|
by
Tony Bushby
excerpts from
The Bible Fraud
The Pacific Blue Group
Inc.
In the opening sentence of
a New Testament parable, Jesus stated:
A man of noble birth was
on a long journey abroad, to have himself appointed king, and
return. (Luke 19:12)
Herein lies part of a
profound Gospel truth revealing the substance of historical
information that the church has strived for 2000 years to conceal.
In this tale of long ago misconceptions and mistaken identities must
be clarified so that the original story may be seen to rest upon a
true and sure foundation. For this purpose we begin with the
examination of church writings purporting to record the birth of
Jesus Christ.
The Gospels of Matthew and Luke stated that Jesus Christ was the first
born of Mary and Joseph and he had four younger brothers and at
least two sisters (Mark 6:3). Roman Catholics are obliged to hold
the opinion that the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ were the
children of Joseph by a former marriage.
This conclusion originally
stemmed from the Gospel of James (the Protevanglium)
that related to the age of Joseph at the birth of Jesus. However, it
was clearly recorded that Joseph had sex with Mary after the birth
of Jesus. The statement in the Gospel of Matthew that Joseph 'knew
her not until she had born a son' (Matt. 1:25) eliminated the
church's claim that Mary was a perpetual virgin. From the statements
in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew it was clear that the brothers
and sisters of Jesus were subsequent children of Mary in the fullest
sense.
Joseph returned to Galilee with the intention of marrying Mary. The
Gospels according to Matthew and Luke clearly explained that they
were 'betrothed' before Joseph's departure. This was the equivalent
of being `engaged' in modern-day terminology. However, upon his
return some months later, it was plainly apparent that Mary `was
with child' (Luke 2:5) and it 'could not be hid from Joseph'.
The
Gospel of Matthew elaborated extensively upon the feelings of Joseph
when he saw the violated condition of his bride-to-be. He was uneasy
and being unwilling to defame her, he privately discussed ending
their engagement (Matt. 1:19). From the description in the Gospels,
it was clear that Joseph was not the biological father of Mary's
child. So, who was?
The evidence of the Rabbis
The Jewish records of the Rabbis are of extreme importance in
determining Gospel origins and the value of the church presentation
of the virgin birth story of Jesus Christ. A common appellation for
Jesus in the Talmud was Yeshu'a ben Panthera, an allusion to
the widespread Jewish belief during the earliest centuries of the
Christian era that Jesus was the result of an illegitimate union
between his mother and a Roman soldier named Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera.
The Talmud enshrines within its pages Jewish oral law.
It is divided into two parts, the Mishna and the
Gemara. The first discusses such subjects as festivals and
sacred things. The Gemara, is basically a commentary on these
subjects. When the Talmud was written is not known. Some authorities
suggest a date of 150-160, around the same time the Christian
Gospels began to emerge, while others say 450.
The Talmud writers mentioned Jesus' name twenty times and quite
specifically documented that he was born an illegitimate son of a
Roman soldier called Panthera, nicknamed the
"Panther". Panthera's existence was confirmed by the discovery
of a mysterious tombstone at Bingerbrück in Germany.
The engraving etched in the headstone read:
Tiberius Julius Abdes
Panthera, an archer, native of Sidon, Phoenicia, who in 9AD was
transferred to service in Rhineland (Germany).
1
This inscription added
fuel to the theory that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary and
the soldier Panthera. Classical scholar Professor Morton Smith of
the Columbia University USA, described the tombstone as possibly
`our only genuine relic of the holy family.'
2
In many Jewish references, Jesus was often referred to as 'ben
Panthera', 'ben' meaning, 'son of'. However cautious one ought to be
in accepting anything about Jesus from Jewish sources, in the matter
of Jesus 'ben Panthera', the writers seem more consistent than the
men we now call the church fathers.
Scholars, for centuries, have discussed at length why Jesus was so
regularly called ben Panthera. Adamantius Origen, an early
Christian historian and church father (185-251), recorded the
following verses about Mary from the research records of a highly
regarded Second Century historian and author named Celsus (c.
178):
Mary was turned
out by her husband, a carpenter by profession, after she had been
convicted of unfaithfulness. Cut off by her spouse, she gave birth
to Jesus, a bastard; that Jesus, on account of his
poverty was hired out to go to Egypt; that while there he acquired
certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on
possessing.3
Later, in passage 1:32,
Origen supported the Jewish records and confirmed that the
paramour of the mother of Jesus was a Roman soldier called
Panthera, a name he repeated in verse 1:69. Sometime during
the 17th Century, those sentences were erased from the oldest
Vatican manuscripts and other codices under church control.
4
The traditional church writings of St Epiphanius, the Bishop of
Salamis (315-403) again confirmed the ben Panthera story and
his information was of a startling nature. This champion of
Christian orthodoxy and saint of Roman Catholicism frankly stated:
Jesus was the son
of a certain Julius whose surname was Panthera.
5
This was an extraordinary
declaration simply recorded in ancient records as accepted church
history. The ben Panthera legend was so widespread
that two early stalwarts of the Christian church inserted the name
in the genealogies of Jesus and Mary as a matter of fact.
Enlarging on that statement, this passage from the Talmud:
Rabbi Shiemon ben
Azzai has said: I found' in Jerusalem a book of genealogies;
therein was written that Such-an-one (Jesus) is the bastard
son of an adulteress.
6
'Such-an-one' was one of
the well-known substitutes for Jesus in the Talmud, as has
been proved and admitted on either side. Shiemon ben Azzai
flourished at the end of the First and beginning of the Second
Century. He was one of four famous Rabbis, who according to Talmudic
tradition 'entered Paradise'. He was a Chassid (the pious Jews of
Palestine), most probably an Essene and remained a
celibate and rigid ascetic until his death.
The story of Mary's pregnancy by a Roman soldier also
appeared in the sacred book of the Moslems, the Koran. It stated
that 'a full-grown man' forced his attentions on Mary, and in her
fear of the disgrace that would follow she left the area and bore
Jesus in secret. This story was supported in the Gospel of Luke,
with the description of the departure of Joseph and Mary from their
home prior to the birth. Rape was a common event in Palestine during
the Roman occupation and soldiers were notorious for their treatment
of young women. It would be unthinkable for Mary to admit such an
event had occurred for, under the Law of Moses, a betrothed virgin
who had sex with any man during the period of her betrothal, was to
be stoned to death by the men of the city (Deut. 22:21). Simply put,
Mary faced the death penalty unless she could prove her innocence.
7
The mother's name
There was another, lesser-known name Jesus was called during those
early years and that was 'Yeshu'a ben Stada' (Son
of Stada). This name was recorded in the records of
the Sanhedrin and also in the Talmud. What can
also be found in the Gemara, and has embarrassed
Christian authorities for centuries, was this:
Ben Stada was Ben
Panthera, Rabbi Chisda said; The husband was Stada, the lover
Panthera. Another said; the husband was Paphos ben Jehuda; Stada was
his mother ... and she was unfaithful to her husband.
8
These apparently
contradictory assertions can be ironed out when read in context. In
summary, Stada was Yeshu'a (Jesus) ben Panthera's mother.
The Gemera goes on to record that Yeshu'a ben Panthera 'was hanged
on the day before the Passover'. That is to say, apparently, that
after stoning, ben Panthera's body was hung or exposed
on a vertical stake. Crucifixion was an unused mode of execution
amongst the Jews who favored stoning as the main form of capital
punishment. To shorten the cruelty of death by stoning, the victim
was first rendered unconscious by a soporific drink, and
subsequently the stoned body was exposed on a vertical stake as a
warning to others.
They found an old book
The name 'ben Stada' given to Jesus in the Talmud,
was found paralleled in the ancient Mehgheehlla Scroll
that was discovered by Russian physician D.B. de Waltoff near
Lake Tiberius in 1882 and 'is now called simply the Safed
Scroll. In this old text, there were two brothers called
Yeshai and
Judas ben Halachmee who were the illegitimate twin sons born of a
fifteen year old girl called Stadea. The closeness of
the name Stada in the Talmud to the Stadea in the Safed Scroll
is extraordinary and the slight difference in spelling can be
explained by variations in translations. The interesting point here
is that the name ben Halachmee was the name of
Stadea's
later husband, not the biological father of her sons.
Unfortunately, no mention
was made of the real father's name but ben Halachmee was
the name given to Stadea's illegitimate twin boys. According to
the
Safed Scroll, Yeshai and his brother Judas ben
Halachmee were taken in, raised and educated by the religious
order of Essene monks. The Essenes were a perennial
Jewish colony that particularly flourished in Judea for some
centuries previous to the time ascribed to the New Testament
stories. Subsequently one of the boys became a student of Rabbi
Hillel's school of philosophy and the other became the leader of
the Essenes. An older Essene named Joseph was assigned as
Yeshai's 'religious father' and guardian.
The Safed Scroll suggested that eventually, Yeshai
ben Halachmee's outspoken religious views angered the Jewish
priests. He was tried by a Roman court on a charge of inciting the
people to rebel against the Roman Government. He was found guilty
and sentenced to death, but escaped, left the area and traveled to
India.
The Mehgheehlla Scroll mirrored aspects of the hidden
story in the Gospels and provided external evidence that the
conclusion reached in this volume was known in ancient tradition.
Who was Stada/Stadea
One of the most popular aspects of etymology is the history of names
those words or phrases which uniquely identify persons, animals,
places, concepts or things. The earlier forms of a name are often
uncertain and different dialect pronunciations have led to divergent
spellings of the same name. The social pressure to use a standard
spelling did not emerge until the 18th Century and earlier writers
saw no problem presenting a person's name in a variety of ways. In
one study, for example, over 130 variants of the name 'Mainwaring'
were found among the parchments belonging to that family.
Many Hebrew names in the Old Testament were believed to bear a special
significance, as originally individual subjects were called by a
name expressive of some characteristic, e.g. Edom, red; Esau, hairy;
Jacob, supplanter and Sarai (Sara) from the base word, 'Sharat'. A
similar concept applied in Jewish writings and for a long time
confused researchers.
9
Like Roman and Hebrew tradition, the names of the characters 'often
appear in distorted form in Rabbinic literature' and were sometimes
an attempt to disguise their true personality.
10
This type of understanding provided the key to researchers that
enabled them to unlock the true essence of what was really being
relayed in ancient writings.
'Names research' is an open-ended and complex domain, and one which is
particularly greedy of the researcher's time. In any study on the
New Testament, however, it must be remembered that the first Gospels
were written in Hebrew
11 and this was a vital point in determining who Stadea
really was. 'The name (Stadea) has various forms and may have been
borrowed from a fanciful name that meant a scholar; or had a
regional identity like Stabiae or Statila, or a woman of good
family.''
12
According to Jewish writings, Stadea was 'the descendent of princes
and rulers'
13
and her royal heritage provided a clue to her real name. The Talmud
further stated that Yeshu'a (Jesus) ben Panthera's mother 'was also
called Miriam, yes but she was nicknamed Stada ... Stat-da, this one
has turned away, being unfaithful [Statda] to her husband'.
14
St Jerome explained the difficulty that he had in translating
the earliest Gospels into Latin
15
and added that the `original Hebrew' versions of Matthew's Gospel and
the earliest Luke Gospels were written in the Chaldaic language but
with Hebrew letters. The `original Hebrew' version of the name
'Mary' was 'Mariamne'.
16
Therefore, 'Mary' in the English-language Gospels of today was
originally written 'Mariamne' in the Hebrew versions and was
sometimes translated 'Miriam'.
17
Mary unknown in early church history
What was actually recorded of Mary/Mariamne in the only
accepted Christian writings provided scant information indeed about
the woman the church now call the mother-of-God. In the Gospels she
was rarely mentioned. In fact, she was not mentioned by name in the
oldest version of the Mark Gospel in the oldest Bibles. Nor was she
mentioned in the oldest version of the John Gospel. The church said,
'the reader of the Gospels is at first surprised to find so little
about Mary ... this obscurity has been studied at length'.
18
Both the Gospels of Mark and John first introduced Jesus as an adult.
Only in contrived narratives does Mary play an important role in the
biblical texts and, excluding these, she was mentioned only briefly
on three occasions. The church presbyters were also silent on Mary.
There was nothing recorded of her external to the church for more
than four centuries after the time she was said to have lived. She
had no ancestry or background except in spurious apocrypha.
The earliest documented reference to Mary was found in the Mark Gospel
of the Sinai Bible (Mark 3:32).This narrative referred to her as
simply the earthly mother of several sons and daughters. The
reference was actually about a group of people who addressed Jesus
and said, 'Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are
outside asking for you'. Here was a profound truth. Modern Bibles
show the three words `and your sisters', to have been removed or
indexed to a footnote. From here onwards, Mary almost vanished from
the church texts, and apart from an obscure final reference to her
in the Acts of the Apostles (1:14) she disappeared forever from the
New Testament.
However, when the name `Mary' in the Gospels was replaced with the
original Hebrew version, 'Mariamne', an historic aspect arose.
Combining the evidence available, the position advanced in this book
is that Mary, the mother of Jesus in the Gospels, Stadea
of the Jewish writings, and Mariamne of the House of
Herod
were one and the same person.
At the time of the development of the Gospels, Mariamne was the
younger sister of Herodias and the two girls were an integral
part of the vast 'family of Herodes' (Herod today). They were the
much loved granddaughters of King Herod and he 'cared for them with
great devotion'.
19
Their mother, Berenice, later remarried and moved with her
teenage daughters to live in Rome, where she gained the friendship
of
Emperor Augustus.
20
Mariamne and Herodias Herod were of noble birth through
King Herod (c. 73-74BC) and his wife, Mariamne I.
Mariamne Herod's father was Aristobulus, the son of Herod
the Great, and her mother Berenice was the daughter of
Herod's sister, Salome. Mariamne also had two brothers named
Herod II, king of Chalcis, and Agrippa, who became Agrippa
I. King Herod himself descended from a noble line of kings
through his Nabatean mother, Cypros of Petra. The Nabateans
were a Semitic people and the earliest sources regarded them as
Arabs. Today they are generally referred to as Nabatean Arabs.
Owing to its secure location, Petra was adopted by the
Nabatean kings as their capital city which became
incorporated into the Roman Empire in 106. The Nabatean Arabs passed
out of history with the advent of Islam.
21
The House of Herod was founded by the marriage of Cypros of Petra to
Antipater (Antipas), the Idumean, to whom Cypros bore four sons,
Herod being one.
The name Herod subsequently became the title of seven rulers
mentioned in the New Testament and in Roman history. King Herod
was known to the Romans as 'The Great' but in the eyes of the people
over whom he ruled however, he was always known as 'The Impious',
despite his costly restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem. In 7BC he
strangled to death two of his sons, Aristobulus and
Alexander, drawing a comment from Roman Emperor Augustus
(27BC-14AD) that it was safer to be one of Herod's pigs than one of
his sons.
Another son was later born to Herod and, for his safety,
his mother dispatched him to the care of her family in
Ariminum, a city near Ravenna in Northern Italy.
22
He was Prince Joseph, the Joseph of Arimathea in the
Gospels, and he later became the unseen power behind his father's
throne. Herod the Great was a Roman citizen, governor of
Galilee by 47BC and then King of Judea from 37 to 4BC. He was one of
the major figures in politics of Palestine in the early years of the
Roman Empire.
Mariamne Herod's ancestors can be traced back on her
grandmother's (Mariamne I) side to the Hasmonean 'priest-kings' and
'hereditary priests' from the tribe of Benjamin. She, her sister,
and her brothers were descendants of the legitimate Hasmonean
dynasty and 'carried the Hasmonean blood'.
23
They also carried the blood of the Nabatean Arabs, so much so that
King Aretas IV, who was legally confirmed a Nabatean Arab king by Emperor Augustus
24
divorced his wife to marry Herodias (who died after 41AD) to
maintain the Nabatean bloodline, but she declined him. It was
Herodias who was involved in the Gospel story of the beheading of
John the Baptist, for which she received a level of notoriety
and defamation similar to that of Mary Magdalene.
The available records reflect an intricate tangle of marriages,
intermarriages and divorces between the Herods and the
Romans. In the account of the Gospel of Mark (6:17), for
example, Herodias later married Herod Philip I, her
own uncle, by whom she had a daughter, Salome. Salome was
named after her Hasmodean ancestor Salome Alexandra, herself
a priestess-king.
25
Later in time, Herod 'Without-land' Antipas apparently fell in
love with Herodias and proposed to her. Seeing that his
fortunes were rising faster than her husband's, Herodias
accepted his hand. She longed for social distinction, and accordingly
left her husband and initially entered into an adulteress union with
Herod Antipas, who was also her uncle.
26
She was not married to Antipas at this time but married him at
a much later stage (c. 38).
When Herodias saw how well her brother Agrippa I had
fared in Rome, whence he returned a king, she urged her husband
Herod Antipas to go to Caesar and obtain the royal title,
for she believed his claim to it was far greater than that of her
brother. Antipas was not king, but only Tetrarch of Galilee.
27
Contrary to his better judgment he went, and soon learned that
Agrippa I by messengers had accused him before Emperor Caligula
of conspiracy against the Romans. The Emperor banished Herod
Antipas to Lyons, Gaul (France) in 41 and although
he permitted Herodias to return to her home in Rome, she
chose to accompany her husband into exile.
It was recorded that the male offspring of the House of Herod were
forced to become circumcised Jews in the reign of John Hyrcanus,
a Hasmonean of the earlier Maccabean period. In other words, the
Herod family adopted the religion of Judaism. The religious movement
of the Essenes was also connected to the Hasmonean bloodline
through the High Priest, Mattathias, the father of the
military king, Judas Maccabeus.
We know that Herod the Great was favorable towards the
Essenes, maybe because they made it their invariable
practice to refrain from disobedience to the political authority.
The Jewish historical writer, Philo, recorded that they had never
clashed with any ruler of Palestine, however tyrannical, until his
lifetime in the mid first century. This was a passive attitude which
could not fail to commend itself to King Herod, and it was reported
he even went so far as to exempt the Essenes, like the
Pharisees, from the oath of loyalty to himself.
In the reconstruction of the story, and drawing upon the concept of
the Safed Scroll, the pregnant Stadea (Mariamne
Herod, née Mary) secretly went to one of the Essene
communities until the time of the birth, and bore twin boys.
Numerous groups of Essenes existed 'all over, as they were a very
numerous sect'
28 and were found in
secluded country areas as well as cities. Upon the birth of the
twins, she then moved into the palace of Emperor Augustus and there
she lived until the boys were old enough to receive schooling.
It
was due to their solidarity and the family affinity that the young
Mariamne Herod had her illegitimate twin boys educated within
the
Essene community. The Essene hierarchy were her
blood relatives and expounded similar principles and traditions to
the Herodian philosophy. 'They perpetuated their sect by adopting
children ... above all, the Essenes were the educators
of the nobility, their instruction being varied and extensive.
29
To avoid
confusion in developing the premise provided in this work, Mary, the
mother of Jesus in the New Testament, shall be called Mariamne
Herod except when quoting from the Gospels.
The Roman father of the twins
As with ancient Hebrew, Christian and Jewish names, it is also
difficult to be exactly sure of the real names of many of the Roman
characters with which we are dealing and many irregularities arise.
The allocation of names was unlike today's Western procedure and a
great many were purposely compounded with the names of Caesars,
deities, and hybrid variations such as Caracalla, Emperor of
Rome 211-217.
Caracalla was a name derived from a long tunic
worn by the Gauls, which he adopted as his favorite
dress after he became emperor. His proper name was M.Aurelius
Antoninus. The name Caesar developed from Caesarian, being the
nature of the birth of Julius Caesar. Sometimes a new name
was afterwards substituted for the original one, just as Plato
was originally called Aristocles. The Jewish name of the
First Century historian Joseph ben Matthias became Titus
Flavius Josephus when he took Roman citizenship late in life.
A popular loan-name among Roman men was Silvanius
30
that developed from the Roman god 'of uncultivated land beyond the
boundaries of tillage'. A man with the name of Silvanius was
depicted as 'uncanny and dangerous'. In many cases, the name was not
given until the person was grown up and was then adapted from
personal qualities such as Modestus, for example, and
from servile condition Servus, or the name of an
historical celebrity, Cornelia being one instance. In
another Roman tradition, the name was sometimes a reference to
peculiar circumstances at birth: e.g.
As a rule, the eldest
received the 'proenomen' (Christian name)
of his father, and this helps to determine exactly who Tiberius
Julius Abdes Panthera, as it appears on the headstone at
Bingerbrück in Germany, really was.
The name Tiberius Julius is the first part of the full
name of Tiberius, Emperor of Rome,
31 the adopted son and heir
of Emperor Augustus. Whether Tiberius was a native of
Sidon in Phoenicia as recorded on the headstone, is difficult to
establish, for there are conflicting references to his birthplace.
From a very early age Tiberius' parents were in fear of their lives
through the uncertainty of the civil war, where wrong political
allegiances could result in an early death.
His childhood and youth
were beset with hardships and difficulties, because Claudius Nero
and Livia [his parents] took him wherever they went in their
flight from Octavius ... He was next hurried all over Sicily ... His
parents finally fled to Greece but were still in pursuit ...
escaping with him from Sparta at night.
32
The Monumentum Ancrya
33
reported that at one stage the family sailed from Phoenicia to Egypt
to avoid persecution. With such persistent pursuers it was probable
that the family lived at Sidon in Phoenicia and left when they were
found, but this information was not publicly recorded.
The words that are important in establishing whether or not the
headstone actually referred to Emperor Tiberius are
'Panthera' and 'Abdes'. In order to understand this
inscription, it shall be shown that the headstone was composed well
after the time of the events in question and therefore benefited
from the hindsight of history. There appeared to be a very
deliberate plan in place in the manufacture of this headstone, and
whoever was responsible for its construction knew the essence of
what is revealed in this book. Its unknown creator encoded vital
information in the form of a cipher and anagram, which when decoded
revealed the identity of the father of Mariamne Herods'
twin boys.
In many cases a name was a reflection of that person's character and
that view of ancient understanding can be used to trace an
individual's life and illuminate that person's intimate character
peculiarities. That was the case with Tiberius Julius'
nickname, Panther. Variations were Panter-Panetier
Panterer (Roman) which all meant 'adulterer'
34
and Tiberius was a man noted for his sexual excesses. This was
an indication of how historical characters received their confusing
multiplicity of names, for their names carne to reflect their nature
and the events that surrounded their lives.
Not even Tiberius' friends would deny that he often committed
adultery, but said in justification that he did so for reasons of
state, not simple passion he wanted to discover what his enemies
were doing by becoming intimate with their wives or daughters.
35
The reputation of being a womanizer stuck to Tiberius, and as an
elderly man he was said to have still harbored 'a passion for
deflowering young girls, indulging in his sensual propensities on
the island of Capri'.
The name of 'Panther' may have originally
developed from a little-known ancient Roman city of debauchery
called Pantherin or Pantherine. 'Panther' may have also been
attached to Tiberius Julius because of his beastly nature for
the cat-like tactics he used in stalking and pouncing on his
opponents in wars against the Dalmatians and Pannonians.
'In the old
Physiologus [an anonymous Second Century book of fifty
allegories], the panther was the type of Christ, but later, when the
savage nature of the beast became more widely known, it became
symbolical of evil and hypocritical flattery.'
36
From the year of his
adoption by Augustus, circa 4AD, to the death of that
emperor,
Tiberius was in command of the Roman armies and because of his
wicked nature, his troops named him 'the savage beast'.
37
Modern historians described him as a bloody tyrant.
There may be another clue in the name 'Panther'
associated with the lusty, untamed, horned Greek god Pan,
who amused himself with the chase of nymphs. He was forever in love
with one nymph or another, but always rejected because of his foul
nature. Pan dwelt in forests and was dreaded by those
whose occupations caused them to pass through the woods by day or
night. Hence sudden fright without any visible cause was ascribed to
Pan, and called a 'Panic' terror.
This blackened his
image so that he was seen to correspond to the Devil himself. The
name 'Pan' may have originally developed from the earlier Greek myth
of Pan-darus, the term meaning 'to shoot an arrow'. Pan
was the bowman (archer) of the Zodiac which is also the sign of
Sagittarius, encompassing parts of the months of November and
December, and it was no surprise to find that Tiberius, an
archer in his youth'
38
was born in November.
There does seem to be some
historical doubt as to accuracy of the time and place of his birth
and this may account for the modern birth date given to him - 16
November
39
- falling slightly outside the prescribed range of the current
Sagittarius dates, 26 November/23 December. It should be recognized,
however, that the calendar has been adjusted over the course of 2000
years. Sometime shortly before the 17th Century, the Latin
Sacred College quietly restored fifteen years to the Roman
calendar. The net result of that, and earlier alterations, shows a
present difference between Oriental and Western chronologies of
sixty-three years, when both are compared from any certainly known
astronomical date for example, Halley's Comet.
The Roman leaders were renowned for their personification of earlier
gods and the story of Julius Caesar acting out the role as
Zeus was well recorded. 'Then there was Augustus'
private banquet, known as "The Feast of the Divine Twelve", which
caused a public scandal. The guests carne dressed as gods or
goddesses, Augustus himself representing Apollo.'
40
Apollo was the son of Zeus, who was the
equivalent to Jupiter in the Roman pantheon, with the
'Divine Twelve' representing the gods of the zodiac. Zeus
was also the father of Hermes and Pan was
Hermes' son. The great importance of the gods in Roman history at
the time was seen when Emperor Augustus enlarged the temple
of
Apollo near Nicopolis, built in recognition of the victory
at Actium.
41
This was the victory over Mark Antony that cleared the way for
his Imperial Dictatorship.
'Abdes' was the third name found on the tombstone and
applied to Tiberius Julius Panthera. The origin of 'Abdes'
may be connected with Emperor Augustus' liking for ciphers and
this may be what the originator of the tombstone was alluding to
when he applied it to Tiberius. It was said of Emperor
Augustus
that:
Instead of paying strict
regard to orthography, as formulated by the grammarians, he inclined
towards phonetic spelling... When Augustus wrote in cipher he
simply substituted the next letter of the alphabet for the one
required, except that he wrote AA for X.
42
By applying both of these
rules to the word Abdes on the German headstone, a
hidden code is thus revealed:
Abdes = Ab-des =
Bc-des = BC days
Note: The extra
twist for the reader is to apply the cipher rule forward as the
person creating it, not backwards as would have been the case to
decipher.
The person or persons who created the headstone cipher could have only
done so after the Sixth Century when the Julian calendar
was first instituted. The proposed suggestion is that the cipher was
designed to draw attention to the fact that circumstances
surrounding the fathering and birth of Mariamne Herod's twin
boys occurred BC rather than AD. Presumably the inscription on the
tombstone was placed there to convey a special message, for it is
unlikely to have been put there 600 years or more after the actual
event to honor the site of an actual body, if there ever was a body
buried at the site.
The inscription stated that Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera was
transferred to service in Rhineland (Germany) in the year 9AD. The
young Tiberius was indeed in that area at that time:
Tiberius was given
another three years of tribunicial power, with the task of pacifying
Germany... There followed the Ilyrian revolt, which he
was sent to suppress ... Tiberius conducted it for three
years ... but, though often called back to Rome ... Tiberius
was well paid for his stubbornness, by finally reducing the whole of
Illyricum - an enormous stretch of country enclosed by
Northern Italy, Noricum, the Danube, Thrace, Macedonia, and the
Adriatic sea-to complete submission.
43
This timely victory
prevented the victorious Germans, who had defeated three legions of
Rome under Varus in 9AD, from linking up with the Pannonians.
'Proposals were made for decreeing him (Tiberius) the surname
Pannonicus, or the "Unconquered", or "the
Devoted"; but Emperor Augustus vetoed all these in
turn, promising on each occasion that Tiberius would be
satisfied with that of "Augustus", which he intended to bequeath
him' .
44
The evidence is compelling in locating Tiberius for service in
the area of the Rhineland in 9AD.
However, to switch the era from AD to BC as the 'Abdes' cipher suggested, the person named on the headstone was in the
Rhineland in 9BC, not 9AD, and Tiberius was located there on
active duty at that time also. Suetonius recorded that 'in
the third [instance] he took some 40,000 German prisoners, whom he
brought across the Rhine and settled in new homes on the Gallic
bank',
45
the years verified as 7 and 9BC. Although Tiberius was in
active duty in that area at that time, 'he visited Rome several
times'.
46
The date, nevertheless, was curious for locating the tombstone at
Bingerbrück at all, because it did not say that Tiberius
Julius Abdes Panthera died and was buried there, only that he
was on service in the Rhineland. The evidence of the assertion was
supposed that this time of 9BC was a coded message revealing the
year the twin boys were born to Mariamne Herod. At that time
she would have been fifteen years of age.
The territory known as Germany today was never
identified with this title until at least the time of Napoleon,
when the 'Confederation of the Rhine' was formed in July 1806. From
that time on, the area began to be called Rhineland. This knowledge
brings the placing of the tombstone forward some 1200 additional
years from the First Century designation and nearly 1800 years after
the death of Tiberius. On further examination, a remarkable
materialization of information appeared, for on a modern map of
Germany we find that Bingerbrück is located on the
Rhine River in the Rhineland Palatinate, a district of southwest
Germany west of the Rhine, which belonged to Bavaria until 1945.
Formerly, portions of the neighboring territory (Upper Palatinate)
constituted an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire,
now part of Rhineland Palatinate State. The Latin word
Palatinate
was a different sense of the word Palatine, whereas
Palatinus meant 'of the Imperial House' and the electorate
indicated the state contained one of the German princes entitled to
elect the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
47
Palatine is one of the Seven Hills of Rome where the
Emperor of the Roman Empire resided in the Imperial House, whom,
according to the above, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
succeeded and now resides in the Vatican. The
interesting matter is that in earlier times, there was built on the
Palatine hill the shrine to 'The Heavenly Twins' and it still
remains there to this day.
Conclusion
The cipher on the Bingerbrück headstone connected the
ancient Panthera tradition of the Rabbinic writings
with the First Century Roman emperor, Tiberius. The
conclusion drawn is that by reason of her mother's friendship with
Emperor Augustus, the teenage Mariamne Herod met
Tiberius when he returned to Rome to see his emperor father
early in 9BC, and her twin sons were conceived by rape or adultery
by him at that time. It was possible
Mariamne Herod was then married, for the traditions of the time
accepted the early marriage of young girls.
The oldest daughter of
Agrippa I, for example, was married at the age of thirteen.
48 Mariamne Herod named her sons Judas and Yeshu'a
and the populous subsequently nicknamed them 'ben Panthera'
(son of Panthera) after their 'adulterer' father. The
name Yeshu'a carne to be pronounced and spoken as Jesus
in English language translations and, to avoid confusion, shall be
used as such throughout this work.
Unraveling the headstone cipher has now completed a full circle,
beginning with the illegitimate birth of twin boys to Mariamne
Herod, the Virgin Mary of the Gospels, and ending
with their father being the 33 year old Tiberius who was to
later become Emperor of Rome in 14AD. The two boys, although
illegitimate by birth, were the legitimate kingly heirs to the
throne - the next in line to the imperial purple toga - and that
is exactly what the Gospels of the New Testament recorded. This
leads to an underlying truth hidden below the surface level of the
Gospel story and one that the church has suppressed for seventeen
hundred years.
The Gospel of Mark suggested Judas and Jesus were
commonly regarded as illegitimate by the people of their time. The
fact that they were each identified as a 'son of Mary' (Mark 6:3), not 'son of Joseph', was interpreted
by scholars to mean Judas and Jesus were regarded at
the time as Mary's illegitimate sons. In the Gospel of John (8:41)
the scribes and Pharisees challenged Jesus about his birth,
'we are not born of fornication', again revealing that the general
populous knew that Jesus' birth, and thus Judas',
was illegitimate.
Related, in Luke (4:22) was Jesus' irritated
reaction to the words, 'Is not this Joseph's son?' Why would
Jesus (or maybe it was Judas speaking) react to this
seemingly harmless question? The answer was documented in the
oldest Greek texts of the New Testament, which read, 'not
son of Joseph, this one'.
The scriptural and historical data being presented in this work shows
that the New Testament was never an authentic
record, but was, in its entirety, a corpus of corrupted
documents specifically constructed to induce a particular belief
(John 20:30-31). This conclusion rests firmly on known facts and the
ensuing chapters analyze ancient Roman, British and church reports
that support this assertion.
NOTES:
1.-
Jesus the Magician, Professor Morton Smith, 1978, Dea. Lea.
1973-1974.
2.-
Ibid.
3.-
Contra Celsus, Against Celsus, Origen, 1:28.
4.-
See notes on both passages by Lommatzech, in his Origen Contra
Celsus, Berlin, 1845.
5.-
Heresies, Epip., Haer, Epiphanius, lxxvii, 7.
6.-
Jebamoth, 49A.
7.-
Commentaries on the Law of Moses, Jonathon D. Michaelis,
Vols.I-IV, 1814.
8.-
Babylonian Shabbath, 104 b, repeated in almost identical words
in the Babylonian Sanhedrin, 67 a.
9.-
Translations in Progress, Moise Schwab, The Jerusalem Talmud.
10.-
Mary in the Babylonian Talmud, G.R.S. Mead, London & Benares,
1903.
11.-
St Jerome 347-420.
12.-
The Name of the Furies, Eumenides.
13.-
Babylonian Sanhedrin (b. Sanh.) 106
14.-
Babylonian Shabbath 104 b.
15.-
Commentary to Matthew', Hieronymus, bk.ii, ch.xii, 13.
16.-
James the Brother of Jesus, Robert Eisenman, p.471.
17.-
See Syrian Bible, for example.
18.-
Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.XV, 1 October 1912, pp.459-472.
19.-
Encyclopedia Judaica Jerusalem, 1971, p.443.
20.-
Ibid, p.601.
21.-
Ibid., pp.740-744.
22.-
The Herods, Dean Farrar. Also Joseph of Arimathea, Skeats.
23.-
Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.V 1, 1910, p.291-292.
24.-
Antiquities, Josephus, 16:355.
25.-
The Herods of Judea, Oxford, A.H.M. Jones, 1938.
26.-
Catholic Encyclopedia, vo1.VI, 1910, p.292.
27.-
The New Testament, however, sometimes called him `king': Matt.
14:9, Mark 6:14.
28.-
Bible Myths, T.W Doane, 1882, p.431.
29.-
Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.V, 1909, p.546.Also Josephus,
Jewish Wars, II, p.120.
30.-
The Records of Rome, 1868, British Library, ILS 7317,
'Silvani', plural.
31.-
Born in 42BC, Emperor during the years 14-37AD..
32.-
The Life of Augustus, Suetonius, trans. Philemon Holland,
Tudor Series, 1893.
33.-
Res Gestae, E. G. Hardy, 1923.
34.-
Shorter Oxford Dictionary, p.1503.
35.-
The Reign of Tiberius, F B. Marsh, 1931.
36.-
Brewer's Myth and Legend, Editor J C.Cooper. Cassell, 1992,
p.213.
37.-
Catiline, Clodius and Tiberius, Beesly, 1878.
38.-
Smaller Classical Dictionary, 1910 Ed., 'Tiberius'.
39.-
The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, ch.3:5, p.112.
40.-
Ibid., ch 2:70, p.89.
41.-
Ibid., ch.2:18, p.60.
42.-
Ibid., ch 2:88, p.98.
43.-
Suetonius, op.cit., ch.3:18, p.119.
44.-
Ibid., ch.3:17, p.119.
45.-
Ibid., ch.3:9, p.114.
46.-
Smaller Classical Dictionary, 'Tiberius'. Also The Records of
Rome, 1868, British Library.
47.-
Encyclopedia Britannica, 'Palatine'.
48.-
Encyclopedia Judaica Jerusalem, 1971, p.601.
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