Customer Reviews

The Roman Origins of Christianity

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This book is, or should be, important in its field, the origins of the Christian gospels. What Atwill has done is a close reading and comparison of the gospels and the works of Josephus. While Josephus has been read alongside the Bible for 2,000 years and while innumerable books have been written on the two collections, Atwill has actually found correspondences between them that other scholars seems to have missed. This sounds unlikely, but read this book with your choice of translation of Josephus and the gospels. The correspondences are really there. Jesus makes prophecies in the gospels, and Titus (the emperor, not the epistle addressee) fulfils them: he makes, of his soldiers, fishers of men, he besieges and razes Jerusalem. Like Jesus, Titus encounters a legion of demons at Gadara, and sends a Simon to Rome while sparing a John. In both versions the events occur in the same order and at the same locations. And Titus came, as the son of man that Jesus prophesied, before the generation of hearers had passed away.

Atwill argues that these correspondences can only be if Josephus and the gospels were written together. This is in contrast to the early Christian fathers who also noted some of the correspondences, but assumed that they reflected God's will. Atwill proposes that Titus, on his return to Rome, co-ordinated a team of writers including expatriate and turncoat Jews to produce both sets of books, and in effect to create Christianity. It is an odd fact that many of the earliest Christians that we can put a name to were members of the Flavian family, not least Clemens Flavians, the first Pope who is taken to be historical. The official Catholic line that he was the fourth Pope and that Linus, the second, was Pope in Rome all the time that Vespasian and Titus were destroying Palestine, Jerusalem and the temple, is an even odder fact to believe. Apparently, although Atwill does not go into this, James the leader of the so-called Jewish Christians, the Gospel of Thomas and the gospel fragments that we know as Egerton and Oxyrhynchus 840 and 1224 represent a proto-Christianity outside the Roman control, and that is reason enough why they disappeared.

Atwill also analyzes the autobiography given in Josephus' Vita to show that it also cannot be taken at face value. On the other hand, Atwill must be the only writer who argues for a fictional Jesus and who accepts the Testimonium Flavianum as actually written by 'Josephus'.

Robert Eisenman, in his 'James the Brother of Jesus' had already proposed something very similar and proposes a number of candidates as authors of the gospels: Josephus, Epaphroditus, Tiberius Alexander, Berenice and others. Atwill cites Eisenman for several minor points but does not acknowledge this major thread. Atwill's candidates as authors are Josephus, Tiberius Alexander, Berenice and John of Decapolis, which constitutes an overlap. His evidence and his entire approach, are different from Eisenman's, which strengthens the argument.

My biggest problem is Atwill's assumption that the gospels and Acts are received by us as Titus' team left them. To take two major examples: John 21, which almost every commentator takes to be a later addition, and Mark 16:9-20, which is missing from the oldest manuscripts, are both regarded as part of the original text. Atwill is matching the received gospels to the received Josephus, but takes it further and assumes that the documents were never changed later. This does have the advantage that Q and the Signs Gospel can be dropped and forgotten. Another similar problem is that when the New Testament was compiled in the fourth century, all four of Titus' gospels - and no other gospels - made the cut. As the Flavians were by then ancient history, and Constantine and Eusebius etc had their own agendas, this becomes something that needs explaining.

There is also the problem of Paul. How does he fit in? Eisenman had previously compared Saulus in Josephus with the various Pauls in Acts and the Epistles, and deduced that he was a Herodian. Many writers have commented how Paul, especially in Acts, seems more like a police agent than a priest. Atwill says little about the Epistles, nor does he build on Eisenman's work on Paul.

Irritations: One cannot but cringe again and again as Atwill writes "the hoi polloi". He constantly refers to the NT (New Testament) although of course it would not be compiled until 3 centuries later. He refers to Malachi as the last book in the Old Testament (as it is in Protestant Bibles) but in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Jewish Bible that First-Century Greek speakers would be using) it precedes Isaiah and 8 other books. In a tale from Josephus where a man impersonates Anubis, Atwill confuses Anubis with Horus. As in many inferior books, Atwill repeats the quote: "It has served us well, this myth of Jesus" but credits it to Cesare Borgia, rather than Pope Leo X.

Atwill does not anywhere claim proficiency in ancient languages. Eventually it becomes apparent that he made his discoveries using Whiston's early-18th-century translation of Josephus and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Fair enough. The correspondences are there. However, I look forward to seeing what a linguistically proficient commentator will do with this material.

`Fascinating and of course profoundly challenging....a milestone in NT studies.....a fantastic, ice-breaking contribution' Rod Blackhirst (Professor of Biblical Studies, La Trobe University, Australia)
(see his web site on the Flavian Hypothesis
http://www.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au/sae/arts/flavians/flavians.htm)

"Challenging and provocative...If what Joseph Atwill is saying is only partially true, we are looking into the abyss." Robert Eisenman
(Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology, Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins, California State University).

Caesar's messiah should be read by everyone wanting to know the true meaning behind christianity,just how Flavius joseph totally manipulated Daniel's prophecy-which was fulfilled by Antiochus epiphanes into the destruction of the temple,it seems every important event of the first century supernaturally-ie rather conveniently becomes fulfilled by Titus and the roman empire.
Hard to follow at times nevertheless a truly ground-breaking analysis,close followers of the explanation will be rewarded and will be left in no doubt by the end, antonydalley-August 2005.

Early spiral bound edition --extremely small print and poor editing makes for a very difficult read. His thesis is intriguing and even if Atwill's assumptions are close to accurate, the "Roman" Gospel authors failed to accomplish their purpose.