Was There Another Jesus? - Secrets Of Christianity 101 - The Messiah Before Jesus

an ancient stone tablet is discovered and decoding its secrets could Rock a core belief of Christianity it seems to tell the story of a messiah who is killed and rises from the dead after three days sound familiar but this Messiah may not be Jesus this is one of the secrets of Christianity being unearthed by investigative journalist simcha Jacobovici from deserts to tombs from Rome to the Holy Land simcha tracks down the truth behind historical myths long-held beliefs and some of the greatest biblical stories ever told this is a photograph of a unique and mysterious 2000 year old tablet or stone this is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christians come to celebrate and commemorate the resurrection of Jesus three days after the crucifixion this may shake up that the stone emerged from the antiquities market and incredibly the ancient Hebrew text can still for the most part be easily read the key line is this I Gabriel command you the Prince of princes in three days live now that may sound strange to the modern ear but when I first heard about it I almost fell off my chair I mean we're talking about a three-day resurrection if it's referring to Jesus this bit of archaeology is the earliest archaeological artifact that refers to him if it predates Jesus and who is this christ-like figure that we didn't know about before who is this Jesus before Jesus to decode the stone we have to figure out when was it written where did it come from and first who is this Gabriel mentioned on the stone in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles Gabriel is an angel whose main job is to announce the Messiah in the Gospels he's the angel who announces to the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to Jesus on this stone Gabriel is not speaking to a woman rather he is talking to a prince of princes code word in Jesus's time for a messiah so the inscription seems to speak of a messiah who dies and is ordered by the angel Gabriel to rise again after three days until now this has been associated only with Jesus but renowned biblical scholar Israel Canole who brought the stone to light believes that the stone predates Jesus here we have for the first time an evidence that they believe in the death and resurrection after three days of a messianic leader existed even before the time of Jesus I can already hear some of the objections what are you saying here the Jesus was a copycat and I must say that's a totally unhistorical way of approaching the issue if you think that Jesus was influenced by no one and he knew exactly where he was going and he landed like an alien from outer space there's no point looking at any archaeology but if you put Jesus in his historical context first century Judea he was after all a first century Jew then you suddenly have to say wait a minute here's a man living in a country under Roman occupation clearly is gonna be influenced by people and he's going to influence people when it comes to this stone now known as the Gabriel inscription Kennels theory is that Jesus was influenced by someone since the stone predates Jesus but does it the answer depends on whether the inscription was written before the crucifixion and to find out simcha comes to the ancient city of Jaffa in Israel to meet with Robert Deutsch deutsches and a pig refer a specialist in ancient inscriptions he's also one of Israel's foremost licensed dealers in antiquities so he should be able to explain how artifacts like the Gabriel stone are dated it has here a host of the inscription Deutsch is using a full-size paper copy of the stone prepared by the academics who studied it the gabelle inscriptions are very important description the text is important the development of the shape of the letter dates the piece what do you mean that you can date it from the shape of the letter it develops like a car the shape of a car it was never the same before and it will never be the same after that so if you find a car you can say what here is exactly this is typology which is a very very accurate tool to illustrate the point in the first century BC and early first century AD the Hebrew letter lammott L in English had a long neck and then lost it during the same period the kouf or K lost its little cap and the mem the letter M initially Square became rounded losing its squiggles in the process using these techniques Deutsch agrees with professor Canole dating the Gabriel inscription to a time just before Jesus's crucifixion possibly before his birth and is dates to the 1st century BC and the beginning of the 1st century AD so the inscription seems to predate Jesus but not by much to hone in on a more precise date simcha needs access to the inscription but the problem is that the stone belongs to an Israeli collector david jeselsohn who lives in switzerland hi dr. jeselsohn it's simcha and he won't give simcha access to the artifact you think I can say anything or do anything to convince you to let us just take a little look simcha isn't surprised he believes that david jeselsohn is like many collectors who don't like investigative journalists around artifacts they've purchased from sometimes shady antiquities dealers well okay if you change your mind I think you have my email and simcha is determined to see the stone but since he can't get access to the real one he's commissioning artist dan abend off to make him a replica using photographs published in scholarly journals since we don't have access to the stone itself this is a real one-to-one copy okay so this stone it's three feet high and one foot wide and it's very very very unusual it's got columns it's got an incision the letters are hanging from the lines it's not inscribed which is unusual for a stone it's painted everything with anything so what I'd like you to do because that's what you do for a living is make me make me this make me this exactly building replicas is a highly specialized discipline and the work begins right away from the original photograph the team of reproduction experts are using 3d computer and laser technology to recreate the multiple layers of the stone from a painstaking carving process to laying on the letters precisely as they appear on the original stone making the reproduction as close to a perfect copy as possible this should help simcha figure out its date origin and meaning [Music] though some have questioned kernels reading no archaeologists have challenged him simcha now shows the reproduction to Professor Canole who has moved beyond deciphering the text to decoding its earth-shattering message in 2007 an ancient stone came to the attention of scholars that has the potential of shaking Christianity to its foundations dub the Gabriel revelation the text painted on the stone refers to a messiah that lives dies and is resurrected after three days the writing style however seems to suggest the time before Jesus if the inscription is not referring to Jesus who is it referring to was this mysterious dying and resurrecting Messiah and is he the original inspiration for Jesus and his followers when the stones existence was first made public a few scholars including Israel Canole were allowed to study it immediately they recognized it as a genuine artifact but since the stone is now out of circulation simcha has brought a replica he commissioned to show Canole does it look like the original very much very much and look at this look at the line yeah the lines he did them very nice yes where are the key words this one makes sure here is the Schloss you mean in three days reading the Hebrew text professor Kunal begins to decode it for Canole the key historical clue is a reference to three Shepherds my three shepherds three Shepherds Canole thinks one of these Shepherds living around Jesus's birth is the Messiah mentioned on the stone their story begins at the end of the first century BC with Herod the Great Herod was appointed by the Roman Emperor Augustus to rule Judea and do Rome's bidding he was a tyrant hated by his subjects paranoid that a christ-like figure would you thrown him Herod is remembered in the Gospels as the ruler who killed innocent babies fearing that one of them might be a messiah when Herod died in 4 BC his death triggered a messianic fever rebellion broke out on three fronts across the country this was the beginning this is the place where the serious rebellion started here at this point what we where we sit here now was this a nationwide revolt yes Israel was literally burning during this rebellion yes there were three centers for this rebellion three messianic leaders when Judah in the Galilee the second one at Angus in Emmaus and the third one Simon from the Perea from the area of Transjordan suddenly our idea of the world that Jesus was born into seems very different from anything that we heard about in Christmas carols I mean this was no tranquil land with Shepherds tending their flock and wise men following stars this was a land riddled by political unrest and violence rape pillage crucifixions Jews against Romans there was a revolution going on and there were not one but three revolutionary leaders or messianic shepherds one of them seems to have inspired Jesus but which one could it have been a Trancas from a mouse which is just outside of Jerusalem despite more than a century of digging here in Jerusalem not a single Gabriel like stone not one has ever been found I mean in painted on stone anything that resembles it now that's very significant because archaeologically speaking if you have a tradition of memorializing people on stone then you find more than one so the fact that not a single one has found in this area pretty much eliminates a Trancas as the dying and resurrecting Messiah mentioned on the stone well that eliminates them the next candidate is Judah he operated in the Galilee close to Jesus's hometown of Nazareth and there is one archaeological site associated with him a place called Gamla gamla was a center of revolt before and after Jesus thirty seven years after the crucifixion it was utterly destroyed by the Romans never to be resettled simcha is here with archaeologist danny sion to see if there is any gabriel like stone dating to the pre jesus judah revolt immediately inside the gate they come across signs of the final destruction essentially you guys were the first to come in here since the destruction of some of 2,000 years ago that is correct the general of the Roman armies came here leading three legions three full legions is no less than thirty thousand people and then they brought up the siege machines and battering rams and they used artillery barrage to bombard the city with ballista bows here's an example of one such ballista ball this guy weighs about five kilos these things are coming raining down on your hair exactly exactly how many have you found of these two thousand two thousand yes in addition to the ballistas they used arrows we found at Gamla sixteen hundred arrowheads which is probably more than all the arrowhead finds in all of Europe put together but simcha is interested in earlier artifacts is there anything here related to the would-be Messiah called Judah of Galilee as it turns out in the period between Judas revolt and final destruction of gamla in 67 ad the people came back and rebuilt their city except for one area which they left untouched simcha and Danny had they're now looking for signs of the Messianic leader called Judah so what exactly are we looking at here sometimes round about the death of King Herod this area was completely and totally abandoned so let me get this straight this was a living breathing place and then suddenly you know like a volcanic eruption it comes to a grinding halt that is correct but the bigger enigma is why nobody came back afterwards because life went on around this area people living right around right around could it be that this place the were standing is actually a since a monument to the revolt at the time of Judah the timing is right with the death of Herod and the reason that people lived around it but didn't enter it is because so many people died here they didn't want to go into what in essence was a graveyard that is certainly acceptable acceptable proposition simcha is convinced that Judah the Messianic leader who led the revolution left such an impression on the people of Galilee that sections of their towns were left as permanent memorials but no Gabriel like inscriptions have been found in gamma so this leaves Simcoe only one candidate for the Messiah before Jesus Simon of Perea Korea is located on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea it is here that the most famous writings ever found were unearthed they are called the Dead Sea scrolls and are housed in a special Museum in Jerusalem discovered in 1948 the more than 2,000 year old documents are the oldest biblical texts ever found when scholars first studied the Gabriel inscription they were struck by the fact that it looked like a Dead Sea scroll on a stone the similarities between the scrolls and the Gabriel inscription are impressive both are written in ink on both the text is written in two columns and both have the Hebrew letters suspended from the upper guidelines all this suggests that the stone like the scrolls originates from the shores of the Dead Sea so in search of a Gabriel like stone in the area of Perea simcha travels here to meet with archaeologist Konstantinos Politis who's been digging in this area for 20 years well this is our dig house for the last 20 years so we've been our goodies in here too I'm excited about seeing the goodies please afternoon wow talk about jitty's museums have this much well this is gonna go into the museum but for the moment it's in our storage pottery mosaics human bodies in the background the experience yeah there's about 50 bodies back there 50 maybe more among the artifacts unearthed by Politis simcha is struck by ancient Jewish and Christian gravestones reminiscent of the Gabriel inscription but these don't have writings however Politis has a lot more artifacts in his overflowing archaeological workplace but like these for instance so what is this it's a marker above of the burial simcha now understands that Gabriel like stones can be great markers but everything Politis has shown him is inscribed not painted and written in Greek the Gabriel inscription is written in he well let's see what we've got under here we've been here for a while but look at that my goodness I have dust bunnies under my bed we can pull out some of them there you go that's it that's a Jewish faded but this one is Hebrew Politis now shows simcha several Gabriel like Hebrew stones it's a tradition of writing in paint directly on a stone without engraving and it seems to be more common amongst the Jewish ones we're here for a reason I think the Gabriel inscription seems to come from this area we know that in the Dead Sea area there is this is a tradition of writing painting letters on on stone it's not unlikely that the Gabriel inscription could also be coming from this area as opposed to other Eastern desert areas [Music] by tracing the stone to Perea the investigation seems to have linked the dying and resurrecting Messiah with Simon of Perea the man who may have inspired Jesus only a few kilometers from where Politis has found his Gabriel like stones is the exact area where Simon began his revolution were in an area called Milan called Berea which means in Greek beyond beyond the river the Jordan River how does this relate to Simon of Perea well this is the land that he was in and behind us we have this town of Maharis which is where he was living a Roman Byzantine early Christian town very similar to some of the buildings that have been built here same stones that have been reused here same type of architecture more or less so basically when we talk about Simon of Perea he might have lived in this village and he might have lived in a house that looked not much different than that oh yes very much so when Simon started his campaign he seized this area first it's it's a natural strategic point so if you start a revolution this is a good place to start it it's defended naturally and you have a very good viewpoint right across the Dead Sea to Judea so yes you read in Josephus that Simon of Pereira led a revolt that it was crushed it's one thing when you actually see you know troughs mills houses when you connect with the everyday life of human existence to think of how it looked like or felt like when people were killed and sold into slavery and raped and crucified there's an emotional connection for me the evidence is mounting that Simon is the Messiah memorialized on the stone and the man who may have inspired Jesus but if the Gabriel stone did come from pariah how did it get to the West simcha now goes inside an illegal Jordanian antiquities market to find out in 2007 professor Israel Knohl drew the attention of scholars from around the world to a remarkable inscription painted on stone that refers to a messiah that dies and is resurrected the writing style seems to suggest a time before Jesus the stone also talks about three shepherds possibly three revolutionary leaders that instigate a revolution around the time of Jesus's birth the archaeological trail has led us to one of them Simon of Perea modern-day Jordan he was a would-be Messiah that died around 37 years before Jesus's crucifixion but before we conclude that it is Simon and that he is indeed the model for Jesus we have to make sure that we understand how a stone that originated in Perea Jordan made its way into the modern Western antiquities market if he can trace the Gabriel inscription back to the antiquities market in Perea simcha will be closer to linking the Messiah celebrated on the stone to the revolutionary leader called Simon of Perea here we are we're surrounded by literally hundreds of thousands of Rob doubt tubes and if you look at the entire area the whole hill above us all those dimples all those holes on the side of the hill those are Rob cartoons looters they come at night and they're digging quickly but if that hole could have several tombs underneath there and it's basically people who live around here the people are living on top of the cemeteries of that period underneath the houses when they dig the foundations they found these things and then when they sell one or two they see they make some money they maybe just walk a few hundred yards right here and dig it up and sell some more exactly they get what a hundred bucks they get whatever they can get they might get ten dollars or they might get a thousand but usually we're talking about small amounts compared to what the middlemen are getting because the middleman is the one who sells it to some gets out of the country so gets out of the country illegally he connects with the art markets in London in Switzerland in New York and and then he the price goes up astronomically [Music] how does the market work if the Gabriel stone was dug up in Jordan how exactly did it end up in the living room of a collector for an antiquity to be legally sold it needs to have been dug up by an archaeologist and its authenticity needs to be verified as simcha has discovered there is a vast underground Commerce in illegal antiquities looters outnumber archaeologists and regularly dig up ancient artifacts then sell them to dealers on the black market our team now hooks up with one of those dealers transactions like this one take place in secret locations as no one wants to be identified with this kind of illegal business how much for this 10,000 after buying artifacts from looters dealers then sell their wares to collectors and tourists but the whole thing is illegal 21,000 years this works for small souvenirs but what about more significant artifacts like the Gabriel stone which fetches substantial price on the illegal market to find out how the stone might have been smuggled out of Jordan simcha heads back to Israel to see tromo Messiah the world's leading collector of biblical antiquities messiahs personal collection rivals some of the most notable museums in the world these cases hold just a fraction of the thousands of pieces he is purchased simcha is astonished to discover that moussaieff's collection also includes stones like the one Politis showed him in Jordan the kind that bear a striking resemblance to the Gabriel inscription yes no it's amazing though they look to be all about the same thickness and they're rough on the back this is exactly as DiCaprio moussaieff's stones come from pariah once again suggesting that painted Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions are unique to the region he bought them from a now deceased dealer named rahani but how do dealers get large looted pieces out of Jordan and into buyers hands forty-five years a piece like this right some guy digs it on the ground he gets it he paid off people in the airline yes yeah and that's how it got to London yeah and then he comes straight to you yeah since rouhani was the address for high-end archaeology that originated in Perea and messiah new rahani for 45 years simcha decides to take a chance okay so what I want to know is this did you ever encounter a piece much bigger three feet high the one that was recently published I saw it it is in Subic honey showed it to you surely showed me why didn't you buy it because he asked me such a big price how much did he ask for $200,000 $200,000 but what would you have been prepared to pay at that time and it ended in 50 you would have paid a hundred hundred fifty thousand yeah no more sin cos now unraveled many of the stone secrets the writing style the archeology and the way the stone appeared on the antiquities market all point to pariah as its place of origin simcha has also discovered that a rebel named Simon came from this area and that his followers thought he was a messiah Israel Canole believes that he has found strong textual evidence suggesting that Simon's followers were the first to claim that their leader rose from the dead the argument centers on a word mentioned on the stone that is meaningless to anyone except a biblical scholar the word is Dolman which means done but Canole points out that every biblical reference to Doman means one thing only rotting flesh Samson domina boatswain cleans of princess and he decomposed in a gorge because those who have killed him did not let his body to be buried around the time of Jesus the story of a stone seems to fit Simon and no one else Simon's story goes like this at first Simon was successful he defeated a Roman garrison and crowned himself Messiah the Romans went after him with a vengeance and they chased Simon into a paren gully like this one after a bloody battle they decapitated him to further demoralize his followers they didn't allow them to bury his body this is the very story Canole believes he has decoded on the stone but really this makes sense I can just see a battle right they can come in here a few people can can hold off a lot of people but they can get surrounded so the leader wants to get a little bit of a better position right he runs up a place like this he's chased he's literally met he's surrounded from that side he's decapitated you know he he he falls he dies in a place like this you know and then you know this body is all over the place and then it's easy to guard so that the followers can't come to even bury their dead lying down here turn into town Domon this word is used several times in the Bible where somebody is not allowed to be buried his bodies stays outside and rats like this animals that we see here but if Canole is right and Simon is the man memorialized on the stone why would his followers continue to call him a messiah after his violent death after all a messiah was supposed to defeat his enemies not be defeated by them it is at this point that Connells detective work becomes most controversial we've been investigating an ancient Hebrew inscription written around the time of Jesus's birth that tells the story of a christ-like figure who comes back to life three days after he's killed our sleuthing has to a man called Simon of Perea Simon's followers believed he was the long prophesied Savior sent to freedom from Roman rule every text in the Hebrew Bible that talks about this king is coming he does two things he executes justice and righteousness in the land and then he goes and conquers basically the entire world and brings it all under the rule of God I mean this is the Messiah this is his like his resume his job description Josephus the Jewish historian tells us that the reason Herod fortified these desert places is he feared more than anything that a native King might rise in Perea in Judea in Galilee and have some sort of claim to the throne now this is very interesting well what could some peasant like a Jesus figure even before Jesus we've got a number of people that come along they don't have an army they don't have power they don't have the wealth or the influence of Herod he could order a thousand troops at any moment to do anything what they have is this pedigree if anybody is at a Senate of King David and begins to get the religious call to say I think I'm the one there's the potential for hundreds of thousands of Jews to flock to this person and make him King thousands of people did flock to Simon signed he was crowned king and declared Messiah Redeemer in Greek he was called Christ at first Simon seemed to be a God chosen winner he led his followers to victory but then the Roman army defeated him decapitated him and left him to rot in the desert at that point according to Canole Simon's followers did something revolutionary even after death they continued to call him Christ so actually out of the gravest crisis a no idea comes an idea that see the suffering and the dying of the Messiah as a essential part of the process of salvation change that's right yes of course in the next generation this ideology will be picked up by Jesus it will be a leading ideology for his messianic activity and later on the Roman Emperor was defeated by this ideology so it seems that Simon's followers turned this defeat into victory the death of their Messiah they said did not disqualify him in fact his suffering proved that he was the Christ according to Canole this theological spin was made possible by arguing that all along scripture predicted not one but two messiahs a winner from the line of David and the suffering servant from the line of Joseph if Canole is right the Gabriel inscription which is at least four hundred years older than the earliest New Testament text is the earliest document ever found mentioning a suffering Savior now we have the perfect the smoking gun the smoking gun the Messiah son of David and the Messiah son of Joseph appearing in the same line in this document to massage to messiahs the triumphal Messiah and the suffering Messiah are both here and it's the earliest reference this is the earliest reference to a messiah son of Joseph the suffering dying and rising design pretty revolution we've got a text now that shows us this notion of a suffering Messiah who's raised from the dead is already being developed within Judaism so it's not something Jesus came up with it's not something the disciples came up with it's something that is beginning to develop out of the hard experience of the Jewish people which is everyone we put our hope in is killed why is this happening to us but if Simon was the original model for Jesus this still leaves one important mystery to be solved how could Jesus have been influenced by Simon after all one died in what is now Jordan and the other lived a month long journey away in the Galilee it seems that the Gabriel inscription has been decoded it was probably a gravestone that marked the place where Simon of Perea was cut down by his Roman enemies a reference to three shepherds or messianic figures lid simcha to three revolutionary leaders that died at the time of Jesus's birth a reference to one of them decomposing in a gully implies that the would-be Messiah was Simon of Perea a further reference to the angel Gabriel suggests that Simon's followers believed that he was resurrected three days after his death finally a reference to a suffering servant seems to be the first text ever found describing the long-awaited Messiah not as a winner but as a loser all these clues taken together point to Simon of Perea as the original model for Jesus of Nazareth we have a new insight with this Gabriel text it kind of nudges just toward the idea that Jesus before he dies is already anticipating not because God told him in a miracle or because he's the son of God and therefore he knew everything he's struggling wondering where do I fit in what is my role what did the prophecies say about someone like me and he begins to talk in these riddles that's throwing everybody off and he takes his inner group aside they have a talk about is he the one and he basically admits yes you've got it I am the one they're thinking oh then we're gonna march down to Jerusalem take over armies of angels will command and it'll all be over and he says no no no I'm gonna be spit upon and beaten and persecuted and killed and then here's the key and after three days I'll live now where is that coming from I think it's probably unlikely that he took a little trip to Perea and read our actual stone and thought oh that you know I'll be like Simon but what the text tells us is these ideas are in the air they're being discussed we're out in the wilderness out by the Dead Sea out in the place where messiahs come [Music] but how would Jesus who lived in northern Israel have been influenced by Simon who lived in Perea modern-day Jordan I mean the two are 130 miles apart a month-long journey in Jesus's time well it turns out that in precisely the same location where Simon lived and died Jesus's cousin John the Baptist lived and was beheaded in order to fill in the last piece of the puzzle simcha travels with Israel Canole to Mackerras and pariah where John the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod the Great's son Herod Antipas like Simon and Jesus John the Baptist was preaching a religious revival that set him on a collision course with the Roman authorities and it is here in this stronghold but John the Baptist lost his life if we are asking ourself how is it possible that Jesus got this ideology who was the link how was the connection made between Simon of Perea Simon of Perea and Jesus because when Simon was killed Jesus was probably one year old two years old he couldn't talk to me of course so the ideal solution would be either John the Baptist himself of or other people around him John the Baptist had a large following many thought that John was the long-awaited Messiah but John seems to have deferred to Jesus he even baptized him Canole believes that John who spent time in Perea must have known Simon and believed in him perhaps after Simon's death the Baptist brought Jesus into the fold when Jesus came to John he could listen and hear this ideology and be influenced by it so really what we're talking about is that this world-changing idea of a suffering Messiah a suffering dying and rising Messiah was born here and that the link between this idea that grew up around Simon of Perea and Jesus may have been Jesus as cousin John the Baptist who was beheaded right here yes you gotta ask what Shepherd or Messiah was left to rot and die in the crevice of a rock around the time of the death of Herod I mean it's rare that we can do this we can pretty well say I think this is this Shimon Simon and professor Israel Knohl has solved a mystery I think at this moment of 4 BCE the Romans out okay we crush this rebellion we kill the messianic leaders Simon is dead in Transjordan in a narrow Valley there at the end but this will take time Roman will be conquered by disbelief by the followers of disbelief the Jewish Messiah was that the Jewish Messiah transforming to the Christian Messiah will defeat the Roman Empire [Music] some 2,000 years ago Simon's followers came up with a revolutionary world-altering idea namely that a defeated Messiah is not a false messiah they argued that the defeat the suffering the death and the resurrection of the Messiah is an essential part of redemption this idea that grew up around Simon in a desert like this is still celebrated in every Church with Jesus is worshipped the very seldom do you have a text that should just make front-page news and this text should it's a absolutely pregnant moment of time where something is coming to birth that has never been thought of before and we've got a text boy it's amazing

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Keywords: secrets of christianity full series, secrets of christianity, Simcha Jacobovici, decoding the ancients, decoding the ancients full episodes, history documentary, history series, christianity exposed, christianity, christianity explained, christianity documentary, untold history of christianity, was jesus real, the real story of jesus, jesus documentary, jesus life documentary, The Messiah Before Jesus, secrets of christianity 101, secret of christianity 101, jesus christ

Id: 5g13jQYOzYo

Length: 44min 3sec (2643 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 24 2019