Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (9 page)

Psuche
,
⁵³
the word translated in the New Testament above as “soul,” can also mean “heart,” or “the seat of emotions.”
Splanchon
, the Greek word that Josephus uses to describe the part of Mary that was pierced through, is translated above as “bowels,” but is in fact a synonym for
psuche
, and can mean either “inward parts,” especially the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys, or, like
psuche
, it can mean “the seat of the emotions.” Scholars have not seen this conceptual parallel between the two Marys simply because it was created using different words, even though the words mean the same thing.

In other words, if a prophet predicted that “next week a dog will bite a mailman” and a historian recorded that during that week “a cur sank its teeth into a letter carrier” the prophecy, in fact, came to pass even though the prophet and the historian used different words to describe the event. The concept the prophet predicted was the same as the one the historian recorded.

The “fulfilled prophecy” of the “bitten postman” cannot be seen through an analysis of the individual words that the historian and the prophet used. Likewise, the satirical system that exists between the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
cannot be seen by analyzing their individual words and nuances of grammar. The system is made up of parallel concepts, not parallel words.

Notice also that the parallel “heart piercings” of the two Marys are prophetically logical. This is to say that the Mary in the New Testament is the one
predicted
to have her heart “pierced through” in the future, and the Mary in
Wars of the Jews,
which occurred later, is the one who fulfilled this prophecy. If the New Testament had stated that Mary’s heart
had been
pierced through, then the logic of this prophecy would have been contradicted. And notice also that the statement in the New Testament, though innocuous,
is
a prophecy. One reason that the satiric level of the New Testament has remained unseen is because scholars have failed to recognize the many seemingly innocuous New Testament prophecies that are fulfilled within
Wars of the Jews
.

To summarize, within this short passage Josephus has used a number of concepts and names that are parallel to those associated with the New Testament’s symbolic Passover lamb. These are a mother named Mary; the fact that this Mary was pierced through the heart; a son of Mary; hyssop; a son who is a sacrifice; a son whose flesh is eaten; a son who is to become a “byword to the world”; one of Moses’ instructions regarding the Passover lamb; an individual named Lazarus (Eleazar); and Jerusalem as the location of the incident. It is unlikely that there is another passage in all of literature that contains, by chance, as many as half the number of parallels with a concept as singular as Christianity’s Passover lamb. When I first recognized these parallels I felt that the simplest explanation for such an improbable grouping was that it had been deliberately created.  Therefore, the passage was a lampoon of Jesus.

To argue against this proposition one must accept this idea that Josephus unknowingly recorded these parallels in such detail within a passage of less than two pages. However, because Josephus wrote
Wars of the Jews
while living in the Flavian court, a place where Christianity flourished, and was one of the few historians to have recorded Jesus’ existence, he would seem to be among the authors least likely to have recorded a satire of Christ accidentally.

For example, if the passage in question had occurred within a work by Tolstoy, there would be virtually complete agreement that it was a deliberate satire. And notice that when viewed from such a perspective the passage would certainly be seen as darkly comical, the irony being self-evident. The satire suggests that the Messiah who instructed his followers to symbolically “eat of my flesh” was actually eaten by his mother. 

If Josephus was lampooning Jesus, what was his purpose? An obvious explanation is that he wrote the passage to amuse a group by whom the grim joke would be understood. In other words, he would have created it to be enjoyed by the Flavians and their inner circle.

This conclusion is especially plausible in light of the fact that there were individuals within the Flavian court who were aware of Christianity around the time Josephus published
Wars of the Jews.
Further, there were four colleges in Rome that were responsible for overseeing the religions within the empire. Because religion was an important tool of the state, these colleges had considerable political power.  From Augustus on, the emperor was a member of all four colleges, one of which, the
Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis,
was responsible for the regulation of foreign cults in Rome. All the Flavian emperors were members of this college and would have studied Christianity as a foreign cult during this era.

Moreover, the most obvious reason to believe that the Flavians were familiar with Christianity is that so much of the New Testament is related to the family. The Flavians brought about the fulfillment of all of Jesus’ doomsday prophecies—the destruction of the temple, the encircling of Jerusalem with a wall, the towns of Galilee being brought low, and the destruction of what Jesus describes as the “wicked generation.” Titus’ mistress, Bernice, and Tiberius Alexander, his chief of staff during the siege of Jerusalem, are actually named within the New Testament. A cult whose canon prophesied the accomplishments of the Flavians, named individuals within its inner circle, and actually had converts within the imperial family, would certainly have been scrutinized during an era when the regulation of religion was so important that the emperor himself was involved with it.

Titus is known to have reviewed
Wars of the Jews
. As noted above, Josephus wrote that Titus so wished that “the knowledge of these affairs should be taken from these books alone, that he affixed his own signature to them.” Thus, Titus certainly had read the passage describing the Mary who ate her son and, considering the traditions connecting his family to Christianity, could well have understood its ironic parallels with the mother of Jesus. Again, though Jesus seems to be speaking
symbolically
when he speaks of having his flesh eaten as a Passover sacrifice, in Josephus’ history we see a
literal
interpretation of Jesus’ words, which renders them blackly comic.

If the passage was a satire of Jesus then a number of statements Josephus makes within it can be seen as double entendres. The reader need only read these statements from the perspective that the Flavians had invented Christianity, and their satirical meaning will become obvious.  Some of these are found in Josephus’ narration:

It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard …

While I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates …

I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity …

I have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age

But the most important play on words is found within Mary’s address to her “miserable child,” wherein she states:

“… be thou a fury to these seditious varlets and a myth to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.”

As I have suggested above, this quote seems to have been invented by Josephus. Not only were there no witnesses to hear them, but they are, on their face, dubious. Would a mother who has eaten her son really wish him to become a myth to the world? Further, taken literally, Mary’s words seem incoherent. Why would her child become a “fury” to the “varlets”—that is, the Jewish rebels against Rome—by being cannibalized? And why would this “complete the calamities of us Jews”?

Within the context of a lampoon of Jesus, the meaning of the phrase becomes clear. The author is not merely ridiculing Christ. He is stating that the spread of the myth, of the Christ that the Jews killed, will “complete” the destruction of the Jews.

This interpretation indicates that Christianity was designed to promote anti-Semitism—a concept that is plausible, historically. A cult that produced anti-Semitism would have both helped Rome prevent the messianic Jews from spreading their rebellion, and punished them by poisoning their future.

The New Testament has numerous passages that seem deliberately intended to cause Christians to hate Jews. Though Christian apologists have attempted to explain away such passages, there are clear examples of this technique throughout the New Testament. The most famous occurs in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Pilate, after having “washed his hands of the blood of this just person” tells the Jews that they, not the Roman authorities, must be the ones responsible for crucifying Christ. The Jews responded thus:

… all the people answered and said, “His blood will be on us and on our children.”
⁵⁴

Some scholars have speculated that later Christian redactors inserted the anti-Semitism passages into the New Testament out of hatred for the people who had crucified their savior. My interpretation of the passage above suggests the opposite. The New Testament was designed to promote anti-Semitism.

If Christianity had been created by the Flavians to “complete the calamities” of the Jews, why had the religion’s inventors created a Messiah who was a symbolic Passover lamb? The symbolism of John 19 and the passage from Josephus we have been analyzing which set up the symbolic Passover lambs, both stem from Exodus 12 where God tells Moses and Aaron how to observe the Passover “throughout their generations”:

“This is the ordinance of Passover: no foreigner shall eat it.

“But every man’s servant who is bought for money, and when you have circumcised him, then he may eat it …

“In one house it shall be eaten; you shall not carry any of the flesh outside the house, nor shall you break one of its bones.

“All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.

“And when a stranger dwells with you and wants to keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised and let him come near and keep it; and he shall be a native of the land.

“For no uncircumcised person shall eat it.”

Exodus 12:43-49

The above passage provided one of the motives behind the decision to establish a Messiah whose flesh will be eaten by all humanity. God’s instruction to Moses regarding how only the circumcised, the Jews, may eat of the Passover lamb, is an important theological marker of the religious separateness of the Jewish people.

Judaism’s requirement of religious separatism was one of the causes of the war with the Romans. By creating a Passover lamb for all mankind, the New Testament was, on one level, ending the religious separatism that made it impossible for Judaism to be absorbed into the Roman Empire. However, another passage within
Wars of the Jews
reveals the other more ironic inspiration for Christianity’s human Passover lamb.

… as was the number of those that perished during this whole siege eleven hundred thousand,

the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation [with the citizens of Jerusalem], but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country for the feast of the unleavened bread. And were on a sudden shut up by an army, which at the very first, occasioned so great a traitness among them that there came a pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine as destroyed them more suddenly.
⁵⁵

Thus, the Romans were aware that they had besieged Jerusalem at a time when Passover celebrants had swollen its population. As starvation set in upon them the Passover celebrants, like the Mary described by Josephus, engaged in cannibalism. The Roman historian Severus, writing in the third century, also recorded that there was cannibalism during the siege of Jerusalem.

The Jews, meanwhile, being closely besieged, as no chance either of peace or surrender was allowed them, were at length perishing from famine, and the streets began everywhere to be filled with dead bodies, for the duty of burying them could no longer be performed. Moreover, they ventured on eating all things of the most abominable nature, and did not even abstain from human bodies, except those which putrefaction had already laid hold of and thus excluded from use as food.     

Severus,
Sacred History
, Book II/Chapter 30

The cannibalism that occurred during the siege of Jerusalem is, therefore, a candidate as the inspiration behind Christianity’s “flesh eating” innovation. This premise is especially plausible in light of the fact that so much of Jesus’ ministry involved prophecy, and these prophecies all seemed to have come to pass within
Wars of the Jews
. In other words, the New Testament’s “son of Mary” telling his disciples that they must “eat of my flesh” would simply have been another prophecy Josephus recorded as having come to pass.

If the Romans invented the black comedy narrative about a human Passover lamb, it was to satirize the grim “feast” of the starving Passover celebrants who were trapped inside Jerusalem. If this was the case, Josephus’ story concerning the “starving Mary” and the sacrament of communion were both reflections of this satiric theme.