New book on Yeshu ha-Notsri

[Giuseppe]

Truth of the following remark:

The Wagenseil version has a unique position among mythicists and other pseudo-historians as a tool employed to attack dominant scholarly opinions about the historical Jesus. In this domain, the alternative chronology is still very much a living tradition.

(Gavin McDowell, The Alternative Chronology: Dating the Events of the Wagenseil Version of Toledot Yeshu, my bold)

...given the recent book:

In the surviving pre-censorship Talmud manuscripts, Yeshu is sometimes followed by the epithet Ha-Notsri. Who is Yeshu ha-Notsri? Is he Jesus of the New Testament? If not, is there a connection, somehow? Is he the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Have you dared to ask someone: Is it possible that Jesus Christ in the New Testament... Could he be a lie?

I ask the hard questions. In this book: Yeshu ha-Notsri, I will answer them with historical evidence. Here is the Table of Contents:

i Title Page
ii Preface
iii Contents
1 Who Was/ Is Jesus?
3 The Way of the Elders
3 Lessons I Have Learned
4 Can We Reconstruct History?
4 Primary Sources
6 Validation by Archaeology
14 The Notsrian Method of Data Analysis
15 The Notsrian vs the Mythicist
16 The Twists and Turns of Christian History
17 The First Jesus Was Real
20 The Evolution of Yeshu
21 The First Evolution
23 The Second Evolution
25 The Third Evolution
27 The Fourth Evolution
28 Borrowing and Rejecting
31 The Final Evolution: Jesus Today
31 My Own Views
33 Spirit and Flesh
36 General Considerations and Expansions
42 Emperor Ashoka’s Buddhism
44 The Way of the Hinayana Elders
45 Emperor Ashoka Sent Missionaries West
49 140-100 BCE
49 A History Lesson
52 War Between Jannaeus and the Pharisees
53 100-63
60 Who Was Yeshu?
61 Samaritan Writings Separate Fact From Fiction
66 The Prophet Yeshu: Who Was He?
68 The Man of the Lie
85 Hasmonaean Family Ties
90 The Name
91 The Family of Jonathan Bar-Absalom
97 Family Ties
99 Dositheus
103 Abu’l Fath
105 Dositheus=John=Jesus/Yeshu= Simon Magus
113 Redux
118 Abraham Ibn Daud
123 Yeshu, Perachiah, and Jannaeus
125 Epiphanius
127 Ancient Jewish Evidence
129-132 Pictures of Relevant People
132 The Hinayana Way of Yeshu ha-Notsri
169 Bibliography
171 The Final Word
173 Index

[Giuseppe]

The idea that Jesus didn't exist because the his prototype lived 100 years before the Gospel dating of Jesus would seem to be very stupid (when compared to other mythicist views), if it wasn't for the pure and simple fact that it is the only mythicist view that can vaunt the evidence of the accusation in Antiquity that Jesus didn't live really under Pilate.

[Giuseppe]

The intriguing hypothesis advanced by this book, even if his author is strongly indebted to Rene Salm, is that Jesus was parodied as Dositheus.

• Both are said to be followers of John the Baptist

• Both are accused to have learned magic in Egypt

• Both are said to be connected with Simon Magus

I don't follow him entirely in the (foolish?) analogies, hence I continue with the my remarks:

The author of the Clementines wanted to place in a bad light John the Baptist, hence he invented an alter-ego for the Christian founder in the figure of Dositheus. The practice was not new: Ebion was invented for ebionites, Valentinus was invented for Valentinians, Basilides was invented for separationist readers of Mark (where the main idea is the 'kingdom', Basileia, 'being near'), etc.

The collateral effect is that too much often the features of Jesus himself are attributed to those fictional founders. For example, Ebion founded the 'poors', the Ebionites, but also Paul called 'the poors' the Pillars in Jerusalem, hence in a particular sense it is true that Ebion "is" Jesus.

In the case of Dositheus, while he had to be invented to defame the Simonians and by logical extension the Marcionites, it is not a coincidence that Dositheus absorbed some of the accusations already thrown against Jesus: that Jesus went to Egypt to learn magic.

It has never persuaded me that the accusation of learning magic in Egypt is a parody of the birth story of Matthew, and not only in virtue of the different age for this exile in Egypt (adult vs child): Matthew is too much late to be the reason of the legend about Jesus being a sorcerer in Egypt.

Hence I consider 100% apologetics the idea that the Matthean birth story gave rise to the Celsus' accusation that Jesus learned magic in Egypt.

The implication is that Celsus's Jew was based partially on the same tradition ended in the Talmud about the Yeshu lived under Janneus, insofar both talked about a Jesus learning magic in Egypt.