Messages 2001

Joseph and Mary return to Nazareth.

October 9th, 2001

Received by H.

Cuenca, Ecuador

Hello, my dear H___. As I said yesterday, we will continue with the account of Joseph and his family in Egypt.

I have told you that Joseph was aware that Jesus, as the Messiah for the Hebrews, had to live in Judea, because this was the country of the Jews, but the political situation prevented him returning.

The first opportunity occurred in the year 4 B.C. with Herod’s death, but it vanished quickly when it turned out that Herod’s successor was even worse.

You know that Herod the Great had been invested as king in Palestine by the Romans, but as a king without a Kingdom, and Herod had to fight to re-conquer the country, thus proving his political and military abilities.

When he died, he left a will whereby he distributed his country between three of his sons. He also gave an insignificant part to one of his daughters, but we will ignore this, because it doesn’t have any historical influence.

His son Archelaus received half of his Kingdom, Judea, Samaria, his mother’s country, and Idumea, the country where Herod’s family came from. To make this very clear, Herod was not Jewish but an Idumean or Edomite, and as such he was recognized by the Jews as their equal provided he kept the Mosaic Laws. But in fact he didn’t belong to the people chosen by God, as the Jews considered themselves. Archelaus requested the Romans to recognize him as king, but they refused to do this. They only granted him the title of ethnarch, which means “ruler of the (Jewish) people.” They would certainly have granted him the royal title later on if Archelaus had proven worthy of such honor. But just the opposite was the case.

The oldest of Herod’s surviving sons was scarcely prepared to succeed his father in a period of political restlessness. Although he imitated Herod’s cruel brutality, he didn’t possess any of his diplomatic abilities. Archelaus had been raised and educated in Rome, in a private house, by a Jew, in contrast to his Hasmonean stepbrothers, who also received a Roman education in Rome, but in the imperial palace.

Initially Herod preferred his younger son, Antipas, to his older son, Archelaus, naming him as his successor as king. But then he changed his will just before he died, appointing Archelaus as the heir to the title and to half of his vast domain.

Even before the will was ratified by the emperor, Archelaus proved incapable of governing the Jews, sending troops to the Temple during the Passover festivities in 4 B.C. to kill those who had urged him to correct his father’s unjust actions.

Archelaus had just left for Rome, in order to receive the confirmation of his domain over the territories which his father had assigned him, when the Jews rebelled against him, with several auto-proclaimed “kings” who gathered followers amongst the Jews. Augustus confirmed Archelaus as the ruler, or ethnarch, of Judea, Idumea and Samaria, but he withheld the title of “king,” or basileus, until Archelaus would prove worthy of the same by quelling the rebellion, as his father Herod had conquered his own Kingdom. But Archelaus failed, and the Roman legate in Syria, Quinctilius Varus, had to send troops, wiping out the rebellion, and crucifying 2000 people. After ten years of social chaos in Judea, Augustus dismissed him in 6 A.D., confiscated his properties in Roman Palestine, and transformed Judea, Idumea and Samaria into an imperial province under the command of the Roman governor in Syria. As you know, later on, Pontius Pilate was one of its administrators. Archelaus was granted permission to retire to his father’s estates in what is today’s Cote Azure of France, where he died as he had started, a private citizen of Rome.

And so it came about that it would be a Roman administrator who would sign Jesus’ death sentence.

Yes, I know, you know this story. The important thing is that Joseph didn’t see any possibility of returning. He had to stay in Egypt. The years passed, and his wife grew impatient. You also know, from what Jesus had communicated to Dr. Samuels, that Mary insisted on returning, and she finally achieved her objective. Day after day she raised the topic, indicating that if it was true that Judea was a dangerous country, nevertheless in Galilee things were better. And she was right. Finally, Joseph gave in. He sold all their belongings and prepared for the return trip to Galilee. That was Mary’s true goal; she wanted once again to be with her relatives in her homeland. As a matter of fact, living in Judea or in Egypt didn’t make much difference to her, both countries were not her native land.

In order to avoid the dangerous journey crossing through Judea, Joseph decided to buy a passage on a ship sailing down the river Nile to Alexandria, and from there they sailed on another vessel heading for Sidon in Phoenicia, very near Galilee. The choice of a marine voyage was also motivated by the tender age of his children for whom a terrestrial voyage would have been very risky and tiresome. All this happened in the year 4 A.D.

It is enough for today, and you are about to fall asleep. Tomorrow we will talk about the situation in Galilee when the family returned to Nazareth.

God bless you, my brother.

Judas

Publishers Note - references to italics above.

Subsequent to the initial publication of this message, it has been pointed out that a number of paragraphs are, to all intents and purposes, identical, or very similar, to material published by Mahlon Smith on his web site Into His Own. This material is italicised above. As the medium did not copy this material consciously, Judas was asked about the situation. In this message, Judas confirms that he, Judas, extracted that material from H.’s mind, and that he would tend to use whatever material he finds in order to facilitate communication. H. has done a large amount of research in the pursuit of writing a book about Jesus, and has read the material on this site extensively. He has also read many other sources. It is important thus to attribute the source of this material. If any readers believe other sources have been used, kindly let us know, as under the circumstances, it is impossible to know what is original material. While we could set about altering the wording used here, that would not alter the fact that the material was sourced elsewhere, and it would not preserve the originality of this message. It is not our intention to seek to disregard the copyright of any author, merely to record what is Truth.