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Didymus
Didymus
Didymus
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Didymus

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I was a revolutionary, a rebel, a freedom fighter and, if you can believe it or not, my identical twin brother Thomas, my 'Didymus', and I were born of a Virgin.
This happened over two thousand years ago and believe me it is nothing like you have heard or read.
We had an unusual combination of bloodlines, my Didymus and I, me being the oldest by a few minutes was the heir and Thomas was the 'spare'.
On my fathers’ side I was the first male David, we were the most senior and directly descended from King David and we were Levi's, inheritors of the priestly lineage.
On my mothers side we were Kohen the only other priestly line, descended from Aaron brother of Moses and David and Levi through our grandmother and grandfather Hannah and Joachim two intersecting Davidic bloodlines and two separate priestly bloodlines.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 2, 2013
ISBN9781301702145
Didymus
Author

Everard Bromley

Everard Bromley (not my real name, just where my mom was born) (notes on "DIDYMUS") I grew up in South Africa before, during and after the democratic dispensation. After I read the books by Barbera Thiering and knowing about the 'Freedom Struggle' in SA I wondered what and if a similar struggle by Jews during the Roman occupation of Judea would follow the same route and how that would be. (notes on "the BEAST of BIKO BRIDGE") There was genuinely a report in the local newspaper (Daily Dispatch) of number of bodies found where I have located this story. I just let my imagination run wild with the rest of it. (notes on "a Real Surprise) Just a bit of fluff, I was feeling a bit blue for a friend of mine.

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    Didymus - Everard Bromley

    PROLOGUE

    Didymus (meaning 'twin', as does 'Thomas' in Aramaic)

    I am not an historian or theologian, if you are easily offended or upset by religious or historical controversy or argument, read no further, I have manipulated facts to suit my story, because that is all it is, 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.

    It has been said that The problem with Christianity is Christians this is also true of Islam, the problem is Muslims, this applies to any 'ism' that attract fanatical followers, blind adherents or advantage seekers prepared to manipulate a cause to their own ends this includes religious fanaticism, Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Capitalism, ideological absolutism and any fundamentalism you can point a finger at.

    You can’t convince a believer of anything, for their belief is not based on evidence but on a deep-seated need to believe.

    —Carl Sagan

    Part of this story was inspired by the theories of Dr Barbara Thiering on Christian origins

    http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/

    and the immeasurable help of wikipedia.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

    Published by Everard Bromley at Smashwords.

    Copyright 2013

    Everard Bromley

    everardbromley@gmail.com

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to

    http://www.smashwords.com

    and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

    The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products if referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission.

    The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

    <><><>

    BOOK ONE

    Didymus, ‘During the Roman Usurpation’

    Chapter one

    I was a revolutionary, a rebel, a freedom fighter and, if you can believe it or not, my identical twin Brother Thomas, my 'Didymus', and I were born of a virgin.

    This happened over two thousand years ago and believe me it is nothing like you have heard or read.

    We had an unusual combination of bloodlines, my didymus and I, me being the oldest by a few minutes was the heir and Thomas was the 'spare'.

    On my fathers’ side I was the first male David, we were the most senior and directly descended from King David and we were Levi's, inheritors of the priestly lineage.

    On my mothers side we were Kohen the only other priestly line, descended from Aaron brother of Moses and David and Levi through our grandmother and grandfather Hannah and Joachim two intersecting Davidic bloodlines and two separate priestly bloodlines.

    But first I need to give you a little of my cultural history.

    Two thousand years before my time I will use the accepted terminology of 2000BC that is about four thousand years ago some Semitic shepherds moved through the hills of Mesopotamia led by an Adam who could have been a deposed king, a prince or a descendent of one.

    Now throughout this BC time and a lot of early AD time people who heard voices were considered 'holy', today you would classify them as schizophrenic, suffering from auditory hallucinations and bizarre delusions.

    Anyway this Adam coveted the secret knowledge of Kabbalah and astronomy held by the priests of Mesopotamia, their Temples were set in beautiful irrigated gardens called 'Eden', this knowledge was represented by the depiction of a snake and the Adam heard that snake speak to him.

    After the Adam convinced the other shepherds to revolt and demand this secret knowledge from the priests they were driven out of the state.

    As is usual in any paternalistic society, although they probably had nothing to do with it, the blame was laid squarely at the feet of the woman in the tribe.

    With the limited knowledge of astronomy these shepherds did have, like the movement of the sun and seasons, within a few generations they managed to develop agriculture to a degree that caused the priests to notice and reconsider their exile.

    The priests then conned them into becoming servants, enabling the priests to garner themselves more influence by preserving food security.

    The shepherds were told by these priests that they Had to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.

    You have heard all of this before?

    Later these shepherds, together with other Semitics, formed tribes of nomadic migrant pastoral herders, roaming far and wide throughout the area until about 1800BC an Abraham, The Father of a Multitude an important leader, also heard voices.

    These voices told him there was only one God and this land was for his believers.

    Perhaps he was influenced by Zoroastrian religious mythology of monotheism.

    It is interesting to note that about four hundred years later a Pharaoh in Egypt named Akhenaten also started to change the Egyptian polytheism to monotheism, possibly he heard the same voices, or, maybe, he was influenced by a Jewish or Zoroastrian teacher within his circle.

    His one God was 'Aten' or 'Ra', the sun, pretty close to the Zoroastrian sun god.

    Akhenaten built a city to this cause called Amarna.

    He was married to Nefertiti and was the father of Tutankhamun.

    This move to have only one God was the beginning of Akhenatens downfall, because he discontinued funding the traditional temples and this upset a lot of powerful people, mostly polytheist priests who lost their lucrative means of income.

    Soon after Akhenatens death the extremely young Tutankhamun was pressured into returning to the old Egyptian religious ways and after a few years Amarna was abandoned and left to be reclaimed by the desert.

    Although the story of the exodus was probably written to demonstrate God's purpose with us, his chosen people, it was a gematria, an assignment of numerical value to the story of a large number of Israelites who had found their way into Egypt.

    I believe that along with many other Semitic tribes they followed the 1800 BC Hyksos invasion of lower Egypt, looking for advantage and finding it, they settled there for the two hundred and fifty years it took for Pharaoh Ahmose to conquer the Hyksos and retake lower Egypt in about 1560 BC.

    It is interesting enough to note the similarity between the name Ahmose and Moses.

    Eventually, after a further three hundred and fifty years, the Jews in Egypt were becoming too numerous and too influential for Pharaoh Ramesses comfort, he started to oppress and persecute them and it took all the guile of Moses Our Teacher/Rabbi, who may have actually been a Pharaohnic prince, maybe a descendent of Ahmose, not a foundling, to secure their release from under Pharaoh's yoke about 1200BC.

    Moses eventually led them back to where they came from, the land of Canaan, there were never so many and they never spent forty years wandering the desert, forty years was also a gematria, they probably spent just enough time in the desert to toughen up and become hungry and desperate enough to be a threat to any settlements they came across.

    Joshua who was one of twelve spies sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan became leader after Moses had died.

    About 1200 BC, Joshua led the Israelites in conquest of Canaan, killing off any aristocracy and assimilating all the simple peasants after destroying all the major settlements and towns, they then formed the Kingdom of Israel, the land was allocated to twelve tribes.

    Twelve is an important number in early Jewish history, also a gematria and does not necessarily mean ten plus two.

    One of these 'twelve' was the Tribe of Judah which was led by Saul until he died when David, my forefather, declared himself King of Judah and founded Judea and Jerusalem.

    The rest of the tribe remained loyal to the house of Saul until the death of Saul's son when they with the other of the twelve tribes all made loyalty to David in a United Kingdom of Israel.

    A split from the house of David led by Jeroboam formed a new Northern Kingdom of Israel until about 600BC the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar led the conquest of Israel and after destroying the first temple exiled the Jews that had not fled to Gaul and Iberia to Babylon until Cyrus allowed them to return fifty years later.

    Darius who took over from Cyrus then rebuilt the temple.

    After the exile in Babylon all tribal affiliations were abandoned and the Israelites were united again under the Davidic bloodline.

    Certain religious and political functions were reserved for the Levites or Levis and the Kohanim or Kohen, these became the traditional priestly bloodlines.

    The Jews started to spread to larger fertile areas eventually dispersing throughout the Middle East and across the Mediterranean becoming the Diaspora, after Cyrus freed the Jews, a large number had chosen to remain in Babylon, Gaul and Iberia and not return to Israel, but they always kept Jerusalem and its Temple as their center of worship and culture.

    Moving forward to my present day 1BC/1AD, the leaders of Judea and our capital Jerusalem were the hated members of the Herodian Dynasty.

    Herod the Great seeking help from the equally despised 'Roman Occupiers' had canvassed the support of Mark Anthony and Octavian and after securing recognition by the Roman Senate was able to assume the throne of the Hasmonean Kingdom.

    Herod being a western Arab had married Mariamne the Hasmonean and that is how he could claim continuity with the kings of Jerusalem, although a convert he was not born a Jew.

    At first his occupation of the throne brought opposition from the Sadducees leaving the Pharisees in favor, but soon enough his cruelty and mistreatment of Mariamne and the execution of two of her sons on trumped up charges of treason resulted in the Pharisees opposing him, my father Joseph and the other Essenes always opposed him.

    Herod then moved against the Pharisees executing many of their Rabbis, the Essenes because we were a minority and lived in isolated communes were left pretty much alone.

    During his reign Herod was so jealous and paranoid of Mariamne that if he had to travel out of the country he would leave instructions that, if he should die, she was to be put to death immediately.

    Herod the Great was the first client King of the despised Romans, he allowed them to subordinate the economy, the politics, the military and even our relationships with neighboring states.

    Being a cruel leader aside, if he was nothing else, Herod the Great was a builder of note, he rebuilt Solomon’s Temple, Caesarea Maritima and a number of palaces for himself, some like Masada, were in fact fortresses.

    To keep the Jews quiet he completely reconstructed Solomon's Temple, the Temple had been rebuilt five hundred years BC by Darius after Cyrus had allowed the return of the Jews held in exile in Babylon.

    It had been desecrated by the Seleucids, the remnants of Alexander the Great's conquest, who in 160BC had looted it, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus outlawed Judaism and circumcision, he even committed the worst sacrilege to the Jewish sentiment when he had pigs sacrificed on an altar he constructed to Zeus in the Temple.

    It took a revolt by the Maccabees and their rebel army to take Judea back from the Seleucids it was then that the Second Temple was rededicated and became the religious pillar of the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty led by the Zadokite priests, the remnants of which Herod in turn ousted sixty years before I was born.

    To keep the Romans happy Herod built a new city and harbor called Caesarea Maritima in honor of Augustus Caesar it was said to rival the harbor at Piraeus in Greece and even rivaled Cleopatra’s harbor at Alexandria it was beautiful and finished with the very best materials.

    Although it had been constructed on a coast that had no natural harbors, King Herod built two moles as breakwaters, in the end it turned out to be an important commercial harbor and eventually it grew into the biggest city in Judea at the time.

    At the same time Herod built himself one of his many palaces on a promontory with the sea on three sides, he liked his security, the palace was noted for its pool surrounded by a roof supported by many pillars.

    Masada he built on top of an isolated rock plateau on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. The top of the plateau was ninety meters high at the lowest point and was a flat one thousand five hundred square meter egg shape, it had a three meter high casement wall around with many towers, the fortress included storehouses, barracks and an armory.

    The palace was built on a lower promontory. Rainwater was collected and stored in cisterns. Three narrow, winding paths led from below up to fortified gates.

    Four years before I had my Bar Mitzvah Herod the Great died and his Kingdom was divided up between three of his sons, after the intersession of Augustus Caesar we inherited Herod Antipas as Tetrarch whose quarter of the Kingdom made him ruler of Judea the part of Israel where we lived.

    Herod Phillip son of Mariamne the Hasmonean by Herod the great inherited a Tetrarch in the lands to the east of the Jordan.

    Herod Archelaus older brother of Antipas was made Ethnarc, not overall ruler as willed by his father or as disputed by Antipas, only of half the kingdom but he was given the royal dignity.

    Antipas in his cruelty, like his father, murdered three thousand Pharisees which cleared the way for the Sadducees to co opt the Sanhedrin and the running of the Temple in Jerusalem.

    To keep the peace the 'Sadducee usurpers' were prepared to let the Pharisees continue in some of the old ways but they did not share control of the Sanhedrin or Temple in Jerusalem.

    Everybody feared the Herodian and Roman soldiers although there were some who pushed against the rules, they were few and far between and were dealt with harshly.

    There was a lot of animosity between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, my family as Essenes sympathized with neither, as far as the Essenes were concerned the other Jewish sects were The Breakers of the Covenant.

    Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the Jewish aristocrats feared for their position against the cruelty of Antipas more than the wrath of God, few spoke out.

    <><><>

    Chapter two

    My family lived in a commune at Qumran, which we referred to as 'The New Jerusalem' it was near the shores of what you know today as the Dead Sea, the community was revolutionary at heart because they did not follow the teachings of the Pharisees or Sadducees. Our teachers were what was left of the original Zadokite priesthood, we were in fact Essenes (Essenoi), a conservative sect of Second Temple Judaism descended directly from the Zadokite priesthood with strong Davidic, Levite and Kohen bloodlines another trait of our elders was to carefully document everything in code.

    We were less in number than the Pharisees or Sadducees and there were many Gentiles living with us and learning our ways, although none of these Gentiles were taught the secrets of our scriptures and how to translate the code hiding the meanings in them.

    We had communities throughout Judea and lots of less devout members throughout the Diaspora.

    All the members and the children of the community were steeped in the Essene teachings but we had to learn and were instructed in the code using references with hidden meanings as well as numerical references with further hidden meanings.

    To the uninitiated or casual reader or listener without the secret knowledge a passage would sound nothing like what it was meant to convey.

    We were an ascetic lot, no happy families for us, the women and young children lived in a convent known as the house of 'Virgins', while the men and boys who had celebrated their Bar Mitzvah lived a separate, celibate lifestyle, in a nearby monastery.

    There was no private ownership, everything we had belonged to the community and we were not allowed to trade.

    The Essene sect being very conservative committed to a strict observance of Sabbath lived in isolated communities or communes shunning the other Jewish sects who were considered 'The Breakers of the Covenant'.

    We elected a layman as leader to attend to our physical needs so that the priests could concentrate on strict observance, we were not allowed to swear any oaths or sacrifice animals and our preferred diet was vegan.

    We were only allowed to carry weapons for self defense and then only while traveling outside the monastery.

    Although Essenes lived a celibate lifestyle marriage and cohabitation was allowed but restricted to procreation only.

    After three year betrothals a couple were permitted to cohabitate in a trial marriage, they did what comes naturally until the woman became pregnant.

    During this period the man was considered 'unclean'.

    Once the betrothed became pregnant it was back to the monastery for the man and after abstinence and certain rituals he was reconsidered 'clean' again.

    The woman went back to the convent for the next trimester, if there was a miscarriage before the trimester a further three month wait was started and after the six months the couple would try again.

    If after the first trimester of pregnancy there was no miscarriage, they would hold a marriage ceremony.

    Should the woman miscarry before term it was back to stage one after a three month waiting period, this would continue until she came to term.

    If the woman failed to get pregnant or was unable to carry a child to term, the men were allowed a new betrothal or could choose to marry a widow who was still of child bearing age.

    The husband had very little to do with the pregnancy and birth and only after three years following a birth, was the husband allowed back into the matrimonial bed, this was also the first time he met any previous new arrivals in his family.

    This cohabitation lasted until the wife became pregnant again, then it was back to the monastery and convent for both of them until the next three year period after a birth, or six months if a miscarriage happened.

    My dad, you know him as Joseph, who was next in line for the Davidic Kingship and because he was also a Levite was next in line for the high priesthood after my grandfather, who was the present David and high priest, known as 'God', my dad was referred to as the 'Holy Spirit'.

    My dad Joseph was a little lax in the celibacy department and a slip up during the betrothal period with my mother, you know her as Mary, resulted in her becoming pregnant, before the trial marriage.

    This happened while she was still a resident in the 'House of Virgins' that is how the idea of an 'Immaculate Conception' and that I and my brother was born of a Virgin was started.

    Anyone who was initiated in our ways would have been familiar with all this terminology but to outsiders it seemed other worldly.

    Of course this early pregnancy would have been a scandal had not an 'Angel', a priest who was a messenger of the high priest, thus an 'Angel of God', visited my mother and told her not to be afraid for she had found favor with 'God', who as you know, happened to be my grandfather, he desperately wanted to avoid any scandal and if the child was a boy, he was determined to ensure the succession of his bloodline.

    My mother asked the 'Angel' how this would be accomplished because she and my dad were not in a trial marriage.

    The 'Angel' priest said the 'Holy Spirit', that is my dad Joseph, will come upon you, meaning the betrothal period would be terminated to accommodate an early trial marriage and a wedding ceremony would be pushed forward to coincide with the first trimester.

    My grandfather would assist to cover the slip up, thereby preserving my legitimacy and allowing me to inherit the Davidic and Priestly bloodline.

    This pre-nuptial conception was a bone of contention all our life but as my parents were in a binding betrothal at the time, for most in the commune that was enough to make me legitimate, although our younger brother James was seen by some to be the legitimate heir, he never claimed it.

    The fact that Thomas and I were identical twins was kept a closely guarded secret within the community and only a few individuals were actually aware that there were two of us, for the most part only one of us would appear in public at any one time.

    This was to secure the continuation of the bloodline should something happen to me.

    We Essenes at Qumran had a long tradition with a strict ceremonial time table with numerical overtones and a lot of coded references, for example when the high priest 'God' and the other priests 'Angels' sat at table in the refectory for the communal meal, it was on a raised dais platform that we referred to as 'Heaven', we were not allowed to sit or eat until 'God and the Angels were in Heaven'.

    Everyone was seated according to seniority so that the second highest priest sat at the 'Right Hand of God in Heaven' and the next in seniority sat at the left hand side of 'God' and so on, the rest of the refectory was divided into sections referred to as the 'Body' with places for the different levels of learning, the bulk of those who were in the 'Gnosis' sat in the middle, referred to as 'earth' while the lowest, uninformed initiates and any Gentiles, referred to as 'babes', sat with the young newly arrived initiates who had recently held their Bar Mitzvah, furtherest away 'At the Feet of God'.

    Communal bathing or immersion was another big part of our life, we were expected to bathe at least once a day, this was ceremonial as well as hygienic, we were the sweetest smelling Jews in Judea. This was why initiates were baptized before first entry to the lowest level of instruction.

    Soon after Thomas and I were born an 'Angel' returning from Jerusalem, told my dad that Herod the Great, in his aging madness, wanted to slaughter all the first born males in the land, today you refer to it as the 'Massacre of the Innocents'.

    So at the insistence of my grandfather my parents fled Qumran and Judea and headed to Egypt for sanctuary from Herod.

    <><><>

    Thomas and I being babes in arms were carried by my mother who sat on a donkey that my father led, at first we traveled through the hills at night, using the light of the full moon to navigate from Essene community to Essene community where shelter, sustenance and information about conditions ahead was provided along the way.

    We need to pass through the back hills and secret trails so we can move undetected around the more populated areas' Joseph told Mary, 'We must use the hilly country, avoiding any settlements and we have to do this while the moon is full, once we reach the plains there will be no more settlements and we will be able to travel during the day."

    One night Joseph was leading the donkey stumbling slowly around a bend in a wadi, when suddenly he drew up short, they found themselves right in the midst of a Herodian army patrol, luckily all the soldiers had been drinking cheap wine and the sentries were asleep.

    Quiet! Joseph whispered, And pray.

    The fleeing couple managed to make their way silently through the camp and remain undetected.

    The soldiers had been drinking confiscated wine and they had also been feasting on stolen livestock, there were a few legs of lamb curing in the smoke above a smoldering fire, Joseph whispered to Mary.

    I think we should help ourselves to one or two smoked and cured legs as well as some freshly baked loaves of bread and whatever other food and drink we can find.

    I wonder what the reaction of the soldiers will be when they awake to find some of the cooked lamb and freshly baked bread and other rations missing. Mary whispered back, If they even notice at all, I am sure it will be put down to one or two of their own members who having awoken and feeling peckish had devoured some of the food.

    Later when Joseph and Mary were on the plains out in the desert, they had arrived at a scheduled stop at an oasis in the late afternoon, having filled the water skins, Joseph said.

    I have an uneasy feeling, I think for extra security we should move up the hill into hiding in that nearby wadi. He had hardly entered the shelter when a Roman army patrol had marched out of the dusk and into the oasis.

    I knew these soldiers were coming but they were only scheduled to arrive tomorrow night, He said to Mary, I had received intelligence about them from the local Essene village, and we should have been safely on our way.

    The patrol had obviously double marched for longer to reach the oasis a day early.

    We had to stay in hiding for the whole of the following day as the patrol decided to spend all day lazing at the oasis, luckily the cover my dad had chosen was far enough away for us not to be detected and fortunately the donkey and us two babies were quiet.

    The next few days were spent moving through the featureless desert when one of the most frightening occurrences happened, Joseph and Mary had already safely crossed the frontier into Egypt, it had been a particularly warm morning, at midday the hot wind that had been blowing all night started to rise, before long there was a dark cloud on the horizon and they barely had time to hide behind a rock formation and brace themselves before the threatening dust storm struck.

    Joseph had to hobble the donkey and wrap a cloth over its eyes and nose then make sure Mary and us were wrapped properly against the dust, Mary held us face down to stop a layer of dust from settling on and smothering us.

    The rest of the trip was tedious but uneventful.

    At last they reached the Nile and made their way towards the Delta where they were able to take refuge with an expatriate Essene community who were

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