Robert Eisenman Radio Interview on "The New Testament Code"

welcome to the virtual living room i'm gene g your host man talk about incredible credentials he's a professor of middle east religions and archaeology and the director of the institute of judeo-christian origins at california state university long beach he was a senior fellow at the oxford center for post-graduate hebrew studies he was a u.s endowment and humanities fellow in residence at the albright institute of archaeological research in jerusalem ladies and gentlemen it's my honor to uh to welcome here to the virtual living room professor robert eiserman thank you for joining us professor thanks for having me now um you have are certainly very as we put in our promos which you didn't hear because you're out on the west coast i said that you sound smart and and obviously you are here um you have written a new book called the new testament code but there's a quite honestly there's a lot of code books that have been written what was it a dozen years ago or so there was the bible code that was maybe 15 years that was making a lot of noise and then uh the fiction work uh by dan brown the da vinci code is is what makes the new testament code different well that's why we called it that because we knew all of that past history and you know some of those codes are imaginary to be kind some are maybe a little bit uh wacky and a few of them may be outright fraudulent but we hope that what we have presented here is a real one that is not a real code like you look every letter up or you're looking for some mysterious trail an interconnecting relationship between the new testament and i mean by the new testament gospels acts paul's letters etc james and the dead sea scrolls now see that that just that's that's a unique perspective here because for everything that i used to think about dead sea scrolls were not considered new testament and am i wrong on that well i'll tell you something i wrote you know the we think a thousand pages unfortunately this book's probably heavier than you know your kitchen garbage pail the point of the matter is that you you need to write a heavy-duty book you can't do an airport superficial you know read on this kind of stuff and con a lot of people i may be considered to be that myself but at least we give the data there for people to pour through it themselves all the references from the new testament from the dead sea scrolls and this is really a continuation of my pretty well known i think uh i don't want to be uh you know immodest but somewhat revolutionary james the brother of jesus back in 1997 1998 still out in penguin books right i remember that coming out and i it raised a few eyebrows when it came out well it was a revolutionary book in the sense that put james on the mac map i mean really uh how many people ever heard of james much before that and most people haven't even considered the fact that jesus may or may not however you see it had a brother or brothers and uh we we i brought the whole i have to take some credit but i took the whole i brought the whole issue front and center in fact i really believe the so-called ossuary that miraculously materialized back in 2002 out of nowhere in israel is actually based on my book james the brother of jesus because i don't think the people in israel even had an idea that jesus had a brother or that it would have been interesting to anyone but my book was reviewed very positively in the jerusalem post in 1997 and i know some of the people involved in the network responsible for the sudden appearance of that oshawa and i know very well that they had read parts of my book or knew about it and in fact i i wish they had read a little further because they wouldn't have been arrested in the way they did that's true that's very very true now when you start you're obviously an expert i at least from everything that i can read and find i don't know if you claim yourself one or not but certainly everyone will not everyone maybe but a ton of other people claim to you to be an expert on the dead sea scrolls as an expert of of the dead sea scrolls whenever you started your studies were you surprised at where it took you absolutely you know i started at ivy league schools you know cornell university columbia university i got my phd went to oxford things like that and you know the scrolls were really very humdrum and were taught in a very mechanical matter a manner because of what you said no uh relationship to christianity and so on and so forth that was the sort of establishment view that you know i led the campaign to free the scrolls back in the late 80s and the reason we wanted to free them up for research by everybody not just a select few was so that you couldn't have a kind of academic uh curia uh running the not just the publication but the interpretation of the dead sea scrolls so but it was only coming to cal state long beach a people's university where you had where you were dealing with the people you know the great people's university 35 000 students and you had to teach every day you couldn't just go and hide in an ivory tower and do some research on an abstract subject somewhere like you can in some of these research institutions right and they had my nose to the grindstone stone year in and year out so i was teaching dead sea scrolls and you had to make your courses go that to be popular historical jesus new testament and so on and so forth paul and james and and it suddenly you know i suddenly clicked in my mind because i was doing this every term the righteous one the saddique the righteous one in hebrew that sadiq he uh james is known in christian tradition as the just one in latin in greek as dick is in hebrew it's satisfaction and the righteous teacher in the dead sea scrolls every place you see his name uh mentioned the underlying biblical references to the sadique and then the penny began to drop that there was an integral relationship between the movement uh represented by this alleged so-called or real brother of jesus wherever you see it no doubt that he existed and that he he led a movement and a part of the community in the early church and um and and the dead sea scrolls and and that's what started me off wow and what a journey exciting for me and that didn't happen until coming to california and living like the people live not in the ivory tower sort of snob universe i was used to so so in your previous studies before you went there you were pretty much following the track of everyone else right uh the the people who dominated this field were people at harvard frank moore cross and people at oxford gates of vermesh and people that they cope with in jerusalem father devoe and his group and so on and you know a very good description of that by the guys who actually wrote the uh the holy blood holy grail which upon which the da vinci code is based uh beijing and lee wrote this book you know that holy blood wrote this book the dead sea scroll deception about my work to some extent back in the late 80s and they give a very good description of what the monopoly was i don't have to agree with all their views what the monopoly was and how it was uh broken and uh and what it implied and so i i think that's a good starting point for people just want to get into this field well certainly now you have a subtitle on on your book as well the of course the main title the new testament code but the subtitle the the cup of the lord the damascus covenant and the blood of christ you want to uh explain those that is the key to the whole book and that's why i put it as a subtitle because i didn't want people just to think that oh here's another one of those code books you know here's a code hahaha another nonsense thing uh what i wanted to say that these are the key words that have an interrelationship between the two sets of material to give that away of course is actually the the cream and conclusion of the book so one puts the cart before the horse but on i will say this that the damascus covenant is what the dead sea scrolls call the new covenant in the land of damascus we have to put it down as we call it the the damascus covenant and in the last two chapters of my book what i show is that in hebrew damascus is dom and kos rather that's the greek transliteration of the of the hebrew sure dom and hebrew as you probably or may or may not know is blood kos in hebrew is cup and then if you actually do the hebrew version of damascus it's the mashed damascus or something to that effect is blood is drink drink this well then you go over to paul in the in one corinthians and you go over to jesus in the synoptic gospels at the last supper that's why i say it's the whole new testament and in fact new testament is really new covenant so that little underlying you know play on words too in that subtitle but if you go over to the uh you know the key episode in christian religious presentation is the last supper and jesus says this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood drink this in remembrance of on me right then you go over to the dead sea scrolls the new covenant in the land of damascus and suddenly you realize that damascus is linked to what he's talking about there and that couldn't be accidental i mean the odds that you could have five words linking up with this odd formulation jesus makes in the scripture as we have it i think is almost nil so the argumentation that goes into that takes a thousand pages of other things so that people believe that i know or you know what i'm talking about so that's that's what strikes you right between the eyes you think so could it not have been that i mean god is god god's outside of time could this have not been prophetic and jesus is fulfilling it by uttering the same words well um can i call you gene yes please do yeah well i i'm not saying which came first okay the pauline and i think paul comes before the gospels frankly because that's how most scholars see you know we're ornery you know the gospels for us are like later sometimes retrospective you know you know scholars might go into the word of god presentation of things probably would be fired from a second university if we did you know one yeah you know can't mix church and state in that regard too much otherwise i'd be teaching the koran as the ayatollah as bin laden teaches which i don't do we're tough on all supposed angel dictated documents okay okay fair enough fair enough anyway the point is i'm saying the the really important thing i say at the end of the book i don't know which came first but one thing is clear the pauline gospel presentation or the jesus of the gospel last supper and paul in one corinthians is antinomian that is it is against the law or not including the law and it's more i hate to say it mystery religion oriented in the sense that drinking the cup of blood is really not something you would do in palestine even on a symbolic level because blood is banned right according to mosaic law it makes you unclean uh yeah and and you know in james's instructions even as they are presented in the book of acts you know that passage in acts 15 at the end of the jerusalem council where uh you know paul comes out over and says well uh you know i'm some people were coming down and teaching the brothers that unless you were circumcised you could not be saved so barnabas and i came up to jerusalem and we put the version of the gospel as we put it among the gentiles and then peter makes a speech welcoming the nations and then james is pictured as regulating everything because james is the other james is already dead so it can't be the other dame james it's james the brother of jesus james is in that by that point the chief honcho and even axem admits that that this is james the brother of the of the lord and he uh says i rule this stay away from or keep away from blood um fornication things sacrificed to idols and uh strangle things which really probably is a attempt in greek to render carrion well so even according to that you see even symbolically according to the james ian more torah oriented if you want to call that judaistic group or whatever you want to call the early church people like that you wouldn't be able to consume the blood of christ right i mean that was that was strictly for bowdoin in in uh oh yeah you know in the uh well leviticus and the torah and the you know in the you know so so in the in the in the gospel uh uh pauline version of these matters then you have an antinomian or an you know more hellenistic or i know that's a that's a bad word for most people but mediterranean whatever you want to call it roman greco greco-roman presentation things they would accept in that culture of sphere and in the james inn and i say dead sea scroll presentation of these things it's uh you know in the damascus document which is the key document for this the damascus document was discovered in cairo in 1897. okay yeah in a place called the ganesha where they put secret masters where they had a whole catch of medieval manuscripts and no one understood what it was but they knew it was different and important is that would that be the uh i will let me explain some real quick to you i'm sorry professor but i only got a copy of your book uh a week ago no i mean i got a week ago today and trust me i've not made it through the thousand pages no you couldn't possibly i wouldn't expect you to we're just talking i'm not even talking about the book now right friendly you and me sure sure i just wanted to so that you knew that i may ask a couple of stupid questions no no no i don't want to take too much of your time explaining these things to your audience but these are just elementary and i won't keep it up but just to so we're all operating on the same framework sure the damascus document comes from the kyrones in 47 in 1897 and then it was rediscovered among the dead sea scrolls and multiple copies and it turns out to be the the you know the the bedrock version of the history of this community so we speak about raising the new covenant in the land of damascus and but it goes further than that you know you should go out into the wilderness and so on and look for the well of living waters this is all in maybe columns uh seven eight and nine of that document and you should you should set the holy things up according to their precise specifications now you know in the book of acts when peter has his rooftop vision of the tablecloth that comes down from heaven and then peter is the swing figure in galatians that as i will explain in a moment but as you know peter what peter see peter learns as if he hadn't learned it before is you know not to make distinctions between holy and profane i shall learn that i will call no man unclean nor nothing profane after the voice cries out three times kill peter eat right right so that new covenant the one in the in acts which is why it's the whole new testament it's not just gospels the one in acts paul gospels and so on is a um you know 180 degrees the opposite of what you find in in the dead sea scrolls the one wants to separate the holy things according to the size specifications set up the purity laws absolutely that's what the new covenant land of damascus for the dead sea scrolls means we're right back again with the same conundrum in the new testament it's really make no distinctions between holy things so again i'm trying to show we have 180 degrees loggerhead up opposition here and it's i think that really is uh very interesting well absolutely but it's probably not unexpected anytime you have a new entity whether it be of a spiritual nature of any kind there's going to be budding of heads would you agree oh absolutely these people are butting heads but look you know we have i think the budding heads is already in the new testament and and that is the butting heads between paul and james which i covered in my james the brother of jesus book and i want to get into it to an example you gave there and talk a little bit about that we need to take a quick break no no no no no no you're this is fine we are visiting with professor robert eisenman he has written uh this latest book the new testament code the subtitled the cup of the lord the damascus covenant and the blood of christ um you challenged yet well if not i don't know why but if not you just don't hate me no we're looking for truth here that's what we're looking for and we'll be back in just a couple of moments seeking more of that here with robert eisenman and gene g on psalm 99.5 and we're back with professor robert eisemann the author of the new testament code just recently out um how recently is this out professor oh this is just out for 10 days now barnes and noble i think are supposed to be featuring it but i never know what those people who they are they are but they can certainly get it off amazon.com at a cheaper price than i can even get it myself okay so that's a good way to look for it we were talking about some conflicts and you were heading toward the book of galatians on this yeah you know we just talked about peter's vision of the heavenly tablecloth right and and if you'll permit me to put it in my terms i know this is not the faith-based uh one but more of an academic one you know in that instance peter gets pollenized and you say well well what do you mean peter gets paul and eyes yes if jesus had taught that that there are no distinctions between holy and profane peter his most faithful and closest servant and companion and disciple should have known it so the implication of that he needs a heavenly vision of the pauline kind because you know paul's are is always getting apocalypse uh visions sure and he's in touch with the christ jesus in heaven because we know he was an enemy of christians in his early days and he had never met jesus so all of what he knows about jesus is is supernatural but so peter is getting a supernatural vision and and and basically adopting the pauline position there so i conclude that uh that jesus hadn't regulated that but the gospels i'll get to that in a moment because it's another important passage in the dead sea scrolls and in the and in the gospels and this is what the internet locking code really comes down to but let's look at how that that thing in galatians gets started according to paul whose testimony it is where he talks about james the brother of the of the lord and going up to jerusalem in chapter one and two and seeing no one else but the peter and james or kephas as he calls him and james the brother of the lord he says that when some from james came down to go to antioch whichever antioch that is and that's why i take a thousand pesos analyze which antioch we're talking about in my view it's antioch northern syria where the holy shroud was actually found right but any case um so uh paul is angry at the situation and he says you know james who used to be inhabited keeping table fellowship with gentiles that is he didn't observe dietary regulations and purity matters withdrew from them and barnabas copied him in this hypocrisy in this hypocrisy and your listeners who know their their their gospel and new testament i'm sure quite well know that that's exactly what was said in of galatians too but paul makes it even clearer he says that uh that the that the these are the party of the circumcision so uh it's the party of the circumcision that are represented by the sum from james and he spends the rest of galatians being very angry about the issue of circumcision as we all know until he gets into an almost uh uh an an expletive by the end of chapter five he's not a very loving person as we know when he gets angry anyway so anyway um the point is that the issue is food and dietary matter in fact when augustine in north africa wrote jerome in the 5th early 5th century he was upset by that passage in galatians he saw it too and he said jerome how can paul dare to call the holy and pious peter a hypocrite can you explain that to me where he can call him that and the letter took a year to get to jerome and droma and jerome finally answered him and basically said there are some things you shouldn't inquire into so he didn't have an answer really really to that but let's just hold on now so therefore wait a minute wait a minute that that answer reminds me of something my parents used to do i've got to be honest you know because i said so is that pretty much the tone of it you too i don't think it was more like that i think he just wanted to you know uh sweep it under the rug okay i don't think he had the answer to it okay unless you're someone you know you if you're a believing person you have to love peter and paul equally see i don't have to because i'm on the james inside i admit it right from the start i personally paul is not someone who i find very uh um he's a great uh rhetorician he's a marvelous dialectician you know he's a tremendous arguer and polemicist but he's just because he's very good at these greek rhetorical skills doesn't mean that i have to personally like him as an individual in the way he behaves you know i i think he brags and i think he has a lot of hostility and i think he he he slanders other people like peter and uh and james like he says these pillars in the same letter uh you know these big shots in other words not that their importance means anything to me well if that's how he sees peter and james the leaders of the of the um church then honestly that's not the kind of trooper you'd really want to have under your command and be very confident how he's going to behave well that's that's certainly true and i would not argue that point with you uh let me ask you a question it's kind of a little of a rabbit trail here professor but as i have had people on this program um over the past year occasionally that have said they believe that and you may not have any comment on this i'll give you that but that they they believe that within western christianity today the paul is being taught more than than jesus i agree with him a hundred percent because i you see i i am always asking the question and i i say in my first book the historical jesus is one thing the paul and i's christ is something else i mean in looking the very fact that we look for the historical jesus means that we're not sure that the documents we have before us are giving us the total historical jesus so i concluded in the first you know that who would have known jesus better who would have known him better the person who who stayed with him his whole life who knew him from the time he was a child who was one of his faithful followers who witnesses to the crucifixion who who succeeded him in the leadership of the church was martyred somewhat like he was and so on and so forth or a person who denied christ right from the start persecuted early christians by his own admission unto death perhaps even including people like john the baptist and someone then who only knew christ through supernatural visions that he claims that he had and others doubted that he had well the verdict of all history is that the second is some truth and i may i'm a person of a maybe minority of one or two or three or four who actually feel the first is uh true so i would say that if you want to find the historical jesus you should look for the historical james and i don't think he wants you i don't believe that jesus and james were that different from each other and uh so therefore once you have found the historical james it might to my mind we come closer to finding the historical jesus but that's just the position i enunciate in my james book okay while we're on this this bit of a rabbit trail let's stay here for a moment um the gnostic texts that were found in egypt in the 40s what do you have any comment on those well i think they're in really interesting texts in that they show that these materials weren't fixed that we have a lot of creative writing going on we have layers upon layers upon layers of people putting their own spinning their own view take this just new gospel of judas that's that surface right basically we're getting uh you know a rehabilitation of judas the iscard who we think that is in the name of which is sort of really not shocking but very interesting and also we're getting you know greek philosophical argumentation between judas and others and jesus and others of a very sophisticated neoplatonic gnostic type so you see that this this this material is um is is in the process of being created and uh therefore um you know the gospels in the book of acts are something that still have to be you know reckoning with scholars haven't decided on that but let me go back to the point i was trying to make it out uh about paul and the party of the circumcision and so on certainly forgive me for that passage of the jerusalem council where we talk about james making his final uh um judgments as it's called determinations at the end of acts 15. that's triggered by the sum of some who insisted on circumcision and then that's that 15 1 came down and told the brothers that unless you were circumcised you could not be saved and then four it makes it clear that these are supposedly pharisees within the early church well you see to my mind that's already a code word that's all that is already a you know a word um a touchstone word pharisees within the early church this is how the enemies of the james party were calling the james group they were calling them pharisees though they weren't because they insisted on legal niceties so sometimes in the gospel when you see the word pharisee it it doesn't necessarily mean process at all it could be a polemical attack on the james party as opposed to the paul party there's where the code starts to operate and as far as i can these uh that's how that's how i see it any case so when you go back then take another passage where you have this this this code operating if you want to call it a code or this interrelationship one of the favorite sayings in the gospels is found in a series of parables that jesus says something every plant which my heavenly father has not planted shall be uprooted right you know that one yes everybody and we love it right it's so nice right it makes it feel good yeah okay you open up the damascus document you open up the damascus document and this is my proof that that and it's by the way it's delivered within several other parables about blind guides and the blind leading the blind is all in matthew and mark but it's not in luke right and then then it says the blind will fall into the pit right and then it goes on to then talk about a food uh man shall knows by what goes out of his mouth not by what goes into his mouth this just goes down the you know stomach and out that and out right toilet pole yep and so then mark adds jesus said this declaring all foods clean right so the whole thing is a whole series of things having to do with the same issue again food cleanliness and purity matters and now we see that the gospels are saying peter should have known that jesus declared all foods clean peter shouldn't be having any problems either in galatians or in the book of acts on on these issues so let me go back to the one of the starting points there since you're you're a sophisticated person and so is your audience uh at least my audience huh at least my audience yeah oh yeah i'm sure you both are every plant which my heavenly father has not planted uh uh uh uh shall be uprooted and this just bowls me over you look at the first column of the cairo damascus document it talks about how you know after a certain period of time after the babylonian captivity he delivered them into the hand of nebuchadnezzar and then god visited them you actually have a visitation taking place here something like in the gospels the visitation of mary if you want god visited them and caused a route of planting to grow from israel and from aaron to inherit his land and prosper on the good things of this earth and they understood that they were sinners and knew that they were guilty men and they were like blind that men groping for the way and god considered their works because they sought him with a whole heart and raised up a teacher of righteousness for them to guide them in the way of his heart okay now hold on a moment he visited them caused a root of planting to grow from israel and aaron to inherit his land and the good things of this earth every plant that my heavenly father has not planted shall be uprooted okay this is the plant that is being this is the root of planting here that is planted in fact the gospels are saying jesus is saying probably aiming at this this should be uprooted because this is not the plant which my heavenly father has planted you follow me yes yes so in my view there is the interlocking code that you know one is operating against the other but it doesn't just stop there because the whole series then goes on to talk about uh blind men groping for the way in the gospels in the same in the same in the same series we have that they are blind guides we just have the righteous teacher called someone who will guide them in the way of his heart there the blind leading the blind will fall into the pit and then going on to declaring all foods clean so now we have another another uh tension set up between the between the damascus document and the documents of the gospels as we have them and so in uh also this damascus document talks about the pit so you know these are the commonalities that i have to take a thousand pages to tease out and show you your readers how connected all these things are certainly certainly we need to be very exciting for anyone who's interested you don't have to believe what i believe or take my position all the exciting thing is looking into yourself and and and wrestling with these things yourself and deepening your understanding both of scripture and of the new testament and of god ultimately god and i i meant both of the uh yeah both of the new testament and the the dead sea scrolls right to allow me after you break again i'd like to explain to the people why i see the dead sea scrolls as the messianic movement in palestine and that will be a very interesting discussion and be after we get back not only that but we'll talk about a little um encounter shall we say between uh between paul and james at the temple steps as well we are visiting with professor robert eisenman he is uh the author of a newly released book called the new testament code the cup of the lord the damascus covenant and the blood of christ you can almost get your phd just by reading this in and of itself more to come from the professors because everything i know is in that book there you go more from the professor in just a couple of moments here in the virtual living room and we're back with professor robert eisenman he is the author of the recently published book only out for about 10 days right now called the new testament code the cup of the lord the damascus covenant and the blood of christ okay professor take us on from where we were here well um we were talking about the issue of foods and uh regulating the issue of right the basically the back and forth polemics uh um deriving from these uh code words and uh uh pharisees uh every plant that my heavenly father has not planted shall be uprooted the blind guides the blind leading the blind all these we i will be able to show i think but it sets up it sets up that there was a lot of tension within the camp that most of us in western christianity think was first century christianity but there was a lot of factions within under that supposed umbrella well yeah this goes back to the dead sea scrolls and why we had to break the monopoly you see the monopoly was already run by basically people who had and well they were under authority of some kind they couldn't see the scrolls of having anything to do with christianity so they pushed them as far back into the past as they could they they they knew that christianity was related to them because they could see the same vocabulary but they didn't want to consider this to be anything integral to christianity see because there is no christianity in palestine at this point you know you look at the book of acts i forget what chapter 12 or 13 or so on and what does it say christians were first called christians in antioch in northern syria the pauline community uh comprising paul and eleven other people was where christians were first called christians well that's the mid-fifties right that says well what were they called in palestine before that then if they weren't called christians which is a greek greco-roman term what were they called and when did they get into palestine by the name christian in my view they were called essenes in my view of the dead sea scrolls which people underestimated because of this tendentious interpretation we previously had people who call me ten dentures we all call each other ten times that's fine it doesn't matter everyone throws rocks at each other this is the nature of debate but you know just like they won't like me i wouldn't like them but that's okay i consider the scrolls the scrolls are very messianic they have the messianic prophecy numbers 24 17 the star will rise from jacob uh a scepter to rule the world uh lebanon will fall by a mighty one and so on the from isaiah 10 of the the these materials are repeated three four five times in the corpus that we presently have they have the shiloh prophecy you know from uh genesis uh uh chapter 40 something genesis uh about the judah and the messiah of righteousness and so on and they don't have a double messiah they have a flora legion which is a collection of proof texts about promises to the seed of david they are a davidic messianic group but what is the difference between that between them and the messianism that we know this in palestine scroll messianism is a militant messianism it's an apocalyptic messianism it's an uncompromising messianism it doesn't uh it really is not prepared to live in peace with foreign power whereas the new testament messianism of romans 13 where paul says pay your taxes and uses the love commandment love your neighbor as yourself which i think is very um you know not very uh i don't think it's uh very forthcoming of him to apply the most precious uh uh the to apply the the the scriptural passage that james calls the royal law of scripture to paying taxes to rome you should love your neighbor by paying taxes to caesar i i don't really believe that that's how it was being used i think that's really cynical so the point being that we have in palestine this this messianism much like john the baptist is portrayed in the early chapters of the synoptic gospels we have this messianism at qumran and we call it essene okay if that's how you wanted to find essene that's fine so in my view in palestine there were not two messianisms there was only one and we found it now in the dead sea scrolls a very apocalyptic militant one that isn't maybe too pleasing with us as far as we know it or turn the other cheek you love your enemies they believe in loving your neighbors but they don't believe in loving your enemies and and they don't believe in turning the other cheek and they're looking forward in the war scroll to a final apocalyptic war against all evil and they speak about the heavenly about the messiah coming on the clouds of heaven with the heavenly host in the war scroll so so you know we have all these images so i put everything habakkuk 2 4 the right shielded by his faith is the key prophecy in the habakkuk commentary from cave 1 of qumran so most people aren't aware of this make a straight way in the wilderness is the basis of the community rule from qumran repeat it twice but it isn't the way we have it that we're familiar with it says this is the time of the preparation of the way in the wilderness uh uh which which which which involves in column nine of the community rule zeal for the day zeal for the law and uh basically also zeal for the day of vengeance so that's a very different kind of messianism than we're familiar with would you say would you go as far as to say that the widely accepted new testament that is basically in print today um is missing it no i think we just have two messianisms one uh a messianism that went through the constantine uh retrospective editorial process uh you know councilman yeah the first right and and but also even earlier than that a messianism that went through the uh augustus pax romanum you know uh you know they recently uh rehoused this altered of peace that augustus uh uh uh dedicated around 8 a.d or something like that in a big building in rome because they found it and i think that's what we're dealing with here and the wars in palestine uh were more like bin laden i hate to say it and uh not that i'm for bin laden i think the scrolls are interested in righteousness righteousness that's the key that's why works is important to the james in view and then we go on that you know okay let's see say these were essenes well then essenes were what messianism maybe not christianity but messianism was in palestine before it went overseas in the palestine in the in the pauline garb and then with the wars against rome from 66 to 70 the james ian groups and all the other groups were either wiped out and all these kinds of documents were put into caves or they went further east into other kinds of movements that we know as uh mandaeans al-khazai notes nozarrains all kinds of eastern groups that finally ended up in islam so anyway that's what i try to discuss in my book and i hope that it's a challenge for people but basically now there are not two messianisms there are only one so the one in in later is a different pauline one is paul's a roman citizen paul tells you the law is not the holy law of sinai the law is roman law absolutely absolutely okay well always since we're here at paul um but you just don't seem to be a big fan of paul oh no obviously i i admit it i mean you call it an agenda it's just a just that you know you i think as a human being you have to be free if if you feel like people may not like me i understand that people don't like george bush i understand that people don't like this person that person understand that if you feel someone is not congenial to your outlook you have an obligation to say it you shouldn't fob it over so that we can discuss it well let's go let's go to a an encounter between paul and james on the temple steps tell us a little bit about that uh which one the one in the pseudo-clementine recognitions yes well there you go you see now the pseudo-clementine recognitions are all important not only for the issue of james you see we have to decide me you your listeners and others who is the leader of the early church in palestine and therefore the bishop of bishops is it peter or is it james and you know is there a second james or is there only one james i cover this in my james the brother of jesus i think being fair you know it is clear by acts certainly by acts 15 and certainly of acts 21 that james is the leader of the early church in galatians both peter and paul must defer to the rulings of james so there's no doubt who's the leader by that time certainly question is at the beginning and that we have acts to discuss about but um this encounter on the steps you see for the pseudo-clementines now the pseudo-clementines is a literature done in the name of clement clement was supposed to be a rich roman noble who was a disciple of peter who had a roman citizenship and later became the first or second pope after peter in rome right but it looks like he's flavius clemens a member of the imperial roman family to whom uh paul in the end of philippians sends epaphroditus with greetings in the house of caesar if you remember the greetings paul gives he sends as his apostle epaphroditus now epaphroditus who paul calls his fellow soldier and uh um i think uh apostle or whatever he speaks in philippians i think that's an authentic letter he you know a paphronitis is turns out to be the sponsor of josephus's works josephus says he is nero's secretary for greek letters and so we do have christians in the household of uh of caesar and even in the flavian family the one that comes later on flavius clemens is one of these people so the pseudo-clementines i think is that clement and um you know they are an alternate uh story of the early church recognition says that clement met peter went back to palestine to meet the leader of the church james and they were having debates on the temple steps when and james was on the on the verge of winning everyone over when an angry violent man came up and uh and and created a ride in the temple of blood and killing in the book of acts yeah hang on just a second here professor let's let's take a just a little side note just uh a debate on the temple steps was not something that was uncommon that was just the place where you held public debates right uh i can't i gina wasn't there i know i i had read something where you know at one point where that was just not an unheard of thing so a debate there you know a debate there is it wouldn't be uncommon uh but the reaction that you're getting into now certainly was well you may i don't think it was hyde park corner but uh i'm sure people who were there uh discussing issues and so on but paul comes in or the angry man who gets letters from the high priest and pursues the community to damascus so it's clear it's supposed to be a paul type figure comes and actually attacks physically attacks james and throws him down the steps and leaves him for dead and others are killed and james's followers carry him out of the temple that night this around 44 a.d around the time of the stoning of stephen in the normative acts carrying him down the next day to uh out jericho the man who is identified as the enemy pursues them with letters but misses them because they've gone out somewhere near jericho now to my mind where they've gone out to is the dead sea and the community had come run and there's some sort of miraculous tomb that they go to visit there where two of the the two or two of the brothers that miraculously whitens every year while paul the enemy carries on to damascus and misses them so that's the attack on james that's the whole thing about that you know relating to the attack on stephen in the relationship of those two attacks which i covered in both books certainly but let me talk a little bit uh so so tim the pseudo clementine recognition say that james sent out peter on his first missionary journey to confront simon magus in caesarea from there from there not jericho but outside of jericho somewhere in my view where qumran is presently located so that kind of detail to my mind is very exciting and it says when he saw james he was still limping uh he was still limping from the fall he took and the leg he had broken you know we get that motive of the broken leg even in the crucifixion of jesus that's right detail to go outside of jericho we never heard before limping on one leg breaking a leg sending out messengers it goes to caesarea and uh the person there asked him how james is he says oh he's better but he's still limping because of his broken leg that's incredible detail you see what i'm trying to say now how long how long had this been since the incident oh that was about two or three weeks a month after the incident okay okay so i mean that's what i'm trying to say that that kind of so i mean you don't don't want to dismiss these documents but no i here's why i like these documents even better tell me and we've got just so that you know professor we've got about three minutes here all right quickly in the picture of peter in acts you know there are about five or six speech in the speeches in the first three uh three or four chapters of acts where peter basically says the same thing over and over and over again he says oh you jews with you stopped up ears and always missing the word of god who rejected all the prophet or killed all of the prophets and now you've killed the lord messiah too and so on and so forth he makes the blood libel charge about five times right much else okay right that's a very angry peter that's not a sympathetic feeder in the pseudo-clementine homilies what do we have we have a gentle peter a peter who's a daily bather peter who rises at dawn to to greet the sun and pray a peter who never says an angry thing who is not anti-semitic who who actually is basically where threat bear clothes is basically the essence of what an ascene is and he's a jamesian he's a vegetarian so which peter do you prefer the angry virulent peter or the gentle uh essene like peter well it isn't so much which one i prefer which one's accurate well that's what i mean well i'm trying to be kind but the thing is if if there are things in the gospels or in the book of acts that have led to holocausts and hatred wouldn't it be nicer in view of the history of the last century to have a peter who who who isn't presented in such a manner and i don't think the historical peter was like that i think the historical peter was not virulently uh shall we say anti-semitic to use a modern term and and therefore we're not inciting holocaust and i think that we all none of us want to be responsible for the holocaust we want to get out from under this this horrendous thing that has happened and uh i think that following peter the essene and the pseudo-clementines and the james in view will help a lot of people get away from some of the uh pauline invective don't forget in thessalonians 2 15 paul says the chur the the the jews who killed all the prophets and killed the lord messiah too and who are the enemies of the whole human race and that is a passage that is attributed to paul as authentic well you know i don't think that's the kind of uh christianity we want we want a gentle loving christian i would agree with that we are out of time no no no no no i just want everyone we have barely touched the tip of the iceberg here please get a copy of this it's called the new testament code by robert eisenman and you can amazon.com is going to be probably your best and least expensive way to do this and professor thank you so very much for your time this afternoon well thanks for listening to my uh seeming rant i appreciate the time no rant at all and uh welcome back anytime and we wish you all the best with this oh you have my phone number anytime you want me i'm at your service great thank you again and we'll be back here monday afternoon at three o'clock join us then

Channel: EisenmanTalks

Views: 8,131

Keywords: Robert Eisenman, Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls, The Community Rule, The Habbakuk Pesher, The War Scroll, The Hymns, New Testament Code, Judaism, Christianity, Jews, Christians, Islam, Muslims, Historical Jesus, James the brother of Jesus, Interview, Bible, Hebrew, Aramaic, Torah, Paul

Id: hN-Cwgu7zGY

Length: 50min 23sec (3023 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 19 2013