By David Maillu
Published May 18, 2023

It is important for African Christians to celebrate the crucifixion of
Jesus Christ. I did celebrate it from time to time when I was a Christian
until the devil of my Christian faith beat that sense out of me. That was,
over the years when, as a scholar and seeker of knowledge, I read from
history books that, good as it is, we were given wrong information about
the fate of Jesus Christ.

My first alarming bell came when I discovered 98 percent of Israelis
worship Judaism religion and only 2 percent are Christians. I began to ask
myself, why? The works that I read which include information from the Dead
Sea Scrolls. These ancient manuscripts were discovered in 1947 and
three-years after. They carry the history of Jew community and birth of
Jesus. They bring out the shocking revelation that Jesus did not die on
the cross. He survived, went underground for political reasons, got
married to Maria Magdalene with whom they had children, divorced her and
died on exile at the age of 64.

The Israelis know this. The Vatican City knows this story very well. An
adventurous film maker tried to express it through the film “Code da
Vinci” which retraced the descendants of the Jesus’ family up to this age.
I watched the film before it got quietly removed from circulation. It is
available on the internet.

One Australian theologian, Professor Barbara Thiering, wrote and published
the most heartbreaking book about her findings after living in Israel
reading the Jewish History for 20 years. Her work is published in a book
titled JESUS THE MAN, which I have read a number of times. After engaging
myself in search for the truth, I got rather embarrassed with the
revelation, wondering whether I should share it with other people with
consequences. It is the kind of dangerous knowledge that fanatics can make
some Christian fanatics kill you in of defence Jesus Christ under the
belief that I am anti-Christ or I am an atheist. We shouldn’t overlook the
fact that some thinkers were murdered by the church out of the claim that
the earth was round and not flat as people know. The thing is, what should
you do with such knowledge within a community that is not ready to accept
it?