67. Ibid. But see Finkelstein and Silberman, Op. cit., page 316 for the power of the Bible in unifying the disparate Israelites.
68. The incense for the perpetual altar flame was made from a secret recipe by the Avtina family, whose women never wore perfume, so they could never be accused of corruption.
69. Johnson, Op. cit., page 116.
70. Some idea of the size of the sacrifices may be had from the fact that there were thirty-four cisterns below the Temple to receive the water used to wash away the blood. Alongside these cisterns were vaults where was kept the money received as Temple fees from pilgrims from all over the world. Johnson, Op. cit., pages 116–117.
71. G. A. Wells, The Jesus of the Early Christians, London: Pemberton Books, 1971, page 131.
72. Ibid., page 4.
73. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 426.
74. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 202.
75. Ibid., pages 147–148.
76. Ibid., page 151. See Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, pages 80ff, for a discussion of the world that gave rise to non-canonical gospels.
77. Lane Fox, Op. cit., pages 123–124. See also: Bauer, Op. cit., pages 184ff, for a discussion of the early manuscripts of the gospels.
78. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 126.
79. Ibid., page 114. Bauer, Op. cit., pages 128–129, for the role of Marcion.
80. In 1966 the United Bible Societies issued a new Greek text of the Bible, for students and translators. According to the UBS, ‘There were two thousand places where alternative readings of any significance survived in good manuscripts.’ Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 156.
81. Frederiksen Op. cit., page 51.
82. Rowland, Op. cit., page 127.
83. Around AD 200 there were Christians who argued that Christ had been born on 3 November (this was based on a misunderstanding about Herod’s death), while others argued for the spring. Christmas has been celebrated on 25 December only since the fourth century and even then Christians in the eastern half of the empire preferred 6 January. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 36. See here of this book.
84. Geźa Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew, London: SCM Press, 1993, page 214.
85. Ibid.
86. Russell Shorto, Gospel Truth, New York: Riverhead/ Puttnam, 1997, page 33.
87. Wells, Op. cit., page 12.
88. Ibid., page 13.
89. Ibid.
90. Vermes, Op. cit., page 217.
91. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 29.
92. Ibid., page 30.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid., page 32. Bauer, Op. cit., page 45, quotes a report that Philo was in touch with Peter in Rome.
95. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 33. Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1890/1994, page 358.
96. Vermes, Op. cit., pages 46–47.
97. Johnson, Op. cit., page 139.
98. Lane Fox, Op. cit., page 21.
99. But Galilee is important in another way too. In the late 1990s, Dr Elhanen Reiner, of Tel Aviv University, came across some midrash – ancient commentaries on the Old Testament – dating back to 200 BC. These early documents contain several references to a Galilean figure of that date called Joshua who sounds very familiar. In Galilee, ‘Jesus’ was a common corruption of ‘Joshua’ and the narrative of Joshua has many parallels with that of Jesus, namely: (1) The first phase of Joshua’s leadership took place in Transjordan; Jesus’ first appearance in the Bible as an adult occurs with him bathing in the Jordan. (2) Joshua appointed twelve elders to apportion the land of Israel, just as Jesus appointed twelve disciples. (3) Joshua’s death ‘agitated the world’, an angel came down and there was an earthquake to mark the fact that God thought Joshua’s death a terrible thing, which few others did. Much the same happens with Jesus: the earth trembles and an angel descends. (4) The closest people to Joshua are called Joseph and Miriam (Mary). (5) Joshua’s death took place on 18 Iyyar, three days before Passover, the same day as the Crucifixion. (6) There is a Hebrew tradition, in an Aramaic book, that Jesus’ Crucifixion took place not in Jerusalem but in Tiberias – i.e., Galilee. (7) The stories of Joshua and Jesus both contain a Judah or Judas who plays a crucial, negative role. (8) At some point in the story, Joshua flees to Egypt, just as the family of the infant Jesus flees to Egypt. This is not the end of the parallels between the two traditions but even these few are enough to raise doubts about Jesus’ true identity. Personal interview, Tel Aviv, 26 November 1996.
100. Wells, Op. cit., page 93.
101. Ibid., page 94.
102. Ibid., page 95.
103. Ibid., page 99. See also: Brian Moynahan, The Faith, London: Aurum, 2002, pages 11–13.
104. Frederiksen, Op. cit., pages 120–121.
105. Wells, Op. cit., page 245.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., page 103.
108. Ibid., page 40. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 16, for a clear account of the deposition.
109. Rowland, Op. cit., page 189.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid., pages 191–192. See Moynahan, Op. cit., page 19, on the role of women.
112. Shorto, Op. cit., page 147.
113. Ibid., pages 160–161.
114. In October 2002 a limestone ossuary was found, allegedly south of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. The box had actually been looted but the Geological Survey of Israel confirmed that the limestone did come from the Jerusalem area. What was notable about the box was that it was inscribed, in Aramaic, with the words ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’. According to Professor André Lemaire, of the Sorbonne in Paris, the style of writing dated the ossuary to between AD 10 and AD 70. The names James, Joseph and Jesus were not uncommon at the time: 233 first-century ossuaries have been found and nineteen mention Joseph, ten Jesus and five James (Yaʾaqov in Aramaic). Given a male population of Jerusalem of about 40,000, and assuming that each man had two brothers, Professor Lemaire has calculated that there would have been about twenty men at the time who were ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus’. But, given that James (mentioned as Jesus’ brother in both Matthew and Mark), was the leader of the Jerusalem church until AD 62, when he was stoned to death as a heretic, and that Jesus would also have been well known, Professor Lemaire argues that the odds on the ossuary really referring to Jesus Christ would be shorter than twenty to one. It was very rare for brothers to be mentioned in ossuaries and, of the 233 known, only one other case mentions brothers. In fact, doubts have since emerged about the authenticity of the box, which is now regarded as a fake. Daily Mail (London), 24 October 2002, page 13.
115. Vermes, Op. cit., page 140.