The Jesus Papers

Notice that the cover of the book depicts Jesus being taken down from the cross, and the blurb says “Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History.”

The natural assumption, at least in my mind, is that the entire book is about some kind of cover-up about Jesus not dying on the cross after all.

Wrong.

That's what the book claims, but that part isn't really that very big in the book. The majority of the book deals with various forms of what we call “mystery religions” and their rituals. There are entire chapters which have virtually nothing to do with the “Jesus didn't die on the cross” theme, but deal instead with things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, illicit buying-and-selling of such types of scrolls, and the difficulty of real scholars ever getting to see such artifacts.

The book does have some very interesting information on the political situation of the Jews at the time of Christ, in specific reference to the zealot groups and what they were doing and what they (apparently) expected of Jesus.

The thing is, in this type of a claim, the burden of proof lies on the person making the claim. In other words, the authors should be able to provide reasonable proof that there was some kind of conspiracy to keep Jesus from dying on the cross, to get him down while he was still alive, and then get him to safety.

“Possibilities” are not proof. Making assumptions is not proof. Even stating that such-and-such a document “proves” that Jesus was alive in 45 AD is not proof, since no photos of the documents are ever provided. The reader is expected to take the author's word that such documents exist.

Some of the things the book does cover include (I will only state the points; the authors provide a lot of information to back up each point):

The origin of the idea that the Pope is infallible. (A political move on the part of the Pope Pius IX and his supporters).

The two men who were crucified along with Jesus were not robbers; they were Jewish zealots, the idea that they were robbers being based on poor translation from the original sources.

The placement of Jesus between the two men indicates that Jesus was also considered a Jewish zealot.

Galilee was a hotbed of the zealot movement.

Jesus had two royal blood lines in him. Through his father, Jesus was of the Line of David. Through his mother, he was of the line of Aaron, the high priest.

This would have made Jesus both a king and a spiritual leader, and the zealots wanted to have him lead them.

Jesus was crucified in 36 AD.

Another name for Jesus at the time was “Chrestus,” and the Romans had records of such a man being tried and executed for political crimes.

A lot of what is in the Bible made it there through political considerations moreso than spiritual considerations, which is why the Gnostic writings are excluded from the Bible.

Throughout history Popes worked on centralizing their power over the Church. This included the destruction of documents that threatened any of the “official” church beliefs.

The Cathars were a target of hatred on the part of the “official” church.

The Inquisition still exists, but under a different name. It was renamed the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and the present Pope was the leader of that office for a while.

The Knights Templar were also objects of the Inquisitions hatred.

The “virgin birth” was not part of the original writings, but the writings were interpreted to mean that there was a virgin birth.

Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.

When Jesus made his remark about paying taxes to Rome (pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's, in relation to the coin he was shown), the zealots lost faith in Jesus since they expected him to fully oppose Roman rule. So they decided to get Jesus out of the way until they could find someone else to lead them.

Pilate tried Jesus to satisfy the Zealots. (Pilate's own political position vis-a-vis Rome wasn't all that good). Knowing that Rome would have been upset if Jesus had actually died (since Jesus basically supported Rome in a way since he said Roman taxes should be paid), he arranged with Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin and friend of Jesus, to have Jesus taken down before he died and then have him taken to a cave where he could be treated with medicines.

The sponge soaked with vinegar that was offered Jesus while he was on the cross was not filled with vinegar, but with a drug that would cause unconsciousness and make it appear that Jesus was dead. That would prevent his legs from being broken (to cause quick death), and would set it up so he could be brought down from the cross before he actually would die.

Jesus and his wife left the area to go to Egypt where they could study at a Jewish temple there.

The rest of the book deals with Egyptian spiritual mysteries, how Jesus studied those, and has more of the history of the various scrolls.

As you can see from the listing, the idea of Jesus not dying on the cross is not something discussed until well into the book. The vast majority of the rest of the book could have been published under a different title such as “Ancient Initiation Rites and Journeying to the Other Side” or some such title. There's also too much space taken dealing with the handling of ancient documents and how many of these were destroyed by the Church. It's an important point to make, but it shouldn't take as many pages to do it as the book devoted to the concept.

Other than the material on the zealot movement in Jewish culture, the book is pretty much boring, retreading ground that has already been covered and not really adding anything new. Assumptions do not equal fact. Granted, proving that Jesus did not die on the cross but was saved from it by a Pilate-Joseph of Arimathea conspiracy is probably impossible, but if the documents to prove that have not really been found (or at least made available to the general public), then the book is unable to prove it's “cover-up” concept.