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by
Joseph Atwill
Reviewed by J. Harold Ellens, PhD
Copyright 2004 J. Harold Ellens,
PhD
Research Scholar, Department of Near Eastern Studies
University of Michigan
Joseph Atwill has written
an intriguing "Jesus-Book." He calls it, Caesar's
Messiah. It is ingeniously conceived, and as was the case with
Steinfeld's runaway best seller, The Passover Plot, Atwill's new
study will be both highly stimulating and enormously controversial. It
will entertain, inspire, provoke, and enrage various learned scholars and
informed lay readers.
Atwill approaches his
subject with the plainly announced assumption that "the question of how
Christianity began" is "an open one." This claim is grounded in the facts
that numerous messianic sects and mystery religions were percolating
through Roman and Jewish cultures in the first century, all of which have
proven to be fictitious, if not hilarious, and all of which have come to
nothing, except Christianity. Moreover, we have no objective evidence
today that a person named Jesus of Nazareth ever existed at that time.
So the author of this
innovative volume has proposed a new and radically unconventional approach
to the "Jesus question," and then carries his thesis through consistently
to formulate an alternative model for understanding the narratives of the
New Testament and the works of Jesus' contemporary, Flavius Josephus.
Noting that events in the
narratives of Jesus' ministry, reported in the gospels, parallel episodes
in Josephus' reports of Titus Flavius' military campaigns, Atwill explores
the possibility that "a Roman imperial family, the Flavians, created
Christianity, and even more incredibly, ... placed a literary satire
within the Gospels and War of the Jews to inform posterity of this
fact."
Vespasian and his sons,
Titus and Domitian, maintained the Flavian Dynasty from 69 - 96 CE, just
the period of Josephus' tenure as their court historian, and the rise of
the Christian Movement. Atwill contends that the Christian ideology and
ritual practice built upon the model of Mithraism, was generated by the
Flavians to offer a persuasive alternative to the numerous contentious and
rebellious Jewish messianic sects constantly troublesome in Roman
Palestine
The author adduces a
remarkable spate of data from the New Testament, the Works of Josephus,
and the history of the
Roman Empire
of the last half of the first century, to weave a coherent, solid, and
internally consistent tapestry.
He tells a story never
before attempted, sounds a trumpet never previously heard, and explores a
world of potential truth until now thoroughly obscured from our vision.
"Once Jesus was universally established as a historical individual, any
other possibility became, evidentially, invisible. The more we believed
in Jesus as a world-historical figure, the less we were able to understand
him in any other way."
After being driven from
Palestine
by the revolutionary Sicarii in 66 CE, the Roman army under Titus
reentered the Israelite domain and destroyed the revolutionaries. Atwill
contends that Christian Messianism was then created by the Flavians to
fill the vacuum so created. The experiment succeeded with enormous
effect, marginalizing Judaism and the emperor cult, and moving the new
religion toward a dominant role in the empire.
Atwill's thesis is
eminently worth exploring. Both for its new ideas and for its
anti-establishmentarianism in the world of biblical studies, this book is
likely to become a notable best seller.
Click Here to Order the book or
read the first two chapters for free.
Visit the Roman Origins
Weblog where Mr.
Atwill answers readers' questions about the thesis of his book Caesar's
Messiah. Click Here
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