
Finally, the
Protoevangelium
attributed to James also has the Baptist's father slain in the Temple. So here is a great puzzle: Jesus in
Matthew
thinks the Prophet Zechariah was martyred in the temple, with which no Jewish source concurs. However, the secular account of Zechariah (not the prophet) in Josephus has this sacrilegious slaying happen
34 years after the Crucifixion.
The explanation, though detrimental to Christianity, is that the composers of
Matthew
and the
Protoevangelium
were fond of the story of Zechariah's martyrdom [ca. 64
C.E.
] and edited it in anachronistically, and that Jesus could never have said those words.

6
. John the Disciple and Evangelist, ca. 10–110?
C.E.
   Apologists have strained to make the Evangelist John, traditional author of
1 John
and the
Gospel of John,
the John who was the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” John the Elder (of whom nothing is known) claims to write
2
and
3 John.
No modern scholar thinks it conceivable that the
Gospel of John
was written before 100–120
C.E.
, and it is the editor's opinion that 120
C.E.
is even cutting it close. That would have made John the Disciple an unlikely one hundred or more. Irenaeus claims John lived “to Trajan's time” (Trajan Caesar, 98–117
C.E.
); Clement of Alexandria in his
Rich Man Who Finds Salvation
(late 100s) sets an account of John after the death of Domitian in 98
C.E.
; Eusebius also says John lived past one hundred years. One wonders if the final comment of Jesus in
John
21:22 was inserted to explain John's suspiciously long lifespan:
“It is my will that [John] remain until I come, what is that to you?…” The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die.
   Not many, even in the times of the Fathers, think the John of
Revelations
is the same author as that of
John.
However,
Revelations
is, according to Irenaeus, a work of the 90s, in the time of Domitian (Caesar 81–96
C.E.
), within John's probable lifespan. This editor suggests that it is
Revelations
that might be the work of the Disciple John, and the
Gospel
and
Epistles
the work of John the Elder—a very likely idea that has received little support through the centuries.