Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (25 page)

Moreover, Jesus refers to a “Son of Man” that will come before the generation he speaks to passes away – in other words within forty years from 30-33 CE.  Jesus “predicted” that when the “Son of Man” made his visitation, Galilee would be destroyed, Jerusalem encircled with a wall, and the Temple razed. There is only one person in history who accomplished these events, and he did it precisely within the given time frame – Titus Flavius, a Caesar whose court historians maintained he was the Christ. The fact that the campaign of this singular individual also had a singular parallelism to Jesus’ ministry cannot have been accidental.

CHAPTER 6
 
Eleazar – Lazarus: The Real Christ

When I first discovered the parallels between the “ministries” of Titus Flavius and Jesus, it was apparent to me that they were designed to create a hidden satire which indicated that the true “Son of Man” foreseen by Jesus was Titus. This is especially clear at the ending of the Gospel of John, when Jesus predicts that Simon will suffer a martyr’s death and that John will be spared. The only individual in history who can be seen as having fulfilled those prophecies was Titus.

At that point in my analysis I saw Jesus and Titus as completely separate individuals, their only connection being that Jesus had satirically predicted Titus’ “coming.” However, I was also beginning to suspect that there was nothing inadvertent within the New Testament, that every word of it was somehow part of a parodic system.

This suspicion stemmed from the discovery that many of its seemingly innocuous details were satirically related to events described in
Wars of the Jews
, for example, the prediction in the New Testament that Mary will have her heart “pierced through.” But if the New Testament and the
Wars of the Jews
were a unified parodying system, then it was clear there were some parts I did not understand. Particularly perplexing to me was Jesus telling his disciples that unless they “eat the flesh” of the “Son of Man” they would “have no life in [them].”
⁸⁹
If Titus was the “Son of Man” Jesus foresaw, why did he also tell his disciples that they would eat the Son of Man’s flesh? – obviously not a prediction about the future Roman emperor.

I therefore began a study to determine if the Gospels’ character “Jesus” might be satirically related to
Wars of the Jews
in a way I did not yet understand. I began analyzing details in the two works to determine if there were connections between Jesus’ ministry and Josephus’ history that I had not yet noticed. I was guided in this search by the fact that the parallels and puzzles I had discovered were all designed to reveal a hidden identity.

The question I was trying to answer is an old one: Who was Jesus?

The mystery of Jesus’ identity begins with his very name. “Jesus Christ,” or, as Paul calls him, “Christ Jesus,” was certainly not the real name of the founder of Christianity. Christ is the Greek word for “Messiah” and Jesus is a Greek homophone (ee-ay-sooce) for the Hebrew word Yeshua, which can mean either “God saves” or, as in the case of Jesus, “Savior.”

The proposition that Jesus’ name was to be understood as “Savior” cannot be disputed because it is confirmed by no less a source than an “angel of the Lord.”

But while he [Joseph] thought about these things Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying …

“And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Matt. 1:20–21

The word the angel used to indicate that Jesus would save his people was
soteria,
⁹⁰
a derivative of
soter,
⁹¹
the Greek word for “savior.”

However, the angel who named the child Jesus also began the confusion over the identity of the “Savior Messiah.” Immediately following his instruction to call the child “Jesus,” the angel notes that, according to ancient prophecy, the child the “virgin will conceive,” is to be called by another name.

All of this happened to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Immanuel (meaning, God is with us).”

Matt. 1:22–23

The confusion over the identity of Jesus is also apparent during his trial, when the New Testament introduces another “Jesus,” Jesus Barabbas. This Jesus, like many of the messianic aspirants described by Josephus, is said to have started an insurrection.

But they all cried out together, “Away with this man, and release to us Jesus Barabbas”—

a man who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection started in the city, and for murder.

Pilate addressed them once more, desiring to release Jesus;

but they shouted out, “Crucify, crucify him!”

A third time he said to them, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no crime deserving death; I will therefore chastise him and release him.”

Luke 23:18-22

Jesus also contributes to the confusion regarding the identity of the “Savior Messiah” by referring to the individual he foresees bringing destruction of Judea not as himself but as the “Son of Man.”

Therefore you also must be ready; for it is at a time when you do not expect Him that the Son of Man will come.

Matt 24:44

The New Testament describes more than one person as “Jesus,” and refers to Jesus by a number of different names. I began to wonder if the New Testament was somehow indicating that there could be more than one Messiah, or “Christ”—in other words, that the New Testament was calling more than one character “Jesus.”

The very name “Jesus” contributes to this idea. That the “savior” of humankind was so named at birth is obviously problematic. Eusebius, for example, suggests that the name Jesus might have been allegorical. In other words, as was the case with Christ, Jesus may have been so named
after
it became clear that he was, indeed, the Savior.

Eusebius was only pointing out the obvious. “Savior Messiah” was not merely a name during this era but also a title, one that anyone who saw himself as having been sent by God to “save” Judea might claim. From the perspective of Titus, the true “son of god” of Judea could not have been any of the Jewish messianic aspirants who waged war against Rome. It could only have been himself.

Josephus records that the struggle over who was the true Savior Messiah of Judea was the real cause of the war between the Romans and the Jews:

But what more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle also found in their sacred writings, that “At about that time, one from their country would become ruler of the habitable world.”

This they took to mean one of their own people, and many of the wise men were misled in their interpretation. This oracle, however, in reality signified the government of Vespasian, who was proclaimed emperor while in Judea.
⁹²

Josephus could not have stated that the Flavian Caesars saw themselves as the Messiahs, or “Christs,” foreseen by the prophecies of Judaism’s world ruler, any more clearly. But this fact raises questions. How could Titus have taken the title of the “Christ” away from the messianic leaders that he struggled with? How could Titus have made the rebellious Jews call him “Christ”?

I discovered how Titus achieved this during my efforts to determine if Jesus, like his Apostles, had a secret identity. I uncovered a series of puzzles within the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
that reveal that not only was Titus Flavius the “Son of Man” predicted by Jesus, but that he was, in fact, the “Jesus” who interacted with the disciples in the final passage of the Gospels—in John 21. Put simply, the puzzles reveal that Titus is the “Jesus” Christianity has unknowingly worshiped.

These puzzles also reveal the name of the Jewish savior who Titus captured on the Mount of Olives and stole the title of “Christ” from – Eleazar, who was satirized as “Lazarus” within the New Testament. The puzzles were also designed to change the story line of the New Testament from the one that has been a comfort to mankind, into perhaps the most vicious tale ever written.

The Christ that Titus battled against, Eleazar, was a mysterious figure only visible through the typological connections involving the “Eleazars” in Josephus, and the character “Lazarus” in the Gospels. The historical Eleazar was certainly a Maccabean – son of Mathias Maccabee, the patriarch of the self-proclaimed Jewish messianic lineage and the orchestrator of the Jewish rebellion of this era. According to Josephus, Eleazar was actually captured on the Mount of Olives, though it is possible that location was chosen simply because it linked to the “pruning” satire the Romans were setting up, which we will analyze in greater depth in this chapter. Eleazar did not completely disappear from history after his capture and crucifixion, however. A coin from the rebellion was discovered that on one side commemorated the rebel leader “Simon” and on the other “Eleazar the Priest”.

To begin to show what the puzzles reveal, it is first necessary to explain how the New Testament interacts with
Wars of the Jews
to disclose the name of the Jewish savior, who Titus captured on the Mount of Olives and executed.

The name Eleazar means “whom God aids” in Hebrew and is translated as “Lazarus” in Greek. The fact that the New Testament records that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, makes the notion that Lazarus might have been the name of the “Christ” that Titus executed, especially hard to accept. To come to this understanding, the reader must both recognize a number of parallels between Jesus and Eleazar and solve a series of puzzles. Only then can the reader learn the Jewish Messiah’s real name.

I recognize that the parallels may seem disjointed and difficult to comprehend at first, but I ask the reader to bear with this. If the satiric connections between the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
were meant to be seen easily, they would not have remained hidden for 2,000 years. In this case the satirical connections between Jesus and Eleazar have been hidden by placing the key parallels to Jesus into a number of different characters named Eleazar or Lazarus. The author requires the reader to remember events experienced by a number of different “Eleazars” to understand his point. In other words, as he had with the various “Simons” and the demoniac of Gadara above, the author is using different characters that he links typologically by a shared name or parallel experiences to create a single satiric theme. The apparent vagueness of the parallels between Jesus and Eleazar will ultimately lead to a connection that is of crystal clarity.

Once I had begun the study to determine the identity of Jesus, I noticed that there are parallels between him and a number of characters named Eleazar. As I show below, characters named “Lazarus” or “Eleazar” were said to have had the Jesus-like attributes of having been born in Galilee, having the power to expel demons, having been scourged, having been plotted against by high priests, having survived a crucifixion, having a tomb that was very like Jesus’, and, of course, having risen from the dead.

Although I saw the parallels as unusual, their meaning, if any, was unclear until I uncovered two puzzles whose solutions disclose the name of an unnamed character as “Eleazar.” Knowing that these two unnamed characters were so named revealed that “Eleazar” was captured on the Mount of Olives, survived a crucifixion, and was a son of Mary whose flesh was eaten as a symbolic Pascal lamb. Adding these unique attributes of Jesus to those previously mentioned, creates a clear picture. The name of the “Christ” who was captured on the Mount of Olives and executed by the Romans was Eleazar.

The following passage from
Wars of the Jews
describes an Eleazar who was a “Galilean.” While being a Galilean is hardly an unusual designation, the reader will note that the Eleazar in the passage has other parallels with Jesus—his self-sacrifice and the strokes upon his naked body.

And here a certain Jew appeared worthy of our relation and commendation; he was the son of Sameas, and was called Eleazar, and was born at Saab, in Galilee.

This man took up a stone of a vast bigness, and threw it down from the wall upon the ram, and this with so great a force, that it broke off the head of the engine. He also leaped down, and took up the head of the ram from the midst of them, and without any concern carried it to the top of the wall,

and this while he stood as a fit mark to be pelted by all his enemies.  Accordingly, he received the strokes upon his naked body.

Wars of the Jews
, 3, 7, 229-231

The following passage reveals that “Eleazar,” like Jesus, had the power to dispel demons. It is an obviously fictitious tale and it is therefore interesting that Josephus claims that the exorcism occurred in his presence, and in the presence of Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian. Knowing that Eleazar was Jesus and that the “demoniacs” were the Jewish rebels, clarifies the real meaning of this odd tale. It is a spoof on the power of “Jesus” to rid the rebels of their demonic wickedness, that is, their rebelliousness. Notice that it also repeats the idea, from the tale of the demoniacs of Gadara, that demons are unable to pass through water.