by Tony Bushby

excerpts from

The Bible Fraud

The Pacific Blue Group Inc.

 

 

 In the opening sentence of a New Testament parable, Jesus stated:

A man of noble birth was on a long journey abroad, to have himself appointed king, and return. (Luke 19:12)

Herein lies part of a profound Gospel truth revealing the substance of historical information that the church has strived for 2000 years to conceal. In this tale of long ago misconceptions and mistaken identities must be clarified so that the original story may be seen to rest upon a true and sure foundation. For this purpose we begin with the examination of church writings purporting to record the birth of Jesus Christ.


The Gospels of Matthew and Luke stated that Jesus Christ was the first born of Mary and Joseph and he had four younger brothers and at least two sisters (Mark 6:3). Roman Catholics are obliged to hold the opinion that the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ were the children of Joseph by a former marriage.

 

This conclusion originally stemmed from the Gospel of James (the Protevanglium) that related to the age of Joseph at the birth of Jesus. However, it was clearly recorded that Joseph had sex with Mary after the birth of Jesus. The statement in the Gospel of Matthew that Joseph 'knew her not until she had born a son' (Matt. 1:25) eliminated the church's claim that Mary was a perpetual virgin. From the statements in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew it was clear that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were subsequent children of Mary in the fullest sense.


Joseph returned to Galilee with the intention of marrying Mary. The Gospels according to Matthew and Luke clearly explained that they were 'betrothed' before Joseph's departure. This was the equivalent of being `engaged' in modern-day terminology. However, upon his return some months later, it was plainly apparent that Mary `was with child' (Luke 2:5) and it 'could not be hid from Joseph'.

 

The Gospel of Matthew elaborated extensively upon the feelings of Joseph when he saw the violated condition of his bride-to-be. He was uneasy and being unwilling to defame her, he privately discussed ending their engagement (Matt. 1:19). From the description in the Gospels, it was clear that Joseph was not the biological father of Mary's child. So, who was?
 


The evidence of the Rabbis


The Jewish records of the Rabbis are of extreme importance in determining Gospel origins and the value of the church presentation of the virgin birth story of Jesus Christ. A common appellation for Jesus in the Talmud was Yeshu'a ben Panthera, an allusion to the widespread Jewish belief during the earliest centuries of the Christian era that Jesus was the result of an illegitimate union between his mother and a Roman soldier named Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera.


The Talmud enshrines within its pages Jewish oral law. It is divided into two parts, the Mishna and the Gemara. The first discusses such subjects as festivals and sacred things. The Gemara, is basically a commentary on these subjects. When the Talmud was written is not known. Some authorities suggest a date of 150-160, around the same time the Christian Gospels began to emerge, while others say 450.


The Talmud writers mentioned Jesus' name twenty times and quite specifically documented that he was born an illegitimate son of a Roman soldier called Panthera, nicknamed the "Panther". Panthera's existence was confirmed by the discovery of a mysterious tombstone at Bingerbrück in Germany. The engraving etched in the headstone read:

Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera, an archer, native of Sidon, Phoenicia, who in 9AD was transferred to service in Rhineland (Germany). 1

This inscription added fuel to the theory that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary and the soldier Panthera. Classical scholar Professor Morton Smith of the Columbia University USA, described the tombstone as possibly `our only genuine relic of the holy family.' 2 In many Jewish references, Jesus was often referred to as 'ben Panthera', 'ben' meaning, 'son of'. However cautious one ought to be in accepting anything about Jesus from Jewish sources, in the matter of Jesus 'ben Panthera', the writers seem more consistent than the men we now call the church fathers.


Scholars, for centuries, have discussed at length why Jesus was so regularly called ben Panthera. Adamantius Origen, an early Christian historian and church father (185-251), recorded the following verses about Mary from the research records of a highly regarded Second Century historian and author named Celsus (c. 178):

Mary was turned out by her husband, a carpenter by profession, after she had been convicted of unfaithfulness. Cut off by her spouse, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard; that Jesus, on account of his poverty was hired out to go to Egypt; that while there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing.3

Later, in passage 1:32, Origen supported the Jewish records and confirmed that the paramour of the mother of Jesus was a Roman soldier called Panthera, a name he repeated in verse 1:69. Sometime during the 17th Century, those sentences were erased from the oldest Vatican manuscripts and other codices under church control. 4


The traditional church writings of St Epiphanius, the Bishop of Salamis (315-403) again confirmed the ben Panthera story and his information was of a startling nature. This champion of Christian orthodoxy and saint of Roman Catholicism frankly stated:

Jesus was the son of a certain Julius whose surname was Panthera. 5

This was an extraordinary declaration simply recorded in ancient records as accepted church history. The ben Panthera legend was so widespread that two early stalwarts of the Christian church inserted the name in the genealogies of Jesus and Mary as a matter of fact.


Enlarging on that statement, this passage from the Talmud:

Rabbi Shiemon ben Azzai has said: I found' in Jerusalem a book of genealogies; therein was written that Such-an-one (Jesus) is the bastard son of an adulteress. 6

'Such-an-one' was one of the well-known substitutes for Jesus in the Talmud, as has been proved and admitted on either side. Shiemon ben Azzai flourished at the end of the First and beginning of the Second Century. He was one of four famous Rabbis, who according to Talmudic tradition 'entered Paradise'. He was a Chassid (the pious Jews of Palestine), most probably an Essene and remained a celibate and rigid ascetic until his death.


The story of Mary's pregnancy by a Roman soldier also appeared in the sacred book of the Moslems, the Koran. It stated that 'a full-grown man' forced his attentions on Mary, and in her fear of the disgrace that would follow she left the area and bore Jesus in secret. This story was supported in the Gospel of Luke, with the description of the departure of Joseph and Mary from their home prior to the birth. Rape was a common event in Palestine during the Roman occupation and soldiers were notorious for their treatment of young women. It would be unthinkable for Mary to admit such an event had occurred for, under the Law of Moses, a betrothed virgin who had sex with any man during the period of her betrothal, was to be stoned to death by the men of the city (Deut. 22:21). Simply put, Mary faced the death penalty unless she could prove her innocence.
7

 


The mother's name


There was another, lesser-known name Jesus was called during those early years and that was 'Yeshu'a ben Stada' (Son of Stada). This name was recorded in the records of the Sanhedrin and also in the Talmud. What can also be found in the Gemara, and has embarrassed Christian authorities for centuries, was this:

Ben Stada was Ben Panthera, Rabbi Chisda said; The husband was Stada, the lover Panthera. Another said; the husband was Paphos ben Jehuda; Stada was his mother ... and she was unfaithful to her husband. 8

These apparently contradictory assertions can be ironed out when read in context. In summary, Stada was Yeshu'a (Jesus) ben Panthera's mother. The Gemera goes on to record that Yeshu'a ben Panthera 'was hanged on the day before the Passover'. That is to say, apparently, that after stoning, ben Panthera's body was hung or exposed on a vertical stake. Crucifixion was an unused mode of execution amongst the Jews who favored stoning as the main form of capital punishment. To shorten the cruelty of death by stoning, the victim was first rendered unconscious by a soporific drink, and subsequently the stoned body was exposed on a vertical stake as a warning to others.
 


They found an old book
The name 'ben Stada' given to Jesus in the Talmud, was found paralleled in the ancient Mehgheehlla Scroll that was discovered by Russian physician D.B. de Waltoff near Lake Tiberius in 1882 and 'is now called simply the Safed Scroll. In this old text, there were two brothers called Yeshai and Judas ben Halachmee who were the illegitimate twin sons born of a fifteen year old girl called Stadea. The closeness of the name Stada in the Talmud to the Stadea in the Safed Scroll is extraordinary and the slight difference in spelling can be explained by variations in translations. The interesting point here is that the name ben Halachmee was the name of Stadea's later husband, not the biological father of her sons.

 

Unfortunately, no mention was made of the real father's name but ben Halachmee was the name given to Stadea's illegitimate twin boys. According to the Safed Scroll, Yeshai and his brother Judas ben Halachmee were taken in, raised and educated by the religious order of Essene monks. The Essenes were a perennial Jewish colony that particularly flourished in Judea for some centuries previous to the time ascribed to the New Testament stories. Subsequently one of the boys became a student of Rabbi Hillel's school of philosophy and the other became the leader of the Essenes. An older Essene named Joseph was assigned as Yeshai's 'religious father' and guardian.


The Safed Scroll suggested that eventually, Yeshai ben Halachmee's outspoken religious views angered the Jewish priests. He was tried by a Roman court on a charge of inciting the people to rebel against the Roman Government. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but escaped, left the area and traveled to India.


The Mehgheehlla Scroll mirrored aspects of the hidden story in the Gospels and provided external evidence that the conclusion reached in this volume was known in ancient tradition.
 


Who was Stada/Stadea


One of the most popular aspects of etymology is the history of names those words or phrases which uniquely identify persons, animals, places, concepts or things. The earlier forms of a name are often uncertain and different dialect pronunciations have led to divergent spellings of the same name. The social pressure to use a standard spelling did not emerge until the 18th Century and earlier writers saw no problem presenting a person's name in a variety of ways. In one study, for example, over 130 variants of the name 'Mainwaring' were found among the parchments belonging to that family.


Many Hebrew names in the Old Testament were believed to bear a special significance, as originally individual subjects were called by a name expressive of some characteristic, e.g. Edom, red; Esau, hairy; Jacob, supplanter and Sarai (Sara) from the base word, 'Sharat'. A similar concept applied in Jewish writings and for a long time confused researchers.
9 Like Roman and Hebrew tradition, the names of the characters 'often appear in distorted form in Rabbinic literature' and were sometimes an attempt to disguise their true personality. 10 This type of understanding provided the key to researchers that enabled them to unlock the true essence of what was really being relayed in ancient writings.


'Names research' is an open-ended and complex domain, and one which is particularly greedy of the researcher's time. In any study on the New Testament, however, it must be remembered that the first Gospels were written in Hebrew
11 and this was a vital point in determining who Stadea really was. 'The name (Stadea) has various forms and may have been borrowed from a fanciful name that meant a scholar; or had a regional identity like Stabiae or Statila, or a woman of good family.'' 12 According to Jewish writings, Stadea was 'the descendent of princes and rulers' 13 and her royal heritage provided a clue to her real name. The Talmud further stated that Yeshu'a (Jesus) ben Panthera's mother 'was also called Miriam, yes but she was nicknamed Stada ... Stat-da, this one has turned away, being unfaithful [Statda] to her husband'. 14


St Jerome explained the difficulty that he had in translating the earliest Gospels into Latin
15 and added that the `original Hebrew' versions of Matthew's Gospel and the earliest Luke Gospels were written in the Chaldaic language but with Hebrew letters. The `original Hebrew' version of the name 'Mary' was 'Mariamne'. 16 Therefore, 'Mary' in the English-language Gospels of today was originally written 'Mariamne' in the Hebrew versions and was sometimes translated 'Miriam'. 17
 


Mary unknown in early church history


What was actually recorded of Mary/Mariamne in the only accepted Christian writings provided scant information indeed about the woman the church now call the mother-of-God. In the Gospels she was rarely mentioned. In fact, she was not mentioned by name in the oldest version of the Mark Gospel in the oldest Bibles. Nor was she mentioned in the oldest version of the John Gospel. The church said, 'the reader of the Gospels is at first surprised to find so little about Mary ... this obscurity has been studied at length'.
18

 

Both the Gospels of Mark and John first introduced Jesus as an adult. Only in contrived narratives does Mary play an important role in the biblical texts and, excluding these, she was mentioned only briefly on three occasions. The church presbyters were also silent on Mary. There was nothing recorded of her external to the church for more than four centuries after the time she was said to have lived. She had no ancestry or background except in spurious apocrypha.


The earliest documented reference to Mary was found in the Mark Gospel of the Sinai Bible (Mark 3:32).This narrative referred to her as simply the earthly mother of several sons and daughters. The reference was actually about a group of people who addressed Jesus and said, 'Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you'. Here was a profound truth. Modern Bibles show the three words `and your sisters', to have been removed or indexed to a footnote. From here onwards, Mary almost vanished from the church texts, and apart from an obscure final reference to her in the Acts of the Apostles (1:14) she disappeared forever from the New Testament.


However, when the name `Mary' in the Gospels was replaced with the original Hebrew version, 'Mariamne', an historic aspect arose. Combining the evidence available, the position advanced in this book is that Mary, the mother of Jesus in the Gospels, Stadea of the Jewish writings, and Mariamne of the House of Herod were one and the same person.


At the time of the development of the Gospels, Mariamne was the younger sister of Herodias and the two girls were an integral part of the vast 'family of Herodes' (Herod today). They were the much loved granddaughters of King Herod and he 'cared for them with great devotion'.
19 Their mother, Berenice, later remarried and moved with her teenage daughters to live in Rome, where she gained the friendship of Emperor Augustus. 20


Mariamne and Herodias Herod were of noble birth through King Herod (c. 73-74BC) and his wife, Mariamne I. Mariamne Herod's father was Aristobulus, the son of Herod the Great, and her mother Berenice was the daughter of Herod's sister, Salome. Mariamne also had two brothers named Herod II, king of Chalcis, and Agrippa, who became Agrippa I. King Herod himself descended from a noble line of kings through his Nabatean mother, Cypros of Petra. The Nabateans were a Semitic people and the earliest sources regarded them as Arabs. Today they are generally referred to as Nabatean Arabs. Owing to its secure location, Petra was adopted by the Nabatean kings as their capital city which became incorporated into the Roman Empire in 106. The Nabatean Arabs passed out of history with the advent of Islam.
21 The House of Herod was founded by the marriage of Cypros of Petra to Antipater (Antipas), the Idumean, to whom Cypros bore four sons, Herod being one.


The name Herod subsequently became the title of seven rulers mentioned in the New Testament and in Roman history. King Herod was known to the Romans as 'The Great' but in the eyes of the people over whom he ruled however, he was always known as 'The Impious', despite his costly restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem. In 7BC he strangled to death two of his sons, Aristobulus and Alexander, drawing a comment from Roman Emperor Augustus (27BC-14AD) that it was safer to be one of Herod's pigs than one of his sons.

 

Another son was later born to Herod and, for his safety, his mother dispatched him to the care of her family in Ariminum, a city near Ravenna in Northern Italy. 22 He was Prince Joseph, the Joseph of Arimathea in the Gospels, and he later became the unseen power behind his father's throne. Herod the Great was a Roman citizen, governor of Galilee by 47BC and then King of Judea from 37 to 4BC. He was one of the major figures in politics of Palestine in the early years of the Roman Empire.


Mariamne Herod's ancestors can be traced back on her grandmother's (Mariamne I) side to the Hasmonean 'priest-kings' and 'hereditary priests' from the tribe of Benjamin. She, her sister, and her brothers were descendants of the legitimate Hasmonean dynasty and 'carried the Hasmonean blood'.
23 They also carried the blood of the Nabatean Arabs, so much so that King Aretas IV, who was legally confirmed a Nabatean Arab king by Emperor Augustus 24 divorced his wife to marry Herodias (who died after 41AD) to maintain the Nabatean bloodline, but she declined him. It was Herodias who was involved in the Gospel story of the beheading of John the Baptist, for which she received a level of notoriety and defamation similar to that of Mary Magdalene.


The available records reflect an intricate tangle of marriages, intermarriages and divorces between the Herods and the Romans. In the account of the Gospel of Mark (6:17), for example, Herodias later married Herod Philip I, her own uncle, by whom she had a daughter, Salome. Salome was named after her Hasmodean ancestor Salome Alexandra, herself a priestess-king.
25

 

Later in time, Herod 'Without-land' Antipas apparently fell in love with Herodias and proposed to her. Seeing that his fortunes were rising faster than her husband's, Herodias accepted his hand. She longed for social distinction, and accordingly left her husband and initially entered into an adulteress union with Herod Antipas, who was also her uncle. 26 She was not married to Antipas at this time but married him at a much later stage (c. 38).


When Herodias saw how well her brother Agrippa I had fared in Rome, whence he returned a king, she urged her husband Herod Antipas to go to Caesar and obtain the royal title, for she believed his claim to it was far greater than that of her brother. Antipas was not king, but only Tetrarch of Galilee.
27 Contrary to his better judgment he went, and soon learned that Agrippa I by messengers had accused him before Emperor Caligula of conspiracy against the Romans. The Emperor banished Herod Antipas to Lyons, Gaul (France) in 41 and although he permitted Herodias to return to her home in Rome, she chose to accompany her husband into exile.


It was recorded that the male offspring of the House of Herod were forced to become circumcised Jews in the reign of John Hyrcanus, a Hasmonean of the earlier Maccabean period. In other words, the Herod family adopted the religion of Judaism. The religious movement of the Essenes was also connected to the Hasmonean bloodline through the High Priest, Mattathias, the father of the military king, Judas Maccabeus.


We know that Herod the Great was favorable towards the Essenes, maybe because they made it their invariable practice to refrain from disobedience to the political authority. The Jewish historical writer, Philo, recorded that they had never clashed with any ruler of Palestine, however tyrannical, until his lifetime in the mid first century. This was a passive attitude which could not fail to commend itself to King Herod, and it was reported he even went so far as to exempt the Essenes, like the Pharisees, from the oath of loyalty to himself.


In the reconstruction of the story, and drawing upon the concept of the Safed Scroll, the pregnant Stadea (Mariamne Herod, née Mary) secretly went to one of the Essene communities until the time of the birth, and bore twin boys. Numerous groups of Essenes existed 'all over, as they were a very numerous sect'
28 and were found in secluded country areas as well as cities. Upon the birth of the twins, she then moved into the palace of Emperor Augustus and there she lived until the boys were old enough to receive schooling.

 

It was due to their solidarity and the family affinity that the young Mariamne Herod had her illegitimate twin boys educated within the Essene community. The Essene hierarchy were her blood relatives and expounded similar principles and traditions to the Herodian philosophy. 'They perpetuated their sect by adopting children ... above all, the Essenes were the educators of the nobility, their instruction being varied and extensive. 29

 

To avoid confusion in developing the premise provided in this work, Mary, the mother of Jesus in the New Testament, shall be called Mariamne Herod except when quoting from the Gospels.
 


The Roman father of the twins


As with ancient Hebrew, Christian and Jewish names, it is also difficult to be exactly sure of the real names of many of the Roman characters with which we are dealing and many irregularities arise. The allocation of names was unlike today's Western procedure and a great many were purposely compounded with the names of Caesars, deities, and hybrid variations such as Caracalla, Emperor of Rome 211-217.

 

Caracalla was a name derived from a long tunic worn by the Gauls, which he adopted as his favorite dress after he became emperor. His proper name was M.Aurelius Antoninus. The name Caesar developed from Caesarian, being the nature of the birth of Julius Caesar. Sometimes a new name was afterwards substituted for the original one, just as Plato was originally called Aristocles. The Jewish name of the First Century historian Joseph ben Matthias became Titus Flavius Josephus when he took Roman citizenship late in life.


A popular loan-name among Roman men was Silvanius
30 that developed from the Roman god 'of uncultivated land beyond the boundaries of tillage'. A man with the name of Silvanius was depicted as 'uncanny and dangerous'. In many cases, the name was not given until the person was grown up and was then adapted from personal qualities such as Modestus, for example, and from servile condition Servus, or the name of an historical celebrity, Cornelia being one instance. In another Roman tradition, the name was sometimes a reference to peculiar circumstances at birth: e.g.

  • Lucius-born by day;

  • Manius-born in the morning;

  • Alphus-the first born;

  • Quintusthe fifth born

  • and Decimus-the tenth born.

As a rule, the eldest received the 'proenomen' (Christian name) of his father, and this helps to determine exactly who Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera, as it appears on the headstone at Bingerbrück in Germany, really was.


The name Tiberius Julius is the first part of the full name of Tiberius, Emperor of Rome,
31 the adopted son and heir of Emperor Augustus. Whether Tiberius was a native of Sidon in Phoenicia as recorded on the headstone, is difficult to establish, for there are conflicting references to his birthplace. From a very early age Tiberius' parents were in fear of their lives through the uncertainty of the civil war, where wrong political allegiances could result in an early death.

His childhood and youth were beset with hardships and difficulties, because Claudius Nero and Livia [his parents] took him wherever they went in their flight from Octavius ... He was next hurried all over Sicily ... His parents finally fled to Greece but were still in pursuit ... escaping with him from Sparta at night. 32

The Monumentum Ancrya 33 reported that at one stage the family sailed from Phoenicia to Egypt to avoid persecution. With such persistent pursuers it was probable that the family lived at Sidon in Phoenicia and left when they were found, but this information was not publicly recorded.


The words that are important in establishing whether or not the headstone actually referred to Emperor Tiberius are 'Panthera' and 'Abdes'. In order to understand this inscription, it shall be shown that the headstone was composed well after the time of the events in question and therefore benefited from the hindsight of history. There appeared to be a very deliberate plan in place in the manufacture of this headstone, and whoever was responsible for its construction knew the essence of what is revealed in this book. Its unknown creator encoded vital information in the form of a cipher and anagram, which when decoded revealed the identity of the father of Mariamne Herods' twin boys.


In many cases a name was a reflection of that person's character and that view of ancient understanding can be used to trace an individual's life and illuminate that person's intimate character peculiarities. That was the case with Tiberius Julius' nickname, Panther. Variations were Panter-Panetier Panterer (Roman) which all meant 'adulterer'
34 and Tiberius was a man noted for his sexual excesses. This was an indication of how historical characters received their confusing multiplicity of names, for their names carne to reflect their nature and the events that surrounded their lives.


Not even Tiberius' friends would deny that he often committed adultery, but said in justification that he did so for reasons of state, not simple passion he wanted to discover what his enemies were doing by becoming intimate with their wives or daughters.
35 The reputation of being a womanizer stuck to Tiberius, and as an elderly man he was said to have still harbored 'a passion for deflowering young girls, indulging in his sensual propensities on the island of Capri'.

 

The name of 'Panther' may have originally developed from a little-known ancient Roman city of debauchery called Pantherin or Pantherine. 'Panther' may have also been attached to Tiberius Julius because of his beastly nature for the cat-like tactics he used in stalking and pouncing on his opponents in wars against the Dalmatians and Pannonians.

'In the old Physiologus [an anonymous Second Century book of fifty allegories], the panther was the type of Christ, but later, when the savage nature of the beast became more widely known, it became symbolical of evil and hypocritical flattery.' 36

From the year of his adoption by Augustus, circa 4AD, to the death of that emperor, Tiberius was in command of the Roman armies and because of his wicked nature, his troops named him 'the savage beast'. 37 Modern historians described him as a bloody tyrant.


There may be another clue in the name 'Panther' associated with the lusty, untamed, horned Greek god Pan, who amused himself with the chase of nymphs. He was forever in love with one nymph or another, but always rejected because of his foul nature. Pan dwelt in forests and was dreaded by those whose occupations caused them to pass through the woods by day or night. Hence sudden fright without any visible cause was ascribed to Pan, and called a 'Panic' terror.

 

This blackened his image so that he was seen to correspond to the Devil himself. The name 'Pan' may have originally developed from the earlier Greek myth of Pan-darus, the term meaning 'to shoot an arrow'. Pan was the bowman (archer) of the Zodiac which is also the sign of Sagittarius, encompassing parts of the months of November and December, and it was no surprise to find that Tiberius, an archer in his youth' 38 was born in November.

 

There does seem to be some historical doubt as to accuracy of the time and place of his birth and this may account for the modern birth date given to him - 16 November 39 - falling slightly outside the prescribed range of the current Sagittarius dates, 26 November/23 December. It should be recognized, however, that the calendar has been adjusted over the course of 2000 years. Sometime shortly before the 17th Century, the Latin Sacred College quietly restored fifteen years to the Roman calendar. The net result of that, and earlier alterations, shows a present difference between Oriental and Western chronologies of sixty-three years, when both are compared from any certainly known astronomical date for example, Halley's Comet.


The Roman leaders were renowned for their personification of earlier gods and the story of Julius Caesar acting out the role as Zeus was well recorded. 'Then there was Augustus' private banquet, known as "The Feast of the Divine Twelve", which caused a public scandal. The guests carne dressed as gods or goddesses, Augustus himself representing Apollo.'
40

 

Apollo was the son of Zeus, who was the equivalent to Jupiter in the Roman pantheon, with the 'Divine Twelve' representing the gods of the zodiac. Zeus was also the father of Hermes and Pan was Hermes' son. The great importance of the gods in Roman history at the time was seen when Emperor Augustus enlarged the temple of Apollo near Nicopolis, built in recognition of the victory at Actium. 41 This was the victory over Mark Antony that cleared the way for his Imperial Dictatorship.


'Abdes' was the third name found on the tombstone and applied to Tiberius Julius Panthera. The origin of 'Abdes' may be connected with Emperor Augustus' liking for ciphers and this may be what the originator of the tombstone was alluding to when he applied it to Tiberius. It was said of Emperor Augustus that:

Instead of paying strict regard to orthography, as formulated by the grammarians, he inclined towards phonetic spelling... When Augustus wrote in cipher he simply substituted the next letter of the alphabet for the one required, except that he wrote AA for X. 42

By applying both of these rules to the word Abdes on the German headstone, a hidden code is thus revealed:

Abdes = Ab-des = Bc-des = BC days

Note: The extra twist for the reader is to apply the cipher rule forward as the person creating it, not backwards as would have been the case to decipher.


The person or persons who created the headstone cipher could have only done so after the Sixth Century when the Julian calendar was first instituted. The proposed suggestion is that the cipher was designed to draw attention to the fact that circumstances surrounding the fathering and birth of Mariamne Herod's twin boys occurred BC rather than AD. Presumably the inscription on the tombstone was placed there to convey a special message, for it is unlikely to have been put there 600 years or more after the actual event to honor the site of an actual body, if there ever was a body buried at the site.


The inscription stated that Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera was transferred to service in Rhineland (Germany) in the year 9AD. The young Tiberius was indeed in that area at that time:

Tiberius was given another three years of tribunicial power, with the task of pacifying Germany... There followed the Ilyrian revolt, which he was sent to suppress ... Tiberius conducted it for three years ... but, though often called back to Rome ... Tiberius was well paid for his stubbornness, by finally reducing the whole of Illyricum - an enormous stretch of country enclosed by Northern Italy, Noricum, the Danube, Thrace, Macedonia, and the Adriatic sea-to complete submission. 43

This timely victory prevented the victorious Germans, who had defeated three legions of Rome under Varus in 9AD, from linking up with the Pannonians. 'Proposals were made for decreeing him (Tiberius) the surname Pannonicus, or the "Unconquered", or "the Devoted"; but Emperor Augustus vetoed all these in turn, promising on each occasion that Tiberius would be satisfied with that of "Augustus", which he intended to bequeath him' . 44 The evidence is compelling in locating Tiberius for service in the area of the Rhineland in 9AD.


However, to switch the era from AD to BC as the 'Abdes' cipher suggested, the person named on the headstone was in the Rhineland in 9BC, not 9AD, and Tiberius was located there on active duty at that time also. Suetonius recorded that 'in the third [instance] he took some 40,000 German prisoners, whom he brought across the Rhine and settled in new homes on the Gallic bank',
45 the years verified as 7 and 9BC. Although Tiberius was in active duty in that area at that time, 'he visited Rome several times'. 46

 

The date, nevertheless, was curious for locating the tombstone at Bingerbrück at all, because it did not say that Tiberius Julius Abdes Panthera died and was buried there, only that he was on service in the Rhineland. The evidence of the assertion was supposed that this time of 9BC was a coded message revealing the year the twin boys were born to Mariamne Herod. At that time she would have been fifteen years of age.


The territory known as Germany today was never identified with this title until at least the time of Napoleon, when the 'Confederation of the Rhine' was formed in July 1806. From that time on, the area began to be called Rhineland. This knowledge brings the placing of the tombstone forward some 1200 additional years from the First Century designation and nearly 1800 years after the death of Tiberius. On further examination, a remarkable materialization of information appeared, for on a modern map of Germany we find that Bingerbrück is located on the Rhine River in the Rhineland Palatinate, a district of southwest Germany west of the Rhine, which belonged to Bavaria until 1945.

 

Formerly, portions of the neighboring territory (Upper Palatinate) constituted an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of Rhineland Palatinate State. The Latin word Palatinate was a different sense of the word Palatine, whereas Palatinus meant 'of the Imperial House' and the electorate indicated the state contained one of the German princes entitled to elect the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 47

 

Palatine is one of the Seven Hills of Rome where the Emperor of the Roman Empire resided in the Imperial House, whom, according to the above, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire succeeded and now resides in the Vatican. The interesting matter is that in earlier times, there was built on the Palatine hill the shrine to 'The Heavenly Twins' and it still remains there to this day.
 


Conclusion


The cipher on the Bingerbrück headstone connected the ancient Panthera tradition of the Rabbinic writings with the First Century Roman emperor, Tiberius. The conclusion drawn is that by reason of her mother's friendship with Emperor Augustus, the teenage Mariamne Herod met Tiberius when he returned to Rome to see his emperor father early in 9BC, and her twin sons were conceived by rape or adultery by him at that time. It was possible Mariamne Herod was then married, for the traditions of the time accepted the early marriage of young girls.

 

The oldest daughter of Agrippa I, for example, was married at the age of thirteen. 48 Mariamne Herod named her sons Judas and Yeshu'a and the populous subsequently nicknamed them 'ben Panthera' (son of Panthera) after their 'adulterer' father. The name Yeshu'a carne to be pronounced and spoken as Jesus in English language translations and, to avoid confusion, shall be used as such throughout this work.


Unraveling the headstone cipher has now completed a full circle, beginning with the illegitimate birth of twin boys to Mariamne Herod, the Virgin Mary of the Gospels, and ending with their father being the 33 year old Tiberius who was to later become Emperor of Rome in 14AD. The two boys, although illegitimate by birth, were the legitimate kingly heirs to the throne - the next in line to the imperial purple toga - and that is exactly what the Gospels of the New Testament recorded. This leads to an underlying truth hidden below the surface level of the Gospel story and one that the church has suppressed for seventeen hundred years.


The Gospel of Mark suggested Judas and Jesus were commonly regarded as illegitimate by the people of their time. The fact that they were each identified as a 'son of Mary' (Mark 6:3), not 'son of Joseph', was interpreted by scholars to mean Judas and Jesus were regarded at the time as Mary's illegitimate sons. In the Gospel of John (8:41) the scribes and Pharisees challenged Jesus about his birth, 'we are not born of fornication', again revealing that the general populous knew that Jesus' birth, and thus Judas', was illegitimate.

 

Related, in Luke (4:22) was Jesus' irritated reaction to the words, 'Is not this Joseph's son?'  Why would Jesus (or maybe it was Judas speaking) react to this seemingly harmless question? The answer was documented in the oldest Greek texts of the New Testament, which read, 'not son of Joseph, this one'.


The scriptural and historical data being presented in this work shows that the New Testament was never an authentic record, but was, in its entirety, a corpus of corrupted documents specifically constructed to induce a particular belief (John 20:30-31). This conclusion rests firmly on known facts and the ensuing chapters analyze ancient Roman, British and church reports that support this assertion.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES:

1.-   Jesus the Magician, Professor Morton Smith, 1978, Dea. Lea. 1973-1974.

2.-   Ibid.
3.-   Contra Celsus, Against Celsus, Origen, 1:28.
4.-   See notes on both passages by Lommatzech, in his Origen Contra Celsus, Berlin, 1845.
5.-   Heresies, Epip., Haer, Epiphanius, lxxvii, 7.
6.-   Jebamoth, 49A.
7.-   Commentaries on the Law of Moses, Jonathon D. Michaelis, Vols.I-IV, 1814.
8.-   Babylonian Shabbath, 104 b, repeated in almost identical words in the Babylonian Sanhedrin, 67 a.
9.-   Translations in Progress, Moise Schwab, The Jerusalem Talmud.
10.- Mary in the Babylonian Talmud, G.R.S. Mead, London & Benares, 1903.
11.- St Jerome 347-420.
12.- The Name of the Furies, Eumenides.

13.- Babylonian Sanhedrin (b. Sanh.) 106

14.- Babylonian Shabbath 104 b.
15.- Commentary to Matthew', Hieronymus, bk.ii, ch.xii, 13.
16.- James the Brother of Jesus, Robert Eisenman, p.471.
17.- See Syrian Bible, for example.

18.- Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.XV, 1 October 1912, pp.459-472.
19.- Encyclopedia Judaica Jerusalem, 1971, p.443.
20.- Ibid, p.601.
21.- Ibid., pp.740-744.
22.- The Herods, Dean Farrar. Also Joseph of Arimathea, Skeats.
23.- Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.V 1, 1910, p.291-292.
24.- Antiquities, Josephus, 16:355.

25.- The Herods of Judea, Oxford, A.H.M. Jones, 1938.
26.- Catholic Encyclopedia, vo1.VI, 1910, p.292.
27.- The New Testament, however, sometimes called him `king': Matt. 14:9, Mark 6:14.
28.- Bible Myths, T.W Doane, 1882, p.431.
29.- Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.V, 1909, p.546.Also Josephus, Jewish Wars, II, p.120.
30.- The Records of Rome, 1868, British Library, ILS 7317, 'Silvani', plural.
31.- Born in 42BC, Emperor during the years 14-37AD..
32.- The Life of Augustus, Suetonius, trans. Philemon Holland, Tudor Series, 1893.
33.- Res Gestae, E. G. Hardy, 1923.
34.- Shorter Oxford Dictionary, p.1503.
35.- The Reign of Tiberius, F B. Marsh, 1931.
36.- Brewer's Myth and Legend, Editor J C.Cooper. Cassell, 1992, p.213.
37.- Catiline, Clodius and Tiberius, Beesly, 1878.
38.- Smaller Classical Dictionary, 1910 Ed., 'Tiberius'.
39.- The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, ch.3:5, p.112.
40.- Ibid., ch 2:70, p.89.
41.- Ibid., ch.2:18, p.60.
42.- Ibid., ch 2:88, p.98.
43.- Suetonius, op.cit., ch.3:18, p.119.

44.- Ibid., ch.3:17, p.119.

45.- Ibid., ch.3:9, p.114.

46.- Smaller Classical Dictionary, 'Tiberius'. Also The Records of Rome, 1868, British Library.
47.- Encyclopedia Britannica, 'Palatine'.

48.- Encyclopedia Judaica Jerusalem, 1971, p.601.