Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus

Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus - by Joseph Atwill

Caesar's Messiah, a real life Da Vinci Code, presents the dramatic and controversial discovery that the conventional views of Christian origins may be wrong. Author Joseph Atwill makes the case that the Christian Gospels were actually written under the direction of first-century Roman emperors. The purpose of these texts was to establish a peaceful Jewish sect to counterbalance the militaristic Jewish forces that had just been defeated by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A.D. Atwill uncovered the secret key to this story in the writings of Josephus, the famed first-century Roman historian. Reading Josephus's chronicle, The War of the Jews, the author found detail after detail that closely paralleled events recounted in the Gospels. Atwill skillfully demonstrates that the emperors used the Gospels to spark a new religious movement that would aid them in maintaining power and order. What's more, by including hidden literary clues, they took the story of the Emperor Titus's glorious military victory, as recounted by Josephus, and embedded that story in the Gospels - a sly and satirical way of glorifying the emperors through the ages.

Contents:

Introduction
1. The First Christians and the Flavians
2. Fishers of Men: Men Who Were Caught Like Fish
3. The Son of Mary Who Was a Passover
Sacrifice
4. The Demons of Gadara
5. Eleazar Lazarus: The Real Christ
6. The Puzzle of the Empty Tomb
7. The New Root and Branch
8. Until All is Fulfilled
9. The Authors of the New Testament
10. The Typological Method
11. The Puzzle of Decius Mundus
12. The Father and the Son of God
13. Josephus' Use of the Book of Daniel
14. Building Jesus
15. The Apostles and the Maccabees
16. The Samaritan Woman and Other Parallels
Conclusion
Appendix
A Reader's Guide to the Names and Terms
in Caesar's Messiah
A Timeline of Jesus' and Titus' Lives