Who is to blame for Jesus' death?

The different authors of the Gospels repeatedly try to shift the blame for Jesus' sentence from the Romans onto the Jews, particularly during the episode where Pilate offers the crowd the chance of releasing the prisoner of their choice, as was often the custom, so we are told by Mark and Matthew, for the Easter festival. But in actual fact, this version of accounts is completely wrong and several scholars today agree that the Romans never had such a custom. The Roman procurator's offer - Jesus or Barrabas? - is pure make-believe, as are his reticence to condemn Jesus and his bad grace in bowing to the pressure from the crowd. In reality, it was entirely unthinkable for a representative of Roman law, particularly one as cruel as Pilate, to ask the people for their opinion and even more to give into their whims. The whole aim of this fabrication actually consisted of transferring the blame from the Romans to the Jews and making out Jesus to be someone who would go down well with the future readers of the four Gospels.

What were Jesus' last words?

The Evangelists Matthew (2:46) and Mark (15:34) say that Jesus' last words were "Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?", which is being interpreted "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" According to most commentators on the Gospels, this phrase is taken from a psalm by David (Ps 21:2) which applies only too well to Jesus' death on the cross for its reuse by the two Evangelists not be anything more than a purely "literary effect" without any real relation to the historical reality. Furthermore, in the Gospel of Luke (23:45), Jesus dies whilst saying a verse from another psalm of David, "Into Thy hand I commit my spirit" (Ps 31:6), whereas in the Gospel of John (19:30), he simply says rather laconically, "It is finished". Jesus' last words therefore change from one gospel to another, which is obviously dependent on the theological plan pursued by the authors of the texts. The philosopher Porphyry is quick to seize upon these uncertainties and challenge the entire Christian "testimony" of Jesus' death, "It is clear that this inconsistent fiction either represents several victims crucified on the cross or just one who suffers such a monstrous death, that those present are given no idea of what he is suffering. But if those people are incapable of truthfully saying how Jesus died and are merely writing for the sake of it, then not much trust can be placed in the rest of what they have written".

In Jesus and the Mortal Secret of the Templars, Robert Ambelain puts forward an hypothesis that supports the idea that Jesus had been initiated into Magic. On the one hand, he points out that the Hebrew alphabet consists only of consonants and a vowel sound can only be made by adding a punctuation beneath the letters, and he notices that the three letters in the name Elie (aleph - lamed - he), each with a different punctuation, mean "to conjure", "to curse". On the other hand, he advises that the old manuscripts on Magic (Key of Solomon), whose texts reached us through Peter de Abano, a disciple of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, explain that a magician performs a conjuration by calling the Divine Names (names of the angels), which vary according to the place, the day and the hour of the ritual and the subject of the curse. Spurred on by this information, the author first notices that among the demons associated with Tuesday, there is El and Elohim, plural of Eloi; he then realises that among the names of the spirits governing the west region of the world (traditionally the region of the dead) on that particular day, there are Lama and Astagna; finally, of the 12 spirits ruling the hours of Tuesday, there are Tani (or Tanic or Thamic). Ambelain therefore comes to the conclusion that the second phrase pronounced by Jesus could be ELi! ELOIm! LAMA ASTAGNA TANI..., which means "Conjuration! Curses"! By Lama, Astagna, Tani...". His hypothesis is reinforced by the facts:

1. According to John, Jesus died on "the day on which the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed" in the Zealot's calendar, which was a Tuesday.

2. All the words in this phrase are names used in Magic and in exactly the same hierarchical order.

3. All the names fall exclusively within the tonality of Mars, including the name of the spirit ruling the hour (Tani).

4. This hour is exactly the eighth of the day, which is the last one lived by Jesus and during which he spoke the famous phrase.

5. All the names quoted are those of spirits that are summoned to do harm to one's enemies (cause wars, killings, fires, illness, raising armies, and so on), and that is exactly what happened in Jerusalem shortly after Jesus' death: the revolt of the Zealot militants, the war with Rome, the siege of the Holy City with all its horrors, mysterious epidemics, etc.

It is therefore possible and even probable that the last words of Jesus, suffering in agony, called on the dark powers (demons) to curse the city of Jerusalem that forsook him in its attempt to shrug off the Roman yoke.

Where was Jesus crucified?

In Jerusalem, inside the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, next to his tomb, you can still see the area today where Jesus was apparently crucified: Golgotha, which means "the place of the skull" in Aramean. However, this place was only discovered in the fourth century, because the Roman emperor Constantine, who had only recently converted to Christianity, ordered a search for Golgotha and Jesus' tomb. Bishop Macarius was entrusted with the task. As official sources were resolutely tight-lipped about the existence of the special place for capital executions, Macarius decided to pray to God for His help. His prayers were answered, and in ecstasy, he had a vision of Golgotha being in the place where it is currently venerated. Following this "revelation", which is taken in the most mystical sense of the word, Macarius was therefore the "inventor" of Golgotha, taken in the archaeological sense of the word.

In the Gospel of John, the following description is given, "Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden" (19:41); according to Matthew (27:60), this garden was even the personal property of Joseph of Arimathia, a rich man and secret disciple of Jesus. Furthermore, in Jesus' time, a cemetery had to be located next to the place of execution, if it were only to dispose of the bodies of the torture victims at the end of their ordeal. There is none of that with Golgotha: no garden on the totally bare hill, no cemetery - the nearby Temple, if it were indeed a holy place, would have forbidden having a cemetery next door, as such an impure place, especially with a neighbouring execution site, would have desecrated the holy place.

Golgotha was therefore "chosen" in the fourth century as Jesus' place of execution for its name, for the legend that accompanied it, and also... for the convenience of the pilgrims. At a time when there was nothing left of the town that witnessed Jesus' death, where there no was map of ancient Jerusalem, where the archaeology and its disciplines, belonging to history, were totally inconceivable, where the naivety of the followers was boundless and where the faith was always preferred to rational criticism, we might reasonably have some doubts about the results of the "survey" conducted by bishop Macarius.

Is Jesus' death as described in the Gospels just a pale imitation of the ancient prophecies?

The (necessary) death of the Messiah was announced by the prophets of the Old Testament, and they even go into detail: it was written that he would be beaten with sticks, spat upon, and that he would remain stoic in the face of adversity, that he would die between crooks, that his feet and hands would be torn to shreds, that none of his bones would be broken, that the drink offered would be vinegar and gall, that he would rise after three days, and so on. All these prophecies were written down in collections that circulated among the Jewish world in Palestine and which were consulted by those of the believers that were awaiting the imminent arrival of their liberator. These messianists were Jewish sectarian groups (some of their documents were found in Qumran), which had devised a theology based on the "suffering Messiah" as presented by Isaiah. Since the 2nd century BC, they had been living in wait of the imminent return of the "Master of Justice". Therefore, it is not surprising to come across the saviour of their beliefs in the Gospels.

According to Dupont-Sommer, a specialist in analysing the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jesus, as he is presented in the Gospels, appears in many respects like a stunning reincarnation of this "Master of Justice" (Jewish priest, head of the Essenian sect, death towards -65). In this role, he preaches penitence, humility, loving thy neighbour and chastity. Like him, he advocated compliance with Moses' Law, the entire Law, but the Law achieved and perfected through his own revelations. Like him, he was the Chosen One and the Messiah of God, the Messiah come to redeem the world. Like him, he faced the hostility of the Sadducean priests. Like him, he was sentenced and tortured. Like him, he ascended to heaven beside God. Like him, he will be the new judge at the end of time.

What credibility can be given to accounts that are made up exclusively of pre-existing texts? Where is the living tradition? Where are the witnesses? Where are the facts? If we remove the events without a scriptural reference, what is left of the account of Jesus' death as told by the Evangelists? The cross? It can be found in numerous religions prior to Christianity, without mentioning Plato's cosmic cross, which was formed by the intersection of two axes of the world, whose gnosticism includes the elements for placing the Logos. Redemption through the sacrifice of a God? It can be found in mystery religions, where it concerns a suffering god who dies and rises again for his followers at the spring equinox, when the life of nature reasserts itself over winter. Every year, Tammuz (Adonis), Osiris and Attis died (Attis, hung from a pine tree) and rose again after three days. During their "terrestrial death", Adonis, Attis, the goddess Ishtar and Orpheus descended into the Underworld like Jesus. Most of the gods were attributed the title of "Lord" (which translates in Greek as Kyrios), the same title that the Christian community of Antioch and later the Church of Rome gave to Jesus. They gave the gods the attribute of "Saviour" (Soter in Greek), and the same was done for Christ.

The god that most resembles Jesus is undoubtedly Mithra. Like Jesus, he is considered to be the "Son at the right hand of the Shining Father". Like Jesus, he has the rare characteristic of being celibate. He also dies and rises again. He also appears at the end of time to sit in judgement on the "living and the dead", which are then reborn as flesh. His cult includes a commemorative meal and a baptism of initiation. Finally, the birth of Mithra was traditionally celebrated on... 25 December.