Concerning Joyce’s thesis that Jesus died at the age of eighty while fighting the Romans at Masada, the historical basis is perhaps even more questionable. Joyce never knew the professor’s true name, and even admits that he must rely on “hearsay” testimony. If that is not enough, the scroll has since vanished and no one knows the claimed whereabouts of either this document or the “professor” upon whose word the testimony rests! Interestingly, Joyce even wrote to Yigael Yadin, the well-known archaeologist who headed the Masada expedition. Yadin’s response to Joyce’s story was that “anyone with a little knowledge of scrolls and conditions in which they were discovered at Masada would have immediately detected the
72 Peterson, “Legend,” p. 6A.
nonsense in the story.”^73 There can be little question that the story of the lost scroll cannot be used in any attempt to formulate the historical facts of the last years of Jesus’ life.
In Holy Blood, Holy Grailwe find a similar gap in the historical basis. The authors themselves characterize their ownhistorical argument, before investigating the Christian sources, with the following description: Our hypothetical scenario . . . was also preposterous . . . much too sketchy . . . rested on far too flimsy a foundation . . . could not yet in itself be supported . . . too many holes . . . too many inconsistencies and anomalies, too many loose ends.^74 After their research into Christian origins, does their evaluation change? While holding that their thesis was still probably true, the authors conclude, “We could not—and still cannot—prove the accuracy of our conclusion. It remains to some extent at least, a hypothesis.”^75 As we will see below, their thesis also has numerous gaps in argumentation.
Historically, then, such theses lack the data needed for the conclusions. Very late documents, missing evidence and faulty historical reconstructions certainly do not prove one’s case.
4.Illogical arguments
The fourth major problem with these theses is that, in addition to the lack of a historical basis, each exhibits decidedly illogical argumentation. The Japanese legend contains such inconsistencies as Jesus’ brother dying in his place, the fact that Jesus’ teachings reflect none of the Japanese philosophy that he supposedly learned during his “silent years” spent in Japan, and the failure to acknowledge the Christian teachings of Francis Xavier. This Catholic priest visited Japan in the sixteenth century and probably accounts for much of the Christian influence in that country.^76 Even so, it is in the works of Joyce, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln where we perceive more glaring gaps in logic.
For Joyce, the story does not stop with the admittedly hearsay evidence supplied by an anonymous “professor” who disappears along with all of the evidence for his claims, never to be heard from again. After asking where the scroll could have disappeared, Joyce postulates that there is one country in the world which would especially like to discover its contents—Russia! When he arrived in Delhi, India he remembered that the “professor” had also said he was going to Delhi. Therefore, Joyce felt that he had verified his thesis when he spotted a Russian plane at the airport, although he apparently never questioned the presence of planes from various other countries at such an international airport. Russia had to have sent the plane to pick up the “professor” and his valuable scroll!^77
