Joe Atwill

To critics and supporters of the thesis in Caesar’s Messiah:

I believe that there is deliberate typological mapping between Jesus’s ministry as depicted in the Gospels and Josephus’ depiction of Titus’s military campaign in Wars of the Jews. The system of mapping is based upon the one that links Moses to Jesus give below. I believe that any reasonable person who understands that typology and then works through the analysis in Caesar’s Messiah will recognize that the relationship between the two ‘sons of god’ – Jesus and Titus - was deliberate.

Comments like Johann’s above are not meaningful in that they do not engage my analysis of the typology between Wars and the Gospels. The question that Johann should focus on, and the one that I believe is the future of NT scholarship, is simply by what methodology does one establish whether or not deliberate typological mapping is occurring? As I maintain that the Jesus/Titus typology is an extension of the Moses/Jesus mapping, critics need to first understand how that system is built before trying to falsify my thesis.

Without such understanding criticism will be incoherent. Richard Carrier, for example, dismissed the connection between the ‘son of Mary who is a human Passover lamb’ in Josephus and the one in the Gospels on the grounds that the family connections were not identical. Simply inspecting the first parallel of the Moses/Jesus mapping below – in which the two ‘Josephs’ are not of the same family relationship - shows that such verbatim parallelism was not used to build the mapping. Critics should also recognize that the Moses/Jesus ‘Baptism’ parallel below can only be seen within the context provided by the cumulative effect of all of the parallels. The cumulative effect is created by the entire pattern of parallel names, locations, concepts and, most importantly, sequence.

Given that Titus Flavius flatly maintained that he was the ‘Christ’ and that the earliest Christian catacombs were Flavian, positing him as the ‘son of gad’ whose visitation Jesus predicted would lead to the destruction of the Galilean towns, the encircling of Jerusalem and the raising of the Temple should be automatic. Titus is the only individual in history who actually fulfilled the prophecies Jesus gave regarding the visitation of the ‘son of man’. Since until CM no one had even tried this avenue of analysis it is clear that NT scholarship has left a catastrophic hole in its understanding of the Gospels. This will soon change.

Gen 45-50 Joseph to Egypt - Matt 2.13 Joseph to Egypt

Ex. 1 Pharaoh massacres boys – Matt 2.16 Herod massacres
boys

Ex. 4 "All the men are dead…" Matt 2.20 `They are dead…"

Ex. 12 From Egypt to Israel- Matt 2.21 From Egypt to Israel

Ex. 14 Passing through water (Baptism) – Matt 3.13 Baptism

Ex. 16 Tempted by bread- Matt 4.4 Tempted by bread

Ex. 17 Do not tempt God – Matt 4.7 Do not tempt God

Ex. 32 Worship only God- Matt 4.10 Worship only God

Joe Atwill

Johann_Kaspar

Too bad. I have no pain, quite the contrary. So you feel nothing, or what you feel is completely wrong. I seriously doubt your understanding skills here and otherwise.

I rather think I hit right on the nail.

Of course it matters a lot, especially when one wants to speak about wordplay. There is no wordplay and there is no argument. I mean rationnal argument. No lamb, no passover, no wordplay, but a crime, understood as such by all actors except maybe the mother, who should have been crazy at that point.

So you are following Chapman's crazy imagination. Not even your own idea. Too bad.

No he does not. You only are proving that you - like all xians and all people with a xian mentality - have no understanding of the meaning of this verse. Too bad.

No. Josephus never said this, neither concretely, nor figuratively. You are putting in the text what is not there. No passover, no lamb, just a desperate crime. Too bad.

I don't care of late xian fucking stupid interpretation by a anti-judaist propagandist. It is not a sacrifice, nobody, nothing is saved, it is a crime, by Josephus own words.

Again and again... It begins to be really funny. Josephus never wrote your quote. You are still thinking that Josephus wrote the War in Greek... Too bad.

Yep, it clarifies the fact that you are inventing what Josephus wrote. Like mirages you see things that are not in the text. Is it a scoop? Now according to your analysis (or Chapman's), passover is in August? Wow!

Very clarifying indeed.

Johann_Kaspar

You can believe what you want. Who will care?
Titus != Yeshua

Again fiction and crazy imagination. Vespasianus was no god. Was Titus crucified? Should be a scoop! And of course you don't understand the meaning of "son of god"...

And that is supposed to be an argument? Only words. You are linking common words to create your "typology" and are discarding at the same time the context and the very meaning of these words.

You want to tell other how they should think? This is a little presomptuous from your part.

Wow, we have messianist Jews aclaiming Titus as their new king! Wonderful. There is nothing to falsify. Everything is twisted to suit your preconceived imaginary ideas.

There is no connection at all between a crime and a sacrifice and an execution. See previous post: no passover, no lamb, nothing left for a "typology".

Only in your dream.

Wrong. In Exodus they are not going into water.

Wrong. In ex16 they are not tempted, they are requesting. You are confusing with de8:3. Too bad.

But you are on the good track studying Hebrew literature and how it is working. Start by studying the language could be a meaningful advice.

Joe Atwill

Johann:

Your comments are too irrational and obscene to respond to. I ask that the moderator remove your post.

Joe Atwill

mountainman

Hi Joe,

I'd like to ask a question about your theory of the history
of antiquity. Let's assume for the moment that you are
correct, and that the gospels are based on some form of
fabrication that has been mapped to the life of an earlier
Caesar ... Titus?

The question is what constraints have you determined for
the actual fabrication itself. When were the writings first
put together, and by whom, and where? Thanks.

Joe Atwill

Mountainman:

The original Gospel(s) were probably written in the six months following the death of Vespasian. I explain my reasoning for this conjecture in CM. They would have been written in the Flavian court – there is a witticism in Wars relating to this - 7.5. 162. Certainly Tiberius Alexander is one of the candidates for authorship. He accepted the Flavians as gods and was the nephew of Philo the famous Jewish philosopher and theologian, so he would have had the expertise in Judaism necessary for the production of the Jesus story. As far as who exactly wrote the text or what was done with them in the first century I have no idea.

Joe

S.C.Carlson

This is pretty fun. The two of you agree that the gospels were written at the Emperor's behest, but disagree as to which one. Let the best man win!

Stephen

P.S. Who's got dibs on Elagabalus?

Johann_Kaspar

Thank you sooooooooooooo much! That is the best argument I ever read. I mean the best argument that I hit right on the nail.

Johann_Kaspar

And more unsupported fiction. The "original" gospel was written before the fall of Jerusalem.

mountainman

That's just conjecture and conditioned opinion, tendered by Eusebius,
but without any archeological and/or scientific evidence to support it.
It is certainly not an historical fact, the above claim.

This much we know for certain - the "original" bible was published
c.330 CE by a supreme imperial mafia thug, emminent christian
theologian, proselyter and malevolent dictator.