Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus - Softcover

Atwill, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569754578 ISBN 13: 9781569754573

Publisher: Ulysses Press, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Joseph Atwill began his religious studies as a youth in Japan at the only English-speaking school in the country, the Jesuit-run St. Mary's Military Academy. The majority of each of his school days was spent studying Greek, Latin, and the Bible, which he found fascinating, although he eventually drifted away from the faith. Having studied computer science in college, Atwill formed a series of successful companies with one of the most renowned programmers in the world, David Ferguson. Many years later, the sale of his interests in these companies allowed him to return to his earlier interest – the origins of Christianity. He spent over a decade studying hundreds of books, among them, the works of Robert Eisenman and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Together with Eisenman, Atwill wrote a paper on the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls. While studying the two most prominent works of the 1st century - Josephus’ "Wars of the Jews" and the Gospels - Atwill noticed a series of parallels occurring in sequence between the military campaign of the Roman Caesar Titus Flavius and the ministry of Jesus. His findings led him to a startling new conclusion about the origins of Christianity - that a Roman imperial family, the Flavians, had created Christianity to pacify the Jews’ rebellion against Rome, and even more incredibly, they had placed a literary satire within the Gospels and "Wars of the Jews" to inform posterity of this fact. The results of Atwill’s research are set out in his book "Caesar’s Messiah". The second edition of "Caesar’s Messiah", Ulysses Press 2006, became the best selling work of religious history in the US in 2007, and its German translation "Das Messias Ratsel", Ulstein 2008, achieved #1 Best Seller status. The Flavian Signature edition of "Caesar’s Messiah", CreateSpace 2011, adds the most detailed presentation of the parallels Atwill discovered between the works of Josephus and the Book of Luke.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ulysses Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1569754578
• ISBN 13: 9781569754573
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 256