O HOLY FIRING OF ROME (part two)

continued from part one

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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. 

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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..

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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

Now 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


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:

continued in part three

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