The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (22 page)

“Judas Iscariot” is a mistranslation of Judas Sicari. Like the Baryonim, this name signified a rebel group, its literal translation is “dagger man,” a killer or assassin. John and James were two apostles called
boanerges
by Jesus, which in his native Aramaic meant “sons of the storm wind.” The other Simon in the original group was called the “zealot,” a name for those who were steadfast against the corruption of their Jewish faith by the Sadducees and Pharisees. The band that Jesus had recruited went beyond the original twelve apostles. Although the Greek influence in composing and preserving the history of Jesus played it down, the role of women was significant. Women like Mary Magdalene were a strong presence in the early group and traveled with the apostle, which also violated Jewish custom.

Jesus truly appeared to be creating a religion different from what the established religious custom had become. It is possible that he was more educated than most, having studied in a rabbinical school. It is also likely that he was unique and that while the Sadducees and Pharisees could not accept his message, neither could the political zealots and the Essenes. This may be why the fanatical John the Baptist sought out Jesus to address him for his violation of convention. A mutual baptism may have been significant in reconciling them and cementing the common bond they shared in fighting the establishment, which both believed to be corrupt.

John the Baptist was steeped in the Essene tradition and was a member of a very exclusive Nazarene sect. Michael Grant interprets
Nazoraios
as the word for “guardian,” but at the same time he considers
netser
to mean “shoot” or “branch.” The importance of this connection is that both Jesus and John belonged to a sect into which one had to be born. The “shoots” of the bloodline of David had preserved this unbroken line from one thousand years earlier. Both John and Jesus were members not only of the exclusive bloodline of David but that of Aaron the “magician,” the priest, as well. Grant says the Egyptian word
NTR
had
the same meaning—“one who watches.” The language comes to us with no vowels. N(e)T(sa)R “netsar” might have been the pronunciation, as in Nazarean (with z as a ts sound). When Jesus is described as a Nazarean, we cannot assume it was of Nazareth as that town might not have existed at the time. It was a designation of a caste of priest-kings steeped in an ancient wisdom (Sophia). Jesus was a “watcher,” an observer of the ancient custom, a guardian of secret knowledge. It is Hebrew tradition that awaits a messiah from the houses of David and Aaron. Early Christian teachings and the Gospels place an emphasis on the genealogy of the Son of God, although in teaching the divine nature of Jesus, a human genealogy would seem insignificant.

There is further circumstantial evidence that Jesus and John were members of an elite group. They are both remembered as having un-trimmed hair. This, Grant says, is characteristic of the guardians; there was power in the hair, as the legend of Samson records. Belief in the power held in the hair is not confined to this sect. The word
kaisear
means “a crown of hair,” which is preserved also as “caesar” and in Russian as “czar.” The early Church writer Eusebius, in explaining that James, the brother of Jesus, was a very holy man, says, “no razor touched his head.”
²⁹

Characteristic of the guardians was the concept of purification through water. The Essenes practiced this ritual daily, and the early Christians practiced it as a rite of initiation. John the Baptist was truly a voice crying out in the desert, the voice of a rabble-rouser who was so incensed by the second marriage of Herod that he called the very act illegal and the participants worse. He constantly plagued Herod, and the family of Herod. Such radical criticism led to his decapitation. As has been pointed out, his feast day of June 24 and the relic of the severed head came to play an important role in later Freemasonry.

In the year after the execution of John, Jesus, too, was martyred in a style reserved for those who sought to overthrow the government. He had declared himself “King of the Jews,” or so his accusers said. Roman law dictated that no one could be a god unless the senate decreed it.
³⁰

The followers of Jesus were forced into hiding, which took a great toll on the unity of the group and on the message Jesus had sought to
teach. His own family, who had doubted him while he was alive, came to revere him, but only in the light of their own Hebrew religion. He was a messenger of the purity of the people of Israel, contaminated by the Roman and Greek presence. The message of James and the family of Jesus was that his teaching was only for the “chosen” people, who were Jews. Paul, once known as Saul, who had been a persecutor of Jesus and his early followers, became a convert. He believed that the message of the Messiah was intended for Jews and Gentiles alike. He had followed Jesus from the beginning and understood the radical concept of love being above the law, but the message was being altered by the family of Jesus to a more conservative concept of the purity of the law. Torn between James and Paul, Peter eventually went on the road to preach the message of Jesus.

Some of Jesus’ original followers and apostles literally headed for the hills and the safety of the Essene sects, which they might have considered more pure. Peter and Paul spread the word through the Mediterranean. But the concept of Jesus as king, the heir to the throne of Solomon, died on the cross. Or did it? The Gospels indicate that Jesus had brothers and sisters who also may have been in the same bloodline. In Mark, four brothers are listed: Jacob (also known as James), Joseph, Judas, and Simon.
³¹
The most important was James, who inherited, or took over, the leadership of the small group. His goal was to preserve the kingship of a Jewish priest-king in the David-Aaron bloodline. He fought with Paul over the rite of circumcision, which Paul felt was a major stumbling block in converting Gentiles. James didn’t care to convert Gentiles. James eventually became an embarrassment to Paul, who would find converts whom James would refuse to admit. James and the family of Jesus, who had once denied Jesus’ role, seem to have capitalized on their status after his death, although more likely in a political rather than a religious sense.

Paul influenced the Church greatly, but three hundred years later the Church sought to remove James from the historical records and raise the status of Mary to a virgin. One explanation of the concept of Mary as virgin is that it was done to answer the needs of converts from the Mediterranean, to whom the Greek mystery religions had appealed. Jesus was
not the first god to be born of a virgin. The Greeks had Jason, Perseus, Miletus, Tammuz, and Adonis. Another explanation of Mary as virgin was that it was simply an error in translating. A word that meant “maiden,” it more correctly referred to a woman of marriageable age, but in translation it ended up as “virgin.” This explanation is less likely.

A third explanation is that it was a political compromise. The brothers and sisters of Jesus are referred to both in the Gospel of Matthew and in Paul’s letters to the Galatians. In the early history of the Christian Church, the descendants of the family of Jesus are said to have lived well into the second century
A.D.
³²
Why, then, deny their existence? To the Pauline Church, not intent on crowning an earthly king and wishing to avoid what Rome might misconstrue as a threat, the family and descendants of Jesus were a topic to be avoided, and soon denied. Jesus was the Son of God and not a son of man, who might have heirs.

It would have been very unusual for a Jew in the time of Jesus to be unmarried. There is even circumstantial evidence in the surviving Gospels that Jesus had a wife. Jesus was addressed as “rabbi,” which implied that he was a teacher who had been taught by the elders—a suggestion confirmed in the Gospels. A rabbi would begin his ministry at age thirty, which is also substantiated by the Gospels. This title also implies that he took a wife; being married was a necessary condition to becoming a rabbi. A teacher had to be a married man.

As further evidence, proponents of this theory say that the marriage at Cana was actually the wedding of Jesus.
³³
If, they ask, it was not the wedding of Jesus, why would his mother be so concerned that their host was running out of wine? She was concerned enough to induce Jesus, her son, to work a miracle. The responsibility for providing food and drink was that of the host of the wedding, who would be the bridegroom. But such evidence is circumstantial. It may have been a sister or brother of Jesus whose wedding took place at Cana, and in the absence of their father, Joseph, the responsibility would fall to the older brother, who may have been Jesus. Similarly, being addressed as “rabbi” may have been a show of respect for the man who was his group’s teacher, ordained or unordained.

The debate over the possible marriage of Jesus and the question of potential heirs has strong advocates on both sides. Those who deny the possibility of marriage consider the suggestion tantamount to heresy. At the same time, priests and laypersons alike have commented that being married not only would not detract from Jesus’ message but would strengthen it, since as a husband, and possibly a father, he bore more human responsibilities. When the marriage of Jesus was left out of the Gospels, it was not because the Church was against marriage or women; that stance would come later. Two thousand years ago the marriage was not being debated as a religious issue—it was a political question. The Christian Church had to make itself acceptable to a militant Rome, which needed no new rivals. A wedding of Jesus, or even a brother of Jesus, implied potential heirs, and heirs would be a threat to Rome’s earthly kingdom.

Holy Blood, Holy Grail
expands further the theory of Jesus being married to encompass the likelihood that his bride was Mary Magdalene.
³⁴
There is little evidence for this claim. Mary did travel with Jesus and was present at his execution; she was also the first to see his empty tomb. None of this, however, proves such a claim. She was simply a devoted follower. On the other side of the debate there are stories of a relationship between Jesus and Mary in the Gnostic texts. The strongest argument in favor of Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus is the Church’s campaign against her. Her story seems to have grown over the years—she has been said to have had “devils” and been exorcised and to have been a prostitute. In the Gospels, Mary was not the same woman mentioned as the prostitute in the passage where Jesus saves her by instructing the one without sin to throw the first stone. In Church lore, however, she somehow took on that mantle.

Without the political overtones, the issue of a married Jesus might also have been affected by the way Paul preached. The Pauline Christian doctrine was filtered through a Hellenistic screen. Jesus was represented as a shepherd, like the Greek god Tammuz, whose job was to tend his flock. The Greek mystery religions had some taboos, but sexuality was not a sin because fertility was important. The religion, however, had originated from an area where sex was taboo, or at least considered unclean, and was reserved only for the necessity of procreation. Paul tried
to preserve the moral tone of the Jews who followed Jesus while making the message acceptable to his fellow non-Jews.

Celibacy, however, was not a requirement of the followers of Jesus or of those he appointed as his apostles and guardians of his Church. Peter was most definitely married, and his wife’s martyrdom is recorded. For reasons of its own, the Church forced priests to give up their wives one thousand years later; it had never been a requirement of the founder. The Church soon lost its roots entirely in its assimilation into the Roman world. Constantine, the emperor of Rome, was an adherent of the cult of Sol Invictus, the victorious sun—a male-dominated warrior cult, decidedly pagan, that celebrated the “birthday” of the sun on December 25 (on or near the solstice).
³⁵
At the First Council of Nicaea in
A.D.
325, the Church, in its new role as state religion of Rome, had to make modifications. December 25 was taken as the birthday of the Son of God as well as the sun itself. The day of rest, the Sabbath, which had always been a Saturday, was changed to Sunday (the day of the sun). In the new and improved Roman version of the religion, women were given less of a role, and the pope took a much greater role. The message of Jesus had been love; the message of the Roman Church was power.

If Roman Christianity altered the message of God, what became of the followers of Jesus the man? Jesus had not wanted a revolution and a crown for himself, but many of his followers searched for a more earthly kingdom. These followers went into the hills as the Roman persecution and ensuing warfare led to more war. Thirty years after the execution of Jesus, hostility between the occupied Jews and the Roman overlord came to a head. The Jewish revolts in
A.D.
65–67 and in
A.D.
133 started a reaction that led to the destruction and mass deaths at the Essene fortress at Masada on the shore of the Dead Sea. Many surviving sects traveled in four directions, and some survived under different names. Medieval texts tell another story.
³⁶

Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy supporter of Jesus, was a merchant whose fleet sailed as far away as England to trade for such commodities as tin. He was single-handedly responsible for procuring the body of Jesus from the Roman Jewish authorities. He wanted Jesus to be buried in a worthy tomb, and in this single act, he exposed himself to
the authorities as a supporter. Knowing that this revelation could easily cost him his wealth if not his life, he gathered those closest to Jesus and sailed away on his own ship. Medieval texts may be novel in the telling of this story, but the Bible fails to provide an alternative. Outside the medieval texts and Grail romances, we have no record of the death of Mary Magdalene or of Joseph of Arimathea.