Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (54 page)

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.

John 6:49-52

To demonstrate that Christianity’s divine origin parallels Judaism’s, the authors of Christianity took the events from the story of the original Exodus that had numbers associated with them and inserted those numbers into their story of the birth of Christianity. In other words, since God gave the law to Moses fifty days after the first Passover, Christianity would give the “new” law 50 days after its Passover, the crucifixion of Jesus.

On the day that the law of Moses was given, 3,000 died for worshipping the golden calf.
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On the day the “spirit” was given to the disciples of Christ, 3,000 were added into Christ and received life,
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signifying that the improved covenant with God brought life.

These parallels were obviously created to establish Christianity as the new Judaism. The Gospels and the writings of Josephus work together to this end. The New Testament records the birth of the new Judaism while the history of Josephus records the “death” of Second Temple Judaism.

All the parallels I have given above, between Christianity and Judaism and between Jesus and Moses, are well known. In addition, the authors of the Gospels also established something else heretofore unknown. By mirroring the sequence found in the story of Exodus and by establishing Jesus’ “cruci-fiction” as a new Passover, they established a continuum, one that mirrored the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt and “wandering” until they were permitted to enter the promised land forty years after the first Passover. As with the time sequence for the fulfillment of the prophecies of Daniel, once the continuum of the “new Exodus” had begun, there could be no stopping until all had come to pass.

What is the conclusion to the forty years of wandering in the New Testament? Since the Gospels end shortly after Jesus’ death, where is the conclusion to Christianity’s forty year Exodus recorded? The answer is found within
Wars of the Jews.

To conclude Christianity’s forty-year cycle, Josephus links the date of Jesus’ crucifixion to the date he established for the destruction of the Judean fortress Masada. Josephus “records” that the year the stronghold was destroyed was 73 C.E. Scholars, citing archeological evidence, often date the fall of Masada to 74, not 73 C.E. They may well be correct, but Josephus was interested not in recording history but in creating mythology. He therefore entitled the chapter that contains the passage describing Masada’s destruction as follows:

BOOK 7 – CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF ABOUT THREE YEARS.  FROM THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS, TO THE SEDITION OF THE JEWS AT CYRENE.
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Josephus does not need to be any more precise than he is in the phrase “about three years.” If his time span is inaccurate, and it surely is, who had been there to point out his error? Josephus is only interested in using “history” to convey his message. In this instance, he wishes the reader to believe that Masada fell three and a half years after the destruction of the temple, that is, in 73 C.E.

Josephus then gives the day and month of the conclusion to the siege at Masada.

They then chose ten men by lot out of them to slay all the rest; every one of whom laid himself down by his wife and children on the ground, and threw his arms about them, and they offered their necks to the stroke of those who by lot executed that melancholy office;

and when these ten had, without fear, slain them all, they made the same rule for casting lots for themselves, that he whose lot it was should first kill the other nine, and after all should kill himself …

Those others were nine hundred and sixty in number, the women and children being withal included in that computation.

This calamitous slaughter was made on the fifteenth day of the month Xanthicus [Nisan].
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Josephus records that the fourteenth of Nisan is the day when the Jews celebrated Passover. The Gospel of John states that Jesus was crucified on the thirteenth of Nisan and arose on the fifteenth. The fifteenth of Nisan, 73 C.E., is forty years to the day after Christ’s resurrection. Only readers of both the Gospels and Josephus would be aware of this exact forty-year time span.

In other words, the Gospel of John establishes the date of Jesus’ resurrection as the fifteenth of Nisan, 33 C.E., and Josephus establishes the date of the end of the Jewish war as the fifteenth of Nisan, 73 C.E. It is only when the two works are read together that readers are able to understand that it was, just as Jesus had predicted,
exactly forty years
between the two events. Again, either Josephus inadvertently recorded something truly supernatural, or the two works had been aligned to create this effect.

The authors of the New Testament and Josephus thus created a parallel between the first forty years of Judaism, during which the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, and the purported first forty years of Christianity, from the supposed time of Jesus’ “death” until the Romans completed the conquering of Israel. These forty years, which can be called the “wandering” for Christianity, date from Christ’s resurrection on the 15th of Nisan, 33 C.E., until the end of the Jewish rebellion, which is marked by the destruction of the Sicarii, the movement that Christianity replaced, on the 15th of Nisan, 73 C.E.

The parallel forty years of wandering by the two religions is, of course, a continuation of the parallels between Jesus and Moses, which were designed to create the impression that the origin of Christianity parallels the divine origin of Judaism. The forty years of “wandering” for Christianity was inspired by the following passage from Joshua, which describes what happened to the Israelites after the original Passover.

The passage makes clear the logic behind the New Testament authors’ decision to establish the precise forty-year interval between Jesus’ death and the destruction of the Judean fortress Masada. They wished to show not only that Christianity’s origin paralleled Judaism’s, which proved it had replaced Judaism’s special relationship with God, but also that the 70 C.E. destruction of Jerusalem had been divinely ordained. The “men of war were consumed because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord”—exactly as had happened after the original Passover.

For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he would not shew them the land, which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey.
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Forty years is the traditional period of penance for the Israelites as well as the length of a generation. This tradition stems, of course, from the original forty years of wandering. By giving Christianity a forty-year cycle, the Romans were “proving” that their conquest of Judea was merely another case of God’s wrath for Jewish wickedness, as had often been recorded by the Jews’ own religious literature.

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
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I want to underscore how important this forty-year period after Jesus’ death is for the theory of there being a single source for the New Testament and the works of Josephus. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ ministry is described as having encompassed three Passovers. These three Passovers are not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. The author of John consciously establishes the date of Christ’s death as occurring in the year 33 C.E. He does this because this is the only way possible, arithmetically, to create the correct alignment with the prophecies of Daniel and also to create a forty-year cycle between Jesus’ resurrection and the end of the Jewish war.

The works of Josephus have been deliberately configured to demonstrate that the prophecies of Daniel culminate in the 70 C.E. destruction of Jerusalem—an understanding he shared with the writers of the Gospels.

In order to prove that Rome had God’s divine providence, the creators of Christianity provided “evidence” that the 70 C.E. sacking of Jerusalem was foreseen by Daniel, the evidence being the “histories” of Josephus. In this way, all the important dates of Jesus’ life were back-calculated to be in alignment with the destruction of Jerusalem. This is completely clear with regard to the beginning of his ministry and his resurrection. My conjecture is that Jesus’ birth was also established at exactly seventy years before the siege of Jerusalem. Though scholars have given a number of explanations of how the year of Christ’s birth was exactly seventy years from the destruction of Jerusalem, my analysis suggests that it was done to mimic the seventy years “in the desolations of Jerusalem” described in the Book of Daniel.

In the first year of his reign Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
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The
dates of Jesus’ life were simply more “pieces” of Judaism chosen by the creators of Christianity to meet its logical and theological requirements. The central events of Christianity—the birth of Christ, the beginning of his ministry, and his death, are 1 C.E., 30 C.E., and 33 C.E. All these dates were calculated backward from the destruction of Jerusalem. They were chosen to fit into a pattern that combined the prophecies of Daniel and the life of Moses.

The beginning of Jesus’ ministry in 30 C.E. was calculated to be exactly forty years from the day that the Romans under Titus pitched camp outside Jerusalem, the “Second Coming.” This dating system is not based upon the birth of a world-historical religious leader, but orients itself from the destruction of a city.

Thus, the theological chronology created by the inventors of Christianity ran in a forty-year cycle between Jesus’ resurrection and the fall of Masada. While this forty-year cycle was in motion, the other template for Christianity, the prophecies of Daniel, ran concurrently.

In fact, Christianity’s version of the prophecies of Daniel was heading for its conclusion
on the same day
as its forty-year cycle of “wandering”.

In the following passage, notice that the day the Romans pitched camp at Jerusalem was the fourteenth of Nisan. Josephus is falsifying history once again to create both a parallel between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign and a point of orientation for the prophecies of Daniel.

The date Josephus gives for when the Romans first pitched camp outside Jerusalem was exactly forty years from the first of the three Passovers used by John to date Jesus’ ministry—the day that Jesus first came to Jerusalem.
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Josephus wishes us to believe that Jesus came to Jerusalem forty years before Titus began his siege of Jerusalem, a siege that Jesus predicted would occur before his generation had passed away. He also wishes us to believe that Masada fell forty years to the day from Jesus’ resurrection. These two perfect forty-year cycles are, of course, absurd and, in and of themselves, show the planned relationship between the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews.

I have included the entire passage, because it shows the brutality of the destruction. Notice the use of the word “repent” in conjunction with the Jewish rebels.

And, indeed, why do I relate these particular calamities? While Manneus, the son of Lazarus, came running to Titus at this very time, and told him that there had been carried out through that one gate, which was intrusted to his care, no fewer than a hundred and fifteen thousand eight hundred and eighty dead bodies, in the interval between the fourteenth day of the month Xanthicus [Nisan], when the Romans pitched their camp by the city, and the first day of the month Panemus [Tammuz].

This was itself a prodigious multitude; and though this man was not himself set as a governor at that gate, yet was he appointed to pay the public stipend for carrying these bodies out, and so was obliged of necessity to number them, while the rest were buried by their relations; though all their burial was but this, to bring them away, and cast them out of the city.

After this man there ran away to Titus many of the eminent citizens, and told him the entire number of the poor that were dead, and that no fewer than six hundred thousand were thrown out at the gates, though still the number of the rest could not be discovered;

and they told him further, that when they were no longer able to carry out the dead bodies of the poor, they laid their corpses on heaps in very large houses, and shut them up therein;

as also that a medimnus of wheat was sold for a talent; and that when, a while afterward, it was not possible to gather herbs, by reason the city was all walled about, some persons were driven to that terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dunghills of cattle, and to eat the dung which they got there; and what they of old could not endure so much as to see they now used for food.

When the Romans barely heard all this, they commiserated their case; while the seditious, who saw it also, did not repent, but suffered the same distress to come upon themselves; for they were blinded by that fate which was already coming upon the city, and upon themselves also.
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