I have already several times written skeptically about Christianity. I have assumed, as many others, that the mission of Jesus must be understood in the context of that time and that place. Jesus was a miracle making Jewish Messiah fulfilling the end-of-time prophesies. Soon after his time, in 66 AD, started the Jewish rebellion, so I have connected Jesus to his time and it lead to a political-religious conspiracy of Messianic Jews against Rome.
I think it is quite logical to think in this way, but in this post I want to reconsider the basic assumption, that is, what if it is all true, redemption and eternal life and all that. Where does that lead? But first let me rewrite the conspiracy that follows from the skeptical view.
Jesus taught of the imminent Day of the Lord. It means the end of the times, not the end of the world. Time was divided into units called times of duration about 2000 years. It is the old Jewish calculation that the world is 6000 years old (composed of three 2000 year times) and then follows 1000 years. Later the cycle repeats. Jesus believed that he lived at the end of times and had a good reason for it. The times could be calculated in many ways. One is the astrological time, which was changing to the time of Pisces. There are many references to astrology in the Old Testament: Jacob’s ladder is the world pillar (Kochab and Pherkad, once marking the celestial Northern Pole), Jacobs 12 sons, Josephs dream of stars circulating the sun, reference to Draco in Job etc. and fish as the symbol of Jesus suggests the time of Pisces. The second one is Zoroastrian calculation: a thousand years between Saviors born of virgin. The third is Jewish prophetic calculation in the Book of Daniel, probably written in 167 BC (but edited still up to 31 BC as it seems to refer to the sea battle of Octavian and Marc Anthony), which is supported by many calculations, for instance it was 1000 years since the construction of the first temple started.
As Josephus Flavius notes, the end of times and the coming world ruler were expected in all Eastern provinces of Rome. Julius Caesar was declared god after Caesar’s comet was seen. Caesar’s testament made Octavian his son, thus Octavian, being reborn as a full grown man, become the son of god and took the name Augustus. After this time many Roman emperors were deified after their death. There is a distinct resemblance between Christusmonogram and Sidus Iulium commemorating the comet of Caesar. All this means that the times were indeed ending and a divine world ruler was expected to come. In the Jewish scriptures the end of times implied the Day of the Lord, i.e., the Day of Wrath, a punishment of sins. God would first punish his people and then destroy the other peoples.
The Dead Sea text of the battle of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness can hardly mean any other time than the Day of the Lord, i.e., the coming war against Rome. The Sons of Light would lose the first stage of the war since according to prophets the temple and the city would be destroyed and the people taken to captivity, but naturally they would win the last stage as God was with them. Thus, the Messiah would come again as a military leader after having died as a prophet and savior. Jesus predicted his second coming in clouds. That seems to mean a comet as the King Messiah was associated with a star because of the Star Prophesy (Numbers 24:17). Jewish rabbis knew of a comet with a period of 70 years and I think they mistook Caesar’s comet for Halley’s comet and expected that the comet would return around 30 AD, time of Jesus’ crucifixion and the reign of Herod Agrippa I. Herod Agrippa was not only Herodian, he was also Hasmonean, a dynasty with Messianic connections. For the Dead Sea Scrolls sect, Hasmoneans were the new Davidic dynasty. Herod Agrippa did try to become the divine king, but as Acts 13.1 state, an angel of the Lord struck him down. He was probably poisoned. So, this time Messianic plans had to be postponed. Messianic Jews had to look for another King Messiah.
Herod Agrippa II was not interested in these plots. Finally the periodic comet appeared in 66 AD. Flavius Josephus tells of the signs of the Day of the Lord. Naturally, the King Messiah should have appeared, but what is strange: Jews started a Messianic war but while there were some Messiah candidates, none of them was widely accepted. Therefore I believe that the King Messiah of this war was meant to be Flavius Josephus (Yosef ben Matityahu, related to the Hasmonean king dynasty), who despite having no military credentials was put in charge of Galilee, which was the center of Jewish resistance and messianic expectations.
Was Jesus connected with these or a separate phenomenon? Within this theory I have proposed in my other writings that he was very well connected and that the comet of 66 AD was understood as Jesus coming in the skies. Jesus had two cousins, apostles Jacob and John. They wanted to sit on the places just next to Jesus and Herod Agrippa executed Jacob by a sword. This may indicate that both belonged to the Hasmonean dynasty, in which case so did Jesus and John the Baptist, but maybe only remotely. Jacob possibly had a secret claim to the throne while posing as a simple man: he is called Jacob the Greater. Moses was raised as a prince. How likely is it that Jesus, a prophet like Moses, was simply a prophet, especially as the Gospels give his genealogies? The genealogies trace him to David, but for the Dead Sea sect Hasmoneans were the new Davidic lineage. The lists require a special reading, but there is King Janneus. Old prophesies would be fulfilled second time in the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls sect with a Hasmonean Messiah. Mary Magdalena was someone very important in this plot and assuming this theory is correct, I have proposed, not as the first, Mariamne II as Magdalena. Mariamne II was the former queen, much older than Jesus, so she was not his wife, instead she was his main supporter. The plan probably included a plot to assassinate Nero, declare it a suicide, and set up a friendly emperor to Rome, but all backfired and Vespasian became the emperor. I even agree with Eisenman that Paul probably was Herodean as he was Benjamite and in that time it meant Edomite (Idumean). Paul’s Christianity became Edom, which has an end-of-the-times role in Kabbalism. If this theory is true then the Turin Shroud, assuming it is Jesus’ shroud, was created as a part of the plot.
But this is only a theory, a possible scenario. It is where I ended when trying to follow the skeptic view. The skeptic view does not easily lead to Jesus as a philosopher and miracle worker with no political program. The reason is the Turin Shroud: forging the Shroud was difficult and had to have a strong motivation. But as I wrote in the post of the Shroud, it is not known how it can have been made. I made my suggestion but would be surprised if my method works. The alternative, a miracle, can only be discarded as impossible by flat earth believers, that is, if we have not seen any miracles, they must be impossible. Well, not necessarily, they are not necessarily against any logic or so called “laws of physics”.
The skeptic view I outlined leads to a conspiracy theory where all is politics. That is not how Christianity understands Jesus and it seems to be not as Jesus understood his mission. I will first give some reasons why it seems that Jesus understood his mission in the same way as Christianity has taught it ever since and then I try to see where leads the assumption that what Jesus taught is actually all true.
Everybody knows what Jesus taught, at least those who had religion in school and have read the Bible through a few times, or is it so? All these things have been repeated endless times.
But no, I still have to think about it. The problem with repeating statements is that they become familiar and one feels that one understands everything when in reality one understands absolutely nothing. That makes repetition is an ideal trick for fooling students, just repeat something and finally everybody accepts it as true. It works very well with Christianity. After hearing so many times that Jesus dies for our sins and concurred the Death, redeemed us, it seems natural, but what is it supposed to mean?
Even Paul and Gospels seem confused as they give two theories for what it means. According to one Jesus was the Passover lamb. Blood of the lamb protected from the Angel of Death in the Day (in fact, a Night) of the Lord. This theory implies by analogy that the Chosen were to be protected from the Angle of Death, which seems to imply that the First Roman-Jewish war was the Day of the Lord. The Chosen should have been lead to a new Promised Land, which may be explained as spreading the good message to the world. Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple, which supports the idea of the new Moses leading a new Promised People to new Promised Land. The destruction of the temple is foretold in Daniel, so we can accept that Jesus predicted it and this prophesy was not written after the event, as is often assumed. But there is a problem with this explanation for Jesus’ mission. While one may interpret that the blood of the lamb redeemed the sins and protected in that special way, lamb’s blood was not drunken, doorways were marked with it. Jesus told the disciples to drink his blood, so this theory does not match Jesus’ words exactly.
The other theory is that Jesus redeemed the original sin of Adam. As the punishment of the original sin was death, redeeming the sin removed the death. Therefore the Messiah had to rise from death. Crucifixion of the Messiah had been told in Isaiah, or so it was understood at that time. As people died also after the sacrifice, there had to be an intermediate period where the Death still seems to exist, while it is conquered. Logically, the Messiah must come again to signal the end of the intermediate period. Drinking blood fits much better to this theory that to the Passover lamb alternative. Life is in the blood, so eating what is alive gives life. Drinking blood was forbidden, a taboo, and punishable by death, but the Messiah took the punishment. Breaking a taboo also brigs power and with this power the believer obtains the eternal life. At the same time the command of El, that the firstborn son must be sacrificed, is fulfilled. As prophets forbid sacrificing own children, but El’s command had to be obeyed, only the Messiah must die. Jesus’ command to drink his blood and his words of Eternal life fit only this explanation in the context of Jewish scriptures and they also agree with Jewish magic, like a ban to approach God empty-handed implying that a sacrifice was mandatory in any magic where the spirit approached was God. This must have been the primary meaning of Jesus’ mission and the Passover lamb was a secondary meaning. Paul and Gospels have a quite correct view on this.
Clearly them Jesus was not seeing his mission only as political restoration of Israel’s independence from Rome, nor only as fulfillment of the promise that if the people obey the law they can live in the country, but if they break the law, they will be under another power.
The actual mission was based on spiritual concepts that seem unrealistic for a modern skeptic: there is the original sin; it can be redeemed by a human sacrifice; the redemption conquers the death so that there is eternal life; there are ends of times; the times ended around 30 AD; there is the Day of the Lord; and the Messiah has risen from death and will come again. That is Christianity, but can it be true in the real sense?
So, what if, does it lead to contradictions or to a possible scenario?
Can the death be conquered? Earlier in human history the answer would have been no, but today we are not so sure. Medicine and technology is advancing rapidly. It is just barely possible that in one-two hundred years, or maybe sooner, this could be possible. The times have changed in last hundred or so years. What was impossible is not so any more.
What if the times ended around 30 AD? If we agree that the times have changed in rather recent history, not yet in 1800, nor yet in 1900, but maybe in 2000, and agree that since 2000 or so we live in a new era, and use the Jewish way of counting 2000 years for an era, then the times did change around zero AD. Nothing special happened then, but it feels that today something special has happened to humanity. How could ancient Jews have known it? Maybe it was not Jews, they borrowed from more advanced cultures. Maybe there is some reason depending on human population growth and cultural development in agricultural societies why it took about 2000 years to reach a new stage. Maybe some reason was known why this should be so, but as all knowledge was secret, we never learned it. Let us notice that 2000 years is about 66.6 generations, a number of a man. So, it is possible that a new era started around 30 AD.
What about the primeval sin? That seems like an outlandish concept, but wait. The punishment for the sin is death. The reason there is death is that there are births, that is, without death the earth fills up. The reason for births (for us) is sex. Some religions, including Christianity, were quite against sex. At the moment we can in some countries control births so that the population does not need to grow even if the death rate is reduced. Maybe it could be reduced to zero, meaning that the birth rate must also go to zero, but there still can be sex. It is indeed possible to remove the primeval sin of sex causing births, which is the reason for death. So, this is not outlandish.
The death is redemption of the primeval sin of birth. Redeeming this sin by birth control allows eternal life as soon as medicine or technology makes it possible. Economy can tolerate zero growth since machines do most of the work and their development does not need to be halted.
This kind of a possibility was not there in the time of Jesus. Thus, there had to be the intermediate period, an era. Death did not disappear after the sacrifice of the Messiah though it was symbolically, or maybe theoretically, conquered. The Messiah must come again since the eternal life is possible only after a long time.
Why the Messiah had to be sacrificed for this? The prophet-Messiah did symbolic things, which much later are realized as real things. He showed the Way. Death is a requirement for birth. Sacrifice may come from the basic mystery of agriculture: the best seeds are sacrificed by burying into ground so that new seeds grow, but this is only as long as there is death and birth. If the best seeds are sacrificed, or best genes have sex, make children and die, the population evolves to better, but if the Messiah already is perfect, there is no need for evolution. Stopping death and birth stops evolution. It should be done only after reaching a sufficiently perfect level.
What is the meaning of drinking the blood of the Messiah? The blood is teaching, meaning that genetic evolution is stopped but cultural can continue.
Why there has to he the Day of the Lord? It is because without a catastrophe there will be no pressure to a change. The change requires destroying the Bad and letting only the Good live. As this is a highly questionable, but necessary concept, in a zero birth and death rate society, there must be an intermediate era when the Good get better and the Bad get worse.
The Messiah will come again when the scientific and technical level allows creating the new world. Jesus did come in the signs of the sky in 66 AD, but that was only symbolic. The catastrophe of the Jewish war was only symbolic. The real Day of the Lord comes later.
There is also the concept of the sign of the covenant. The sign of the covenant of Noah was the rainbow and the taboo was drinking blood because the life was in blood and that era was forbidden from searching an eternal life, which had filled the earth in the previous era. This is explained in Sumerian sources that there as a overpopulation catastrophe in Sumer, after which people in the Levant started sacrificing their first born sons. It is something symbolic: death as redemption of life. I do not understand this sign issue yet and will not try to make any sense of it, but in general is seems to me that there can be an understanding of the Christian way of reading Jesus which is not impossible or outlandish, despite the strange religious concepts that initially abhor any skeptic.