Jesus, My View
What do we actually know for sure about Jesus? Very little. He is not mentioned by any author or historian contemporary to him. The earliest book that qualifies as history that mentions him is by Josephus, The Jewish Wars. The war he refers to and participated in happened around 70 CE, 40 years after the death of Jesus. Josephus describes him as a wise man, and refers to followers, called “Christians”, who still exist. He doesn’t say that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.
Yet, that is the main point about Jesus in the surviving letters of Paul. Paul (or Saul of Tarsus, originally) was on his way to Damascus, when a blinding vision of Jesus knocked him to the ground, and asked him, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” The entire religion of Christianity is based on that event. Saul assumes that Jesus must have risen from the dead if he is capable of appearing to him as a vision. I think modern Psychical Researchers would not agree that this is the only possible explanation. In Paul’s letters, he does not refer once to any saying of Jesus. Of course, he might have preached the sayings of Jesus, but no record of his teachings survive. Paul’s letters are the oldest part of the New Testament.
The four canonical (i.e., lawful) gospels were written in the first century CE, according to Church Tradition. But there is absolutely no reason to believe any church tradition, since we know such traditions were edited, deleted, modified, mangled and more or less continuously invented right up to the present moment. At least, there is no reason to accept any church tradition without supporting archaeology or other scholarship that doesn’t just accept or depend on church tradition. Some people will tell you there are fragments of the gospels that can be dated to the first or second Century CE. Forgeries! All these fragments were bought in Middle Eastern antiquities markets in the 19th and 20th Centuries. They are dated only by the writing style. Well nothing could be easier to forge. Find me one in situ in an archaeological site and I may believe it. The oldest surviving gospels are the Sinai Codex and the Vatican Codex, both written about 350 CE, i.e., after Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
What do we know for sure? We know that Christianity was a mystery religion for its first thousand years of existence. How do we know that? Because in early churches, those in the audience who had not been initiated had to leave at a certain point in the service. They gathered in the Narthex, a large room built for that purpose. Often there were dual churches, one for the initiates, and the other for the non-initiates. Such double churches were very common before 900 CE. Such a double church existed on the Isle de Cite in Paris, where now there is just a single cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris.
We also know this from the autobiography of St. Augustine (ca. 400 CE), the Confessions. This is a very good book, a real classic, a good read, and I strongly recommend it to every Christian, or anyone like myself who merely has a scholarly interest in history. In it we learn that Augustine was raised a Christian by his mother, but dismissed the gospels as childish fables until he met Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who explained to him the hidden symbolic meaning of the gospels. So clearly, what we know as the New Testament is nothing but the childish fables taught to the general population. The hidden symbolic meaning is the real teaching, and if it survived, it did not survive in Church tradition, nor in the New Testament.
But it might have survived in The Gospel of Thomas, which was only discovered in the deserts of Egypt in 1945. So this is one work, written in Coptic, the language of the time, that has not been translated, edited, or otherwise reinvented by Christian tradition. This comes straight down to us from ancient times. It doesn’t really matter whether the copy we have was written in the 1st Century or the 2nd Century CE, since it could have circulated as an oral tradition for a century or more. In any case, we have only church tradition that the four canonical gospels were written down between 70 and 90 CE. The internal evidence of mythological, magical and syncretistic elements suggests they are much older than that, more likely third Century.
The Gospel of Thomas could be called The Sayings of Jesus, because that is what it is. There is nothing about his life, nothing about miracles, nothing about teaching to large crowds, nothing about a crucifixion or resurrection, nothing about his birth or death. In that respect, it very much resembles the Koran, or the Tao Teh Ching, both of which are also nothing more than the teachings of the master.
Is The Gospel of Thomas Gnostic? Well maybe a little, since it starts off by saying “These are the secret sayings of Jesus as told to Thomas Didymos (the twin).” But we know that all of Christianity was a little bit Gnostic for at least 900 years. That is to say, it was a secret teaching. It was a mystery religion.
Furthermore, we know that it was these secret teachings that gave rise to the Saints, who were very much at the center of Christianity at least until the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. By the “Saints” I mean the ascetics who went off to live alone or in small communes, at first in the deserts of the Middle East, and later on remote islands off the British Coast, places like Lindisfarne, until they were finally destroyed by the Vikings. For about 100 years, in the depths of the Dark Age, these Irish monks were the only people in Europe who could still read and write Greek and Latin, and still had a taste for the Classics. When the rest of Europe had been overrun by Germanic barbarians, the Irish saints preserved Civilization for about 100 years. With the rise of Charlemagne, and his contemporary, Albert the Great, cities, towns, schools, libraries and universities were re-established. Some of the schools survived the Vikings and survive today as universities. Nearly every ancient book we still possess are those copied in these scriptoria, in Carolingian Miniscule, the father of “lower case.” Ancient books are all in upper case, and there are no blanks between words. It was in the Carolingian scriptoria that they first broke sentences into words separated by a blank, and began using capital letters as we do. The Irish Saints saved civilization. This is an historical fact.
It is hard to fathom to what depths civilization had sunk even in Rome, even in the papacy. Cities and towns had disappeared. No one could read or write, not even monks, priests, popes or kings. Charlemagne tried to learn to read and write at age 40, but he never got the hang of it. However, he had Alcuin of York, brought over from the British Isles to start his nascent universities, and to re-educate the priests and popes.
The Christianity that revived at the end of the Dark Ages, about 900-1000 CE , was not at all the same religion that went into the Dark Ages. It had been revised to incorporate Germanic ideas, such as Heaven and Hell (Valhalla), the End Times and the Last Judgement, and the banishing of souls into an eternity of either Heaven or Hell. These strange ideas have nothing to do with original Christianity. Jesus never said anything like that. What we call Christianity today is sheer superstition, and is not at all what Jesus taught.
You will not find any visual representation of The Last Judgement in early Christian art, such as the art of the catacombs under Rome. The earliest “Last Judgements” date from about 1000 CE, and are carved on the tympanums of Romanesque Cathedrals, over the door. There are very few Crucifixions before 900 CE. There is one carved on the door of Santa Sabina in Rome, from about 450 CE. There are none in catacomb art. There are none on the walls or ceilings of any of the early “house” churches that have been found in many parts of the Roman Empire.
In catacomb art, we see many representations of Jesus as a shepherd, holding a lamb around his neck. There are many pictures of Jesus holding his arms out to the sides, as if inviting you to come give him a hug. This “T” gesture is called “Orisen” and is thought to be the earliest form of prayer. Sometimes he is shown surrounded by 4 symbolic animals, later associated with the 4 gospels.
Everything I have said so far is historical fact.
So how do we put the bits and pieces of archaeology and old books and historical fact into a coherent story?
Let’s review. In archaeology, we have the Tropaion under the altar of St. Peters. (See the book The Bones of St. Peter.) This archaeology was done during WW 2 and following. It contains a first Century tomb, and inside the “graffitti wall” there was found the bones of a robust 70 year old man, wrapped in purple cloth with gold threads running through it. This skeleton is missing the feet, ankles and head. This must be St. Peter. Maybe he was crucified upside down. The easiest way to get him down would be to chop off his feet. Another church claims St. Peter’s skull as a relic. We also have the catacombs and old house churches, with their representations of the “good shepherd” and of Jesus in Orisen. We know the desert saints existed. We know the Irish saints existed. We know the double churches existed. The Gospel of Thomas in Coptic comes down to us from ancient times, unaltered, untranslated, and unchanged. It probably represents an oral tradition which was finally written down in the local language of the desert saints in Egypt. That language was Coptic. The Nag Hammadi library, which includes the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, and many other new and interesting books, new to us, anyway, was no doubt the library of a community of desert saints. Why they hid their library, we don’t know. Perhaps they were about to be overrun by Saracens, i.e., Moslems.
One might put these pieces together in more than one way. Here’s my version.
For the teachings of Jesus, refer to the Sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas. Most of them are the same as the sayings of Jesus in the 4 canonical gospels. So it doesn’t really matter in what order they were written down. The Gospel of Thomas might be later, but represent an older secret oral tradition. Do not forget that early Christianity was a mystery religion.
When asked when the Kingdom of Heaven would be established on Earth, the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas says it has already happened. The Kingdom of Heaven is all around us, but we do not see. Several versions of “The Apocalypse,” now known as “The Book of Revelation” are found in the Nag Hammadi library, so we can clearly see that its meaning is purely symbolic, and in no way prophecies a coming End Times, or a return of Jesus to Earth.
Much of the teaching of Jesus, both in “Thomas” and in “the Gospels” is about the X of Y, where “X” is a word that could be translated “realm” or “kingdom” and “Y” is literally “sky” or “the heavens”. Ancient metaphors must be considered in the context of the worldview of the time. And the worldview of classical times was that of Aristotle, who drew a large distinction between Earth and the Heavens. Here on Earth, at rest in the center of the universe, everything is earth, air, water or fire. Everything is mutable, corruptible and perishable. None of these things are true of the Heavens, according to Aristotle. The heavens are made of a fifth element (i.e., a quintessence), which is immutable, imperishable, and incorruptible.
Thus, Jesus was teaching about the realm of the quintessence, which was immutable, imperishable and incorruptible. It makes perfectly good sense to say “the realm of the quintessence is within,” a saying found both in “Thomas” and in “the gospels.” The Aristotelian worldview was the common background of thought throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, including the Middle East in the time of Jesus. It remained the common worldview until the time of Galileo and Kepler.
It makes perfectly good sense to go seek solitude in the desert, or on remote islands, and seek the realm of the quintessence within, for that is divinity. And we all partake of divinity. We are all sons of god, according to the Jesus of The Gospel of Thomas. This is what the Saints were doing, and some of them succeeded in experiencing those mystical states which reveal our union with divinity. In that way, they saw the Unity of All things, and became holy. What is the root of “holy?” It is the same as “whole”, “holistic,” “heal” and “hale.” Jesus was teaching the same thing taught by all mystics. And how could it be otherwise if he were truly a wise man?
Since we know the Saints really existed, they must have been following the Gospel of Thomas, not the canonical gospels. The Gospel of Thomas is the real deal, the true teaching of Jesus. It was a secret teaching, revealed only to the initiates. And as the Saints disappeared after 800 CE, so did the true teaching.
~~~~Dr.H