Holy Blood, Holy Grail (56 page)

In A.D. 303, a quarter of a century before, the pagan Emperor Diocletian had undertaken to destroy all Christian writings that could be found. As a result Christian documents especially in Rome all but vanished. When

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Constantine, commissioned new versions of these documents, it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit and re-write their material as they saw fit, in accordance with their tenets. It was at this point that most of the crucial alterations in the New

Testament were probably made, and Jesus assumed the unique status he has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantine’s commission must not be underestimated. Of the five thousand extant early manuscript versions of the

New Testament, not one pre-dates the fourth century.” The New Testament, as it exists today, is essentially a product of fourth-century editors and writers custodians of orthodoxy, “adherents of the message’, with vested interests to protect.

The Zealots

After Constantine the course of Christian orthodoxy is familiar enough and well documented. Needless to say it culminated in the final triumph of the “adherents of the message’. But if “the message established itself as the guiding and governing principle of Western civilisation, it did not remain wholly unchallenged. Even from its incognito exile, the claims and the very existence of the family would seem to have exerted a powerful appeal an appeal which, more often than was comfortable, posed a threat to the orthodoxy of Rome.

Roman orthodoxy rests essentially on the books of the New Testament. But the New Testament itself is only a selection of early Christian documents dating from the fourth century. There are a great many other works that pre-date the New Testament in its present form, some of which cast a significant, often controversial, new light on the accepted accounts.

There are, for instance, the diverse books excluded from the Bible, which comprise the compilation now known’ as the Apocrypha. Some of the works in the Apocrypha are admittedly late, dating from the sixth century. Other works, however, were already in circulation as early as the second century, and may well have as great a claim to veracity as the original Gospels themselves.

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One such work is the Gospel of Peter, a copy of which was first located in a valley of the upper Nile in 1886, although it is mentioned by the bishop of Antioch in A.D. 180. According to this “apocryphal’

Gospel, Joseph of Arimathea was a close friend of Pontius

Pilate which, if true, would increase the likelihood of a fraudulent Crucifixion. The Gospel of Peter also reports that the tomb in which Jesus was buried lay in a place called “the garden of Joseph’. And Jesus’s last words on the cross are particularly striking: “My power, my power, why hast thou forsaken Me? 18

Another apocryphal work of interest is the Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus

Christ, which dates from no later than the second century and possibly from before. In this book Jesus is portrayed as a brilliant but eminently human child. All too human perhaps for he is violent and unruly, prone to shocking displays of temper and a rather irresponsible exercise of his powers. Indeed, on one occasion he strikes dead another child who offends him. t1 similar fate is visited-upon an autocratic mentor. Such incidents are undoubtedly spurious, but they, attest to the way in which, at the time, Jesus had to be depicted if he were to attain divine status amongst his following.

In addition to Jesus’s rather scandalous behaviour as a child, there is one curious and perhaps significant fragment in the Gospel of the Infancy. When

Jesus was circumcised, his foreskin was said to have been appropriated by an unidentified old woman who preserved it in an alabaster box used for oil of spikenard. And “This is that alabaster box which Mary the sinner procured and poured forth the ointment out of it upon the head and the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ.”9

Here, then, as in the accepted Gospels, there is an anointing which is obviously more than it appears to bean anointing tantamount to some significant ritual. In this case, however, it is clear that the anointing has been foreseen and prepared long in advance. And the whole incident implies a connection albeit an obscure and convoluted one between the

Magdalene and Jesus’s family long before Jesus embarked on his mission at the age of thirty. It is reasonable to assume that Jesus’s parents would not have conferred his foreskin on the first old woman to request it even if there were nothing unusual in so apparently odd a request.

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The old woman must therefore be someone of consequence and/or someone on intimate terms with Jesus’s parents. Aad the Magdalene’s subsequent possession of the bizarre relic -or, at any rate, of its container suggests a connection between her and the old woman. Again we seem to be confronted by the shadowy vestiges of something that was more important than is now generally believed.

Certain passages in the books of the Apocrypha the flagrant excesses of

Jesus’s childhood, for example were undoubtedly embarrassing to later orthodoxy. They would certainly be so to most Christians today. But it must be remembered that the Apocrypha, like the accepted books of the New

Testament, was composed by “adherents of the message’, intent on deifying

Jesus. The Apocrypha cannot therefore be expected to contain anything that might seriously compromise the “message’ which any mention of Jesus’s political activity, still more of his possible dynastic ambitions, manifestly would. For evidence on such controversial matters as those, we were obliged to look elsewhere.

The Holy Land in Jesus’s time contained a bewildering number of diverse

Judaic groups, factions, sects and sub sects In the Gospels, only two of these, the Pharisees and Sadducees, are cited, and both are cast in the roles of villains. However, the role of villain would only have been appropriate to the Sadducees, who did collaborate with the Roman administration. The Pharisees maintained a staunch opposition to Rome; and

Jesus himself, if not actually a Pharisee, acted essentially within the

Pharisee tradition.”

In order to appeal to a Romanised audience, the Gospels were obliged to exonerate Rome and blacken the Jews. This explains why the Pharisees had to be misrepresented and deliberately stigmatised along with their genuinely culpable countrymen, the Sadducees. But why is there no mention in the

Gospels of the Zealots the militant nationalistic “freedom fighters’

and revolutionaries who, if anything, a Roman audience would only too eagerly have seen as villains? There would seem to be no explanation for their apparent omission from the Gospels unless Jesus was so closely associated with them that this association could not possibly be disowned, only glossed over and thereby concealed. As Professor Brandon argues: “The

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Gospels’ silence about Zealots ... must surely be indicative of a relationship between Jesus and these patrons which the Evangelists preferred not to disclose.””

Whatever Jesus’s possible association with the Zealots, there is no question but that he was crucified as one. Indeed the two men allegedly crucified with him are explicitly described as les tai the appellation by which the Zealots were known to the Romans. It is doubtful that Jesus himself was a Zealot. Nevertheless, he displays, at odd moments in the

Gospels, an aggressive militarism quite comparable to theirs. In one awkwardly famous passage, he announces that he has come “not to bring peace, but a sword’. In Luke’s Gospel, he instructs those of his followers who do not possess a sword to purchase one (Luke 22:36); and he himself then checks and approves that they are armed after the Passover meal (Luke 22:38). In the Fourth Gospel Simon Peter is actually carrying a sword when

Jesus is arrested. It is difficult to reconcile such references with the conventional image of a mild pacifist saviour. Would such a saviour have sanctioned the bearing of arms, particularly by one of his favourite disciples, the one on whom he supposedly founded his church?

If Jesus was not himself a Zealot, the Gospels -seemingly despite themselves betray and establish his connection with that militant faction. There is persuasive evidence to associate Barabbas with Jesus; and

Barabbas is also described as a les tai James, John and Simon Peter all have appellations which may hint obliquely at Zealot sympathies, if not

Zealot involvement. According to modern authorities, Judas Iscariot derives from “Judas the Sicarii’ and “Sicarii’ was yet another term for Zealot, interchangeable with les tai Indeed the Sicarii seem to have been an elite within the Zealot ranks, a crack cadre of professional assassins. Finally there is the disciple known as Simon. In the Greek version of Mark, Simon is called Kananaios - a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic word for

Zealot. In the King James Bible, the Greek word is mistranslated and Simon appears as “Simon the Canaanite’. But the Gospel of Luke leaves no room for doubt. Simon is clearly identified as a Zealot, and even the King James

Bible introduces him as “Simon Zelotes’. It would thus seem fairly

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indisputable that Jesus numbered at least one Zealot among his followers.

If the absence or, rather, apparent absence of the Zealots from the Gospels is striking, so too is that of the Essenes. In the Holy Land of

Jesus’s time, the Essenes constituted a sect as important as the Pharisees and Sadducees, and it is inconceivable that Jesus did not come into contact with them.

Indeed, from the account given of him, John the Baptist would seem to have been an Essene. The omission of any reference to the Essenes seems to have been dictated by the same considerations that dictated omission of virtually all references to the Zealots. In short Jesus’s connections with the Essenes, like his connections with the Zealots, were probably too close and too well known to be denied. They could only be glossed over and concealed.

From historians and chroniclers writing at the time, it is known that the

Essenes maintained communities throughout the Holy Land and, quite possibly, elsewhere as well. They began to appear around 150 B.C.” and they used the Old Testament, but interpreted it more as allegory than as literal historical truth. They repudiated conventional Judaism in favour of a form of Gnostic dualism which seems to have incorporated dements of sun worship and Pythagorean thought. They practised healing and were esteemed for their expertise in therapeutic techniques. Finally they were rigorously ascetic, and readily distinguished by their simple white garb.

Most modern authorities on the subject believe the famous Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran to be essentially Essene documents. And there is no question that the sect of ascetics living at Qumran had much in common with

Essene thought. Like Essene teaching, the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect a dualist theology. At the same time they lay a great stress on the coming of a Messiah an “anointed one’ descended from the line of David.” They also adhere to a special calendar, according to which the Passover service was celebrated not on Friday, but on Wednesday which agrees with the

Passover service in the Fourth Gospel. And in a number of significant respects they coincide, almost word for word, with some of Jesus’s teaching. At the very least it would appear that Jesus was aware of the

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Qumran community and, to some extent at any rate, brought his own teachings into accord with theirs. One modern expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls believes that they “give added ground for believing that many incidents fin the New Testament] are merely projections into Jesus’ own history of what was expected of the Messiah’ .13

Whether the Qumran sect were technically Essenes or not, it seems clear that Jesus even if he did not undergo formal Essene training was well versed in Essene thought. Indeed, many of his teachings echo those ascribed to the Essenes. And his aptitude for healing likewise suggests some Essene influence. But a closer scrutiny of the Gospels reveals that the Essenes may have figured even more significantly in Jesus’s career.

The Essenes were readily identifiable by their white garments which, paintings and cinema notwithstanding, were less common in the Holy Land at the time than is generally believed. In the suppressed “secret’

Gospel of

Mark, a white linen robe plays an important ritual role -and it recurs later even in the accepted authorised version. If Jesus was conducting mystery school initiations at Bethany or elsewhere, the white linen robe suggests that these initiations may well have been Essene in character.

What is more, the motif of the white linen robe recurs later in all four

Gospels. After the Crucifixion Jesus’s body “miraculously’ disappears from the tomb which is found to be occupied by at least one white-clad figure.

In Matthew it is an angel in “raiment white as snow’ (28:3). In Mark it is “a young man in long white garment’ (16:5). Luke reports that there were “two men .. . in shining garments’

(24:4), while the Fourth Gospel speaks of “two angels in white’ (20:12). In two of these accounts the figure or figures in the tomb are not even accorded any supernatural status.

Presumably, these figures are thoroughly mortal and yet, it would appear, unknown to the disciples. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that they are Essenes. And given the Essenes’ aptitude for healing, such a supposition becomes even more tenable. If Jesus, on being removed from the cross, was indeed still alive, the services of a healer would clearly have been required. Even if he were dead, a healer is likely to have been present, if only as a “forlorn hope’.

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And there were no more esteemed healers in the Holy Land at the time than the Essenes.

According to our scenario a mock Crucifixion on private ground was arranged, with Pilate’s collusion, by certain of Jesus’s supporters. More specifically it would have been arranged not primarily by “adherents of the message’, but by adherents to the bloodline immediate family, in other words, and/or other aristocrats and/or members of an inner circle. These individuals may well have had Essene connections or have been Essenes themselves. To the “adherents of the message’, however the “rank and file’ of Jesus’s following, epitomised by Simon Peter the stratagem would not have been divulged.