Six Historical Facts You Probably Did Not Know About Jesus and Christianity that You Should Know

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

The name “Jesus” is a transliteration of a more common Hebrew name, “Yeshu’a.” The proper name of the central person in Christianity is “Yeshu’a ben Yosef,” which technically translates as “Joshua, son of Joseph.” For a long period of time, the letter “J” in the Western world was pronounced with a “Y” sound. There is no letter “J” in the Hebrew or Aramaic languages that Yeshu’a ben Yosef spoke.
Historians and other biblical scholars have noted that the FOUR Gospels included in the Christian Bible that detail the life of Yeshu’a ben Yosef cover only FIFTY days of his life. There are no known written records that give details of his life in its entirety.
There were/are over THIRTY Gospels written about the life of Yeshu’a. In circa 180 CE, a scholar named Irenaeus wrote his Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) where he determined that only FOUR of these Gospels should be included in the Bible. These FOUR Gospels were the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. At the time, Irenaeus and his followers were vehemently against and competing for adherents with Christian Gnostics. Do not confuse Christian Gnostics with “agnostics.” Christian Gnostics were a group of Christians who performed different rituals and who held several different interpretations of the life of Christ and the practice of Christianity.
The Lord’s Prayer was originally recited by Yeshu’a in Aramaic, one of a few languages that Jesus spoke. There are many different translations of “The Lord’s Prayer,” from the original Aramaic. The Lord’s Prayer that most modern Christians recite is actually a version edited and re-written by England’s King Henry VIII, which is why it (and the King James Bible, edited by England’s King James) sounds so much like English poetry from the 16th century. Read some Shakespeare and then read some passages of an Old King James version of the Bible and you will notice the similarities.
The standard practice for punishing a woman who had committed adultery or who became pregnant outside of wedlock, was to take her to her father’s door, bury her up to her neck, and then have the men of the town throw rocks at her head until she was dead. Yeshu’a stopped the men from killing the alleged biblical adulterous woman, daring them to cast the first stone if they too were not guilty of some offense; by so doing, he was stopping this common and accepted practice of death by stoning. Many scholars believe that Yeshu’a was applying the rules of adultery to men. Up until that time, only women were charged with committing adultery. Men had customarily been allowed concubines, particularly if their wives were barren or had passed childbearing age. Yeshu’a surely understood the implications of sanctioning the act of stoning women to death. After all, his stepfather Yosef (Joseph) disobeyed the Mosaic practice of stoning when he learned that the woman, Mary, to whom he was betrothed, was “with child,” a child that Yosef/Joseph was certain he did not sire.
Yeshua ben Yosef was sentenced to death by crucifixion, Rome’s standard death penalty for slaves convicted of crimes. The charges against Yeshu’a were HERESY (going against church teachings) and SEDITION (which is plotting to overthrow the government). Yeshu’a was first tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for HERESY by Jewish Church authorities before he was turned over to Pontius Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea from roughly 26 – 36 CE, for further prosecution by the Roman state.

While the Internet can certainly help you read more about this information and other related topics, the information included here can be found in the Dictionary of Roman Religion, see Lesley and Roy A. Adkins article “Jesus of Nazareth.”; another good source of information is a book called Jesus by A. N. Wilson (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992).

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What Do Those Gates Protect?

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye Joy Allen

Historian, Educator, Theatre and Jazz Advocate & Consultant, Doctoral Student

In my previous blog The Persistence of Old Models / Old Beliefs I wrote about my meetings with theatre expert Paul Carter Harrison and our discussion about the problems with racial stereotypes. Of course, the one thing about being a historian is that when you ask and address one question, other questions always come up. So here goes. I do not know about you, but I find something odd about the death of Trayvon Martin that has nothing to do with the actual shooting of the gun that killed him, but rather that the neighborhood that he was visiting that fateful night in February 2012 was a “gated community.” Does anyone find it strange that there had been a rash of burglaries allegedly committed by young Black men in a “gated community”? This issue may not ever come up in the actual trial of George Zimmerman, but exactly what or who were those gates in that Sanford, Florida community supposed to protect?

I live in what is technically a middle class/working class all-Black neighborhood. My neighbors and I look out for each other. On the very rare occasion that we see something or someone that we find strange or out of the ordinary, we call the police and let the police do their job. Everyone has a fenced-in backyard. A few homes have fences around the entire perimeter. Many people have alarm systems installed, which is always a good idea because it is a real deterrent to break-ins. There have only been a couple of burglaries that I can recall in the over forty years I have lived here, and at least one of those was committed by a couple of kids who were caught shortly after the break-in. To my knowledge, there has never been a rash of burglaries; that does not mean that it cannot happen. It just means that since the early 1970s, I have never heard anyone say, “We have got to do something about this rash of burglaries.” This brings me to this whole idea about gated communities.

I have seen several gated communities. In fact, I live less than two miles from an all-Black gated community. The one obvious distinguishing characteristic is that no one can just walk in or out and no one can drive in or out without having some kind of code, a pass key, or something that says you live there or are visiting. The closed perimeter is in place precisely to restrict the entrée of unwanted visitors. So how is it that this gated community in Sanford, Florida has endured so many burglaries? If the gates to this community remain closed, how did the thieves get in, burglarize a home or several homes, and then get out? Did they jump a fence? If so, exactly what did they steal? The fact that you should not be able to drive in and out of a gated community easily limits the abilities of a thief or thieves, does it not? I say this to raise something far more troubling about the entire area we all now know as Sanford, Florida. First, allow me to comment on one unrelated event that happened to a friend.

A couple of years ago, burglars broke into the house of one of my friends. The police quickly apprehended the thieves. Yet the first thing the police noticed was that the thieves went into the house and cut the phone cords to the alarm system. The police suspected that someone–probably there to do work on the home–who visited this house took note of where the battery and controls for the alarm were and passed along that information to the burglars. Not long after this happened, I quickly encouraged everyone I knew to install a wireless cellular back up system to their existing alarm system so that it would immediately kick in should someone be brave enough to break-in and then cut the phone wires. Now, I do not say this to make everyone think that the man that just delivered their refrigerator is automatically a potential suspect for a future burglary. Most of us do not think of burglars or any other type of criminal in this manner. Criminals always look like they are up to something, don’t they? Yet, all those burglaries in that gated community in Sanford, Florida made me think about what happened to my friend.

If this neighborhood was having a string of burglaries, exactly how difficult was it for that community to request an increase in police patrols? If a community has these gates, does that automatically mean that it needs fewer police or no police? If you do not live in one of these communities and you visit one, doesn’t that mean that you or almost anyone visiting a gated community could be seen as suspicious? We learned that George Zimmerman called 911 over fifty times during the course of a year. If all of these phone calls were legitimate, then why did he need to call so often if he lived in a gated neighborhood? Is it not fair to ask: Were all these burglaries committed by people who were not members of this neighborhood? Do those gates really keep people out or do they seal people in?

Please read: Florida’s problematic gated communities by Bonita Burton

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James Baldwin’s Soul is Still on Fire!

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by Leslye “Joy” Allen Historian, Educator, Theatre & Jazz Advocate, Doctoral Student

On Thursday, May 23, 1963, writer and activist James Baldwin met privately with Robert F. Kennedy at Kennedy’s home in McLean, Virginia. Baldwin was infuriated by the virulence meted out on peaceful civil rights protestors by Birmingham, Alabama police. Robert Kennedy got an earful.

A second meeting was hastily held the next day, this time at Robert Kennedy’s New York City apartment. However, on that Friday, May 24, Baldwin brought along a group that can best be described as a “civil rights arsenal”!

Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Rip Torn, Dr. Kenneth Clark, freedom rider Jerome Smith, attorney Clarence B. Jones, Edwin C. Berry of Chicago’s Urban League, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morganthau arrived at this meeting at Baldwin’s request.

Baldwin’s group came to discuss and complain to Robert Kennedy and Burke Marshall (head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights wing) about President John F. Kennedy’s failure to use the power of the presidency to stem the police violence that continued to plague peaceful civil rights protesters.

The meeting of this group of individuals was not particularly successful. Yet, Baldwin’s outspokenness, audacity, and literary genius was—and remains—a source of both political and artistic inspiration.

My good friend, actor-writer-curator-activist, and now editor, Charles Reese is but one of many keepers of Baldwin’s legacy.

Reese—who stays in Southwest Atlanta whenever he is in town—is pulling double duty in the legacy preservation department. I learned about his plans when he and I had one of our long breakfast sessions at “The Beautiful Restaurant” on Cascade Road.

Back in the year 2000, Reese, a Morehouse College alumnus, had a daunting task. He had to figure out a way to preserve, protect, and promote the work of his good friend, fellow Morehouse alumnus and playwright Howard B. Simon who died that year of complications brought on by streptococcus meningitis—He was only 37 years old. Even more tragic, Simon never got a chance to read the great reviews theatre critics wrote about his seminal play James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire.

A Soul on Fire is not an account of what happened in Bobby Kennedy’s apartment that Friday in 1963. It is, rather, Simon’s vision of what Baldwin did, said, and imagined the day before.

Via the dramatic genius of Simon and the bravura performance of Reese in the title role, the play captured the essence of Baldwin and the spirit of the 1960s. With both Simon and Baldwin gone, Reese has not waivered in his determination to preserve the legacies of both men.

With a lot of tenacity (and a little help from his friends), Charles Reese has edited and published the play James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire by Howard B. Simon.*

Reese kicked off a book/play-signing tour on January 29, 2012 in Los Angeles with plans to go from city to city hosting book signings and reading salons, inviting the public to take part in the drama and the discussion.

I urge you to join the celebration of James Baldwin and Morehouse alums Howard B. Simon and Charles Reese. The play James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire is available at: Amazon.com.

For more information about hosting a book-signing and play-reading event; and to keep up with Charles Reese’s many multimedia projects (The James Baldwin Project, the Howard B. Simon Literary Canon and The Charles Reese Experience), go to: The Charles Reese Experience.

For additional historical information about James Baldwin and Howard B. Simon; and to keep up with the plans to develop a film version of the play, visit: James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire.

*Finishing the last edits and details in late December 2011, Charles Reese chose 2012 as the target year to promote the publication of Simon’s play because this year marks the 25th anniversary of Baldwin’s death. Baldwin’s body departed us on December 1, 1987 in Saint-Paul-De-Vence, France. His Soul, however, is Still On Fire! Peace.

Leslye Joy Allen is proud to support the good work of Clean Green Nation. Visit the website to learn more about it: Gregory at Clean Green Nation!

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: History

Six Historical Facts You Probably Did Not Know About Jesus and Christianity that You Should Know