Once upon a time, at a time when the Jews were at constant war with the might of the Roman Empire, there lived a Jewish general-cum-governor who, near death in that war, saw a way out of his predicament, and, hopefully, the way out for some of his friends as well, for his being a learned man as well. Managing to obtain an audience with the Roman general of the particular crusade that we are looking at, he said to that powerful eminence, ‘Powerful Eminence, I can make you an even more powerful eminence than you already are, most powerful Eminence. - ‘
‘Get to the punch line, you scoundrel,’ said the most powerful eminence; being offered the opportunity to hear how to become even more of a powerful eminence, and so willing to give this scoundrel some of his precious, powerful-eminence time. ‘What’s your game,’ went on He, suspiciously.
'My game,’ said the Jewish general-cum-governor-cum hopeful acolyte of this most powerful eminence, ‘is to make you Caesar.’
At this, the nearly most powerful eminence perked up his ears, with the possibility being offered him to become the THE most powerful eminence in the land, and not just the land of Judea, but the whole ball of wax. (As we more spiritually advanced people might think of the whole shebang as.) ’Tell me more,’ said the you-know-what-by-now to the artful Jew; adding - to make the crafty Jew remember his place, at the feet of the you-know-what-by-now - ‘and hurry it up. I don’t have all day, you know. I’m the - ‘
‘Powerful eminence in this area; I know, I know,’ replied the scheming Jew; and then, remembering his place at the feet of the you-know-what-by-now, adding, properly obsequiously, ‘but as I say, I can make you the THE most - ‘
‘Yes yes,’ interrupted the you-know-what, ‘we’ve covered that part of this conversation. Now, let’s hear it. And this had better be good.’
And it was Very, very good. It was a plan based on the keen understanding of why the Jews continued to be such a pain in the astronomical power of Rome: It was because of their belief - their fervent belief; their zealous belief - in a militant Messiah - an Anointed One - who would come and help them defeat their enemies. This learned Jew, looking to save his own skin, and that of some of his friends - all of whom happened to be of the priestly line of their religious belief, not so incidentally to the telling of this story (and of history itself) - explained that the key to success for this most powerful eminence - and for himself, and his priestly lineage of friends - was for him, a lowly Jew, to put his brethren in their proper place, at the feet - for now - of their masters; to prophetically chastise the “wicked generation” of Jews that refused to bear the yoke of Rome - to get them to repent, of their constant insurrections against the might of the Roman Empire, or they would be destroyed.
And they did not, and so they were. But a contingent of them managed to escape - and into the very household of their persecutors. Here is how it happened.1
This learned Jew, then - by the name of Josephus - who was a Jewish general-cum governor of a province in Judea - name of Galilee - that was notorious for its zealous and continued insurrection against Rome, saw the futility of such an approach to the problem, and hit on another approach. He somehow convinced Vespasian, then the Roman general in command of the Judean campaign, but with ambitions that may or may not have been widely known, that he could help him be victorious in his battle with the Jews, with that ‘scalp on his belt’ then giving him an inside lane to the emperorship (which was by then going through a number of hands, as, with the death of Nero, various contenders vied for the throne). In exchange for what? In exchange for letting him, Josephus, become the court historian for Vespasian and his family (the Flavians); from which position he could write glowing tributes to the new emperor, and his family; and for one last little favor: that he, Vespasian, might allow him to bring into the august Vespasian’s household a few of his friends.
Vespasian agreed. And from there began a major chunk of the history of Western Civilization. In the creation by, in particular, Josephus, of a new religion, that would sweep all before it for a good long while, and with it, the fates of many a family of Jewish priestly lineage. For, from that thus-augmented imperial household sprang many a bishop of the new religion, including popes, and many of the great landowner families of Europe, and including many if not most of the great royal families thereof.2
While those Jews who stayed with their ancestral religion struggled to survive in the shadows of those illustrious cousins of theirs…
How did this come about?
Upon Vespasian’s ascension to the Roman throne as emperor, he turned over the job of the (attempted) pacification of the Jews to his elder son, Titus, who went on to accomplish that mission with the siege and sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple there, and whose military campaign in Judea Josephus used as the template (a technique called 'typography') for a concocted story about the public ministry of a pacifistic Messiah back at the beginning of that generation who counseled the Jews to ”render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” and otherwise surrender to the yoke of Rome, and for their pains of having been so stiff-necked in their pride (and belief in a militant Messiah who would lead them to victory), they caused the destruction of all that they held dear; with Josephus 'foretelling' Titus as the Jewish religious-literature-prophesied Son of Man, complete with references to such prophecies scattered learned-like throughout his tale. The story of this fable-leading-to-stark-reality was chronicled by Josephus in his role of historian in two works, ‘Wars of the Jews’ and ‘Jewish Antiquities,’ and in the role of his alter ego, a concocted figure named Saul become Paul.
The proofs of this conspiracy are considerable, and as covered in such prodigious works of scholarship as Joseph Atwill’s ‘Caesar’s Messiah: the Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus’ and Flavio Barbiero’s ‘The Secret Society of Moses: The Mosaic Bloodline and a Conspiracy Spanning Three Millennia’.3
As eminent scholar/researcher Robert Eisenman, PhD, Professor of Middle East Religious and Archeology, California State University, and author of ‘James the Brother of Jesus’ said in the prefacing page to the Atwill tome: “Challenging and provocative. If what Joseph Atwill is saying is only partially true, we are looking into the abyss.” The abyss, that is to say, of a religion built on sand.
No great ‘abyss’. When you are dedicated to Truth.
As we should all be. As facets, fractals, aspects, points of view, perspectives of
The All That Is. Experiencing Itself through us truthseekers.
Which, then, is our basic nature.
For us to come to recognize.
And then, go from there. Into a - the -
New World.
P.S. This whole take on this matter is, of course - and as touched on in a footnote to this offering - predicated on the premise that there are no actual sources of evidence of any beginnings of a Christian religion before Josephus, and very possibly other intellectuals of the Flavian imperial household, concocted the story, to benefit their benefactors. All that we really know of that New Testament era and story comes from Josephus/Paul, who had a dog in that fight There is no reference, e.g., in the works of the great historian of that actual era, Philo, to any such historical figure as portrayed in the NT; and any reference to such a ‘fact’ in any other work near the time involved can easily be laid at the feet of later Christian apologists, as anachronisms, thrown in to give some credence to their belief. And as, e.g., the purported persecution of Christians under Nero is just that: purported. That oft-portrayed but historically unproven business is based merely on assumption, given the time period involved.
It is for us to sort all of this sort of thing out.
All. Of it.
As part of our home work.
That is to say, of our work by which to head
home, again.
Having gone just about as far as we can go, away from our home base.
In our better natures.
From having been captured by the Darkness
long enough.
—
footnotes:
1 Or at lest, one version of ‘it’. Not having been there - at least not consciously - we have to put the historical pieces together as best we can. And note that I said ‘historical’. Because the best we have on the whole matter, of the ‘New Testament’ story, is a) what the synoptic Gospels say; which were written by who-knows-whom some time after the ‘fact’ (and all after the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 C.E); and b) what Saul become Paul says. And ‘he’ is central to the concoction of this ‘story’.
Read on.
2 And thus the origin of the belief inculcated in the masses of the 'divine right of kings'. Based on their ancestral belief that they were of the lineage of 'the Chosen Ones' - Hebrews singled out by their (tribal) god for supremacy over their neighbors.
A belief that has haunted humanity down to this day. But to continue.
3 With many other works of dedicated research uncovering the fable of the biblical Jesus, as based on the stories of many god-men that had come down to that day, including from ancient Egypt, in the similar story to that in the New Testament, of the ‘holy family’ of Osiris, Isis and Horus. Major works in this field are: ’The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold’: 'Sons of God: Krishna, Buddha, and Christ Unveiled’; ‘Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ’; and ‘Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection,’ all by D.M. Murdock, aka Acharya S; and ‘Man Made God’ by Barbara G. Walker.
Other sources of the fact of Saul-become-Paul being the nom de plume of Josephus are ‘Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs’ and ‘Jesus, King of Edessa;’ both by Ralph Ellis; only this latter Jesus being very different from the character portrayed in what became known as the New Testament. However, it is all a compelling story.
God moving in mysterious ways, perhaps.
To help us come to clear discernment.
Separating the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
