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

by Atwill, Joseph

  The switching of Titus with Jesus occurs in John 21. The chapter begins with Jesus coming to the Sea of Galilee in the morning, where he “showed” himself to his disciples. The disciples are described as being unable to recognize Jesus from the small boat in which they have spent the night. Jesus instructs them to “cast the net” after which they haul in a “multitude of fish.” Being informed that it is “the Lord,” Simon swims ashore, where he and the disciples eat “bread” and “fish” with Jesus, who then prophesies that Simon will be put to death but that John will be spared.

  After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and in this way He showed Himself:

  Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together.

  Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We are going with you also.” They went out and immediately got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing.

  But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

  Then Jesus said to them, “Children, have you any food?” They answered Him, “No.”

  And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish.

  Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment (for he was naked), and plunged into the sea.

  But the other disciples came in the little boat (for they were not far from land, but about two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fish.

  Then, as soon as they had come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread.

  Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish which you have just caught.”

  Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not broken.

  Jesus said to them, “Come and eat breakfast.” Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, “Who are You?”—knowing that it was the Lord.

  Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.

  This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.

  John 21:1–14

  This story of the disciples catching “fish” shares a number of parallels with the passage in Wars of the Jews that describes the Romans catching Jews like fish on the Sea of Galilee, which I have discussed previously. In that passage Josephus describes a band of rebels led by a Jesus, the son of Shaphat.

  This Jesus leads a sally against the Romans. In response, Vespasian orders Titus to take a force and counterattack Jesus and his band. Before the battle, Titus delivers the speech in which he describes the coming battle as “my onset.” He then attacks the Jews with his troops and routs them. Some of the Jews, however, escape to their boats on the Sea of Galilee (Josephus describes these boats as “small”), where they spend the night. The next morning, Titus orders his soldiers to construct boats to attack the Jews. In the ensuing sea battle, the Romans catch Jews like fish. Following the battle, Josephus describes the dead bodies of the Jews giving off a terrible stink.118

  The following list is presented for clarification of the parallels between Josephus’ “sea battle” passage and John 21:

  • Both passages describe the followers of a “Jesus” who spend the night in a small boat.

  • Both passages describe a “catching” that occurs the following morning.

  • Each passage occurs on the Sea of Galilee (Tiberias).

  •Jesus and Titus share the previously noted collection of parallels in John 21 involving the condemning of “Simon” and the sparing of “John.”

  The parallels work to give a typological and satirical meaning to John 21, one that should not be difficult for the reader to see at this point. Indeed, if Jesus were to say to his disciples to “cast a net” and become “fishers of men” in John 21, then the satirical relationship between that passage and Josephus’ description of the sea battle becomes too obvious to overlook. The fact that Jesus makes this prophecy earlier in his ministry, does not make its implications any less clear—particularly in light of the fact that the group that he instructs to “cast a net” in John 21 contains Simon, James, and John, the same individuals he has predicted would “henceforth” become “catchers of men” earlier in his ministry.

  Once again, the authors of the New Testament are testing the memory of the reader. Only the reader with a good memory will recall that it is Simon and the “sons of Zeb’edee” whom Jesus has earlier predicted would “henceforth” be “catching men”. And only such a reader will recall that Jesus made this prophecy regarding “catching men” while standing on the very beach where Titus stands as his soldiers catch Jews like fish.

  Notice that the author indicates only that the events of John 21 take place “after these things”—that is, after Jesus’ crucifixion. In other words, the events of John 21 could have occurred at any time following the crucifixion and can be understood as being contemporaneous with the events of the parallel “fishing” passage from Wars of the Jews. With this clever device the authors unify the time frames of the Gospels and Wars of the Jews. John 21 is intended to be understood as both an event from the life of a Jewish Messiah circa 30 C.E. and a depiction, albeit satirical, of Titus’ sea battle with the messianic movement’s Galilean fishermen. The passage can be read both as the end of the story of one savior of Israel and the beginning of the story of another.

  As with the different Gospels that form the puzzle of the empty tomb, John 21 and the “catching passage” from Wars of the Jews are designed to be interactive. And, again, their interaction creates a story different from the benign one that appears on the surface. John 21 interacts with Josephus’ “catching” passage to create a satire indicating that the confused followers of Jesus mistake Titus for the Lord.

  The “Jesus” they follow – “Jesus, the son of Shaphat, the principal head of a band of robbers” – is not on the beach because Titus has killed him. Josephus records his death in the passage, stating that: “Titus had slain the authors of this revolt,” clearly indicating Jesus.

  Therefore the “Jesus” that the disciples follow no longer exists and they mistake Titus for their Lord—“Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.” Thus deluded, the disciples then do Titus’ bidding, helping the Romans capture the Jewish rebels swimming in the Sea of Tiberias by “casting their net.” The satire is a perfect synopsis of the real intent of Christianity, which is to “convert” the followers of the Jewish Messiah into followers of Caesar without their knowing it.

  Having achieved his goal, Titus, the “Lord,” then sits down with his new “disciples” for a breakfast of “bread” and “fish.” The words “bread” and “fish” are, as I have shown, both used as synonyms for human flesh in the New Testament.

  Notice the author’s witticism. The disciples don’t ask his name—which would give away the fact that his name is Titus—but “know” that he is the “Lord.”

  Jesus said to them, “Come and eat breakfast.” Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, “Who are You?”—Knowing that it was the Lord.

  Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.

  This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.

  John 21:12-14

  The interaction between the New Testament and Wars of the Jews identifies the “fish” that Titus served to his new disciples in John 21 as the “putrefied” bodies of the “fish” killed by the Romans during the battle mentioned above. This putrid smell of the “fish” on the beach, parallels the stench recorded in the other passages of cannibalism—the tomb of Laz
arus in the New Testament and Mary’s son in Wars of the Jews.

  And a terrible stink, and a very sad sight there was on the following days over that country; for as for the shores, they were full of shipwrecks, and of dead bodies all swelled; and as the dead bodies were inflamed by the sun, and putrefied, they corrupted the air.

  Wars of the Jews 3, 10, 530

  And the “bread” that the disciples eat is also identified in the New Testament. It is the flesh of the Messiah who was “raised from the dead.” Notice how clear an example the following passage is – of Jesus’ seemingly symbolic statements, which take on a black comedy meaning when read literally.

  “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

  The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us his flesh to eat?”

  Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his life blood, you shall have no life in you.”

  John 6:51–54

  To make clear that it is the body of the “Son of Man” that the disciples are feasting on, John 21 states that this is “the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.” The author is including this detail at this point, because the “Jesus” who actually rose “from the dead” was Lazarus, who “showed himself” to the disciples twice previously, first at his “resurrection” and then again at the “feast of Lazarus.” The disciples are being satirized as unwittingly feeding on the Messiah’s body. The joke regarding “bread” in John 21 is that they are eating from the same “loaf” that was eaten during the “feast of Lazarus” above.

  I would note that the analysis above has implications for the sacrament of Communion. It suggests that the Romans deliberately created the ritual as a cruel joke on Christians.

  In any event, the contemptuous humor that the Romans created regarding the cannibalism of the messianic Jews, evidently springs from the irony they saw in a people with such strict dietary laws eating rancid human flesh. The irony of the Jews – a people too fastidious to eat pork – eating human flesh, would have been widely understood within the patrician class when Wars of the Jews was written. The satirist Juvenal, for example, referred to it without providing any context.

  Some, whose lot it has been to have Sabbath fearing fathers,

  Worship nothing but clouds and the numen of heavens,

  And see no difference between the flesh of swine and humans

  Since their fathers abstained from pork.119

  The two “Jesuses” who are on the beach when the Romans catch Jews in the Sea of Galilee, Titus and Jesus the Son of Shaphat, are simply the final Jesuses within another satiric turn. All the Jesuses encountered after the resurrection are different individuals. As they have done with the various “Mary Magdalenes”, the authors include seemingly irrelevant details in each Gospel that make it logically impossible for any of the four Jesuses encountered after the “resurrection” to have been the same individual.

  In Matthew, the Jesus encountered by his disciples does not ascend to Heaven, instead saying to his followers, “I am with you always.” In Mark, however, Jesus is described as ascending to heaven, just as he is in the Gospel of Luke. Though these two ascension stories appear identical, in fact they take place at different locations. The authors reveal this in an earlier passage in Mark (Mark 14:28). This passage indicates that Jesus will meet with his disciples in Galilee, obviously some days following his resurrection, whereas the ascension in Luke occurs just outside Jerusalem on the same day as the resurrection. Finally, the Jesus in John meets with a different number of disciples following the resurrection, a different number of times, and at a location different from the ones in the other three Gospels.

  The authors of the Gospels designed their creation to be perfectly logical. Whenever two events seem to contradict one another, the reader needs to recognize that he or she is reading incorrectly. That is to say, that he or she is making an incorrect assumption. In this case, the incorrect assumption is that all the Jesuses in the Gospels are the same individual. Simply changing that assumption makes the Gospels become “true”—that is, without contradiction.

  However, who do the disciples encounter at the conclusions of Matthew, Mark, and Luke if not the Jesus who was crucified? Just as the authors have identified whose empty tomb Mary Magdalene discovers—with its stone “rolled away”—before she comes across it in the dark, the authors have already given the reader this information. The Jesus depicted at the conclusion of each of the Synoptic Gospels is the Jesus whom Pilate has previously released, Jesus Barabbas.

  As the New Testament’s final dark comic stroke, each Gospel concludes with a different individual as its Jesus. Of course, the final Jesus is the one described in John 21, the very end of the Gospels. That Jesus is Titus, the “true” Son of God whom Christianity worships.

  I suspect that the herd of Jesuses roaming about at the conclusions of the four Gospels are an ironic joke reflecting the fact that there were numerous individuals claiming to be the Messiah during this era, a fact that is recorded in both the New Testament and Wars of the Jews. The authors of the New Testament are perhaps sarcastically making the point that, since there are already so many “Messiahs,” or “Christs,” there is no reason why Titus could not be one as well.

  Finally, a question I found interesting is whether the authors intended to put forth the “combined version” of the visit to the empty tomb and the revelation that Jesus did not rise from the dead as a philosophical statement advocating reason over religious mysticism.

  The reader must resolve those logical contradictions; if he or she fails, the punishment is belief in a false god.

  It is possible that the authors of the Gospels created them as a sort of educational tool disguised as a narrative about Jesus. The authors may have wished their readers to work through the various contradictions in logic in order to develop their reasoning ability and thus be able to think their way out of religious superstition. They may have wished the Gospels to be seen by posterity as a contribution to the development of reason.

  CHAPTER 8

  The New Root and Branch

  Having shown the methods that the Romans used to satirically communicate the real history of their struggle with the messianic Jews, I can now present the most complex of their works. The reader will recognize that I have already touched on many of the passages that make up this satire. These separate elements were designed to be linked together to create a larger intertextual story.

  I refer to this satire as the “new root and branch.” It is a vast literary device coursing through the Gospels and three of Josephus’ books. Because it extends over several different books, it is hard to discover, but, as noted above, this literary device is not unusual in Hebrew literature. It is, for instance, similar to the way in which the Abraham saga is continued in the Book of Samuel and the Book of Kings. Through a series of distinct passages, one character becomes associated with another character by means of parallel acts or locations, and by means of similar language.

  The purpose of this particular satire is to document that the “root” and “branch” of the Judaic messianic lineage has been destroyed and that a Roman lineage has been “grafted on” in its place. This satirical system actually begins in the Book of Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament. Malachi means “my messenger” in Hebrew and was used as an epithet for the prophet Elijah. This is because in Judaic literature it was predicted that the Messiah would be preceded by the appearance of Elijah, who would act as the messenger of his coming.

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

  Malachi 3:23

  This final passage in the Book of Malachi predicts a coming disaster for the “wicked,” one that will leave
them destroyed by fire and with neither “root” nor “branch.”

  For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of Hosts, [and] will leave them neither root nor branch.

  Malachi 3:19

  Josephus clearly records that the first part of this prophecy, concerning the “wicked” being “burned up,” came to pass during the war with the Romans. He also records that the second part of the prophecy—that they would be left with neither “root” nor “branch”—was also fulfilled during Titus’ campaign, though not so overtly. To understand that the “wicked,” that is, the messianic rebels, were to be left with no “root” or “branch,” the reader needs to comprehend perhaps the most complex literary satire ever written.

  As noted above, “root” and “branch” were Judaic metaphors used to denote the messianic lineage. For example, the Genesis Florilegium states:

  … until the Messiah of Righteousness, the Branch of David comes, because to him and his seed was given the Covenant of the Kingdom of his people …120