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.
Though the strange fact that Jesus’ flesh was the basis for the sacrament is not often noted today, this may not have been the case during Christianity’s first centuries. Eusebius recorded that early Christians had to defend themselves against charges of infanticide and cannibalism.56
Therefore, members of the Flavian court could have understood the passage from Josephus as black comedy because such individuals would have seen irony in Jesus telling his followers, particularly at Jerusalem, where Jews resorted to cannibalism, that “the bread that I give is my flesh.” From the Flavian perspective, the satire is self-evident.
However, once I became suspicious that Josephus’ passage about “a myth for the world” was a mockery of the Gospels’ human Passover lamb, I began studying it in its original Greek. While doing so, I discovered something that confirmed the passage’s connection to the Gospels. There is a confession by the Flavians in the story that is more clearly visible in the original language. It is a confession that they invented both Christianity and its anti-Semitism.
To construct the confession, the author used a series of puns linked to the word “mythos” or myth. As noted above, in the passage Josephus described Mary’s son as a “mythos” or “myth for the world” (BJ 6. 207). He goes on to state that the killing of the myth for the world will be seen as a “mysos” (BJ 6, 212) or “atrocity”, that will be responded to by the Romans with “misos” (BJ 6.214) or “bitter hatred”.
Other scholars have recognized that the puns were designed to work together to tell a story. The story the puns create should be analyzed to determine if it has some connection to the creation of Christianity – this is simply good analytic technique. There is, of course, only one individual who ca
n be seen as a “myth for the world”, who was a son of Mary and a human Passover lamb, and whose killing was an “atrocity” that created “bitter hatred” of the Jews. Notice that the story told by the linked puns is not only a description of the invention of Christianity, but a proud declaration of the invention of its accompanying anti-Semitism.
Scholars as far back as Melito in the second century have understood that the child in Josephus’ passage was a symbolic Passover Lamb. In fact the child is the only human Passover Lamb, other than Jesus, in literature. It is self-evident that something as rare as a coherent description of the invention of Christianity did not occur accidentally in the passage describing literature’s only other human Passover lamb. The “mythos puns” are a bold-faced confession of the invention of Christianity and its anti-Semitism by the Romans.
Though the acts revealed by the declaration are perhaps the most evil in history, it is hard not to give the devil his due. The authors of the subtly shifting “mythos” wordplay possessed a literary skill only surpassed by their wickedness. They not only punished the Jews for their rebellion by poisoning their future, but were able to notify posterity that they had done so using only erudite puns.
Finally, the short chapter in Wars of the Jews that contains the “son of Mary” passage concludes with Titus, having been told the story of the mother who ate her son’s flesh, delivering a sermon on the meaning of the sordid affair.
But for Caesar, he excused himself before God as to this matter, and said that he had proposed peace and liberty to the Jews, as well as an oblivion of all their former insolent practices; but that they, instead of concord, had chosen sedition; instead of peace, war; and before satiety and abundance, a famine.
That they had begun with their own hands to burn down that temple which we have preserved hitherto; and that therefore they deserved to eat such food as this was.
That, however, this horrid action of eating an own child ought to be covered with the overthrow of their very country itself, and men ought not to leave such a city upon the habitable earth to be seen by the sun, wherein mothers are thus fed,
although such food be fitter for the fathers than for the mothers to eat of, since it is they that continue still in a state of war against us, after they have undergone such miseries as these.
And at the same time that he said this, he reflected on the desperate condition these men must be in; nor could he expect that such men could be recovered to sobriety of mind, after they had endured those very sufferings, for the avoiding whereof it only was probable they might have repented.57
Titus’ use of the word “repent” in the passage has an implication for the ministry of Jesus. “Repent” is, of course, one of the key words of Jesus’ ministry and Caesar’s usage of it brings the parallels between the passage and the Gospels even tighter. Jesus states repeatedly, “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand,” but exactly what sin does he wish the Jews to repent of? Jesus never gives an answer to this question. However, when the passage is read as a satire of Christianity, the answer is clear—the sin that Jesus wished the Jews to “repent” was their rebellion against Rome.
CHAPTER 4
The Demons of Gadara
When I first came across the passage from Wars of the Jews describing a son of Mary whose flesh was eaten, and recognized its linkage to Christianity, I was perplexed. The more I studied the passage, the more I was convinced that it had been deliberately created as a lampoon—but as more than just a lampoon of Jesus. It appeared to be a disclosure of a different origin of Christianity than the one that had been passed down to the modern era. That is, that Christianity had been created to be a “calamity” upon the Jews. I began to analyze Wars of the Jews to determine if it contained other passages that could be seen as satirical disclosures regarding this different version of Christianity’s origin.
That was when it became clear to me that there were numerous parallels between the story line of Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign through Judea, and that among them was their similar experience near the town of Gadara.
Each of the Synoptic Gospels tells a story of Jesus coming to Gadara where he meets a man who is possessed by demons (in Matthew, Jesus meets two demon-possessed men, a point I shall return to). In the versions of the story found in Mark and Luke, when Jesus asks the demon his name, the demon replies:
“My name is Legion: for we are many.”
Mark 5:9
I found it interesting that the demon would choose to describe himself and his cohort as a component of an army. Remembering that the location where Jesus asked his disciples to become “fishers of men” was used to create a parodic linkage to an event that occurred at the same location in Wars of the Jews, I wondered whether the use of the word “legion” by the demon might be satirically related to an event in Wars of the Jews that occurred near Gadara. The passage in Mark describing the demoniac of Gadara tells of Jesus’ encounter with a man possessed by numerous demons. These demons leave the man at Jesus’ bidding and then enter into a herd of swine. Once the swine are possessed by the demons, they rush wildly into the sea and drown. The passage does not reveal what happened to the demons after the swine drown. Note that in the New Testament, “unclean spirits” are synonymous with devils and demons.
And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:
Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.
But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped him,
And cried with a loud voice, and said, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.”
For he said unto him, “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.”
And he asked him, “What is thy name?” And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion: for we are many.”
And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.
And all the devils besought him, saying, “Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.”
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea (they were about two thousand), and were choked in the sea.
And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done.
And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid …
… And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.58
In Wars of the Jews, 4, 7, there is a short chapter that describes the battle at Gadara. The chapter begins with a description of how “John” rose to power as a leader of the rebellion.
By this time John was beginning to tyrannize …
… Now some submitted to him out of their fear of him, and others out of their good will to him; for he was a shrewd man to entice men to him, both by deluding them and putting cheats upon them. Nay, many there were that thought they should be safer themselves, if the causes of their past insolent actions should now be reduced to one head, and not to a great many.
Thus, Josephus described John as a “tyrant” into whose “one head” the “insolent actions” of many had been “reduced.” Josephus next describes the Sicarii, the most militant faction of the Jewish rebellion who, h
e states, were able to undertake “greater matters” because of the “sedition and tyranny” that John had created.
There was a fortress of very great strength not far from Jerusalem … called Masada.
Those that were called Sicarii had taken possession of it formerly, but at this time they overran the neighboring countries, aiming only to procure to themselves necessaries; for the fear they were then in prevented their further ravages.
But when once they were informed that the Roman army lay still, and that the Jews were divided between sedition and tyranny, they boldly undertook greater matters …
… Now as it is in a human body, if the principal part be inflamed, all the members are subject to the same distemper;
so, by means of the sedition and disorder that was in the metropolis … had the wicked men that were in the country opportunity to ravage the same. Accordingly, when every one of them had plundered their own villages, they then retired into the desert;
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