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| Artists Rendition of the Holy Perpetrator ~ Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld |
According to The Bible: Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of God the Son and the Awaited Messiah, Was Above All, A Horse Theif
While scanning the bible one day, I ran across an odd little story. It was a strange, seemingly innocuous account that seemed out of place, and one that I had never heard mentioned before.
The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Now I have come to think that this bizarre little story may hold the key to the entire Christian fable.
Jesus (assuming for the purpose of this argument that a traveling evangelist by that name once existed) lived in a time of great gullibility and religious fervor.
Superstition was deeply ingrained into the everyday lives of the millions - literacy and critical skepticism were not - certainly not in regards to vengeful and unpredictable gods whose ire could be unleashed upon the unwary for no apparent reason.
The average citizen was fearful and entirely powerless against authoritarian rulers. Questioning authority seldom evoked an enlightened or compassionate reaction.
The people of that region have a history of extreme susceptibility to any and every new superstition that came along. It was a golden age for traveling holy men.
So anyway, this particular itinerant preacher had a gang of 12 guys who followed him around. That raises the question - what did these guys do all day?
Were these 12 mouths he had to feed just mindless adoring sycophants, following him around, hanging on every word, (though never writing any of it down), and receiving food like manna from heaven, or did they exist in a real-world, having to earn their keep and deal with daily pressures, necessities, and irritations?
Like traveling preachers of today, his staff might have had a variety of duties like those of advance men and roadies who get there ahead of the gig, carry the bags, find accommodations, gather firewood, cook, put up posters, manage public relations, grease palms, call in favors, arrange permits, find venues, and a thousand other ad hoc chores.
Or, were some of their duties more like those of Medicine Show crowd plants who were miraculously cured anew in every town.
The tricks of the trade, like bringing dead people back to life, might have played to the country peasants who might mistake a deep coma for death. And faith healing? Petty magic and flim-flam - tools of the trade for hucksters and charlatans.
It might have impressed the ignorant and superstitious, who, after being taken in, was unlikely to confess their gullibility until the show was long gone.
At any rate, one could easily believe that at least parts of their days were filled with sometimes mundane duties involved in the support of a traveling faith healing show - things like finding and preparing food for his posse, collecting and handling money, managing transportation, security duties such as screening access to the son of the creator of the universe, etc. Apparently, sometimes those duties included special ops.
While searching for a bible passage one day, my eyes fell upon a most curious account in Luke 19, verses 29 - 36.
And it came to pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying, go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him. And they that were sent went their way, and found even as he had said unto them. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said The Lord hath need of him. And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon. And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way.
What are we to glean from this sparse account? Looking at
this with an eye on known human behavior modes, here is what
it looks like to me: Jesus and his crew stopped outside a small
town to scope it out and make some plans.
Apparently, these plans
involved the removal of a horse (colt*) from the town without
prior approval or notification of the owner. Today, this is known
as 'theft' and, until relatively recently, was a hanging offense.
Jesus told two of his men to go into the town where they would
find a horse.
He told them to get the horse and bring it to him
without being seen, but if they were seen, to inform the guy that they
were taking his horse to their boss, a guy who apparently had enough
of a rep (and 12 mindless "followers", work-hardened and ready to do
whatever the "son of God" might require of them) that people would
simply hand over their loot without a struggle.
So they went to town, located this guy's horse, and started to make
off with it when the guy spots them and comes running out to find out
what the hell they think they are doing.
So, they 'splain to the guy how
it's gonna be. I guess you could say they made him an offer he couldn't
refuse.
Long story short, the guy caves and they depart with what, for
many people in that part of the world in those days, would have been
a large and indispensable part of their net worth.
Whatever they told
him seems to have been quite persuasive.
Lastly, they made a riding blanket out of their clothing - so far so
good, although it is a little surprising that the alleged son of God would
require either a horse or padding for his own butt - but then it just
got weird.
His followers started laying their clothing on the ground for
the horse to walk on. Why they were doing this is not evident, but it
sounds like something that a petulant young medieval prince might
have had his minions do out of boredom.
Makes me wonder how
many miles they kept that up.
Boiled down, this has conspiracy, coercion, and grand theft
written all over it.
I'm not sure how the folks around Bethpage and
Bethany dealt with this kind of thing, but the Romans were known to
be very tough on crime and were fond of using criminals, including
petty thieves, for rough entertainment.
Where I come from, stealing
a horse would have gotten a person hanged a lot faster than religious
scammery.
Conclusion
And I think that’s exactly what happened. It turns out that local
constabularies of the day viewed thievery very harshly.
Imprisonment,
torture, and cruel executions were common even for petty offenses.
It seems to me that there is a likelihood that this traveling preacher
simply ran afoul of the law, got caught, and got hung, so to speak.
Now the large number of people who actually believe the Jesus
fable will tell you that he was tortured and crucified like a common
criminal for his beliefs.
The adamantly religious are rarely objective and sometimes diverge from the facts in the public assessment of their
figureheads.
Looks to me like his followers and the biblical revisionists
who came later may have glossed over any misdeeds committed by
this pack of unemployed religionists, and painted his incarceration
as if he were an innocent, unjustly imprisoned, and badly treated
religious/political prisoner, Luke 19 notwithstanding.
It reminds me of the old Bob Newhart Show in which Bob was
complaining about a ticket for parking illegally in an alley. His
airheaded neighbor, Howard, told Bob about a guy he knew who had
parked illegally in that same alley and was now in prison.
Bob asked incredulously, "He's in prison for illegal parking?"
Howard replied, "Yeah! Well... that and he killed a guy."
So, yes, Jesus was executed for his religious views. That, and he
stole a horse.
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*Although there were certainly horses available in those days, it is possible
that this meant an ass or a donkey. But in days of yore, stealing a loaf of bread
could get you hung, let alone a small, rideable, horse-like, animal.
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