HOME PAGE | PROEMIUM TO THE STUDY | PROFILE AND CONTACTS |
Languages |
 |
 |
The inexistent Apostle James "the Minor" or "the Just"
Summary
The transmission of ancient patristic Christian texts – the New Testament, Historia Ecclesiastica by Eusebius, the most important works of Tertullianus and Origen and those of many other “Fathers of the Church” - has been studied by many classical philologists, paleographers and biblicists.
The only available records of these works are on papyrus and scrolls, the most ancient of which dating back to the Middle Ages; these consist of a corpus of coded manuscripts whose original texts were not carefully preserved in spite of the extreme doctrinal and historical importance of what they contained; on the contrary they were deliberately destroyed in order to cancel the evidence of the evolution of a new religion (which at the start was totally different) - in fact, the myth of the solely Jewish theological protagonists has gradually been modified through the centuries. The methodical destruction of Christian documents began when Christianity came to power and the Roman Empire was still strong. This was at the time of Emperor Constantine the Great (fourth century); during his reign the powerful Court Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea was able to access the Imperial Archives and examine handwritten scrolls concerning the chronicles of Rome and the subjugated Judea as well as the respective first century protagonists.
Paleographers, papyrologists, biblicists, philologists have carried out their work but they were unable (or did not desire) to resolve the “enigma” regarding Jesus Christ, the Apostles and the Holy Family. Today it is the duty of analytical historians to investigate – without being influenced by their beliefs – the evangelical events by focusing on the historical context of the time in order to have a clear view of the vicissitudes; they need to be fully conscious of the fact that they are analyzing first century Judea, a land subject to the Roman Empire, which thus could not have a Jewish Ancestral Law that came into conflict with that of Rome. This imperial exigency applied to all religions; in order to guarantee compliance with imperial law, the Roman authorities had set up a special priestly college with the task of surveilling foreign cults in order to verify the possible existence of nationalistic dogma intolerant of the subjugation imposed by the ruling power.
In line with this principle, the Caesars - the sole guardians of State powers (imperium), invested with the supreme religious rank of the Roman Empire (Pontifex Maximus) and thus superior to all the High Priests (Archiereis) of every creed - conferred the right to execute (ius gladii) only to the Governors of the Roman Provinces, commanders of adequate military contingents who possessed hegemonical and absolute territorial power. They were Magistrates (and often pagan priests) with the power to act as both prosecutors and judges of inhabitants accused of commiting crimes, apart from those subjects having Roman citizenship, certified through a diploma issued by the Emperor. Roman citizens were to be tried by a court made up of several judges, and if such a court did not exist in the territory in which the crime had been commited, the accused were sent to Rome in chains on the first available trireme. Ius Gladii was assigned to the client Kings, Tetrarchs and Ethnarchs ruling over the regions under Roman protectorate, and to whom was given the right to maintain an army with light armaments in order to guarantee public order and collect taxes.
These Governors had enormous military power, thus making it possible to guarantee the unity of a very vast Empire.
Unlike the provincial governors, no priest of the many divinities worshipped in the territories controlled by Rome had the right to execute subjects of the Pontifex Maximus and Princeps of the Roman Empire; therefore the High Priest of the Temple of Jerusalem could not suppress any inhabitant of the Roman Province of Judea without the prior consent of the imperial representative, even in the case of a violation of the Mosaic Law which was not binding for a Roman official ... and the High priest was aware of this, as were the Christian scribes who invented the "trial against Jesus" contained in the Gospels.
"They then led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the Praetorium ... Pilate said: «Take him yourselves, and try him by your own Law». The Jews answered: «We are not allowed to put anyone to death»" (Jh 18,28/31).
In these documents we read that in order to implement Jesus's death sentence decreed by the High Priest Caiaphas, it was necessary to submit the case for final approval to the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate who personally ordered the convict's torture.
This is all confirmed in Josephus's "Jewish Antiquities" (XX 102), where it is stated that the Roman Procurator Tiberius Julius Alexander (in office from 46 to 48 A.D.) personally ordered the crucifixion of the Zealots James and Simon (sons of Judas the Galilean) after their trial.
In order to support what we have just stated, let's analyze Eusebius's manipulated “evidence” regarding the existence of James, brother of Jesus (reported by the Pharisean scribe Josephus Flavius), which can be found in “Historia Ecclesiastica” (transmitted by the Church beginning from the Constantinian period). So if the brother of Christ did exist, we should (according to the Christian scribes) therefore admit that Jesus the Redeemer also existed, but … let's verify the historical text.
From “Jewish Antiquities” Book XX 196-203:
“As soon as the King Agrippa II heard this news, he gave the high priesthood to Joseph, who was called Kabi, the son of Simon, formerly High Priest. And now Caesar (Nero), upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea, as Procurator. But the King deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus. With his authoritarian disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of Judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most zealous followers of the law, they (the Judges of the Sanhedrin) disliked what was done; they also secretly sent (legates) to King Agrippa, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified, and ordering him to desist from any further action; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a Sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which King Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, High Priest”.
* Josephus Flavius was a member of the Sanhedrin and, as a result of his close friendship with the High Priest "Ananus, son of Ananus", was well-aware of the latter's disposition. It is certain that Josephus was the Scribe of this Assembly. At the start of the first study we mentioned the ambitious career of the the Jewish historian who, having become part of this Synod in 56 A.D., managed to rise to the top of Jewish aristocracy.
We first of all must point out that Ananus “delivered” (provisional arrest, entrusted to the Guards of the Temple) some men “to be stoned” and did not “have them stoned”.
These men were charged with very serious crimes in violation of the Mosaic Law which provided for the death penalty ... but Ananus could not stone anyone without the consent of the Procurator and the High Priest was perfectly aware of this; he (and here was the mistake) provisionally arrested the accused in order to accelerate the procedure provided for by Roman law before the arrival of Lucceius Albinus (Imperial Procurator from 62-64 A.D.). Ananus therefore ignored the usual procedure provided for by Rome. In fact, the legates of the judges of the Sanhedrin (the most zealous followers of the law) asked King Agrippa II to order Ananus to "desist from any further action", meaning that the stoning had yet to be carried out.
Ananus was aware of the fact that the “right to execute” was only a prerogative of the Imperial Procurator “cum iure gladii” and the least that could happen to him, if he arrogated the power, would be to end up in chains, like his predecessor High Priest Ananias* ten years earlier; or even worse, he could be executed, like his older brother Jonathan (who also had been High Priest), who was executed by Procurator Antonius Felix (Antiquities XX chap. 8,163) for only having contested one of his decisions; first of all, Ananus knew that Romans did not trust the Jewish High Priests … and that the Romans themselves demanded to personally try and interrogate under torture the people under accusation, in order to verify whether they were nationalist rebels and force them to reveal the names of their accomplices before putting them to death.
* By order of the Legate of Syria Ummidius Durmius Quadratus, whom we have described in detail in the previous study regarding Paul of Tarsus.
Ananus was certain, “with his authoritarian disposition”, that the gravity of the accusation would prevail over the formal procedure which provided for the presence of a Roman representative in order to convene the Sanhedrin. This rule allowed the Emperor, through his right-hand man, to politically control what the puppet Sanhedrin of Jerusalem decided.
Lucceius Albinus did not care about the stoning of James (or anyone else) for having violated Jewish law. When the Sanhedrin met, the Procurator expected to be informed and, after personally examining the topics to be discussed, decided whether or not to approve them before being deliberated (and the decision made was unappealable) … Rome simply did not trust: that's it.
The priestly faction, which at the time was against the High Priest Ananus, took the opportunity to “take off his shoes and socks” with the aim of depriving him of his authority; members of this faction went to Alexandria and intercepted Albinus (he was the true holder of political power), “informing him that Ananus did not have the authority to convene the Sanhedrin without his consent”: this was the object of the controversy.
A crime which would have provoked the lapidation of people was not reported to the Procurator because the sentence had yet to be carried out … impossible without the consent of a Roman official; the secret accusation only made reference to the convocation of the Sanhedrin carried out without the approval of the Procurator, and the Roman, “convinced by these words”, did not want to know anything else.
The Jews who intercepted Albinus did not mention James's name to him as he could not have known James; therefore, the Procurator forced the “vassal” King Agrippa II to intervene and depose Ananus who had dared to convene the Sanhedrin “without his consent” and he was replaced by another “papable” High Priest: Jesus, son of Damneus … brother of James.
Unless we wish to shred all ancient Roman history and literary texts, no expert involved in the study of the Roman Empire can accept that a Jewish High Priest could have ever arrogated to himself the right to execute numerous subjects of the Princeps Pontifex Maximus and manage to get out of trouble by simply being removed from office. The red-handedness of his behaviour would have been too evident; in fact, here we see the High Priest of the Temple of Yahweh take advantage of the absence of the Procurator and assign himself prerogatives, depriving the latter of his authority and investing himself with the power to interpret Roman Law, role which belonged to the Procurator himself who also acted as a Magistrate. Only Roman Law counted in the territories controlled by the Empire and it was the only one capable of maintaining the power of Rome exercised through the Imperial Legates.
In such a situation Ananus would have, at the very least, been immediately chained and sent to Rome to be tried by Nero's tribunal which would have not hesitated to behead him or even crucify him as a warning towards any priest with the desire to emulate his behaviour. As already done by Emperor Tiberius in 19 A.D., when two priests of the Temple of the goddess Isis were crucified for having been accomplices to a sex crime, a much lesser crime than that which the "contemplative historians" attribute to the High Priest of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem for having arrogated to himself the right to execute, a prerogative recognized by law as belonging solely to the Roman Governors.
A Christian "tradition" which erroneously interpreted this Act of the Jewish Sanhedrin (as we are about to verify) was "assembled" by monastic scribes unable to understand the rigid mechanisms governing an Empire at the height of its power. After reading the authentic historical event in which we find a Jew by the name of James, brother of one of the many "Jesuses" (Joshua) walking around, the scribes took advantage of this fortuitous coincidence and decided to add "called Christ" to the brother of a man named "Jesus" in order to create proof of the existence of "Jesus Christ".
If - after rereading the above-mentioned passage - we try to remove “called Christ”, we would be left with only “James, brother of Jesus”, without any patronymic (obligatory for all Jews when they are mentioned for the first time); therefore, the only “Jesus” having a patronymic is “Jesus, son of Damneus” and the historian Josephus does not mention James's patronymic because, being that he is the brother of Jesus son of Damneus, even James is the son of Damneus. On the contrary, if there had been another Jew with the name “Jesus” who was not the son of Damneus, the historian would have reported the different patronymic in order to distinguish the two Jesuses.
The fact that the name Jesus could not be followed by the Jewish divine title "Christ" is also attested by the Christian apologist Father Origen who, in the third century A.D. (about eighty years before Bishop Eusebius), in two of his works (“Commentarium in Matthaeum” X 17 and “Contra Celsum” I 47), when referring to this event candidly affirms (both sorrily and surprisingly) that «Josephus (Flavius) did not recognize Jesus as "Christ” (Messiah)».
Upon reading the names "Jesus" and "James" (his brother) in the above-mentioned passage of Antiquities he fell out of his chair, convinced, motu proprio, that the Jewish historian was referring to Christ but did not write this title; Josephus was a Jew and, as a result, he could not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Believers do not realize that through this phrase the Apologist Origen stated precisely that in the authentic chronicle written by Josephus there was no trace of "Christ" after the name "Jesus". This important detail proves that at the time of Origen the falsification attributed to the Pharisean historian by Eusebius had yet to be invented: the "Testimonium Flavianum", through which "Jesus was the Christ" is attested. Other "outstanding proof" of the Advent of the "Saviour" that the powerful Bishop has Josephus "witness" in "Historia Ecclesiastica".
Eusebius's "Testimonium" - which deals with the existence of Jesus Christ - is attributed to Jewish historian and was interpolated in the codices of "Jewish Antiquities" rewritten from the eleventh century onwards, but this forced the scribes to cite this "Jesus" with the reductive Jewish title "called Christ" within the Sanhedrin of Ananus so as to free the Jewish chronicler from the burden of explaining that the High Priest of the Synod, in the presence of the "brother of the Messiah", would have felt obliged to ask the latter who this "Messiah" that the Jews were awaiting was and, consequently, open another "trial of Jesus". Inevitably, the "Jesus was the Christ" of Testimonium Flavianum becomes the unavoidable genesis of "called Christ": the certainty of the first statement provides a meaning to the hesitant "testimony" of the second, but later on (sixth study), after demonstrating that the "Testimonium Flavianum" is a passage invented by Christian scribes, even the phrase "called Christ" - which seemingly refers to the brother of an inexistent Bishop of Jerusalem who in turn is the brother of an inexistent Christ - will prove to be a fake deliberately created in order to make the myth of the universal "Saviour" historically truthful.
The spurious interference of “Christ” in the phrase “James, brother of Jesus, called Christ” deliberately aims at calling to mind Jesus Christ and his family, as described by the “Holy Writings” and the ecclesiastical pulpits, but this demonstrates that Josephus Flavius truly did not know “Jesus Christ” and therefore could not make mention of Him, because otherwise he would have written: “James, one of the brothers of Jesus, called Christ” … or, even better, according to what is upheld by the Church: “James, one of the cousins of Jesus, called Christ”, which had to be followed … (“bar” in Aramaic) by son of … ? … And here the problems start, as we are about to see.
James, brother of Jesus son of (bar) Damneus, and others, avoided being executed. In fact, if they (absurdly) had already been executed, there would have been no need for the representatives of the Sanhedrin to run to Alexandria to intercept Albinus as the accusation against Ananus for having convocated the Sanhedrin without his authorization continued to stand and it could still have been used, aggravated by the violation of “ius gladii” (the right to execute, a prerogative which was conferred by the Caesars solely to Roman Governors); Albinus would have just needed enough time to come from Alexandria ... and, most important of all, the Jewish notables "were not offended” by a lynching which did not take place: it would be a ridiculous phrase if it were connected to the real massacre of many men. A collective martyrdom of hypothetical Christians which is systematically unknown to all the Fathers of the Church starting with Origen, who does not analyze the event in-depth nor accuses the High Priest Ananus of the massacre.
The mania of martyrdom is so strong that the manipulation of its invention is reported through a different version of the events by the Venerable Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea in “Historia Ecclesiastica” where we read:
“In reality there were two Apostles named James: one, the Just (or the Minor, protagonist of the incident that we are analyzing) was thrown down from the pinochle of the Temple and beaten to death by a fuller (man armed with a stick with nails at one end); the other was beheaded” (HEc II 1,5). And to give more weight to the “evidence”, Eusebius attributes to Josephus the false affirmation that “the martyrdom of James caused the destruction of Jerusalem as a divine punishment” (HEc II 23, 19-20).
We have seen that the “deeds” of these two “Jameses” - recalled in two diverging narrations of their respective deaths (the Temple of Jerusalem described by the Pharisean historian Josephus in Ant. XV 392-425 did not have “pinocles”, unlike the future Christian churches) - cannot be related to “James, brother of Jesus Christ” who, as reported by the Jewish historian, was about to be stoned. The testimonies, contrived by deceitful scribes operating in an uncoordinated manner, bring about the creation of a third "Apostle James", having taken into consideration that the first was "James the Elder" killed, by decapitation, earlier by King Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12,1).
These are three failed attempts made by the scribes to use a true event, which took place within the Sanhedrin in the first century, in order to offer historical proof of the existence of their divinity: the Christ Saviour of humanity and his brother the Apostle James. In the above-mentioned chronicle, the pretext used by the clericalists was that represented by the fortuitous reference to the name "Jesus" (very popular among the Jews at this time) linked to the name James.
In fact, it is not by chance if "Jesus" himself, in the Gospel of John, does not call any Apostle "James" to be part of His entourage. And all the mystic exegetes have always pretended to be unaware this “minor contradiction” contained in the “holy text”: Saint Luke follows the Apostles in their “Acts of the Apostles” until 63 A.D., but does not report the death of “James the Minor” … thus he does not have any “pity” on him.
After mentioning the death of James the Elder (the first), the evangelist Luke, who according to the "tradition" died in 93 A.D., describes the journeys of Saul Paul up until his arrest and transfer to Rome in 63 A.D. (Acts 28,30), but knows nothing about the "death by beating" or “lynching of James the Minor” which is said to have taken place in 62 A.D. … despite the fact that the latter was one of the “Twelve Apostles”, Head of the Church of Christ and Bishop of Jerusalem … but, evidently, the “alter ego” of the only “James" present in the original manuscripts had yet to be invented. This lacuna which characterizes the “Acts of the Apostles” is so serious that the usual Eusebius of Caesarea decides to “correct it” by telling the story as follows:
“But after Paul, in consequence of his appeal to Cæsar, had been sent to Rome by Festus, the Jews turned against James, the brother of the Lord to whom the episcopal seat at Jerusalem had been entrusted by the apostles” (HEc. II 23,1).
But it is not easy to falsify “history”, and invent a "Bishop seated on the throne" so as to render the faith in Christ credible.
The contemporaneous events described in this ecclesiastical passage demonstrate that the Eusebian scribe (like the evangelist John who died in 104 A.D.) was unaware of the consequences of the historical datings; the contemporaneous reference to Paul and James offers further proof in contrast with the identification of the Jew James (brother of Jesus son of Damneus) with the James brother of the Lord. In fact, there would be no explanation for the silence of Saint Paul - man with a passion for writing never-ending letters - with regard to the death of James the Just (62 A.D.), aware that the former died in 68 A.D., as reported by Saint Jerome in "De viris illustribus":
"Saint Paul foresaw his own martyrdom ... in the fourteenth year of Nero he was beheaded in Rome for his faith in Christ" (op. cit., chap. V).
It is impossible to justify the ignorance of Saint Paul with regard to the martyrdom of James the Minor which took place five years prior to his own, in consideration of the fact that he mentions the latter in the First Letter to the Galatians (I 19) and where he calls him "the brother of the Lord"; Saint Paul also makes reference to James the Minor in the First Letter to the Corinthians (15,7), where he exalts him for after His resurrection "Jesus appeared to James and then to all the Apostles".
The total absence of evidence in the Codexes copied through the centuries by the scribes of Christianity forces us to affirm that in reality the torture of James is unknown to all the disciples of Christ, His successors and all the Fathers, including Saint Jerome, up until the end of the first millenium ... with the sole exception of Eusebius who, however (as already seen), offers a completely different version. As Eusebius lived over half a century prior to Jerome and was the latter's direct source, how is it possible to find an explanation for this absurdity?
In order to understand we must analyze the manuscripts describing the respective works and verify the datings in which the scribes of God drew them up; we then notice that "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius was written by the scribes drawing on two distinct families of Codexes dated to between the tenth and thirteenth centuries*. Otherwise, the first manuscripts containing "De viris illustribus" by Girolamo were drawn up by other scribes over a century before (we will examine the details in the V study concerning John the Apostle).
Therefore it is totally evident that the holy monastic pens called in the famous Bishop and Christian historian to offer "testimony" on the martyrdom of James the Just; when doing so they also drew on the "Codex Ambrosianus F 128" of the eleventh century containing Josephus's "Jewish Antiquities", in which the scribes deliberately introduced the false Testimonium Flavianum as well as the expression "called Christ" in the Sanhedrin of Ananus that we are analyzing.
* The manuscripts of "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius are divided into families; the first is made up of the Codexes: B = Parisinus 1431 (twelfth century); D = Parisinus 1433 (twelfth century); M = Marcianus (twelfth century); the following Codexes belong to the second family: A = Parisinus 1430 (eleventh century); Laurentianus 70,20 (tenth century); Laurentianus 70.7 (century X/XI); Mosquensis 50 (twelfth century).
In addition to these there is also a Syriac and an Armenian version marked with "Σ" and a Latin "L" version dating back to Rufinus of Aquileia; these three versions are "probably" dated to the fifth century: a dating based on a "probably" reserved" for believers, but not for history ...
Rufinus of Aquileia (345-410 A.D.) was a friend of, and listen up .... Saint Jerome, that of "De viris illustribus"; the latter knew nothing about the death of James the Just (op. cit. chap. II) provoked by the blows of a fuller, while his fellow believer Rufinus would have been aware of this death ... according to what the modern-day spiritual exegetes would lead us to believe. Rufinus and Jerome had doctrinal contrasts yet no disagreements with regard to the life of the Apostles. As a result of the undying antitheses present in the listed manuscripts (starting from the datings always obtained by means of unreliable paleographic estimates), when the translators attempted to conjecture an archetype of "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius of Caesarea they were forced to censor, cut, correct and add information on the basis of subjective and convenient interpretations. L'editio princeps greca, edited by R. Estienne, was published in Paris in 1544; it will be followed by a series of conflicting translations which have been published from this time onwards.
But above all, we critics are obliged to highlight the fact that the Church has always avoided publishing the translations of the individual codexes of the "Historia Ecclesiastica" mentioned above so as not to reveal the contrasting contents drawn up by the scribes over the centuries, knowing full well that contradictions would have undermined the credibility of the entire work, concerning the history of the protagonists and the Christian martyrs starting from the first century.
However - despite the fact that the interpreters of the codexes chosen by the high clergy were all contemplative believers - there is no manuscript capable of demonstrating that all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church who succeeded one another through the centuries were aware of the torture of James the Minor perpetrated by the High Priest Ananus prior to the "Codex Ambrosianus F 128" dating back to the eleventh century A.D. and containing Josephus's "Jewish Antiquities".
Finally, after over a millenium, the scribes of God established that the martyrdom of James the Just, brother of Jesus, took place by stoning.
When nine centuries ago the scribes transcribed this codex, they added the famous "called Christ" of Book XX without realizing that they should also have corrected all the manuscripts kept in the ecclesiastical libraries spread throughout the Christian world in order to eliminate the other contradictory death of James the Minor "one, the Just, was thrown down from the pinochle of the Temple and beaten to death" mentioned in the manuscripts of Eusebius's "Historia Ecclesiastica". A huge oversight which inevitably sweeps away the Testimonium Flavianum, that is to say what should have constituted the non-Christian historical proof "par excellence": a falsification of the death of James by stoning introduced in the eleventh century by the scribes of Christ in "Codex Abrosianus F 128". The related investigation is published in the sixth study.
Starting from the current one, all our studies will prove that the "Historia Ecclesiastica" was invented in the fourth century to appear historically true the "Advent" of Jesus Christ, the Apostles and their successors, including martyrs.
Let us now return to the present topic and note that the Jewish Scribe of the Sanhedrin, the historian Josephus, does not report the motivations of the charges brought against James by the High Priest, but simply mentions “breach of laws” because the proceedings against those under preventive detention (delivered to justice under armed surveillance) were annulled after the destitution of Ananus.
Another important detail to be highlighted is that in “Acts of the Apostles” "Jesus" is never called by his name by the members of the Sanhedrin; he is generically referred to by the word “this” because “Yeshùa” (Aramaic contraction of the Hebrew “Yehoshùa”) for the evangelist was a divine title (He who saves). The divine nature of Christ was not recognized by the Jews, so they – according to the principles of the evangelist Luke - could not have called Him “He who saves”. Unlike Luke, for the Pharisean Josephus it was not a problem to call a common man like Jesus by his name, thus demonstrating that for the Jews he was simply an ordinary man; as a result this incident, which refers to a true act of the Sanhedrin, disavows the "Acts of the Apostles" and demonstrates that the Jewish priests had no problem calling him "Jesus" ... except in "Acts" by Luke.
It is very important to highlight that the Jewish historian, in the chronicle we have just read, makes no mention of the existence in the city of Jerusalem (his birthplace) of a Bishop, head of the Christian Church, nor of a religion hostile towards Hebraism. The clericalists claim that the “James” of the historic account was the territorial and spiritual leader of the Jewish Christians during the first century A.D. and this will rebound against the lie of Eusebius, thanks to archeological discoveries (as we will see later on). If he had followed the historical rational profile, the Jewish scribe would have surely known the Bishop; this would have been his duty as in 62 A.D. Josephus was already a prominent twenty-five-year-old Pharisean priest and a member of the Sanhedrin as of 25 A.D. In addition, the Jewish historian never uses the term “Apostles”: he does not know them … like he had never heard about (as reported in “Acts” 5,12/16) spectacular “miracles” carried out by them in front of the Temple, under the portico of Solomon (which was destroyed, sic!) or in the squares of the Holy City in the presence of crowds who had arrived from nearby towns (Josephus was born in 37 A.D. and his parents saw the film “The Passion of Christ” without paying the admission ticket) and without ever explaining the plot to their son.
But what really makes this Act of the Sanhedrin (dating back to 62 A.D.) important is that it is the only one recorded by the historian from the death of Herod the Great onwards; it was not removed for the reasons that we are now discussing. The singularity of the Jewish Synod of Ananus reported in the chronicle of Josephus clashes with the industriousness of the Sanhedrin called continuously to decide on Jesus and his successors in the New Testament documents of Pauline Christianity. This aspect is dealt with in-depth in the fifteenth study through a meticulous analysis which demonstrates that the scribes of "Antiquities", from the eleventh century onwards, censored all the chronicles and decisions of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem in order to justify the lack of historical proof concerning the "trial against Jesus" and the related torture of the Jewish Messiah.
Unlike the Gospels, Josephus, strangely, does not report the resolution of the Sanhedrin regarding Jesus's sentencing to torture. In contrast with what is narrated in "Acts of the Apostles", he makes no mention of the clash which took place three years earlier (that is to say in 59 A.D. when the Jew Josephus was twenty-two years old and an important Pharisean scribe and priest) between Saul Paul - the most important “Evangelist Apostle” - and the High Priest of the Temple Ananias within the Sanhedrin: imaginary apostolic diatribe which was won by Saul thanks to the intervention of Tribune of Jerusalem (depicted in "Acts" an idiotic manner). Moreover, in "Antiquities" there is no reference to Saint Stephen's death by stoning decreed by the Sanhedrin (convened without the obligatory authorization of the imperial Legate) according to "Acts of the Apostles": the protomartyr massacred without pity by the young member of the Sanhedrin "Saul", not yet "Paul", who was dying to slaughter Christians.
If the chronicle of this Sanhedrin is reported, it is for only one reason: the name “Jesus”. This is not the “Christ” which we all know, as we would be led to believe by the targeted tampering, but he is another, one of the many Jews with the name “Jesus” (Joshua) who lived in Judea in the first century A.D. Josephus could not have written “Christ”: it was added by someone deceitfully “pious”, controlled by strong hands.
The first Christian who was able to consult the imperial archives was in fact the Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, due to his privileged position at the court of Constantine. Who else, apart from a Christian scribe with a precise plan, could have forced an important Pharisean priest like Josephus to write the word “Christ”, which was the equivalent of “Messiah” (the one chosen by God as head of His people)? … without considering the fact that the writer, as a Jew, would have felt obliged to fill many papyrus scrolls with descriptions of the divinity which he himself was awaiting.
For a very long time the Church – in order to prove the existence of the “Saviour” as a man – has supported evangelical truths through invented historical documents such as the “Testimonium Flavianum” and through the manipulation of this true story regarding James, brother of Jesus, the latter being the High Priest son of Damneus (as is reported by the historian Josephus).
The proof of the modification of the original text follows two routes:
1st The ascertainment that the change introduced - which differs (from the earliest of times) from one manuscript to another – always concern the same phrase, which is of vital importance for “theological evidence”: the word “Christ”. In fact, while in “Testimonium Flavianium”, which is attributed to Josephus, the Christian scribes of Eusebius of Caesarea attested “...He was the Christ”, in the above-mentioned passage of the Jewish historian (which comes from the ecclesiastical archives) we read “called Christ”.
So we have therefore decided to print a photocopy of an ancient text written by Josephus, translated from Greek, which dates back five centuries and which comes (needless to say) from the archives of a Bishop, as can be seen on the title page:
These men were charged with very serious crimes in violation of the Mosaic Law which provided for the death penalty ... but Ananus could not stone anyone without the consent of the Procurator and the High Priest was perfectly aware of this; he (and here was the mistake) provisionally arrested the accused in order to accelerate the procedure provided for by Roman law before the arrival of Lucceius Albinus (Imperial Procurator from 62-64 A.D.). Ananus therefore ignored the usual procedure provided for by Rome. In fact, the legates of the judges of the Sanhedrin (the most zealous followers of the law) asked King Agrippa II to order Ananus to "desist from any further action", meaning that the stoning had yet to be carried out.
Ananus was aware of the fact that the “right to execute” was only a prerogative of the Imperial Procurator “cum iure gladii” and the least that could happen to him, if he arrogated the power, would be to end up in chains, like his predecessor High Priest Ananias* ten years earlier; or even worse, he could be executed, like his older brother Jonathan (who also had been High Priest), who was executed by Procurator Antonius Felix (Antiquities XX chap. 8,163) for only having contested one of his decisions; first of all, Ananus knew that Romans did not trust the Jewish High Priests … and that the Romans themselves demanded to personally try and interrogate under torture the people under accusation, in order to verify whether they were nationalist rebels and force them to reveal the names of their accomplices before putting them to death.
* By order of the Legate of Syria Ummidius Durmius Quadratus, whom we have described in detail in the previous study regarding Paul of Tarsus.
Ananus was certain, “with his authoritarian disposition”, that the gravity of the accusation would prevail over the formal procedure which provided for the presence of a Roman representative in order to convene the Sanhedrin. This rule allowed the Emperor, through his right-hand man, to politically control what the puppet Sanhedrin of Jerusalem decided.
Lucceius Albinus did not care about the stoning of James (or anyone else) for having violated Jewish law. When the Sanhedrin met, the Procurator expected to be informed and, after personally examining the topics to be discussed, decided whether or not to approve them before being deliberated (and the decision made was unappealable) … Rome simply did not trust: that's it.
The priestly faction, which at the time was against the High Priest Ananus, took the opportunity to “take off his shoes and socks” with the aim of depriving him of his authority; members of this faction went to Alexandria and intercepted Albinus (he was the true holder of political power), “informing him that Ananus did not have the authority to convene the Sanhedrin without his consent”: this was the object of the controversy.
A crime which would have provoked the lapidation of people was not reported to the Procurator because the sentence had yet to be carried out … impossible without the consent of a Roman official; the secret accusation only made reference to the convocation of the Sanhedrin carried out without the approval of the Procurator, and the Roman, “convinced by these words”, did not want to know anything else.
The Jews who intercepted Albinus did not mention James's name to him as he could not have known James; therefore, the Procurator forced the “vassal” King Agrippa II to intervene and depose Ananus who had dared to convene the Sanhedrin “without his consent” and he was replaced by another “papable” High Priest: Jesus, son of Damneus … brother of James.
Unless we wish to shred all ancient Roman history and literary texts, no expert involved in the study of the Roman Empire can accept that a Jewish High Priest could have ever arrogated to himself the right to execute numerous subjects of the Princeps Pontifex Maximus and manage to get out of trouble by simply being removed from office. The red-handedness of his behaviour would have been too evident; in fact, here we see the High Priest of the Temple of Yahweh take advantage of the absence of the Procurator and assign himself prerogatives, depriving the latter of his authority and investing himself with the power to interpret Roman Law, role which belonged to the Procurator himself who also acted as a Magistrate. Only Roman Law counted in the territories controlled by the Empire and it was the only one capable of maintaining the power of Rome exercised through the Imperial Legates.
In such a situation Ananus would have, at the very least, been immediately chained and sent to Rome to be tried by Nero's tribunal which would have not hesitated to behead him or even crucify him as a warning towards any priest with the desire to emulate his behaviour. As already done by Emperor Tiberius in 19 A.D., when two priests of the Temple of the goddess Isis were crucified for having been accomplices to a sex crime, a much lesser crime than that which the "contemplative historians" attribute to the High Priest of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem for having arrogated to himself the right to execute, a prerogative recognized by law as belonging solely to the Roman Governors.
A Christian "tradition" which erroneously interpreted this Act of the Jewish Sanhedrin (as we are about to verify) was "assembled" by monastic scribes unable to understand the rigid mechanisms governing an Empire at the height of its power. After reading the authentic historical event in which we find a Jew by the name of James, brother of one of the many "Jesuses" (Joshua) walking around, the scribes took advantage of this fortuitous coincidence and decided to add "called Christ" to the brother of a man named "Jesus" in order to create proof of the existence of "Jesus Christ".
If - after rereading the above-mentioned passage - we try to remove “called Christ”, we would be left with only “James, brother of Jesus”, without any patronymic (obligatory for all Jews when they are mentioned for the first time); therefore, the only “Jesus” having a patronymic is “Jesus, son of Damneus” and the historian Josephus does not mention James's patronymic because, being that he is the brother of Jesus son of Damneus, even James is the son of Damneus. On the contrary, if there had been another Jew with the name “Jesus” who was not the son of Damneus, the historian would have reported the different patronymic in order to distinguish the two Jesuses.
The fact that the name Jesus could not be followed by the Jewish divine title "Christ" is also attested by the Christian apologist Father Origen who, in the third century A.D. (about eighty years before Bishop Eusebius), in two of his works (“Commentarium in Matthaeum” X 17 and “Contra Celsum” I 47), when referring to this event candidly affirms (both sorrily and surprisingly) that «Josephus (Flavius) did not recognize Jesus as "Christ” (Messiah)».
Upon reading the names "Jesus" and "James" (his brother) in the above-mentioned passage of Antiquities he fell out of his chair, convinced, motu proprio, that the Jewish historian was referring to Christ but did not write this title; Josephus was a Jew and, as a result, he could not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Believers do not realize that through this phrase the Apologist Origen stated precisely that in the authentic chronicle written by Josephus there was no trace of "Christ" after the name "Jesus". This important detail proves that at the time of Origen the falsification attributed to the Pharisean historian by Eusebius had yet to be invented: the "Testimonium Flavianum", through which "Jesus was the Christ" is attested. Other "outstanding proof" of the Advent of the "Saviour" that the powerful Bishop has Josephus "witness" in "Historia Ecclesiastica".
Eusebius's "Testimonium" - which deals with the existence of Jesus Christ - is attributed to Jewish historian and was interpolated in the codices of "Jewish Antiquities" rewritten from the eleventh century onwards, but this forced the scribes to cite this "Jesus" with the reductive Jewish title "called Christ" within the Sanhedrin of Ananus so as to free the Jewish chronicler from the burden of explaining that the High Priest of the Synod, in the presence of the "brother of the Messiah", would have felt obliged to ask the latter who this "Messiah" that the Jews were awaiting was and, consequently, open another "trial of Jesus". Inevitably, the "Jesus was the Christ" of Testimonium Flavianum becomes the unavoidable genesis of "called Christ": the certainty of the first statement provides a meaning to the hesitant "testimony" of the second, but later on (sixth study), after demonstrating that the "Testimonium Flavianum" is a passage invented by Christian scribes, even the phrase "called Christ" - which seemingly refers to the brother of an inexistent Bishop of Jerusalem who in turn is the brother of an inexistent Christ - will prove to be a fake deliberately created in order to make the myth of the universal "Saviour" historically truthful.
The spurious interference of “Christ” in the phrase “James, brother of Jesus, called Christ” deliberately aims at calling to mind Jesus Christ and his family, as described by the “Holy Writings” and the ecclesiastical pulpits, but this demonstrates that Josephus Flavius truly did not know “Jesus Christ” and therefore could not make mention of Him, because otherwise he would have written: “James, one of the brothers of Jesus, called Christ” … or, even better, according to what is upheld by the Church: “James, one of the cousins of Jesus, called Christ”, which had to be followed … (“bar” in Aramaic) by son of … ? … And here the problems start, as we are about to see.
James, brother of Jesus son of (bar) Damneus, and others, avoided being executed. In fact, if they (absurdly) had already been executed, there would have been no need for the representatives of the Sanhedrin to run to Alexandria to intercept Albinus as the accusation against Ananus for having convocated the Sanhedrin without his authorization continued to stand and it could still have been used, aggravated by the violation of “ius gladii” (the right to execute, a prerogative which was conferred by the Caesars solely to Roman Governors); Albinus would have just needed enough time to come from Alexandria ... and, most important of all, the Jewish notables "were not offended” by a lynching which did not take place: it would be a ridiculous phrase if it were connected to the real massacre of many men. A collective martyrdom of hypothetical Christians which is systematically unknown to all the Fathers of the Church starting with Origen, who does not analyze the event in-depth nor accuses the High Priest Ananus of the massacre.
The mania of martyrdom is so strong that the manipulation of its invention is reported through a different version of the events by the Venerable Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea in “Historia Ecclesiastica” where we read:
“In reality there were two Apostles named James: one, the Just (or the Minor, protagonist of the incident that we are analyzing) was thrown down from the pinochle of the Temple and beaten to death by a fuller (man armed with a stick with nails at one end); the other was beheaded” (HEc II 1,5). And to give more weight to the “evidence”, Eusebius attributes to Josephus the false affirmation that “the martyrdom of James caused the destruction of Jerusalem as a divine punishment” (HEc II 23, 19-20).
We have seen that the “deeds” of these two “Jameses” - recalled in two diverging narrations of their respective deaths (the Temple of Jerusalem described by the Pharisean historian Josephus in Ant. XV 392-425 did not have “pinocles”, unlike the future Christian churches) - cannot be related to “James, brother of Jesus Christ” who, as reported by the Jewish historian, was about to be stoned. The testimonies, contrived by deceitful scribes operating in an uncoordinated manner, bring about the creation of a third "Apostle James", having taken into consideration that the first was "James the Elder" killed, by decapitation, earlier by King Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12,1).
These are three failed attempts made by the scribes to use a true event, which took place within the Sanhedrin in the first century, in order to offer historical proof of the existence of their divinity: the Christ Saviour of humanity and his brother the Apostle James. In the above-mentioned chronicle, the pretext used by the clericalists was that represented by the fortuitous reference to the name "Jesus" (very popular among the Jews at this time) linked to the name James.
In fact, it is not by chance if "Jesus" himself, in the Gospel of John, does not call any Apostle "James" to be part of His entourage. And all the mystic exegetes have always pretended to be unaware this “minor contradiction” contained in the “holy text”: Saint Luke follows the Apostles in their “Acts of the Apostles” until 63 A.D., but does not report the death of “James the Minor” … thus he does not have any “pity” on him.
After mentioning the death of James the Elder (the first), the evangelist Luke, who according to the "tradition" died in 93 A.D., describes the journeys of Saul Paul up until his arrest and transfer to Rome in 63 A.D. (Acts 28,30), but knows nothing about the "death by beating" or “lynching of James the Minor” which is said to have taken place in 62 A.D. … despite the fact that the latter was one of the “Twelve Apostles”, Head of the Church of Christ and Bishop of Jerusalem … but, evidently, the “alter ego” of the only “James" present in the original manuscripts had yet to be invented. This lacuna which characterizes the “Acts of the Apostles” is so serious that the usual Eusebius of Caesarea decides to “correct it” by telling the story as follows:
“But after Paul, in consequence of his appeal to Cæsar, had been sent to Rome by Festus, the Jews turned against James, the brother of the Lord to whom the episcopal seat at Jerusalem had been entrusted by the apostles” (HEc. II 23,1).
But it is not easy to falsify “history”, and invent a "Bishop seated on the throne" so as to render the faith in Christ credible.
The contemporaneous events described in this ecclesiastical passage demonstrate that the Eusebian scribe (like the evangelist John who died in 104 A.D.) was unaware of the consequences of the historical datings; the contemporaneous reference to Paul and James offers further proof in contrast with the identification of the Jew James (brother of Jesus son of Damneus) with the James brother of the Lord. In fact, there would be no explanation for the silence of Saint Paul - man with a passion for writing never-ending letters - with regard to the death of James the Just (62 A.D.), aware that the former died in 68 A.D., as reported by Saint Jerome in "De viris illustribus":
"Saint Paul foresaw his own martyrdom ... in the fourteenth year of Nero he was beheaded in Rome for his faith in Christ" (op. cit., chap. V).
It is impossible to justify the ignorance of Saint Paul with regard to the martyrdom of James the Minor which took place five years prior to his own, in consideration of the fact that he mentions the latter in the First Letter to the Galatians (I 19) and where he calls him "the brother of the Lord"; Saint Paul also makes reference to James the Minor in the First Letter to the Corinthians (15,7), where he exalts him for after His resurrection "Jesus appeared to James and then to all the Apostles".
The total absence of evidence in the Codexes copied through the centuries by the scribes of Christianity forces us to affirm that in reality the torture of James is unknown to all the disciples of Christ, His successors and all the Fathers, including Saint Jerome, up until the end of the first millenium ... with the sole exception of Eusebius who, however (as already seen), offers a completely different version. As Eusebius lived over half a century prior to Jerome and was the latter's direct source, how is it possible to find an explanation for this absurdity?
In order to understand we must analyze the manuscripts describing the respective works and verify the datings in which the scribes of God drew them up; we then notice that "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius was written by the scribes drawing on two distinct families of Codexes dated to between the tenth and thirteenth centuries*. Otherwise, the first manuscripts containing "De viris illustribus" by Girolamo were drawn up by other scribes over a century before (we will examine the details in the V study concerning John the Apostle).
Therefore it is totally evident that the holy monastic pens called in the famous Bishop and Christian historian to offer "testimony" on the martyrdom of James the Just; when doing so they also drew on the "Codex Ambrosianus F 128" of the eleventh century containing Josephus's "Jewish Antiquities", in which the scribes deliberately introduced the false Testimonium Flavianum as well as the expression "called Christ" in the Sanhedrin of Ananus that we are analyzing.
* The manuscripts of "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius are divided into families; the first is made up of the Codexes: B = Parisinus 1431 (twelfth century); D = Parisinus 1433 (twelfth century); M = Marcianus (twelfth century); the following Codexes belong to the second family: A = Parisinus 1430 (eleventh century); Laurentianus 70,20 (tenth century); Laurentianus 70.7 (century X/XI); Mosquensis 50 (twelfth century).
In addition to these there is also a Syriac and an Armenian version marked with "Σ" and a Latin "L" version dating back to Rufinus of Aquileia; these three versions are "probably" dated to the fifth century: a dating based on a "probably" reserved" for believers, but not for history ...
Rufinus of Aquileia (345-410 A.D.) was a friend of, and listen up .... Saint Jerome, that of "De viris illustribus"; the latter knew nothing about the death of James the Just (op. cit. chap. II) provoked by the blows of a fuller, while his fellow believer Rufinus would have been aware of this death ... according to what the modern-day spiritual exegetes would lead us to believe. Rufinus and Jerome had doctrinal contrasts yet no disagreements with regard to the life of the Apostles. As a result of the undying antitheses present in the listed manuscripts (starting from the datings always obtained by means of unreliable paleographic estimates), when the translators attempted to conjecture an archetype of "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius of Caesarea they were forced to censor, cut, correct and add information on the basis of subjective and convenient interpretations. L'editio princeps greca, edited by R. Estienne, was published in Paris in 1544; it will be followed by a series of conflicting translations which have been published from this time onwards.
But above all, we critics are obliged to highlight the fact that the Church has always avoided publishing the translations of the individual codexes of the "Historia Ecclesiastica" mentioned above so as not to reveal the contrasting contents drawn up by the scribes over the centuries, knowing full well that contradictions would have undermined the credibility of the entire work, concerning the history of the protagonists and the Christian martyrs starting from the first century.
However - despite the fact that the interpreters of the codexes chosen by the high clergy were all contemplative believers - there is no manuscript capable of demonstrating that all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church who succeeded one another through the centuries were aware of the torture of James the Minor perpetrated by the High Priest Ananus prior to the "Codex Ambrosianus F 128" dating back to the eleventh century A.D. and containing Josephus's "Jewish Antiquities".
Finally, after over a millenium, the scribes of God established that the martyrdom of James the Just, brother of Jesus, took place by stoning.
When nine centuries ago the scribes transcribed this codex, they added the famous "called Christ" of Book XX without realizing that they should also have corrected all the manuscripts kept in the ecclesiastical libraries spread throughout the Christian world in order to eliminate the other contradictory death of James the Minor "one, the Just, was thrown down from the pinochle of the Temple and beaten to death" mentioned in the manuscripts of Eusebius's "Historia Ecclesiastica". A huge oversight which inevitably sweeps away the Testimonium Flavianum, that is to say what should have constituted the non-Christian historical proof "par excellence": a falsification of the death of James by stoning introduced in the eleventh century by the scribes of Christ in "Codex Abrosianus F 128". The related investigation is published in the sixth study.
Starting from the current one, all our studies will prove that the "Historia Ecclesiastica" was invented in the fourth century to appear historically true the "Advent" of Jesus Christ, the Apostles and their successors, including martyrs.
Let us now return to the present topic and note that the Jewish Scribe of the Sanhedrin, the historian Josephus, does not report the motivations of the charges brought against James by the High Priest, but simply mentions “breach of laws” because the proceedings against those under preventive detention (delivered to justice under armed surveillance) were annulled after the destitution of Ananus.
Another important detail to be highlighted is that in “Acts of the Apostles” "Jesus" is never called by his name by the members of the Sanhedrin; he is generically referred to by the word “this” because “Yeshùa” (Aramaic contraction of the Hebrew “Yehoshùa”) for the evangelist was a divine title (He who saves). The divine nature of Christ was not recognized by the Jews, so they – according to the principles of the evangelist Luke - could not have called Him “He who saves”. Unlike Luke, for the Pharisean Josephus it was not a problem to call a common man like Jesus by his name, thus demonstrating that for the Jews he was simply an ordinary man; as a result this incident, which refers to a true act of the Sanhedrin, disavows the "Acts of the Apostles" and demonstrates that the Jewish priests had no problem calling him "Jesus" ... except in "Acts" by Luke.
It is very important to highlight that the Jewish historian, in the chronicle we have just read, makes no mention of the existence in the city of Jerusalem (his birthplace) of a Bishop, head of the Christian Church, nor of a religion hostile towards Hebraism. The clericalists claim that the “James” of the historic account was the territorial and spiritual leader of the Jewish Christians during the first century A.D. and this will rebound against the lie of Eusebius, thanks to archeological discoveries (as we will see later on). If he had followed the historical rational profile, the Jewish scribe would have surely known the Bishop; this would have been his duty as in 62 A.D. Josephus was already a prominent twenty-five-year-old Pharisean priest and a member of the Sanhedrin as of 25 A.D. In addition, the Jewish historian never uses the term “Apostles”: he does not know them … like he had never heard about (as reported in “Acts” 5,12/16) spectacular “miracles” carried out by them in front of the Temple, under the portico of Solomon (which was destroyed, sic!) or in the squares of the Holy City in the presence of crowds who had arrived from nearby towns (Josephus was born in 37 A.D. and his parents saw the film “The Passion of Christ” without paying the admission ticket) and without ever explaining the plot to their son.
But what really makes this Act of the Sanhedrin (dating back to 62 A.D.) important is that it is the only one recorded by the historian from the death of Herod the Great onwards; it was not removed for the reasons that we are now discussing. The singularity of the Jewish Synod of Ananus reported in the chronicle of Josephus clashes with the industriousness of the Sanhedrin called continuously to decide on Jesus and his successors in the New Testament documents of Pauline Christianity. This aspect is dealt with in-depth in the fifteenth study through a meticulous analysis which demonstrates that the scribes of "Antiquities", from the eleventh century onwards, censored all the chronicles and decisions of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem in order to justify the lack of historical proof concerning the "trial against Jesus" and the related torture of the Jewish Messiah.
Unlike the Gospels, Josephus, strangely, does not report the resolution of the Sanhedrin regarding Jesus's sentencing to torture. In contrast with what is narrated in "Acts of the Apostles", he makes no mention of the clash which took place three years earlier (that is to say in 59 A.D. when the Jew Josephus was twenty-two years old and an important Pharisean scribe and priest) between Saul Paul - the most important “Evangelist Apostle” - and the High Priest of the Temple Ananias within the Sanhedrin: imaginary apostolic diatribe which was won by Saul thanks to the intervention of Tribune of Jerusalem (depicted in "Acts" an idiotic manner). Moreover, in "Antiquities" there is no reference to Saint Stephen's death by stoning decreed by the Sanhedrin (convened without the obligatory authorization of the imperial Legate) according to "Acts of the Apostles": the protomartyr massacred without pity by the young member of the Sanhedrin "Saul", not yet "Paul", who was dying to slaughter Christians.
If the chronicle of this Sanhedrin is reported, it is for only one reason: the name “Jesus”. This is not the “Christ” which we all know, as we would be led to believe by the targeted tampering, but he is another, one of the many Jews with the name “Jesus” (Joshua) who lived in Judea in the first century A.D. Josephus could not have written “Christ”: it was added by someone deceitfully “pious”, controlled by strong hands.
The first Christian who was able to consult the imperial archives was in fact the Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, due to his privileged position at the court of Constantine. Who else, apart from a Christian scribe with a precise plan, could have forced an important Pharisean priest like Josephus to write the word “Christ”, which was the equivalent of “Messiah” (the one chosen by God as head of His people)? … without considering the fact that the writer, as a Jew, would have felt obliged to fill many papyrus scrolls with descriptions of the divinity which he himself was awaiting.
For a very long time the Church – in order to prove the existence of the “Saviour” as a man – has supported evangelical truths through invented historical documents such as the “Testimonium Flavianum” and through the manipulation of this true story regarding James, brother of Jesus, the latter being the High Priest son of Damneus (as is reported by the historian Josephus).
The proof of the modification of the original text follows two routes:
1st The ascertainment that the change introduced - which differs (from the earliest of times) from one manuscript to another – always concern the same phrase, which is of vital importance for “theological evidence”: the word “Christ”. In fact, while in “Testimonium Flavianium”, which is attributed to Josephus, the Christian scribes of Eusebius of Caesarea attested “...He was the Christ”, in the above-mentioned passage of the Jewish historian (which comes from the ecclesiastical archives) we read “called Christ”.
So we have therefore decided to print a photocopy of an ancient text written by Josephus, translated from Greek, which dates back five centuries and which comes (needless to say) from the archives of a Bishop, as can be seen on the title page:
FLAVII IOSEPHII ANTIQVITATVM IVDAICARVM
Per Hier. Frobenium e Nic. Episcopium, Basileae, MDXLVIII (Lib. XX, cap. 8)
In the bottom right hand corner of this page of the book the following is written: “brother of Jesus Christ by the name of James”... not “called Christ”.
These translations - which come from manuscripts “edited” by Bishops who were driven by the need to demonstrate the truthfulness of the doctrine which postulated the advent of the Messiah Jesus - altered this short phrase in different ways thereby demonstrating that this phrase was not original but added at a later date; so if "Christ" is eliminated, we are left with only one Jesus, son of Damneus, who has a brother by the name of James.
Four centuries prior to this version, the most ancient handwritten copy of "Jewish Antiquities" containing Book XX, dating back to the eleventh century, was inserted into "Codex Ambrosianus GR F 128". This dating demonstrates that all the high exegetes of Christianity passed off the textus receptus of the manuscript as truthful; yet they do not mention that if the James described in the historical passage as the brother of Jesus Christ had truly been stoned to death, this would have contradicted the other death of Jesus's brother "thrown down from the pinochle of the Temple and beaten to death". This different description of James the Minor's death contained in Eusebius of Caesarea's "Historia Ecclesiastica" is clear proof that the event was invented. As further demonstration of these undying contrasts, it must be highlighted that there is no manuscript dating back prior to the "Codex Ambrosianus GR F 128": the first to report the stoning of James brother of Christ. These are all absurd inconsistencies, starting with the deathly silence regarding the torture of James involving the Apostles who died after him as well as the Apostolic and Apologetic Fathers who succeeded them (including Saint Jerome who describes his life), the only exceptions being the posthumous but contrasting "testimonies" given over ten centuries later by the scribes in their respective codexes in the name of Origen and Eusebius.
2nd The critical analysis demonstrates that the execution of the people incriminated by the High Priest was not carried out; there is only a decree which he enacted but which was immediately contested and annulled due to a procedural irregularity committed by Ananus (in contrast with the Roman Law).
This procedural regulation went into effect in 6 A.D. (starting with Prefect Coponius), therefore before the time of Christ. As a matter of fact, in the Gospels we read that “Christ” was first arrested and then executed … but only thanks to the presence of the imperial official Pontius Pilate and his intervention in the “trial against Jesus”.
At least in this circumstance (the one and only), the evangelist - before inventing the scenario of the blood-curdling “Passion of Christ” seen as a necessary ritual sacrifice aimed at eschatolgical resurrection - informed himself about the laws of Rome in force at that time.
In addition, from an in-depth reading of the Gospels we see that the presence in this Sanhedrin of a James, brother of Jesus Christ, is complcated by the "painful" impossibility of identifying his father, as comes out in the apologetical investigation carried out by the Pope. The results of these two lines of investigation coincide and definitive proof is provided in the fourth study: archeology.
Let's stay on the subject and read what Benedict XVI declared (it is on-line) during the “General Audience with the Pope on James the Minor” held on 28 June 2006, which is evidence of what we reported in the first study regarding the Apostles. In order to do this, we make use of the chart entitled “Names and Qualifications of the Apostles in the Canonical Gospels”:
The Apostle James the Minor
“Dear brothers and sisters, next to the figure of James “the Elder, son of Zebedee”, in the Gospels appears another James, who is called “the Minor”. He is in the lists of the twelve Apostles chosen personally by Jesus, and he is always referred to as “son of Alphaeus” (Mt 10,3; Mk 3,18; Lk 5). James (the Minor) is also identified with another James, called “the Little” (Mk 15,40), son of a Mary (ibid) who could be the “Mary of Cleophas” who, according to the fourth Gospel, was present at the foot of the Cross along with the Mother of Jesus (Jhn 19,25). He also was originally from Nazareth and a probable relative of Jesus (Mt 13,55; Mk 6,3), who is called “brother” in the Semitic manner (Mk 6,3; Gal 1,19) … Experts are debating the question of the identification of these two characters who share the same name: James son of Alphaeus and James “brother of the Lord”. The evangelical traditions have not left any accounts on either of them. The earliest information on the death of this James is offered to us by the historian Josephus Flavius. In his “Jewish Antiquities” (20, 201 fol.), edited in Rome towards the end of the first century, he tells us that the death of Giacomo was decided through the illegitimate initiative of the High Priest Ananus, son of the Annas reported in the Gospels, who took advantage of the interval between the deposition of the Roman Procurator (Festus) and the arrival of his successor (Albinus) in order to decree his lapidation in the year 62 A.D.” …
As all the readers - and even the faithful - can verify, the impossibilty of giving a registry certificate to this “Giacomo” is evident to the Pope himself. However it is important to point out that the great theologist Benedict XVI deliberately kept enraptured believers oblivious to the fact that all the evangelists, Apostles and later Fathers as well as all the historians and Doctors of the Church, until the eleventh century* knew nothing about the stoning of Jesus's brother, who was also Bishop of the Church of Jerusalem. Moreover, Benedict XVI was careful not to inform the faithful sheep of his flock of the enormous contradiction deriving from the other representation of the martyrdom undergone by the same James the Minor: in this case through the blows of a fuller; an event described in-depth (with details which are completely different from those contained in "Historia Ecclesiastica" by Eusebius of Caesarea) in codexes drawn up from the tenth century onwards). This can only mean one thing: those who invented and wrote about the life and agony of the Apostle James the Minor knew that he was an imaginary character. As a result neither the torture nor the Saint who is said to have undergone the sufferng ever existed.
* As already seen, according to present-day Christianity Saint James underwent the martyrdom in 62 A.D. but ... "the Christians of the first millenium" had a different opinion and, as a result, did not report the event. Here is the list of the followers of Christ, passionate writers and chroniclers of martyrs who died after James yet make no mention of his torture: the evangelist Luke died in 93 A.D.; the Apostles Peter and Paul died in 67 A.D. after writing letters to their "colleagues"; the evangelist Mark died after Saint Peter; the evangelist John died in 104 A.D.; in "Adversus Haereses" Ireneus of Lyons mentioned the Apostles and died in 202; Tertullianus died in 230; Origen Adamantius died in 254; Eusebius of Caesarea died in 340; Saint Jerome wrote the biography of James the Minor and died in 420 A.D. No Christian wrote about the stoning of James the Minor ... until the eleventh century. Having already defined the primitive ecclesiatical testimonies, it cannot be said that over a millenium after his death the spectre of Josephus informed humanity that James the Minor was stoned in a Jewish Sanhedrin in 62 A.D.
If “this” James, passive protagonist of the account we have analyzed, had been identified by the historian with his father's name (patronymic, the equivalent of our surname), obligatory custom respected by the Jew Josephus for all the characters of the historical chronicle analyzed above (all one has to do is re-read it), when referring to “James brother of Jesus called Christ”, the historian should have said that James (being that he was the brother of Jesus Christ) was son of (“bar” in Aramaic) Joseph (Saint) who, as we all know, was married to the Virgin Mary. In fact, the “semitic manner” advanced by the Pope as an alibi in order to disown the true brothers of Jesus - with the aim of protecting “before, during and after the birth” the virginity of Mary, perpetual “Mother of God” - was not a problem whatsoever for the Jewish chronicler in order to distinguish between the many brothers, cousins and half-brothers and half-sisters mentioned by Josephus from the Old Testament onwards, as the historian wrote his works initially in Aramaic (the language of Jesus) and then translated them into Greek, as in the case of the evangelical writings.
This is also confirmed by Eusebius of Caesarea in “Historia Ecclesiastica” (II 1,2) who, not all bound to the "semitic manner", wrote:
“At that time James, called brother of the Lord, as he was also called son of (bar) Joseph, and Joseph was the father of Christ ...”;
"The throne of James, who was the first to receive the episcopate of the Church of Jerusalem from the Saviour and the Apostles, and who the divine books designate with the title of brother of Christ, has been preserved to this day" (HEc. VII,19).
The Pope of the faithful, Benedict (like almost all contemplative exegetes) pretends not to be aware of the precise historical deposition given by the Bishop, his ideological predecessor, a century before the Council of Ephesus, held in 431 A.D. under Emperor Theodosius, during which the Metropolitan Christians established that Mary, mother of Christ, was also “Mother of God” (Theotokos).
It is only one important aspect of the object of our enquiry, which allows us to understand the contradiction (for Christian doctrine) if, in line with the Gospels and semitic tradition, in "Jewish Antiquities" (XX 200) we had found written the patronymic: “James, son of (bar) Alpheus alias Cleophas” (?), married to “Mary sister of Mary” the Virgin (Jn 19,25) - which Benedict XVI, aware of the risk of having sisters with the same name, has to his advantage avoided mentioning in his General Audience to Christian believers - who was in turn “related” and (according to “the Semitic manner” administered by the Pope, who states that, in his opinion, the degree of kinship is not specified) also “sister of Mary” and wife of Alpheus or of Zebedee. They are all men (including Cleophas) who would all become potential fathers of “Jesus”, being that James is their son and at the same time brother of Christ but … also son of Saint Joseph; very bad news for the doctrine which Pope Benedict himself (though apparently interested in finding a patronymic for this “James”) deliberately ignores in order to not reveal the mystic “bunch” (which is a consequence of the contradictory evangelical evidence reported in the Gospels). We must once again point out that - on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, Historia Ecclesiastica and the Christian Patristic Tradition - we are speaking about a brother of Jesus Christ, His Apostle and successor in the capacity as Bishop of Jerusalem.
It is on the basis of this information that the most important Catholic Biblicist, John Paul Maier, in volume I page 324 of his work "A marginal Jew. Rethinking the historical Jesus" attests: «..the most likely opinion is that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were true brothers and sisters». The famous exegete priest is well-aware that the biblical and historical findings report that Mary was not only the mother of Jesus, but also the mother of another four sons and two or more daughters. We deem it necessary to refer to the the sixth study on the "Testimonium Flavianum" (part II) for an in-depth analysis of the motives which prompted the Christians, in the fourth century, to modify the original Gospels by including the "Nativity" and the "Mother of God".
In conclusion: the depositions made by Eusebius of Caesarea (who, as he himself attested, had an original Gospel in Aramaic) and by the canonical evangelists contrast with one another and with depositions made by the other “Fathers”, therefore becoming evidence which is incompatible with that of Josephus. The evidence provided by Josephus is deliberately falsified in order to create a man who never really existed: “James the Minor”, or “the Little”, or the “Less”, or “the Just”, in other words a theological protagonist created by the “Fathers” of Christianity in an uncoordinated manner.
The Church is perfectly aware of this; in fact, an “ossuary” dating back to the first century A.D. was found a few years ago, but with the inscription “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus” engraved in modern times; even before the the Israeli authorities discovered this archeological deception, the Church calmly reported the shameless lie.
The ecclesiastical exegetes know that James the Minor, or the Little, or the Just were invented by their fideistic forerunners so that James, one of the real brothers of “Jeshùa", would not emerge as having been killed by the Procurator Tiberius Julius Alexandrus in 46/48 A.D. along with his brother Simon; they were both children of Judas the Galilean and, what a coincidence, were both killed two years after the execution of James the Elder and the heavenly flight of Simon Peter propitiated by the intervention of an Angel of the Lord (Acts 12, 1-9).
The present study dedicated to the critical verification of the existence of the Apostle “James the Minor” is complete: as further proof of the validity of the study, other relevant historical evidence is added in the subsequent analysis regarding the “The false successors of the Apostles". With the help of archeology, we will demonstrate that in Jerusalem there was no Christian Bishop until at least the III century A.D.
This is the reason why the Jewish historian could not recognize the James reported in the chronicle as the spiritual head of a community of Jesuit Christians in Jerusalem. In fact, if an “Ecclesia” of practicing Christians in his birthplace (Jerusalem) had truly existed - believers of the Advent of a suffering "Messiah saviour of the World", therefore different from the Jews “Awaiting” the powerful "Messiah Dominator of the World" - the Pharisee Josephus would have mentioned them in his account of the event. This event dates back to 62 A.D., when the Jew was still living in Jerusalem and was an important member of the Sanhedrin (and also a relative or at least a friend of the High Priest Ananus).
Josephus died at the beginning of the second century A.D. without making any reference to the many Jesuit martyrs followers of a Jewish Messiah (Meshiah) who had already arrived; these martyrs created through imagination over two centuries later by the eminent Bishop and Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea and highly valued by today's exegete spirtitualists … profoundly inspired.
“Jesus” and “Christ” were holy appellatives chosen by the Jewish sect of the Essenes (nationalistic like the Zealots), who belonged to the Alexandrine community. The Essenes, in conformity with what is reported in the scrolls recovered in Qumran, had foretold the coming of the Messiah and “Son of God”. In a later historical period (between the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple carried out by Tito in 70 A.D. and the Jewish war ordered by Adrian in 132 A.D.), and in coherence with their earlier prophecies, the Essenes, after these catastrophes, unlike other Jewish sects, had already recognized the Advent of the “Son of God” as if it had taken place three generations earlier. They designated Him with two divine titles, “Saviour” and “Messiah”, recognizing Him as a strong Jew, head of the Pharisean Zealots: the followers of the “fourth philosophy, a novelty which up to that time had been unknown”, created in 6 A.D. by Judah the Galilean and reported by Josephus in his works.
The eldest son of Judah - who inherited the Messianic ambitions of his Father - was able to become “King of the Jews” in 35 A.D., while Rome was involved in a war against the Empire of the Parthians: a Messiah King who who was executed by the imperial Legate in 36 A.D., as will be described later on. Therefore as a hero and a martyr, the Essenes called him with his real name in their primitive Gospels written in Aramaic, Greek and Coptic: John, native of Gamala. They were “Gospels about John” … not written by John, which narrated the prodigious feats of John, the Jewish Messiah, “Son of God”, as docile as a lamb (Agnus Dei), prophesied by Isaiah … without pagan “virginal birth” and eucharistic transubstantiation.
The Eucharistic theophagic ritual of the pagan “Hostia” (the sacrificed victim consecrated to God) will later be “grafted” onto the Jewish Messiah by the Pauline Christianity of the Salvation: a blasphemy against Ancestral Law and Jewish mythology. But how is it possible to claim this?
After highlighting that history wipes out, one by one, all the “Apostles” from the Jewish reality of the time (a fact which does not occur with regard to the brothers of “Christ”), let's proceed with the analysis and move on to Nazareth. We will demonstrate that the homeland of “Jesus”, as it is described in the Gospels, does not correspond at all to the present city but to Gamala, stronghold of the Zealots and native land of Judas the Galilean and his sons, who all had the same name as the brothers of “Jesus”: James, Simon, Judas, Joseph … plus John, indicated in the Gospels with the term "this”.
Emilio Salsi
[ go back ]