Yeshua and Mashiach Human Nature

This account of the nature of messiah and its relationship to our understanding of Yeshua as a messiah is to make clear a position consistent, both with scientific cosmology, and with social history - that Yeshua was a human being, just as we all are, who was nevertheless a paradigm-shifting genius in the messianic tradition, rather than a pagan man-God inconsistent with any form of common sense understanding of nature, evolution, historical development and cosmology. It is designed to give an overview of the cultural motifs Yeshua brought together in a very idiosyncratic and creative way in an attempt to fulfill the apocalyptic messianic hope of his time, and to heal the divide between the accursed false messiah Jesus appears be to many Jews and the pagan man-God he assumes to many Christians.

This concept of the human mashiach is central to the wider messianic tradition and to the Jewish concept of the mashiach as an anointed bringer of long-term future goodness. It corrects the utterly pagan Hellenistic contrivances that have gone on since the time of Jesus on the part of both orthodox and gnostic Christians, who have launched Yeshua into a role, firstly of Logos, then an only begotten Son of God sacrificed by Him so we can all have forgiveness, whose body continues to drip with blood on every cross and every crucifix two thousand years later, despite his claims to return in the generation of people standing before him and whose body and blood we are supposed to consume for our own salvation in an act of cannibalism more reminiscent of the Aztecs, or Dionysian dismemberment, than the Hebrew tradition from which he sprung.

Such pagan thinking also infects the claims of bodily resurrection, the debates about pure divinity and complete humanity which caused the fragmentation of the orthodox church into Coptic, Orthodox and Catholic sects, Mary’s divine impregnation by God in the Hellenistic shadow of Zeus and Semele, and the idolatrous trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, a many-headed monstrosity, inconsistent with the transcendence and unity of God beyond any symbolic representation, well-understood in the traditions of both YHVH and al-Llah. The natural thesis also rejects the docetic ideas that Jesus didn’t experience pain and was assumed directly into heaven as described in the Quran, which is the cause for much of the violent Islamic martyrdom and slaughter of the innocents in suicide bombings we are experiencing today, which lamentably do happen so rapidly that the perpetrator probably experiences little pain, by comparison with the injured and bereaved, who are left behind in the mortal coil.

The Human Messianic Tradition in Judaism

Before Yeshua’s time there were a progression of messianic anointed, principally kings, in contrast both to the prophetic figures of Old Testament history, who were anointers, or protesters, rather than anointed ones. Each of Saul, David, Solomon and Cyrus the Mede were either anointed by a priest or acclaimed as anointed in the scriptures. All of these were clearly and unambiguously human men. Both ‘messiah’ and ‘christ’ mean ‘anointed’ in their respective languages, so the key to being a messiah is being anointed either by a priest, by a woman, or by God ‘himself’ as in the quotation of Isaiah 61 which Yeshua read in Nazareth “the Lord hath anointed me” and which Jane and I read together as woman and man in the name of God and Gaia on the night of millennium Eve on the Mount of Olives.

Out of these Old Testament anointed, Solomon shines forth both in his kingly splendour, in his religious heroism in establishing the first temple, and in his reputation as having a deep knowledge of the natural and supernatural, from the hyssop that grows out of the wall to the key and seal of the magical arts. He was also above all the consort of the feminine, both in the Song of Songs and the Wisdom of Solomon and the Proverbs, in giving the Queen of Sheba all she desired, and in his many wives and concubines and his permissiveness, so criticized by the Yahwist prophets for letting his many wives worship the strange deities of their own affection. He is thus a messiah of fertility and abundance, as well as anointed by a high priest in the religious tradition.

In the lead up to Yeshua’s mission, there was a growing tradition of Jewish apocalypticism in the shadow of the Zoroastrian renovation cosmology, that led to increasing eschatological expectations of a final end of days confrontation, as articulated in the accounts of prophets such as Zechariah, and in contemporary works such as Enoch. We can also compare Yeshua with contemporaries such as John the Baptist and the Essene Teacher of Righteousness, both of whom are regarded by all as human beings. We can compare the cosmic scale of the conflict portrayed between God and Satan surrounding Yeshua’s mission with the invectives in the Dead Sea scrolls casting the same kinds of apocalyptic conflict in a more regional and humanly political light in terms of known adversaries. John likewise for all his scorched-Earth apocalyptic rhetoric, is accepted as a human forerunner.

Since Yeshua, in the Jewish tradition there have been a succession of human messiahs most or all of which have been a source of lamentation to Jewish people. A century after Yeshua, Bar Kochbah was anointed by Rabbi Akiva who consecrated the Song of Songs as the Holy of Holies, and who brought about the final diaspora of the Jewish people in the last futile resistance to the Romans. For his pains Akiva, who was told at the time of the anointing “grass will grow out of your jaw” was tortured and executed along with nine other prominent Rabbis by the Romans, after bar Kochbah whose name means "son of a star" following Numbers 'prophecy' 14:7 that "a star shall shoot out of Jacob" died, apparently strangled by a snake after the final battle of Betar. Thus we can see Jesus is not the only one by any means anointed or anointer to give his life for the cause.

Both Yeshua's and bar Kochba's missions can be seen in the Jewish two-messiah model of a Josephic messiah who dies followed by a prophesied Davidic messiah who is victorious. Jesus is Yeshua ben Joseph and died claiming to return in an eschatological parousia disconnecting from the limitations of Jewish descent of traditional law. Later Maimonides expanded this concept into a set of almost impossible criteria viz bearing the long lost lineage of David, rebuilding the temple and regathering the diaspora.

The 15th and 16th centuries account several Jewish messiahs, including David Re’uveni and Shlomo Molkho who was burned at the stake. The latter influenced two messiahs from Tsvat in Galilee, Isaac Luria and his successor Hayim Vital. Luria’s new phrasing of the kabbalistic myth of the Zohar provided for a cosmic rescue mission to be carried out by the messiah and newly endowed the messiah with the ability to determine the nature of the individual soul and human deeds in the effort.

By far the largest messianic event influencing those to follow and causing continuing ferment and interest internationally was the messiahship of Shabbati Zevi who led a Jewish expedition eastward from Europe but was imprisoned in Turkey and apostasized to Islam. This began a tradition of duplicitous conversion in which successive messiahs extended the antinomian theme, culminating in Isaac Frank who espoused mysticism and sexual liberation opposed rabbinical teachings and whose daughter become the only female Jewish messiah in his stead. Following this, a line of Hassidic messiahs beginning with Israel ben Eliezer and culminates in the messianic following of Menachem Mendel Schneersohn today. The uneven fates and fortunes and angst induced by messianic personalities has in turn led to much pain and a loss of confidence in the messianic persona on the part of Jewish people, faced with both the holocaust and flux and change both in the New World and in the fortunes of secuar Zionism in the ‘Holy Land’.

What this parade of messiahs do show is that the messianic tradition is one of human innovators and that the elevation of Jesus to a man-God status is a disconnection from the messianic tradition into pagan beliefs in a super-human status, characterized more closely by the fertility deities who bridge the realm between the sacred king and the personified god in roles such as Adonis, Tammuz and Dionysus, all of which are human heroes grown into deities associated with death and regeneration.

There is a central problem with the idea that God the Father should choose this time and place to pronounce his only begotten son should be sacrificed in a final struggle with Satan to end the dysphoria that began with the Fall in Eden. Why then over one of many rumblings of civilization and empire and not now, for instance, since it is now that we have discovered the means of total annihilation and are laying waste to the planet on a scale likely to reverberate over evolutionary time?

The answer clearly lies in the social history and the evolution of religious ideas of a God acting in history and the confluence of Zoroastrian ideas of a final renovation with an increasingly apocalyptic Yahwistic following coming out of the Exile and its overthrow by Cyrus and his favour for the Jews. This confluence came about neither from a cosmic God of the universe with a psychopathic jealousy and a tunnel vision for Zion, nor from a local God of history alone, but the collision, ferment and fertilization of human religious imagination through cultural interaction.

Israel in Cultural Ferment at the Crossroads

Despite the unique status attributed to Israel as the ‘Holy Land’ by Jews and Christians alike, this area has been a focal cultural crossroads and a meeting point of cultures often in cultural conflict since the colonization of the fertile crescent. Biblical studies, both Christian and Jewish, tend to describe Old Testament culture as a very upright chauvinistic ‘people of God’ light years separated from the depravities of pagan deities and the excesses of fertility worship, but this is a very inaccurate view. Not only was Israel colonized by the Hebrews as an agrarian land of milk and honey, littered with Canaanite towns and subject to Philistine influences, as well as being populated in its backdrop by diverse tribes, from the Midianites to the Edomites, but it had major cultural infusions from Egypt spreading all the way to Byblos, from Sumeria from the very tribal roots, and later intrusions by the Assyrians which resulted in the Northern kingdom falling to pagan rule for several hundred years up to the time of the Jews release from exile.

The many invectives of the prophets against the whoring ways of Israel, and those against some of the Jewish kings, attest not to an abhorrence of heathen pollution, but to the fact that Hebrew worship during this time was complex, multicultural and syncretic. In the Psalms YHVH stands at the head of the congregation of the deities, the ‘Elohim of Genesis 1 is plural and we are in their likeness female and male. The astral worship of the heavenly host continued. Jeremiah confirms the Queen of Heaven was worshipped in peace and prosperity in the streets of Jerusalem and we know from Gezer and Elephantine that YHVH was worshipped alongside Anath and Asherah up to the time of the exile. Indeed Josiah only finally instituted YHVH-only worship, removed the Asherah from the temple and attacked and killed her priests and priestesses 23 years before the Babylonians seized control. Much of the Old Testament writings, from Deuteronomy through to the deutero-Isaiah, are exilic writings supporting the defensive struggle, under bondage, of the more recently emerged YHVH-only movement that had eradicated the decentralized pastoral tabernacle worship.

After the exile, Jewish thought was strongly influenced by the apocalyptic mind-set of Zoroastrian cosmic renovation and it is clear from the exhortations of Ezra and Nehemiah in the rain that many of the Jews remaining in Israel had intermarried with a diversity of cultures. Following the Persians, Alexander swept across the civilized world and successive conflicts with Greek and Roman empires ensured Hellenistic ideas pervaded Jewish thought, despite the antagonism and violence of the conquerors.

The emergence of the Maccabees resulted in an attempt at cultural purification, including the reinstitution of circumcision for Jewish men who preferred only a small token incision to enhance their attractiveness with gentile women. However there were other local cultures whose resurgence and prosperity caused them to have a major impact on Jewish life. Arabic Nabatea had become very expansive, causing the Edomites to overflow the Jordan into Southern Judea. The Nabateans were Arabs who worshipped the ancient deities Dhu Shara (Lord of Seir) and al-Lat (Goddess) and later Manat and al-Uzza, the same goddesses cursed by Muhammad in Mecca six hundred years later. Under Greek influence Dhu Shara assumed the Dionysian form of a man-God with a tragic mask of immortality and fertility worship of the god and goddess continued on every high hill and under every green tree.

Much of the minimalist description of Jesus as a mere insurrectionist carpenter from the shores of Galilee and the Jerusalem-centered perspective of Sadducee and Pharisee worship and Herodian rule belie the cultural complexity nascent in the first century. Although Jewish apocalypticism was ascendent, as evidenced in works, from Daniel through Enoch to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the preaching of John the Baptist, the Essene Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran and even Yeshua’s brother James the Just were scorched Earth atonement eschatology of final conflict, the mission of Jesus reflects much more fully the cultural complexity evident in the women of the countryside, and the gnostic supernatural, as much as the apocalypsis of the male Zealots who caused Galilee to run red with blood in the final conflict with the Romans. It is this sensitivity to all the dimensions of the spiritual culture of his time that has caused his teachings to spread like wild fire throughout the pagan world.

Yeshua as Transcultural Messiah

Our knowledge of Yeshua’s life and mission comes primarily from synoptic gospels written long after his death by people who had no personal contact and were already involved in evangelizing Christianity to the gentiles. The four gospels of the New Testament however have traces of an older sayings source ‘Q’ and together with the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas we can derive a less contrived picture of Yeshua’s personal vision. There are also traces of an older list of miracles in John, which ironically as the one ‘gnostic’ gospel in the New Testament takes a position of opposition to the gnosticism of Thomas in which Yeshua is ‘not your master’ in thrice deriding Thomas and declaring Yeshua as the cosmic logos.

If we set aside for a moment Yeshua’s highly mythical birth account and the strange case of mother Mary pregnant without husband except for the compassion of Joseph, the real entry point for Yeshua’s mission is his baptism by John. Q opens with John pronouncing scorched earth judgment in Jordan, in the metapohor of a grain god of the threshing floor with a winnowing fan stoking eternal fire and prophesying a greater one who will herald the Kingdom. This leads to the dove descending and to Jesus spending forty days in the desert contesting with Satan non the pinnacles of the temple in a highly dualistic confrontation between the forces of light and darkness.

The faith healing of the therapeutae then expands to become a set of nature miracles purporting to establish Yeshua’s status as the one prophesied by John. In Q this is accompanied by a deputation from John’s followers ostensibly checking out Yeshua’s miraculous candidacy. Yeshua’s excessively miraculous nature is an apocalyptic disjunction from the Hebrew tradition, despite Aaron’s rod and the works of some of the prophets.

These miracles have to be seen in three contexts. The first is that they were the stuff of myth and rumour, which didn’t stand up to personal scrutiny. The Gospel of Thomas 31 notes: “No prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him.” Mark 6:5 makes this even clearer “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them”. The second is that some are evangelistic metaphors rather than miracles, such as feeding the 5000. The third is that the extreme nature miracles such as walking on water are very specifically Dionysian in their style and approach in a way which is reflective of fertility worship, Hellenistic fable and specifically Nabatean culture of the time, rather than the Hebrew tradition, even in its apocalyptic flourish.

When John was beheaded, ostensibly in the sacrifical dance of the seven veils, the descent of Inanna/Ishtar, and Idumean Herod offered half his kingdom in echo of the passage in Esther, the general were present for a war banquet because Herod was besieged by the Nabateans for jilting his wife, the Nabatean princess in favour of his cousin Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife. The Nabateans would have defeated Herod had not the Roman legions intervened, so John’s accusation of Herodias was more politically explosive than a mere personal insult calculated to unravel the very fabric of Herod’s rule.

This pivotal event, cast in the tradition of fertility worship fits hand in glove with the resurgent fertility worship of the time in Nabatea which followed a Dionysian Dhu Shara taking both the form of a God and a man hero who donned the Dionysian tragic mask in gaining immortality. The entire mission of Jesus all the way through to the careful preparations for the final cursing, last supper and orchestrated betrayal, can be seen as a carefully crafted apocalyptic Dionysian tragedy designed to pit the forces of dark against the forces of light. Indeed the first miracle listed in Johns vestigial list was the turning of water into wine at Cana at his mother’s behest on the day of the festival of Dionysus and all the epithets of true vine, winebibber and the extreme blasphemy that unless you eat the soma and sangre of the son of humanity you have no life in you, are classic Dionysian fare.

Hence we find Yeshua is cursed in the Talmud as a false mashiach who hearkens, like Balaam, out of Edom. The Lexicon Talmudicum and Talmud babli Sanhedrin 106b, 43a, 51a and the Toldoth Jeshu refer to Jeshu-ha-Notzri [Jesus of Nazareth] by mention of the wicked kingdom of Edom, since that was his nation... he was hanged on a Passover eve... He was near to the kingdom [genealogically]. “Balaam the lame was 33 years old when Pintias the Robber [Pontius Pilate] killed him... They say that his mother was descended from princes and rulers but consorted with carpenters.” The Jewish citing of Jesus as son of a Roman ‘Pantera’ [panther] is another term of derision insinuating Dionysian heritage but a Roman gravestone has been found in Bingerbrück Germany for Julius Abdes Pantera an archer of Sidon, dating from the appropriate early Imperial period. The Mishnah (Baraitha and Tosefta) note: “It has been taught: On the eve of the Passover they hanged Yeshu ... because he practised sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray. A disciple of Yeshu the Nazarene is cited in Sepphoris capital of Galilee saying “It is written in your Torah ‘Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot ...’ How about making it a privy for the high priest? Thus did Yeshu ... teach me ‘For the hire of a harlot hath she gathered them, And unto the hire of a harlot shall they return’, from the place of filth they come, and unto the place of filth they go” Another Sanhedrin entry 103a by Rabbi Hisda comments on Psalm 91:10 “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling” that “Thou shalt have neither a son nor a disciple who will publicly let his food burn (forfeit his salvation in a public display) like did Jesus the Nazarene”. Rabbi Abbahu taught “If a man say unto thee ‘I am God’ he lieth; if he saith ‘I am the Son of Man’ he will live to rue his words; and if he saith ‘I ascend into Heaven’ he will not bring to pass that which he saith”.

What Jesus appears to have done is to respond to John’s baptism by making his own much more far-ranging interpretation of the apocalyptic condition in coming to a synthesis of all the traditions of his time in one right of passage of unveiling of all these together. This is the key both to his genius and to why, when Christianity proved too heretical a movement to prevail in Hebrew quarters, took off like wild fire across the pagan world.

Into this heady mix we have the role of the women of Galilee who gave to the mission out of their very substance, evocative of both full financial support and the nard of sexuality, of Mary Magdalen, Martha, and Salome, who is again referred to in sacrificial terms in the Gospel of Thomas 61. In John Jesus loved both Mary and Martha, and Mary is assigned ‘that good part’, hinting at the hieros gamos which is later fulfilled in sacrificial terms in Mary anointing Jesus to his doom. This sacrificial anointing by a woman rather than a male priest, and a woman whose name is intended to be remembered wherever Christ’s name is spoken in conjugal revelation, has no place in the Hebrew tradition, except in Esther’s condemning of Haman, which as we have seen is again a portrayal of fertility sacrifice of the sacred king.

The role of the women is compounded in the feminine intimacy of the crucifixion, with the male disciples scattered as sheep, Peter denying him thrice, and yet the women of Galilee have all come down to Jerusalem for what can only be a sacrificial performance and Mary (Magdalene) Salome and other women by contrast are present, embalm the body, pronounce the exultation, and are then deemed to be the founders of the inner Gnostic path.

What remains enigmatic here is whether Yeshua fully celebrated the sacred marriage with Magdalen or others as the Gnostic tradition claims or just used the fertility relationship as an instrumental part of the declaration of his mission. However, regardless of this we become aware of the ingenuity with which he re-interpreted in one rite of passage in his mission all the dimensions of spirituality from not diminishing one iota of the law of the prophets, to profligate claims to both being the Dionysian soma and sangre and a combined Adonis/Tammuz figure at the other extreme claiming to be the very son of God which caused such ire among the Rabbi that he has been cursed as the epitome of an indulgent false prophet in the Talmud.

His use of lightning in the second coming is the characteristic province of Dionysus spawned from the lightning between Zeus and Semele, which resulted in Dionysus being the only begotten son out of Zeus’ knee. If they say to you: Look, he is in the wilderness, do not go out; look, he is indoors, do not follow. For as the lightning streaks out from Sunrise and flashes as far as Sunset, so will be the Son of Humanity ·on his day‚.

Central to the Dionysian nature of his mission is using controversy and conflict to whip up the emotions of all present to the point they will try to destroy him, from the fabled account of escaping being thrown off the cliffs of Nazareth on his first reading of Isaiah 61’s black self-anointing verses later expanded to the final turning of the tables in the temple, in the end succeeding in being simultaneously cursed by the High Priests, the Herodians and the Romans as both a blasphemer and an insurrectionist, climaxed in a very carefully crafted Dionysian tragedy in which he has carefully planned the details in advance securing the ass for his fertility march and the room in which he will pass the sop to Judas to initiate the hour of darkness. Much of Q is devoted to setting out this fire-brand mission of cursing Pharisees, cities like Chorazin, hypocrites and others, while supporting tax-collectors and in John declaring himself the Logos again in terms most recognizable in Hellenistic rather than Hebrew terms.

We now come to the sayings, which attest clearly to Yeshua’s individual genius. These sayings fall into an enigmatic contrasting set displaying both philosophical genius, deep insight and gnostic awareness of an awesome depth.

Q’s ‘do unto other as you would they should do unto you’ is a neatly affirmative inversion of Hillel’s ‘do not to others what you would not have them do unto you’ elaborated in other sayings setting out a philosophy of forgiveness, not expecting rewards, impartial love, non judgement, egalitarian equity in the first and last becoming exchanged.

Several of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas set out a manual, not just for Christ to be Lord, but for each of us to be the twin in the Christ state of gnosis, beginning with the opening statement “Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.” Leading on from this are passages that set out an immediate experience of the All paralleled in the best of shamanistic vision: “It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will I find me there.” And this is said despite Jesus refusing to make the claim of being the Christ as portrayed in Peters acknowledgment of him in the synoptics: “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out.”

Notable in these account is that the Kingdom is not a heavenly realm descending from the sky, but the natural world and our conscious experience, once we see face to face.

Thomas 3 “If those who lead you say to you, '’See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. “

Thomas 113 His disciples said to him, “When will the kingdom come?” Jesus said, “It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘here it is’ or ‘there it is’. Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

Q 20 But on being asked when the kingdom of God is coming, he answered them and said: ‘The kingdom of God is not coming visibly‚ Nor will one say Look, here! or: There! For, look, the kingdom of God is within you!’

Thomas 20 “Tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.” He said to them, “It is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all seeds. But when it falls on tilled soil, it produces a great plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”

Q 18 What is the kingdom of God like, and with what am I to compare it? It is like a seed of mustard, which a person took and threw into his garden. And it grew and developed into a tree, and the birds of the sky nested in its branches.

Yeshua’s relationship with his family is problematical throughout his mission. Mary plays little part in the mission except for ostensibly suggesting he converts the water into wine at Cana in John and the family then going down to Capernaum afterwards. In Mark, he later claims to the crowd that they are his mother and brethren when they come to seek to speak to him. In John his brethren tell him to go down to Jerusalem disparagingly, saying ‘if what you say is true, show yourself to the world’. Notably, James the Just, who Jesus did pass the mantle to in Thomas, was a much more conservative figure, who was also murdered, in the temple, shortly before the siege of Jerusalem.

Q 26 The one who‚ does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple; and the one who‚ does not hate son and daughter cannot be my disciple.

Q 53 I have come to divide son against father, and‚ daughter against her mother, and‚ daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Paradoxical, given his disclaimer of familial connections, we have the Edenic invocations against divorce as adultery that have led to Christianity enforcing monogamy in a way which is unparalleled in 85% of world cultures.

Q 18 Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another‚ commits adultery, and the one who marries a divorcée commits adultery.

This is again light years away from the Jewish tradition of fertility in genealogy and family values and much closer to pagan views, in espousing a religion of all-encompassing belief rather than kinship or tribe. The same goes for comments about eunuchs, which can only have a meaning in a world dominated by final eschatology where reproduction is futile.

Finally, despite all the ‘miracles’ we have to admit that Yeshua’s expectation was that the parousia would come in his own generation:

Mark 9:1 “Jesus said unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power’.”

Luke 21:32 “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.”

That fact that we are still waiting attests to the humanity of a genius prophet in his time although his ultimate position, common to all the gospels, is that of the thief in the night whose hour we shall never know in advance:

Q 39 “But know this: If the householder had known in which watch the robber was coming, he would not have let his house be dug into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Humanity is coming at an hour you do not expect.”