What follows is not, therefore, a conspiracy theory. It is, however, the story of a conspiracy hatched almost two millennia ago that had consequences far outlasting any intended purpose. For we will demonstrate that most of the “new” Testament—a text full of magic, mystical visions, astrological portents, demonic possessions, resurrections of the dead, the fulfillment of ancient prophecies, and allegorical mystery—was known by its authors to be a work of fiction.
This book does not address the questions of the existence of God. Nor does it explore the origin or content of the Hebrew Bible. Such matters stand well outside our purview. (8)
Many may wonder why the subject of this book, if it is so readily observable, has never been explored in such comprehensive detail before in the 20 centuries since Christianity’s inception. One simple answer is that, since Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, it has only been legally possible in the last three centuries for anyone to publicly question Christianity’s origins without incurring a charge of heresy—for which a sentence of death was not uncommon.
Even today, many biblical academics and other specialists have concluded that approved scholarly qualifications are required to grasp the history of Christianity. However, after 30 years of research, 60 years cumulatively between the authors of this book—an effort well beyond what most could ever devote to such an investigation—we must deny this cloistered view. In this respect, some modern scholars are nearly as guilty of dogmatism as the mystics they often critique from a modern vantage.
This book is the product of painstaking examination and comparison of all the available sources with an open mind. To this end, we have endeavored to provide exhaustive citations and extensive quotes from the most important original sources so that anyone can follow the arguments made and so that anyone can readily check the full range of those sources. Wherever possible, large segments from the source material itself are directly provided so that readers may examine the primary evidence for themselves. A map, timeline and family tree are appended at the end of the book for additional insight into the historical context in which the New Testament was composed. The Notes section provides yet another layer of scholarship for those wishing to dig deeper into the evidence.
No membership in an anointed authority or elite is required to understand what is presented in this book. The only requirement for anyone who reads what follows is an inquisitive mind open to taking the evidence at face value and following it where it leads.
PART I
Dolphin and Anchor
I.
Crux Dissimulata
At the center of Christianity, according to the first three Gospels, Jesus Christ seems to have made an impossible mistake.
While only God knew the precise date, Jesus proclaims that the Messiah, the “Son of Man,” in “great power and glory” would return within the lives of some of the people listening to him.
This strange misstatement has caused consternation almost since the expiration date of this prophecy passed.
But was it a mistake? What if we take Jesus Christ at his word?
In his prophecy, Jesus links the blessed event of his Second Coming with the destruction of Jerusalem and its famous Temple, which we know did in fact occur within his prophecy’s timespan. Both events are predicted by Jesus to transpire, definitively, within the living memory of those to whom he made these predictions. Jesus even accurately describes the future Jewish War that would begin in 66 CE and correlates it to the destruction of the Temple that was to signal his return in power and glory.
The verbal description of the war that Jesus renders in the Gospels eerily mirrors that given by the historian Flavius Josephus of the actual events 40 years later as the Roman general and future Emperor Titus fulfilled Jesus’s prophecy, right down to the “armies in the clouds” that Jesus foretold would appear in the sky before that brutal war’s final siege and the Temple’s destruction.
The Gospels were written after the Temple was demolished and the Flavian generals Vespasian and his son Titus rose from the East to become emperors of Rome and rule “the world” as a new era of peace did, in fact, return—a “Pax Romana.” In short, the Jewish prophecy of the messiah had been fulfilled—and so had the prophecy of Jesus.
Moreover, the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus openly proclaimed that they were the messiahs of Jewish prophecy, as part of their official propaganda and imperial cult. Few today realize that even important Jewish leaders at the time (officially if not always sincerely) recognized these pagan Romans as messiahs.
Was their arrival in power and glory as princes of peace the advent of Jesus’s prophecy? Or is it possible that Jesus’s prophecy was written while these Flavian emperors ruled in order to prove their messianic pretentions after they had conquered Judea? In either case, Jesus’s prediction in the New Testament may not be the mistake many assume it to be, after all.
For decades, based on the striking possibility suggested by this historical coincidence, we searched for further links between the Flavian dynasty and the formation of Christianity. In the process we found so many connections that they exceeded our most outlandish expectations.
At first, we were struck by the sheer quantity of what, in this light, appears to be Roman propaganda in the Gospels themselves. Not only does Jesus advocate peace with Rome in an age of Jewish rebellion—even calling for the payment of taxes—but he acknowledges the faith of a Roman centurion with his most lavish praise. Indeed, the New Testament thoroughly removes the special status of Hebrews as God’s Chosen People altogether and opens to the whole world the worship of the Jewish God.
Writing in the years just before the outbreak of the first Jewish War, St. Paul himself identifies political rebellion as a sin in the New Testament and proclaims that submission to the Roman government is obedience to God and his own appointed agents on earth.
According to the Gospels, Jesus not only calls for an end to the contemporary purity regulations that so alienated Jews from the pagan world (as does St. Paul), but Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor at the trial of Jesus, vividly washes the Romans’ hands of any culpability for his crucifixion. And, as readers will see, at every turn Christ’s own story seems to have been shaped by the Roman political agenda at the time.
Just how much of the New Testament comprises such pro-Roman propaganda? It soon became obvious while searching for an exception to the startlingly pro-Roman attitude in the New Testament that there is no exception anywhere to be found. (1)
Most people today do not know that the writing of the Gospels has been dated to the era of the Flavian dynasty of Roman rulers, who rose to power after crushing the massive religion-inspired rebellion of messianic Jews some 40 years after the alleged death of Jesus. Most Christians are also unaware that close friends of these same Flavian rulers appear in the New Testament itself, or that the oldest Christian catacombs were the original burial site of the Flavian Emperor Vespasian’s granddaughter (the niece of the Emperor Titus, his son), or that her husband would be counted among the first “popes” of the first Christian church in Rome.
All of this evidence, when unflinchingly placed together in its historical context, suggests what is today considered completely impossible: that Christianity is somehow intertwined with imperial Rome.
And yet, actual physical evidence directly linking the Flavian dynasty to Christianity had never been shown to exist and continued to elude us during three decades of research. With all of the propaganda typically generated by Roman emperors, it seemed certain that, if such a radical hypothesis were correct, at least some physical link between Flavian emperors and Christianity must have survived, even after the many centuries during which evidence could have been lost or purposely destroyed. An imperial Roman form of Christianity may have been aimed at a specific audience, and it may have been only a single aspect of their propaganda, but, if the inference were correct, we realized that some visual trace should remain even to this day.