Yeshu didn’t exist?

Since the 2015 publication of my second book, several treatments of the thesis that the Hasmonean figure Yeshu ha-Notsri was the founder of Christianity have appeared in print. They appear to be responses to, or inspired by, posts on this blog and perhaps also to the final chapter of NazarethGate, entitled “In Search of the Rejected Seer.” At seventy-five pages, that chapter remains the most detailed investigation of the Yeshu-was-Jesus thesis (also referred to as the “alternative chronology”).

One of the recent treatments of the alternative chronology is A. Jordan’s book entitled Jesus the Nazarene, reviewed on this website in several posts beginning here. Though methodologically flawed, Jordan’s book represents a first step in grappling with the Hasmonean-Yeshu-was-Jesus thesis from a Jewish point of view.

While Jordan fully respects the data concerning the Hasmonean/Talmudic Yeshu, a Canadian postdoctoral researcher by the name of Gavin Mcdowell has written a peer-reviewed chapter claiming that no alternative chronology exists. For Mcdowell, all the passages referring to Yeshu ha-Notsri in the ancient texts are ahistorical, including those in the Talmud, Epiphanius, Ibn Daud, etc. To my knowledge, such a claim has not been made before. Since the passages are in error, Mcdowell concludes that Yeshu ha-Notsri never lived, that the story of him fleeing to Egypt with the nasi, Perachiah, is fiction, as are also the accounts of his trial and execution by the Sanhedrin. This, of course, is a vast departure from prior treatments of “Jesus in the Talmud” by Schäfer, Herford, and others.

Mcdowell’s chapter is entitled “The Alternative Chronology: Dating the Events of the Wagenseil Version of Toledot Yeshu.” It appears in a 2020 collection of essays dealing with the Toledot Yeshu. In my opinion, Mcdowell’s arguments suffer from speculation and poor logic at multiple junctures, and I find his odd conclusions entirely unsubstantiated. For those interested, I have uploaded a PDF of his chapter—annotated with my comments—to Academia.edu (scroll down, under “Book review”).

Mcdowell’s essay did, however, bring to my attention a significant detail. He notes (pp. 6-7) that the medieval writer Qirqisani explicitly identifies Perachiah as the maternal uncle of Yeshu ha-Notsri. This is precisely the missing link needed to tie Yeshu closely to Perachiah. It explains why Yeshu fled into Egypt with the most important religious figure in Israel, a flight that took place in 94 BCE or within a few years thereafter. It also places a very personal light on the excommunication of Yeshu. If Qirqisani was right, that excommunication was carried out by his own uncle. And Qirqisani probably was right—the Toldoth Yeshu, a very early Jewish anti-gospel, places Yeshu in the time of Janneus and relates: “And after some time [Mary] bore a son, and they called his name Joshua [ = Jesus] after the name of his mother’s brother.” That mother’s brother, according to Qirqisani, was Joshua ben Perachiah. So, Qirqisani and the Toldoth agree on this important point.

Mcdowell’s chapter ends with an explicit dig at mythicists today. To my knowledge, this is the first time Jesus mythicists are called out in a peer-reviewed essay:

The Wagenseil version has a unique position among mythicists and other pseudo-historians as a tool employed to attack dominant scholarly opinions about the historical Jesus. In this domain, the alternative chronology is still very much a living tradition.

As today’s principal proponent of the “alternative chronology” involving Yeshu, I presume Mcdowell is obliquely characterizing me here as a “pseudo-historian.” On p. 2 he calls G.R.S. Mead a “pseudo-history and conspiracy” theorist, so I don’t feel badly. Then too, I find his assertion that “the alternative chronology is still very much a living tradition” cause for rejoicing.

A mythicist cottage industry is born

In the last couple of years a certain “Dr. Preston Lewis” appears to have endorsed the alternative chronology in a slew of self-published books concerning the Hasmonean Yeshu. I have not read any of Lewis’ books, and for the following I rely on information culled from various Amazon.com webpages. Lewis’s first book, entitled Yeshu Ha-Notsri, appears to be based on posts from this blog (see the table of contents listed here). Other titles by the same author are The Complete Teachings of Yeshu Ha-Notsri (Jan. 2024, hardcover $30), The Path of Yeshu ha-Notsri: The Way of Freedom (Dec. 2023, $69), THE WAY OF FREEDOM: A Notsrian Textbook (Dec. 2023, paperback $39), and The Earliest Footprint of Jesus: Yeshu ha-Notzri—Before the Myth: The Earliest Footprint of Jesus Book 2, (April 2022, $19, paper). The latter book spotlights “the figure of Mary Mag’dalene and her crucial role restoring belief among the Nazarene’s followers that Yeshu ha-Notzri was indeed Israel’s Messiah.”

Clicking on the author tab “Dr Preston Lewis” yields three pages with no less than 33 book titles. They range from Mandean and “Nasoraean” scriptures, to reprints of books by E.S. Drower and G.R.S. Mead, to The Original Gospel of Thomas, to the above-mentioned books on Yeshu ha-Notsri. Many of the entries are in foreign languages which, I suspect, are the products of Google Translate, for reading one Amazon page suggests to me that “Doctor” Lewis (he claims a Ph.D on one cover) has difficulty putting a grammatically correct sentence together in English. One sample of his writing:

… In this study we face a real intellectual dilemma. A dilemma that has been either unaddressed or effectively ignored for more than two centuries. One might add, by the best-educated among us. A dilemma that, at all costs, must avoid pursuing a well-familiar later dialogue of post-Palestine, Hellenized intrigue. Masquerading as early tradition. For casual readers, what are we talking about? The synoptic texts are loaded with accounts when weighed against a legitimate historical background would have been extremely late narrative additions. Almost certainly created beyond the Land of Israel… —Dr. Preston Lewis

In 2022 two further self-published books on the Hasmonean Jesus and “Nasoraean” scriptures appeared under the name Daniel G. Slawter. One of those books is also entitled Yeshu ha-Notsri. Given the similarities in titles and dates, I suspect that Daniel Slawter and “Dr. Preston Lewis” are one and the same person.