Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (49 page)

explains why Decius Mundus did not conceal his resolution to kill himself

and most importantly, this interpretation explains how the two “third-day divinity declarations” in literature happen to be placed next to one another.

There is yet another parallel in the Decius Mundus tale and the
Testimonium
, a parallel only apparent when one reads the passages in their original Greek. In the
Testimonium
, Jesus is described as a teacher of people who “accept the truth with pleasure.” The Greek word for pleasure that Josephus uses is
hedone
, the root for the English word “hedonism.” Scholars have puzzled over Josephus’ use of
hedone
here. Hedone usually denotes sensual or malicious pleasure, and “to accept the truth with hedone” is a strange concept. The sentence that Josephus wrote in Greek could just as well be translated “received the truth with malicious pleasure.”

The verb Josephus uses in this phrase is
dechomenon
, which means to receive, the phrase in Greek reading
hedonei talethe dechomenon
.
In the Decius Mundus tale, Decius also receives something with “sensual pleasure.” Decius receives the plot Ide hatches to enable him to seduce Paulina with sensual pleasure—
hedone
, the Greek reading
dechomenou ten hiketeian hedonei
.

The same verb,
dechomenou
(meaning “to accept or receive”), is used with
hedone
in the
Testimonium.
This creates yet another parallel between the
Testimonium
and the Decius story. Based on the context provided by the Decius story, a logical conjecture is that this verb/noun combination creates the idiom “getting screwed.” I have been unable to confirm this conjecture by another example from classical Greek, however.

Hedone
is also used in an interesting manner with another word. Josephus concludes his Preface to
Wars of the Jews
with the following statement:

Tauta panta perilabôn en hepta bibliois kai mêdemian tois epistamenois ta pragmata kai paratuchousi tôi polemôi katalipôn ê mempseôs aphormên ê katêgorias, tois ge tên alêtheian agapôsin, alla mê pros hêdonên anegrapsa. Poiêsomai de tautên tês exêgêseôs archên, hên kai tôn kephalaiôn epoiêsamên.
¹⁶¹

Whiston’s translation into English is as follows:

I have comprehended all these things in seven books, and have left no occasion for complaint or accusation to such as have been acquainted with this war; and I have written it down for the sake of those that love truth, but not for those that please themselves [with fictitious relations]. And I will begin my account of these things with what I call my First Chapter.

The reason Whiston places brackets around the phase “
please themselves [with fictitious relations]
”
above,
was to alert the reader that it is an inaccurate translation. The Greek words that Josephus uses here,
hêdonên anegrapsa,
do not mean “
please themselves with fictitious relations
” but rather
please themselves with registering.
When used in connection with a person, as it is here, the stem word,
anagrapho
, means to register or record names. Whiston arbitrarily inserted the phrase
[with fictitious relations]
into his translation because he believed that this is the idea Josephus actually meant. A literal translation of the sentence would read as follows:

… and I have written it down for the sake of those that love truth, but not for those that please themselves with registering names.

While Whiston found this translation incoherent, from my perspective it makes complete sense, as the technique used by the authors of the New Testament and the works of Josephus to turn Judaism into Christianity was the switching, or “unregistering,” of names. Decius became Anubis and Titus became Jesus. Neither valued much “this business of names.” Josephus’ seeming “incoherencies” are very significant and are meant to be translated exactly as they were written.

CHAPTER 12
 
The Father and the Son of God

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one fully knows the Son except the Father, nor does any one fully know the Father except the Son and all to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.

Matt. 11:27

Jesus’ doomsday prophecies were directed against the “wicked generation” of Jews who rebelled against Rome. Therefore, his threatened “second coming” was predicting the 70 C.E. destruction of Jerusalem. This was the understanding of most Christian theologians until this century and is still the way the Preterist Christians understand these prophecies. The 17th-century theologian Reland saw the Roman assault on Jerusalem in this way:

[The] “Son of God came now to take vengeance on the sins of the Jewish nation.”

His contemporary, William Whiston, was even more specific. He understood that Jesus’ words indicated “that he would come at the head of the Roman army for their destruction.”
¹⁶²

I am in complete agreement with Reland and Whiston. All of Jesus’ ministry was about the coming war with Rome and was designed to establish Jesus as Titus’ forerunner. Therefore, the relationship between Jesus and “the Father” referred to throughout the Gospels is a forerunner of the relationship between Titus and his father, the emperor and god Vespasian.

All the dialogues that describe Jesus’ relationship with the Father use comic wordplay that actually describes Titus’ relationship with his real father, Vespasian. Supporting this premise is the fact that all of Jesus’ descriptions of his relationship with his father mention that father and son possess secret identities known only to the two of them.

“But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has granted me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me.”

John 5:36

“I bear witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness to me.”

They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father; if you knew me, you would know my Father also.”

John 8:18-19

In Matthew, Jesus also speaks of a secret identity known only to him and his father.

At that time Jesus answered and said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.

“Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.

“All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.”

Matt. 11:25-27

In the Gospel of John, Jesus again discusses his relationship with the Father. Again the discussion takes place within the context of a concealed identity. In this instance, his questioners are trying to determine whether Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah. Christian theologians have made numerous efforts to explain Jesus’ meaning here. My explanation is that it is a revelation that Jesus was a “god” and not “God.”

“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.

“I and the Father are one.”

The Jews took up stones again to stone him.

Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these do you stone me?”

The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?’

“If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken),

“Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God?’

“If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me;

“But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

John 10:29–38

If Jesus’ dialogue is, as I suggest, a satiric way of describing Titus and his father, the god Vespasian, then the passage above makes perfect sense.

It is of interest that Titus is the only person, other than Jesus, who is referred to in the New Testament with the phrase “coming of.”

But He who comforts the depressed—even God—comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not by his coming only …
¹⁶³

A “Titus” is also described in the Pauline letters as the “true child.”

To Titus my own true child in our common faith.

Titus 1:4

When Vespasian died in 79 C.E., Titus succeeded him as emperor. Among his first orders of business was to have his father deified. It was not a routine task, as Vespasian was to be the first non-Julio-Claudian emperor to be so honored. But it was important because Vespasian’s deification would break the chain of divine succession held by the Julio-Claudian line since Julius Caesar and thereby help secure an imperial future for the Flavian family.

In order for Vespasian to be made a
diuus
, the Roman senate had to decree it upon him. It was a uniquely Roman custom that only the senate could bestow the title of
diuus
upon him. Over the years, the senate had turned down many applicants for the title. Therefore, Titus needed to somehow demonstrate to the senate that Vespasian’s life had been that of a god. During this time, he would also have been involved in the creating of an empire-wide bureaucracy to administer the cult of Vespasian, once it was established.

In spite of the fact that Vespasian’s
consecrato
would have been of great importance to Titus, it did not occur until six months after his death. This interval between the death of an emperor and his
consecrato
¹⁶⁴
was an unusually long time. I believe that it was during this time that the New Testament was created. The length of the interval was due to the fact that during this period Titus created not one but two religions that worshiped his father as a god, as well as the New Testament’s companion piece,
Wars of the Jews
.

As Jesus’ prophecies came to pass during the Jewish war, they proved that God had sanctioned the events he foresaw. This is exactly what Titus would have been attempting to demonstrate to the Roman senate—that the events of his father’s life, certainly including his conquest of Judea, proved that he was divine and that he deserved to be decreed a
diuus
. Viewed from this perspective, the similarities between Christianity and the cult of Vespasian are obvious.