JESUS and MILITARY SECURITY
 Col. Rose Mary Sheldon, professor of Military History at Virginia Military Institute wrote on

Jesus as a Security Risk: Intelligence and Repression in the Roman Empire

http://asorblog.org/…/jesus-as-a-security-risk-intelligenc…/ 

This is my comment:

You post an unusual attempt to explain the inconsistencies in the story from the medieval RCC-Protestant tradition that came down to many of us in childhood. It seems this is still not correct. It conflicts with Jewish Law and historical accounts such as Josephus and Philo and early writings about the Temple. It wasn't some sort of public cathedral, open to all!
In the NT Jesus avoided being declared Son of David outside the Temple. Inside the Temple was different. Matt chap 1 shows that he was entitled to this as son of Joseph so it was not an unfounded claim. Pilate was a brutal governor yet it is Pilate who says that Jesus is innocent. No hint of treason or insurrection.
The high priests, who were not anointed, wanted Jesus the anointed dead. If Pilate wanted an excuse to kill him he could have cited 'causing an affray in the Temple' when he chased out the Temple the merchants 'thieves and robbers'. Both Josephus and Eusebius record that such affrays in the Temple caused thousands of deaths near the narrow passages that led to the Roman legion headquarters, the Antonia. It is more likely that Jesus cleared the 'thieves and robbers' in conjunction with the Roman authorities rather than without their knowledge. It caused no deaths among the tens of thousands of Passover visitors.
This incident occurred just before his night-time arrest by high priests but is not mentioned at the trial. Why? The Temple was under separate, priestly jurisdiction and not under Roman control. The area of his arrest on the Mount of Olives was connected to the Temple by a bridge and considered holy ground.
The Temple precinct was a small city-State and fort structure under armed Israelites and priests. This had been agreed in a treaty with Julius Caesar, according to Josephus. Roman army banners of their gods were banned. It was a no-go area. In Acts Paul was arrested in the external parts of the Temple merely on a false rumor. The so-called 'carpenter-preacher' was involved in very vigorous action INSIDE the Temple.
The missing piece of intelligence involves understanding what Christ's position was inside the Temple. It caused the high priests (plural) to want him dead. Pilate who was responsible before Caesar for justice and order merely acquiesced. Jesus was executed and the soldiers took his single-piece robe -- which was a priestly one described in Ex 28:4, 31 etc.
According to Justin Martyr (early second century), Tertullian around 200 and Eusebius and others, Pilate confirmed Jesus rose from the dead. He may have witnessed the Ascension from the Antonia. On receiving his and other reports, Tiberius declared Jesus was God and forbade Romans to persecute the Nazarenes. His successor Caligula defied God and tried to foment a war of genocide by ordering a huge golden idol of himself as Jupiter be placed inside the Temple-fortress at Jerusalem.
Far more than a simple accusation of insurrection based on military spies was involved.

Caesar's Edict: Proof of Resurrections

The following archaeological Proof of the Resurrection is included in the latest version of the book. Many documented physical resurrections took place -- for centuries! The Romans were faced with empty tombs  -- where the body was missing but the other articles were left. Hence, not grave robbery! There are also numerous historical confirmations not included here. Roman emperors, like Tiberius and later second century ones, acknowledged the resurrection of Christ was a fact. These events were a major incentive and proof for those who gave their lives in the pagan persecutions. Christians preferred to die for the Creator God who could resurrect rather than offer a pinch of incense to the pagan gods or to a 'divine' Caesar like Caligula. Roman pagan gods .lost credibility.
The Resurrection of Christ and physical resurrections of Christians -- and the Roman Emperors acknowledgement of them -- led to the destruction of the pagan system. This is why Constantine declared the Roman Empire 'Christian'. For the majority of the citizens, the pagan gods were dead!

Who defined and bound the New Testament Canon?

The New Covenant books were written and made into a canon directly by the disciples of Christ. 'Bind up the testimony; Seal the Law among my disciples!' Isaiah 8:16. That is the principle and the prophecy.
Dr Ernest L Martin set out the facts in his book: Restoring the Original Bible.
The idea that only in the fourth century the Roman Catholic Church alone defined these books for ‘Christianity’ is patently absurd.
One word in the NT explains the process. It consistently mistranslated. In fact I know of no accurate translation. That is a curious fact. Correctly translated from standard references and lexicons, it would have indicated who could, should and did define the canon. It would also make clear that the Roman church could not have defined the canon!
The churches have been bamboozled after more than a thousand years of Roman Catholic propaganda. The Vatican (which hated Jews and any idea that Christ held any office in the Temple) made sure that no one asked questions about such Greek terms. They banned the Greek text from Europe for five centuries. Jerome mistranslated key Greek terms and replaced them by nondescript Latin terms. And in the later period the Roman Catholics made sure no one, not even its priests, understood Latin!

Authority
Why today have all the churches’ translators refused to translate this word correctly? Self-interest and anti-Semitism may be some motives. What is the mystery word that this is all about?
That word is epistatēs. It occurs not once but seven times in the NT. Its true translation undermines the false dogma instigated by the imperial Roman ‘Mother Church’. It also exposes the difference between word church as used today and the original Greek word, ekklesia. The concept of church today is as different as if the Romans had looked at a pig in a trough and said that is what the Bible means by a horse! Many today still can’t recognize the ekklesia – it’s a war horse!
All of the occurrences of Jesus being called epistatēs are in the priestly book of Luke which centers around the Temple (5:5, 8:24, 45, 9:33, 49, 17:33). It is addressed to his Excellency Theophilus, 1:3. Luke covers many technical Temple matters such as the 24 priestly courses, the Sabbath, the calendar and various other tough topics of Torah. Luke was no gentile! (See Luke the Priest: The Authority of the Author of the Third Gospel by Dr Rick Strelan.)
Luke 1:3 implies the book is written to the high priest, his ‘Excellency Theophilus’ specifically to be deposited in the archives as a true, witnessed record of resurrections and miracles. One vital reason was that the Temple was under threat of desolation by the arrival of the arch anti-Semite, Caligula, as emperor. Reacting to the Resurrection which had trashed belief in the Roman pantheon, Caligula wanted to reign from Jerusalem and have a gigantic statue of himself inside the Temple and every synagogue in the Empire.
The title ‘Excellency’ relates to Theophilus being the political leader of the nation, the high priest put in power under the Romans. He was in office from 37 to 41 during all Emperor Caligula’s near ethnocidal persecution. When Luke later wrote Acts, Theophilus was no longer in office. Hence he wasn’t then addressed as ‘Excellency’ in Acts 1:1. This evidence identifies him unambiguously. It explains what would otherwise be an affront by omitting his title in Acts 1.

What is an epistatēs?
So when Luke has the disciples refer to Jesus in the early ministry as ‘epistatēs’ we should take
special note. What is an epistatēs? Nearly all translations render it ‘Master’. But in the Greek language it is a very precise term about a high office. To render it ‘Master’ is the equivalent of going to a hospital and referring to the chief brain surgeon as a health worker!
In fact, one translation, the Concordant version, translates it as ‘Doctor’! But in that case it has the sense of Professor of Hebrew Law. (The NWT has Instructor.) But at least the translators realized they were faced with a special term of office. Schonfield has ‘Chief’. The Weymouth translation gives it as ‘Commander’. That signification is far off from the idea of ‘Herr Doktor’!
So what does it mean? The word has in fact two main senses as you will see if you check any normal Greek lexicon as distinct from the Romanized ones. One is in fact Commander of the city’s troops. In this sense it is equivalent, in the Hebrew context of the Temple, to the Priest for Warfare mentioned several times in the Bible. (see Jesus, James, Joseph p218 for the summary table.) There is some linkage with the sense that contemporary Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus use the term as Superintendent.

President of what?
The second sense in normal Greek usage is President of the city’s ruling Assembly. What did the Greeks call their assembly? An ekklesia! That should have rung mighty bells for any honest translator. The word ekklesia occurs frequently in the NT. The same translators render it as ‘church’, an extremely bad choice. ‘Church’ is a self-serving term for the RC-Protestant community.
There was no such thing as their church in the first century. There were no churches with steeples. There were no stone cathedrals to terrify the population by their soaring architecture. There were no crucifixes and there were no statues of saints. Once people had all this under the fourth century Emperor Constantine, a hierarchy of bishops under his central authority could begin to control all the religion across the whole Roman Empire. Their church meant all the local population meeting like pigs at their trough in their buildings and subject to their lordship.
Attack the idea of ‘church,’ bishops and cathedrals and you attack the very foundation of medieval autocracy. It would turn society upside down. In fact so worried was King James that any translation would undermine the hierarchy where the king not only ruled but defined the religion for the people, that he laid down two very strict conditions for the translators of the King James Bible.
Firstly, no marginal notes, especially those that appeared in earlier versions denouncing Israel’s evil kings. Secondly, all occurrences of the word ekklesia should be translated church! Why? Because Tyndale and the earlier translators had had the audacity to translate the word correctly as ‘Congregation’! Even today you will find the Bibles of most of church committee translations render Matt 16:18 (I will build my ‘ekklesia’) as church. Only those brave individual scholars like Robert Young’s literal translation or Darby’s have ‘I will build my Assembly’. The Assembly of Israel! In the first century ekklesia for Jews meant a governmental body, the Assembled Congregation of God’s people.
How can we be sure what ekklesia meant to Hebrews? It was the word used in the current Greek Septuagint version to translate the Hebrew word qahal, meaning the Assembly of the twelve tribes. They met in ancient times in the Court of Israel of the Temple. To reinstate it was part of Christ’s mission.
Christ is called an epistatēs of such an ekklesia. If modern churchman translated it as something like ‘President, professor, superintendent or Commander of the church’ they would have a lot of questions put to them! So what was Christ’s new Assembly?

Christ commands the Seventy
Luke explains it himself. In Luke 10 he says Christ created an Assembly of Seventy. This clearly relates to the Assembly created under Moses in the wilderness, Num 11:16f. It was composed of six men from each tribe, with two of them staying in the camp. They experienced the power of God’s spirit in the Tabernacle. It was a foretaste of the NT Pentecost.
Then after the Resurrection, the 12 tribes had been forewarned to bring more witnesses. In Acts 1:15 there were 120 from the 12 tribes, ten ‘named ambassadors’ per tribe. They came from far and wide, ‘every nation under heaven,’ including Parthia, Rome’s rival superpower ruled by Israelite exiles, Acts 2:5-11.
The Hebrew scriptures speak many times of the Assembly of Israel, the qahal. Peter is recorded in around 37 CE as saying that the Assembly of Seventy that Christ formed, composed of tried and honest men, was the first real qahal meeting all the criteria since the time of Moses. This was, said Peter, a real sign that Jesus was the Prophet greater than Moses and foretold by Moses in Deuteronomy 18. Early historians such as Eusebius record how important the Seventy were in propagating worldwide the proof of the Resurrection.
So if the qahal is the real meaning of ekklesia, what is the title that Jesus has as its epistatēs? Turn to a standard reference like the Oxford Classical Dictionary and you will find that the epistatēs ..
'presided over the Council (boulé) and Assembly (ekklesia).'
A classical Greek reference like Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Latin Antiquities will tell you that the epistatēs was in charge of the city treasury and public works. In the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew scriptures, the word epistatēs occurs numerous times. It is translated as Commander of the Army of Israel or as Superintendent of works in the Temple. Those two functions describe the office of the Sagan, or Chief Priest in the Temple.
But what has that to do with the canon?
The Oxford Classical Dictionary describes other attributes of the epistatēs.
'He held the State seal and keys. … In the Hellenic kingdoms the title epistatēs is given to an agent of the king within a subject city who exercises considerable power.'

The Key
Jesus held the powers of the kingdom of heaven. The Temple seal was clearly necessary for the exiled tribes of Israel to recognize the writings of Jesus, James and the Davidic House. The canon is a sealed book, sealed with the Temple seal of David’s House. Up to just before the destruction of the Temple, this high post of Sagan was occupied by James, the brother of Jesus Christ. He wrote to the twelve tribes, 1:1. After he died or rather was murdered, we hear in early writings of the period that John, son of Zebedee, wore the diadem of office. He clearly was empowered to close the NT canon and its 27 books. He sealed them.
What of the Key? The Temple had a huge ‘Key of David’ that was used to open and close the door to the Temple fortress. Christ, according to John’s book of Revelation, holds the Key of David on his shoulder, Rev 3:7, Isaiah 22:22. He is dressed in the robes of the Sagan Chief Priest, the cohen ha-rosh, Rev 1:13.
No one other than the epistatēs, and certainly not the paganized, gentile church of Rome could ever define the canon.
Case closed.


A fuller treatment is found in the free ebook: Jesus, James, Joseph and the past and future Temple at http://www.academia.edu/10890773

 

Extract from Book Jesus, James, Joseph and the past and future Temple

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The Magi and the extraordinary Parthian Peace Process

Is there any event equivalent in history to Europe’s extraordinary peace record? Europe is living in the longest peace in its known history. That peace was based on supranational principles and initiated by Robert Schuman after a lifetime’s work.
An amazing peace process took place two thousand years ago between two fighting superpowers. They divided the planet as much as the Soviet Union and the USA did in recent times. And it covered the exact area that is the source of today’s conflict in the Near and Middle East — Syria, Iraq and Iran.
In the middle of the earth at the point of contact of these two superpowers lay Israel. It was conquered first by one power, the Roman Empire and then by the other, the Parthian Empire. Who won? Rome was humiliated. Its armies were decimated. It renounced any further attacks on the superpower of the East.
Then a peace treaty was forged. At this time and because of this peace, trade was boosted from the Far East to Gaul in the West. An era of prosperity allowed the Temple at Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

During this Augustan-Parthian peace, Jesus Christ was born at Bethlehem. Why have most Europeans not learned the facts behind this key event in Christian civilization? What did most people learn about the Parthian Empire at school or even university?
Yet every year many people send each other cards with Parthians on them. Who are they? The Magi! Why does the real identity of the Magi remain obscure to most people?


Early in the Middle Ages great confusion, not to say false propaganda, arose about the supposed three Magi who visited the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. First, it is important to go to the record itself in the New Testament (NT) and get the facts.
* There were not three Magi. The number is not specified. It is only stated that they brought three types of gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
* The Magi came from the East. No names are mentioned.
* The event took place more than a year after the birth of Jesus as he is called a ‘toddler’ in Greek. That means he was about a year and a half old.
* No other children are mentioned which means that James, the brother of Jesus, was probably not yet born.
* The visit took place in Bethlehem. When Jesus was born, the David’s ancestral home no longer existed. Why? Because Herod the Great had destroyed all trace of the Davidic dynasty and the ‘castle’ of David there. James says in Acts 15, that the ‘Tabernacle of David had fallen down’. Herod did not hesitate to kill off his own sons and wives if he thought they would usurp him. It is therefore certain that he would wipe out any trace of a Davidic dynasty he could find.
The NT says that at the time of the Magi’s visit Joseph had a house there. How come? Joseph was of direct royal lineage. He had the temerity and obligation to register the lands of David as his own. The registration took place as the first one under Quirinus, governor of Syria. (He made two.) This coincided with the celebration of twenty-five years of Augustus’s reign and the 750th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Rome. (See Dr Ernest L Martin: The Star that astonished the World).
Augustus was proclaimed Pater Patriae, Father of the Fatherland. Prominent citizens were required to register their smaller fatherlands and acclaim allegiance to Caesar. Thus Joseph registered his right under Roman and Israelite laws as patriarch of the tribe of Judah. This was a very dangerous move as his life was at immediate risk by Herod. But Joseph also had protection under Roman law. Herod could not simply kill a Davidic son without Roman acquiescence. As James said, the ruins were prophesied by Amos to be rebuilt.
So why in the Middle Ages did the Magi become a source of controversy? Firstly, the Magi were not Christian or even Jewish as far as the ignorant scholars of the time could say. People asked: why did pagans come and worship the infant Jesus? Why did they come at all? How many were there? Why didn’t Herod kill them?
The answers are clear once we understand the dilemma faced by the Roman State Church founded under Constantine in the 300s CE. Constantine’s amalgam of paganism and Christianity replaced Rome’s ancient pantheon. The Roman Empire had its capital in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.
The lasting shame of the Roman Empire is that it destroyed the kingdom of Judah, its capital Jerusalem and its Temple. The term ‘Magi’ relates to the rival super power of Rome, the Parthian Empire. It extended from the River Euphrates to India and modern Afghanistan. Parthians traded with the Far East. It was a feudal confederation of kingdoms, not a military dictatorship like Rome.



The Head of the Parthian Empire was called Arsaces, ‘King of kings’. A single dynasty had a succession of 30 Arsakoi kings. They ruled from 255 BCE for nearly half a millennium, more than any dynasty there before or since. The kings were selected, elected and sometimes rejected by a Council of Wisemen, priestly scientists. Its name? The Magi! (See Rawlinson’s Parthia or Steven M Collins: Parthia, Forgotten Ancient Super-power.) Rawlinson says that Parthia divided ‘with Rome … the sovereignty of the earth.’
There is good reason why Europeans are so ignorant about Rome’s super-power rival. The Magi again! The paradox became an intense political problem for the Roman Empire of Constantinople. Why? Because, although the ruling Arsakoi tribes of the Parthian Empire had migrated by then, the Roman Empire was still at war with the successor Sassanian Persian Empire.
It was excruciatingly painful for the priests of the Roman ‘Mother Church’ to explain why the Magi of Persia had worshiped the infant Jesus and the Roman Empire had destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. Parthia worshiped Jesus. Rome pillaged Jerusalem and destroyed the Jews. How could Romans justify a Christian heritage?
The Roman Mother Church therefore blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus although the crucifixion was conducted by the Roman soldiers, under Roman imperial authority and with Roman nails.
As for the Magi, they became non-persons. They were reduced to just three foreigners. But in reality the Magi helped govern Parthia. They performed a similar task to the Levitical priesthood for the Israelitish kings.
Were there three Magi or more? We can say with near certainty that there were not three but many thousands! The Parthians were highly mobile and had several capitals. They traveled in massive, opulent, oriental style. The general selected by King Orodes to fight the Roman invader Crassus arrived with two hundred litters for his concubines. A thousand camels carried his personal baggage. A body of ten thousand horsemen and slaves served his personal needs. The Magi, the resplendently rich Parthian kingmakers, would have come to Jerusalem in their thousands or not at all!
This is how Matthew’s gospel describes the scene:
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah in the days of Herod the king,
BEHOLD! There came wise men (Magi) from the East to Jerusalem, saying:
‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews? … We are come to do homage to him.
When Herod heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.
The word ‘troubled’ can better be translated ‘terrified’, ‘set in a tumult’ ‘consternated’.
Parthia had forged a peace treaty with Rome two decades earlier. This came after Roman legions had been grossly humiliated. In 55 BCE the avaricious Consul Crassus sought booty. Crassus, he of the saying ‘as rich as Crassus,’ was the powerful oligarch of Rome. Parthian king Orodes slaughtered his 40,000 strong legions. Presented with his severed head during a performance of the Euripides play ‘Bacchae’, Orodes filled its mouth with molten gold, mocking him to drink to his fill. In 40 BCE Parthia invaded Judea and deposed the Roman-selected high priest at the Temple and installed another, Antigonus. In 37 BCE Mark Antony invaded Parthia with a massive 16 legions of 100,000 men. They were decimated. He barely escaped with his life. In 34 Julius Caesar planned to attack Parthia. He was assassinated in Rome.
If in the next few days you hear people talking about ‘Three wise men’, you can tell them, ‘It’s time to wise up on the Parthian Magi!’
Today’s leaders need to remind themselves how this area of an amazing peace, became again the furnace of conflict.

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ANSWERS from Historical Documents about Judaism’s and Christianity’s burning Questions:

·        How was Jesus fully both man and God? How and when was he known in Rome?

·        How could Jesus be a ‘Son of David’ if the New Testament calls Mary a ‘daughter of Aaron’? What did Jews mean by ‘virgin’?

·        Why does the New Testament have TWO different ‘genealogies’ of Jesus, BOTH through Joseph? Who was Joseph?

·        The Chief Priest’s duty was rebuild the holy Temple! Not Herod, a fervent pagan! Who?

·        Why don’t churches acknowledge James, the brother of Jesus, who prayed inside the Temple’s Holy Place? Who owns the site?

·        Why are Rome’s churches silent about Parthia, the superpower that invaded Israel and defeated the Roman Empire’s greatest generals and decimated its legions?

·        Not three ‘Magi’ but thousands of ‘Magi’ and Parthians arrived after the birth of Jesus in a cavalcade and terrified both Herod and all Jerusalem.

·        Where did the false myth originate that Jesus was a carpenter? 

·        Which Scriptures say he was a great Chief Priest with authority over the Temple? He taught high priests there.

·        The first Congregation (ekklesia) of Christ met INSIDE the Temple! All the tribes of Israel were represented there.

·        Pilate was a brutal Roman governor. Yet he confirmed legally that Jesus was both ‘King of the Jews’ and innocent of any charges of treason against the Empire! Why?

·        Emperor Tiberius confirmed that Jesus rose from the dead and was God!

·        After Christ’s Resurrection, Rome had to abandon its traditional gods like Jupiter, Mars, and Venus. These ‘gods’ became the laughing stock of the world!

·        The successor, Emperor Caius Caligula planned to be deified in Egypt as ‘Supreme God’ and to move his capital to the Temple!

·        Instead of worshipping Christ, the ‘Jewish’ ‘Sun of Righteousness’ Malachi 4:2, why did Romans turn to literal Sun worship?

MAIN FEATURES OF JERUSALEM at the time of Joseph, Jesus and James. The Temple was built over the Gihon spring. It is south of the massive Roman Fort, Antonia. ALL TEMPLE LAND and S Olivet STILL belong to King David’s FAMILY!

Josephus, priest, soldier, historian and eyewitness, described the Temple situated on a square or cube-like tower above the Kidron Valley, each side one Roman stade. Two stoa roads were like arms a stade long. The stoa double causeway on the Temple’s northwest led to the oblong 10,000-strong fortress of Antonia, the size of ‘several cities’ for legions. Accounts say the Temple had an inexhaustible, gushing spring, Gihon. Antonia (the Haram) had no spring.

 

ISBN: 978 1 291 83504 5       or      981291835045