
© PR Web UK
London - American Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ. His presentation will be part of a one-day symposium entitled "Covert Messiah" at Conway Hall in Holborn (full details can be found
here).
Although to many scholars his theory seems outlandish, and is sure to upset some believers, Atwill regards his evidence as conclusive and is confident its acceptance is only a matter of time. "I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do not want to directly cause Christians any harm," he acknowledges, "but this is important for our culture. Alert citizens need to know the truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false histories and false gods. They often do it to obtain a social order that is against the best interests of the common people."
Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire. "Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century," he explains. "When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system. That's when the 'peaceful' Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to 'give onto Caesar' and pay their taxes to Rome."
Was Jesus based on a real person from history? "The short answer is no," Atwill insists, "in fact he may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there's simply nothing left."

© Opposing Views
Atwill's most intriguing discovery came to him while he was studying
Wars of the Jews by Josephus [the only surviving first-person historical account of first-century Judea] alongside the New Testament. "I started to notice a sequence of parallels between the two texts," he recounts. "Although it's been recognised by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophesies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman war, I was seeing dozens more. What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern. The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar."
How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinised books of all time? "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognised the literary game being played." Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"
Is this the beginning of the end of Christianity? "Probably not," grants Atwill, "but what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. We've got the evidence now to show exactly where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."
Atwill encourages skeptics to challenge him at Conway Hall, where after the presentations there is likely to be a lively Q&A session. Joining Mr.Atwill will be fellow scholar Kenneth Humphreys, author of the book
Jesus Never Existed.Further information can be
found here.Joseph Atwill is the author of the best-selling book Caesar's Messiah
and its upcoming sequel The Single Strand.
Reader Comments
Leviticus 16
And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering.
And Aaron shall offer his bullock of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make an atonement for himself, and for his house.
And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat.
And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering.
But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.
you could easily see the manipulations and propaganda in the New Testament, however it is difficult to day if these were or not a result of later editing; if we accept the above theory, maybe we could go even further and say Jesus if he existed was a secret agent of the Roman empire used to pacify the Jews :))
No one lives.
No one dies.
No one cares.
Only government/business and government/business-oriented propaganda, aka P.R. or 'perception management', there is no other motive....
Uh huh.
ned
p.s. great comment by Highland Fruit Loop!
Nothing you said there makes sense nor makes a point.
It is not rational, but always a dig at sott. Not one thing you wrote relates to this article.
And regarding your comment below:
You do know about pathology right?
In your way, you are censoring sott by doing character attacks and jokes. The trolls that complain about censorship use that argument of "free speech" in order to allow their abuse of not using rational debate.
I am all for free speech, but all you add is noise and garbage.
Over and over and over again, wherever I go on this supposed wonderful and great internet, I say: DO NOT CENSOR, ALTER OR REMOVE (BANISH) COMMENTS OR COMMENTERS.
Amen.
ned
Free speech doesn't mean we have to listen to comments that have nothing to do with the article at hand.
Jo Atwill's "Caesar's Messiah" is bases upon a Flavian creation of Jesus, with Titus as Jesus. Contrary to Carotta "Jesus was Caesar", his book is not out of print since there was no rush from sott members to buy it on amazon.
There is a movie in support of the book, with talks from a guy named Timothy Freke. I wonder why Atwill did not stop from a while to examine what Freke has to say. Freke wrote a lot about gnostic teachings and made quite a few statements available :
- Fathers of the church did not know of a historical Jesus. Paul or Origen only knew of a birth, a crucifixion and a ressurection. So Jesus was another "dying god of the mysteries", as Osiris, Dionysos, Adonis, Attis, Mithras, Odin...
- There are strong parallels between Jesus and greek philosophers, more than a cynic feature in Q. Pyhagoricians are quite the same people as the first Christians (communities, fish symbol, etc.). Pythagoras (in Laertius ?) was able to tell how many fishes were taken. Jesus said the apostles had fished 153. 153 is a sacred number to pythagoricians. Socrates friends wanted to pay thirty coins of silver to avoid death penalty. Jesus said in the gospels "take this bitter cup away from me".
- There are parallels (Atwill show them to) between the stories of the Old and the New Testaments. A slaugther of the innocent in an egyptian context for example, that the saviour of Israel/ Mankind avoid...
So are Roman emperors, Greek philosophers, Jewish Messiahs different faces of the god of the mysteries ? I would add that each of these traditions, included in the big "indo-european" litterature share strong ties with the arctic sun god and an arctic environment.
I mean, do we care if Tom Sawyer was a real person? No.
All we care about is the wonderful writing and the ideals that are highlighted. Which is the way it should be.
How about, instead of attacking the veracity of the existence of some fabled superhero, we focus on critical thinking and the observation of shared reality?
If more religiously zealot people were to work on their critical thinking skills they would realize how silly they are to blindly follow any literature, regardless of who wrote it or when it was written.
They would come to the realization that we all, individually, create our existences and that you only get from life what you put into it.
It's just that simple.
The answers to life's questions resides in our hearts, not on the pages of some moldy old book.
Maybe Mr. Atwill can start deconstructing the bible itself.
The BIBLE: Begins with a talking snake - ends with a four-headed monster. NON FICTION?