The Ignored Historical Black Hole in Palestinian Religious Life (70 - 140 CE)

Nietzsche once said that when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back into you. Maybe that's one reason why scholars tend to avoid looking at or thinking about the historical black hole that exists after the destruction of the Jewish temple (70 CE).

The easy way out of course is to accept the propaganda of the two traditions which emerge out of the reformation 'encouraged' by the later Antoninian Emperors. The Mishnah says that somehow the original tradition of Judaism survived the Imperially sanctioned repression of traditional Jewish beliefs began by the Flavians (70 - 96 CE) and continued through to Hadrian (117 - 138 CE).

In the same way Christian scholars simply accept the silly history of the canonical Book of Acts recasting Christianity as an apolitical Jewish messianic faith (a faith in an impossible messiah no less - viz. 'Jesus Christ' - and one who never applied the term 'messiah' or 'son of David' to himself no less) which started BEFORE the black hole historical period and somehow survived and flourished once some semblance of 'historical knowledge' is restored in the Antonine period.

The question they should have asked of course is why there is a historical black hole at all.

There is no reason for anyone to think that Catholic Christianity was ever persecuted by the Emperors before Irenaeus. The problem of course is that the Catholic Church as we know it only began with Irenaeus. His claims to have preserved the original tradition of Polycarp are utterly false and were challenged by Irenaeus' contemporary Florinus of Rome.

Indeed when we look carefully and develop a three dimensional portrait of Polycarp (i.e. incorporate the information from Lucian of Samosata's Life of Peregrinus) we see Polycarp as a wanna be Imperial lacky and ass-kisser. A loose canon whose ambition for developing an acceptable form of Christianity for the 'powers that be' was only realized by Irenaeus.

In this and only this way can Irenaeus be thought to be a 'successor to Polycarp.'

The question that has dogged me my entire adult life is what was the Palestinian faith that filled up that black hole period? The more I look I see Christians with Jewish and Samaritan leanings, Jews with Christian and sectarian leanings and Samaritans with Christian and Jewish leanings in this epoch.

Could it be that all three traditions had in fact 'come together' in the Flavian period in some form and that this 'ecumenical Palestinian faith' was persecuted in the period that followed owing to its unprecedented success at attracting proselytes?

I certainly think so. This after all is the purpose of all my efforts - to find the original lost faith of ben Abuyah (which was later recented - sort of - by Meir) which in turn I believe was one and the same with the original lost faith of various Markan cultures in the period (Marqe the Samaritan, the Alexandrian patriarchy of St. Mark and the continued existence of the marqione - 'those of Mark' - at the fringes of the Empire or as martyrs in the heart of the Empire).

Will I manage to pull this off before I die? If you mean will I be able to PROVE such a thing existed I think that it is highly unlikely that such a proposition will have universal acceptance among scholars. Nevertheless I can attempt to do something else which does have a chance for success.

If at the very least I get everyone to think about the black hole, to stimulate alternative explanations and avoid the diverting of eyes which is now acceptable - and even encouraged - by the current generation of scholars.