The Man Without A Name

By Neil Trickett

In picking up this book, you must have felt intrigued by the flavour of mystery. Mostly, it is so. Who killed Kennedy? Who was King Arthur? Did Diana die by accident? They are ready instances - all Anglo-Saxon compulsions, but other nations and cultures have theirs. The pages you have in your hands provide answer to the greatest mystery of all. Vital, far-reaching and outstanding for almost 2000 years. Why was the tomb of Jesus found empty? Who was the unnamed man who wrote the gospel called 'John' - an account different to all the others? The most knowing. Jewish and giving a vitally different understanding. The flow of questions arising out of his almost contradictory account makes for an evermore intriguing quest. The conclusions for an answer to the mystery that has stood before everyone, for so long, as by far, the mightiest of all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528911610

Neil Trickett

Neil Trickett started life in Sussex in 1936 and lives in Exmoor with his wife and family. Instinctively a designer and creator, he became a Civil Engineer. He loves knowledge and is assiduous in interrogating information and challenging comfortable norms. This book, his first to be published and twenty years in the making, was not something he planned to do. But he felt compelled to share what he discovered.

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Bibliography

About the Author

Neil started life in Sussex in 1936 and lives in Exmoor with his wife and family.

Instinctively a designer and creator he became a Civil Engineer. He loves knowledge and is assiduous in interrogating information and challenging comfortable norms.

This book, his first to be published and twenty years in the making, was not something he planned to do. But he felt compelled to share what he discovered.

Dedication

To my wife

Copyright Information ©

Neil Trickett (2018)

The right of Neil Trickett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781788232883 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781788232890 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781788232906 (Ebook)

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Preface

The work making these pages possible began as a consequence of the writer being asked to carry out some large-scale artwork for a church festival. The given terms of reference were to illustrate the scenes in the Garden of Gethsemane and the act of crucifixion, with it being thus necessary to read those passages of the Jesus story with the concentrated degree of analysis and thought appropriate to the given task.

Thus it was for the first time that the presence of someone who was always to be an unnamed man became not only recognised but more and more to be seen as an immense question. Not just one question but many, given his lurking anonymity within the very different Jesus story told by ‘John’ and the consequent mystery it has always been for scholars and theologians. Not only there as an unnamed figure but the one said by ‘John’ to have been the one ‘most loved’ by Jesus. And even more, there at the beginning as the first disciple and at the end as someone there ‘until I (Jesus) might come again’. And even more, there at the most critical moments of all that happened, as a close witness with more understanding than the disciple Peter – traditionally and generally accepted to be the source of the gospel set down by ‘Mark’. The man without a name only once coming apart from Peter, when Jesus, from the cross, tells him to take Mary, his mother, into his home and to care for her as a son.

Afterwards it all became the matter of study across many thousands of hours. Fundamental to the task were the stories as told by the four gospels, from those of birth to those of reappearances after vanishing from a tomb. There did come, however, a revelatory moment when the reality behind the stories stood clear and led to the compulsion to these pages.

The writer is not, nor ever has been, a determined sceptic of religious ideas. Following marriage into a family committed to sincere and regular practices of unquestioning worship, he became confirmed in the same faith, serving as a treasurer and a representative on a Parochial Church Council.

My thanks are due to my wife, her family and all my friends, most of whom practise institutionalised worship, for their understanding, tolerance and continuing friendship: in recognition, I trust, of the seriousness, sincerity and integrity of thought that has been both necessary and applied.

Introduction

The mystery of the unnamed man comes as synonymous with that of the story of Jesus. The one, by the quill of ‘John’, is a part of the other.

Generally the story of Jesus now comes with the sound of either history or myth, with few sounds outside places of worship, of his having been a supernatural figure. As a consequence introductions to television programmers and the generality of published writings give, if often in a somewhat oblique way, the assumption of him being no more than an historical figure who died on a cross.

It is thus unsurprising that the sound of priests is to be heard with less assertion about such matters as birth out of a virgin; or of Jesus having been a part of ‘God’ himself. From their place within what has developed into a small, highly communicative, pluralistic world, possessed of extensive and ever increasing new knowledge about the real nature of everything, such adjustments of their position have to be seen to come out of an awareness that the old ideas of belief in ancient stories telling of a witnessed human being having been born of a virgin and, at his end, having risen from being dead will no longer be accepted by many.

But no reasonable doubt need be held of the man without a name, for he is several times recorded within the book of ‘John’ – a work to be held as solid between the hands and with the unnamed man stating his place at the end of the book as the person who wrote it.

Yet none of the above described, developed circumstances can be taken to justify putting away the Jesus stories because they are still the cause of so much that makes for history. Even more, they still stand for many as something of the meaning of life. Thus the mystery of him remains. And although he does come to us only through stories by others, none tell of matters in either a more real or profound way than the words of ‘John’.

It is a circumstance where the unsolved mystery of the identity of the anonymous man, as the source of the ‘John’ account, stands to be seen as a question of the greatest significance, for, by his real and sometimes very frank accounting, he is to be seen telling of a human reality. The one mystery thus standing there to be seen as an integral part of the other. With the very real possibility of finding the explanation of one proving to be also that of the other.

An amount of time is necessary to see how parts of other stories were taken to create ideas of Jesus of Nazareth having been a supernatural being. They are stories and perceptions known to a slight degree around almost the whole human world but with the task of finding the realness of the persons, if any, behind so much being still outstanding.

And it is to be supposed that it would all still be just so much of a mystery but for the odd circumstance that led to the effort of understanding that brought forth these pages.

It was an effort that gained and retained impetus through an increasing awareness of crucial conflicts between comparable parts of the stories that present themselves to anyone cross reading the four canonised accounts with intent care. And they are conflicts that persist because they demand reasoned explanation. With few exceptions they come as consequences of the account given by the unnamed but most loved man. But any attempt to draw the accounts together towards even a rudimentary degree of consensus emerges as an impractical endeavour mired in shapeless confusion. Yet they are conflicts that insist upon resolution because they make a coherent understanding of the figure of Jesus impossible. Along with so much standing to be understood there had to be intense curiosity about the man who was compelled to write a so different, yet so real account, without revealing his name.

Coming from amongst all the differences and conflicts, however, one consideration did stand as both evident and consistent across the four accounts – none of the four told a scene of death on the cross that could be taken as realistic. From this, with a reasonably assumed reality of the Jesus figure having lived through it all, to die much later and elsewhere, there existed an altogether different circumstance. One where the described brilliance and charismatic Jewishness of Jesus of Nazareth is known to have been still somewhere alive and active, living with at least the same passion and belief as he had displayed in Galilee and Jerusalem.

So it was that when studying the extensive range and pattern of conflict between the generally accepted writings of ‘Mark’ and the very different, often contradictory version of ‘John’, with all the Jewish knowledge displayed by him, it stood as an ever-increasing necessity somehow to discover the identity of the unnamed man.

And thereafter the unfolding reality developed into a compulsion exceeding any to be derived through the imagination of writers of fiction.

Why such ancient mysteries have never before been pursued without relent is to be explained, in large part, by the unremitting discipline, from a very early date, applied to prescribed acceptance of the four gospel texts. This, along with the proscribed understanding of what they offer, was all made emphatic by Irenaeus of Lyon (circa 130–200) and given established substance by the Council of Nicaea, in 325 CE.

From the response of priests who were consulted in the course of this task there came no reason to conclude that their training and ordination had not followed such a limiting discipline.

The laity, in turn, in preparation for confirmation, is taken through a course of prescribed teachings that does not induce questions of the legitimate and obvious kind identified and answered by these pages.

And insofar as the mass of churchgoers is concerned, they are presented only with selected passages from the four gospels, mostly in relation to the ecumenical calendar: extracts taken by those responsible, to be appropriate – but always without cross reference to parts of the canon that give contradictory accounts. In questionable justification of such circumstances, a determination to frustrate any urge to study the lack of mutual consistency across all four accounts can be considered to be in the interest of faith.

And, of great help to those seeking to maintain the given ideas, is the circumstance that a condition of belief is felt to be vital to the purpose, making questions to be of no matter.

Amidst so much, however, there is always present the need to keep in mind the contradictory but always very real account by the unnamed man.

There are, too, other important, although less direct, factors that are seen to be influential in the lack of attention to the incoherence of the Jesus based stories when taken together.

It can be explained, in part, by the fact that the Creed determined at Nicaea does not have any connection with what any of the stories say about Jesus as a man or what happened to him. This might come as a remarkable and, to some, a provocative thing to write, but it is a matter of fact to recognise that the Nicene idea of Jesus being a Very God of very God cannot be seen to be the claim of any of those giving account. And although the idea of resurrection of the body is the bedrock of the Religion, it is not something that originated in any of the stories about Jesus but was first a story coming through an unidentified report in ‘The Book of Acts’, of a reputed claim – although unwritten and unsupported – by Saul (Paul) of Tarsus: someone who is not identified by any of those who claimed later to give an account and who is shown, in ‘Acts’, to have been a persecutor of Jesus and his disciples. (Chapters 1 & 3).

After exhaustive readings and comparisons of the given accounts further work was both in order and necessary to examine an extensive range and variety of works by theologians. Nearly all, however, came with an apparent purpose of making their faith secure. Thus the task soon afterwards extended to texts by historians and by sceptics. But almost nothing was found that sought to explain why the accounts are in such conflict. And so it was again with extensive study of the likely origins, purpose and probable years of those giving account.

Across all texts, attempts to understand why the unnamed man had created so many discords were notable, above all, by their absence. The nearest to a common factor across the range of works examined was a purpose to try to determine the historicity of relevant texts: principally the dates and origins of the gospels; and who might have written them.

In seeking to go on but given almost nothing of report of any critical analysis of the accounts, it came as most possible first to identify the self-appointed purpose of Jesus amongst his people. It was a task that did not have to contend with the vital conflicts due to the four accounts enabling sight of a notable degree of agreement about it. In the process much of the reality of him and how he saw himself in relation to the society about could be gleaned, with the writings of the unnamed man being much the most extensive and aware. All of the accounts indicate the Jews to have been unresponsive to Jesus, with some open hostility towards him. The account of the unnamed man, however, shows this to have amounted to very real danger and so much as an open threat to his life. Those anonymous words provide full and good reason to understand why Jesus wanted his days in Jerusalem to come to an early end.

In none of the accounts did it emerge as reasonably possible, however, to see what he is shown to have done and to have been, to make, either in whole or part, for the ‘Religion’ established about him. Instead, with what comes as a near unanimity, the evidence of his beliefs and teachings is to be seen to have been the basis for the more spiritual ‘Gnostic’ movement, in his name, that was preached abroad in the years before ‘Paul’ and continued to represent an alternative understanding of the nature of Jesus until the declarations at Nicaea. This circumstance stands in much the most emphatic particular through the writings of the man without a name. To an extent where ‘John’ stands to be seen to have been as intent upon a ‘gnostic’ purpose as he was to change or dismiss the earlier efforts to give account of the Jesus phenomenon.

There is, however, much more to be recognised than the evident philosophical and theological thrust behind the spiritual teachings of Jesus, as set down in the stories. He carried a disruptive purpose, too, that is to be perceived through the close concurrence of all four accounts when telling the Temple scene of Jesus overturning the tables of the moneylenders. It is a given sight of him having been about a need for people to see their purpose not to be about the pursuit of money but an understanding of what he is regularly shown to have described as the Kingdom of God. That the unnamed man told, with much exactness, as the others had done – albeit as an event at a different place in time – serves to make sure what Jesus preached on the important matter of human acquisitiveness.

Thus it stood as an important part of understanding to try to know why Jesus lived with such values instead of those of society all about him. It was a question seen to be answered when the unnamed man indicated the real circumstances of his birth; with him thus having stood as someone unacceptable to the society at large.

Despite the evident misfortune of his real circumstances, however, there need be no doubt from the given understandings, particularly those provided by the unnamed man, that Jesus would rather be recalled in his own misfortune realness, than as a figure of other men’s creation. As would anyone.

It left the question of the unrevealed identity of the man who was either ready or compelled to write so contrarily without a vital sight of his name. Or was he – when he came to the very last? What is ‘John’ seeking to tell in his final words, when he records Jesus saying to Peter, in relation to the unnamed man, if I want him to stay until I might come again … what is that to you?

Chapter 1

Early History

The gospel stories are not a part of ancient history – the time of Jesus of Nazareth was no more than some 2000 years ago, with the formal religion as we know it coming more than 300 years later.

Across the ages before, we know that many earlier Religions had been devised, some of which are still very much alive in the East and Far East. Some of these have been shown to have seeded some of the ideas of Christianity.

There is evidence, too, that religion in the form of ideas or sensations of an all-powerful, controlling force, known in English speaking places, in recent years, as ‘God’, have existed probably since soon after what we recognise as humanity began. Everywhere about the earth there are hard, clear remains telling of the attendance of human societies upon the perceived power of their idea of a ‘God’ or ‘Gods’. In places where Christianity invaded and flourished there are to be seen remote sites, frequently on wild hilltops, where megaliths and stone circles mark earlier human attendance upon the idea of the power of unseeable ‘Gods’ over human destiny.

And it is easy to understand that there had to be a credulous eagerness to believe in things magical when living in a world that was not only endless but also largely unknown. Any explanation could be accepted if it gave some ease to the insecurity of a wondering mind confronted by the vagaries of nature and the urgency to stay alive.

That the world had to be flat, for instance, stood as obvious. And the sun was to be seen revolving around the earth, which stood as the centre of all things.

At the same time, each person’s own stretch of world was small, being the distance that could be travelled on foot, or, for a few, on a four-legged beast, in a coracle or by small sailboat. So, a wider world of mystical events; divine people; and vital powers of nature, often terrifying, was accepted without question.

Suffice to recognise, however, that a large number of Religions existed around the globe long before the age of Christianity: which came as a late development that found its place within what are loosely described as ‘western societies’. Prior to the Jesus idea peoples in the west held to a variety of what are labelled ‘Pagan’ concepts, based on recognition of their dependence upon the forces of nature.

A first, clear movement to a wider, more focussed idea of a ruling divinity came with the Cretan culture, some two millennia before the stories about Jesus of Nazareth began to appear. And it was the Cretan figure of Cronus, following his Hittite predecessor, and succeeded by his son Zeus, who led to the development of the Greek pantheon of Gods with which we are all familiar to some extent. The same structure of a divine pantheon was adopted by the much more widespread development of the Roman Empire, albeit with the gods being given each a different, Latinised name.

Religion at the heart of the western dynamic was thus at such a stage when ‘Paul’ and other missionaries, perhaps including the disciple Simon Peter, began to circulate their ideas and stories about Jesus, soon after his crucifixion.

It is not the purpose of these pages to explore beyond the essential speculations through the earliest days of the Religion that were to make for what is known as ‘Christianity’. It was then adopted and still is taken to mean a Religion founded within the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, but the name itself, by its Hellenistic derivation, is something of a date later than the actual beginning of it all in Galilee. The very first of so much was of Judea – of Galilee and the wildernesses about, when esoteric sects can be seen to have been a prominent phenomenon there and much further afield.

One of the sects identifiable in Jewish history is that known as the Essenes, thought to have originated from areas about the Dead Sea, with accepted records of their existence for about two hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth was born. The texts of both the canonised gospels and those uncovered a short while ago at Qumran are to be seen yielding a perception of John the Baptist and Jesus having been followers of Essene beliefs, or something similar. The sects were of aesthetic practices including communal living, but with immersed baptism and self-denial being practiced, to the exclusion of marriage, in the pursuit and teaching of spiritual understanding. To have to live in the wilderness for forty days, as gospel texts record was done by Jesus, would be consistent with Essene aestheticism. Thus Jesus (Yeshu or Yeshua or Yahweh) and his followers would have been seen to be a small part of one of these sects.

The pursuit and teaching of spiritual knowledge was common to adherents of such sects and acquired the Greek term ‘gnosis’, which led to the early gospel texts, including those found at Qumran, being described as ’gnostic’.

And so it would have been seen until, galvanised by the drama of Golgotha and the unexplained disappearance of the crucified Jesus from where he had been laid, some of his disciples carried excited ideas of him further afield. The most notable of these was Simon Peter, who is seen through the gospels to have been the most vital follower and impelled by shame of his abandonment of his master at the direst moment of need.

The actions, travels and disputes of those disciples who remained after the crucifixion are set down to a small extent in the further books of the New Testament, most notably in ‘The Book of Acts of the Apostles’. From that text and some letters included in the canon it is evident that much was undertaken in the fifteen to twenty years following the crucifixion, with the stories and teachings being carried to such far and influential places as Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Athens and Rome.

Insofar as Simon Peter is concerned there is strong record of his missionary presence in Antioch for about seven years. There is also good reason, from local use of his Greek name, Cephas, to recognise his mission having reached Corinth. Anything of Rome is of a more apocryphal nature but appropriate to the later establishment of Rome as the centre of the Religion.

It is a measure of the vigour and passion of those early messengers that so much was accomplished in such brief time.

Another carrying the Jesus story abroad at the same time was Paul (previously known as Saul) who had not been a disciple but was a Pharisee and persecutor of such bands as the one gathered about Jesus. As a Pharisee, his belief in resurrection of the body resulted in his passion for what he saw to be the confirmed possibility for himself arising through the empty tomb of Jesus. Such passion and belief did he acquire that his place in the development of the early Religion was formative, becoming central to what was eventually established – which circumstance is identified in sufficient detail in the next two chapters.

There is extensive evidence telling that harsh division existed, however, and lasted for some three hundred years, between the ‘Paulinian’ based claim of resurrection and the ‘gnostic’ concept that any movement about Jesus should be based on the spiritual essence of his teachings, with life beyond death being not of the body but off the spirit. It is evident from letters and books of The New Testament that the dispute was bitter, with the important centre of Ephesus being both representative and vital.

At the time of the first century Ephesus was a fine town on the west coast of what is now Turkey, with its reputation being crucial to the beginning of Christianity for it was a recognised centre of learning, culture and spiritual inquiry. The painstaking reconstruction of its library building still stands – unlike that of Alexandria – as a monumental work of recovered architecture and artistically inspired craftsmanship.

What took place there in the first century CE is of particular note because it was there that the mysterious figure of John the Elder, or Presbyter, was present; who is generally seen to have been the writer of the ‘John’ gospel.

It is also a place of note because Ephesus is to be seen as the centre of the spiritual (‘gnostic’) alternative to the resurrectionist proposition of ‘Paul’ (Saul), who is reported to have gone there and spent time in debate with the resident community. It is a circumstance highlighting the mystery of the figure of ‘John’ and making of him an anomaly: as someone resident in a ‘gnostic’ community yet being seen as the writer of a gospel canonised by the Paulinian Church because it contains vivid and detailed stories of Jesus reappearing to his disciples.

It leaves us with the compelling wonder of whether the two most recognisable and vital figures of the post-crucifixion Jesus history met and conversed. Whether they did or not, however, it is apparent from the Book of Acts that Paul’s attempts to gain a hearing were not well received and he was compelled to leave; with it being likely that the figure known as ‘John’ was influential. All these circumstances are of important note here because it is the writer of the ‘John’ gospel who is to be seen in systematic conflict with the other gospel writers in telling both what Jesus was about and what happened to him; giving, thus, a contrary account that caused the impulse to this investigation.

Such circumstances render the atmospheric remains of Ephesus to be seen as those of a place fundamental to all that emerged as a Religion, for given the presence there through the most critical formative period of ‘Christianity’ of that anonymous figure known as ‘John’ – and as a certain consequence of his influence, the first sure roots of the organised Religion that came to be called ‘Christianity’ are to be seen to have spread from there, with ‘bishops’ appointed to their place before the end of the first century. It is thus reasonable to see the Elder’s death to have been whilst resident in Ephesus and his remains laid to rest there, before the end of the first ‘Christian’ century. There are postulates who claim that he was banished by Emperor Domitian to the island of Patmos, from about 81 to 96 CE, where he wrote ‘The Book of Revelations’ before returning to Ephesus at what would have been a great age; but these stories bear no more than the substance of unverified legend. Rather it is to be considered that he retreated to Patmos for a while following news of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 66–69 CE and wrote ‘The Book of Revelations’ there – a matter dealt with in due course within these pages.

Such a retreat, at such a time, would be consistent with the gospel writing known as ‘John’ containing repeated evidence of its writer having been of a first-hand knowledge of the fabric and ways of Jerusalem during the years Jesus of Nazareth was there, with the long-estranged figure of John being much affected by reports of its destruction. It would also be consistent with the writer of ’The Book of Revelations’ stating his place at the time of writing to be on the island, with all these circumstances being dealt with in Chapter 23.

In addition to so much, conclusive records of the Elder’s presence in Ephesus were made by Papias, who is known to have lived there within the approximate period of 50–140 CE. He referred to the anonymous figure as ‘the Presbyter’ and quoted the few of his words that remain to us, with them being of unique value as the only written records of that vital time providing contemporaneous criticism of the first two gospels to emerge. The importance of the record made by Papias was recognised by the Roman historian Eusebius and included in his writings for the Emperor.

Subsequently the figure of ‘John’ has come to be known by a variety of names but most commonly as Apostle John or Saint John, or John the Evangelist, with John of Patmos, John the Presbyter, or John the Elder being frequent alternatives – this last being the form used in these pages.

Always, however, he comes with an ever-preserved anonymity. The sometimes identification of him as John of Patmos is because of his direct connection with that island, by reason of a statement within the text of the fantastical ‘Book of Revelations’ telling it to be the work of someone identifying himself as ‘John’.

What stands above all, however, is the conjunction of his criticisms of the early gospels with his very different account of Jesus given in the powerful and most influential ‘Gospel of John’.

Apart and effectively separate from the Ephesus related circumstances was the development, across the 260 years following the death of ‘Paul’, of the proposition he had declared of resurrection of the body.

The claim of ‘Paul’ thus made for a vision of the human body being immortal and was so well received that it carried through to the centres of Greek and Roman Empire, with ‘Paul’ having been, amongst all else of this remarkable man, possessed of the privilege of being accepted by Roman Authority as a Citizen. These were decisive factors in the spread of the new Religion, leading, in the year 312 CE, to it being taken for political reasons by the Emperor Constantine and pronounced to be the faith – Constantine: Emperor of Imperial Rome: still the greatest power of the known world at that time.

So those groups who had become known as ‘Christian’ acquired, through a fortuitous stroke, a substance and prospect of the highest order. And what became known as ‘Christianity’ established its home in the land of a people with a naturally creative temperament for operatic drama; profound music; and passionate art.

Nowhere else could have made more of the story of Jesus.

The title ‘Christian’ was attached to early missionaries, whether of ‘gnostic’ or ‘Paulinian’ persuasion, because the dominant language of the lands through which they travelled was Greek, with the thrust of the missionaries’ faith being that Jesus had been a Messiah, long awaited by the Jews, and the Greek word for ‘Messiah’ is Christos: hence ‘Christ’. The figure the Jews had in mind, however, was an inspirational leader, born of royal descent from King David, so the story held out by ‘Paul’ was – and still is – unacceptable by them.

Constantine went on thirteen years later to summon the first council of leaders of the new faith, to be held at Nicaea.

The fact that those gathered to the purpose concluded by declaring a faith in resurrection of the body – although given the power of Constantine it can be regarded as having been inevitable – rendered ‘Paul’ altogether triumphant. Nor is it surprising because his message held out the prospect that everyone was overjoyed to hear. But it has to be recognised that it had been carried by someone of a powerful charisma whose speeches and journeys took the story of a risen Jesus to places far from that of Jesus, in Galilee. A description of his activities is slightly, but adequately, indicated in the book of ‘Acts of the Apostles’ and other places.

The idea of Jesus having risen from being dead in a tomb succeeded in altogether vanquishing ‘gnostic’ ideas and became the basis for the established ‘Paulinian’ Religion that still exists, with a recent Archbishop of Canterbury declaring abroad The Religion of Christianity stands or falls on the matter of the resurrection.

Thus the Jesus based Religion stands, in all its immensity, as a remarkable construction based upon the singular, perhaps hysterical, claim of one man – someone who was travelling with a considerable number of companions, despite which his claim, through a third party, had come and remained without corroboration.

With the Paulinian offer, based on resurrection of the physical body, having been adopted, the spiritual, ‘gnostic’ idea stood condemned and led to early gospel writings by those of the ‘spiritual’ persuasion, termed ‘Gnostics’, being hidden away by those elements or destroyed by others.

Many early gospels, such as that of Thomas, have only recently been discovered from places where they had been put to save them from destruction as not contributory, at the least, to the resurrection story.

Chapter 2

Men Endeavour to Make ‘God’

It is appropriate, at this preliminary stage, to seek to make a succinct summary of the Religion founded about the figure of Jesus of Nazareth and established at The Council of Nicaea, in 325 CE; together with some limited observations upon the pronouncements of those gathered in the town of that name (now Iznit), in Western Anatolia (now north-western Turkey). In particular, it is in order to identify at the outset, what was taken and extended therefrom to make the basis for the Religion, and the part served by the gospels, despite the far reaching and vital presence of their discordances – the investigation of which brought these pages.

It is necessary to appreciate that prior to the gathering at Nicaea, ideas about the figure of Jesus were in stages of free development, with widespread debate and difference. These processes were largely concentrated about two different propositions, with the difference between them being fundamental.

On the one hand there was the idea identified as ‘Paulinian’, because it was based on the reported verbal claim and missions of Saul (‘Paul’) of Tarsus that he had heard the voice of a Jesus risen back to life from a state of death and who thus stood as proof of bodily resurrection.

On the other hand stood the idea that Jesus had been a man inspired by ‘God’ to understand and teach the values necessary for life of the spirit: living in nearness to the Creator of things and with the spirit continuing beyond death.

Given such different fundamentals in the conflicting perceptions it is appropriate to set down here, in brief, what the Council of Nicaea established as the basis, or Creed, for the new Religion.

The following elements of essential doctrine can be identified.

Jesus was sent by ‘God’ from heaven to earth, as ‘God’ coming himself.

He was born of ‘God’, by immaculate conception, out of a virgin, human woman.

He was crucified at Golgotha, suffered and died there.

On the third day he physically rose from being dead in a tomb.

The act of Jesus physically rising from a condition of death is to be taken as a promise of eternal life for anyone who puts their faith in him.

He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of ‘God’.

That Jesus, together with ‘God’ and the Holy Spirit, form a divine Trinity,

That Jesus is Very God of very God; begotten not made, being of one substance with the father.

Thus the idea of Jesus as ‘God’ incarnate was set in place – officially appointed to be a part of ‘God’ himself.

The much-disputed concept of the Trinity was devised and set down: to be pronounced and administered everywhere.

The first block of the subsequent church is that Creed.

Why There Could Be No Acceptance of the Concept in the Homelands of Jesus

In the lands of the historical Jesus two fundamental reasons stood hard against the Nicene offered perception of him.

In first fundamental there was the ideological and religious fact that the propositions denied, or at least compromised, the long accepted, more graspable idea of ‘God’ in straightforward singleness.

But also there was the most simple and vital fact that the reality of him was known to have been nothing more than what is human.

By comparison with these crucial factors Nicaea offered only a Creed with no essential touching place upon what is real. Only the moment of perceived death on a cross has a dimension in reality. So The Council of Nicaea could be seen to hold out no more than an administrators’ creation in the abstract. And in the abstract there is no need for Jesus, with the concept of ‘God’ being sufficient to all things.

Acceptance Elsewhere

Those living in places elsewhere and attracted by the idea of having more than the abstract to turn to, welcomed the idea of Jesus having been witnessed in life as a man but having been the presence of ‘God’ himself. Not quite ‘God’, for that was too much to cope with. So the idea of a three-part ‘God’ was devised, with Jesus being a divine son and part of the whole.

By such a device those early church founders at Nicaea sought to provide for the difficulty of the abstract imagination at a stroke.

Thus the conceived reason for Jesus was, and still is, to remove, by his witnessed physical existence between ideas of a supernatural birth and a supernatural rising from death, any need for ‘God’ to be visualised in the abstract state. Instead, the Jesus of human history can be taken to make ‘God’ both real and tangible in human form.

No Basis in the Gospels

It is clear to be seen, however, that the Nicene declarations took no account of the gospels canonised at the same Convention, which do not reveal such visions of him to have been how Jesus sought to be regarded. Instead he can only be seen to have had in mind for himself, at most, the limited status of a Jewish Messiah: himself a human successor to earlier Jewish figures already acclaimed as such.

But, even in that capacity, he is seen, through the gospels, to have viewed himself, by reason of his own Jewish awareness, to be without the necessary, traditional credentials. Instead, and to the converse, what he did have was a fearful understanding of the political consequences of such a claim, at the hands of the Roman occupiers.

That those at Nicaea established a Creed, with no foundation in how Jesus offered himself according to the gospels they canonised, makes clear how much the passion for resurrection lived in Emperor Constantine (or his wife), hence enabling those of like mind to make the idea stand as an imperative. It represented a complete triumph for those of the ‘Paulinian’ – resurrectionist – persuasion; with those of spiritual, ‘gnostic’ ideas being left as heretics.

But ever since Nicaea 325, the difficulty arising from those proclamations has remained – that Jesus is thus required to satisfy two sets of parameters: those for what are known, from personal experience, to be human; whilst at the same time having to satisfy those that have to exist in the imagination, for what might be perceived to be ‘God’.

And in practice the trauma of every human death makes this impossibility evident: the abstract is abruptly a separate place from the real world, with Jesus as a human in conjunction with Jesus as a ‘God’ becoming a chasm stretching from the difficult to being an impossibility.

Thus, such a sequence of abstractions is, in the end, further beyond anyone to grasp than the single abstraction of ‘God’.

Some of the Further Difficulties Seen to Arise

These have been and are by their very nature open to unresolvable debate, ranging from perceptions of there being no difficulties at all, to an infinity of both theological ideas and gospel interpretations. Some of the last of these difficulties form the kernel of what has come to be set down in these pages.

In addition to the gospel shortcomings is the fact that Saul (‘Paul’) is shown to have described Jesus as ‘a singular man of God’ – therefore not of a supernatural essence but someone uniquely seen to represent the idea of ‘God’, although a "man". As a consequence he saw a ‘risen’ Jesus, as someone holding out the same possibility for any other man. The Nicene proposition, however, is based on the idea of a supernatural Jesus being something of ‘God’ himself: with no basis in logic, therefore, to take a circumstance of him being able to ‘rise’ from death to constitute a possibility for any plain human.

A further major issue is that the Nicene proposition stands at odds with the gospel accounts, for Jesus is not reported anywhere to have made any claim to be more than mortal. Instead he is reported in the gospels to have turned away from any claim even to be so much as a Messiah – there are several instances of him referring to ‘God’ as his ‘Father’, especially so in ‘John’, but there are wider aspects to what he is seen to have had in mind. It is often made clear that he sees ‘God’ as the Father of all men. And the prayer he is said to have offered for the use of all begins Our Father … It is also clear from other gospels that the question of his human paternity was a matter of question – an issue embraced in particular within Chapters 19 & 21. And all the gospel texts tell he pronounced always the singleness of ‘God’.

Those at Nicaea were thus compelled to remain dependent upon their own imagination, in the abstract, in order to seek a way around the gospel accounts. But it proved then to be an effective impossibility, and still it stands as an insuperable task of rationale today.

In seeking for justification of those at Nicaea, it is to be seen that they derived the concept of a divine Jesus from the ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’ given stories of birth, and their stories of reappearances after discovery of the tomb being empty; with further stories of ‘reappearances’ being contained in ‘John’ and, by the time of Nicaea, likely to have been in some versions of ‘Mark’ too.

There is no significant gospel unity on these matters however.

The Stories of a Resurrection

Early versions of ‘Mark’ contained no accounts of ‘reappearances’.

In the case of ‘Matthew’, there are the two stories of Jesus reappearing to his friends. The first in a supernatural dimension, with angels present, to women at the tomb, who are allowed to clasp his feet. The second occasion being before *‘the eleven* disciples’ (reasonably excluding Judas, but including Peter, the accepted source of the non-miraculous ’Mark’), in Galilee. Doubt by some of the disciples is, however, recorded.

In the case of ‘Luke’, he tells altogether different tales – involving different people and in different places. All are described in a supernatural dimension. All appear, either explicitly or implicitly, to exclude Peter, thus recognising the silence of ‘Mark’ and his place as the acknowledged interpreter of Simon Peter – to whom ‘Luke’ does feel it necessary to make, however, the slightest possible hearsay reference at one point.

‘John’ describes some remarkable scenes – in words that, in places, can be taken to have a supernatural dimension: a feature not present elsewhere in his gospel. But the stories are altogether different from those given by the others.

Of particular note however, is the fact that they can, in part, be set alongside the stories of ‘Matthew’ – yet when this is done, the given detail of ‘John’ stands in precise contradiction of the other.

In later versions of ‘Mark’, there are what come as slight copies of the two main scenes described in ‘Luke’; but the tentative reference to Peter, which appears in ‘Luke’, is excluded.

No claim is made in any gospel that a moment of the body of Jesus ‘rising’ was actually witnessed.

These differences between gospels, either unrecognised or cast aside by those at Nicaea, along with the many other discords – still stand for resolution nearly two thousand years later.

All of these differences are examined to their conclusion in the pages that follow.

Chapter 3

The Gospels’ Place

Given what came from those gathered at Nicaea and their consequent Creed it is appropriate to consider, at the outset of a work of gospel analysis, what part each of those four small, selected texts had in forming the textual basis of the Religion established in 325 CE and ongoing, unchanged since. But in doing so it is first necessary to recognise the place of Saul/‘Paul’, who undertook an energetic passion of mission across much of the eastern parts of the Mediterranean before any of the gospels can be seen to have been written.

Not only did the mission of Saul/‘Paul’ come first in time but it is shown to have been based on the claim of a fundamental experience by him of hearing the voice of Jesus speaking to him, when on his way to Damascus, at a time after his body had vanished from its place of rest.

All the gospels as selected at Nicaea align themselves with the idea of bodily resurrection by giving accounts of reappearances by a ‘risen’ Jesus.

But it was Saul/‘Paul’ who began the claim of a resurrected Jesus; which inspired his missions; was embodied in the Creed of Nicaea and has been the central claim of the Religion ever since.

To put this circumstance in brief chronological detail, the supposed claim of ‘Paul’ is seen to have arisen in about 35 CE, with his missions having been activities of the following 20 years or so. They were thus completed some ten years, at least, before the first gospel is generally seen to have emerged: in about 68 CE, by which later date ‘Paul’ had been put to death.

But when the first gospel, known as ‘Mark’, did come, although generally accredited to the lips of Simon Peter, the disciple, it contained nothing of ‘Paul’s’ reported claim, or any reference to it. Instead, the contrary reality was that it did not tell of any act of ‘reappearance’ by Jesus after having vanished from his entombment. And it made no mention of the claim or travels of ‘Paul’. It was a circumstance that came in spite of an already widespread idea of faith based on the report of a life changing experience by ‘Paul’ promoting the claim of Jesus being proof of physical life for man after death. The silence of ‘Mark’ constituted an effective dismissal of the proposition.

It is probably thus to be seen that the next gospel to come, seen to be that known as ‘Matthew’, comprised an almost word for word copy of ‘Mark’ but with added stories to tell of a supernatural Jesus. At the outset he tells of his birth having been out of a virgin and therefore something only of ‘God’. And he concludes with stories of after death ‘reappearances’ by Jesus to his friends. These stories of ‘reappearances’ included Simon Peter but came at a time only after Peter is known to have been executed. Thus the assumption ‘Matthew’ requires is that Simon Peter chose not to tell his scribe, ‘Mark’, of any supernatural sightings