Suresh A. Shenoy

While writing my doctoral thesis on 'Josephus' Jewish War as a Narrative Five Act Tragedy' in 2002-05 I had my Epiphany. Through my research into the genre of the 'Jewish War' I discovered that it was a work in two distinct genres, classical history in the foreground and narrative five-act tragedy in the Senecan mode in the background. It was in 'genres disjunction'! It meant that Josephus had used a literary disjunction to express his attitudinal disjunction towards his Roman patrons, the Flavians. He pretended to be their ally, while he was hostile towards them in private. In terms of the 'Jewish War', Josephus appeared to be an admirer of the Flavians in the foreground text, while he condemned them as villains of a tragedy in the background.

Josephus was a writer of the First Imperial Century. His 'genres disjunction' was in fact structural irony intended, as Quintilian explained it in his 'Institutio Oratoria', to say things about the politically powerful which would result in fatal consequences in an age of censorship if written openly and explicitly.

The thought passed my mind, if genres disjunction was helpful to Josephus, it could also be of use to the Gospel writers to say unpalatable things about the authoritarian Pauline Church of their time. To my utter delight, I first found the Synoptics wrote in 'genres disjunction' with Gospel in the foreground, and classical history, the Homeric monomyth, and the five tragedy in the background. Each genres in the background told their readers about their unbelief in Jesus as the Christ, his miracles and his resurrection. (See 'The Four Fabulists: the Literary Genres of the Gospels and the Acts of Apostles', 'The Divine Christ: Christian myths, Mysteries and Magic', 'Gospel of Mark and Loss of Faith', 'Saint Matthew decode Christianity' and 'The Many layered Gospel of Luke').

John went even further in depicting Jesus as deluded when he thought and acted as if he was the Christ, the Messiah, even in his dying moments on the cross. (See "Jesus the Ironic Christ in the Fourth Gospel').

The Jesus Christ whom the Gospel writers were rejecting was the creation of Paul of Tarsus in his five personal epistles. An analysis of those letters revealed that Paul was an advanced Schizophrenic, violent in his thoughts and expression, aggressive in his actions. He was capable of murder to get his way. (See Saint Paul's Dark Secret: Psychosis and Religious Delusions' and 'Nero's Minions').

My search for the Gospel has not ended. In 2021, I found that Luke's Gospel was written in response to Pope Clément's Epistle to the Corinthians and that the Book of Revelation was closely related to the subject of 'Nero's Minions'.