HUGH J. SCHONFIELD THE PASSOVER PLOT Copyright © 1965 Hugh J. Schonfield First Edition published in Great Britain 1965 This 40th Anniversary Edition published in the United States 2005 The Disinformation Company Ltd. 163 Third Avenue, Suite 108 New York, NY 10003 Tel.: +1.212.691.1605 Fax: +1.212.473.9096 www.disinfo.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a database or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means now existing or later discovered, including without limitation mechanical, electronic, photographic or otherwise, without the express prior written permission of the publisher. 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Contents page Introduction 9 PART ONE The Man who believed He was Messiah 1 The Last Times 19 2 He that should Come 34 3 A Child is Born 48 4 The Formative Years 58 5 The Anointing 71 6 Attempt and Failure 79 7 The Disclosure 90 8 Setting the Stage 101 9 The King Comes 114 10 The Plot Matures 127 11 It is Finished 143 12 Thou wilt show me the Path of Life 15 8 13 He is not Here 170 14 Faith and Deeds 183 PART TWO The Sources and Growth of the Legend 1 Messianism and the Development of Christianity 191 2 North Palestinean Sectarians and Christian Origins 207 CONTENTS page The Suffering Just One and the Son of Man 215 Gospels in the Making 228 The Second Phase 242 Some Gospel Mysteries 259 Bibliography 277 Index 283 Introduction THE PASSOVER PLOT is the outcome of an endeavour which has extended over forty years to discover the man Jesus Christ really was. The difficulties all the way have been formidable, and by no means confined to problems of research. By far the hardest part of the undertaking has been to free the mind from precon- ceived ideas and the effects of traditional Christian teaching. There had to be a readiness to entertain whatever might be revealed even if this meant differing from former judgements. Most books about him have been devotional, apologetic or polemical, and I wished mine to be none of these. What I aimed at was to shed all disposition to make use of Jesus and allow him from his own time to explain himself to me. I was first charged with responsibility for the task now com- pleted when I was a student at Glasgow University. We were visited by an eminent Scottish Professor of New Testament History and Literature, whom I, a Jewish boy, rather startled by my youthful arguments and familiarity with the ancient Christian authorities I had studied on my own initiative. Already at that time the person of Jesus greatly attracted me, and I wanted to find out what had been the convictions of his original Jewish fol- lowers who acknowledged him as the Messiah. I read widely both the Christian and Jewish interpretations, and it seemed to me that both were partly right and partly wrong. There was a mystery which called for further explanation. My enthusiasm impressed the Professor, and he invited me to his home in Edin- burgh where we talked into the small hours. In the end I made IO INTRODUCTION him a promise, which I have only been able to honour long after his death. Through the intervening years, however, I pursued my researches, exploring many aspects of the subject. I wrote a num- ber of books as much for my own instruction as for the enlighten- ment of those who read them. Finally I found it necessary to make a fresh English translation of the Christian Scriptures accom- panied by copious explanatory notes, published as The Authentic New Testament, the most consequential of all my literary labours. I have frequently been urged by numerous readers to set down my convictions about Jesus. They were persuaded that, in my unusual position as a Jew who has devoted a lifetime to the sympathetic elucidation of Christian Origins and is not connected with any section of the Church, I ought to have seen things which have escaped the observation of those more directly in- volved. Some of these correspondents may merely have been curious, and others eager to obtain my endorsement of their own beliefs. But on the whole there has been certified to me from the letters I continually receive from many parts of the world that there is a widespread desire for a realistic rather than an idealised representation of Jesus. The traditional portraiture no longer satisfies: it is too baffling in its apparent contradiction of the terms of our earthly existence. The God-man of Christianity is increasingly incredible, yet it is not easy to break with centuries of authoritative instruction and devout faith, and there remains embedded deep in the sub-conscious a strong sense of the super- natural inherited from remote ages. Jesus still counts for so much, and answers so much to human need, that we are anxious to believe that there must have been something special about him, something which eludes our rational grasp and keeps us in our thought of him hovering perilously on the brink of naked superstition. We find in him the symbol both of the martyrdom and the aspirations of man, and therefore we must cling to him as the embodiment of an assurance that our life has a meaning and a purpose. Quite apart from the intrusion into early Christianity of a pagan assessment of his worth in