Jay Raskin's "Evolution of Christ and Christianites": A Review
‘It’s more than great – it’s mediocre!’ -Saying attributed to movie mogul Sam Goldwyn

Some years ago the veteran British comedians Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones performed a sketch on their TV show of the Nativity as it would be filmed by Hollywood today. Needless to say, this departed very quickly from scriptural truth, and ended with a shoot-out at the inn, culminating in a dying Police Commissioner Pilate saying in his patrol car, ‘Truly, this man was the Son of God.’ Complaints of blasphemy from outraged viewers swiftly followed.

While Smith and Jones’ sketch is a poor comment on Scripture, it does accurately portray the mentality behind Raskin’s book. Raskin himself isn’t a Biblical scholar or a historian or archaeologist of the ancient Near East. His Ph.D. is in philosophy, and he teaches philosophy, humanities and film studies, and produced the films Electra and I Married a Vampire for the schlock horror outfit Troma. While the book’s blurb places him in succession to the usual sceptical line-up of Robert Price, Freke and Gandy, Earl Doherty, Acharya S, Robert Eisenman, Michael O. Wise and Dan Brown, his chief qualification for writing the book appears to be that for five years he was moderator of the discussion group on Freke and Gandy’s Jesus Mysteries forum. His bibliography also cites Richard Carrier and the British fringe writer, Brian Magee, who believes that Barabbas was really Jesus. As for the publisher, Xlibris is a self-publishing company associated with Random House. This should tell you that whatever else you’re going to get here, it’s not sound scholarship.

This was, however, lost on the reviewer for the Fortean Times, a British magazine devoted to high weirdness rather like the US Fate. Giving the book a massive 8 out of 10, their reviewer praised the book with the encomium ‘If you want to see the birth of Christianity uncluttered by assumptions, but bolstered by rigorous scholarship, you could do a lot worse than this book.’ 1

It’s hard to see why, as the book’s scholarship is by and large appalling. The book is essentially one large catalogue of errors and bad logic from cover to cover with hardly anything in it bearing any resemblance to the religious situation in first century Palestine, let alone the birth of Christianity. Here, however, are Raskin’s most glaring and fundamental mistakes.

While Raskin clearly knows his ancient philosophy, he shows no knowledge of the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Aramaic, and discussion of the precise meaning of some of the New Testament Greek terms is confined to the words for ‘slave’ and ‘apostle’ on pages 575-6. He quotes the Church fathers extensively, but these are all taken from English translations on the Internet, rather than the original Greek or Latin. This is a critical mistake, as he tries to show that many of them were forged using stylography, the method of which he also seems to have taken from the Internet, if his bibliography is anything to go by, as subtle differences in the original language can be obscured in translation. For example, German has two words for ‘now’, jetzt and nun, which have subtly different meanings. Someone analysing the style of a translated document in which those two words have been translated into English as ‘now’ could believe that the original German author was using a rather more restricted vocabulary and different style than is actually the case.

He also has absolutely no understanding of the Aramaic substrate underneath the Greek of the New Testament. Discussing Peter’s denial of Christ before cock-crow, Raskin declares that Mark was Greek-speaking, and merely translating from Aramaic, a language he didn’t understand. This is because Mark apparently didn’t understand that ‘cock-crow’ was an Aramaic idiom for sunrise. (p. 167) Yet New Testament scholars like Joachim Jeremias have pointed out that the Greek of the New Testament was heavily influenced by Aramaic, so that ‘Everywhere behind the Greek text we get glimpses of Jesus’ mother tongue.’ 2 Crucially, he shows absolutely no knowledge either of Jewish literature and religious ideas at the time of Christ as preserved in the Talmud and Targums, despite the fact that these are clearly essential for understanding the nature of Judaism at the time of Christ. Indeed, his source material for the period is essentially Eusebius and Josephus, whom he criticises extensively throughout, the Dead Sea Scrolls and various Gnostic gospels like the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Thomas. He does not, however, inform his readers that these Gospels are 3rd or 4th century and so, like the similar Gospels of Peter, Secret Mark and the Egerton Gospel, do not contain traditions, which might stimulate reflection today on the Christian Gospel. 3

His ignorance even extends to ordinary, everyday customs in the Hellenistic east, such as kissing as an ordinary greeting between heterosexual men. In Longus’ Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe, written in the second century AD, for example, the heterosexual hero, Daphnis, greets his long-lost brother, Astylus, with a kiss. 4 However, when Judas betrays Christ with a kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, Raskin sees it as really referring to Christ greeting Mary Magdalene. (p. 151) He doesn’t seem to have much idea of the basic archaeology of first century Palestine, either. He finds Mary’s comments about the stone in front of the Lord’s grave being moved incredible, as how could she know that the stone was there in the first place? (p. 149). Yet tombs in first century Palestine often did have a cartwheel stone to seal their entrances, something that the women would known when they came to embalm Jesus. The other type of tomb sugessted for the time of Jesus -- involving a plug-like stone -- would have been no less familiar. 5 He also claims that Nazareth didn’t exist at the time the Gospels were written, and so must have been an invention of the Christians to disguise the fact that Jesus was really a Nazirite, and it was they that wrote Marks’ Gospel. (p. 185) This is clearly contradicted by the presence of Jewish graves from before the time of Christ, as the Christian Thinktank discuss in their article ‘Question – did the Christians Make Up the Town of Nazareth’ at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/nazy.html. He also doesn’t understand who the Nazirites were, as he claims that Apollos in Acts became a Nazirite by making a vow while cutting his hair, whereas in reality Nazirites did not cut their hair until the fulfilment of their vow. (p. 481)

Thus without any background of scholarship in the religion, literature, history and archaeology of first century Palestine, Raskin’s approach to his subject is profoundly anachronistic. His approach to Biblical criticism is to compare it to the intercutting of films, an approach that is so crucial to his understanding of the development of the Gospel that he declares that his deconstruction of the New Testament ‘could hardly be done without it’. (p. 14) The result of this is that there are long passages comparing the New Testament to the literary development of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, Batman, Raffles, Frankenstein, Chicago, and Harry Potter, and the development of the cinema between 1894 and 1927. (pp. 200-232, 280) He calls this method a ‘narrative sense tool’, and proceeds to describe his deconstruction of scripture ‘narratological archaeology’. (pp. 251-2) Thus, Raskin’s tool for criticising the Bible isn’t whether the events make sense in the context and world-view of the ancient Near East, but whether they make a good story for him.

Declaring his intention to ‘narrow our understanding to the specifically materialistic understanding of the Christian gospels of the first centuries’, Raskin’s essential approach is to see nearly every Biblical figure as somehow a literary forgery based on another Biblical figure, and to adopt the opposite point of view from what is said in the text. (p. 118) If something is presented as really happening, then it is a forgery. If it is a dream or parable, then it somehow describes a real situation, though not the obvious one of its message. Thus, Thomas’ handling of Christ shows not that the Lord was present in real, corporeal form, but that Jesus was really a spirit. (p. 235) The vision of the author of the Shepherd of Hermas of a woman, representing the author’s spirit, who grows younger as his soul is rejuvenated by the good news of the Gospel, is taken to mean that the early Christian church sent a succession of women, first elderly, and then progressive younger, to persuade Roman matrons into letting them evangelise their slaves. (p. 574) It’s a massively paranoid world of competing religious factions, and where scribes literally steal and alter each other’s manuscripts in their pamphlet wars.

Raskin sees the Bible as the obvious product of this campaign of pious forgery, as well as the works of the church historian Eusebius and even Josephus. As a work of Christ myth scholarship, it’s de rigueur that Josephus’ description of Christ, the Testimonium Flavianum, should be dismissed as a forgery. Raskin goes one further, however, and states that the references to Christ and Christianity in Tacitus and Suetonius must be forgeries too. (pp. 98-102) However, in his skewed vision antichristian interpolators were also active in altering historical texts: Raskin claims that the dispute between Pilate and the Jews over the corban money and the stationing of Roman insignia in Jerusalem were deliberately placed in 19 AD so as to disrupt the chronology of the Christian gospel. (p. 272) For an effective rebuttal of the argument that the reference to Josephus is a forgery, see JP’s article. As for the arguments against the references to Christ in Josephus and Suetonius, this is merely the assertion that these authors couldn’t have written about Christ or Christians themselves, because they only mention them once in their writings. Actually, all this says is that these authors simply weren’t that interested in what, at the time, was a small Jewish sect, except when it became sufficiently troublesome to attract their interest.

As a major source for the development of the early Christian church, Eusebius is the target for many of Raskin’s allegations of forgery. Raskin argues that Eusebius was responsible for forging Acts in the Bible, the Testimonium Flavianum, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Quadratus, Irenaeus, the Christian prisoners from Gaul, Tertullian, Dionysius and the Roman emperor Augustus. All the evidence, however, is against such an assertion. Raskin’s argument against Eusebius’ fundamental truthfulness is derived from Gibbon via C. Dennis McKinsey’s Dictionary of Biblical Errancy and Richard Carrier. He also quotes Madame Blavatsky’s comparison of the Church History to Baron Munchausen, not realising that she was talking about the work of the same name by the German 19th century scholar Mosheim. Not that this matters, as Blavatsky herself seems to have had little qualms about committing fraud when it suited her. In 1885 Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research, presented damning evidence of fraud in the miracles supposedly committed by Blavatsky to the British Society for Psychical Research. 6 Blavatsky, with her dismissive and hostile attitude towards the Christian Church and willingness to commit fraud to support her own doctrines, would hardly have any scruples about lying about the most important historian of the early Church. Raskin’s source for these allegations of fraud by Eusebius paradoxically seems to be Roger Pearse’s page on the great Church historian at http://ww.tertullian.org/rpearse/eusebius/eusebius_the_liar.htm. Raskin doesn’t take on board, however, and certainly neglects to mention that Pearse’s page provides an effective demolition of these claims. If anyone is lying about history, it’s not Pearse, and it’s not Eusebius.

As for Eusebius himself, all the evidence instead speaks for his fundamental truthfulness and accuracy. While the classical historians would compose speeches to put into the mouths of heroic generals, Eusebius quotes and summarises his material directly. 7 He preserves much material that would otherwise be lost, and when his sources can be checked, he is often found to be extremely accurate, as has been shown by the comparison of his account of an edict of the emperor Maximinus II with an inscription of the same edict. 8 Far from being a liar, Eusebius has been hailed by historians such as Guy Schofield as ‘dependable’, ‘scholarly’ and ‘by far the most important and reliable historian of the early church’. 9 Although scholars have criticised Eusebius for his vocal support of the emperor Constantine, and seen his writings on the emperor as less history than panegyric, the accusations of fraud are unproven. 10 The major criticisms of Eusebius instead are that his quotations are too brief, a confused chronology and lack of synthesis in his writings. 11

As for stylistic analysis, although it has been noted that Eusebius’ and Hegesippus styles are similar, they are distinctive. Scholars have described Hegesippus’ Greek as ‘awkward’. 12 They have also pointed out that there is a discrepancy between Hegesippus’ reports of the imperial interrogation of James the Just and Christ’s cousins, and Eusebius’ treatment of the material. In Hegesippus, James the Just and the other relatives of Christ are questioned by Vespasian because they are Jewish and claim descent from King David, not because they are Christians. Eusebius, however, states that they are interrogated because they are Christians. There is clearly a distinction here between Hegesippus and Eusebius. If the principle of disparity used by Biblical scholars to find the authentic words of Christ in the New Testament – the critique which sees Jesus’ words as genuine if they conflict with later church doctrine or practice – is applied, then it is clear that Hegesippus has not been forged by Eusebius.

Even Raskin himself seems not to take his allegations of wholesale forgery against Eusebius too seriously. On pages 505-7 he argues from Hegesippus to show that the Temple was still standing when Hegesippus was writing, so he must have been recording events before the Temple’s destruction in AD 70, and so was reliable for that period, but that the later material from the second century is an invention of Eusebius. So, Raskin himself considers Hegesippus forged only as and when it suits him.

Raskin’s accusations of wholesale patristic invention of the Scriptures are similarly unfounded. Raskin claims that the Epistles and Luke’s Gospel are really by Marcion, but were taken over, edited and expanded by Tertullian. (pp. 111-113) His basis for this is to take the description of Marcion’s heavily edited version of the scriptures, that is, Luke’s Gospel without the Virginal Conception and Resurrection, and Marcion’s heavily edited versions of ten Pauline epistles as constituting an earlier canon which Tertullian then expanded as part of a polemical campaign against Marcion. He also sees the references to the Holy Spirit and the laying on of hands in the Epistles as evidence of Tertullian’s forgery, as Tertullian became a Montanist, and they laid great emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit. (p. 514) He also makes the mistake of attributing Paul’s emphasis on feminine modesty, which he anachronistically describes as ‘misogynistic’ to Tertullian, on the basis that Tertullian similarly emphasises these virtues in De Cultu Feminarum, and suggests that Tertullian wrote them as a direct rebuke to his own wife for not behaving sufficiently modestly. (pp. 486-7) Underlying these assertions are a basic attitude that whatever catholic, orthodox Christians have written must be propaganda and forgery, and that the text and canon of the Bible must postdate the Fathers.

Raskin’s view of the late forging of Luke and Acts suffers from major drawbacks. Firstly, the ancient world, including the Church Fathers themselves possessed a sophisticated tradition of literary criticism. Eusebius himself uses it to distinguish those books and writings he considers to be canonical and authoritative from heretical versions. Any attempt by Tertullian to forge passages of scripture himself would have been recognised and condemned. And Tertullian certainly was condemned: for his support of Montanism, but there was no allegation that he was involved in manufacturing scriptures so it’s clear that however unorthodox the great Christian apologist may otherwise have been, he was not a forger.

Tertullian stresses the traditional, orthodox view against Marcion, and draws on the other Fathers, Theophilus and Irenaeus, to support his position. If Tertullian had been forging material to support his position against Marcion, the sections of the Church most familiar with his illustrious predecessors would surely have denounced him. Tertullian himself was a master of logical literary criticism, pointing out how inconsistent Marcion’s own versions of the scriptures were. For example, Marcion excised the Nativity, but included the Passion, which Tertullian considered far more objectionable from Marcion’s perspective. 13 The evidence from contemporary literary criticism therefore shows that Marcion’s is the forgery, not the orthodox scriptures defended by Tertullian. Furthermore, Tertullian’s own style of ad hominem argument against his enemies was, by the standards of the time, very remarkably moderate. When he describes Marcion as a Pontic sea captain, he is very close to the truth, as Marcion’s father had been a bishop in Pontus, and Marcion himself had owned a ship. 14 Rather than being a forger, Tertullian is rather very concerned to present the truth.

There is also no reason to doubt the common authorship of Luke and Acts, given that they are so very similar in style and language and both addressed to the same person, Theophilus. 15 The use of specialised medical knowledge in Luke, and the general sympathy to doctors, appears to corroborate the identification of Luke as a doctor by Paul, and that the author was the same Luke who accompanied Paul on his missions. 16 This contrasts with Tertullian, who, even though probably not actually a lawyer, was certainly influenced by legal terminology rather than the medical profession. 17

Nor is Tertullian the only Church Father to show an awareness of Luke. Clement of Rome does too, writing in the last decade of the first century AD, even if he does not quote the Gospel directly. 18

As for supposing that the references to the Holy Spirit in Scripture are interpolations by Tertullian in his Montanist phase, this does not stand up to scrutiny either. One need only go through the Bible to find the Holy Spirit mentioned literally from the very Beginning, as in Genesis 1:2, when ‘the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters’, and ecstatic utterances and the operations of the Holy Spirit are found throughout the New Testament, including Paul, and not just Acts. Montanism claimed to be a revival of the prophetic tradition of the early church, and so while they may have laid especial emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit as described in Scripture, this does not mean they invented those passages. Indeed, the criticism of the Montanists was not that they were forging false gospels, but that the prophetic utterances of Montanus and his followers, Prisca and Maxilla, were held to contradict and elevated above it. However, their prophecies were never confused with Scripture, not even by their most notable convert, Tertullian. 19 Thus, rather than the references to the Holy Spirit and His gifts being inventions of Tertullian, the evidence is most certainly that the Montanists took their inspiration from Scripture.

Regarding the text of the New Testament itself, Raskin’s essential method of deconstruction is to look for any similarity, no matter how tenuous, between the various figures in its pages, and then suggest that they originally referred to the same person, but have been recast as different characters to fulfil various narrative roles. From Robert Price he takes the idea that Jesus is really based on John the Baptist, as both are prophets with miraculous births. He then strains even further to prove that just about every Jewish freedom fighter, religious leader or bandit at the time must also have been christs. He claims that the sons of the rebel Judas the Galilean, Elionaeus, Theudas, Simon and James were looked up on as ‘christs’ because they were probably crucified by the Romans. (p. 189) But this is erroneous. Despite the theology of the suffering messiah articulated by Isaiah, first century Judaism did not expect, nor want, a messiah who would suffer the greatest shame imaginable at the time: crucifixion. Indeed, the Mosaic Law made very clear just how far crucifixion was from the ideal of holiness expected of the messiah in Deuteronomy 21:22 ‘for he that is hanged is accursed of God’. It was only after Jesus’ glorious resurrection that the cross, the sign of degradation and abject humiliation, became the symbol of divine hope and messianic redemption.

Following Randall Helms, he sees the stories of Jesus as taken from those of the Old Testament prophets, and simply rewritten around Christ. This criticism is ably rebutted by JP in his articles ‘Fictional Friction’ at http://www.tektonics.org./gk/helmsr01.html and ‘Who Wrote the Balderdash’ at http:www.tectonics.org/gk/helmsr02.html, and in the paper ‘Good Question … did the gospel authors simply rip-off stories from the OT and ascribe them to Jesus?’ at the Christian-thinktank at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qotripoff.html. Ignorant of the principles of Biblical typology, in which, in the worldview of first century Judaism, the future was expected to look pretty much like the past and prophets expected to show their ministry in the performance of certain deeds, he can only accuse the gospel writers of inventing the great figures of the New Testament. Refuting such misconceptions of the early Christian use of the Old Testament are scholarly works like Richard Longenecker’s Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, reviewed here by JP. Raskin quotes Rabbi Jacob Neusner that the Gospel of Matthew is a set of midrashim woven together, and claims that the supposed invention of characters he sees in the New Testament were an orthodox part of Jewish midrashic exegesis. (p. 379) This is very far from the truth. Midrash was the genre of Jewish exegesis devoted to making plain the hidden meaning of Biblical texts, not the invention of new ones, though later rabbis did create miracle stories about their predecessors. However, this was not the case with Matthew, as discussed by the Christian Thinktank in their article ‘Were the Miracles of Jesus invented by the Disciples/Evangelists’ at http://www.christian-thinktank.com/mq3.html. For the refutation of the claim that the Gospel writers forged passages using the Old Testament, see ‘Good Question … did the Messianic Jewish Believers use the OT deceitfully or ignorantly in the New Testament’ at the Christian Thinktank’s http://www.christian-thinktank.com/baduseot.html. Raskin seems to be getting midrash mixed up with the process by which Jewish exegetes would collapse several Biblical figures into one, by ascribing events or stories associated with one figure with another. However, this did not involve inventing new Biblical figures, but was instead meant to show that the Biblical figures whose actions were ascribed to the named characters were equal to them in piety and holiness. It was an exercise in explication, not further myth-making.

He also sees Simon Magus as another source for Jesus’ life, based largely on Simon Magus’ messianic pretensions. (pp. 514-15) This is obviously contradicted by the clear differences in identity and messianic claims between Jesus and Simon, in Jesus’ case Jewish, in Simon’s Hellenic-Gnostic, so more twists of logic and strained parallels are required to resolve this contradiction. He also believes that Joshua in the Old Testament must have been another source for the figure of Christ, because he was the warrior who led Israel to victory over the pagan Canaanites, just like the Jews expected a Messiah to bring them victory over the pagan Romans, and because the name ‘Jesus’ is a form of ‘Joshua’. This falls down on the fact that Jesus never led a military campaign against the Romans, not to mention all the other differences between their lives and careers. This does not, however, stop him from claiming that the ‘Church of God’ he supposes was set up to bring wayward slaves back into the Jewish fold, had a messiah based on Joshua rather than Moses to stress the virtues of obedience in contrast to the spirit of rebellion fomented by the Lawgiver. (p. 581) The obvious problem with this theory is that the Exodus from Egypt and the receipt of the Law by Moses is absolutely central to Judaism, and it’s inconceivable that the Jewish establishment would wish to create such a radical revision of Judaism merely to gain slave converts.

None of the parallels he tries to find are particularly close. This leads him into numerous contradictions, which he attempts to resolve with more tenuous identifications and spurious attempts to explain the discrepancies away. At each stage of this process he claims to have discovered a new level of the propagation of the gospel behind those of the finished canon. By the end of this he claims not only to have found Q, but also an UrMark, MQ; and an UrUrMark, or MQQ, as well as two layers in the Book of Revelation. (pp. 345-78, 432.) It’s a hall of mirrors, at the end of which Raskin believes he sees the fictionalised face of the Gospel’s author, but succeeds only in dimly perceiving his own. (p. 369) In so doing, he goes further than even the Jesus Seminar, and criticises such non-Christian scholars as Mack and Ludemann for taking on faith the belief that there was ever a historical Jesus behind the Jesus of the Bible. (p. 604) The fact that Raskin’s whole edifice is built wholly on the belief that no such person as Christ ever existed, and is an attempt to explain away the evidence to the contrary, and so is every bit, if not more, an act of faith as the scholars he criticises, does not appear to have occurred to him.

He attempts to explain the obvious differences between the conception of John the Baptist to his aged parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the Virginal Conception of Christ by Mary by stating that Christ’s birth is a further mythological development from that of John’s. This is contradicted by the material in the Jewish Haggadah, which shows that when, in Jewish legend, a Biblical character was held to have supernatural powers, his conception was suspected to be due not to the Holy Spirit, but to one of the angels. This is shown most clearly in the Qumran Genesis Apocryphon 1QapGen, describing the suspicions of Noah’s father, Lamech, that his prodigiously talented infant son was really the scion of one of these: ‘Behold, I thought then within my heart that conception was (due) to the Watchers and the Holy Ones … and to the Giants … and my heart was troubled within me because of this child.’ 20 Apart from which, the differences between the two conceptions of John the Baptist and Jesus are so glaringly obvious that Raskin is forced into yet more convoluted and contradictory arguments to try and explain these away.

He also claims that Christ’s return from the grave to the women at the tomb evolved from the Graeco-Roman idea of a dream visit of the deceased to the mourners. (p. 122) This can be discounted, as the women were most certainly awake, not asleep and dreaming. As Jews, they would not have held the Hellenic idea of dream returns from the dead anyway. Also, the idea of the return of the spirits of the dead did not automatically lead to the idea of a physical resurrection. Graeco-Roman culture did not, as JP shows, have any idea of a physical resurrection of the dead based on the Platonic idea that matter was imperfect. The Jews did believe in a physical resurrection, but only at the end of time. Thus, Christ’s appearance to the women in the Garden of Gethsemane was a genuine anomaly at the time, not just in terms of being a physical miracle, but also as contradiction to the basic tenets of the Jewish and Hellenistic worldviews. For a comprehensive refutation of the subjective visions hypothesis, see the numerous articles JP lists about Jesus’ Resurrection.

At times Raskin’s comparisons are so strained and contrived as to be non-existent, except to Raskin himself. For example, he sees the Transfiguration as similar to a long speech by Dionysius in Euripedes’ Bacchae, and so claims that Mark must have got the idea from watching a performance of Euripides’ play at the theatre in Caesarea. However, Dionysius in the passage is not transformed himself, but merely talks about transforming lives, and transforming people into snakes and dragons. (p. 294) There is absolutely no similarity between the two passages whatsoever. He likewise claims that the description of Jesus as ‘firstborn from the dead’ in Colossians 1:18 and Revelations does not refer to Christ rising from the dead, but from Christ being born from primeval chaos, citing Proverbs 8:22-29, despite the fact that this does not make any mention of the dead. When, however, his conclusions are so far-fetched that there is absolutely no evidence for them, he simply asserts without any argument or proof. Thus Raskin tells us that John referred to himself as well as Jesus as the ‘good shepherd’, and viewed himself as the Paraclete. (p. 143). Other howlers include Raskin’s assertion that the Jews became monotheists under the influence of Platonism. (p. 338) This is despite the fact that the Mosaic code shows no trace of Platonic influence and was composed long before the Greeks entered Palestine. Still, it makes a change from the usual canard that Moses got the idea of the one God from Akhenaten.

Most remarkably, he claims one of the sources of Mark’s Gospel to be a play by a woman called Mary, in which the Word of God descends to possess the son of the high Priest, Simon bar Caiaphas, who is having a torrid affair with Caiaphas’ wife, Mary Magdalene, his own stepmother. Caiaphas tricks the Romans into crucifying his son in order to unite the Judaeans against Rome. During the arrest, Simon undergoes a mock coronation ceremony, which makes him king of the Jews, the crucifixion is faked, and Simon meets his secret lover and stepmother, Mary Magdalene, at the tomb. (p. 612) Coming from a cinematic and theatrical background himself, he is very taken with the idea, and especially the notion that a woman could have written the play, which he calls a ‘new feminist paradigm’. (p. 201)

Raskin comes to this remarkable conclusion from his belief that the only genre that mixes poetry and narrative like the Gospels was mime plays. (p. 246). This is in flat contradiction to the fact that throughout the Old Testament the figures of Israel’s history are recorded as singing praises to the Lord in the middle of narrative passages, as exemplified by the song of Hannah, the mother of the Prophet Samuel, at his dedication in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. Looking at Christ’s appearance to the women at the tomb, Raskin states this only makes sense if Mary is the narrator of the story. (p. 123) It’s a nonsequitur that is effectively contradicted by just about every book that’s ever been written where the author isn’t one of the characters at the end. He tries to support his argument by citing Josephus’ meeting with an actor, who had been born a Jew, during his embassy to Rome (p. 248) and with arguments that the classical mime theatre had actresses as well as actors (p. 249). In fact there is a body of evidence which suggests that respectable women were attending the theatre, whose performers included actresses as well as actors, from the time of the city dionysia of fifth century Athens. 21 It does not follow, however, that plays with a romantic content were written by women. The central plots of the Greek novels that have survived are all based around the sufferings of a couple of lovers, who are separated and undergo a variety of misfortunes before being reunited and married. While it’s possible that there were many by women, which have not survived, those novels that do all seem to have been written by men: Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, Heliodorus, Lucian, Iamblichus and Antonius Diogenes. 22 Raskin has a thesis that the life of Christ is a piece of female romantic fiction, and is desperately trying to alter the facts to match.

In the context of first century Judaism, however, Raskin’s scenario is highly unlikely. Judaism, and then early Christianity at this time were bitterly hostile to the theatre. In the Haggadah about Ruth, it is stated very clearly that Jewish women do not go to the circuses, and the theatre was condemned in the Talmud. 23 Pious Jews regarded the Greek language and Hellenic philosophy with suspicion, fearing that it would lead to apostasy. The notorious apostate Elisha ben Avuyah had, it was believed, abandoned his Judaism through his love of Hellenic culture, and it was said that ‘Greek songs never left his mouth’. 24 The association between apostasy and the theatre is confirmed, rather than disproved, by Josephus’ description of the actor. He states that he ‘had been born a Jew’, and so, by implication, no longer was, even if he remained sufficiently attached to his ancestral people to show Josephus around the imperial metropolis. This hostility to the theatre carried on into Christianity. Tertullian himself decried and condemned the theatre, along with other pagan entertainments, with the words ‘We have nothing to do, in speech, sight, or hearing, with the madness of the circus, the shamelessness of the theatre, the savagery of the arena, the vanity of the gymnasium’. 25 Even after the conversion of the empire to Christianity, in the east the theatre was still considered unchristian. Under Byzantine law, actors were considered pagans and denied the civic rights of the Empire’s Christian subjects. The last place Mark, as a pious Jew, would have taken his ideas is from the theatre.

From the political angle too it’s unlikely that any such, or similar plays would ever have been staged. The Roman Empire and its client states certainly did not possess freedom of speech or conscience. It’s extremely unlikely that someone as important as the High Priest, like Caiaphas, would have tolerated such a portrayal of himself on the stage. Similarly, the Greek and Roman colonists who would have patronised the theatre regarded the non-Greek populations of the conquered provinces as barbarians, inferior in culture and civilisation, and looked with horror on the nationalist aspirations of the indigenous peoples amongst whom they lived. The very last thing they would have wanted or tolerated is a play celebrating the Jews’ aspirations for freedom and independence.

As for the plot of the play described by Raskin, the identification of Jesus with a supposed son of the High Priest, Simon, comes about through a long process of convoluted logic. From Eisenman he gets the idea that the name Cleophas is a form of Caiaphas, and so decides that the father of Christ’s cousin mentioned by Eusebius, Simeon bar Cleophas, must be the High Priest Caiaphas. (p. 199) Rejecting Judas as leading the Roman soldiers to find Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, because Judas was only a minor disciple, Raskin decides it must have been Caiaphas himself, who then recognised Christ because he was his son. (p.182) It’s an argument based solely on Raskin’s presuppositions of personal importance. Furthermore, the genealogy of the Jewish priesthood was carefully recorded as they could only marry other priestly families. Nowhere is it recorded that Jesus was the son of Caiaphas, and the identification of Cleophas with Caiaphas is tenuous, based on a perceived similarity between the names. If Jesus had been Caiaphas’ son, he would have enjoyed his father’s immense power and prestige, rather than having been brought up the son of carpenter in backwoods Galilee.

The idea of Caiaphas offering up his son for a faked execution by the Romans is similarly ludicrous. Caiaphas and the priestly establishment were hated by very many contemporary Jews as collaborators with the occupying Romans. Passages denouncing the corruption and venality of the priesthood are found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Talmud, where Caiaphas and his family are vilified as brutal oppressors. 26 The Temple was central to first century Judaism, but rather than sparking national revolt, the execution of one of Caiaphas’ sons by the Romans would rather have been the occasion for wild rejoicing. And as corrupt collaborators, Caiaphas knew too well on which side his bread was buttered ever to want the Romans thrown out of Judea.

So, no such play as that described by Raskin ever did, or could have existed.

In the last section of the book, Raskin outlines his belief that Paul was really a slave, Titus was his son, and the Pauline Church developed from the famine relief efforts described in Acts, which he connects with the Synagogue of the Freedmen. This religious organisation, which Raskin chooses to call ‘the Church of God’ had as its basis the non-canonical Shepherd of Hermas, which Raskin sees as predating the figure of Christ in the canonical Gospels as it does not mention Jesus by name. His efforts in this direction are no more historically accurate than the preceding pages.

The origin of Raskin’s remarkable assertion of Paul’s servile status is his literal reading of the apostle’s metaphorical use of slavery. (p. 581-2) Raskin is aware that Paul was a tentmaker, citing Acts 18:2, but then claims by various twists of bizarre logic to show that it was Paul’s companion Apollos who was the tentmaker. (p. 578-9) He completely fails to mention Paul’s words in Acts 23:6 ‘I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee’, and his connection to the Sanhedrin through his presence at the debate during which Stephen was martyred, Acts 7: 58-9. This suggests very middle class, if not aristocratic connections, a fact born out by Paul claiming hereditary Roman citizenship when he was arrested in Jerusalem in Acts 25: 26-29, something he could not have done if he were a slave.

Raskin’s failure to grasp the metaphorical nature of Paul’s preaching on slavery is another example of the strongly anachronistic attitude to scripture throughout the book. While this aspect of Paul’s preaching may be difficult for 21st century westerners to understand, born and raised in societies where literal slavery has mercifully long been abolished, it would have been immediately clear to Paul’s contemporary congregation. Throughout history slavery has been used by free, even extremely high ranking aristocratic people, to express absolute devotion and subjection. In the diplomatic correspondence of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs from El-Amarna, for example, the vassal kings describe themselves as ‘servants’ of the Pharoah, while stressing their royal titles to each other. 27 The modern Italian goodbye, ‘ciao’, is a contraction of ‘vestre schiavo’ – ‘your slave’, used as an adieu during the Middle Ages by departing individuals, regardless of status, to express their devotion to each other. In England, until very recently, it was common practice for a person writing a formal letter to conclude ‘And oblige your obedient servant’. Thus post-1960s egalitarianism seems to have produced an extremely anachronistic misreading of scripture, at least in the case of this book. For contemporary scholarship on slavery in Paul’s theology, see JP’sreview of Dale B. Martin’s Slavery as Salvation: the Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity.

The identification of Titus as Paul’s son comes from his literal reading of Paul’s description of Timothy as his son, whom he identifies with Titus following Richard Fellows. (pp. 493-4). This is despite the whole passage in 1 Corinthians 4:17 where Paul refers to Timothy as his son making very clear that it is a spiritual, not biological relationship, with the words ‘in the Lord’. Unable to understand how a woman could be impressed by Paul’s preaching as to wish to convert to Christianity, he decides that the non-canonical Acts of Paul and Thecla show Paul seducing Thecla, but cleverly rewritten to disguise this perfidious action, and goes on to identify, on this basis, Thecla as Timothy’s mother. There’s no basis for such a reading other than Raskin’s prurient imagination, but it doesn’t stop him. Raskin also claims that Christ himself seduced and then married the Samaritan woman at the well. (pp 536-40) His reason for this bizarre assertion is that he cannot understand why the disciples should be so shocked at Jesus simply talking to the woman, unaware that in first century Jewish society men did not acknowledge strange women, and held non-Jews, and especially Samaritans, in complete contempt. So, he considers that Christ must have been doing something really scandalous, like kissing her, in order to shock the disciples.

As for the Church in Acts, Raskin sees this as being set up by the Jews to bring recalcitrant slaves back into the Jewish social order, using Platonic and Jewish ideas. Eventually, according to Raskin, this organisation became open to all slaves, and then gained free converts as slaves bought their freedom. (pp. 580-1) He sees the presence of Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians and Asians as evidence of mass transportation for the food provision of the early Church to the poor and needy in the community, and that the Synagogue of the Freedmen were involved in the project to gain prestige. (p. 588-9) There are several major problems with this. Firstly, Jewish masters were required to circumcise their slaves in order to bring them to the faith, and the practice had resulted in the spread of Judaism amongst the slaves and noticeable numbers of Jewish freedmen. 28 Thus provision already existed for religious instruction in the principles of Judaism. In Judea it can be reasonably assumed that most of the slaves would have been Jewish, which negates Raskin’s contention that slaves were polytheists and followers of Mystery religions for the Holy Land. Although slaves in gentile Roman society would have been very largely pagan, it does not follow that they were members of Mystery cults. Many pagan religious societies would only admit slaves with the permission of the slave’s master, an attitude that also seems to have permeated the Christian Church, according to a third century manual of discipline. 29 In the case of the Mystery religions, a fee was required for initiation, a condition that would surely have placed membership of many cults beyond the reach of many slaves. 30 Thus slaves were not the primary, let alone the exclusive objects of religious conversion, either by Pagans or Christians, which counts against the idea that Christianity was promoted by the slave owners as a way to make their slaves more tractable.

Paul’s theology, in which some scholars have claimed to find evidence of the mixture of Gnostic, Greek philosophical ideas the book considers were introduced into Judaism to appeal to slaves, is fundamentally Jewish, though he did use the vocabulary, though not the ideology of the Mystery religions to make his theological points and to win over Pagan audiences conversant with Greek philosophy. 31 Contemporary Judaism regarded Greek wisdom with intense suspicion as a possible source of apostasy, and some rabbis, such as Rabbi Ishmael issued prohibitions against studying it, so that as late as the third century AD Origen could remark that a knowledge of Greek literature was rare among Jews. 32 It’s therefore extremely doubtful if many rabbis wished to adulterate Judaism with Hellenic, pagan notions to win over their slaves. Moreover, as JP points out in The Impossible Faith, the early Church had a larger proportion of free members, who risked social ostracism and humiliation for their membership of the Church, than other organisations. Paul preached to everyone, and the early Church was never an organisation purely for slaves, so the idea that the Church had its origins in a purely slave movement falls down here.

The provision of food and other necessities to needy members of the Church, described in Acts, occurs while the Church is under intense persecution by Saul/Paul and has absolutely no connection with the official Judaism which Saul/Paul represents. There’s no evidence for the Synagogue of the Freedmen being involved with this to gain prestige at all. The passage in Acts 4:34-36 describing the provision of money to the poor states merely that ‘Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold. And laid them down at the apostle’s feet: and distrubtion was made unto every man according as he had need’. The gifts of money and support came not from the Synagogue of the Freedmen, but from various individuals whose only institutional connection with each other seems to have been their common membership of the early Church. Indeed, the Synagogue of Freedmen appears largely unconnected, even bitterly hostile, to the infant Christian Church. Acts 6:9-15 makes it clear that it was some members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen who were responsible for Stephen’s arrest and martyrdom. The Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians and Asians who debated and conspired against Stephen, far from showing that the Church had an international membership and an international trade infrastructure, they simply show that Jerusalem, as the centre of Judaism throughout the world, had residents whose origins were lay in the Diaspora outside Judea.

As for the Shepherd of Hermas, this non-canonical work of the second century AD clearly derived much of its imagery and phraseology from the canonical gospels. The phrase ‘the Lord hath sworn by His son’ and other phrases mentioning the Son of God obviously refer to Christ, even if they do not mention Him by name. Raskin himself shows the parallels between Hermas’ identification of stones used in building work with the people forming the Church with comparable passages in the canonical Gospels and the similarity between Hermas’ teaching on adultery and Jesus’ teaching as presented in Matthew. He states, however, that this teaching makes no sense in the Gospels, and therefore must be half-remembered from Hermas. The issue of divorce was a live one in the Judaism of the time of Christ, with a sharp division of opinion on the legality of divorce for anything except a wife’s adultery between the schools of Hillel and Shammai. Jesus’ teaching on divorce is absolutely consonant with the first century Jewish background of the Gospels. Rather than proving that Hermas is the prior document, this example actually reinforces the traditional interpretation that Hermas is a later development.

In fact, orthodox Christian scholars have argued that Hermas in his work shows an awareness of something like Matthew, Mark and John, and the Epistle to the Ephesians, as well as the Old Testament and apocalyptic literature. 33 The argument that the Shepherd of Hermas predates the Gospels is spurious, however. Although Raskin is right when he says that the Shepherd of Hermas was still accepted by some Christians as late as late as the third century AD, this does not mean that it was, as he believes, the primary document for the Roman church. (p. 573) It was never given a pre-eminent place amongst the books accepted as canonical by the Roman church, and Irenaeus’ use of the term scriptura to describe it probably just means ‘writing’ and not Holy Writ in the technical sense. 34 Hermas’ Shepherd might have been regarded as inspired, but it was not seen as on the same plane as the rest of Scripture. As for saying little about the life of Jesus, it appears from the rich allegorical imagery within it that it was intended as a visionary treatise on the virtues and vices, which edified and attacked the Church, imagined as a huge tower. It was not a gospel, but simply an allegorical moral treatise, albeit one grounded in visionary experience, the contents of which only make sense in the context of a Church founded and preaching the life and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Raskin is no better in his knowledge of Christian art history. Interspersed throughout the book are illustrations of paintings and representations of Christ taken from the Roman catacombs, with captions giving Raskin’s interpretation of them. Mostly these are just silly, as when he claims that some of the depictions he shows of a beardless, youthful Christ baptised by John the Baptist are ‘feminised’. (pp. 254, 279) Looking at the pictures reproduced, it’s clear that the artist was simply following convention in presenting Christ in the style of a Roman citizen, with short hair and clean-shaven face. One example is just plain offensive, however. On page 608 he presents an illustration of a child-sized coffin on which is, amongst various other Biblical figures, a carving of a man praying over a dead child. To most people, this touching scene would convey nothing except a father’s grief over the death of his child, and his hope that its soul would ascend to heaven to be with Our Lord. Christian epitaphs for children have similarly survived elsewhere from the Roman Empire, such as the demi-literate one reading ‘Little Hermas, light, may you live in God the Lourd Chreist. Aged ten yares sevun munths’. 35 Unable to credit the early Christians with any decent or human feelings, Raskin sees this pathetic tableau as a further example of Christian perfidy: the man is bargaining the soul of the dead child in exchange for protection, wealth and a return to life after death. Well, 2000 years have gone by, but obviously Raskin still believes the old ancient Pagan slander that Christians killed babies in their religious rites. In his Quest for the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer pointed out that liberal attempts to produce a historical Jesus simply produced a distorted reflection of the face of the liberal Biblical scholar writing the work. If Raskin’s image of the early Christians in the Evolution of Christs and Christianities is anything like a reflection of his psyche, in which Jesus and Paul are viewed as sexual predators and frauds and the early Christian community ready to sacrifice their own children, then he clearly needs professional help.

In short, rather than a work of serious scholarship, this book is simply one long exercise in paranoia, twisted and poor logic and a prejudiced, anachronistic attitude to scripture. It’s promotion by the Fortean Times seems to indicate, if not that the reviewer’s own strong antichristian prejudices overcame their critical faculties, then the Fortean Times was trying to cash in on the feeding frenzy for pseudo-historical attacks on Christianity and the Bible. This is one Biblical epic that DeMille definitely didn’t make, and the best phrase to describe it and Raskin’s ‘narrative sense tool’ comes from the immortal words of Queen’s Freddie Mercury in Headlong: ‘Let me out of this cheap B-movie!’

-"Beast Rabban"

References

  1. Rooney, N., ‘Apocalypse Now for Slaves’, Fortean Times 214, p. 60.
  2. Jeremias, J., The Parables of Jesus (London, SCM 1970), p. 11.
  3. Stanton, G., Gospel Truth? New Light on Jesus and the Gospels (London, HarperCollins 1995), p. 95.
  4. Gill, C., trans., ‘Daphnis and Chloes’, in Reardon, B.P., ed., Ancient Greek Novels (London, University of California Press 1989), p. 342.
  5. Wiseman, D.J., Illustrations from Biblical Archaeology (London, The Tyndale Press 1958), p. 82.
  6. Oppenheim, J., The Otherworld: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1985), pp. 176-7.
  7. Louth, A., and Williamson, G.A., Eusebius, The History of the Church (Harmondsworth, Penguin 1989), p. xx.
  8. Grant, M., The Ancient Historians (London, Gerald Duckworth & Co. 19955), p. 357.
  9. Grant, Ancient Historians, p. 357.
  10. Bardenhewer, O, and Shahan, T.J., trans., Patrology – The Lives and Works of the Fathers of the Church (Frieburg im Breisgau, B. Herder 1908), p. 247.
  11. Tixeront, J. Handbook of Patrology (St. Louis, Missouri, B. Herder 1920), p. 188.
  12. Tixeront, Patrology, p. 76.
  13. Barnes, T.D., Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford, OUP 1985), p. 126.
  14. Barnes, Tertullian, p. 216.
  15. Drane, J., An Introduction to the Bible (Oxford, Lion 1990), p. 517.
  16. Drane, Introduction, p. 517.
  17. Barnes, Tertullian, pp. 22-29
  18. Grant, R.M., The Formation of the New Testament (London, Hutchinson University Library 1965), p. 79.
  19. Bray, G., Creeds, Councils and Christ (Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press 1984), p. 45.
  20. Vermes, G., The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (London, Penguin 1995), pp. 272-3.
  21. Sourvinou-Inwood, C., Tragedy and Athenian Religion (Lanham, Lexington Books 2003), pp. 177-184.
  22. See Reardon, Ancient Greek Novels.
  23. ‘Ruth, Book of’, in Bowker, J., ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford, OUP 1997), p. 827.
  24. Rajak, T., Josephus (London, Duckworth 2002), p. 60.
  25. Lewis, N., and Reinhold, M., Roman Civilisation: Vol. 2- The Empire: Selected Readings (New York, Columbia University Press 1990), p. 557.
  26. Rajak, Josephus, pp. 22-3.
  27. Von Dassow, E., ‘Introduction’, in von Dassow, E., and Greenwood, K., ‘Correspondence from El-Amarna in Egypt’, in Chavalas, M.W., ed., The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation (Malden, USA, Blackwell 2006), p. 183.
  28. Fox, R.L., Pagans and Christians (London, Viking 1986), p. 296.
  29. Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 297.
  30. Ferguson, J., ‘The Mystery Religions’, in Cavendish, R., ed., Mythology: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (London, Orbis 1980), p. 155.
  31. Drane, Introduction to Bible, pp. 389-90.
  32. Rajak, Josephus, p. 60.
  33. Rackroyd, P., and Evans, C.F., The Cambridge History of the Bible: Vol. 1 - The Beginnings to Saint Jerome (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1970), p. 291.
  34. Rackroyd and Evans, History of the Bible, p. 295.
  35. Bettenson, H., Documents of the Christian Church (Oxford, OUP 1963), p. 85.