Lena Einhorn

It’s all about chronology – and war

On discovering the title of this book on the internet I felt joy, connection and curiosity, as I have been conducting chronological research on the origins of Christianity myself. I ordered and read the book immediately, and now I take the opportunity to write this review, which means something quite special to me. Most of all I see Einhorn as a companion on the road to a full understanding of the origins of Christianity, even though our conclusions on the real course of events are slightly different.
Reading the New Testament Einhorn discovered many subtle references to rebellious activity. But when reading Josephus’s Jewish War and Antiquities she ascertained that rebellious activity was low in the years of Jesus’ ministry (around 30 CE) but that it steeply rose after 44 CE. Einhorn discovered several parallels between events or persons in the ‘earlier’ New Testament and in the ‘later’ Josephus. This brings her to the core of her ‘time shift’ theory: that Jesus was not active under Pontius Pilate but about 20 years later. According to Einhorn the Gospel writers have deliberately shifted the events back in time from the 50s to the 30s of the first century CE because the real founding story was too anti-Roman to be told overtly.

The greatest merit of this book is the clear discussion of the rebellious activity in the middle of the first century CE and its relation to early Christianity as a rebellious faction. The main parallel in her book is the one between Jesus of the Gospels and the rebel leader called the Egyptian in Josephus. Although there are similarities between the two stories, there are major differences also, so in my opinion this parallel is not really convincing.

This brings me to my most important criticism of Einhorn’s theory. Although most of her observations are interesting and worth considering in themselves, Einhorn only explores the first years when rebellious activity rose after a period of relative calm. In a few sentences she touches the culminating period of the rebellion, the war of the Jews against the Romans (66-70 CE), and discusses a couple of parallels during that period, but an in-depth discussion of this period is missing. In my opinion the strongest parallels with the Gospels are to be found not in Josephus’s Jewish War and Antiquities but in his Life. In the first part of the great rebellion, end 66 to mid-67 CE, Josephus was in Galilea as organizer of the rebellion, and it is in his description of this period (together with an event at the end of the siege of Jerusalem) that the most powerful parallels are to be found. It really is a pity that Einhorn, who is so familiar with Josephus’ works in general, has overlooked the most powerful fragments. She also limits herself to the New Testament and to Josephus, while the wider literature of the time (the Apostolic Fathers, the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls) is also important when researching the true origins of Christianity, not only in the sense of parallel events (here Josephus remains the most important partner) but also in supporting secondary clues and in the understanding of the mindset of the messianistic rebellious movement of the era. The most important conclusion of my research is a 40-year time shift.

Therefore I advise everyone interested in the working method of the Gospel writers and in the historical truth about the origins of Christianity to read Einhorn’s book alongside my ‘A Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity’.… (more)