Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (42 page)

accordingly the watchmen that sat upon the towers gave them notice when the engine was let go, and the stone came from it, and cried out aloud, in their own country’s language, THE STONE COMETH, so those that were in its way stood off, and threw themselves down upon the ground; by which means, and by their thus guarding themselves, the stone fell down and did them no harm.

But the Romans contrived how to prevent that by blacking the stone, who then could aim at them with success, when the stone was not discerned beforehand, as it had been till then; and so they destroyed many of them at one blow.

Yet did not the Jews, under all this distress, permit the Romans to raise their banks in quiet; but they shrewdly and boldly exerted themselves, and repelled them both by night and by day.
¹³⁷

In the 1915 Dent translation, this passage reads differently. “THE STONE COMETH” was translated as “THE SON COMETH.” To determine the basis for this discrepancy I looked at the passage in the oldest Greek versions of
Wars of the Jews
. They all show the phrase as “
ho huios erchetai
,” “huios” being the Greek word for “son.” Modern translators have arbitrarily substituted the word they believed Josephus intended to use here (stone), refusing to translate the actual Greek word that appears in the oldest extant manuscripts. This is interesting because the word
petros
, which scholars have chosen to translate “stone,” is in no way linguistically similar to the word
huios
“son,” which is actually found in the passage.

Whiston was aware that the original word in the phrase is “huios.” In his translation of Josephus he left the footnote below, in which he attempts to explain how it came to pass that all the ancient works he used for his translation had used the Greek word
huios
for son. His explanation is fascinating in that it is an example of the kind of cognitive dissonance that he and other scholars have used to avoid seeing what is right in front of them. He admits that the only language in which “stone” and “son” might have been mistaken for one another, Hebrew, is not the language in which Josephus wrote
Wars of the Jews
. He also argues that alternative translations—arrow or dart—are “groundless conjectural alteration.” Therefore, he really has no alternative than to accept the word as it is written—that is, “SON.” However, he does not wish to do this either, leaving him with no explanation.

What should be the meaning of this signal or watchword, when the watchmen saw a stone coming from the engine, “The Stone Cometh,” or what mistake there is in the reading, I cannot tell. The MSS., both Greek and Latin, all agree in this reading; and I cannot approve of any groundless conjectural alteration of the text from “ro” to “lop,” that not the son or a stone, but that the arrow or dart cometh; as hath been made by Dr. Hudson, and not corrected by Havercamp. Had Josephus written even his first edition of these books of the war in pure Hebrew, or had the Jews then used the pure Hebrew at Jerusalem, the Hebrew word for a son is so like that for a stone, ben and eben, that such a correction might have been more easily admitted. But Josephus wrote his former edition for the use of the Jews beyond Euphrates, and so in the Chaldee language, as he did this second edition in the Greek language; and bar was the Chaldee word for son, instead of the Hebrew ben, and was used not only in Chaldea, etc. but in Judea also, as the New Testament informs us. Dio lets us know that the very Romans at Rome pronounced the name of Simon the son of Giora, Bar Poras for Bar Gioras, as we learn from Xiphiline. Reland takes notice, “that many will here look for a mystery, as though the meaning were, that the Son of God came now to take vengeance on the sins of the Jewish nation;” which is indeed the truth of the fact, but hardly what the Jews could now mean; unless possibly by way of derision of Christ’s threatening so often made, that he would come at the head of the Roman army for their destruction. But even this interpretation has but a very small degree of probability.
¹³⁸

Whiston mentions the seventeenth century scholar and theologian Reland’s interpretation of the phrase. It is a most straightforward understanding and based, of course, on the word “SON” being the word Josephus wrote. Reland understood that the phrase relates to the coming of the Son of God described in the New Testament. Further, Whiston’s next comment—“which is indeed the truth of the fact, but hardly what the Jews could now mean; unless possibly by way of derision of Christ’s threatening so often made, that he would come at the head of the Roman army for their destruction”—is so in accord with my thinking as to need almost no clarification. Whiston is specifically taking the position that I am arguing, that Christ’s prophecies relate to the coming war between the Romans and the Jews, and that the “Son of God” would lead the Roman army. It is a small step then to the position that all of Jesus’ warnings regarding the coming of the Son of God, who will bring destruction with him, are predicting the Son of God who actually was at the head of the Roman army, Titus.

It is also fascinating to notice how effective and long-lasting the anti-Semitism created by the New Testament has been. Notice that Whiston sees the destruction of the Jews as being a quite appropriate vengeance for their destruction of the Savior. It is easy to imagine how such a perspective would have affected his everyday dealings with Jews. Hence, if Rome did create Christianity to instill anti-Semitism, their invention certainly stands the test of time. It is still working thousands of years after its creation.

To demonstrate the importance of the statement, the editor of Josephus has capitalized all the letters in the phrase. “THE SON COMETH.” The editor of Josephus has identified the importance of the passage in the same way as he identified the phrase
house of hyssop
in the “Son of Mary” passage cited earlier, by writing that phrase in italics.

The point at which Josephus inserts the pun helps to make its meaning clear. The passage is at the very beginning of the Roman assault on Jerusalem, the exact moment in time when the son actually did “cometh” to destroy Jerusalem.

Further, it is implausible that someone would sound the alarm for a hurled projectile with such a lengthy phrase. “Incoming” is all a contemporary soldier utters before he hits the deck. “THE STONE COMETH” is too long a phrase to speak when milliseconds matter. This idea becomes even clearer in the original Greek –
“ho petros erchetai”
is not an expression that would naturally come to mind when a large stone is bearing down on someone.

The substitution of “stone” for “son” actually continues another satiric concept in the New Testament, “stone” being another of the important self-designations Jesus uses. Jesus compares himself to a stone, one that if it strikes will “utterly crush.” In other words, he is saying that the “Son of God” is a “stone” who will crush those who reject him, obviously meaning the Jews. He states this specifically within the context of Rome’s use of power. This is, of course, the same satiric concept presented above, where Josephus records that a “Son,” who is in fact a “stone,” has crushed Jews.

Like Jesus’ other ironic self-designations (fisher of men, living bread, living water), with “stone” the physical location where Jesus uses the expression is part of the send-up. He calls himself  a “stone” rejected by the builders (meaning the Jews), which will “utterly crush” those on whom it falls, at the exact spot where Josephus records that stones did actually fall on Jews during the war with Rome.

In the “woe-saying Jesus” passage above, Josephus continues the satiric theme of Jesus calling himself a stone that will “crush.” The woe-saying Jesus is killed just as the Roman siege of Jerusalem begins. Josephus records this slapstick Jesus’ last words:

“Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!” And just as he added at the last, “Woe, woe to myself also!” there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost.
¹³⁹

It is clear that a resident of the Flavian court would have found ironic humor in each of Jesus’ self-designations because of the
locations
where he pronounced them. Imagine a patrician with a copy of the Gospels in 80 C.E., knowing what the Roman war catapults had done to the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem, reading about a Messiah who, while standing beneath that city’s walls, calls himself a stone and threatens to fall on and utterly crush Jews. For such an individual, the biting humor would have been obvious. Could Jesus, by sheer chance, have given himself so many unique self-designations at the exact locations that would have made them tauntingly humorous to patricians?

When viewed as a group, the parallels between these two passages and the satire they create seems too exact to have occurred by chance. The choices are either to agree with Eusebius, who writes:

It is fitting to add to these accounts the true prediction of our Savior in which he foretold these very events. His words are as follows: “Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day; For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”

… These things took place … in accordance with the prophecies of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who by divine power saw them beforehand as if they were already present …
¹⁴⁰

… or accept the idea that the same source produced both the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
.

CHAPTER 10
 
The Authors of the New Testament

Josephus concludes
Wars of the Jews
with a series of passages that, I believe, lampoon the Apostle Paul as well as create a puzzle that identifies the inventors of Christianity. It struck me as logical for the authors to have concluded their work with a passage that identifies them—quite in keeping with the spirit of malicious playfulness that runs through their entire composition.

I present the first of these passages below. This passage describes a group of Sicarii who escape into Egypt. Once there, they find themselves rebuked by “Jews of reputation” who inform the Romans of their presence in Egypt. The Sicarii are captured and then tortured in an attempt to make them “confess that Caesar was their lord,” which they refuse to do. Their children also refuse to “name Caesar for their lord,” in spite of their also being tortured. Thus, the passage clearly presents an unsolved problem for Titus: how to make the rebellious Jews call him “Lord.”

WHEN Masada was thus taken, the general left a garrison in the fortress to keep it, and he himself went away to Cesarea;

for there were now no enemies left in the country, but it was all overthrown by so long a war. Yet did this war afford disturbances and dangerous disorders even in places very far remote from Judea;

for still it came to pass that many Jews were slain at Alexandria in Egypt;

for as many of the Sicarii as were able to fly thither, out of the seditious wars in Judea, were not content to have saved themselves, but must needs be undertaking to make new disturbances, and persuaded many of those that entertained them to assert their liberty, to esteem the Romans to be no better than themselves, and to look upon God as their only Lord and Master.

But when part of the Jews of reputation opposed them, they slew some of them, and with the others they were very pressing in their exhortations to revolt from the Romans;

but when the principal men of the senate saw what madness they were come to, they thought it no longer safe for themselves to overlook them. So they got all the Jews together to an assembly, and accused the madness of the Sicarii, and demonstrated that they had been the authors of all the evils that had come upon them.

They said also that “these men, now they were run away from Judea, having no sure hope of escaping, because as soon as ever they shall be known, they will be soon destroyed by the Romans, they come hither and fill us full of those calamities which belong to them, while we have not been partakers with them in any of their sins.”

Accordingly, they exhorted the multitude to have a care, lest they should be brought to destruction by their means, and to make their apology to the Romans for what had been done, by delivering these men up to them;

who being thus apprised of the greatness of the danger they were in, complied with what was proposed, and ran with great violence upon the Sicarii, and seized upon them;

and indeed six hundred of them were caught immediately: but as to all those that fled into Egypt and to the Egyptian Thebes, it was not long ere they were caught also, and brought back,

whose courage, or whether we ought to call it madness, or hardiness in their opinions, every body was amazed at.

For when all sorts of torments and vexations of their bodies that could be devised were made use of to them, they could not get any one of them to comply so far as to confess, or seem to confess, that Caesar was their lord; but they preserved their own opinion, in spite of all the distress they were brought to, as if they received these torments and the fire itself with bodies insensible of pain, and with a soul that in a manner rejoiced under them.