TLDR: Jesus Christ was created by the Flavians to make jews(and non-jews) submissive to rome
Joseph Atwill, author of "Caesar’s Messiah," claims he’s found ancient confessions by the scriptures’ authors that they invented Jesus Christ and his story as basically a form of propaganda.
"Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century," Atwill said. "When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome."
He says that Jesus was not based on an actual historical figure, but Atwill argues that the events of his life were overlaid on top of actual events from the First Jewish-Roman War, waged by Emperor Titus Flavius in Palestinian territories.
"The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar," he says.
"Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history," Atwill says. "To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."
Although to many scholars his theory seems outlandish, and is sure to upset some believers, Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive and is confident its acceptance is only a matter of time. "I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do not want to directly cause Christians any harm," he acknowledges, "but this is important for our culture. Alert citizens need to know the truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false histories and false gods. They often do it to obtain a social order that is against the best interests of the common people." Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire.
"Was Jesus based on a real person from history? "The short answer is no," Atwill insists, "in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there's simply nothing left."
Atwill's most intriguing discovery came to him while he was studying "Wars of the Jews" by Josephus [the only surviving first-person historical account of first-century Judea] alongside the New Testament. "I started to notice a sequence of parallels between the two texts," he recounts. "Although it's been recognized by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophesies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman war, I was seeing dozens more. What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern. The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar." How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinized books of all time? "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it.
An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognized the literary game being played." Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that, "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"
Is this the beginning of the end of Christianity? "Probably not," grants Atwill, "but what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. We've got the evidence now to show exactly where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."
And the writings we do have are biased. Roman historians Josephus and Tacitus do make a few, scant remarks about his life. But that was a century after Jesus's time. So they may have garnered their information from early Christians. And those threadbare accounts are controversial too, since the manuscripts had been altered over time by Christian scribes whose job it was to preserve them.
Today, several books approach the subject, including:
- Zealot by Reza Aslan
- Nailed - Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald
- How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman
- The Christ myth by Arthur Drews
- On the historicity of Jesus: Why we might have a reason for doubt by Richard Carrier
- Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald
- The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Acharya S (D.M. Murdock)
- The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth by John M. Allegro
- Caesar's Messiah: the roman conspiracy to invent Jesus by Joseph atwill
Historian Richard Carrier in his 600 page monograph, On the Historicity of Jesus, writes that the story may have derived from earlier semi-divine beings from Near East myth, who were murdered by demons in the celestial realm. This would develop over time into the gospels, he said. Another theory is that Jesus was a historical figure who become mythicized later on.
Carrier believes the pieces added to the work of Josephus were done by Christian scribes. In one particular passage, Carrier says that the execution by Pilate of Jesus was obviously lifted from the Gospel of Luke. Similar problems such as miscopying and misrepresentations are found throughout Tacitus.So where do all the stories in the New Testament derive?According to Carrier, Jesus may be as much a mythical figure as Hercules or Oedipus.
Bart Ehrman focuses on the lack of witnesses. "What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references - nothing..."
The Rank-Raglan Mythotype is a set of traits that heroes across cultures share.
There are 22 of them including,
One biblical scholar holds an even more radical idea, that Jesus story was an early form of psychological warfare to help quell a violent insurgency. The Great Revolt against Rome occurred in 66 BCE. Fierce Jewish warriors known as the Zealots won two decisive victories early on. But Rome returned with 60,000 heavily armed troops. What resulted was a bloody war of attrition that raged for three decades.
Joseph Atwill contends that the Zealots were awaiting the arrival of a warrior messiah to throw off the interlopers. Knowing this, the Roman court under Titus Flavius decided to create their own, competing messiah who promoted pacifism among the populous. According to Atwill, the story of Jesus was taken from many sources, including the campaigns of a previous Caesar. Of course, there may very well have been a Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef (as would have been Jesus's real name) who gathered a flock around his teachings in the first century. Most antiquarians believe a real man existed and became mythicized. But the historical record itself is thin.
HERE is a documentary about this topic, I encourage all of you to watch it.
Also, here’s something to think about, everything about Jesus has no true verification. one of the things I was thinking about is that if he was so well known, there should be some contemporary evidence of his life. for example, if he had been a carpenter before he started 'ministering', then he would have been a skilled one considering his age and apparent lineage, thus, some of his work would have survived, and when he died, the value of those artifacts would have skyrocketed, but there is no mention of any of his carpentry work, no toys, hangars, chairs, tables, knobs, dowels...nothing. There are exactly zero contemporary accounts of anything mundane about the apparent person, no records of his crucifixion or his altercation with the high ranking jewish rabbis, nothing.
Joseph Atwill, author of "Caesar’s Messiah," claims he’s found ancient confessions by the scriptures’ authors that they invented Jesus Christ and his story as basically a form of propaganda.
"Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century," Atwill said. "When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome."
He says that Jesus was not based on an actual historical figure, but Atwill argues that the events of his life were overlaid on top of actual events from the First Jewish-Roman War, waged by Emperor Titus Flavius in Palestinian territories.
"The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar," he says.
"Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history," Atwill says. "To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."
Although to many scholars his theory seems outlandish, and is sure to upset some believers, Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive and is confident its acceptance is only a matter of time. "I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do not want to directly cause Christians any harm," he acknowledges, "but this is important for our culture. Alert citizens need to know the truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false histories and false gods. They often do it to obtain a social order that is against the best interests of the common people." Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire.
"Was Jesus based on a real person from history? "The short answer is no," Atwill insists, "in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there's simply nothing left."
Atwill's most intriguing discovery came to him while he was studying "Wars of the Jews" by Josephus [the only surviving first-person historical account of first-century Judea] alongside the New Testament. "I started to notice a sequence of parallels between the two texts," he recounts. "Although it's been recognized by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophesies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman war, I was seeing dozens more. What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern. The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar." How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinized books of all time? "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it.
An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognized the literary game being played." Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that, "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"
Is this the beginning of the end of Christianity? "Probably not," grants Atwill, "but what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. We've got the evidence now to show exactly where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."
And the writings we do have are biased. Roman historians Josephus and Tacitus do make a few, scant remarks about his life. But that was a century after Jesus's time. So they may have garnered their information from early Christians. And those threadbare accounts are controversial too, since the manuscripts had been altered over time by Christian scribes whose job it was to preserve them.
Today, several books approach the subject, including:
- Zealot by Reza Aslan
- Nailed - Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald
- How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman
- The Christ myth by Arthur Drews
- On the historicity of Jesus: Why we might have a reason for doubt by Richard Carrier
- Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald
- The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Acharya S (D.M. Murdock)
- The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth by John M. Allegro
- Caesar's Messiah: the roman conspiracy to invent Jesus by Joseph atwill
Historian Richard Carrier in his 600 page monograph, On the Historicity of Jesus, writes that the story may have derived from earlier semi-divine beings from Near East myth, who were murdered by demons in the celestial realm. This would develop over time into the gospels, he said. Another theory is that Jesus was a historical figure who become mythicized later on.
Carrier believes the pieces added to the work of Josephus were done by Christian scribes. In one particular passage, Carrier says that the execution by Pilate of Jesus was obviously lifted from the Gospel of Luke. Similar problems such as miscopying and misrepresentations are found throughout Tacitus.So where do all the stories in the New Testament derive?According to Carrier, Jesus may be as much a mythical figure as Hercules or Oedipus.
Bart Ehrman focuses on the lack of witnesses. "What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references - nothing..."
The Rank-Raglan Mythotype is a set of traits that heroes across cultures share.
There are 22 of them including,
- a virgin birth
- the audience knowing little to nothing about his childhood
- being the son of god
- dying on a hilltop
- the mysterious disappearance of his remains
One biblical scholar holds an even more radical idea, that Jesus story was an early form of psychological warfare to help quell a violent insurgency. The Great Revolt against Rome occurred in 66 BCE. Fierce Jewish warriors known as the Zealots won two decisive victories early on. But Rome returned with 60,000 heavily armed troops. What resulted was a bloody war of attrition that raged for three decades.
Joseph Atwill contends that the Zealots were awaiting the arrival of a warrior messiah to throw off the interlopers. Knowing this, the Roman court under Titus Flavius decided to create their own, competing messiah who promoted pacifism among the populous. According to Atwill, the story of Jesus was taken from many sources, including the campaigns of a previous Caesar. Of course, there may very well have been a Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef (as would have been Jesus's real name) who gathered a flock around his teachings in the first century. Most antiquarians believe a real man existed and became mythicized. But the historical record itself is thin.
HERE is a documentary about this topic, I encourage all of you to watch it.
Also, here’s something to think about, everything about Jesus has no true verification. one of the things I was thinking about is that if he was so well known, there should be some contemporary evidence of his life. for example, if he had been a carpenter before he started 'ministering', then he would have been a skilled one considering his age and apparent lineage, thus, some of his work would have survived, and when he died, the value of those artifacts would have skyrocketed, but there is no mention of any of his carpentry work, no toys, hangars, chairs, tables, knobs, dowels...nothing. There are exactly zero contemporary accounts of anything mundane about the apparent person, no records of his crucifixion or his altercation with the high ranking jewish rabbis, nothing.
Last edited:
