MATTHEW WAS JUDAS : 3

CHAPTER 4 : HANAN THE HIDDEN

I’m sure you’re wondering now why hanan the hidden was called ‘the hidden’: well, such a revolutionary, theocommunist guerrilla would have had all the reasons in the world to hide from the romans and their collaborator-jewish henchmen à la joseph flavius. The spirit and strategy of qumran (the dead sea scrolls community, the real early christians) was one of ‘secrecy’, as attested to by the scrolls. Again, no surprise here: the romans/herodians were out to hunt them down!

But : akkadian halāpu can also mean, more specifically, ‘to hide/cover one’s face’. In her book ‘the mandaeans of iraq and iran’, first published in 1937, lady e.s. drower published several pictures of these surviving ‘baptists’ or daily bathers, these middle-eastern ‘sabbas’: when baptizing others, the priest, dressed in white, has his head covered and also his mouth and all the lower half of his face: only nose, eyes and forehead remain uncovered. That is also why hanan was ‘the hidden’, if eisenman is right that the mandaeans still practice a baptism by full immersion in rivers, akin to john the baptist’s, whom they hold in high esteem - who was hanan´son, which is reflected in the mandaean sobriquet for john the bap´s father : abba SABA zacharias.

‘James the son of alphaeus’ of ‘matthew’ 10:3 is the one and only james bar saba ‘the just’, ‘well’ and ‘son of the well’, ‘white-clad’, ‘milk’-drinking vegetarian, ‘teacher’ (of righteousness at qumran), and finally, ‘son of’ (hanan) ‘the hidden’ who ‘covered’ his head & face when baptizing and ‘hid’ from the evil romans/herodians who were after him, in a spirit of ‘secrecy’ typical of his religious community of theocommunist antiroman guerrillas at qumran, and elsewhere including jerusalem, galilee etc.

All of which just ‘had’ to be (re)written out of history by turning the title ‘halphaios’ into a non-existing father or brother of a non-existent 2nd james, duplicated to muddy the waters and divert readers from the one and only james bar saba called ‘the just’ for his extreme ‘righteousness’, of which he was ‘the fountain’ or ‘well’: halphaios.

And : he was ‘the son’ of halphaios too, in the sense of ‘the hidden’ here, because his father was hanan the hidden!

Let us also remind the reader that there is a tradition of occultation in certain strands of islam and alawitism, whereby a messiah or mahdi incarnates into a human being but does not reveal himself as messiah until the end times - a tradition that harked back to ancient jewish beliefs. Thus hanan might have been perceived as the hidden messiah too - just like his son john the baptist.