Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (35 page)

Having achieved his goal, Titus, the “Lord,” then sits down with his new “disciples” for a breakfast of “bread” and “fish.” The words “bread” and “fish” are, as I have shown, both used as synonyms for human flesh in the New Testament.

Notice the author’s witticism. The disciples don’t ask his name—which would give away the fact that his name is Titus—but “know” that he is the “Lord.”

Jesus said to them, “Come and eat breakfast.” Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, “Who are You?”—Knowing that it was the Lord.

Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.

This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.

John 21:12-14

The interaction between the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
identifies the “fish” that Titus served to his new disciples in John 21 as the “putrefied” bodies of the “fish” killed by the Romans during the battle mentioned above. This putrid smell of the “fish” on the beach, parallels the stench recorded in the other passages of cannibalism—the tomb of Lazarus in the New Testament and Mary’s son in
Wars of the Jews.

And a terrible stink, and a very sad sight there was on the following days over that country; for as for the shores, they were full of shipwrecks, and of dead bodies all swelled; and as the dead bodies were inflamed by the sun, and putrefied, they corrupted the air.

Wars of the Jews
3, 10, 530

And the “bread” that the disciples eat is also identified in the New Testament. It is the flesh of the Messiah who was “raised from the dead.” Notice how clear an example the following passage is – of Jesus’ seemingly symbolic statements, which take on a black comedy meaning when read literally.

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this Man give us his flesh to eat?”

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his life blood, you shall have no life in you.”

John 6:51–54

To make clear that it is the body of the “Son of Man” that the disciples are feasting on, John 21 states that this is “the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.”
The author is including this detail at this point, because the “Jesus” who actually rose “from the dead” was Lazarus, who “showed himself” to the disciples twice previously, first at his “resurrection” and then again at the “feast of Lazarus.” The disciples are being satirized as unwittingly feeding on the Messiah’s body. The joke regarding “bread” in John 21 is that they are eating from the same “loaf” that was eaten during the “feast of Lazarus” above.

I would note that the analysis above has implications for the sacrament of Communion. It suggests that the Romans deliberately created the ritual as a cruel joke on Christians.

In any event, the contemptuous humor that the Romans created regarding the cannibalism of the messianic Jews, evidently springs from the irony they saw in a people with such strict dietary laws eating rancid human flesh. The irony of the Jews – a people too fastidious to eat pork – eating human flesh, would have been widely understood within the patrician class when
Wars of the Jews
was written. The satirist Juvenal, for example, referred to it without providing any context.

Some, whose lot it has been to have Sabbath fearing fathers,

Worship nothing but clouds and the numen of heavens,

And see no difference between the flesh of swine and humans

Since their fathers abstained from pork.
¹¹⁹

The two “Jesuses” who are on the beach when the Romans catch Jews in the Sea of Galilee, Titus and Jesus the Son of Shaphat, are simply the final Jesuses within another satiric turn. All the Jesuses encountered after the resurrection are different individuals. As they have done with the various “Mary Magdalenes”, the authors include seemingly irrelevant details in each Gospel that make it logically impossible for any of the four Jesuses encountered after the “resurrection” to have been the same individual.

In Matthew, the Jesus encountered by his disciples does not ascend to Heaven, instead saying to his followers, “I am with you always.” In Mark, however, Jesus is described as ascending to heaven, just as he is in the Gospel of Luke. Though these two ascension stories appear identical, in fact they take place at different locations. The authors reveal this in an earlier passage in Mark (Mark 14:28). This passage indicates that Jesus will meet with his disciples in Galilee, obviously some days following his resurrection, whereas the ascension in Luke occurs just outside Jerusalem on the same day as the resurrection. Finally, the Jesus in John meets with a different number of disciples following the resurrection, a different number of times, and at a location different from the ones in the other three Gospels.

The authors of the Gospels designed their creation to be perfectly logical. Whenever two events seem to contradict one another, the reader needs to recognize that he or she is reading incorrectly. That is to say, that he or she is making an incorrect assumption. In this case, the incorrect assumption is that all the Jesuses in the Gospels are the same individual. Simply changing that assumption makes the Gospels become “true”—that is, without contradiction.

However, who do the disciples encounter at the conclusions of Matthew, Mark, and Luke if not the Jesus who was crucified? Just as the authors have identified whose empty tomb Mary Magdalene discovers—with its stone “rolled away”—before she comes across it in the dark, the authors have already given the reader this information. The Jesus depicted at the conclusion of each of the Synoptic Gospels is the Jesus whom Pilate has previously released, Jesus Barabbas.

As the New Testament’s final dark comic stroke, each Gospel concludes with a different individual as its Jesus. Of course, the final Jesus is the one described in John 21, the very end of the Gospels. That Jesus is Titus, the “true” Son of God whom Christianity worships.

I suspect that the herd of Jesuses roaming about at the conclusions of the four Gospels are an ironic joke reflecting the fact that there were numerous individuals claiming to be the Messiah during this era, a fact that is recorded in both the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
. The authors of the New Testament are perhaps sarcastically making the point that, since there are already so many “Messiahs,” or “Christs,” there is no reason why Titus could not be one as well.

Finally, a question I found interesting is whether the authors intended to put forth the “combined version” of the visit to the empty tomb and the revelation that Jesus did not rise from the dead as a philosophical statement advocating reason over religious mysticism.

The reader must resolve those logical contradictions; if he or she fails, the punishment is belief in a false god.

It is possible that the authors of the Gospels created them as a sort of educational tool disguised as a narrative about Jesus. The authors may have wished their readers to work through the various contradictions in logic in order to develop their reasoning ability and thus be able to think their way out of religious superstition. They may have wished the Gospels to be seen by posterity as a contribution to the development of reason.

CHAPTER 8
 
The New Root and Branch

Having shown the methods that the Romans used to satirically communicate the real history of their struggle with the messianic Jews, I can now present the most complex of their works. The reader will recognize that I have already touched on many of the passages that make up this satire. These separate elements were designed to be linked together to create a larger intertextual story.

I refer to this satire as the “new root and branch.” It is a vast literary device coursing through the Gospels and three of Josephus’ books. Because it extends over several different books, it is hard to discover, but, as noted above, this literary device is not unusual in Hebrew literature. It is, for instance, similar to the way in which the Abraham saga is continued in the Book of Samuel and the Book of Kings. Through a series of distinct passages, one character becomes associated with another character by means of parallel acts or locations, and by means of similar language.

The purpose of this particular satire is to document that the “root” and “branch” of the Judaic messianic lineage has been destroyed and that a Roman lineage has been “grafted on” in its place. This satirical system actually begins in the Book of Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament.
Malachi
means “my messenger” in Hebrew and was used as an epithet for the prophet Elijah. This is because in Judaic literature it was predicted that the Messiah would be preceded by the appearance of Elijah, who would act as the messenger of his coming.

But I shall send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

Malachi 3:23

This final passage in the Book of Malachi predicts a coming disaster for the “wicked,” one that will leave them destroyed by fire and with neither “root” nor “branch.”

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of Hosts, [and] will leave them neither root nor branch.

Malachi 3:19

Josephus clearly records that the first part of this prophecy, concerning the “wicked” being “burned up,” came to pass during the war with the Romans. He also records that the second part of the prophecy—that they would be left with neither “root” nor “branch”—was also fulfilled during Titus’ campaign, though not so overtly. To understand that the “wicked,” that is, the messianic rebels, were to be left with no “root” or “branch,” the reader needs to comprehend perhaps the most complex literary satire ever written.

As noted above, “root” and “branch” were Judaic metaphors used to denote the messianic lineage. For example, the
Genesis Florilegium
states:

… until the Messiah of Righteousness, the Branch of David comes, because to him and his seed was given the Covenant of the Kingdom of his people …
¹²⁰

This root and branch messianic imagery found in the Dead Sea Scrolls is a continuation of its use by the prophet Isaiah concerning the coming Messiah, as the following translation from another fragment of the Scrolls shows:

… Isaiah the Prophet … the thickets of the forest will be felled with an axe and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. A staff shall rise from the root of Jesse, {and} a planting from his roots will bear fruit … the Branch of David.
¹²¹

The authors of the New Testament continue the messianic root and branch metaphor, though with a totally different perspective. Within the New Testament, the root and branch imagery is presented in the context of their being transformed into a different lineage—the lineage of the new Messiah. The “branches” are described as either being “pruned” or being “grafted onto.” Jesus predicts—echoing the Book of Malachi—that those “branches” that do not “abide” in the new Judaism he brings, will be “burned.”

If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire.

John 15:6

Josephus builds on the root and branch imagery in the New Testament by establishing a series of related parallels. As we have seen so often, these parallels contain puzzles that reveal the names of unnamed characters. And in every case the name of the unnamed character is Eleazar. My interpretation of the parallels involving Eleazar is that they indicate that Eleazar was the name of the individual that the messianic rebels looked to as the “root” foreseen by Judaic prophecy. Judging from the satire, this individual may actually have existed and have been the spiritual leader of the rebellion.

As is the case with all the typological passages, the root and branch satire can be recognized by determining the temporal order in which its events occur, even though they are described in different books. This is the same technique required to solve “the puzzle of the empty tomb” above, where the reading has to arrange the four empty tomb texts in chronological order to comprehend the combined story that the texts create. Josephus provides the reader with a clear path to this temporal understanding.

The other keys to recognizing the satire are the same ones that are used throughout the New Testament and
Wars of the Jews
. These are parallel locations and conceptual parallels. Further, some of the principles from the Roman sciences of botany and homeopathic medicine are used in the “root and branch” satire. Roman medicine considered that whatever made you sick could sometimes cure you. For instance, one treatment for a scorpion bite was to apply mashed raw scorpion to the wound. Roman botany considered that by introducing tamed specimens into a colony of wild plants, a hybrid and tamer plant would result.