because of His humility and wisdom until… John the Baptist. Gavache frowned and redoubled his attention at this point in the account.
John the Baptist was Jewish, the son of the priest Zacarias and Elizabeth. He was born on the outskirts of Jerusalem in Ein Kerem, six months before Jesus, and began his Nazarite education at the age of fourteen in Ein Gedi.
‘Nazarite education?’ Gavache asked.
‘Yes, the consecration of someone to God. It involved some physical sacrifices, never cutting one’s hair, never drinking wine, never touching a corpse, never eating meat. One had to maintain a purified state against all temptations,’ Ben Isaac explained, with the patience of Job. ‘Jesus was also a Nazarite.’
‘Jesus the Nazarite, as opposed to Jesus from Nazareth, the Nazarene,’ Gavache deduced, absorbed in the story. ‘A Messiah consecrated to God?’
‘See how it all connects,’ Ben Isaac tossed out.
Jesus was fascinated by John the Baptist for his abnegation, but even more for his personality. He saw a wandering preacher who advocated baptism instead of fanatical extremism. Like all the Jews of his time, John had a preoccupation with purification by water. Even today archaeologists are constantly discovering the basins for ritual baths, the Jewish miqwa’ot. Practically every Jewish house had one, and any traveling Jew that entered one had to be purified. They had to dip themselves in a pool, which was filled with spring water, but, before going in, they had to wash their hands and feet, especially the lower limbs, which were the source of impurity. After dipping, their feet and head were rubbed with purifying oil. The woman who anointed Jesus in the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany two days before the Crucifixion, according to the canonical gospels, was just performing a Jewish ritual with ancient roots.
‘Okay, they took a lot of baths. What does that have to do with anything?’ Gavache asked.
‘The baths were Jewish rituals. John the Baptist performed the same ritual in the Jordan River, but for gentiles,’ Ben Isaac explained.
‘And baptized Jesus,’ Gavache added.
‘But this didn’t have the enormous outcry that the apostles and His followers claimed it did. The majority didn’t understand what had happened. Not even John understood.’
Jesus was a flexible, open, intelligent man, a rabbi, a master, a healer of souls, a preacher who greatly admired John’s methods. John the Baptist was an enormous influence. In reality John marked a break with the past. After him, Jesus intensified his rituals and preaching, presenting variations that were not pleasing to conservative believers. Jesus created a new branch of Judaism, a kind of sect. When John was beheaded by Herod Antipas, Jesus was his natural successor.
‘John never performed a miracle,’ Ben Isaac said, and then sighed deeply, as if in sorrow. ‘Neither did Jesus. The Jesus who gave sight to the blind and cured cripples exists only in the Bible.’
‘How boring. And where does Bethlehem and Nazareth fit into all this?’ Gavache asked, disillusioned.
‘The authors of the New Testament had to emphasize that Jesus was the Savior, the Anointed One, the Son of God, Emanuel, and that there was no doubt about this. The prophets of the Old Testament had pointed the way and described the steps to follow. He would be born in Bethlehem, flee to Egypt, return, and be called the Nazarene. But, as you noted, they confused “Nazarene” with “Nazarite.”?’ Ben Isaac smiled slightly. ‘The only time that He stepped foot in Nazareth, as an adult, he was poorly received. People wanted to kill him. Do you think that would have been possible if he had belonged to one of the good families of the region?’
‘What a confusing story.’ Gavache was speaking in general, not referring specifically to Ben Isaac’s account, which made sense. ‘Why did Pontius Pilate wash his hands of all this and order the Jews to decide?’
‘That’s more nonsense,’ Ben Isaac replied. ‘Do you know who the dominant force in the so-called civilized world was from 27 B.C. through the next four hundred years?’
‘I assume you’re referring to the Romans.’
‘You assume correctly. Do you know what happened during this time?’
Gavache shrugged. He was an expert on life, not history.
‘Roman expansion, which lasted for several centuries, and in the case of the Eastern Roman Empire, more than a millennium.’ Ben Isaac counted off on his fingers. ‘The birth and death of Jesus and of Paul of Tarsus, the author of the Epistles. During this time the canonical and apocryphal gospels were written, and a new religion was born, Christianity.’
‘In other words?’
‘In other words, everything happened under Roman influence. There are no originals of the sacred texts, only transcriptions of unknown authorship and motivation. Christianity is a patchwork quilt, based on historical misrepresentations. Why do you think the Vatican is always so attentive to archaeological discoveries? Always so quick to refute or control any new fact unearthed? Because they’re living with a time bomb. They know that everything they have established is based on a lie. The New Testament is a purely political document, created to control the people. I think it also aimed to control the Jews, only they didn’t succeed.’
‘And why do you think they didn’t succeed?’ Gavache asked.
‘Because they knew the truth.’ Ben Isaac got up now and paced the room. The subject annoyed him. ‘Pontius Pilate wasn’t the good, courteous man the Bible portrays, nor was he intelligent. He was a bloody man with wicked instincts, a perverse schemer. He never washed his hands or let the Jews decide Jesus’s fate. Washing the hands was a Jewish ritual of purification, not Roman, the netilat yadaim. Barabbas, whom the Jews chose to free in Jesus’s place, according to the New Testament, was a Zealot, from a violent, fanatical sect of Judaism, different from the Nazarites, though they shared some methods. Barabbas had killed Roman soldiers, a serious crime; today he would be considered a terrorist. The Zealots led innumerable rebellions, always put down by the Romans, and in their final hour committed suicide en masse — men, women, and children. Pilate would never have freed a killer of Romans. It’s not only improbable but impossible.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t wash his hands of it,’ Gavache insisted.
‘How does the Bible say that Jesus died?’ Ben Isaac asked.
‘Crucified.’
‘Exactly,’ Ben Isaac answered, as if expressing an obvious truth that Gavache didn’t get. ‘If you had doubts, the Crucifixion was proof that Pilate never washed his hands. He was the one who condemned Him, and not others.’
Gavache was confused, and Ben Isaac realized it.
‘Crucifixion was always a Roman sentence, not Jewish,’ he explained. ‘If he’d been condemned by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, the punishment would have been death by stoning.’
‘A devil of a choice,’ Gavache said ironically.
‘But He wasn’t sentenced to the Jewish punishment, was He?’ Ben Isaac ignored Gavache’s comment. ‘Jewish participation in the death of Christ was greatly exaggerated.’
‘You mean they had nothing to do with His death,’ Gavache said.
‘Not only did they have nothing to do with it, they tried to help Him.
‘When the Roman soldiers and the Temple Police arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, they didn’t bring him before Pilate. The first stop occurred during the night at the house of Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, in front of the Praetorium, the governor’s palace. It wasn’t at the Temple or the place where the Sanhedrin met, which indicates an informal meeting, not an audience. Also, the Sanhedrin never met at night. One of its members was Joseph of Arimathaea, who aided Jesus along the route of the cross and offered his tomb to receive His body.
‘It was the beginning of Passover, the celebration of the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt, and the Sanhedrin never condemned anyone to death during this period. It was prohibited,’ Ben Isaac continued. ‘There are many indications in the Bible that suggest that the Jews never at any time mistreated Jesus.
‘The prophet said that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and the crowd would hail him as the Son of David. Jesus did that in the final days of His life, but the event was not as grand as Holy Scripture describes. The Romans reinforced all the gates of the city during Passover. If the event had had all the significance the Bible gives it, Jesus would never have entered the city without being arrested. It was a capital crime for a nobleman to proclaim himself king of the Jews. Another story has Jesus expelling the money changers and sellers of doves from the Temple. It was obviously an insignificant event, exaggerated by the apostles and the writers of the gospels. Any major altercation within the Temple would have called the attention of the Temple Police, and there’s
