Quran inamuongelea mtu tofauti mnayemuita Issa ambaye alizaliwa chini ya mti. Biblia inamuongeleà Yesu aliyezaliwa kwenye hori la ng'ombe. Hawa ni watu wawili tofauti
Was there a Jesus? Of course there was a Jesus – many!
The archetypal Jewish hero was
Joshua (the successor of Moses) otherwise known as
Yehoshua (Yeshua) bin Nun (‘Jesus of the fish’).
Since the name Jesus (Yeshua or Yeshu in Hebrew, Iesous in Greek, source of the English spelling) originally was a
title (meaning ‘saviour’, derived from
‘Yahweh Saves’) probably every band in the Jewish resistance had its own hero figure sporting this moniker, among others.
Josephus, the first century Jewish historian mentions no fewer than
nineteen different Yeshuas/Jesii, about half of them contemporaries of the supposed Christ! In his
Antiquities, of the twenty-eight high priests who held office from the reign of Herod the Great to the fall of the Temple, no fewer than four bore the name Jesus:
Jesus ben Phiabi,
Jesus ben Sec,
Jesus ben Damneus and
Jesus ben Gamaliel. Even Saint Paul makes reference to a rival magician, preaching
‘another Jesus’ (2 Corinthians 11,4).
The surfeit of early Jesuses includes:
Jesus ben Sirach. This Jesus was reputedly the author of the
Book of Sirach (aka
‘Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach‘), part of Old Testament
Apocrypha. Ben Sirach, writing in Greek about 180 BC, brought together Jewish ‘wisdom’ and Homeric-style heroes.
Jesus ben Pandira. A wonder-worker during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (106-79 BC), one of the most ruthless of the Maccabean kings. Imprudently, this Jesus launched into a career of end-time prophecy and agitation which upset the king.
He met his own premature end-time by being hung on a tree – and on the eve of a Passover. Scholars have speculated this Jesus founded the Essene sect.
Jesus ben Ananias. Beginning in 62AD, this Jesus had caused disquiet in Jerusalem with a non-stop doom-laden mantra of
‘Woe to the city’. He prophesied rather vaguely:
“A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against the whole people.”
– Josephus, Wars 6.3.