November 2012: Pope Benedict XVI ponders the early life of Jesus and several myths about how the birth unfolded in his latest book. In “Jesus of Nazareth — The Infancy Narratives,” the pope states the Christian calendar is actually based on a blunder by a sixth century monk, who Benedict states was several years off in his calculation of Jesus’ birth date. According to the pope’s research, there is no evidence in the Gospels that the cattle and other animals traditionally pictured gathered around the manger were actually present. The Pope further debunks the claim that angels sang at the birth, a staple theme of Christmas carols.

The book, which is being published in multiple languages in time for Christmas 2012, is the third in a series by the pontiff. The 176-page volume, which comprises a brief foreword, four chapters and an epilogue, traces Jesus’ life up to the age of 12, when, according to the Gospels, he was presented by his parents in the Temple in Jerusalem, the Vatican stated. The previous two volumes dealt with Jesus’ adult life and his public ministry. The initial worldwide print run with the book released across 50 countries in Italian, German, Croatian, French, English, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. In the coming months, the book will be translated into 12 more languages for publication in 72 countries in total,

Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent for the Religion News Service, stated the pope was not so much aiming to debunk myths as trying to show that the Jesus depicted in the Gospels is a real historical figure, who walked on earth and talked to people like anyone else.The pope also looks at scholarly studies of the Bible, some of which have indicated for decades that the traditionally accepted birth date for Jesus is wrong. While the book points out that the Gospels do not support the presence of animals at Jesus’ birth, this detail was apparently added in later centuries. Speciale stated the pope is a traditional man and does not suggest they should be thrown out of the Nativity scene and he doesn’t want people to change their traditions.

The Vatican quotes Anthony Valle, a professor of theology, as stating the pope has been open to scientific inquiry in his own study of Jesus’ life. “The pope is not against the historical critical method at all, in fact, he uses it, he appreciates it,” Valle stated. He sees the pope as using “both faith and reason” in his efforts to bring the life of Jesus closer. Monsignor Philip Whitmore, who translated the book into English, stated the pontiff used his writing to explore “the inner meaning of the infancy narratives, showing how they pick up on Old Testament themes and develop them in new and unexpected ways.” “The pope helps us to understand the world where Jesus was born. Caesar brought peace to the Roman Empire, but this tiny child brought something much more wonderful, God’s peace, eternal life, an end to sin and death,” Whitmore added. “Anyone who’s wondering why Christmas came to be such a great celebration in the West can find the answer right here. The pope explains how the birth of Jesus changed history forever.”

Pope Benedict XVI also writes in his book “Jesus of Nazareth, that the Jewish people are not collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. Many Catholics and other Christians blamed Jews for Jesus’ death for hundreds of years, but the Catholic Church formally repudiated that assertion in the 1960s. Benedict underlines the new position; “Who has insisted on the condemnation of Jesus to death?” he asks in the book, referring to scenes in the Gospels where the people of Jerusalem demand that Roman governor Pontius Pilate have Jesus crucified. The Gospel of John says the people in question were “the Judeans,” but the pope says the term “does not refer to unlike the modern reader may tend to interpret, the people of Israel as such, and it doesn’t even have a ‘racist’ connotation.” Far from meaning all Jewish people, Benedict writes, “the circle of prosecutors pursuing the death of Jesus” is the “aristocracy of the Temple,” or the priesthood. “Even that is not without exception,” he adds in the book.

John Dominic Crossan was a teenager in Ireland, when he dreamed of becoming a missionary priest. Jesus was extraordinary because of how he lived, not died, states Crossan, one of the world’s top scholars on the “historical Jesus,” a field in which academics use historical evidence to reconstruct Jesus in his first-century setting. Crossan states he never planned to be a Jesus scholar but was drafted to play that role by the Roman Catholic Church

Crossan believes the public should be exposed to even the most divisive debates that scholars have had about Jesus and the Bible. He co-founded the Jesus Seminar, a controversial group of scholars who hold public forums that cast doubt on the authenticity of many sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus.

The 77-year-old Crossan has built on the seminar’s mission by writing a series of best-selling books on Jesus and the Apostle Paul. With his silver Prince Valiant haircut and his pronounced Irish accent, he’s also appeared on documentaries such as PBS’s “From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians” and A&E’s “Mysteries of the Bible.”

Crossan states Jesus was an exploited “peasant with an attitude” who didn’t perform many miracles, physically rise from the dead or die as punishment for humanity’s sins. “I cannot imagine a more miraculous life than nonviolent resistance to violence,” Crossan states. His best-selling books, including the recent “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography,” have changed how biblical scholars operate. Crossan’s overarching message is that you don’t have to accept the Jesus of dogma. There’s another Jesus hidden in Scripture and history who has been ignored.

Crossan states his father, a banker, and his mother, a housewife, didn’t push religion on him. He was raised in a traditional Irish Catholic church where faith was “undiscussed, uninvestigated and uncriticized.” “I didn’t grow up in an atmosphere where the Bible was stuffed down my throat.” He grew up in a small town in Ireland reading adventure stories like “20,000 Leagues under The Sea” and reciting poetry with his father on long walks. He wanted adventure and travel. The missionary priests who visited his boyhood school with stories of mission trips to Africa seemed to offer both. Crossan immersed himself in the world of the Bible for the rest of his adult life. When he entered a monastery at 16, church leaders told him they wanted him to be a scholar because he had already taken five years of Latin and Greek.

He became a priestly prodigy: ordained by 23; a doctorate at 25. He studied in Rome and Jerusalem, and eventually became a New Testament scholar who became known as an authority on the parables of Jesus. (Crossan saw them as subversive literary gems.) His days as a priest would end, though, because of the same forces that shaped the rest of his career: the clash between church dogma and scholarly truth.

Crossan states it was “bliss” being a priest and scholar in the mid-1960s because the Roman Catholic Church had instituted a series of modernizing reforms. But conservative church leaders fought those reforms, and Crossan says they pressured him to steer his research toward conclusions that reinforced church doctrine. He left the priesthood in 1969 after he angered church leaders by publicly questioning the church’s ban on birth control. He married, and settled into a career of teaching and writing books that were read primarily by other scholars.

Later, however, Crossan would anger church leaders again. Crossan is also reviled in a way that few scholars are. Some critics say he’s trying to debunk Christianity. In 1985, Robert Funk, a New Testament scholar, asked Crossan to join him on a risky mission: Expose the public to academic debates about the historical Jesus. The seminar was Crossan’s first wide exposure to the public. The media gravitated to him because he was a scholar who didn’t talk like a scholar.

He became known for his sound bites inspired, he states, by Jesus’ use of parables to distill complex truths in pithy but provocative sayings. Explaining why America’s reliance on military might was similar to Rome’s. “There’s good news and bad news from the historical Jesus. The good news: God says Caesar sucks. The bad news: God says Caesar is us.”
Crossan’s public profile rose another notch in 1991 when The New York Times ran a front-page story two days before Christmas on his book, “The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.” The book became a bestseller, and Crossan followed up with more. He says people were anxious to embrace a faith with “brains and heart,” and learn the history behind the text, not just its wording.

Crossan states that he’s “trying to understand the stories of Jesus, not refute them.” Consider his understanding of the resurrection. Jesus didn’t bodily rise from the dead, he states. The first Christians told Jesus’ resurrection story as a parable, not as a fact. “Crucifixion meant that imperial power had won,” Crossan states. “Resurrection meant that divine justice had won. God is on the side of the crucified one. Rome’s’ values are a dead issue to me.”

Most were parables, too, Crossan states. But there were some exceptions. “I’m completely convinced that Jesus was a major healer. I don’t think anybody would talk about Jesus if all he did was talk.” People like to talk about Scripture, but Christians should also know history to understand Jesus, Crossan stated.
In Jesus’ time, Rome was forcing many Jewish families into destitution, with high taxes and land seizures. Some Jews advocated violent rebellion, but others opted for non-violent resistance. Jesus called for nonviolent resistance to Rome and just distribution of land and food. He was crucified because he threatened Roman stability, not as a sacrifice to God for humanity’s sins, Crossan states.

If you believe in a God that uses violence to “save” humanity, you’ll start believing that violence is permissible in certain circumstances, such as suicide bombing or invading other countries to spread democracy. The human addiction to violence, though, is so ingrained that even the authors of the New Testament had trouble accepting Jesus’ nonviolence, Crossan states. So they did a little editing.

Crossan’s proof: Jesus preaches nonviolence at the beginning of the New Testament. By the book of Revelation, he’s leading armies through heaven to kill evildoers. “Christianity both admits and subverts the historical Jesus,” Crossan states.

Crossan claims growing up Irish “makes you skeptical about empire.” But he says he came of age in the first generation after Irish independence when hatred of the British was not pervasive. Crossan once wrote in his memoir that he learned two things from Irish history: “One, the British did terrible things to the Irish. Two, the Irish, had they the power, would have done equally terrible things to the British (they did it to one another with the British gone).”

After spending much of his life in the Roman Catholic Church, Crossan is now an outsider. Crossan has also broken with church tradition by marrying. He married Margaret Dagenais, a university art professor, soon after leaving the priesthood in 1969. She died of a heart attack in 1983. Today, his current wife, Sarah, is a yoga teacher and photographer. She’s also his partner in travel. Crossan wanted to see the world as a boy. Now he sees it as a man. The two often travel to holy sites, where she takes photos that Crossan later uses in church presentations.

Crossan is not worried that his work will shatter people’s faith in Jesus. The closer one gets to the historical Jesus, Crossan states, the more extraordinary Jesus becomes. “A lot of people in the first century thought Jesus was saying something so important that they were willing to die for it. If people finish with my books and now see why Pilate executed him and why people died for him, then I’ve done my job.”

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The video was documented by Waled Shoebat a former Palestinian terrorist.  This video demonstrates that Islam does not use the Temple Mount as a Holy place of worship. Instead they pray towards Mecca with their backsides facing the Temple Mount Dome and use the area for secular activities.