Author Archives: René Salm


About René Salm

René Salm is the author of two books on New Testament archeology and manages the companion website www.NazarethMyth.info.

The Parables of Enoch—Pt. 3

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The First Christians / pt. 7 The Parables of Enoch (chapters 37–71 of 1 Enoch) is a unique composition dating to the last decades of the first century BCE. It has been preserved as part of the First Book of Enoch (1 Enoch), but scholars have noted that it does not fit its context, neither as to theology nor vocabulary. Its dating is also different: the remaining parts of 1 Enoch have been dated to late II BCE, while the Parables of Enoch are dated a century later (more on dating below). One writer has opined: “I think we should not even rule out the possibility that the authors of the Parables might have been Jewish Christians.”  The theology of the Parables—in … Continue reading →

The Parables of Enoch—Pt. 2

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The First Christians / pt. 6 In the previous post I introduced the Parables (also called “Similitudes”) of Enoch, which forms a major part (chps. 37–71) of the book known as 1 Enoch. Scholars date these chapters to around the turn of the era, which happens also to be the critical period of the first followers of Yeshu haNotsri (d. ca. 65 BCE). I identify those early followers with Epiphanius’ Nasarenes (Panarion 18)—not to be confused with his invented sect of Nazoraeans (Pan 29). Except for the “nazirite” (in Judaism, a person consecrated to God, generally temporarily), all cognates with the “z” sound betray Catholic inventions: Nazarene (Mk 1:24), Nazareth and Nazoraean (Mt 2:23), as well as variations of these words found … Continue reading →

The earliest “Christian” sects

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The First Christians / pt. 4 The purposes of this post are to situate the reader in a relatively unfamiliar time (the first century BCE) and political situation (the Hasmonean Kingdom giving way to Roman hegemony); as well as to introduce religious groups that go by various names and later petered out: Nasarenes, Nazoreans, Therapeutae, and Essenes. The Roman general Pompey conquered Palestine in 63 BCE and subordinated it to the province of Syria. The conquest marked the end of the Hasmonean kingdom and was the last time Jews would rule the land until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Temple still stood after the Roman conquest (it would be destroyed in 70 CE), priests and Pharisees continued … Continue reading →

2024 website statistics

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I thought it might be of interest to some readers, now and in future, to give a snapshot of this website’s parameters as far as traffic, extent, and growth are concerned. The site has been in existence for twelve years (two of them inactive in “sleep mode”). It began in Sept. 2012 for several reasons. One was to publicly chronicle my investigations into early Christianity, which I knew would be novel, if not ground-breaking. Another was that a public blog forced me to order my thinking and to put it in cogent, understandable terms. Finally, the blog would endure as a readily accessible future reference, both for myself and for others. Given its intellectual content and the esoteric nature of … Continue reading →

Jewish-Christian literature: the Parables of Enoch

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The First Christians / pt. 5 The period between the death of Yeshu haNotsri ca. 65 BCE and the acceptance of the canonical gospels ca. 150 CE (215 years in all!) represents a lengthy period in which the theology of Jesus took forms that today we would scarcely recognize as “Christian.” A vast literature survives from this era, some of it denominated Christian, some denominated Jewish, some considered an amalgam of the two religions, and some whose theology remains frankly “uncertain.” This literature, because it did not enter either body of religious scripture, is termed “Jewish pseudepigrapha” and “Christian apocrypha.”  Both terms are treated pejoratively by the guild. Pseudepigrapha literally means “false writings,” and the term “apocryphal” immediately raises suspicion in biblical … Continue reading →

“New eyes” on the first century BCE

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The First Christians / pt. 3 The tradition dates Jesus of Nazareth’s birth to about 4 BCE. That was a full sixty years after the death of Yeshu haNotsri, whose given name was apparently Yochanan ben Abshalom in Hebrew, that is, John the son of Absalom. As we have seen, this prophet was a member of the Hasmonean royal family. Two of his uncles were kings (Aristobulus I and Janneus), his grandfather was John Hyrcanus I (r. 134–104), his own sister was married to Judas Aristobulus II—the king during whose reign John was executed—and his maternal uncle was none other than Joshua ben Perachiah, the head of the Sanhedrin (nasi) and the most powerful religious figure in the land. Despite all these … Continue reading →

Help with Wikipedia editing

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Would somebody who has read chapter 12 (“The 1962 Forgery of the Caesarea Inscription”) of my book NazarethGate, and who has some expertise editing Wikipedia, please amend the Wiki Nazareth page that presently reads: “A Hebrew inscription found in Caesarea dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century mentions Nazareth as the home of the priestly Hapizzez/Hafizaz family after the Bar Kokhba revolt (AD 132–135).” In fact: the inscription was discovered by the noted forger Dr. Jerry Vardaman (of microletter infamy). He was arrested by the Israeli authorities within hours of his “discovery” of the Nazareth inscription in Caesarea Maritima in 1962. (He was later arrested again on an excavation in Jordan.) There are many additional reasons why the … Continue reading →

Gnostic elements in Judaism

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The First Christians / pt. 2 Very occasionally in Jewish scripture, man crosses the chasm separating him from God. Doing so is fraught with danger, for we recall that Moses could not even look upon the face of God (Ex 3:6), and when the prophet Isaiah “saw the Lord sitting on a throne” he exclaimed: “Woe is me! I am lost, for… my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts!” (Isa 6:1 & 5.) If merely seeing the Lord is anathema, then for man to ascend to heaven is far beyond the pale of Judaism. And, indeed, the later rabbis severely proscribed any consideration or study of such “ascents,” whether visionary or not. However, at least two anomalous figures in … Continue reading →

The Alternative Chronology

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The First Christians / pt. 1 Most of the posts on this website depend on an alternative chronology in which the founding prophet of Christianity lived in the time of Alexander Janneus. The massive reorientation on the part of the reader that this alternative chronology requires involves a breathtaking time shift of one hundred years, something no New Testament scholar considers or even can consider—for the alternative chronology gives the lie to the New Testament itself. “Moving” the founding prophet back one hundred years in time requires one to deny the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth—which is Jesus mythicism. At the same time, the alternative chronology solves intractable problems that have bedeviled as well as astonished scholarship for generations. Among them are … Continue reading →

The “alternative chronology” and Yeshu ha-Notsri—An update

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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 … Continue reading →