Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition

by Atwill, Joseph

  We must persuade our citizens that the gods are the lords and rulers of all things and what is done, is done by their will and authority; and they are the great benefactors of men, and know who everyone is, and what he does, and what sins he commits, and what he intends to do, and with what piety he fulfills his religious duties.

  Cicero, The Laws, 2:15–16

  Rome attempted not to replace the gods of its provinces but to absorb them. By the end of the first century, Rome had accumulated so many foreign gods that virtually every day of the year celebrated some divinity. Roman citizens were encouraged to give offerings to all these gods as a way of maintaining the Pax Deorum, the “peace of the gods,” a condition that the Caesars saw as beneficial to the empire.

  The Romans also used religion as a tool to assist them in conquest. The leader of the Roman army, the consul, was a religious leader capable of communicating with the gods. The Romans developed a specific ritual for inducing the gods of their enemies to defect to Rome. In this particular ritual, the devotio, a Roman soldier, sacrificed himself to all the gods, including those of the enemy. In this way the Romans sought to neutralize their opponents’ divine assistance.

  Thus, when Rome went to war with the Zealots in Judea it had a long tradition of absorbing the religions of its opponents. If Romans did invent Christianity, it would have been yet another example of neutralizing an enemy’s religion by making it their own, rather than fighting against it. Rome would simply have transformed the militant Judaism of first-century Judea into a pacifist religion, to more easily absorb it into the empire.

  In any event, it is certain that the Caesars did attempt to control Judaism. From Julius Caesar on, the Roman emperor claimed personal authority over the religion and selected its high priests.

  Caius Julius Caesar, imperator and high priest, and dictator sendeth greeting …

  I will that Hyrcanus, the son of Alexander, and his children … have the high priesthood of the Jews for ever …

  and if at any time hereafter there arise any questions about the Jewish customs, I will that he determine the same… 38

  Roman emperors appointed all the high priests recorded within the New Testament from a restricted circle of families who were allied to Rome. By selecting the individual who would determine any issue of “Jewish customs,” the Caesars were managing Jewish theology for their own self-interest. Of course, what other way would a Caesar have managed a religion?

  Rome exercised control over the religion in a way that was unique in the history of its provincial governments. Rome micromanaged Second Temple Judaism, to the extent of even determining when its priests could wear their holy vestments.

  … the Romans took possession of these vestments of the high priest, and had them reposited in a stone-chamber …

  and seven days before a festival they were delivered to … the high priest …

  Josephus, Antiquities, 18, 4, 93-94

  In spite of these efforts, Rome’s normal policy of absorbing the gods of its provinces did not succeed in Judea. Judaism would not permit its God to be just one among many, and Rome was forced to battle one Jewish insurrection after another. Having failed to control Judaism by naming its high priests, the imperial family would next attempt to control the religion by rewriting its Torah.

  I believe they took this step and created the Gospels to initiate a version of Judaism more acceptable to the Empire, a religion that instead of waging war against its enemies would “turn the other cheek.”

  The theory of a Roman invention of Christianity does not originate with this work. Bruno Bauer, a 19th-century German scholar, believed that Christianity was Rome’s attempt to create a mass religion that encouraged slaves to accept their station in life. In our era, Robert Eisenman concluded that the New Testament was the literature of a Judaic messianic movement rewritten with a pro-Roman perspective. This work, however, presents a completely new way of understanding the New Testament.

  I will show that the Gospels were created to be understood on two levels. On its surface level they are, of course, a description of the ministry of a miracle-working Messiah who rose from the dead. However, the New Testament was also designed to be understood in another way, which is as a satire of Titus Flavius’ military campaign through Judea. The proof of this is simply that Jesus and Titus share parallel experiences at the same locations and in the same sequence. Those parallels are both too exact and too complex to have occurred by chance. That this fact has been overlooked for two millennia represents a blind spot in scholarship.

  The Gospels were designed to become apparent as satire as soon as they were read in conjunction with Wars of the Jews. In fact, I will show that the four Gospels and Wars of the Jews were created as a unified piece of literature whose characters and stories interact. Their interaction gives many of Jesus’ sayings a darkly comical meaning, and also creates a series of puzzles whose solutions reveal the real identities of the New Testament’s characters. Understanding the New Testament’s black comedy level reveals, for example, that the Apostles Simon and John were cruel lampoons of Simon and John, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion.

  Throughout this work I refer to Jesus’ ministry as a satire of Titus’ military campaign. I do so because the ministry was based on the campaign and was intended to be seen as blackly humorous when viewed from that perspective. However, the relationship between these two “ministries” was not simply satirical. I shall show that Jesus’ ministry was designed to prove that he was the Malachi, or messenger, of the “true” Messiah—Titus Flavius.

  Malachi means “my messenger” in Hebrew and was used as a cognomen for the prophet Elijah. This is because Judaic prophecy foretold that the Messiah would be preceded by the appearance of Elijah, who would act as the messenger of his imminent coming.

  But I shall send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

  Malachia 3:23

  To show that Jesus’ ministry was a forerunner of Titus’ campaign, the authors of the New Testament and Wars of the Jews used typology, a technique that runs throughout Judaic literature. Key incidents in Jesus’ ministry were created to be seen as the “type,” or prophetical basis, for events from Titus’ campaign and thereby “prove” that Jesus had been the Malachi of Titus.

  I will also show that Josephus falsified the dates of events in Wars of the Jews to create the impression that the prophecies of Daniel came to pass during the war between the Romans and the Jews. This was done to provide “proof” for the New Testament’s claim, on its surface level, that the “son of God” foreseen by Daniel was Jesus.

  The histories of Josephus and the New Testament are perhaps the most scrutinized works in literature and I encourage skepticism of my claim to having discovered a new, “true” way of understanding them. Throughout the ages, the New Testament has been an intellectual kaleidoscope, within which fantastic prophecies and codes have often been “discovered.” Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I would not be presenting this work if I could not meet that criterion.

  However, it was the case that the Flavians possessed both the motivation and the capacity to create a version of Judaism aligned with their interests. Any honest seeker of Christianity’s origin must, therefore, at least consider the possibility that the Flavians produced the Gospels. Further, the core of Jesus’ prophecies—the Galilean villages “laid low,” Jerusalem encircled with a wall, the temple left with not a single stone atop another, and the “wicked generation” destroyed—all share one characteristic. Each is a military victory of the Flavian family. Thus, the oft-cited principle that history is written by the victors suggests that that family should be the first group we investigate.

  This is why we should attempt to understand the Gospels as they would have been understood by someone familiar with the conquest of Judea by Titus Flavius, emperor of Rome. And with this perspective, a completely different meaning of the Gospels becomes visible.

&nbs
p; They proclaim the divinity of Caesar.

  CHAPTER 2

  Fishers of Men:

  Men Who Were Caught Like Fish

  To begin to explain the relationship between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign that my analysis indicates is a satire, I point to the following passage in the Gospel of Matthew. In this passage Jesus is described at the onset of his ministry as asking Simon and Andrew and the “sons of Zeb’edee” to “follow me” and to become “fishers of men.”

  From that time Jesus began to preach. “Repent,” He said, “for the Kingdom of the Heavens is now close at hand.”

  And walking along the shore of the Lake of Galilee He saw two brothers—Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew—throwing a drag-net into the Lake; for they were fishers.

  And He said to them, “Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

  Matt. 4:17–19

  The same story is represented in the Gospel of Luke as follows:

  While the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennes’aret.

  And so also were James and John, sons of Zeb’edee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.”

  Luke 5:1, 10

  In another passage from the New Testament, Jesus foresees that cities on Gennesareth Lake (better known as the Sea of Galilee) will face tribulation for their wickedness.

  Woe to you Chorazain! Woe to you Bethsaida!

  And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades.

  Matt. 11:21, 23

  In Wars of the Jews, Josephus describes a sea battle where the Romans caught Jews like fish. The battle occurred at Gennesareth, where Titus attacked a band of Jewish rebels led by a leader named Jesus.

  This lake is called by the people of the country the Lake of Gennesareth …

  … they had a great number of ships … and they were so fitted up, that they might undertake a Sea-fight.

  But as the Romans were building a wall about their camp, Jesus and his party … made a sally upon them.

  … Sometimes the Romans leaped into their ships, with swords in their hands, and slew them; but when some of them met the vessels, the Romans caught them by the middle, and destroyed at once their ships and themselves who were taken in them.

  And for such as were drowning in the sea, if they lifted their heads up above the water, they were either killed by darts, or caught by the vessels; but if, in the desperate case they were in, they attempted to swim to their enemies, the Romans cut off either their heads or their hands … 39

  A first-century peasant who heard Jesus’ doomsday prophecy which describes what would become of the inhabitants of the cities on Gennesareth Lake, and also heard the passage above from Wars of the Jews which describes their destruction, would have understood the juxtaposition as evidence of Christ’s divinity. What Jesus had prophesied, Josephus recorded as having come to pass.

  But an uneducated peasant could not have understood that there was another “prophecy” that came to pass within the passages above. I am referring to Christ’s exhortation to become “fishers” or “catchers” of men, while standing on the spot where Jews would be caught like fish during the coming war with Rome.

  However, any patricians who knew the details of the sea battle at Gennesareth would have seen the irony in a Messiah who was named “Savior” inventing the phrase “fishers of men” while standing on the beach where the Jews were caught like fish. The grim comedy is self-evident.

  These two “fulfilled” prophecies exemplify the two levels on which the New Testament can be understood. Jesus’ prophecy regarding the destruction of Chorazain and Capernaum is completely straightforward and meant to be understood literally.

  The other “fulfilled” prophecy, that of Jesus’ prediction that his followers would become fishers for men, is not so straightforward. It could be understood only by someone who, like the residents of the Flavian court, had knowledge of the details of the sea battle between the Romans and the Jewish fishermen at Gennesareth. Only such individuals could have seen the prophetic irony in Jesus using the expression while standing on the very beach where the Jews would later be caught like fish.

  If the authors of the Gospels were referring to the Jewish rebels as fish, they were using a metaphor common in the first century. For example, Rabban (chief Rabbi) Gamaliel spoke of his disciples through a parable in which they were compared to four different kinds of fish—an unclean fish, a clean fish, a fish from the river Jordan, and a fish from the sea. Roman authors also used the metaphor. Juvenal, a contemporary Roman poet, specifically compares fugitive slaves and informers to fish.40

  The structure of the black comedy is important. Jesus speaks of “catching men” in a seemingly symbolic sense. Josephus then records that Jesus was indeed a “true” prophet. His vision of “catching men” at Gennesareth did come to pass, the cruel joke being that it came to pass literally, and not in the symbolic manner that Jesus seemed to have meant with the phrase. This is the most common structure of the dark humor created by reading the New Testament in conjunction with Wars of the Jews.

  If the New Testament and Wars of the Jews engage in a scornful interactive comedy regarding “fishing” for men at Gennesareth, they also work to create another wry “fish” joke. As mentioned above, in Matthew 11:21 Jesus predicted “woe” for “Chorazain.”

  Scholars have always presumed that Jesus was referring to a Galilean fishing village. Josephus, however, gave a different definition of the word “Chorazain.”

  The country also that lies over against this lake hath the same name of Gennesareth …

  … Some have thought it to be a vein of the Nile, because it produces the Coracin fish as well as the lake does which is near to Alexandria.41

  So, while at the Sea of Galilee, Jesus predicted woe for the Chorazain, and said that henceforth his disciples would follow him and become fishers for men. Titus’ experience was strangely parallel to Jesus’ prophecies in that he literally brought woe for the Chorazainians and his soldiers literally followed him and became “fishers of men.” That is, they fished for the inhabitants of the village named for the Coracin fish. If the irony of juxtaposing the onset of Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign was created deliberately, it apparently stemmed from the fact that Titus saw the sardonic humor in his “fishing” for the Chorazainians – who have the same name as a fish – as they attempt to swim to safety.

  The previous examples, in and of themselves, are not convincing evidence that there is a deliberate parallel between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign. It is, after all, quite possible that it was just an unfortunate coincidence that Jesus chose the beach at Gennesareth as the spot where he described his future ministry as fishing for men. I present this example of the two levels of interpretation that are possible while reading the New Testament in conjunction with Wars of the Jews, because it occurs near the beginning of both Jesus’ and Titus’ narratives. I show below that the sequence of events that take place in the New Testament and Wars of the Jews have a meaning not heretofore understood.

  However, the parallels that exist between the experiences of Jesus and Titus at Gennesareth are not limited to catching men. The first part of Jesus’ statement is “Follow me” and “Do not be afraid.” When one reads the passage from Josephus in which the Jews were “caught”, it is also recorded that the soldiers who did the “catching” were told not to be afraid and indeed “followed” someone. As the next excerpts show, the person being followed was Titus, who told his troops not to be afraid.

  “For you know very well that I go into danger first, and make the first attack upon the enemy.

  “Do not you therefore desert me, but persuade yourselves that God will be assisting to my onset.”42

  And now Titus made his own horse march first against the enemy.43

  As soon as ever Titus had said this he leaped upon his horse
and rode apace down to the lake; by which lake he marched and entered the city the first of them all, as did the others soon after him.44

  Thus, Josephus pointed out three times that Titus was the first into battle. And again, the Roman soldiers who would do the “fishing” literally followed Titus, creating another conceptual parallel with Jesus.

  In fact, the New Testament passage above, in which Jesus asks his disciples to “follow me,” and the passage from Josephus in which Titus asks his troops to follow so that they can become fishers of men, have a number of other parallels.

  Like Jesus, Titus had been sent by his father.

  So he sent away his son Titus to Casarea, that he might bring the army that lay there to Scythopolis.45

  While it is hardly unusual to follow a leader into battle or to have been sent by one’s father, Titus, again like Jesus at Gennesareth, is in a sense beginning his ministry there. He states that the battle is to be his “onset.”