The Sacred Executioner Part 2

This is the second part of my review of The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt by Hyam Maccoby


Moses

Next, Maccoby tackles another confusing Biblical passage in which Moses' wife circumcises his son.

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision. (Exodus 4:24-26)

There have been numerous different explanations for what's going on here. A big part of the confusion has to do with figuring out which pronoun refers to whom. Maccoby translates the Hebrew as follows:

And it came to pass on the way at the lodging place, that the Lord afflicted him (with madness), and he (Moses) sought to kill him (the child). And Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his (Moses') feet; and she said: 'Surely a bridegroom of blood art thou to me.' So He (God) withdrew from him (Moses, i.e. the fit of madness left him). Then she said, 'Bridegroom of blood for the circumcision.' (Exodus 4:24-26)

This translation indicates that Moses was about to perform a child sacrifice, but God decided that sacrificing the foreskin was enough. Thus circumcision, like animal sacrifice, was used in place of human sacrifice as religion evolved. A further clue that this passage is about human sacrifice is found in the passage immediately preceding:

Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’” (Exodus 4:22-23)

Maccoby cites another interpretation of this passage from the scholar Julius Wellhausen. He points out the Hebrew word for "bridegroom" is derived from a Semitic root which means "to circumcise". The Hebrew word for "father-in-law" also derives from the same root. Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, was also known as hoten Mosheh (the circumciser of Moses). This indicates to Wellhausen that this passage marks a transition from the practice of circumcising young males just before marriage to circumcising males at birth.

An example of puberty circumcision still in the Bible is found in Genesis 17:24 where Ishmael is said to be thirteen at the time of his circumcision. Another possible instance of pre-marital circumcision is found in Genesis 34 in which the inhabitants of Shechem agree to be circumcised in preperation for an intermarriage with the family of Jacob. Also Joshua circumcises the young men of Israel to prepare for the invastion of Canaan (Joshua 5).

Judas

The sacrifice of Jesus parallels the sacrifice of Isaac and is described in the same language. However, in the case of Jesus, God isn't asking someone else to sacrifice their only son, He is making Himself sacrifice His only son to appease His own anger. As is common with human sacrifice, the victim becomes deified as a way of justifying the slaughter. So too with Jesus.

The Jewish people as a whole are the Sacred Executioner in the story of Jesus. It is they who cry out "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27:25). They are the ones who are blamed and held responsible for the death of Jesus. Sharing in their blame and in the role of Sacred Executioner are Judas Iscariot (in a way a personification of the Jewish race), the Wandering Jew, and Pilate.

Judas is like a brother to Jesus. This is because the Sacred Executioner cannot be an outsider. Just as with Cain and Abel, a close relationship is required between executioner and victim. Judas may have even been the brother of Jesus if all the characters named Judas in the Gospels are the same person. In the Acts of Thomas, Judas Thomas is considered the twin of Jesus. In fact, the Hebrew word "Thomas" simply means "twin".

Further evidence that Judas was a Sacred Executioner is the fact that his motive for betraying Jesus is flimsy and contradictory. However, since he dies instead of being cursed with immortality, he doesn't fit the role of Sacred Executioner exactly. This part of the role is taken up by the Wandering Jew and the Jewish people as a whole.

The Jews are cursed to eternally wander the earth. As in previous human sacrifices, the death of Jesus, necessary as it was, is both a crime for which the Jews must be punished and a saving event by which all Christians can profit.

Pilate symbolizes the role of the community. He orders the execution, yet washes his hands of it. Just like earlier communities which demanded, but were horrified by human sacrifice.

As an aside, I found it interesting that the reforms Jesus set out to accomplish in spite of the Pharisees in the Gospels, were the same reforms already instituted by the Pharisee movement in history. I was also interested to learn that during the Middle Ages, Christianity turned its focus from the adult Jesus to the infant Jesus held in the arms of the Virgin Mary. Maccoby refers to this change in focus as a regression.

Miscellaneous

Maccoby sees the goat for Azazel (Leviticus 16:9-10) as being a later version of the Sacred Executioner when animal sacrifice has replaced human sacrifice. He also suspects the death of Achan (Joshua 7) was originally a human sacrifice. Of course, Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11:30-40) is an explicit human sacrifice taking place in the Bible.

In the ancient world, sacrifice was required each spring to renew the earth. God seems to be calling for an end to human sacrifice when he says "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22) God is saying the seasons will continue on their own, they no longer require human sacrifice to be initiated.

The last few chapters of the book get away from the Bible and the Sacred Executioner to focus on the poor treatment of Jews by Christians during the Middle Ages and the Holocaust. There's some interesting information here, but it's off topic.

I think Maccoby makes several unjustified leaps in this book. He tends to read too much into the Bible and is sometimes found harmonizing contradictions. I wish he would have cited his sources better (sometimes he doesn't even give the Biblical verse he is discussing). However, he does provide some thought provoking interpretations of the Biblical text. While his interpretation of the text is certainly possible, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the most probable.

The Sacred Executioner Part 1

This post is part one of my review of The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt by Hyam Maccoby

According to Hyam Maccoby, the Sacred Executioner is a figure appearing in various ancient religions who performs a necessary function to society in the form of human sacrifice, but is then cursed and banished from society for doing such a despicable deed. In this book, Maccoby attempts to prove that there are traces of the Sacred Executioner in the Bible.

Cain

According to the Bible, Cain kills his brother Abel because God accepted Abel's animal sacrifice, but not Cain's vegetable sacrifice. If the story of Cain and Abel is simply one of murder, why does God then place a mark upon Cain and declare that if someone kills Cain, Cain will be avenged sevenfold? Here, Maccoby sees the traces of an earlier version of the story in which Cain is a Sacred Executioner. He performed a needed human sacrifice, so he cannot be punished for his actions. However, the act is so horrible that he cannot remain a part of society.

Maccoby thinks that Abel (whose name in Hebrew means "vapour" or nothingness) wasn't the name of the person Cain originally killed. Rather, Cain killed his son Enoch. The evidence for this is the fact that human sacrifices were commonly performed in the ancient world in order to dedicate a new city and Cain named the city he built after his son Enoch. Enoch died young, at the sun-god age of 365 during a time when most people lived to be about 900. Also, the Bible doesn't say that Enoch died, but rather that he "walked with God, and he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24) which implies human sacrifice to Maccoby.

Further, Maccoby supposes that Cain was originally the first man, not Adam (whose name simply means "man"). Like Adam, Cain was punished by having to toil agriculturally (Genesis 4:12) and he was also banished to the east of Eden to the land of Nod (literally "land of exile"). This implies that Cain was originally from Eden, but got kicked out. It is said that Adam "knew his wife" when he fathered Cain. Likewise, Cain "knew his wife" when he fathered Enoch. Since the phrase "knew his wife" isn't used again until the time of Noah, this implies that knowing one's wife isn't simply the act of conception, but rather the initiation of a new race.

The name Cain means "smith" in Hebrew, and indeed his descendants (particularly Tubal-Cain) are said to be blacksmiths and metalworkers. There is a tribe of smiths in the Bible called the Kenites whose name is derived from Cain and in fact their name is sometimes translated as Cain (Numbers 24:22). The father-in-law of Moses was a Kenite (Judges 4:11) and in another verse is even named Cain. Saul spares the Kenites because they showed kindness to Israel in the past (1 Samuel 15:6). The Israelites seem to have been on good terms with the Kenites since there is only one hostile reference to them in the Bible (Number 24:21-22).

Maccoby thinks that the original Kenite creation story in which Cain is the first man was replaced by the Israelite version in which Adam was the first man. Further evidence of this is the genealogy given for Adam's son Seth. The descendants of Seth listed in the Bible are based on the descendants of Cain. Their names are only spelled slightly differently: Cain, Kenan; Irad, Jared; Mehujael, Mahalalel; Mathushael, Methuselah. Also, both Cain and Seth have descendents named Enoch and Lamech.

Lamech

Very few verses are spent on Lamech in the Bible (only Genesis 4:17-24), but Maccoby suspects he was an important figure in the Kenite myth. Like his ancestor Cain, Lamech is also a murderer and in fact boasts that "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." Lamech lives to be 777 years old, in reference to this statement. Lamech's sons are said to be the fathers of tent-dwellers, cattle raisers, musicians, and metal workers. How can this be since according to Biblical chronology they all died in the Flood? Maccoby's answer is that in the original Kenite myth, Lamech and his three sons were the ones to survive the Flood, not Noah and his three sons. Noah's wife is the first wife mentioned since Eve in the Sethian line, likewise Lamech's wives are the first mentioned since Cain's in the Cainite line.

Evidence that the Kenite/Cainite line continued after the flood is found in the geneology of Genesis 10:21-24 and 11:11-13. In the Greek Septuagint, the name Cainan, a variation on Cain, appears seven times (although it appears to have been edited out of the Masoretic text.) Cainan appears to have been used as a title since Noah's son Shem has both a son and grandson named Cainan.

Maccoby supposes that Noah's animal sacrifice giving thanks to God after the Flood had a parallel human sacrifice in the hypothetical Kenite myth. This is why Lamech claims he will be avenged like Cain; he was also a Sacred Executioner. Further, Maccoby points out the Hebrew can be translated in such a way to indicate that Lamech killed not just any man, but his own child, a theory which finds support in Midrash Tanhuma which gives the following story: Lamech was blind and would often go hunting with his son Tubal-Cain who would point him in the right direction. One day, they accidentally kill a man with a horn coming out of his head. This man is Lamech's ancestor Cain whose "mark" was the horn. Lamech claps his hands together in grief, but unfortunately, his son is standing between his hands and dies from the blow. Lamech's wives refuse to have intercourse with him for fear that any offspring they have will be under the curse. Lamech explains that even though Cain was cursed, he was allowed to have seven generations of descendants before he died, therefore Lamech would be allowed seventy seven generations. 

Maccoby supposes that in the original version of this myth, Lamech made a human sacrifice of his son, Tubal-Cain. Perhaps Cain was a god in the Kenite religion and when a child was sacrificed to him, the child became deified and associated with the god. This might be why Tubal was given the odd double name of Tubal-Cain.

Ham

Another part of the Bible that contains textual difficulty is the scene in which Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent. His son Ham then sees him naked. When Noah wakes up, he somehow knows that his son saw his nakedness and responds by cursing his grandson Canaan (whose name in Hebrew actually has nothing to do with Cain even though the names are similar in English). How did Noah know what happened? Why was his son seeing him naked such a big deal? Why did he curse his grandson instead of his son?

According to the Midrash (See Genesis Rabbah 36:7; Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 70a; Yalqut Shimoni Noah 61) , Ham didn't just see his father naked, but he castrated him. He did this so Noah couldn't have anymore sons. The more sons Noah had, the less inheritance Ham would get, and in the case of Noah, his inheritance was the entire world. Maccoby then links this story to Greek and Egyptian myths involving castration and further supposes that in the original version of this myth, Canaan was the hero like when Cronus castrated Uranus. He then became the villian in the Kenite version, and finally Ham was made to share his blame in the Israelite form of the myth.

Genesis 9:24 states that "Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him." Ham is not Noah's youngest son, but Canaan was the youngest son of Ham. This is further evidence of tampering done with the text and points to Cronus, the youngest son of Uranus who castrated his father at his mother's urging. (The youngest son is often the champion and favorite of the mother in matriarchal myths.)

Abraham

There is no devil in the Hebrew Bible. The serpent in the Garden of Eden was not thought to be Satan in disguise before the Christian era. Satan does appear in the Book of Job, but he is not the devil, but rather one of God's angels whose job it was to reveal mankind's faults before God. This is how Satan is presented in the Talmud as well.

In the Bible, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but substitutes an animal at the last minute. In the Book of Jubilees, the dark angel Mastema is the one who suggests God test Abraham in this way, providing the same role as Satan in the Book of Job. In later Midrash, Satan is presented as trying to prevent the sacrifice, jogging Abraham's hand to make him drop the knife (Tanhuma, Vayera 23). This is in stark contrast to the sacrifice of Jesus in which Satan helps God make the sacrifice happen. Even though God is demanding the sacrifice of Jesus just like earlier gods demanded human sacrifice in general, God is absolved of the blame. This is another aspect of the Sacred Executioner, that not only the tribe, but also their god are absolved of blame for performing a human sacrifice.

Perhaps in an earlier version of the story, Abraham actually did sacrifice Isaac. A trace of this is found in Genesis 22:19 in which only Abraham, not Isaac departs Mount Moriah after the sacrifice. One Midrash (Shibbolei ha-Leket 9a-9b) even states that Isaac was killed and burnt to ashes but brought back to life.

The Father of Joshua/Jesus by Saul Levin Part 3

This is the third part of my book review of Saul Levin's The Father of Joshua/Jesus in which I summarize the concluding chapter.

Chapter VI

Although the names of Jesus and Joshua are different in English translations, they  are both the same name in Greek and Hebrew. In fact, Jesus seems to have been named after Joshua. While the Gospels of Matthew and Luke have completely different nativity stories from one another, one thing they both agree on is that Jesus was named by an angel. In Luke, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and says "You shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus" (Luke 1:31). In Matthew, the angel appears to Joseph, so the wording only differs by a pronoun: "She shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus." (Matthew 1:21) Luke goes on to call Jesus "son of the Highest" (Luke 1:32), perhaps with Joshua son of the Lord in mind.

In the apocryphal Protevangelium of James, the parents of Mary were sterile. So Mary's father Joakim  goes to the desert to fast for forty days, while Mary's mother Anne prays to get pregnant in a fertility rite setting - sitting under a tree, wearing a headband, and looking at a nest of sparrows. Angels appear to both of them promising a miraculous birth. Mary's mother Anne (based on Anne, the mother of the prophet Samuel in the Old Testament, also compare 1 Samuel 2:1 with Luke 1:46) vowed to give her child to serve the Lord. Accordingly, when Mary was three years old, she was given to the temple where she was fed by an angel. Perhaps her being given to the temple is an echo of the "hallowed ones" or temple prostitutes of the Hebrew Bible. When she turned twelve, the priests were worried she would pollute the temple (by menstruating) so they gave her to the elderly widow Joseph. While spinning thread to make a curtain for the temple, Mary is visited by an angel and becomes pregnant with Jesus.

In a footnote, Levin points out that the Gospels (Mark 11:8-11, Matthew 21:8-10, John 12:12-13)  confuse the autumn festival of Tabernacles where palms were waved and people cry "please save" with the spring festival of Passover. He explains their ignorance of Jewish customs by supposing the authors of the Gospels wrote after the Temple was destroyed (70 CE) and they did not attend synagogues either. I think a better explanation for why the Gospels are ignorant of Jewish customs is that they were not written by Jews, but hey, that's just me.

While Jesus recreates most of the miracles performed by Elisha and Elijah in the book of Kings, one miracle is conspicuously absent: making a sterile woman fertile (although Luke has John the Baptist born to aged parents similar to Abraham and Sarah, this happens before the birth of Jesus). Levin supposes that Jesus's miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding (John 2:1-11) could be thought of as a fertility miracle since having plenty of wine at a wedding makes the occasion more joyous which in turn makes it more likely that the marriage will produce children, but I think this is stretching it a bit.

In another footnote, Levin points out that the name of Jesus's mother is never given in the Gospel of John, and in fact her name being Mary as it is in the other Gospels is unlikely since her sister is named Mary. While it wouldn't be unusual in Roman families to have two sisters both named Mary, this wasn't done amongst Jews. Does this indicate that John had a different name in mind for the mother of Jesus, perhaps edited out later to conform with the other Gospels, or is it an indication that the Gospel writer was Roman?

Jesus is called the "son of David" when he heals the blind or performs exorcisms (Matthew 9:27, 15:22,  20:30-31, Mark 10:47-48, Luke 18:38-39), which implies that David was known for performing such miracles himself. David does cure Saul of an evil spirit (1 Samuel 16:14) and the Talmud tells us he was a gynecologist (Tractate Berakoth 4a). However, David did not heal the crippled Mephibosheth, although he did provide for him (2 Samuel 9:1-9). Perhaps with this in mind, Jesus is not called the "son of David" when he heals the lame (Luke 5:17-26, John 5:1-15). The only other time Jesus is called the "son of David" is during his triumphal entry into Jerusalem during Passover (Matthew 21:9-16). 

Although Jesus is called "the Anointed One" (i.e. Christ), there is no depiction of him actually being anointed. The closest the Gospels come is when a woman pours perfume on him (Matthew 26:7, Mark 14:3, John 12:3, Luke 7:36-50) although Jesus himself says this is for his burial (Matthew 26:12, Mark 14:8), not for anointing. Acts 10:38 is the most explicit reference to an act of anointing, although this refers to being anointed by spirit. Levin muses that the anointing had to be kept secret since when the disciples of Jesus say he is the anointed one, he instructs them to tell no one (Matthew 16:16-20, Mark 8:29-30, Luke 9:20-21). Calling himself the anointed one was tantamount to calling himself King of the Jews, which is what ended up getting him into trouble. Jesus not being officially anointed like King David makes him more like Joshua who wasn't anointed either. This is because Joshua was from an earlier time when leadership was bestowed by the laying on of hands rather than anointing (Numbers 27:18-23).

Just as Joshua's spies in Jericho stay at the house of Rahab the prostitute (Joshua 2:1), Jesus kept the company of prostitutes. Joshua's miracle of destroying the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6:1-20) finds a possible correspondence in Jesus's claim that he will destroy the temple and in three days build another ( Mark 14:57-59, Matthew 26:60-61, John 2:19). Although Levin doesn't mention it, Joshua's miracle of making the sun stand still (Joshua 10:12-13) may correspond to the darkening of the sun at the death of Jesus (Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44-45). Levin claims Jesus was meant to be a military leader like Joshua and plays up the militant aspect of Jesus, pointing out that the followers of Jesus were armed (Luke 22:49), one of Jesus's followers cut off a servant's ear (Mark 14:47, Matthew 26:51, Luke 22:50, John 18:10), Jesus tells his disciples to sell all they have to buy swords (Luke 22:35-36), and Jesus says he came not to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34-36).  I must admit that all these similarities seem more like parallelomania than actual evidence of a correspondence to me.

In direct contradiction to his own introduction, Levin uncritically accepts the Gospel accounts as history rather than literature and cherry picks out passages that match his view of Jesus as a guerilla leader. He ends his book by telling us that Jesus being called the son of God was originally due to his being a great man, not due to being thought of as God's literal offspring.

The Father of Joshua/Jesus by Saul Levin Part 2

This is the second part of my review of Saul Levin's book The Father of Joshua/Jesus covering chapters 4 and 5.

Chapter IV

Rabbinical literature and Bible codices record that scribes changed the text of the Bible. This chapter lists numerous changes made in the text, proving that the Bible has indeed been revised. Levin notes that in public readings, the divine name was never spoken, being too holy. Also certain phrases that were too obscene were replaced by euphemisms. However, the only time the written text was altered was to avoid blasphemy. 

One of these "corrections" was made to remove a reference to polytheism. The word "god" was nonsensically changed to "tents" in the follow passage:

We have no part in David, and we have no heritage in Jesse's son; everyone to his own god, O Israel. (2 Samuel 20:1)

Levin uncovers another reference to polytheism using one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that was available when his book was written. In the following passage the word "God" found in the Dead Sea Scrolls was nonsensically changed to "Israel" in the Massoretic text.

When the Most High parceled out nations,

when he split up the sons of man,

he fixed the boundaries of peoples

to the number of the sons of God

For the Lord's portion is his people,

Jacob the lot of his heritage. (Deuteronomy 32: 8-9)

Originally, YHWH, or the Lord, was one of several gods. Each god was given a nation of men and YHWH got Israel. Later on, YHWH merged with his father, the Most High and became the only god there was. As this idea was considered blasphemous later on, it was changed in the Massoretic text, but the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve the original.

By comparing the Septuagint with the Massoretic text, Levin finds many unattested changes in the text. For example, the hero named Jerub-Baal or "The Master Strives" in the Septuagint gets his name changed to "Shame Strives" in the Massoretic (Judges 6:32-9:57, 1 Samuel 12:11) This is because The Lord went to war with a rival god called The Master (not to be confused with the Dr. Who villain) in 1 Kings 18 and 2 Kings 10. Other Hebrew names which contain a reference to The Master were also changed. A Jewish hero just couldn't be named after a rival god.

More relevant to the topic of whether or not Joshua's original patronymic was son of the Lord, there's an early king of Judah (Abijah) whose name in the Septuagint translates to "The Lord is My Father", but whose name was changed in the Massoretic text to "The Sea is My Father"! It came to be considered blasphemous for a mortal to be fathered by god, so the name had to be changed. This was certainly the case with Joshua son of the Lord being changed to Joshua son of Nun (which means fish). Not only did the scribes have motive to remove this blasphemy from the text, but, as Levin demonstrates, they could make the change easily with only minor changes to the letters.

Chapter V

The tribe of Judah far exceeded the number of any other tribe in every census of the Bible. A possible explanation for Judah's fertility is found in Genesis 38. Judah had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Judah got a wife for Er named Tamar. Tamar is the Hebrew word for palm, which was a sign of fertility since the palm tree is green throughout the year and produces dates for months on end. However, Er was wicked and the Lord put him to death. Tamar then married Onan, but he was also wicked and the Lord killed him as well. Not wanting his last son to die also, Judah refused to let Tamar marry Shelah, so she dressed up as a hallowed one (temple prostitute) and slept with Judah at twin springs where she got pregnant and later gave birth to twins, replacing the two sons Judah had lost.

The tribe of Judah settled in the south in a land that was famous for its palm trees. Levin points out that Tamar's father is never named, even when the text calls for it, which is very strange. She originally must have been a literal palm tree and Judah's impregnating her was a metaphor for the tribe of Judah's cultivation of the palm, which made a more sedentary life possible and led to them being more numerous than the other tribes of Israel. Trees and May-poles are linked with fertility in many places in the Bible. For example, the place where Sarah and Abraham overcome their sterility is called "the great trees of Mamre" (Genesis 18:1).

Ruth is another woman whose parentage is strangely lacking in the text. Like Tamar, she is not from the tribe of Israel. Both Ruth and Tamar have in-laws who are reluctant to provide a male relative for them to marry after having two sons die without producing children. However both Ruth and Tamar end up seducing the male head of the clan and becoming pregnant with sons.

Foreskins were a symbol of vitality and virility. When Moses was near death, his wife cut off their son's foreskin and touched it to his feet, which restored him to health (Exodus 4:24-26) and they later had another son (Exodus 18:2-4). King David, who had numerous wives and sons perhaps obtained his superhuman virility from cutting off the foreskins of two hundred Philistines (1 Samuel 18:25-27). David's expertise when it came to getting woman pregnant extended into the medical realm since according to the Talmud, he was also a gynecologist.

The prophet Elisha somehow gets a childless woman pregnant in 2 Kings 4:9-17. Apparently her husband was old (i.e. impotent) so Elisha lives with them for awhile, and then the woman gets pregnant. The most obvious way for him to accomplish this would be to have sex with her, although medical knowledge may also have played a role.

The Father of Joshua/Jesus by Saul Levin Part 1

This post is a review of the first three chapters of The Father of Joshua/Jesus by Saul Levin. In case you're wondering about the title, both Joshua and Jesus are the same name in Hebrew. Joshua is the English translation of Yehoshua, while Jesus is based on Iesous which is the Greek version of Yehoshua (Yeshua in Aramiac). The first part of this book sticks to the Hebrew Bible, but he does discuss the New Testament Jesus later on.

Chapter I

The first chapter is really just an introduction in which Levin explains his methodology and gives a summary of the book to come.

"The whole subject, as I approach it, belongs to philology rather than history or theology. In dealing with accounts of divine procreation, it would be chimerical to play the historian, as though I knew what actually happened to certain persons at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a place. [...] The primary evidence consists of texts, mostly but not altogether literary; and I look upon them less as sources of information about the material life of the past than as artifacts of importance and interest in their own right."

Chapter II

The Biblical hero Joshua, who became the leader of the Israelites after the death of Moses, is said to be the son of Nun. However, Joshua's patronymic is kind of strange. Hebrew usually uses "ben" to indicate "the son of" (for example Joseph ben Mattathias). However, in Joshua's name, "bin" is used instead. Also, his father's name, Nun, is simply one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It's equivalent to saying he is the son of N. As Joshua's patronymic is used more than any other in the Pentateuch, it was the most liable to be simplied due to frequent use, but being simplified to a single letter is a bit too much.

Also, while the Hebrew versions of the Bible, the Massoretic and Samaritan texts, present Joshua as the son of Nun, the Septuagint, which is written in Greek, presents him as the son of Naue. Josephus, also writing in Greek, renders Joshua's patronymic in a curious way (Antiquities 3.2.3 and 3.14.4), although since I don't know Greek I can't explain why it's curious. Scholars usually just chalk this up to a corruption of the text, but in his book The Father of Joshua/Jesus, Saul Levin uses philology to argue against this. He demonstrates that Naue cannot be the Aramaic form of Nun, it can only be an Aramaism of the divine name. Joshua wasn't originally the son of Nun, but rather the son of the Lord.

Since I don't know Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, I can't vouch for how persuasive his arguments are. While they were a recent discovery when Levin wrote this book (1978) and he therefor does not reference them in detail, the Dead Sea Scrolls do prove that the Septuagint is often closer to the original Hebrew than the Massoretic or Samaritan texts. I don't know whether the DSS strengthen Levin's argument or not.

Chapter III

So if Joshua is the son of the Lord, what does this mean? Was he literally YHWH's son, or was "son of the Lord" simply an honorific title applied to a great man? Odysseus, for example, was called the son of Zeus in an honorific, not a literal, sense (Iliad 2.173). Calling someone the son of a god doesn't fit Jewish culture very well, so its origins are most likely Pagan, although there are vestiges of proof that Samson was originally the son of a sun god.

Sterile couples miraculously having children with the help of God or an angel is a common theme in the Bible. Samson's mother seems to have gotten pregnant by having sex with a stranger who was possibly an angel since the Hebrew phrase for "a man comes to a woman" is most often used euphemistically for sexual intercourse.

A man of God has come to me [had sex with me], and his looks were like the looks of God's messenger [an angel], very awesome; I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name. (Judges 13:6)

The prophet Samuel also had a miraculous birth. Reading between the lines, Levin suggests that it may have been the priests at the temple who got Samuel's mother pregnant.

Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel; and how they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. (1 Samuel 2:22)

When a childless woman goes to the temple to pray for offspring and comes back pregnant, is this what's happening? In the ancient world, if you got impregnated by a temple worker, or "hallowed one", the pregnancy was considered a gift from God and the child produced would be called a son of god. Temple prostitution was a common fertility rite in the ancient world, but was it practiced in Israel?

There shall be no hallowed woman from the daughters of Israel; and there shall be no hallowed man from the sons of Israel. You shall not bring a prostitute's hire or the price of a dog (male prostitute?) to the house of the Lord your God for any vow; for both of them are an abomination to the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 23:17-18)

Notice how the above passage doesn't condemn temple prostitution outright, it only forbids Israelites from being temple prostitutes. As long as the "hallowed ones" are strangers, the practice seems to have been acceptable.

The three kings of Judah (Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah) all dedicated themselves to eradicating the hallowed ones from the temple.

And he demolished the houses of the hallowed ones [temple prostitutes] that were in the house of the Lord where the women wove coverings [literally "houses"] for the May-pole. (2 Kings 23:7)

So it appears that temple prostitution did occur in Israel, although it became unpopular in later times.

Turning back to Joshua,  we find that it was Moses who gave him his current name in the Massoretic text: "And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua" (Numbers 13:16) The Samaritan Pentateuch, on the other hand, does not contain the name Hoshea at all, rendering the passage ridiculous: "And Moses called Joshua the son of Nun, Joshua." This can't just be a scribal error because the Samaritan text removes the name Hoshea everywhere it appears. What's going on here?

Most of the great men in the Bible have miraculous birth narratives, but the Bible tells us nothing about Joshua's parents. In the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Sotah 35a), Joshua is called "the one with the lopped off head." An eighteenth century rabbinic writing by Abraham ben Elijah, which appears to originate from a much earlier date, explains why.

In a cento (a story mainly constructed from different Biblical passages cobbled together), we are told that Joshua's mother was sterile and miraculously got pregnant. However, Joshua's father learned from heaven that his son would one day cut off his head, so they put him in an ark and sent him down the Nile a la Moses where he was swallowed by a fish a la Jonah. Someone caught the fish and brought it before the king. When they opened up the fish and found a child inside, the king decided to make Joshua an executioner. Joshua ends up chopping off his father's head and sleeping with his mother. However, their marriage bed fills up with milk from her breasts. Joshua is about to kill her for being a witch when she reveals that she's his mother. Joshua is called the son of Nun (which means fish) because he came out of a fish.

This story helps explain why Joshua was called the son of the Lord. Not only is his birth due to divine intervention, but his patronymic "son of a fish" indicates that his human father is either non-existant or utterly insignificant.

In the thirteenth century document called the Zohar, Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Eleazar encounter a divine stranger and ask him the name of his father, to which he replies that his father was a great and ancient fish who swallowed all the other fish in the sea and spit them out again alive. Even though his father is not YHWH, his father is still a god. When pressed for his own name, the stranger says it's Benajahu (The Lord Builds or Son of the Lord) son of Jehoiada (The Lord Knows). If the Zohar intends Jehoiada to be the name of his mother, then "know" could be intended in a sexual sense. She knew the Lord and the stranger is the son of the Lord. Although he isn't named outright, this stranger is most likely meant to be Joshua.

Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute?

The Bible doesn't tell us much about Mary Magdalene, although she was apparently an important figure to early Christianity since she was the first person to see Jesus after he was raised from the dead (Mark 16, John 20). She is also the only person who was present at all three major events of the crucifixion (Mark 15:40, Matthew 27:56, John 19:25), the burial ( Mark 15:47, Matthew 27:61), and the empty tomb (John 20:1, Mark 16:1, Matthew 28:1,  Luke 24:10). Besides this, all the Bible tells us about her for sure is that Jesus cured her of seven demons (Mark 16:9,  Luke 8:2). She is not mentioned in Acts or the epistles.

Some scholars such as Elaine Pagels and Raymond E. Brown suggest it's possible Mary Magdalene was originally the unnamed Beloved Disciple in the Gospel of John since whenever the Beloved Disciple and Mary Magdalene appear at the same time, there are inconsistencies indicating the text may have been tampered with.

In the Gnostic Gospels such as the Pistis Sophia and the Gospel of Mary, it's said that Jesus loved Mary more than his male disciples. The Gospel of Philip tells us that Jesus used to kiss her often. (Philip 63:34-36) Some take this as an indication that Mary was the wife of Jesus, however, kissing was a common greeting, so it's not necessarily romantic. Consider the famous scene of betrayal where Judas greets Jesus with a kiss.

The tradition that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute seems to come from combining her with the unnamed sinful woman of Luke 7:36-50 who washes the feet of Jesus with her hair and tears. Luke 7 doesn't tell us what the sin of the sinful woman was, but tradition has a way of filling in missing details.

John 11-12 tells us Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, was the one who anointed the Lord's feet. It's possible Mary Magdalene is the same person as Mary of Bethany since both are often referred to as simply Mary and they never appear at the same time. If they are the same person, that doesn't mean Mary was a prostitute, unless you also combine her with the unnamed woman caught committing adultery in John 8:2-11 who Jesus saves by telling her accusers that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. However, this pericope does not appear until later versions of John, so it's obviously a later addition. It's possible Mary was a prostitute, but it's not stated outright by the text. Or is it?

Do we know anything else about Mary Magdalene? Based on the name Magdalene, many think she came from a town called Magdala. However, there's no evidence that a town called Magdala existed. No such town is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures or in the writings of Josephus, although some think Magdala was the city Josephus calls Taricheae. Also, Magdalene is wrong grammatically speaking. The -ene ending is not the correct one to indicate a person from a particular town, it should use the -aia ending. If Mary came from a town called Magdala, her name would be Mary Magdalaia.

In Aramaic, Magdala can mean tower, elevated, great, or magnificent. So maybe her name means Mary the Magnificent. However, there's no evidence the New Testament was written in Aramaic. All available evidence points to the original language of the New Testament being Greek. What else could "Magdalene" mean?

In his Pre-Nicene New Testament, Robert M. Price translates Mary Magdalene as "Maria the hair dresser." Maria is the way the name Mary appears in the original Greek and "medgaddlela" is a Talmudic expression referring to the curling of women's hair. This actually brings us full circle since the Talmud uses the term "hair curler" euphemistically to refer to a prostitute, so it appears Mary Magdalene (or more literally, "Maria the prostitute") was a prostitute after all.

It wouldn't necessarily have been scandalous for Mary to be a prostitute given the historical context. In his Panarion, Epiphanius tells us that Simon Magus considered himself God. He descended down to earth to rescue the prostitute Helen of Tyre, who was really the latest incarnation of the Divine Thought which had been imprisoned on earth by evil angels. Much like Jesus does in the Ascension of Isaiah, Simon Magus changed his form as he descended down through the seven heavens so the Principalities and Powers would not recognize him. (Panarion 56) Is is possible the historical Mary Magdalene was Helen of Tyre and the seven demons Jesus cast out of her correspond to the seven heavens he descended down to get to earth?

1 Thessalonians vs. 2 Thessalonians

Let's face it. There's a lot of epistles out there claiming to have been written by Paul. How do we know which ones were really written by Paul and which ones are forgeries?

Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as if from us that the Day of Christ is at hand. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2)

OK, so if an epistle says that the Day of Christ is at hand, it isn't really from Paul.

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. But as to the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the Day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

(1 Thessalonians 4:17-18, 5:1-2)

Whoa! 1 Thessalonians just said that the end will come suddenly during Paul's lifetime. So, if 2 Thessalonians is telling us the truth, that makes 1 Thessalonians a liar!