The Christian Apologist JP Holding has written a review of Caesar’s Messiah (http://www.tektonics.org/books/csmessrvw.html). As a number of readers of my book have asked my thoughts on it I have decided to respond.

Holding begins his critique by arguing against the relevance of my question asking how a pro-Roman version of messianic Judaism emerged during a period when another messianic movement was waging war against Rome. Holding sees such a question as reflecting a failure to understand “ancient social psychology”, something which he grasps. He wrote:

 “Atwill openly contradicts himself, for he claims he cannot see how Judaism could produce such diametric opposites, yet he argues that Christianity was built to make these opposites attract! He supposes, in other words, that Judaism would not produce such a group; but he hypothesizes that Jews then converted to such a group!”

In fact, I did not claim that Christianity was built to convert members of the militaristic messianic movement to a pacifistic version of the religion, which is an absurd notion. Rather, I argued that Christianity was created to prevent the spread of the militaristic messianic movement, a completely different concept. I refer to Christianity as a ‘theological barrier’ to the messianic movement, not as an effort to convert Zealots.  Holding has created a straw man – the implication that I argued that the militaristic Zealots could have been converted to Christianity

Holding’s logic also seems to have failed him in his next sentence. He wrote:

“He supposes, in other words, that Judaism would not produce such a group; but he hypothesizes that Jews then converted to such a group!”

Even if one accepts the inaccurate premise that I claimed the Zealots could have been converted, Holding’s point is moot in that it is certainly possible for a group to have not been able to have produced a religion that it was converted to. For example, every ‘group’ in Europe that converted to Christianity would not have been able to have ‘produced’ the religion.

Holding continues with his criticism of my impression of the history of the era by stating that:

 “One also wonders why in the world Titus would care to start a new religion for Jews that he had already soundly beaten on the battlefield!”

This, however, is a question that history itself provides an answer to. Though Titus had put down their revolt he had not destroyed the messianic movement. This is proven by the fact that over the next sixty years it was twice able to seize and hold large territories inside the Roman Empire. Therefore the motivation of the Flavians to create Christianity is obvious. They wished to prevent any further costly rebellions, which were not only possible but in fact occurred.

Holding eventually gets to my point that Christianity was developed, not to convert Zealots, but to prevent the “spread of messianic Judaism”, however he states that this was unnecessary. Though Holding correctly notes that Josephus recorded the hope of the ‘messianic Jews’ to expand their movement to Jews in other parts of the Empire, he somehow knows that such a hope was “misplaced” because the Jews of the Diaspora would not “support such a movement”. He wrote:

“The idea that Christianity was intended to prevent the spread of messianic Judaism to the provinces ignores the fact that Jews of the Diaspora were Hellenized enough that they did not support such a movement in the first place (the misplaced hopes of the rebels, recorded by Josephus, notwithstanding).”

Holding’s position that the “Jews of the Diaspora,,, did not support such a movement” is untenable. It is a historical fact that the ‘Jews of the Diaspora’ in Egypt, Cyprus and Cyrenaica rebelled against the Empire in 116. And as in the 66 uprising before it and the ‘Bar Cochba’ rebellion twenty years later, the 116 revolt appears to have been messianic. And, like the two other rebellions, it was a popular movement that was able to defeat the Roman military for a period and control large geographical areas. Holding’s position is also contradicted by Josephus who concluded Wars of the Jews with a description of a rebellion that took place after Titus’s campaign in Judea had ended. Josephus wrote: “the madness of the Sicarii, like a disease, did reach as far as the cities of Cyrene.” Wars, 7, 437

For information on the 116 ‘Diaspora rebellion’ see: 

http://www.lamp.ac.uk/~noy/Jews16a.htm

Holding does accurately spot an error in the editing of Caesar’s Messiah that ascribed a statement by John the Baptist to Jesus, but also makes a number of assertions about errata that are erroneous. For example, he wrote:

“It is claimed that the church's "structures of authority, its sacraments, its college of bishops, the title of the head of the religion, the supreme pontiff-- were all based on Roman, not Judaic traditions.". This is partly false, partly misleading. The advanced structure of pontiff and college did not exist until much later”

In fact, the title and college of priests existed during the reign of the Flavians. As the high priest of the Roman Religion Titus actually held the title Pontifex Maximus (Suetonius, Titus, 9) and was head of the college of priests.

Holding also states that the following passage from the book is a “dumb question”:

” how did a religion that began as verbal traditions in Hebrew or Aramaic change into one whose surviving Scripture is written almost entirely in Greek?"

He neglects to mention, however, that the ‘dumb question’ was asked by Albert Schweitzer, who spent much of his life trying to answer it and that it is still unanswered.

Holding then attempts to dismiss the parallels that I show exists between Jesus and Titus as the products of circumstance. He wrote:

“Those who need as reminder of how absurdly this sort of ramshackle theorizing can be abused are reminded that it is just as easy to do the same elsewhere, as for example we did with Lincoln and Kennedy.”

Holding’s analogy is inaccurate, however, in that it fails to point out that the parallels between Jesus and Titus occurred in the same sequence. There are no examples in literature that I am aware of such parallels occurring in the same order accidentally. The reason for this is simple. Unusual parallels between individuals that are accidental – such as the famous ones between Lincoln and Kennedy - do not occur in the same order because, since they are ‘accidental’, their sequences are subject to the rules of probability regarding random events. Therefore, truly accidental parallels will occur in the same order only very rarely. If Holding believes that the sequential parallels I show exist between the ministry of Jesus and Titus’ campaign are “just as easy to do the same elsewhere” then he should cite an example. He should produce another person with parallels to events in the life of Jesus that occurred in the same sequence. I wish him luck.

Holding also objects to my questioning as to why all of the females central to Jesus’s ministry have the name ‘Mary’. He wrote:

”He (Atwill) makes the same error concerning "Mary" (a name held by up to a third of Jewish women of this era; thus, despite Atwill, there is no oddity in two sisters having variations of that same name.”

Holding is either using the Gospels as his source for his claim that a “third of Jewish women” were named Mary – which would be circular reasoning – or he is using a source that I am unaware of. This pattern does not exist in either the DSS or in Josephus, which has only one ‘Mary” – the mother of the child eaten as a Passover sacrifice. As far as his claim that it was not unusual for two sisters to have had the same name, I would note that common sense says otherwise and ask him to provide his source showing that this was an ordinary practice in Judea during this era. Moreover, the Gospels do not merely state that two sisters had a “variation” of the same name, but that two sisters had the exact same name – ‘Mary’ – John 19: 25. And it is not “a third” of the females central to Jesus’s ministry that are named ‘Mary’ it is all of them - with the exception of ‘Martha’,  Aramaic for ‘Mary’.  Holding is avoiding the “oddity” of the many ‘Marys’ in the Gospels by misstating the facts.

Holding also criticizes my claim that Jesus’s doomsday prophecies are related to Titus’s destruction in Judea during the coming war. He wrote:

“Atwill misreads Jesus' prophecy as saying a "Son of Man would come to Judea...encircle Jerusalem with a wall, and then destroy the temple..." No prophecy of Jesus says that "the Son of Man" would do these acts; they are corollary acts to the enthronement of the Son of Man in heaven, and thus Atwill's claim that Titus "fulfilled" and identified himself with the Son of Man is gravely out of kilter.”

This criticism can be shown to be incorrect by simply reading Matthew 24 and 25. The interpretation I present is the only straightforward reading of the text and is certainly not unusual – it was the one held by all church scholars until the twentieth century. As far as Holding’s belief that these prophecies are actually corollaries to acts that would occur not on earth but in heaven, while it is not my place to criticize someone’s faith, I would point out that it is difficult to rationally respond to such an assertion.

Though it is the core of the thesis, Holding surprisingly makes only two attempts to criticize my analysis showing a deliberate linkage between events from Jesus’s ministry and Titus campaign. He first claims that there is no basis for my linking Jesus’s prediction that his disciples will be “fishers of men” with the Romans ‘fishing’ for the Jewish rebels who were attempting to swim to safety during the sea battle at the Sea of Galilee.

He wrote:

“Atwill parallels Jesus' "become fishers of men" statement to the Roman act of dispatching Jews who had fallen into the sea during a naval battle by hitting them with darts or cutting off their hands -- thus becoming "fishers of men" because the Romans "caught like fish" the Jews in the lake. No, don't ruin the magic by asking how one "fishes" men being killed and allowed to sink and drown. For Atwill, it is proof enough to stretch the point to make this "grim comedy"

To respond I would note that the Gospels state that Jesus actually made two claims while at the Sea of Galilee about the future activities of his disciples, a point that Holding does not mention. In Luke, Jesus states that his fishermen disciples will henceforth be “capturing”, not “fishing”, for men. The Greek word used - “zogreo” – specifically indicates the capturing of men. Moreover, Holding’s above paraphrasing of Josephus’ ‘fishing for men’ passage is incorrect. Josephus stated that some of the Jewish sailors were “caught”. Whiston translated the passage as follows:

 “if they lifted their heads up above the water they were either killed by darts or caught by the vessels; but if in the desperate case they were in, they attempted to swim to their enemies, the Romans either cut off their heads or their hands.” Wars, III, 527

Thus, the actual parallel is linguistically clearer than Holding’s paraphrasing of it but, even if one accepts his mistranslation, Holding’s criticism is incoherent in that one can indeed ‘fish’ with spears and one normally kills what one ‘fishes’ for. As readers may judge for themselves, refusing to see a conceptual parallel between the two passages is deliberate myopia. Further, Holding does not mention that, in addition to the conceptual parallel concerning ‘fishing for men’, both events take place at the same location and at the onset of campaigns.  Such oversights are unfair to his readers in that they might find this information valuable in judging his conclusions about the parallel. I would also note that in Caesar’s Messiah I do not paraphrase the passages that I analyze, but give the complete text so that readers may judge the connections I posit for themselves.

Holding next criticizes a single one of the numerous links that I show exists between the ‘Passover lamb’ of the Gospels, and Josephus’ passage describing a ‘son of Mary’ who was eaten as a Passover sacrifice, He wrote:

 “In a second story, Atwill draws a strained connection between a Mary in Josephus and the one in the NT; namely, that the former is said to be "pierced through her very bowels and marrow" because of hunger, while the latter is to be "pierced through your own soul" (Luke 2:35) because of grief over her son's death. His excuse that "soul" and "bowels" are synonymous does not wash for it is merely a strain of the same type above, making soldiers who kill men in the water with darts and swords into "fishers". “

It is hard to even speculate as to how Holding came to this misunderstanding concerning ‘soul’ and ‘bowels’ given that in the book I provide the definitions of the Greek words in question – ‘psuche’ and ‘splanchon’. Both words can mean either ‘soul’, ‘heart’, ‘inner body parts’, or ‘the seat of emotions’. Thus, though in English translations of the Gospels and Josephus different words can be selected, i.e. ‘bowels’ or ‘soul’, there is no ‘strained connection’ whatsoever as the identical English word could just as easily be given in each passage. The parallel is especially clear in light of the fact that the words which indicated the ‘piercing’ activity in both passages are linguistically related, though this is not mentioned by Holding.

In his critique on the ‘son of Mary who was a Passover Lamb’ passages in the Gospels and Josephus Holding again fails to describe the overall mapping scheme between Jesus and Titus that the passages are part of. He also fails to mention that ‘psuche’ and ‘splanchon’ are perhaps the least important of the numerous parallels between the ‘son of Mary who was a Passover Lamb’ passages that I present or to provide a description of these parallels. Holdings oversights are misleading in that his readers are only learning his version of the parallels and not the one presented in the book.

Moreover, in his review Holding does not critique or even describe the book’s primary thesis - that the precise system of typological mapping in Matthew showing that the life of Moses ‘foresaw’ the life of Jesus is also used in the Gospels and the works of Josephus to demonstrate that Jesus’s ministry ‘foresaw’ Titus’s campaign. This oversight severely limits the value of Holding’s review. To be meaningful a review of any work of scholarship should describe and critique its thesis, rather than just focus on the aspects of the work that a reviewer believes he or she can criticize.