Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (40 page)

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus states that the temple of Jerusalem will be destroyed. He then is asked what signs will foretell its destruction. Jesus responds with a list of signs that will occur before the coming of the “Son of Man,” the individual whose visitation will bring about the destruction.

Josephus also gives a list of signs that, as he relates it, actually did precede the destruction of the temple. When these two lists of signs are compared, a number of parallels emerge.

The first parallel is almost too obvious to be noticed—the location and subject of both passages. They both describe activity in and around the temple of Jerusalem and both have to do with its destruction. Further, both Jesus and Josephus flatly declare that they are going to reveal the signs that will precede the coming destruction of the temple.

Thus, the title of the chapter in
Wars of the Jews
reads:

THE GREAT DISTRESS THE JEWS WERE IN UPON THE CONFLAGRATION OF THE HOLY HOUSE. CONCERNING A FALSE PROPHET, AND THE SIGNS THAT PRECEDED THIS DESTRUCTION.

At the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus is asked the following question:

Afterwards He was on the Mount of Olives and was seated there when the disciples came to Him, apart from the others, and said, “Tell us when this will be; and what will be the sign of your Coming and of the Close of the Age?”

Jesus’ doomsday visions are thus parallel to Josephus’ chapter heading:

… SIGNS THAT PRECEDED THIS DESTRUCTION.

Both sets of signs are, thus, in relation to the coming destruction of the temple. Jesus states that these signs will also herald the coming of the “Son of Man” and the beginning of the “tribulation” during which the temple will be destroyed. Josephus records that very similar signs, in fact, did occur just before the destruction of the temple.

For clarification, I will go through the list of signs that Jesus envisioned and then present the parallel signs that Josephus recorded as having come to pass.

The New Testament Jesus sees false prophets rising and leading the people astray
.

“Take care that no one misleads you,” answered Jesus;

“for many will come assuming my name and saying ‘I am the Christ’; and they will mislead many.

Many false prophets will rise up and lead multitudes astray …”

This “comes to pass” in this passage from Josephus:

A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded them to get upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.

Now there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God …

Jesus described the route the Son of Man would take.

For just as the lightning flashes in the east and is seen to the very west, so will be the Coming of the Son of Man.

This was the direction of the march of the Roman army as they entered Judea on the east and carried their conquest westward.

Like Daniel [Daniel 7:13], the New Testament Jesus sees a sign of the Son of Man in the sky, foreshadowing that the destruction is imminent:
“
One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven!”

In Josephus, we read of an actual sign in the clouds foretelling the imminent destruction of Jerusalem.

… before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds …

The parallel between the sign of “chariots and troops … among the clouds” given by Josephus, and the “sign of the Son of Man in the sky” given by Jesus, is problematic for Christianity. If one accepts, as the early Christian scholars did, that the signs Jesus gives in Matthew came to pass with the signs Josephus records, then it is difficult to contradict that Jesus was referring to Titus as the “Son of Man,” chariots and troops being more synonymous with leaders of Roman armies than with religious sages. This parallel is as clear as any of the other parallels between the signs that Jesus foresees in Matthew 23 and 24 and the signs that Josephus gives in
Wars of the Jews,
and to attempt to exclude it would constitute special pleading. Of interest is the fact that on the Arch of Titus in Rome, there is a relief depicting both Titus’
consecratio
and his conquest of Jerusalem, which shows him being carried into the clouds on an eagle.

Other scholars have noticed the connection between Jesus and Titus, that Josephus’ sign regarding chariots and troops creates. The eighteenth-century theologian Reland wrote concerning this particular sign 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 …

Reland was simply stating the obvious. Since Jesus’ eschatological prophecies were solely regarding the destruction of Judea by the Romans, they appear to envision him coming “at the head of the Roman army.” Because Titus was the head of the army that destroyed Jerusalem, the parallel that this sign creates between Jesus and him seems clear.

Continuing with the lists of signs, in the New Testament Jesus predicts “woe” for women who are suckling a child.

And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days.

Matt. 24:19

Josephus shows that this came to pass.

She then attempted a most unnatural thing; and snatching up her son, who was a child sucking at her breast, she said, “O thou miserable infant! for whom shall I preserve thee in this war, this famine, and this sedition?”

 … As soon as she had said this, she slew her son, and then roasted him, and ate the one half of him …

Jesus foresees “famines and earthquakes” as signs of the coming destruction. In the above passage from Josephus, the priests “felt a quaking” as they attempted to perform their ministrations. Josephus describes “many that were worn away by the famine.”

In Matthew 24, Jesus states:

“let him who is on the roof not go down to fetch what is in his house;

“nor let him who is outside the city stay to pick up his outer garment.”

In the following passage, Josephus records that this sign “came to pass”:

And now the Romans, judging that it was in vain to spare what was round about the holy house,

that they set that cloister on fire; by which means it came to pass that some of these were destroyed by throwing themselves down headlong, and some were burnt in the cloisters themselves. Nor did any one of them escape with his life.

A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded them to get upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.

They also burnt down the treasury chambers, in which was an immense quantity of money, and an immense number of garments …

Jesus states:

But of this be assured, that if the master of the house had known the hour at which the robber was coming, he would have kept awake, and not have allowed his house to be broken into.

Throughout
Wars of the Jews,
Josephus uses the word “robber” to describe the Jewish rebels:

And now it was that the multitude of the robbers were thrust out [of the inner court of the temple by the Romans,] and had much ado to get into the outward court, and from thence into the city, while the remainder of the populace fled into the cloister of that outer court …

Jesus literally dates the “close of the age” that he is prophesying:

I tell you in solemn truth that the present generation will certainly not pass away without all these things having first taken place.

Jews in the first century held that a generation lasted 40 years. Therefore the generation that Jesus is referring to can only be the one that, 40 years later, rebelled from Rome. Thus, all of Jesus’ prophecies were foreseeing events from the coming war.

The following quote underscores this idea.

… Wherever the dead body is, there will the eagles flock together …

Since the eagle was the symbol of the Roman army, the idea behind this passage also seems clear. Numerous scholars have understood the passage to indicate that Jesus is foreseeing the Roman army gathering about the corpses amidst the destroyed temple. As Albert Barnes wrote in his
Commentary on Matthew
in 1832:

This verse is connected with the preceding by the word “for,” implying that this is a reason for what is said there—that the Son of Man would certainly come to destroy the city, and that he would come suddenly. The meaning is that he would come, by means of the Roman armies, as certainly, as suddenly, and as unexpectedly as whole flocks of vultures and eagles, though unseen before, see their prey at a great distance and suddenly gather in multitudes around it … So keen is their vision as aptly to represent the Roman armies, though at an immense distance, spying, as it were, Jerusalem, a putrid carcass, and hastening in multitudes to destroy it.

The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus has seen into the future and is telling the Jews what they must do to avoid “tribulation.”

For there will rise up false Christs and false prophets, displaying wonderful signs and prodigies, so as to deceive, were it possible, even God’s own People …

Remember, I have forewarned you.

Josephus, in a pattern that should be familiar to the reader by now, states:

Now if any one consider these things, he will find that God takes care of mankind, and by all ways possible foreshows to our race what is for their preservation; but that men perish by those miseries which they madly and voluntarily bring upon themselves …

As with all of Jesus’ prophecies, his list of signs operates on two levels. On their surface, they would have demonstrated to early uneducated Christian converts, the divinity of Jesus. Potential converts would have been shown the prophecies of Christ in the New Testament and then the realization of each prophecy in
Wars of the Jews
—the official prophet corroborated by the official history. This would have both “proven” the divinity of Christ, because he had been able to see into the future, and simultaneously justified the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem, because it “proved” that it had been foreseen by God. On their satiric level, however, the two lists of signs are obviously clues to the real identity of the Son of Man—Titus Flavius.

I note another parallel between Jesus’ eschatological prophecies and
Wars of the Jews
that is related to this theme. Jesus in Matthew 24 states:

… for then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world and assuredly never will be again.

Josephus records that this too came to pass.

… the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were.
¹³¹

There is another parallel between the signs in Matthew 23 and the signs in Josephus. I will analyze it separately because of its unique satiric nature. This parallel has long puzzled scholars. The confusion has been due to its not being understood both as a dark inside joke and as another of the parallels between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign, which were created to give their two stories the same broad outline.

In the Gospels, Jesus states:

You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town,

that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechari’ah the son of Barachi’ah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation.

Matt. 23:33–36

In
Wars of the Jews
Josephus writes:

And now these zealots and Idumeans were quite weary of barely killing men, so they had the impudence of setting up fictitious tribunals and judicatures for that purpose;