Thursday, January 3, 2013

O HOLY FIRING OF ROME: TOPPLE THE SKEWERS (part one)

The wind of the Holy Spirit lifts tongues of fire at Pentecost: "Are These Not All Galileans?" 




The WORD became flesh and encamped among us                        (ἐσκήνωσεν = encamped)
We have seen His glory
Glory as only begotten with Father*                                  (δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός)   y-y*
Full of grace and truth 

   ---JOHN (1:14)1
(The key Greek word in the above passage is the adjective monogenous (μονογενοῦς), pronounced: mon-og-en-ooce'. The word combines two root words: mono, which means "one," and genous (the genitive form of genos), which means: 1) offspring or descendant, 2) family or clan, 3) race or nation, 4) gender*, 5) type or class. These concepts are all rooted in generation, genesis, birth, conception. The word monogenous was often used to denote a sole offspring, but did at times also refer to an issue who was unique or paradigm. The opportunities for literary device expand with the nuances of "one" to indicate either the lone individual, or the unity of a group.)2
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Double-edged acts of word-play about supermen are afoot. In JOHN (1:14), the Greek word ἐσκήνωσεν literally means "to pitch a tent." Once a reference to Bedouins has been excluded, tent-pitching inevitably connotes warfare in the Roman period. Hence those who seek the truth can hear, how the forces of the WORD OF GOD encamped among the people. The wording chosen by the text, alludes to the Galilean army, which fleshed-out the WORD---making it manifest. At yet another great turning point in earth history, the host of Galilee provided Yahweh with His tabernacle in the desolation. 

Those who call themselves "Biblical Literalists," are inheritors of a tradition programmed to reject the God who sponsors the greatest work of historical literature, while they embrace a filicide cult deity in His place. The so called literalists are thereby rendered incapable of comprehending the volcanic certitude with which God's literary "Peace" will erupt. They have no ears to hear the Gospel's subtle memorials to the virile Galilean army---crucified as was Jesus. The tightest of these literary memorials, rotate upon the sword.


SWORD-FIGHT  AT  BATHHOUSE  JUDAH

The Galileans led a successful revolt against Nero's Rome. Josephus was chosen as the general who would command the novel defense against the return of Roman power. Whereas Josephus was Hasmonean by descent, his fore-bearers had led the successful Maccabean revolt against the abominable Pagan tyranny of Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes. Josephus begins his account of the Jewish-Roman War---his book WARS---rather boldly, with a geothermal account of the 166 BC, Hasmonean victory at Emmaus which freed Israel from the Seleucids. This brief thread of introduction will sing out about only a few sizzling verses, to massage what the Pharisees mistook for a profanation of holy things, such as the Temple, and the Sabbath. 

The rub down starts with: (1) Joe's Subtle Emmaus Forward to WARS, where Maccabee's 166 BC redemption of Israel at Emmaus, frames Joe's report on the First Jewish-Roman War which commenced in full 232 years later (in 66 AD). The discussion will knead out the knots which tie the second verse of that politically nostalgic prologue to: (2) When Pigs Fly in the Gospel, where the issue of what constitutes what is clean or unclean, receives its ultimate satirical treatment in the edgy Gospel pericope of Legion's exorcism from Israel. Then, after looping back around to pound out the bottom ends of the Emmaus Forward to WARS, the pointers will rush back naked into: (3) Joe's parallel account of Maccabee's Emmaus Battle in ANTIQUITIES. The session promises a happy ending with: (4) the Resurrection Appearance on the Road to Emmaus in LUKE, which runs the tags down into both: (5) the Testimonium Flavianum and: (6) the Creed of the Galilean Sect's Zealotry in ANTIQUITIES. So without further delay, the track of this thread commences with the first feet in the temperamental heat animated by Judah Maccabee's great achievement of victory, won over Antiochus Epiphanes in the Battle of Emmaus. Therefrom Judah Maccabee lustily runs the 160 stadia dash, from Emmaus to Jerusalem, where Maccabee hammers the very real Seleucid sacrilege on the Temple mount to redeem Israel. Hasmonean Josephus uses this pericope of Maccabean victory at Emmaus, to frame the politics of the Galilean revolt against both Rome and Rome's hired sheepherders:



JOE'S  SUBTLE  EMMAUS  FORWARD  TO  WARS


ἀπὸ δὲ θερμοῦ τοῦ κατορθώματος 
ὥρμησεν ἐπὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ πόλει φρουράν
οὔπω γὰρ ἐκκέκοπτο 
καὶ ἐκβαλὼν ἀπὸ τῆς ἄνω πόλεως 
συνωθεῖ τοὺς στρατιώτας εἰς τὴν κάτω· ...

From the heat of this great achievement    (i.e. from the excitement on Judah Maccabee's victory at Emmaus)
("heat" is θερμοῦ --- thermoῦ, Greek root of the English word "thermal," cf. thermoῦ balaneion: "thermal bath." Josephus primes his audience with his Emmaus word-game, whereas the name of the battle location is specified as "Emmaus" in ANTIQUITIES (12:7:4), but is here only referred to with this hot word-play on the thermal definition Josephus gives for the name "Emmathaus" in Galilee at WARS 4:1:3.)
He rushed upon the garrison in the city (Maccabee raced to Jerusalem to destroy the now unsupported occupation)
(The full-step march twists round this second verse, because it is tagged with a deliberate key word, which Josephus uses to map out a field of scholastic subtext he embeds into his variant texts. Gospel uses this Greek word "rushed(ὥρμησεν --- hōrmēsen) only three times---always in the suicide rush of pigs (MATTHEW 8:32, MARK 5:13, LUKE 8:33). It is not an accident that this word is found nowhere else in all the rest of the Gospels, but yet is found in common at the same porcine point, of all three, of the otherwise quite deliberately variant and divergent versions, which each of the three, Greek synoptic Gospels, spin uniquely on the exorcism of an evil spirit self identified by the blatant Latin name "Legion." Compare the relevant portion of the three parallel Gospel accounts of daemonic Legion's rabid rush over the cliff which rushes on the heels of the final three lines of this extract.  

For they had not yet been cut off  (hmmm...)

So he blew them back out of the upper town

Pushing upon the soldiers in the bottom

---WARS (1:1:4)

This Emmaus victory song lilts on to finish off the Seleucid stinkers in the Holy Place. Liberation of the Jerusalem Temple rushes on the heels of this extract, to top off Joe's bold Emmaus forward to WARS, and mark how his work is surreptitiously girded with the theme of human slavery and liberation, national captivity and redemption. Joe tags his ornately constructed codex with this Greek word "rushed(ὥρμησεν --- hōrmēsen), to run the aim and itinerary of the Galilean redeemer inside the Messianic program initiated by the redeemers of Joe's own Maccabean ancestry:    

☛ WHEN  PIGS  FLY  FROM  LEGION  IN  MATTHEW  ☚ 


καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ὑπάγετε 

οἱ δὲ ἐξελθόντες ἀπῆλθον εἰς τὴν ἀγέλην τῶν χοίρων· 
καὶ ἰδού, ὥρμησεν πᾶσα ἀγέλη τῶν χοίρων κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν 
καὶ ἀπέθανον ἐν τοῖς ὕδασιν 

And He said to them: "Go down!"

Then having gone out, they entered into the pigs
And behold: rushed the whole herd down the precipice into the sea
And died-off in the waters

---MATTHEW (8:32)



☛ WHEN   PIGS  FLY  FROM  LEGION  IN  LUKE 


ἐξελθόντα δὲ τὰ δαιμόνια ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τοὺς χοίρους 

καὶ ὥρμησεν ἀγέλη κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν λίμνην 
καὶ ἀπεπνίγη

Then having gone out from the man, the demons entered into the pigs 

And rushed the herd down the precipice into the lake
And were choked-off

---LUKE (8:33)



☛ WHEN  PIGS  FLY  FROM  LEGION  IN  MARK 

καὶ ἐξελθόντα τὰ πνεύματα τὰ ἀκάθαρτα εἰσῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους 
καὶ ὥρμησεν ἀγέλη κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ὡς δισχίλιοι 
καὶ ἐπνίγοντο ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ

And having gone out, the unclean spirits entered into the pigs
And rushed the herd down the precipice into the sea about two-thousand*
And they were choked in the sea

---MARK (5:13)

*("about 2000": not the countable sum of "153" which an implicit dot-connection will contrast) 

 





In the eighth chapter of LUKE, this pericope of the daemonic "Legion," follows on the heels of the key Parable of the Sower, wherein it is told that the seed sown by the prophetic Savior is a symbol: "THE WORD OF GOD" (both the Scriptures themselves and the body of the Savior). The Sower simile goes on to provide the ultimate guide when it further explains that this "WORD" is itself to be understood as parable, which will produce a wholesome crop only in those of good heart, just as grain seed will only thrive in good soil. The last two points must be restated together for clarity, whereas it is apparently hard for some of the concerned ground to fathom, how the entirety of the Scriptures, and the entire body of Christ, are understood as parable. This by no means suggests the WORD is not on point vis a vis the material reality on this fertile planet, where magnetic north becomes south at the whim of a circuit with the sun. For the WORD truly lays bare this reality's less than forgiving laws, in the only way they can be understood with clarity---: by patient and careful study. Now when LUKE drops this bombshell, to reveal that everything in scripture is woven in parable, LUKE drops it inside the seed of a version of the Parable of the Sower which is wrapped in a husk of daemonic exorcisms. For LUKE introduces the Parable of the Sower with the witness that Jesus cast seven demons out from Mary Magdalene, and LUKE thereafter follows the Parable of the Sower with the Exorcism of the demon Legion. Everything is indeed woven in terrific parable. 
To begin to understand the true fertility of this religion, one must compare the three Gospel versions of the Legionnaire's pig-rush above, and note how the differences are entirely superficial, not at all the sort of differences one would expect from three independent sources. The same type of tight correspondence between the three texts which is exhibited in the Gospel WORD comparison above, is ubiquitous throughout the bodies of their compositions. Nineteenth Century German scholars who recognized this, put forward the theory, now largely taken for granted, that these uncanny similarities indicate MATTHEW and LUKE, were both based upon MARK, and upon a lost source of sayings absent from MARK but present in LUKE and MATTHEW. This old theory calls that hypothetical lost document "Q" (for Quelle --- "source"). However, when, for prime example, one examines the passages compared above, it is clear that the line-for-line interdependence of the narrative is much more extreme than the quaint "Q" theory can do justice. Any modern classroom or literary critic would not measure such unabashed interdependence mere "sourcing," but would instead call it outright plagiarism. Unless of course the three documents were all different editions composed by the the same author, who expanded and polished his metaphors to address different viewpoints, all the while sewing together every major theme in his prodigious body of work, by weaving subtextural threads spun of literary tags. Such an endeavor would, instead, be a feat so far and away above any other work of literature, that its power to change human behavior and history would prove its divine inspiration. The Gospels make no effort to harmonize their diverse deliveries for a mundane stamp of absolute literal veracity. Instead the original pericopes first composed into MARK, have been rearranged and extrapolated into new contextual themes, with a final transparent finish applied by replacing most of the key words with synonyms. This is a tongue in cheek veneer of faux plagiarism, quite unlike what one would expect from three or four different privateers attempting to cover their tracks with a straight face. Not even the members of the most desperate last minute study group, would dare to all turn in term papers so thriftily modified. Catch the superficial differences between the three Gospel variants of Legion's exorcism above. "Lake" (λίμνην) is substituted for "sea" (θάλασσαν), "demons" (δαιμόνια) replaces "unclean spirits" (πνεύματα τὰ ἀκάθαρτα), "died-off" (ἀπέθανον) gets spun into "choked-off" (ἀπεπνίγη), etc.. 
While most of the narrative's descriptive terms get changed into equivalents, there are two key terms which remain unmolested across the three versions: "rushed" (ὥρμησεν), and "down the precipice" (κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ); their conspicuous permanence poses a puzzle which tags the pericope to its own grander, thematic metonyms in the corpus.  
Every evidence points to one common author playing a word game. God-seekers may attribute this to an angel of divine inspiration, here witnessed through three different lenses. Yet such seekers could just as easily admit that God's angel inspired Josephus to create four separate accounts as a scholastic exercise for divine instruction. The result is a God-fearer's crossword puzzle---a divine brain game of the same type as the grand match-up hidden in the similar plethora of conflicting details which riddle the accounts of events which the Old Testament re-reports multiple times in a manner analogous to the four conflicting accounts given by the artifice of the Gospels. There is no actual moral deception in this proposition, despite the way it might be superficially judged under the scrutiny of the current corrupt paradigm. Except for their glossy literary signatures, all four Gospels were originally published anonymously. All four pseudonyms: MARK, LUKE, MATTHEW, and JOHN were added by the early church fathers. The pig-rush trifecta is one of the most central of Joe's signature tags, crafted by an inspiration to deliberately unite his key themes across his works. When, via the same glossy signatures, the Testimonium Flavianium (Joe's passage on Jesus in ANTIQUITIES 18:3:3) is shown to directly meet up with the Resurrection Appearance on the Road to Emmaus in LUKE (24:13-35), then Joe's divinely inspired authorship of all four Gospels becomes apparent in the weight of the literary device array centered on this hotspot. Here the discussion of the Legion pericope sits nested inside the decipher of Joe's subtle Emmaus forward to WARS. For while most of the key words have been substituted in cookie-cutter fashion, the strategic repetitive use of the word ὥρμησεν (hōrmēsenfor "rushed," tags all three versions of Legion's exorcism and ties them directly to the rationale that the Emmaus forward provides for the Galilean revolt from Rome. Meanwhile, the exact repetition of the extended construct "rushed ... down the precipice" (ὥρμησεν ... κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ), fastens them all together even more tightly, with a marked thread into a key pericope at the caves of Arbela Galilee (ANTIQUITIES 14:15:5,  WARS 1:16:4), wherein the theme of slavery and liberation, is rhetorically treated in a most autobiographical fashion. Extracts of the Arbela pericope in ANTIQUITIES and WARS are best prefaced with the introduction to the Legion pericope in MARK:
STONE-CUTTING  LEGION  GOES  WILD IN  MARK
Καὶ ἦλθον εἰς τὸ πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης εἰς τὴν χώραν τῶν Γερασηνῶν (Γαδαρηνῶν -/- Γεργεσηνῶν). καὶ ἐξελθόντος αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ πλοίου, εὐθὺς ὑπήντησεν αὐτῷ ἐκ τῶν μνημείων ἄνθρωπος ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ, ὃς τὴν κατοίκησιν εἶχεν ἐν τοῖς μνήμασιν, καὶ οὐδὲ ἁλύσει οὐκέτι οὐδεὶς ἐδύνατο αὐτὸν δῆσαι. διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν πολλάκις πέδαις καὶ ἁλύσεσιν δεδέσθαι, καὶ διεσπάσθαι ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τὰς ἁλύσεις καὶ τὰς πέδας συντετρῖφθαι, καὶ οὐδεὶς ἴσχυεν αὐτὸν δαμάσαι· καὶ διὰ παντὸς νυκτὸς καὶ ἡμέρας ἐν τοῖς μνήμασιν καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν ἦν κράζων καὶ κατακόπτων ἑαυτὸν λίθοις ... ἔλεγεν γὰρ αὐτῷ Ἔξελθε τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἀκάθαρτον ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. καὶ ἐπηρώτα αὐτόν Τί σοι ὄνομά καὶ ἀπεκρίθη λέγων, Λεγεὼν ὄνομά μοι ὅτι πολλοί ἐσμεν. καὶ παρεκάλει αὐτὸν πολλὰ ἵνα μὴ αὐτοὺς ἀποστείλῃ ἔξω τῆς χώρας. Ἦν δὲ ἐκεῖ πρὸς τὰ ὄρη ἀγέλη χοίρων μεγάλη βοσκομένη·. καὶ παρεκάλεσαν αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ δαίμονες λέγοντες Πέμψον ἡμᾶς εἰς τοὺς χοίρους ἵνα εἰς αὐτοὺς εἰσέλθωμεν. καὶ ἐπέτρεψεν αὐτοῖς εὐθέως ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἐξελθόντα τὰ πνεύματα τὰ ἀκάθαρτα εἰσῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους καὶ ὥρμησεν ἡ ἀγέλη κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἦσαν δὲ ὡς δισχίλιοι καὶ ἐπνίγοντο ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ. 
And they went to the other side of the sea to the region of the Gerasenes (variants read Gadarenes -/- Gergesenes). And upon his having gone forth out of the boat, he immediately met up with a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling in the tombs, and no longer was anyone even able to bind him, not even with a chain. Whereas he often had been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn in two by him, and the shackles had been shattered, and no one was able to subdue him. And constantly all night and day, in the tombs and in the mountains he was crying and cutting himself with stones ... [Jesus] was saying to him; "Come forth uncleansed spirit from out of the man!" And He (Jesus) asked him (the daemon): "What is your name?" And he answered saying: "Legion! (Λεγεὼν) For we are many!" (πολλοί --- polloi)! And he begged Him many times that He would not send them out of the country (χώρα --- chóra, pronounced kho'-rah). For there, feeding near the mountain, was a herd of pigs (χοῖρος --- choiros, pronounced khoy'-ros, hence there's a pun here, between χώρα "country": kho'-rah, and the singular χοίρου "pig": khoy-roo; this pun is later exploited further, when in LUKE 8:37, all the περι-χώρου "surrounding country": --- peri-chōrou, pronounced per-ikh'-o-roo, begs Jesus to "depart": ἀπελθεῖν --- apelthein (cf. 'go out': ἐξελθεῖν --- exelthein) i.e. 'go-out' from the "surrounding country," which is given alternately as ὅριον --- horion, pronounced hor'-ee-on, in MARK 5:17 and MATTHEW 8:34). And they begged Him saying: "Send us into those pigs, that we may enter into them!" And He allowed them. And having gone out (ἐξελθόντα --- exelthonta), the unclean spirits entered into the pigs. And rushed (ὥρμησεν --- Joe's tag to the Emmaus forward to WARS, unmolested by all three Legionarie pericopes in the Gospelthe herd down the precipice (κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ --- Joe's tag to the Arbela Cave pericope, a phrase also unmolested in all three Legionnaire pericopes) into the sea about two-thousand. And they were choked in the sea.
--- MARK (5:1-13)
Compare this metaphoric rehash, with the pericope of Herod's Hunt at the Arbela Caves. These caves adorn cliffs which jut up over the other side of sea, between Tiberias and Magdala. The scene takes place circa 38 BC, as Roman forces aid Great Herod in taking the kingdom granted him by the Roman Senate in 40 BC at the behest of Marc Antony. Note that this troglodyte pericope takes place almost as close to Magdala as it does to Arbela, whereas Holy Land geography is another one of the tasks Rabbi Josephus has embedded into his scholastic puzzle. Herod, now endowed with Roman forces by Antony, has not yet taken Jerusalem for Rome. The liberation theology theme of this true earth religion, is woven into Herod's new hunt for Galilean red gold. The following extracts, based on Whiston's translation, will only give the key Greek highlights: 
HEROD  HUNTS  GALILEANS  FOR  THE  FLESH-TRADE  IN  ANTIQUITIES 
But Herod was not pleased with lying still … and went into Galilee … and resolved to destroy those robbers that dwelt in the caves (note that this pro Hasmonean cave-party, which favors rule by Antigonus Matthias, here gets equated with the Galilean "robbers," i.e. Zealots, of later anti-Roman sedition), and did much mischief in the country (brilliant double-speak, whereas Joe leaves the identity of the real mischief maker open: Who is the real robber? Is it the Israelite? Or is it Rome's Herod?)… So he brought over to him all Galilee, excepting those that dwelt in the caves … They were very near to a village called Arbela ... These caves were in mountains that were exceeding abrupt, and that in their middles were nothing but precipices, with certain entrances into the caves (i.e. mouths---as the reader will soon be informed). Those caves were encompassed with sharp stones (i.e. teeth---following the identification of the former), and in these did the robbers lie concealed, with all their families about them. But the king ordered there be made certain chests (λάρνακας --- larnackasplural of λάρναξ --- larnaxthis word is often specifically used to refer to funerary boxes---small coffins containing human remains, such as the "Larnax of Philip of Macedon"), in order to destroy them, and to be hung down, bound about with iron chains, by an engine, from the top of the mountain … Now there was one old man who was caught within one of these caves, with seven children and a wife; they prayed for him to give them leave to go out, and yield themselves up to the enemy; but he stood at the cave's mouth, and repeatedly slew whichever child of his who went out, till he had destroyed every one of them, and after that he slew his wife, and cast their dead bodies down the precipice (κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ --- the same Greek phrase repeated in all three Legion pericopes), and himself after them, and so underwent death rather than slavery, but before he did this he berated Herod harshly with the meanness of his family, although he was then king (again brilliant double-speak) ... In the mean time, Pacorus was fallen in a battle, and the Parthians were defeated, when Ventidius sent Macheras to the assistance of Herod, with two legions (δύο τάγματα---here Josephus does not use the Greek transliteration λεγεὼν for the Latin legionemhowever it is certain that Whiston's English "two legions" is the correct translation for this duo of "ordinances," for it is confirmed by the large contingent of cavalrymen, and multiple obvious uses of τάγματα for "legion" in Herod-Agrippa II's bombastic speech at WARS (2:16:4)---a speech he ends with a telling Pharisaic warning about fighting on the Sabbath), and a thousand horsemen, while Antony encouraged him to make haste.
---ANTIQUITIES (14:15:4-7)
If the only evidence, linking the Legion Pericope to the Arbel Cave Pericope, were the phrase down the precipice (κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ), then one might be forgiven for dismissing the pig trifecta as work of a Pagan Lady Luck. But this emancipation proclamation puzzle, has squares which dive too deep into hell, to be dissuaded by any attempt to explain the cells as due perchance synchronicities. For with the Emmaus forward to WARS, Josephus subtly hammers home the overarching anti-slavery theme that all non-corrupted Monotheists should innately realize. The Divine issue of the WORD regards man's dignity as a species, in the free and natural state in which he was created. Paganism, its idolatry, and its sympathetic magic practices, constitute a species-wide disease which is truly the "Fall of Man," down into slavery, unto drunken irrationality. The Old Testament documents the Divine's wrath upon the Pagan slave empire Egypt; the New Testament resurrects God's medicine against Rome. The descriptions which harmonize the Legion Pericope in MARK with the Arbela Cave Pericope in ANTIQUITIES, color the cosmic context of the anti-slavery theme at Arbela. The old man who berated Rome's king Herod at Arbela in 38 BC, was of the same ideology as the Galileans with the suicide pact in the cave where Josephus was captured at Jotapata in July 67 AD, was also the like of the Galileans who similarly went down the precipices during the Roman siege at Gamla in November 67 AD, was the compatriot of the Galileans who went down with the Temple in August 70 AD rather than be captured by Titus, and was the kindred of the Galileans with the suicide pact at Masada in April 73 AD. All shared the old man at Arbela's motto: "Death before Slavery." The old man did not go down the cliff until he "berated Herod harshly with the meanness of his family." Josephus too, although thought of as a traitor for saving his skin in the cave at Jotapata, was of the resolution to continue the resistance as long as possible, waiting until the summer of 80 AD, to berate the Flavians with his family's meanness. Then it was that the new volume of the WORD was launched, via demonstrative publicity events which burned with cosmic heat. Ill omen flashed in the face of new Flavian Amphitheater---the Colosseum---built with a gluttonous consumption of captive Jewish flesh and blood. But before the narrative can dig the brimstone off the Tarpeian rock, one must note how Rome's new king, Herod, tries to fish Jewish captives out from the mouths of those caves surrounded by sharp rocks at Arbela in Galilee. Demon Legion cuts himself day and night with sharp rocks. Legion lives in the "tombs," and these tombs get harmonized to the caves of Arbela with the device of funerary chests. That harmony is developed further in the Gospels, with the dual issue cave/tombs (σπήλαιον/μνημεῖον·) wherein the bodies of Jesus and Lazarus are lain (JOHN 11:38, MARK 15:46, MATTHEW 27:60, LUKE 23:53, JOHN 19:41-20:1, ANTIQUITIES 10:10:4, WARS 5:6:3, 5:8:3, 6:5:3, DANIEL 2:31-35). Legion can not be bound with chains like some obedient slave; instead Legion periodically erupts from the world of the dead. Meanwhile Rome's Herod lowers the funerary chests into to the mouths of the Arbela caves by using a contraption made with chains. Slave flesh and slave blood is on the menu of the diseased. It will indeed be the last supper of the deceased.
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ABOVE: GEOLOGICAL FORTRESS: This is the western third of the northern cave face of Mount Arbel, Sea of Galilee in the background. The Hasmonean rulers built up Magdala along the edge of this natural edifice, where it falls into the sea below the peak to the bottom left of this picture. 


ABOVE: TWO STORIES TO THE RUINED CAVE COMPLEXES ON THE PRECIPITOUS FACE OF MOUNT ARBEL. The cave structures were both carved back deep into the rock and defensively walled in flat to the ledges. They were supplied by huge cisterns filled by water channels carved down in the stone. Many of the interiors were finely paved and finished. BELOW: ANOTHER VIEW OF THE HUMONGOUS MOUNT ARBEL CLIFF FORTRESS: Magdala on the Plain of Gennesareth in the background.



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THE  TOWER  OF  MARIAMNE  AND  THE  SPEAR  OF  DESTINY 
Whereas the Arbela Pericope is vital to the Messianic saga on several fronts, it warrants a short abstract of the historical context. The pivotal tags of human history which mark this context, prompt the savvy to deduce cosmic intervention. For the Hasmonean Kingdom first became a Roman tributary when General Pompey entered the Jerusalem Temple in 63 BC. Yet just nine years later in 54 BC, the Behemothic mega-billionaire who had put down the slave rebellion of Spartacus---Master Marcus Licinius Crassus---became the sloppy second Roman to violate the Jerusalem Temple, this time removing everything of quick monetary value in order to finance war on Parthia (WARS 1:8:8). Hear here that crass Crassus was soon killed by the Parthians at a place the Greeks called Carrhae---a very ancient settlement none other than the pivotal Haran of GENESIS 11:26-32, 27:43, 31:38-41. In the chaotic aftermath of the Roman loss at Carrhae, none other than Cassius Longinus---later day chief instigator and co-assassin of Julius Caesar---took the governorship of Syria made vacant by Crassuss's wipe-out beyond the Euphrates. Cassius Longinus soon marched south to a place that some variants of MATTHEW 15:39 call Μαγδαλά Magdala, a direct Greek transliteration of the Aramaic מגדלא, corresponding to the Hebrew מגדל Migdol---meaning "Tower." The illustrations Josephus sketches at Emmaus, Arbela, and Gadara/Gerasa, are rooted together in a harsh historical reality colored red, with blood drunk by the Imperial economic regime which rewarded Longinus, as he flooded the market, with the Magdalene's pierced meat. 
Before getting to the sharp point of Longinus's spearhead, the identity of this lakeside hub Magdala must be qualified. With a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic, the Talmud describes the town as מגדל נוניא Migdol Nunaiya, meaning "Tower of Fish" (B. PES. 46b). When naming more than one famous Rabbi from the town, the Talmud calls that Rabbi a "Magdalene," in the same style by which the Gospels qualify the female disciple Mary (B. M. 25a, YER. BER. ix. 14a; TAAN. i. 64b). In Latin this place Magdala was called Tarichea after its common Greek monker Ταριχέας Taricheas, meaning: "[Place] of Pickling [Fish];" Josephus indicates Tarichea was 3.5 miles from Tiberias (LIFE 1:32), and Joe also indicates both Tarichea and Tiberias were built against mountains (ὑπόρειος --- WARS 3:10:1). The flat topography 3.5 miles south of Tiberias thus precludes locating Tarichea in that direction. However 3.5 miles is an accurate distance north, from the foothill border of Tiberias to the foothill border to the current Israeli town מִגְדָּל Migdal---built in the vicinity of the old Arab village المجدل‎ Al-Majdal. Therefore it follows that the identification of Magdala with Tarichea, is indeed solid, though rather fishily revealed. For the corpus is lit by a scholastic highlight, applied in a sort of literary pantomime, danced with the Gospel's pregnant silences about Galilee's three most unavoidable metropolises: (1) Sepphoris: never mentioned in Gospel despite the fact it loomed over Nazareth as Galilee's capital during the early youth of Jesus (note the enigmatic Jesus "son of Sapphias" so prominent in LIFE), (2) Imperial Tiberias: where the ghost of an idol-house implicit to "Tiberias," became the capitol of Galilee in the young adulthood of Jesus, while holocausts burned in Pilate's seaside Tiberium, which served as Provincia Judaea's capitol at Caesarea Maritima. Despite that fact, this new place on the lake of Galilee, named Tiberias for the Imperial Cult genius of the reigning Caesar Tiberius, is mentioned directly only once in all the Gospels (at JOHN 6:24), when Tiberias plays a familiar role in a surfing charade which breaks next-door on Magdala, after a miracle whip-up of fish-sauce (note that Tiberias does play the prominent role in the fiery career of Joe's contemporary iconoclastic rival "Jesus son of Sapphias"), (3) Tarichea: while all of the Gospel arrows into and out of Magdala wipe-out inside scholastic puzzles, the Greek name for Magdala goes entirely unmentioned. These three particular literary rebuses, peculiar to the Gospels, have their polished mirror image in WARS, ANTIQUITIES, and LIFE, where: (1) unnamed Nazareth is only the mute object of a zealous charade around Sepphoris, (2) the lake is never elevated to an epic sea named for the patriotic region Galilee, or annexed to the alien glutton Tiberius (Tiberias), but instead remains a lake loyal to the royal Gennesareth, which is contrary to (3): the treatment of Magdala, whose native name is ubiquitously eschewed for the Greek monker Tarichea. In summary, Gospel overshadows the capitals Sepphoris and Tiberias, while paradoxically elevating the prominence of lowly Nazareth and the import of the alien Pagan Decapolis, under a flailing charade over the native Aramaic name (Magdala) original to the place called Tarichea in Greek. Among the plethora of autographs Josephus signs across his works, this riddled nexus approaches regnal stature. To understand the full wit and drive of what Joe wrote, one needs to realize his hand, doodling his own history into the depths of his politically charged itinerary, ciphered nomenclature, and fluent metaphorical devices.  
The political economy of Magdala/Tarichea is central to why the Roman Cassius Longinus chose to camp there twice: first in 53 BC, then again a decade later in 43 BC. Reports of Strabo and Josephus both indicate the importance of Magdala/Tarichea in the lake's lucrative fishing industry. In the decades before Israel banned fishing on the lake in 2010, ten tons of little fish were caught every night during the height of the six month long season. Whereas in the First Century there were 230 commercial ships, based in Tarichea, which fished the ancient pristine lake, the native industry of Tarichea evidently pickled enough high quality fresh water Kinneret Sardines, that its products were commodities, consumed as far away as the banquets of Rome (WARS 2:21:8, Strabo GEOGRAPHY 16:2:45). This commercial center of Galilee's fish trade, was apparently named Migdal for a lit tower, which advertised where fishermen could safely bring in their hauls between dusk and dawn, no matter the weather. Fishing sardines at night is common, hence Simon complains to Jesus from the boat in LUKE (5:5-7): "Lord, we've worked hard all night and have not caught anything, but since you say so, I'll let down the nets. And upon doing this they enclosed a multitude of fishes---so many (πολύ· --- poly) that they were bursting their nets" (cf. more night fishing at JOHN 21:3). The climax of the catch is characterized in league with Legion's own climactic self classification in all three Gospels: "we are many," where "many" (πολλοί --- polloidoes not only signify the literal sense of quantity, but also points directly at a very tangible (and electrically charged) figurative sense, as in: "multitude," the "common people," the "subjects," the "majority"---a euphemism often cynical, but brought back up into the ideal literal sense where the "city" (πόλις --- polis) is ruled by "assembly" (ἐκκλησίᾳ --- ekklēsia), in a form of representative government anathema to autocratic or oligarchic governments wherein the subjects (the "many") are reduced to mere slaves of the rulers (the few); the English words politics and poll are based upon this Greek root of the Legion's soul searching. Now as for the super draft whereby the fishermen were "bursting their nets" under the direction of Jesus, this totally natural fish-story does not describe anything exaggerated or hocus pocus, for when it is seen at the calm surface, the net bursting with the lake's sovereign citizens, is a straightforward description of a typical catch of schooling Kinneret Sardines (species Acanthobrama Terraesanctae). To this day, in order to escape the lake's large indigenous predators called biny-fishthese small planktivorus sardines defensively congregate into massive bait-balls---a survival tactic which makes the sardines vulnerable to very efficient human drafts.  
Archaeological excavations at Magdal/Tarichea indicate the town was richly endowed under the Hasmonean monarchic priests. Archaeological surveys of Galilee in general, indicate a surge of development in the region commencing with Hasmonean rule circa 100 BC. It is important to note that despite the fact that the Hasmoneans had barely ruled Galilee for four decades when Pompey entered the Temple, Pompey still retained the unity of Galilee and Judaea, despite the Roman's immediate grant of independence to the Pagan Decapolis which the Hasmoneans had occupied at roughly the same time as Galilee. It is tempting for Israeli scholars to see a Pagan flight from Galilee and a Hasmonean colonization which parallels the speed of the modern situation, albeit stickler free. For flight and colonization is no doubt true of the Syrian and Tyrian fortified places of Galilee which dominated the countryside for the Seleucids. However, a somehow ethnically distinct Galilee (Judaean in the religious sense of a long standing tradition of worship at Ezra's Second Temple), no more precludes the Zionist Jesus, than an Askenazi establishment of Israel degrades the level of acceptance for all. This is introduced in preface to further championing a Hasmonean role in Galilee central to the story of Magdala and Gennesareth, for if in this Hasmonean championship, the analysis loses sight of the very real distinction (and often conflict) between Galileans and Judaeans, noted both by the Gospels and the Talmud, then much focus on Jesus, Josephus, and the Jewish revolt is lost. 
Leaving that problem for its proper place, it is notable that Jotapata (Yodefat), Gischala (Gush Halav, Gish), Gamla, and Sepphoris, were all fortresses taken by the Hasmoneans and repopulated upon the flight/expulsion of the local Seleucid officials who governed the region, largely from these locations. All these Hasmonean strongholds were most prominent in the 66-67 AD Galilean resistance to Rome, except of course Sepphoris, which had, during a snowstorm in 38 BC, been taken by Great Herod from the last Hasmonean High-Priest King, Antigonus Matthias, then subsequently redeveloped by Herod as his own administrative center of Galilee. On Herod's death in 4 BC, Sepphoris was commandeered by Galilean rebels from the neighborhood of Nazareth, who distributed Herod's armory at Sepphoris to effect a revolt which spread throughout the countryside to Jerusalem (ANTIQUITIES 7:10:5-8). When the Roman General Varus retook Sepphoris, he sold the entire populace into slavery, then burnt the city to the ground (ANTIQUITIES 17:10:9). In the mop-up operations, two thousand of the chief "robbers" were crucified along the roadsides, as signposts of warning erected by this soon infamous Varus, the very general who would be the chief Roman victim at Teutoburg fourteen years later (ANTIQUITIES 17:10:10). The burnt shell of Sepphoris was subsequently rebuilt by Herod Antipas to serve as his own first capital. Now although the pericope of the Arbela Caves extracted here takes place right after Antipas's father Great Herod first took Sepphoris from the last Hasmonean King in 38 BC, Josephus deliberately suggests Galileans of Judaean religious alliance lived in the Arbel/Magdala area as early as the revolt of Judah Maccabee (ANTIQUITIES 12:11:1 cf. 1 MACCABEES 9:2, ANTIQUITIES 12:8:1-2, 6, 13:5:6, 1 MACCABEES 5:14-23). Hence at Arbel, the berating of Herod's lineage by the Hasmonean resistance, represented by the suicidal old man one hundred and twenty something years later in 38 BC, takes on new significance, (while a related device of even more longevity is discovered by resolving 1 MACCABEES 14:41 inside LUKE 2:22-35, advised of the fact that Josephus was directly descended from Simon's niece). The pedigree connecting Hasmonean Josephus to the Galilean cause suddenly tightens in focus beyond what is apparent with a shallow read of WARS and LIFE. Josephus marks this Hasmonean connection to the Galilean host himself, in noting that the Hasmonean monarch Alexander Jannaeus was reared in Galilee due to a prophesy which foretold Jannaeus would inherit the kingdom (ANTIQUITIES 13:12:1), then, by clever use of his own genealogy's signature Matthew (Mattathias) to Joseph sequences, (accented with his signature Matthew to Matthew sequence dropped elsewhere in the puzzle), Josephus grafts his own line closer to that of his distant cousin: the Levite King Jannai (τοῦ Λευεὶ τοῦ Μελχεὶ τοῦ Ἰανναὶ: LUKE 3:24) and inserts these ciphers into LUKE's genealogy of Jesus precisely at the place when the Pharisee punisher King Alexander Jannaeus lived and reigned (LIFE 1, LUKE 3:23-25, Strabo GEOGRAPHY 16:2:40). The telescoped summary of Joe's view on Levite rule comes at the death of his own direct ancestor High Priest Jonathan, spoken from the mouth of Jonathan's brother Simon, who, at ANTIQUITIES (13:6:3), foreshadows the replacement of the resurrected Temple with the resurrected Messianic body; (regarding this Messianic host, cf. JOHN 2:19-21, 1 CORINTHIANS 3:14-17, EPHESIANS 2:11-22, 1 PETER 2:4-10, ACTS 4:1-22, then insert this whole edifice into LUKE 3:23, where Jesus is described as: ὢν υἱός, ὡς ἐνομίζετο, Ἰωσὴφ---"being son as it was supposed (ἐνομίζετο---i.e. in a legal manner of judgment/argument) of (of/by) Joseph[us]").



ABOVE: FAR LEFT AND FAR RIGHT FRAMES: COIN OF KING ANTIGONUS MATTATHIAS---LAST HASMONEAN HIGH PRIEST TO HOLD REGAL POWER: This coin of Mattathias is the only ancient Jewish coin to depict the Temple implements of Menorah and Showbread Table. The graphic of this coin represents the first die of more than twelve known dies of this issue, yet a total of only twenty-five specimens, from all the known dies combined, have surfaced until now. Rather than tender, this issue was plausibly a token exchangeable for arms at those smelters in the nation which opposed Herod and the Roman Legions coming to oust Mattathias and his Parthian sponsors. This bronze was forged at the same historical moment when Josephus so dramatically illustrates an angry old man throwing his own issue "down the precipice" of the cave complex at Arbel---fortress over Magdala. The Greek inscription around the Menorah reads: "King Antigonus." The Paleo-Hebrew inscription around the Showbread Table reads: "Mattatayah High Priest and Council of the Jews." CENTER FRAME: DIAGRAM OF A STONE CARVED IN RELIEF, FOUND IN A FIRST CENTURY B.C. SYNAGOGUE EXCAVATED AT MAGDALA: The Synagogue at Magdala is the most lavish of the half dozen known Synagogues which date from the Second Temple Period. The edifice was decorated with frescoes of the First Pompeiian Style, painted stone columns, carved stone pilasters, and a mosaic with evident royal symbology. Dating from 100 BC to 67 AD, this congregation of the local Jewish Council was built in the most defensible corner of the city, behind a thick seawall, against the steep slopes and narrow pass around Mount Arbel. Found in situ, against a long wall in a narrow room, and facing stone benches along the opposite wall, this carved stone almost certainly served as the base to a huge metal or wooden stand which held a very impressive scroll of the Torah. Here the WORD OF GOD stood upright in Magdala. The adjacent space which has been called "the reading room" of the Synagogue, was likely a scriptorium involved with both religious and temporal business. Like all the decorum in the Synagogue, no animals are depicted, though some geometric designs on the top of this stone base do seem to deliberately suggest (but not illegally depict) fish tails. Note how the seven branched Temple Menorah is represented flanked by columns. These represent the Temple's facade, whose idealization was once Solomon's Temple pillars called Boaz and Jachin, connecting the earth to the heavens. Some have hastily assumed that the stone jars shown beside this Menorah are amphorae of wine. This reasoning is no doubt partly attributable to shallow reads of certain prutah's from the Great Revolt which depict grape leaves on one side, then amphorae on the other. While the Holy intoxication implied, in the context of a sovereignty secured by bloody resistance, should indeed be interpreted as deliberate (and while there was indeed a great excess of good wine stored up in the Temple complex to aid in the attraction of strong unlettered youth towards the showdown), the jars on this Magdala Torah-stand base, (and even the amphorae on the Great Revolt coins in question), are better understood as jars stocked full of oil for the Temple Menorah. This reasoning discovers a Hasmonean connection which involves the Maccabean Hanukkah story. For whereas the Temple was indeed a stealth fortress, the gathering of siege stores for this fortress was the aim of representations of these oil jars (note the tank of oil in the base below the Magdala Menorah, which has its symbolic corollary in a diamond which surrounds the royal rosette in the Magdala Synagogue's mosaic floor). The provenance of the relevant phase of great civic works at Magdala, and hence the charter of this Magdala Synagogue/Concil of the Jews, is Hasmonean. The long, war-filled reign of Alexander Jannaeus was most important in the establishment of this community. A consensus is building that most or all depictions of the Menorah which date from the Second Temple Period are probably of priestly provenance. Whereas the Hasmonean King was High Priest, the priestly connections in his dominion's newest outposts like Magdala, were undoubtedly of Hasmonean affiliation. Thus when Magdala is mentioned in the lists of priestly abodes composed after the Temple's destruction, this can not be taken to preclude a colony of Temple priests in Magdala while the Temple still functioned. Moreover, this same reasoning should be extended to Nazareth, which also appears on these lists. For Josephus points this way with the priestly connection he riddles into Mary through Elizabeth and Zechariah. Consider that when Varus razed Sepphoris to the ground and enslaved its inhabitants, the priestly colony which the Hasmoneans planted at Sepphoris would naturally have wanted to retain control of the adjacent pastures and fields allotted to them. While Antipas, using Roman law, might have gotten away with appropriating whatever property this priestly clan the Hasmoneans planted in Sepphoris had previously held inside the now destroyed city (a city repopulated by Herodians and foreigners which the Hasmonean sponsored priests were likely not interested in joining anyway), Antipas would have had a much harder time evicting the entire clan of these Temple priests from any nearby holdings, no matter what innuendo might have connected any individuals among them to the 4 BC revolt which ensued when Great Herod died. The Roman/Herodian consumption of the Hasmonean state and its institutions, while steady and progressive, was paced for least resistance. Nevertheless it would explode like a tinderbox, despite the attempt at finesse. Fire Marshall Joe was master of the matches, when the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord arrived. 



This super-coiled loop into the history of Magdala/Tarichea, circles back upon the Roman Longinus through certain epic milestones in the controversial reign of Alexander Jannaeus. In one of its literary contexts, Joe's "rushed" meme ties the Hasmonean root to trampling pigs, in ways that are perhaps Joe's attempt to explain the more controversial actions which this dynasty of his relatives pursued in their hurry to preserve the legacy of the WORD. One of the most questionable of these tacts was their polite sacrifices to Hercules at the Ara Maximus in Rome's Forum Boarium. Such offerings were a standard respect which was expected of any Second Century BC diplomat as they entered the great city through the Porta Trigemina. No petty power could overlook these ritual observances without paying the price of returning from Rome with empty hands. The autonomy of the Hasmonean state would have never been achieved without fulfilling the standard modes of contemporary diplomacy then required by the colossal Pagan power on the Tiber---an empire which was by then already tracking on its inevitable collision course with Yahweh's Jerusalem Temple. The Hasmoneans were stuck with having to rely upon Roman support to shore up Israel just enough to pull a Messianic victory out of the inevitable military defeat on their horizon (1 MACCABEES 8:1, 8:13, 8:17-32, 12:1-4, 14:15-17, 15:15-24,  2 MACCABEES 4:11,  11:34-38, ANTIQUITIES 12:10:6, 13:5:8, 13:7:3, 13:9:2). There is however a pregnant silence regarding any relations at all between Alexander Jannaeus and the Romans, either friendly or hostile. His conquest of Gaza, and of Hellenistic cities which would become the Decapolis, could not have met with Roman approval, prompting the conclusion that the final expansion of the Hasmonean state was afforded by a chaos, with which, Rome was preoccupied at home during the reign of Jannaeus (103-76 BC), whereas while Jannaeus reestablished Eretz-Israel, the Romans were in disarray from the Second Servile War from 104-100 BC, the Social War from 91-88 BC, Sulla's First Civil War from 88-87 BC, the Sertorian War from 82-72 BC, Sulla's Second Civil War from 82-81, and the Rebellion of Lepidus in 77 BC. Shortly after Jannaeus died, Italy erupted in the open anarchy of the Third Servile War (73-71 BC), wherein close to a quarter of a million slaves were on the loose in the boot, until Crassus defeated Spartacus, then marked his victory with the crucifixion of 6000 of the violent runaways along Rome's Appian Way. On average, Crassus had each cross planted 100 feet from the next, so that each cross could be seen from the next along the entire length of Rome's 350 mile long highway. To be fair to poor golden-mouthed Crassus, when one considers the relative sizes of the realms they ruled, the crucifixion of 800 Pharisees by Jannaeus was every bit as cruelly spectacular. However Rome's slaves and gladiators were guilty of a very different kind of treason, than were the Pharisees who hated the rushed program of King Jannaeus so much, they stooped to betray the independence of the nation to the Pagans. 

ABOVE: HIGHLIGHTED GRAPHIC RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROYAL SEAL OF KING ALEXANDER JANNAEUS, BASED UPON AN BULLA IMPRESSION WHICH SURFACED FROM THE ISRAELI ANTIQUITIES MARKET IN 1975: The seal gives the king's theophoric Hebrew name Jonathan (Yehu-Nathan) which means "Yahweh's-Gift." The name Nathaniel is a parallel Elohist synonym, with the more generic meaning: "God's-Gift." This seal is the earliest known use of a date-palm as a symbol of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew calligraphy, reconstructed within the constrained space, depicts the letters given by the 1981 analytical report of N. Avigad. Use of Paleo-Hebrew script on Hasmonean seals, and especially on their coinage, is somewhat mysterious, whereas that script had long fallen out of general use. By 500 BC, Aramaic square letters were employed for even the scrolls of Holy Scripture, with the one exception of the instances where the divine name Yahweh ("YHWH") occurs in the texts. Thus God's name was still written in Paleo-Hebrew, although the rest of the Torah was otherwise penned in the more intelligible Aramaic square script. Somehow this reverent retention of Paleo-Hebrew for the name Yahweh would, in time, contribute to a terrible capital innovation. Consider therefore how this seal of Jannaeus, with its provocative yet ineluctable division of Jannaeus's theophoric name into its two roots, along with the greater size of the title "King" (M-L-K)---with all that root's highly negative narrative possibilities---fit with Jannaeus's disregard for Pharisaic halachic sensibilities. His worst detractors were these enforcers of a corrupted, so-called literalist interpretation of the WORD. Their obfuscationist paradigm whittled-down the WORD and Yahweh into skin deep caricatures. This self-anointed religious police-force micromanaged all contracts and Sabbath observances until Israel's God was so inaccessible to the people that His name could not be spoken. Such rigid and reactionary innovation, which rose in force over time in relation to the adoption of Aramaic and the challenge of Hellenism, had, in effect, become much more idolatrous than the less superstitious belief system of Jannaeus and his Hellenized, (moreover quite literate and geopolitically wise), Judean milieu. Ironically, the ruler's xenophobic Pharisaic detractors were not capable of fully comprehending how Rome was the Molech on the horizon against whom Jannaeus was racing to prepare the nation and its legacy for an inevitable showdown---in full compliance with a truer, and unassailably more circumspect, weighing of the WORD. Hence the double-edged wit of the King of the Jews fell on many ears irate in their intransigent tone deafness. 
The palm trunk on the seal of Jannaeus, exhibits a deliberate likeness for the war club of a Samsonic Hercules, discussed with further illustrations below. For a deliberate contrast, the artistic flourishes of the color highlight in this reconstruction have actually obscured the round, un-palm-like knotting, evident on the original design, as seen on the parallel seal in the following illustration. The reconstruction of the seal is here framed by points to some of the puzzles alluding to Jannaeus in the Gospel. Key to hearing these, is the knowledge, that since at least the time of Jannaeus, through the time of Jesus, and on into the Great Revolt, it was the Hasmonean "princes" or "rulers" (שָׂר sar: root S-R) who were the genitive possessors of the gardens identified by the geographical moniker Genosar (גניסר G-N-S-R: "Gardens of the Rulers," the name of the fertile plain which lays between Capernaum and Magdala). In WARS Josephus transliterates this into Greek Γεννησὰρ (Gennesar), in the Gospels Γεννησαρέτ (Gennesaret). The doubled n, not present in the original Hebrew pun גניסר, nor its source כנרות (LXX Κενερὲθ), neatly affords the wordplay's amble on into the Gospel variants to the name of a high place on the southwest approach to Sepphoris called both Nazara Ναζαρά, and Nazareth Ναζαρέτ, Ναζαρὲθ. This ornate phonic hook which morphs Gennesareth with Nazareth, baits the seeker further with Joe's fabulous branch of the Nile at Gennesar, a fantastic anomaly he conjectures due to a local Nile-Fish, with which he ciphers the Priestly course of Hapizzez resident at Nazareth, via a suggested bilingual Egyptian/Latin pun: Hapi-Pisces.
All this prompts the students of the arch-scholiast to nibble, all the more gingerly, on the line of God's-gift which lures the ego on with the faux-slam: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The Hasmonean prince become ruler---King Jannaeus---did indeed come out of Galilee. Connect the dots: from Jannaeus's youth and education spent in Galilee due to his dishonor in the family (ANTIQUITIES 13:12:1), to the dishonor of Jesus at Nazareth (MARK 6:4, LUKE 4:16-30, on into king Jannai's own dishonor in his hometown---Jerusalem (ANTIQUITIES 13:13:5). This braiding is validated by Jannaeus's inclusion as Jesus's ancestor Ἰανναὶ Jannai at LUKE (3:23-25), the proof for which is detailed in the next seal illustration's caption. The Messianic body is immaculately conceived at Nazareth in 7-6 AD, in the odes LUKE (1:26-37) sings to the dishonored Mary (whom Gospel gives as both Μαριά "Maria" and Μαριάμ "Mariam," both short for Μαριάμη 'Mariamne'---the name of Herod's Hasmonean royal-flesh bridge, burned so unjustly in a scandal with a Joseph). Whereas the Messianic body is the successor to the aggressive patriotism and Messianic plan of none other than Jannaeus himself, this Messianic body gets merged with Jannai's legacy, in the literary memorial to Jannai hidden in the subtext of the Nathan Pericope which forwards JOHN:
   THE  NATHAN  PERICOPE  CLOBBERS  NAZARETH --- ROYALLY   
Nathaniel said to him: Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
Philip said to him: "Come and see!" 
Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward Him 
                      (coming toward Jesus, hence approaching Messianic kingship)  
And [Jesus] said: "Here is an Israelite! In that there is no deceit!"             
Nathaniel asked Him: "Where do you know me from?" 
Telling him the Jesus answers: 
"Before Phillip called you I saw you under the fig-tree"
                       (I saw you in the Temple before love called you) 
Nathaniel responded: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" 
Telling him the Jesus answers: 
"You believe this because I said to you I saw you under the fig tree? 
You will see greater things than that!"  (greater things than Herod's expensive Temple)
Then He lays it down for him: "Truly, truly I tell you! You will see the sky open! 
And the angels of God will ascend and descend on the Son of Man!"  
(You---YES YOU---will be the Temple of Yahweh, and the legacy of Hasmonean piety will continue to increase despite the Temple's destruction! God willing it!)  
---JOHN (1:43-51)  
Israel's King Jannai was rejected in the Jerusalem Temple, in circumstances Jesus and the Galilean sect later recalled when they too were rejected in the Jerusalem Temple. These were signs that the Temple had run its course of life, to enter into the stage of its final climactic purpose. Seeking to not only maintain, but expand the preeminent legacy of the WORD in a world without a stone Temple, Josephus needed to make sense of the Temple's destruction to his audience. Using the disciple Nathan-El, (a reflexive doppelganger for King Jannaeus, whose proper Hebrew name was Yehu-Nathan), Josephus identifies the seeds of the Temple's demise in the citrons pelted at King Jannaeus in the Temple's inner court. There and then did the Maccabean effort reach high noon, with the precarious union of church and state---priest and king---teetering on the edge, as Jannaeus was unleashing all the power at his disposal to protect the union of Galilee and Judaea---Israel together with Judah---in a united Messianic kingdom of Eretz-Israel, reformed by the wit and effort of Jannai's Divinely inspired lineage. 
Like the fig tree, the Temple was a symbol of the fecundity and security of Israel (1 KINGS 4:25, PROVERBS 27:18, JOEL 2:21-25, LUKE 13:6-9, SONG 2:13, MARK 11:12-20, MATTHEW 24:1-2, 24:32-35). Once the religious observance degenerated into a so called literal interpretation of the WORD, it set up the conditions which allowed social justice to steadily erode in the interest of a segment of the religious elite who appeased foreign powers at the expense of native powers and peoples, while they themselves remained well ensconced by their corrupt literalist system. The critical phase of this process took place under the Romans and Herodians, as the burdens of the yearly Roman tribute tax, a strictly enforced Temple tax, and further Herodian fees and taxes, increasingly forced many young men into debt and drove them off the land---offering a multitude the choice between brigandage or slavery. The Nathaniel Pericope is only in JOHN, and it is only there, in that one brief allusion to the fig tree metaphor at the center of that pericope, that one will find any mention at all of a fig tree in the entire text of JOHN. In order to understand the Nathaniel Pericope, Josephus requires that his readers study how he employs the Old Testament roots of the fig tree metaphor in his three earlier Gospels. Add to this that the name "Nathan" is only mentioned in the JOHN gospel, and JOHN only mentions Nathan once outside the Nathaniel Pericope. In fact, the way Nathan concludes the first chapter of JOHN, forwards that Gospel with Nathan's Pericope, then, due to the rarity of his cameo, Nathan also sort of introduces the last chapter of JOHN, where Nathan is qualified among the witnesses to a social justice puzzle, which concludes the JOHN Gospel with the appearance of the resurrect Jesus beside the catch of 153 predatory Biny-fish. There Nathan is identified as a resident of Cana. His Hellenized character, like that of King Alexander Jannai before him, is indicated by his pairing with the Greek named Philip, and thus his conflation in the Synoptic Gospels with another Greek named disciple---Bartholomew (Bar-Ptolemy: a name with roots in Canaan both pre-Alexandrian and ostensibly pre-Judges, whereas along with proto-Hellenic names Anak, Macaah, and other key proto-Hellenic loan words in Hebrew, this Indo-European name so particular to the Davidic lineage, represents what is best described here as a current of the Dananoi/Denyen element which penetrated into the Levant right onto the Kings Highway, from Sidon, through Geshur). Nathan's identity as a Galilean from Cana sets up multiple contexts for the line: "Here is an Israelite---in that there is no deceit!" (among which cf. GENESIS 49:16, without missing, that whether it be the province of a fabulously ornate historical metaphor, or even if it be an otherwise totally evacuated archaism, the fact remains that the Hasmonean nativity at Modi'in sprang out of Joshua's seafront lot for Dan---a lot whose inland capital was at a junction evidently later refashioned into Emmaus-Nicopolis). Joe's emphasis of the truth in the stock of Galilee's Israelite roots, ultimately snaps a down to earth shot of the big bad royal Jannai, not merely with reference to Jannai's northern upbringing, but for Jannai's quick and timely cementing together, and competent rule, of Eretz-Israel---a Herculean feat if ever there was one.
Josephus crafted a second set of allusions to Jannai, which are rooted in the same Nazareth/Nazarene nexus. The seeker begins to get an inkling, that these hairy word roots themselves somehow point to a special connection linking the Jesus movement to King Jannai and the Hasmoneans. The Nazareth conception is central to the braiding together of Jesus with Samson in the interplay between MATTHEW (2:23) and JUDGES (13:5, 16:17), realizing that the Hebrew Nazareth (Natzaret נצרת) comes from A): the trilateral N-TZ-R root meaning "to guard," "keep safe," and sometimes even "keep secret" or "keep hidden," all evidently shoots off from an early word for "branch," or "bough," and reflecting the protection and shelter that tree branches provide from the sun, wind, and rain, both naturally and by their use in construction and horticultural supports, moreover used figuratively for a human line of descent, as in "a branch of the family." In contrast Nazirite (Nazir נזיר) comes from B): the trilateral root N-Z-R, with the meaning of "separated" or "consecrated [to God]." 
Thus this-here purple sidebar, waxing under Jannai's seal illustration, must briefly branch-off further from the Roman stints of Cassius Longinus at Gennesareth, to set up the context for Samson's seismic quaking of Emmaus, which shook the contemporary gastric disease to its urban Italic epicenters, in Joe's most solemn wake. Via slip up and down the following fault-planes in the WORD, the ginormous body of the Samsonic Nazarene brought down many temples:

  (A): ANGEL  VISITS  NAZARETH  MAMA  MARY   
Moreover in the sixth month God sent the angel Gabriel to a city (πόλιν polin, not only a "city," but also body of citizens) in Galilee whose name was Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the name of the virgin was Mariam ... and the angel said to her: "Fear not Miriam! For you have truly found favor with God! Now behold (also: "Though realize"), you will conceive in stomach! (ἐν γαστρὶ--en gastri: "in [your] stomach," or even: "inside a stomach," whereas the Greek "stomach" (gastri) was also a euphemism for a "gourmand," "epicure," or "glutton")! And you will call the name of Him ! ---: "Jesus!" ("Yahweh's Deliverance!" i.e. Joshua! [Help Me Please!]) He will be huge! (Like Samson/Hercules and even Athronges!) And He will be called "Son of the Most High [God]" (a quality not only acclaimed for David by the Jews, but also acclaimed for Hercules by the Greeks and Romans. Realize that many of the most important Hebrew titles of God, including "El," "Elyon," and "Elohim," are titles borrowed from a Pagan context and used in a Monotheistic one). And the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He (Jesus: "Yahweh's Deliverance"!) will reign over the House of Jacob (i.e. over Israel) to [the end of] the ages. And His kingdom will never end. ---:(note the emphasis on the importance of names, which highlights how the prompt to call the theophoric name "Jesus" circumvents---even mocks---the taboo on speaking "the name" Yahweh).
---LUKE  (1:26-33) (in LUKE this extract (A) follows right after extract (D) below)
  
  (B): HE  WILL  BE  CALLED  A  NAZARENE    
Moreover having been recruited (χρηματισθεὶς, from χρημα---a legally binding agreement, hence recruited to public action or service up to an understood standard) in a dream (come true!), He (He/he---: Joe) returned to the district of Galilee, and having come he dwelt in a city (πόλιν polin) called Nazareth, so that it would be fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophets, that He will be called a Nazarene. 
---MATTHEW (2:22-23) 


  (C): ANGEL  VISITS  NAZIRITE  SAMSON'S  MAMA  
Now there was a certain man of Zorah of the families of the Danites whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and had not given birth. And the angel of Yahweh appeared to the woman and said to her: "Behold, now you are barren and have not given birth, but you shall conceive and bear a son. I pray therefore you now beware and do not drink wine or any strong drink nor eat anything unclean. For behold you will conceive and bear a son, and a razor (מורה --- this word literally means: "an exchange(r)" or "a substitute") will never levy (עלה --- the same root can mean both "go up" and "take away," "grow," and "chew") upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.  
---JUDGES (13:2-5) 
The Samsonic size Gabriel predicts for Mary's delivery from Yahweh, near the end of the first chapter of LUKE (1:26-33, (A)), quietly sets up the Nazarene bait and switch allusion that MATTHEW (2:22-23 (B)) spins off Danite Samson's placental Naziritism in JUDGES (13:2-5, (C)). To confirm for the reader that they are not imagining this bait-and switch from Nazarene to Nazirite, the earlier portion of the same first chapter of LUKE (1:1-15, (D)), embeds an even neater allusion to the text of Samson's placental Naziritism in JUDGES (13:2-5, (C)), laying the Nazirite references even more completely into the lines which describe Baptist cousin John's annunciated coeval gestation with Jesus. Gabriel works this additional Divine sampling of JUDGES (C) on Mary's cousin Liz (D), right before Gabe's herald of Mary's gastronomical giant (A): 


  (D): FATHER-MERCY,  THE  NAZIRITE,  AND  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT  
There was a certain priest named Zechariah of the division Abijah, and his wife named Elizabeth was of the daughters of Aaron ... and they had no child because Elizabeth was barren ... an angel of the Lord appeared to him (to Zechariah while he was on duty as Priest in the Jerusalem Temple) to the right of the altar of the incense (right in front of the veil which separated the most "Holy Place" or "Holy of Holies" from the rest of the Temple)... then the angel of the Lord said to him: "Fear not Zechariah for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear a son to you, and you will call the name of Him---: "Yohanan!" ("Yahweh's Mercy!" i.e. John) He will indeed be huge before the Lord, and wine and strong drink no not shall he drink (unlike English, in both Greek and Hebrew usages, double negatives do not indicate a positive, but are still a negative---in Greek an emphatic negative, except of course when the emphasis is hyperbole), for he will be filled of the Holy Spirit (in both Greek and Hebrew also: "Holy Wind" or "Holy Breath") even from his mother's womb. ---: (note again the double-edged prompt to call a theophoric name, this time "John." There would be such a huge mass of cries for mercy from Yahweh after the murder of Herod's Mariamne, that Yahweh would bring on the last prophecy in the Tanakh---His Great and Terrible Day: cf. LUKE 1:17, MALACHI 4:1-6). 
---LUKE (1:1-15) (segues right into extract (A)) 
When collating this passage of LUKE to its source in JUDGES, one must first notice, how the parallelism of the composition, tangles the concept of Naziritism with that of the Holy Spirit (τοῦ Πνεύματος τοῦ Ἁγίου). The Hebrew phrase "Holy Spirit" (רוח הקודש) is only used three times in the Old Testament (PSALM 51:11, ISAIAH 63:10,63:11). It could not have been lost on the ears of Galileans, that ISAIAH 63 speaks of a time when there is no Jerusalem Temple (63:18), when a wrathful Holy Spirit had vacated that sanctuary in anger (63:10), and was called to return to the people in the form of a Messiah who would tread the winepress of slaughter, to soak his raiment dripping red with the blood of Edom, which, for the Galilean Sect, offered a clear cipher for the Edomite Herodians, and their master---Rome. This martial kink on Naziritism, is reflected with the "rising and felling of many in Israel," which Jesus Himself was to cause, by a 'soul piercing sword' in LUKE 2:28-35 (cf. DEUTERONOMY 33:29, JEREMIAH 4:18). The discussion will thus need to gradually elaborate, how due to the official ban on a Nazirite's presence at a human death (a regulation Samson likewise flouts with a great flourish), this martial transformation of the Nazirite would not be permissible---that is unless and until one realizes the meaning behind the Zealot wedding at Cana (where mikveh water stored in stone jars for ritual purification purposes, is transformed into bloody New Covenant wine), which ciphers a blood-bath mikveh related to Messianic Baptism. The Hebrew concept of the "Holy Spirit" (or more technically "Spirit of the Holy Place"---i.e. Yahweh's) speaks of Yahweh's presence (or Shekhinah שְׁכִינָה) before the Ark of the Covenant, normally seated behind the Temple veil. Access to this presence by the King of Israel (i.e. the Messiah), imparted prophetic insight through communion with God's angels (i.e. "messengers"). The title "Son of God" was one of Messianic kingship (PSALM 89:26-28, PSALM 2:6-7). Like the breath of Yahweh which brought Adam to life out of the soil, the Holy Spirit resuscitated the Messianic movement at the death of Jesus, when the veil before the Holy Place was torn asunder with His dying breath (MARK 15:38, LUKE 23:45, MATTHEW 27:49-51, all blowing in a matrix which out-gasses into the province of earth science with JOHN 19:34-35, 20:20-22, 20:27-29, 2 SAMUEL 22:2-4, DANIEL 2:34-35, which then grades on into David's missile in MATTHEW 16:13-20: where the "rock" morphs into the very concept, that the everyday mortal man of faith---Ben Adam: the Son of Man---who suffers, dies, and is buried, is by nature a Son of the Living God, and a Messiah of an everlasting kingdom). Israel itself had been set apart as a royal nation---the Son of God among the Gentiles in the macro sense, as best stated by Moses himself in DEUTERONOMY (32:1-43), where the lines of DEUTERONOMY (specifically: 32:3, 32:15, and 32:18), get amplified regarding vocalization of the name "Yahweh" in a Galilean context, with: ACTS (4:10-12), 1 PETER (5-7), LUKE (20:9-19), etc.---all evidently composed in the wake of spontaneous Messianic appeals of protest, cried aloud in the Temple at Passover by fed-up masses commandeering PSALM 118 (ponder this boisterous crowd as the collective Jesus in LUKE 20:19). Once the Galilean Sect came of age, the title to kingship/sonship was understood as the province of every initiate in the body of Christ---where "Christ" is the Greek word "Anointed," which translates the Hebrew word "Messiah," which in turn refers to Yahweh's King (LUKE 3:21, 6:35, ROMANS 8:14, MATTHEW 5:9). Hence the inspired texts tell that to be "Christian," is to be filled with the presence of Yahweh and execute functions of a Messianic King whose kingdom will never end. The Great Revolt can not be understood without this "Nazarene" doctrine, which signaled a rejection of the corrupted Jerusalem Temple, by a critical mass of the "preserved" shoots of Israel who had for centuries made the Second Temple the focus of their worship, but who, after Roman/Herodian rule superseded the Hasmonean Kingdom, soon became of a united aim to cleanse that once Holy House or destroy it. In the context of hurling the stone at Rome, Yahweh's establishment of a mock sacrificial system for a Temple He would one day destroy for good, can be viewed as though it were the necessary fashioning of a trick sling-shot, trimmed, with all the bells and whistles of a cosmic drama, for a life or death revelation to the human species.      
Pulling this sling back into the playful statement of MATTHEW 2:23 (B): "So that it would be fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophets (prophets plural, hence spoken by more than one prophet, or in the books of the prophets taken together as a division of the Tanakh), that He would be called a Nazarene," one will quickly find that this prophetic tension is not so enigmatic as the commentators of clueless doctrines present it. Though the analysis (connecting extracts A-D) definitively shows Josephus couches this riddle in allusions to a prophetic herald of Samson's birth as a Nazarite from the womb, it must be considered that if the Greek title Nazarene transliterates a form from the Hebrew N-TZ-R root---as the implied harmony of the title Nazarene with the place Nazareth suggests, then the seeker must search elsewhere for Old Testament prophecies which make a more succinct fit with the mundane criterion of MATTHEW (2:23), than does the revolutionary repackaging of the N-TZ-R root inside the N-Z-R root of a super-mundane Nazirite Samson. Commentators who are caught in clueless doctrines, while having rightly pointed at the tighter fit found in ISAIAH 11, have done so without anything but a superficial understanding of what ISAIAH 11 is all about, whereas they merely focus on the first line which displays the proper trilateral root. However the red branch in ISAIAH (11:1) adorns a prophecy concerned first with Jerusalem's fall to the Babylonians, at the very end of what the spurious divisions of ISAIAH have very suspiciously made into the previous chapter (10). This sudden break blurs the distinction between the fall of Assyria and the fall of Judah, to such an extent, that the average reader is robbed of the crucial context to the sprouting of ISAIAH's new Messianic Branch:

MIGHTY  WHITEY  WILL  FALL  AND  A  ROD  WILL  RISE  FROM  JESSE'S  STUMP 
Behold! With a terrible crash, the Lord Yahweh of the Armies will lop off the bough (פֻּארָ֖ה first of several synonyms for "Branch" in a matrix of horticultural metaphors for human social structure), and cut down the ones of high stature (elite humans likened unto high tree branches), and the haughty will be humbled (the glittering canopy falls to the decay on the floor). For with iron (i.e with swords) He will cut down the thickets of the forest (i.e. destroy the clan structures which organize the populace), and the mighty Lebanon will fall (here juts the summit to a mountain of Biblical evidence that reveals it was for more reasons than just the provenance of its many Cedar pillars, that Solomon's Jerusalem palace was called "House of the Lebanon Forest," (literally "House of the Forest of Whiteness"), whereas here this palace becomes a simile for the royal family and nobility of the Kingdom of Judah, when the palace is read properly embedded in its context within the underlying horticultural simile wherein wood represents the history and qualities of people; thus this clause calls the "House" (i.e. the royal line) of David/Solomon: "the Great White One,"  (or the "Mighty Whitey" as it were) whereas לְבָנוֹן "Lebanon" means "[Place of] Whiteness," (cf. 1 KINGS 7:2, 10:17, 10:21, 2 KINGS 14:9, 2 CHRON 9:16, etc.; and furthermore consider also the implied melanin deficiency of Jacob's Aramean Father-in-Law "Laban," mythic sire of the favorite womb(s) of Israel). This is not racism; it is the unvarnished historical narrative. Truth is endangered, if, out of some misplaced politically correct chivalry, all discussion shies away from these mythologized demographic testimonies. Ignoring the inconvenient minorities of the past does not promote a harmonious future. Ultimately, the palace simile gives another clue to the import of Phoenicia in this ruling family, in its Temple, and in its rise to power, all summed up by ISAIAH in similes, as this family tree-house was about to get lost, right here, in the abyssal gap between ISAIAH CHAPTER 10 and ISAIAH CHAPTER 11---a spurious editorial break that ... "will fall")! And a rod (חֹ֖טֶר both a "twig," or ordinary wooden "stick," and also a "staff [of office]," here as a "shoot" of new growth after injury) will come forth from the stump of Jesse. And a Branch (נֵ֫צֶר --- netser, pronounced nay'-tser: this is the trilateral N-TZ-R word: "Branch": a horticultural term used in human genealogy---a new family line: literally the "Keeper(s)," "Guard(s)," or "Preserver(s)" of the paternal name and/or tradition) will rise from his roots ... And it will again come to pass in that day, the Lord will set His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people (a second Exodus), those who still remain will be recovered from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hammath, and from the islands of the Sea. And He will lift up a sail in the nations, and the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah will be gathered from the four corners of the earth ... And He will shake his hand over the River [Euphrates] with his scorching wind, and strike its seven streams (i.e. strike it in all seven of its major tributaries), and make it so they will be crossed dry-shod. Then there will be a highway for his people who are left in Assyria, like it was for Israel in the day He came up out of Egypt.
---ISAIAH (10:33-11:16)  
This extended extract is essential, for when the standard commentaries give the curt: "there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots," they miss all the important points. Three things here are key. First, ISAIAH's prophecy indicates that, with a mighty crash, Judah's royal branch would be lopped off beneath David's line---where the depth of this pruning is the important point not to miss. The fact that the Babylonians pruned the Branch so flush to the trunk, leaves unavoidable consequences for the succession. These consequences are deliberately dramatized by an elaborate charade Joe choreographs to chasten his audience, with charts of two wildly divergent genealogies of Jesus he gives in MATTHEW and LUKE. The steps on these charts are followed to the letter most seriously only with the sobering awareness that the narratives of both of these dramatically trimmed Davidic genealogical trees make it very plain that Jesus is not in fact the genetic son of the Joseph who is the purported direct line from David! The point is, that beyond what is in the end an irrelevant controversy regarding Joseph's right to rule or bequeath a united kingdom (where in that end one may find his playful allusion to a jealousy of the Hasmoneans), the Jesus movement only descends upon the throne of Zion by adoption. Anyone who unchastely sought a literal direct descendant of David in these contradictory genealogical riddles of the Gospel, got served---royally, by ignoring the adoption spoiler pivot upon which they agree. For Babylon pruned the royal branch completely off the tree, beneath where David arose from shepherd to king. Therefore, although the Messiah ISAIAH expects would be of the same stock David came from, he would not descend specifically from David. Instead the Messiah would come from the roots (plural) of Jesse, (which of course are also the roots from which David arose, with the very notable exclusion of the Moabite roots of Ruth). 
The Gospel genealogy riddle is in very close accord with the reference REVELATION (22:16) makes to ISAIAH's passage about this Branch: "I Jesus have sent my messenger to testify about these things to the assemblies: "I am: the root and the nation of David: the bright Morning Star," for while γένος --- genos (here "nation," "family," "type") does indeed, with a likeness to the cyclical nature of the appearance of the planet Venus at the break of each solar day, make a play on the further dual meaning "offspring," "descendant," (or even the neglected "successor") with which genos may be translated in this passage, it should however not be missed that the most direct human line which this prose portrait describes, is the recurrent persona, or adopted "Son," of He Who Is (i.e. both the creator and the harbinger of survival). Beyond any daytime likeness to the Galilean Sect as a whole, the Hasmonean monarch who ruled right before their sectarian dawn, most definitely fits both the literal and figurative senses of this pedigree puzzle first posed by ISAIAH (11). For although---like Jesus---Jannaeus was a Levite, Josephus tells that a prophet had foretold Jannaeus (Yehu-Nathan) would be king, just as David had been indicated king only by the prophet Nathan---not at all by any patrilinear descent from Jesse. Hence lays the further allegorical drama Joe encrypts with his competing genealogies of the adopting father Joseph: one pedigree through royal descent from famous Solomon, and one pedigree through the non regal son Nathan, who is an entirely uncolored character but for the faint pastel of his shared name with the prophet in question, a color which gets brightened into neon via Nathan's anomalous doppelgangers which David sires beside him in the Septuagint. It must be emphasized that this genre of literary device is not the invention of Josephus, but the very fabric of the Hebrew Old Testament itself.
The second key point regards what the N-TZ-R passage from ISAIAH (11) tells us of the Messiah's active nature. ISAIAH's Messiah is a Zionist deliverer. Hard to distinguish from Moses himself (or Yahweh for that matter), he brings the captive Israelites back into their promised land, which goes on to win itself defensible borders. Read the rest of ISAIAH CHAPTER 11, and hear how ISAIAH's Messiah will conquer Philistia, and subject Edom, Ammon and Moab. Wherever so-called Christian doctrines expect the return of a single apocalyptic Messiah, their dogma always reaches the acme of its cluelessness, for their doctrine's saccharin Messiah is anathema to the temporal politics described by Isaiah's Zionist expectation. Not even in the most modern, independent, pro-Israel Christian congregation, is one likely to ever hear ISAIAH 11 read in its entirety, for in their doctrinal context it becomes a troublesomely murderous prophecy, which sees their Jesus raze Gaza to the ground, plunder Jordan, and who knows, perhaps even make a rush or two into Saudi Arabia. Holy Jesus! We hardly knew Ye! Begin the introductions vis a vis ISAIAH (11) and the deliberate wordplay in the scriptures which links the words Messiah, and Moses with Manasseh (i.e. Manasseh where the Tribe of Dan leapt out of Bashan). Stop the lazy madness. However do note, that the great Alexander Jannaeus did already fulfill these, and other similar redemption prophecies of ISAIAH, (more on the implicit Mosaic imperative of this warmaking Messiah in due order). For now, in order to drive the third key point home, the discussion needs to mine two other prophetic shafts of the Nazarene's trilateral root. That third key will turn, on the not so lost Tribes of Israel. 
The Prophet Jeremiah's use of the N-TZ-R root exhibits growth from the context of Isaiah's prediction of a Messianic redemption and restoration of the "guarded," "kept," or "preserved" captives and exiles from the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The language of Jeremiah evidences how deeply the vocabulary itself was involved in the prophetic process, whereas the stanzas typically harness the full range of a words meaning---as though God's plan (the WORD) were in part augured directly out from the lexicography's own sacred core. Hence those who are the "guarded," "kept," or "preserved" portion, of an Israel worthy of redemption, are simultaneously styled as the "Keepers" of the covenant, and "Guards" of the faith, with the entire matrix of figurative expansions upon the protective uses of a "Branch," employed in the context of an Israel that is, in its most real and sacred sense, not some idyllic theocratic nation-state tucked away in an isolated corner of the globe like some lofty Shangri-La, but instead, with a great shear in the crust, right into the very violent down and dirty heart of all the nations, God planted a sobering vine, which the guard lines of the WORD support and protect:
 JEREMIAH'S  N-TZ-R  NATZIRITE,  REFERS  TO  NORTHERN  KINGDOM  ISRAELITES 
אם־תשוב ישראל ׀ נאם־יהוה אלי תשוב ואם־תסיר שקוציך מפני ולא תנוד׃ ונשבעת חי־יהוה באמת במשפט ובצדקה והתברכו בו גוים ובו יתהללו׃ ס כי־כה ׀ אמר יהוה לאיש יהודה ולירושלם נירו לכם ניר ואל־תזרעו אל־קוצים׃ המלו ליהוה והסרו ערלות לבבכם איש יהודה וישבי ירושלם פן־תצא כאש חמתי ובערה ואין מכבה מפני רע מעלליכם׃ ... ואמר אהה ׀ אדני יהוה אכן השא השאת לעם הזה ולירושלם לאמר שלום יהיה לכם ונגעה חרב עד־הנפש׃ בעת ההיא יאמר לעם־הזה ולירושלם רוח צח שפיים במדבר דרך בת־עמיהנה ׀ כעננים יעלה וכסופה מרכבותיו קלו מנשרים סוסיו אוי לנו כי שדדנו׃ כבסי מרעה לבך ירושלם למען תושעי עד־מתי תלין בקרבך מחשבות אונך׃ כי קול מגיד מדן ומשמיע און מהר אפרים׃ הזכירו לגוים הנה השמיעו על־ירושלם נצרים באים מארץ המרחק ויתנו על־ערי יהודה קולם׃
"Israel: If you would return" says Yahweh (i.e. would return to sovereignty in the land from out of captivity) "Then return to Me (i.e. return to keeping the covenant), for if you banish your filthy things from my presence without wavering, and if, in truth, justice, and righteousness, you will swear: "As Yahweh lives!" (i.e. swear again with full faith in Survival, even though Israel was vanquished by Assyria) then I will bless you in the Nations for glory. For this is what Yahweh has to say to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: (as the chapter bears out, much of Jeremiah's own prophetic stance was shared by the faithful remnant in the Northern Kingdom, both those who managed to avoid deportation and those who gradually escaped from exile to trickle back into Israel) "Break up your fallow ground and do not sew among thorns! (here lays the root of the Parable of the Sower, with all its instruction on the proper way to read the Bible; the thorns are the secular culture's gateways to the infertile sadistic sexuality of the marketplace.) Remove the foreskins from your hearts you men of Judah and Jerusalem! Circumcise yourselves to Yahweh! (these lines very specifically imply sadism and sexual misconduct, for in light of the cultural norms of behavior that Jeremiah rails against, the circumcisions of their flesh were without merit; cf. DEUTERONOMY 6:5, 30:6, 10:12-20, MATTHEW 22:36-37, LUKE 10:25-37, MARK 12:28-34, LEVITICUS 26:40-42, PSALM 51:10-12) Or, due to your evil deeds, My fury will arrive like a fire that burns without quenching! (i.e. you will become an unending sacrifice) ... Then I (Jeremiah) said: Alas Lord Yahweh! Surely you have beguiled this beguiling people and Jerusalem, saying: "You will have peace!" while the sword reaches to the soul (cf. LUKE 2:35 where, in the Jerusalem Temple, Mary is told by Simon (Thassi) that a sword will "pass through" her soul too; one can hardly overemphasize the importance which the prophetic pen of Josephus made of this chapter, especially this complicated line; hence reconsider JOHN 20:21 and MATTHEW 10:34). In its time this people and Jerusalem will speak of a dry wind from the peaks of the desert [blowing] upon the daughter of my people (a wrathful Divine spirit against Israel's daughter Jerusalem) ... See! He moves like the clouds! Whirlwinds for His chariots! His horses are swifter than eagles! (see how Joe pulls his Messianic victory out of the jaws of defeat by building on how DANIEL 7:13 resonates here: cf. MARK 14:62, MATTHEW 24:30) Woe to us! We are ruined! (i.e. "Woe to us Jerusalemites!" who comprise the city, hence: "Woe to Jerusalem! The City is destroyed!"  Oh Jerusalem, wash the wickedness from your heart and be saved! How long will your wicked schemes lodge inside you! (i.e. lodge: spend the night inside you, indulge at the inn---deliberately indicating that the sin rapes the sinner)! For from Dan a voice makes it known: Mount Ephraim's affliction is heard (down beyond the symbolic depth where "Dan" means "Judge" and the "Mound Ephraim" ultimately suggests the fruit of the human womb in the context of Jeremiah's wail against the Tophet, (whether that Tophet were right out in the open, or cleverly hidden in plain site by the elite twisted brutes of a society their Tophet enterprises degenerated), the sophistication to the composition's semantic dove-tails, implies the youth of Israel's remnant in the Mount Ephraim area was prey to the Jerusalem market). Report it to the Nations!: "See!" Proclaim against Jerusalem! Come Keepers! (come/return: "Keepers," "Guards," 'Branchees': this is the relevant prophetic use of the N-TZ-R root word: נצרים Notzerim---compare with "Nazareth": נצרת Natzaret; this crescendo of the chapter refers back to the Israelites recruited for glory in the prologue) [Come] from far away lands! And contribute your voices against Jerusalem! (surely these נֹצְרִ֥ים Notzerim are only worthy of this designation if they were what Jeremiah recruited: the moral trellis that supports and guards the sobering vine planted by the one and only true God of fertility and species survival; never were they, nor can they ever be, the "[Enemies]" which the translation in the 1998 COMPLETE JEWISH BIBLE (CJB) xenophobically paraphrases into English with absolutely no relation to the lexicographic root, and hence with little apparent respect for the moral intent of the prophetic WORD---a standing translational insult to the sound family values of the overwhelming majority of Jewish people everywhere. The translator of this passage in the CJB props up a stance, that on its surface suggests: "leave it to the (syndicate of) tenured authorities," which smacks of an extralegality all too familiar in Christianity and Islam as well; further depth to the CJB translator's paraphrase, intentional or unintentional, is indexed with a lexicographic table below.)
---JEREMIAH (4:1-16) 

Leaving aside for now, the pivotal humiliation, of the royal High Priest Jannai His predecessor, certainly the intractable Messianic movement of Jesus was the all-time paradigm of these Hebrew Cassandras, whom Jeremiah solicits here with scholastic flair. The commentary above cites the potent corollaries between the Gospels and JEREMIAH (Chapter 4), to establish that this call to witness JEREMIAH broadcasted five centuries earlier, resonated loudly and personally with those whose experience in post-Hasmonean Galilee smacked of a twisted betrayal by all segments of the national infrastructure centered in Jerusalem. Hence it should be no surprise that the modern Hebrew word for "Christians" is Notzerim הנוצריים, whereas these corollaries between the Gospel and JEREMIAH (4) provide provenance which connects this term with the Galilean Sect and thus with the very first Christians that movement recruited. The Spear of Destiny Puzzle points at how the roots of this term were buttressed by the voices and militias of the exiled tribes of Israel. Their song wails above and beyond the corollaries in the commentary above, a song wherein anyone familiar with the Gospel, should, upon reading JEREMIAH (4), immediately hear the resounding "Woes!" centered in the Little Apocalypse---"Woes!" with which Jesus proclaimed impending doom upon Jerusalem and the Temple via Rome, in the same manner as JEREMIAH predicted the earlier doom via Babylon. The Gospel's apocalyptic laments actually begin with the "Woe" Jesus cries out against the Roman world due to the abuse of children and revenge of the putti (MATTHEW 18:1-10), a Samsonic "Woe!" which will toss this sidebar back to the Spear of Destiny as it pierces the buttress at Magdala. 
 


ABOVE: THE WORD BECAME FLESH: In his signature style, it is only with the Nazarene vs Nazirite Riddle that Josephus reveals the Hebrew name by which the Zealots called themselves. This is resolved by: A) the Gospel corollaries to JEREMIAH (4), B) the Spear of destiny Puzzle, C) the mockery of Pagan Roman ceremony embedded in the Divinely inspired mythos of Samson. The English translation of the Tanakh named "The Complete Jewish Bible" (CJB), advertises its bias in its own very clever title, which espouses the opinion that the Greek Gospels are not Divinely inspired Jewish cannon. The authors of that volume might perhaps reconsider the influence of the late Septuagint tradition on the final Masoretic text. A tardy provenance to Samson's drama, can be viewed in relation to the post-Apocalyptic redactors of the Masoretic text working-around the taboo on voicing the name of the messenger who took on the name "Flavius." Hence their opinion may be resolved as quite different from the later redactors of the Talmuds, who like the authors of the CJB, propose that the Tanakh is complete without a Messiah or a Messianic movement. Holy Moses! That Zionism is Messianism by nature, is something that the Ultra-Orthodox who make anti-Zionist professions know intimately. Nevertheless, today all light the candle.  

The destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 AD was a prophesied time called “The Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh” (יום יהוה הגדול והנורא). Four decades earlier circa 30 AD, Jesus is already privy to the stellar plot of this prophecy, when His Little Apocalypse discourse points at the Jerusalem Temple and declares: “Do you see all of this? (i.e. see the huge blocks of Herod’s grand Temple) I tell you truly that there is not even a stone on top of a stone here that will not been thrown down … this generation will not pass away until all these things have unfolded” (MATTHEW 24:2...24:34). Jesus introduces this Little Apocalypse with seven cries of “Woe!” upon the Pharisees and Law Teachers who were His contemporaries (MATTHEW 23:13-39), wherein the seventh “Woe!” holds them responsible for this most epic destruction of Jerusalem, with that blame due to these Pharisees being the contemporary owners of the religious trait which continually tries to assassinate the prophetic WORD with a corrupt version of literalism. Read how these seven Pharisaic “Woes!” (MATTHEW 23:13-39) calculate bloodguilt from the Great and Terrible 70 AD, all the way back to when Cain murdered Abel at the very beginning of the world (MATTHEW 23:35-38); then take the refrain of that summation in the ensuing Little Apocalypse of MATTHEW (24:21): “There will indeed then be great tribulation, such as has not existed from the beginning of the world until now,” and compare it to its clear and deliberate parallel in WARS (1:0:4): “Accordingly it seems to me that all the misfortunes of all nations, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared with these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were (i.e. no nation’s misfortunes could compare with the gravity of Jewish misfortune centered about the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem. Joe continues:); while the authors of them (i.e. the authors of these misfortunes suffered by the Jews) were not foreigners, it makes it impossible for me to restrain my lamentations (i.e. it makes it impossible for Joe to restrain his “Woes!” whereas they flow from a great and terrible tradition).” This “Good Grief!” sleight of hand in Joe’s preface feigns to blame the Galileans, while the cross reference to the “Woes!” of MATTHEW (23:35-38) points instead at a Pharisaic target for his charges. 

The prophetic roots of this Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh are planted by the prophetic authors in: DANIEL 12:1, EZEKIEL 5:9, JOEL 2:2, and MALACHI 4:1-5. Whereas MALACHI prophesied against the Second Temple, the Pharisaic halacha which subsequently produced a defacto ban on any further prophecy, had a terribly emasculating effect on Judaism. Note that the Seven Woes Upon the Pharisees highlight the Yahwehist point to the spoken oath of JEREMIAH (4:2 in the commentary above): “you will swear: “As Yahweh Lives!,”” whereas the oath-governing rules that Jesus attacks in these Pharisaic “Woes!” (MATTHEW 23:16-22), were rules related to the Pharisaic taboo on speaking the name “Yahweh”---a taboo duly squashed by the argument of MATTHEW (23:21-22). Meanwhile, the new command Jesus gives, namely forbidding the swearing of any oaths at all (MATTHEW 5:33-35), was a proscription which incited revolt, whereas it duly prevented all Christians from swearing the obligatory oaths which the evil one Caesar required of citizens when transacting various forms of legal business, essentially the same oaths which evil Caesar expected from non citizen subjects as they paid the tribute tax. This New Covenant oath-ban was validated by the prompt to trump the empty piety of the Pharisees with an even more extreme paradigm of behavior pointed for wartime (MATTHEW 5:20); what’s more, it was necessitated by the sling-shot, stone Temple’s imminent self-destructive firing, vis a vis ISAIAH (66:1) and PSALM (11:4), (cf. ACTS 7:49, JAMES 5:12). Hence Jesus ends his Cassandra-pitched diatribe against the Pharisees and their Caesar-appeasing Jerusalem, by informing them via conundrum (at MATTHEW 23:38-39) that both: A) the Messiah is the Temple (i.e. “Delivery from Yahweh”) (23:38), and: B) they will never see the Messiah again (even if He be among them), as long as they literally refuse to bless anyone who “comes in the name of the Lord” (23:39), whereas the “name of the Lord” in question is “Yahweh.” This conundrum makes a Messianic point of unassailable capital logic, worthy of being pondered with circumspect awareness. For Jesus subverts the taboo on voicing God’s name while emphasizing how this Pharisaic halachah against vocalizing “Yahweh” could never conform to the Messianic jubilance of PSALM 118:26, a Psalm which this discussion has already connected to spontaneous Passover outbursts by Galilean pilgrims in Herod’s Temple---Galileans who sang the provocative lines of PSALM 118:25-26, which were indeed written to be sung aloud in chorus during that holiday: אנא יהוה הושיעה נא אנא יהוה הצליחה נא׃We pray Yahweh! Save us now! We pray Yahweh! Send us success now! Blessed is He who comes in the name of Yahweh! From the Temple of Yahweh we bless you!” Joe’s report prompts his students to calculate the costs, of the Pharisees rejecting Jannaeus in the Temple, and then rejecting the Galileans in the Temple after him, all while weighing how that cost accrues in both the temporal and spiritual realms, whereas it relates to stiff-necked Pharisaic pride, regarding a demonstrably corrupted ideology of the Divine and His intent, vis a vis His name “Yahweh.” The branches which shoot off Pharisaic Judaism should consider, that If the Hasmoneans and Jannaeus had not reinforced Israel to lead the resistance to Rome’s expansion into the Fertile Crescent, then Caesar’s idols would have been installed on the Temple Mount as objects of sworn oaths and worship before the reign of a Caligula, and Judaism would most likely never have won the respect and allies that allowed Pharisaic Judaism to survive and thrive, not merely despite, but in fact because of the Galilean revolt, while the two other major wars against Rome which followed it, prompted further Jewish led resistance to Trajan and Hadrian in Mesopotamia. 
The smart of Joe’s stinging laments, was no doubt related to the harsh criticism he himself received, for his surprisingly successful, if in places bitterly destructive, Messianic program. Any circumspect study of scripture will agree, that destruction of God’s Holy City and God’s Holy Temple, could only be wrought by God’s own will. The prohibition on speaking God’s name was tantamount to closing the book on all prophecy. Josephus knew too well that if there was any city and nation, whose situation made prophecy essential to its survival, it was his. The mysterious Messianic “work-around” Joe was inspired to craft to the need at hand, vindicates its own authority. That Joe continued to endeavor at such a laborious task that was so personally thankless at the human macro level, vindicates his own character, and exhibits his dedication to God and God’s WORD. Joe’s revilers might consider, that to those on other branches of the tree, the refusal to consider that the God of the Tanakh would never unleash the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem without sending a contemporary divinely inspired prophet, makes such a reviler’s faith in the Tanakh appear shallow and/or unreasoned. For if this messenger in the Great and Terrible Day of Yahweh was not Josephus, then who was it? 
Few are aware that Josephus, in his signature style, divides Jesus's gloomy voices of "Woe" between his Gospels and his historical memoirs. Hence the acme of these "Woes" is, most seriously, the acme of this planet's black comedy---the very "Woe is Me!" riddle belted out by a 70 AD reprise of Jesus Christ Super-Temple, in a climactic version of His woeful "Death before Slavery!" vow, broadcast in a fiery Yahwehist chicken dance finale, from atop the Roman besieged wall of Jerusalem.     
In ISAIAH (11:1), where the Messiah will be a "branch" that springs from the Davidic lineage of Jesse. With regards to this bait and switch allusion to Samson, one must contemplate that the conflict between Jannaeus and Roman officials hit closest to home inside the contemporary legacy of Philistine power, at the free-ports of Gaza which Jannaeus captured to take control of the departure points where the Arabian branch of the Far East trade routes bypassed Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt to sail on to Rome. With regards to the garden insignia of Jannaeus, which sealed state documents handled by Roman consulates in Gaza, note the contrast between the N-TZ-R (נֵ֫צֶר tree branches or shoots) of Jesse at ISAIAH (11:1) and the discarded head branch of Babylon at ISAIAH (14:19).  
  





   
Of all the hasty acts of Jannaeus which quickly reestablished Israel to its natural borders, his heavy reliance on paid mercenaries was crucial. Regarding the later Roman spearhead of Longinus, this rushed itinerary of Jannaeus was most problematic due to his heavy looting of human booty during his conquests. Taking captives and selling them into slavery, was a practice of contemporary warfare which kept the mercenaries of Jannaeus engaged to win, whereas they were paid with a share in the revenue Jannaeus collected from the slave brokers (WARS 1:4:2-3, ANTIQUITIES 13:13:3). This practice became pivotal when Jannaeus conquered Hellenistic cities which had been founded near the banks of the Jordan by Alexander the Great and his heirs centuries earlier. The foremost of these Hasmonean controlled Hellenistic cities about Galilee were Scythopolis, Hippos, Gerasa, and Gadara. Many of the captives whom the Hasmonean forces took on the Jordan, no doubt eventually found themselves slave-traded into the Roman Empire. When, just thirteen years after the death of Jannaeus, the Roman Legions under Pompey invaded the Hasmonean Kingdom which Jannaeus had so recently secured in this manner, one of Pompey's chief advisers was a Pagan freedman (i.e. ex-slave) named Demetrius, who had been a citizen of Gadara prior to his captivity. It must be considered that this irony was both motivated by the patriotism of Demetrius and orchestrated by the diplomatic lubricators of the Roman war machine's marketing team. Ultimately, it is with regard to the Pagan captives taken by the Hasmoneans in the Galilee and Golan, that the level of Hasmonean royal involvement in Magdala/Taricheas is directly material to discerning how deep Longinus pierced the flesh of the Magdalene.  
It should be highlighted, that the crushing defeat Crassus suffered at Carrhae (Haran), on the heels of his looting of the Hasmonean's Jerusalem Temple, was a defeat which unfolded in the territory of Parthia which the Bible calls Aram-Naharaim, then home to very very large numbers of Jews, many in communities that dated from the exiles by Assyria. The majority of this great Jewish multitude beyond the Euphrates was heavily invested in the Second Temple by centuries of annual temple taxes paid by every fighting age male who could afford it. If one seeks the origins of any large force of Jewish colonists, which some conjecture as necessary for an apparent population explosion in Galilee after the Hasmoneans reconquered it, then colonists from Aram-Naharaim most neatly explain both the distinctions in dialect and the distinct standards of measure with which the Talmud contrasts First Century Galilean Jews from their Judaean brothers. It also sheds light on the revived contemporary use of the shelved term "Israel," suspiciously common to the four books titled MACCABEES, the four Gospels, the Epistles, and Great Revolt coinage. Once Longinus commanded the retreat from the slaughter Crassus had bought beyond the Euphrates with Temple treasure---a crushing slaughter wrought in this Israelite-heavy Aram-Naharaim---Longinus regrouped Rome's devastated forces in Antioch. Longinus was in no position to march back into the deserts of Judaea. Magdala's wealth and grafted Hasmonean connections were no doubt known by Longinus and the spies of the Syrian Legions which had looted Judaea and the Jerusalem Temple to finance Crassus's fatal march on Parthia from which Longinus and company were attempting to recover. Crassus's recent holy rapine thus squandered, Syria's new bankrupt governor---this blade-happy Cassius Longinus---desperate for new funds to protect Syria from the emboldened Parthians, led his sharpened spearhead into Magdala to withdraw more cash to repel Parthia's feared advance. Once he collected whatever payments he could extract prior to his trawl, the Roman Longinus hauled in 30,000 Galilean/Gaulonite captives from Magdala, then sold them on the market as slaves (WARS 1:8:9, ANTIQUITIES 14:7:2). Enriched by this consumption of human meat in Galilee, Roman Syria remained secure from Parthia, until Longinus was trounced by Augustus and Marc Antony in the Battle of Philippi. Josephus choreographed a charade upon the interchangeable names Magdala and Tarichea, to point his hearers to this cosmic cliff-hanger of human servitude, which falls into the abyssal deep upon this hell-bound point. 
Now although they were ruled by Pagans, Gadara and the cities of the Decapolis no doubt had large Jewish minorities long before they were conquered by Jannaeus. The Romans had granted Gadara's Pagan majority its freedom from the Hasmoneans only nine years before Longinus first camped at Magdala-Tarichea to fish for men. The mood for revenge against all those associated with their former Hasmonean rulers was still quite fresh indeed. The action of Longinus at Magdala must be viewed as one more step in Rome's deconstruction of the upstart Hasmonean Jewish power which it had engaged over a century in order to weaken the Seleucids. Therefore, the pregnant brevity and definitive number which characterizes Joe's battleless reports of Longinus's spearhead, point at a sort of open season, with human traffic delivered over the lake to Magdala from the Decapolis, whereas a century later in 66 AD, Josephus numbers the entire population of Tarichea (i.e. Magdala) at 40,000, and it is unreasonable to conjecture that Magdala held many more people when Longinus first tapped the site. This scale of trade in humans (to the number 30,000), could scarcely have been planned and accomplished without the knowledge of Great Herod's wealthy father Antipater, former Hasmonean Governor of Idumea (Edom). It just so happens that his own father, also named Antipater (but Great Herod's grandfather), had been drafted into service to the Hasmonean state by Jannaeus. By the time of the Jewish flesh bounty of Longinus at Magdala, the later Antipater (Great Herod's father), was Pompey's point man in Jerusalem, an ambitious man finally entirely unrestrained by his former boss---the stripped down Hasmonean High Priest Hyrcanus II (a son of Jannaeus), whom Pompey had just previously defrocked of all temporal power. Later, when Julius Caesar defeated Pompey in 48 BC, Antipater came to Julius Caesar's rescue when he was besieged in Alexandria. In reward, Antipater was appointed to serve at a lucrative post: Rome's first Procurator of Judaea; Antipater in turn appointed his son Herod as Governor of Galilee. Herod was already in training for that position of Roman Governor of Galilee, while Longinus collected his pounds of Jewish flesh at the port of Magdala before Caesar and Pompey came to blows. Ten years after Governor Herod was chased out of Galilee by Antogonus Matthias (a grandson of Jannaeus), Herod would return right there, to the caves at Arbel, to pay his own Roman Legions, with his own profits from Galilean flesh, but one old man dove down the precipice there, in a battle to the death against this all too familiar "king," whom Rome was imposing upon them from Edom.
Now in 44 BC, a decade after Cassius Longinus shored up Syria with Galilean booty, the blade of Longinus assassinated Julius Caesar. Then with his protege Junius Brutus in tow, Longinus fled the civil unrest that resulted from his coup, to somewhere that had served his needs well before, somewhere warm and pleasant with ripe fruit for the picking year round. Yes, Longinus fled from Augustus and Antony to Tarichea (native name Magdala). While there on this his second tour, Longinus began to organize his civil war force in the east by leaning heavily upon the wealthy Procurator Antipater and his son Herod, who was by then the local regional governor over Magdala. Josephus underwrites all these pivotal events of the planet's history with a flourish which aims to incite a eureka moment in the reader. Here Joe drops a puzzling crossed path of breadcrumbs with his casual report, of how when Longinus revisited Magdala in 43 BC, Longinus enslaved the entire population of Emmaus in order to raise funds to fight Augustus. The sparse account deliberately calls to mind how Longinus had enslaved 30,000 at Magdala on his first visit ten years earlier. This time around however, Longinus needed the human infrastructure around the lake to remain intact, whereas there, on the plane of Genessareth, Longinus was receiving embassies, while amassing funds and forces to hold the east and face Augustus and Antony. This is documented in part by the surviving correspondences between Cassius Longinus and Cicero. For the last letter sent to Cicero while Longinus was still in Rome is collated to late March or early April 43 BC, whereas the first letter to Cicero from Longinus in the east is dated May 7, 43 BC, and the return address on that letter from the first post assassination war camp of Cassius Longinus, indicates the camp was located on the fertile shore of the Sea of Galilee at Tarichea (i.e. Magdala/Gennesareth). Thus forget the DA VINCI CODE's much ado about the sinful flesh of one woman named Mary Magdalena. The hidden identity of Magdala as the lusty fisherman's inn-town Taricheas---a nefarious place frequented by a bunch of drunken Mary's just off the night shift---is a real master key to the mystery of the Gospels. If one listens to the craft of Josephus attentively, then the emergence of the Galilean "robbers," and the Galilean Sect of Zealots and Sicarii, is a process that begins in the wake of the slave raid Cassius Longinus made upon Magdala circa 52 BC. When, back in Rome eight years later in 44 BC, Cassius Longinus assassinated Caesar, the resulting civil war took Longinus and Brutus from Rome on to Magdala where they dined and hobnobbed with the Roman elite who found themselves in the same predicament, a group in which the father of Augustus's future wife Livia was at the forefront. Outmaneuvered at home in Rome, these characters called all their lackeys in the east to attend them in the impressive spring gardens blooming under the pleasant afternoon shade of Mount Arbel. Their bellies filled on the youth of Emmaus, well slathered in pickled minnows, they moved on to Philippi, where they bit the Macedonian dust. Though Augustus and Antony won the fateful battle and civil war, the resulting chaos in the east allowed the Parthians to move into Roman Syria. The harried Hasmonean kingdom then entered under Parthia's wing, with seven years of freedom from Roman oppression, during which the last Hasmonean dynast---Antigonus Mattathias---was installed as king. As Mark Antony's military expedition was outfitted to take Syria back from the Parthians, Antony prompted the Senate to declare Herod king of Judaea, in opposition to Parthia's new Hasmonean man---Antigonus Mattathias. 
 


ABOVE: ARBELA, MIGDAL-TARICHAEA, THE PRECIPITOUS CLIFF FORTRESS, AND THE ONLY STEEP PRECIPECE WHICH FALLS INTO THE SEA OF GALILEE: The old Hasmonean man who dove down the precipice near Arbel and Magdala, did so down the steep cliff face of the above illustrations, where the caves are labeled between the blue arrows above. The chain of links into that old man's story at Mount Arbel, are key to solving the puzzle, regarding which other cliff it was where Legion was pushed into the sea by Jesus, whereas none of the variant Gospel locations of Gerghesa, Gadara, and Gerasa, offer a single appropriate cliff, off which the swine herd could rush down the precipice into the lake. Read on..
EireneGoBrath


Josephus illustrates the resistance to Herod and his Roman Legion's who ousted Hasmonean Mattathias, in the character of the old man who dove down the cave precipice at Arbel. The superimposed proximity of the Arbela caves to Magdala/Tarichea, highlights Joe's anti slavery theme in geographic neon. This central nexus takes what is at once both the most wildly supernatural and yet most clearly political sign in Gospel---the Demon Legion---and links it to both Maccabee's victory at Emmaus and the suicide plunge from the caves. Just as the Gospels repeat the same pericopes with faux contradictions, so too do Joe's WARS, ANTIQUITIES, and LIFE. In contrast to the later version in ANTIQUITIES already cited, the earlier version of the Arbela pericope in WARS, makes no mention of chains, but instead suggests the funerary boxes were lowered down on ropes. After Herod enriches himself with slaves from the caves near Magdala/Tarichea, and distributes the profits among his men, Herod camps at Emmaus: 

HEROD  HUNTS  GALILEANS  FOR  THE  FLESH-TRADE  IN  WARS 

... the rock which lay on the front [of the caves] had beneath it valleys of a vast depth, and of an almost perpendicular declivity; insomuch that the king was doubtful for a long time what to do, by reason of a kind of impossibility there was of attacking the place. Yet did he at length make use of a contrivance that was subject to the utmost hazard; for at length he sent into the mouths his bravest in chests let down by a rope (τοὺς γοῦν ἀλκίμους καθιμῶν ἐν λάρναξιν ἐνίει τοῖς στομίοις: though this earlier version in WARS makes no mention of chains common to ANTIQUITIES and MARK, and instead implies ropes, it does put to use the same root λάρναξ --- larnax, here in a terrible wordplay suggesting the remains of corpses force fed into mouths; this double-speak spins off the implied mouths of the caves mentioned earlier, though in this construct the word “dens,” given in Whiston’s genitive rendition “mouths of the dens,” is absent). Now these men slew the robbers and their families, and when they made resistance, they sent in fire upon them [to try and force them out]; and as Herod was desirous of saving some of them [to sell as slaves], he proclaimed that they should come and deliver themselves up to him; but not one of them came willingly to him; and of those that were compelled to come [by fire or grappling hooks], many preferred death to captivity. And here a certain old man, the father of seven children, whose children, together with their mother, desired him to give them leave to go out (ἐξελθεῖν --- exelthein), upon the assurance and right hand that was offered them, slew them after the following manner: He ordered every one of them to go out, while he stood himself at the cave's mouth, and repeatedly slew that son of his who went out ... Herod was near enough to see this ... and appealed to the man to spare his children (so Herod could sell them as slaves) but he (the old man) did not relent in what he said, but all the more reproached Herod about the lowness of his descent (not coming of a royal lineage, Herod had no right to usurp the Hasmonean kingdom of Antigonus Matthias to enrich himself and Rome) so he slew his wife as well as his children, and when he had thrown their dead bodies down the precipice (κατὰ τοῦ κρημνοῦ), he at last threw himself down after them ...

By this time (the Parthians being already driven out of the country, and Pacorus slain) Ventidius, by Antony's command, sent 
a thousand horsemen, and two legions (δύο τάγματα --- the fact that there are dozens of times when ANTIQUITIES and WARS uses the Greek: τάγματα to indicate the Latin: Legio, Legion, or Legionum, while never once transliterating the word directly into Greek as λεγεὼν, only serves to emphasize that Roman ordinance is deliberately suggested in the three parabolic uses which the Synoptic Gospels make of a transliteration of "Legion" for a daemonic moniker), as auxiliaries to Herod, against Antigonus. Now Antigonus besought Macheras, who was their general, by letter, to come to his assistance, and made a great many mournful complaints about Herod's violence, and about the injuries he did to the kingdom; and promised to give him money for such his assistance; but he complied not with his invitation to betray his trust, for he did not scorn the one who sent him (Antony), especially while Herod supplied him with more cash [than Antigonus offered]. So he pretended friendship to Antigonus, but came as a spy to discover his affairs; although he did not herein comply with Herod, who dissuaded him from so doing. But Antigonus perceived what his intentions were beforehand, and excluded him out of the city (Jerusalem was still in the hands of Antigonus), and from the walls defended himself against him (the Roman commander Macheras) as against an enemy, till Macheras was ashamed of what he had done, and retired to Herod at Emmaus (Josephus goes on to describe how on the way to Emmaus, the Roman Macheras slaughters Jews in an indiscriminate wrath, which neatly chimes in on the ability of the Hebrew root "Hamma" חֲמַ֥ת to specify "wrath" or "fury," and thus Josephus indicates another key reason why he chose to weave his pericope puzzles together upon a matrix which thematically conflates several different places with this name Emmaus. The name has a geothermal aspect, which enables a cross reference to the volcanic nature of Yahweh's interaction with His creation, as in the fire on the rumbling mount Sinai in Arabia, but then again at the more noxious Vesuvius. Whereas brimstone will blanket the skies in an inevitable futurity coming sooner than autocrats can prepare for, the Divine requires truth in assembly, or delivers extinction.)
---WARS (1:16:4-6) 
With these direct word tags, and further key plot tags, Joe sews his purity theme directly onto the liberation theology theme, poking deep stitches clear across his compositions. The musings of an elite who held a corrupt literal interpretation of the Tanakh, had accreted a ginormous body of halacha onto the WORD, and these innovations, along with those who enforced them, were aiding and abetting the progressing Pagan erasure of the true Mosaic legacy. Joe's theme summary pivots on the impiety of innovations regarding what constituted profanation of the Sabbath, and regarding what violated ritual purity. For the so called doctors of the law had taken it upon themselves to extrapolate, in stony clauses newly hewn, what made one clean or unclean, and what included one within Israel, and what cut one off from Israel. Now of those who might yet recognize, how Joe forwards his account of the Galilean revolt with the simile implied by how the evil spirit Legion's flight so sloppily correlates to the Maccabean rush at the Temple, there are no doubt literary simpletons who will immediately take the simile for a slam equating Macabee's forces with dirty pigs. Such who read sacred things so superficially are not fit to teach the meaning of the Torah to anyone, let alone justified to pretend to be the Torah's enforcers, and this is precisely one of the more glaring demonstrations of the divine inspiration at this juncture. For while it is true, that if one accepts the thesis argued here, that these literary tags are a deliberate puzzle in a complex subtext, then the simile between Maccabee's stampede and the pigs is indeed in some sense inescapable. However, what does not necessarily follow, is that this simile is intended as a slam on Maccabee and his forces. For when one bothers to seek the deeper meaning beneath the shocking surface, one is amazed to find that this simile is instead a thought provoking jab at critics of the tactics used by these brave men who were Josephus's very own heroic forebearers. The device is a clever rebuke of those who would ostracize the fighters of the Hasmonean or Galilean revolts for their refusal to be bound by a body of halacha accreted onto the Torah by a tenured elite of superstitious armchair Israelites. The lunacy of the Pharisaic position is right now being demonstrated quite ironically to modern Israelis, with Sabbath elevators on one front, and Ultra-Orthodox who refuse to serve in the IDF on the other. Here the argument must leave aside the prohibition on eating pork (and why that central prohibition of the dietary laws was camouflaged in a mass of complex additional dietary regulation, to keep stealth how the bacon-ban was deliberately motivated by the need to separate the Israelites from the disgusting magic rites behind the fertility celebrations of their neighbors.) For here the simile does not boil down to why pigs are unclean to eat, but instead hinges upon how they are unclean for ritual purposes and prohibited from entry into the Temple precincts. These pigs boil down to this bloody trespass in a very telling manner, whereas the "rush" of Judah Maccabee and company in this passage, aimed to destroy the altar Antiochus Epiphanes had set up in the Temple to sacrifice pigs before an occupation idol dressed up as Zeus. The most economic summary of the point Joe makes with this simile, regards Joe's aim to draw a parallel between the Galilean revolt against Nero and the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus. The hot post-Emmaus forces of Judah Maccabee were considered unclean by Pharisaic standards, because they came into contact with the dead on the battlefield (NUMBERS 19:11), what's more, they were avowed to make war (and slaughter) on the Sabbath, which involved breaking many of the 39 Pharisaic melakhot prohibited for the day of rest. Though the present form of the halacha which formulate the 39 classes of Sabbath taboos, date perhaps to 200 AD or later, the Gospels and 1 MACCABEES indicate that early forms of these legalese innovations were indeed serious threats to the liberty of an Israel trying to survive in the shadow of the power of the Greco-Macedonians and early Imperial Romans. Though Judah Maccabee's army was considered unclean under this Pharisaic mountain of muddy innovation, (which hung on a tenuous thread from the Torah), the Maccabean freedom forces entered the Temple without any need to wash themselves or wait seven days, because the Temple was in a defiled state from the abominable sacrifices of Antiochus. Galileans were likewise justified by abominable sacrifices being offered to Yahweh in the Temple by the faux-divinity Nero, whose own idol was offered public sacrifices alongside a gold idol of his dead three month old daughter Claudia-Augusta (deified 63 AD), her mother Poppaea-Sabina (deified 65 AD), Augustus (deified 14 AD), Livia-Julia (deified 42 AD), and Claudius (deified 54 AD). These Pagan rites, to false gods made of the ruling elite which oppressed Israel, took place at three lavish temples inside Israel: (1) at Caesarea-Maritima on the coast, (2) at Sebaste in Samaria, and (3) at the limits of Neropolis (Herod-Agrippa II's newly revamped Caesarea-Phillipi, near the ruins of Dan). It must not be ignored that although Tiberius denied his mother Livia her deification in 29 AD, which made her devotees wait until Claudius reigned for her to receive fully legal divine honors, there was none the less an additional temple focused on Livia's cult at Bethsaida, a town which had been upgraded to a polis and renamed Julias, to celebrate her expected deification upon her death in 29 AD. Nor can it be ignored that this Imperial turning point at Bethsaida, is, not only overtly where, and when, LUKE pinpoints the start-up to the Jesus assembly (i.e. His ministry), but it is also LUKE's covert point to the explanation of why the assembly was organized to reinvigorate the Galilean Sect. Anyone without their head up their posterior could see that all this oppressive Italian sculpture was a most serious Torah violation. Now as for the pig simile, which ties Jesus's exorcism of the daemonic Legion to Maccabee's rush at the defiled Temple of Yahweh, well the Torah identifies the animal unclean for eating and all ritual purposes, such as entry into Yahweh's Temple for sacrifice. Hence the sloppy simile implied by these tags which Joe embeds for his subtext, roots the Pharisaic objections to the ministry of Jesus, down into the very foundation of the Hasmonean Kingdom, whereas the Gospel blames the Galilean's epic destruction, upon objections to the legality of the Galilean's tactics---objections which were made by those who were pretending to enforce the Torah (MARK 3:6, MATTHEW 12:11-14, LUKE 6:9-11, JOHN 5:16-18). The question of the cleanliness or uncleanliness of healing (and 'threshing') on the Sabbath, is one of the main themes of the Gospels. At MATTHEW (12:1-45), Josephus---himself blamed for great carnage---develops this theme to the ultimate counter-punch, blaming Pharisaic self-righteousness for the shortness of Israel's redemption, and subsequent reinfestation. Joe's earliest development of the theme is MARK (1:21-28), where there is a man in the synagogue with an "unclean spirit" who cries out against the zealous teaching of Jesus (MARK 1:23-24). Though the Greek phrase, literally "uncleansed spirit" (πνεῦμα τὸ ἀκάθαρτον), could also mean simply 'bad breath' or 'polluted wind,' the critic's daemonic possession is indicated by his epileptic "convulsing" (σπαράξαν --- sparaxen), which ultimately identifies the nature of the evil he serves, as will later be made plain, with the final raw word on the bloody Last Supper. This native daemonic who is healed in the Capernaum Synagogue on the Sabbath, represents all those who, because they were resigned to cow-tow to diseased Roman power, would shout out against the Zealot call to action, and thereby work against the Torah's spirit instead of for it. However, the Savior's mission against the cannibal Pagan power necessitated His proclaiming the WORD in the whole earth. Thus the Semitic idiom cried out in Greek by the daemonic would-be Israelite, healed in the synagogue, is the same idiom cried out by the demon Legion healed in Pagan Perea: "What [does this matter] to us and to you?" (τι ημιν και σοι ? --- MARK 1:24, MATTHEW 8:29). In the synagogue the Israelite is apathetic about the Zealot call to action. His use of the idiom asks how the idol houses in Bethsaida-Julias, Tiberias, and Caesarea-Philippi really impact the daily needs of the Capernaum community. In the daemonic Legion pericope, it is Pagans of the Decapolis who use the idiom, to ask the Zealots how this revolt, which burned for justice, could possibly be any of their concern. How Joe uses this Legion pericope to telescope his own post-war seditious activities in the caverns under Rome, is massaged to its climax in THE BIBLE FOR ZOMBIES Part One: NOMAD. Suffice it here to note how Roman slavery, especially of youth, involved a heavy burden of sexual servitude. Josephus had a lot of pokers in this fire. The fate of a sex-slave was a most potent motive for a soldier---especially a General---to continue the fight to the death. This was perhaps the most potent masculinity issue behind the reason why surrender was considered not only a dishonor, but even "unclean." Thus it should be no surprise that the same idiom pleaded by the unclean Legion, and cried out by the unclean spirit in the synagogue, is used in the singular by none other than Jesus Himself, to address His unnamed mother at Cana, on the third day of His ministry in JOHN (2:4): τι εμοι και σοι ---"What [is this] to me and to you?" His mother is Israel, informing her son there is dissatisfaction with the lull in the resistance. Why are thousands of Jewish boys being tortured as they slave on the Colosseum in Rome, while everything appears to be business as usual? Oblivious to the criticism, the war-engineer Jesus reminds her that these things take time: "My hour has not yet arrived!" It can not be missed that Josephus resided in Cana at the only place he admits cooperation with the Galilean leader John of Giscala (LIFE 16, JOHN 5:31, 8:13, 14:6-30, 18:37-40, AGAINST APION 1:5, ANTIQUITIES 18:1:1, 18:3:3, WARS 7:11:5). The Cana wedding is a Zealot union, where the wine of the community's communion, is, of course, the Last Supper symbol of blood zealous for the WORD. "This wine is my blood" (MATTHEW 26:28). The zealous spin on the theme of ritual purity is made plain, whereas the water is turned to wine inside jars used to store water for ritual cleansing. The six stone jars of twenty gallons each were sufficient to fill a mikveh for cleansing by ritual immersion. The cleansing at hand was to be by blood, where the best red wine was to be served at a late hour in Rome---on the third day. The centrality of the purity theme blames the bitter teeth of all the war's destruction upon a deceptive literalist corruption of the WORD, via a penchant for Sabbath devices (MARK 2:23-28, 3:1-6, LUKE 6:1-11, 13:10-17, 14:1-6, JOHN 5:1-18). The concept of ritual purity is turned over into a colorful debate about spiritual purity. Thus the literary tags which pivot here on an axis between the Emmaus starting gate of WARS (1:1:4), and Gospel's Exorcism of Legion, should not accrue onto the Maccabees all the prejudice against four footed pigs which the dietary taboo deliberately incited for moral purposes unrelated to any guilt of the animal. 
The identification of the simile is substantiated by further tags that extend the axis into the Galilean revolt at WARS (4:2:5, 4:7:3-4:10:7), specifically the release of Josephus from his chains, and the passages which highlight the flight of thousands of Galileans away from Roman legionary campaigns against Gischala (hometown of the warlord John), against Gadara (from whence "a prodigious number are forced to leap into the Jordan against their will"), and against Gerasa (hometown of the warlord Simon who is later sacrificed at the Triumph in Rome). The name "Legion" calls up the Roman military unit of approximately six thousand, correlating to: (1) the 6000 women and children killed in their rush from Gischala (WARS 4:2:5), (2) the force of 6000 which John of Gischala rushes with into Jerusalem after his Sabbath day rouse (WARS 5:6:1), (3) the 6000 burned alive in the Temple fire lit by the Romans (WARS 6:5:3), (4) 6000 strong captives Vespasian chose in the stadium of Magdala to be sent to dig a pit for Nero (WARS 3:10:10). Only MATTHEW numbers, at "about two thousand," the herd of pigs which the Legion of spirits enters, to thicken the stew with a tag upon the 2,200 Gadarenes captured by the Romans, while nearby the "prodigious number" of Gadarenes drowns in the River Jordan (WARS 4:7:5). The Sea of Galilee is in fact a huge pool of the Jordan River, and that river served as a mikveh, where John the Baptist cleansed the zealous generation of Jesus of any impurity the Pharisees might cite to deflate the determination of the revolt. Joe tags this literary axis further with another correlating wink he crafts by only giving the name of the demon Λεγιὼν "Legion" in the versions of the parable in MARK (5:8, 5:15) and LUKE (8:30), but while the unclean spirit goes unnamed in MATTHEW (8:28-34), the word "Legion" is nevertheless given its place in MATTHEW too, (and again for only a single time, at 26:53), when Jesus in Gethsemane predicts that twelve "Legions of Angels" will fight the Roman occupation of Israel. Thus the Gospel trifecta of the word "Legion" (MARK 5, LUKE 8, MATTHEW 26), parallels the trifecta use of "rushed" (MARK 5:13, LUKE 8:33, MATTHEW 8:32). Note also that at LUKE (8:27, 8:35), and MARK (5:15), it is revealed that the violent daemonic "Legion" fought naked.    
For they had not yet been cut off  (hmmm...)

So he blew them back out of the upper town

Pushing upon the soldiers in the bottom


---WARS (1:1:4)



Note that Judah Macabee "rushed" (or better yet "raced") from Emmaus to Jerusalem. These verses are immediately followed by Judah's cleansing of the Temple, so recently profaned by the pig sacrifices of Antiochus Epiphanes. Here the only method Josephus employs to refer to the place where this pivotal victory took place---i.e. Emmaus---is in the wordplay he makes upon the etymology of the name, whereas at WARS (4:1:3), when discussing a different Emmaus in Galilee, Joe instructs his audience that the name "Emmaus" should be interpreted as "thermal-bath," (θερμὰ --- therma); Mason and Feldman are deficient in distinguishing this Galilean Emmaus (as distinct from the Judaean) via their own rendition "Ammathus," which serves to deny Joe his wordplay here, for while the Galilean Emmaus is the only one Joe refers to as Ἀμμαθοῦς (Ammathous), Joe does refer to a Judaean Emmaus interchangibly as  Ἐμμαοῦς (Emmaous) or Ἀμμαοῦς (Ammaous), and thus the Galilee form's exclusive retention of a single letter theta (θ), allows the θοῦς (thous) to pun θεός (theos), suggesting things charred by the deity, for those with the power of speaking in tongues. Joe suggests Galilee's Emmaus was named for a natural medicinal hotspring which drew the original settlers to the site, although the original Hebrew name Hammath (חמת) JOSHUA (19:35) gives for this site, more than likely referred to people who got "burnt" there during irregular upwellings (hence anti-Samaritan black comedy is written between the lines of JOHN 4:14). Now it is certainly not unplausable, that the late Hebrew Midrashim which refer to the Judaean Emmaus as 'Hammat' in parallel to the Galilean form of JOSHUA 19:35, are perhaps guilty of following Josephus or later Christian traditions, however knowledge of Joe's word craft, and a thereby informed analysis of how the Emmaus name-game fits into Joe's matrix of puzzles, connotes that these devices which bundle together all three places which William Whiston translated alike into English as "Emmaus," is wordplay that aims to indicate heat by association. Moreover Joe's two further sites named Emmaus, (including the site of Macabee's victory above), instead refer, perhaps somewhat queerly, to godless, or unnatural bathhouses of the sacrilegious Roman type, implied at these hot-spots in Rome's occupation of Judaea. All three "hot-lays" of the land are linked up on Joe's clean energy itinerary. For the thermal wordplay Joe shoots over the Maccabee battlefield for survival, links God's natural heat to the Jewish cause in order to forward his book WARS (at 1:1:4) with an allusion to hammering the Pagan oppressor at Emmaus. The way this forward serves to sign part of a stealth signature which unifies his extended corpus, deliberately highlights the luridness of the parallel geopolitical innuendo with its strokes, when in the lays of his later ANTIQUITIES, Joe describes in more detail the epic battle at Emmaus which established the Hasmonean Kingdom. There the key verses, about fighting that epic battle with "naked bodies" at the implied hot-bath site Emmaus, suffice to mark the steamy thread which this discussion soaks its head over:


περὶ δὲ τὸν ὄρθρον ἐπιφαίνεται τοῖς ἐν Ἐμμαοῖ...
καὶ γυμνοῖς τοῖς σώμασιν μάχεσθαι

At about the break of day they revealed themselves at Emmaus ... 
(or "displayed themselves;" Judah Maccabee suddenly learned how otherwise "poorly equipped" his force was...)
And He urged them to fight with naked bodies

----ANTIQUITIES (12:7:4)


Now the reader is certainly at liberty to blush and close their eyes to the playful double meanings, though at the risk of not hearing the harmony in the surgically knotted threads beneath the pulsing white linen of the resurrection robe. The technicolor dream coat tightens the unifying theme of the interwoven accounts further in tapestry, with the double-edged device of 'taking the truth with pleasure,' which rotates the Galilean Sect onto the Testimonium-Emmaus axis (link). It is no perchance coincidence that the most epic resurrection appearance of Jesus, takes place on the road to Emmaus, along the same signature threads of innuendo: 

Καὶ ἰδοὺ δύο ἐξ αὐτῶν ἦσαν πορευόμενοι ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ 
εἰς κώμην ἀπέχουσαν σταδίους ἑξήκοντα ἀπὸ Ἰερουσαλήμ ᾗ ὄνομα Ἐμμαοῦς ...
καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐγγίσας συνεπορεύετο αὐτοῖς
οἱ δὲ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο τοῦ μὴ ἐπιγνῶναι αὐτόν ...
καὶ
παρεβιάσαντο αὐτὸν λέγοντες
Μεῖνον μεθ' ἡμῶν ὅτι πρὸς ἑσπέραν ἐστὶν καὶ κέκλικεν ἡ ἡμέρα
καὶ εἰσῆλθεν τοῦ μεῖναι σὺν αὐτοῖς ...
αυτων δε διηνοιχθησαν οι οφθαλμοι και επεγνωσαν αυτον

N
ow behold: two of them on that same day
Were going to a village called Emmaus about 60 stadia from Jerusalem ... 
(most texts read 60 stadia σταδίους ἑξήκοντα, but early variants exists with 160 stadia σταδίους εκατον εξήκοντα. That both variants were issued by Josephus and his mole Epaphroditus, fits perfectly with Joe's authorship of all four Gospels, and the literary simile he crafts via the shell game he plays with his three different locations called Emmaus: an Emmaus near Tiberias, an Emmaus 60 stadia from Jerusalem, an Emmaus 160 stadia from Jerusalem. There is a mathematical comedy written into LUKE's resurrection-day race to Emmaus and back, which is set-up by the double-knot tied via the otherwise unnecessary limiting phrase  ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ --- "on that same day." The variant witnesses serve to emphasize the literary simile Joe crafts for his esoteric battle plan, with this blur which melds warfare past to warfare future, at the three times as charming Emmaus. Here at the start of LUKE's race, the rhetorical potency rises, whereas the just crucified chief iconoclast, is missing from His rebel tomb hideaway, His bandages cast off. It appears that instead of attending quickly to the cause of the WORD on the second half of the third day, these two lusty disciples---Cleophas and his bathing-buddy---intended to go and recuperate in the hot baths at Emmaus, but they were intercepted as...)
Jesus himself approached and traveled with them
And they were prevented from recognizing Him ... 
And they grabbed at Him saying: (παρεβιάσαντο same root is violent at MATTHEW 11:2, LUKE 16:16, ACTS 16:15)
"Lodge with us! For it is towards evening and the day has bent over" (κέκλικεν)
So to lodge with them He entered inside ... 
Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him. (επεγνωσαν --- epegnōsan)

---LUKE (24:13-31)

Again, one without the ears for it, need not hear that this word επεγνωσαν (epegnōsan) by which the two bathhouse disciples "knew" (or better yet: "experienced") the resurrection of Jesus, uses the very same verbiage rooted of the word gnosis ("knowledge"), which none other, than carnal mother Mary herself utters, figuratively, to defend her chastity against the descent of the Angel of Yahweh. When she is told she will bear His massive son inside her, Mary protests:

καὶ ἰδού: συλλήψῃ ἐν γαστρὶ καὶ τέξῃ υἱόν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν...
εἶπεν δὲ Μαριὰμ πρὸς τὸν ἄγγελον:
Πῶς ἔσται τοῦτο
ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω

Now behold:
in womb you will conceive, and bring forth a son, and you will call his name: "Jesus"...
Then Mary said to the angel:
"How will this be, since (ἐπεὶ---epei) I have not known (γινώσκω---ginōskō) a man?"

---LUKE (1:31-34)




 ANTIQUITIES 18:3:3, διδάσκαλος ἀνθρώπων τῶν ἡδονῇ τἀληθῆ δεχομένων and ANTIQUITIES 18:1:1 καὶ ἡδονῇ γὰρ τὴν ἀκρόασιν ὧν λέγοιεν ἐδέχοντο οἱ ἄνθρωποι). 


work in progress 8-5-15


It is Nor is it an accident that the apocalyptic key to the Gospels lays in the largely Aramaic book of DANIEL, and its relations to the four Greek books of MACCABEES. 


When Josephus crafted his divinely inspired (and quite deadly) spoof of the Pagan Mysteries, Joe buried all the blood and gore in his sophisticated literary subtext. Thus the Danielian provenance of the revolt against Rome is taught in the synagogue, by the Harvest-Lord of the Sabbath, as the season for threshing returns:



HEALING  THE  WITHERED  HAND  ON  THE  SABBATH
Having departed from there He entered their synagogue, and beheld a man who had a withered hand (i.e. a hand unable to fight), and so they might accuse Him, they asked Him: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" ... Then He says to the man: "Stretch out your hand!" (Ἔκτεινον τὴν χεῖρά σου --- Ekteinon tēn cheira sou!And he stretched it out (καὶ ἐξέτεινεν --- kai exeteinen), and as healthy as the other, it was reestablished (ἀπεκατεστάθη --- apekatestathē).
---MATTHEW (12:9-13) 




THE  PERIL  OF  SEIZING  MR.  MAACHAH  ON  THE  SABBATH
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemene ... And He says to the disciples: "Sit here while we go; over there I will pray." And having taken with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful ... (soon Jesus hears the approach of one thousand men at arms, with--according to JOHN 18:12---a "cohort" σπεῖρα of 600 Roman soldiers at the forefront, led by a χιλίαρχος "chiliarchos"---the "ruler of a thousand." Jesus seeks escape to fight another day, and exclaims): "Rise up and let's go! Look! Those who betray Me draw near!"... (But Judas brings a small force of Temple police into the heart of the Galilean camp, and sneaks them past the other disciples, to the place where Jesus is with Peter and Zebedee's sons---James and John. Judas leads the Temple police to Jesus, and when Jesus is seized, one of the three disciples who are with Jesus, (i.e. either Peter, James, or John) lobs off the ear of the High Priest's servant, but before they do, the variant in LUKE 22:49 implies at least two of them control a sword: ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ περὶ αὐτὸν τὸ ἐσόμενον εἶπον αὐτῷ, Κύριε εἰ πατάξομεν ἐν μαχαίρᾳ "Moreover those around Him seeing what was unfolding said: "Lord should we strike with sword?" where the stylistic lack of an article before a singular (not a single) "sword" (machairē), unites all the variants.) Now discern: one of those with Jesus stretched out his hand, (ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα --- ekteinas tēn cheira --- which is the same formula Jesus recites, to command and heal the withered hand on the Sabbath, at the beginning of his movement in MATTHEW 12:13 and MARK 3:5, which, in turn, is ultimately a reference to the hardly paradoxical, holy-war doctrine of the pious yet practical priest Mattathias, great grandson of Hasmonaeus, found in 1 MACCABEES 2:27, 2:41: "Let everyone who is zealous (ζηλῶν) for the Torah and stands by the covenant follow me ... On that day they decided if anyone attacked them on the Sabbath they would defend themselves." Thus lay the great roots of sublime subtext, which nourish the account of the disciple in the garden on the Sabbath, who: "stretched out his hand," then---:) drew his sword and struck the servant of the High Priest, cutting his ear off of him. Then Jesus says to him: "Return the sword of you to the place of it, for all those who take sword will certainly perish by sword." 
---MATTHEW (26:36-52) "sword" μαχαίρᾳ (machairē)



The last line (πάντες γὰρ οἱ λαβόντες μάχαιραν ἐν μαχαίρᾳ ἀπολοῦνται), is most famously paraphrased with the definite articles added: "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." This epic moral cuts through key threads of the narrative in essential and yet unexpected ways. Now discern, that it is only the version given to the after-supper, Sabbath-stroll-in-the-park detail of JOHN (18:10), which identifies Peter as the disciple whose sword cut off the High Priest's servant's ear. This sets up the comic relief whereby Peter's Galilean accent is heard in the courtyard of the High Priest. Later, in ACTS, the Gospel's literary puzzles slash these same swords up into another episode of Galilean rebellion, in which thunderous James plays lead blade. The central tree of the Gospel cross-word reveals that the Zebedee brothers were cousins of Jesus (compare MATTHEW 27:56 with JOHN 19:25 and MARK 15:40, cf. MATTHEW 20:20-24). Moreover this extended family of Jesus was evidently of some importance in the Galilean fishing industry, hiring employees from outside the family (MATTHEW 4:21-22, MARK 1:19-20, LUKE 5:4, JOHN 21:1-5). A full decade after Jesus's cousins, John and James Zebedee, escaped the sword-fight in the garden night, there came the final episode of resistance for cousin James. Zebedee's blood was taken in a sick, public, daytime entertainment spectacle, bankrolled by a later Herod, under a later Caesar. Here the three main families of the Gospel drama meet in the amphitheater. Apparently fond of wearing the latest stiff Kushan leather suit, sprinkled heavy with regal accents of bright precious metal (στολὴν ἐνδὺς ἐξἀργύρου πεποιημένην πᾶσαν ANTIQUITIES 19:8:2), Herod the Great's grandson Herod-Agrippa I, took-in the destruction of the cousin of Jesus, beneath an idol of Julius Caesar's great-great grandnephew Claudius: 


Κατ' ἐκεῖνον δὲ τὸν καιρὸν 
ἐπέβαλεν Ἡρῴδης ὁ βασιλεὺς τὰς χεῖρας κακῶσαί τινας τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας 
ἀνεῖλεν δὲ Ἰάκωβον 
τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰωάννου μαχαίρᾳ

Moreover that was the time (i.e. the reign of Claudius Caesar vis a vis ACTS 11:28),
Herod the king extended his hands to injure some who belonged to the assembly, 
moreover taking (doing away with, executing) James,
the brother of John
[by the] sword (i.e. in the arena).



---ACTS (12:1-2)  "sword" μαχαίρᾳ (machairē)


James of Zebedee lived by the sword; James of Zebedee died by the sword. The literary set up is written into MATTHEW (26:52), where James is with Jesus in the garden on the Sabbath; the literal execution is the end of James at the arena's center stage, in ACTS (12:2). Bloody truth is understated with a literary wink and a nod. Who dare deny God His right to inspire great literature? Let that daring one collect their wages. Do not bite the coin---it's loaded. It is a rite of human meat and blood. But whose meat and blood? When, how, and why? Whoever has ears to hear ought to listen, carefully. In the world of the Gospel, the word "assembly" (ἐκκλησίας ekklēsias) denoted a democratic gathering (Heredotus HISTORIES 3:142, ACTS 19:32, 19:39, 19:41, MATTHEW 20:23-30). The "church" Jesus established was a democratic call to action, in a life and death fight against an insane Pagan tyranny. Someone's lying Lord, kumbaya.  

The play in the original chosen Greek words, their given order, and some convenient restraint in the use of definite articles, speaks*:
  
πάντες γὰρ οἱ λαβόντες μάχαιραν 
ἐν μαχαίρᾳ ἀπολοῦνται

All indeed who take sword (machairan)
By sword (machairē) will perish

 ---MATTHEW (26:52)  

☞ (Note that the article-heavy Greek of the Gospel, gives no articles for the machaeri.)

(cf. REVELATION 13:10, GENESIS 9:6, JEREMIAH 15:1-7)


ἀνεῖλεν δὲ Ἰάκωβον 
τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰωάννου μαχαίρᾳ

Moreover [Herod] took (seized, did away with) James 
The brother of John Sword (machairē)

---ACTS (12:2)
(Note how here the lack of both preposition and article mocks a Gladiator's surname with the word machairē; one could call him: angry "John Sword," or: happy "Mr. Maachah*." Soon, again in a bloody arena, Herod Agrippa takes a mortal blow from an Angel of the Lord; ACTS 12:23 uses the word ἐπάταξεν to describe this "strike" at Herod as if by sword---the same verb used to describe "striking" off the ear in MATTHEW 26:51.) ☜


Rest assured that no one is suggesting that assassination, arson, or non consensual iconoclasty, be adopted in any uneasy assembly of any incorporation. However, it is still a fact, that no mainline denomination, ever currently champions the statement from Jesus quoted next---neither during their Sunday services, nor in their regular Sunday School catechisms. As a consequence, all these mainline institutions sell a whitewashed Jesus, whom they resculpt via an ancient imperialist spin of magical doctrines, and hence all practice a ritual of fraudulent communion, whereas the Savior truly bares his unvarnished Divine soul when He states:

Μὴ νομίσητε ὅτι ἦλθον βαλεῖν εἰρήνην ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν·
οὐκ ἦλθον βαλεῖν εἰρήνην 
ἀλλὰ μάχαιραν

Do not think that I came to bring peace to the world
I did not come to bring peace (eiréné)
But rather a sword (machairan)

----MATTHEW (10:34) 
(This deep wordplay of hue contrasts, is only shuffled into MATTHEW. God's medicine is delivered via the uniquely begotten whose consumption became a Pagan industry.)

Note that it is again only in MATTHEW, that one hears the following compliment, which is full on direct contradiction, if rendered into very simple English: 

μακαριοι οι ειρηνοποιοι
οτι αυτοι υιοι θεου κληθησονται
Happy (makarioi) are the peacemakers (eirēnopoioi)
For they shall be called Sons of God  (huioi theo)

---MATTHEW (5:9)

("happy" or 'blessed': μακαριοι --- makarioi, pronounced mak-ar-ee-oy)
("knife" or 'sword': μάχαιρα --- machaira, pronounced makh'-ahee-ra) 

Here, to buttress their coo-coo doctrine, the literalists must mince the original words, and translate the masculine Greek: υιοι θεου --- "Sons of God," with the inaccurately neutered English: "children of God," because their filicide cult deity has a fertility issue of only one son, whom must nevertheless be killed for their feast and still feed them all, whereas the deity their dogma sells is such a loving and compassionate libel against the Almighty chef. Despite this shallow quackery of theirs that misrepresents the Divine as a filicidal cook, the text in Greek literally says: "Sons of God," masculine, plural. So much for the honesty of those who profess to present the literal interpretation of God's WORD. 

Members of the elite intelligentsia have been lying to the common man about God's WORD for a very long time. The Scripture was translated from Greek into Latin and presented in Latin to non Latin speakers. The English words clergy and laity come into Modern English from the Middle English clergie and lewed. The term clergie was not only used to indicate an official member of Church staff; clergie was also used to describe someone, who though not a Church official, was nonetheless literate in Latin. The Middle English term lewed could mean either a layperson, or any person who was illiterate in Latin, most often someone completely unlettered. The provenance of the English term laypersonthus has the historical connotation of an "illiterate person"---but most specifically a person illiterate in the official Roman Church translation of God's WORD. The information gap within which the doctrinal spin on the WORD was concocted, increases by a quantum level, in the great space that intervenes between the official Latin translation and the original Greek and Hebrew in which the texts are authentically  composed. 

Now when the so called literalists present MATTHEW's words about "peace" to laypeople who have no clue about the original Greek text, nor its literary context, then there appears to be some very contradictory intent on the part of Prince of Peace Jesus. Yet no one minds, because they are so hypnotized by a long standing tradition, of bling and ritual that orders their life from cradle to grave, that they have had all their religious chutzpah surgically removed, as though it were an appendix, or gallbladder---or perhaps foreskin for a most ironic simile. Yet, when one instead believes the WORD OF GOD is more important than the dogmas and rituals of men, and makes the effort to seek and find, to knock and open, then one hears that freedom isn't free, and peace is delivered by the point of a sword. The Sermon on the Mount recruits the Messianic army. The Beatitudes is the roster that describes those who enlisted. Here the Galilean's own happy-sword rhetoric, cuts right through the Roman propaganda. "Peace" was Rome's great justification for Imperial violence and thievery. Academia still props up this Tiberian façade today. The so called "Pax Romana," or "Augustan Age," was among the most violent in history, with Rome expanding her borders, reach, and control, by force of arms, by the most torturous punishments, and by Pagan magical mind control. All the great achievements of Rome's Imperial infrastructure were built with booty taken by violent means, with the most exacting labor preformed by people who were themselves taken as human booty, and put into slavery---the sin of the world. The Divinely ordained human victory Galileans won against the rabid Pagan magic at the core of this sham "peace," is almost entirely erased and belittled by the hypnotic agenda of the so called literalist dogma---which is not an agenda to teach the language of the WORD OF GOD to the laity, but is instead an agenda that orders the illiterate ones to: "kneel," "now sit," "now stand," "now kneel," "sit,"  "kneel," "stand," "sit," etc. 

The Galileans were the Zealots. Jesus was their most important leader, due in no small means to the great rebirth of the movement in the generation of Josephus, the General of Galilee, who brought God's war against Pagan values to a crescendo in Rome. THE BIBLE FOR ZOMBIES by Lehan MacAdam begins to explain how Josephus wrote all four Gospels, channeling the very same inspired literary style via which the Old Testament of the Bible was itself compiled and redacted---a style of revelatory riddles posed by the many deliberate faux-contradictions between the contents of the different titles in the corpus. These discrepancies are honed to write an epic esoteric subtext in the space intervening between the competing works of this, the most holy of all collections of texts. The author, Josephus, was the General of Galilee when the Galilean hosts freed Judea from Rome. 




One way Josephus makes plain his industrious pseudonymity, is by splitting the essential facts between his variant pseudonymous voicings of the history. Thus the size of the military force that apprehends Jesus is not made plain until the Latin word "cohort" σπεῖρα, and Greek word "chiliarchos"  χιλίαρχος are voiced in JOHN. In this regards, the historical works ANTIQUITIES and WARS, which Josephus penned under his Flavian freed-name, are equally important vehicles, whereby Joe shuffles the cardinal facts that solve the Gospel riddles. James of Zebedee's death by the sword is a key exhibit of this interdependence. The same Greek word for "sword" is used both for the blade that cuts off the ear in Gethsemane, and also for the blade with which Herod kills James of Zebedee. This word is μάχαιρα (machaira: pronounced makh'-ahee-ra). It is a specific class of sword---a short dagger used for slaughter. Indeed, in Modern Greek, this word machaira is used generically for "knife," (so: 'look out old Mac, ease back'). Outside of the arena of violent popular entertainment, and onto the First Century street, the machaira was typically a weapon of ambush and revenge. In the theatre however, this short-sword was famous as the only weapon wielded by one of the most skilled of all the classes of gladiators, called the Dimacherus, for his two short-swords, with which he cut up many opponents who were much more heavily armed and armored than he. The key to James of Zebedee's death in the arena, is found in ANTIQUITIES: 
He (Herod Agrippa) also showed his magnificence in the arena, with his great number of gladiators; and there it was that he exhibited so many combatants, in order to please the spectators; no fewer indeed than seven hundred men to fight with seven hundred other men, and [Herod] allotted all the malefactors who he had for this exercise (i.e. Herod-Agrippa scheduled all the "criminals" in his custody---like John of Zebedee---for public destruction in the arena), that both the malefactors might receive their punishment, and then out of this function of war, the satisfaction of peace would be born (τὸ πολέμου δ᾽ ἔργον γένηται τέρψις εἰρήνης ---: ashen sarcasm piled high here in a Vesuvian simile). And thus were these criminals all destroyed at once. (τούτους μὲν οὖν πασσυδὶ διέφθειρεν---: note the jaded yet accurate view of the Roman world's concept of "Peace," which the Latins attributed to their Pagan goddess "Pax;" she was the "Eirene" or "Irene" of the Greeks, often depicted in possession of the child named "Ploutos," which in turn means "Wealth-giver"---an infantile to pubescent form of Pagan death given to the god Hades).
---ANTIQUITIES (19:7:5)

The seeker is given security in connecting these dots by the further call and return. It is only via this thread of collation, linking these elements shuffled between MATTHEW, ACTS, and ANTIQUITIES, that one of the most troublesome riddles in LUKE is solved. Jesus poses this riddle to stipulate His final definition of the liturgy that brings life to His memorial services. This most serious of all the instructions at the Lord's Supper, reveals His institution of a New Passover feast, to work an exodus out from servitude to Roman Pagan magic---right before His posse regroups in Gethsemene: 

THE  RIDDLE  OF  A  TWO  SWORDED  JESUS
And He said to them: “When I sent you with no purse, or pack, or sandals, did you need anything?” And they said: “Nothing!” (because they were the Galileans, given many epithets by Josephus, including: the Robbers, the Dagger-men, the Zealots, the Sicarii). Then He said to them: “But, any who now has a purse, let him dispense it, and do the same with the pack, and he who is without them, he must sell his cloak and buy a sword. I say to you truly, that this---what has been written (in the WORD, at ISAIAH 53:12)---must be fulfilled in Me: “And He will be counted among the lawless” (i.e. He will ironically be thought of as criminal for enforcing God’s WORD against the Pagan cannibals). And these things are indeed fulfilled in Me.” Then they said: "Look Lord---Swords here! Two!" And He said to them: “Fitting it is." (i.e.--: 'it is enough to accomplish the work, and the work is worth accomplishing by this means.')
---LUKE (22:35-38)

Here LUKE, gives the last word on the sacramental communion table. Please do go and check the Gospel text; this is indeed the final course of the bloody Lord's Supper. If anyone doubts that Josephus, or his say, uncle Jesus, were uniquely conceived, then they need only ponder the depth of irresistibly virulent literary sophistication that documents their footprints upon this planet. Here in LUKE, the seeker does indeed find a reference to the Dimachaeri of the Roman gladiatorial arena, whereas the Zealots overcame the elite Pagan cannibals of Rome with asymmetrical victories in the Imperial theater, using skill and tactics similar to those of a Dimachaerus. However, a simile Divinely inspired, does not rest in the bloody mundane, for it soars in and vaporizes from a higher cosmic order.    

DIMACHAERUS SICARII SICARIUS
ABOVE: Gladiator type called DIMACHAERUS --- the "TWO SWORDEDfighter: from Greek διμάχαιρος  "DIMACHAIROS." Compare the wording: μάχαιραι ••• δύο "MACHAIRAI ••DUO," given in the original Greek of the Jesus Two Sword Riddle: LUKE (22:38). The illustration is restored from a sculpted relief of the early Roman Imperial Period. The Dimachaerus in this relief wields two sickle shaped sicae, which were designed for quick gutting and decapitation. These sicae are the "daggers" for which Josephus named those who were Zealots for the WORD---the very "Sicarii." Their blades were double edged and razor sharp. Thrusts of the concave blade-edge made broad stabs and slashes; its broad arc could be jabbed clean into a body just like a straight dagger, but its wide cutting punch, devastated many more volumes, of veins, of sinew, and of flesh. When pulled out from deep inside the victim, the tissue damage was of monstrous angles. On the other hand, concave-blade swipes, when  executed powerfully, did cut clear through limbs and necks. Despite any disinformation effort to the contrary, there is absolutely no doubt that the acrobatic Dimachaerus was a popular gladiatorial act in the First Century, thanks to the evidence of a Patrician sport pamphlet, which happened to be reproduced in a graffiti for Plebian perusal, most probably by a gambling enterprise. The dating of the graffitied pamphlet is certain, because it was uncovered on a street of Pompeii. This graffiti, now in the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Naples, tables among its billings, the battle between a Dimachaerus and Hoplomachus on the Ides of May---definitely more than three months before the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius.


Many will cringe at any suggestion that Jesus was part of military movement. Either they have not read the Old Testament prophets, or else they are not fit to tell difference between a duck and an elephant. With a doctrine as quacky as that of the literalist, continually quacking in one's ears, something much bigger than has been properly explained by one's well quacked catechists, goes very easily misidentified. The so called literalist doctrine, is a very aged, yet scholastically fraudulent patina, of hypnotic layer upon layer of pasted on quackery. In contrast, the JOHN Gospel defines Jesus as the sobering "WORD OF GOD" made manifest---brought to life in humanity. This WORD OF GOD is God's collected Holy Scriptures, with all the riddles that the anomalies in their collation composes. This Old Testament seed of Jesus contains more than 285 instances which address God by the occupational title: "YAHWEH OF THE ARMIES"---often translated: "LORD OF THE HOSTS." Now if the Divine Father of Jesus is the just trump-master over such violent ceremonies, then on no sacred grounds can one discount the equation:  "Like Father Like Son."


YAHWEH  PRODUCES  THE  PROMISED  SON
        
The Greek word μονογενοῦς (monogenḗs; pronounced: mon-og-en-ace'), whenever applied to Jesus in the Gospel, is almost invariably translated as "only begotten [son]." This exclusive translation has been important to "literalist" doctrines which propagate the Gospel commercially:

For God so loved the world 
 That He gave (ἔδωκεν) His only begotten (μονογενῆ: monogene) Son 
So that every one who believes in Him does not die
But has life eternal

---JOHN (3:16) 
(the verb ἔδωκεν not only means "gave," but its meanings also range into "produced," as the use of the form ἐδίδου in MATTHEW (13:8) testifies.)
Doctrines that sell the idea of salvation through ritual mass sacrifice, have so corrupted the analytic thought processes of the literalists, that they can not hear how the Divine inspiration at JOHN (3:16) mocks their magical paradigm. The virility of the Danite 'genotype' of Galilee, puts the witless shenanigans worked by the drooling groupies of Isis and Osiris to shame. The salvation equation, can only be understood in a sane and moral manner, if recognized as the metaphor of a sober reality compact, delivered within an historical context. The literalist tradition bewitches, via a zombie doctrine that libels the universe's one God, with worship that defines the one God as immortal high priest of a child sacrifice cult, who perpetuates His personal filicide ritual, in order to share His immortality with those who partake in theatrics that conjure up the sacramental mystery meat of His son---tortured to death for the ease of the magic circle that literally eats His flesh.  

Those worthy to receive the truth should emulate the anti-magic aim in the satire's mocking, not ape the magic that the satire mocks.

The literalist libel against God stands whether or not the bewitched zombies are conscious enough to perceive their idolatrous error. Forgive them Father for they know not what they eat. By longstanding tradition, the zombies are too spiritually and intellectually comatose regarding their torture flesh-feast, to be disgusted or concerned about the explicit filicide ground to the doctrine that binds both them and their own vulnerable offspring. Thus how could they be expected to comprehend, that the revealed destiny of humanity in the WORD OF GOD, dictates, that the city which embraces the Tophet instead of the promise, must itself suffer the fate of the child consumed by the Tophet. Man is a creature, of an ecological niche, determined by the power of creation. In a manner that is wholly unique to his species, mankind's survival is entirely contingent upon a very serious respect for life. For this reason man can not afford to allow himself to be governed by those who, mesmerized by their own image, lack such serious respect. For each man is only one out of billions made in the image of God. The WORD is with that God, and that God is the WORD, whereas the scripture is uniquely begotten by the power of creation, to explain how, out of all the creatures, mankind is uniquely begotten. For God so loved the world that He produced His uniquely begotten Son, who is the WORD OF GOD come to life. The circles of jerks who think they have custody of the so called literal meaning of this WORD, are all wanking their own chains.

The rolling surface, of the ocean-deep WORD OF GOD's satirically armed war against filicide---which the zombie-mass apes---is, in the end, unbeatable as a medicinal substitute for real child sacrifice. Yet this metaphor, when divorced from its historical context, still offers amoral magical adepts way too much wiggle room for criminal exploitation, and this is why ancient elite political institutions rushed for just such a historical divorce early on, and why the institutions they initiated have promoted their so called "literal" line of interpretation ever since. Earth's history has been hostage to these institutions for the duration.

Anyone who doubts how important the versatility of the word monogenes is to the scripture's intent, need only study the original language of the Bible itself, for this word monogenes is used in HEBREWS, in a closely related way which can not simply mean "only begotten" in the sense of a lone offspring:

Πίστει προσενήνοχεν Ἀβραὰμ τὸν Ἰσαὰκ πειραζόμενος
καὶ τὸν
μονογενῆ προσέφερεν
ὁ τὰς ἐπαγγελίας ἀναδεξάμενος


By faith did offer up Abraham his Isaac being tested
And his monogene did offer up 
The [one] the promises embraced 

                                      ---HEBREWS (11:17) (original word order)

This attempted child sacrifice took place on the Temple Mount of Moriah. There can be no question that Abraham had already begotten Ishmael with Hagar before Isaac was born. The record is also clear that Abraham begat six sons with Keturah after Isaac was spared. The KING JAMES VERSION of HEBREWS (11:17) boldly translates monogene as "only begotten," as though there were no doctrinal problem with this translation at all, since Isaac was the "only begotten" son who was still in Abraham's possession at the time Abraham attempted his sacrifice. This ignores how the passage itself, points to Isaac's uniquely promised birth as the true explanation for Isaac's status as monogene. Isaac was indeed, "uniquely conceived"---literarily begotten as he was, in the womb of a ninety year old woman.

The doctrinal spin worked via the "only begotten" mistranslation, was devised by the ancient uppermost crust, to darken the veil between Jesus and the zealous Galilean host, until opacity reigned supreme. Consider the uncanny parallel between God's offering of His monogene Jesus, and Abraham's offering of his monogene Isaac. When the Temple was built on Mount Moriah, it was designed as Yahweh's fortress against the Pagan empires continually storming through these parts of Earth's greatest military theater. The Galileans dealt a mortal wound to Pagan Rome by taking Jerusalem, where the host of Galilee made an immortal stand against the Roman reoccupier upon the Temple Mount. There the Galilean host offered themselves up for God's plan. Josephus describes their sacrifice as a burnt offering on Moriah's summit: 
The flame was also carried a long way, and made an echo, together with the groans of those that were slain; and because this hill (the Temple Mount: Moriah) was high, and the constructs of the Temple were huge, one would have thought this whole city was burning … there was … a sad clamor of the seditious (downed Galilean Zealots hatched in the trap of the Romans), who were now surrounded with fire πυρὶ and iron σιδήρῳ (swords at the core) ... one would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple stood, was seething hot, as though entirely of fire in every part of it, that the blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain more in number than those that slew them; for nowhere did the ground appear visible, due to the dead bodies that covered it.
---WARS (6:5:1)

The Galileans offered themselves up to stymie Rome's designs against God's plan. Yahweh's Temple, where this 70 AD stand unfolded, stood like a fortress on the very hill where God played the trickster to break the human species of the malignant habit of child sacrifice. Truly divine inspiration is capable of anticipating---even mockingly prompting---actions of the principalities and powers who lay arrayed against the divine plan. The species extinction which would result from the disease of the Pagan magician, is arrested by the negative profession of the Pagan cannibal's filicide creed. Thus the Galilean Last Supper is an antidote, made of Monotheist metaphor, compounded with vectors and context which declare the divine instructions for survival. Though the body acted with one voice of divine inspiration, this was not the heroic sacrifice of a singular Galilean Zealot. In the last months of the 70 AD siege of Jerusalem, over 20,000 Zealots were crucified in front of the city walls (WARS 5:6:11). Many did indeed pick up His cross and follow after Him (MATTHEW 10:38). The "Delivery from Yahweh" was comprised of many men. The "meat" and "blood" were the zealous army consumed with Holy War, who fought to end the slavery of a species bound for extinction by cancerous Pagan-magic mind-control. In this fight against Rome's Pagan disease, the Galileans were provided with pivotal aid by wise men from the east. Thus it is no perchance coincidence, that Josephus definitively uses the word monogenḗs as 'uniquely made' [son] in his ANTIQUITIES (20:20), in context wherein Joe makes sure it can not be taken to mean "only begotten [son]," whereas additional sons are mentioned for the father in question. The telling double-edged ground to the story, involves a Wise Man's public conversion to Judaism, at the urging of a zealous Galilean:  

THE  MAGI  MONOGENE  OF  ADIABENE
Now about this time (as it just so happens, context in ANTIQUITIES indicates this is about the same time when James Zebedee and Herod Agrippa were both stricken in the arena, i.e.---early in the reign of Claudius Caesar, circa 44 AD), Helena, queen of Adiabene, (Adiabene was a wealthy semi-autonomous state on eastern trade routes under Parthian jurisdiction; its capitol Arbela, is today Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan) and her son Izates, changed their course of life (the male names of the ruling house of Adibene are Iranian---moreover Zoroastrian---associating them with the Zoroastrian Magi before their conversion to Galilean Sect Judaism) to embrace the Jewish customs, and this on the occasion following (the conversion was born of the will of God in a manner which involves God's herald---an annunciation---about the special birth of Magi monogene Izates as follows): Monobazus (Monobazus Sr.), the king of Adiabene, who had also the name of Bazeus, fell in love with his sister Helena, and took her to be his wife (note that Sarah was Abraham’s half sister: GENESIS 20:12), and begat a child with her (Monobazus Jr.). Then as he was in bed with her one night, he laid his hand upon his wife's belly, and fell asleep, and seemed to hear a voice, which bid him take his hand off his wife's belly, and not hurt the infant that was therein, which, by God's providence, would be safely born (therein the explanation for the monogene: born by God’s providence), and have a happy end (later portions of the story which are omitted in this extract, go on to detail God's support of this monogene Izates in his war against Parthian powers, and here Whiston's anomalously happy translation is quite interesting in that regard). This voice put him into disorder; so he immediately awoke, and told the story to his wife; and when his son was born, he called him Izates. He (Monobazus Sr.) had indeed Monobazus (Jr.), his elder brother (i.e the elder brother of the monogene Izates), by Helena also, moreover he (Monobazus Sr.) also had other sons by other wives besides (note that Josephus deliberately makes it plain in this prelude, that here not only can the word monogene not mean “only begotten [son],” but monogene also can not be taken as ‘only legitimate [son],’ since Izates had a full brother). Yet did he (Monobazus Sr.) openly place all his affections on this his monogene [son] Izates (μονογενῆ τὸν Ἰζάτην "his uniquely-born [son] Izates": born via prophetic vision of God's messenger, i.e.---via annunciation, like Isaac, Samson, John the Baptist, and Jesus), which was the origin of that envy which his other brethren, [who were born] by the same father, bore to him ….

But afterwards, as he
(Izates now king) had not quite left off his desire of doing this thing (his desire to publically become a Jew, something that a Jewish merchant named Ananias would not offer Izates; note that the name "Ananias" drops a literary tag that brings to mind the Sadducee High Priesthood), a certain other Jew that came out of Galilee, whose name was Eleazar, and who was esteemed very skillful in the learning of his country, persuaded him to do the thing (i.e.---: do the thing that God had preordained when Izates was begotten)
….

When the king had heard what he
(the Galilean) had said, he delayed the thing no longer, but retired to another room, and sent for a surgeon, and did what he was commanded to do. He then sent for his mother, and Ananias his tutor
(the Jewish trader), and informed them that he had done the thing (circumcision); upon which they were presently struck with astonishment and fear, and that to a great degree, lest the thing should be openly discovered and censured, and the king should hazard the loss of his kingdom, while his subjects would not bear to be governed by a man who was so zealous ζηλοῦν in another religion (note Joe’s deliberate use “zealous” in a Galilean context); and lest they should themselves run some hazard, because they would be thought of as the cause of his act (his act of conversion). But it was God Himself who hindered what they feared from taking effect; for He preserved both Izates himself, and His sons when they fell into many dangers, and procured their deliverance when it seemed to be impossible, and demonstrated thereby that the fruit of piety does not perish as to those that have regard to Him, and fix their faith upon Him only.
---ANTIQUITIES (20:2:1-4) (minimally refined from Whiston's translation)

GREEK noun ☞  μονογενή  ☜  monogene, (pronounced: mon-og-en-ay')

✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮✮

Before this discussion dials into Joe's next, and most unique, play on the word monogene, the importance of Adiabene to the Gospel story deserves a pause on the observatory platform. If Josephus indicates that the king of Adiabene was uniquely begotten by God's intervention, in order to join God's nation at the very time that the Jesus assembly was picking up steam, then one best surmise Adiabene, and its king, are somehow very important to the Messianic legacy. An explosive gash in the sky from Adiabene, that streaked into to Jerusalem, was picked up on telescope devices used in Joe's inspired Gospel satire of the Galilean Holy War. These telescopes focus, on close approach orbits which intersect here, to illuminate this holy ground. Their fiery tails are of a brilliance that warrants a flyby. 

As a physical device: a "telescope" is an optical machine, constructed of lenses, that can view a comet long before it becomes visible to the naked eye. As a literary device: a "telescope" is a time machine, constructed of words in plot loops, that remove events from their original time frame, and artificially place the same events into a different time frame than the one in which the events actually took place. The narratives of run-of-the-mill novels, often employ a transparent type of literary telescope, written as memory recollections, or dream sequences. Sacred texts frequently telescope overtly with prophecy and revelation. Yet telescoping may also be accomplished in a more opaque and seamless manner, via cosmic crypts, and earthen masks, honed to warp the fabric of time itself. Josephus uses telescope devices in that more scholastic Old Testament tradition, whereas such refined optics are employed in the Pentateuch, to emphasize how later events in God's plan are prefigured in their earlier currents. For prime example, telescoping is used to make the character of Abraham represent renewed religious resolutions among the community of Jewish exiles who return from Babylon. Note that Abe is only mentioned in two PSALMS, and both of these PSALMS (47 & 110) are  post exilic. Moreover Abe is 75 years old when he begins his migration back home to the Levant from the Persian Gulf coast delta (GENESIS 12:4, ANTIQUITIES 1:7:1), which is the same period of time the exiles in Babylon waited to begin their return home from the same Gulf coast (subtract Zerubbabel at c. 518 BC, from Jeconiah at c. 597 BC, with time allowed for orders, roundup, and travel). The return from exile is telescoped back to the time before the captivity in Egypt. The Second Temple phase of Judaism was just as uniquely born as Isaac. The sacred texts document this historical reality, and they do not feign to hide it from an industrious seeker. However, via both overt and covert compulsion, religious organizations trend towards increasing doctrinal tyranny over time. The tallest in the forest can not survive without lightning. What creature is man if not the tallest? What will be humankind's religion, if not a religion of survival for the species? A species that can split the atom, yet feeds on its young, will never survive. 

Josephus exploits literary telescoping to construct his cosmic Gospel crossword puzzle with the highest level of scholastic difficulty. Joe not only plays on words and symbols, and then shuffles the keys into his several variant texts composed from different rhetorical perspectives on the same war story, but Joe also takes real historical elements, uses them as models for symbolic elements in his satirical puzzle, then jumbles the time frames of these elements to telescope God's important themes. Thus the riddled stargazer must note the fact that the royals of Adiabene were Magi, who came from the east and joined the Galilean revolt against Rome. Their conversion to Judaism was famous throughout the ancient world, not only because of their great architectural projects in Jerusalem (Pausanias GRAECIA DESCRIPTIO 7:16:5, ANTIQUITIES 20:4:3, WARS 6:6:3, Talmud SUKKAH 2b), but also for their bearing of conspicuous gifts to the Temple---gifts of precious gold from the east (Talmud: YOMA 37a & 37b, TOSEF 82; compare also Adiabene's relief to Israel's famine of BABA BATRA 11a, ANTIQUITIES 20:2:5, with Paul's contemporary effort of ACTS 11-12, MATTHEW 6:19-21, whereas Antioch was the main port of the Cyprus trade, and directly at the terminus of Adiabene's main route of economy). 

All the new gold vessels Adiabene supplied for the Temple had to be anointed with myrrh (EXODUS 30:22-29, JOHN 2:21). Moreover frankincense was burned at the Temple's incense table---especially on the Day of Atonement (EXODUS 30:34-38, 30:1-10). It was thanks to the gifts borne from Adiabene, along with Adiabene's military support (WARS 2:19:2, 5:11:5), that the Jerusalem Temple was cleansed of the idolatrous Caesar's gifts and sacrifices (Talmud GITTIN 56a, WARS 5:13:6), to prepare for the momentous Day of Atonement in November of 66 AD, when the Temple was ruled by the Galilean Eliezer.


ABOVE: THREE FORMERLY ZOROASTRIAN MAGI BEARING GIFTS FROM ADIABENE. This Mosaic in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore Ravenna (c. 430 AD), like most early depictions of the Magi, shows them in Persian/Parthian dress. Though the nativity narrative in MATTHEW is too economic to detail the entire story of Adiabene's symbiotic relations with the Son of Man, the Gospel story is nonetheless, very literally specific, when it discusses these characters who are so often translated generically as the "Wise Men":
Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλέεμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας
 ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου τοῦ βασιλέως ἰδού
μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν παρεγένοντο εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα
λέγοντες, Ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ τεχθεὶς βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων
εἴδομεν γὰρ αὐτοῦ

τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ
καὶ ἤλθομεν προσκυνῆσαι αὐτῷ
 


When the Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea
In the days of Herod the king---Behold!
Magi from east arrived in Jerusalem 
Saying: "Where is the one being born King of the Judaeans?
We're seeing (understanding, perceiving) indeed of Him
The star in the east! (anti-Roman movement of wide popularity)!
Now we come to pay homage to Him
 (literally.: "kiss towards Him,")
                                                                  (figuratively: 'swear fealty to Him,' 'demonstrate our obeisance to Him' )

---MATTHEW (2:1-2)
  
The original Greek text calls these "Wise Men" by the more specific Iranian derived word  μάγοι --- Magoi. These "Magi" were priests of the "fire-worshipping" Zoroastrians, which is, in and of itself, very interesting, especially once one reads on, and perceives Casius Dio's twilight-zone telescope of Adiabene into the Great Fire of Rome. Some think Judaism was strongly influenced by Zoroastrian Monotheistic concepts during exilic Persian contact and sponsorship. However there is little reason to seek a late explanation in Persia for the Tanakh's pyrosania. Yahweh is the Master of the Armies. In the ancient world, fire was the military weapon of mass destruction. Martial sparks were especially important, to the tumultuous end of the Bronze Age that freed Canaan from Egypt. Now while the common translation "Wise Men" genericizes the Zoroastrian visitors in faith and sex, there is a further non-Biblical subterfuge that calls them the "Three Kings," which then goes on to give them each a name, and even confabulate three different countries of origin for them, but all of this is deliberate anti-Gospel propaganda, every splinter as fraudulent as the "True Cross," and perhaps also ultimately the invention of Constantine's mother, Helena. Ironic, whereas, if one wants to know the real names, of these three Magi of Adiabene who bore gifts to the Messianic movement, they were: the monogene Izates, his brother Monobaz, and their loving mother---none other, than Helena of Erbil.    


Gold, frankincense, and myrrh, have been detected by an elemental probe. Burning results from a rough geopolitical probing, now fly out the back door of Caesar's wormhole into the future. This time-warp rocket of blunderous hostilities, takes its first snapshot in 64 BC; Rome's General Pompey is caught with time-prolapsed polaroids, as he sashays on into the Jerusalem Temple with an overfilled stomach. Pompey spies on the floor in the airy Holy of Holies, as he annexes a Judean Kingdom ruled by the Hasmonean relatives of Josephus for the previous century. The Roman Republic will be a dead façade within twenty years from when Pompey enters into Yahweh's Temple, as Caesar becomes dictator, and then is quickly assassinated and deified. Henceforward the Imperial Pagan Romans---men who will worship their dictator and his idols as a god---will either choose Yahweh's High Priest directly, or will choose an Apostate Jew who will choose Yahweh's High Priest for them. That charade will endure, until when, almost exactly a century from when Pompey's peek spills beyond the veil of the Sanctuary, the Galileans will cleanse Yahweh's Temple, and end the sacrifices made there to the health of Caesar's Pagan "genius."

The transformation of Israel into a vassal state serving Pagan Rome, begins with ruthless help from the Edomite Great Herod and his father Antipater. However just as these Edomites were serving Rome and themselves by finishing-off the Hasmoneans, Pompey and Julius Caesar began their spat, into the winds of a full on Roman Civil War. This conflict soon gave the Hasmonean royal relatives of Josephus meteorological cover, for a brief last-minute taste of freedom from Rome. The geopolitical key here, is that this reversal was worked by Armenian and Parthian aggressions against a suddenly wavering Rome's most recent eastern inroads. The interests of Armenia and Parthia benefitted the Hasmoneans, and rendered Rome's annexation of Israel null and void for the seven years from 44-37 BC. During the midst of this seven year period of independence, in the year 40 BC, Marc Antony persuaded the Senate in Rome to declare Great Herod "King of the Jews." Three years later in 37 BC, Herod finally stormed back into Hasmonean Jerusalem with a force of Roman troops. Once installed as king, Herod proceeded to slaughter every innocent remaining male Hasmonean royal he could get his hands on, whilst under the cover of his marriage to the beautiful Hasmonean princess named Μαριάμη --- Mariamne (cf. Μαριά---i.e. Mary). Herod would eventually murder Mary, and his own innocent, half Hasmonean sons by Mary, but his grandson by Mary, named Herod-Agrippa I, would live to become king under Caligula Caesar, and "King of the Jews" under Claudius Caesar.  




ABOVEENGRAVING OF KING HEROD THE GREAT, AND HIS UPSTAGED HASMONEAN WIFE NAMED MARIAMNE Μαριάμη (i.e. Μαριά ---"MARY"). The following citations from ANTIQUITIES by Josephus describe Herod's murders of the innocent Hasmoneans who might have ruled in his place: 37 BC: Herod kills the top 45 men in the Hasmonean cabinet, and gives the Hasmonean royal jewels and treasures to Marc Antony. Josephus quotes Strabo's account wherein Antony mutilates King Antigonus Matthias with an ax ------ an uncustomary execution, whereas the Romans usually strangled conquered chiefs (ANT 15:1:5). According to Cassius Dio, the method Antony used on Antigonus was crucifixion (ROM HIST 49:22). Dio, like Strabo, notes that this execution was uncustomary for a man with his rank of king---i.e. 'King of the Jews.' The two accounts are not mutually exclusive, as crucifixion could involve humiliating public mutilation of the victim, especially of the genitals. Antigonus was the grandson of Alexander Janneus, and the brother of Mary's mother. 35 BC: Herod drowns Mary's brother Aristobulus III---the High Priest (ANT 15:3:3). 30 BC: Herod murders Hyrcanus II, son of Alexander Janneus, grandfather of Mary (ANT 15:2:3-4, WARS 1:22:1). 29 BC: Herod murders Mary and her protector Joseph, and Alexandra---Mary's mother, along with the "children of Sabbas" (ANT 17:7:4-10). 7 BC: Herod kills Aristobulus IV and Alexander III, his own two sons by Mary  (ANT 16:11:7, 16:1:2, 16:3:1). 5 BC: Filicidal Herod kills a third son, Antipater II (ANT 17:7:7). Regarding Alexander Janneus, note the "Jannai the son of Joseph the son of Matthias" of LUKE (3:24). 


οτε ηρωδης ιδων οτι ενεπαιχθη υπο των μαγων εθυμωθη λιαν
και αποστειλας ανειλεν παντας τους παιδας τους εν βηθλεεμ
και εν πασιν τοις οριοις αυτης
απο διετους και κατωτερω
κατα τον χρονον
ον ηκριβωσεν παρα των μαγων

And Herod seeing he had been outsmarted by the Magi was enraged greatly
And he dispatched to make an end to all the boys in Bethlehem
And all in the vicinity of it
From two years old and under
Down-from the time (χρόνον---chronon: accusative for chronos)
Which he ascertained from the magi  

---MATTHEW (2:16)3

ABOVE: HEROD'S SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. Through the bias of Anti-Persian propaganda, the Greeks came to blame the invention of the so called "black arts" on Zoroaster, and thus the Magi became "magicians" as opposed to proper Pagan priests who honored the gods. The English word "magic" is derived from a millennia of prejudice in the ancient West against the Zoroastrian priesthood. Yet Western Paganism was itself truly rife with sympathetic magic, which became virulent in the degeneracy of the Imperial period, as the Pagan mysteries penetrated deep into the general populace. The double-edge on the Slaughter of Innocents Parable, plays upon the libel against the Magi, to indict Herod of practicing the "black arts." This Gospel accusation is substantiated by the Pagan implements on Herod's year three coins. Moreover, the Herodian era temple at the very top of Mount Hermon, may have been Herod's darkest hide away.



ABOVE: THE HEIRS MURDERED AT AUGUSTA: GREAT HEROD'S SONS ALEXANDER III, AND ARISTOBULUS IV, ARE STRANGLED TO DEATH IN 7 BC AT SEBASTE (i.e. "AUGUSTA") ISRAEL, BY THEIR FATHER'S MEN, ON THE ORDER OF AUGUSTUS CAESAR. Josephus gives the following account of this filicide in WARS: 
σφόδρα μὲν ἠχθέσθη Καῖσαρ ἐπὶ τοῖς νεανίσκοις, οὐ μὴν ᾤετο δεῖν ἀφελέσθαι τὸν πατέρα τὴν περὶ τῶν υἱῶν ἐξουσίαν … Τούτοις Ἡρώδης πείθεται, καὶ παραγενόμενος εἰς Βηρυτόν, ἔνθαπροσέταξεν Καῖσαρ, συνῆγε τὸ δικαστήριον ... ἔνθα δὴ μετέωρος ἥ τε Συρία πᾶσα καὶ τὸ Ἰουδαϊκὸν ἦν ἐκδεχομένων τὸτέλος τοῦ δράματος· οὐδεὶς μέντοι ὑπελάμβανεν ἔσεσθαι μέχριτεκνοκτονίας ὠμὸν Ἡρώδην. ὁ δὲ σύρας τοὺς υἱοὺς εἰς Τύρον κἀκεῖθεν διαπλεύσαςεἰς Καισάρειαν τρόπον ἀναιρέσεως τοῖς μειρακίοις ἐσκέπτετο … πέμψας δὲ καὶ τοὺς υἱεῖς εἰς Σεβαστὴν οὖσαν οὐ πόρρω τῆς Καισαρείαςπροσέταξεν ἀποπνῖξαι.
Caesar (Augustus Caesar) was violently annoyed at the case of the young men (Aristobulus IV and Alexander III), yet he did not think he ought take control of the father's reins, so he wrote him that he had appointed to him the power [of life and death] over his sons (basically telling Herod to dispose of them)... With these directions Herod complied, and went to Beirut where Caesar ordered the court to be assembled, and he collected the judicature ... And now all Syria and Judaea were in great anticipation while waiting for the last act in this tragedy, still no one did suppose that Herod would be so barbarous as to murder his own children ... He sent his sons to Sebaste (i.e. "Augusta" Israel), a city not far from Caesarea (Caesarea Maritima), and ordered them there to be strangled.  
---Josephus in WARS (1:27:1-6)   
Alex and Ari had been expected to succeed Herod. Due to this filicide, the divided succession went to three sons without Hasmonean provenance: Archie, Antipas, and Philip. This sordid succession is integral to the comprehension of how Jesus was indeed a uniquely born monogene. King Herod the Great died three years after he murdered his Hasmonean sons Alex and Ari, whereupon Great Herod was soon succeeded by the three stooges who were schooled in Rome: 
CAESAR'S  THREE  STOOGES 
  • Herod Archelaus (Archie): After Augustus and his grandson Gaius emended Herod’s last will, Archie was only made Ethnarch of Judaea, Samaria, and Idumea, while rebellious Galilee was separated from Judaea and further divided. Archie would only serve for a decade, from 4 BC to 6 AD. In the key year 6 AD, Archie was deposed and Judaea annexed, while Jesus was born alongside the Galilean sect in the tax-revolt response. A critical mass had the nerve to fight the evil rulers who spoiled the Holy Land and stuck babies in mangers. Josephus crafts a satirical 6 AD agricultural fertility-cult parable, in the Doomsday Dreams of Archelaus and Glaphyra, to plow full circle through this ensuing royal list. Glaphyra, was a half Armenian princess from Cappadocia, and the widow of Alexander III---the half Hasmonean son whom Great Herod strangled at Sebaste; Alex's filicide was just three years prior to when his bro Archie stepped-up into the resulting power vacuum, to grab the reins, and bag the family jewels. Joe's parable has Alex's widow Glaphyra take Archie as her unlawfully wedded third husband. The train of twisted Imperial snakes, bites its own tail over this widow Glaphyra, whereas Archie suddenly usurps the heir apparent status of Glaphyra's murdered first spouse Alex---Archie's half brother, ☞ when Augustus confirms brother Archie, to rule in Alex's place, as the rook to Empress Livia's home-girl auntie Salome, ☜ who had commandeered Alex's orphans and sent their hoity-toity, half Armenian, widow mommy---Glaphyra---packing back home to Cappadocia, where this Glaphyra dreamt up a bromantic end to her dead first husband Alex's supplanter Archie,  whose estate was soon liquidated by Cyrenius, when Tigranes V---the orphan son whom Glaphyra had bore to strangled Alex---needed funds to install his rule over Armenia,  after Augustus was no doubt fully disgusted, with how the Armenian death of Augustus's own young heir named Gaius, was rumored to have been plotted by Augustus's own wife, Empress Livia  so that Livia's son Tiberius, could become the Caesar, whose cult-magic racket got prosecuted, by the unremitting Jesus. The mafia back-stabbing, inside the competitive Herodian and Imperial Julio-Claudian houses, has no parallel. The nonchalant way in which these occult thugs brutalized their own family members, only scratches an infamous surface, well preserved over the monstrous private sadisms they enjoyed, at the expense of countless lives taken from their nameless subjects. According to ANTIQUITIES 17:11:4, the dominions master Augustus entrusted to Archelaus delivered him a total of 600 talents annually, but at WARS 2:6:3 Joe gives the same revenue as only 400 talents; the average of Joe's two deliberately variant accounts is 500 talents---compare the 5 talents of MATTHEW 25:15, and note how the more local focus to Joe's variant form of the Parable of the Talents in the lines of LUKE (19:12, 19:14-16, 19:27), lifts details from WARS (2:2:1-3, 2:6:1, 2:7:3) about Archelaus's trip to Rome in quest of kingdom. According to the fragmentary Greek version of Eusebius's THEOPHANIA (4:22), the missing GOSPEL OF THE HEBREWS contained yet a third variant of the Parable of the Talents, in Hebrew, or Aramaic, wherein the servant who was given 5 talents "was eating up the belongings of his master with harlots and flute-girls." Josephus wrote a version of WARS in Aramaic; it is also missing.
  • Herod Antipas: made Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea  by Augustus Caesar; serves from 3 BC to 39 AD. Breaking ground in a Jewish graveyard about the year 25 AD, Antipas builds the polis Tiberias---a Pagan city of the Imperial Cult honoring the flowering faux-divinity of the ruling Caesar Tiberius. Even the Sea of Galilee came to be renamed: θαλάσσης Τιβεριάδος---"Sea of Tiberias," or, in Latin: "Mare Tiberiadis." According to ANTIQUITIES 17:11:4, the tetrarchy that master Augustus entrusted Antipas delivered him 200 talents annually---compare the 2 talents of MATTHEW 25:15.
  • Herod Philip: made Tetrarch of Gaulonitus, Auranitus, Trachonitus, and Batanea by Augustus Caesar; serves from 3 BC to 34 AD. Philip was a "great friend" of the Roman General Varus. While Archie, Antipas, and auntie Salome were in Rome contesting Great Herod's will in 4 BC, Varus set the cloisters of the Temple on fire and stole 400 talents from the sacred treasury. Varus's troops then burnt Sepphoris, where Varus sold the survivors into slavery, after he had crucified 2,000 of the Galileans who had fortified the city. The final emendation of Herod's will, and division of Herod's kingdom, was largely the design of Gaius and General Varus, who called Philip in from Syria, to help out in Judaea, as insurrection flared while Archelaus and Antipas fought over the kingdom in Rome. Philip was given his own third of Great Herod's kingdom, and in 29 AD, Philip rebuilt Bethsaida into Julias---a Pagan city of the Imperial Cult honoring the flowering faux-divinity of the just deceased Empress Livia-Julia. This abomination, rising over the unnatural division of Gaulonitus from Galilee near Bethsaida, restoked the Galilean sect under Jesus. Bethsaida was the ancient capitol of Geshur. The House of David had fiery roots, in Geshur, and in the related realm of Maachah, which was right next door to the border post city of Dan. The Bethsaida roots of the Jesus movement put the Son of David back in the saddle. According to ANTIQUITIES 17:11:4, the tetrarchy that master Augustus entrusted to Philip delivered him 100 talents annually---compare the 1 talent of MATTHEW 25:15. 
ORPHANS  OF  THE  HEIRS  MURDERED  AT  AUGUSTA 
Children of the half Hasmonean Aristobulus IV, who was strangled at Sebaste, did 'inherit' rule, thanks to the designs of Great Herod's sister Salome I, who was both their great aunt and their grandmother. In the threefold division of Great Herod's client kingdom, Salome I inherited the palaces and date palm groves Herod had built at Jabneh and Phaesalis, as her two own private Topiarchies. When the Topiarchress Salome I died, these Topiarchies became the private Israeli properties of Salome's home-girl Empress Livia-Julia. The following three full siblings were orphans of the strangled Aristobulus, and thus the grandchildren of both Mariamne and Salome I:  
  • Herodias: wife of Tetrarch Antipas, mother of Salome II. 
  • Herod-Agrippa I: raised in Rome in the house of the future Caesar Tiberius after the murder of his father Aristobulus IV by Augustus Caesar and Great Herod: c. 29-33 AD: made Agoranomos of Tiberias by Antipas, at the behest of Herodias and Livia; 37 AD: Caligula Caesar makes him King of  Gaulonitus, Auranitus, Trachonitus, Batanea, and Abeline, 39 AD: Caligula adds Galilee and Perea to his kingdom, 41 AD: When Claudius Caesar adds Judaea and Samaria, Herod-Agrippa I's realm becomes bigger than what his grandfather Herod the Great had ruled, but Herod-Agrippa dies less than three years later in 44 AD, and governance of Judaea and Samaria once again devolves to direct rule by Roman Procurators. Herod-Agrippa was deeply involved in intrigues of Imperial succession, playing a part in the rise to power of his close friend Caligula Caesar, and then, with many talents of Judaean money, greatly assisting Claudius Caesar in his affirmation by the Senate. In reward Claudius ends direct Roman rule of Judaea, but only for three years.
  • Herod of Chalcis: 41 AD: Claudius Caesar makes him King of Chalcis, a realm north of Abeline which stretched up the Bekah Valley to Heliopolis. 44 AD: At the death of his brother Herod Agrippa I, Claudius makes him Governor of the Jerusalem Temple, administering its police force, and appointing the High Priest. Herod of Chalcis died c. 49 AD.  
GRANDCHILDREN  OF  THE  HEIRS  MURDERED  AT  AUGUSTA  
The following children of the three listed orphans left by strangled Aristobulus IV, also inherited the opportunity to rule for Rome: 
  • Salome II: of the "seven viels"  was daughter of Herodias. Salome became Queen of Chalcis in 53 AD. In 58 AD Nero added somewhat far away Lesser Armenia to the Chalcis realm ruled by Salome and her second husband. Salome's second husband was her twice first cousin Aristobulus V.  
  • Aristobulus V: son of Herod of Chalcis; appointed King of Chalcis c. 53 AD. Nero adds Lesser Armenia to his realm shared with Salome in 58 AD.  
  • Herod-Agrippa II: son of Herod Agrippa I, he is raised at Rome in the Emperor's palace by Claudius Caesar. In 49 AD, Claudius makes him King of Chalcis and Governor of the Jerusalem Temple, whereby he chooses Yahweh's High Priest for his step-father Caesar, until the Galileans take back the Temple in 66 AD. He relinquishes Chalcis to Salome and Aristobulus in 53 AD, when he is made King of Gaulonitus, Auranitus, Trachonitus, Batanea, and Abeline. In 55 AD Nero adds much of Galilee and Perea to his kingdom. He fights on the side of the Romans against Josephus in the Jewish War, and issues his own "Judaea Capta" coinage, which celebrates the taking of Jewish slaves by victorious Rome. Josephus reports that Herod-Agripp II celebrated days of Dionysian feasts upon captured Galileans whom Herod Agrippa II called war booty. 
In addition to the positions obtained by the six offspring of Aristobulus IV listed above, two offspring of Alexander III---the other half Hasmonean son whom Herod strangled at Sebaste in 7 BC---also inherited an opportunity to rule for Rome: 
  • Tigranes V: an orphan of Alexander III who made no pretense of his abandonment of his Jewish religious roots. Tigranes V was appointed by Augustus to rule as client king of Greater Armenia, at the same time Augustus banished Archelaus and took direct control of Judaea (RES GESTAE DIVI AUGUSTI 5:27). Tigranes V reigned 6-12 AD; Cyrenius was Governor of Syria 6-12 AD---the very same period  of tenure. Rome's previous client ruler of Armenia, Artavades III, had just been assassinated in a 6 AD popular revolt. The resulting 6 AD crisis for the Empire introduced by Armenian nationalists, along with debased silver coinage minted by the Romans in Syria during that year, fills out economic motive for the removal of Herod Archelaus from Judaea (Dio ROMAN HISTORY 55:25:1-5). An increase in military budgets was needed to face the threat of Armenian instability on the Parthian frontier of Syria, and it was filled in part by liquidating the estate of Archelaus, and briefly incorporating Judaea and Samaria into Provincia Syria for taxation. Cyrenius was sent to govern Syria in 6 AD, right as Judaea is being placed under Syria's jurisdiction, and right as Tigranes V is being installed in Armenia. As the challenges of these tethered transitions were managed, Judaea's Prefects gradually obtained more independence from Syria's Governor. From Roman headquarters at Caesarea Maritima, Coponius, Prefect of Judaea from 6-9 AD, reported directly to Governor Quirinius in Antioch. Note that prior to his appointment to the post of Governor of Syria, Cyrenius had been sent to Armenia by Augustus to act as advisor to Marcus-Agrippa's son Gaius, who was given charge of Roman management of Armenian affairs, while made previous Governor of Syria by Augustus, who was the grandfather of Gaius, and his legal father by adoption (Tacitus ANNALS 3:48). According to Tacitus, Gaius---supported by Cyrenius as his chief man in the field---appointed the Armenian king Ariobarzanes who reined c. 2 BC to 4 AD (ANNALS 2:4). Gaius officially died from a wound he took in battle at Artagira Armenia c. 3 AD. While Cyrenius was officially second in command regarding Armenian affairs under the 25 year old Gaius, the younger man's prominence was entirely due to his being grandson and adopted heir of Emperor Augustus. Cyrenius, then already at 50 years of age, was certainly the real geopolitical intellectual power behind the office of Gaius, and Cyrenius would continue in his Armenian role like he succeeded Gaius in his Syrian role; Cyrenius would thus have been central to the installation of Tigranes V's predecessor: Artavasdes III---King of Armenia 4 to 6 AD (see Tacitus ANNALS 2:4, 3:48, 1:3). The assassination of Artavades in 6 AD caused the crisis that appointed Tigranes V and deposed Archelaus. The birth of Jesus in this geopolitical manger, is the unique context which begat the Galilean sect of Judaism---a militant sect that Yahweh chose to star in the 66-70 AD finale of His Jerusalem Temple. Tigrane V's mother was Glaphyra, the half Armenian princess of Cappadocia; As Josephus relates, an illegal marriage, between this non Jewish Glaphyra and the Jewish pretender Herod Archelaus, was in someway salient to the 6 AD exile of Herod Archelaus by Augustus. The reader is deliberately left the task of connecting the dots to Glaphyra's son Tigranes V. Josephus is, in a like manner, cryptically mute about the Armenian crisis that Nero faced in the orchestrated prelude to the Jewish revolt of 66 AD; peace is the last piece of the puzzle. More than two decades after he was deposed, Tigranes V was tried for treason before the Senate and executed (Tacitus ANNALS 6:40); the year was 36 AD---the same year that Syria's governor Vitellius both defeated the Parthians in Armenia, and deposed Pontius Pilate.    
  • Tigranes VI: grandson of the orphan Alexander IV, great-grandson of Herod the Great, Tigranes VI was appointed client  King of Greater Armenia in 58 AD but did not take the kingdom until 60 AD. He attacked Adiabene in 61 AD, was repulsed from Armenia in 62 AD by a Parthian and Adiabenite coalition, and forced by Nero to surrender all claims to rule under the 63 AD peace agreement between Nero, Parthia, and Adiabene. In the brief Armenian adventure of Tigranes VI, the crimes of Herod against the Hasmonean house bear fruit, properly plucked by the Jewish revolt plot aforethought of the Hasmonean Josephus---General of the Galileans.   
RECAP: The changes in rule over Judaea at the turn of the century, provide the most essential historical context for understanding the Gospel concept of the monogene, as the discussion will soon demonstrate with a comparison of the nativity narratives of LUKE and MATTHEW:
  • 40 BC to 4 BC: The Edomite Great Herod is Rome's King of Judaea. Halley's comet appears in 12 BC---eight years before Herod's death.
  • 4 BC to 6 AD: Upon Herod's death, Archelaus is installed as Rome's Ethnarch of Judaea for a decade, until Augustus Caesar deposes him, and exiles him to the outer darkness, in 6 AD.
  • 6 AD to 41 AD: Upon the exile of Archie, the government of Judaea devolves unto direct rule by Roman Prefects and Procurators. To execute this direct rule, the Romans make the 6 AD tax census (the ἀpographάs, i.e. "registration"), and force the baby Jesus into the beast's manger. The revolt waged by the Galilean Sect---a new sect of Judaism made up of the "Zealots" or "Sicari"---is a revolt and sect uniquely born in the very same year that this newborn baby Jesus is delivered into the beast's feeding trough. Get a clue!   



The geopolitical probe takes its next epic snapshot in 12 BC, as Halley's Comet cuts over Jerusalem, where Herod has finished assembling all his materials to begin the above ground phase to his rebuild of the Jerusalem Temple (MATTHEW 2:1-12, JOHN 2:20-21). Halley's is the only comet visible with the naked eye that an earthling may view twice in their lifetime (MATTHEW 24:27-34). In all its troublesome cosmic glare, Herod's rebuild of Yahweh's Temple is a travesty, whereas the Edomite has already built three Pagan cities for Caesar in Israel:  
  • Caesarea Phillipi, (Καισαρεία Φιλίππεια) near the ancient city Dan.   
  • Caesarea Maritima, (Παράλιος Καισάρεια) on land assigned to the Tribe of Manasseh. 
  • Sebsate (Σεβαστή --- a Greek name literally rendered into English as "Augusta"), also in Manasseh territory, over the ruins of the capitol of Israel that Omri built at Samaria 
Each of these new cities that Herod names for the living Emperor, are equipped with a temple of the Imperial Cult---an idol-house called an Augusteum, wherein the living Emperor Caesar is worshipped as god. One must also note Herod's construction of many Pagan Temples outside Israel. All Herod's greatest projects were built largely with profits he earned from his Roman franchise, particularly the profits from Herod's slave labor management of the Imperial House's copper mines of Cyprus, yet the calculated effect of these famous projects upon the Jewish mind should not pass unnoticed. Pseudo-Jewish patronage, both by Pagans, and of Paganism, whittled away at Israel's Monotheist resolution. Herod's rebuild of Yahweh's Temple could not be divorced from Herod's rebuild of the Temple of the Pythian Apollo at Rhodes, nor could it be sanitized from Herod's ceremonial confirmation of his kingship there at Rhodes by the hand of Emperor Augustus Caesar in 31 BC. Inscriptions found on the Acropolis at Athens suggest Herod built the circular Augusteum whose ruins are found just east of the Parthenon. In the time of Nero an Aesclipeon with rows of idols was even built in the Jerusalem shadow of Yahweh's Temple, while Caesarea Philippi was refitted as Neropolis. Josephus hides the iconoclastic imperative in his inspired literary works in order to allow the cure to pierce the cell membrane, but those with ears to hear can indeed comprehend, the God given gift of immunity that comes with pious effort. No matter how Hellenized or degenerate the Hasmoneans may have become, their coinage was always engraved with dual Greek and Hebrew legends. In contrast, Herod's coins were always exclusively in Greek. When one searches Herod's coins carefully for any sort of inscription in Hebrew, one finds there was never a jot (i.e. יוֹדΙώτα). Moreover Herod proudly issued coins with the Caduceus---the symbol that heralds the advent of Pagan power, via its elite, and inhuman, cannibal magic. Due to a large diaspora, mainly in Egypt and the Asian provinces, Jews comprise about nine percent of the Empire's entire population at the time of Augustus. Moreover, there are large populations of Jews in the Parthian Empire to the east, which pose an equal threat to the health and expansion of Rome's faux-divine Imperial House. The prey will be lulled to sleep with the opium in the polished bling, until a jealous Yahweh reminds them that the pew is noxious. Still, so many who are otherwise savvy, disregard where wisdom begins, and let themselves be led into Herod's amphitheater to mourn.    

 
ABOVE: HEROD THE GREAT'S CHARMING CADUCEUS COIN CELEBRATES PAGAN VICTORY OVER HASMONEAN JERUSALEM IN 37 BCThe Greek legend reads: ΗΡΩΔΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ, which means "Of King Herod." The coin is dated year three from Herod's 40 BC coronation in the Roman Senate. Only Herod's first coins, issued in this, the year of his victory over Antigonus Matthias and the Parthians, are graven with a date of issue. On this coin the date is found directly above the points of the Caduceus. Edomite Herod, as a franchisee of the Second Triumvirate, has now seized the Hasmoneans by their generative organs.
The final snapshots needed, to preface a solution to the Parable of the Two First Days of Christmas, are taken on the border of Adiabene and Armenia, on the eve of the next approach of Halley's, seven decades hence. The Roman Empire's demigod post of Caesar is now filled by a most self indulgent, adolescent hedonist of little talent, named Nero. Despite a Galilean resistance that has simmered and boiled since Great Herod became ambitious Governor of Galilee circa 49 BC, the morbidly inbred Herodian Dynasty appears to have successfully supplanted their Hasmonean predecessors, and secured Israel as vassal to Pagan Rome for nearly a century. But a celestial phenomenon dramatically makes its reentrance stage right. Soon the Herodian Dynasty will flash into the fiery trash heap of Yahweh's orchestra pit. In 58 AD, Nero's client, Herod Agrippa II, rules over most of Galilee, and is also Governor over the Jerusalem Temple at Caesar's pleasure. Herod's great-granddaughter, Seven-veil Salome, and her husband Aristobulus (himself also Herod's great-grandchild), are appointed by Nero to rule the Roman vassal state of Lesser Armenia. With these Herodian pawns in place, Nero Caesar now sends his general Corbulo to invade Greater Armenia, and there install another Herodian dynast as ruler: Tigranes VI---Great Herod's great-grandson. What Nero's general Corbulo does next is the real shift-kicker. Corbulo continues his invasion beyond the borders of Greater Armenia, making rapine marches into Adiabene, where Corbulo all but deposes Adiabene's pious Jewish king Monobaz II---brother of the uniquely born Izates. The Romans are exploiting their own stable of apostate Jewish royals, as a wildcard in a untimely putsch back into the east.

Just prior to Nero's calculated misadventure (Tacitus: ANNALS 13:5, Dio: ROMAN HISTORY 61:3:1-4:2, Seneca: APOCOLOCYNTOSIS 3-4), Greater Armenia had realigned itself, revolting from decades of Roman suzerainty, to join the likes of their Adiabenite neighbors, as confederates of the more kindred Parthian Empire. Vologases I, the Parthian Emperor, had installed his own brother Tridates as king of Armenia shortly after Nero became Caesar. After Rome finally sent Corbulo on the attack, the Parthians of course rallied to restore their own embattled clients Tridates and Monobaz. Parthian forces drove back into Armenia, together with a large contingent led by Monobaz of Adiabene. Nero is eventually forced to seek a cessation of hostilities, or risk once more loosing Syria to Parthia---a very expensive setback indeed. The negotiated peace promises to allow Nero to save face, albeit with purely cosmetic public gestures of Roman ritual drama, staged as a major production. Nero can not resist starring in a good show, so Nero withdraws the claim that his Herodian pawn Tigranes has made on Armenia, and accepts the reinstatement of Parthia's king Tridates---but only because Tridates is going to come to Rome, and be at center stage of an epic spectacle. Tridates---the brother of the Parthian Emperor----is to be crowned by puffed-up Emperor Nero, the twenty-five year old musical hero. The gig is up in the Forum. When Nero's mother, Agrippina Minor, insisted that exiled wise-man Seneca tutor her son, she made a terrible casting mistake; the first season of Latin Idol ended with falling star. All theater is deception. Survival requires sobriety.

In 63 AD, with much fanfare, Nero presides over a farcical public coronation of Parthia's Armenian king. Nero shuts the doors to the Temple of Janus, delivering Seneca's duplicitous lines about "Peace" to the crowd like a droning Locutus---a detail this discussion will circumambulate back around in short order. Less than a year after this drama, in 64 AD, Rome is burned by the West's converts to the anti-Imperial Galilean sect who go by the name of "Christians." In 66 AD Halley's Comet once more cuts in over the Jerusalem Temple, as the brothers of Monobaz and the uniquely born Izates, lead a contingent from Adiabene to repulse the legions Rome brings in from Syria to fight the Jewish insurrection. The converted Magi of Adiabene help repulse Rome's General Cestius as he sallies outside the walls of a Jerusalem in full-on Galilean revolt. Along with the Adiabenites rides Eleazer, the son of the disciple of Jesus named Simon Zealotes. Josephus is none other than the son of Matthew. Many quit the tax booth to join the Delivery from Yahweh.  


  THE  TWO  FIRST  DAYS  OF  CHRISTMAS 

The preceding photographic synopsis, provides cosmic context essential to the most glaring of all deliberate chronological anomalies in Gospel. The prime Christmas, is, by its very nature, a geopolitical time-warp. It certainly can not be scientifically denied, that whether one chooses "B.C." or "B.C.E.," whether one professes to exist in "A.D." or "C.E.," this Messianic birthday anomaly has forever changed the way time is measured on this planet. Thanks to battles begun by the Galilean Sect, expansion into Asia was halted for the evil empire of faux-divine human traffickers. The disease was checked. The global restoration of human dignity was scheduled to begin again. These are certainly things worthy of celebration and rejoice. Even an atheist, who chooses to view human existence as merely anarchic noise banging off a chance Newtonian game of galactic cue-sports, can only ignore the english upon this shot by blurring their own focus on the ball's war history. The Bible's sophisticated literary treatment of this planetary milestone is the antithesis of the fairy tale. Any individual human may view their own freedom and mortality with or without urgency; the species as a whole has the same choice. In this empyreal predicament, Divine inspiration imparts the Scripture with its immortal centrality. Earth's nickel-iron core is an electronic dynamo. The currents rise and fall on the right and left hands of the Lord of Hosts. 
    
The first Noel's literary stump, fires up a Divine Gospel puzzle, whereas the first Christmas date-year and regime specified in MATTHEW, is definitely begotten uniquely from the first Christmas date-year and ruler-regime reported in LUKE. Those who attend to a literal interpretation of the Bible, need to snap out from a stupor they suffer, under spells cast by Imperial wizards who commandeered the early church. To obtain victory over the literalist spells, one must abandon the untenable position of their phony "literalism," and instead recognize God's right to communicate His most important message via literature Divinely inspired. Without recognizing God's right to teach by whatever ornate rhetorical style God alone chooses, the so called literalists can not sanely maintain the Bible's inerrancy, whereas MATTHEW and LUKE record two wholly distinct birth-years for Jesus, at least a decade apart. A minimum ten year calculation is deliberately composed, by indicating entirely different governments under which the two unique begettings of Jesus are begotten---different governments specified by the testimony of God's own inerrant parabolic WORD. If literal inerrancy is impossible, only God's prerogative of literary device can explain the inerrant validity and potency of His WORD. God's inspired Christmastime math Word-problem, develops the mind's ability to comprehend the utterly unique monogene quality that God invests in Jesus.

Gospel quite clearly specifies that the Bethlehem birth of Jesus fell into two entirely different vehicles of a Roman rule that marched in an oppressive train of succession. In MATTHEW the Magi visit baby Jesus while client king Great Herod rules; MATTHEW makes sure that this is clear, by reporting that Great Herod's death prompts the return of Jesus to Israel from out of His hiding in Egypt, and then reporting that this return to Israel occurs during the rule of Great Herod's son Archelaus, who has succeeded his fully great dead father over Judaea. There is no vagueness as to which two Herods are riding that train. When the Great Hero was toast in 4 BC, his son Archie was appointed Ethnarch over Judaea's sugar. On the other hand, in LUKE, double-trouble Jesus is not born until after Augustus Caesar has already deposed this son of Great Herod named Achelaus, in order that Rome may directly tax Judaea's sweet milk and honey, by conducting a census under Quirinius---a Roman whom Augustus made governor of Syria at the same time that direct rule from Syria succeeded the dethroned Archelaus in 6 AD. The first Christmas that gets chewed up in LUKE's manger, is a full ten years after MATTHEW's baby stabbing Great Herod had died:

✰ FIRST  CHRISTMAS  IN  MATTHEW: 12 BC  
Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλεὲμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας, ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρώδου τοῦ βασιλέως, ἰδού, μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν παρεγένοντο εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα … καὶ πέμψας αὐτοὺς εἰς Βηθλέεμ εἶπεν Πορευθέντες ἀκριβῶς ἐξετάσατε περὶ τοῦ παιδίου· ἐπὰν δὲ εὕρητε ἀπαγγείλατέ μοι ὅπως κἀγὼ ἐλθὼν προσκυνήσω αὐτῷ … καὶ ἐλθόντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εὗρον τὸ παιδίον μετὰ Μαρίας τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ πεσόντες προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ καὶ ἀνοίξαντες τοὺς θησαυροὺς αὐτῶν προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δῶρα χρυσὸν καὶ λίβανον καὶ σμύρναν … καὶ χρηματισθέντες κατ' ὄναρ μὴ ἀνακάμψαι πρὸς Ἡρῴδην δι' ἄλλης ὁδοῦ ἀνεχώρησαν εἰς τὴν χώραν αὐτῶν Ἀναχωρησάντων δὲ αὐτῶν ἰδού, ἄγγελος κυρίου φαίνεται κατ' ὄναρ τῷ Ἰωσὴφ λέγων, Ἐγερθεὶς παράλαβε τὸ παιδίον καὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ φεῦγε εἰς Αἴγυπτον καὶ ἴσθι ἐκεῖ ἕως ἂν εἴπω σοι· μέλλει γὰρ Ἡρῴδης ζητεῖν τὸ παιδίον τοῦ ἀπολέσαι αὐτό ὁ δὲ ἐγερθεὶς παρέλαβεν τὸ παιδίον καὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ νυκτὸς καὶ ἀνεχώρησεν εἰς Αἴγυπτον καὶ ἦν ἐκεῖ ἕως τῆς τελευτῆς Ἡρῴδου … Τελευτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ Ἡρῴδου ἰδού, ἄγγελος κυρίου κατ' ὄναρ φαίνεται τῷ Ἰωσὴφ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ λέγων, Ἐγερθεὶς παράλαβε τὸ παιδίον καὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ καὶ πορεύου εἰς γῆν Ἰσραήλ· τεθνήκασιν γὰρ οἱ ζητοῦντες τὴν ψυχὴν τοῦ παιδίου ο δε εγερθεις παρελαβεν το παιδιον και την μητερα αυτου και ηλθεν εις γην ισραηλ ακουσας δε οτι αρχελαος βασιλευει επι της ιουδαιας αντι ηρωδου του πατρος αυτου εφοβηθη εκει απελθειν χρηματισθεις δε κατ οναρ ανεχωρησεν εις τα μερη της γαλιλαιας καὶ ἐλθὼν κατῴκησεν εἰς πόλιν λεγομένην Ναζαρέτ· ὅπως πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν ὅτι Ναζωραῖος κληθήσεται
When the Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king---Behold! Magi from east arrived in Jerusalem ... And sending them to Bethlehem, he (Great Herod) said: "Go search carefully for the child. When however you do find [Him], send word back to me, that I also can go and make obeisance to Him" ... And [the Magi] having arrived at the house (οἰκίαν not the φάτνῃ "manger" or the καταλύματι "inn" of LUKE 2:7) they found the child with Mary---the mother of Him, and fell [in prostration] to make obeisance to Him, and having open their treasuries (having made their resources available), they presented gifts: gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. Now having been divinely warned in a dream not to return to Herod, by a different route they withdrew to the their [own] country (singular). Upon their withdrawal Behold! A messenger of Master (κυρίου "[the] Lord" or "Master"---to those of the Galilean sect, only God was "Master") appears in a dream to that Joseph saying: "Rise-up! Take the child and the mother of Him, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod is about to investigate this child---to utterly destroy Him." Thus immediately rising-up, he took the child and His mother by night, and withdrew into Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod ... Whereupon Herod having died, a messenger of Master appears in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying: "Rise-up! Take upon yourself the child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; they have died indeed---those who sought the life of this child!" Thus rising-up, he took the child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. Having heard however that Archelaus was reigning over Judaea in the place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been divinely warned in a dream, he withdrew into the district of Galilee, and when he arrived he dwelt in a city called Nazareth, so that should be fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophets: "He shall be called a Nazarene."   
---MATTHEW (2:1-23)    


ABOVE: ADORATION OF THE MAGI, FROM THE SARCOPHAGUS OF ST. AGNES IN ROME: The ornate construction of MATTHEW's nativity cleverly seems to allow concordance with LUKE's nativity, whereas Jesus may be a toddler as old as two by the time the Magi arrive, and thus the baby Jesus miraculously survived the feeding manger of the hungry black-magic "beast," to live another day, and accept royal Iranian visitors in a proper home. However the calendar of this solution dissolves for anyone acquainted with the concordant passages of WARS and ANTIQUITIES by Josephus. The Jesus child of MATTHEW (2) is born during the reign of Great Herod the king: "Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king." When Jesus goes into hiding in Egypt, it is also during the reign of Great Herod: "he took the child and His mother by night, and withdrew into Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod." Jesus returns to Israel while Herod's son Archelaus rules as Ethnarch over Judaea: "Having heard however that Archelaus was reigning over Judaea in the place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there."
The MATTHEW Nativity Pericope, delivered under Great Herod, gives a royal focus, bound up in: ➊ the Star Prophecy of NUMBERS (24:17), ➋ the fealty of Iranian Magi emissaries with a fiery war-chest from the East, ➌ the Amalekite nature of Rome and the Herodians, ➍ a seditious element that survives by going into hiding---an underground of innocent Hasmoneans and their supporters---on which the record pivots. The royal pomp of MATTHEW's Christmas, contrasts with LUKE's revolting view of water broken in a barnyard feed-bin, after the loaded estate of Archelaus is liquidated, and the controversial Galilean travels to Judea, to birth a new religious sect. Like the enraged Hasmonean house, the royal line of David too, has hit rock bottom in very taxing times; the engaged Mary (short for Mariamne), who is taken for spouse by Joseph, gives birth to the Messianic movement in less than humble, ruddy grass roots:  

FIRST  CHRISTMAS  IN  LUKE CHAPTER TWO: 6 AD
 Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐξῆλθεν δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου ἀπογράφεσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην. αὕτη ἡ ἀπογραφὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου. καὶ ἐπορεύοντο πάντες ἀπογράφεσθαι ἕκαστος εἰς τὴν ἰδίαν πόλιν. Ἀνέβη δὲ καὶ Ἰωσὴφ ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας ἐκ πόλεως Ναζαρὲτ εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίαν εἰς πόλιν Δαβὶδ, ἥτις καλεῖται Βηθλέεμ διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν ἐξ οἴκου καὶ πατριᾶς Δαβίδ, ἀπογράψασθαι σὺν Μαριὰμ τῇ μεμνηστευμένῃ αὐτῷ γυναικὶ, οὔσῃ ἐγκύῳ. ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἐκεῖ ἐπλήσθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι τοῦ τεκεῖν αὐτήν. καὶ ἔτεκεν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς τὸν πρωτότοκον καὶ ἐσπαργάνωσεν αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνέκλινεν αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ φάτνῃ διότι οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τόπος ἐν τῷ καταλύματι.  
It just so happened that in those days 
(noun plural: ἡμέραις, literally "days," figuratively "years;"---the chapter opens with the broad context of an era, within which a peculiar milestone in both the life of Cyrenius, and in the history of Judaea, will be highlighted; thus the full phrase gives the sense: ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις: 'in those times,' or 'in that era,' i.e.---: at the beginning of the Empire, when the Republic was murdered via the magical emasculation of the Senate, and the Imperial period of dictatorships called the Principate ensued.
went out a decree 
(δόγμα; literally: "went out a dogma"---a telling use of the Greek source of the modern English loan-word "dogma") 
from Caesar Augustus to register
(verb: ἀπογράφεσθαι, i.e.--: apograthesthai: to enroll, or to enlist one's name and property holdings for census---and ultimately taxation---purposes.
all the inhabited  [sphere]. 
(οἰκουμένην, i.e.--:oikoumené, pronounced oy-kou-men'-ay; this is the word from whence comes the Roman Church term "ecumenical;" it meant the entire world subject to Rome. This eulogy to the pompous aim of Augustus, points to a subversive literary assertion embedded into the record by Joe's Flavian protégé Tacitus at ANNALS 1:11, where---with a telescope dialed into the funeral of Augustus---Tacitus exposes Caesar's bent to register every subject of the entire Empire, and cryptically blames this bent for bringing a "zealous" halt to Rome's expansion; The autobiography of Augustus---the humble RES GESTAE DIVI AUGUSTUS, or "DEEDS OF THE GOD AUGUSTUS" (2:8) dates three registrations of Roman citizens at 28 BC, 8 BC, and 14 AD---none of these was a universal enrollment which included every Roman subject who lived outside of direct provincial rule. Tacitus ANNALS 6:41 indicates that the client kingdom of Cappadocia, created by Augustus, was not forced to fully register until c. 35-39 AD, when Vitellius was Governor of Syria---two full decades after Augustus was dead. Enrolled non citizens had status just above slaves, while those governed under a client king held status and rights which for the most part continued the local traditions of government that were in place prior to each client kingdom's incorporation into the Empire's sphere.)
This registration 
(noun singular: ἀπογραφὴ, i.e.--: apographē: the first registration of Judaea, which happened at the time Jesus was born into a manger. The same word is used for the same episode of registration at ACTS 5:37, ANTIQUITIES 18:1:1, WARS 7:8:1.) 
first happened when Cyrenius was governing Syria 
(again, by reference to Tacitus, one hears Joe say that Judaea was first added to the human registry of Augustus's legacy, when Cyrenius was made governor of Syria in 6 AD, and this date is confirmed by ACTS 5:37, which is written in unity with the voice and perspective of LUKE, and specifically in unity with LUKE's nativity chronology. Every ecumenically entrenched attempt to errantly fudge the date of LUKE's birth of Jesus, and deny that it coincides with the Galilean sect's birth upon the 6 AD tax registration revolt, is naught but a Beastly turn of the head by a literalist accomplice, refusing to acknowledge the horror of any baby delivered into a manger, whether it be in 6 AD, or in 2026 AD.)
And all went to be registered (ἀπογράφεσθαι, i.e.--: apograthesthai), each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from the Galilee, out of Nazareth town, into the Judaea, to David’s city which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, registering with Mary, she being engaged to him, she being pregnant. It furthermore happened that while they were there, her delivery date arrived, and she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in strips of cloth, and laid him in a manger (φάτνῃ), because there was no room for them in the inn.  
(further discussion of this passage will soon make apparent, that this unadorable barnyard end to the scene, very accurately caricatures both Caesar, and his elite collaborators, as of the gluttonous ilk of the initiates to the darkest rites of Dionysus and Isis, while it further defines their government as a ginormous Bacchanal facilitated by volumes of cement, marble, and equally enormous human suffering.)
---LUKE (2:1-8)  
The next chapter of LUKE begins with more historical markers, which date the revolt begun by John the Baptist and Jesus to 29 AD---the exact death year of Empress Livia-Julia, widow of Augustus, and mother of his successor Tiberius Caesar. Livia-Julia was the brains and force behind the establishment of the Imperial Cult that worshiped her dead husband Augustus as a high god, and worshiped her living son Tiberius as the son of that new government-man god. The year of her death Bethsaida was began to be refit in her name Julias, in expectation of her approaching godhead. Bethsaida was the native place of the first disciples. Whoever has ears that hear let them listen:


MINISTRY CHRONOLOGY FORMULA BEGINS LUKE CHAPTER THREE:
DING DONGS THE WITCH IS DEAD!29 AD
Ἐν ἔτει δὲ πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας Τιβερίου Καίσαρος ἡγεμονεύοντος Ποντίου Πιλάτου τῆς Ἰουδαίας καὶ τετραρχοῦντος τῆς Γαλιλαίας Ἡρῴδου Φιλίππου δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ τετραρχοῦντος, τῆς Ἰτουραίας καὶ Τραχωνίτιδος χώρας καὶ Λυσανίου τῆς Ἀβιληνῆς τετραρχοῦντος επ αρχιερεων αννα και καιαφα εγενετο ρημα θεου επι ιωαννην τον του ζαχαριου υιον εν τη ερημω
And in the fifteenth year of the government of Tiberius Caesar (29 AD---LUKE's Jesus, and the Galilean sect, are both 23 years old) -- Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod [Antipas] tetrarch of Galilee, and Philip his brother, tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.... (if LUKE chapter three can begin here with mention of the likes of Lysanias, then LUKE chapter two certainly would have mentioned Archelaus or Great Herod, if either of them had ruled over Judaea when Jesus was delivered into the Bethlehem manger. Moreover, Joseph flees with Jesus into Egypt directly from Bethlehem in MATTHEW, while in the contrasting itinerary in LUKE, after Jesus is born into the manger, and presented in the Jerusalem Temple, Joseph takes Jesus directly back to Nazareth.)  
---LUKE (3:1-2)

The aim of LUKE and ACTS is to present God-loving Greek speakers with a reliable literary synopsis of the Messianic movement within in a well defined historical context. Thus each introductory chapter gives an account of which regime was in place when the nativity unfolds. The Jesus who is born under the census of Cyrenius, had to have been conceived during the last year of Herod Archelaus:


LUKE CHAPTER ONE PROLOGUE PROMISES ACCURATE CHRONOLOGY
Seeing that many have undertaken to compose a narration concerning the matters that have been fulfilled among us, as delivered to us by others, who from the beginning became eye-witnesses, and officers of the WORD, it seemed, having exactingly studied all these things from the start, appropriate for me also, to write to you [an account] in consecutive order, most noble Theophilus (a name or moniker that means "God-lover"), that you may know the certainty of the things wherein you were instructed. There was in the days of (ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις: 'in the time of,' or 'in the era of') 'Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest, by name Zacharias, who belonged to the priestly division of Abija. His wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron … In the sixth month of Elizabeth‘s pregnancy, God sent the Angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee ... And Mary arose in those days, and hurried into the hill country, to a city of Judaea, And she entered Zechariah’s home, and greeted Elizabeth … Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months, and then returned home. 
---LUKE (1:1-56) 

 LUKE thus gives the reader, three different consecutive regimes which ruled Judaea:  
  • LUKE chapter ONE: Conception of Jesus, under the last year of Herod Archelaus in 5 AD.
  • LUKE chapter TWO: Birth of Jesus, under the first year tax census of Governor Cyrenius in 6 AD. This synchronizes the birth of Jesus to the birth of the Zealot Sect, which Josephus pins to the tax revolt of Judas the Galilean, in this year Judaea is annexed by Pagan Rome.
  • LUKE chapter THREE: Ministry of Jesus, christened under Pontius Pilate in 29 AD---the year Empress Livia-Julia died. This synchronizes the start to the career of Jesus with Herod-Philip's makeover of the hometown of the disciples---Bethsaida---into the Imperial Cult polis Bethsaida-Julias, to honor of the expected elevation of the Empress, into a full fledged goddess, of the tyrannical Pagan state which was exploiting and profaning the land.  
The savvy seeker is not concerned by the fact that Herod Archelaus is simply referred to as "Herod" by LUKE, for that is how Archelaus is designated in his coin legends; moreover, both Herod Antipas, and Herod Agrippa, are also simply called "Herod" in LUKE and ACTS. If the title "Herod the king" in LUKE chapter one, is at all troubling in light of Archelaus's lesser title of "Ethnarch," then the great age noted for Zechariah, and short rule of Archelaus, make it certain that Zechariah's term as priest originated "in the days of" Great Herod; here the inspired author's vagueness allows some surface measure of literary harmony between the accounts of MATTHEW and LUKE, while the literary harmony is not absent at depth either, whereas those capable enough to scrutinize the nativity time-warp, are certainly also capable enough to comprehend how the entire Messianic assembly stands inside the name of Jesus. It is much more than a scholastic puzzle. It is the satirical means to the moral intellect the species requires to survive this hot rock. If either the brute Great Herod or his son Archelaus had ruled Judaea when the human baby Jesus was registered in the Bethlehem manger, then this would have been noted in LUKE chapter two, as part of the clear aim of the composition to present this birth in its proper geopolitical historical setting. The birth into the beast's manger is indeed marked in this very political fashion, when the text notes what the actual regime was over Judaea, during the census that replaced the rule of the Herodians with direct Roman government---when Cyrenius ruled over both Syria and Judaea. Emperor Augustus appointed Cyrenius Governor of Syria in 6 AD, at the same time he deposed Herod Archelaus (Josephus ANTIQUITIES 17:13:5-18:2:1, 20:5:2, WARS 7:8:1, ACTS 5:37, Strabo GEOGRAPHY 16:2:46, Dio ROMAN HISTORY 55:27). Josephus speaks very clearly, when he dates the birth registration of Jesus to 6 AD, with the formula:


ANTIQUITIES CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CLEARLY DATES JUDAEAN ADVENT OF CYRENIUS: 6 AD 
WHEN Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus's money, and when the taxings were come to a conclusion, which were made in the thirty-seventh year of Caesar's victory over Antony at Actium (which was in 31 BC, thus 37 - 31 = 6 AD), he (Cyrenius as Governor of Syria) deprived Joazar of the high priesthood, which dignity had been conferred on him by the multitude, and he (Cyrenius again, as ruler over Judaea) appointed Ananus, the son of Seth to be high priest (this elder "Annas" was the father in-law of Caiphas, and therefore ANTIQUITIES 20:9:1, agrees with how LUKE 3:2 indicates Annas was the real power behind his son in law; Ananus Ben Seth is thus the "Annas" before whom Jesus is first tried in JOHN 18:13-23. This same "High Priest" Annas leads the Sanhedrin before whom Peter and John are tried after Pentecost: (ACTS 4:6). His son "Ananus Ben Ananus" was High Priest in the lead up into the great rebellion---the very High Priest who had James the brother of Jesus murdered off the Temple's ledge in 62 AD(ANTIQUITIES 20:9:1). Cyrenius established this clan's franchise when, in 6 AD, he appointed the elder Ananus Ben Seth (i.e. Annas); called γεραίτατος ('geriatric,' from γεραιός---geraios, i.e. "aged"), this "Ancientest Ananus," none other than the original Ben Seth (i.e. son of Seth), was notably still alive in 66 AD: (WARS 4:3:7), when he and his sons were assassinated by the Galilean Zealots: (WARS 4:5:2, GENESIS 4:25-26, NUMBERS 24:17): however his own corpse was left unburied, so that via telescope, he might seek to erase the great victory Lazarus won over the Romans at Beth-Horen: (cf. JOHN 12:10, ANTIQUITIES 20:9:1, LUKE 16:19-31, EXODUS 28:8); Josephus sarcastically notes his senility, calling him ἀνὴρ σωφρονέστατος, which means "a man of sound mind," (not Whiston's perhaps even more sarcastic "prudent man" in the twisted context), whereas the Sadducees had lost all regards for the Temple's Danielian design: (WARS 4:3:7), while Herod [Antipas] and Philip had, each of them, received their own tetrarchy (Archie's two half brothers had originally received their tetrarchies in 3 BC. Here, after a trial in Rome ten years later, they are reinstated; cf. Strabo GEOGRAPHY 16:2:46), and settled the affairs thereof (thus the two Herod brothers who were left standing after 6 AD, collected taxes for Caesar, as the Sons of Seth began their administration of Vichy Judaea).  
---ANTIQUITIES (18:2:1)** 
No matter how one tries to spin it down, it is only a truly miraculous Jesus, who can be born both before, and after, the reign of Herod's son Archelaus.  




ABOVE LEFT: ANNAS AND CAIAPHAS PORTRAYED BY TISSOT, RIGHT: TISSOT'S ANNAS, CAIPHAS, AND THE EXTENDED CLAN OF THE SONS OF SETH: Appointed by Cyrenius in 6 AD, the Ben Seth family ruled the Jerusalem Temple for more than half the time that lapsed between the birth registration of Jesus, and the end of the Temple at the hands of His Zealot Sect. In ANTIQUITIES, Josephus draws the parallel connecting the trial of Jesus under Tiberius, to the trial of his brother James under Nero. No one knew better than Josephus, that this office of God was a family affair:   
Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus (Ananus Ben Seth) proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a High Priest to God, which had never happened to any other of our high priests, and he had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly (officially for nine years, from 6 AD to 15 AD, but actually ruling behind his sons for the greater part of four decades). But this younger Ananus (Ananus Ben Ananus), who, as we have told you already, took the High Priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; now since Ananus was of this disposition, he realized he now had the proper opportunity [to exercise power] ... so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some of his companions; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.
---ANTIQUITIES (20:9:1)

When one hears Joe link the two courts that tried Jesus and James, and thereby hears Joe's tacit nod to the Messianic Star Prophecy of NUMBERS (24:17), then Joe's choice of this place to insert his second, less biased, anointing of "Christ," is deliberately affirmed by the context of his inspired literary tapestry, with a weave that maps out the front lines of the zealous religious civil-war, in stitches that loop between WARS (7:8:1)***, and ANTIQUITIES (18:2:1)**.

The Ben Seth high-priest clan (i.e.---the "Sons of Seth"), lived lavishly in the train of the elder Ananus ("Annas"), five of his sons, and one of his son in laws (Caiaphas). The Sons of Seth served in Jerusalem as High Priests for Rome, with the following tenures:  
  • 6 AD - 15 AD: Ananus Ben Seth, called Annas in Gospel; appointed by CyreniusRome's Governor of Syria. 
  • 16 AD - 17 AD: Eleazar Ben Ananus, son of Ananus Ben Seth; appointed by Valerius GratusRome's Prefect of Judaea. 
  • 18 AD - 36 AD: Joseph Ben Caiaphas, son in law of Ananus Ben Seth; appointed by Valerius GratusRome's Prefect of Judaea; presided over trial of Jesus under Prefect Pontius Pilate.  
  • 36 AD - 37 AD: Jonathan Ben Ananus, son of Ananus Ben Seth; appointed by VitelliusRome's Governor of Syria.   
  • 37 AD - 40 AD: Theophilus Ben Ananus, son of Ananus Ben Seth; appointed by VitelliusRome's Governor of Syria. 
  • 42 AD: Matthias Ben Ananus, son of Ananus Ben Seth; appointed by Herod-Agrippa IRome's client king of Judaea. Matthias was High Priest when James of Zebedde was sentenced (ANTIQUITIES 19:6:4, 19:7:5, ACTS 12:2).   
  • 62 AD: Ananus Ben Ananus, son of Ananus Ben Seth; appointed by Herod-Agrippa IIRome's Chief of the Jerusalem Temple Police, presided over trial of James the brother of Jesus, during a transition in Roman administration, after Nero's Prefect Porcius Festus had died, and his replacement, Prefect Lucceius Albinus, had not yet arrived at Caesarea Maritima.  

BELOW: NICKLE-IRON ASTEROID STRIKES DEEP INTO CLAY: TISSOT'S STRIKING DEPICTION OF THE TRAJECTORY OF JESUS BEFORE A TRIBUNAL OF CHIEF PRIESTS AND ELDERS, ANNAS PRESIDING: Throughout WARS and ANTIQUITIES, Josephus draws a deliberate line of ornate literary ambiguity that demarcates the militarized zone between the Sadducee sect of Jerusalem and the Zealots of Galilee. This allows Joe to take his rationale for the Zealous war with Rome and rhetorically insert it into the mouth of his Sadducee enemy. The most brilliant example of this ventriloquist device, is the speech that the arch Ananus is supposed to have made against the Zealots as they take the Temple away from the Sadducees (ANTIQUITIES 4:3:7-10). With nothing excised from that speech, but only sudden flips of thematic context suggested in the clever lay of the clauses, the swansong scripted for the dummy Ananus, indicts the sons of Seth in an eternal effigy, cooed with woe, from the pulley-worked jaw of the very same Sethian who tried the Jesus:

יז אראנו ולא עתה אשורנו ולא קרוב דרך כוכב מיעקב וקם שבט מישראל ומחץ פאתי מואב וקרקר כל בני שת

I will see Him but not now. I will behold Him but not close-by. A star will proceed from Jacob. A rod (שבט,---cf. PSALM 2:9, DANIEL 2:33) will rise up out of Israel, and strike at the temple (פאתי) of Moab, and destroy all the sons of Seth (שת,---i.e. Set, cf. GENESIS 4:25-26, Plutarch ISIS AND OSIRIS).

---NUMBERS (24:17) 

(Moab and Set meet in gravid religious significance, where Isis and Set cut up Maneros meat at Tanit's Tophet. The god of Moab was Chemosh, who can be conflated with Molech and Baal with regards to his taste for human sacrifices, especially those of firstborn sons---boys who were indeed monogenes when they were sacrificed as infants. Now Jesus was himself a son of Seth (LUKE 3:23-38), the very same Seth who replaced Abel (GENESIS 4:25-26). Examination of the greater paradox which this fact falls into at NUMBERS (24:17), succinctly verifies that the Seth of GENESIS (4:25-26) does indeed cipher the Egyptian god Set. 
Before explaining this, the skeptics must be reminded not forget the arch key to scripture: Jesus is the WORD OF GOD بِكَلِمَةٍ مِّنَ اللَّهِ (i.e. Jesus is the TANAKH; He is the scripture made manifest---the WORD become flesh: (JOHN 1:1-4, 1:14, KORAN 3:35, 3:39, 4:171). Early Greek philosophers used "Logos" (λόγοςfiguratively to describe "reasoned discourse," a thesis propounded, a line of argument. The Stoics later honed the more cosmic uses of this figurative concept of Logos to indicate that the living universe was an orderly presentation of knowledge---that the cosmos was the expression of the ultimate mind of reason. Philo developed this Stoic concept of Logos in relation to the Hebrew scripture by personifying this Logos as the Angel of Yahweh. With Josephus and his inspired Gospels, this Logos (λόγος the "WORD") was brought down to earth, and back to the root of its etymology, whereas to the average convert who was a native Greek speaker, the "Logos" was most tangibly Yahweh's living scripture (λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ THE WORD OF GOD), which became flesh in the brave Galilean and His zealous rebellion for the preservation and propagation of the spirit of this WORD in mankind. The scripture is God's WORD in the form of a vocable linguistic composition---God's reasoned discourse to the world; the Zealots were the spirit or aim of this WORD in action. The inspired scriptural revelation of this ultimate concept of the WORD, reveals itself in a way which speaks of the nature of the rhetorical style in which the Hebrew and Greek of the message is composed. Jesus (the WORD in the flesh) taught by way of parables (MATTHEW 13:34-35, cf. PSALM 78, and MARK 4:33-34---: which reads: "And in many such parables He spoke the WORD to them in a way they were able to hear, moreover He did not speak to them without parables.") Too many ears have failed to hear the revelation therein which regards how scripture must be read. Whereas Jesus is the WORD OF GOD (the OLD TESTAMENT made manifest), His teaching deliberately reveals that the scripture itself accomplishes its teaching by parables (but only for those with ears to hear). Those people who purport to champion the WORD, but yet do not recognize that scripture filters the history it records through an aligned mass of moral parables, are people which the scripture itself likens unto the Pagans which such auditory ineptitude will destine them to serve---idolatrous tyrants who, like the very idols they worship, have ears that don't hear and eyes that don't see: (MARK 4:10-11, ISAIAH 6:9, PSALM 135:15-17, PSALM 115, JEREMIAH 5:18-21, 5:7-17, 6:10-12, MARK 4:9-25). 
With that validation for seeing and hearing the scripture as parable, the discussion can return to Seth's not so secret identity as the Egyptian god Set. Now when Set's son Enosh was born "men began to call upon the name Yahweh." There exists of this verse, a Hebrew interpretation influenced by the late halacha against vocalizing the name "Yahweh." That interpretation claims this verse refers to Yahweh's name being used in Enoch's generation for profane or idolatrous purposes. That interpretation must be rejected as baseless. Until this point in scripture Eve is the only human to use the name "Yahweh," and only once, and only to Adam, not in supplication or appeal to the Deity. "Enosh" means "man" single, or "mankind" plural, with ancient connotations of weakness and mortality. It is based upon a word used to describe the subject mass of a nation, not those who lead, but those who are led. When this monogene Enosh is born to Set, men begin praying to Yahweh because of the errant predilection already evidenced for offering first fruits of even the human womb. The subject mass of mankind calls to Yahweh for deliverance. The Egyptian god Set is the appropriate turn-post of this geohistorical riddle, because the Hebrews traced their roots in Egypt back to the Hyksos, who swept into the Nile Delta from Canaan, where they eventually ruled from Avaris (near Goshen). The Hyksos equated the established Egyptian god Set with their own version of the storm-god, and were especially reviled for worshiping Set to the exclusion of all of Egypt's other deities. The story of Joseph and his brothers ciphers the Hyksos stint in Egypt. The fall of the Hyksos and Minoans are both roughly timed by the seeds of their ends in the fallout from Santorini and the rise of Mycenae in its wake. Now while Josephus hints that he knew the Exodus actually came much later with the Sea Peoples successive attacks on the New Kingdom, Joe chose to emphasize Hebrew antiquity by timing the Exodus with the end of the Hyksos Dynasty. This rhetorical stand was evidently taken for the same reason that the parables in scripture gloss over the very same discrepancy---to emphasize that the Hebrew tradition is of greater antiquity of than that of the great Imperial powers. The problem the Hebrews faced was how to contend with their opponents while making this otherwise valid claim, despite the fact that David and Yahweh's nation were the late result of the Bronze Age collapse during which the Sea Peoples released the Levant from Egyptian control. If Josephus had solved the scripture's relevant parables any further than he did solve them, then the Romans could have made the rhetorical point that their mythic origins in the wake of the sacking of Troy, were every bit as ancient as Israel's origins in the wake of the sacks of Byblos, Kadesh, Hazor, Beth Shean, Ashod, and Askelon during the same period that Troy fell. 
Bringing the discussion back to Set, the god of the Hyksos, one can not escape the parallel between Set's murder of his brother Osiris and Cain's murder of Abel. Both epic founding fratricides were motivated by jealousy. The twist lays in the in the flip-flopped vocation of the villain, whereas Cain, like Osiris, was the agriculturalist, while Abel, like Joseph and the early Hebrews, was a shepherd; Josephus even renders the name "Hyksos" as "Shepherd Kings." Yet despite the fact that the Bible champions a perspective which diametrically opposes the Egyptian fertility doctrine, it still must not be missed that Abel is replaced with the doppelganger of Cain. In Egyptian religion Set cuts up his brother Osiris and plants his body parts up and down the Nile. Though there is the cultic subterfuge whereby Isis reconstructs, reanimates, and copulates with the murdered brother, the overall theme of fertility via human sacrifice is unchanged. The murdered man's flesh and blood comes back to life beneath the ground to make the crops grow. The religion of Yahweh was diametrically opposed to this view. When Cain's vegetable offerings are not popular with the Deity, Cain sacrifices Abel to his own ego, but Abel's blood cries out from the ground. Yahweh curses the ground so that nothing will grow for Cain. The Israelites were told that if they worshiped fertility gods, or practiced their rites, Yahweh would make the crops fail and see to it that the land became desolate. 
Seth and Enosh are the second and third human generations of the world. Thus take PSALM (78:1-2): "Give ear O my people to my law תּוֹרָתִ֑י (to my "Torah," i.e. to the nature of my scripture). Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter the riddle of the ancient time," and then compare it with MATTHEW (13:35): "I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world." Now the verification key to Set's parabolic identity is the Star Prophecy of NUMBERS. This is Balaam's prophecy to Balak, which takes place just slightly before the Israelites are about to invade Canaan. Noah was a descendant of Seth, and thus the parable of the flood indicates that all those living at the time of Balak and Balaam were descendants of Seth. If the Messiah is to destroy all those who descend from Set, then he is to destroy all mankind, ostensibly including Himself, which adds perhaps even more quixotic humor of the darkest kind when one remembers that David was of Moabite descent, and here the "temple" of Moab is the target. However this "temple" is not just the forefront of the cranium of Moabite warriors, but also the forefront of their mindset, most concretely illustrated by the temple of Chemosh at the forefront of their capital, and the disgusting human sacrifices performed there. The solution Josephus expounds in his ANTIQUITIES, explains the Sethian enigma of the Star Prophecy via a parabola wherein the Seth who replaces Abel is a parabolic virtuous twin of the evil god Set (the names Set and Seth are identical despite what the distinct translations may wrongly imply). Via this orbit, the evil in Seth's line only reached an intolerable level in the seventh generation, which is the time of Noah. Now Noah himself was also a descendant of Seth. So here we reach the parabolic floodgate where "the sons of Seth" can not be taken to mean all Seth's descendants. Once one is informed of the identity of the Seth behind the curtain, one is left with the only interpretation with any potency---the "sons of Seth" are those who follow the non kosher ethos of the fertility cults; they are those who act in line with the cannibalistic belief that fertility, health, and prosperity, are accrued at the expense of the life and well being of others.)
  






RESOLUTION: IN THE NAME OF ICONOCLASTIC JOSHUA יהושע (i.e. "JESUS" Ἰησοῦς)

Despite all the desperate attempts by picket-fenced Literalists to conjure up a census of Judaea by Cyrenius during Great Herod's reign, their shallow ritualistic read, of what makes the horn-blowing, wall-tumbling, idol-felling, and altar-smashing Joshua unique, will never allow them to understand the apostasy inherent in the self-righteous whitewash they so thickly slather all over the Son of the Lord of Armies. An erudite read of the Gospel finds no errancy in a pre-Archelaus-born Jesus of MATTHEW, coexisting with a post-Archelaus-born Jesus of LUKE. The riddle of the power in His name---"Jesus"---is double-edged like all His inspired Word. This power not only rests in the survivalist---or immortal---meaning of "Jesus": from the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iesous) for the Hebrew name Joshua יהושע, which means "Delivery from Yahweh." The power in the name is also active, via the fact, that the survival of God's uniquely born species, is accomplished by an assembly that makes its headquarters inside the immortal aim of this Divine name (JOHN 1:12, 2:23, 3:18, JOEL 2:31-32, 1 JOHN 3:2, 3:23, 4:15, 5:13, HOSEA 1:10, ANTIQUITIES 18:1:1---i.e. Niese section 18:5-6). This Nativity Resolution certainly should not be taken as any negation of the fact that the Gospels report the teachings of a real life militant Galilean Rabbi named Joshua (Iesous in Greek) who was crucified by Pontius Pilate, whereas the ultimate solution to the Gospel crossword reveals that Josephus, the son of Matthew, was the nephew in the flesh of the born-again Rabbi---the very "Joses" (Iosetos; i.e.---: little 'Joey') who telescopes himself into the womb of "the other Mary" (ἄλλη Μαρία) by the cross. The activity of Judas the Galilean, and his father Ezekias, which ANTIQUITIES plays-down before the 6 AD tax revolt, gauges how the Two First Days of Christmas Parable explains the paradox in which the Messiah who named the movement, was born before the movement came of age, and how the Messiah for whom the movement would be named, came of age after the movement was officially born into the historical record.  

LUKE focuses on the grass roots Jesus movement born under the tax registration of Cyrenius in 6 AD; MATTHEW on the other hand, coronates the geopolitical strategic depth of the more elite crowd's Jesus---the well connected monarchic Rabbi who leads Hasmonean and Galilean camps into an alliance born under Great Herod's 12 BC deconstruction of the most important Jewish laws. By these two historical foci, the Gospels deliver, with great economy, all the important fact's about Yahweh's intervention in earth changes, at a milestone that reset the planet's chronometer, when a limit was placed on the evil empire's odometer. Gospel delivers all the essential main ideas of the immortal record, from out of zip-files densely packed inside the high-brow literary device of His Parable of The First Two Days of Christmas. 


LUKE's  REGISTRATION  GIVES  BIRTH  TO  ZEALOT  SECT IN  ACTS,  WARS,  AND  ANTIQUITIES

The most important context of the Messiah's birth in the manger, requires only a quick read of the "registration" tags, before the discussion veers into a more complete analysis of Joe's account of the synchronous birth of Jesus and the Galilean sect---the Zealot movement. The first "registration" tag is in WARS:.
καλεῖται δὲ τὸ φρούριον Μασάδα. προειστήκει δὲ τῶν κατειληφότων αὐτὸ σικαρίων δυνατὸς ἀνὴρ Ἐλεάζαρος, ἀπόγονος Ἰούδα τοῦ πείσαντος Ἰουδαίους οὐκ ὀλίγους, ὡς πρότερον δεδηλώκαμεν, μὴ ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ἀπογραφάς, ὅτε Κυρίνιος τιμητὴς εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίαν ἐπέμφθη. τότε γὰρ οἱ σικάριοι συνέστησαν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὑπακούειν Ῥωμαίων θέλοντας καὶ πάντα τρόπον ὡς πολεμίοις προσεφέροντο...
The fortress was known as Masada. It was one Eleazar, a potent man, and the commander of these Sicarii, that had seized upon it (Eleazer Ben Jair took Masada from the Romans in 66 AD). He was a descendant from that Judas, who, as we have previously discussed, had persuaded a multitude of the Jews, not to submit to the registration (ἀπογραφάς, i.e.--: ἀpographάs) when Cyrenius was sent into Judea to make one. For that was when the Sicarii joined together against those that were willing to submit to the Romans (i.e. against the Sadducees and their High Priesthood), and treated them as enemies in every respect...
---WARS (7:8:1)***

Note that the Sicarii, or Zealots, (a.k.a. "Robbers"), first joined together against the High Priesthood House of Ananus Ben Seth, when Jesus was born into the manger. Thus the Galilean Sect is born as a separate branch of Judaism, when the conflict with Pagan Rome heats up into a religious civil war. The violent attack Jesus makes upon the Temple---the seat of Sadducee power---must be viewed in this context, especially since it is covered by a simultaneous insurrection in Jerusalem by the "Robbers," among whom Jesus is crucified. The second "registration" tag that this discussion turns on, is found in ANTIQUITIES:
οἱ δὲ καίπερ τὸ κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς ἐν δεινῷ φέροντες τὴν ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀπογραφαῖς ἀκρόασιν ὑποκατέβησαν τοῦ μὴ εἰς πλέον ἐναντιοῦσθαι πείσαντος αὐτοὺς τοῦ ἀρχιερέως Ἰωαζάρου, Βοηθοῦ δὲ οὗτος υἱὸς ἦν. καὶ οἱ μὲν ἡττηθέντες τοῦ Ἰωαζάρου τῶν λόγων ἀπετίμων τὰ χρήματα μηδὲν ἐνδοιάσαντες: Ἰούδας δὲ Γαυλανίτης ἀνὴρ ἐκ πόλεως ὄνομα Γάμαλα Σάδδωκον Φαρισαῖον προσλαβόμενος ἠπείγετο ἐπὶ ἀποστάσει, τήν τε ἀποτίμησιν οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ ἄντικρυς δουλείαν ἐπιφέρειν λέγοντες καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας ἐπ᾽ ἀντιλήψει παρακαλοῦντες τὸ ἔθνος:
But the Jews, although at first they were shocked to hear about the registration (ἀπογραφαῖς, i.e.--: ἀpographaῖs), soon they abandoned any further opposition to it, by the persuasion of Joazar, who was the son of Beethus, and High Priest; so they, being over-persuaded by Joazar's words, gave an account of their estates, without any dispute about it. Yet was there one Judas, a Gaulonite (i.e. Judas the Galilean---the region of Gaulonitus overlapped the region of Galilee, and Bethsaida was near the center of this overlap), of a city whose name was Gamala, who, taking with him Sadduc, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to a revolt, who both said that this taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert their liberty...
---ANTIQUITIES (18:1:1)

The account of the building Messianic movement given in ACTS, is delivered in the same voice as the account of the ministry of Jesus given in LUKE. Both LUKE and ACTS are dedicated to "Theophilus" (LUKE 1:3, ACTS 1:1), and each work is one half of a single unified composition. Therefore, where ACTS (5:37) tells Theophilus that the nativity "registration" of LUKE (2:2), was indeed the 6 AD registration that birthed the Galilean Sect, right there and then, the inspired author deliberately trumps every protestation that any Literalist could ever attempt to concoct. ACTS (5:37) employs the same (ἀpographē) "registration" tag as LUKE (2:2), in a very telling manner:
ἀνέστη Ἰούδας ὁ Γαλιλαῖος ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις τῆς ἀπογραφῆς καὶ ἀπέστησεν λαὸν ἱκανὸν ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ· κἀκεῖνος ἀπώλετο καὶ πάντες ὅσοι ἐπείθοντο αὐτῷ διεσκορπίσθησαν: 
Judas the Galilean rose up in the days (plural: ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις) of the registration (ἀπογραφῆς, i.e.--: ἀpographēs), and drew away a multitude of the people after himself, and he was done away with, and as many as were persuaded by him, were all scattered (διεσκορπίσθησαν).
---ACTS (5:37) 

Compare this with what Jesus has to say, before Jesus is himself done away with---via crucifixion---in punishment for the violent attack Jesus made upon the Jerusalem Temple: 
Τότε λέγει αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς Πάντες ὑμεῖς σκανδαλισθήσεσθε ἐν ἐμοὶ ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ταύτῃ· γέγραπται γάρ, Πατάξω τὸν ποιμένα καὶ διασκορπισθήσεται τὰ πρόβατα τῆς ποίμνης, μετὰ δὲ τὸ ἐγερθῆναί με προάξω ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν.
Then Jesus says to them: "This very night all of you will fall away before me, indeed it has been written; "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered (διεσκορπίσθησαν), but after I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee." 
---MATTHEW (26:31-32)

Now when the Galileans rose up alive again, in the well planned 66 AD revolt, Josephus did indeed go ahead to buttress the front lines in Galilee, where he prepared for the Roman invasion from Syria. Eleazer meanwhile, holed up on Masada, topping off in the rear. However the birth of the movement, with the delivery of census baby Jesus into the manger, lays deeper in the context of the passage of ZECHARIAH quoted by Jesus:

ז חרב עורי על רעי ועל גבר עמיתי--נאם יהוה צבאות הך את הרעה ותפוצין הצאן והשבתי ידי על הצערים

Awake O sword against the shepherd
And against the kindred man
Says Yahweh of the Armies
Strike my shepherd and the sheep will be scattered
And My hand will turn against the little ones

---ZECHARIAH (13:7)

Biblical Literalists often teach that God speaks of this reality with delight, instead of as a clear warning of the obvious, delivered with deep sadness. Thus it need not surprise that such Literalists could continue to push the mystery meat, that their unstudied faith conjures up by ritual mind-control magic, as a necessary soul food habit. As shocking as it may be, one can not ignore how Literalists are so numbed by their Augustine dogma, that they can actually pretend to be so clueless, as to think it is cute and adorable, to deliver a human baby into an animal feeder. Great Caesar's Ghost! The Literalist readers are dogmatically bound up so tight, that most only have the vaguest idea what doctrines prompt them to mindlessly find joy in the meat of baby Jesus lain inside a beast feeder---good tidings worthy of huge plastic representations, lit up yearly in the public town square, and on innumerable private lawns. Spaceship Earth is clearly spinning out of control. The crew stumbles on, in crazy traditions sure to end in a fatal crash. The job is clearly one that calls for this Daily Planet's puzzle-master---he who reports for duty from the krypton sphere (κρυπτὸν --- LUKE 8:17, MATTHEW 10:26). 

ZECHARIAH (13:7) speaks of the fall of David's house, and the consequences that must be paid for religious sins that the insane Pagan cults perpetrate against the dignity of human life. Then Herod arrived, and he smote the later day Hasmonean shepherds. Little children were once more openly for sale in the marketplace. The Parable of the Two First Days of Christmas is about a seditious alliance that joined the remnants of the Hasmonean camp, together with the Galilean root and offspring of David, in order to redeem the future generations of Israel. The Roman Census is deliberately synchronized with the birth of Jesus in order to prompt the seeker to discover the ultimate rationale for all the destruction and suffering of the First Jewish Roman War, and to understand the motive for every zealous action that led up to it, and to perceive the mindful strategy in the fiery vengeance that was to follow it. Any organization that dares to call itself a Christian Church, yet does not teach about the implied horror of a human infant being consumed to enrich beasts, is certainly not an organization that anyone should give the ritual power, to make them stand, and sit, and kneel on cue, before a menagerie of lifeless statuary, in a grand edifice of corruption. One best believe the survival of the human race is at the stake. Wisdom begins with fear of Yahweh. Eternal life is not attained by mystery meat rituals. The catechism of survival is a catechism of truth. 
And all went to be registered (ἀπογράφεσθαι, i.e.--: apograthesthai), each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from the Galilee, out of Nazareth town, into the Judaea, to David’s city which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, registering with Mary, she being engaged to him, she being pregnant. It furthermore happened that while they were there, her delivery date arrived, and she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in straps (ἐσπαργάνωσεν --- esparganōsen), and laid him in a manger (φάτνῃ), because there was no room for them in the inn.  
---LUKE (2:4-7) 


EPILEPTIC  BEASTS  FEED  UPON  THE  STRANGE  CRADLE
In the Greek of LUKE 2:7, the noun φάτνῃ (manger) comes from the verb πατέομαι (to eat). “Manger” literally means “feeder.”  
  • A “manger” is a eating trough where a beast chews its food --- the "manger" is a beast feeder.  
  • Baby Jesus ends up being delivered into the manger, because Caesar is hungry for more money --- the registration of Augustus is a tax census (LUKE 2:1-7). 
  • The faux-divine Caesars are the “beasts” (θηρίον) of REVELATION (13:1-18, 14:9-11, 15:2, 16:2, etc.).  
  • Ancient Roman epileptics actually ate the brains of human infants as an attempted therapy (see Pliny: NATURAL HISTORY 28:2). 
  • Epilepsy ran in the family of the Julio-Claudian House of Caesar: (see Suetonius: LIFE OF THE CAESARS, JULIUS 45:1; CALIGULA 50:2; see Plutarch: CAESAR 17, 53, 60).   
  • The Greek verb which LUKE (2:7) uses to describe binding baby Jesus in straps, is ἐσπαργάνωσεν (esparganōsen); this verb comes from the noun σπαργανόν (sparganōn), which means: "a swaddling band." The practice of restraining a baby in such bands, evidently aimed to fasten the baby in a manner which prevented it from rolling over onto its stomach---a position in which the baby was more likely to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. LUKE (9:39) employs the very conspicuous "only-begotten" tag (μονογενής, i.e.---: monogenēs), to deliberately extend the context of the "swaddling" act in the manger, into the cure of an adolescent epileptic by Jesus, via the related Greek word συνεσπάραξεν· (synesparaxen), which comes from the root σπαράσσω (sparassó)---a verb meaning: "to convulse," or "toss and turn," as in an epileptic seizure. Compare the English word spar, meaning: "to fight," "struggle," or "kick." When Mary enrolls with the sick and phony god Caesar, the baby Jesus is strapped into His feed-bin fate, by the very straps which restrain the unclean-spirited epileptic house that feeds on Him.

As the discussion will bear out, the paramount monogene tag is not employed haphazardly in God's preordained earth-drama. The pericope of Healing the Epileptic follows the Transfiguration in MARK, MATTHEW, and LUKE. That segue frames this monogene miracle in the shadows of the adjacent unholy precincts, to the evil, early Herodian era occult temple, found on the secluded top summit of Mount Hermon. The tectonic context is a planetary conflict, that pits the true Living God and His sons, against the phony god made out of the murdered dictator Julius Caesar, and his own offspring---the culted Caesars who ruled the sadistic empire as a succession of reputed "sons of god" (Diviius Filli)

καὶ ἰδού, ἀνὴρ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου ἀνεβόησεν λέγων
Διδάσκαλε δέομαί σου ἐπιβλέψον ἐπὶ τὸν υἱόν μου ὅτι μονογενής ἐστιν μοί
καὶ ἰδού, πνεῦμα λαμβάνει αὐτόν καὶ ἐξαίφνης κράζει καὶ σπαράσσει
αὐτὸν μετὰ ἀφροῦ καὶ μόγις ἀποχωρεῖ ἀπ' αὐτοῦ συντρῖβον αὐτόν·
καὶ ἐδεήθην τῶν μαθητῶν σου ἵνα ἐκβάλλωσιν αὐτό καὶ οὐκ ἠδυνήθησαν
ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν Ὦ γενεὰ ἄπιστος καὶ διεστραμμένη
ἕως πότε ἔσομαι πρὸς ὑμᾶς καὶ ἀνέξομαι ὑμῶν
προσάγαγε ὧδε τὸν υἱόν σου
ἔτι δὲ προσερχομένου αὐτοῦ ἔρρηξεν αὐτὸν τὸ δαιμόνιον
καὶ συνεσπάραξεν·
ἐπετίμησεν δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τῷ πνεύματι τῷ ἀκαθάρτῳ
καὶ ἰάσατο τὸν παῖδα
καὶ ἀπέδωκεν αὐτὸν τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ


Now percieve: a man from the crowd cried out, saying:
“Teacher, I implore you to consider my son, for he is my only-begotten! (his monogene --- μονογενής)
Now percieve: a spirit takes him, and suddenly he cries out
And with foaming [mouth] it throws him into convulsions (σπαράσσει --- sparássi)
And departs from him with complication---bruising him
So I begged your disciples to cast it out, yet they were not capable”
Then Jesus Answers him: 
“O faithless and perverted generation!
How long can I exist with you and tolerate you!
Bring your son here”
Now while he was coming near the demon threw him down
And sent him into convulsions (συνεσπάραξεν· --- synesparaxen)
However Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit
And healed the boy
And gave him back to his father

---LUKE (9:37-42)

The Healing of the Epileptic Son, ends with the monogene --- God's uniquely conceived creation --- returned to its true Father. The literary report in LUKE highlights a real transference, whereby the disease of Caesar's unclean spirit, did convulse itself into God's nation. This invasive seizure was facilitated by the Herodians and their Sadducee collaborators who monopolized the High Priesthood as a Roman franchise. The Beast was eating Israel, and the adulterous collaborators were keeping God's children conveniently strapped into the manger.

Rome's transition, from a Republic to an Autocratic Empire, was marked by a full embrace of the eastern religious mysteries of Bacchus/Dionysus and Isis-Osiris---unsavory antisocial cults which the Republicans had repeatedly legislated prohibitions against before the conquests of Greece and Egypt. As was the case with Dionysian mythology, the cannibalism of the fallen Roman Republic was not only metaphoric of the consequences of her doctrines, policies, and state-craft. For in the more private practices of the Bacchic diseased elite, the cannibalism delved beyond all allegory, and was indeed also literally, human teeth, making meals, of the most tender human meat available on the market.




ABOVE: FOURTH CENTURY NATIVITY SCENE, ON AN END PANEL TO THE SARCOPHAGUS OF GENERAL STILICHO, CATHEDRAL OF SAINT AMBROSE, MILAN. If one can put aside the fact that a manger is the feed bin of a beast, and can further put aside the fact that the first house of Caesars was full of notorious epileptic beasts, then one will still, none the less, be confronted by the fact that Gospel describes a newborn human infant consigned to a barn, where the gifted child is registered along with other domesticates which are raised for food use. Get a clue. Dogmatists have tried to respin this clear consciousness raising theme, by desperately contending, that in the First Century, animals were kept inside the house by theft-wary rustics. Surely such rustics would not have been so cold to refuse to let the newborn Jesus borrow their bed, even if their beasts shared the same roof with the rest of their family. Such guilt-ridden avoidance of the literary truth ignores the Gospel's counter point about the lack of room in the village inn. The "no vacancy" sign is painted to prompt the reader to consider a scathing social commentary about the empire's rush for money at any cost, and the new status, of both Judaea, and the House of David, within the Imperial borders. The scene on the Sarcophagus of Stilicho shown in the illustration above, does not depict a manger at all, but like other carvings of its era, it straps helpless baby Jesus into the winnowing cradle of Dinoysus Liknites. 
Once the anti-Imperial Christian movement was appropriated and disarmed by Emperor Constantine, the Emperor lorded over dogmas crafted to reverse the spin of the inspired holy satire. All the original cultural allusions to Dionysus in Gospel, are mysterious anti-Pagan critical spoofs, and morally justified turnabout. However the doctrines of the early legalized church dictated a Paganized remystification of these satirical elements, with an esoteric "It's all good" ethos, crafted as a psychological smokescreen that excused the private indulgences of the elite. It is not all good. Thus the manger device in LUKE was indeed originally composed as a deliberately negative reflection on the winnowing-fan cradle of Dionysus, in order to pointedly label the elite government addicts of the Pagan mysteries, as the "Beasts" they truly were, vis a vis their colossal, and deeply insane, disregard for the sanctity of human life. The Sarcophagus of Stilicho ironically captures the spirit of the original sacred spoof in the artwork carved on an expensive memorial to a champion of its reversal, whether or not the General Stilicho of tradition was the one for whom this coffin was fit. The inspired narrative Josephus penned, calls the winnowing-cradle of Dionysus what it is---a gross feeding trough for gross mad cows. Here the sacrificial baby Jesus is indistinguishable from the fetish-feast communion of Maneros, wrapped mummy-like in the comestible quest for the sickening fairy-tale immortality of Osiris. This faux ambrosia was trafficked like a spiritual drug, enticing and bonding a bevy of crazied space-cadets initiated into the more exclusive levels of the drunken upper crust's mind control disorders, which were first formulated by the licentious thugs ruling Old Kingdom Egypt, Crete, and Canaan. The next illustration will elaborate, upon how the critique of the Dionysian mysteries, which Josephus crafts in the Gospel, is entirely based upon the core message and metaphors of the Old Testament prophets. However the discussion at hand, first proceeds with a quick diagnosis of the unclean spirit of epilepsy in Caesar's First House.

Most Grand Mal Epilepsy is now believed to involve some mutative genetic predisposition, most commonly by maternal inheritance. The Ancient Romans believed this disease was an inauspicious curse from the gods. They called the disorder Morbus Comitialis---the “Disease of the Assembly Hall.” It was in fact so common of a nuisance among Ancient Rome’s elected representatives, as to warrant a rule from the Augers of the Roman state religion, which required that any meeting of government committee, was to be immediately disbanded if a single member of a body were to suffer a seizure. This mandatory cessation of all proceedings applied whether the assembled body was a 600 man session of the Senate, or tens of thousands of Plebes assembled to vote on the Field of Mars. Such inconvenient Pagan rapture, was rarely taken as imparting divine will or intelligence into the convulsion sufferer. By far, the most common belief was that epileptic fits were due to demonic possession. Hippocrates scoffed at superstitious spiritual causes beyond the sufferer's own constitution, as early as the Fifth Century BC, while he noted a hereditary predilection for the malady. 

The inspiration of the Gospel’s epilepsy report, should not be discounted. The narrative makes a poignant literary use the prevalent “demonic” belief then current. 
The First Century’s sordid culture of epilepsy is highly relevant to the literary truth of the Gospel story. Records of the medical practices of that time, describe the most elite Ancient Roman epileptics, pursuing treatments for their affliction, that can quite accurately be described as demonic. The noted prevalence of this brain disorder within Caesar’s house, is pivotal to the riddle strapped inside LUKE’s ignored registration feed-bin, whereas unclean-spirited Roman epileptics literally indulged, in literal vampirism, and literal cannibalism, with their frothing mouths for their spastic excuses. 

Dictator Julius Caesar evidently inherited his genetic predisposition for epilepsy from his mother Aurelia Cotta, and since Ms. Cotta was the great-grandmother of Augustus Caesar, she is evidently an original source for the Grand Mal Epilepsy noted in Caligula Caesar, and in Nero Caesar’s half-brother Britannicus---each a great-great-great-grandnephew of the frothy Julius in the food 
court.


ON THE EPILEPSY OF JULIUS CAESAR'S GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDNEPHEW BRITANNICUS

For any
 reader unfamiliar with the ancient diagnosis of the tremors suffered by the first Caesar dynasty, a synopsis of the record beginning with Britannicus 
will suffice. As previously stated, the empire was ruled by a conspiracy between thug elements of the aristocracy, which enriched themselves by human trafficking, supported by military conquest. They had no respect for human life. Nor was even the blood of their closest family members sacred, despite their platitudes for their noble ancestral veins. Nero's mother Agrippina murdered her own paternal uncle cum husband, Claudius Caesar, by a painful poison. Four months later her new Caesar Nero staged a boy-snuffing scene at a religious feast of the Roman state. The new eighteen year-old Emperor Nero, saw fit to murder his thirteen year-old half brother Britannicus, dispensing with a very fast acting poison, at a sacred public banquet. Everybody who was anybody in the Imperial infrastructure was in attendance, to experience the mental shock that this scary Punchinello intentionally served-up hot, as he dragged them all through the first grand adolescent shaft of his Manchurian crawl space. The sly comments of Josephus on this big-top clown interlude, are material to how the Gospel fits into a parallel conspiracy, by elements of the intelligentsia, fed-up with the power held by this meat-cartel mafia, who disgustingly gorged themselves on a franken-flesh windfall, swallowed fresh off the sub-oceanic floor to their circus:
And when Nero had thus obtained the government, he got Britannicus to be so poisoned, that the multitude could not see it (i.e. 'could not percieve it,' for they were blinded by the deceptive mind games by which the Caesars shaped public information and consent---cf. LUKE 7:21); although he (Nero) publicly put his own mother to death not long afterward, (and here follows the most jaded and unrepentantly biased sarcasm...) giving her this reward, not only for giving birth to him, but for being responsible for his possession of the Roman empire by way of her own plotting. He (Nero) also slew Octavia his own wife (i.e. Claudia-Octavia, the full sister of Britannicus), and many other illustrious persons, under this pretense, that they plotted against him. But I omit any further discourse about these affairs; for there have been a great many who have composed the history of Nero.
---ANTIQUITIES (20:8:2-3)

Upon a cursory read, one hears no reference to epilepsy here. Joe's Greek is also mute on the clinical symptoms of Julius and Caligula. Only the enlightened and dedicated seekers follow Joe's prompt to compare Joe's sparse account here, with the other contemporary authors to whom Joe alludes in the passage. Such seekers separate themselves from the multitude of suckers whom Caesar deluded, whereas in reward for a seeker's knocking, their ears become open. and they can perceive Joe's tacit highlight of the Imperial house's epilepsy. Joe's rhetoric is highly sophisticated, as will become more apparent, when the parallel references to the nasty death of Britannicus are extracted for comparison. Via this belletristic charade, Joe highlights the Imperial epilepsy with such a supremely exaggerated form of literary understatement, as to mark the disease, as of the utmost import for those who are destined to complete this teacher's scholastic exercises successfully. Thus it is notable that Joe crafts similar silent screams of mea culpa in his accounts of the Great Fire of Rome, in his dramatic playbill of a related proclamation of Peace with Parthia so expertly staged for Nero, and of Nazareth's involvement in the destruction of Sepphoris---to name but a few of the more prominent examples of most similar device. The above passage from ANTIQUITIES (20), begins by dropping this epilepsy bunker-buster in stealth, in order to focus the weaned multitude's attention. At the felonious moment of climax to his murder scene of Britannicus, Nero condescendingly broke the forth wall with an anti-naturalistic lack of concern about his public fratricide, as he recapped the show-stopper with a malodorous wise-crack, wherewith he explained how the tragic flop of his rival---which everyone was witnessing right then and there on the Imperial stage---was just another episode of the familiy's paroxsymal disease. This may be deciphered as: "the boy had it coming, for this episode which has afflicted the body of Britannicus, is one of the hazards of this powerful family's genetic inheritance."

The discussion will return Joe's passage in short order, and extract it further, to irrigate those stuffy auditors, which remain averse to ever crediting authority for any essential employments of ethereal subtlety. Here however, the discussion must first turn to compare Joe's account with the account of his protege Tacitus, who verbally demonstrated his hatred Nero no less than Joe did, and who was no less skilled in the use of silence: ("sub Tiberio quies" ---Tacitus HISTORIES 5:9:2). The record in the Roman tongue of the ANNALS by Tacitus, is the earliest surviving composition on Nero that covers the murder of the epileptic Britannicus in grisly detail:

Britannicus was dining, and since what he ate and drank was always tested [for poison] by the taste of a select attendant, the following device was contrived ... A cup as yet harmless, but extremely hot and already tasted, was handed to Britannicus; then, on his refusing it because of its warmth, poison was poured in with some cold water, and this so penetrated his entire frame that he lost alike voice and breath. There was a stir among the company; some, taken by surprise, ran hither and thither, while those whose discernment was keener, remained motionless, with their eyes fixed on Nero, who, as he still reclined in seeming unconsciousness, said that this was a common occurrence, from a periodical epilepsy, with which Britannicus had been afflicted from his earliest infancy, and that his sight and senses would gradually return ..The assertion is made by many contemporary authors that, for days before the murder, the worst of all outrages had been offered by Nero to the boyish years of Britannicus (i.e.---: seventeen year-old Nero raped thirteen year-old Britannicus): in which case, it ceases to be possible to regard his death as either premature or cruel (i.e.---: better off dead than demoted to your elder brother's sex slave), though (i.e.---: it might still be regarded as cruel for the following reasons:) it was amid the sanctities of the table (for his life was eaten by Nero at a sacred feast of the Roman state), without even a respite allowed in which to embrace his sister (appreciation of the art of this clause pivots on knowing that the record indicates Nero was a versatile bisexual who bottomed for grown men in public, for in that light the reader is prompted to interpret the strange construct of Tacitus as making a witty reference to Nero---not Claudia Octavia. Hence the libertine Nero was another "sister" of Britannicus, and in Nero's rape of Britannicus, Nero cruelly never gave Brittanicus a kiss or a reach-around) 
---Tacitus ANNALS (13:16)

Here is not the place to delve into the depth of Tacitus's Latin, or to delineate his rhetorical genius, or to detail how this passage goes on to tell how Nero soon made a great show of arresting poisoners and publicly destroying great caches of poison to deflect and confuse his guilt onto others, or to explain at length how that show relates to lopsided Roman claims which broad-brush acts of cannibalism and human sacrifice among the Celts---whose religious capitol happened to be in Britain. Here the discussion concerns Roman epilepsy, and Roman cannibalism, so the thread must quickly loop into the other histories relevant to that infinitely larger pile of gnashed bones. The next record is the Latin of Suetonius:

[Nero] ordered that the poison be taken to the dining-room and given to Britannicus. The boy dropped dead at the very first taste, but Nero lied to his guests and declared that he (Britannicus) was seized by the epilepsy to which he was subject, and the next day had him hastily and unceremoniously buried in a pouring rain.
---Suetonius LIFE OF NERO (33:2-3) 

Suetonius agrees with Joe's Flavian protege Tacitus; both accounts report the same basic facts with regards to Joe's frothy silence on unclean Imperial cult seizures. The deception of Nero Caesar which Joe's account in ANTIQUITIES called "unseen," is again noted as the hidden epilepsy of Brittanicus. Now if any reader finds that they too are just about to mentally manifest in invisible conniption fits, wondering why the crime scene investigation into the Beast feeder in Bethlehem has focused in so closely upon Britannicus---a boy who missed his chance to be Caesar due to his rape and murder by his elder brother Nero, then such a reader is perhaps not aware of the current street value of nine pounds of flesh.

On the 13 of October, 54 A.D., two decades after Joshua's outwitted execution set the world's mind free, the seventeen year-old Nero was inaugurated emperor, in crisp, tasty toga, chosen with his mommy. On that pompous day, Josephus was the circus fat-mirror of the dapper new Caesar, for both young leaders---Nero and Joe (Evil Empire Antichrist and his Nemesis)---were born in the same year 37 AD. While the city of Rome celebrated the pubescent egomaniac's parade to the Imperial helm, Tacitus was but a wee toddler, born about two years before Nero's mother would poison Claudius Caesar, so that her homicidal Billionaire teenage clown, could begin to rule the planet's greatest empire. Suetonius was born about two years after the suicide of Nero would finally end the torturous thirteen year long Neronian farce, with an outbreak of thirteen months of general anarchy.

Tacitus was already researching his histories while Josephus composed his ANTIQUITIES. Suetonius wrote his LIFE OF NERO decades later. The last account of Britannicus is found in Casius Dio's ROMAN HISTORY in the Greek tongue. Neither Josephus, nor Tacitus, nor Suetonius, could have ever read Dio's account, since they had all died well before it was penned, whereas Dio was born almost exactly a century after Nero ruled. Dio most certainly read these three earlier accounts, along with Joe's WARS and some Gospel. By the time Dio wrote ROMAN HISTORY, the Gospels were still rising as a seditious element of pop culture, with a growing Christian subculture avoiding Imperial registrations, along with the required sworn oath and pledge of subservience directed to the genius of the demigod Emperor. The Emperor's genius was his divine nature---the spiritual place where his temporal power and the order of the heavens met. Caesar's genius was thus regarded as the genius loci of the Roman Empire itself. As the ultimate executive authority of Imperial government, Caesar's genius required a pledge of the state religion at registration. This pledge placed Rome's authority above all other temporal and religious authorities everywhere within the borders of the empire. At certain instances of Imperial registrations, a religious component of concurrent fees, could even include a required sacrifice to Caesar's genius. Tyranny demanded reach into both body and mind. The general form of the registration oath---often recited under a giant idol of the emperor's genius---is known from the way Caligula modified this oath to include his sisters in the pledge towards the beginning of his reign. Thus Suetonius is quoted, but with the final "and his sisters" (et sorores), here redacted in the Latin ellipse for illustration:

THE OATH OF REGISTRATION

Neque me liberosque meos cariores habeo quam Gaium habeo ... eius 

I do not value myself or my own children more than I value Caesar...

---Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA (15:2) (Caligula Caesar's Latin praenomen was Gaius)

Regarding the diseased first House of Caesar, their contemporaries have left an overwhelming preponderance of testimony that the Julio-Claudians put little value upon the lives of their own family members, as they repeatedly murdered them in their mafia struggles for power. They proved they valued the lives of their unrelated subjects even less, as they repeatedly tortured and slaughtered free citizens on nonsensical whims, either to demonstrate their power, or for cheap personal entertainment and nourishment. It can be no surprise the registration oath was seen as a great chink in the Imperium's armor. Even while reviling the excesses of the autocrats, the historiographer Dio Cassius must certainly have nonetheless loathed Josephus, whereas Dio was an Imperial patriot of Greek race, who had obtained the highest Roman state offices, including Senator, Consul, and three times Provincial Governor. Dio's intelligence, inquisitiveness, access to privy records and information, must have made him cognizant of who Josephus was, and of what Josephus had done. Moreover Dio had been born after both a Second Roman Jewish War (the Kitos Rebellion), and yet even a Third Roman Jewish War (the Bar Kokhba Rebellion), with each new epic resurrection of Jewish hostility, just as disastrous for Rome's Drang Nach Osten as the initial spoiler---the Galilean incarnation of revolt (the First Roman Jewish War), which Josephus had brought to such a strategic and defiant close. This background is relevant due to Dio's apparent perception of the gravid rhetorical point Joe made by way of Britannicus, and due to Dio's subsequent attempt to declaw that point with a flush bang upon Joe's subtle literary nail-head. For Dio merely nods that Nero attempted a deception to cover-up his murder of Britannicus, but turns on that theme 180 degrees, to concoct a different deception from the one that the three earlier histiographers relate. Dio furthermore refutes Josephus directly by reporting that Nero's deception about the murder was "seen"---with grand drama---and therefore Nero duped no one. Finally, Dio's composition tends to discount the accusations of epilepsy as of questionable veracity, with this questionableness not in any way connected by the narrative to Nero's poetic license at the unfolding crime scene, nor connected specifically to the murder of Britannicus at all, but instead Dio rhetorically skews the very context within which a perhaps only partly fraudulent Imperial report of epilepsy is made, to suggest that the epilepsy is of questionable authority in general, and therefore best discounted entirely. In this way Dio almost completely buries one of Joe's choicest directional bread-crumbs, at a particularly tricky point of the trail out, from the knotted forest of the drooling Pagan she-wolf: 

... she (Agrippina: Nero's mother, Caligula's sister, Claudius's niece and second wife) persuaded Claudius to make known to the populace by proclamation and to the senate by letter that, if he (Claudius Caesar) should die, Nero was already capable of administering the business of the State. In consequence of this he (Nero: adopted stepson of his great uncle Emperor Claudius) became a person of importance and his name was on everybody's lips, whereas in the case of Britannicus (the natural son of Claudius) many did not know even whether he was living, and the rest regarded him as insane and an epileptic; for this was the report that [Nero's mother] Agrippina brodcast ... 
(the space of half a chapter separates, and thereby dissociates, this wholly different report on the epilepsy, from Dio's following report on the Britannicus poisoning) 
... Nero now treacherously murdered Britannicus by means of poison and then, as the skin became livid through the action of the poison, he smeared the body with gypsum. But as it was being carried through the Forum, a heavy rain that fell while the gypsum was still moist washed it all off, so that the crime was known not only by what people heard but also by what they saw.
---Cassius Dio ROMAN HISTORY (60:33:10 - 61:7:4) 

Dio may have entirely invented these traditions which subtly spin the earlier narratives, or Dio may have cherry-picked them from available sources, and then woven them into his narrative in such a way as to foil Joe's embarrassing point, which Joe delivered in a scholastic teaching aimed to instruct a great multitude in rhetorical and symbolic literacy sufficient to win the mental freedom of the subject classes. The tempest that soaked the funeral procession which carried the body of Britannicus to the tomb of Augustus, is a feature common to the accounts of both Suetonius and Tacitus. Indeed, the musing Tacitus gives about this great storm is of such great length, it was not extracted in the ellipse given here. Still, neither of the early accounts by Tacitus or Suetonius give Dio's cosmic dead-pan story about the stage make-up Nero applied to the boy's corpse. How could they have resisted to report this morbid tidbit if it was extant in their time? Dio was no fan of Nero. Why then would Dio seek to spin away the epilepsy report? Perhaps Dio did not want the just motive for the First Roman Jewish War and its aftermath to be in the public record in such a way that might instigate the enlightenment of the domesticates on the tables of the Imperial register. Dio could admit early Caesars had been crazies. Dio could even drop hints that clarify points about their cannibalism, since in Pagan parlance it was a matter of course for men who obtained god-like power to display sublime yet credible threats of such ritual dominance, going back to the Spartan Krypteia and their legal hunts in the Helot underclass each harvest season. Nevertheless, it was too much truth for Dio to admit that the Empire was founded by a demon possessed family, whereas that was how the overwhelming majority of Roman subjects viewed the epilepsy phenomena.


ON THE EPILEPSY OF JULIUS CAESAR'S GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDNEPHEW CALIGULA CAESAR


The Hebrew Bible reveals, the one real God Yahweh, is a jealous God. Caligula Caesar was a phony Roman god who was most jealous of the real God Yahweh. The prophets had militantly built-up Yahweh's religion, to hurl its hard won ancient wisdom, directly at Pagan Rome's undivine gluttons of state, whom they were expecting for dinner. Julius and Augustus Caesar both decreed politically expedient exemptions for Judaean religious traditions. The spirit of these exemptions was whittled away at with magical mind-games put into play by Judaea's Herodian and Roman governors. As the final foundations of the Imperial Cult were being lain under Tiberius Caesar, the resistance of the Galileans won fame empire wide by the iconoclastic demonstration of Jesus. The disciples of Jesus who survived into the reign of the next Caesar Caligula, would be called to resist Caligula Caesar's attempt to install a colossal idol of his phony undivine image into the Holy of Holies of Yahweh's Jerusalem Temple (cf. MATTHEW 26:53, ANTIQUITIES 18:8:1-6, 18:1:1---i.e. Niese section 18:5-6, WARS 2:10:1-5).

The planned shipment into Israel of Caligula's statue got smashed,
 when a people's army including women and children, all equipped with scythes, rakes, and other farm tools, grew to numbers called "many tens of thousands" (Ἰουδαίων δὲ πολλαὶ μυριάδες), while they marched into Syria Province out of Galilee, to prevent transit of the vicenarian Frankenstein's idol intended for Yahweh's Temple (ANTIQUITIES 18:8:2, Philo EMBASSY TO GAIUS 32:223-229, Tacitus HISTORIES 5:9). The great size of these humble columns of outraged farm-folk is found in the "more than twelve legions of angels" (πλείους ἢ δώδεκα λεγεῶνας ἀγγέλων) which Jesus promises at MATTHEW (26:53). That number represents more than 66,000 people, whereas a Roman Legion was made of approximately 5,500 men. James of Zebedee was in Gethsemane by the side of Jesus when He made this projection, which signaled James to flee ahead of the Temple Police, sword in hand, to fight on that later day. The foretold final conflict for James arrived a decade later, after Caesar's giant Roman idol was set to be erected inside Yahweh's sacred space, at the very end to the reign of Caesar CaligulaThe chronology of the literary record indicates, that after James of Zebedee was captured, he was executed in the Gladiatorial arena by Herod Agrippa, near the beginning of the reign of the next Caesar Claudius (ACTS 12:2, ANTIQUITIES 19:7:5).

Caligula was a polluted man with a misfiring brain. This great grandson of Augustus became emperor at age 25, when his youngest sister Julia-Livilla was 18, his favorite sister Drusilla was 20, and his eldest sister Agrippina was 21. His assassination at age 28 was dished out in a vicious group stabbing by his own Praetorian Guards, who were repulsed by his dinner parties. Their angry knife orgy was a copy-cat killing. It reprised the cutting group veto that perforated the epileptic Julius Caesar in the Senate five decades before Caligula was born, but the julienning of Caligula Caesar was cooked up in a much more intimate setting. When Cassius Dio (59:29:4-30:1) reports that more than one of Caligula's assassins tasted Caesar-flesh after they had ginsu carved his royal hind to to bone, the modern English phrase "a taste of his own medicine," applies in ironic ways, whereas Dio tables this raw tid-bit inside the context of how and why Caligula's pseudo-sacred feasting disgusted the guards, and moved them to perform juicy surgery on the most regal member at the very point where Caligula announces he will add three more days to a feast already in progress, so that his ruling thighs and belly can act and dance a tragedy before all present. According to Dio, the guards called "cut" right as Caesar's grim gyrating love-feast was to commence with a tragic course of the flowering youth of well bred young boys imported fresh from Asia, under pretense of merely singing Caesar's praises and returning home in one piece. Dio elaborates on the Roman religious context to proceedings that Josephus described a century before Dio:
Caligula was celebrating a festival in the palace and was producing a spectacle. In the course of this he was himself both eating and drinking, and was feasting the rest of the company. Even Pomponius Secundus, consul at the time, was taking his fill of food as he sat by the emperor's feet, and at the same time kept bending over continually to shower kisses upon them. For Chaerea and Sabinus, (the conspirators) pained as they were by the disgraceful proceedings, nevertheless restrained themselves for five days. But when Caligula himself wished to dance and act a tragedy and for this purpose announced three more days of the entertainment, the followers of Chaerea could endure it no longer, but waiting merely till he went out of the theatre to see the boys of exalted birth whom he had summoned from Greece and Ionia ostensibly to sing the hymn composed in his honour (in honor of Gaius Caesar Caligula), they intercepted him in a narrow passage and killed him.
---Dio ROMAN HISTORY (59:29:4-6)


Suetonius (LIFE OF CALIGULA 58:1) dates the assassination to the twenty-fourth of January. Each year, with reference to that date, the Pontiffs chose when to begin the movable feast of Sementivae, in supplication to the earth goddess called by the names Tellus and Terra Magna. She was Rome's version of the Greek goddess Gaia (cf. the birth name Gaius given to three of the first four Caesars). Josephus reports that the shows which Caligula hosted in the lead up to his murder, began with sacrifices to the faux-Divinity of Augustus Caesar. Now the marriage of Augustus to Livia took place on the seventeenth of August in 37 BC---seven days before the assassination date Suetonius reports. Their union was a great milestone on Augustus's road to holy Emperor, as it marked his final break from the Second Triumvirate. The postmortem establishment of the anniversary as a private feast, celebrated for three days inside the palace, is attributed to Livia (Dio 56:46:5). Now the conspirators did not want to kill Caligula and violate the sanctity of a religious feast, but when Caligula informed them that he was lengthening the feast by even more days, they became impatient in their disgust and decided to act. Caligula was extending the holiday of Augustus into the Sementivae---the Semen-feast that celebrated the sowing (semente) of seed (semen) into the earth. The dilemma of the conspirators was supposed to be understood by readers who knew the Roman religious calendar, since the Semenetivae actually included two holidays separated by a week. The first feast sacrificed a pregnant pig as an offering to Tellus. It was not fixed on the calendar, but fell around the twenty-fourth of January. Seven days later, another holy day of Semenetivae was held in honor of Ceres, the goddess of cereal. The full religious context of Caligula's final day requires knowing that the imported Asian cult of the "Great Mother" goddess Cybele, had, since the Punic War, been syncretized with the idolatrous trappings of Ceres, and together recently infused into the full divine honors which Livia's Imperial memory was still expecting, though Livia was not fully divinized by legislation until the reign of Claudius. Now when Caligula continued the feasting for Augustus into the first part of the Sementivae without having informed his guards from the outset, they grew impatient to cut him to pieces, no doubt expecting Caligula was perhaps planning to extend the feast for yet a further week thereafter, increasing the odds that their designs would be discovered. This rundown on the sacred calendar fits the report of Josephus, who details that the boys whom Caligula was about to engage near his bath, were young dancers of the Pyrrhic Dance, which was part of a boy's coming of age ceremony in the Asian Mysteries of Cybele:

So Caligula came out in a solemn manner, and offered sacrifice to Augustus Caesar, in whose honor indeed these shows were celebrated … Caligula turned aside into a private narrow passage, in order to go to the place for bathing, as also in order to take a view of the boys that came out of Asia, who were sent thence, partly to sing hymns in these mysteries (μυστηρίων) which were now celebrated, and partly to dance in the Pyrrhic way of dancing upon the theatres. So Cherea met him, and asked him for the watchword...
---Josephus ANTIQUITIES (19:1:13-14) 

(Ponder Joe's cross-reference at MATTHEW 26:30, which has no other satisfactory explanation, and compare the word μυστηρίων "Mysteries" at MATTHEW 13:11, MARK 4:11, LUKE 8:10, ROMANS 11:25, ROMANS 16:25, etc. etc.; this loaded Greek word is found a total of 28 times in the New Testament. The Christian "Mystery" is wrapped in an Old Testament iconoclastic metaphor, which compares idolaters to the idols they worship, whereas neither have eyes to see, nor ears to hear: PSALM 115:4-7, 135:15-17, ISAIAH 2:6-6:13, MATTHEW 13:11-50, JOHN 12:12-41. Hence anyone of sound mind who does some Biblical study will find that these quasi-satirical Gospel references are not some secret nod to Pagan magic rites, but are instead the genetic instruction innate in the life protecting cells of the immune system vital to survival of the human species. This thread will reprise with the unmasking of the abominable Dionysian Mysteries, as soon as the Imperial epileptics who drank polluted intoxicants are purged of their cannibal feast. The Apostles certainly were not singing hymns in praise of the egregious idolatry that was Caesar: LUKE 23:2, 2:1-7, JOHN 19:12-16, REVELATION 17:1-18.) 

Right after this moment in earth history, day 24 January 41 AD, where Dio reveals that the week long final fancy-feast of Caligula's insane empire was cut short with an unexpected Et tu Buffet, Seutonius gives report that the wee brains, of Caligula's one year old daughter, were quickly smashed out of her skull onto a frigid wall, to flesh out how cold, this dish of revenge was served. The reports of Suetonius and Dio on these matters, relate to each other with a definite quality of call and response. Therefore one can't help but hear how their cadence cascades off the earliest account by Josephus:


JOSEPHUS 
So Cherea (head of the Praetorian guard and the principal conspirator) met him (Caligula), and asked him for the watchword; upon Caligula's giving him one of his ridiculous words, he immediately reproached him, and drew his sword, and gave him a terrible cut with it, yet this cut was not fatal. And although there be those that say it was so contrived on purpose by Cherea, that Caligula should not be killed at one blow, but should be punished more severely by a multitude of wounds ... If Cherea was of that mind, I esteem him the greatest of all fools, in pleasing himself in his spite against Caligula ... But everyone may guess as he pleases about this matter ... Cherea was very uneasy that Caligula's daughter and wife were still alive ... he sent Julius Lupus, one of the tribunes, to kill Caligula's wife and daughter ... So when he was come into the palace, he found Caesonia, who was Caligula's wife, lying by her husband's dead body ... all over herself besmeared with the blood of her husband's wounds, and bewailing the great affliction she was under, her daughter lying by her also; and nothing else was heard in these her circumstances but her complaint of Caligula, for he had not taken seriously what she had often proclaimed to him beforehand; which words of hers were taken in a different sense even at that time, and are now esteemed equally ambiguous by those that hear of them, and are still interpreted according to the different inclinations of people. Now some said that the words denoted that she had advised him to leave off his mad behavior and his barbarous cruelty to the citizens, and to govern the public with moderation and virtue, lest he should perish by the same way, upon their using him as he had used them (on Caligula's "using people" see Dio 59:10:2)...
---Josephus ANTIQUITIES (19:1:14-19:2:4), cf.  ANTIQUITIES 11:6:11, MATTHEW (7:12). 


SUETONIUS 
As he (Caligula) lay upon the ground and with writhing limbs called out that he still lived, the others dispatched him with thirty wounds; for the general signal was: "Attack it Again!" ("Repete!") Some even thrust their swords through his private parts ... With him died his wife Caesonia, stabbed with a sword by a centurion, while his daughter's brains were dashed out against a wall.
----Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA (58:3-59:1) 
(Repete is the etymological source of the English word repeat, but with not exactly the same overall meaning. The original Latin compounds the prefix re, meaning "back," with the verb petere meaning: "I make for," "I seek or desire," "I attack." Dio's explicit synopsis suggests that the conspirators may have exploited the same double-meaning found in the modern Portuguese cognate "repetir," which has both the global generic meaning of the English word repeat, but also the specific, colloquial meaning "to eat another helping" at a meal, i.e.---:'get a second plate,' go back for "seconds" ... thirds...) 

DIO  
When he (Caligula) had fallen, none of the men present kept hands off him, but all fell to stabbing him savagely, even though he was dead; and some even tasted of his flesh. His wife and daughter were also promptly slain. Thus Caligula, after doing in three years, nine months, and twenty-eight days all that has been related, learned by actual experience that he was not a god.
---Cassius Dio ROMAN HISTORY (59:29:7-30:1)

T
he pattern of this brain matter decanted onto the wall will glow with significance, after Pliny's description of the contemporary cutting edge treatment for epilepsy is extracted and compounded. The report of Caligula's epilepsy is also given by Suetonius:
Valitudo ei neque corporis neque animi constitit. Puer comitiali morbo vexatus. In adulescentia ita patiens laborum erat, ut tamen nonnumquam subita defectione ingredi, stare, colligere semet ac sufferre vix posset. Mentis valitudinem et ipse senserat ac subinde de secessu deque purgando cerebro cogitavit.

He was sound neither of body nor mind. The boy was afflicted with the epilepsy disease. While in his adolescence he had some endurance, but at times, due to sudden faintness, he was barely able to walk, to stand, to collect his thoughts, or to hold up his head. He himself realized he had mental illness, and sometimes planned to go into retirement, to purge his brains. 

---Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA (50:2)

Since Literalists prohibit themselves from discerning the sharpness of the inspired double-edged tongue, how could they be expected to realize, that the Biblical lessons with this type of blade, are intended to ensure Monotheistic security against Pagan employment of such weapons. Key to the back-hand cut of the passage above, is the fact that the core principal of the traditional medicine of the ancients, was the sympathetic magic maxim of "like for like." A similar literary coulé, that Nero's conscripted tutor Seneca centers on Caligula, fleshes up into a coupé. Seneca's diagnosis of Rome's Armenian episode of bulimia, uses the gross eating habits of the Imperial elite, to pen his biting rhetorical prognosis for the Empire:
If we crave extra it is vice we work for not necessity. There is no need to probe every depth, nor to burden the belly with the carnage of breathing creatures, nor [the butchery of] the last conchs from unknown shores of the ultimate sea (the noun strāges: carnage, 'butchery': i.e. "massacre," "overthrow," "defeat," figuratively: 'sexual violation,' 'conquest,' 'deflowering;' the noun conchȳlia: conchs: most specifically aphrodisiac "oysters," more generally "mollusks," however "conchs" generically denotes all edible "shellfish," what's more "conch" is also timeless slang for the receptive sex-orifice, and, by extension the receptive sex-'partner,' penetrated in an act of lust by penis (phallus), i.e.---: slang analogous to "pussy," "culo," "cherry," moreover a "conch" was also a scoop, or a vessel for unguents, medicines, or condiments. As Rome's goddess of sex and war, Venus was typically depicted as the divine meat shown invitingly posed inside of a conch. Last, but not least in relevance to this deep passage, "conch" also denoted the color "purple," and the "royal garments" shucked off of foreign kings and petty chieftains. Only in the most lurid double meaning of "conch," can one completely decipher the related account of Caligula's failed invasion of Britain given by Suetonius in his LIFE OF CALIGULA 44-45. In this dense column, Seneca has scientifically paralleled and diagnostically integrated the cojoined contexts of Rome's breakneck plunge into infirmity, via the vanity of the rich man's bed, dinner table, and geopolitical board-game). Gods and goddesses (here an appeal to the local powers of a foreign place) damn the rogues whose luxury has over-leaped the bounds of an empire already invidiously wide! They want game from beyond Phasis (Armenia is beyond Colchis) to furnish their ostentatious kitchens, and show no reluctance to import fowl from the Parthians, from whom Rome has not yet taken vengeance (here the Latin is well rendered to expose an ambiguity regarding who was to be the object of this foretold vengeance, however Seneca's overall bias to the letter is clear). Items familiar or strange are brought together from all quarters to tempt their finicky palates. They fetch from the ends of the ocean, things a stomach debauched by dainties can scarcely retain. They vomit to eat and eat to vomit, and do not deign to digest the banquets for which they have ransacked the globe. If a man is sick of this (i.e. if he despises this orgiastic feasting), then how can poverty harm him? If anyone covets (desires or lusts) [this] (these phrases are full of double meanings which here pivot on a contrast between a desire for a vice, and a desire for a cure to that vice) poverty even profits he [who is] cured involuntarily (cured by a means he does not himself will to be cured by), and even if he would not retake such medicine(s) under coercion (again talking both about his not wanting to further indulge in the exotic "viands," but also posing a flip-flop on his strength of will to be remedied of the vice inherent in such preparations; thus a conscience unflattered by itself cries "Alas!" in an appeal for a strong rule of natural law in the next phrases...). In this case, at [the very] least, as long as he is unable, it is like he is unwilling (et epulas quas toto orbe conquirunt nec concoquere dignantur. Ista si quis despicit quid illi paupertas nocet? Si quis concupiscit illi paupertas etiam prodest inuitus enim sanatur et si remedia ne coactus quidem recipit interim certe dum non potest illa nolenti similis est). Caligula Caesar, whom in my opinion nature fashioned in order to demonstrate what unlimited vice is capable of when combined with unlimited power (i.e. one both able and willing to sin beyond every reasonable limit---nature's caricature of the empire itself, with a highlight of the prime command of natural law which both figures broke. so flagrantly. to their own "little-booted" ends), dined one day to the cost of half a million dollars, and though everyone complemented his ingenuity, he had scarcely managed to convert the tribute of three provinces into a single dinner (cf. Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA 17:2, 37:1-3) ... One is moved to protest: "Why do you launch your ships? Why do you equip armies against both beasts and men? Why do you scurry about in such busy excitement? Why do you heap riches upon riches? Do you not want to think that these bodies are too little? (...hmmm...perpetrator equated with its disposable property) Is it not madness and the ultimate mental error to desire so much when somebody is small? (Non uultis cogitare quam parua uobis corpora sint? Nonne furor et ultimus mentium error est, cum tam exiguum capias, cupere multum?) Though the census increases, and the borders extend, you never relieve your bodies. Many have ceded their votes for good merchandise, copulated along with an investigation of all parts for food---you have no place to assemble these preparations of yours! (Licet itaque augeatis census promoueatis fines numquam tamen corpora uestra laxabitis. Cum bene cesserit negotiatio multum militia rettulerit, cum indagati undique cibi coierint, non habebitis ubi istos apparatus uestros conlocetis, i.e.---: the rush to the vomitorium of this theatre is inevitable, whereas the unmanly Imperial belly of tiny-dancing Rome has its limits).    
---Seneca CONSOLATION OF HELVIA (10) (Helvia was the name of Seneca's mother)

Caligula's sister would later compel the philosopher who wrote this letter to educate her son Nero. Comprehension of the most horrible metaphor of baby Jesus---away in a manger where beasts feed---involves both A) the epilepsy of the Imperial House, and B) Caesar's role as the Anti-Christ Beast of REVELATION---a book chronologically focused upon Nero Caesar and the Great Fire of Rome. Nero forced Seneca to commit suicide just one year after the Great Fire, and just one year prior to when the Great Jewish Revolt began. Important threads that will later connect these two great events, require a few paragraphs to give context to the eloquent man who trained the Bible's epitome of the Beast.  

Seneca themed his CONSOLATION OF HELVIA to comfort his mother, after Claudius Caesar had exiled Seneca from Rome to Corsica, a move which curtailed Seneca's access to luxury and fine society. Seneca was banned shortly after Caligula's sisters were welcomed home to Rome. Banished, Seneca was prevented from aiding Caligula's sisters, in any new political moves they might have attempted upon return from their own exiles, imposed upon them over a year earlier by their recently murdered brother. Seneca's exile commuted a death sentence for a charge of adultery with Caligula's youngest sister Julia-Livilla---a great granddaughter of Augustus. Such a masked accusation placed on the docket of the Senate, could not be divorced from the odious treason it loudly implied, beneath its attack upon the moral standing of this philosopher-politician. The charade of Seneca's affair with Julia-Livilla, masquerades inside the Imperial enterprise's paranoia, regarding their own addictions to the Pagan Mysteries. 

Dio first blames Messalina (mother of Britannicus) for ordering a quick return of Julia-Livilla back into exile, worked simultaneously with Stoic Seneca's banishment for his politically incorrect meetings with the young princess (Dio 60:8:4-5). However, further on in Dio's narrative, when he reports how, four years later in 46 AD Empress Messalina poisoned Julia-Livilla's husband Marcus Vinicius, Dio states Messalina suspected that Vinicius had been the one who killed his Stoicum loving wife (
Dio 60:27:4, 31:3-5). Meanwhile, in the reports of Empress Messalina's own promiscuous sexual exercises, the accusations of prostitution should be read as shy nods to Messalina's exploitation of the Mysteries, particularly the magical Mysteries of Cybele, and the even more embarrassing soothsaying that was part and parcel of the rites of Isis, whose cult first became sure-footed in the capitol under Caligula (Mommsen CIL I, p. 333-4;  to grasp the silent treatment given to the power of the feminine mysteries from the east, ponder Suetonius LIFE OF CLAUDIUS 29:3). Thus despite the great number of lurid reports about Messalina, Dio's poison motive for Messalina in the refusal of Vinicius to commit adultery with her, (which Dio gives in close context to a plot by Valerius Asiaticus---consul 46 AD), tends to imply that Vinicius (consul 45 AD) was chosen by Messalina to join in plans to completely eliminate her husband Emperor Claudius (Dio 60:27:1-4, 29:4-6, 31:1-5, Tacitus ANNALS 11:12:1-12:1:1). The earlier sources by Seneca and Suetonius both claim Julia-Livilla was killed by Claudius, without giving a date, nor any explicit mention of a second exile (APOCOLOCYNTOSIS 10:4, LIFE OF CLAUDIUS 29:1). Since the prime reports of adultery involving the women in this drama, are liaisons central to intrigues that make attempts upon the life of a Caesar, one must ponder the charge of a clandestine extramarital union between Julia-Livilla and Seneca as a check regarding uneasiness about a possible conspiracy, past, future, real or unrealized. Such suspicions are only vexed by Josephus, who both distances and implicates Julia-Livilla's husband Marcus Vinicius (paired and punned along with Valerius Asiaticus) in the successful assassination of Caligula (ANTIQUITIES 19:1:14, 19:4:3). Moreover Caligula had exiled his sisters Julia-Livilla and Agrippina (Nero's mother), for their suspected roles in an earlier assassination plot that had failed to kill him, suspicions for which the freaky epileptic charged both sisters as guilty of adultery with Caligula's reputed main male lover and designated heir Marcus Lepidus, who was supposed to be the beneficiary of that unsuccessful initial plot. Caligula's earlier tapping of Lepidus to succeed him, grew problematic once Lepidus was reduced to merely another horny in-law, after Lepidus was widowed by Caligula's favorite sister Drusilla (Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA 24:1-3, Dio 59:11:1, 59:22:6-9). It should not be dismissed as entirely coincidence that Caligula discovered the plotting of Lepidus, Julia-Livilla, and Agripina, after the birth of his daughter by Caesonia gave him the hope of a natural heir. Seneca's witness of Caligula's growing maltreatment of the two surviving sisters, who had already suffered so much from Imperial intrigues under Tiberius Caesar, can only have increased Seneca's moral conflict with the madly immature emperor, while suspicions regarding the Stoic philosopher's political designs waxed (Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA 53:1-2, Dio 59:19:7-8, 61:10:1). 

Seneca's isolation on backwater Corsica gave the Stoic space to ponder the adolescent impulses of the newfangled imperial adventure's institution of a virtual monarchy, while he lamented how it had crushed the last virile checks and balances of Rome's Republic. Once Empress Messalina was herself executed for the one adultery that Claudius eventually judged as revealing her designs on his death, the self widowed Caesar then married Caligula's only surviving sister Agrippina (his own niece). The new Empress Agrippina recalled Seneca from his eight years of exile, had him made Praetor, and drafted him to tutor her son Nero. Agrippina apparently believed the move was safe, since earlier she evidently had also saved the rising Quaestor Seneca's life, when it was threatened after he had the gumption to challenge her crazy spendthrift brother Caesar, face to face in a regal session of the Senate (Dio 59:19:7-8, 61:10:1, Tacitus ANNALS (12:8:13-14). 

Seneca's shrouded role as one of Paul's friends in Nero Caesar's house, is pivotal to the Messianic drama (PHILIPPIANS 1:13, 4:22, LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 3 & 65, ROMANS 16:11, LIFE OF JOSEPHUS 2, ACTS 23:6, PHILIPPIANS 3:5). Thanks to the evidence of Cassius Dio (ROMAN HISTORY 61:35:3-4), it is not possible to credibly deny that Seneca penned the scorching satire of the Imperial cult titled: "THE PUMPKINIFICATION OF [THE GOD] CLAUDIUS," (APOCOLOCYNTOSIS [DIVI] CLAUDII). Dio's attribution of a Greek pun to Seneca, where Apocolocyntosis (Pumkinification) is a pun for Apotheosis (Deification), suggests a Greek version of Seneca's satire was in circulation. Once the truth seeker has discerned that the Gospel's subtext screams invective against the Imperial Cult as its prime theme, in order to identify Caesar as the Imperial Anti-Christ whom Messianists fight in order to deliver the world from his evil, then the proposition that Seneca carried on ciphered correspondences with Messianists through the evangelist named Paul can not be dismissed as entirely fantastic. The plausibility of this proposition gets magnified in the light of Dio's quote of what Seneca's elder brother Gallio had seditiously broadcast against the Cult of Caesar (61:35:3), and how this remark fits with facts about Seneca's rebel brother Gallio recorded in ACTS 18:11-17, Tacitus's ANNALS (15:73), Seneca's EPISTULAE MORALES (104) and Pliny's NATURAL HISTORY (31:33). Seneca constructs a tragic comparison between the crucifixion and Julius Caesar's assassination, to begin his DE IRA (1:2)---an essay Seneca dedicates to his brother Gallio's hot temper.

Both Suetonius (LIFE OF CALIGULA) and Philo (EMBASSY TO GAIUS) paint portraits that detail the intellectual component of Caligula's insanity, with vivid strokes that point in unison at the burden of the Imperial Cult upon this spoiled boy's psyche. Caligula's confused attempts to be accepted as an over-sized caricature of living god, were dressed up in convulsions of schlock drama that would have been laughable, were they not drenched in such brutal and capricious violence. Can Caligula's end have been marked by a clearer planetary signpost than his failed attempt to install a giant idol carved in his misfiring image inside Yahweh's Jerusalem Temple? Seneca's life was turned upside down because of this twenty-something's Imperial madness, and Seneca's own black humor on the topic of Imperial divinity underlines his disgust. Agrippina could not have given the Imperial saboteur lurking within Seneca any more noble task than she did when she tapped the Stoic word-man to hold the hand of another spoiled boy assuming the future god honors of the Imperial Cult, as he ascended to an office and an empire Seneca knew deserved to be committed to the ash heap. One may be rightly puzzled whether Dio is withholding or highlighting a revelation, when ROMAN HISTORY (61:7:5) reports that Seneca lost interest in governing the empire after Nero murdered Britannicus, for this comment contradicts all the evidence for the building industry of Seneca's involvement in state affairs, including Dio's very own reports. Moreover Dio tellingly contradicts the chronology of Tacitus regarding when Nero's scripted Armenian drama in the capitol took place relative to the date of the Great Fire. Old man Seneca could certainly forgive himself for toying with the inferior mind of young boy Nero, inside a bigger context that aimed to heel the dictatorial power that the Caesars wielded, over a rabid faux-divine empire which so thoroughly molested the minds of all its subjects, with no moral conscience. 
  




ABOVE: SCENE OF DIONYSUS LIKNITES, CARVED UPON ONE END OF A BACCHIC SARCOPHAGUS, IN THE FITZWILLIAM COLLECTION OF CAMBRIDGE, TO BE COMPARED WITH THE IMPERIAL CHRISTIAN SARCOPHAGUS IN THE PRECEDING ILLUSTRATIONThe liknon (λίκνον) was a winnowing cradle used by Hellenic peoples to separate the wheat kernel (seed) from the chaff (husk)---it was the Grecian version of a winnowing fan. Greek myth claimed that the infant Dionysus was placed into a winnowing cradle, and that the divine child was thereafter raised by Satyrs, who taught to him the ways of intoxication and sensual pleasure. What was fit for the god must surely suffice for the children of its devotees. In the highlighted sketches of the sarcophagus illustrated above, those with the eyes to see it, may note how the plumped boy in the winnowing cradle bends over to suckle on the male figure who carries the grain separator that harvests him. All the libertine excesses of the fertility cults were of course represented as sacred rituals which imparted magic plenty and protected children. To the deaf and blind it was just harmless and amusing Pagan metaphor. Inklings of the true ominosity increased with erudition. In the HYMN TO ZEUS by Callimachus, the nymph Adrasteia (Ἀδράστεια), whose name means "inescapable," places the infant Olympian in a winnowing cradle made of gold, so that he might escape being eaten by his father Cronus. All the magical paradoxes were deliberately confusing. Hence it was supposed to be safety to represent a child scooped up into a tool that was used to process foodstuffs. Sympathetic magic belief may be summarized by the maxim "like for like." Things cosmically similar to each other, in form, image, properties and/or effects, were considered "like," and were believed to promote each other, but were also magically employed for similar potencies and contexts, to fight against what was "like." For example, a god of pestilence could be entreated both to sicken one's enemies and also heal one's friends. However no matter what masked face the mystery cultists chose to present to the community on a rainy day, those with sound moral faculties, knew that libertines exploited these cults to indulge in the abuse of children, using idolatrous magic principals as their rationale. Hence the satirical nativity in the LUKE Gospel is entirely justified, moreover utilitarian, when it deliberately compares the winnowing cradle of Dionysus Liknites, to the feeding manger of a beast, whereas this comparison is employed as a call to arms. This literary provocation incites the consciousness of revolt as it points at the gross appetites of the Imperial elite. Right in the very same satirical Old Testament tradition, the Gospel records John the Baptist's good news about Jesus: 
His winnowing fan is in his hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn, but chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
 ---LUKE (3:17), MATTHEW (13:12) 

(cf. PSALM 1:4, ISAIAH 1:31, 41:16, 66:24, JEREMIAH 15:7, 51:2)
There is more in these symbolic lines than just a foreboding side reference to the traumatic fires that deflated Jerusalem and Rome in 64, 70 and 80 AD. Note that this metaphor compares the human soul with grain---not human meat, (be it magically transubstantiated or otherwise). The Messianic rebellion did indeed refine the human soul. The proofs are found in the provenance of the long road to the illegality of slavery, and in the end made to the gladiatorial death-sport in the public arena. The Messianic take on the winnowing-fan spins a moral rebuke, upon the metaphoric exploitation that the Pagan fertility cults worked with the same farmyard winnowing device. Adherents of fertility cults secretly used the winnowing cradle to mask forbidden pleasures that the elite indulged in at seasonal festivals, marking the rebirth at the end of winter, and the death at the fall of summer, while celebrating the cycles of planting, sowing, and harvesting. Jesus and His Messianic followers literally and historically turned the metaphor around against the hardest partyers among the libertines. The mysteries of Dionysus and Osiris that flourished in the late Hellenistic Age, took the seasonal nature of these Mardis Gras types of feasts, and remade them into religious systems that operated a year round Carnival ("meat-lifting") conducted behind closed doors, with a hierarchical system of role playing at different levels of hedonistic sex abuse and ritual cannibalism. By the Roman Imperial period these highly degenerate cults were ubiquitous, and were used by the mega-wealthy to magically domesticate every caste beneath their lofty perches. A concise explanation of the plethora of Dionysian parallels in the Gospel will follow the nearly finished rebuke of the epileptic spirit.


ON THE EPILEPSY OF JULIUS CAESAR

What could be more ironic in the history of earth’s temporal power? The health of Rome’s representative government was destroyed by their most infamous sufferer of epilepsy---a malady they named the “Disease of the Assembly Hall.” Could this be more potent of a marker in the planetary record, if Caesar had not given his symptoms of Morbus Comitialis as his very excuse, after his first attempt to receive the Senate in a monarch’s sitting posture was rejected by that ancient body? Or if they had not subsequently spilled the pilfered life-juice of his toxic metal possessed body upon the Assembly Hall floor?

Towards the end he was subject to frequent fits of falling, and to nightmare as well. He was attacked by his epileptic seizures twice during his [military] campaigns.
---Suetonius LIFE OF JULIUS CAESAR (45:1)
That he should undergo toils beyond his body's apparent powers of endurance amazed them, because he was lanky, had skin that was delicate and pale, suffered from distemper in the head, and was subject to epileptic fits … Nevertheless, he did not make his feeble health an excuse for soft living, but rather his military service a cure for his feeble health, since by wearisome journeys, crude diet (εὐτελέσι διαίταις), continuously sleeping in the open air, and enduring hardships, he fought off his trouble and kept his body strong against its attacks. 
--- Plutarch LIFE OF CAESAR (17)
Moreover, after sundry extravagant honours had been voted him in the senate, it chanced that he was sitting above the rostra, and as the praetors and consuls drew near, with the whole senate following them, he did not rise to receive them (but instead remained in the posture of regal ease)… This vexed not only the senate, but also the people, who felt that in the persons of the senators the state was insulted, and in a terrible dejection they went away at once, all who were not obliged to remain, so that Caesar too, when he was aware of his miscalculation, immediately turned to go home … afterwards he made his disease an excuse for his behaviour, saying that the senses of those who are thus afflicted do not usually remain steady when they address a multitude standing, but are speedily shaken and whirled about, bringing on giddiness and insensibility. 
--- Plutarch LIFE OF CAESAR (60)

    
ON THE DEMONIC TREATMENT OF EPILEPSY IN THE TIME OF CHRIST


The Roman encyclopaedist Cornelius Celsus flourished during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. The little known of his person comes from detective investigation into his medical work DE MEDICINA. Celsus may have died during the reign of Caligula or Claudius. His DE MEDICINA gives the earliest use of the word "insania." Celsus includes epilepsy as one of six insanity disorders, and he comments that vampirism should be tolerated as a treatment because of the misery wrought by the disease:
That disease (morbus) which is called epilepsy ([morbus] comitialis), or the major [disease] ([morbus] maior), is one of the best known. The man suddenly falls down and foam issues out of his mouth; after an interval he returns to himself, and actually gets up by himself. This kind affects men oftener than women. And usually it persists even until the day of death without danger to life; nevertheless occasionally, whilst still recent, it is fatal to the man ... 
... (Celsus goes on to describe a most demonic treatment) ...
… Some have freed themselves from such a disease by drinking the hot blood from the cut throat of a gladiator: a miserable aid made tolerable by a disease still most miserable.
---Celsus DE MEDICINA (3:23:1-7)


In addition to the notable Grand Mal epilepsy reported in Caesar's elite bloodline, the general occurrence of epilepsy in ancient Rome was of such epidemic proportions, that it was nicknamed the "Major Disease." The scale of the problem is illustrated by a tally of Pliny's NATURAL HISTORY, where one encounters the following countdown regarding health disorders: the term "cough" occurs 150 times, "fever": 134 times, "headache": 108 times, "epilepsy": a whopping 84 times. Rome's lead polluted water, diet, and environment, is a contentious topic. Lead poisoning is known to cause seizures, sterility, and birth defects. Evidence is mounting that a cumulative exposure to lead (as opposed to acute poisoning), increases the incidence of Parkinson's. Perhaps it is not overstatement to blame the fall of Rome on lead pollution, if lead contamination can be identified as a key catalyst of behaviors that weakened the moral and physical strength of the elite, favored the victory of Christianity, and ushered in the Goths. 

The word "plumbing" derives from the Latin word for this Heavy Metal---"lead" (plumbum: "Pb" on the periodic chart)---utilized to line aqueducts and fashion most water pipes. Drinking water was probably not the most dangerous source of this toxic metal in the Roman diet. Lead acetate was used as an artificial sweetener and preservative in wine and condiments. Lead cups, plates, and pot linings were common. Lead compounds were the main ingredient in many cosmetics and medicines. The toxic lead in Roman paint was most threatening to the children of the old rich, who were bred generation after generation in villas decorated elaborately with the pigments lead white (lead carbonate) and red lead (lead oxide). Tests on the bones of 55 people killed in the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius, showed a mean lead level of 85 ppm, which compares with roughly 35 ppm for an average modern American. More than ten percent of the samples exhibited levels suggestive of poisoning. Similar results have been found in bones from Roman Britain. As Rome grew more affluent and polluted, the gladiatorial "games" increased to become great public spectacles under the Caesars. 

Captives and criminals, when they were, by state tradition, dispatched in Roman triumphs and gladiatorial showcases, were not considered violations of the Senate law that banned human sacrifice---a ban that was only instituted in 96 BC, and a ban that only proscribed private magical practices, which Pliny complains nonetheless persisted outside of state sanctioned religious observances, despite the illegality (NATURAL HISTORY 30:3-4). Like triumphs, the gladiatorial spectacles were actually religious rites. What modern English refers to as "the games" or "gladiatorial shows," were called munera in Latin---literally sacrificial "duties," "obligations." When the Caesars aimed to impress the mob with bread and circuses, these games were held to offer human blood sacrifice to the underworld spirits (manes) of deceased relations, while they gave the gift of entertainment to the common citizenry. The great gladiatorial shows originated in a religious obligation that required ancient Rome's militant wealthy class to maintain more private altars, where they owed human blood nourishment to their deceased male relatives and ancestors (Tertullian DE SPECTACULIS 12, confirmed by the Pagan Servius Honoratus VERGILII AENEIDEM COMENTARII 10:519). Certain deities required their own public munera. These included Jupiter Latiaris---the most ancient form of the Latin high god---who was fed human blood to protect Latium from foreign invasion; Rome's sack by the Gauls in 390 BC suggests the extreme tint of hair and skin favored for these human blood offerings, while the nominal sacrifice was a pure white bull which had never been yoked. Julius Caesar was famous as the first man to hold public games of epidemic proportions:

During his Aedileship (66 BC) he (Julius Caesar) furnished 320 pairs of gladiators ... he erased all memory of the ambitious efforts of his predecessors in the office.
---Plutarch LIFE OF CAESAR (5:9)

Caesar's 66 BC games were held as blood offerings to the underworld spirit of his Proconsular father, who had died in 85 BC. The way in which Caesar super-sized the spectacle was so alarming, that the Senate legally constrained his preparations:
Caesar gave a gladiatorial show besides, but with somewhat fewer pairs of combatants than he had arranged; for the huge band which he assembled from all quarters so terrified his opponents, that a bill was passed limiting the number of gladiators which anyone was to be allowed to keep in the city.  
---Suetonius LIFE OF JULIUS CAESAR (10:2) 


Even these games Julius outdid, when in 46 BC he removed an altar to Mars in order to build a wooden amphitheater in the Forum. The new games were rites of blood offered to the underworld spirit of his daughter Julia, who died during childbirth in 54 BC: 
He (Julius Caesar) was blamed, indeed, for the great number of those slain (in these games for Julia's ghost), on the ground that he himself had not become sated with bloodshed and was further exhibiting to the populace symbols of their own miseries; but much more fault was found because he had expended countless sums on all that array … the soldiers raised a disturbance, not because they cared about the reckless squandering of the money, but because they themselves did not receive the citizenry's wealth. In fact they did not cease their rioting until Caesar suddenly came upon them, and seizing one man with his own hands, delivered him up to punishment. So this man was executed for the reason given, and two others were slain as a sort of ritual observance. The true cause I am unable to state, inasmuch as the Sibyl made no utterance and there was no other similar oracle, but at any rate they were sacrificed in the Campus Martius by the pontiffs and the priest of Mars, and their heads were set up near the Regia. 
---Dio ROMAN HISTORY (24:1-3) 
He (Julius Caesar) announced a combat of gladiators and a feast for the people in memory of his daughter, a thing quite without precedent. To raise the expectation of these events to the highest possible pitch, he had the material for the banquet prepared in part by his own household, although he had let contracts to the markets as well. He gave orders that whenever famous gladiators fought without winning the favour of the people, they should be rescued by force and kept for him.
---Suetonius LIFE OF JULIUS CAESAR (26:2) 


The revelation of cannibalism becomes overt, in Dio's report on Caligula's butchery of Rome's best and brightest, under the pseudo-sacred cover of the games:
Ἐπαίτια δὲ δὴ πρὸς πάντων ὁμοίως τάδε ἐξειργάσατο. πλείστους ὅσους ὁπλομαχῆσαι ἐποίησε: καὶ γὰρ καὶ καθ᾽ ἕνα καὶ ἀθρόους, ὥσπερ ἐν παρατάξει τινί,ἀγωνίσασθαί σφας ἠνάγκασε, παρὰ τῆς βουλῆς δὴ τοῦτο αἰτήσας, ὥστε καὶ ἔξω τοῦ νενομοθετημένου πάνθ᾽ ὅσα βούλοιτο δρᾶσαι, καὶ ἀποκτεῖναι τῶν τε ἄλλων πολλοὺς καὶ τῶν ἱππέων ἓξ καὶ εἴκοσι, τοὺς μὲν τὰς οὐσίας κατεδηδοκότας, τοὺς δὲ καὶ ἄλλωςὁπλομαχίαν ἠσκηκότας.
The following acts of his (Caligula Caesar) met with the censure of everybody alike. He caused great numbers of men to fight as gladiators, forcing them to contend both singly and in groups drawn up in a kind of battle array. He had asked permission of the senate to do this, so that he was able to do anything he wished even contrary to what was provided by law, and thus put many people to death, among others twenty-six knights, some of whom had their substance (οὐσίας) devoured (κατεδηδοκότας), while the others engaged each other in gladiatorial combat.
---Dio ROMAN HISTORY (59:10:1-2)

It is not only ancient epileptic medicine that suggests the more literal meanings of these extracts are meant to apply, on top of the ambiguous euphemisms, to mock---in fact emphasize as paradoxical understatement---what otherwise seems like over the top rhetoric employed for an extreme metaphorical maligning. Here the language itself is suggestive, and it is followed with context about unsuspecting human flesh tossed from the bleachers to the circus beasts like their daily bread (59:10:3). The Greek word ousias (οὐσίας) not only meant "substance" in the form of "property" or "wealth," as it is used in LUKE (15:12). but it also meant "substance" in a mineral, biological, cosmic, or even in a magical sense. Note the illustration found in the Ancient Greek verb οὐσιάζω (oὐsiázo), which meant: "to make a spell magically efficacious by applying a substance (i.e.---: by applying an ousias)." The paramount example---which contrasts the most mundane and ethereal connotations---is the unique Gospel word epiousios (ἐπιούσιοσ, genitive: ἐπιούσιον) coined by Jesus in the Lord's Prayer of MATTHEW (6:11) and LUKE (11:3). Give us this day what is beyond substance (i.e.---: pure spirit). 

Though he is not remembered as epileptic, Claudius Caesar is described as a sickly stutterer, with symptoms of dropsy, palsy, or Parkinson's disease, perhaps in concert with Tourettes. James of Zebedee was executed in Herod-Agrippa's Beirut arena during Claudius's reign. In Rome such executions took place beginning at noon. Collation of the account of Seneca with that of Suetonius, indicates Claudius sent the general audience out of the arena at lunchtime, while the most sadistic elite would feast with him upon these executions:
By chance I attended one of these shows at the time of the lunch-hour interlude, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation, an exhibition at which men's eyes get to rest from the slaughter of their fellow-men. But it was quite the opposite. The previous combats were the essence of compassion; but then all the trifling is put aside and it is pure murder. The men have no defensive armor. They are exposed to blows at all points, and no one ever strikes in vain. Many persons prefer this program to the usual pairs and to the bouts by request. Of course they do; there is no helmet or shield to deflect the weapon. What is the need of defensive armor, or of skill? All these mean delaying death. In the morning they throw men to the lions and the bears; at noon, they throw them to the spectators. The spectators insist that each on killing his man shall be thrown against another to be killed in his turn; and the eventual victor is reserved by them for some other form of butchery; the only exit for the contestants is death. Fire and steel keep the slaughter going. And all this happens while the arena is virtually empty. You may retort: "But he was a highway robber; he killed a man!" And what of it? Granted that, as a murderer, he deserved his punishment, what crime have you committed, poor fellow, that you should deserve to sit and see this show? In the morning they cried "Kill him! Lash him! Burn him!" "Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way?" "Why does he strike so feebly?" "Why doesn't he die for the offering?" "Whip him to connect his wounds!" "Let them receive blow for blow, with chests bare and exposed to the stroke!" And when the games stop for the intermission, they announce: "A little throat-cutting in the meantime, so that there may still be something going on!"
---Seneca EPISTLE 7 (cf. MATTHEW 20:22-23, 26:27-30, ACTS 12:1-20, ANTIQUITIES 19:7:5)


He (Claudius) took such pleasure in the combats with wild beasts and of those who fought at noonday (the criminals), that he would go down to the arena at daybreak, then after dismissing the people for luncheon at midday, he would keep his seat and in addition to the appointed combatants, he would for trivial and hasty reasons match others [to fight against each other], even from the [arena] carpenters, the assistants, and men of that class, if any automatic device, or pageant, or anything else of the kind [that they were responsible for], had not worked well.
----Suetonius LIFE OF CLAUDIUS (34:2) 


He (Claudius) was constantly giving gladiatorial contests; for he took great pleasure in them, so that he even aroused criticism on this score. Very few wild beasts perished, but a great many human beings did … After he had become accustomed, then, to feast his fill on blood and carnage, he had recourse more readily to other kinds of murder.
---Dio ROMAN HISTORY (60:13:1-14:1) 


Everyone is certainly free to decide for themselves, to what degree are these works---extracted here after the demonic prescription given by Celsus---to be taken literally or metaphorically. But the sickening human blood remedy Celsus asks to be tolerated, is most certainly no literary allusion or device. His early First Century work is scientific and free of any humor or licence that might distort the medical facts. Moreover his vampiric treatment for epilepsy is corroborated in surviving works by three other ancient authors. One is the Christian author Tertullian, who wrote his APOLOGETICUS in 197 AD. Tertullian makes unadorned legal arguments for repealing the Roman laws against Christians. Tertullian would not have cited judicial evidence his readers knew to be false, as such a tactic would certainly fail to sway his Pagan audience to accept Christians as equal law abiding citizens. The amphitheater and games were public assemblies that most of Tertullian's target audience visited. Tertullian takes for granted everyone knew that epileptics drank the blood of the criminals executed in the gladiatorial combats at high noon. Tertullian argues against those who condemn Christians due to the rumors that Christians drink human blood at their gatherings:
Behold! In that most religious city of the pious descendants of Aeneas (a very sarcastic way to say "Behold! In Rome," whereas the Julii House of Caesar claimed it was descended from a son of Venus named Aeneas, who had survived the burning of Troy to settle in Latium) there is a certain Jupiter (Jupiter Latiaris) whom in his own games (munera) they deluge with human blood! (the blood of human victims from the arena was collected in trophy shields and poured over an idol of Jupiter Latiaris). 'But,' you say: "Only the blood of a criminal condemned to beasts." And therefore, I suppose, of less gravity than the blood of a man? Is it not instead worse, because it is that of a bad man? What's more the blood is shed in manslaughter (not even shed in a solemn sacrifice, but shed for sadist entertainment). Jupiter must be Christian, as your view of Christians goes (i.e. since you think Christians are murderers who drink blood at secret rites); and the only son (monogene) of his father [Saturn/Chronos] because of cruelty (because Saturn ate his other offspring)! … What about those, too, who for the cure of epilepsy at the gladiatorial show in the arena, drink with greedy thirst the fresh blood flowing from the throats of the criminals?
---Tertullian APOLOGETICA (9) 197 AD.
(The points Tertullian makes about: A) human blood sacrifices for Jupiter Latiaris, and B) epileptic vampirism in the arena, are both confirmed by his Christian contemporary Municius Felix (OCTAVIUS 30). Moreover in ORATIO AD GRECOS (29:1), the earlier Christian writer Tatian, cites Rome's human sacrifices for Jupiter Latiaris and Artemis as motives for his own conversion c. 150 BC. What's more, the Pagan Neoplatonist and anti Christian polemicist Porphyry (DE ABSTINENTIA 2:56) emphasized, circa 270 AD, that everyone knew the throats of men were cut in the arena to offer human blood to Jupiter Latiaris for his annual feasts. Both Livy (AD URBE CONDITA LIBRI 1:31) and Servius Honoratus (VERGILII AENEIDEM COMMENTARI 2:135) speak of Jupiter Latiaris as the oldest form of the Roman high god. His festival---the Feriae Latinae---was the annual office of Rome's Consuls and underpinned the bloody ritual component of their power to steer the Roman state. Livy (1:31) distances proper Roman piety from the orgy of blood and gore displayed annually for Jupiter Latiaris, suggesting these were ancient Alban rites only re-instituted due to soothsayers and superstitions, long after higher Roman usage had made them archaic, and Livy's bent, along with the extremely inauspicious end he reports for King Tullus, appears to deliberately reflect a negative prophecy upon the Julii, who, in Livy's time, championed their Alban heritage while they brought so many Asian magical practices back into fashion. One of the mysteries of Cybele involved a supposedly voluntary castration. Empress Livia, who resided in Israel part time since 10 AD, took on many of Cybele's attributes while she established the Imperial Cult of Augustus and acted as its high priestess upon his 14 AD death. The historian Livy, a distant relative of hers, died three years after her husband Augustus in 17 AD. Caligula disdained his own Livii heritage and transferred Livia's honors to his sister Drusilla, whom he had deified in her place upon her 38 AD death. Caligula's epilepsy, vampirism, and cannibalism, were all sacked up inside his ballsy claim to be an incarnation of Jupiter Latiaris. While Josephus emphasizes that the erotic "Priapus" or "Venus" were the secret organs of contention in the mouth of Caligula that incensed the head conspirator who was forced to help "sic 'em," both Suetonius and Cassius Dio cite the epileptic Caligula's exploitation of the vampiric attributes of Jupiter Latiaris for his own magical prowess (Suetonius LIFE OF CALIGULA 22:2, 58:2, Dio 59:28:5-11, 59:30:1a).  

Note that Tertullian reports that epileptics drank the blood of the games right in the theater for all to see. The third report on vampires in the amphitheater is given by admiral Pliny the Elder, who died under the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Pliny's NATURAL HISTORY, adds even more evil entries into the Roman pharmacopoeia. The medicine this discussion is concerned with is that which deputized Jesus Christ Vampire Slayer. The Messianic movement was born in the disgust of seeing human babies being incubated inside Roman mangers:
Epileptic patients are in the habit of drinking the blood even of gladiators, draughts teeming with life, as it were; a thing that, when we see it done by the wild beasts even, upon the same arena, inspires us with horror at the spectacle! And yet these persons, forsooth, consider it a most effectual cure for their disease, to quaff the warm, breathing, blood from man himself, and, as they apply their mouth to the wound, to draw forth his very life; and this, though it is regarded as an act of impiety to apply the human lips to the wound even of a wild beast! Again, there are others who make the marrow of the leg-bones and the brains of infants, the objects of their research!
---Pliny NATURAL HISTORY (28:2)    


If one reads Pliny's words carefully, they can hear him confirm Tertullian's report that epileptic spectators sucked the blood of slain gladiators in the very arena in which they were killed---a shocking detail also affirmed by the testimony of Celsus, as is indicated with the piping temperature Celsus prescribes for the victim's blood. While these searches for a treatment are clearly barbaric, Celsus provides a plethora of documentary proofs that Roman medicine was in general quite advanced beyond what is commonly known. He even describes methods of brain surgery, plastic surgery, and skin grafting. Roman doctors were well aware that the the brain was the locus of epilepsy. The superstitious belief in sympathetic magic guided many searches for remedies, and might by chance find substances which tempered symptoms, whether substantial or placebo. When gladiators were killed in the arena, they could exhibit tremors. Loss of blood might seem the most reasonable explanation. Injury to the head is a common cause of tremor and seizures. 



ABOVE: PARTIALLY RESTORED FRESCO KNOWN AS "THE CUPID SELLER," FROM THE VILLA SAN MARCO, STABIAE, 79 AD. Stabiae was a wealthy suburb of Pompeii, where admiral and natural historian Pliny the Elder died, while investigating the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius. This fresco is one of the most obvious portrayals of the darkest side of the slave trade, where children are bought and sold for use in both the bedroom and the kitchen. The saleswoman visits wealthy Domina with an exotic merchandise that blurs the line between slave children and poultry, baked together in the guise of pliable cupids performing as living sex toys. The Latin cupido does not mean "love," but instead literally means dark "desire," and "greed," and "avarice," and "lust." Happy Valentine's Day stupido (Latin for "dazed," "stupefied")! The original baneful language of Pagan symbolism sublimes on, whether or not those who partake of its toxic forms realize, how their psyche is dazed by the Pagan magic cemented into the foundation of their daily life. The subliminal ancient prompts to sin are magnified by the monkeyed subtext in modern popular art forms, to empower a virulent disease which will cause the extinction of this species, if none care for its treatment. On every side the magic mistakes of the past reach into the present with the spellbound aim of consuming the children of the future. Those with grandchildren or hopes for them awake! The merchant card in the painting sits before a small staging area like that of an elite travelling slave-salesman. The toddler hawker grabs the fantastic slave child and pulls it out of a poultry cage like a chicken or goose. Domina is represented as a predator, her garments falling in a pattern to suggests the outline of a bird of prey. One well trained, eager to please little cupid, demonstrates his stupid pet tricks inside Domina's cloak, which is painted in the same regal pigment as the curtains to the travelling stage of performance and display. There the eager cupid reaches under Domina's kitchen apron to play with Domina's pampered purple conch. The majority of Ancient and even Medieval depictions of Cupids, Cherubs, Putti, Angel-babies---whatever one prefers to call them, all have a sinister double-meaning that zombies can not to see. The dirty mind is endemic to the history not the ethos of the historian. The cannibal past can not be swept under the rug whereas it still festers in the much more dangerous present. The world is spinning out of control because of the degenerate hogwash man has made out of his religions. Mankind's most sacred task is a matter of healthcare for the species itself, and it centers on a fiduciary responsibility to the young, the elderly, and the poor. Instead greed, lust, and avarice rule the day, the elderly are put away, and near every denomination is rife with sexual abuse of children. In a very dark irony to which they are apparently not privy, the hazed ivy league gives this regime the insanely short-sighted name "survival of the fittest." The major arteries of the infrastructure are all being re-engineered with toll roads so that great swaths of tissue may rot. Failure to protect children is the core pathology of the disease whose arrow aims to kill everyone's offspring, with no security offered to anyone by ledgers of binary code representing accumulated wealth in a computer cloud, no matter how great. Satan, be he understood as an ethos, or as an idolatrous persona carved in the image of an ethos, is none the less a very powerful insubordinate pathology that respects no law or contract---least of all the constitution of the very human body itself. Even this disgusting fresco, when it was discovered by archaeologists in 1749, was promoted as adorable and copied widely, even ending up in upholstery fabrics used on regal furnishings. Not all those who exploited this image in the Eighteenth Century were oblivious to its Satanic meaning. With sadist humor, the image celebrates the exploitation of poor and unlucky children for sexual gratification, for inane magical prescriptions, and for the entrees of abominable Black Sabbath feasts.
Others make the marrow of leg bones and the brains of infants the objects of their "research!"

---Pliny NATURAL HISTORY (2:8) 

Do you not want to think that these bodies are too little? Is it not madness and the ultimate mental error to desire so much when somebody is small?
---Seneca LETTER TO HELVIA (10)
Τίνι δὲ ὁμοιώσω τὴν γενεὰν ταύτην ὁμοία ἐστὶν παιδαρίοις ἐν ἀγοραῖς καθημένοις καὶ προσφωνοῦσιν τοῖς ἑταίροις αὐτῶν, καὶ λέγουσιν Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε ἐθρηνήσαμεν ὑμῖν, καὶ οὐκ ἐκόψασθε.

W
ith what can I compare this generation? It is like little children sitting [for sale] in the marketplaces, who call out to the strangers, saying: "We play on the pipe for you! (lurid innuendo) Now wont you dance? We cry out in pain for you! Now wont you cut?" (the verb κόπτω---koptó; here the aorist indacative form is ekopsasthe; it literally means "to cut" or "to chop," and only figuratively means "mourn;" note the use of the form ekopton in MATTHEW 24:8)
---MATTHEW (11:16-17) 
(the verbs of contention in this passage are in the aorist indicative tense, which has no English equivalent, and although the aorist indicative can often imply that an action occurred in the past, it never asserts this, and in the proper context, the aorist indicative can also, just as powerfully, refer to present or future events.)



THE PRIVY PROOF THAT CAESAR IS THE BEAST OF REVELATION

Caesar's census results in baby Jesus being placed in beast's feed bin called "manger."
Caesar's family had epilepsy and Roman epileptics ate babies seeking magic treatment of the disease.
Caesar is the disgusting "Beast" described by the apocalyptic books REVELATION and DANIEL.

This discussion has established that: the registration ordered by Augustus caused the baby Jesus to be placed into a feeding trough for a beast---that feed bin known as the "manger." The discussion has furthermore established that: the Julio-Claudian line of Caesars frothed heavily with epilepsy, a disease treated at that time by drinking human blood and eating human flesh---specifically the organ meat of infants like baby Jesus. Now it merely remains to detail how: Caesar's clear identity as the beast of REVELATION confirms that Caesar's vampirism and cannibalism are deliberately satirized by the divinely inspired Gospel, in order to deliver mankind from a wretched future, that will otherwise lead to an extinction of the species, quite quick in geologic time. 
It just so happened that in those days went out a decree from Caesar Augustus to register (ἀπογράφεσθαι, i.e.--: apograthesthai:) all the inhabited [sphere]. And all went to be registered (ἀπογράφεσθαι, i.e.--: apograthesthai), each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from the Galilee, out of Nazareth town, into the Judaea, to David’s city which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, registering with Mary, she being engaged to him, she being pregnant. It furthermore happened that while they were there, her delivery date arrived, and she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in strips of cloth, and laid him in a manger (φάτνῃ, i.e. laid the infant in a feeding trough for a beast), because there was no room for them in the inn.
---LUKE (2:1-8) 
       
As previously explained to the reader, "in those days," here refers figuratively to the era that began the Imperial period and thus includes the entire reign of Augustus, while other qualifiers in the texts, synchronize the penetration of the Augustan registration dogma into Israel with his deposition of Herod Archelaus in 6 AD. Thereupon the Galilean Sect was born in opposition to the Augustan tribute levied via the first Roman census. The scene Tacitus paints of the funeral of Augustus, pops with an apocalyptic foreshadow, written as a postscript to Augustus's own posthumous financial report about his orders to register the entire world. A cosmic whammy spoils the morbid magic in the jackpot guts of the gluttonous beast:
Ad deos, ad effigiem Augusti, ad genua ipsius manus tendere, cum proferri libellum recitarique iussit. opes publicae continebantur,quantum civium sociorumque in armis, quot classes, regna, provinciae, tributa aut vectigalia, et necessitates ac largitiones. quae cuncta sua manuperscripserat Augustus addideratque consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii, incertum metu an per invidiam.

They (the Senators) were stretching their hands to the gods (i.e. reaching to heaven in religiosity), to the statue of Augustus—to the knees thereof (for the statue was a colossus)—when he (Tiberius) gave orders for a document to be produced and read. It contained a statement of the national resources: the strength of the citizens and allies under arms, the number of the fleets, [tributary] kingdoms, and provinces, the taxes direct and indirect, the needful disbursements and customary bounties cataloged by Augustus in his own hand, with a final clause advising the restriction of the empire within its present frontiers, either out of fear or jealousy (invidia: envy, odium, unpopularity, zealotry---one of the synonyms of invidia is zelus;).
----Tacitus ANNALS (1:11)

The
 Latin noun invidia (accusative invidiam) conjured up all kinds of magical inferences. In the sympathetic magic worldview of Paganism, invidia was the "evil-eye"---a malevolent spiritual force that threatened the potency of the powerful. The word is constructed by compounding the prefix: in, with the verb video; together the modified verb literally means "to look into," "to see inside." However in a sham world constructed of Pagan propaganda and magic mind-control, "to look into" things is considered an aggressive and spiritually malevolent act that is only the province of those who rule. Thus the negative influence of the evil-eye was warded off with the torturous sex magic of Pagan Mysteries, most threateningly symbolized by the fascinus, which was a disembodied penis. Invidia was also the Roman proper name for the Greek goddess Nemesis, to whom many of the munera (gladiatorial spectacles) staged in the east were dedicated. In that role, Invidia represented the aggressive eye of state power, rooting up the jealous (or zealous) resistance to the Empire in the provinces, and dispatching the criminal rebels in the mocking ritual of the bloody arena. Before the Imperial Cult had barely gotten off the ground, Tacitus frames the reign of Tiberius with the pompous funerary report, of figures Augustus had compounded together from his census orders, confounded by the limits of the empire's power to fascinate its subjects. 
It is beyond the scope of this immediate discussion to fully argue whether or not Tacitus invented the dying advice of Augustus regarding the bounds of the empire. However it certainly was not beyond the tactics of Tacitus to employ incredible commentary. When Dio (56:33:1-6) repeats the tale, he expands the three mum funerary books of Suetonius (LIFE OF AUGUSTUS 101:1-4), by reissuing the fantastic postscript of Augustan humility noted by Tacitus into its very own novel fourth volume, whereat Dio goes on, to lay down the thickest sarcasm, when he himself comments, that this advice about the Imperial limits was not out of character, since Augustus himself never strove much to expand the empire's borders into barbarian lands, but could have, if perchance he had ever been of a mind to do so---a sarcastic statement via which Dio makes a frisky allusion to the report of Augustus having repeatedly dashed his own ungroomed head against the doors of the Temple of Janus, crying: "Varus give me back my Legions!" (Suetonius LIFE OF AUGUSTUS 22:1-23:2). The whole corrupt concept of Pax Romana or the Pacis Augustus is a total sham, and the fact that it is still propagated in an Orwellian manner from the hallowed halls of the ivy league, proves that lunatics are still in custody of the asylum. Now it is certain that when Tacitus speaks to the bounds of jealousy here, Tiberius is not the jealous one in question, though it be true that Tiberius did generally follow this course of boundary caution during his reign, whether or not this course came to Tiberius from a sudden new bent in the geezer Caesar. However, the invidia most problematic for the toxic Alexandrian pipe dreams of Julius, was that invidia which gawked beyond the pompous Imperial veil from Jewish eyes that could see, and from German eyes, and especially from the eyes of those Romans who lost loved ones under the final commands of Governor Varus. Herein is the key view that pries away the nonsense about an Augustan Pax Romana, whereas for ever onward, into the chilling winter of his life, geriatric Augustus was still actively projecting Roman power, pushing beyond the natural boundary of the Rhine at the age of seventy---an antiquarian span for an ancient---until his grand designs for the planet's future were stymied by the loss of three legions in Lower Saxony, less than five years before he died and joined his divinized epileptic uncle, in Rome's sick addiction to seeing stars. 

The starry-eyed Imperial prediction of Vergil's AENID, prognosticates in direct opposition to the registration postscript cast by Tacitus at the funeral of the god Augustus. Virgil's AENID is one of many religious texts which the book of REVELATION reflects off, to the purpose of an apocalyptic vision that sets sail for eternity early in the Roman Imperial Period. The mockery REVELATION makes of the AENID is bound up in reverent reprises of DANIEL and 2 MACCABEES---anchors which will be weighed after Caesar's role as the Beast is forever established beyond a shadow of an Imperial redoubt. The AENID was a Pagan religious text that Virgil composed to flatter and support the Imperial designs of Augustus. Virgil's prose crafts a mythic story based upon the Trojan hero Aeneas, from whom the Julii House of Caesars claimed ancestry. Functioning as the textural foundation of the newly institutionalized Imperial Cult, the AENID champions descent of the Caesars from the Pagan divinities Mars and Venus, via a family line that escaped the fiery destruction of Troy. REVELATION defies the AENID's phony religious propaganda, when it peels back the viel to cast aspersions at such obviously satirical characters, as a reputedly refined and benevolent Patrician emperor maligned as "the Beast," and a Pagan goddess whose epithet "Great Mother" (Latin: Magna Mater) is reworked into "the Great Prostitute" (Greek: μεγάλης πόρνης --- Megalēs Pornēs) --- the famous "Whore of Babylon." The passage which REVELATION reflects most directly, is the very crescendo of the AENID's validation for the Imperial Cult:
Yea! a son of Mars will keep his grandfather’s company, Romulus, whom his mother Ilia shall bear of Assaracus’ stock (Assaracus was the mythic great-grandfather of Aeneas). Do you see how twin plumes stand upright on his head and how the Father of the gods stamps him with divine majesty? Lo, under his auspices, my son, this glorious Roma will extend her empire to earth’s ends, her ambitions to the skies, and shall embrace seven hills with a single city’s wall (the seven hills of Rome: cf. REVELATION 17:9), blessed in a brood of heroes; even as the Berecyntian mother (this epithet refers to the goddess Cybele from Mount Bereycyntus, marking her a presage of goddess Roma in the way Troy is the mythic source of Rome. After Trojan origins were confabulated for the Anatolian Cybele, the wife of Augustus---Empress Livia---took on Cybele's attributes and titles for her role in the Imperial Cult, while new idols of Cybele were graven with Livia's face. Cybele's more common epithet was "Magna Mater"---meaning "Great Mother"---which is the divine epithet that REVELATION spins into “Great Harlot,” with a very fresh historical reference in the infamous orgiastic abuse of the Mysteries worked by Claudius Caesar's first empress Messalina, as she assumed for herself a living role of the divinized Livia's "Mater Augusta," in association with her offices at the Palatine altars of Cybele and Dionysus. Empress Roma is styled the “Whore of Babylon” via Babylon's role as the progenitor of post EXODUS Imperial idolatry vis a vis DANIEL 2:31-38; cf. 1 PETER 5:13, REVELATION 14:8, 17:5, 17:9, 17:18 etc., DANIEL 4:28-34), turret-crowned, rides through Phrygian towns in her chariot, happy in a progeny of gods, clasping a hundred grandsons, all denizens of heaven, all tenants of the celestial heights. “Turn hither now your two-eyed gaze, and behold this nation, the Romans that are yours. Here is Caesar and all the seed of Iulus destined to pass under heaven’s spacious sphere. And this in truth is he whom you so often hear promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who will again establish a golden age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn; he will advance his empire beyond the Libyans and Indians to a land which lies beyond our stars, beyond the path of year and sun, where sky-bearing Atlas wheels on his shoulders the blazing star-studded sphere.
---Virgil AENID (777-807) 


Julius Caesar strove to exceed the historical footprint of Alexander the Great (Suetonius LIFE OF JULIUS 7:1-2). Granted, Rome did conquer western lands which Alexander would only visit in the graven form of a marmoreal idol. Still, the Latin aim for the Kyber, Tarim, and China, was ambitious beyond belief. The poppy extracts in their temple incense contributed to a surreal Pagan fog that distorted their vision. Virgil's mythic promise that Augustus would register the entire world, to rule even beyond India, never came to pass. The invidia of Christian resistance to the Imperial Cult, as embodied by REVELATION, smashed the spells of these self-divinized thugs, so lost in their own marbles: 
And one of the seven angels who had the seven vials came, and he spoke to me, saying: “Come, I will show you the judgment of the Great Prostitute, who sits upon the many waters, with whom the kings of the earth did prostitute themselves, so that those who inhabit the earth became intoxicated with the wine of her prostitution.” And in the Spirit he carried me away to a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored Beast, full of names spoken in evil, having seven heads and ten horns (cf. DANIEL 7:20), and the woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold, and precious stone, and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of the filth of her pornography and abominations, and upon her forehead was written the name: “BABYLON THE GREAT MYSTERY MOTHER OF THE PROSTITUTES AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." And I saw the woman getting intoxicated on the blood of the saints, and on the blood of the witnesses of Jesus (here this is not only a mere metaphor describing sadist Romans getting intoxicated at the sight of the bloody suffering of Christian martyrs in the arena, whereas Rome's Imperial elite actually played the real life role of insane, foaming at the mouth vampires, who literally sucked the warm blood out from the cut throats of the criminalized Christian resistance whom they executed in the arena), and looking at her I was awestruck with terrible awe. And the angel said to me: “Why are you awestruck! — I will explain for you the Mystery of this woman and of this Beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The Beast that you saw: it was, and it is not; and it is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go away to destruction, and those who inhabit the earth, whose names have not been written upon the scroll of the life from the foundation of the world (those who are not preregistered with the real God), will be awestruck, beholding the Beast that was, and is not, although it is. To the mind that possesses wisdom, here the seven heads are seven hills (the seven hills of Rome), upon which the woman does sit, and there are seven kings (Julius Caesar through Galba), the five did fall (Julius through Claudius), and the one is (Nero Caesar), the other did not yet come (Galba), and when he does come, he must abide but briefly (Galba reigned only seven months); and the Beast that was, and is not, he also (i.e. all of the Caesars are the "Beast") is eighth (Otho), and out of the seven he is (Otho was at the forefront of making the seventy year old Galba into the seventh Caesar, only to hire out Galba's murder, when, seven months into Galba's reign, Galba made plain that someone other than Otho was slotted to succeed him as the eighth Caesar), and he will go away into destruction (after three months as eighth Caesar, Otho commits suicide to save the lives of many of his soldiers). And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings (here the ten horns on the fourth Beast of DANIEL 7, become ten client kings of Rome, who are called to rebel at REVELATION 17:16-18, in a turnabout sending the consequences of Caesar's mind of beastly intents back unto him, in order to use him as he used others. Note that when the four Beasts of DANIEL 7 are taken to correspond to the four archetypal sections of this planet's great Imperial Idol of DANIEL 2---with Babylon the head of gold, Persia the torso and arms of silver, the Greco-Macedonians as the belly and thighs of brass, Rome the legs of iron---then regardless of when he wrote, the inspired author of DANIEL exhibits proactive prescience in the way his telescope of the "Abomination That Causes Desolation" of Antiochus Epiphanes presages Caligula's idol, the sacrifices for Nero, and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Titus, whereas by bait and switch, this correspondence between DANIEL 2 and DANIEL 7 that links these four sections of the Imperial Idol to four discrete Imperial Beasts, soon dissolves into a reference to the four Macedonian Diadochi in DANIEL 8 and 11:4. It is notable that the "Great Mother" goddess Cybele, who is none other than the paradigm of the "Great Prostitue" of REVELATION, was imported to Rome from the troubled Asia Minor epicenter of the Imperial Macedonian realm during the Second Punic War circa 210 BC. Only two decades separate the fall of Carthage from the fall of Antiochus Epiphanes, while the first king of the Hasmoneans ruled at the very time that Carthage burned for seventeen days in the spring of 146 BC; hence at the very moment that the Hasmonean Kingdom was established, a huge quake of Roman steel struck up a great tidal wave of idolatry looming on the waters. The aforethought of the sharp double-edged tongue thus cuts through a succession of ten Greco-Macedonian kings on the way in, while it releases ten coeval Hellenistic client kings of the newly Roman East on the way out), who did not even receive a kingdom (not in reality anyway since these client rulers govern for Rome), but one hour with the Beast do receive authority as kings (prompting them to hurry up and resist the empire upon the realization that their kingdom is scheduled for Roman annexation like every other Roman client that was courted before them). These have one mind, and they shall give over their own power and authority to the Beast. These will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is “Lord of Lords” and “King of kings,” and of those that are called, and chosen, and faithful with him."  Then he said to me: “The waters that you saw, where the Prostitute sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues; and the ten horns that you saw upon the Beast, these shall hate the Prostitute, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her in fire, for God gave up their hearts to work his mind, and to work as one mind, and to give their kingdom to the Beast till the WORDS of God are completed, and the woman that you did see is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth" (at the time REVELATION was written, this can only be the great city of Rome, and therefore the Beast of REVELATION must be Caesar).
---REVELATION (17:1-18) 


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TABLE ABOVE: THE SEVEN HEADS TO THIS BEAST THAT WOMAN RIDES ARE THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME, WHERE THERE ARE SEVEN BLOODTHIRSTY KINGS CALLED "SEIZURE":
AENID  
... Glorious Roma will extend her empire to earth’s ends, her ambitions to the skies, and shall embrace seven hills with a single city’s wall, blessed in a brood of heroes; even as the turret-crowned Great Mother Cybele, rides through Phrygian towns in her chariot, happy in a progeny of gods, clasping a hundred grandsons, all denizens of heaven, all tenants of the celestial heights ... behold this nation, the Romans that are yours. Here is Caesar and all the seed of Iulus... ---AENID (777-807)
REVELATION  
... “I will show the judgement of the Great Prostitute ... Why are you awestruck! — I will explain for you the Mystery of this woman and of this Beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns ... To the mind that possesses wisdom, here the seven heads are seven hills, upon which the woman does sit, and there are seven kings, the five did fall, and the one is, the other did not yet come, and when he does come, he must abide but briefly ... and the woman that you did see is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth."---REVELATION (17) 
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ABOVE LEFT: A COIN OF DOMITIAN CAESAR SHOWS THE GODDESS ROMA, SEATED IN ROYAL EASE UPON THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME. By Roma's feet is Tiberinus, god of the River Tiber, said to have helped Aeneas on his journey from Troy to Latium. Behind goddess Roma's buttocks is Lupa the Capitoline shewolf, suckling the twins Romulus and Remus. ABOVE RIGHT: MAP OF THE GREAT CITY ON THE RIVER TIBER, SHOWS THE SEVEN HILLS OF ROME, EMBRACED WITHIN THE SERVIAN WALL, WHICH IS MARKED BY THE DARK RED LINE.  



ABOVE: MAP AND KEY GIVE CONTEXT TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF REVELATION. Rome's Appian Way ended at the port of Brindisi (B), located on the upper heel of the Italian boot. Historical roots, inter-wound in Asian space and time, kick back into top gear, with the interlaced Imperial address given to the goddesses Roma and Cybele, in the AENID passage quoted above with reference to REVELATION. The great Neolithic goddess of Anatolia, was called the "Mountain Mother" (Matar Kunileya) by the Phrygians, who worshiped her with ecstatic rites parallel to the celebrations of Dionysus. As the Greeks formulated their Olympian religion, they adapted Cybele as equivalent to the Minoan mother goddess Rhea, of the Mount Ida (MI) on the island of Crete, where the early Bronze Age King Minos, developed a taste for regular sacrifices of human children. Cybele's cult center at Pessinius (PS) claimed it had been founded by King Midas, who lost Phrygia to the Cimmerians one century before Nebuchadnezzar ruled Babylon. Though King Midas was said to have been Cybele's son, the myth of his golden touch, relates to his patronage of Dionysus, in his greater love for wealth than for humanity. In FABULAE by Pseudo-Hyginus, Midas is noted as the discoverer of both white and black lead. Early in the Imperial period, Rome's histiographers settled upon the date of 753 BC for the founding of Rome, which is closer to the 700 BC fall of King Midas at Gordium, than it is to the 1182 BC fall of King Priam of Troy, whom Hittite records call "Piyama-Radu" of Wilusa---the Hittite adaptation of a native Luwian (or Luish) name for Troy, cognate with the name Ilus, whereof Rome's Julian house trumpeted their origin. Now during times of particular state distress, Rome's toxic lead poisoned religious elite, searched their scrolls of cryptic poems attributed to a Sibylline Oracle, in order to discover some line or phrase therein that might be interpreted to require an extreme religious prescription, such as the blatant (non mysterious) human sacrifices, still resorted to in times of great peril. Rome's histiographers record pompous, non triumphal, propitiatory human sacrifices, in the troubled years of 226 BC, 216 BC, and 114 BC (Livy URBE CONDITA LIBRI 22:57:6, Orosius HISTORIAE ADVERSUM PAGANOS 14:13:3, Plutarch LIFE OF MARCELLUS 3:6, QUAESTIONES ROMANAE 83). The pairs of Gauls and Greeks sacrificed with civic fanfare after the monumental loss to Hannibal at Cannae in 216 BC, did not turn the tide of the Second Punic War. Hannibal's invasion continued its ominous destruction of Italian power. Crops failed and more meteors fell from the sky than was usual. In 205 BC the Sibylline Books were once again consulted. A Greek riddle therein was interpreted as having predicted, that when the cult of Cybele would be imported from Asia to Rome, then the invader would suffer defeat by the graces of the Great Mother. In 204 BC, with the help of their Attalid allies who ruled the Asian coast in Smyrna (Church # 2) and in Pergamon (Church # 3), the Romans obtained a sacred black stone of meteoric origin from the cult center of Cybele in Pessinius (PS). This was brought to the Temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill, where it was carved into the face to a new idol, of this, the blackest of all Madonnas, who forever compelled her priesthood to entirely cut off their own male organs with flintstone, as a bloody ordination offering. Ten years after the Second Punic War ended in Roman victory, Cybele's Roman temple of the Great Mother was dedicated right next to the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill, with her first proper Megalesia festival, begun on the Ides of March, 191 BC. Rome's mythographers remade the Trojans into Phrygians, while they simultaneously moved Cybele's lair of origin. from Phrygia. to a Mount Ida of Troy (Minoan mother goddess Rhea's original home in Mount Ida Crete is labeled on the above map with a large green dot; the large green dot near Troy (T) is Mount Ida in Asia; the large green dot in Europe is Mount Olympus). Now here is where the braided histories of the goddesses Cybele and Roma get inter-wound with the braided histories of the books of MACCABEES 1, 2, & 3, DANIEL and REVELATION. For at the same time Rome fought the Second Punic War in the west, she was engaged in a Macedonian War in the east. The Attalids of Pergamon were Rome's allies. In the wake of Rome's dominance of Carthage, Hannibal escaped and eventually fled to the court of none other than the Seleucid monarch Antiochus the Great, father of none other than the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes. The goddess Roma, who would become a fixture of the Imperial Cult in the east, was not a Roman invention. Goddess Roma was first worshiped by Greeks at a shrine in 195 BC Smyrna (Church #2) (Tacitus ANNALS 4:56); this was done in order to augment a temporal alliance with normal Hellenic favors of divinity---with the supposed sympathetic magic empowerment of the tandem idolatry---to fuel the enterprise of military cooperation with Rome against the faux-divine King Antiochus the Great, who still controlled Ephesus (Church #1), and had even gained a foothold in Europe, until Rome engaged him in battle with troops and a novel propagandistic crisscross of magical goddesses. Thus with regard to DANIEL (2:31-33), the coeval earliest worships of goddess Roma in Smyna, and Cybele in Rome, mark the beginning of the transition from the belly and thighs of idolatrous Greco-Macedonian brass, to the legs of Roman iron, as this edge of Asia which would later house the Seven Churches of REVELATION, passed from the Seleucids to the Romans, two and a half centuries before Rome was burned. In the vision of John on Patmos (PT), this region of Asia Minor was rejecting idolatry and passing into a new spiritual alliance, with a coming Messianic Kingdom destined to fill the whole earth. Nero was to fall again. The House of Ilus was once more to be destroyed by fire. The great revolt would resume.  
  
NERO'S BEAST MAGIC          

In NATURAL HISTORY (30:3:12) Pliny laments that the Senate's official legislation against human sacrifice was not passed until 97 BC, though if the passage be read correctly, despite the way Pliny deliberately enshrines this ban as a Republican milestone, the proscription really only covered those sympathetic magic rites---or 'witchcraft'---that were practiced by private persons outside of the long sanctioned traditions of Roman religion. Pliny's Republican morals are reflected in Dio's feigned consternation regarding the shocking way Julius Caesar sacrificed two Roman soldiers (whom Caesar had perhaps deliberately instigated) on a public altar to Mars in 46 BC (ROMAN HISTORY 24:1-3). Pliny rhetorically deflects the odious public forms of such ritual away from Romans onto Celts, while he moralizes that the barbarian nations owe Rome great thanks for outlawing human sacrifice. Yet the disgust Pliny expresses in his notes about the Roman popularity of cannibalistic sympathetic magic cures for epilepsy and other diseases, unabashedly admits such witchcraft among Romans had not only failed to be eradicated by the Senate's decree, but was in fact increasing in popularity during the Imperial period. Thus Pliny's rhetoric ultimately reflects the religious barbarity back unto a superstition bound core of the Roman populace. Pliny couches his moralizing in reference to the uncivilized subjects of the empire in order to emphasize the barbarity of what was beginning to be accepted as the vanguard of the epicure. Thus Pliny's most revealing statements about magical practices, though highlighted by a perhaps quite libelous broad-brush on the Druids, is not so secretly reflected by Pliny upon his own compatriots, in order to shine the scientific light upon the savage amorality of their inane mystery-meat recipes:
IN former parts of this work, I have had occasion more than. once, when the subject demanded it, to refute the impostures of the magic art, and it is now my intention to continue still further my exposure thereof. Indeed, there are few subjects on which more might be profitably said, were it only that, being, as it is, the most deceptive of all known arts, it has exercised the greatest influence in every country and in nearly every age. And no one can be surprised at the extent of its influence and authority, when he reflects that by its own energies it has embraced, and thoroughly amalgamated with itself, the three other arts which hold the greatest sway upon the mind of man (i.e.---: medicine, religion, and astrology)That it (i.e.---: magic) first originated in medicine, no one entertains a doubt; nor [does anyone question] that, under the plausible guise of promoting health, it insinuated itself among mankind, as a higher and more holy branch of the medical art. Then, in the next place, to these the most seductive and most flattering of promises, it has added all the resources of religion, a subject upon which, at the present day, man is still entirely in the dark ... It is clear that there are early traces still existing of the introduction of magic into Italy (cf. Dionysius Halicarnassus ROMAN ANTIQUITIES 1:38:1-4); in our laws of the Twelve Tables for instance; besides other convincing proofs, which I have already noticed in a preceding book (NATURAL HISTORY 28:4). At last, in the year of the City 657 (Finally! in 97 BC...), Cneius Cornelius Lentulus and P. Licinius Crassus being consuls, a decree forbidding human sacrifices was passed by the Senate (when the Senate represented for the welfare of the Roman people, before they became puppets of the Caesars); from which period the celebration of these horrid rites ceased in public, and, for some time, altogether (here Pliny alludes to the fact that human sacrifice continued in secret with increasing boldness, although this line of his evidently ignores, as Imperial anomalies, the public human sacrifices under Julius and Augustus Caesar in 46 and 40 BC). The Gallic provinces, too, were pervaded by the magic art, and that even down to a period within memory; for it was the Emperor Tiberius that put down their Druids, and all that tribe of wizards and physicians (sarcasm here, is revealed not only by the next line, but by the full context of Pliny's exhibits and allusions in this work; cf. Tacitus ANNALS 2:69). But why make further mention of these prohibitions, with reference to an art which has now crossed the very ocean even, and has penetrated into the empty recesses of nature? (the full rhetorical context of this line previous, implies a two way commerce between insular and continental land-forms, but also evokes the slippery ends of lecherous mind-forms) At the present day (i.e. the reign of Vespasian or Titus), struck with fascination, Britannia still cultivates this art, and that, with ceremonials so august, that she might almost seem to have been the first to communicate them to the people of Persia. To such a degree are nations throughout the whole world, totally different as they are and quite unknown to one another, in accord upon this one point! (in which one may sense a well buried rhetorical reference to the Fascinus Populi Romani)! Such being the fact, then, we cannot too highly appreciate the obligation that is due to the Roman people, for having put an end to those monstrous rites, in accordance with which, to murder a man was to do an act of the greatest devoutness, and to eat his flesh was to secure the highest blessings of health (it must be noted how this entire construct is rhetorical, vis a vis Pliny's own repulsion when giving evidence of Romans eating the brains of infants as a purported treatment of epilepsy in his own day; Pliny holds up the Senate's bold 97 BC act on behalf of the Roman people, as a milestone of human history which should be extended to all spheres of the public and private lives of all nations, despite the fact that many Romans and Roman institutions were themselves not abiding by this groundbreaking legislation, which in any case was almost certainly enacted in the guise of restraining unsanctioned cults and private practices, whereas in the wake of the official import of the Cybele cult, all those who gravitated towards exotic magical mysteries became emboldened) ... All these practices, however, have been proved by the Emperor Nero, in our own day, to be so many false and chimærical illusions (i.e. whimsical frauds---monstrous deceptions, that not only did not aid Nero's health and power, but instead resulted in Nero's fall and death, with the near ruin of Rome itself); entertaining as he did a passion for the magic art, unsurpassed even by his enthusiastic love for the music of the lyre, and for the songs of tragedy; so strangely did his elevation to the highest point of human fortune act upon the deep-seated vices of his mind! 
---Pliny NATURAL HISTORY (30:1-5) 
 (Dio ROMAN HISTORY 48:14) 



        
        

  





















ABOVE: WARNING!!! IT'S NOT FAIR TO USE JESUS MEAT AS FOOD----NOR IS IT SAFE---WHY ARE ZOMBIES SO CLUELESS? TO ENLARGE, PLEASE CLICK ON THIS WARNING POSTER. Some cherish the retort: "Life is not fair." It is the job of those who govern to make life fair. An unfair marketplace will collapse in a velocity proportionate to its unfairness. When more magic is used to hide the unfairness, then the unfairness increases by an order of magnitude. The enemy of truth accelerates his own looming demise, increasing his own cut through his trickery and brutality. Does the human species deserve to live? Or will everyone turn their spineless heads away, while the beast gobbles up the future. Can caring people really believe that the lives of their grandchildren, and of their grandchildren's grandchildren, will be safe in an ultra-high technology world built on lies? Where then is there any real honor whatsoever in preserving any tradition---no matter how old or comfortable---when it is based on a spin that turns the sobering truth into a celebration of lies? Will the paradigm of violently xenophobic fairy tales, rein in the age of nuclear weapons, waste, terrorism, macro-drones and micro-drones, nanotechnology, and unbridled genetic engineering? Life or Death!-----CHOOSE! 
Nativity pictures like the one above are given to children to color-in, as if it were a cute scene. Is this fair use of God’s inspired Gospel? Can a baby in an animal’s feed-bin ever be a cute thing? The manger scene in God’s inspired WORD illustrates the colossal disrespect that was paid to the child of God---disrespect that God surely repaid. 




 BLOG UNDER CONSTRUCTION  PLEASE EXCUSE THE MESS  March 27  2015



Josephus again uses the word monogenḗs outside the current doctrinal mold at ANTIQUITIES (2:181), where the patriarch of the Tribe of Dan, has, in every sense of the word, a 'uniquely begotten son' indeed, for Josephus gives him the name Οὖσις, (Ousis meaning "substance" or "essence" in Greek, which Whiston renders into English as "Usi"). This cryptically reflects the original name for Dan's son in the Torah, yet not for its specific meaning or phonics, but instead for its wordplay, whereas the Torah itself gives two different names for Dan's son, and the closest relation between these names, is, once again, not found in their root meanings, but due to their playful exhibit of two phonetically reversed syllables (HSM vs. SHM): with Hushim שוחמי (pronounced: khoosheem) given at GENESIS (46:23), but Shuham חשים (pronounced: shookawm) given at NUMBERS (26:42).

The Danite monogens named Ousis, only begotten by Josephus, is the illustrious Jewish general's most signature literary tag. Like the two mirror-plane Danite Hebrew names, Joe's novel Greek Οὖσις (Ousis) has its own twin version with phonetically reversed syllables, found in none other than the Greek version of the name "Jesus": Ἰησοῦς (Iesous). Moreover, this revelatory wordplay is embedded into a special line at the heart of the Gospel, where the word Οὖσις is the root of the massive Danite "host"---the "transubstantiated epi-ousios" (ἐπι-ούσιον) that fights for God's required survival plan; the Lord's Prayer pleads constantly for its periodic resurrection via MATTHEW (6:11) and LUKE (11:3): 

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν 
τὸν ἐπιούσιον 
δίδου ἡμῖν τὸ καθ' ἡμέραν·

The bread of us
         ("bread" is ἄρτον, from the verb αἴρω: "to raise," thus "loaf" is literally'risen-unit,' hence: 'The risen unit of us') 
Which [is] super-essence        (ἐπιούσιον'super-substance'---beyond materiality) 
Give us this each day             (ἡμέραν·: day---also metaphorically an "age" or "era")
       
---LUKE (3:11)

The unique word epiousios (epiousion) is found nowhere else in the Gospel except MATTHEW 6:11, and LUKE 11:3. What's more, the word epiousios is so unique, that it's found nowhere in all of Classical Greek literature. The common mistranslation renders it "daily," to construct: "Give us this day our daily bread." This error is clearly not the literal translation, since the word is coined by adding the versatile preposition epi (meaning "above," or "beyond," or "on the basis of"), to the root word ousos (meaning "substance" or "essence"). Jerome's more literal translation into Latin rendered it as supersubstantialem, which in English is "super-substantial." The church father Origen, surmised the word epiousios was coined by the Gospel author. The puzzle, that connects this unique word epiousious, to the unique name Ousis assigned to the Danite monogenḗs in the ANTIQUITIES by Josephus, is only the grandest riddle, out of a plethora of puzzles, which all resolve to reveal that Josephus wrote all four Gospels in the same scholastic, literary style, by which the competing books of the Hebrew Torah were redacted. THE BIBLE FOR ZOMBIES by Lehan MacAdam reveals these riddles, for those who seek the historical and moral truths preserved in the original words of the Bible. 

Jesus---the Word made manifest---is not a literal, y-chromosome donee type Son of God, nor a member of a divine pantheon begotten with genes made up of divine DNA, but a special son in the allegorical sense of things begotten by the will of God in an extraordinary manner. No conscious creature should support a doctrine that flies in the face of Jesus, when Jesus teaches His followers by calling God: "Your Father in heaven," and when Jesus tells His followers to address God as: "Our Father." 

The Divinely inspired satire attacks the power of the Pagan mysteries, while recording the achievements of the army it recruits for the battle. Those who shallowly believe that the Gospel story plagiarizes the mythic themes of Pagan cults, completely miss these enlistments. The pit of fire is super-hot. The wood in question is certainly not green.

שוחמי (shookhawm'), חשים (khoosheem'), Οὖσις (ooceeece'), Ἰησοῦς (ee-aysooce'
  



  Martin's Glorious Destruction of Pompeii and Herculeneum in 79 AD: Powered by the WORD.  
3): "Blessed Are Those Who Believe Without Such An Experiencing"


And He said to them
"To you has been given the mystery of the Kingdom of God
However to those outside
Through parables is everything born"                           (εν παραβολαις τα παντα γινεται)

---MARK (4:11)
(Both monogenḗs and ginetai are from the same root  as the English verb generate, and the English nouns genome, genetics, and Genesis.)


Bishop Idle Before his Empty Facade under the 1872 Eruption of Vesuvius by Achenbach. Note the gas lamps.


Those who erroneously profess to interpret the Bible in a "literal" manner, side-step the true meaning of the most important words and parables in the divine message. Since Jesus was the "Word" incarnate, and since Jesus taught in parables, then it follows that it is through parables that the Word of God teaches mankind about cosmic reality. Those who ignore the parabolic nature of the Word, are misled concerning the special relationship between the two prime metaphors of the A) Old Testament, and B) New Testament: 

  • A): the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
  • B): the Bread and Wine of the Last Supper 

The parables centered upon these metaphors use Holy Satire to communicate the cosmic taboo against cannibalism. Direct from the spirit of the Lord of Creation comes His central allegorical revelation which teaches:
  • A): Cannibalism, if permitted, will cause the extinction of the species 
The Word: "You will surely die in the day (age, era) that you eat from it." --GENESIS (2:17) (בְּי֛וֹם: in the day, age, era).
  • B): Flesh and Blood must instead be risked keeping cannibal Pagan elites in check in order to secure life everlasting
The Gospel does not establish a mass of mock cannibal ritual magic which pretends to be real cannibalism. "Do this in memory of me" means those who become witnesses to His suffering for God's will, are called to offer up their own flesh as part of God's force--the 'army' or "Host" fighting cannibal elites.
The Word: "He who does not pick up his own cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me." --MATTHEW (10:28, 16:24), LUKE (9:23, 14:27).
Jesus recruits His host with metaphor. Jesus called his followers to fight for what is sane and the healthy like He and His host did. Cannibals are not worthy to inherit the world Jesus saved. A follower of Jesus would not eat bread and pretend it is human meat, nor would a follower of Jesus pretend the carnivorous marketplace will police itself in a Godly manner, any more than they would pretend any human bureaucracy could be trusted to shepherd the flock in an autocratic manner, some eventually going so far as to openly call themselves "infallible." Jesus called His followers to become aware and active. A follower of Jesus was never called by scripture to become a zombie.
This core principal should be no surprise to anyone. Nor can its logic be questioned except by appeals to Godless sociopathic hedonism. Social degeneracy inevitably leads to collapse. The human species will not survive if its course is steered by cannibal magic. The economy runs on good feeling. Pyramid schemes are a very expensive social disease. Any subculture that would venerate and emulate the beastly likes of Nero Caesar is clearly off its rockers. The only response to "Do what thou wilt" must be "An eye for an eye." This is exactly what Jesus says in His parable:

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. 

---MATTHEW (7:12)

This restatement is not a break from the Old Testament. It is a sure warning voiced to prevent the fool-hearty from loosing an eye. There is no call for archaic retaliation against individuals because they belong to the same "tribe" as any perpetrators. Just as the economy pays a very high price for rampant corrupt speculating and pyramid schemes, the species will pay the ultimate price if the engines of its government run on such models. 

The "Lamb of God" is one of a entire flock led by the natural God, not led by the magic of Pharaoh, Caesar, or his successors. The Galilean host shed Passover blood, not in order to forgive sins but to send them away. Galilee led a new exodus to escape the jaws of the Roman snake. Slavery to the arena-addicted cannibal Romans, was defeated in sequel to the earlier Passover that checked the expansion of cannibal Egypt. 

In a gag reflex against the divinely revealed message, Rome's magic addicted Pagan elite crafted erroneous, so called "literal" interpretations of the two central anti-cannibal parables in the Divine Word. The Romans invented these magical mind-control doctrines, to evade how the prohibition against cannibalism doomed their Imperial legacy. The entire ritual system of the Catholic church, is buttressed upon a subterfuge spun in rhetorical response to the anti-cannibal satire of the Holy Scripture. The two central dogmas of the Catholic church are:
  • A): the doctrine of Original Sin, which claims reproductive penetration is inherently sinful.
  • B): the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which claims that the sacramental unleavened wafer of the mass, which is traditionally known as the "host," "victim," or "sacrifice," is magically transformed by the ordained Priest's ritual into real flesh and blood. 
These two erroneous doctrines are locked together to magically bond men, women, and children, to a crypto-Pagan edifice built up through successive corruptions of the Word as spun by Constantine Caesar, Augustine, and the brutal theocratic rulers of the wealthy Papal States. Ingestion of the magically produced human God-flesh is pushed as necessary to maintain communion with the church. Only through communion can a Catholic benefit in the redemption from Original Sin paid for with Christ's sacrificed flesh. The principles behind these Catholic interpretations and rituals hearken back to Pagan sympathetic magic.
 
Pseudo-literalism usurps the rich literary metaphor of the divine message, and brings it down near a Pagan level. One way in which the great cathedrals are like Pagan temples, is that the enormous scale is capable of tricking one into blissful compliance with ignorance. Every great place of worship is just as metaphysically useless as a four-story plastic Jesus would be on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Zombies, wake up. All public prayer is against the gospel instructions spoken by Jesus:



ABOVE:  KISSING  IN  CORNER  OF  SQUARE---PROFOUND  LESSON  TAUGHT  BY  ICONOCLASTIC  TRICKSTER
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[Jesus said:] "And when you pray, you shalt not be like the hypocrites, because they kiss (φιλοῦσιν:--literally "love," figuratively "kiss") in the synagogues, and in the corners (γωνίαις) of the squares (πλατειῶν, cf. German "platz," English "plaza;"---"square(s)" is the best fit for all nine occurrences of this word in scripture), standing to pray so that they can be seen by men. Truly I tell you that they get their separate reward (μισθὸν:---i.e. "recompense;" compare the use at REVELATION 22:12, 2 PETER 2:13). Instead when you pray, go into your secluded place (ταμεῖόν:-- literally "treasury," "store-room," or 'closet,'---your place of utmost privacy) and close your door, and pray to your Father who is in the secret (κρυπτῷ·, kryptō, cf. the English "crypt": i.e. your Father who is 'unseen,' because He is immaterial; since He is 'hidden,' pray to Him in hiding) ... "Our Father who is in the heavens (i.e. who is ethereal like the sky---not residing in any stone, statue, or cracks in a wall) hallowed be thy name [Yahweh] (Ἁγιασθήτω:--literally: "I sanctify your name [Yahweh]," i.e. I keep the name separate---not taboo---because your name is holy, sanctified, ἅγιος:--literally "different," not part of any magical Pagan pantheon).
---MATTHEW (6:5-9)

Jesus plainly instructs that huge crypto-Pagan edifices housing magical objects of sympathetic ritual will hinder rather than enhance any true communion with the real God. The word Zombie comes into English from West African by way of Haiti. In the Kikongo language, zumbi means "fetish;" in Kimbundu nzambi means "god." The association with reanimated corpses relates to rituals of Haitian magic, which make virtual slaves out of devotees who are ensnared by idolatrous worship. Such are convinced by drugs and rituals that they have died and been reborn into the service of a voodoo priest. In a similar fashion, rituals of the corrupted Monotheism of the West, twist the message of the prophets upon its head to perpetuate slavery, which is not the natural state of man as he was created. Compulsion to kneeling, and standing, and genuflecting, and prostrating, and circumambulation, recitation and transubstantiation, are all calculated to make the follower betray the words and intent of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed.  



BACKSLIDING: "The serpent was more subtle than any 
creature of the field Yahweh Divinity had made"



It is notable that the Koran surah titled Al Mai'iad exhibits knowledge of the proper allegorical reading of the parable of the Last Supper communion table. The title Al Ma'iad means "The Table Spread," and is usually taken simply for a micro-cosmic dining table, spread with food or provisions. The planet earth's crust is itself made up of "plates" in a quaking tectonic system. The surah begins:

Oh ye believers! Keep the covenant! All four-footed animals are permitted for you [for food], except those you have been told are not permitted ... 

---KORAN (5:1)
Clearly two-footed mammals are taboo. When Mohammed's recitation climaxes in direct reference to the Christian communion table, he cloths the table in the original intent of its metaphor; the disciple becomes part of the host---the force of God's will:
Those who disbelieved cried out: "This is nothing but evident magic!" And when I inspired the disciples (i.e. the followers of Jesus) saying: "Believe in Me and in My messenger" They said: "We believe! Bear witness that we are Muslims!" 

---KORAN (5:110-111) 

This seemingly anachronistic statement, which paints the followers of Jesus as "Muslims," is understood with an analysis of the language. Attention to that language reveals that Mohammed's inspired verse here commands study of the Gospels by any  who would dare call themself a "Muslim." The word "Muslim" (مُسْلِمًا) means "He or She of Salamun." The word salamun (سَلَامٌ) is shalom (שָׁלוֹם) in Hebrew. In English it is peace. In Greek the word is Εἰρήνη. The BIBLE FOR ZOMBIES explains how, when Josephus wrote all four Gospels in his war upon Rome's imperial cannibal elite, he wrote JOHN last, and omitted the allegory where Last Supper bread & wine is metaphor for flesh & blood. Instead, in JOHN's parallel climax of the four Gospel weave, Jesus erupts with the volcanic parable of His "Peace":

Peace I leave with you. My Peace I give to you. To the degree that the world ("kosmos" here "the world order") doesn't give, I give to you. Let your heart not be troubled. Nor let it fear."  ---JOHN (14:27)
The Koran continues:    
When the disciples said: "Oh Jesus son of Mary, is your Master able to send us down a table spread from heaven?" He said: "Observe your duty to God if you are true believers!" [They said] "That's what we want to eat from" (we want to take our sustenance from that which comes down from the sky; we want to be sustained by a covenant with God), Jesus son of Mary said: "Oh God our Master, send us down a table spread (the wordplay here is between the word مَائِدَةً translated as "table spread" and the verb تَمِيدَ translated as "shake" or "quake" as in "earthquake," cf. KORAN 6:15, 21:31, 31:10) from heaven, that it may be a sign from thee, and so that it may be a celebration for us, for the first of us and the last of us (so that it may bring plenty to both the eminent and the lowly). Give us support, for you are the best supporter. God said: "Lo, I send it down to you. But whosoever of you disbelieves after that (cf. JOHN 20:26-29), I will punish him with a punishment worse than I ever punished anyone in all the worlds (i.e. in all the planets)." 

---KORAN (5:111-115)  

One may fully comprehend what the verses of Mohammed are saying to mankind, when one reads THE BIBLE FOR ZOMBIES: Part One NOMAD, and discovers how Josephus used "Peace Be Upon You" in reference to God's fiery burial of the cannibals of Pompeii under the gaseous 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius. 

Blessed are those who believe without such an experience --JOHN (20:29)

Sigmund Freud was first to famously comment:

Yahweh was certainly a volcano god ---Sigmund Freud, MOSES AND MONOTHEISM, (P. 39, 1939)

To call Yahweh a volcano god is a gross understatement. Yet Yahweh's igneous and meteoric hands are indeed his power-tools in the creation of mankind. When ANTIQUITIES discusses God's revelation to Moses on the quaking volcanic mountain, Josephus explains EXODUS (3:13) thus:

These signs were however not only present to Moses at that time, but through all time whenever he needed them. Out of all these [signs] he relied most on the fire, trusting that in its truth he would have God as his benevolent supporter---ANTIQUITIES (2:12:4)

Here fire is a volcanic sign from God. EXODUS chapter nine makes the ultimate use of the fire-meme in the production of boils on Egypt's magicians. Moses takes a handful of the ash of humans who were used as ritual food in Pagan rites of Heliopolis. Moses throws that human ash into the air at the appropriate moment, to act as a sign of why the ash from a great Aegean volcano begins to fall again on Egypt. 



EGYPTIAN MAGIC SYMBOLISM Left: An Egyptian relief, depicts live human offerings tied to spit-stakes, which are posted right next to carved-up cattle, ready to be roasted. Right: Temple at Luxor: Egyptian temples are built in huge sympathetic magic likenesses of the roasting-spit. The obelisks are literally "skewers," from the Greek word  ὀβελίσκος. The Greek word the Gospel uses for "cross" is σταυρός, which is a pointed "stake."



Josephus was in Rome in 64 AD when the Great Fire was lit. Those who joined the Galilean movement in Nero's capitol, destabilized Rome enough to allow Israel to briefly break free from the evil empire in 66 AD. The Galileans took Malachi's fire escape to freedom. The whole empire eventually followed the trail they blazed, but the smitten Imperial authority repaved the road to ruin in stages. THE BIBLE FOR ZOMBIES by Lehan MacAdam, is a revelatory GPS, calibrated to detour faithful seekers off that road to ruin, and back onto the strait and narrow mapped out in the original moral literature collected in the Bible. Though it be proven that the message of Jesus and the Gospel is iconoclastic, and though it be proven that Rome was indeed burned by the Christians to ruin Nero, the tongues of flame called for today are allegorical. Let fiery words encourage as many of the pretenders as possible to graduate from the archaic and repetitive magic acts in the museums, and take their place at the adult's table, where the business of third great parable which bridges the Old and New Testaments is about to get underway. This third prime metaphor of the Old and New Testaments is:


  • 3) the Volcanoes and Quakes of Earth's Tectonics of Plates---God's Wisdom Rearing Mankind
The braids of this third prime metaphoric revelation meet the two prime anti-cannibalism metaphors most prominently at:
  • A) the flaming sword which turns-over scorching at the forefront of Eden, and the volcanic mountain on which are revealed the first laws which lead out of the cannibal empire in a pillar of smoke by day and a  pillar of flame by night.
  • B) the great earthquake and splitting open of the rocks upon the piercing of Jesus with the sword, and the trickster's gaseous meme of Last Supper "peace," vented by the Pompeii reference in the gas gripped, and released, inside the closed doors of the atmosphere, building up to great earthquakes of REVELATION.  

The often lurid innuendo in the allegorized narratives, lampoons hedonism rather than promoting it. The reward of pleasure provides recompenses for toils in necessary functions of existence, but pleasure is no end in itself, nor is pleasure key to some magical science of evolutionary victory. Survival is the motive of any who will be. The fires of earth's hemmed in borders must be tended collectively. The challenge is daunting. When there is very fair weather and broad deep seas, a ship built by many sane hands may be captained by crazy fringes for a long duration, with few to witness the mania with clarity. When the seas crowd and churn, the sober must take the helm.    

Prepare yourselves for the third day
Do not approach the female                                                                              (do not become effeminized, flaccid)
And on the morning of the third day                              (cf. GENESIS 1:9: Pangea's volcanic rise on the third morning)
There were thunders and lightnings and thick cloud on the mountain
Then a blast of glisten extremely loud
And all people in the camp trembled
And Moses brought the people out of the camp 
And they stood at the foot of the mountain to meet with the Divine
And Mount Sinai was everywhere smoking on its face where Yahweh's fire landed on it
And the smoke that ascended from it was like the smoke of a furnace
And the whole mountain quaked greatly
And the sound of the glisten grew louder and louder
And Yahweh alighted on the top of the mountain 
And Yahweh called Moses unto the top of the mountain
And Moses climbed [up its flank]

---EXODUS (9:15-9:18)

And he [Moses] said: "I enjoin you to show me your glory"
And He [Yahweh] said: "I will make my beneficence overflow before your face 
And in your face I will make the name "Yahweh" famous                                                    (cf. REVELATION 22:4)
And will be gracious to whom I will be gracious                                (literally "I will show favor / be generous to whom I will...)
And will be merciful to whom I will be merciful"                                           (literally "I will encamp with whom I will encamp") 
"But" He said: "You can not see my face, for no man can see me and live"      (***reputation for safety--don't do this at home)
Then Yahweh said: "Behold there is a place near me where you will preside upon a rock      (stand up upon, be firm upon)
And it will happen that when my glory overflows I will place you in a crack of the rock
And I will protect you with my hand while I overflow
And I will remove my hand and you will see my backside
But my face must not be looked at                                                  (***wisely inserted to deter jumps into lava with living flesh)

---EXODUS (33:18-23)  

And letting loose    
(ἀφεὶς, cf. ἀφῆτε in the lampooned Pompeii gripping and loosing of JOHN 20:23, whereby letting one loose in volcanic out-gassing, trumps the Pagan's inane binding and loosing of sacrificial victims) 
With a loud noise      
(φωνήphóné---from whence the English word "phonics," and "phoenetics"---means "sound," "voice," or "language;" "cry" is the safest refuge from the whoopee-cushion intent of the 'rank language' which the inspired author carefully parsed for these revealing double meanings)  
Jesus breathed-out                                                     
(ἐκπνέω, "exhaled," "expirated," "vented")
---MARK (15:37)

The earth quaked. The rocks split.

---MATTHEW (27:51)

The sunlight quit!  Even the veil of the temple split down the middle!                   (cf. EXODUS 3:12, like a red hot pants splitting)

---LUKE (23:45)

He delivered His wind                                             
(πνεῦμα., pneuma means "spirit," "breath," and "wind")
---JOHN (19:30)

The doors having been shut      
(figurative meaning: 'devoid of pity,' on the abode of degeneracy, on the theme-park of the spirit of Sodom.)
The Jesus came 
(Jesus means "Salvation" or "Delivery from Yahweh;" thus "the Delivery from Yahweh arrived")
He stood upright                                                                                                 (truly righteous, firm, erect)
In the midst 
And said: "Peace be upon you!"                                                                                        السلام عليكم
Then He says to Thomas:
"...Bring your hand and put it inside my flank
And don't be disbelieving but believing"

---JOHN (20:26-27)
   
The literary presentation of the Revelation is calibrated to throw the knock-out punch.

 It might be funny, but it is no joke.

All The Prophets Are Hot Tonight, But Only Samson Was A Nazarite.