The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">[The Hellenized Jewish philosopher] Philo of Alexandria [25BC–50AD] wrote books of serious philosophy … even if no Jew in first-century Jerusalem is attested as having developed either such philosophical expertise or, indeed, such philosophical interests … If Jews in Jerusalem [though possibly versed in Greek] attended public readings of epic poetry or public performances of tragic plays, even with such impeccably Jewish themes, there is no surviving evidence of it.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It was this final point which particularly exasperated him [Pilate], for he feared that if they [apparently Temple priests] actually sent an embassy [to the emperor Tiberius] they would expose the rest of his conduct as governor by stating in full the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty.&nbsp; So with all his vindictiveness and furious temper, he was in a difficult position.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It is an ordinary and common custom for each one to say: “I am God (or a son of God, or a divine Spirit).&nbsp; And I have come.&nbsp; Already the world is being destroyed.&nbsp; And you, O men, are to perish because of your iniquities.&nbsp; But I wish to save you.&nbsp; And you shall see me returning again with heavenly power.&nbsp; Blessed is he who has worshipped me now!&nbsp; But I will cast into everlasting fire upon all the rest. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Immediately after Jesus’ death, the circle of his friends began to gather.&nbsp; Their love for him, instead of fading in his absence, quickened, opening into a potent love they felt for one another.&nbsp; Their gatherings were like those of a bereft circle, and they were built around lament, the reading of the texts, silence, stories, food, drink, songs, more text, poems – a changed sense of time and repeated intuition that there was ‘one more member’ than could be counted.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">And so he convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others.&nbsp; He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">For almost a decade – from 48 to 56 C.E. – Paul ranged widely … preaching tirelessly about the impending changes he believed were about to sweep over the world.&nbsp; He traveled through rural areas where hard-pressed peasant populations responded with joy to the prospect of a coming day of judgment when their burdens would be lifted and when ambitious landlords and cold-hearted estate stewards would finally receive their just rewards.&nbsp; He preached in crowded urban streets and workshops where day laborers, slaves, and indentured craftspeople dreamed of regaining control of their own futures – assuring them that they would live to see the current imperial regime of power and economic inequality crumble before their eyes. Each of Paul’s communities could find its deepest hopes and profoundest ideals fulfilled in the particular image of Christ that it cherished — all of which were progressively drifting away from the verifiable historical facts of Jesus’ life … In its complexity and studied ambiguity, it held the new communities together.&nbsp; And in that sense – in the villages, towns and cities of Galatia and Macedonia — a new kind of Christianity was born.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Therefore to scotch the rumor [that Nero had ordered the fire], Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians.&nbsp; Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue.&nbsp; First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race.&nbsp; And derision accompanied their end:&nbsp; they were covered with wild beasts’ skins and torn to the death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">In the last days of the reign of Nero [54-68], no one could really be blamed for dismissing the tiny tribe of Christians as a cult of doomed dreamers and idealists … The most famous leaders of the Jesus Movement had been discredited or crushed by the power of the empire … The greatest miracle one could possibly imagine was that the dream of the Kingdom of God would survive at all.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The administration of Albinus [procurator of Judea, [62-64], who followed Festus [60-62], was of another order; there was no form of villainy which he omitted to practice.&nbsp; Not only did he, in his official capacity, steal and plunder private property and burden the whole state with extraordinary taxes, but he accepted ransoms from their relatives on behalf of those who had been imprisoned … and the only persons left in gaol as malefactors were those who failed to pay the price.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Such was the character of Albinus [62-64], but his successor, Gessius Florus [64-66], made him appear by comparison a paragon of virtue.&nbsp; The crimes of Albinus were, for the most part, perpetuated in secret and with dissimulation; Gessius, on the contrary, ostentatiously paraded his outrages upon the nation and, as though he had been sent as hangman of condemned criminals, abstained from no form of robbery or violence.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Deeply as one must mourn for the most marvelous edifice which we have ever seen or heard of, whether we consider its structure, its magnitude, the richness of its every detail, or the reputation of its Holy Places … While the temple blazed, the victors plundered everything that fell in their way and slaughtered wholesale all who were caught … The Romans, now masters of the walls, planted their standards on the towers, and with clapping of hands and jubilation raised a paean in honor of their victory.&nbsp; Pouring into the alleys, sword in hand, they massacred indiscriminately all whom they met … The Romans now set fire to the outlying quarters of the town and razed the walls to the ground … those who perished during the siege from first to last, [numbered] one million one hundred thousand.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Caesar [Titus] ordered the whole city and the temple to be razed to the ground … leaving only the loftiest towers … and the portion of the wall enclosing the city on the west … the city was so completely leveled to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no ground for believing that it had ever been inhabited.&nbsp; Such was the end to which the frenzy of revolutionaries brought Jerusalem, that splendid city of worldwide renown.</em></p>