First and foremost, in 1996 came the work of Prof. Robert Eisenman, a pioneer of this school. His works, such as James the Brother of Jesus and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, note the strange way that the New Testament appears to invert the ideology—and the very language—of both the Dead Sea Scrolls sectarians and the “Jewish-Christians” who came before Paul.
Two important theories were published in 2005, Francesco Carotta’s Jesus Was Caesar, which observed certain interesting relationships between the imperial cult and the beginning of Christianity, and Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah, which finally began to investigate the role of the Flavian emperors.
Then, 2008 saw the publication of Operation Messiah by Thijs Voskuilen and Rose Mary Sheldon, which argued nothing less than the hypothesis that St. Paul was a Roman intelligence operative.
Each of these writers made several of the same observations that we had made—and each added many more to our burgeoning mountain of evidence. Most crucially, in some important way, each recognizes the importance of the contemporary political context to the emergence of Christianity.
None of these writers completely agrees with any of the others, and readers will see that we ourselves hold back from making all of the same arguments and drawing all of the same conclusions of any of them, as well. However, the work of these writers illuminates important new aspects of an emerging understanding.
In light of this revolutionary new understanding, it is time to give the historical evidence of Christian origins a fresh look.
We do not profess to know whether the man named Jesus referred to in the New Testament ever existed. Such a thing may never be known with certainty. What we can show, however, is that this war-torn period of ancient history inspired one side to create a form of religious “psy-ops” in a sophisticated attempt to counter its enemies’ religious fervor. And that ancient project, launched for long forgotten reasons, has endured and shaped Western history ever since. (1)
While this subject has interest for the religious, those completely uninterested in religion will have much to gain from this book, as well. Religions forged more than a millennium ago continue to be a rising force in world events, with ominous implications for everyone, perhaps especially the non-religious. Understanding the origins of these forces is increasingly important in the world today, for both believers and non-believers.
It was only the relatively recent separation of religion and law in the West, which Americans call “the separation of Church and State,” that officially ended violence in the name of God and allowed, at the same time, the freedom to publish just such a book as this.
Even in modern American politics, however, religion persists as a powerful force in the 21st Century. It is widely believed that no candidate who is not a Christian, for example, could ever be elected President of the United States even though the American Constitution expressly forbids any such qualification. (2)
The endurance of religions is a testament to how indispensable fundamental ideas are in guiding human life. When freely chosen, religious faith is a deeply personal pursuit. When conflicts are religious, even where the difference of opinion is no longer fatal, emotions run high. Many who live in free societies understandably bristle, for example, if they believe faith is being exploited to push a political agenda.
Given our modern context, any evidence that Christianity itself was created for political purposes two thousand years ago is therefore all the more relevant.
In the text that follows, we will reveal the historical context in which Christianity arose by examining the source material widely accepted by scholars, both believers and non-believers. Utilizing their best scholarship, all of the relevant sources, and archeological evidence presented here for the first time, we will demonstrate how a revolutionary theory solves all of the historical dilemmas in the conventional understanding—by simply taking the evidence at face value.
When evidence contradicts a theory, a good scientist discards the theory instead of the evidence. Again and again, as we shall see, Biblical scholarship has twisted the evidence to conform to the pre-conceived assumptions of scholars rather than allowing conflicting facts to simply tell their story.
When references to names and people in Christianity’s history appear to implicate the same person in a problematic way, for example, such figures are often split into separate historical people, with unlikely reasoning, in order to avoid confronting a confusing coincidence. When a perceived paradox aims in a direction that is uncomfortable to follow, the words of contemporaries, historians, and even the New Testament itself are often boldly reinterpreted rather than simply taking them literally. As we shall see, even scholars’ interpretations of the first symbols that archeology and Church historians recognize as “Christian” have been inverted in a way that has disguised what the evidence tells us.
Ironically, any questioning of the Gospels’ scenario of Jesus as an itinerant preacher and healer in pastoral Galilee is itself automatically branded a Da Vinci Code-like “conspiracy theory.” Considering how Hellenized and non-Jewish Christ’s own teachings actually are, and how pro-Roman the positions of Paul and all of the Gospels happen to be, what is more surprising is that scholars could accept as unquestionable the central tradition of a purely Jewish origin for the Gospels.
It has always been tempting to search for obscure, hidden and ulterior meanings in the New Testament. Even Jesus’s own words are themselves blatantly conspiratoriaclass="underline"
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’” (Emphasis added.) (3)
Jesus sometimes instructs his disciples, and those he heals, not to reveal his miracles to anyone. (4) He even orders his disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. (5)
Mystery surrounds why code-names were adopted by so many of the first Christians in the New Testament. Simon was renamed Peter by Jesus, since he was to be the “rock” (petra or πέτρα means “rock” in Latin or Greek) upon which the early Church would be founded. Barnabas, Paul’s associate, was really named Joseph. Paul was originally Saul. (6) While it may have been true that many 1st Century Jews had second “Greek” names, sometimes the name of the disciple is completely suppressed in the literature, as in the case of the famously unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved.” (7)
Notably, members of the rebellious sect of Jews that preserved the famous Dead Sea Scrolls used titles such as “Teacher of Righteousness” rather than reveal the names of any individuals. Secrecy more emblematic of war than religion marks both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.
In the following pages we will embark on the opposite of a “conspiracy theory.” By considering the simplest answer from all of the evidence, we will ask the reader to take all of it at face value. In the process we will advance a theory that uniquely integrates all of the seemingly contradictory evidence without tortured reasoning or the unprovable speculations employed in much of Christian scholarship.