Introduction: The Gospels are not literal.
Once upon a time it was considered a sign of insanity to doubt the literal truth of the Bible. To question anything in the divinely inspired scriptures would be to question existence itself. Scepticism towards the infallibility of the written word of God marked one as an anarchist and political danger to the believing community. In the West secular laws were justified from the Bible, although often by suppositious arguments. The American Southern Baptists, for example, justified their slavery of the Negroes from the Old Testament condemnation of the children of Ham to be servants of the children of Israel.

But there are stages of believers. Those who still hold that the Bible is inerrant are, hopefully, few. The next stage of belief is a reasoned approach to the Scriptures involving a critical analysis of the text sorting out the anachronistic elements from the eternally relevant passages. This is still a belief in the Truth of the Bible, or at least selections thereof. The great critical Biblical scholars of the last two centuries believed in a literal truth of the Bible - if they could just sort it out from the dross.

The philologists have worked the text to death. The theologians have twisted every term and sentence into a preconceived meaning. The historians, strangely the most blinkered, bring their political and social theories with them in their attempt to find the ‘Historical Jesus’. The advance of modern criticism has left the priests bewildered and the congregations dwindling.

What is needed is a fresh approach to appreciate the Bible as literature; which is not philologically deadening, theologically fossilised or historically blinkered. After all, the Bible is made up of stories: From the stories in Genesis and Exodus to the stories of the Gospels and the Apocalypse. Granted, it is a varied and uneven literature. The Sun did not literally and historically stand still for Joshua, but it makes a good story. The heavens will not literally roll up like a scroll at some historically determined time as the author of the Apocalypse wrote, but it makes a good story.

Inconsistency and contradiction mark the Gospels as non-history. They are both internally and comparatively contradictory. Any number of examples could be given to demonstrate this fact. They are, for the most part, vague on actual historically verifiable dates, and the few examples of dated events, such as the date of the birth of Jesus, are mutually inconsistent. They are not reporting convincing history. But, they do tell some very vivid and convincing stories, which have found their way into the hearts of generations.

In trying to date the gospels we find great difficulty, not least with the belief of most writers that somehow the gospels are reporting, truly, events that really happened to a man who really existed. This, often unconscious, presupposition taints all of their work. To the believer Luke is an accurate historian therefore we can use him unreservedly for historical fact. What happens when a scholar is a believer?

When the scholars run out of facts they are not above making up a good story and trying to pass it off as some kind of ‘fact’. Some serious writers actually give us a detailed story of Jesus’ childhood and family life - for which we have absolutely no historical source. Another will give us a story about the family circumstances of Paul, with the definite assertion that: ‘His father was a wealthy Jewish cloth merchant in Tarsus specialising in carpets, shoes and tents woven of the high quality wool from the province; and that by this wealth he gained Roman citizenship for himself and his son, Saul’. All of this comes from a dubious line in Luke’s Acts 18:3 about Saul/Paul staying with a Jewish couple in Corinth who plied the trade of tent-makers! They make a good story where the facts are uncertain or non-existent. In doing this they are often unconsciously following the methodology of the writers they are supposed to be studying.

Traditional view of the Gospels.
The tradition of the Christian Church from the fourth century onwards was that the four gospels were written in the following manner: Matthew and John were disciples and wrote from their own memory. Mark, perhaps John Mark the disciple of Peter, wrote from the reminiscences of Peter. Luke, the physician to the apostle Paul, wrote his gospel from hearing eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus’ life, and wrote Acts from his own eyewitness of the events. Can this tradition be sustained in the light of scholarship?

When we look at the traditional references we have to the gospels and try to fit them into a verifiable time frame we can find no mention of the four before Irenaeus in the late second century. In fact the earliest uncontested source to the four gospels is by Eusebius in the fourth century. In his History of the Church he describes the four gospels in varying orders as given in his earlier sources. He gives six different sources and orders of production. One has Luke the earliest as a gospel and read by Paul. Another, Clement of Alexandria, quoted only in Eusebius, has the two gospels with the infancy stories written first, followed by Mark and still later John. The early tradition was, and still is, hopelessly confused.

An outstanding example of this confusion which is found in Eusebius is about the writing of the Gospel of Mark. Eusebius has Mark, who had written his gospel from the words of the apostle Peter, arrive in Alexandria and preach his gospel to such effect that a great many of the Alexandrians believed and withdrew into the desert to found communities. This is verified, according to Eusebius, by the account of the Therapeutae given by the Alexandrian Jew Philo Judaeus who wrote with glowing admiration of this religious community. The work of Philo from which Eusebius quotes is On the Contemplative Life, where these ‘earliest Christians’ are described. There is a problem, and not a small one, about this description of Mark’s earliest Christians in Philo.

On all accounts Philo was born about 30 B.C.E., as he describes himself as an old man in 39 C.E., and he is believed to have died shortly after 40 C.E.. As On the Contemplative Life is considered to be one of a pair of his earliest, youthful, works there is a dating problem with the account of Mark’s preaching. As the work was done in Philo’s youth it could not have been much later than 5 C.E. which puts it some time before Jesus’ ministry, not to say crucifixion. How could Mark have listened to the words of Peter, in Rome, about a crucified Jesus who was still a child according to the traditional dating? This is an anachronism of the most serious type. If Eusebius has such a faulty understanding of his history that he can have Mark preaching a gospel years before the events of Jesus’ life happened, what about his other gospel accounts?

Another important point to be made when considering the date of the composition of the gospels is that a mention of a ‘Jesus’ or a ‘Christ’ in the earlier literature does not mean an existing set of gospels as we have them. The gospels were used separately by different sects: some followed only Matthew, others Luke and yet others only John. It was only much later in the history that they were gathered together as the ‘four gospels’. They started their life as separate documents meant for differing peoples and purposes. Perhaps, seeing their contradictions, they were never supposed to be collected together?

Fortunately for the early Church this compilation did not happen until their theology and hierarchy were strong enough for them to insist on the gospels’ special properties and depth of meaning not available to the uninitiated. They were then reserved for the elite of the spiritual hierarchy and fed to the congregation in purified doses. It was only after the Reformation that the books of the Bible were available to the literate laity. Then the questions started. Everyman felt he had the right to accept what he liked from his reading of the Bible and question what he found objectionable. From this followed all of the modern scholarship into the reality or historicity of the Bible tradition.
 

Synoptic problem.
As noted, the traditional accounts of the gospels and the order in which they were written is hopelessly confused. Has modern scholarship eliminated that confusion? No! Scholars, both historical and theological, have spent lifetimes in intricate study and subsequent elaboration of conflicting opinions. Some will follow the traditional view of Matthew first, as it is the most cited by quotations in the early Church Fathers. Others will have John first as a reliable source for he was an actual disciple and had actually followed Jesus. A few writers hold that Luke was the first, because he is most complete as a history when his gospel is coupled with his ‘eyewitness’ account of the events in Acts. However, arguing from the internal content of the gospels most scholars have come to the consensus that Mark was the source for the others. Recently there is a school that is going back to the priority of Matthew because he was reported, in a dubious source, to have written first in Aramaic or even Hebrew before being rendered into Greek. There we have the full circle.

When it was understood that two of the three gospels shared material absent from Mark an hypothetical source was postulated. This ‘source’ for material shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark was called ‘Q’, for no particularly good reason. The Q could just as easily stand for “Quintus Fabulus” an hypothetical retired centurion with many years service in the East, who gathered tales and sayings of the sages and holy men of that part of the world.

Although the gospels differ in almost all of their details they are remarkably similar in their overall story. They are too similar to have been written separately in different places at different times. How can one believe that Matthew and Luke obtained exact copies of both Mark and the hypothetical Q, and then in different cities wrote their individual gospels as similarly as they did? There are also some cases where it looks as though Mark is modifying sources from Matthew and Luke, such as the ‘Triumphal Entry’ into Jerusalem. How can this be accounted for in the traditional sequence? The gospels are interdependent and not independent documents.

How can the faithful explain these problems of difference and similarity in the ‘true’ gospels? Once the problem was noticed it was tackled by the best minds in Christendom. These men, and all were men, merely wanted to clear up a few apparent inconsistencies and finally reconcile the story of Jesus’ life and true teaching. The new age of reason would not allow illogicality even in its religion.

In the eighteenth century scholars applied the techniques gained through the study of the scientific method to the study of Homer and the ancient literary corpus. If this could be done with the ancient Greeks why not the ancient Jews? So the Old Testament was subjected to searching criticism, mainly by the German school. When word of this arrived in England the Anglican Church was horrified. If this could be done to the O.T. - what if someone did the same thing to the New Testament? They were right, the N.T. canon soon came under the fire of the German big shots, with a devastating effect throughout the Christian world. The English scholars soon rose to the task and aimed more broadly than the continentals. Liberal Christians, discontented with the traditional dogmatic view, found a new interest in historical criticism. Book after book has been written on the ‘Life of Jesus’.

For many today this was the start of the rot of disbelief, and the cause of all modern ills. Gone forever was the simple, peaceful Jesus who blessed the little children and fed the people in the wilderness. Now we had a Jesus of contradictions. Was he to bring peace or the sword? Was he a Jew who obeyed the Jewish Law, or was he the first Christian who proclaimed a new Law? Was he ending history, or starting a new era? In the study of the differing pictures of Jesus the enlightenment found a rebel, a healer, a magician and the prototype Gnostic? Each proponent expounded his case with seemingly irrefutable logic. However, as they all were working from an undemonstrable premise they came to differing conclusions. They all postulated that there really was an historical Jesus to find. What if not?
 

Impossibility of internal solution.
With a little ingenuity one can find at least four different images of Jesus in the gospels. This is not to say that the images will yield a consistent picture, for as the most part they will be mutually exclusive. A peaceful Jesus cannot be reconciled with a revolutionary who comes with a sword. Each of the gospels contain contradictory pictures. For example Luke, combining the opposite views of Matthew and Mark, has Jesus proclaiming two doctrines that cannot possibly be reconciled when he says that: “Whoever is not with me is against me.” And then a few chapters later he decides: “Whoever is not against you is for you.” Which version of his doctrine do we follow? Most Christians have answered by merely choosing whichever suited their own attitude to their rivals in the religious business.

The greatest problem in studying the gospels is reading one into another. The classic example of this is the ‘Nativity’ scenes at Christmas. They inevitably have the baby Jesus worshipped by both the wise men and the shepherds. These come from two different stories told in two different gospels, which are so different as to be irreconcilable. The dates, the sequence of events, and the endings of the birth story of the central figure of Christianity differ. Only the pious mind can believe in two things at once. The same can be said for the crucifixion scene, the ending of the central figure’s mission. Each account varies from the others.

A clear example of this happening can be demonstrated with the second most important character in Christianity, Saul/Paul. Luke wrote both a gospel and a history. How reliable his history of Paul in Acts is will be an indication of his accuracy in his gospel account of Jesus. For an exercise try to think of Saul/Paul without referring to Acts - rather only from his own letters, which are considered authentic.
* He did not study in Jerusalem under Rabbi Gamaliel.
* He was not present at the stoning of ‘Stephen’.
* He did not have a vision on ‘the road to Damascus’.
* He healed no cripples.
* He did not meet the Roman governor, Gallio, in Corinth.
* He raised no one from the dead.
* He was not a Roman citizen.
These facts are in Acts but not in the Epistles. According to Paul himself he did not do anything which Luke represents him as doing in Acts. If Paul had done any of these things he surely would have boasted of them. If the Paul of Acts has practically nothing to do with the ‘real’ Paul in the Epistles, what does this say about the Jesus of the Gospels and the ‘real’ Jesus?

We must conclude that Luke’s work is open to question. If he could fictionalise such an account of Saul/Paul, who wrote copiously, what did he do to Jesus, who wrote only in the sand? If his gospel is as unhistorical as his Acts can be demonstrated to be, the next question that comes to mind is: what about the other gospel accounts? They may be as unhistorical as Luke as they are so similar in their story and purpose.

But in that case all of the gospels are disputed works, ie. open to question. We cannot use one disputed work to verify another. To read the story of Jesus we unconsciously slip from one gospel to another. For one raised in the Western tradition this is one of the hardest habits to break. We, since birth, have been surrounded with the story of Jesus. It permeates our culture and our thought whether or not one is a believer.

The gospels had the field for many centuries and were long considered the benchmark of truth, “it is Gospel” was the synonym for veracity The other literature of the culture had been made subservient to the Bible, but surprisingly much has survived under the protection of the Church itself.

External sources.
It is often said, especially by Christians, that there is little literature from the time of Jesus. They are wrong. The period from just beforethe birth of Jesus through the second century is the richest period of extant ancient literary productions. Also, we now have the Dead Sea Scrolls and other recently discovered material contemporary with the period.

The problem for Christians is that there are so few uncontested mentions of Christ in the literature. The historians Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius have mentions, but these are doubtful as to their authenticity and date of inclusion. The same can be said for the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan and the emperor’s reply concerning Christians. The letter attributed to Pliny was published after his death by one of the imperial secretaries later in the second century.

Of these ancient contemporary sources Josephus is the most important to our study of the gospel period. Whatever one thinks of his character and prejudices Josephus is generally reliable where he is disinterested. But there is one thing that he had a great interest in, and that was the Messiahs and other pretenders who brought down the destructive wrath of the Romans upon his beloved Jerusalem. He hated them and tells us so at every opportunity. He would never have written favourably about any Messiah and that, of course, would include the Jesus Christ figure.

There are the two contemporary imperial historians whose works have survived, Tacitus and Suetonius. But there are also many historians who have not. One contemporary, mentioned by Josephus, was the Syrian historian Hermogenes. Suetonius, in his Life of Domitian, relates how Hermogenes was executed for “some incautious allusions” in one of the books of his history. Also his slaves, copyists, were crucified for having copied such ‘allusions’! This is but one example of imperial control of the literature and most importantly the histories. This was standard Roman procedure, and especially after Vespasian they kept a firm hand on book production and distribution.

In the course of time imperial censorship gave way to ecclesiastical control. The intention was the same, to control the literature and men’s minds by not allowing any alternative opinion to survive. What was started under the Romans continued in the Church, especially during the Inquisition. All ancient literature we have, other than the recent archaeological finds, has been filtered through two thousand years of censorship. The authors mentioned above were either imperial secretaries, or in the employ of the government at some stage. They were ‘official’ historians or propagandists for the state.

If the passages about Jesus in the imperial historians are authentic they must have had official approval. If they are later interpolations they again must be officially approved, because who else would be able to tamper with official histories? Which ever way we argue the case the Roman authorities would have had to approve the Jesus passages.

The gospels themselves were created during this period of imperial control. That they have survived along with the other ‘approved’ literature suggests that they were also ‘approved’. The State allowed only those works which were relevant to its cause to survive. The witness of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hag Hammadi gnostic scriptures attest to the diversity and breadth of early literature. These late finds give us examples of contemporary literature to act as something like a ‘control’ with which to measure the ‘approved’ works. We can now see how tame the ‘approved’ gospels are when compared with the other streams of semi-Christian thought.

After the first Jewish war the Romans had a tame Judaism, under the Rabbis of Jamnia, and allowed their version of the Jewish Scriptures, without the revolutionary Books of the Maccabees, to be published abroad. The emperors had always had a special relationship with the Jews since Julius Caesar.

History of Roman occupation.
In 63 BCE the Jews had their first real encounter with the Romans. Pompey conquered them. From then on they were under Roman control of one sort or another. Sometimes they were ruled by their own, Roman appointed, kings. The Jewish kings were quite adept in both backing losers and coming up with the winners in the struggles for the empire amongst the Romans themselves.

The father of Herod, Antipater, after first backing Pompey changed sides and saved Julius Caesar when all seemed lost in Alexandria. Caesar never forgot the favour and granted the Jews of the empire special privileges and religious concessions. For the most part this was continued up until the emperor Hadrian. Through circumstances of timing and fortune most of the first century emperors owed their ascension to one or another of the powerful Jews. Herod the Great won the favour of Augustus, after previously backing the loser Mark Anthony, by aiding him in taking Egypt, the key to the empire. His grandson, Herod Agrippa I, was a close friend of the emperor Caligula until his assassination, when Herod then put Claudius on the throne. When he founded his dynasty Vespasian was aided by the Alexandrian Jews, especially Philo’s nephew Tiberius Alexander. Tiberius Alexander’s father, Philo’s brother’ was the richest man in the world in his time and manager of imperial estates under several emperors. The Jewish king Herod Agrippa II was a valued favourite at court until his death in about 100 C.E.

In Palestine itself life was not too bad under indirect rule. States under Roman protection generally prospered. The laws were stable, commerce was unrestricted throughout the empire - which was most of the known world. Anyone could become wealthy if they just got along with their business and paid their taxes. The Romans thought of their taxes as a rent paid for civilization. If you did not pay your rent, you were evicted and someone else took over the property. The Romans were the landlords of Western civilization and protected their property diligently.

When the Romans deposed Herod’s son, Archelaus, in 6 C.E., and took direct control of Palestine the Jews in Galilee revolted at the prospect of paying tax to the heathen. They had been paying the same tax to their own king but the outsiders were something else. This was the start of the first war, which simmered for years before breaking out in open revolt within a generation of this first gesture of defiance. The Jews of Judea were only a small part of the empire, but they were one of the most wealthy provinces the Romans controlled. Judea was at the cross roads of trade both north-south and as the terminus of the Eastern overland trade routes. Judea was crucial to the well-being of the empire.

The first Jewish war cost the Romans dearly, both in the loss of political prestige and military expenditure. Wars cost money, money the emperors would have liked to have spent on bettering the life of the citizens of the empire. Things like water supplies for its cities. But, unexplainably, when the Romans wanted to improve the water supply for Jerusalem the Jews rioted? Why did the Jews, of all peoples, not want a better supply of the health sustaining water? Did they not want to bathe? The Romans, as often in their dealings with the Jews, were completely baffled.

The Jews made up ten percent of the population of the empire under Claudius, but they exercised power out of proportion to their numbers. They were the financiers of the imperial house. This interesting state of affairs was not interrupted until the second Jewish war in 135 ended imperial favour. By then the new sect of Christians had become almost entirely gentile. The Jewish-Christian ‘bishop’ of Jerusalem was replaced by a Gentile after the second war. The Gentile Christians proved useful to the government in their organisational control of their believers. This was rewarded in just a few centuries with complete and official recognition by Constantine and full rule before the end of the fourth century. Their rise, at first riding on the back of Judaism, was later at the expense of the Jews. By the late second century the Christians made up the ten percent of the empire that the Jews previously had.
 

Flavian propaganda machine.
Flavius Vespasian, the founder of the Flavian Dynasty was an unknown person of lowly birth, (his father was a customs supervisor). Vespasian needed some recognition of the validity of his accession and the rule of his new dynasty. A series of miracles were noted which seemed to presage his rule. We have three contemporary sources for these miracles: Josephus, 37-100 CE, Tacitus, 55-120 and Suetonius, 69-140. All three were in the employ of the Flavian emperors, and for a period, at the same time. Both Josephus and Tacitus admit their debt first to Vespasian, then his sons Titus and Domitian for their careers. Suetonius shows his debt by the glowing biographies he wrote for the Flavian Dynasty. How reliable or truthful are their accounts of the Flavian Oracles?

Tacitus himself did not believe in miracles, yet he recorded those of Vespasian and the Jews dutifully. It was he who wrote; “but it was only after the rise of the Flavians that we Romans believed in such stories.” This was the attitude of an educated, sensible Roman. Even Josephus shows a vein of scepticism in his works when it comes to miracles, at least those which are not directly from God. Suetonius was rather easy-going and miracles did not bother him very much one way or the other.

In the first century there was an oracle of unknown origin circulating that a ruler of the world would come from the East. When Nero was forced into suicide there was already a rebel general with his army on the march towards Rome. But he was from the West, Spain, so that he was unsuccessful, as were his two successors who were all from Europe. That left Vespasian, in Judea, with the largest concentration of troops under his command. The oracle was pressed into service to mean that the ruler was none other than Vespasian himself. This was the start of a propaganda campaign that assisted the Flavian dynasty to come to rule and to rule the Roman empire.

Vespasian was given a favourable prophecy from the priests of Mt. Carmel. Whether or not this was mere political expediency on their part Vespasian and his followers were well pleased. The rumours were spread quickly throughout the army that their general was to be successful in whatever he planned. His immediate followers, including Josephus who had himself prophesied the emperorship would come to Vespasian, encouraged the general to consider seizing power. Our general was a veteran campaigner and caution was his first course. However, Tiberius Alexander, a lapsed Jew and governor of Alexandria, had the troops under his command take their oath to Vespasian as emperor.

When the new emperor was in Alexandria preparing for the journey to Rome several portentous events happened. When Vespasian went to the temple of Serapis for an oracle he is recorded by both Tacitus and Suetonius to have received an oracle associated with the name Basilides, ie. ‘king’s son’. This was taken to mean that the god had acknowledged Vespasian’s right to the Principate.

Then there were the blind and lame whom Vespasian cured with his ‘royal touch’. They were brought to him with the assurance from the god Serapis that he could heal them by spitting into the blind man’s eyes and healing the lame man with his heel. He was reluctant considering that if he failed he would look the fool. His followers reassured him that he could do it, he did and the two men were healed. This was obviously stage-managed, by whom we will never know. Most likely it was the followers of the new emperor who concocted the circumstances to give more confidence to Vespasian in his new role. Other miracles concerning his birth were now ‘remembered’, and favourable portents came from all over the empire, including Greece. The stories spread quickly, no doubt helped on their way by the official post.

Flavius Vespasian became emperor and god. His two sons followed him to the rule and the Flavian dynasty was a fact. While oracles and miracles assisted him in his rule by establishing a supernatural awe around his person Vespasian remained wryly sceptical to the end. He had a great sense of humour. On his death bed he said, as he felt himself dying; “Now I feel myself becoming a god.”

Josephus as propagandist.
Flavius Josephus ben Matthias ha Cohen retired to Rome after the war and wrote his memoirs, as a general should. However, Josephus’ memoirs were more than mere reminiscences of a successful commander who had completed his active service. In this war Josephus had served on both sides, first as a Jewish commander and later as a Roman intelligence officer. He had been given the emperor’s old house and received considerable revenues derived from large property holdings in Judea granted to him by the Roman commander after the war. He was on family terms with not only the emperor Vespasian and his son Titus, but also with the Jewish royal house under Herod Agrippa II which resided in Rome. He boasts of this close relationship often. How did he, a defeated Jewish rebel, attain to such a position with the victorious Romans?

As a young man Josephus was included in an embassy from Jerusalem to Rome. There he met with success, through Jewish connections to the emperor’s wife. He was in Rome during Nero’s reign and presumably at the time of the great fire, though he does not mention the event. In his Antiquities he mentions a renegade Jew, who by a fraud perpetrated upon a noble Roman matron, caused the Jews in Rome to be expelled from the city. This must have been the expulsion under Nero mentioned in other literature. He would have seen Rome at its mightiest. The splendour of the court and magnificence of the city would have impressed this young provincial. But the might of the Roman army would have been the most impressive of all.

When Josephus returned from Rome things in Jerusalem had gone from bad to worse. There were increasing tensions between the Jews and their Roman rulers. Rebellion was in the air. When hostilities broke out Josephus was given a command, of some sort, to defend Galilee. The Romans took Galilee as a training exercise for the real war in Judea. Josephus surrendered to Vespasian and prophesied his rule. He was treated very well from the start by his captors. When Nero died Vespasian struck off his fetters and he joined the Roman staff. He acted as an intelligence officer, interrogating prisoners and advising the Romans on conditions in Jerusalem. Josephus had many friends in the besieged city and was able to gain information useful to the besiegers. He continually tried to negotiate a surrender but was generally unsuccessful. However, he did convince a large group of nobles and rabbis to desert to the Romans.

Just before the destruction of the temple he organised for some of the treasures to be lowered over the wall to the Romans. These were later exhibited in the Triumph at Rome, as still illustrated on Titus’ arch. He also gained custody of the Holy Books from the temple after the war. He was also allowed to save those of his friends and family who had survived the siege. Titus, the victorious general, granted him almost royal favours and took Josephus with him in his retinue to Rome.

In Rome the first assignment for Josephus was to write an account of the inevitable and ultimate defeat of those who had challenged Rome’s rule. He wrote first in Aramaic, the language of the East, and then in Greek for the rest of the world. He discusses this in his works. The description of the Roman victory was to dissuade other subject states from rebellion. This was completed quickly, the first draft came out immediately after the war and the Greek some three years later. The work was published by the emperor himself and officially distributed, first in the East and then throughout the empire. His was the ‘official’ history, all others were discouraged and have not survived.

The Flavians excelled at this production of Propaganda/History. As noted all of the surviving histories of the period are from Flavian sponsored writers. All other writers had a hard time of it. Some were merely relegated to oblivion, while others were done to death. The emperors wanted their version of events to be the only one available to the populace, and ultimately to history. This was effective and the policy was followed by all succeeding emperors. When the Christians took over the empire they did not see fit to change this state of affairs, indeed they were even more active in inventing histories.
 

Gospels as post-Josephus.
There are two ways to date an ancient document; externally, where the work is mentioned in another historically datable document, and internally by the latest historically datable event mentioned in the text. The gospels are no exception to these rules.

The first is relatively easy as the gospels have their first historical notice, in another Christian work, in the mid to late second century. The earliest mention of any gospel at all is in Justin Martyr writing in the middle of the second century. Irenaeus, writing no earlier than the year 185, lists the four gospels for the first time - and which sect of Christians used which gospels, and which rejected one or more of the canon. As we see, even in the Christian documents, the gospels were only noted some one hundred and fifty years after the events they purport to describe. The earliest secular writer who mentions ‘the books of the Christians’ is Eunapius, writing at the beginning of the fifth century.

The gospels are set in the early years of the first century, indeed the first century is dated from them. If this seems to be a circular statement, it is. The story they tell, of the start of a new era of the ‘kingdom of God’ stemming from the birth of a Messiah, starts the dating of our Common Era. The dating system of the Western world was devised in the sixth century by fixing years from the Anno Domini, year of the Lord, the supposed birth date of Jesus. This in itself is debatable as we simply do not know when Jesus was born, if at all.

If we turn to the documents themselves, noting their setting in the first third of the first century, we can find thinly disguised accounts of events which happened in the last third of that century. The most striking of these are the prophecies, by Jesus, of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the cities of Galilee, years after his supposed death. These are found in all of the gospels. Mark, supposedly the earliest, has a graphic description of the woes of the Jews and their destruction. Matthew and Luke share a similar description, said to be from the Q passages. Luke gives graphic details in his description of the siege of Jerusalem and its destruction by the Romans.

This is a remarkable example of prophecy before the event, if indeed we can credit the miraculous. Most modern readers have doubts about miracles and would recognise a post-event description rather than a visionary experience being reported. The temple had been destroyed six centuries earlier, but was soon restored. In the Jews’ recent past the temple had been taken by the Romans, by Pompey, and looted by Crassus, but not destroyed. There was no precedent for thinking the Romans would destroy it before they were obliged to do so in the last stages of the Jewish war. This was due to the last-ditch stand taken by the religious fanatics. They had sought protection there, believing that God would at least save his own house. Their determined resistance brought on its destruction by the Romans.

If, then, we can see that the gospels which contain the description of the temple’s destruction were written after the event we have a date for their earliest production, ie. post 70’s. Jesus’ predictions were written into the gospels at a date well after his supposed death. It is either this way, or we have to believe in the miraculous. As the later Christians came to believe that the destruction of the Jewish temple was god’s revenge on them for having killed his son, Jesus’ predictions made sense theologically if not historically.

If the gospels describe the destruction of Jerusalem they must be assumed to have been written after the event. Who else wrote about these the events? Josephus’ history would have been available in the East only a few years after the destruction. As Josephus’ history was the official account published and distributed throughout the empire we should expect to find evidence somewhere that it is being used by the gospel writers. Luke gives it away in his second book, Acts, when he lifts a description of two bandits Theudas and Judas from Josephus and puts it into Gamaliel’s speech. We can still see how he mistook the account from Josephus and anachronistically inserted it into his own work.

Gospels as propaganda
Josephus wrote his account of the war for the Flavians, as a piece of propaganda to divide the Jews and to encourage them to accept Rome’s rule. The gospels also promote the acceptance of Roman rule. According to Josephus the fanatical Jews in Judea brought on their own punishment by defying the Romans. In the gospels the fanatical Jews, by defying Jesus and calling for his crucifixion, brought on their own punishment by the Romans.

This pro-Roman, anti-Jewish sentiment, permeates both Josephus and the gospels. Christians are admonished to obey the powers that be, ie. the Romans. Slaves must obey their masters. Does this sound like a revolutionary new religion springing up from the masses? No, it rather reads like something imposed from above. It has been noted earlier how tame the gospels are from the Roman standpoint. The bad guys are ‘the Jews’ and the good guys are the ‘Romans’. All of the Romans we meet in the gospels are friendly, and respectful, to Jesus and the early Christians. From the centurion at Capernaum to the centurion at the crucifixion, who called Jesus a ‘son of god’, even Pilate himself, the Romans were not against Jesus. Only the ignorant and stubborn Jews caused Jesus any trouble.

This view cannot be further from the realities of the first century Roman rule. How did Jesus, a crucified Jewish rebel, attain to such a high position in the Roman empire? We have asked almost the same question of Josephus. In his case it was a matter of practical assistance to the rulers. In the case of Jesus it is more of a matter of being a harmless figurehead to a new officially approved sect of the Jews. This Jesus approved of the Roman taxation and preached non-violence. He was a ‘peaceful’ Jew who could be worshipped by both Jews and Gentiles. In time the gentiles took over the whole show.

Now that we can examine the recent finds of ancient literature from the early Christian period, like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library, we can see how ‘tame’ the canonical gospels really are. They are not at all like the contemporary Jewish sectarian literature found near the Dead Sea, nor are they like the radical Gnostic and Hermetic texts found in Egypt. The are comfortably conformable to the establishment. The gospels were protected from the beginning while the other literature was for the most part destroyed by the establishment, first Roman, then Christian.

Luke, in his Acts, gives the plot away when he describes Saul/Paul and his activities as an agent provocateur where ever he went. He disrupted the synagogues throughout the East and threw the Jews everywhere into a frenzy. The Romans finally had to come to the rescue of their agent by taking him into protective custody and spiriting him off to Rome where he lived ‘without hindrance’.

If Luke was writing for the Romans - then the others were. If we consider the possibility that the gospels were written together as political/theological fiction, with the help of an expert on Eastern folk tales, stories of their holy men and wonder workers, then most of the historical problems mentioned earlier disappear. Matthias, Marcus and Lucan, along with agent ‘Q’ sat down together and made up a story from a set theme of a ‘peaceful Jew preaching a transcendent kingdom demonstrated by the usual miracles’. Each wrote their gospel to the best of their ability and in the interests of the area of the empire to which their story was destined. These ‘eyewitness’ accounts were then published through official channels in various parts of the empire. They were considered as promoting a ‘tame’ Jewish sect that could be depended on to be both loyal and useful. That is - loyal to their masters and useful to divide the Jews as well as to absorb the gentiles who were leaning towards Judaism.

The contradictions between the gospels can be seen as merely idiosyncratic rather than factual. The fictional setting of a peaceful Judea in the first century would only be possible well after the real events of the period had been forgotten. The theology, and to a large extent the Christology, came from establishment Jews like Philo. There never was an idea of a new religion, the exercise was considered merely as a prudent modification of an existing religion in the interest of the stability of the state.

An unexpected religion.
As the fortunes of Judaism declined the status of its offshoot, Christianity, increased until it was considered a religion in itself. This was unexpected but not unwelcome to the Romans. The new sect had influence in high places. They moved into places in the imperial service that were formally occupied by Jews. And as often happens there were periodic changes in who is in the high place. The fortunes of the early Christians waxed and waned according to their political circumstances. Sometimes they would back the wrong emperor and they would lose influence, only to regain it when there was a favourable change of emperors. There was never any widespread blanket condemnation or persecution of the early Christians. Granted, sometimes, especially in the early second century, when they were mixed up with the Jews in general, they were caught up in their persecutions. Reading the Christian literature of the Church Fathers we can see that they had the ear of several emperors. Then, early in the fourth century the Roman empire finally recognised its bastard son and officially adopted it.

The rest is history, Church history. The organization of the early church was more sophisticated than one would expect. From the very first they had organized themselves into a Roman-like hierarchy of bishops/governors, deacons/leaders of ten, presbyters/council of elders and local priests. This system was very efficient, as was the Roman empire upon which was built. When the Romans officially recognized the Church it devolved many of its expensive civil responsibilities to the authority of the bishops. The Church soon became synonymous with the State.

In the beginning of the second century the question was who was a Jew and who was not? The Christians claimed the taxation privileges of the Jews but were not considered by them to be real Jews. Later, when the Jews had revolted throughout the empire the Christians had to become non-Jews. Who were the real Christians, and who were not, was the only question after the second century? Who had official approval and who were renegades?

The pagan writers considered that the Christians were responsible for the destruction of the empire. They believed that the abandonment of the ancient worship of the gods condemned the empire to invasion and destruction. Be that as it may, they were correct in that the empire was invaded and the temples were destroyed by the Christians. At the end of the fourth century Arian Christian hoards descended upon Greece and Italy and brought on the ‘dark ages’. Delphi and the rest of Greece were destroyed in 391, the temple of Serapis at Alexandria in 395. Rome fell to the Barbarian Christians in the early part of the next century. The orthodox Christians of the empire gleefully joined the Barbarians in the destruction and plunder of the temples.

The earliest Jewish-Christians were marginalised as an heretical sect. They were known to the Gentile-Christians as ‘Ebionites’ the ‘Poor’, for their ‘poor’ understanding of their own Christ. This name is familiar to the readers of the Dead Sea Scrolls - as the sectarians in that literature called themselves by the name, or title, of Ebionites, ‘the Poor’. Whenever any Jew tried to remind the Christian Church that they were originally Jewish they were anachronistically called ‘Judaizers’, and accused of trying to corrupt the ‘True Church’. The Jews who knew the truth of the origin of the Church were systematically destroyed. The result for the Jews has been to live under a ‘civilization’ that had stolen their religion and then persecuted them for the theft? How many Jews, men, women and children have died because of this politically motivated literary lie?

Because of the total control over the literature and ideas of the past centuries the Church has had it its own way. The Christian story has permeated the Western civilization to such an extent that even non-believers are affected by its literature.
 

Conclusion: The Gospels are literature.
When we realise that the literature of the Christian Church was written after Josephus, using Josephus, and for much the same purpose as Josephus, the material starts to make sense in areas where there always has been confusion. The prophecies relate to the history in a much more logical way. The anti-Jewish sentiment is explicable rather than merely irrational. The pro-Roman stance matches the political circumstance. For the most part the events make better reading if they are thought of as literature rather than some kind of history.

However, there are a few surprises, some pleasing and others shocking, in store when we read the history back through the gospels’ source, Josephus. Luke even borrows his style from Josephus. We will see that the ‘star over Bethlehem’ was over Jerusalem. The story of the child Jesus in the temple with the Doctors is from Josephus’ own childhood. We find out what a real Baptist is like. We see the sermon on the Mount is a romantic fiction which would have been politically impossible. The ‘Gadarene swine’ were six thousand Jews drowned or killed in the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum by the Roman Legion. The strange parable of the vineyard owner paying the last worker the same as the first is explained as a type of Social Security. And we understand why ‘three’ were crucified. Also, much light is shed upon Luke’s Acts, such as the ‘Shekhinah’ passing from the Jews as the ‘Spirit of Pentecost’ of the Christians; and the death of Herod. Many previously inexplicable parables and miracles are explained by a literary, rather than literal, reading.

The reading of the gospels in light of the period of history in which they were written, as well as the period about which they purport to write, will clear up many of the Synoptic Problems. They are not, and never were, meant to be read as history in our historical sense. They are little novels, or ‘novella’ with a theological and political purpose. The similarities and differences can be explained as interdependent yet idiosyncratic literary documents written from a common, shared, and individually reinterpreted source.

As history the gospels fail miserably. But, as literature they work superbly. Every episode in the ‘Lives’ of Jesus can be traced back to a source available in the early second century. Josephus is used for the history. The common Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures, known as the Septuagint, was used for the prophetic proof-texts of the Messiahship of Jesus. The sayings of Jesus can be traced to first and second century Rabbinical teachings. The eschatology is a combination of early Jewish apocalyptic literature and Greek mysticism. There is nothing original in the Jesus story. But it is well presented. The way the gospels seemingly reinforce each other adds to the feeling, but not the substance, of a true story. This is good literature.

The first thing the early Church did was to eliminate its rivals. What they did was to destroy any alternative views expressed in literature and replaced them with their own story. The ‘orthodox’ Christians borrowed the best from their opponents, and then tried to destroy all trace of them. This applied not only to the Jews and Gnostics, but also their brother, unorthodox, Christians. The major problem with Christianity is that its highly successful early literature is often at odds with its later developed dogma.

What started out as a Flavian literary propaganda project ended up by convincing its creators to believe in their own creation. The propaganda got out of hand and came to be considered the “Gospel” truth. Whether or not this is to be considered the most successful fraud in history, the Gospels are certainly the most successful works of literature ever produced.

“It was only after the rise of the Flavians that we Romans believed in such stories.”