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INTERVIEW WITH KATHLEEN O’NEAL GEAR AND W. MICHAEL GEAR ON THE BETRAYAL
1. You say that there is an alternate story of the life of Jesus, one that has been suppressed for nineteen centuries. How do you justify that claim? Who suppressed the information?
The Church was involved in a battle to rewrite the “facts” of Jesus life practically from the beginning, and we find the evidence for this in the ancient documents themselves. Keep in mind that the first scribes who copied the sacred books got them from earlier scribes, who got them from earlier scribes. They were literally copying copies of copies. Mistakes were bound to creep in. A later scribe couldn’t read the handwriting of the earlier scribe, so he had to interpret what he thought the letters were. Some scribes were very good, and some were very bad. Later correctors often disagreed with former scribes. In one case, a later scribe, exasperated by changes he found in the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, wrote in the margin, “Fool and knave! Leave the old reading, don’t change it!”
The result was that, by the second century, there was a considerable variety of New Testament texts. The manuscripts that are the closest to the original gospels are actually the ones that are the most variable and amateurish. By the time scholars start finding professional, standardized copies, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the gospels had become very different books. Twelve or thirteen verses had been added to the ending of the Gospel of Mark, and an entire chapter to John. There were two dramatically different versions of Matthew, and many individual verses and parables had either been inserted or deleted.
The conspiracy to suppress the information, however, actually begins at the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. where the New Testament was officially determined. There were hundreds of different gospels circulating at the time, and the council was convened primarily to throw out controversial books, to accept certain versions of the gospels, and establish official Church doctrine. Once the council had determined the official gospels, the Roman emperor Constantine ordered that the books of “heretics,” meaning Christians who held other gospels as sacred, be hunted out and destroyed. He also declared that anyone found copying them would be officially charged with heresy, which was a capital offense punishable by death.
From this point on, the Roman Empire, working with the Church, suppressed the works of anyone who not agree with the “Official Story.” We see this in many places. For example, the Edict of 333 C.E., says:
“Constantine, Victor, Greatest Augustus, to bishops and laity: Arius (presbyter of Alexandria who insisted that since Jesus was indisputably ‘begotten,’ and therefore ‘human,’ he must be second to God) having imitated wicked and impious men deserves the same loss of privileges as they. Therefore, just as Porphyry [a Platonist who wrote a detailed work against Christianity] that enemy of piety who put together various illegal works against religion, got his just deserts, so that … his impious books have been obliterated, thus, too, we now order that Arius and those who agree with him shall be called Porphyrians … and if any book written by Arius be found, it is to be consigned to the fire, so that not only his corrupt teachings may vanish, but no memory of him at all may remain.”
2. How do you know that twelve or thirteen verses were added to the Gospel of Mark?
We know because of the writings of early Church fathers. For example, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, bishops who lived in the 200s, had no knowledge of verses 9–20 of Mark. By the fourth century, Church historians Eusebius and Jerome wrote that they knew of the longer ending, but also said it was absent from almost all Greek manuscripts they had seen. The earliest Bible, known as the Codex Sinaiticus, ends at Mark 16:8. As well, Matthew 16:2, and John 5:4 and 16:24 don’t exist. Luke 22:43 is marked as “spurious” by the first of nine correctors who worked on the codex between the fourth and twelfth centuries, but his words were scratched out by the third corrector. The Sinaiticus manuscript also includes two books that were sacred to early Christians—the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas—that are not in the modern New Testament.
3. So there was a lot of dissention in the early years of Christianity, a lot of disagreements about who Jesus was, and what he taught?
Oh, yes. In the first few decades after his death, April 7th in the year 30, there was a great disagreement about the facts of Jesus’ life, and what his teachings were.
New Testament readers are familiar with part of this battle from Galatians, where Paul writes that Galatian Christians were listening to “those who would pervert the Gospel of Christ” (1:7) and believing in a “different gospel” (1:6). That “different” gospel had come from “men of repute in Jerusalem” (2:2) and Paul says that before “certain men came from James” (2:12) Cephas—Peter—had eaten with Gentiles, but after the arrival of “the circumcision party” (2:12), Cephas, Barnabas, and others separated themselves from Gentiles.
Two of the major disagreements of the first and second centuries were over the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection.
4. You claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. How can you possibly know that?
To start off, remember that only Matthew and Luke use the word “virgin” (parthenos in Greek) for Mary, the mother of Jesus. In the case of Matthew 1:23 he was quoting from Isaiah 7:14 where the original Hebrew word was alma, which meant simply “young girl.” It had none of our modern connotations of being a biological virgin.
Second, if you’re searching for the truth, it’s very important to ask what people who did not believe in him had to say about Jesus. And it’s also important to ask why certain things were left out of the gospels. For example, the Gospel of John never mentions the name of Jesus’ mother. Neither do the epistles of Paul. We have to ask, why not?
We know from the writings of ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish historians that there a very strong tradition that Jesus was an illegitimate child. For example, in 178 C.E. the Platonist historian Celsus wrote that Mary was pregnant by a Roman soldier named Panthera and was driven away by her husband for adultery. In addition, the Jewish story of Jesus’ life, the Toledoth Yeshu, which contains remnants from the second century, also names Pantera as Jesus’ father. And we know from Roman records that Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon served as a Roman archer in Jerusalem from 6 B.C. to 6 C.E.
And the canonical gospels themselves contain references. In John 8:41, when Jesus is sparring with his Jewish critics in Jerusalem they say, “we were not born of fornication!” as if to imply that he was. As well, the noncanonical gospels have many references. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, which dates to the 300s, but probably has origins in the 100s, when Jesus is standing before Pilate, his enemy’s charge, “you were born of fornication!” In verse l05 of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “He who knows the father and the mother will be called the son of a whore.”
Also, when Jesus goes to preach in the temple at Nazareth the people call him the “son of Mary.” The Jewish people didn’t trace descent through the female until after the destruction of the Temple in the year 70. At the time our Lord was in Nazareth descent was traced through the male. To refer to a man as being the son of his
mother was gravely offensive. It meant that his paternity was uncertain.
And later gospel writers knew this. So the writers of Matthew, Luke, and John go to great efforts to eliminate this reference. For example, Matthew 12:55 replaces Mary with Joseph, as does John 6:42. Later editors change Mark’s words to read things like “the son of the carpenter.” The gospel of Mark was often “corrected” by later writers to echo the glosses of Matthew and John.
In fact, the Pantera tradition was so widespread and persistent that early Christians could not simply dismiss it as malicious propaganda. They had to find a place for Pantera. So, for example, in the fourth century, Church father Epiphanius gave Pantera a place in the holy family, claiming that Joseph’s father was known as Jacob Pantera. As late as the eighth century attempts were still being made to explain it away, as when John of Damascus writes that Mary’s great-grandfather was named Pantera.
5. If Jesus was an illegitimate child, where does the story of Joseph come from?
Again, let’s look at the gospels. Mark, the earliest gospel, never mentions Joseph, either directly or indirectly. As well, the Infancy Narratives that name Joseph in Matthew and Luke are problematic. First, they tell different stories. For example, Matthew 1:16, says Joseph’s father was Jacob, but Luke 3:23 says his father was Heli. And none of the significant information found in the infancy narratives of either gospel is attested clearly elsewhere in the New Testament. In particular, the following items are found only in the infancy narratives:
1. The virginal conception of Jesus.
2. Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem.
3. Herodian knowledge of Jesus’ birth and the claim that he was the king. Rather, in Matthew 14:1–2, Herod’s son seems to know nothing of Jesus.
4. Wide knowledge of Jesus’ birth, since all Jerusalem was startled (Matt. 2:3), and the children of Bethlehem were killed in search of him. Rather, in Matthew 13:54–55, no one seems to know of the marvelous origins of Jesus.
5. John the Baptist is a relative of Jesus and recognized him before his birth (Luke 1:41,44.) But later in Luke 7:19 and John 1:33, John the Baptist seems to have no previous knowledge of Jesus and seems puzzled by him.
What this suggests is that the infancy narratives were once separate elements and were added later to the gospels. They are probably based upon an Old Testament pattern of birth annunciations with stereotyped features: the appearance of an angel, fear by the visionary, a divine message, an objection by the visionary, and the giving of a sign. (For example, the birth of Moses in Exod. 3:2–12 and of Gideon in Judges 6:11–32. For a comparison with Matthew’s genealogy, see also Ruth 4:18–22 and 1 Chronicles 1:28, 34, and 2:1–15.)
Many scholars see Matthew’s version of the story as a “pre-Matthean narrative associating the birth of Jesus, son of Joseph, with the patriarch Joseph and the birth of Moses.” Note also that Joseph, Jesus’ “father,” like the Old Testament Joseph, had a father named Jacob, went to Egypt, had dreams of the future, was chaste, and was disinclined to shame others, which points to the possibility of there being a “Joseph typology” in Luke 1–2. In other words, using the “Joseph” story was not intended to convey fact, but rather to associate Jesus’ birth with other mythic events. Both of the Infancy Narratives seem to be largely products of early Christian reflection on the salvific meaning of Jesus Christ in light of Old Testament prophecies.
In other words, the Infancy Narratives tell us practically nothing about the historical Jesus—nor about his father.
As an aside, many of the early Christian churches used versions of these gospels that did not include the Infancy Narratives, probably because they knew they were suspect. This is demonstrated when Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus in Syria, writes about the “heretic” Tatian in 450 C.E.:
“This fellow also composed that gospel called “By the Four,” cutting off the genealogies and such other things as show that the Lord was, as for his body, a descendent of David. Not only the adherents of his party used this gospel, but also those who followed the apostolic teaching … . I found more than two hundred such books revered in the churches of my own diocese, and collecting them all, I did away with them and introduced instead the gospels of the four evangelists.”
6. I was intrigued by your analysis of the Gospel of Mark. You say that the author of that gospel probably lived in Rome, and that all the ugly things he says about Jews had a political context. What was going on politically?
When Jesus’ brother James was murdered sometime between 62–70 C.E., relations within Judaism began to fall apart, then the Jewish Revolt of 66 cut all communications with the Mother Church in Jerusalem. Mark and his community in Rome were suddenly rudderless. To make matters worse, to the Romans, Christians were Jews. Judaism and Christianity did not split until around 85 C.E., at exactly the time when the gospels of Matthew and Luke were being written. To the Romans there were Jews who believed the Messiah had come, and there were Jews who believed the Messiah had not yet come. The persecution must have been unbearable. In part, at least, Mark’s gospel was probably a deliberate attempt to shout, “We are not Jews!” Undoubtedly one of the reasons Mark chose to vilify Jews in his gospel was that by shifting the blame for Jesus’ death from Rome, where it belonged, to the Jews, it solved a major public relations problem for Christians in Rome. It was like saying, “Yes, the Jews are killing your sons and husbands in Palestine, but they also killed our Lord. We are not Jews! In fact, we hate Jews as much as you do!” The historical legacy of Mark’s vilification, however, is wrenching. Before the end of the first century, Christians were forbidden to enter synagogues. By the close of the fourth century, marriages between Jews and Christians were prohibited, and if such marriages occurred, they were treated as adultery. Legislation was promulgated forbidding Jews to proselytize, or build new temples, and if a temple had been destroyed, they were forbidden to rebuild it.
His words have, unfortunately, been used to support the murder of millions—though at the time, they were simply self-defense.
7. You mention that the gospels of Matthew and Luke date to around 85 C.E. What do the other gospels actually date to, and who wrote them? We all know they are attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but you say those are made-up names. Who made them up and when?
Yes, the documents themselves are silent as to the names of their authors. During the second century, early Christian scholars attributed the books to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, but nowhere in any of the texts is the author cited.
Mark dates to between 68–70 C.E., Matthew to around 80 C.E., Luke dates to 85 C.E., and John to around 100 C.E. The earliest written works that record Jesus’ life are actually seven letters from Paul, which date to the 50s, and are incorporated in the New Testament. (Scholars generally agree that Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are genuinely from Paul’s hand.) But the first versions of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John did not appear until after the deaths of James, Peter, and Paul, which occurred just before the destruction of the Temple of 70 C.E.—almost forty years after the death of Jesus.
Incidentally, the oldest surviving New Testament gospel is a 3.4-inch-tall fragment of the Gospel of John that dates to around 125–135 C.E. The earliest copies of the other gospels date to the fourth or fifth centuries.
8. I want to know how you can claim that he did not bodily resurrect from the cross. If he didn’t resurrect, what happened to his body?
According to Jewish law, his relatives would have been required to bury him. In the sixteenth century, Rabbi Isaac Luria listed Jesus’ burial site in Galilee, just north of Safed, in a graveyard he called, “the burial places of the righteous.”
Remember that the earliest version of the earliest gospel, Mark, has no resurrection, nor does the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. We know that Matthew and Luke, written a decade or two later, include the story of the resurrection. Also, many early Christians did not believe in the resurrection. We know this because early Chur
ch leaders like Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, 70–156 C.E., wrote an attack against those who “denied the resurrection” by, he says, “perverting the logia of the Lord.” Apparently collections of Jesus’ sayings and life story that did not include resurrection, probably more than just the gospels of Mark and Thomas, were circulating.
Scholars generally agree that Matthew and Luke used two “gospels” to compose their stories: the Gospel of Mark, which they incorporated almost word for word, and an unknown gospel that scholars refer to as the “Q” document. One of the interesting things about the Q document is that it contains no references to Jesus’ miraculous birth or his resurrection. (A good analysis of this can be found in Chapter 3 of Philip Jenkins’s book, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way.)
What seems clear is that there was an early Christian community that saw little significance in the idea of the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection, or had not yet felt the need to invent the stories. They believed that Jesus’ significance lay in his words, and his words alone.
9. Give me some examples of undeniable factual errors in the New Testament gospels.
Let’s just talk about a few of the obvious errors.
1. Despite what the evangelists record, we know from a wide variety of historical resources that there was no eclipse of the sun during Passover of the year 30. There was an eclipse of the sun during the month of Nisan (April) in the year 33, but it was utterly invisible from Jerusalem. The only solar eclipse visible from Jerusalem during the time period in question occurred on November 24th of the year 29. There were, however, eclipses of the moon on the eve of Passover in the years 30 and 33.