Caesar's Messiah Debunked - Joseph Atwill's Covert Messiah Refuted

http://caesarsmessiahdebunked.com

Caesar's Messiah was a book published by a dot com businessman named Joseph Atwill in 2005. Last year, he released a documentary based on the book and everyone is talking about it all of a sudden, because Atwill put out the world's most misleading press release for his film screening in London. Richard Dawkins then retweeted the press release, even though he said he didn't endorse the theory, and now this eight-year-old theory is news again. Thank you, Richard Dawkins.

The basic premise of Caesar's Messiah is that the Roman Imperial family, the Flavians, invented Jesus by using the Jewish historian Josephus and, presumably, other people to write the gospels after Rome defeated the Jews in 70 AD. The idea was to make the militant Jewish rebels accept a peaceful Messiah and, thereby, give Rome less trouble.

Atwill says that the New Testament was written in a code that requires you to read Josephus' War of the Jews alongside the New Testament to get the joke. He, of course, is the only person to crack this code, making him super smart.

The following are just some of the major problems with this theory. For footnotes and references to the claims I'm about to make, go to the link in the description or to the website ceasarsmessiahdebunked.com.

One of the biggest problems this theory has is the existence of Christianity before 73 AD, when Atwill says that the idea was concocted by the Romans. Quite simply, if Christianity can be demonstrated to exist before that time, this theory is toast.

The famous historian Tacitus says that Nero was persecuting Christians in Rome in 64 AD. He also mentions that "immense multitudes" of Christians were living in Rome at the time. Try to figure out why "immense multitudes" of Christians are in Rome ten years before Christianity was supposed to have been invented.

Suetonius also mentions Nero punishing Christians, as well as many Christian historians. That seems like a bad PR idea to write this kind of stuff: "Hey, everyone! Join the new religion so we can burn you alive and feed you to lions. The signup sheet is right over there."

Paul, who tradition has being killed by Nero around 66 AD, wrote thirteen of the letters in the New Testament, all of them very Christian. Even the most skeptical scholars in this field don't date these letters later than 68 AD, and most of them much earlier than that. You should find out why even these skeptical scholars feel the need to place these letters so early, which you can do at the website caesarsmessiahdebunked.com.

Okay, so, let's move beyond the historical problems with saying that Christianity didn't exist before 73 AD, and let's look at some of the common sense or logical problems with his theory.

Why in the world would the Romans do this? They had already totally crushed the Jews in 70 AD, destroying the city and the temple.

When the Romans had a problem with people not wanting to conform to their rules, which they did often, they did what they do best: crush people into submission with war. There was never any need to do anything different, especially at this point in their history. Also, consider that the Jews weren't even a threat to them in any meaningful way. Plus, as I said, they had already completely destroyed them.

Atwill, in response to J.P. Holding on the point that the Romans had already defeated the Jews, said well, yeah, but Josephus mentions that the Romans had some problems with a few Jewish rebels from Alexandria just after the war. Holding replied, saying:

What Josephus refers to is disturbances in Alexandria that were instigated by the Sicarii who had fled to Jerusalem after being beaten there. So, in reality, this was nothing more than a mop-up after a decisive victory -- and I might add, no reason for Titus to invent a religion for them, since he beat them soundly there as well.

Okay, so let's look a little bit at the New Testament that Titus supposedly created, and see if it makes sense to you that the Romans would make this up and actually want people to read it.

So, the Romans created a guy who said stuff like, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me?" Matthew 28:18