The New Testament of the Holy Bible is probably the most important piece of literature whose provenance is completely unknown.
No one, not even Christian religious scholars, knows who wrote the Gospels (i.e. the stories of the life, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ) or when, exactly, they were written.
Of course, the lack of witnesses or evidence corroborating alleged divine goings-on is a common denominator of every major religion in world history. The mystery of supposed supernatural things is part of the attraction, I suppose. People like to ponder the unknown and come up with all manner of explanations: it’s the nature of human beings.
This is what keeps the clergy in business.
Believers in fables and myths are simply expected to suspend disbelief and accept such stories as factual. So, even though human beings can’t build ships than can accommodate all living things, part seas, topple stone walls by blowing on a trumpet, walk on water, miraculously restore hearing to a deaf person, raise the dead, or survive a crucifixion, the true believer must accept these tall tales if he wants to “belong to the club” (his church).
Devout religious folks are actually proud of the fact that they BELIEVE in stuff that has no basis in fact. Whereas a non-believer such as myself finds himself constantly asking, like the old burger commercial, “Where’s the beef?”
In other words, where did this Biblical literature come from, who wrote it, when was it written, how was it published and, perhaps the most important question, why was it produced?
These questions, particularly concerning the New Testament of the Bible, have puzzled curious folks for 2,000 years.
Of course, during the first 1,500 years of Christianity, when the Catholic Church possessed enormous power, simply asking such questions could get the inquirer in big trouble. A skeptic could be shunned by the faithful, excommunicated (tossed out of the Church), tortured on the rack, or even burnt at the stake. Book burning (i.e. destroying any religious literature not complimentary to the Gospels) was commonly practiced by Christian zealots under the direction of local bishops.
Thankfully, the power of the Church has been in decline for several hundred years, thus many theologians and historians over the years have been able to contemplate the murky origins of Christianity.
What they all agree on is that the Gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (that is, they were titled that way to infer that Jesus’ disciples or followers wrote them, with the implication that these scribes were four independent witnesses to Jesus’ ministry). Also, it is obvious to scholars and theologians that none of those writers personally witnessed any of the holy pageant in Palestine: all of the Gospels were written long after Jesus Christ allegedly walked the earth.
In addition, since none of the authors personally experienced Jesus (and there were no tape recorders in the 1st century), we can know for a certainty that none of the supposed verbatim quotes from Jesus came from His lips. Thus, all the red ink in the New Testament (i.e. the supposed actual words of Jesus Christ) are not the “word of God” but, rather, wonderful prose constructed by talented writers in the late 1st and early 2nd century.
A question that has always haunted me concerns the “Why?” In other words, why did Jesus (an observant Jew) and his twelve disciples (also Jews) conspire to create an anti-Semitic religion?
Another question is, “How did Christianity emerge under the noses of the Roman Empire?” The Romans had their own pantheon of gods (Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, etc.) which supposedly helped them out from time to time. At the same time, Rome was quite tolerant of the various religions that they encountered in their conquered territories.
So, how was it that the new religion of Christianity was able to grow by leaps and bounds in the 2nd and early 3rd centuries, eventually replacing Rome’s own Roman pantheon of gods and becoming the “state religion” of the Empire by the 4th century?
I just recently read (for the second time!) a book by Joseph Atwill titled Caesar’s Messiah, The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus. This book theorizes how and why Christianity evolved from Judaism with the help of leadership at the Roman court.
Atwill’s book makes more sense than anything I have previously read about the mysterious beginnings of Christianity. It is still considered a fringe conspiracy theory among theologians and historians, but it really connects the dots, in my opinion. So, I will undertake to summarize Atwill’s theory in the following discussion.
Two thousand years ago the Roman Empire encompassed much of the “known world”, including the Middle East. As was the policy within the Empire, conquered peoples were allowed to worship their local gods in their own fashion with the exception that every place of worship also needed to contain a representation of the Roman emperor as an acknowledgement that he was their worldly lord and master. Most conquered peoples acquiesced to this rule. However, the Jews of Palestine absolutely refused to allow a bust of the Emperor to be placed in their places of worship, as their religion forbade such an abomination.
Thus, the Romans were in perpetual conflict with militant Jewish hardliners, which necessitated a strong, expensive military presence in the Middle East to maintain order. By the mid-1st century, Rome had stomached all it could of the rebellion and mounted a campaign to crush the Jewish zealots once and for all. The “War of the Jews”, as historian (?) Flavius Josephus describes it, culminated in the siege and ultimate destruction of Jerusalem, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the burning and leveling to the ground the Jewish holy Temple in 70 A.D. A few years later, the remaining zealots were trapped on the mountaintop fortress of Masada and were either wiped out by the Roman army or committed mass suicide.
Leadership in Rome was quite annoyed at the massive and expensive military endeavor required to pacify the residents of Palestine. They didn’t want a repeat of this religious guerrilla warfare in the Middle East or any part of their Empire. The Roman goal was, and always had been, to pacify the peoples in lands that they conquered. In most cases, their new subjects acquiesced and they became obedient Roman citizens. This period of peace and prosperity of the Roman Empire is known by historians as the “Pax Romana” (27 B.C. to 180 A.D.).
Unfortunately, zealous Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere refused to cooperate. The problem was like a boil on Rome’s ass; something had to be done.
Atwill theorizes that Christianity was invented at the Roman court by probably a team of writers who worked together to fashion a product that would accomplish two objectives: defang militant Judaism and substitute an alternative monotheistic religion that would be beneficial to the Empire.
A thorough reading of the biblical New Testament reveals two things: the Gospel stories are the origin of anti-Semitism, as we know it today, and there is not one word in any New Testament book that reflects badly on the Roman Empire or its leaders. In fact, Jesus’ ministry highlights pacifistic ideas like “turn the other cheek”, and obedience concepts like “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” (i.e. follow the rules, pay your taxes). Christians are exhorted by Christ to be good citizens, as they will be “rewarded in Heaven”.
This decidedly pro-Roman religion didn’t happen by accident, according to Atwill.
One of the great mysteries about the New Testament stories about Jesus Christ is that no one knows who wrote them. The stories just started magically appearing beginning in the late 1st century after the Jewish wars against Rome. Christian clergy and theologians have insisted for the past 2,000 years that the Gospels (i.e. the stories about Jesus’ ministry) are factual.
However, no one who lived at that time in Palestine, even the many established religious and historical writers of the day, ever mentioned being in the presence of, or even hearing about, a charismatic, young Jewish rabbi “who was known far and wide”, wandering the region doing miraculous things, speaking to assemblies of thousands, turning water into wine, making a scene down at the Temple on the Mount, being crucified, rising from the dead, addressing 500 people after he was arisen, and… dead people climbing out of their caskets and walking the streets.
As is typically the case with any religion, the supposed divine man left no writings, possessions, or corpse to prove he was ever on Earth. None of the alleged thousands of followers, including his supposed twelve Apostles, erected a sign or monument (like “George Washington slept here”) that believers could venerate. How about “Jesus Christ was born here” or “Jesus ascended to Heaven from this spot!”?
Nope. There is a deafening silence from people actually living in early- to mid-1st century Palestine. Historians who were present in Palestine at that time and wrote about interesting happenings of the day universally omit any mention of the Jesus Christ character. It is as if he never existed.
According to the Gospels, Jesus was crucified in 33 A.D., four decades before the Jewish revolt against the Romans which culminated at Masada in 73 A.D. The Jewish Wars were prosecuted first by the Roman general Vespasian and, then when he went to Rome to begin the Flavian dynasty of emperors, his son Titus. During the campaign, a Jewish commander named Josephus bar Matthias was captured. He found favor with Vespasian by prophesizing that the Roman commander would ultimately crush the Jews and become Caesar. This is what ultimately happened, although the final military campaign was led by Vespasian’ son Titus after Vespasian returned to Rome and became the emperor.
Josephus, originally a slave to Vespasian, was later freed, became a Roman citizen and a historian who later wrote several books about the Jews, the rebellion, and the Roman military campaign. Working at the royal court, in the capacity of Vespasian’s biographer, he was a trusted member of the Flavian family, eventually changing his name to Flavius Josephus.
Josephus was but one of several aristocratic Jews from the Middle East who essentially “switched sides” and supported the Roman campaign to wipe out the Jewish zealots. Chief among them were Hellenized Jewish aristocrats from Egypt (the Alexanders) and Judea (the Herods). Together with the Romans, they had a common financial interest in preventing any future revolts. Also, there were intricate personal relationships between the Flavians in Rome and these two aristocratic families. Herod’s niece Berenice eventually became the mistress to Titus, Vespasian’s son and heir, thus connecting the Flavians (Vespasian, Titus, and his brother, Domitian), and the Alexanders (the family of Berenice’s first husband) with her family, the Herods.
At the time of Vespasian’s demise in A.D. 79, Titus became Emperor. Trying to solidify the Flavian mark on Rome, he started a campaign to have the Roman Senate confer retroactive “god status” on his father. His efforts ultimately paid off: Vespasian was posthumously declared a Caesar, rewarding the Flavians with a divine provenance. Thus, Titus Flavius, the new emperor, could say that he was, in a way, “the son of a God”.
Maybe not coincidentally, these things happened at the same time as the Gospels were being created by persons unknown. These supposedly biographical stories about Jesus Christ, “the son of God”, began to circulate. At the same time, Flavius Josephus was writing his histories entitled the Antiquities of the Jews and The Wars of the Jews while enjoying the benefits of royal Roman patronage.
Joseph Atwill has done a deep dive into the similarities of Josephus’ “histories” and the Gospels themselves. In many cases, it appears that the sequence of events, and even the prose in the various documents, are strikingly similar. Atwill also compared the Gospel stories with Old Testament prophecies, and it appears that the Gospel writers went to great extremes to make sure that their hero Jesus was fulfilling those prophecies.
Of course, as we know now, those Gospels were written by persons unknown no earlier than 80 A.D. and perhaps as late as 125 A.D. by writers who were very familiar with the Old Testament. The ability of the hero Jesus to ostensibly fulfill prophecy is not so remarkable when one considers that the only evidence that he did so are the Gospel stories themselves, written no earlier than fifty years after His supposed demise… by persons unknown to history.
Nowadays, this type of literature would be called mythical.
If I was writing a fictional biography about myself, I could intersperse within the chapters supposed predictions that I made as a young boy. For example, I could say that, in 1957, I predicted that President Kennedy would be assassinated in 1963. Lo and behold, that prediction came to pass! But, of course, I wrote my fictional biography fifty years after the fact, so I knew when I was crafting the “miracle” prophecy what calamity had already come to pass.
Of course, I’ve used a known historical event as the example of such post- (rather than pre-) diction.
The Gospel stories (which are presumed by the faithful to be true) are replete with dramatic events from 1st century Judea that no person living at that time in Palestine… other than the unknown Gospel writers… seemed to have witnessed at that time. They have all the characteristics of myths.
Much like the stories about Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Pecos Bill… no one ever met the hero except the author. Can Pecos Bill’s exploits be factual if there were no independent witnesses? Probably not, and that’s why those stories are considered myths.
At any rate, Atwill theorizes that there were some clever writers, Jewish “turncoats” as it were, with extensive knowledge of the ancient Hebrew religion (likely Josephus, the Herods, and the Alexanders) who cooperated with the Flavians in Rome to concoct the Gospel stories. The team of writers was quite knowledgeable about Old Testament prophecy, particularly relating to a “Messiah” who would come to rescue the Jews from their latest oppressors, the Romans.
One of the tell-tale signs of the fact that these Gospel stories are myths is the absence of the identity of the writers: they took pains to be anonymous. Let’s face it: If anyone was to find out that the whole Jesus adventure was concocted at court in Rome, the jig would be up.
But there are clues about the Gospel writers interspersed in the fables like bread crumbs. In many cases those clues involve modified names of characters. One involves the famous Joseph of Arimathea, who the Gospels report took Jesus down from the cross and buried him. Historians say that there was no place called Arimathea in 1st century Palestine. However, there was a writer, working for Emperors Vespasian and Titus in Rome at the time when the Gospels were created, whose name was Josephus bar Matthias. Is it possible that the writer Flavius Josephus, with tongue-in-cheek, couldn’t resist including himself in the gallows humor? Director Alfred Hitchcock famously used to do this in his movies.
Another telling fact about the production of New Testament literature is that, in the 1st century, only wealthy aristocrats or the government itself could afford the high cost of producing written materials. The common citizen followers of a Jewish rabbi who wandered the countryside would likely not have been wealthy journalists.
Atwill’s thesis is that the Gospel stories were meant to (a) crush the militaristic Jewish religion, (b) create an alternative religion that was pacifistic, and (d) put Roman leaders in a positive light, particularly the Flavian dynasty. The overriding goal was that Jews throughout the Empire would acknowledge Caesar as a god and be obedient to him.
I won’t go into the minute details of Atwill’s analysis of the Gospels, but as he explains ad nauseum, they were meant by the unknown authors to satirize and lampoon Judaism and its zealous leaders while at the same time creating a new religion without the burdensome Hebraic requirements (circumcision, no eating flesh of cloven hooved animals, purity standards, etc.) and restrictions (check out Leviticus in the Old Testament!).
In order to entice new converts to the religion (particularly Jews), the new “god” figure, i.e. Jesus Christ, was portrayed as fulfilling Old Testament prophecy such that he would appear to be the long-awaited Messiah.
Yes, the writers used the antiquity and provenance of Judaism… against itself in kind of a cruel joke.
In fact, according to Atwill, Jesus’ alleged ministry in Palestine is a choreographed match to Vespasian’ and Titus’ military campaigns which ultimately resulted in the total destruction of Jerusalem and its holy Temple and the hilltop fortress of Masada. This Jewish catastrophe, which was foretold in the Gospels by the Jesus character (supposedly the Son of God) was actually accomplished by Titus (the “son of a god”). The goal of the whole literary charade was for religious citizens of the Roman Empire to accept Caesar as a god figure, be obedient, and reject the militarism of the Judaism that had caused so much grief.
Question: Who had the resources in the 1st and 2nd century to produce the Gospels and disseminate them throughout the “known world”? Answer: The Roman emperors and their scribes.
Although not covered by Atwill’s book, this reality also explains the provenance of the rest of the books of the New Testament, many of which were allegedly written by the self-appointed “Apostle Paul”.
This mysterious Saul/Paul fellow, not mentioned in the Gospel fables or any historical accounts of actual 1st century events, seemingly wandered the Empire preaching a “Christian” religion. The Apostle admittedly (in his writings) never met Jesus Christ in the flesh, only in a vision, but that was apparently enough to set him on a course to provide an alternative theology to Judaism. (Supposedly, Paul was an ex-Jewish priest, and citizen of the Roman Empire, providing him with the bonafides to steer his listeners away from Judaism and toward a better religious product.)
This is, not surprisingly, exactly what the Roman leaders desired.
One interesting thing about Paul the Wandering Salesman is that he had no apparent job to earn income. Supposedly, Paul spent his hours coaching up the new Christians and writing letters (epistles) to the various emerging churches, setting them straight on matters of theology and behavior. Some of Paul’s writings are quite lengthy, hence the would have been prohibitively expensive to produce.
“How did this guy with no means of support afford to publish these writings?”, you might ask. My guess is that Paul (or whoever really wrote Paul’s New Testament contributions) was on Caesar’s payroll.
Even though “Apostle Paul” supposedly wandered far and wide, spoke to thousands, experienced all manner of adventures (including being killed but… surviving!), and allegedly helped to establish churches in many big cities within the Empire, he is another Biblical persona who is absolutely unknown to legitimate historians researching people and places of the 1st century.
Just like Jesus, his disciples, and the faceless writers of the various books of the New Testament, who took pains to hide their identities.
Rhetorical question: If it had become known that the entire New Testament was an elaborate literary scam concocted at the royal court in Rome, do you think the public would have “bought” the new Christian religious product?
I think the answer is obvious.
In conclusion, I have no idea if Joseph Atwill’s theory is 100 percent correct, but it is the best explanation that I have ever heard. It makes sense when you carefully examine Atwill’s painstakingly researched arguments.
As Carl Sagan famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. There is zero evidence to back up any of the New Testament fables nor does anyone know for sure who wrote them.
In this case, the “Why?” they were written, per Atwill, makes a lot more sense than the idea that the God of Abraham, in a fit of exasperation over 1st century Judaism, came up with a new, improved religious product for His earthly audience.