Caesar’s Messiah (2005)

I’ve always had this nagging feeling of unease when reading the stories of Jesus in the New Testament. I wrote of it before, preferring The Gospel of Thomas to the other ‘authorized’ gospels, even John’s. That a source document (Q) was used by the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) seems obvious, with very few changes between them. But the idea that Josephus and his ‘Antiquities of the Jews‘ was that source document seems logical now that I’m reading “Caesar’s Messiah“. (The winners always get to write their version of the story, while the losers get to limp away and lick their wounds.) What happened to the Truth? It got buried in the desert along with the ‘other’ gospels, now considered Gnostic and pseudo. Did Christianity exist before the Gospels were written down? Of course, how else would Nero have had a scapegoat religion full of low-life followers to sacrifice in the Bread and Circus extravaganzas of his reign? That fire in Rome? Started by the Christians, of course. The new Roman Emperors starting with Vespasian, were newly converted Christians. Titus was his son.

It’s the use of the word Satire that gets stuck in my craw. If the Gospels were only meant to amuse the Flavian family, it’s a shame that they survived to the present day, because people now take every word as ‘gospel’. All except the Jews, of course, because they are made out to be the villains of the piece. And Jesus made a new religion, which was not his intention. Portraying Jesus as ‘not of this world’ makes him mythic from the very beginning. To be a pacifist in an ongoing struggle between the Jews and Romans seems to be misguided at best, utterly useless at worst. No wonder the early Christians were scathing of those who didn’t have Gnosis, the inner knowing that told truth from fiction.

Make no mistake: the New Testament is antisemitic. The Jews are painted in such a poor light that it’s no wonder that they reject Jesus as their true Messiah; this is propaganda at its most effective result. The QAnon effect in this day and age is testament to that fact.

“By their fruits ye shall know them…”