EPILOGUE

previous

This article has tried to take some distance from several dogmatic religious events in order to make place for a Jesus that fits better into the typical mystical messianic tradition that was common during his life.

The chapter on Biblical numbers clearly demonstrates that like the Old Testament, the four gospels make a substantial use of symbolic numbers. The origin of this symbolism is Jewish religious tradition, which explains why in Roman Christianity, this mystical symbolic layer gradually lost importance. By now it has become clear that this number symbolism is in reality a fundamental part of the whole Christian message. The mystic messianic approach of Judaism fits much better into the historic context of Jesus life than the by now accepted Christian tradition does.  

When Jewish based Christianity became the official Roman religion, its religious basis was thoroughly revaluated and censored and stripped of much of its mystical components in order to be able to become a main stream state religion. The gospels that survived are narrative and emphasize on the political message, claiming that the guilt of Jesus' death lays with the Jews and not the Romans.

What is not written in the gospels is that the Israel of Jesus days was a melting pot of hundreds of years of exposure to all kinds of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures. The religious / philosophical message of the Hellenistic cultures was mathematically orientated with a special interest in irrational numbers, while the mainstream Pythagorean teachings focalized on the religious value of geometric proportions and mathematical progressions.

The Jewish religious tradition of those days had great interest in the mystical layer of religious texts, all in context of the concept of Messianic salvation. Extensive religious sectarian groups (like the ones that have become known through the Qumran scrolls) were occupied by their calculations of the expected Messiah, because of which there was even disagreement about the right calendar to use.

More than any other people, the Jews have always had a special interest in the phenomenon of time and calendars. This interest resulted from the six day creation story and the Sabbath service, the almost impossible task to match the lunar and the solar calendar with the many religious feasts of the year and the strict religious obligations that are connected to the timely celebration of these celebrations and finally, the long awaited arrival of the Messiah.

Besides their religious interest in the phenomena of time, Judaism has always been interested in the hidden mystical value of numbers. The later mystical Cabalistic tradition was a crystallization of a theme that is as old as the Jewish people. Contemporaries of Jesus such as Menachem the Essene are associated with early Cabalism. Apart from Cabalism, Jews and Greek practiced "gematria", or the conversion of words in numeric values and vice versa. Gematria was a common practice since both the Jewish as the Greek language used the same characters of the alphabet to express both letters as numbers.

This was the scenery of Jesus' life and death. It adds meaning to the many references to number symbolism that he gives in the gospels, passages that in later Christianity gradually lost their meaning. Most likely the original Christian teaching before the Nicaean censorship, must have had an even stronger mystical symbolic contents. 

The fact that Jesus' teachings had a secret "initiate" component is beyond any doubt. Jesus mentions this himself in the gospels, and besides that, it was the most normal thing to do in those days. A religious sect without secret teachings for the initiated was simply inconceivable in those days. This tradition was proceeded after Jesus' death by his early followers that used a variety of secret symbols such as the fish, peacock, chrismon etc. In later days these symbols became publicly known, but initially they most definitely served as secret recognition signs.

These explanations focus on Jesus as a historical person, trying to fit him into the common mystical messianic tradition of those days. However many other scenario's remain just as plausible. It is very well possible that Jesus' death was not at all planned and desired as the gospels want us to believe. The possibility remains that the Roman occupants saw in him nothing more than a potential rebel leader and crucified him for no other reason. Historically speaking it is highly unlikely that this crucifixion has ever taken place during the Pesach feast. It is even very questionable whether the Jewish religious council played any role in the whole event. The gospels claim that the Jews accused Jesus of sacrilege, but if that would have been the case, the Jews themselves had the authority to execute Jesus by stoning him to death. It is not at all true that the Jews did not have authority to execute people. They were allowed to do so for ordinary and religious crimes. The same fate overcame Andreas, one of the early Christians, who became the first Christian martyr because he was stoned to death by the Jewish Christian prosecutors such as the later apostle Paul.

Whatever happened or never happened, Jesus' death must have been a substantial blow for his followers. For the years after his death the first Christians kept on expecting his immediate return, especially during the hard times of the war against the Romans and the subsequent destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. It was only through the application of substantial eschatological resurrection number symbolism of the gospels that Jesus' departure could be integrated in a more appropriate historical time frame.

This powerful symbolism was needed in order to express the unique eschatological value of Jesus death and resurrection. It was simply not appropriate that he would have died and resurrected on some ordinary days of the week. As such the narrative passion story of the gospels became the nucleus of Christian theology, and considering the importance of the message, some very clever minds came up with the most intriguing system of religious symbolism that was ever invented.

Whether the symbolic meaning of the resurrection numbers was borrowed from an existing messianic tradition or maybe even authored by Jesus or his followers; we will most probably never get the final answer. Too much material has gone lost during the first centuries of Christianity so the only hope left is that new archeological findings will be able to provide more answers to the many interesting questions that remain unsolved.