Caesar's Messiah The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus by Joseph Atwill

Author:Joseph Atwill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Jesus; Christianity; Jews; Judaism; Jewish; Bible; Roman; Rome

CHAPTER 1 1

The Puzzle of Decius Mundus

I believe that the Flavians did not intend to have sophisticated people like themselves take their invention, Christianity, seriously. Jose-phus describes the individuals who fomented the rebellion in Judea as "slaves" and "scum." These are the individuals that Rome would have seen as being susceptible to an infatuation with militant Judaism. It was for this group, hoi polloi, that they created the religion.

This is why the authors of the New Testament and Josephus felt free to put in their creations the puzzles and lampoons that "notified" the educated of the true origin of the religion. They did not believe that the masses—the uneducated slaves and peasants for whom Christianity was intended—would understand these puzzles, an assumption that has proven to be correct. However, they certainly wanted the puzzles to be solved eventually. Only then could Titus' greatest achievement—that of transforming himself into "Jesus," be appreciated.

My interpretation of the following passages is that they create a puzzle whose solution shows how the puzzles in the New Testament can be solved. The puzzle itself is quite easy to solve; the only difficult aspect of it is recognizing that the puzzle exists.

There are three "pieces" to the puzzle. One of these is the Testimonium Josephus, which is the name scholars have given to Josephus' one and only, very short description of the "Christ." The other two "pieces" of the puzzle are the two tales that immediately follow the Testimonium.

To date, scholars have not recognized that the Testimonium and the two tales that follow it create a puzzle, simply because they have

The Puzzle of Decius Mundus 227

failed to see that the three tales must have been created as an interrelated set—that is, they were created in direct relationship to one another. Once this proposition is understood, it becomes clear that they form a puzzle whose solution is also obvious.

Here is the Testimonium and the two odd tales that follow it.

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be Lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him did not at first forsake him, for he appeared to them alive the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the termpLe of Isis that was at Rome. I will now first take notice of the wicked attempt about the temple of Isis, and will then give an account of the Jewish affairs. There was at

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