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To Dawn
 I.
A man introducing himself as the son of God but
obviously meaning it to be metaphorical and yet at
the same time knows the people he is talking to well
enough to understand that they won’t take it as mere
metaphor – it gives me the willies having to address
this person by the name he really deserves.
Hermann Bahr, 1921

H
e came from a rough neighborhood knowing
first hand what it means to live in poverty.
When Jesus used the term “poor” he didn’t
mean it metaphorically. When and where he was born
seems a moot point since not two of the sources – if
they care mentioning his nativity at all – agree on a
plausible date. Bethlehem as the place of birth is a red
herring as well. The census mentioned to motivate the
move of the parents didn’t really occur at the time
suggested, and when it occurred it definitely did not
require you to leave your place of residence. Fanciful
fictional strokes attempting to make up for
inaccessible information.
Our man’s hometown was Capernaum in Galilee; a
four-hour’s jog away from the seat of the Roman
deputy of the administration in Syria.
Caesarea was rather posh in this Palestinian
ambience: the houses had glass windows, the people
shopped at well-stocked market-stalls and after a day’s
work they washed off the dust in the public baths. For
recreation they went to the playhouse or the arena. A
harbor opened up the city towards to the world at
large. Amenities mainly enjoyed by foreigners; a Jew
firm in his beliefs, would neither dine at the table of a
Gentile nor receive him at his own table. He would not
go to the theater, he would shun the arena and the
gymnasium like sin itself, even not read a secular
book, “unless it be at twilight.” Mixed marriages were
something unheard of.
Capernaum, on the other hand, was a place in the
extremes of destitution. Although located at the Lake
of Gennesaret with opportunities for fishing and
planting, the new economy of Herod the Tetrarch had
introduced an element of polarization between the
poor and the very rich that previously seemed
unknown in Galilee. The wind whistled in empty
windows, people bought their produce at the market
next town, and implements and clothing went into the
garbage only after been assiduously mended and
mended again many times over.
We are given the names of four brothers (Mk. 6: 3)
James, Joses, Juda and Simon; the sisters receive only a
cursory nod, and in passing an aunt, his mother’s
sister, is mentioned.
Word in the streets had it that his biological father
was not Mary’s husband but a Roman soldier (the
circumstances are everybody’s guess, but it doesn’t
seem to have left a blemish on Mary, so, according to
the customs and beliefs of the period, rape is not
completely out of the question). The Syrian Archer
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera was stationed in
Caesarea before the Romans lost three of their legions
in Germany and in 9 AD frantically scraped together
reinforcements from all over their dominions.
Pantera’s unit was transferred to Bingerbrück on the
Rhine where Pantera died a natural death. The
inscription on his headstone reads: “Tiberius Julius
Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62, a soldier of 40 years’
service, of the 1st cohort of archers, lies here” (Corpus
inscriptionum Latinarum, XIII, 7514 and Dessau, Inscriptiones
selectae, 2571). The stone is now in the museum at
Kreuznach. The data tally well with Jesus’ alleged birth
date (any time between BC 22 and 4 BC or even 6 AD if
you prefer the absurd dating in Luke), and for a mere
rumor it would be quite a long shot to actually find a
grave that not only fits time and location but belongs
to an individual that listens to the same name as given
in the Talmud. In fact the evangelists, too, may have
been aware of the rumor: there is this episode of a
tacit understanding between our man and a Roman
centurion who displays a remarkable sensitivity for
the Jewish fears to defile themselves when entering
the home of a Gentile (Mt. 8: 5; Lk. 7: 2). The only real
problem here is that neither the gospels nor the
Talmud have any clue when Jesus was born and are
both removed from the alleged “event” by two
centuries.
Needless to say the theologians received the
finding of the headstone with frantic denials and the
insincerity endemic in this profession: before the
discovery of the tombstone the theologians, if they
were familiar with the Talmud at all, were adamant
that the name “Pantera” was too unusual as not to be
a rabbinical fib; after the discovery the same
“scholars” dismissed Pantera’s name “as too common
and generic.”
Theology and truth really have only one thing in
common: the first letter. And yet a not exactly
critically radical proponent of “radical criticism”
maintains in his Eight Theses that “faith does not imply
belief in the truth of historical facts,” because “Religion is
not a concern about facts of history, instead it is the
existential truth that counts.”
Well that explains it then why for centuries the
bones even of women and children had been broken
on the wheel, the bodies burned to cinder and “the
cinder thrown away” for six sous a piece to the
hangman. They just didn’t get the “existential truth”
and had the temerity of thinking on their own feet, or
they accidentally forgot to kneel to the existentially
significant wafer carried by the custodian of
existential truth, the priest in an existentially
significant procession. Thoughts to which you would
never give utterance, but on inquiry are too honest to
deny, made all the difference between having a life –
the real thing – before death and the agonizing exit
before a jeering crowd.
Any cavalier dismissal of this terror as “ancient
history” is not only an insult to the victims, it sweeps
conveniently under the rug the fact that these
“existential” practices only ceased, not because the
churches, these harbingers of existential truth, had
come to their senses and refrained, but only because
the existentially disinterested arm of secular law
finally and far too late intervened. What should the
mere necessity for such intervention be telling us?
And yet the intervention has not prevented secular
ideologies from taking religion and the inquisition as
their model.
After Auschwitz, I truly believe it is a slippery road
to compartmentalize “truth” into various sets of
meaning and take this as an excuse to dismiss the
significance of the factual in lieu of “existential”
fancies.
Because that is all there is: facts and fancies.
Nothing in between! It takes a theologian to be OK
with the “pseudo-epigraphic” falsification of events
and the invention of people that never existed for
some or other form of woolly “symbolism” – I see in
the Eight Theses the name of C.G. Jung cropping up,
which should always be a warning sign – and more or
less homespun “higher truths.” Higher truths have
killed more people and ruined more lives than
anything else in the entire history of the human race
since the days when two groups of hunters and
gatherers got to blows over the possession of a
waterhole.
To return to the factual world, however, in Dura
Europos on the Iraqi border, archaeologists did
manage to excavated examples for the meticulous
roster the Roman army used to keep before 254 AD, so
I heard the suggestion that the rabbis of the Talmud
may have gained access to such archive and picked the
fellow as a plausible candidate, perhaps just for the
heck of it or in an attempt to stir the mud in the
ideological mud-slinging match between Jews and
Christians. It is not completely impossible, but in the
polemics between Jews and Christians Mary’s virginity
became critically topical only two hundred years after
much if not everything of the archival evidence had
already been destroyed in the aftermath of Emperor
Trajan’s campaign into Iraq. Of course the army’s
roster for the Syrian legions would have been kept in
Antioch and perhaps for some units in Caesarea as
well. Caesarea was the seat of the Roman governor and
it remained unaffected by the upheavals, yet it was not
only a Gentile enclave and as such virtually forbidden
territory for a curious rabbi, it also leaves us with the
tricky question why some or other Christian ayatollah
and defender of the true faith would have failed to
destroy the evidence; especially Christianity’s
Rosenberg – Eusebius – comes to mind; he had access
and we know he forged the “Flavian Testimony.”
The name of Jesus’ oldest brother is given as
“James.” James in this setting was a common name
and somewhere Josephus speaks of the activities of a
certain “James the Just.” To this day theologians can’t
resist speculating whether this particular James could
have been identical with Jesus’ oldest brother and / or
be the author of the Epistle of James.
Another red herring!
In Josephus’ account, the supporters of James the
Just are the exact same law-abiding Pharisees from
Jerusalem’s establishment, which the evangelists love
to vilify as Jesus’ personal enemies, alleging that he
said: “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and
of the leaven of Herod” (Mk. 8: 15). If anything the passage is
meant to be a narrative marker for the point in time of
Jesus’ activities. And the sober homily on the virtues
of charity under James’ name is written by somebody
with excellent command of Greek, who barely cares
mentioning Jesus by name.
 At home nobody seemed to hold high expectations
about Jesus, least of all his parents and siblings (Mk. 6:
4). Even the dedicated propagandist can’t help
admitting that Jesus “did not many mighty works there
because of their unbelief” (Mt. 13: 55-58).
There also seems to have been a wife, the one
person who knows the prophet in his underwear. I am
not referring to the silly soap about Mary Magdalene
in our novels and bestsellers but to a brief remark in
one of our sources that has Jesus read the Torah in the
synagogue (Lk. 4: 19), which, I am told, in those days was
permitted only to married men. Yet another source
makes the Neighbors, who knew Jesus since childhood
marvel “how this man knows letters, having never learned”
(Jn. 7: 15). Being of an irritable temper, Jesus on more
than one occasion was seen to be rude to his own
family, especially to his mother (Mk. 3: 31-35; Jn. 2: 4).
In fact, whenever possible, Jesus preferred to stay
out of sight from his hometown altogether and live
what he preached: “No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. If
any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife, and children, yea, and his own life, he cannot be
my companion.”
Instead he went preaching, “through every city and
village,” with a sizeable entourage mainly of women,
“Mary called Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod’s
steward, Susanna, and many others,” who ministered
“unto him” – what is the expression – “from their
substance” (Lk. 8: 1). These women and his companions
were now his surrogate family (Mk. 3: 31-35). Maria was
not the only woman who looked at him with glazed
dog-eyes, leaving it to Martha to do the cooking and
wash the dishes (Lk. 10: 38-42). (I have seen this glazed
look in a National Geographic feature on a modern cult
leader in New Mexico, now doing time for statutory
rape: the women surrounding him, regardless of age,
seemed to walk through a dream, as if under a spell.)
Be that as it may, it is easy to overlook what is
written here between the lines: most of these women
had walked out on their husbands and children to
follow this pied piper from Galilee.
This was an era where just about everybody –
whether Gentile or Jew – lived in fear of dreaded
spirits and familiars. Jesus’ reputation was built on his
exorcisms; his acts of “healing” were based on driving
out “demons.” He held it up as his chief credential: “I
beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven, and if I with the
finger of God cast out devils, how can you doubt the
kingdom of God is come upon you” (Mk. 1: 15, 1: 39, 6: 7, 6: 11, 9:
1(!), 13: 26; Mt. 10: 5; Lk. 9: 62, 10: 1, 11: 20). Then, Reimarus
observes, “he forbade these miracles to be made known,
even in cases where they could not possibly be kept hidden,
with the sole purpose of making people more eager to talk of
them” (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer), and talk
they did. Tall tales of a herd of possessed pigs driven
over a non-existing precipice into a “nearby” lake of
actually some thirty miles away from the mighty deed
(Mk. 5: 13) – nobody seemed to wonder from where in
this orthodox neighborhood suddenly a herd of pigs
could possibly emerge (Mk. 1: 15, 1: 39, 6: 7, 6: 11, 9: 1 (sic!), 13:
26; Mt. 10: 5; Lk. 9: 62, 10: 1, 11: 20). Even after two thousand
years archeologists can still tell a Jewish settlement
from the absence of pig bones in the garbage dumps.
Maybe it’s another metaphorical reference to the
Romans and the way this Zealot planned to get rid of
them, I haven’t thought of that, yet.
The account presents to us a man of charisma. Yet
not everybody fell under his spell, and not just a few
even among the inner circle felt his charms fall short
of the mark.
Jesus’ big thing was the imminent end of the
world, or rather the arrival of a new age. In Jesus’ own
words: “Verily I say unto you, there be some of you
standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they have
seen the kingdom of God come with power” (Mk. 9: 1; Mt. 16: 28).
What kind of “kingdom” he expected to come is more
or less open to interpretation, although given
circumstance and time it most likely was something
political.
The Jewish authorities encountering Jesus saw no
reason to think of him as a gentleman and scholar; in
the verbal jousting between them and him they used
“rabbi” as an ironic taunt.
 A real rabbi would have been caught fibbing when
pronouncing: “Have ye not read in the law, how on the
Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath,
and are blameless” (Mt. 12: 5). Indeed Jesus’ audience
hadn’t; there was no such law, but Jesus was too
streetwise to pause here and leave the listener time
for reflection. Instead he lunged into a fit of calculated
fury: “You hypocrites, you discern the face of the sky, but
how is it that you do not read the signs of this time? I am
come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be
already kindled” (Lk. 12: 49). He had no intention to make
an impression on the people of learning. His target
audience was the untutored and illiterate, some things
never change, our “Sunday schools” still profit from
going after the pliable minds of the intellectually
defenseless selling them propaganda for knowledge.
All these are examples from the time when Jesus’
“ministry” was well under way, but at the beginning of
his activities there is an event that has caused
embarrassment for believers and theologians ever
since.
Jesus, apparently on his own accord, went to a
certain John on the Jordan, to get himself baptized.
Who or what gave this John the authority to make
baptism desirable for a person like Jesus? He must
have considered John as a figure of authority and
standing. A teacher perhaps; and he was.
Unlike the obscure Jesus, the word of John the
Baptist carried weight in Galilee, if Josephus, our only
independent source for the existence of John, can be
trusted. John was known to be, says Josephus, “a good
man, who commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to
righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God,
and so receive baptism; not only for washing away their
sins, but for the purification of the body; since the soul is
already purified by righteousness. Herod Antipas feared the
great influence John had over the people, even that he might
raise a rebellion, for the crowds seemed ready to do
anything he should advise. So Herod thought to prevent any
mischief John might cause before it would be too late. John
was imprisoned in the fortress of Macherus and put to
death” (Josephus, Antiquities VIII, 5: 2). According to the
evangelist, at such a baptism the formula spoken on
behalf of God himself was the announcement: “You are
my Son, today (sic!) I have begotten you” (Lk. 3: 22), possibly
the exact words when the Baptist held your head
under water. In our modern texts the word “today” has
been edited out, but it is part of the earliest
paleographic artifacts.
So who was this John? We don’t know. He seemed
to have come out of nowhere, but he left a legacy that
has endured to the present day. The Mandaeans
consider him the founding figure of their religion. The
baptismal initiation rite, as given by Josephus could
suggest a member of the Essenian brotherhood. Purity
and ablutions was the big thing among these people.
According to the gospels we also may assume John was
not exactly a friend of the sacerdotal establishment in
Jerusalem – if he had anything to do with the
sectarians of Qumran, he expected the final battle
between good and evil to be fought over the control of
the temple in Jerusalem. But these are speculations. In
Mandaean scripture as well, however, John is shown as
standing in the middle of the battle royal between the
two aspects of the Universe, light and darkness, left
and right, good and evil. But Jesus in this picture
doesn’t come off very well, Mandaean scripture is
depicting him as a trickster and liar: “Beware of the
carpenter; give him an axe but spare the frankincense”
(Lidzbarski, Mark Das Johannesbuch der Mandar, Teil 2) er, Teil 2)
This is not the only suggestion of frictions between
two sectarian leaders. In the gospels, after all the
alleged courtesies on the Jordan, John seems to have
completely forgotten about the dove and his golden
boy and from prison: sends Jesus an ironic note,
whether it is “he that should come, or do we look for
another” (Mt. 11: 2-30). Jesus’ reply, “blessed is he,
whosoever shall not be offended in me,” is not exactly an
affirmation. I leave alone that this exchange is placed
at a point in time when Jesus already had died on the
cross for a number of years – the narrators have
considerable problems to keep their timelines straight
– but the way the evangelists narrate the incident
leaves little doubt about John the Baptist’s meaning:
he expected some action from his former protégée and
questioned his leadership. After all Jesus had been
conveying big promises to his companions: “Ye are
they which have continued with me in my temptations, and
I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father has appointed
unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel” (Lk. 22: 28-30; Jn. 14: 1-3).
Yet he didn’t seem in a hurry to follow up on his
promises and among his companions “there were some”
who felt “indignation among them,” that their leader
was so slow on delivering. Jesus used to evade all
objections with the remark that the “very hairs of your
head are all numbered” and also that “many are called but
few are chosen,” is not exactly a rousing call to arms.
Peter, Jesus’ right-hand-man and enforcer, not a
man of great patience, at last took his boss by the
lapels “and began to rebuke him” (Mk. 8: 32). A sharp call
to order cleared the air, for now, but Jesus ran out of
options. He knew he had to act.
Jesus gathered his following at Caesarea, right
under the noses of the Roman administration. It
doesn’t take a look at the map to realize the political
nature of this move. Sending “them forth by two and
two,” he ordered his companions to announce “the
kingdom of heaven at hand” (Mk. 6: 7-8), but to convey this
message only to the “sheep from the house of Israel,” not
the Gentiles and Samaritan infidels. The good people
of Galilee, however, refused to stir. All that Jesus was
able to do was throwing another of his tantrums: “Woe
unto you, Chorazin! Woe unto you, Bethsaida! I say unto
you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the Day
of Judgment, than for you. And you, Capernaum, shall be
brought down to hell” (Mk. 11: 21; Lk. 10: 13). His revolution
had stopped dead in the tracks before it even began.
In the gospel according to John he could no longer
risk to show his face in public.
Gone were the carefree days of water turned to
wine. In John Jesus is depicted to play a cat and mouse
game with the authorities and keeping away from
Jerusalem with a lame excuse: “You go up: I will not, for
my time is not yet come.” Only after given the “all clear,”
he dared to visit the festival, although not “openly, but
as it were in secret” (Jn. 7: 8-10).
But how important was the whole affair for the
other team anyway, whoever they were?
The flippant “did there ever arise a prophet out of
Galilee” does not have the ring of a profound concern,
although this may have changed when Jesus issued
instructions to his companions to sell their garments
in exchange for arms (Lk. 22: 38), something of which the
evangelist tries to tune down its significance. A better
indicator is the simple fact that there exists not a
single contemporary witness testimony outside of the
gospels. Not even in the works of the contemporary
Philo of Alexandria (BC 20 – 50 AD) who paid Jerusalem
repeated visits and had a keen interest in Jewish-
sectarian affairs. Apparently nobody felt sufficiently
alarmed to take notice or keep a record.
In 26 AD a new deputy of the Governor in Syria
arrived in Judea, the “praefectus iudeae” Pilate (Jn. 18: 12;
Jones, A. H. M. Procurators and Prefects in the Early Principate) . On
arrival Pilate immediately set the tone “by expending
the temple treasure upon the construction of an aqueduct.
The populace formed a ring round the tribunal of Pilate,
besieging him with angry clamor. He foresaw the tumult
and a troop of his soldiers in plain clothes, armed with
batons mixed with the crowds. From his tribunal he gave
the signal and in the ensuing stampede many Jews perished
from the blows or trodden to death by the fleeing mob”
(Josephus, Wars II: 175-177, Antiquities XVIII: 60-62).
There were more incidents of this kind in this
troubled relationship between governor and his
subjects, yet petitions to the capital failed to impress
the authorities. Emperor Tiberius was not given to
fixing what seemed to be working; Pilate was doing his
job, and by doing so he broke a few eggs to make an
omelet, so, naturally, people complain.
He left Pilate in office for two full terms, ten years
in all, which was unusual and either a sign for His
Imperial Highness’ satisfaction or for his lethargy.
The prefect’s first term was not yet completed
when in 29 AD Pilate charged a native from Galilee
with sedition and lèse-majesté.
Under the Aegis of Rome Herod’s temple had fallen
under the jurisdiction of the Gentile “pontifex
maximus,” the chairman presiding over the board for
all legally acknowledged cults in the empire, an office
often held by the emperors themselves. An imperial
stipend provided funds for a daily sacrifice on behalf
of the emperor. In other words, any activity on the
temple precinct fell under the direct authority of
Rome. Even the robe of the high priest was held in
Roman safekeeping and released only for the festivals.
So when Jesus after an apparently carefully
choreographed demonstration in the streets (Mk. 11: 8-
12) started a riot in the temple, he could be sure to get
the Romans’ attention.
Well, that’s what the sources suggest; we shall
later see that this was far from self-evident.
Again it is important not to get sidetracked from
actual religious customs and observances. Of course
the trade in sacrificial animals was part of the very
service – everybody, everywhere did this, even the
Buddhists in China and Japan – only they didn’t
slaughter the animals and rather released them to
accrue good Karma.
Yet Jesus wasn’t worried about good Karma. What
he didn’t like was the sight of currency changers lined
up under the bleached marquee along the inner side of
what was later to become the Wailing Wall, the outer
court, a huge area accessible to everybody including
the visiting Gentile. Jesus seemed aware that the
temple in Jerusalem like every other of the big cult
centers in the Roman domain acted as the equivalent
to our high-street banks, offering loans, keeping
individual safe deposits and facilitating the transfer of
large sums on letters of credit, backed by the bullion
hoarded in the temple’s vaults. The commerce of the
entire Empire depended on the credit provided by the
network of major shrines, of which, the cult-center on
the isle of Delos, acted in lieu of a central bank as the
clearinghouse for the various currencies in the Empire
and abroad. We are told, about ten thousand major
transactions a day went through this temple alone.
Herod’s temple was part of this system.
None of this could be of any concern for the man
who is asking us to behold the lilies in the field, yet it
concerned the people benefitting from the temple’s
petty loans to artisans and peasantry and the more
substantial loans to builders and trading houses.
In other words, once again Jesus ran into a brick-
wall, “Is it not written, ‘my house shall be called a house of
prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of
robbers” (Mk. 11: 15-19), he cried, but who would listen –
except perhaps for Essenians and Zealots? (As we shall
see later the saying may have been meant much more
literal – after its destruction the remains of temple
had indeed been a den for jackals and criminals.) “The
people in Jerusalem refused to rise, as the Galileans had
refused at the time when the disciples were sent out to rouse
them.” (Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer). The
next evening Jesus was placed under arrest (Mk. 14: 47;
Jn. 18: 10), and we are asked to believe that an act of
armed resistance did not lead to further arrests.
The prisoner was first brought before the High
Priest and the Council of Jerusalem.
Contrary to the anachronistic protestations in our
sources (Jn. 18: 31), before the year 73 AD the Sanhedrin
did have the authority to pass capital punishment by
means of stoning, burning, or slaying and even
extended civil jurisdiction outside of Jerusalem (Philo,
De Legatione 23; Cicero, Pro Flacco, 28; Acts 6: 12; 7: 59 and 9: 2).
Then why did this body not exercise its prerogative, if
indeed there was a trial and they had Jesus found
guilty of a felony?
Then again what can we possibly know about
proceedings behind closed doors? Who among our
sources was actually there to corroborate what
happened on either of the two trials? On the night of
his arrest Jesus’ companions hurtled to Galilee into
hiding, according to the map, fifty kilometers on the
trot (Mt. 26: 56). The one man, alleged to have stayed
behind, was shooed away from the courtyard of the
High Priest when a maidservant blew his cover (Mk. 14:
66-72; Mt. 26: 69-75; Lk. 22: 55-62; Jn. 18: 16-17).
A session at night, especially on the night to
Passover, was of course strictly against the law, but
the accounts are explicitly designed to besmirch Jews
in every possible way. Jewish law (Deut. 17: 6 and 19: 15)
prohibited the conviction of any person on one
testimony alone. This has been interpreted to exclude
even a verdict on the strength of one’s own
confession, which would be the first habeas corpus
known to history, since it deters from interrogation
under torture. So what is one to think, when the
narrator accuses the Sanhedrin of dismissing
witnesses as untrustworthy (Mk. 14: 59; Mt. 26: 59-60) and
yet has the council pass judgment based entirely on
the defendant’s own confession? (Mk. 14: 62-64; Mt. 26: 65-
66).
And by the way, would it not have been as simple
as it was expedient to keep the prisoner in custody
until after the festival? (Mk. 14: 2) So, what was the
rush?
There is only one possible explanation: Pilate
himself had issued the warrant for Jesus’ arrest; and
he was waiting. The Roman governor, as we
remember, was in town only on special occasions –
like the Passover – and apparently there was even a
Roman centurion present at the arrest (Jn. 18: 12). His
presence would be inexplicable without orders by his
superior (Julius Wellhausen, Pharisees and Sadducees). We are
told of much confusion. The whole cast is rushing
about in the jerky quickstep of a silent motion picture
and the defendant is dragged twice across town, from
Pilate’s chambers to the tetrarch’s palace and back,
with interrogations on both ends, all within thirty
minutes (Lk. 23: 11-12). It takes more time to haggle over
a lamb at the market-stalls.
In his defense Jesus claimed divine status as a king
“not of this world” (Jn. 18: 36). Obviously he came without
legal representation. Before a Roman court only one
person, the emperor, had a claim to divine status. So,
when little later, the defendant pleaded guilty, more
or less on his own accord (Mk. 15: 2; Mt. 27: 11; Lk. 23: 3; Jn. 18:
37), it formally sealed the case (Jn. 19: 13-16). Pilate’s
pretense to find “no guilt” was just another example
for his already notorious sarcasm. The Judge’s washing
of the hands is Jewish custom and doesn’t belong into
a Roman court. It tells us something about the kind of
audience this account was written for; not a reader of
the Roman establishment for whom a judge giving this
sign of repudiating of his own verdict could only be
offensive.
One could of course argue an itinerant preacher
simply had not the clout to raise any legal qualms with
a Roman official, especially not this one.
The alleged offer to release the already convicted
Barnabas would have been in blatant disregard of the
law, since the privilege of amnesty was lying
exclusively with the emperor; only he could issue a
pardon or repeal a capital sentence. Any infraction on
the imperial prerogative would have been an act of
treason and an assumption of excessive powers,
punishable under the Lex Julia (Digesta 48, 81 48, 8, 4 and
Mommsen; also reflected in the right of appeal – see Acts 26: 32).
So
there is no need to discuss the meaning of the curious
narrative ploy to present us with two convicts of the
same name – Jesus “son of the father,” and the other
guy, a lacuna followed by “son of the father,” because
that is the meaning of “Barnabas.” Maybe there did
actually occur several arrests and this was one of
Jesus’ own siblings or companions? It would still not
give Pilate the legal latitude to release either of them
without a formal acquittal.
So whatever the meaning here, the passage gives
evidence to only one thing: the narrative at this point
obviously has been manipulated to the point of
screwing up the facts, if there are any, but it does
leave us with the question why even an official with
Pilate’s record should have opened himself to legal
recriminations by some of his more influential
political enemies whose connections went all the way
to Rome and the imperial court (Lk. 23: 12), enemies, we
are told, who were only waiting to trip him up?
The evangelists make it look, as if Pilate was trying
to pass on the buck to Herod the Tetrarch (Lk. 23: 4);
after all Jesus was a Galilean subject and therefore fell
under Herod’s jurisdiction. Yet there was no legal
provision for Pilate to delegate the governor’s powers
inherent in the “Ius Gladii” to any other individual
(Digesta 1, 6, 6; 1, 21, 1; 50, 17, 70). Pilate himself had written
a warrant on Jesus had him apprehended and indicted
and if now Pilate without prior acquittal handed over
a case of lèse-majesté to the tetrarch, he again made
himself answerable to charges and thus again invited
political blackmail (Lk. 23: 7-12). Even the author of Luke
knew this and therefore made this episode look like a
courteous overture between former enemies. Pity it
screwed up an already tight schedule even further.
Pilate – not the Jews – executed Jesus and on
charges, relevant only under Roman law. Pilate said so
himself in his very own words, it is written in the
charge nailed to Jesus’ cross.
For a Jew crucifixion was the ultimate ignominy,
since everybody was “cursed who hangs on a post” (Gal. 3:
13; Deut. 21: 22-23; Joshua 8: 29, 10: 26-27). It didn’t make any
difference whether the convicted had been executed
by the Roman Governor or under Jewish law. In either
case, “even if he were a king of kings” (Sanhedrin 9: 8d),
“those slain by a court of law are not to be buried in their
fathers’ sepulchers, but in a grave by themselves” (Numbers
23: 13). And that’s exactly what the story is telling us.
Yet such “grave by themselves” was not meant to be
the final resting place. After a suitable period of
penance, “when the flesh has rotted,” the family was
permitted to “collect the bones and bury them at home in
their appropriate place” (Sanhedrin 6: 6a; 9: 8c, etc.), normally
the hometown and that’s where we should look for
Jesus’ remains: in Capernaum.
 Reimarus concludes: “Before his arrest, Jesus was
overwhelmed with dread, and on the cross he closed his life
with the words ‘my God! My God! Why have you forsaken
me?’ This avowal cannot, without violence, be interpreted
otherwise than as meaning that God had failed him in his
aim, that it had not been his purpose to suffer and die”
(Reimarus, Fragments by an Anonymous Writer).
But the story doesn’t end here just yet. After the
initial consternation among the loyal and the diehard,
it is not, as we should expect, someone of the family
who is stepping up to the helm of the movement, but
Jesus’ old enforcer who muscles his way to the top (Acts
5: 1-11), telling us that “God raised up Jesus of Nazareth on
the third day, and showed him openly,” and now listens to
this, “not to all the people, but unto chosen witnesses”
(Acts 10: 41).
Here it is: the classic con.
The uninvolved bystander sees absolutely nothing,
no visions, no Jesus, no sudden darkness, no corpses
walking out of their graves, only an assembly of
Galileans hollering and singing and this man with
hands as big as coal shovels who seems to surround
himself with a praetorian guard of rather rough
looking youths, and what does he say? “These are not
drunk, as ye suppose!”
The “resurrection” was proclaimed the first time in
a place fifty kilometers away from Jerusalem and
always by the same one or two people, and since then
we are asked to take their word for it.
You may think this is too simple and mundane a
resolution to be true, after all for two thousand years
people have built their faith, in fact an entire religion
on the resurrection of Christ and you can’t create a
faith from a lie – or do you? Well ask yourself, if you
are a believer, why do you believe? What do you think
the resurrection is doing for you?
You see?
If this is really meaningful for you, what do you
think makes you so alert, that this promise of your
faith, should make any difference if it is coming out of
the mouth of a conman?
So, this then is the end to a plausible enough story.
Jesus disappears from the records, and with the
exception of Eusebius, Emperor Constantine’s chief
ideologue, there is very little mentioning of what
became of Jesus’ family even in the Christian sources.
But these are not the only problems.
 II. Pilate
A good deal of the historical power Christianity has
acquired depends on the accomplishment to conceal
the circumstances of its origin. Not so completely as
to secure this power over the minds forever, but
perhaps well enough to obstruct forever
investigations by historical science.
Franz Camille Overbeck (1837 – 1905)

Anonymous accusations ought not to be admitted

under any circumstances. They set a most evil
precedent, and they are not in keeping with the spirit
of our time.
Emperor Trajan

Keep purity, and let not a thought enter your heart of

another’s wife, or of fornication, or of any such like
evil deeds, for in so doing you are committing a great
sin.
Hermas

The same writer also relates unwritten traditions of

 certain strange parables and teachings of the Savior,
and that there will be a period of thousand years
after the resurrection of the dead, and that the
kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on
this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through
a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, for he
appears to have been of very limited understanding.
Eusebius of Caesarea (263 – 339 AD)
We are justified in drawing an absolute distinction
between the teaching of the Apostles in their
writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime
proclaimed and taught.
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694 – 1768)

Later, when joining the others in their Galilean

hideout, Peter would speak of the one “whom they slew
and hanged on a tree.” Apparently Paul’s “good news” of
the “Christ crucified” (I Cor. 1: 23) had not yet arrived in
Galilee. Nobody gives a direct account; the tales come
to light a full three generations after the alleged fact,
treating us to the grotesque caricature of a Roman
judge hopping up and down from his high seat like a
yo-yo instead of having the bailiffs go on with the
proceedings.
In plain view Pilate is alleged to have solicited his
verdict with a lynch-mob (Mk. 15: 3; Lk. 23: 2; Jn. 18: 30-31, 19:
12 etc.), as if he had never heard of the explicit
prohibition of collective accusations in Roman law:
“Vanae voces populi non sunt autiendae” – the vain voice
of the people is not to be listened to (Codex Justinianus IX:
47, 12). Unlike the modern district attorney, who speaks
for “the people” against the accused, there was no
public prosecutor at a Roman trial. Instead each party
hired their own attorney and brought their case
“before the people,” represented by the judge.
The Jewish council should have been fully aware of
the procedure, as it did in the case of Paul (Acts 24: 1),
but with Jesus apparently the council couldn’t be
bothered.
Besides, what business was it of allegedly Jewish
accusers to charge Jesus with lèse-majesté and
sedition? (Mk. 15: 2, 15: 26; Mt. 8: 21-22, 10: 35, 19: 29, 12: 48-49, 27:
11, 27: 37; Lk. 8: 19-21, 9: 59-60, 12: 53, 14: 26, 23: 3, 23: 38; Jn. 2: 14, 6:
15, 18: 33, 19: 7-8, 19: 19) They couldn’t care less. So if there
was a formal indictment in the first place the burden
fell entirely on Pilate’s shoulders. Formalities that
could leave the judge, even this judge, with egg on his
face. On paper, Roman law imposed severe penalties
on false accusations or insufficient preparation (Digesta
47: 23, 2; 15, 1-2; Codex Theodosianus IX: 36,1; IX: 1, 9-14; Codex
Iustinianus IX: 12, 7 and 46, 7); the admission of evidence
known to be false could lead to a murder charge
against the judge himself if this gave cause for the
execution of an innocent, provided of course there was
an interested party left standing to file the indictment
(Marcianus, Digesta 48, 81 and Mommsen).
According to Philo of Alexandria, the only actually
contemporary writer who has left us testimonies about
people mentioned in the gospels, (although he neither
mentions Jesus, nor even John the Baptist), Pilate
himself was about to or already had faced charges for
“briberies, insults, robberies, outrages and indecent
assaults, constantly repeated executions without trial (sic!),
ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty” (Philo, De Legatione
301-3).

I
f you open the Christian Bible you are invited to
read a story with a beginning and an end: in the
first part, the so-called Old Testament, we begin
with the creation of the world and move on through
the distant mists of prehistory when the angels still
went after the women of man, to the founding of the
two Hebrew Kingdoms and their fall to the Babylonian
empire and the return of the first Zionists and the
construction of the second temple. A story, in parts at
least, of some epic sway and grandeur, from which the
sorry appendix which Christians use to call the New
Testament is definitely a letdown, a piece of bourgeois
pulp fiction, Dostoyevsky at his worst: nocturnal
gatherings of conspirators (Jn. 20: 19), shifting living
quarters (Acts 9: 25, 30), the occasional stint in a prison
cell (Acts 5: 18; 8: 3; 23: 35), the incessant look over the
shoulder (Mt. 26: 69-74), the despair of whores and
stigmatized, even murder for money (Acts 5: 1-11). I have
always detested the anti-intellectual bias and the
folksy mythology. I detest this presumptuous
glorification of the disenfranchised as the secretly
privileged. Little people with megalomaniac
ambitions. Possessed minds at odds with their
environment and the world at large, with all these
penned up resentments funneling into a piece of
psychedelic nightmare telling us the how and when to
get even, and yet all the while announcing universal
“love” on the poster-boards.
It is difficult to find a document so brimming with
hatred and yet cracked up to the infants in body and
mind as the enunciation of peace to the world. The
New Testament has become the prototype for much of
the political propaganda in subsequent ages and even
of secular ideologies originating in the 19th century. It
also influenced the ages as a manifesto of anti-
Semitism cover to cover.
That Jesus was a Jew himself apparently is the first
thing forgotten by his followers.
However, if we were simply to publish the Biblical
books in the order of their first publication, it already
would give away the propagandistic intent and
perhaps allow for a more realistic assessment of their
true intent and purpose:
To begin with, in the Old Testament the oldest item
is the Book of Judges, the only document positively
indicating a pre-exile provenance, although even here
we can only guess the date for the editorial hand that
has been putting together the folklore and snippets of
a quickly vanishing tradition, but the remarkable lack
of rabbinical bias allows to hope for a real early date.
Next in line come some if not most of the prophets,
followed by Job, portions in the Books of Kings and
sections of the Psalms. The novelistic exercise of
Deuteronomy predates the rest of the entire Pentateuch,
an admitted counterfeit end to end (…), and originally
was either meant to justify political measures of
oppression under the regime of King Josiah at a time
when they actually happened or it is a piece of
alternative history from the scriptural cottage
industry of Ezra, when the rabbis busied themselves
not only to lay Israel’s polytheistic past to rest, but
invent for themselves a history to live by. Well, that
may actually be too negative as an assessment; Ezra
and Herodotus were contemporaries, it was a time
when people got interested in history, the real thing,
and wherever the religious bias permitted, Ezras’
editorial team let loose the rains. Much in the Books of
Kings and especially Chronicles is a product of this
period and composed in a spirit of genuine curiosity
for the facts. Solomon’s Song, Ecclesiastes Daniel and
Proverbs belong to a very different outlook altogether,
they are products of Hellenistic sensibilities and
eclecticism.
Spinoza () was not the first to have reservations
about the cottage industry of manufactured
“scripture” during the second temple (), but it was he
to say so openly and pay for it with excommunication
from the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
In fact the 4th book of Ezdra, for obvious reasons
not included into the canon, admits as much.
[… quote …]
For us, the most recent confirmation for the
practice of counterfeiting scripture even for the
centuries AD are the findings of Qumran and of course
the very existence of the New Testament.
In other words if we use the same yardstick for the
texts in the New Testament we get the Apocalypse as the
first and most ancient of the documents, it may date
from as early as 81 AD and clearly speaks for
somebody closer to the zealot mindset of the Qumran
people than to any of the Christian churches from
subsequent ages, we may even know the author by his
real name – I can assure you, it’s not John – followed
by the remains of Q and the Homily of James, the gospels
according to Mark, John, Matthew and Luke and finally
the epistolary forgeries – what is the highfalutin
cooking word here? – oh, “pseudo-epigraphs.” In fact
beginning with the most corrupt item in the canon,
the Apocalypse, and not ending with the so called
“genuine” epistles of Paul the entire book cover to
cover is pseudo-epigraphic as well, i.e. presented by an
anonymous author under a false name, although in
case of the Apocalypse we happen to know the author’s
true name, but that, as we shall see, only by accident.
(You want to know who? Well if you must know,
Cerinthus the Ebionite (c. 100 AD). The man followed
Jewish law, denied the divinity of Jesus who became
the Christ (Messiah) only at his baptism and lost this
ranking at the crucifixion. Apparently there was open
dissent with the evangelist of John and Cerinthus may
have had a hand in the Gospel according to Matthew.)
It was the only way, to have this production by a
so-called heretic, pass the scrutiny of the heresy
sniffers, and as we shall see, it was not the only
appropriation of heretical material by the self styled
orthodoxy of later ages.
By now of course the reader knows my feelings
about these practices. What the reader doesn’t know
yet, however, are my assessments for the time of their
publications and the reason why.
Let’s begin with the Apocalypse; it has been setting
the tone for what was to follow. But we also know that
this book squeezed in into the canon only with
difficulty and after considerable debate, and here is
why:
[… quote …]
Bibliography
Eisenman, Robert (© 2012)
– James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: the Damascus
Code, the Tent of David, the New James the Brother of Jesus
For those interested in what actually happened at a given
point in time utterly useless: this “method” of comparing
anything with everything and connecting dots across the
millennia and geographical zones while shifting about
characters and names as the freely available chips in a
game of “look what I found,” and all this learning and
manic acumen only to stitch together the accidental
leftovers of isolated data and documents to a colorful quilt
of events and doppelgangers admitted to be fictional as the
agents in an insane allegory for – well, for what actually? –it
reminds me uncannily of “bible study” in Sunday school. Its
like a Northrop Frye hanging over from a binge, and utterly
bogus. But with a double scotch – neat please – it can be fun
to read, Mr. Eisenman certainly had more than his fair
share of fun.

Part I – Jesus

Part II – Pilate (the trial)

Part III – Mark & Q
Mark and Q. The late dating of all the gospels – late but
produced roughly in the same decade. Even Mark is
post 117 AD, because of the apocalypse.

Part IV – Tacitus
Where is the evidence? In the first century no
headstones, no inscriptions, not even a graffiti on the
public toilet. The pseudo-epigraphic nature of the
biblical narrative. The old testament. The art of
forgery in the new one. Of all the secular sources
(details) the one that is critical: Tacitus. Not for
mentioning the crucifixion, this he could have easily
picked up from current Christian sources, but for the
so-called Neronian persecution in the Annals. Three
scenarios: a Renaissance forgery cover to cover; the
“restoration” of a badly preserved medieval copy of a
work that originally was of a very different anecdotal
character (the Sulpicius quotation is not a quotation of
Sulpicius from Tacitus, but of the forger from
Sulpicius); or the retelling of a Christian horror-tale,
modeled on impressions from current events (Hadrian
impersonating Nero), because even if it would refer to
genuine events it is told from the distance of sixty
years.

Part V – Suetonius, Pliny & Josephus

Part VI – Paul, Marcion, the roots of Christian
Antisemitism

Part VII Conclusion

 V. Conclusion
Were it not for the authority of the Church, I should
put no faith in the gospels.
St Augustine

S
tories have a curious way of screwing with the
facts, especially the kind of stories we like to
tell time and again. For example the Japanese
have built shrines to commemorate an event from
1703, which is pretty recent to turn it into a myth, and
yet the revenge of the 47 ronin has become just that.
(Actually there had been only 46, but that's only a
minor inaccuracy.)
The general belief held of this event is that these
jobless samurais – “ronins” as they are called –
avenged the death of their lord.
But they didn’t.
Their feudal lord, the young hair to estates in Alo
pretty far down South of Edo, had been sentenced to
commit suicide because he had attacked and wounded
– whether with or without provocation is immaterial –
an elderly court official on the premises of the
capital’s royal residence of the Shogun. Hence it was
the Shogun himself, who was the offended party here.
The court official was a high-ranking bureaucrat, Kira
Yoshihisa, a commoner in charge of educating puppies
from the nobility like his assailant in the finer points
of court etiquette, he was an instructor, but he was not
the owner of a princely domain, nor entitled ever to
own one. All he had to the name of his family was a
modest mansion in the capital.
Needless to say that in the novels and stage
performances this man soon became the arch-villain –
– under a slightly different name.
What the ronins really plotted to do was finishing
what their lord had begun; yet even in the
understanding of their period, their aim was murder,
not revenge.
In modern Japan there are now quite a few
shrines with lifelike statues of the 47 ronin, and a
large literature celebrates their deed as the token of
ultimate loyalty. But there was no law in the Japan of
the Tokugawa that allowed a retainer or even blood
relative to proceed beyond the limits of justified
vendetta between feudal lords, of which that assaulted
courtier could never have qualified to become the
target. The rules were clear: you were expected to
announce your intention to the authorities
beforehand and await either their go-ahead or ruling
against the intended act.
But in this particular case the law didn’t
acknowledge the grounds for any such action in the
first place and apparently the rogue retainers knew it.
 Or take the story of Jesus. People today and
especially the believers in Christ think of him as their
savior and superhuman hero who changed their fate
and the history of the entire Universe. In the real
world a young Galilean thug associated himself with
the circles of a local radical, John the Baptist, probably
quite some time after the demise of the movement’s
founder, a movement that still exists in the form of
the Mandaeans. The Mandaeans have preserved
memories of Jesus as well, but it is nothing to write
home about. When called to act on his commitments
Jesus turned out to be a total failure. His attempt to
rouse the masses from under the walls of Caesarea, the
seat of the Roman governor, didn't wake even a dog
from its sleep and how it ended in Jerusalem is a
matter of record – only that this record is flawed on so
many levels, it can only be fiction.
The whole story seems to be a case of backdating
in order to avoid the Jesus-people’s involvement in the
aftermath to Keto’s war.
As far as secular sources took notice the
backdating was picked up on surface value by Tacitus
and also affected Suetonius’ speculative interpretation
of unrest in the streets of the Roman capital. The
historian made a quick calculation based on the data
for the tenure of Pilate and correctly computed the
presence of a noticeable faction of presumed
Christians for the time of Emperor Claudius. However
such calculation is only as good as the variables put
into the equation: garbage in, garbage out. There had
been unrest all right, and it was under Emperor
Claudius, and it happened in the decade after Pilate’s
recall from office, and the unrest was followed by
orders to expel from Rome the ringleaders of Jewish
expatriates in Italy, but nothing of this had anything
to do with a non-existing movement of Galilean
sectarians to whose existence neither the occasional
headstone nor any other type of inscription has been
found to testify, not even some or other graffiti on the
public toilets making fun of Christians. The “apostle”
Paul is depicted of traveling the Mediterranean almost
end to end, and according to the letters as well as Acts
he had ample opportunities to make himself a
nuisance with the authorities, but nothing of this has
left a trace and be it the graffiti of a curse.
Likewise the record of Christian murals in the
catacombs cannot be dated to the first century. There
is just nothing to document the existence of Christians
before the second century apart from the ostentatious
pronouncements in their propaganda, which,
however, is dating from the second century as well.
Notice that the murals give us the good shepherd
collecting his flock; the morbid image of the crucified
is a product of the 4th century.
Both authors, Tacitus as well as Suetonius wrote
only shortly after the story got into circulation. As
long as we don’t know better, the author of Mark is the
sole candidate for its invention.
In the real world the whole episode of a call to
arms under the walls of Caesarea apparently occurred
only after Jerusalem was already in ruins and a den for
the jackals. The Flavian testimony is a forgery by
Eusebius, magically emerging from the selfsame
manuscript of the very same collection in Caesarea,
that had caused the learned Origen seventy years
earlier to express his palpable disappointment about
the absence of any mentioning of Jesus. Indeed: Jesus
was still an adolescent, barely in his teens, when
Josephus published his book in 96 AD. It would have
been a miracle of prescience for the Roman
collaborator to take note of the Galilean redneck, but
his material became a mainstay for the fables in Mark
and Luke together with the lore in Q, which may or
may not be of Aramaic origin. Which also should lay to
rest all speculations about the identity of James the
Just in Josephus’ narratives.
The tenth book of Pliny’s letters, whether
wholesale, or as a matter of an overzealous
“restoration,” is a forgery by the Renaissance
humanist […]. That the manuscript disappeared after
been submitted to print, however, should not raise our
eyebrows; it was part of the process in the early
printing houses to cut up a manuscript.
So, there was no crucifixion. Jesus was still very
much alive and after Keto’s war in the process of
merging back into the anonymity of his Galilean
fellowship, an early forerunner of William Miller (1782 –
1849), when his trusted and clearly disappointed
enforcer stepped forward to pull his con informing the
world that Jesus had been hung on a tree – the news of
the “Christ crucified” () had not yet arrived in Galilee –
and now had risen from the dead and made his
appearance, of course not to everybody, but just to the
chosen few.
We notice that it is always the same two people –
“Peter” and “John” – making this announcement and
we are supposed to take their word for it.
But before we get all self-righteous and condemn
the deception, we should consider whether the con
may have been no more than an attempt to protect
from repercussions the person of a still living Jesus,
the very same guy standing somewhat in the shadow
at the back of the crowds, watching the people singing
hymns to the risen Christ. Maybe like the distant
successor in the history of millenarianism his last
words had been “I confess my error, and acknowledge my
disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is
near, even at the door” (William Miller).

A not so simple Story in two parts, 5 chapters each

- part one The Story of Jesus
- part two Antisemitism Cover to Cover

After this failure, the Millerite movement was adrift.

Dozens of theories proliferated as to why the Advent
had failed to occur on schedule, including further
revised dates (none of which garnered nearly as much
attention). Some said that Christ had returned
“invisibly”, others that October 22 had marked not
Christ’s return but the day that “the door was shut”,
after which there could be no salvation for
unbelievers. Hiram Edson claimed to have had a
prophetic vision which showed him that Christ had
come on schedule – but in heaven rather than on
Earth. The Millerite movement began splintering into
sects as the debate raged, and soon had all but run out
of steam. Miller himself died in 1849, insisting to the
end that the Second Coming was imminent.
Following such a catastrophic failure, one might
expect that the Millerite movement would fade away
entirely. But that is not what happened. Although the
fragmented Millerites languished for some time, and
though many did abandon the movement, several of
the competing splinter groups would ultimately gain
new life. Hiram Edson’s sect, the one which claimed
Jesus’ return was heavenly rather than earthly,
developed into a denomination that still exists – the
Seventh-Day Adventists, who today number as many
as 15 million members worldwide. The Adventists
claim that Jesus’ 1844 entry into the “heavenly
sanctuary” was the beginning of a still-ongoing
process of “investigative judgment” of the souls of
believers. They continue to claim that the literal
Second Coming is imminent, though they no longer
attempt to set dates.
The Advent Christian Church, another modern
denomination, arose from a different Millerite splinter
group. Another former Millerite, Charles Taze Russell,
would carry forward his Miller-inspired beliefs about
the imminent end-times into a new sect that he
founded: the Watchtower (named after their monthly
magazine), known today as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
And last but not least, a small splinter group of
fundamentalist Adventists led by a preacher named
Victor Houteff split from the main church in 1934, and
relocated to Waco, Texas, where they formed a
community. They would later rename themselves the
Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, and then the Branch
Davidians… and when a charismatic preacher calling
himself David Koresh gained control of the group, the
rest is history.
Nevertheless Branch Davidians believe that
Koresh will someday return to Earth. Some hoped,
based on Daniel 12:12, that this would occur 1,335 days
after his death: December 14, 1996. The Hidden Manna
faction believed that it would take place on August 6,
2000, then October 20, and now March 2012. Other
followers avoid date-setting.
The Millerites and their modern descendants
show that human beings, when motivated by ideology,
are capable of coping with nearly any disappointment
without altering what they believe. Miller made one of
the few fatal errors in religion – tying his faith claims
to a specific, falsifiable physical test – and no doubt
owes his modern obscurity to that. But the faith that
he founded has survived him, in somewhat changed
form, and continues to issue apocalyptic predictions
without being daunted by their repeated failure. This
dynamic is visible in modern sects as well. When
religious membership is a marker of tribal identity, a
sign of belonging to a community, which gives its
members hope and comfort, the nature of its specific
claims is almost beside the point.