Cross to Bear

By Chris Spiller

The book is a factual investigation into the true origins of Christianity, with very controversial conclusions.

An intensive 6-year period of investigating and reviewing many historical documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, University archives, USA microfilm, the Bible etc which conclude that the foundations of Christianity are total false.

 Jesus had nothing to do with Christianity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Spiller
• Release date: Aug 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781465814425

Book preview

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Cross to Bear

by

Chris Spiller

Copyright © C. Spiller

ISBN 978-1-46581442-5

Published on Smashwords

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Author’s Foreword

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH seemed to offer far more questions than answers. Whilst travelling around Europe and North Africa I came into contact with snippets of the Christian history and these sometimes proved to be very bloody, leaving me with the impression that the Church’s history is sometimes not very Christian. This nagging feeling of being kept in the dark aroused my curiosity as to what actual historical evidence supported the Christian story. In the Middle Ages the Church was all powerful and in an unquestionable position. Anyone who dared to question it was labelled a heretic and disposed of and until recently the Christian Church has continued to keep a tight and discreet control over information which might damage its credibility.

This power to control information has now largely been eroded with the introduction of democracy, freedom of speech and the loss of the monopoly the church holds in religious matters. The advent of the Internet has enabled me to do worldwide research to try to establish the real history and truth. There is a mass of information out there, formerly suppressed as unsuitable or too controversial for publication. By researching manuscripts, books, theories, religious documents, state records, Dead Sea Scrolls and other historical evidence, I have been able to obtain information which would otherwise have taken years to accumulate, even if I had known where to look.

Cross referencing this information has resulted in some very revealing facts. I have tried to limit the references to the relevant items but hope this book will point in the right direction should the reader choose to delve deeper in any particular area.

Firstly be aware that the New Testament was not a contemporary record, nor unbiased, and written not by historians, but by the hierarchy of the Church, which continued to refine and censor the information it wished to promote. This has always bothered me, as how is one going to get a clear and honest picture on any subject if it is provided from such a biased viewpoint? Imagine asking a Manchester United football supporter to choose and write on the best football club in the world?

As each day passes, I couldn’t wait to find out how the story would unfold and how the information fitted together to reveal a truer, newer story, but that is for the reader to judge .

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Contents

In the Beginning

The Embryo of Christianity

The Chrysalis of Christianity

The Birth of the Christian Church

Consolidation

Expansion

The Christian Crusades

Power Struggle in Europe

Old World Loss - New World Gain

Renaissance: The Cost was Protestantism

The Unnwinable Fight for European Christianity

French and Irish Revolutions

Democracy and Communism the Church’s Enemies

Rome and the NAZI

SORRY!

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Chapter 1 - In the Beginning

BORN IN A STABLE to the Virgin Mary on December 25th with the adoration of the shepherds and wise men bringing gifts. Died at Easter and rose from the dead to heaven to rejoin his Father. Depicted with a halo, ascended to heaven, whence it was believed he would return at the end of time to raise the dead in a physical resurrection for a final judgement, sending the good to heaven and the wicked to hell, after the world had been destroyed by fire. His followers worshipped on Sundays and were baptised. Sounds familiar? We all know the story, the beginning of Christianity.

But this is the story of the birth of Mithra a Sun God around 600 years before Christ! Surprised? Well, so was I and this was the start of my interest in the subject when I came upon Mithra for the first time in a book called the Hiram Key. After researching the Mithra religion I was overcome by a need to find out how much more of the history of Christianity was accurate or had been borrowed from other religions.

So how did it really start? Who started it and when?

Let’s start from Jesus of Nazareth or Christ

* Jesus is the Greek translation of Yehoshua a Hebrew name meaning ‘Yahweh will deliver’ often given to a leader. (The Jews called God Yahweh)

* Christ or Christo means Messiah in the Greek language, a title, and not a name. Neither Jesus nor Christ would have been used as a name in Judea and not together.

* Nazareth the town he came from, did not exist at that time!

This is not a good start, a man with no name, from a town not yet built. Let us first consider what contemporary information is available regarding what we call in our modern Christian calendar year 0. In Judea at that time the Romans, who were very good at keeping records, occupied the country and the indigenous population they ruled was made up of various, sects with a Jewish religious base but not mainstream Jews and pagans. (The word Jew was a shorted form of Judahite a person from Judea.) The Cities of Caesarea and Sebaste were pagan centres while in different areas other religions dominated, for instance Jerusalem was the Jewish centre.

The contemporary historian Flavius Josephus ‘The Wars Of The Jews – (Book II)’ divided Judeans into three main Jewish groups: The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees; of the second, the Sadducees; and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essenes.

Pharisees

The Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, maintained the validity of the oral as well as the written law. They were flexible in their interpretations and willing to adapt the law to changing circumstances. They believed in an afterlife and in the resurrection of the dead. By the first century B.C. the Pharisees came to represent the beliefs and practices of the majority of Palestinian Jewry.

Sadducees

The Sadducees were priestly and aristocratic families, who interpreted the law more literally than the Pharisees. They dominated the Temple worship and its rites, including the sacrificial cult. The Sadducees only recognized precepts derived directly from the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and the existence of angels. The Sadducees were unpopular with the common people.

The Essenes

The Essenes were a separatist group, some of whom formed an ascetic monastic community and retreated to the wilderness of Judea. They shared material possessions and occupied themselves with disciplined study, worship, and work. They practised ritual immersion and ate their meals communally. The Priests did not marry and were celibate. There were different sects within the Essenes all based on Jewish religions including Hemerobaptists, Ossaeans, Nazoraeans and Herodians. The variations accrued either by tribal, historical or regional separation and led to development into self contained sects. The different sects evolved through the religious elders’ interpretation of the Old Testament stories which were passed down through the tribes. The ancient Christian historian Epiphanius, in his Panarion, speaks in more detail of the Jewish sects, confirming seven in all: Sadducees, Scribes, Pharisees, Hemerobaptists, Ossaeans, Nazoraeans and Herodians.’(Panarion 1:19).

The reader will also have heard of the Samaritans. Samaritans were in their eyes the original Jews not deported by the Assyrian conquerors of the kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. The Samaritans called themselves Bene Yisrael (‘Children of Israel’), or Shamerim (‘Observant Ones’), for their sole criterion was the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament).

Printed books would not arrive for another 1500 years so the majority of the population was illiterate and information was limited to the spoken word being handed down accurately. Written records were an expensive process limited to Government requirements and relevant religious groups for social and religious reasons. The only way to get information to the masses was to read out proclamations in town squares or meeting places and to declaim sermons from religious leaders. Travelling storytellers supplemented these means and merchants brought news of what was happening elsewhere. (News from North East West South). So information was limited and controlled to that provided by Government officials and the local religious body and this would continue to be the case for the next 1500 years.

Religion to Jews was a way of life. It was a closed religion. Gentiles were excluded, so the Jews were more a race of people than a religious group, as are the orthodox Jewish sect today. Their power in Judea although subservient to Rome was nevertheless given due respect by the authorities even if its motivation was self interest. Records through Rome provide an accurate picture of the running of Judea, including various records of important events. The Dead Sea Scrolls also provide a useful insight into the world of the people who lived in Qumran, the Essene Sect: these people lived in lower Judea, and their writings cover this period and some of the personalities. An assortment of writings from different sects and prominent people, surviving either in their original state or in copy form add to the overall picture of the period.

So different religious sects were prominent in certain areas mainly due to tribal variations and the isolation of some geographical locations. Those of the Essenes community were known as Nazarenes, Sabians, or Subbi.

The Essenes were a cloistered group who lived near the Dead Sea at Qumran, and were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had broken away from the main Jewish religion and although they followed the basic Jewish religion they sought a purer form of Judaism. They shunned the Jewish leaders whom they saw as corrupt and in league with the conquering Roman forces. The Nazoraeans’ home was around Mt Carmel in southern Babylon and their religion evolved from the Jewish Old Testament. They followed the basic Jewish laws but deviated from the norm by: being vegetarians, did not cut their hair, their religious teachers were celibate and wore white robes. This formed the bases of the priestly purity laws. (This celibate requirement for priests was copied by the Christian Church and continued for the next 2000 years with varying degrees of success.)

The sect shared ownership of all items as ownership was sacrificed for the communal good. Their lifestyle parallelled the Jewish ethos, particularly the high value placed on marriage, procreation, religious purity and the incorporation of the Hebrew belief of angelology (belief in angels). They did not set up temples in the desert but interpreted their communal body as the temple of the lord. They were also unique at that time for observance of priestly purity laws, which allowed the Qumran sect, in its view, to associate with angels.

They studied the past for a model of their future and saw events moving towards an apocalyptic climax, in which the angels would help them overthrow their oppressors, described in their Torah (Jewish bible) as the Romans. For them the new Kingdom of Israel, the Promised Land awaited. The sect cherished a militant body and by tradition they thought of themselves as the children of Israel and regarded all other Jews and Gentiles as enemies. Like Joshua they were poised to retake the Promised Land from the sinners.

The Nazarenes were a proactive group and took their teaching to the people. They tried to convert existing Jews to their cause but excluded Gentiles who were not accepted into their religion because of their lack of religious purity. Their sect followed an extreme and purer form of Judaism, which thought that by catechistic means it could bring about their Kingdom Of Israel. So it would seem that the Nazarenes’ religious hierarchy was run on similar lines to some of the fundamentalist religious sects that cause controversy today. They worshipped the god Yahweh, the God of the Jews, who was supposed to be a hard taskmaster compared with the more benign Christian God portrayed today. This may partly explain the totally opposing opinions to be found in the Bible, the harder influence of Yahweh like ‘an eye for eye’ and the more forgiving Christian ‘when struck turn the other cheek’. They believed in baptisms and their most important leader, held in high regard for his teaching and miracles, was none other than John the Baptist, who was seen as their Messiah.

The Nazarenes laid great value on baptism as part of their religion, which involved total immersion of the body in water, preferably in a running stream. They used the fish as their religious symbol, actually a very ancient badge of priests. In the Nazarenes’ writings it also confirms that John the Baptist was associated with the same symbol. Even the word Nazoraean today has links with this symbol ‘Nasrani’ in Arabic in that region means ‘little fishes’. When researching the structure of the Nazoraean sect I found the Manual of Discipline which laid down the sect’s hieratical structure. This was made up of twelve holy men and two leaders and bears a striking similarity to the Bible’s twelve disciples.

The Manual of Discipline laid down the council of the Nazoraean Community, which consisted of twelve perfect and holy men who were the ‘pillars’ and two principal pillars representing the kingly and the priestly rolls. One looked after the physical leadership and structure of the sect while the other was responsible for the spiritual guidance.

So when we talk of the twelve disciples maybe this was derived from the Nazoreans twelve men of discipline?

The Pharisees

The Pharisees were a society of scholars or wise men. They enjoyed a large and popular following, and in the New Testament they appear as spokesmen for the majority of the population, so a Pharisee Nazoraean would be similar to a spokesman/priest. Samson was recorded as belonging to the Nazoraean and is mentioned in their manuscripts as a Pharisee Nazarite. Pharisees took a vow for a period on their route to higher position in the community. The amount of self sacrifice and denial of earthly comforts involved in this measured the individual’s position in the community. When the period of the vow came to an end, the Pharisee Nazarite had to present himself at the door of the sanctuary with a male lamb of the first year for a burnt offering; a ewe lamb of the first year for a sin offering; a ram for a peace offering.

After the priest offered these sacrifices up, the Nazarite cut off his hair at the door and threw it into the fire as a peace offering to God. Could this ceremony have connections with the story of Samson cutting off his hair and losing his (inner) strength? Luke 4:1 13 records Jesus fasting for 40 days just as John the Baptist did. This is another confirmation that he was taking part in this Nazoraean ritual to prepare himself to become one of the chosen few of the sect. The Christian stories of Jesus spending three years in the wilderness in about 27AD also fit in with him belonging to the Nazoraean sect. The Nazoraean ascetic monastic community retreated to the wilderness of Judea at this time. This strict religious sect set high value on self discipline and self sacrifice, which was required to reach the highest position in it community.

This is borne out by John the Baptist’s lifestyle as leader of his sect. John the Baptist was referred to with great reverence, even as late as the time of writing Luke’s Gospel 3:15 :

And as the people were in expectation and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ (the Messiah), or not.’

This indicates the importance of John to all men as being the candidate for the Messiah. John is said to have baptised Jesus consolidating the point that John was head of the sect and Jesus was subordinate to him. The extract below shows the reaction of Jesus on meeting John and his reverence towards him.

‘You knew that John was a prophet and not to expect royal garments when you saw him. But what you did not know, and what I now tell you is that John was more than a prophet, He was the one about whom it is written, ‘look I am sending my messenger before you’ He will prepare your path ahead of you. (Burton. L. Mack: the lost gospel)

In Josephus’ writing he implies that Herod executed John for political reasons. Herod Antipas was the ruler of Galilee and Transjordan and fell out with John the Baptist over Herod’s illegal marriage under Jewish law to his brother’s divorced wife. Herod feared that John as the leader of the Nazoraeans might have too much influence over the people and thus be able to spark off a rebellion.

Another major player in Jesus story was Pontius Pilate who was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea. His rule began 26AD and lasted until 37AD (Josephus, Antiquities 18.32f,35,89).

Judaea was extremely small, by Roman standards, 160km north/south and 70km east/ west, and during his governorship he had only a small force at his command. Syria was the main Roman base at this time and had a Counsellor running the country. He had at his disposal four Roman legions (Tacitus, Annuls 4.5) A legion is up to 6000 men but could be as few as 3,000.

Pontius Pilate had only auxiliary forces drawn from descendants of the Herodian troops from Caesarea and Sebaste amounting to five infantry cohorts (a cohort was 300 600 men) and one cavalry regiment, all scattered throughout the province. One cohort was permanently posted in the Antonia Fortress in Jerusalem.

So Judaea was a minor region but if a crisis occurred the Governor could call upon the Syrian counsellor for help. This was how it was meant to work, but for the first six years of Pilate’s governorship, Emperor Tiberius appointed L. Aelius Lamia to the post of Counsellor of Syria, but kept him in Rome. Possibly he was trying out a form of centralised government but it left poor Pilate in a vulnerable military position. This would mean Pilate was more dependent on his auxiliaries and any potential uprising had to be put down quickly before it could escalate. As Judea was a Jewish country their religion precluded any absorption by the Roman occupier so they were there under sufferance, which led to frequent confrontations.

The traditional capital was Jerusalem (the Jewish centre) but the governor resided in Caesarea (Pagan) on the coast, together with his troops and entourage, transforming the city into the Roman administrative headquarters. On occasion, the governor would move to Jerusalem, particularly during festivals both to keep the peace and to make Rome’s present felt. Rome had few officials in its provinces only the governor and a small number of personal staff. The governor’s concerns therefore, had to be limited to essentials, the maintenance of law and order, judicial matters and the collection of taxes. To enable him to carry out his duties, the governor was given the title of Imperium, or supreme power in the province. General administration of the day to day running was left largely to the Jewish High Priest and the aristocracy in Jerusalem.

Normally Jewish criminals would be dealt with under Jewish law, tried and if guilty, jailed or executed as required by their law. The Governor would only become involved if the crime was a crime against the state, such as inciting insurrection, revolt, killing a Roman etc. The Romans expected the Jewish authorities to uphold imperial interest whilst the local aristocracy could expect their own privileges to be safeguarded by Rome in return. Another distinctive feature of Pilate’s governorship is that, unlike his predecessor Gratus who changed the High Priest four times in eleven years, Pilate made no change to the High Priesthood he inherited.

This was not out of respect for the Jewish sensitivities but rather because he found that Gratus’ last appointee Caiaphas was a man he could rely on to support Roman interest and commanded some respect amongst the people. Bronze coins struck during Pilate’s period of governorship have pagan symbols on one side and Jewish symbols on the other.

So there was Pilate, ruling on a knife edge in a volatile region, having to work with the Jewish Priests and the aristocracy to maintain its smooth running with a relatively small force to back him. Security of Judea as a Roman province was considered paramount and to this end he would have to act quickly to suppress any local troubles lest it grow to a size his forces could not contain.

Jesus Christ is the person that the Christian religion is based on. Who was he? Surprisingly there is little or no contemporary information or mention of his name during his lifetime. Jesus is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for Yehoshua (used by leaders of the time) meaning ‘Yahweh will deliver’ (in modern terms ‘God will deliver victory’ or, as they used it, ‘Bringer Of Victory’. The name was often given to leaders at the time.

Christ is again a Greek translation from the Jewish word Messiah, used in Judea to mean ‘Bringer of Salvation’ given to a person believed to be the chosen one from God. In Jewish tradition the Israelites’ kings were associated with the word Messiah, meaning King to be or King in waiting.

Neither Christ nor Jesus would have been used in Judea as a name at that time, as it was not in their language. Norman Cohen described in ‘Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come’ the Jewish Messiah:

‘He will be, at the most, a great leader and a wise and just ruler, guided by Yahweh and appointed by him to rule over his people in Judah.’

This notion of a transcendental saviour in human form, so important in Zoroastrianism and so central to Christianity, is totally unknown to the Hebrew Bible.

The fact that the word ‘Messiah’ is not used at all in the New Testament can only be explained if the translators used the Greek word ‘Christos’ wherever the Hebrew word ‘Messiah’ appeared in the text. Over a period this general term became associated to an individual ‘Christ’. Thus stories passed down from a person thought to be a Messiah would have been attributed to Christ. This can cause confusion, as over a period there were other Messiahs such as John the Baptist. When translating these stories into Greek they would all have been attributed to Christ or Christo (Messiah in Greek) as this was the direct translation but it did not apply to a particular person.

So with a name of ‘Bringer of Victory’ or ‘Bringer of Salvation’ it is hardly surprising that one is unable to find any contemporary reference to this person.

Jesus or Christ is only present in documents, manuscripts, and other written work produced retrospectively. So any text using these names must have been written a long time after his death and had then been already translated into Greek.

So did he exist? When I started this research I was sceptical. So his real name is not known but working backwards, as he is referred to as Jesus today. We know that it’s Greek for Yehoshua in Hebrew. So if his father was Joseph he would have been know as Yehoshua ben Joseph (Yehoshua son of Joseph). For ease of recognition I will refer to him from now on as Jesus.

His birth: According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about ten years after Herod's death. Some Christian writers have tried to manipulate the text to mean this was the first census while Quirinius was governor and that the first census of Israel recorded by historians took place later. However, the literal meaning is ‘this was the first census taken, while Quirinius was governor’. In any event as history clearly shows, Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until well after Herod's death. So not even the year he was born seems to have been recorded with any accuracy let alone in which month he was born or his name. Although not much is known about his family some information is available in the scriptures.

‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Jude? And his sisters, are they not all with us?’ ( Matthew 13:55 56)

‘But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.’ (Galatians 1:19.)

‘It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.’ (Luke 24:10)

So he had a family, four brothers and at least two sisters, and more is recorded about his brother James. It was one of the best kept secrets of the Christian Church that he had any relations at all. You will later see that James his brother not only outlived him by 30 years but was far more important to the original religion than Jesus.

As for what Jesus looked like, there is a copy of Flavius Josephus’s (Jewish historian 37AD 100AD) description of Jesus in a surviving Slavonic Text, which has come to light in the last century and believed to be genuine despite Christian censorship:

‘... a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high, hunchbacked with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard’.

Another reference to his height is made by Luke 19:3 we can read about a man called Zaccheus who tries to see Jesus through a crowd.

‘And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and he could not for a crowd, because he was low of stature.’

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(One could take this statement the other way to indicate that Zaccheus was short but in conjunction with the previous passage I concluded it to be Jesus. If Zaccheus was short he would not use this as an excuse, but overcome the problem as he had done all his life.) Three cubits high put him at a height of less than 4ft 6ins (1.35ms) possibly due to his hunchback. This is not so unusual as it seems, since the average height in those days was less than 5 feet tall. Nevertheless this is very different from the current image we are presented with but is only to be expected as the Church had a free hand at a later period to create a suitable figurehead as the head of the religion.

That he had a family is not unreasonable, but the Christian Church created a Godly figure rather an ordinary mortal as the head of its religion. The Church was formed totally around Jesus, whose importance had to be strong enough to form the basis of an entire religion. This was to prove a problem later, as without the total control of information and the absolute devotion of the population, information contrary to the Church’s teaching could shake the very foundation stone of the religion itself. This was unlike other major religions such as Buddhist, Judaism, and Islam, whose history goes back to unquestionable times. This vulnerability was the reason why the Church in later years, when it had the power, stamped down with such ferocity on anyone trying to question its teachings.

So when the Christian Church was establishing its history it all had to fit with a person worthy enough to be seen as The Messiah sent to earth to save the world.

Jesus of Nazareth is another title, which needs a bit of explanation. According to Roman records, which were meticulous during this period for tax and military reasons, Nazareth did not exist until a much later period. Nazareth is not mentioned in any writing of the time and today you will see there a modern town with little history. To justify the Christian connection the Church maintains that a small hill village was there during the time of Jesus but nothing historical remains today. The Christian scriptures say he called himself Jesus of Nazareth, but if he came from a small unknown village then there would be little point in saying: I am Jesus of a small hill village that you would not have heard of.

The true reason was that Jesus was a Nazoraean, not from a town called Nazareth. The Christian Church does not seem to have had any interest in the actual religion that Jesus was teaching and promoting during his lifetime. This may seem strange but when you realise that Jesus belonged to an extreme Jewish sect it is hardly surprising. Jesus was obviously not a Christian in the modern sense but he was a Nazarite belonged to the Nazoraean religious sect, which followed the Jewish Old Testament and religious laws. The Christian Church always referred to Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth either through ignorance or intention and did not give him the correct title of Jesus, a Nazoraean of the Jewish based sect of Essenes.

If they had used the correct version they would have had to answer the question: What is a Nazoraean? The Bible does state that Pilate put a sign on the cross to say: Jesus a Nazoraean, King of the Jews. John the Baptist was the spiritual leader and Messiah to the Nazoraeans and when he was executed on the order of Herod in 32AD it left a vacuum. And who stepped into this vacuum? None other than Jesus! It is also suggested in some religious records that Jesus was the cousin of John the Baptist and this was quite likely due to the close nature of this small Nazoraeans community.

John had preached about the Promised Land as the leader of the Nazoraeans but now Jesus sought to complete his work by more direct action.

The Nazoraeans secession was not straightforward; possibly because of the confrontational attitude of Jesus and his disciples, the sect was not unanimous in its support for this new leader. The position of leader in the Nazoraean sect demanded total commitment, a strict adherence to the sect’s purity laws: abandoning belongings, becoming celibate, leaving hair uncut, following a vegetarian diet and cutting all communications with their family.

Jesus became leader with the title of King of the Jews indicating the Nazoraeans saw themselves as a superior Jewish sect carrying the torch of Judaism for the general Jewish population to follow. This is another major fact that the Christian Church records, but never explains, Jesus called himself King of the ‘Jews’ not mankind, or the people of Judea. Nowhere is there any recorded text even in the Christian Church where one can find Jesus stating he was starting a new religion. He was not trying creating a new religion in his eye, just a better purer and less corrupt Jewish way of life.

When he became the leader of the Nazoreans he brought his own religious interruption to the post as how to bring about the Kingdom of Israel; in fact he made it into a personal crusade to succeed at any cost. Some asked Jesus how it was that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fasted whereas his disciples did not (Mark 2:18). People perceived a distinct difference between Jesus and John. Some thought John was demon possessed because of his frequent fasting (Luke 7:33 34). Although early Christians saw John as a forerunner of Jesus, the disciples of John and others did not see it quite that way. No doubt some of John's disciples did follow Jesus. But many others continued in their allegiance to John their Messiah even after his death and never became followers of Jesus.

Jesus’s immediate goal was the overthrowing of the established order and in doing so to bring about the Kingdom of Israel. He had seen that the passive approach of John the Baptist didn’t work and maybe he thought that more aggressive action was needed. This aggressive stance meant that Jesus did not enjoy the total support of the sect. As Jesus led the sect for no more than a couple of years and was unsuccessful, this might explain why there is little contemporary record about his reign, unlike James, Jesus’ brother, who led the sect for 30 years after Jesus’s execution.

Having established Jesus as the leader of Nazoraeans, we can see how the Christian Church used so much of the Nazoraean sect’s background to build the image we have of Jesus today. A religious individual with long hair, celibate, possessing no worldly goods, wearing a white robe and leading 12 disciples, 12 leaders of the Nazoraeans but his religion bears little relationship to what has evolved into the Christian religion. Later I will describe how many of the Nazoraean and Mandaean (they evolved from Nazoraeans) religious practices became