A Man of His Time

By Dean R. Eyerly

Historical life of the “man’’ called Jesus of Nazareth from time of birth 4BC until death as late as AD82. Historical information given on Jesus family (mother/father, brother/sisters, disciples/ friends/associates). The politics of the day concerning issues such as: War with Rome, Jesus’ messiahship, meaning of the terms

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jan 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947765252

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A Man Of His Time

Copyright © 2017 by Dean R. Eyerly

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-947765-24-5

ISBN eBook: 978-1-947765-25-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

Scriptures are taken from niv kiv nkiv (New Spirit Filled Life Bible); Amplified; LB. KING JAMES VERSION (kjv): KING JAMES VERSION, public domain.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Dead Sea Scrolls

Nag Hammadi Library

Antiquities Of The Jews

Jews Of Diaspora

Babylon

John The Baptist

Rabbi And The Stranger

Apostle Paul 

Temptation In The Desert

Man Of His Time

Teacher Of Wisdom

Parables Of Jesus

Miracles Of Jesus

Land Of Milk And Honey

Enduring Books

True God Of Israel

On This Rock 

Missing Family 

Eusebius

The Disciples

Lost Years Of Jesus

Story Of Joseph And Aseneth

Urantia Revelation

The Passover Lamb

Gospel Of Peter

Timeline: Jesus Of Nazareth And Mary Magdalene

Revelation Of Jesus Christ 

Virgin Birth And Resurrection

From There To Here

The Lost Tomb Of Jesus

Bibliography 

Preface

Many Christians are extremely concerned with heaven and the afterlife. This urgency entails a list of things people can do to ensure that they receive the best rewards in the world to come with most, if not all of the list, being recited in church on Sunday morning. This is very different from the teaching of Jesus, who focused his ministry almost exclusively on proper behavior in the world—here and now! As John the Baptist was concerned about the future world to come, Jesus was concerning about today.

The Hebrew Bible makes little mention of heaven as Judaism, both ancient and modern, is more concerned with people’s correct behavior in this world than earning credit toward a comfortable place in the next after death. Indeed, from the classical Jewish teaching found in Ethics of the Fathers 1:3, it states:

Do not be one of those who serves God in order to receive a reward.

Simply put, Jesus wasn’t interested in the question of whether mankind is going to heaven or hell. He was concerned that his followers and mankind in general, left the world in a better place than they found it as what happens next is of far lesser consequence. Jesus’ focus was on adhering to God’s law in an effort to improve our lives and the lives around us today. His goal was to bring more truth and justice into the world, to help redeem it—to fight oppression, disease, end poverty, stop wars, and push back bigotry and ignorance.

For Jesus, the modern Christian emphasis on the afterlife would be either an admission of this life’s futility or a signal that the follower is more interested in saving their own skin instead of that of their neighbor. When some missionaries urge people to accept only Jesus in order to reach heaven, they convey a message that earthly life is filled with misery, and that only death gives life meaning. Jesus totally rejected this message as his religion was a system which focused on life itself. In Deuteronomy 30:15, Moses tells the Jews:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction and he urges the people, Now, choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19).

According modern Christian theology, there is but one viable truth and that is belief in Jesus Christ—there is no other way! According to Jesus teaching of Wisdom—Love your God above all else and your neighbor as yourself—that is the only way!

Introduction

In modern America, when we speak of a religion, we mean a set of beliefs and a set of institutions that teach and reinforce those beliefs. Religion of this sort did not exist at the time of Jesus. First century Jewish belief consisted of the ways of our ancestors—that is, doing things in the traditional way. In the era when the Christian gospels and epistles were being composed, Judaism was a widespread religion in the Roman world, while Christianity was a young upstart which was immediately opposed by the leaders of Judaism causing followers of Jesus to feel greatly oppressed. As a result of this oppression, the first followers formed a view that Judaism was the old rejected covenant with God, while their new ‘sect’ of Jewish believer had come into being as a replacement for the old temple way with the first followers of Jesus calling their movement The Way—the Way of Christ.

Christianity began as a movement within Judaism first led by Apostle Paul commencing twenty years after the crucifixion. Some of Jesus’s followers accepted him as being the messiah sent to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob while others viewed him as being a Prophet, esteemed teacher, and founder of their kingdom of Heaven school of thought and nothing more. In this situation, both the Jewish and Roman authorities regarded Jesus with suspicion. Was he another troublemaker like John the Baptist or was he zealot out to over-through the Roman government?

The holy scripture that Jesus would have known consisted of not just the Torah of Moses which consists of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy but also the books of the Prophets plus five hundred years’ worth of interpretation of the laws of Moses contained in a book called the Talmud.

Greek speaking Hellenist Jews who lived in exile, and were exposed to the Greek gods and other pagan diety in Babylonia, were quick to digest the new message about Jesus as compared to the home grown Aramaic-speaking Jews who had not had that worldly experience. In AD 34, Stephen of Antioch, a student of St. Peter, was the first to preach that the new belief concerning Jesus was for all people with this view attaching Jewish conservatism which led to conflict within Jewish community. Stephen was seized at the request of the Temple high priest, accused of blasphemy for disavowing the temple cult and their claim to be the sole authority in religious belief. For this crime, Stephen was condemned to ‘death,’ becoming the first so-called ‘Christian’ martyr.

The Gospel stories found in the New Testament give little information about Jesus’ earthly life; scarcely anything is mentioned before he reaches the age of 30 with those years being referred to by scholars as the ‘Missing Years of Jesus.’ Mark emphasizes the marvelous things Jesus did—Matthew concentrates on the relationship of Jesus to the Jewish faith—Luke stresses the blessings of salvation brought by Jesus, and John reveals Jesus as the one sent by God into the world to be its Savior.

Second and third century Christian orthodoxy of Apostle Paul centered it’s theology on the ‘divinity’ of Jesus with his family—save the Virgin Mary—either being placed in a peripheral position or eliminated altogether because the Church wanted to create a super-real character: an object of worship as the ancient pagan world was used to worshipping objects! If Christ were portrayed as being totally human, it was felt by some that his humanity would be bounded and limited.

One of the main elements in the study of the ‘historical’ Jesus is to recognize the fact that there is a significant difference between the ‘pre-Easter’ and ‘post-Easter’ Jesus with the former meaning the view people held for Jesus before the crucifixion as compared to what he became after the resurrection. Before his death his followers had known him as being a man of flesh and blood, as their teacher of wisdom, a Galilean Jew, and the wisdom of God. After his death, they knew him in a different way due to Apostle Paul’s experience while on the Damascus road when Jesus became referred to as being a bright light and a voice from on high.

In the study of early Judaism and Christianity, scholars have discovered that a tremendous amount of credible information about Jesus is stored in a collection of sectarian writings called Pseudepigrapha which are non-canonical texts written for purposes other than the explanation of the religious law or the teaching of scripture. Prior to the nineteenth century, Pseudepigrapha was deemed relatively unimportant until additional documents were found in obscure libraries around the world or through archaeological digs. Such discoveries as Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi Library, Antiquities of the Jews and Jewish War by Josephus are just a few which created great excitement.

As diverse as the information is, the text shares certain traits in common—the material gives glimpses into the hidden world of antiquity. Scholars differ over the legitimacy of using Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha as a historical source with Christian scholars more ready than their Jewish counterparts to rely on these sources with the Christian argument being that these writings are the only Jewish text contemporary with Jesus. The counter-argument from the Jewish scholar is that the official rabbinic writings, though published at a much later date, should be used as they contain first century material which represents the central teaching of Judaism.

Gospel stories are not biographies, though they contain some biographical information. They are books written by convinced Christians to explain their faith to others (see Luke 1:3—4; John 20:31). They are quite unlike any other type of ancient literature meaning that they cannot be approached in the same way as other documents. The ‘critic’ comes to the Old and New Testament with such questions as:

What purpose were these writings meant to serve?

How accurate is the history recorded in them?

What can we learn about their method of composition?

What light does this throw on their author’s intention and achievement?

Criticism is an indispensable aid to interpreting the Bible. But in a specialized sense it covers a range of disciplines which apply to most types of literature, and has made a very positive contribution to the understanding of biblical history. The main branches of criticism are:

Textual criticism is concerned with recovering the original text of a document as mistakes are liable to creep into every document copied by hand. It is the task of the textual critic to spot these errors by comparing numerous copies of the same manuscript. The Dead Sea Scrolls was a very important discovery as it gave scholars Hebrew text that was a thousand years older than the Old Testament text they already possessed. In addition to that was the equally important discovery of the Bodmer Papyri (second century New Testament manuscript) and Chester Beatty Papyri (third century New Testament manuscript) which significantly pre-dates the fifth century manuscript used for the preparation of the modern Bible, with the fifth century text showing clear signs of having been tampered with.

Source criticism is the attempt by scholars to discover the written material on which the different biblical writers drew. It is extremely difficult to distinguish different literary sources within a document unless some of the original sources have actually survived. In that case the source material may be subtracted from the document in question to leave the author’s own contribution to the story.

Tradition criticism attempts to trace the development of a biblical story or tradition from the time it was first told to the time it was first written down.

Redaction criticism determines how the editor (redactor) of a biblical book utilizes his sources, what he omitted and what he added and what his particular bias was. Only when the critic has access to all the sources which were at the disposal of the editor can his findings be absolutely certain.

Form criticism is concerned with the study of literary as different writings have different forms. Often the form of a piece of literature may throw light on the nature of the piece and its background. The basic method of form criticism is to compare like with like, to determine the characteristic features of a particular type of literature, and then to suggest reasons for these features.

Literary criticism attempts to identify and understand the literary styles which the biblical writers used. The Old Testament contains some of the greatest stories in all of world literature. Their greatness resides not just in the content and their theological outlook, but in the way the tales are told and presented.

Historical criticism covers all aspects of historical writing. There are three aspects of it which are of particular concern to biblical studies. First, historical criticism has to determine the techniques used for dating a document. Unless we have the original, the date of composition will of course always be earlier than a copy. The latter is relatively easy to determine with modern methods in paleography and archaeology. A second clue to the date of a book lies in the events it records. The third important task of historical criticism is to verify information found in the biblical sources. Are the statements backed up by other sources, biblical or non-biblical or by archaeology?

Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves located high up in the cliffs overlooking Khirbet Qumran which is located at the north end of the Dead Sea. The excavated ruins of Qumran have revealed an extensive complex of buildings that were once occupied by a strict Jewish sect known as Essene.

The Bible gives the impression that the Jewish religion was uniform in practice, closely controlled and strictly regulated by the priests in Jerusalem. However, actual evidence suggests otherwise and nowhere more clearly than at Qumran. In 1947 this discovery of ancient manuscript changed modern knowledge about religion in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Within the next ten years, over nine hundred complete scrolls and fragments of scrolls came to light, as the ruins of Qumran and nearby caves were excavated.

The buildings at Qumran included a refectory, kitchen, assembly rooms, a laundry, two potteries and eight water cisterns. There was evidence of a dam in a large gully in the cliffs, and channels to lead water from the dam to the cisterns. Stone writing tablets which had fallen from an upper story of the main building were also discovered. Objects found in the excavations, especially coins, made it possible to date the Qumran occupation periods accurately to the first century BC through ad 68. The community hid it’s manuscripts in caves located above the building complex and fled the area prior to the arrival of the Tenth Legion under command of Roman General Vespasian (ad 9—79) who destroyed all the buildings and Jerusalem itself in AD 70 during the First Jewish-Roman War.

It is believed that Judas Iscariot, as head of the East Manasseh Magians, was in charge of the scribes at Khirnet Qumran for a period of time. The members of the community believed that the true meaning of scripture had been revealed by a Teacher of Righteousness at the beginning of the community existence, and that they were chosen by God to be Sons of Light in conflict with all Sons of Darkness until such time as God would finally sent a prophet and two messiahs to bring victory and judgment. Their beliefs and practices are of importance to scholars for the light they shed on the religious attitudes in Palestine during the early years of Christianity.

The Teacher of Righteousness is a figure found most prominently in the Damascus Scroll which is carbon dated as being written between 129—44 BC. This document speaks briefly of the origins of the Essene after the Babylonian exile noting that God raised for them a teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart (cd 1:9—11). The teacher is extolled as having proper understanding of the Torah, qualified in its accurate instruction, and being the one through whom God would reveal the hidden things in which Israel had gone astray (cd 3:12—15).

Barbara Thiering, in her book Jesus the Man makes the following observation regarding the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essene that inhabited Qumran:

It soon became apparent to those scholars studying the scrolls that the writers were similar in many ways to the early followers of Jesus Christ. This was the reason for the sensational claims made in the first few years after their discovery.

For instance, the two groups, the Qumran sect and the early Christians, lived in the same small area at about the same time. Both met every day for a sacred meal of bread and wine to which only initiates were admitted. Both practiced community sharing of property, a most unusual practice for Jews. Both value celibacy, the Quran sect very strongly, the Christians moderately. Both used baptism as a method of initiation, and both looked forward to a coming apocalyptic crisis which would usher in a new messianic age. They used the same names for themselves: both called themselves the Way, the New Covenant, Sons of Light. Both had a branch in Damascus. They were governed by bishops, who had similar functions in both cases. Each lived in expectation of a New Jerusalem, with an identical architectural plan. They have numerous terms in common, which closely parallel passages of both sets of literature. An obvious hypothesis—which depends on knowing the date of the relevant scrolls—is the Qumran sect represented the form of Judaism out of which Christianity came. There was a split, the Christians reacted strongly against some aspects of Qumran practice, while retaining basic organization and some doctrine.

The term Dead Sea Scrolls has the power to evoke images and emotions even in those who have only a vague idea of what they are. Since their discover by Bedouin tribesmen near Wadi Qumran between 1946 and 1956, scholars have translated and studied all 900 of scrolls, testify to an astonishingly rich and fertile literary culture that gave birth to the foundational religious documents of Judaism and Christianity.

The religious writings originally transcribed in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek are of two different kinds: the biblical and the non-biblical. The biblical texts are copies of the Hebrew Bible forming about one-quarter of the total number of scrolls in the collection with this cache including a copy of every one of the books of the Jewish Bible, except, for the Book of Esther which is missing. In many cases, the scrolls have supported the traditional text of the Bible, but, in other cases, what they say in particular verses agrees with nontraditional versions like Septuagint. In a similar vein the discovery of the scrolls has uncovered the existence of biblical excerpts of rewritten Bibles and of lost sources used. In short, the scrolls have proven that the Jews of Jesus’s day knew and used more than one form of biblical books, and it seems not to have disturbed them or driven them to resolve the differences.

The non-biblical texts are copies of religious text not found in the Bible. Of the scrolls found several written between 150BC and AD 65 are of particular interest to scholars because they shed new light on the inner workings of a group of believers known as followers of the Way. This work includes a collection of legal dicta, including laws about marriage with these laws being extremely revealing for anyone interested in the late Second Temple period in the time of Jesus, for these documents are a window revealing how people of that time lived their lives.

Of the non-biblical scrolls, the following are of most interest to scholars:

Damascus Scroll can be easily divided into two broad sections: the Exhortation and the Laws. The Exhortation is a group of sermons describing how God has always judged the wicked and rewarded the faithful throughout history while the Laws details the kinds of behavior—moral, legal, and cultic. The rules themselves fall into two groups: rules for those living in cities (A 12:19) and for those living in camps (A 12:22—23) with the camp rules being oriented to communal living. The rules highlight the internal lines of authority of the camp and specify sanctions to be carried out against violators. The rules were not intended to be an exhaustive scheme for righteous living but a summary of important points that would serve to guide the righteous in areas where controversy might arise with certain acts being grounds for excommunication or severe discipline.

At the end of the manuscript is a document titled The Foundations of Righteousness: An Excommunication Text which indicates to some scholars that Apostle Paul was excommuicated from the Jerusalem-church community because he had expanded his understanding of Jesus’ being beyond the limits the church could accept, namely, that Jesus was Son of God which was contrary their monotheistic belief in one Lord God Almighty.

As Overseer of the camp, the Teacher of Righteousness must teach his general membership about the works of God, instruct them in His mighty miracles, relate to them the future events coming to the world, and he should care of them as a father does to his children, taking care of all their problems as a shepherd does for his flock. No member of the camp is allowed to bring anyone into the group except by permission of the Overseer. Likewise any man who marries a woman let it be with the counsel of the Overseer and likewise let him instruct a man who wishes divorce (AQ266). As Overseer of the camp, he must be between thirty to sixty years of age, learned in the Book of Meditation and in all the regulations of the Law, speaking them in a proper way and master of every secret of men and of every deceptive utterance. As for the membership:

This is the rule of the general membership for meeting all their needs: a wage of two days every month at least shall be given to the Overseer. Then the judges will give some of it for their wounded, with some of it they will support the poor and needy, and the elder bent with age, the man with a skin disease, whoever is taken captive by a foreign nation, the girl without a near kinsman, the boy without an advocate; and for whatever is common business, so that the common house should not be cut off. This is the exposition for those who shall live in camps, and these are the pillars of the foundations of the assembly.

Community Rule Scroll governed the community living at Qumran and other Essene chapters scattered throughout Palestine. Each chapter of the Essene had a leader known as the Instructor who guided deliberations about rules for the group’s government, association funds, and biblical interpretation. Believers were referred to as being Children of the Light with their association being called the Way. Those who entered the community of God could anticipate long life, bountiful peace, multiple progeny, and eventually life everlasting. For scholars, one passage of the text speaks of the hope of resurrection (11:16—17) by noting that believers will one day receive a crown of glory and a robe of honor.

Particularly striking is the notion of hidden teaching, called the mystery as early Christianity embraced similar notions of continuing revelation not known to outsiders with this idea based on the notion that God continued to reveal new truth in their own day and that the Bible was neither the only, nor the final, repository of his communication with humankind. Many rabbis who led the community thought of themselves as being handers-down of additional revelation given to Moses at Mount Sinai with this oral law being passed on from generation to generation only by word of mouth.

Followers of the Way, thought of themselves as atoning for sin through sacrifice offered in the context of prayer, righteousness, and blameless behavior (9:4—5). Thus members of the Way believed themselves as being the true temple replacing the temple in Jerusalem as God did not dwell in an edifice built by human hands. God lived in them.

Anyone who preferred to continue in his sinful ways would not be initiated into the the Way in as much as his soul had rejected the disciplines and knowledge required for the laws of righteousness. He lacked the strength to repent and therefore was not to be reckoned among the upright. His knowledge, strength and wealth could not meet the spiritual level required to enter into the society known as the Way.

For the elect, God created humankind to rule over the world, appointing for them two spirits in which to walk until the time ordained for His visitation. These are the spirits of truth and falsehood with upright character originating within the Habitation of Light; perverse character from with the Fountain of Darkness. God has appointed these spirits as equals until the End of Time and set an everlasting enmity between their divisions. The purpose of the Essene community was to look forward to the arrival of a prophet like Moses predicted in the book of Deuteronomy. Rules for male rite of passage into adulthood and female incorporation are noted as follows:

Then, at age twenty, he shall be enrolled in the ranks and take his place among the men of his clan, thereby joining the holy congregation. He must not approach a woman for sexual intercourse before he is fully twenty years old, when he knows right from wrong. With the marriage act she, for her part, is received into adult membership. From this time on he may bear witness to the statures of the Law, and take his place among the ranks for the ceremonial proclamation of the ordinances 1QSa (Q28a), 4Q249a—i.

War Scroll describes the eschatological last battle as the righteousness is fully victorious and evil is forever destroyed. This vivid account gives the reader insight into how, at about the time of Jesus, some Jews conceived of Armageddon.

The first lines of the scroll (1QM 1:1—7) lay the framework for a three-stage conflict between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The first battle finds the sons of Levi, the sons of Judah, the sons of Benjamin, those exiled to the wilderness against their adversaries led by the King of Assyria in alliance with other enemies of Israel, namely the tribes of Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Philistia. The second stage of warfare expands to include the pharaoh who lived in Egypt and finally to the Kings of the North. After six bloody engagements during this second battle, the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness are deadlocked in a 3-3 tie. In the seventh and final confrontation the great hand of God shall overcome Satan and all the angels of his dominion, and all the men of his forces shall be destroyed forever (1QM 1:14—15) as ultimately, God’s purpose is to exalt the Sons of Light and to judge the Sons of Darkness.

Thanksgiving Hymns Schroll was written in an intensely personal tone which stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The author speaks of himself in the first person and recounts an agonizing history of persecution at the hands of those who were opposed to his ministry. In addition, the writer describes having received an empowering spirit granting him special insight into God’s will (1QHa 4:38), opening his ears to the wonderful divine mysteries (9:23), using him as a channel of God’s works (12:9), and fashioning him as a mouthpiece for God’s words (16:17) with these unique abilities being the bold affirmation for any leader, reminiscent of various messianic claimants of ancient history.

Copper Scroll gives the location where the treasure of the Jerusalem Temple was secured prior to the start of the First Jewish-Roman War in AD 66. Scholars believe this scroll to be the genuine administrative document for the treasurer held by Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. According to Josephus (Jewish War 6.390—391), the Romans pursued a policy to retrieve treasure hoards that the citizens of Jerusalem had hidden prior to the war when the second temple was destroyed in AD 69. Phineas, the official treasurer of Herod’s Temple was interrogated by the Romans to learn the location of these treasurers. A second passage by Josephus further notes that as a result of the treasure being found and subsequently released by the Romans, the gold standard through-out Syria fell to half its previous value. In all, the cache of temple loot unearthed from locations around Jerusalem, Jericho, and Qumran totaled:

322,000 pounds of silver coins (4,500 Roman talents).

23,200 pounds of silver and gold coins (327 Roman talents)

500 pounds gold coins (7 Roman talents)

165 ingots of pure gold

800 vessels, flasks, cups, bowls, and pitchers made of silver and gold

Words of Levi Scroll: Jacob’s twelve sons were the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Since Levi, the third of the twelve sons was the forefather of the priestly tribe of Levi, the text stresses the duties and prerogatives of the priest with the ideal priest being a combination of zealot warrior for God, an observer of ritual purity, an inspiring teacher, and a recipient of divine revelation through dreams and prophecy. In this text Levi’s grandfather Isaac gives instructions to him about the moral duties of the priesthood:

When Isaac, our grandfather saw us all, he greeted us joyfully. When he recognized that I had become priest to God Most High, the Lord of Heaven, he began to teach me authoritatively the priestly way of life. He said to me, Levi, carefully avoid, my son, all ritual impurity and every kind of sin. Your way of life is to be more strict than all other humans. So now, my son, I will show you the proper way for you to live, not withholding from you anything you need to know about the priestly way of life. First, carefully avoid, my son, all impure lewdness and every kind of improper sexual act. You must marry a woman from my clan, so as not to defile your seed with harlots, because you are a holy seed, and holy is your seed as the holy temple, and because you are considered a holy priest to all the seed of Abraham. You are close to God and close to all his holy angels. So purify your flesh from every impurity of any man.

Temple Scroll was written at the time many Jews were awaiting a new Moses figure in the Second Temple era believing that the Scriptures prophesied his rise. The basis for this belief was caused by Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses says, The LORD your God will rise up for you a prophet like me from among your people with this belief being further advance by Gospel of John, when John the Baptist asked Jesus: Who are you? Are you a prophet? (John 1:19—21). The scroll is considered important to scholars because it gives additional insight into Jewish life in the first century which is not found in the Bible. The scroll mandates the construction of a vast temple with surrounding complex unlike Solomon’s temple or any other known Jewish temple plan at that time. The scroll includes a festival calendar that mandates hitherto unknown festivals, sacrifices, and festival regulations. Passages from Deuteronomy that concern either divorce or polygamy have been eliminated from the Temple Scroll—passages that mention foreigners also have been eliminated because the author conceived an Israel that excluded all Gentiles from life in the land.

In certain groups of the scrolls the Hebrew word pesher is to be found, introducing a procedure that gives modern scholars a new approach to translating sacred scripture from antiquity in order to find the hidden meaning. The system works like this: The first century scroll writer takes an Old Testament book such as the minor prophet Habakkuk, which deals with events in 600 BC. He goes through it verse by verse, and after quoting each passage adds Its pesher is… with the scribe then explaining that Habakkuk is really talking about events in the scribes own more modern time. In simple terms, for the modern scholar, the pesher is like a solution to a puzzle. A rough analogy might be the solution to a cryptic crossword. The clues do not look like they make sense to the layman, but to a scholar who knows this technique and has the necessary knowledge can solve the puzzle as to what Mark, Matthew, Luke and John et al were actually talking about.

Nag Hammadi Library

In December 1945, two Egyptian farmers were searching for natural fertilizer along the base of the magnificent cliffs that grace the Nile River as it flows around the great river bend in Upper Egypt. As these farmers, Muhammad Ali al-Samman Muhammad and his brother Khalifah, tell the story, they hobbled their camels and began to dig near a large boulder that lies at the foot of an exceptionally impressive cliff called the Jabal-al-Tarif. Suddenly they struck something hard. They dug farther and unearthed a sealed jar that had lain there in the sand of Egypt since the fourth century. Inside the jar they found a collection of ancient manuscripts which were buried around AD 376 by a group of monks from the monastery of Saint Pachomius with this burial most likely taking place immediately after Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, ordered all scripture not approved by the Council of Nicaea to be destroyed.

Muhammad and his brother wrapped the manuscript carefully in their tunics and led their camels back home to the village of al-Qasr hoping the books might have some value. Their mother, thinking they had brought her paper to fire her kitchen stove, burned one book and part of the second before Muhammed had realized what she had done. Fearing that more harm might come to the remaining books, Muhammad asked a local priest named Basiliyus Abd al-Masih, to look at them. Upon his study, he gave the books to his brother-in-law Raghib who taught English and history in al-Qasr. To establish a value for the books, Raghib suggested to Basiliyus that he take one of the books to Cairo. When Raghib arrived in Cairo, he visited with his friend George Sobhi, a doctor who had a passion for the Coptic language in which the book was written. When Sobhi took one look at what was sitting on his desk, he immediately called the Cairo Department of Antiquities. What Sobhi and Raghib had in their possession were over fifty ancient Christian texts, such as the Apocryphon of John, Gospel of the Egyptians, Dialog of the Savior, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, and Gospel of Truth which were long believed to have been destroyed when the Church of Rome virtually erased the early Christian followers of Jesus from history books by the fourth century.

By 1949, the Nag Hammadi Codex came to the attention of noted historian of religion from the University of Utrecht, Professor Gilles Quispel. By the time he had finished studying the text, it had become clear to him that what Muhammad Ali and his brother had found at Nag Hammadi was a wealth of early Christian material whose very discovery meant that the history of the early Church would have to be rewritten as he could see emerging from the books a picture of Jesus who was at other times very different to the Jesus pictured in the New Testament. Now called the Nag Hammadi Library, this discovery consisted of thirteen codices, or books, containing over fifty-two texts, of which forty were previously unknown by modern scholars. These texts are, with few exceptions, early first and second century Christian documents, which provide scholars with valuable information about the character of the Jerusalem-church at the time of Jesus.

Various groups of early Christians who lived at the time of Jesus stressed the importance of direct inner knowledge of God above dogma as pronounced by later orthodoxy with this knowledge being of a direct, personal, intuitive kind. Unlike today, Christianity in the early centuries of the Common Era was a mixed bag of beliefs and practices with this being a major problem for James, brother of Jesus, as head of the first post-crucifixion Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem as he continually clashed with his most fervent missionary, Apostle Paul. For James, Peter and John, Paul was in effect, the first ‘heretic’ to the Jerusalem-church for preaching a flagrant deviation of the original message which Jesus had taught. For scholars—Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount while Paul preached Christ crucified—which is a big difference.

Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, most of the information scholars had about the first followers of Jesus were derived from writings of the later-day church Fathers, who viewed these early followers of Jesus with distain. The earliest Christian apologist to deride the first followers was Justin Martyr (AD 100—162), whose Second Apology condemned Christian teachers Simon Magus, Valentius and Marcion of Sinope as being ‘wicked and deceitful.’ Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon (AD 130—202), writing in the late second century, saw Simon Magus as the ‘Father of All Heresy’, and therefore the emerging orthodox church’s primary enemy. Tertullian (AD 155—230), in De Carne Christi, lambasted the first followers of Jesus for their denial of the physical reality of Christ’s resurrection, declaring that anyone who did not believe that Jesus rose ‘bodily’ from the grave was a ‘heretic’ while, at the same time, famously declaring that the resurrection must be believed, because it is absurd!

If that wasn’t bad enough, in the eyes of the church Fathers, the first followers also regarded women as the equal of men and allowed females to be priests. The followers of Mary Magdalene would regard Gospel of Mary as their main source of spiritual guidance. Still others would esteem Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Ebonites, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Truth or Gospel of Judas. Despite the writings of the later day church Fathers who declared themselves to be ‘orthodox’ Christians, early followers such as Valentius, Marcion and Simon Magus simply referred to themselves as being ‘Christian.’ Needless to say, the orthodox church fathers, who had different views about Christ’s ‘being’, positively foamed at the mouth at the mere mention of Simon’s name, especially as his teachings became more popular than theirs during the course of the second century.

What differentiated the early teaching of Jesus from orthodoxy was the idea that knowledge of God and self alone, will save as opposed to faith. This meant that the individual had it within himself to obtain salvation. In addition to emphasis on faith, the Church of Rome added a new caveat of receiving sacraments in addition to that faith meaning that the Church and priests were now necessary and indispensable. The first followers of Jesus would hear none of that, stressing the fact that one is only saved by what goes on within one’s heart and soul. For the first followers, ‘faith’ was a poor cousin to ‘knowledge’ as faith effectively implied a distance between the believer and the divine.

Early Christians employed various figures of speech to depict the sorry fate of the entrapped spirit: it is asleep, drunk, sick, ignorant, and in darkness. In order to be liberated, then, the Spirit needed to be awakened and brought to sobriety, wholeness, knowledge, and enlightenment. This transformation in one’s life is accomplished through a call from God through the personage of a man called Jesus of Nazarith who cured the sickness and ignorance of mankind—He woke those who were asleep! Unlike Orthodoxy which came three hundred years later, the first Christians took focus on the earthly view of Jesus as being their esteemed teacher of knowledge. For the first Christians, Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary in a normal fashion; he had brothers and sisters who were involved with his movement; he was the founder of their kingdom of Heaven school of thought, a New Jerusalem; he led a perfect and pure life; the crucifixion was public notice of his incorruptibility; and that he died and was buried with his spirit raising-up prior to the crucifixion.

The first followers of Jesus of Nazareth were branded heretical by the orthodox Church and its practitioners persecuted. Although their beliefs were similar to modern-day Christianity, they held that the world is imperfect as it was created by an evil god who was constantly at war with the true, good God of Jesus who lived beyond the material plane; that Jesus came to teach liberating knowledge and that women were equal to men. The first believers also stressed that we have a divine spark inside us which, when recognized and developed, will ultimately liberate us from the prison of the material world and that it is Christ who is the Savior due to his teaching of wisdom.

Once the Babylonia captivity had ended and the exiled tribes had returned home in the late sixth century bc, friction was generated between those tribes who left and those who stayed. The exiles felt that they were the true children of God, as they had remained true to the Torah and had suffered the punishment of exile to prove it. These groups were frequently ascetic and apocalyptic, standing at the fringe of Jewish life. Perhaps the most well-known group was the Essene, a group based at Qumran one mile from the Dead Sea. It is known from the Dead Sea Scrolls that the Essene sought to establish a new covenant with God, as they believed that Israel’s sins had all but invalidated the old covenant given by God to Abraham. To the Essene, the world was a battleground between the forces of heaven and hell, good and evil, and that man himself is the microcosm of this war as the spirits of truth and falsehood struggle within the human heart. They also insisted that what mattered was not one’s ethnic origin or sex—be it Jewish or Gentile, male or female—but one’s morality as only the pure of heart will be saved and that it is the knowledge of God’s mysteries as taught by Jesus that guarantees salvation. Gospel of Thomas, which is thought to be the original words of Jesus says:

Saying 70: If you bring forth what is within you [divine spark], what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have will kill you.

When Christianity became legalized in the Roman Empire in AD 313, it was a matter of time before the champions of orthodoxy would be required to bring the Christian religion into line with Emperor Constantine’s overhaul of the Empire. To settle theological disputes, Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea, whose opening session began 20 May 325. In the two months that the Council sat, the tree-hundred-eighteen church fathers gathered to debate a number of topics including fixing the date for Easter and establishing an orthodox position on Christ’s divinity with the Nicene Creed promulgate on 19 June, drawing the battle lines between orthodoxy which accounted for less than one percent of the population of Rome and everyone else.

Patriarch of Alexandria, Athanasius (AD 296—373), was the first person to list in his Easter letter dated AD 367, the same New Testament books that we cherish today. Known as Athanasius’s 39th Festal Letter, he condemned all other non-approved writers as being ‘heretics’ mandating that their books be destroyed with the most notorious example of this being the burning of the great library in Alexandria in AD 391. A copy of Athanasius’s Festal Letter, in Coptic translation, found its way to one of the monasteries founded by St Pachomius near Nag Hammadi. Preferring not to destroy their sacred books, the monks chose to bury them for posterity at the base of the cliffs at Jabal-al-Tarif. Gospel of Egyptians, found in the Nag Hammadi Library concludes with a reference to the Nag Hammadi Codex being buried in a mountain:

The Great Seth (third son of Adam and Eve after Cain and Able) wrote this book…He placed it in a mountain that is called Charaxio, in order that, at the end of the times and the eras…It may come forth and reveal this incorruptible, holy race of the great Savior, and those who dwell in them in love, and the great, invisible eternal Spirit, and his only begotten Son, and the eternal light…and the incorruptible Sophia (Wisdom of God)…and the whole Pleroma (a realm of Fullness) in eternity. Amen.

The Lost Bible, complied by scholar J.R. Porter, is an anthology of ancient scripture which did not become part of the Christian Bible. It is drawn from the body of literature known as pseudepigrapha of the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament apocrypha, which are of great interest to scholars for the light they shed on history, religion, and culture of both Judaism and Christianity at the time of Jesus.

The Old Testament is itself, a selection from a larger mass of scripture that includes Pseudepigrapha. Similarly, the New Testament was selected in the fourth century from a body of literature