Extract from Barbelo – The Story of Jesus Christ, by Riaan Booysen

The physical intimacy between Christ and John would have raised many eyebrows if witnessed today and the idea that Christ may have been homosexual has been suggested by several researchers (hotly contested, of course). In Chapter 8 of Barbelo I argue that even though Christ as a young man may have had normal sexual desires, his physical appearance, being short and deformed with a scary face, prevented him from having such relationships. The constant ridicule he had to suffer as a child and as a young man must have fostered an unfathomable hatred in him towards the upper classes of society and in particular towards attractive women. However, through his eloquence and revolutionary ideas he was able to attract and impress many young men, like John, who eventually succumbed to Christ’s sexual advances. When Mary Magdalene eventually fell for him, he dropped John like a hot potato.

In this extract I will present some of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Christ and his disciples.

1.The most infamous suggestion of a sexual relationship between Christ and a young man (Lazarus, in this instance) comes from the disputed text The Secret Gospel of Mark,

And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God.…After these follows the text, ‘And James and John come to him,’ and all that section. But ‘naked man with naked man,’ and the other things about which you wrote, are not found.

2.In a sequence of events that could be labelled ‘The Seduction of John,’ Christ managed to finally destroy any resistance John might have offered to his advances, as John describes towards the end of his life:

O God Jesu,…You who have kept me also till this present hour pure for yourself and untouched by union with a woman; who, when I wished to marry in my youth, appeared to me and said ‘John, I need you’; who prepared for me also an infirmity of the body; who on the third occasion when I wished to marry prevented me at once, and then at the third hour of the day said to me upon the sea, ‘John, if you were not mine, I would have allowed you to marry’; who blinded me for two years, letting me be grieved and entreat you; who in the third year opened the eyes of my understanding and gave me back the eyes that are seen; who when I regained my sight disclosed to me the repugnance of even looking closely at a woman; … who made my love for you unsullied; … who inspired my soul to have no possession but you alone.

 3. Probably the best evidence from the New Testament itself is Peter’s denial of Christ. Assuming that what the Gospels report in this respect is true, Peter was quite upset that Christ doubted his loyalty. Christ’s words ‘you will deny three times that you know me’ more likely were something like ‘one day you will reject me.’ Peter was the disciple who attacked one of those who came to arrest Christ. Following his arrest, however, Peter was accused by a servant maid as being one of Christ’s followers, which the brave and fearless man denied three times. Realizing that Christ’s prediction had come true, he wept bitterly.  The most likely explanation for Peter’s denial lies in yet another curious event immediately following the arrest of Christ. According to Mark, ‘A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.’ This young man could very well have been John, and it is more than likely that Peter, the leader of the now shattered group, would have been instructed by Christ to look after the others who may or may not have been in on the conspiracy at that stage (John would not have known about the plot to have Christ crucified and removed from the cross). When he saw John fleeing, he must have followed him for that reason, and it must have been then that John blurted out the true nature of his love for his master. It must have been John who was with Peter when he ‘denied’ Christ.

What was the denial like? Peter swore that he did not know Christ and burst into tears. This behaviour, if anything, indicates that Peter was shocked and sickened by what he had just learned, for he had not realised before what had been going on between the two men. He then must have understood Christ’s prediction that he (Peter) would sometime in the future turn his back on him. The story of the cock crowing immediately after Peter had denied knowing Christ for a third time and Peter bursting into tears when he remembered Christ’s prediction, would have been invented in an attempt to disguise the true reason for Peter’s denial.

Reading between the lines, more biblical evidence is to be found suggesting that Peter’s denial followed his shocking discovery of Christ’s affair with John. We learn of the miraculous fish catch early in the Gospels, when the calling of first disciples took place. Then, quite surprisingly, John relates the very same event when the risen Christ appears to his disciples on the beach. Peter reacted (in John’s account) by jumping overboard when he realised it was Christ. Would this not have been the reaction of a man who did not know if he could ever face his former master again? John’s placing of the miraculous fish catch here can only be a rationalization of the true reason why Peter jumped from the boat (in an attempt to get away from Christ). If John’s description of Peter’s ‘reinstatement’ is a true reflection of the atmosphere at that moment, Peter’s resentment of John is almost tangible:

     Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. When Peter saw him, he asked, 

        ‘Lord, what about him?’

Christ replied:

 'If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.'

4.Is there any proof of the above hypothesis about Simon Peter? When the Templar Knights were arrested, they were accused of having practised blasphemous rituals and teachings.  New members were required to deny Christ three times, to spit on the cross three times (some were instructed to trample or urinate on the cross), and most notably, the newly induced knight was instructed to undress completely and was kissed three times by his initiator on the base of his spine (the anus), his penis, his navel, and his mouth. Many of the initiates were informed that Christ was a false prophet. They were not to tell about the initiation rites on pain of death or imprisonment.

The Templar Knights had excavated under the ruins of the Temple between 1118 and 1128 CE and older rituals of Freemasonry state that these knights found documentation under the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem and brought them to the St Clair estates in Kilwinning, Scotland, in 1140 CE.  The most likely conclusion is that the Templar Knights had found Peter’s notes as referred to in The Secret Gospel of Mark, or at least copies of these notes, causing them to reject Christ as their Saviour and introduce initiation rituals to reflect their abhorrence of him. The denial of Christ three times, exactly as Peter did, and the simulated homosexual act could not have had any other origin than that Peter (or someone else) had written about Christ’s homosexuality, recounting Peter’s disgust when he discovered the fact.

5. The Templar Knights were also accused of having worshipped a head with three faces called Baphomet. The name can be translated for Hebrew as ‘(He who) desired the mouth for himself’, a clear reference to oral sex. In Barbelo I argue that ‘Christ’ was originally known as Simon Magus, but that his inner circle later began to refer to him as the Saviour (Jesus Christ) to distance him from his identity as Simon Magus, and that he had adopted the alias Paul of Tarsus after his crucifixion, which he had survived.  There is no other logical explanation why the Knights would have ‘worshipped’ a head with three faces. The head my in fact have been the physical, embalmed head of Paul (Jesus Christ).

6.Even Simon Magus is recorded to have had a sexual relationship with a boy. An obscure story from the Toledot Yeshu relates how Simon Magus had fashioned himself a boy from air, which he kept ‘where his bed is,’ to ‘assist him in his performances.’

7.    In another obscure event Christ and Judas supposedly flew up into the air, where Judas ‘defiled’ Christ.

In May 2015 the waterfordwhispersnews reported that an almost 2 000-year-old manuscript, unearthed in the Vatican Vaults, claimed that Judas was a “raging homosexual” who had made sexual advances on his fellow apostles and even Christ himself. The director of the Holy See Press Office, Federico Lombardi, speculated that it was Christ’s rejection of Judas’ advances which caused him to betray Christ. However, as discussed in Barbelo Section 4.4, The Gospel of Judas claims that Christ himself had instructed Judas to betray him (with a kiss). This was an essential part of Christ’s crucifixion conspiracy – the soldiers had to know which man to arrest.

Will we ever see a copy of this 2 000-year-old document? How many more such documents have been discovered, but have not been revealed to the public after being banned by the Vatican?

Judas having ‘defiled’ Christ in the air suggests that he did, in fact, have a sexual relationship with Judas, like he had with James and John. That would explain why Christ told Peter that he would one day deny him three times. Why three times specifically? Would one not normally say “You will one day betray me”? What Christ was most likely telling Peter was “You will one day discover that I have three young lovers in our group”, namely James, John and Judas.

8.  Christ had no qualms with appearing naked before his disciples, and revelled in his appearance. John records that Christ ‘riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself’, and in another instance, Christ was asked by his disciples, ‘When will you be revealed to us and when shall we see you?’, to which Christ replied, ‘When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children.’ The so-called ‘transfiguration on the mountain’ also suggests that Christ was naked, and, in fact, with another man (from The Acts of John):

Then I, since he loved me, went quietly up to him, as if he could not see, and stood there looking at his hinder parts, and I saw him not dressed in clothes at all, but stripped of those that we usually saw upon him, … he, turning about, appeared as a small man, … and I saw another like him coming down …

The ‘transfiguration on the mountain’ event ended with Christ performing some kind of dance for his disciples – in the nude?

9. An indignant Epiphanius  relates a variant of the ‘transfiguration on the mountain’ story which he had obtained from a Gnostic group:

They claim that he [Christ] reveals it to her [Mary] after taking her aside on the mountain, praying, producing a woman from his side, beginning to have sex with her, and then partaking of his emission, if you please, to show that ‘Thus we must do, that we may live.’

The woman in question would have been of the flesh-and-blood type, not a ‘creation’ by Christ. Read more about unfortunate women like this one in Chapter 10 of Barbelo.

10.Epiphanius recorded numerous other allegations of misconduct brought against the Christians and Christ.

 By the Stratiotics and Gnostics:

 And once they recognize each other from this they start feasting right away—and they set the table with lavish provisions for eating meat and drinking wine if they are poor. But then, after a drinking bout…they get hot for each other next. And the husband will move away from his wife and tell her ‘Get up, perform Agape with the brother.’ And when the wretched couple has made love…to lift their blasphemy up to heaven, the woman and man receive the man’s emission on their own hands. And they stand with their eyes raised heavenward but the filth on their hands and pray…and offer that stuff on their hands to the true Father of all, and say, ‘We offer thee this gift, the body of Christ.’ And then they eat it partaking of their own dirt, and say ‘This is the body of Christ; and this is the Pascha, because of which our bodies suffer and are compelled to acknowledge the passion of Christ.

And so with the woman’s emission when she happens to be having her period. .. And ‘This,’ they say, ‘is the blood of Christ.’…But although they have sex with each other they renounce procreation. It is for enjoyment, not reproduction, that they eagerly pursue the seduction.… They come to climax but absorb the seeds of their dirt, not by implanting them for procreation, but by eating the dirty stuff themselves.

 By the Phibionites:

Offer their shameful sacrifices of fornication…in 365 names which they have invented themselves as names of supposed archons, making fools of their female partners and saying, ‘Have sex with me, so that I may offer you to the archon.’…And until he mounts, or rather, sinks, through 365 falls of copulation, he starts back down through the same acts…Now when he reaches a mass as great as that of a total number of 730 falls—I mean the falls of unnatural unions…then finally a man of this sort has the hardihood to say, ‘I am Christ, for I have descended from on high through the names of 365 archons.

 By the Carpocratians:

Carpocrates…his character is the worst of all.…And he says that Jesus our Lord was begotten of Joseph, just as all men were generated from a man’s seed and a woman. .. Hence these victims of this fraud’s deception have become so extremely arrogant that they consider themselves superior even to Jesus. ...  The plain fact is that these people perform every unspeakable, unlawful thing, which is not right even to say, and every kind of homosexual union and carnal intercourse with women, with every member of the body, and they perform magic, sorcery, and idolatry and say that this is the discharge of their obligations in the body…

In fact, the Gnostics claimed that Christ himself had revealed the above obscenities to them.

Perhaps the best description of the practices of the early followers of Christ is given by Minucius Felix in his work Octavius, in which he presents the accusations brought against the Christians through the voice of an attacker of the Christian faith:

And now, as wickeder things advance more fruitfully and abandoned manners creep on day by day, those abominable shrines of an impious assembly are maturing themselves throughout the whole world. Assuredly this confederacy ought to be rooted out and execrated. They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another. Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name become incestuous: it is thus that their vain and senseless superstition glories in crimes. Nor, concerning these things, would intelligent report speak of things so great and various, and requiring to be prefaced by an apology, unless truth were at the bottom of it. I hear that they adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures, consecrated by I know not what silly persuasion—a worthy and appropriate religion for such manners. Some say that they worship the virilia of their pontiff a and priest, and adore the nature, as it were, of their common parent. I know not whether these things are false; certainly suspicion is applicable to secret and nocturnal rites; and he who explains their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for his wickedness, and to the deadly wood of the cross, appropriates fitting altars for reprobate and wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve.

So, to conclude, was Jesus gay? Judging from the circumstantial evidence in the New Testament, the narratives in various apocryphal texts and outright accusations against Christ and his followers, the answer is an overwhelming ‘yes’. And not only that – he appears to have been obsessed with sex.

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Extract from Barbelo – The Story of Jesus Christ, by Riaan Booysen

The Second Coming of Christ is supposed to be preceded by the arrival of the Antichrist, a man who is to be identified by the so-called ‘Number of the Beast’:

This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.

In Barbelo I argue that Christ had promised to return before his generation had passed away (Matthew 24:30-34) and that he attempted to fulfil that promise when he rose against the Romans a couple of decades later, as Josephus’ Egyptian. The Second Coming of Christ was, however, thwarted by Felix, from whom Christ managed to escape. When Paul (an alias of Christ, see related article) was later captured, he was accused of being that very Egyptian who had led the uprising and was subsequently taken to Rome for execution. So, if there never was a ‘Christ’, there most certainly cannot ever be an Antichrist, and assuming furthermore that there is no such thing as prophecy, the origin of this number must be sought elsewhere.

There indeed happens to be a ‘666’ that was well known during the first century – it was no more than the name of a simple game of dice. This Roman game was played with three dice and was known in ancient times as ‘Six thrice or three dice,’ where the winning total would be three sixes, but three dice (ones) would count as zero. In essence ‘666’ means ‘the winner takes all,’ and it must have been a game regularly played by people in ancient times (see depiction from Asterix and Cleopatra below), due to the simplicity of constructing dice.

Roman game of dice from Asterix and Cleopatra

Based on the style and grammar of the two texts, scholars have long recognised that authors of the Gospel of Saint John and the Book of Revelation, also called the Revelation of Saint John, were two different people. The Revelation of Saint John appears to contain a garbled version of Daniel’s visions, as several ‘visions’ are common to both books, including ‘the Son of man coming on the clouds’, as well as the four beasts of Daniel, which most likely became the four horsemen of the apocalypse in Revelation. Only God will know (pardon the paradox) what had inspired Daniel’s visions.

It would therefore seem that the Revelation of Saint John was written by someone who had contact with John, most likely during John’s imprisonment, and who had taken it upon himself to record John’s visions about the returning Christ. He must have remembered something about the game of dice which he and John, or perhaps John and a fellow inmate, used to play and worked it into the document as it stands today. There is simply no other possible origin of this number.

PS: When I presented the above interpretation at an appropriate forum, it was argued that the Greeks did not have a decimal system similar to ours at that time, and that three sixes next to each other could not possibly have been interpreted as the decimal number 666 as recorded in the Book of Revelation. This, however, is not true at all. The Greeks did possess a decimal numbering system several centuries before Christ, but it was different from ours in that it did not possess a zero as a placeholder. Instead, they used different letters of the Greek alphabet to present ones (α…θ for 1...9, ι to ϙ for 10 ... 90, ρ to ϡ for 100 ... 900, and so forth), as shown in the Ancient Greek table below.

Ones		Tens		Hundreds
Greek	Value	Greek	Value	Greek	Value
Αα          Alpha	1	Ιι             Iota	10	Ρρ           Rho	100
Ββ           Beta	2	Κκ           Kappa	20	Σσς         Sigma	200
Γγ            Gamma	3	Λλ           Lambda	30	Ττ            Tau	300
Δδ          Delta	4	Μμ         Mu	40	Υυ           Upsilon	400
Εε           Epsilon	5	Νν          Nu	50	Φφ         Phi	500
ϚϛϜϝ       Digamma	6	Ξξ            Xi	60	Χχ           Chi	600
Ζζ            Zeta	7	Οο          Omicron	70	Ψψ         Psi	700
Ηη          Eta	8	Ππ          Pi	80	Ωω         Omega	800
Θθ          Theta	9	Ϙϙ          Koppa	90	ϡ             Sampi	900

 

A modern three-digit number would have been expressed as the sum of the hundreds, the tens and the ones. For example, 241 would have been expressed as ΣΜΑ (200+40+1), 601 as ΧΑ (600+1), 610 as ΧΙ (600+10) and 666 as χξϛ (600+60+6), as recorded in the Book of Revelation.

Is it possible that the ancient Greek players of this game of dice could have interpreted three dice with sixes next to each other or in sequence as the number presented in Revelation? Why not simply add up the numbers of the three dice, which would yield a sum between 3 and 18? If significantly more than two players were involved, it could very well be that the dice were tossed sequentially, the first throw representing the ‘ones’, the second the ‘tens’ and the third the ‘hundreds’. That would give a total of 6x6x6 = 216 possible values, instead of the 16 values if the individual values were simply added together (minimum 3, maximum 18). Among 5 or 10 or 20 players the sequentially-numbered totals would have reduced the chances of individuals ending up with the same totals, for instance making elimination easier. It would seem, then, that the Greeks who played this game could indeed have recorded the decimal number ‘666’ in this manner.

Extract from Barbelo – The Story of Jesus Christ, by Riaan Booysen

Christ claimed to be the Son of God and the only way in which he would have been able to prove his claim to divinity would have been by performing supernatural ‘miracles’. A ‘miracle’ is generally understood to be a case where physical matter instantaneously changes from one state to another through the mere command or desire (belief) of a person, or a force that can be exerted in a supernatural manner (moving objects without the application of physical force), and so on. Criticism against miracles is usually countered by the argument that, God, as the Almighty Creator, is omnipotent and able to do anything He desires.

Assuming for a moment that such a God, being a He, She, Them or It, does indeed exist, let’s take a look at ‘miracles’ from a practical angle. Let’s call them the Ferrari Gods, who exist in a heaven called Italy. They have just finished the design of their latest Formula One car and the first prototype has passed its test drive with flying colours. However, the test driver afterwards claims that he was able to fly to the moon with this new Ferrari. Would anyone believe him? Of course not. And could the Ferrari Gods themselves get into this Ferrari and fly to the moon? Of course not. They did not design it for that purpose. If they had wanted to fly to the moon, they would have designed a Space Shuttle instead.

So, what is my point? The Ferrari of the Creation (to use Christian terminology) is called ‘Physics’. Everything in the universe is subject to the Laws of Physics. Therefore, no ‘miracle’ that has ever been performed, either back then or today, by anyone, will survive the scrutiny of the Laws of Physics.

In Barbelo I argue that Christ was originally known as Simon Magus, which literally means Simon the Magician (see related article). Christ himself was also accused of being a magician, so, assuming that He had indeed performed ‘miracles’, how did he manage to do it? The answer is simple – he was an illusionist, no different from any illusionist we know today, and like any such deceptions, it merely required various degrees of preparation.

• The Coin in the Fish

This is a dead giveaway. Whoever opened the mouth of the fish, either Peter or one of the other disciples, would have used the very first trick any aspiring illusionist has to master, which is to make an object appear as if from nowhere.

• The Miraculous Fish Catch

The deception of the miraculous fish catch was most likely achieved by suspending underneath the boat a net filled long in advance with live fish or, if the lake was shallow enough, in a net lowered to the bottom of the lake. When Simon Peter cast his net into the water, it was simply allowed to sink to the bottom, after which the net filled with fish was hoisted up, and a ‘miracle’ was proclaimed.

• Turning Water into Wine

A modern illusionist would probably perform this ‘miracle’ in the following manner. Someone makes a scene about there being no wine left (a planned shortage), ensuring that there are many witnesses to the event. The illusionist then orders what appears to be an arbitrary group of men (in this instance, the waiters) to fill the jars with water in clear view of all the witnesses. On their way to place the jars of water in an agreed location, those who carry the jars momentarily disappear from sight by, for example, moving through a group of people or passing behind an obstruction. The jars containing water are quickly switched for identical jars previously filled with wine. The unsuspecting witnesses hardly notice anything out of the ordinary, and, to their amazement, the water has been turned into wine.

• Feeding Thousands

Christ had close ties with one of the richest families in Jerusalem, the Boethus family. He would, therefore, have had access to huge reserves of food, and the bread loaves and fish were simply concealed from view and then secretly passed on to the disciples, who distributed it among the masses.

• Walking on Water

In calm, shallow waters it would have been possible to walk on stepping stones laid just below the surface of the water, leading up to a previously determined point of rendezvous with Peter’s boat. Dusk would have been chosen to prevent the stepping stones from being spotted by the witnesses, and Christ would have been dressed in white to make him clearly visible. Peter also attempted the walk-on-water miracle but missed one of the stones and ended up in the water. No doubt the critics of Christ would have seen through the deception, and his followers subsequently had to introduce a raging storm and the subsequent calming of the sea after the walk on the water in an attempt to refute their allegations.

• Faith Healing

 Probably the most controversial aspect of modern Christianity, the healing of various illnesses and diseases through faith, has changed little since the miracles performed by Christ. Those who are supposedly blind, lame, or deaf or who suffer extreme pain only need to lie for the miracle to be accomplished, but the healing of physical deformity and disability can practically only be achieved by making use of twins, one of which is afflicted. Such a pair would have been invaluable to any travelling magician in the time of Christ. There may be several reasons why anyone would participate in such fraud, but the two most prominent are: first, most likely to deliberately promote the cause of the ‘healer’ by his team, and second, doing so for money when outsiders are involved.

• The Raising of Lazarus

The raising of the dead would be the Holy Grail of miracles, and is worth looking at in greater detail. The sisters Mary (Magdalene) and Martha sent word to Christ that Lazarus, ‘the one he loves,’ was sick, but when Christ eventually reached Bethany, their hometown, Lazarus had died and had already been buried for four days. Christ was met by Martha, but Mary ‘stayed at home.’ He comforted the mourning sisters and was ‘deeply moved in spirit and troubled’ and wept. Martha took Christ to the tomb, which was opened, and Christ promptly called for the deceased Lazarus to come out from the tomb. Lazarus obliged and emerged from the cave, still wrapped in linen and cloth. A hint at how Christ managed to ‘revive’ the deceased Lazarus is given in a text called The Secret Gospel of Mark in which the raising of Lazarus is briefly recounted. Curiously, though, it is stated that ‘a great cry was heard from the tomb’ before Christ and Martha opened the grave. There is, of course, no such thing as the revival of the dead, which leads one to suspect that this miracle must have been yet another of Christ’s deceptions.

The ‘miracle’ was most likely performed as follows: Lazarus either pretended to be sick or more likely was given something to make him appear sick. When he ‘died,’ he would have been given a drug to prevent him from making involuntary movements while family members and friends came to mourn him. Once he had been buried, he would have left the tomb secretly, and the body of a deceased person would have been placed inside. Just before the arrival of Christ, with much fanfare and numerous witnesses, Lazarus would have slipped into the tomb, waiting for Christ’s call to reappear. It would seem, however, that the young man completely underestimated the horror of being locked up in a confined space with a rotting corpse and eventually began screaming to be released. No doubt, both his sisters and Christ would have found Lazarus’s predicament hilarious, which probably accounts for Mary not leaving the house to meet Christ, as she must have struggled to control her laughter. Christ is recorded as having wept in sorrow, but one can imagine that he, too, could hardly contain himself, and that he had to clutch his face with both hands to conceal his true emotions. The tears streaming down his face and his shaking body would have been interpreted as intense sorrow by those who were unaware of the deception, but those tears would have been tears of laughter.

It is important to note that many people, scholars and novices alike, have wondered why Christ was weeping at all when he approached Lazarus’s grave, as he knew very well that he was about to revive him again a short while later. Not only that, the word translated as ‘troubled’ actually means that Christ was angry! Why on earth would he have been angry? The explanation is simple – he was actually furious because Lazarus’s calling from the grave was about the blow the deception’s cover! Christ would have become the laughing stock of Israel if his deception was to be revealed! I have no doubt that his followers who were in on the deception, immediately began to ‘mourn’ very loudly when they heard the calls coming from the grave, in order to drown them. As simple as that.

All the other instances of Christ reviving deceased persons can likewise be explained. The deceased and his or her family had to be involved in the deception right from the start, either as willing participants or having been paid to do so. Of particular interest is the raising of the deceased son of a widow who lived in Nain. In this instance the dead boy was being carried out of the city in a coffin, presumably to be buried, when Christ encountered the funeral procession. He touched the coffin and instructed the boy to sit up, which he promptly did. There can be no question that the boy had been anything but dead, and that his ‘death’ must have been well orchestrated to convince friends and family members that he had actually died. A widow in need would have been more than willing to participate in this deception, provided that the compensation was sufficient.

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Extract from Barbelo – The Story of Jesus Christ, by Riaan Booysen

My theory about Jesus Christ began to develop when I read The New Complete Works of Josephus with the off chance of finding individuals named Joseph and Mary. A Joseph-and-Mary connection soon surfaced, although in a time frame significantly earlier than the accepted time of Christ. Joseph, the treasurer of Herod the Great, and his friend Sohemus were instructed to guard Herod’s teenage wife Mariamne I when he was summoned to appear before Antony.  Upon his return Mariamne I rejected Herod, who subsequently blamed Sohemus for a breach of trust and had him summarily executed. Mariamne I (her name is equivalent to the biblical Mary) was tried, convicted, and also executed. For some reason Joseph’ life was spared.

My first impression was that Mariamne could not possibly have been Mary, the mother of Christ, as she had been executed around 29 BCE. However, close scrutiny of her history with Herod strongly suggests that she must have escaped from Herod through a carefully orchestrated ‘execution’:

•  Herod had murdered Mariamne’s father and brother, and had given instruction that should he lose his life, she should also be killed. Herod was a hated man and Mariamne had to live under constant fear for her life. Mariamne had also sworn to commit suicide rather than allowing Herod to touch her again. In other words, there was no way out for her. Anyone trying to hide her from Herod would have been executed if found out, and she could no longer live with him. Apart from suicide, the only way out would be for her to be ‘executed’, so that Herod would no longer continue to look for her. All that would be required would be the cooperation of a couple of officials in Herod’s court, who no doubt would have had great affection for this beautiful teenager. Joseph himself would have had control over many of Herod’s officials.

• After the murder of her son, Alexandra, Mariamne’s mother, at great personal risk, wrote to Cleopatra of Egypt, begging for her assistance to have her son’s murder avenged. Antony subsequently summoned Herod to him for an explanation of his actions.

• When Herod returned from Antony, Salome, his sister, accused Mariamne of plotting to poison Herod. Mariamne appeared before a tribunal and was sentenced to death. Herod and several court members objected to the sentence, but Alexandra, in order to save herself, “changed her behaviour to quite the reverse of  what might have been expected from her former boldness, and this after a very indecent manner; for out of her desire to show how entirely ignorant she was of the crimes laid against Mariamne, she leaped out of her place, and reproached her daughter in the hearing of all the people; and cried out that she had been an ill woman, and ungrateful to her husband, and that her punishment came justly upon her for such her insolent behaviour, for that she had not made proper returns to him who had been their common benefactor. And when she had for some time acted after this hypocritical manner,  and been so outrageous as to tear her hair.”

•  Mariamne accepted her sentence without showing any emotion or fear.

 

Everyone hated Herod and Alexandra no doubt loved her daughter very much. Could this have been a deliberate ploy to free Mariamne from Herod once and for all? Alexandra could, instead, have begged Herod to spare Mariamne’s life, which he obviously would have done. Why didn’t she? Further investigation revealed the following:

1.      Practically all of the apocryphal accounts of Mary and Joseph relate that they were public figures, known to ‘all of Israel’. Would an unknown, pious young virgin have been known to all of Israel? The biblical episode of Christ being found in the temple at the age of twelve is a clear adaptation of the early life of Mary, who was raised in the temple and loved by all of Israel. Only royal children and the children of the priests were raised in the temple.

 2.   In the apocryphal The Infancy Gospel of James it is related that Joseph was elected to receive Mary as his ward, i.e. he was appointed as her guardian, and upon learning that she had become pregnant, he lamented “I did not guard her”. This matches Joseph as Herod’s treasurer having been appointed to guard Mariamne during his absence.

3.      According to The Infancy Gospel of James, both Mary and Joseph were brought to trial, but passed the drinking-of-the-Lord’s-water test and were exonerated. Both Mary and Mariamne had, therefore, appeared before a tribunal.

4.     In the Mandaean Apostasy of Mary, she (Mary) professes to be a daughter of the kings of Jerusalem, and “All the priests and priests’ sons came and kissed thy hand.” In the same document it is also related that she was locked up behind bars (as Herod had done with Mariamne), and her mother reproaches her in the presence of the Jews, as Alexandra had reproached Mariamne in court. Josephus recorded that Mariamne was publicly known as a woman “somewhat rough in nature”, while in The Apostasy of Mary her father, most likely a subtle reference to Herod, who was old enough to be her father, accuses her of being “a bit of coarse stuff” on his robe.  Mary makes numerous references to the “treasury of light” – why this curious association, unless she had been involved with Herod’s treasurer?

5.      The Romans remembered Christ as ‘Fabri (of a workman, carpenter) aut (or) quaestuariae (quaesturae, of the office of a treasurer, or chamberlain) filius (a son). In other words, his father was Joseph, Herod’s treasurer.

6.      The cuckolded husband of Christ’s mother is called Pappos ben Judah in the Talmud. The only other person by that name supposedly lived around 134 CE and reportedly used to lock his wife indoors when he went out. This would be a perfect match for Herod the Great, who locked his wife Mariame away when he was travelling. In other words, this Pappos merely seems to have been dated incorrectly. One of the towers in Herod’s temple was actually named the Tower of Mariamne and could refer to either Mariamne, his second wife, or Mariamne, his third wife. It is perhaps no coincidence that when Luna, the mistress of Simon Magus, “was in a certain tower, a great multitude had assembled to see her, and were standing around the tower on all sides; but she was seen by all the people to lean forward, and to look out through all the windows of that tower.” It was not Mary Magdalene but Mary, the mother of Christ, who had been locked away in a tower. In Barbelo Simon Magus is argued to be the real name of Jesus Christ.

7.      In The Acts of Philip Mary Magdalene is actually called Mariamne, confirming that the names Mary and Mariamne were used interchangeably at that time.

8.      Joseph was recorded as having lived until the age of 111 years, and he had become known as Sabbas, meaning ‘the Old Man’ in Hebrew. One of his sons was known as Joseph Barsabbas and also as Barsabbas Justus of the Flat Feet. The latter can be linked to the renowned Roman orator Cicero, who had once defended a Roman soldier called Quintus Ligarius before Julius Caesar in his famous Pro Ligario speech. In his speech Cicero mentions a Caius Pansa (Gaius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus), who had been involved in the charges against Ligarius to a lesser extent. Caius Pansa was consul of the Roman Republic and was therefore a public figure that would have been known amongst the Romans as well as Rome’s vassal states. In Latin the word pansa means ‘splay-footed’ or ‘having broad (flat) feet.’ Pansa died in 43 BCE, which would have made him a contemporary of a young Joseph, the treasurer of Herod. Joseph must have married a daughter of Pansa, hence ‘of the Flat Feet’.

The fact that Joseph, Herod’s treasurer, had not been executed makes sense if he had become a Roman citizen through his marriage to the daughter of the consul of the Roman public – Herod would not have dared touch him. In Barbelo I argue that Christ had adopted the alias Paul of Tarsus following his ‘resurrection’. ‘Paul’ claimed to be a Roman citizen upon his capture, most certainly through his father.

9.      In Barbelo I present evidence that Joseph, the father of Christ, and Joseph of Arimathea (Arimathaias), were one and the same person. No place called Arimathea has ever been identified, but the name Ara-Matthaias means “the cursed Matthaias” in Greek. This Joseph was born in 68-67 BCE to a Matthias Curtus (see related extract on Joseph – Joseph of Arimathea – Josephus) and died in 45 CE, which makes him around 112 years old at the time of his death – a near perfect match for Joseph’s 111 years.

It should be noted that Christ’s body was taken care of by Joseph of Arimathea and another secretive disciple called Nicodemus. This Nicodemus has been identified as the Nakdimon ben Gorion (Gurion) in the Talmud, Gorion most likely being derived from the Greek ‘geron’, also meaning ‘old man’. It would make sense that Joseph of Arimathea, a ‘friend of Pilate’, and his son Nicodemus, would have been in a position to monitor Christ’s deteriorating condition on the cross and to remove him when Christ gave them the signal “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (quite literally).

 10.  Celsus claimed that Mary had had an affair with a Roman soldier called Pantheras, who is called Pandira in the Talmud. The word pansa is derived from the Latin word pandere, of which “pandira” must simply be a distorted form. Pantheras is mentioned in the same context as Pansa’s Roman soldier, and although there is no Latin equivalent for “Ligarius”, the Latin word lignarius means “carpenter”, no less. There can be no doubt that “Roman soldier”, “pandira” and “carpenter” all link Joseph, the father of Christ, to Caius Pansa, who died in 43 BCE.

 11.  As discussed in Chapter 4, Luke relates that Christ was born during the time of a census of the entire Roman Empire ordered by Augustus. He clarifies this census as being the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Augustus is known to have taken a census of Roman citizens at least three times—in 28 BCE, 8 BCE, and 14 CE—while Quirinius served as imperial legate of Syria from 6 to 9 CE and conducted the census at the beginning of his term of office. Quirinius’ term does not agree with any of the census dates of Augustus. However, the year 28 BCE perfectly matches the year in which a pregnant Mariamne would have given birth to her son.

 12.  The notion that Christ was born at the beginning of the Christian era stems purely from the biblical account that Christ was born when Herod (died 4 BCE) was still alive – he had supposedly issued a decree for all male children less than two years old to be killed. According to Jacob of Edessa, Christ was born in the 309th year of the Greeks. The Alexandrian age began in the year 336 BCE, which means that Christ was born around 27 BCE, which, given rounding errors, is the same as 28 BCE.

 13.  More importantly is the date of the crucifixion. According to Luke, Christ began his ministry at the age of 30 (in Barbelo it is argued that when Christ, who was known to the Jews as Simon Magus, returned to Israel following the death of Herod, he had already earned the reputation as being a magician, and began his ‘ministry’ right then). As he would have required time to build up a following, and Pontius Pilate was involved in his crucifixion, it is dated to around 30-33 CE. The traditional view is that Pilate ruled from 26-36 CE, but according to Josephus Pilate was already in office when the expulsion of the Jews from Rome occurred in 19 CE. We have two independent sources that date the crucifixion to ca. 21 CE. According to Eusebius, the ‘forgery’ called The Acts of Pilate claims that Christ died ‘in the fourth consulship of Tiberius, which was the seventh year of his reign.’ Tiberius ruled from 14 to 37 CE, and this description therefore translates to the year 21 CE. In The Life of Saint Paul the Apostle we read “Jeronimus in his book, De viris illustribus, that the thirty sixth year after the Passion of our Lord, second year of Nero, Saint Paul was sent to Rome bound”. Nero ruled from 54 to 68 CE and two years into his reign would be 56 CE. The year of the crucifixion is then 56 CE − 36 = 20 CE, which, given rounding errors, is the same as 21 CE.

In The History of the Death of Saint John the Evangelist, it is claimed that John lived seventy years after the resurrection of Christ, until the reign of Domitian (81–96 CE) and ‘he became an exceedingly old man.’ This implies that the Crucifixion and resurrection occurred somewhere between 11 CE and 26 CE.

14.  A key indicator of Christ’s age at his crucifixion is a passage from the Gospel of John in which the Jews indignantly reproach Christ that he had not yet reached the age of fifty. They would certainly not have made such a statement if Christ had still been in his early thirties. Irenaeus argues vehemently that Christ was nearly fifty years old when he was crucified, and asserts that according to those who had worked with John, he (John) confirmed that Christ had reached that age. If Christ had been born in 28 BCE and had been crucified in 21 CE, he would have been 49 years old when he was nailed to the cross, matching the remark made by the Jews.

15.  Christ was labelled “The King of the Jews” at his crucifixion. Why would he have received such an appellation, if either he or his mother had not claimed that he was indeed the rightful heir to the throne of the Jews (from the Hasmonaean line)?

16.  In the nativity accounts of Christ we are told that the Wise Men from the East brought gifts to the new born king of the Jews. The gifts would have been given to Mariamne, the young queen who would have required financial support to sustain her in her place of refuge.

17.  Christ befriended and ‘loved’ Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha, and her brother Lazarus. There was only one prominent family who lived in that era and who had three children of identical names, namely the family of Simon Boethus. His children were called Mariamne, Martha, and Eleazar. Mariamne was the third wife of Herod the Great and the Boethus family was prominent in Israel in the decades just before and after the beginning of the Christian era. If Christ had only been born around 4 BCE, he would probably have been too young to have become involved with this family. Had he been born in 28 BCE, however, he would have been around thirty years old when he met them, specifically Mariamne (Mary Magdalene).

In conclusion, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that suggests that Mariamne had not been executed as recorded by Josephus, but that she had used this ruse to escape from Herod. Several legends about Christ relate that he was born around 28 BCE and crucified around 21 CE, when he was close to 50 years old.

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