Read The Thirteenth Apostle Online
Authors: Michel Benôit
The Thirteenth Apostle (44 page)
The primitive Church is not what we imagine now, a uniform group of people, united by a homogenous conception of Jesus. It comprised several communities, gathered around one apostle or another, who would serve as a rallying point and banner. Paul of Tarsus, in one of his authentic letters, describes the situation well:
My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos [a collaborator of Paul]”; another, “I follow Cephas [Peter]”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
25
In other words, several apostles had founded their communities, which “belonged” to their founders.
The Acts of the Apostles describe three of these communities, which are opposed to one another in violent skirmishes: that of Peter, a majority which the old ruler controls with an iron fist, up until his final eviction from Palestine. He will then be replaced in Jerusalem by James, Jesus's brother, who little by little takes charge of what will later be called (using a term too general to be exact) the Judaeo-Christians.
Then a newcomer enters the stage in quite a dramatic manner: Paul of Tarsus. He displays his disdain for the official apostles: “As for those who seemed to be important â whatever they were
makes no difference to me.”
26
Numerous communities under his authority will be born all around the Mediterranean Basin.
A fourth community has been discovered in Palestine,
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the one that was formed around the thirteenth apostle. This community, just like its founder, has been erased from the Church's memory: a meticulous textual examination does however allow one to get an idea of his tortuous journey.
The first to rally round the
beloved disciple
would be the Jews who had come to Jesus. It is no doubt to this initial group that he will transmit his memories of the man he knew: they constitute what I called his
letter
. His testimony will be integrated into the community's successive and evolving structures. Indeed, the community exists out in the open, in the midst of a general climate of turmoil difficult to imagine today, characteristic of the Jewish context of the period. We see it clashing with all the pressure groups intermingling around it.
The first clash will happen with Peter and his people, who claim to be the sole representatives of the “correct teaching”. The opposition between the Twelve and the thirteenth apostle has been violent; we have several accounts of this in the fourth gospel.
Then there is the confrontation with Paul's disciples, Jews of Greek origin. Caught between these two groups, which fought violently during the 48 ad assembly in Jerusalem,
28
the community keeps its distance from their struggles.
I have described this crucial assembly in chapter 28 of
The Thirteenth Apostle
. And when I imagine that it is on this day that a permanent rift occurs between our hero, his community and the rest of the nascent Church, I do not have any historical proof as such â but it is entirely plausible.
Rejected by the Church, the community of the thirteenth
apostle clashes with the Jews, who do not make any distinctions between the various Christian factions and subject it to the mistrust, hatred and exclusion which the early Christians fell victim to on Jewish territory.
Finally there is the encounter with the pagans of the Empire, whose philosophy and strange religions would continue to fascinate nascent Christianity.
Under the pressure of these combined influences, the community of the thirteenth apostle will experience very pronounced internal tensions. Around a central question which the Church will take seven centuries to resolve: the
identity of Jesus
, who will be referred to less and less as
the Nazorean
and increasingly as
Christ
(or
Messiah
in Hebrew). However, this term does not yet imply deification of the friend encountered on the banks of the Jordan. Now the Messiah, Jesus is no longer quite an ordinary man, but still belongs to the ordinary circle of humanity.
The community of the thirteenth apostle is then joined by new members from the Greek territories.
29
Under their influence, Jesus will progressively be identified with God the Creator: he leaves the world of men to be placed on a divine orbit. One can imagine the shock felt by those who wanted to stay faithful to the teachings of the thirteenth apostle: this was a pure and simple denaturation of his testimony. The community therefore splits into three groups:
1) Those who accept the deification of Jesus and join the increasingly dominant Church: it will take another generation for them to assimilate Greek popular philosophy. At the end of the first century they use its vocabulary to cast in stone the divine nature of Jesus: this is the prologue to the fourth gospel. Written
directly in Greek, this text is one of the highlights of ancient poetry. It describes Jesus having become dematerialized, become the Word of God and creator of the universe: we are miles away from the friend encountered once upon a time on the banks of the Jordan!
2) Those who do not want leave Jerusalem: after the eviction of Peter they join the Judaeo-Christians led by James and his successors.
3) Those who have remained loyal to the thirteenth apostle through thick and thin. Around the year 90
AD
, the Acts of the Apostles speak already of a “Nazorean sect”,
30
which does not yet distinguish itself fully from Christians in general. Soon after, the annals of Christianity mention them as being heretics, sometimes confusing them with the Ebionites, another heretical sect condemned by the Church.
My hypothesis is that the disciples who remained loyal to the thirteenth apostle can be identified with those Nazoreans which appear as an autonomous movement from the second century onwards, persecuted wherever they went. They will write a gospel of the Nazoreans, which came to the attention of the early Christian scholar Origen before it was destroyed by the dominant Church. Perhaps it can be assimilated to the gospel of the Hebrews, of which some lines have survived. History has been rewritten so skilfully by the Church that it is now difficult to be certain on this point.
But the Nazoreans will be granted posterity from an unexpected source: if one reads the Koran in the original Arabic, one can see that our modern translations often mention “Christians”, but the word used in the Koran is
naz'ra
,
Nazorean
. And it is from their conception of Jesus that the Koran derives its own particular understanding of Christianity. We are therefore grateful to the
Koran for providing relatively broad documentation on how the seventh-century Nazoreans developed the teachings of the thirteenth apostle on Jesus.
In
The Thirteenth Apostle
I have attempted to recreate this troubled and patchy part of history, from the disappearance of the thirteenth apostle until the reappearance of the Nazoreans in the Koran.
The Community's Farewell
The death of the thirteenth apostle was a considerable blow for those who had stayed loyal to him. His community had even hoped that he would not die. It manifests this mixture of despair and mad hope in the final lines of the fourth gospel:
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leant back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumour spread among the brothers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”
31
This same community solemnly attests that all that has been preserved of him does correspond to his own testimony, what he has seen with his very eyes:
This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.
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By doing so, they are vigorously resisting those who have transformed Jesus first into Christ and then into God: they have managed to insert their own statement into the text of the Bible. It contradicts the previous statement:
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Several lines apart, these two contradicting proclamations eloquently illustrate the tortuous destiny of a group of people led by
the one who saw
. His account has been preserved in the final text of the fourth gospel: the different strata cover and mingle with one another, but nothing crucial has disappeared. This must be seen as a witness to the thirteenth apostle's exceptional aura of influence. Fiercely committed to his disappearance, his enemies did not dare touch his testimony. By amending it to the point of betrayal, they paid him the best kind of homage: thanks to them we know, like Father Nil (the protagonist of my novel), that truth always resurfaces in the end.
The Legacy of the Thirteenth Apostle
Research into the historical figure of Jesus has made leaps and bounds in the last fifty years. I have contributed to this research by publishing first
Dieu malgré lui, nouvelle enquête sur Jésus
33
in 2001 and then
Jésus et ses héritiers, mensonges et vérités
34
in 2008: in the present postface I have had to limit myself to a brief and very incomplete summary of these recent works. The burning question of the betrayal of Jesus and the roles played by Judas and Peter remain unanswered. I refer the reader to those two publications. All the evidence of what he or she has read here can be found there: the plot around Peter and the thirteenth
apostle, the assassination of Judas by Peter⦠This is not fiction, but the result of a hypothesis founded on meticulous research. The outcome of this research will surprise more than one: I vouch for its historical pertinence.
However, making the epistle of the thirteenth apostle the treasure of the Templar Knights is pure invention on my part, and this idea has entertained me greatly. As for the events happening in the corridors of the Vatican, my experience of the Holy City permits me to say that my depiction actually tones down reality.
* * *
For nineteen centuries, an
official version
of events has been imposed on Western Christianity, based on a skewed reading of the texts. State-sanctioned lies have enabled a civilization â our civilization â to evolve and endure to this day.
At a time when traditional Churches appear to be entering a prolonged state of agony, plunging this civilization into deep uncertainty about its own founding values, scholars are freeing themselves of the weight of official history and gaining a new and refreshing perspective on Jesus. I would like to see in this more than simple coincidence: the promise for the West of a new hope, which has been sorely lacking of late.
1.
With the exception of Julius Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, who have left us biographical fragments.
2.
Or 3rd April 33 â but most scholars tend towards the 30 date.
3.
All the uses of this term seem to denote, to differing degrees, the hallmark of the primitive Church. See for example Matthew 10:24, 10:42, 13:52, 26:18, Luke 14: 26â27, etc.
4.
The expression “the Twelve” in the New Testament can be traced back to Jesus, although the phrase ascribed to him by John 6:70 (“Have I not chosen you, the Twelve?”) indicates the fierce hatred the writers of the fourth gospel felt towards the “apostles”.
5.
Matthew 10:2, voicing here the viewpoint of the Church in the latter half of the first century.
6.
Matthew 19:28 puts into the mouth of Jesus the following words: “when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel”.
7.
John 1:35â40.
8.
The Community of the Beloved Disciple
(Boston, MA: Pauline Press, 1983).
9.
John 21:2.
10.
John 21:20.
11.
These details have been provided by the team of J. Charles-worth,
Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(New York: Doubleday, 1992).
12.
Mark 14:13â15.
13.
I.e. the three gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (as opposed to the fourth gospel).
14.
John 18:15â16.
15.
John 18:5 and 18:7.
16.
John 19:19.
17.
The question of Jesus's siblings has been the subject of many discussions. From the second century onwards the Church refused to consider them as anything but cousins or Joseph's offspring from a previous marriage. Uncomfortable with this rigid dogmatic position but impelled by textual evidence, most specialists now admit that they were indeed brothers and sisters by birth.
18.
Satyricon
cxii.
19.
John 19:25â27.
20.
Acts 1:14.
21.
Acts 4:13.
22.
Acts 12:2.
23.
I am leaving aside the question of the three epistles attributed to him, as well as the Apocalypse: to discuss this would stray too far from the subject at hand.
24.
John 20:1â7.
25.
1 Corinthians 1:11â12.
26.
Galatians 2:6.
27.
See the work of Raymond E. Brown, mentioned above.
28.
Acts 15.
29.
I am leaving out an important step here, namely that of the encounter with the Samaritans. For further details see my essay,
Jésus et ses héritiers, mensonges et vérités
(France: Albin Michel, 2008).