Of course it is enormously difficult to piece together the dramas of 2,000 years ago, but certain aspects of John's death still raise suspicions. He was a political prisoner of great status, yet apparently he was executed on the whim of a stripper who specifically asked for his head. As beheading was not a common method of execution in Judaea - the Jews tended to stone criminals and outlaws whereas the Romans employed the considerably crueller method of crucifixion - there is a distinct sense of ritual to the Baptist's death. For what purpose, or for whom, did Salome really want John's head?
After John's death, Jesus' mission began in earnest, but as his fame as a healer and exorcist spread, King Herod was afraid that he was possessed by the spirit of John, saying `... John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him'.'' Bizarrely and shockingly, Herod may have had a point - at least as far as Jesus' own beliefs were concerned. For as biblical scholar Carl Kraeling wrote in the 1950s, `John's detractors used the occasion of his death to develop the suggestion that his disem bodied spirit was serving Jesus as the instrument for the performance of works of black magic, itself no small concession to John's power.' 12
To Christians the very mention of magic is abhorrent. Christ came to sweep away all the blasphemous and futile trappings of the occult, so firmly associated with pagan cults. Yet this interpretation is a modern projection: the early Christians, while of course fulminating against their enemies the pagans, were just as much involved with the occult - perhaps more so, if one considers Jesus' miracles. Outside the cosy world of faith the harsh reality is that the early Christians cast spells in the name of Jesus and that Christ himself was not averse to practices that would certainly earn excommunication from modern fundamentalist groups.
More significantly, the Carpocratian leader Marcus (see the beginning of this chapter) was described by the appalled Bishop Irenaeus as:
A perfect adept in magical impostures, and by this means drawing away a great number of men, and not a few women, he has induced them to join themselves to him, as to one who is possessed of the greatest knowledge and perfection, and who has received the highest power from the invisible and ineffable regions above.13
We recall that the Carpocratians were reputed to possess initiatory secrets of a sexual nature, which they claimed originated with Mary Magdalene, Martha and Salome - and which Clement of Alexandria tacitly acknowledged as being authentically the rites of Jesus himself. If the sex rituals were originally approved and even encouraged by Christ, what about the magic practised by Marcus and his followers?
Morton Smith, in his Jesus the Magician (1978) claims that Jesus' popularity lay in his clever use of Egyptian magic. First he would intrigue the inhabitants of whatever village he passed through by putting on a dramatic show of casting out devils and healing the sick, then he would move in with his teaching and hook the people. His writing in the sand, walking on the water and so on were, Smith asserts, mainstays of the itinerant Egyptian sorcerers, who also employed hypnotic - and possibly narcotic - techniques. But did Jesus' ambition go well beyond simply garnering the oohs and ahs of a few backwater peasants? Did he also have his eye on John the Baptist's huge international empire?
According to Matthew 11:18, the Jews believed of John that `he had a demon', although this may not have referred to his being possessed by one, but rather that he had one over which he had power as an occult `servitor', similar to the Middle Eastern djinn.14 Again, the practice of what amounts to black magic is not something that sits comfortably with the accepted image of the Baptist, but then we now know that the real man was very different - a married man with children, a bitter rival of Jesus, whose favourite was the Church's hated Simon Magus, a renowned sex magician.
In this light perhaps it is not so astounding that John `had a demon' or slave-spirit, even though traditionally the means to acquire this dubious slave was to obtain a body part of a murdered man, although magically speaking the optimum power was achieved by murdering the man oneself . . . This is particularly interesting in the case of the Baptist's own execution. Was it some kind of ritual slaying, a blood sacrifice necessary to clear the way for the incoming sacrificial king? What was the mysterious Salome's real role in demanding John's head?
Morton Smith redefines Herod's words above as: `John the Baptist has been raised from the dead [by Jesus' necromancy; Jesus now has him]. And therefore [since Jesus-John can control them] the [inferior] powers work [their wonders] by him [i.e. his orders].''
Jesus was not averse to what others would unhesitatingly define as necromancy: the Jews roundly denounced his raising of Lazarus as trafficking with demons. Even if it were merely a ritual and not a literal recall to life, it still took place in a tomb - abhorrent and unthinkable to the orthodox. It was immediately after this event that the Jews planned Jesus' downfall.
Did Jesus (for so long believed to be the epitome of divine love and righteousness) or at the least his followers actually arrange for the Baptist to be killed? Certainly, Australian theologian Barbara Thiering believes so, as the Jesus cult was the only obvious candidate to benefit from his death.' 16 But was it merely a political assassination, to clear the way for Jesus to take over? After all, John's cult, the Mandaeans, still claim that Christ `usurped' and even `perverted' the Baptist's following. But if it was also a ritual murder, could it have been motivated by the dark desire to enslave his soul by possessing a part of him? Christ's contact in the palace was presumably Salome, although possibly aided and abetted by another female disciple listed in the New Testament, Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's chief steward. On the orders of Herodias Salome demanded John's head - although her identity was suspiciously obscured by the writers of the gospels.
That anyone could even contemplate such a scenario - Jesus Christ being implicated, perhaps knowingly, in the murder of the Baptist, not to mention possibly being deeply involved in what amounts to black magic - will no doubt be profoundly shocking to many people even outside the Christian community. Curiously, however, much of this theory has been in the public domain for years: for example, Morton Smith's Jesus the Magician was first published in 1978, and Barbara Thiering aired her idea that the Jesus movement might have been behind John's death in the early 1990s. Yet none of this filtered out much beyond the cultish circles of `alternative seekers' or perhaps the more open-minded theologians (usually American) into the wider world, although Ms Thiering's admittedly somewhat strange book came in for a hard time, being largely dismissed as `fantasy'.
The same wall of stony ignorance surrounds the Christian community on the subject of the Gnostic Gospels, about which ordinary believers continue to be kept in the dark. But why should they care about these long-lost texts, when theologians sneer about their `dubious' authenticity and refuse even to contemplate central questions such as their depiction of the relationship between the Magdalene and Jesus, the row with Peter, and the status of women as apostles in the early Christian movement? Clearly it is very much in the interests of today's devotees to ignore the uncomfortable picture of the Gnostic texts, but there is only so long they will be able to maintain this lofty stance as more people read them for themselves.
If Jesus Christ is believed to be God Incarnate then no evidence that he was the contrary will make any kind of impact, except cause disgust. Faith cannot be argued away, and in many ways, whatever the historical Jesus was really like, he has now achieved such archetypal status as the ultimate Good, that perhaps one should simply avoid becoming engaged in such arguments. Yet although one might agree with Jeffrey Burton Russell, who writes: `Any religion that does not come to terms with evil is not worthy of attention','' when faced with the fact of the anti-Jesus Johannites such as the Mandaeans, who have traditionally denounced Christ in the most immoderate terms, tough questions have to be asked. Not about the universal evils such as torture and starvation, but the whole concept of Jesus' goodness, so widely accepted even among non-Christians in the West as to be deemed a holy truth set in stone. But, to a mainstream Christian it is the Johannites who are evil and `perverted', just as the Baptist's favourite, Simon Magus, has been vilified since the earliest Christian times.
Yet of course it is of prime importance to uncover great historical wrongs - no matter how uncomfortable they may be to our cultural and religious certainties - for only in doing so can humanity ever move forward. And if that involves revisiting and radically revising the character, motives and deeds of Jesus called the Christ, then it must be done unflinchingly, for old prejudices and even basic concepts of right and wrong will have to be revised. As the early Christians were so fond of denouncing their rivals as tools of Satan, perhaps it is time to redress the balance - especially as the persecution of those whose beliefs were different remains an indelible scar on the human psyche.
PART TWO
Legacy of the Fall
