Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (62 page)

Archelaus

The census of Quirinius

The fifteenth year of Tiberius

John the Baptist

Pharisees

Sadducees

James the Brother of Jesus

Judas the Galilean

The famine under Claudius

The Death of Herod Agrippa I

Jesus

In addition to these overlapping characters and events, the works share a number of conceptual parallels other than those I have previously presented. I want to briefly discuss some of these. The first actually predates Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign. It consists of the parallel “slaughter of the innocents” that occurs in both the New Testament and Josephus’
Antiquities of the Jews
.

Though other scholars have noticed this parallel, I am not aware of anyone else having seen the unusual temporal correspondence between the two passages. The passages in the New Testament and Josephus dealing with the slaughter of innocents occur at the same time. Since both tales involve Herod this may seem unimportant, since both passages appear simply to reflect the same event. However, when this parallel is viewed in the context of the other New Testament/Josephus parallels, its real significance becomes clear.

From the New Testament:

… in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem,

asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.”

When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him;

and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

They told him, “In the Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet …”

… When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent for and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

Matt. 2:1-5, 16

Josephus records a parallel event.

Now there was a certain sect of Jews who valued themselves highly for the skill they had in the ways of their fathers and who believed they best observed the laws favored by God—the sect called the Pharisees—by whom the women of the palace were guided. They were fully able to deal successfully with the king due to their prescience, but often fell into fighting and setting up obstacles to him.

For example, when all the Jewish people pledged their loyalty to Caesar and to the king’s government, these men, over six thousand of them, refused to swear; and when the king therefore imposed a fine on them, the wife of Pheroras [the king’s brother] paid it.

Now to repay this kindness of hers, being believed to have, by Divine inspiration, the foreknowledge of things to come, they foretold that God had decreed that Herod’s government would be taken from him and from his descendants, and that the kingdom would come to her and Pheroras and to their children.

These predictions, which did not escape detection by Salome [the king’s sister], were reported to the king, and also that they had subverted some others of the palace. So the king killed those of the Pharisees principally involved, as well as Bagoas the eunuch, and a certain Karos, who exceeded all of his peers in beauty and was his favorite boy. He also killed everyone of his own house who had allied themselves to the talk of the Pharisees.

Bagoas had been elated by their prediction that he would be hailed as the father and the benefactor of the one who would be their appointed king; for to this king would fall power over all things, and he would provide Bagoas with a marriage and the ability to sire children of his own line.
²⁵³

The passage above from Josephus has clear parallels to the nativity story given in Luke and Matthew. Notice that in each we have wise men, who have the gift of prophecy, predicting that “the king who was to come” will end Herod’s reign. Herod’s reaction in both is to “slaughter the innocents.” Josephus describes the new king as someone who will have “the power over all things.” It is more important, however, that both stories involve a miraculous birth by someone normally assumed to be incapable of having children—in the New Testament it is a virgin, in Josephus a eunuch.

This parallel between the Virgin Mary and the eunuch Bagoas is the beginning of parallel sequences of events in the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
. The authors switch a eunuch for a virgin to create a parallel “miraculous birth.” The story of Bagoas reveals the mindset of the authors of the New Testament in that it shows the contempt they had for those who believed in fables about virgin births.

Another interesting point is that this lampoon would indicate that the authors of the New Testament were indeed trying to create the impression that Mary was a “virgin,” that is, someone incapable of giving birth, a matter of some contention among scholars.

I wish to conclude my analysis with a brief comment on Revelation and the Pauline literature.

These works will be covered in depth in a subsequent book, but I want to assure readers that they are also Flavian documents, though not one produced by the circle that surrounded  Titus Flavius. Like the Gospels, these works were designed with a veiled typological level that foresaw yet another “Flavian Christ” – Caesar Domitian. Therefore, as Titus had used the historian Josephus to link to the Gospels and create the typology that reveals that he was the “Jesus Christ” in John 21, so Domitian used his historian Suetonius to create a history of his life that linked to Revelation and the Pauline literature and thereby show that he, not his brother, was the final “Christ”. By winning a petty game of literary one-upmanship with his dead brother, Domitian sought to replace Titus as “Jesus” and make himself the “god” that Christians have worshipped for two thousand years.

Understanding Domitian’s typology begins by simply comparing the characteristics given to the “lord god” in Revelation with those that Suetonius recorded for Domitian. Such a comparison makes it clear that the “lord god” of Revelation was Domitian.

As an example of the analysis in my next work, I present the following list of the shared characteristics of the two “lord gods” below. In the list, Revelation’s characteristics of the “lord god” are given first, followed by the citation of Suetonius’ parallel descriptions of Domitian.

While some of the connections are simply historical facts that the authors expected their readers to be familiar with, and others are metaphorical or trivial, some of the parallels are so complex that they indicate a deliberate connection in and of themselves. Examples of these complex parallels are the “raised a ‘day’s wages’ by a third and increased grain and decreased wine” parallel (Revelation 6:6 and Suetonius, Domitian, 7), and the “gave a prophetess chance to repent then cast her on a bed of suffering and executed her lovers” parallel found in Revelation 2:20-22 and Suetonius, Domitian, 8. As is always the case, however, when attempting to determine if a designed pattern exists between works of literature, the parallels need to be judged as a collection. And when viewed as a collection, the parallels leave little doubt as to the identity of the “Lord God” of Revelation.

•  Rode white horse (Suetonius, Domitian, 2)

•  Inner circle were winged creatures with multiple eyes (Suetonius, Domitian, 3)

•  Outer circle wore crowns (Suetonius, Domitian, 4)

•  Congregation wore white (Suetonius, Domitian, 12)

•  Both were called the “Lord God” (Suetonius, Domitian, 13)

•  The “Lord God” as an archer (Suetonius, Domitian, 19)

•  Throne room was encircled with a rainbow and was next to a sea (Suetonius, Domitian, 5&6)

•  Raised a “day’s wages” of soldiers by a third at the point he increased grain and decreased wine (Revelation 6:6 and Suetonius, Domitian, 7 )

•  Gave a prophetess the chance to repent then cast her on a bed of suffering and executed her and her lovers (Suetonius, Domitian, 8)

•  Attacked sexual immorality (Suetonius, Domitian, 8)

•  Opposed “those who claim they are Jews but are not” (Suetonius, Domitian, 12)

•  Was the first and the last – the alpha and the omega – Domitian maintained that he was both the first of the Flavian Caesars and the last (Suetonius, Domitian, 13)

•  Was the “morning star” (Suetonius, Domitian, 16)

•  Had feet of bronze (Suetonius, Domitian, 18)

•  Battled beast with two horns (Suetonius, Domitian, 19)

Among the historical parallels between the “Lord God” of Revelation and Domitian were the following:

•  Was a “living god”

•  Had the power to execute subjects

•  Church in Ephesus was the first in order of importance (Domitian built personal Temple there)

•  Had a group of churches in Asia Minor

•  Father was a god

•  The “lord god” of Revelation and Domitian were both the “Christ” (Suetonius, Vespasian, 4)

•  Was a member of trinity of gods – Domitian was the “pneuma hagios” or “holy spirit”

Finally, - the obvious is always overlooked - the “lord god” Domitian possessed a mail system capable of sending letters to the “seven cities” named in Revelation.

In the next work, we shall open the “seven seals” and show their incredible meaning.

Conclusion

The analysis I’ve undertaken in this work supports the premise that, sometime after the war between the Romans and the Jews, Christianity was created by intellectuals working for the Flavian emperors. They created the religion to serve as a theological barrier to prevent messianic Judaism from again erupting against the empire. I have also presented an analysis showing that the story of Jesus’ ministry told in the Gospels was constructed as a “prophetic” satire of Titus Flavius’ military campaign through Judea. This satire cleverly used typological parallels to show that Titus was the real “Christ” that Christians have unwittingly been worshipping.

Though unseen for 2,000 years, the path to understanding the real meaning of the Gospels is a clear one. The first step is simply recognizing that Jesus was created as a typological figure. This is established at the beginning of the Gospels, in Matthew, where the life of Moses, the first savior of Israel, was used as a type for Jesus, the second savior of Israel.

The use of typological parallels to link Jesus to Moses was designed to create the impression that prior Judaic literature had “foreseen” the life of Jesus. However, the fact that the authors of the Gospels created Jesus as a typological character, strongly supports the thesis that the linkage I show in this work – between Jesus and Titus – was also created deliberately. Let us suppose that a criminal is known to commit his crimes with a very unusual weapon—say, a bowling ball. A crime scene where the victim is crushed by a bowling ball would strongly suggest the same perpetrator. The same kind of evidence weighs against the authors of the Gospels. It is implausible that one of the few groups that ever knowingly used typology would have also created the only accidentally typological relationships in all of literature.