The Second Messiah

“Bingo.” Fonzi stabbed the laptop keyboard with his finger. “Read on, be enlightened, and then we’ll discuss.”

The screen cleared and then presented another chunk of text:

The Roman commander in Dora, a harsh man known for his brutality, having heard of Jesus the Nazarene’s deeds and that he was gathering crowds around him and that he had claimed to be the King of the Jews, promptly imprisoned the false messiah on charges of sedition.

A trial was quickly arranged. The prisoner was found guilty on Judas’s evidence, and on the evidence of the brethren in Judas’s company, who spread rumors about the prisoner and conspired against him. All this time the fearful prisoner had begged to be cleared of his charges, no longer claiming that he was Jesus the Nazarene. But the commander failed to heed him, the charges remained, and the sentence of execution was carried out by crucifixion.

When the messiah’s corpse was removed from the cross, it was placed in a tomb in the burial caves outside Dora, on the road to Caesarea. On the third day, several of Jesus the Nazarene’s disciples went to the tomb and removed the body, to prevent it becoming a false shrine to their master. And there the matter ended. All this was told by Judas Iscariot to the Chosen of God.

The text ended. As Jack read it again he felt as if his lungs had turned to stone. “It—it’s astonishing,” he said hoarsely.

“Astonishing doesn’t even come close.” Fonzi shook his head. “But right now, we don’t know when exactly this other crucifixion happened in the timeline of Jesus’ life. Was it in the same year he was crucified? Or before, or even after? But for various reasons, which I’ll come to, I’d suggest that it’s likely to be some time between 30 A.D. to 33 A.D., which is generally agreed to be about the time when the real Jesus was executed. And if this means what I think it means, then it may cast doubt on the most powerful core of Christian belief—the resurrection itself.”

“How?” Lela asked.

Fonzi massaged his temple with the fingers of one hand. “The pretender—let’s call him the false Jesus—is caught, sentenced, crucified by the Romans, and then his corpse is removed from his tomb by the real Jesus’ disciples. In effect, his body has disappeared. At some point, before or after this event, we assume that the real Jesus is caught, sentenced, crucified by the Romans, and then rises from the dead.

“But clearly this raises questions. One story mirrors the other. What if this second event is misrepresented? What if the two stories—the one concerning the real Jesus, and the other story that reflects the false Jesus—have essentially blurred to become one? Or even that one of them replaced the other?”

“You mean the resurrection may have never happened?”

Fonzi said, “Hey, I’m just throwing out thoughts, Jack. Like any sane, reasonable thinker would do if they read this material. And some of those thoughts might be adhesive enough to stick. It’s even conceivable that this story we’ve just read may cast doubt on whether the real Jesus was crucified, and not a substitute, as many early Christian heresies and the Koran have claimed.”

Fonzi paused, then added, “Something else that’s worth consider-ing—Bible experts have been known to suggest that there had to be some kind of collusion between Jesus and Judas for his betrayal to take place. This report makes you wonder if the collusion went even deeper. That Jesus might never have died on the cross in the first place. You get my point? The pretender’s crucifixion was the only one that took place. Those are the kinds of speculations that might arise from this material.”

“How come a story as controversial as this hasn’t surfaced before now?”