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The mystery of 'The Jesus Papers'
By Sara James
Correspondent
NBC News
updated 7:50 p.m. CT, Sun., April 2, 2006
This report aired Dateline Sunday, April 2
Sara James
Correspondent
• Profile
Michael Baigent is investigating a grisly crime. He’s tracking down leads, digging for clues, and trying to shed new light on a cold case— a case that is 2,000 years old. And this isn’t just any case: It is perhaps, the most well known story in history—the crucifixion of Jesus.
Sara James, Dateline correspondent: You believe that much of what we think we know about Jesus is a lie?
Michael Baigent, author: It’s a lie. It’s an obvious lie.
Hard to imagine? Author Michael Baigent has captured readers’ imaginations before with a provocative non-fiction work in which he claimed Jesus was married. Some of the same ideas appear in “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. In fact, he sued Brown’s publisher for copyright infringement. Brown and his publisher strongly deny they did anything wrong. A decision is pending in the case.
Story continues below ↓
advertisement | your ad here
Now, Baigent has a new book, "The Jesus Papers," with an even more controversial premise which challenges the conventional story about Jesus.
James: So basically, you’re asking anybody who is a Christian to question their fundamental beliefs?
Baigent: Absolutely.
James: Some might call your position heresy.
Baigent: I should hope they would.
While he considers himself an investigator bent on exposing the truth, scholars say the tale he weaves is fiction— fantasy, rather than fact.
Elaine Pagels, religious scholar, Princeton University: It’s imaginative to say the least.
Craig Evans, evangelical New Testament scholar at Acadia Divinity College: It’s voodoo scholarship, it shouldn’t be taken credibly.
It’s criticism Baigent has heard before, back in 1982, when he and two co-authors wrote “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.”
The book’s popularity has soared since the “Da Vinci Code.” Thanks to that book and the soon-to-be released movie, devoted fans around the world can recite a key story line— that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not only married but had a child, and the descendants live on to this day.
CLICK FOR RECENT RELATED STORIES
'Gospel of Judas' provides contrarian view
Court clears 'Da Vinci Code' author
But the plot doesn’t end there. For more than 20 years, author Michael Baigent has kept the trail warm, chasing secrets from London to Jerusalem. He’d heard about a “smoking gun” of sorts, documents containing extraordinary information about Jesus—and he wanted to get his hands on them.
James: Where have you traveled on your search for these documents?
Baigent: It’s not just documents of course. It’s carvings, sites, underground tombs, underground temples. But I’ve been to Egypt a lot and spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Italy too... and, of course, France.
We followed in his footsteps in search of answers— traveling from England to France, Israel to Italy on a trail that would have twists, turns and even giant leaps. It was a journey into the shadowy world of antiquities, where the trade in artifacts is often illegal.
Baigent: This clandestine market by its very nature, you just can’t get a hold of the documents.
James: Is it dangerous?
Baigent: Where lots of money is involved, there’s always a risk. And one thing I’ve learned over the years is to keep my mouth shut which is why I’ve not spoken about a lot of these things— until now really.
Baigent says he’s breaking his silence because he’s seen and held shocking documents, including two he named his book after, calling them “The Jesus Papers.” And he makes this astonishing claim: that the Church wants to keep them secret.
Baigent: You can make sure they never see the light of day—that they’re destroyed. That they’re lost. That they’re hidden away. And this is the situation that I’ve found.
James: So you’re saying that there’s a cover up?
Baigent: There is a cover up. Of course there’s a cover up.
A cover up, he contends, because his clues point to a radical conclusion: that Jesus did not die on the cross.
Baigent: I don’t think Jesus died at the crucifixion. I think he survived.
In the Bible, the story is told like this: Jesus spent his final hours on a hillside in Jerusalem. Sentenced to death, the peasant preacher was nailed to a wooden cross and left to die and was later resurrected.
The site would become holy to Christians around the world, now the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
What do we really know about what happened on that fateful day 2,000 years ago? The exact details of the crucifixion have always been steeped in mystery. What we do have are pieces of evidence from four different and sometimes contradictory gospels written at least 30 years after Jesus died.
James: So you believe even in the Bible, there are clues to what you believe is the truth.
Baigent: Absolutely. If we read them closely and ask the questions we can come up with a very, very different construction.
With the Bible as his source, Baigent reconstructed the story of the crucifixion and arrived at an entirely new version of events.
A secret deal with Pontius Pilate
He says Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesus’s death, actually made a secret deal to save his life.
Baigent: It was rigged. It was a fraud. I think the crucifixion was set up precisely to remove a particular political problem which both Pilate and Jesus found themselves within.
Pilate, Baigent argues, he needed to appease the crowd which was calling for Jesus’s death. But because Jesus had urged his followers to pay their taxes to Rome, Baigent argues Pilate also had an incentive to let Jesus live.
Baigent: It’s my hypothesis that he rigged the crucifixion such that Jesus would survive but very quickly removed Jesus from the scene.
According to Baigent, Jesus and his supporters were also in on this plot. Baigent acknowledges there no proof of his theory, but it was possible to survive crucifixion. There is at least one example in early historical records. The Jewish historian, Josephus, writes about finding three of his friends nailed to the cross.
Baigent: He pleaded with Roman authorities and got them brought down. Two of them died. One survived. If the crucifixion was arranged to allow a survival, it could be done.
It’s a theory that was first raised in a book called “The Passover Plot” 40 years ago, which was dismissed by scholars. But Baigent believes the theory deserves a second look. The plot would have gone like this: Jesus would have been sedated so that he looked dead and then later revived after being taken down from the cross.
Baigent: The way to survive it would be to reduce the trauma. It would be to get the person off the cross quickly. And it would be to minister to that person as soon as possible afterwards. And all three of these factors we can find in the New Testament.
The vinegar-soaked sponge
He says where the Gospels relate how a thirsty Jesus called out for something to drink. A sponge soaked in vinegar was placed on a reed and lifted to Jesus’ mouth. But rather than reviving him, Jesus died shortly after drinking the liquid. Baigent says that detail suggests how the
plot might have been carried out.
Brooklyn Museum of Art / Corbis
1886-1894: A painting from a series of Bible illustrations by James Tissot.
Baigent: I think it’s more likely that they raised the sponge with some kind of anesthetic, which knocked Jesus out, which would reduce the trauma and make it easier for him to survive.
James: What do you think those drugs might have been?
Baigent: Well, they used hashish, opium, belladonna. There was a mixture of drugs.
Baigent says his account would explain why Jesus apparently died so quickly. While normally a person lingered on the cross for three days, according to the gospels, Jesus died within hours. Of course, there is another widely accepted explanation for Jesus’s quick death: He had been beaten, stabbed, in addition to being crucified.
James: Indeed, somebody could die after a matter of hours instead of several days?
Baigent: They could. But I think by giving someone a drug to render them unconscious would reduce this trauma and I think this is a significant factor in the Gospel account.
The Greek text
Next, he suggests, a lifeless-looking, unconscious Jesus was removed from the cross. The gospels say that Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate to ask for Jesus’s body. Buried in the text of the original Greek Bible, Baigent says is a crucial clue:
Baigent: When Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate and asks for Jesus’ body to take down from the cross, he asks for the “soma” of Jesus—Which means the living body. Pilate allows Joseph to take the body. But he uses the word “ptoma” which means the corpse, the dead body.
So even in the New Testament, there’s a distinction made between a living Jesus and a dead Jesus.
Religion scholar Elaine Pagels of Princeton University says Baigent is drawing the wrong conclusion.
Pagels: If you’re talking about the removal of a body of a friend of yours, you would ordinarily not talk about “a corpse.” You would not say, “my father’s dead corpse.” You would talk about “my father’s body.” It’s just a bit more respectful and intimate on the whole.
'Immediate medical attention'
Once Joseph of Arimathea collected the body, Michael Baigent says there was one last, urgent
step to complete the plot: immediate medical attention.
Baigent: They bring him down from the cross, they get him as quickly as possible into the tomb where under the cover of darkness, they return with drugs to treat any bleeding which may have occurred and to try to revive him.
And once again, Baigent contends the Gospels offer clues. When Joseph and Nicodemus—supporters of Jesus—visited his tomb during the night, they brought with them herbs and spices such as aloe and myrrh.
The Bridgeman Art Library / Getty
The Lamentation of the Dead Christ, c.1520 (oil on panel)
Baigent: They weren’t embalming spices.
James: The spices they took to the tomb weren’t the kinds of things they would be taking if Jesus were dead?
Baigent: Exactly.
James: So you’re saying they were going to deal with an injured Jesus rather than a Jesus who had perished? That’s not the way the Gospels read.
Baigent: That’s the way the Gospels read if you read them closely.
Craig Evans, an evangelical New Testament scholar at Acadia Divinity College, completely dismisses Baigent’s theory. And he says spices were brought to the tomb and there was a very practical reason.
Evans: Bodies were spiced because of the bad smell. That’s what they were doing, not to treat his wounds and hopefully help him revive and get out of the tomb alive.
All of the accounts agree that Jesus was crucified and died and what strikes me as remarkable that had he not died that would have been enormous good news for his followers.
James: So rather than keep such news a secret, you’d be shouting it from the rooftops?
Pagels: Absolutely. God delivered him.
But Michael Baigent takes his unorthodox ideas even further— he contends there is hidden evidence that Jesus was alive and well long after the crucifixion.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12084683/
CONTINUED : Was the evidence of Jesus being alive a hidden treasure in southern France?
By Sara James
Correspondent
NBC News
updated 7:50 p.m. CT, Sun., April 2, 2006
This report aired Dateline Sunday, April 2
Sara James
Correspondent
• Profile
Michael Baigent is investigating a grisly crime. He’s tracking down leads, digging for clues, and trying to shed new light on a cold case— a case that is 2,000 years old. And this isn’t just any case: It is perhaps, the most well known story in history—the crucifixion of Jesus.
Sara James, Dateline correspondent: You believe that much of what we think we know about Jesus is a lie?
Michael Baigent, author: It’s a lie. It’s an obvious lie.
Hard to imagine? Author Michael Baigent has captured readers’ imaginations before with a provocative non-fiction work in which he claimed Jesus was married. Some of the same ideas appear in “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. In fact, he sued Brown’s publisher for copyright infringement. Brown and his publisher strongly deny they did anything wrong. A decision is pending in the case.
Story continues below ↓
advertisement | your ad here
Now, Baigent has a new book, "The Jesus Papers," with an even more controversial premise which challenges the conventional story about Jesus.
James: So basically, you’re asking anybody who is a Christian to question their fundamental beliefs?
Baigent: Absolutely.
James: Some might call your position heresy.
Baigent: I should hope they would.
While he considers himself an investigator bent on exposing the truth, scholars say the tale he weaves is fiction— fantasy, rather than fact.
Elaine Pagels, religious scholar, Princeton University: It’s imaginative to say the least.
Craig Evans, evangelical New Testament scholar at Acadia Divinity College: It’s voodoo scholarship, it shouldn’t be taken credibly.
It’s criticism Baigent has heard before, back in 1982, when he and two co-authors wrote “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.”
The book’s popularity has soared since the “Da Vinci Code.” Thanks to that book and the soon-to-be released movie, devoted fans around the world can recite a key story line— that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were not only married but had a child, and the descendants live on to this day.
CLICK FOR RECENT RELATED STORIES
'Gospel of Judas' provides contrarian view
Court clears 'Da Vinci Code' author
But the plot doesn’t end there. For more than 20 years, author Michael Baigent has kept the trail warm, chasing secrets from London to Jerusalem. He’d heard about a “smoking gun” of sorts, documents containing extraordinary information about Jesus—and he wanted to get his hands on them.
James: Where have you traveled on your search for these documents?
Baigent: It’s not just documents of course. It’s carvings, sites, underground tombs, underground temples. But I’ve been to Egypt a lot and spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Italy too... and, of course, France.
We followed in his footsteps in search of answers— traveling from England to France, Israel to Italy on a trail that would have twists, turns and even giant leaps. It was a journey into the shadowy world of antiquities, where the trade in artifacts is often illegal.
Baigent: This clandestine market by its very nature, you just can’t get a hold of the documents.
James: Is it dangerous?
Baigent: Where lots of money is involved, there’s always a risk. And one thing I’ve learned over the years is to keep my mouth shut which is why I’ve not spoken about a lot of these things— until now really.
Baigent says he’s breaking his silence because he’s seen and held shocking documents, including two he named his book after, calling them “The Jesus Papers.” And he makes this astonishing claim: that the Church wants to keep them secret.
Baigent: You can make sure they never see the light of day—that they’re destroyed. That they’re lost. That they’re hidden away. And this is the situation that I’ve found.
James: So you’re saying that there’s a cover up?
Baigent: There is a cover up. Of course there’s a cover up.
A cover up, he contends, because his clues point to a radical conclusion: that Jesus did not die on the cross.
Baigent: I don’t think Jesus died at the crucifixion. I think he survived.
In the Bible, the story is told like this: Jesus spent his final hours on a hillside in Jerusalem. Sentenced to death, the peasant preacher was nailed to a wooden cross and left to die and was later resurrected.
The site would become holy to Christians around the world, now the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
What do we really know about what happened on that fateful day 2,000 years ago? The exact details of the crucifixion have always been steeped in mystery. What we do have are pieces of evidence from four different and sometimes contradictory gospels written at least 30 years after Jesus died.
James: So you believe even in the Bible, there are clues to what you believe is the truth.
Baigent: Absolutely. If we read them closely and ask the questions we can come up with a very, very different construction.
With the Bible as his source, Baigent reconstructed the story of the crucifixion and arrived at an entirely new version of events.
A secret deal with Pontius Pilate
He says Pontius Pilate, who ordered Jesus’s death, actually made a secret deal to save his life.
Baigent: It was rigged. It was a fraud. I think the crucifixion was set up precisely to remove a particular political problem which both Pilate and Jesus found themselves within.
Pilate, Baigent argues, he needed to appease the crowd which was calling for Jesus’s death. But because Jesus had urged his followers to pay their taxes to Rome, Baigent argues Pilate also had an incentive to let Jesus live.
Baigent: It’s my hypothesis that he rigged the crucifixion such that Jesus would survive but very quickly removed Jesus from the scene.
According to Baigent, Jesus and his supporters were also in on this plot. Baigent acknowledges there no proof of his theory, but it was possible to survive crucifixion. There is at least one example in early historical records. The Jewish historian, Josephus, writes about finding three of his friends nailed to the cross.
Baigent: He pleaded with Roman authorities and got them brought down. Two of them died. One survived. If the crucifixion was arranged to allow a survival, it could be done.
It’s a theory that was first raised in a book called “The Passover Plot” 40 years ago, which was dismissed by scholars. But Baigent believes the theory deserves a second look. The plot would have gone like this: Jesus would have been sedated so that he looked dead and then later revived after being taken down from the cross.
Baigent: The way to survive it would be to reduce the trauma. It would be to get the person off the cross quickly. And it would be to minister to that person as soon as possible afterwards. And all three of these factors we can find in the New Testament.
The vinegar-soaked sponge
He says where the Gospels relate how a thirsty Jesus called out for something to drink. A sponge soaked in vinegar was placed on a reed and lifted to Jesus’ mouth. But rather than reviving him, Jesus died shortly after drinking the liquid. Baigent says that detail suggests how the
plot might have been carried out.
Brooklyn Museum of Art / Corbis
1886-1894: A painting from a series of Bible illustrations by James Tissot.
Baigent: I think it’s more likely that they raised the sponge with some kind of anesthetic, which knocked Jesus out, which would reduce the trauma and make it easier for him to survive.
James: What do you think those drugs might have been?
Baigent: Well, they used hashish, opium, belladonna. There was a mixture of drugs.
Baigent says his account would explain why Jesus apparently died so quickly. While normally a person lingered on the cross for three days, according to the gospels, Jesus died within hours. Of course, there is another widely accepted explanation for Jesus’s quick death: He had been beaten, stabbed, in addition to being crucified.
James: Indeed, somebody could die after a matter of hours instead of several days?
Baigent: They could. But I think by giving someone a drug to render them unconscious would reduce this trauma and I think this is a significant factor in the Gospel account.
The Greek text
Next, he suggests, a lifeless-looking, unconscious Jesus was removed from the cross. The gospels say that Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate to ask for Jesus’s body. Buried in the text of the original Greek Bible, Baigent says is a crucial clue:
Baigent: When Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate and asks for Jesus’ body to take down from the cross, he asks for the “soma” of Jesus—Which means the living body. Pilate allows Joseph to take the body. But he uses the word “ptoma” which means the corpse, the dead body.
So even in the New Testament, there’s a distinction made between a living Jesus and a dead Jesus.
Religion scholar Elaine Pagels of Princeton University says Baigent is drawing the wrong conclusion.
Pagels: If you’re talking about the removal of a body of a friend of yours, you would ordinarily not talk about “a corpse.” You would not say, “my father’s dead corpse.” You would talk about “my father’s body.” It’s just a bit more respectful and intimate on the whole.
'Immediate medical attention'
Once Joseph of Arimathea collected the body, Michael Baigent says there was one last, urgent
step to complete the plot: immediate medical attention.
Baigent: They bring him down from the cross, they get him as quickly as possible into the tomb where under the cover of darkness, they return with drugs to treat any bleeding which may have occurred and to try to revive him.
And once again, Baigent contends the Gospels offer clues. When Joseph and Nicodemus—supporters of Jesus—visited his tomb during the night, they brought with them herbs and spices such as aloe and myrrh.
The Bridgeman Art Library / Getty
The Lamentation of the Dead Christ, c.1520 (oil on panel)
Baigent: They weren’t embalming spices.
James: The spices they took to the tomb weren’t the kinds of things they would be taking if Jesus were dead?
Baigent: Exactly.
James: So you’re saying they were going to deal with an injured Jesus rather than a Jesus who had perished? That’s not the way the Gospels read.
Baigent: That’s the way the Gospels read if you read them closely.
Craig Evans, an evangelical New Testament scholar at Acadia Divinity College, completely dismisses Baigent’s theory. And he says spices were brought to the tomb and there was a very practical reason.
Evans: Bodies were spiced because of the bad smell. That’s what they were doing, not to treat his wounds and hopefully help him revive and get out of the tomb alive.
All of the accounts agree that Jesus was crucified and died and what strikes me as remarkable that had he not died that would have been enormous good news for his followers.
James: So rather than keep such news a secret, you’d be shouting it from the rooftops?
Pagels: Absolutely. God delivered him.
But Michael Baigent takes his unorthodox ideas even further— he contends there is hidden evidence that Jesus was alive and well long after the crucifixion.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12084683/
CONTINUED : Was the evidence of Jesus being alive a hidden treasure in southern France?
