Biblical Scholar Joseph Atwill has forever changed how we understand early Christian history by focusing on religion as an instrument of political mind control.

photo by: Bolton
A long time ago there was a war in the Middle East between the Romans and the Jews. Spoiler alert: the Romans won. After hauling the bounty back to Rome, and building a really nice arch, they had their official historian write it all down. The man they chose for the job was a Jewish general who not only switched sides to join the Romans in the sacking of Jerusalem, but proclaimed his Roman leader was the real Messiah the Jews had long waited for.

Now, a New Testament scholar has turned Christianity on its head by pointing out obvious connections between Josephus' version of the Roman victory and passages in the Gospels attributed to Jesus.  Joseph Atwill has challenged New Testament scholars to explain how Josephus' very pro-Roman version of events wound up becoming Jesus prophecies. Atwill insists we need to re-examine what we thought we knew about the ability of the Romans to rewrite history in order to consolidate power.

Join Alex Tsakiris for a second interview with Joseph Atwill, author of Cesar's Messiah:

Alex Tsakiris: Some folks are put off by any mention of conspiracy in world politics. I'm not. Given the well-documented history of misdeeds by those in power I think it's the perfect place to start. What is your general feeling about conspiracy and how it affects our worldview?

Joe Atwill: It’s all a conspiracy: 9-11; World War I; World War II. The most obvious conspiracy that we’ve suffered from was Constantine using Christianity as the foundation of the feudal system. This was clearly an insincere, conspiratorial, secret society moment where he developed the feudal system with a series of edicts and then also through an edict to Milan to start process of making Christianity a state religion so that the slave would think that there was a religious context for his condition...

The theory of Caesar’s Messiah is simply based on the sequence of these passages in the [Bible and the ancient Roman account of the Jewish war]. How much trouble is it for me to defend it? I just say -- put the texts side-by-side. I told one scholar, how old is your son? Just read it to your son side by side and have him tell you if there is parallelism. Anyone can see it. It’s obvious...

If there’s one thing that comes out of Caesar’s Messiah that I hope occurs is that it will not only end the ability of the politicians to use Christianity as a propaganda tool but eventually it will force people to then put some sunlight into the Hebrew Bible and say, wait a second, what we’re looking at, tip to stern from Genesis all the way through the Book of Revelation is the literature of oligarchs. These stories are there to fool people into giving power to people that want to rule.

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