Fabricating the Jesus Story –
"Mark": Bringing the Celestial Superjew Down to Earth
From Future to Past, from Sky to Earth
Between the era of the Maccabees and Bar Kochbar's war (approximately 160 BC to 135 AD) the increasingly radicalised factions of the Jews were animated by an expected warrior/priest (or perhaps a warrior and a priest) who would lead the 'nation of Israel' in triumph. The expectation was thus of someone in the (imminent) future, no doubt of 'Davidic' or even 'divine' lineage but otherwise, human.
This monumental hope/expectation was equalled only by the monstrous calamities of 69-73 AD, 114-117 AD and 132-135 AD. Respectively, these three conflicts:
1. destroyed the Temple, its priesthood, the city of Jerusalem and Judaean 'temple-economy';
2. destroyed, impoverished, enslaved and disheartened Jews of the 'diaspora';
3. destroyed dozens of towns and hundreds of villages throughout Palestine, decimating the Jewish population and leading to the enslavement of tens of thousands.
With this in mind, we should not relate Mark to a spurious 'persecution of Christians by Nero' (a reasoning favoured by Christian writers) – but to the very real suffering of a whole nation. Judaism itself was against the wall. The weakness of its position had been exposed. The Hebrew god had always punished his chosen people because they had failed him: they had not obeyed the Law. But always the Jews had redeemed themselves – and lived to transgress again. But in 135AD Judaea was wiped off the map and the nation dispersed. For any individual Jew, the heart of the problem was that the 'covenant' was between the Jewish god and the whole nation of Israel. All had to observe Righteousness. The errors of one bad apple imperilled the whole people.
With the ultimate disaster of 135 AD, for many unhappy Jews the theology of a 'national salvation' (or none at all) no longer gave hope. As Josephus said, God was now with the Romans; he remained a Jew but reasoned the caesars were god's instrument of retribution. No doubt many despondent Jews apostasised and adopted one or other of the pagan faiths. At this low point, the need was thus created for a radical revision of the Jewish faith. The nation of Israel might perish but surely a 'way' could be found for the pious to save themselves? The answer was a new covenant between the individual and his god, for a path to a personal salvation –similar to that on offer from the pagan mysteries.
As the dispersed and desparate bands of Jews struggled with the problem, they must surely have asked, 'How had (Jewish) scripture failed them so badly?' Rather than doubt the veracity of their 'ancient oracles', priests, safeguarding their future role, deliberated and reached the conclusion that the fault was not in the texts but in the Jews themselves.
On cue, as foretold, the Messiah had arrived! – but the Jewish nation – the Jews collectively – had failed to recognize him!! As a result. the ferocious god Yahweh, had punished the Jews even more mercilessly than he had punished them in the past.
The disaster now made perfect sense. And hope could return. If the righteous individual were to worship this erstwhile messiah, that individual, at least, could be assured of a place in the 'new Israel'. Having decided on the theology, the questions naturely arose, 'Who had been the lost Messiah?' and 'Why had he not been recognised?'
Here, new meanings teased out of old scripture (in good 'midrash' tradition) provided the answer: he would have been in disguise; he would have concealled his messiahship.
The new theology needed to be weaved into a convincing story, one that could be read aloud to groups of dispirited Jews. From the moment the proto-Christian priests adopted the conviction that a messiah had been and gone, the hunt was on to identify the missed saviour. Temple records and much else had been lost in the wars (some, of course, secreted away in jars at Qumran to be discovered twenty centuries later) but fragments, half-remembered stories and the rich corpus of pagan mythology would provide the missing detail. If the letters of Rabbi Saul were available to them at all, they contributed only the popular gnostic idea that the 'risen Christ' reigned in heaven and was a wholely spiritual agency, who would descend on a cloud at the End Time.
For the proto-Christians this arrival would be a second coming; they were about to fabricate the first.
In the story that emerged, the Gospel of Mark, essentially, the author composites more than fifty 'micro-stories' (mainly healings and miracles, of the type told of Apollonius), sandwiched between a put-down of John the Baptist (whose followers were serious rivals to the early proto-Christians) and a dying-saviour sequence (of the kind then being officially promoted for the dead Antinous.
The Lost Messiah
In resolving the theological conundrum that 'the messiah had been but had gone unrecognised' Mark has to have his hero perform endless miracles but then command the persons healed, onlookers, disciples, and even demons to silence (1.34; 1.44; 3.12; 5.43; 7.36; 8.26; 8.30; 9.9). The entity that brings the Word tells them all to keep quite about it! Of course, this introduces an inconsistency – whole towns witness his deeds! – but then inconsistency permeates the entire bible.
Mark's short story is one of suffering (and the Jews were suffering), leading to a place in the soon to arrive 'Kingdom of God ' for believers. Mark begins building his Jesus based upon the 'suffering servant' of Isaiah.
'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.' (1.15)
The hope therefore is that the present agonies will soon end.
But in this first of the gospels, there is no geneology; there is no star, no nativity pageant, no Bethlehem. Mary is mentioned by name once only (probably a later interpolation) and Joseph not at all. Jesus actually disowns his family (3.31,35); they in turn think he's gone mad (3.21). This can hardly be the Mary visited by an archangel, who 'rejoices' in the 'great things done to her' when she receives her divine pregnancy! There is no flight to Egypt, nor murder of babies, no 12-year-old in the Temple. None of this has yet been written.
Nor has Mark's Jesus yet become the perfect being of the later gospels. His hero is a 'Son of God' but nonetheless one with human characteristics. His Jesus appears sorrowful (14:34), disappointed (8:12), displeased (10:14), angry (11:15–17), amazed (6:6), and fatigued (4:38). In Nazareth, he was unable to do 'powerful work' because he was not believed in. 'Like a dove' the holy spirit had descended on him at baptism; presumably before this he had been a mere mortal.
The first half of Mark (chapters 1 - 9) is a catalogue of miracles and exorcisms, quite a lot of it repetitive (he uses the word 'immediately' more than 40 times!), plus a whole bunch of parables, which serve only to baffle his followers. Taking a more theatrical turn, Mark has his Jesus 'transfigure' into a glowing figure on a convenient mountain top where he is addressed by a speaking cloud confirming him as Son of God. Thereafter, Jesus resumes the role of peramulating exorcist on the road to Jerusalem.
There follows a curious chapter of 'End Time' prophecy (chapter 13): Why the prophecy at all? It was widely known that Jesus ben Anania, in 62AD, had made such a ‘correct’ prophecy (as recorded by Josephus in 79AD). Mark wanted his hero to have no less a gift of prophecy, so he took the most well-known example of a 'successful' prophecy of the time and re-worked it.
The world went on, despite the fall of the Temple, so Mark has Jesus say ‘the end shall not be yet.’ (13.7). Mark is discounting any idea that the destruction of the first Jewish war would havesignalled the ‘end time’ – indicative that he was writing long after conflict of 66-70AD. Famously, the godman says ‘ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars’, which nicely covers all the subsequent rebellions of the early decades of the second century.
All this ‘prophecy’ of the so-called ‘little Apocalypse’ of Mark 13 actually fits much better a later date.
The clues are there: 1. ‘false' Christs:
‘false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.’(13,22)
This reference fits Simon Bar Kockba, better than any other ‘falsh prophet’. Many beside himself considered him the Messiah and, with the blessing of the High Priest, Bar Kockba led the war against Rome from 132-135 AD. He was said to have spewed fire from his mouth – not a particularly difficult ‘wonder’ to have learnt.
The remainder of Mark is taken up with 'the Passion' and oddly, the original Mark ends abruptly – and without sight of any resurrected Christ! Frightened women flee an empty tomb and 'tell no-one.' (16.8) Unabashed later Christian writers will add an improved, more satisfying ending.
The internal dating evidence for Mark comes from the fact that Mark has his Jesus ‘prophesy’ the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Mark makes it the last public discourse of Jesus before his arrest:
‘And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down…’ Mark 13.2
Christian writers (as early as Ireneus) have used this earlist possible date for Mark as definitive – making the jump that as there are no obvious references to events later than 70 AD, we have Mark’s date of origin. However, a well-known event like the fall of the Temple could have been placed in the story anytime after it had occurred, as early as 70 AD – or as late as 170AD !
The real clues are more cryptic:
2: persecution, especially persecution from Jews:
‘for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten…’(13.9)
In the 90s the Jews first introduced a curse upon ‘apostates’ and Jewish hostility to the Jewish/Christian heretics was greatest between 100 - 120AD.The second Jewish war, unfortunately, did not have its Josephus to record the events but it was, in fact, a larger conflict. It had the more profound consequence of wiping Judaea off the map.
A final clue is a cryptic reference from Daniel 9.27 which in the original referred to Antiochus profaning the Temple of Jerusalem c.165 BC, with an image of Zeus.
‘The abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains: …And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.’(13.14,18)
Some have speculated this refers to Caligula’s intention of placing of a statue of himself in the Temple announced in 40 AD. But the statue was never erected; Caligula was assassinated in 41AD. Now in fact Hadrian purposefully modelled himself on Antiochus Epiphanes and the catalyst for the second Jewish revolt was his erection of not merely a statue of Zeus/Jupiter, along with his own image, but an entire temple to the god. The most terrible war followed.
The little aside that Mark adds 'Let the reader understand' seems to indicate that he knows calling the temple of Jupiter 'an abomination' could be regarded as seditious, and Hadrian came down hard on the Jews after the war of 135AD. If Mark were just referring to the desolation caused by the first war, the aside does not make sense. Even the Romans, at least according to Josephus, were sorry about the destruction of the Temple.
One should also note that the reference to 'flight in winter' had specific meaning for the events of the second Jewish war. It was in winter that the Roman armies partially withdrew to regroup, making a flight possible. Nothing like this happened in winter time during the first war.
Thus we can piece together the sequence of events:
In the aftermath of the first Jewish War (66 - 73 C.E.) remnants of the Essenes, began calling themselves the 'Church of God'. Their now dead Teacher of Righteousness assumed retrospectively the mantle of the Messiah. Challenged as they were by gnostics (proponents of an entirely divine Christ) and in a desparate attempt to renew and widen their membership, they embarked on the process of romanticising the life of the half-forgotten hero. The process of 'creative biography' was not lost on the Paulites, working the ghettoes of the Greek cities.
From the onset of the war, refugees from Palestine had flooded into the city of Alexandria, taking their cults with them. Partisans of Paul’s ‘celestial superman’, agitating for support in the crowded Jewish settlements, faced their main challenge not from gnostics or Essene survivors but from the baptisers – both followers of John the Baptist and the sun-worshipping Therapeutae. Like the Paulites, the baptism factions had escaped the carnage of the war by refusing to be drawn into a fight with the Romans. The followers of John, with a real dead hero and martyr, presented the greater challenge.
CREATIVE BIOGRAPHY
Paul's death had left a void in the leadership of his 'gentile faction'. To preserve and defend themselves they wrote a story of a 'Jesus' character, inspired partly by the life and teachings of Paul himself. In what proved to be the most profound act of religious synthesis Paul’s Judaised pagan sun-god was given human form and placed in a recent past.
To win over the Baptists, a clever story was woven. Firstly, the baptist’s importance was acknowledged but John is conveniently quoted as saying that ‘one greater than he’ will follow (Mark 1.7). A less than celestial Jesus is then conjectured and given a connection to the baptist – Jesus, it would seem, like any other follower, had gone to John to be baptised! The ‘theology’ here is very weak – why would the superior and sinless Jesus have need of a baptism of repentence from the inferior, ‘born with sin,’ John? Apparently, at this point the Holy Spirit had worked its magic and had enlightened Jesus as to his mission (‘and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him’) (Mark 1.10) – and this, for the same Pauline Christ that had existed ‘since the world began’ and presumably knew a thing or two!
Nonetheless, the superiority of Jesus over John the baptist was demonstrated by the tale. John’s story was then closed off by his arrest (‘Now after that John was put in prison…’ (Mark 1.14). In less than three hundred words, the baptist was dispossed of! With John safely out the way, Jesus began his own ‘ministry,’ coming out of the shadows (or rather, the ether) and taking on a public role (in a Palestine, a half century earlier). The fictitious life of Jesus has been overlaid on the real life of John. The divine ‘eagle’ had landed.
Within a few years the legend – that a celestial Christ had actually lived on earth – had gained embellishments. The dead John had met a pretty dramatic end by beheading; no better way to upstage that fate than a torturous crucifixion. The problem was squaring that particular claim with Jewish scripture. Followers of Paul combed through the authoritative Greek/Jewish text, the Septuagint for an answer. They already had – from pagan sources – the notion that their hero went from life to death to life again. Now they sought out each and every ‘prophesy’ that could confirm that a fallen leader could and would be the anticipated Messiah. For them the crucial text was an obscure reference in Isaiah, to a ‘suffering lamb.’
This ‘prophesy’, from the long dead sage, did not wash with most Jews (it was a blantant wrenching out of context). But for the partisans of Christ it was enough to ‘prove’ the messiah would indeed be a ‘sacrifice’ rather than a conqueror. The embryonic crucifixion sequence in Mark is very brief (it takes up just eight verses from a total of six hundred and sixty five!), makes no mention of Jesus’s resurrection, and ends with frightened women fleeing from an empty tomb and saying nothing! (see J. Spong, Resurrection, p 59]
The Paulites could now defend the ignominy of their fallen hero’s wretched death by scripture – but they faced an uphill struggle. The later, Matthew re-write will add tomb guards, cast off burial clothes and ecstatic women – it is they who have the first, uplifting encounter with the risen Christ. But for the moment, the crucifixion/resurrection is a flimsy finale to a gospel taken up more with baptism.
If many Jews remained reluctant to accept that a ‘pacifist’ messiah had already lived and died it was because their vast messianic hopes in no way included a pathetic criminal, hanging limp on a cross. But for gentiles, with centuries of tradition of dying gods, the dramatic story had great appeal.
Kenneth Humphreys