“The Egyptian” of Acts 21:38 - an unlikely candidate for Jesus

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

Good luck to anyone who is able to convert the Jewish Jesus Christ of the New Testament, whose death occurred early during the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, into a rebel insurgent leading a force of 4000 murderous sicarii (assassins) at Mount Olivet, or into the wilderness, at a point late in the procuratorship of Felix - and an “Egyptian” rebel at that!

Lena Einhorn

has attempted to do just that in her, albeit most intriguing, book, A Shift in Time,

and in her article, “Jesus and the Egyptian Prophet”: http://lenaeinhorn.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Jesus-and-the-Egyptian-Prophet-12.11.25.pdf

I, having read through a substantial amount of the material that Lena referenced for me on the subject, wrote her this my summary of it all:

Dear Lena,

Many thanks for your interesting contributions which I have enjoyed reading ….

What I got out of it, though, is not what you would have wanted me to get out of it.
Your showing how well Procurator Felix fits the biblical Pontius Pilate was a revelation to me.

St. Paul says to Felix that the latter had been a judge of the nation "for many years" (Acts 24:27), which could not be true of just Felix at that time (about a handful of years only).
But it would be perfectly true were Felix to be merged with Pontius Pilate, making for some two decades of overall governorship.

And, regarding the startling likenesses between some aspects of Jesus and "the Egyptian" - though one would be very hard put indeed to make of Jesus, "love thy enemy", "he who lives by the sword will die by the sword", "my kingdom is not of this world", "render to Caesar", a murderous revolutionary.

What happens is that the influential life of Jesus Christ gets picked up and absorbed into pseudo-historical characters, such as the Buddha (his birth was miraculous, he walks on water, he has 12 inner apostles and 72 outer ones, etc.), Krishna, Prophet Mohammed, and, most notably, Apollonius of Tyana, whom many regard as being the actual model for the biblical Jesus. Unfortunately for Apollonius, his association with Nineveh (destroyed in 612 BC and whose location was totally unknown until the C19th AD), renders him an historical absurdity - same with Mohammed and his various associations with Nineveh.

Also Heraclius of Byzantium for the very same reason.

Josephus has obviously merged into the one scenario, two very disparate characters: Jesus Christ and the Egyptian.

Hence some incredibly striking parallels mixed with some impossible differences.

My best wishes,

Damien.