The First Christians / pt. 13
In the last couple of posts we have looked (here and here) at the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (T12P), a work written in the last half of the first century BCE and later edited and interpolated by Catholic Christians. Here I signal one more passage of interest and then will conclude this particular discussion with a some closing observations on T12P and the New Testament.
Testament of Benjamin, chp. 11
2/ And in later times there shall rise up the beloved of the Lord, from the lineage of Judah and Levi, one who does his good pleasure by his mouth, enlightening all the nations with new knowledge. The light of knowledge will mount up in Israel for her salvation, seizing them like a wolf coming upon them, and gathering the gentiles.
3/ Until the consummation of the ages he shall be in the congregations of the gentiles and among the rulers, like a musical air in the mouths of all.
4/ He shall be written of in sacred books, both his work and his word. And he shall be God’s chosen one forever.
(T. Benj. 11:2–4)
Verse 2.
• in later times = “in recent times.” That is, the “beloved of the Lord” lived within a generation or two of the writing of this passage.
• the beloved of the Lord [αγαπετος κυριου]. The prophet Yeshu has exemplary status and is unique among men. He ranks higher than one of the prophets of old, but there is no hint (yet) that he is anything but human. The view of the divine Son emerged with Catholicism about a century later. T12P uniformly knows Yeshu as purely human (T.Naph 4:5; T. Levi 16:3; 18:1, 12; T. Judah 24:1 ff).
Aside: Where the Fourth Gospel got its name?”
The Fourth Gospel uses the phrase “the beloved disciple” (or: the disciple “beloved of the Lord”) six times. Twice, his head is described as lying on Jesus’ breast (13:23; 21:20). To my mind, the uncanny suspicion arises that Jesus and the Beloved Disciple were somehow one and the same person—even if only by literary allusion.
If this fusion of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple has merit, then it lends an interesting light on the final verses of the Fourth Gospel (Jn 21:20, 24), where the Beloved Disciple is credited with having written the work. We thus have—again, perhaps only by literary allusion—the strange situation that the person who wrote the gospel may somehow be identified with Jesus himself.
We continue down this curious path… The name of the Fourth Evangelist is (traditionally) John. This, then, would also be the name of the Beloved Disciple, who wrote the gospel. As it happens, the given name of the prophet later called Yeshu haNotsri in the Talmud (which furnishes the most details regarding the prophet’s life and ministry—see Salm, NazarethGate pp. 419–27) was also “John” (son of Absalom the Hasmonean).
It is as if the author of the Fourth Gospel knew a unique prophet “beloved of the Lord”—the identical epithet used in the T. Benjamin above (v. 2).
If this suspicion is correct, then the Fourth Evangelist has taken this detail and woven it into his gospel. In so doing, the original prophet has suffered reduction to “the Beloved Disciple.” Yet, because the words of the entire Fourth Gospel are credited to that disciple, we have an ambiguous resonance between the gospel and the actual words of Yeshu HaNotsri. It is a little riddle, whose solution may have been known only to the evangelist and his inner circle. If this is correct, then John the Hasmonean’s name ultimately attached itself to at least one Christian gospel.
• from the lineage of Judah and Levi. We have seen that his followers considered that Yeshu haNotsri belonged to both tribes—to the tribe of Levi through blood, and to the tribe of Judah through membership in the Hasmonean family that ruled Israel.
• one who does his good pleasure by his mouth. The importance of Yeshu for the Naṣarenes was his teaching. There is no inkling (yet) of a miraculous wonder-worker, or that Yeshu had any super-human propensities.
• enlightening all the nations with new knowledge. Yeshu’s teaching was “new knowledge” and an “enlightenment”—that is, gnosis.
• The light of knowledge will mount up in Israel for her salvation. The Naṣarene author considers himself a Jew and hopes for the gnostic reformation of Judaism according to the teachings of Yeshu.
• and gathering the gentiles. The new teaching is all-inclusive. The wall of separation between Jew and Gentile has been breeched, and the corollary is near at hand: the Jews are no longer God’s “only” or “chosen” people. This point would ultimately force the Naṣarenes out of the Jewish orbit.
Verse 3. “He” is both the work of Yeshu and his word (cf. v. 4).
Verse 4
• He shall be written of in sacred books. Doubtless many of those books were familiar to the author of T12P. Unfortunately, only some enigmatic names have survived: the Gospel According to the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazoraeans, the Gospel of the Ebionites…
• both his work and his word. “His work” refers to the life and ministry of Yeshu, still remembered by the Naṣarene author but replaced by the Catholic invention of Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, the gospel narrative is ultimately based upon the life and ministry of Yeshu haNotsri.
• And he shall be God’s chosen one forever. Yeshu was unique (see above, v. 2). He was the perfect man, the quintessential revealer of gnosis. Being inimitable, he was “God’s chosen one forever.” Nevertheless, for the Naṣarene he suffered and died as a man and was not God. The Church Fathers were quite aware that this view of Jesus was prevalent among “Jewish Christians.”
T12P and the New Testament
One commentator of a century ago (Oesterley—PDF link includes text of T12P) notes that the work has “an astonishingly high ethical standard” that resembles, yet also precedes, the New Testament (p. xxi). He points to the following parallels:
– “Love the Lord with all your life, and one another with a true heart.” [T. Dan 5:3. Cp. Mk 12:28-34; BCP 1:C9.]
– “If a man sins against you, speak peaceably to him and do not harbor guile in your heart. And if he repents and confesses, forgive him… And if he is shameless and persists in his wrong-doing, even so forgive him from the heart and leave vengeance to God.” [T. Gad 6:3, 7; cf. also 7:7. Cp. Mt 5:43–48; 18:25, Lk 6:27–36; 17:3; 2 Cor 11:20; BCP 1.]
– “Righteousness casts out hatred; humility destroys envy. For he that is just and humble is ashamed to do what is unjust, being reproved not by another, but by his own heart, for the Lord sees its [every] inclination. [T. Gad 5:3; cp. Mk 4:22.]
– “For by whatever human capacity anyone transgresses, by that he is also chastised.” [Mk 4:24. This is the karmic law: BCP 27.]
Oesterley goes on to write that “Ethical teaching of this kind is as exalted as much that we read in the Gospels…” Of course, he had not the slightest knowledge of Yeshu haNotsri or of the Nasarenes (he wrote in 1917), nor the remotest suspicion that Jesus of Nazareth was an invented figure (though that view was already mooted by a few). So Oesterly writes:
There are many other passages in this book [T12P] which show such close affinity in thought and language with what we read in the Gospels that it is difficult not to believe that Christ was familiar with our book, and willingly made use of it sometimes in His teaching. (G. Oesterley, in his introduction to R. H. Charles’ edition of The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 1917, p. xxii. PDF link above.)
Of course, it was not “Christ”—from the (invented) backwater village of Nazareth—who “was familiar with our book,” but the New Testament evangelists. A further striking parallelism occurs between a passage in the Testament of Joseph and the Gospel of Matthew:
Beyond doubt the two passages are related. Scholarship agrees that the Testament of Joseph is the earlier—by one hundred years according to the traditional dating of GMt (ca. 90 CE), and by as much as two hundred years according to my dating (canonical gospels written 140–150 CE). Thus, Jesus of Nazareth’s words above (they are in the Olivet Discourse, Mt 24–25) are hardly original but are based upon an existing text—a Naṣarene text belonging to the real “first Christians.”
The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to come together… The New Testament evangelists pilfered authentic material belonging to the first Christians, the Naṣarene followers of Yeshu haNotsri. From that rich body of material they deleted the gnostic content and “Catholicized” what they could, substituting faith for gnosis and Jesus of Nazareth for the generally forgotten Yeshu haNotsri, who died two centuries earlier (c. 64 BCE–c. 140 CE). The Church did the rest. When Constantine recognized (Catholic) Christianity in the early fourth century, burning heretical texts became the order of business and remained so for a millennium. Most of the Naṣarene works were destroyed—that is the main reason only “clues” remain, scattered here and there among heavily Catholicized/interpolated/edited writings. The one or two authentic early Christian writings to survive intact have done so despite the most assiduous efforts of the Church to utterly destroy them—such as the Gospel of Thomas and a few other works from the Nag Hammadi library and elsewhere.