A GOOD OVERVIEW OF BIBLE "HISTORY" IN THE BOOK SAINT SAUL SKELETON
KEY TO THE HISTORICAL JESUS
This interesting book by Donald Harman Akenson reveals several interesting
facts. The prophecy in Daniel’s seventy weeks is revealed to be predicting an
Anointed One and not a Christian style Messiah or Christ (page 36-7). Christians
tend to believe that it predicted the time Christ would be active in Jerusalem
and that he was the Anointed One. The King James Bible mistranslated the text to
make it speak of the Messiah in the Christian sense (page 36). Now Anointed Ones
or Moshiahs can be kings, priests or even prophets (Psalm 105:15). Never does
the Old Testament say that anything like the Christian Messiah is its spine and
core. Yet Jesus himself said the opposite which was a lie put into his mouth or
told by himself if he lived. Christianity imagined from the very start that the
Old Testament was just a preparation for the coming of the Saviour. The book
points out that the Christian practice of looking for references to the Messiah
in the Old Testament where there are none eg Isaiah 53, and then ignoring how it
uses the expression Anointed One to refer to a wide range of different people
and kinds of people is illogical and biased and underhand (page 38). The Qumran
scrolls also show that Anointed One could be anybody who had a job from God and
not a special saviour of the world. The Damascus Document speaks of the Messiahs
of Aaron and Israel (page 40). This refers to at least two Messiahs but could be
read as meaning there would be several. The majority of the Jews, the chosen
people, were not expecting or looking for the coming of the Christ (page 41).
The Book of Daniel refers to one like the semi-divine Son of Man who will rule
an everlasting kingdom (page 45) but who is not the Anointed One of the Seventy
weeks prophecy who works only in Jerusalem and does not have an everlasting
kingdom but ends up with nothing. This shows the Son of Man who is like the
Jesus of the modern Churches was not predicted in the seventy weeks prophecy.
Page 49 says there was no uniform Judaism in the days of Jesus and Saul, but it
was made up of different groups all with different beliefs and emphasis. The
Jews of the Dead Sea even put a spiritual temple not the physical one at the
fore of their theology! They did not follow exactly the same legal code either
for there is no evidence that they did and there is evidence that they all
interpreted the law differently. Jesus was once called to work out which of the
different disputes about when divorce should be legal was near the mark.
Page 57 argues that when Jesus forbade any attempt to go to Gentiles with his
message but just to focus on the Jews that this saying of his must have been
authentic for the Church did start seeking out Gentiles within a decade after
his resurrection and the command was too well-known to leave out of the gospel.
Well known or not there was no obligation to put it in! It could still have come
from the Jewish Christians who lived in Jerusalem and who claimed to be apostles
and recipients of visions.
The early Church used lots of different names such as believers Nazarenes,
Jesusers, Jessians and disciples and sometimes the Way (page 63). Strictly
speaking it was not an early Church for there is no hint that they all thought
they had exactly the same identity as a body (page 63). All the factions had in
common was a faith in Jesus. The name Christians was meant to be an insult for
it came from outsiders (page 64) so it naturally took it decades to catch on.
Rome would have found the word Christian offensive for it implied that the
Christ or Messiah in Heaven had to be obeyed before the Roman Emperor and that
Christians out of loyalty to Christ could not reverence the Emperor as an
infallible and holy god. They made the Roman regime look ridiculous and without
credibility. So the believers in Jesus were not Christians in the first century.
A few were, but that is all.
Page 74, says that Jesus predicting that not one stone would be upon another
when Jerusalem would be attacked should be granted poetic license for a part of
the Temple, two towers and a piece of the Western Wall survived the disaster.
But Jesus was not writing poetry and using poetic license to simple people who
tend to take prophecies literally would not have been something he would have
done. He meant it literally. But he was wrong.
The book argues that the gospels were all written after the destruction of
Jerusalem which happened in 70AD because they try to console people who have
lost the Temple that there is no need for it anymore for Jesus is the new Temple
(page 77). That makes sense. Jesus’ risen body becomes the Temple that is not
made of human hands (Mark 14:58). The latest date for the creation of the
gospels is 140 AD when evidence that they existed becomes available. A lot of
that evidence is questionable! The late dating is rejected because the Jewish
revolt of 115-117 AD is not mentioned. But then again who are we to decide if
the gospellers would want to write about it? Their main goal was to promote
Jesus as the new Temple and they were entitled to leave things out.
Paul speaks as if the second coming could take place any minute and tried to
prepare all his followers for this even to the extent of telling single ones not
to bother looking for wives and so he knew that Jesus never predicted the
destruction of the Temple and the siege (page 134). He would say the gospels are
lies for saying different.
Josephus writes little of Jesus and more about the Baptist and his movement
indicating that the latter was more important (page 79). This would be a hint
that even then the Baptist was the triumphant messenger from God and Jesus was
still more or less a nobody.
If Jesus was baptised by John as the gospels say, then it follows that Jesus was
John’s disciple (page 81). Jesus then could not really have been God or the Son
of God.
Galatians 2:12 indicates that Peter far from being head of the Church and an
infallible pope was actually under the authority of James (page 82). The verse
says that Peter was afraid to upset the emissaries of James so he did something
uncharitable. He showed himself up in front of Paul who made a show of him for
doing that. He feared these men more than Paul and the only reason could be was
that James was not only his boss, but had the power to destroy his apostolical
career and perhaps declare him a fraud!
Page 85 admits that most historians accepted the secret gospel of Mark as
providing a piece of Mark’s gospel that the Church left out for it didn’t suit
its dogmas. But the book says it was a joke about Jesus being gay. There is that
impression but there is no need to go that far in the interpretation. Plus, if
that was the joke Morton Smith who discovered the gospel could not dare present
it to the scholarly world for fear of derision and the end of his career. If
Smith had written the story as many say, he would have been too afraid of people
seeing the joke and making a joke of him!
The book is sceptical of the existence of the Book of Q (page 111, 321-327) and
tells us that there is no physical evidence whatsoever that it existed (page
112) and says that it was invented in the late twentieth century (page 326).
This is only right. Q is alleged to be the source of what the Synoptic gospels
have in common. But maybe Mark made up his gospel out of thin air and
plagiarised stories about different religious figures and Matthew and Luke
copied parts of him with a bit of editing here and there?
The book sees no reason to believe that Luke really wrote the Luke Gospel or
Acts either (page 135). The epistles of Paul that mention this person are
rejected as inauthentic (page 136) technically forgeries so we don’t know if
Luke even existed.
Luke would have known Paul but the author of Luke and Acts seems to know nothing
of Paul’s epistles (page 137).
Acts says Paul persecuted Christians and killed them and went into every
Christian house in Judea to drag believers out but Paul says the believers there
did not know him by face (page 138). But Paul in his letters says he persecuted
the Christians (Philippians 3:6) which I take to mean he persecuted them by
getting to know their religion and spearheading attacks based on doctrine and
philosophy on them. He gives no intimation that he once violently persecuted
them – his murdering of Christians is something that the Book of Acts speaks
about. He said he persecuted them according to the Law and not his
interpretation of the Law which means that he made life difficult for them for
the Law did not command the killing of Jews for heresy but only very serious
heresy and the Christians then were not serious heretics and indeed accepted by
many Jews as true Jews.