Jesus just a Roman ploy?
One Joseph Atwill says the Romans invented the idea of Jesus Christ as a form of psychological warfare to control the population. He describes himself as a ‘biblical scholar’, but has no formal qualifications in any of the relevant disciplines (he studied computer science at college).
In a book titled Caesar’s Messiah, Atwill claims the Jesus of the Bible never existed. Rather, Emperor Titus Flavius (reigned ad 79–81) created a competing belief system (Jesus Christ) to stop zealous Jews spreading their religion. The thesis is bizarre; Titus had no need for anything fancy, since he had already decisively defeated the Jews militarily in ad 70. And why would he want to start a belief system among the Gentiles that might (and did) challenge emperor-worship?
In an interview about his ‘discoveries’, Atwill said: “What my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break.”
Atwill is just another sad voice arguing for the ‘Christ-myth’ but has no support from any serious historian. Many of those serious historians have no vested interest in Christianity or the Creation/Gospel message, yet unhesitatingly declare that Jesus was a real person in history. Indeed, Atwill has proven an embarrassment even to his fellow Christ-mythers, although that’s like the Tea Leaf Readers Association complaining about the wrong type of tea. However, this didn’t stop a favourable ‘tweet’ from Richard Dawkins, the Apostle of Atheopathy himself.
- Scholar: Jesus was invented by the Romans as form of “psychological warfare”, news.softpedia.com, 10 October 2013.
- See also review at tektonics.org/books/csmessrvw.php.
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