The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Crisis of Christianity-4-5

Chapter IV - Dead Sea Scrolls II: Pauline Christianity

He will be called the Son of God; they will call him the son of the most High. Like the shooting stars that you saw, this will be their Kingdom. ...His Kingdom will be an Eternal Kingdom, and he will be Righteous in all his Ways. He will judge the earth in Righteousness.

A text from the Dead Sea Scrolls

1. Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospels: History and Propaganda

The new light shed by the Dead Sea Scrolls on the New Testament give us ground for believing that Christianity - or more accurately, Pauline Christianity - was the result of a successful power struggle waged by Paul against the sect known among other names as ‘Keepers of the Covenant', 'Congregation of the Poor', and 'Ebionites'. Its leader, as we already saw, was James, known as the 'Righteous'. Jesus was, at best, peripheral to this movement and the struggle, while James was its real leader. Over the centuries, the importance of James was gradually diminished by Christian writers until he came to be known simply as the 'Lord's brother'. Jesus became all-important - presented as the source from which Christianity sprang.

This is a radically new interpretation that follows from the research of modern Biblical scholars and historians, of Robert Eisenman in particular; it is no doubt an oversimplification of a more complex process. But whether or not this reading will prove to be correct in every detail, there can be little doubt that the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls - especially following their release to the public - has sounded the death knell of the orthodox position of Christianity. Let us next examine where the orthodox position on Christianity stands, and what the Scrolls have to say about it, beginning with the light which the early sources shed on Jesus, James and Paul.

A useful point to note is that unlike Jesus, James and other members of the early Church who were steeped in religious duties and concerns, Paul was a man wise to the ways of the largely secular Graeco-Roman world. He was Saul of Tarsus born into a wealthy Hellenised Jewish family and a Roman citizen - in short, a child of privilege. He possessed rights and connections that his co-religionists living in their cloistered communities in Jerusalem and Qumran could scarcely dream about. The Acts of the Apostles, of which Paul may be regarded the hero, shows him to have enjoyed the friendship of high Roman officials. As we already saw, Eisenman's research suggests that he was actually a Roman agent; as we explore further, we shall see that this has a high degree of probability. At this time, however, it is sufficient for us to note that Paul and the members of the early Church came from backgrounds that were worlds apart.

The orthodox position of Christianity has always been that Saul of Tarsus - later St Paul - took the message of Jesus Christ and spread it far and wide. An essential part of the governing ethos of Christianity is that Christ and his message were so radical that they posed a threat to the Jewish orthodoxy of his time. For this reason, we are told, the Jews engineered a coup against Jesus, eventually succeeding in eliminating him. This is the central myth of Christianity for which the Jews have been made to pay a terrible price.

But history, and now the Scrolls, do not support this fable of Christianity saddling the Jews with the crime of deicide. We have already seen that Christ saw himself not as the propounder of a new doctrine but as a staunch upholder of the old Law and the prophets. He was an ultra-orthodox Jew himself. Here is the famous passage again:

Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.

For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled.

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in Ihe kingdom of heaven.

Matthew, 5. 17-19.

These are the words of the Jesus of the Zealot tradition - a fundamentalist Jew with 'zeal for the Law' in the mould of Mattathias Maccabaeus. The Qumran text known as the 'Community Rule' echoes the same sentiment: "Do what is good and right before Him, as He commanded by the hand of Moses and all His servants the Prophets... Let him then order his steps to walk perfectly in all the ways commanded by God, ...straying neither to right nor to left... "[1]

This finds an echo in another recently published Qumran text called 'Admonitions to the Sons of Dawn': "Walking in perfection in all the Ways of God, which He commanded... and not straying either right or left, not treading on even one of His words." (Eisenman and Wise, p 163; original emphasis.)

Qumranian origins of the Gospels are obvious. But Paul, the urbane cosmopolitan citizen of the Roman Empire is altogether a different creature from the inhabitants of the closed community of Qumran with their 'zeal for the Law'. More Roman than Jewish, his vision is largely secular and expansionist. Not for him the anguish and sufferings in the name of the Law and the prophets. To his expansionist vision the stern and uncompromising Law of Moses held little attraction. He saw Jesus as being "cursed by the Law." (Galatians, 3.4) He wanted a simpler doctrine that would find wide acceptance, especially among the Gentiles. For this purpose he coined the doctrine of Faith in Jesus practically repudiating the Law and the prophets. Here is Paul:

Therefore by the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the Law is the knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God without the Law is manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the prophets;

Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.

Romam 3. 20-22.

According to Paul, faith in Jesus Christ is good enough as 'righteousness of God without the law is manifested' through Jesus. And this theme is taken further and stated more explicitly in Galatians.

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the Law: for by the works of the Law shall no works be justified.

(Emphasis added) Galatians 2. 16.

In this Paul essentially overthrows 'the Law' - all-important to Jesus (and the early Christians) - replacing it with his doctrine of Faith. As Paul sees it, "If Righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing." (Galatiam, 2.21) If anyone was a revolutionary, it was Paul not Jesus. And he even makes Jesus agree with him by putting the following words in his mouth:

My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 10. 9

The contrast between Jesus and Paul is indeed striking. Between "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfil" of Jesus, and "we may be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the Law" of Paul lies a whole universe - a universe animated by the ambition of Paul inspired by the example of the expansionist Roman Empire. Verily, Jesus was no revolutionary - if there was one it was Paul.

How are we to account for it - this great chasm between the word of Jesus of the Gospels and the vision of Paul claiming to be his apostle - his 'chosen vessel' as the Bible puts it? The only logical explanation is that Paul had embarked on his own program of expansion in the name of Jesus and Christ. He had taken the name of the essentially inward-looking puritanical sect of messianic (or 'Christian') expectations, and used it to launch an outward-looking expansionist ideology. In the process he jettisoned the all-important Law of Moses and replaced it with a much simpler doctrine of Faith in Jesus that he could more easily sell to a larger audience, especially the Gentiles.

This of course is something that the Jews of Qumran - the real companions of Jesus 'who burned with zeal for the Law' - would never accept. Paul's expansionist vision was more Roman than Jewish, and this brought him into immediate and violent conflict with the Qumran community. This becomes clear upon studying the Acts of Apostles alongside the Qumran texts.

Central to the new theology of Paul is Faith in Jesus, which disregards the Law and is even opposed to it. James, as the leader of the early Church of Jerusalem (and the Qumranians) would not tolerate this heretical position. For according to James "a man was justified by the works" and "faith without works is dead." (James 2.20-4) 'Works' here refers to the works of the Law. In opposition, Paul and his successors set up Jesus - said to be a Christ or Messiah - in whose faith the world was to be redeemed without the Law.

Who was this Jesus that Paul invoked, placing in his mouth words that were contrary to the beliefs of the sect from which he came? And what is the position of Jesus in history? To see this we need briefly to review the classical sources and the early Church histories.

2. Evidence of Classical Sources[2]

It is generally recognized by Biblical scholars and historians that the Gospels - the source from which what we are told of the life and teachings of Jesus is drawn - are highly unreliable as history. They make Jesus bestride the Holy Land like a colossus, but contemporary historical records - which are plentiful - take little notice of him. This is all the more surprising as we do find James mentioned in both Christian and non-Christian sources. There are a few stray references to Christ or Chrestus in Roman chronicles, but none to Jesus.[3] And these references reinforce the Qumran texts in suggesting that there was nothing unique about Jesus even if he existed.

The usage found in the works of all non-Christian authors - Pliny, Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius - suggest that the word Christ or Chrestus (from Greek Cristoz meaning messiah) was a generic term applied to members or leaders of a messianic cult which the Dead Sea Scrolls allow us identify with the Qumranian Zealots; it was not by any means the unique title of Jesus. It certainly cannot be taken to mean the 'surname' of Jesus as many scholars have done. From this assumption to claim that classical historians knew Jesus, who must therefore be a historical person is to jump to a conclusion on what is at best a circular argument. A few examples should help make this point clear.

Tacitus in his Annals of Imperial Rome (XV.44) written about AD 110 records that there was an attempt by Nero to blame the Christians for the burning of Rome which took place in AD 64 - that is to say, two years before the outbreak of the Jewish War. Tacitus goes on to add that the Christians were already hated by the people. As he tells us, speaking of Christians:

...the name is derived from Christ, whom the procurator Pontius Pilate had executed in the reign of Tiberius.. .

This, according to Tacitus, "temporarily suppressed the pernicious superstition. that was causing disturbances in Judaea: we can now identify this as a reference to the revolts being instigated by the Qumranian Zealots that culminated in the First Jewish War. 'Christian' literally means messianic which is exactly how the Qumranians thought of themselves.

The passage from Tacitus is no less interesting for what it leaves out than for what it has to say. To begin with, it does not mention the name Jesus, but only a 'Christ' or Messiah, who had been executed by the Roman procurator for some serious violation of Roman law. Then there is also no mention of the Jews as having played any part in his death. We can read this to mean that some leader of a messianic cult - the Zealots - was executed by the Romans for causing political disturbances in Judaea. His name may have been Jesus, but of that we can only speculate. Jesus was a very common name among the Jews of Palestine.

Nor is this the whole story. Writing only a few years later than Tacitus, Suetonius too knows a 'Chrestus' and Christians as troublemakers who had appeared in Rome in the reign of Claudius (Vita Claudii 25.4). Claudius, Suetonius tells us, had expelled the Jews from Rome "who had on the instigation of Chrestus continually been causing disturbances from Rome.. This again suggests that some Zealot leader calling himself Messiah or 'Chrestus' had appeared in Rome itself, instigating the Jews to rebel against Roman rule. And this was in the reign of Claudius, some years after Pontius Pilate serving under Tiberius had executed 'Christ' in c. AD 33; Claudius' injunction expelling the Jews from Rome was issued in AD 49, long after Tiberius who had died in AD 37. The two Christs were quite obviously different.

The Bible also mentions Claudius' injunction against the Jews: "...because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome.. (Acts /8.2)

A conclusion we may draw from all this is that Christ or Chrestus was a generic term applied to leaders of the messianic fundamentalist group - the one we now call Zealots. Those known by the title Christ were seen by Romans as troublemakers and rabble-rousers, following a 'pernicious superstition', not only when Pilate serving under Tiberius executed 'Christ' but also later, in the time of Claudius, when a Jewish rebel leader known as 'Chrestus' caused him to expel Jews from Rome.[4]

Remarkably, this fact - that there was nothing unique about the title Christ - finds support even in the Bible. The Gospel of Matthew warns not to be led away by competing Christs.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Matthew 24.5.

Then if any man shall say unto you, La, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders;

Matthew 24.23 - 24.

So we can see an effort in motion already in the Gospels to change the generic title Christ or Messiah into the exclusive attribute of Jesus. But all early sources, including the Bible, allow us only one conclusion: that Christ was a generic title used by the leaders of a messianic cult like the Qumranians.

These men were probably distinguished by their manner of preaching - messianic, apocalyptic, charismatic, even demagogic - threatening hellfire and end of the world that seems to have been a peculiarity of Biblical prophets. (One may see their kind in America even today, where it is big business. A few of them have their own television shows.) Our best guess is that preachers of this kind were known to outsiders as 'Christ' or 'Chrestus' just as we now use the term Yogi to mean one who practices Yoga - or claims to - and not any particular individual. All these - a whole tradition - was later made by Christian scribes to coalesce into a single personality identified with Jesus. A fuller study of the Qumran material now made available by the Huntington Library might help bring more such Christ/Chrestus personalities to light.

And these serve to highlight another point of great historical significance: the 'Christians' whom Roman historians like Tacitus, Suetonius and others record were not Christians as we understand the term today, but the early Christians - the Qumranian Zealots - the followers of an extremist messianic Jewish sect. These were the men responsible for the Jewish Wars of AD 66-74 and AD 132-5 in which both they and their faith perished. Thus, when the Church today accuses Nero (AD 54-68) of persecuting the Christians, even if a fact, it could only apply to the members of the early Church - to wit, the Qumranian Zealots.

It helps also to recognize that the Jewish War itself broke out in AD 66, when Nero was the reigning emperor. Thus, his supposed hostility to the 'Christians' of his day was military and political rather than religious. Romans were tolerant in religious matters. The same was true of Nero, at least during the early years of his reign. It would not be inaccurate to say that it was the Christians who for the first time introduced religious persecution on a large scale which they later went on to attribute to everybody else - especially the unhappy Jews - while themselves posing as victims. This is a classic case of blaming the victims.

It is necessary to draw attention to another important fact: since the original or the 'early Christians' perished in the Jewish Wars, the struggles between Rome and the Christians involved mainly these early Christians. The modern Church - which is descended from Pauline Christianity and not the early Church of Jerusalem - never opposed Rome. Paul, the founding father of modern Christianity, was himself a privileged Roman who was seen as a renegade by the early Christians, including their leader James. The modern Church has built fables of martyrdom around Nero's supposed persecution of Christians while suppressing this important historical distinction. And the charade continues today in the suppression of the Qumran material that is now threatening to blow the whole thing apart.

The Church itself should be seen as the successor to the Roman Empire, not the 'Congregation of the Poor' (also a Qumranian term) as the early Church called itself; absurdly, so too does the Vatican today. The Pope is the modern Caesar - more Nero than St Peter. He even dons the resplendent purple robe of the Caesars in preference to the simple fisherman's attire of Peter, and rightly so. He even carries the title 'Pontifex Maximus' of the pagan emperors.

3. Josephus on James and Jesus

To return to the early sources, we are not noticeably better off when we turn to Jewish historians of the period including Flavius Josephus (c. AD 37 - 105) - the greatest of them. The following widely quoted passage is found in his Antiquities of the Jews (VIII, 111.3):

Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, ...He was Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of many of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross (April 3, AD 33), those that loved him at first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day (April 5, AD 33)...

The dates inserted are those held by the modern Church and not given by Josephus. The whole passage is blatantly a later interpolation. Even a staunch upholder of Christian tradition like William Sanford LaSor of the Fuller Theological Seminary is forced to concede:[5]

Most modern scholars would deny the authenticity of the passage, claiming either (a) that it was wholly a Christian interpolation or (b) that it was worked over by Christian hands.

Or in plain English - it is a forgery. Origen, a Church historian of the third century is emphatic that Josephus did not regard Jesus as Christ, which would thus contradict the whole passage. But we already see a sinister pattern at play, shifting the blame for the death of Jesus from the Romans to the Jews by claiming 'many of the principal men amongst us' in the passage just quoted, implying that the Jews had caused Jesus to be executed.

There is one other reference to Jesus, an incidental one, also in his Antiquities of the Jews (XX. IX.1). It goes:

So he [Ananus, the High Priest] assembled the sanhedrim [assembly) of the judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, ...and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned...

The accusation against James - that he was guilty of breaking the Jewish Law - is not credible. Several independent sources are emphatic that James, known as the 'Righteous' was considered a holy man - not the kind to break the Law of Moses. His being stoned to death on orders from the Jewish High Priest is no doubt part of the same plan - to shift as much blame as possible on to the Jews. This account - of James being stoned on the orders of the High Priest - is also contradicted by other early accounts - including those of the early Church historian Eusebius and the ancient work known as the Recognitions of Clement. James emphatically was not stoned to death by the Jews.

As we saw in a previous section, these early sources tell us that James fell victim to an attack while engaged preaching in the Temple. As we also saw, Eisenman's research indicates that the attack on James might have been led by his rival Paul. It has also been noted that Josephus mentions one 'Saul' as having acted as an intermediary in inviting the Romans to attack Jerusalem; Saul of course was the name of St Paul before his conversion. In the circumstances, it would be entirely in order for Christian scribes to shift the blame for the death of James from Paul to the Jews. Otherwise it would be a major embarrassment - to acknowledge that James, the 'Lord's brother', was assassinated in the Temple by St Paul and his followers!

This shifting of the blame on to the Jews was initiated by Paul himself when he accused them of having “put the Lord Jesus to death... making themselves enemies of the whole human race." (1 Thessalonians, 2.15)

As far as the passage in Josephus' Antiquities is concerned, we may again profitably turn to Dr LaSor for the orthodox Christian view:

Scholars are generally convinced that editors have worked over these passages. In my opinion, a reasonable position is taken by the great translator of Josephus, H. St John Thackeray, who holds that the passages are the work of Josephus, and that a Christian censor or copyist has made slight omissions and alterations that have distorted the original account, giving it a “wholly different complexion.” (ibid.)

This is highly unsatisfactory, leaving us in the middle of nowhere. We have no way of knowing if the crucial phrase 'the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ' is a later interpolation or not. Actually, there is more to this passage than meets the eye. We know from earlier references to it that it has been doctored by Christian hands. As I have already pointed out, early Church historians like Eusebius and Origen know the passage but give a different reading. And Eusebius cites other early works - now lost - that also mention James, but not Jesus.

All this is strong indication that the passage in Josephus as known in their time contained a reference to James but not to Jesus. The above account of the death of James - by stoning on the orders of the High Priest - contradicts not only other early accounts, but also the account given by Josephus himself as known to historians of the first four centuries of Christianity. The passage therefore is worthless as it stands; it has been doctored. Eusebius is known to have tampered with Josphus' works to suit his propaganda purposes. He may himself have been responsible for some of these interpolations. But even Eusebius concedes that the Ebionites (the early Christians) did not hold Jesus to be divine. (Proclamation of the divinity of Jesus at the Council of Nicea in AD 325 was a political act by Constantine and Eusebius. See Chapter VlII.)

This admission by Eusebius - conceding that his contemporaries did not regard Jesus as divine - has explosive potential. Origen goes so far as to say that many, including Josephus, did not even regard him a Messiah. Eusebius does not bother to tell us if Jesus did exist historically or if he was a creation of Paul. (As the Bishop of Caesarea in the time of Constantine he could hardly deny Jesus' historicity.) Significantly, studying the early Church against the background of the Scrolls tells us that Jesus played no part in their institution. The early Church gains nothing by Jesus and would suffer no loss if he were removed. Pauline Christianity on the other hand can hardly exist without Jesus. As Eisenman and Wise describe it (p. 234), drawing heavily upon Eusebius:

They [early Christians] also insisted on the complete observance of the Law, nor did they think one could be saved only by 'faith in Christ and a corresponding life.' Rather 'they evinced great zeal to observe the literal sense of the Law...' Paul, they considered 'an apostate from the Law. ' (Original emphasis.)

And rightly so. The conclusion that I am forced to draw is: much of Church 'history' is part of the effort by later Christian scribes to reduce the importance of James and exalt Jesus. They created a Jesus - either wholly fictional, or an exalted version of a relatively unimportant figure - and made him tower over James who was the real leader of the early Christians and the Church of Jerusalem. For it is James, not Jesus who finds mention as a martyr in the works of early authors like Josephus (as known to Eusebius and others) as well as the ancient work 'Recognitions of Clement '.

An unnamed James like figure is found also in the Scrolls - the Habakkuk Commentary in particular. We already saw that the Habakkuk Commentary has served as a major source for the New Testament authors. We shall see later that it was also the source of Paul's great invention - the Doctrine of the Faith. The Scrolls transcripts released by the Huntington Library and Eisenman will surely help clarify the picture further.

In summary: James, the 'Lord's brother', who lived in Qumran and was martyred while preaching is undoubtedly historical, but we are less sure about the Lord himself.[6]

All this brings up a very basic question: if Jesus were really historical, where was the need to forge and fabricate evidence in order to vouch for his existence? It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the Christian scribes themselves must have felt doubts about his historicity, leading them to indulge in forgery on a massive scale. Pagan scholars and historians ridiculed the Christians for being so clumsy in creating the character of Jesus. And pagan Greeks and Romans routinely accused them of harbouring a 'pernicious superstition' .

Christian scribes have undoubtedly been the most inveterate forgers in history, with the infamous 'Donation of Constantine' to show for their masterpiece. For the moment, however, we can afford to be generous and allow that Josephus records the existence of a Jesus, the brother of James, who was called Christ. And this is the sole evidence we have for Jesus in early non-Christian sources. So, even if he was a historical figure, Jesus was not seen as anyone important even by Jewish historians, let alone the awe inspiring colossus of the age that the Gospels make him out to be.[7]

There is something else also of interest. In the passage in question, Josephus is speaking of the trial of James who he tells us was sentenced to be stoned (which was probably not true). Even if the account is false it highlights two things. First, for any violation of Jewish law in Jerusalem, the High Priest of the Temple had full authority to try and sentence all those who came under his jurisdiction; the Romans did not interfere in strictly Jewish affairs. Secondly, execution of criminals under Jewish law was by stoning, not crucifixion. As a result, if the account of the trial and death of Jesus given in the Gospels has any truth at all, it is that he had committed no crime under Jewish law. Crucifixion was the Roman method of execution. If Jesus was guilty of anything, he was guilty under Roman law of a crime that lay beyond the jurisdiction of the Jewish High Priest.

It follows therefore that the Jews had nothing to do with the death of Jesus, even assuming it to be historical. On this Josephus and Tacitus are in complete agreement. Pinning the blame for the death of Jesus on the Jews is blatantly a later fabrication for which they have been made to pay a terrible price. It is the forgers again doing their nefarious work.

This casual (and dubious) reference to Jesus is the only one to be found in the vast body of historical writing available for the period. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Josephus the Jew, writing the history of his people would have had more to say about him had Jesus been the founder of a major religious sect - and that too around the time of the First Jewish War in which Josephus was himself a participant as a commander of Jewish forces. All Josephus has to tell us is that Jesus was called a Christ, or Messiah - even assuming the passage in the Antiquiries to be authentic. There is absolutely nothing about his divinity or importance - only that he was called Messiah, which, in light of what we now know from the Qumran texts only means that he was a leader or teacher belonging to the messianic Qumran community. Even this is contradicted by Origen who tells us that Josephus did not regard Jesus as a Messiah. All other references to Jesus, especially in Christian records, must be seen as later additions.

It is also worth noting that the great Rabbi Bar Hillel who is known to have lived during the period makes no mention of Jesus or his crucifixion. Hillel himself finds mention in the Bible under his Greek name of 'Ainon' where he is said to have been baptised by John the Baptist. (John 3.23) Hillel was close to Essene practices and might have been one himself. He was an important figure of the 'New Covenant' or the early Church. This tells us how far removed early Christianity was from the later Pauline Christianity.

4. 'Son of God' in the Dead Sea Scrolls

As we saw in previous sections, the idea of the messianic 'Teacher of Righteousness' who was persecuted and killed appears not only in the Scrolls, but also in the Book of Enoch that was once part of the Bible. It is now clear that the idea of the Messiah who would appear amongst them and would later suffer persecution was a common expectation amongst the Jews of Palestine at the time. As Eisenman and Wise point out (p. 18) the "very strong Messianic thrust of many of the materials associated with Qumran has been largely overlooked by commentators..." A Qumran text known as the 'Son of God' tells us:

(Eisenman and Wise, p. 70)

This is a potentially explosive discovery coming from Qumran. This idea of the Righteous Son of God that was already in the air was lifted by the authors of the Gospels who went on to present Jesus as the fulfilment of these messianic expectations. They later went on to claim both originality and uniqueness for the whole concept by attempting to destroy all earlier sources. They largely succeeded in this effort, especially after the fourth century when they managed to gain control of the Roman Empire. Prior to that, during the first three centuries of Christianity, pagan historians and scholars ridiculed the efforts of Christians as bad myth creation.

At this point it is not necessary to say anything more on the crucial question of the historicity of Jesus except that he is unimportant, and even unneeded for early Christianity. It is enough to note that the late John Marco Allegro who was a member of the International Team, tended to regard Jesus as a mythical figure. As one of the few scholars who had access to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Allegro's views must be accorded some weight. Allegro's views on the subject - then ridiculed by the Church 'establishment' - receives support from the texts made public by Eisenman. This is clear from the passage from Eisenman and Wise cited above.

The final word on the subject must await fuller examination of the Qumran texts that have only recently been freed from the stranglehold of the Ecole Biblique. But the conduct of Biblical scholars familiar with the Qumran texts of the period of early Christianity leads one to suppose that they do not contain anything in support of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, they would hardly have gone to such lengths to hide the Scrolls from public view.

Christian propagandists - especially the authors of the Gospels - borrowed wholesale from Qumran texts and showered Jesus with titles like 'Christ', 'Son of God', 'Son of the Most High', 'Son of Man', and others claiming him to be the unique possessor of those attributes. History, and now the Qumran texts, do not support these claims. As we just saw, every one of these titles appears in the Qumran texts in connection with the 'Teacher of Righteousness' going back at least a century before the birth of Jesus. Jesus, if historical, was not even peripheral to early Christianity. lts leader was James, known as 'The Righteous', one who was 'Zealous for the Law' and said, "Faith without works is dead." Paul of course was violently opposed to this and saw the Law as an obstacle to his expansionist goals.

If there is a trace of truth in the Gospels - it is that Jesus, if historical, was executed by the Romans for some violation of Roman law; the Jews of the period were totally innocent of it. It is difficult to think of a more monstrous falsification in the history of the world.

5. Rome, the Home of Forgeries

All this bears testimony to the fact that the writings of Christian historians must be treated with utmost caution, for the whole history of the Church is riddled with calculated forgeries and falsifications. For seven centuries and more the Greeks called Rome the home of forgeries. The most famous Church forgery is of course the so-called Donation of Constantine. The Decretum by Gratian of Bologna, though less well known than the notorious Donation has been far more influential. While the Donation has little relevance today, the Decretum continues to exercise great influence on Church doctrine and practices. Here is what Peter de Rosa, a Catholic scholar and former priest had to say about Church sponsored forgeries, the Decretum in particular:

...the documents forged in Rome at this time [before c. AD 11OO] were systematised in the mid-1100s at Bologna by Gratian, a Benedictine monk. His Decretum or the Code of Canon Law, was easily the most influential book ever written by a Catholic. It was peppered with three centuries of forgeries and conclusions drawn from them, with his own fictional additions. Of the 324 passages he quotes from Popes of the first four centuries, only eleven are genuine. (Emphasis added.)

Gratian remarkably invented a way of extending papal power. The Pope, he declared to Rome's approval, is superior to and the source of all laws without qualification. He must, therefore, stand on equality with the Son of God. This apotheosis became the inspiration of the Curia [Vatican administration] which acted in the Pope's name. Every pen-pusher was, in some sense, a god.

(de Rosa, p. 82; original emphasis.)

So much for the Only Son of God! This would suggest that every minor minion in the pay of the Curia could upstage him. Poor Jesus! He has been turned into little more than a useful mascot to help push the Church's political and economic agenda - a poster boy for its propaganda. And this trend was started by St Paul himself - the 'chosen vessel' unto Jesus. Not for nothing did Ram Swarup call Christianity a religion of God-substitutes. And here is what de Rosa has to say about that super God-substitute, Thomas Aquinas.

Looking further ahead to the thirteenth century, the Decretum was Thomas Aquinas' source-book for quotes from the Fathers and the Popes when he came to write his masterly Summa Theologica, the second most renowned work by a Catholic. Aquinas, who knew little or no Greek, was led astray by Gratian, especially in regard to the papacy. Aquinas, of course, had immense influence on the church, especially during the First Vatican Council when papal infallibility was defined.

(de Rosa, pp. 82-3)

It was not until 1789 that Pius VI, in response to an inquiry from the German bishops, admitted that the Decretals were a forgery. The admission was nine centuries overdue.

(Ibid. p. 242)

It is remarkable that even after this admission by Pius VI in 1789, the Decretals and the works of Thomas Aquinas were permitted to play a major role in the declarations of the First Vatican in 1869-70. Incorrigibility, it seems, has no limit as far as the Church is concerned. Martin Luther for one was infuriated when he learnt that most of the demands that were being made by Rome were based on nothing but forgeries - from the exalted Donation of Constantine to the works of Thomas Aquinas.

When examined critically, the whole foundation of the Church _ from the Gospels' charge against the Jews of the murder of Jesus, to the Decretals of Gratian, to the theology of Thomas Aquinas - is seen to rest on nothing but a welter of lies. With this awesome record of forgery and falsification, admitted by the Church itself, not the slightest trust can be placed in any official pronouncement coming out of the Church. The Church is first and foremost a propaganda machine that serves itself in the name of serving Jesus. This is as true today as it was a thousand years ago, for old habits die hard; in any event, having no spiritual message worth the name there is little else the Church can do to fill its coffers and feed its employees. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Christian scholarship has excelled more at forgery than anything else.

There have been other major falsifications by the Church of which I shall only mention two. In AD 391, 'Saint' Cyril and his gang burned down the great library at the neo-Platonic centre of learning in Alexandria. He and his hooligans later went on to murder Hypatia, one of the greatest scholars of the age. The crime of burning the library in Alexandria was later transferred by Christian propagandists to the Arabs. Caliph Omar was accused of ordering the burning of the library of Alexandria when the city fell to him in AD 642. The following words were attributed to him by Christian propagandists: "If the books in Alexandria are in agreement with the Qu'ran they are superfluous. If on the other hand they are contrary to Muhammad's book they are impious. In either case there is no need to preserve the library. It must be burnt." Perhaps a majority of people in the world still believe this canard.

Then there is the myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple created and propagated by the Church in India. The story of St Thomas in India was invented by Syrian Christians of Malabar to give themselves a local patron saint. It was later taken over by the Portuguese Jesuits in their campaign to vilify the Brahmins as persecutors of pious Christians. The fact that the Portuguese held an Inquisition in Goa at which many innocent people were tortured and executed for heresy is seldom mentioned in history books. St Xavier - 'the patron saint of pirates' as one Indian scholar has called him - played a distinguished role in the burning of innocent villagers - especially Brahmin priests - as heretics.

Also to be noted is that all this was part of the aggressive propaganda campaign launched by the Portuguese during their attempted colonisation of India when they destroyed numerous Hindu temples in Mylapore and other areas. Had the great Vijayanagar empire not been there to thwart Portuguese designs in the sixteenth century, at a time when their expansionist urge was at its peak, the situation would have been greatly worse. In creating such myths the Church has shown recognition of the fact that offence is often the best defense: pose as a victim after every successful aggression. The myth has been exposed and exploded by the Canadian scholar Ishwar Sharan in a recent book.[8] All this record was nicely summed up in the following words by the Church historian Peter de Rosa:

History explodes the myth of a papacy lily-white in the matter of truth. In the age of barbarism, the Popes led the pack; in an age of enlightenment, they trailed the field.

(de Rosa, p. 210)

In the last couple of years, especially following Eisenman's successful publication of the Scrolls, the Church has mounted a major propaganda offensive in the media, including shows and interviews on network television, claiming that the Dead Sea Scrolls do not alter the picture of Christianity that it has officially projected. The record of the Church in matters relating to doctrine as well as history over the last two thousand years make this claim, or any of its claims impossible to accept. This can only be seen as an attempt at damage control following the release of the Scrolls transcripts by the Huntington Library (and Eisenman). Then there is the undeniable fact that the Ecole Biblique covered up its findings about the Scrolls, denying access to all but a few of its own for more than forty years.

The natural question is: where was the need to engage in this massive and prolonged cover-up if it had nothing to cover up?

6. Church Propaganda Machine

All this highlights the fact that from the earliest times, the Church has been acutely aware of the value of aggressive propaganda and entirely unscrupulous about tampering with records and fabricating myths as needed. The Roman Catholic Church has probably been the most successful propaganda outfit in the history of the world. Already in the Gospels, we see in motion a systematic effort to shift the blame for the crucifixion of Christ away from the Romans to the Jews. Church propagandists recognized that it was not in their interest to antagonise the mighty Rome. In consequence, Jesus the orthodox Jew was turned into Jesus the rebel and heretic, persecuted by his own people. And one of the most successful propagandists in history was Paul, the true creator of Christianity as we know it. It was Paul who gave the world the dictum: "I am made all things to all men" - to be faithfully followed by politicians everywhere.

Paul also correctly saw that the Qumranian brand of Christianity - narrow and backward looking - had little chance of success in the rest of the Roman Empire. Where the Qumranian vision was inward-looking and conservative, Paul's vision was broad and cosmopolitan. While the Qumranians regarded Rome as the enemy to be driven out of Palestine, Paul knew something that the Zealots living in their cloistered world did not: Rome was invincible. His plan was to use the stirrings within Judaism to create a new world ideology modeled on the expansionist Roman Empire. He succeeded in creating a theological empire within the empire that later went on to subvert Rome itself.

As with Prophet Muhammad half a millennium later, religion for Paul was to serve the needs of politics; he did not see the two as separate. Just as the Prophet used Allah as the source of his authority in extending his political influence, Paul invoked the name of Jesus - the only Son of God - to propagate his expansionist ideology. Paul's vision was fully vindicated when the Roman emperor Constantine himself extended recognition to Christianity in AD 325 as part of a political bargain; until that time Christians had been regarded with justification as a motley group composed mainly of unruly and anti-social elements. And the transformation was complete when Theodosius banned all forms of public worship other than the Christian on November 8, AD 392. With this, the secular and free-spirited Roman Empire was turned into a theocracy of the narrowest kind, soon to plunge Europe into a Dark Age from which it did not begin to come out for a thousand years.

It is now time to take a look at this remarkable man and how he managed to bring off this coup. For this we need to look at the ACIS of the Apostles and the epistles of Paul.

7. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles

While the Gospels are highly unreliable as history, the book of the New Testament known as the Acts of the Apostles does contain a historical core, though heavily coloured by the needs of Christian propaganda. Nevertheless, when studied alongside the Qumran documents, Acts provides an interesting picture of the struggles between the leaders of the early Church and Paul, and how the backward looking ultra-orthodox Jewish sect of early Christianity gave way to the expansionist Pauline Christianity.

From the Acts we get a remarkably vivid picture of the personality of Paul - urbane, innovative, energetic and pragmatic - a propagandist of genius rather than a devout or even a religious man. Clearly, the author of the Acts - Luke, the 'beloved physician' - was a narrator of no mean ability. At the same lime it raises some serious questions about the actual role played by Paul - whether he was acting in the interests of the Roman Empire of which he was a privileged citizen, and possibly, also an agent.

The story of Paul's conversion is well known. By the time the narrative of the Acts begins, Jesus is no longer on the scene, but there is an interesting contradiction. The members of the early Church still congregate at the Temple, though the Gospels make much of the fact that Jesus was implacably opposed to the Temple and its officials; they even make him throw tantrums. At first Paul is shown as being openly hostile to the teachings of Jesus and his followers - the early Christians. It is not necessary to go into the martyrdom of Stephen - the first Christian martyr - though the passage abounds in Qumranic expressions as a comparison with the published corpus of Qumran texts shows.[9]

(We have already seen that according to some Biblical scholars - Robert Eisenman in particular, this actually refers to the attack on James led by Paul himself. This would of course have happened somewhat later, which the author of the Acts has located in the beginning to suit his propaganda purpose.)

Paul makes his appearance at this juncture, though his role is not entirely clear. He is described as being a fierce opponent of the early Church whose members he persecutes. The implication is that he is persecuting the Christians (and Stephen) on the orders of the High Priest of the Temple. This, we shall soon see, is part of the growing Church mythology of Jewish persecution of Christians, though, through most of history it has been the other way. There is no historical record of any Jewish persecution of Christians; it has always been an unsupported charge and a pretext used by Christians in their relentless persecution of the Jews. In any case, this is what the Bible has to say about Paul's behavior immediately after Stephen's martyrdom. At this stage, Paul is still known as Saul.

And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.

And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.

As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women and committed them to prison.

Acts 8. 1-3.

Paul, or Saul must have had a strong detachment of soldiers under him, to make a 'havoc of the church, entering into every house, and ha[u]ling men and women' and imprisoning them. This apparently had the effect of dispersing them far and wide, and the Christians 'were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.' (Acts 8.4)

Then comes the story of Paul's conversion. According to Acts 9 he is on his way to Damascus to enforce the authority of the High Priest on the Christians in that city. Again the implication is that the High Priest of Jerusalem is persecuting Christians not only in Jerusalem but also Damascus. But here, the chronicler of the Acts slips up in his zeal to assign more blame to the Jews. Damascus lies in Syria, not Palestine, which in Roman times were different provinces. The High Priest of Jerusalem had no authority to send Paul or anybody else to Syria to punish the Christians. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that Paul was on his way to Damascus not as an agent of the Jewish High Priest, but of Imperial Rome.

Then there is something else that seems to have received little notice: Paul, though born a Jew, was a Roman citizen with contacts at the highest levels of the empire. It does not seem plausible that he would be working in a position subordinate to the High Priest of Jerusalem. In my reading of both the Acts and the Qumran texts, I have been led to conclude that he was acting as an agent of the Romans and not of the High Priest, though the two may have co-operated to help control the turbulent Zealots - or the early Christians. To return to the conversion of Paul, on his way to Damascus, he is struck by a blinding light and faints. As the Bible tells us, in what is surely the most famous passage in the Acts. and second only to the Sermon on the Mount in the whole of the New Testament:

And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest.

And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he any of this way, whether were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven.

And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him. "Saul, Saul, why doest persecutest thou me?"

And he said, "Who art thou, Lord?" And the Lord said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. "

Acts 9. 1-5.

And after this extraordinary experience, Paul is anointed the bearer of the message of Jesus, "for he is the chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. " (Acts 9.15) Paul uses this story and claims to be the 'chosen vessel' of Jesus in trying to enlist people for his cause. One is struck by the vividness of the passage and its force of expression. It is possible to see that Paul must have been an eloquent and persuasive speaker in an age when oratory was a highly valued art.

As for the substance of the passage, as I already pointed out, Paul could not be going to Damascus as a minion of any High Priest of Jerusalem whose writ did not run in Syria. He could only have been acting on behalf of the authorities in Rome, trying to defuse tensions created at the instigation of the Zealots and their leaders.

As for Paul being struck by a 'light from heaven' - many explanations have been offered including epileptic seizure and sunstroke, with most scholars opting for the sunstroke. There is however a simpler explanation. Paul was struck with a brilliant idea: of how he could neutralize the spreading influence of the militant early Church by hijacking it - turning it into an expansionist ideology along the lines of the Roman Empire, but using the name of Christ or Messiah. This would be entirely natural, for the Qumranians - the early Christians that is - were themselves a messianic sect. Through this device Paul sought to subvert the threat and turn it into an agent of the Roman Empire itself. In other words, he had a brain-wave - one of the most fateful and fruitful brain-waves in history. This was the brilliant light he saw, at least as I read it.

This now fits in nicely with the rest of the Acts. Upon conceiving this plan, Paul hurriedly returns to Jerusalem to convince the Zealots of the wisdom of his new doctrine. The essence of it is the abandonment of the Law and the prophets in favour of a simple 'Faith in Jesus Christ'. This suggests that despite being born a Jew, Paul did not know too much about the religious sensibilities of his co-religionists; those who 'burned with zeal for the Law' could hardly be expected to fall in line with his undeniably pragmatic plan by abandoning their all-important Law of Moses! This is enough to make one wonder if Paul was really a Jew or only a Roman agent pretending to be one. Perhaps he was both.

But Paul is nothing if not practical. He joins the Church in Jerusalem (with James as its leader), remaining a member of the community for three years. Whether he was at Jerusalem all these three years or at Qumran is unclear; probably he spent time at both. He fails in his mission to become a member, and is sent away to Tarsus, his hometown. The Qumran elders must have regarded Paul as a hopeless case who could not be turned into a fully-fledged Zealot. As Eusebius tells us (in a passages cited earlier), they regarded Paul .. an apostate from the Law." His banishment to Tarsus was only natural.

Paul then makes several trips including at least one to Antioch, trying to enlist the early Christians to his newly crafted doctrine. He is still working within the established Church of Jerusalem headed by James, the 'Lord's brother'. James is unhappy with Paul for teaching what he regards with justification as a heretical doctrine. Since early Christianity was a resurrection of Judaism in its most fundamentalist form, Paul with his liberalizing ideas must be regarded as the first Christian heretic. But it was the heresy of Paul that came to flourish as Christianity, while the early Christianity of the founding fathers of Qumran perished in the Jewish Wars. What Paul was propagating was in fact a heresy of an extreme hue that had nothing to do with the teachings of early Christianity. He beseeches them:

For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlely, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

2 Corinthians II. 2-4.

So Paul accuses James and his followers of preaching a gospel of a different Jesus that he does not approve of! So we not only have different Christs, but even competing Jesuses! What are we to make of the phrase 'preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached?' Does this mean that Jesus was simply a symbolic expression used in sermons and not any historical person? This receives some support from the Qumran texts themselves. Eisenman and Wise observe:

The use of the noun Yesha or the verbal noun Yeshu'ato ('His Salvation') is fairly widespread in Qumran and much underrated. One finds expressions such as these in two important contexts in the Damascus Document: viii. 43 relating to 'God Fearers' - 'until God reveals Righteousness and Salvation to those who fear His Name' - and viii. 57 relating to 'not rejecting the Laws of Righteousness', 'listening to the voice of the Teacher of Righteousness' '"

The personification of this concept in the Gospel presentation of the Messianic events in Palestine in the first century can in this light be considered a most revolutionary development and one that has not ceased exercising its influence on mankind even now.

(pp. 243-44, emphasis added.)

The same idea occurs in other Qumran texts than the Damascus Documents - in the War Scrolls and some Qumranian Hymns. One can see that Paul had ample materials to draw upon from which to create his version of Jesus. In the process he did away with the Law. The deeper we look in the Bible, and now the Scrolls, the more inconsistencies we find, and the personality of Jesus turns increasingly shadowy.

Paul was clearly gaining confidence with his new doctrine. Then there is the amazing passage:

I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.

2 Corinthians II. 8.

What are we to make of it? Does it mean thai Paul was already on his way to creating a new Gospel and a mythical Jesus - a symbol drawing upon various sources (robbing 'other churches') to support his radically new doctrine? Is this an admission of the faCI that his version of Jesus was a composite based on Qumranian sources? Thai Paul was not above fabrication to suit his purpose is clear upon even a cursory reading of his epistles. He was the man who after all gave the dictum: "I am made all things to all men." And this is what Paul himself says:

I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.

2 Corinthians 12. 16.

And the Church has followed in Paul's footsteps ever since. A fact that should never be lost sight of is that where James and other members of the early Church saw themselves as preservers of the hoary traditions of Judaism, Paul was a politically ambitious man bent on expansion. His main goal was to attract a large following. For this he needed a new theology free from the rigidity of orthodox Judaism to make it easy for the Gentiles too to join his movement. Not for him the confining vision of the Jews as the 'chosen people' tied down by the Law. In all this, Paul comes out as more of a Roman politician than a Jewish religious leader.

The Acts then continues with the adventures of Paul. His teachings now have nothing to do with the beliefs of the early Church; if anything they contradict the most fundamental of its tenets. He returns to Jerusalem where the Church leaders express their displeasure at his preaching of his new doctrine that is in complete violation of the Law. Paul, though undoubtedly eloquent, was probably not moderate in speech or manner. He was after all a child of privilege. A riot soon ensues. The infuriated mob cries out for his blood.

And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, "Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live."

And as they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air.

Acts 22. 22-3.

But somehow, mysteriously, Roman soldiers arrive on the scene and spirit Paul away. But before leaving Paul infuriates the mob further by making a highly provocative speech. It is of little interest to us here, but what follows in the Acts is revealing, showing Paul's high standing in the Roman world. When a centurion - an officer commanding a hundred Roman soldiers - tries to interrogate him under torture, Paul pulls him up.

Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned? "

When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, "Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman. "

Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, "Tell me art thou a Roman?" He said, "Yea."

And the chief captain answered, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." And Paul said, "But I was free born. "

Acts 22. 25-8.

That apparently was enough for the chief captain, and from then on Paul does pretty much as he pleases showing complete familiarity with Roman law and procedures. But soon a plot is hatched for his assassination. These again are the Zealots - the early Christians, that is - implacably opposed to Paul who probably does not realize the magnitude of his offence against the Law. In their eyes he is an apostate, one who has been admitted into their community, now preaching his own heretical doctrine against the sacred Law and the prophets. It is an unforgivable sin for which the only punishment is death. But the Roman soldiers - his escort - seem to get wind of it, and Paul is packed off to Rome, presumably to explain his record. It is a measure of the importance of Paul that he is given an escort of 470 soldiers, including cavalry! He is no ordinary man - this Saul of Tarsus.

Along the way Paul suffers a shipwreck, and soon after the Acts abruptly breaks off (except for a contrived ending). Paul disappears from history and we know nothing of his later years. There are of course all sorts of tales including the one about he and Peter being crucified in Rome under Nero's orders. This is not believable. For one, Peter was a founding father of the 'early Church' of the Qumranian Zealots, unlikely to have any truck with Paul and his heresy. It is simply another expression of Christianity's insatiable appetite for martyrs.

As I indicated earlier, all these stories about Roman persecution have to be examined in their proper historical setting - in the light of the political struggles between the Zealots and Rome that erupted in the war of AD 66-74. It has little to do with Pauline Christianity. We can no longer afford to ignore this important distinction - between the early Church of Jerusalem and the later Church of Pauline Christianity. At the cost of repetition, it must be emphasized that the Church today is the successor to the Roman Empire after its subversion by Pauline Christianity, and not the early Church of Jerusalem which perished in the Jewish Wars.

Also, the urbane and resourceful Paul somehow does not strike one as the kind of person who would do something foolish enough to get himself crucified by the Romans. It is not the end of the story however; as I previously mentioned, Paul, his ally the High Priest Ananus, along with James himself, are recorded in a Qumran text known as the' Habakkuk Commentary'. In this we find a 'Teacher of Righteousness' defending the Law against the Wicked Priest and a former member of the Qumran community now turned a Liar. The Habakkuk Commentary refers to a 'Lying Spouter' who 'rejects the Law in the midst of the whole Congregation.' And the 'Community Rule', another Qumran text speaks of a 'son of Darkness' with a 'blaspheming tongue.' This, according to Eisenman. culminated in the murder of James.

Who could it be? The' Lying Spouter' is guilty of precisely the kind of things that Paul was charged with by James and other members of the early Church. (The 'Wicked Priest' was in all probability Ananus the High Priest of Jerusalem mentioned by Josephus.) So here is one more link between the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls - greatly to the consternation of the International Team.

8. Qumranian Source of the Doctrine of the Faith

Amazingly, the same Qumran text - the Habakkuk Commentary - seems to have provided Paul with the idea for his doctrine of faith. Here is the remarkable passage which Paul must have seen during his three-year apprenticeship with the Qumranians, if not earlier.

'But the righteous shall live by his faith.' Interpreted, this concerns all those who observe the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver from the House of Judgement because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness.

(Habakkuk Commentary 8. 1-3; emphasis added.)

This is obviously a most crucial passage, translation given by Geza Vermes. To make sure that the sense was not altered in the translation, I consulted also Kurt Schubert's German translation of the same passage. It reads (rendered into English): "This refers to all those of the House of Judah who live according to the Torah, whom God will rescue from the place of judgement because of their labour and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness." With two independent translations giving us virtually identical readings, we are on safe ground in assuming that there is no ambiguity in the original.

This is a bombshell. So here is the source of the vaunted Doctrine of the Faith - the greatest 'original' contribution of Christianity! - written in language and style that even in modern translation is indistinguishable from that of the New Testament. Paul took this principle from the Habakkuk Commentary (or some common source) but went a step further. He took the doctrine of faith but did away with the all-important Law. With this sleight of hand, he created his new doctrine that became the linchpin of his theology: Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. The Teacher of Righteousness became of course Jesus Christ of Pauline Christianity. This is exactly what Dupont-Sommer and John Allegro had been saying all along.

The early Christians on the other hand, "insisted on the complete observance of the Law, nor did they think one could be saved only by faith in Christ ... " as Eusebius tells us. This suggests he recognized that Paul had reversed the relationship by banishing the Law. Eusebius of course was an extreme partisan of Pauline Christianity.

Through this simple yet sinister change Paul sowed the seeds of the theocratic imperialism known as Christianity. The priesthood of the Church was allowed to become a law unto itself - no longer subject to the Law to which even the highest in Judaism like James the Righteous was subject. Thanks to Paul's innovation, the righteous priest of Judaism became the Pope, the God-substitute accountable to no one - with the Law replaced by the arbitrary despotism of the Church. This was of course the feature claimed by Muhammad as the only Apostle of God; he was not bound by the rules that he imposed on others in the name of Allah. While restricting the faithful to four wives, he allowed himself many more, invoking the authority of Allah for the indulgence.

This throws into relief the conflict between James and Paul as a conflict between the rule of law - no matter how rigid or primitive it may seem to us - and the rule of a theocratic despot placing himself beyond the law by claiming to act in the name of God. Few innovations in history have had such catastrophic consequences for the world as this divorce of authority from accountability engineered by Paul.[10]

Paul's revolution was now complete. The Law of Moses was overthrown and Faith was enthroned in its place. All that was needed was a new mythology to give it substance. This was soon supplied by the Gospels.

9. Acts and the Gospels

What are we to make of the near contemporary, quasi-historical accounts of the Acts which Paul dominates, and its connection with the Gospels of Jesus which are full of contradictions and fantastic stories? In the Acts, Paul is very much a flesh and blood figure while Jesus is invoked only to lend authority to Paul's message; the message itself is often quite different from what we find attributed to Jesus in the Gospels - and even contrary to it. One explanation is: the Gospels, which are later works, were created out of traditional materials to suit the purpose of the Acts and the epistles of Paul which together make up the main vehicle of Pauline Christianity. Paul created a Jesus to give a divine origin to his radically new doctrine. And the Gospels were created to add flesh and blood to the mythical Jesus of Christianity - the creation of Paul. In other words, the Gospels are Pauline Christianity's propaganda literature.

This now receives ample support from the Dead Sea Scrolls to which the Gospels are indebted in everything except the life of Jesus which is more myth than history. The author of the Acts identifies himself as Luke. It can hardly be a coincidence that one of the Gospels is also the work of Luke. Biblical scholars are generally agreed that the two are one and the same. The same Luke is also recognized as a physician and a friend of Paul. This helps account for the immediacy and authenticity of tone and narrative of the Acts as opposed to the fantastic and fable-like Gospels: the first is history, the second myth. The authors of the Gospels, beginning with Luke, drew upon the abundant Jewish tradition of the Messiah found in the Qumran sources and created the Gospels that complement and complete the mythical Jesus of Paul's fertile imagination. This was a stroke of genius - creating the man Jesus of the Gospels from the voice and figure of Jesus invoked by Paul in the Acts and the epistles.[11]

This is admitted - albeit reluctantly - by no less a theologian than Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University.[12]

But it is noteworthy that, except for the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper [which too is found in the Scrolls], Paul does not in any of his epistles quote the exact words of any of the sayings of Jesus as we now have them in the Gospels... From the writings of Paul we would not be able to know that Jesus ever taught in parables or that he performed miracles or that he was born of a virgin. For that information we are dependent on the oral tradition of the early Christian communities as it was eventually deposited in the Gospels, all of which, in their present form at any rate, probably appeared later than most or all of the epistles of Paul.

Everyone must acknowledge, therefore, that Christian tradition had precedence, chronologically and even logically, over Christian scripture; for there was a tradition of the church before there was ever a New Testament, or any individual book of the New Testament.

(Emphasis added.)

Why bring up this phantom - this 'oral tradition' whose existence no one can either prove or disprove? The kind of statement, 'Everyone must acknowledge, therefore...' is quintessentially theological, but Pelikan stops short of the next logical conclusion - to wit, this so-called 'Christian tradition' that preceded the Christian scripture can be traced to the Qumran texts; there is no need to postulate some oral tradition that is no longer extant even if it ever existed. To go by his argument, the Gospels themselves are the authority for their derivation from this nebulous 'oral tradition'. This is a kind of circular argument that only a theologian is comfortable with.

(The use of parables was in all probability borrowed from Buddhist sources where they appear in great profusion. It is definitely not part of the Semitic tradition. Many Western scholars including Max Muller have noted Christianity's indebtedness to Buddhist sources. There were several Buddhist and Hindu colonies in various parts of the Roman Empire including Syria.)

Pelikan also skirts around the inconvenient fact that the Acts - and not just the epistles of Paul - shows no knowledge of the Gospels, and also, that the important institution of the Lord's Supper can itself be traced to the Qumran texts (as I have indicated in square brackets in the passage above). Of course, most important of all - the Doctrine of the Faith - was lifted from the Habakkuk Commentary (or some other Qumranian source). Pelikan's appeal to 'oral traditions' can only be seen as a reflection of his unwillingness to acknowledge Qumran as the source of Christianity. Once we recognize