There are few topics that have intrigued both historians and scholars of religion more than the life and times of Jesus Christ. As far as many people are concerned, Jesus is the most influential and significant person to have ever walked the Earth. Over two billion people regard him as their savior and lord.
Almost all of what we currently know about Jesus Christ comes to us via the Gospels of the New Testament. However it has occurred to many scholars that the New Testament itself is probably based on a lost or secret original Hebrew or Aramaic gospel composed by the earliest Jewish Christians.
This lost gospel has been the holy grail for many a Biblical scholar. Researchers refer to this book as the 'Q Gospel' or just "Book Q'. However to date, no scholar has been able to identify this text. Many have suggested it has been entirely lost.
One writer however is almost certain that he has discovered this lost gospel and is able to prove it and reveal its contents. The revelations regarding Jesus and the ramifications of the publicizing of this missing original gospel might be near earth shattering for both Christianity and Judaism.
Noted Australian writer, Michael Cohen, who previously made a name for himself researching paranormal mysteries, is certain that he has uncovered the original Hebrew gospel hidden beneath mountains of cryptic Hebrew texts, and kept deliberately secret by generations of Jewish mystics as well as the possibly Vatican. This gospel was written by the original Hebrew and Aramaic speaking Christians.
According to Cohen, who is of the Jewish faith himself, the recent attitudes towards Jesus amongst Jews only date back to the dark ages and in particular the era of the crusades. Prior to this, attitudes towards Jesus amongst Jews varied. Some Jews regarded him as one of two messiah’s that the bible prophesied, some regarded him as a prophet and others regarded him as a heretic - however opinions of him were not uniform amongst the community.
At the time of the crusades, some of the most important Jewish communities lay along the the river Rhine, between Germany and France. The main communities in this region were the towns of Speyer, Mainz and Worms. Here jews had lived for centuries in peace with their neighbors. It was said, that the reason the jews of these region knew such peace with the local Christian population is that at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus they had sent letters to the Roman authorities in Palestine asking them to spare Jesus. Cohen notes that this story is probably a fable in itself.
According to Cohen the Jews in this area had began to refer to themselves as “Ashkenazim” from around the Eighth Century CE. The term Ashkenaz in Hebrew refers to the ancient Scythian civilization that existed in the region that is now Iran, Turkey and the far south of the Ukraine. The Jews of the Rhineland believed that the Merovingian kings that ruled in the region of the Rhineland were of Scythian ancestry. Cohen notes that this explanation is noted in the Ninth century work of the Bishop Amulo, called ‘Contra Judeos”, a work that although hostile to Jews contains valuable information on the community at the time nevertheless. This early reference to the term “Ashkenaz” refutes any current theories that the term suggests an alternate ancestry for the Ashkenazim further East - such as in Khazaria. The Khazars were a Turkic group some claim converted to Judaism. According to Cohen this is total myth and there never were any Jewish Khazars. This theory is popular with modern anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists but according to Cohen is a Nineteenth Century hoax by Russian Jews who were being persecuted on account of being labelled “Christ KIllers”. By trying to claim non-Hebrew ancestry a handful of Jewish intellectual thought they could have the “Christ killer label removed.
The peace the Jews of the Rhineland knew was shattered when to their shock, at the time when the vast armies of knights were being raised to conquer Jerusalem from the Muslims who had control of the Holy Land, the recruits attacked the Jewish Rhineland communities. The slaughter that the Jews experienced was unlike anything they had ever been through. Entire families and Synagogues of Jews, were tortured and martyred. The Jews who prior to that had been an integral part of the local economy were changed forever - the community was traumatized. As a result of this Judaism and the Jews began to withdraw into itself and change radically. Judaism prior to that had been a rather ambiguous affair and the lines between it and Christianity somewhat blurred. This was to change. Fragments of Babylonian Rabbinical texts were collated and redacted into what became known as the Talmud. Jews were not to have any more personal relations with Christians or take Christian wives. Jesus was to be rejected as a false messiah outright and no deviation was tolerated. Positive references to Jesus were removed from all Jewish books and an Aramaic original gospel that the Jews until that point had in their possession hidden forever.
However, Jewish works on Jesus including the lost Gospel were not entirely gone. These manuscripts were still copied by Rabbis and kept secretly until recent times.
According to Cohen some of the fascinating facts that this gospel reveals are: Jesus was in-fact born and lived more that 100 years before Christians believe he did. The father of Jesus was a Romanised Jew from Lebanon named Joseph Pandera who was a very wealthy chariot maker for the Roman army. Pandera is an Aramaic cognate of the Latin word Carpenterius, meaning chariot. This is the real origin of ‘Joseph the Carpenter’. Carpenterius became ‘Teknon’ in the Greek Gospels, but someone co-incidentally was then translated closer to its source word in English.
Michael Cohen notes that the truth about Jesus contained in this original gospel is likely set to finally mend any rifts that existed between the Christian Church and Judaism.
"The Q Book presents a Jesus that is both familiar and very different to the Jesus presented by The Church - it is time the world meets the real Jesus". Mr Cohen is currently finishing a book on this explosive topic, due for release early next year. He can be contacted via his Facebook page www.facebook.com/MrMichaelCohen