The two passages satirically confirm the entire premise regarding Christianity. The Jews would not worship Roman emperors and were not swayed by violence; therefore, Rome was forced to “become” the Sicarii movement. The satirical description of the Romans becoming Sicarii is described above in the phrase:
So he habited a great number of his soldiers in their habit, who carried daggers under their garments.
The individuals whose “habit” included “daggers under their garments” were, of course, the Sicarii.
And when they had joined to themselves many of the Sicarii, who crowded in among the weaker people (that was the name of such robbers as had under their bosoms swords called Sicae) …160
The effect of Christianity is also recorded within the satire. Its effect was to end the rebellion.
And thus an end was put to this sedition.
When determining the strength of a theory it is useful to consider how much “explanatory power” it possesses. The following list demonstrates just how many “puzzles” this interpretation resolves.
This interpretation:
resolves Josephus’ perceived confusion over which religion was “at Rome”
resolves why Paulina, of the cult of Isis, and not Fulvia, the Jew, is the one to rend her garments
resolves why Josephus recorded that the temple of Isis was destroyed, though he was aware that no such destruction had occurred
resolves why the women in the different stories both have husbands named Saturninus who know the emperor Tiberius
resolves why the Decius story and the Fulvia story have the same plot
resolves why a character has the unusual name “Decius Mundus”
resolves why a character has the unusual name “Ide”
resolves the parallel use in the Testimonium and the Decius story of the expression “received with pleasure”
resolves the unusual parallels between the wicked Jew in the Fulvia story and the Apostle Paul
explains why Decius Mundus did not conceal his resolution to kill himself
and most importantly, this interpretation explains how the two “third-day divinity declarations” in literature happen to be placed next to one another.
There is yet another parallel in the Decius Mundus tale and the Testimonium, a parallel only apparent when one reads the passages in their original Greek. In the Testimonium, Jesus is described as a teacher of people who “accept the truth with pleasure.” The Greek word for pleasure that Josephus uses is hedone, the root for the English word “hedonism.” Scholars have puzzled over Josephus’ use of hedone here. Hedone usually denotes sensual or malicious pleasure, and “to accept the truth with hedone” is a strange concept. The sentence that Josephus wrote in Greek could just as well be translated “received the truth with malicious pleasure.”
The verb Josephus uses in this phrase is dechomenon, which means to receive, the phrase in Greek reading hedonei talethe dechomenon. In the Decius Mundus tale, Decius also receives something with “sensual pleasure.” Decius receives the plot Ide hatches to enable him to seduce Paulina with sensual pleasure—hedone, the Greek reading dechomenou ten hiketeian hedonei.
The same verb, dechomenou (meaning “to accept or receive”), is used with hedone in the Testimonium. This creates yet another parallel between the Testimonium and the Decius story. Based on the context provided by the Decius story, a logical conjecture is that this verb/noun combination creates the idiom “getting screwed.” I have been unable to confirm this conjecture by another example from classical Greek, however.
Hedone is also used in an interesting manner with another word. Josephus concludes his Preface to Wars of the Jews with the following statement:
Tauta panta perilabôn en hepta bibliois kai mêdemian tois epistamenois ta pragmata kai paratuchousi tôi polemôi katalipôn ê mempseôs aphormên ê katêgorias, tois ge tên alêtheian agapôsin, alla mê pros hêdonên anegrapsa. Poiêsomai de tautên tês exêgêseôs archên, hên kai tôn kephalaiôn epoiêsamên.161
Whiston’s translation into English is as follows:
I have comprehended all these things in seven books, and have left no occasion for complaint or accusation to such as have been acquainted with this war; and I have written it down for the sake of those that love truth, but not for those that please themselves [with fictitious relations]. And I will begin my account of these things with what I call my First Chapter.
The reason Whiston places brackets around the phase “please themselves [with fictitious relations]” above, was to alert the reader that it is an inaccurate translation. The Greek words that Josephus uses here, hêdonên anegrapsa, do not mean “please themselves with fictitious relations” but rather please themselves with registering. When used in connection with a person, as it is here, the stem word, anagrapho, means to register or record names. Whiston arbitrarily inserted the phrase [with fictitious relations] into his translation because he believed that this is the idea Josephus actually meant. A literal translation of the sentence would read as follows:
… and I have written it down for the sake of those that love truth, but not for those that please themselves with registering names.
While Whiston found this translation incoherent, from my perspective it makes complete sense, as the technique used by the authors of the New Testament and the works of Josephus to turn Judaism into Christianity was the switching, or “unregistering,” of names. Decius became Anubis and Titus became Jesus. Neither valued much “this business of names.” Josephus’ seeming “incoherencies” are very significant and are meant to be translated exactly as they were written.
CHAPTER 12
The Father and the Son of God
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one fully knows the Son except the Father, nor does any one fully know the Father except the Son and all to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.
Matt. 11:27
Jesus’ doomsday prophecies were directed against the “wicked generation” of Jews who rebelled against Rome. Therefore, his threatened “second coming” was predicting the 70 C.E. destruction of Jerusalem. This was the understanding of most Christian theologians until this century and is still the way the Preterist Christians understand these prophecies. The 17th-century theologian Reland saw the Roman assault on Jerusalem in this way:
[The] “Son of God came now to take vengeance on the sins of the Jewish nation.”
His contemporary, William Whiston, was even more specific. He understood that Jesus’ words indicated “that he would come at the head of the Roman army for their destruction.” 162
I am in complete agreement with Reland and Whiston. All of Jesus’ ministry was about the coming war with Rome and was designed to establish Jesus as Titus’ forerunner. Therefore, the relationship between Jesus and “the Father” referred to throughout the Gospels is a forerunner of the relationship between Titus and his father, the emperor and god Vespasian.
All the dialogues that describe Jesus’ relationship with the Father use comic wordplay that actually describes Titus’ relationship with his real father, Vespasian. Supporting this premise is the fact that all of Jesus’ descriptions of his relationship with his father mention that father and son possess secret identities known only to the two of them.
“But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father has granted me to accomplish, these very works which I am doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me.”
John 5:36
“I bear witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness to me.”
They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father; if you knew me, you would know my Father also.”
John 8:18-19
In Matthew, Jesus also speaks of a secret identity known only to him and his father.
At that time Jesus answered and said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast
hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
“Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.
“All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.”
Matt. 11:25-27
In the Gospel of John, Jesus again discusses his relationship with the Father. Again the discussion takes place within the context of a concealed identity. In this instance, his questioners are trying to determine whether Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah. Christian theologians have made numerous efforts to explain Jesus’ meaning here. My explanation is that it is a revelation that Jesus was a “god” and not “God.”
“My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
“I and the Father are one.”
The Jews took up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these do you stone me?”
The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God.”
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?’
“If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken),
“Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God?’
“If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me;
“But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
John 10:29–38
If Jesus’ dialogue is, as I suggest, a satiric way of describing Titus and his father, the god Vespasian, then the passage above makes perfect sense.
It is of interest that Titus is the only person, other than Jesus, who is referred to in the New Testament with the phrase “coming of.”
But He who comforts the depressed—even God—comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not by his coming only …163
A “Titus” is also described in the Pauline letters as the “true child.”
To Titus my own true child in our common faith.
Titus 1:4
When Vespasian died in 79 C.E., Titus succeeded him as emperor. Among his first orders of business was to have his father deified. It was not a routine task, as Vespasian was to be the first non-Julio-Claudian emperor to be so honored. But it was important because Vespasian’s deification would break the chain of divine succession held by the Julio-Claudian line since Julius Caesar and thereby help secure an imperial future for the Flavian family.
In order for Vespasian to be made a diuus, the Roman senate had to decree it upon him. It was a uniquely Roman custom that only the senate could bestow the title of diuus upon him. Over the years, the senate had turned down many applicants for the title. Therefore, Titus needed to somehow demonstrate to the senate that Vespasian’s life had been that of a god. During this time, he would also have been involved in the creating of an empire-wide bureaucracy to administer the cult of Vespasian, once it was established.
In spite of the fact that Vespasian’s consecrato would have been of great importance to Titus, it did not occur until six months after his death. This interval between the death of an emperor and his consecrato164 was an unusually long time. I believe that it was during this time that the New Testament was created. The length of the interval was due to the fact that during this period Titus created not one but two religions that worshiped his father as a god, as well as the New Testament’s companion piece, Wars of the Jews.
As Jesus’ prophecies came to pass during the Jewish war, they proved that God had sanctioned the events he foresaw. This is exactly what Titus would have been attempting to demonstrate to the Roman senate—that the events of his father’s life, certainly including his conquest of Judea, proved that he was divine and that he deserved to be decreed a diuus. Viewed from this perspective, the similarities between Christianity and the cult of Vespasian are obvious.
When Titus arranged to have his father declared a god, he “deified” the events of Vespasian’s life. Thus, all of Jesus’ prophecies regarding God’s coming wrath upon Judea, flow without contradiction into the cult of Vespasian. In fact, the Gospels could have been presented to the Roman senate as “proof” of the absurd premise that Vespasian’s life had been that of a god.
To see this more clearly, simply subtract Judaism and Judea from the New Testament. What if Titus, in trying to convince the Roman senate that certain events of his father’s life proved that he was divine, had claimed that a prophet had wandered about Italy in 30 C.E. predicting that two Roman gods, a father and a son, would one day destroy a “wicked generation” of Jews who rebelled against Rome and along with them the temple of Jerusalem? Every member of the senate would have understood that the gods this Italian prophet had “forseen” were Vespasian and Titus. Of course, no Roman senator would have been so gullible as to believe the story. Locating the prophet in Judea does not make such prophecies any more plausible, but Christianity was not created for a sophisticated audience.
The histories of Josephus, which prophesied that Vespasian would be the world ruler foreseen by Judaism’s messianic prophecies, likewise provided support for Vespasian’s deification. The New Testament and Wars of the Jews both make the case that the destruction of Judea was an act of a god—the same absurd premise as that made by the cult of Vespasian.
When we align the New Testament with Wars of the Jews a clear picture emerges. Jesus predicted that a “Son of Man” would encircle Jerusalem with a wall and destroy its temple and bring tribulation onto the “wicked generation” that rebelled against Rome. In fact, one man actually had these precise characteristics. A man who was a “son of god” and whose followers “fished for men” at Gennesareth. A man who encircled Jerusalem with a wall and destroyed the temple of Jerusalem. A man who brought the tribulation that Jesus had foreseen unto the “wicked generation” and then ended his “ministry” by condemning Simon and sparing John. The man was Titus Flavius.
Only one man at that point in history had the power to establish a religion. At the same time that the first real evidence of Christianity emerges, one man is known to have established a religion that, like Christianity, held that the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple was the work of a god. The man was Titus Flavius.
Bear in mind that no one had a stronger motivation than Titus for finding a cost-effective method of containing militant Judaism, which was so expensive for Rome to control.
Finally, only one family other than Jesus’ is associated with the origin of Christianity. It is the family of Titus Flavius. Even if one discounts the tradition that regards Flavius Clemens as the first pope, as well as all the other Flavian traditions connected with Christianity’s origins, the inscription naming Flavia Domitilla as the founder of the oldest burial grounds for Christians in Rome still exists today. If one ignores even this, the works of Flavius Josephus would be sufficient to confirm the Flavian connection with the origins of Christianity. Josephus’ works deliberately falsified history to provide support for Christian dogma. And whoever or whatever he was, Josephus was an adopted Flavian.
Concerning the question of who knew Judaism well enough to create Christianity, this information was in abundant supply, even within the small circle of Titus’ known confidants. Titus’ mistress Bernice, though a Herodian, had Maccabean ancestors and claimed to have been a Jew. Though the Jews of the messianic movement would not have seen her religious perspective as Jewish, she would clearly have known much about the Judaism of her day and would have been able to contribute to the creation of the Gospels.
Tiberius Alexander was another individual within Titus’ innermost circl
e who knew of Judaism well enough to oversee the production of the New Testament. Tiberius was the nephew of the famous Jewish philosopher Philo, and Vespasian held him in such regard that he made Tiberius chief of staff to Titus during the siege of Jerusalem.
Though a Jew, Tiberius Alexander was a Roman knight who was morally able to order the murder of thousands of his race to maintain the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. When the Jews of Alexandria “made a disturbance,” Tiberius ordered the Roman troops not only to kill the rioters, but to plunder and burn their ghetto as well. Josephus records that “fifty thousand corpses piled up.” Tiberius, in his role as chief of staff to Titus during the siege of Jerusalem and the subsequent slaughter and enslavement of the Jews there, showed a slavish obedience to Rome. It would have been necessary for someone of Jewish descent who created a religion that was used to oppress his own people. His religious perspective was Romanized to such an extent that he was not even monotheistic. He often used the word “gods.” Josephus, who, it should be remembered, also claimed to be a Jew, recorded Tiberius’ close relationship to the Flavians.
Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition Page 35