Free Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition by Joseph Atwill Page A

lampooning Jesus, what was his purpose? An obvious explanation is that he wrote the passage to amuse a group by whom the grim joke would be understood. In other words, he would have created it to be enjoyed by the Flavians and their inner circle.
    This conclusion is especially plausible in light of the fact that there were individuals within the Flavian court who were aware of Christianity around the time Josephus published Wars of the Jews. Further, there were four colleges in Rome that were responsible for overseeing the religions within the empire. Because religion was an important tool of the state, these colleges had considerable political power.  From Augustus on, the emperor was a member of all four colleges, one of which, the Quindecimviri Sacris Faciundis, was responsible for the regulation of foreign cults in Rome. All the Flavian emperors were members of this college and would have studied Christianity as a foreign cult during this era.
    Moreover, the most obvious reason to believe that the Flavians were familiar with Christianity is that so much of the New Testament is related to the family. The Flavians brought about the fulfillment of all of Jesus’ doomsday prophecies—the destruction of the temple, the encircling of Jerusalem with a wall, the towns of Galilee being brought low, and the destruction of what Jesus describes as the “wicked generation.” Titus’ mistress, Bernice, and Tiberius Alexander, his chief of staff during the siege of Jerusalem, are actually named within the New Testament. A cult whose canon prophesied the accomplishments of the Flavians, named individuals within its inner circle, and actually had converts within the imperial family, would certainly have been scrutinized during an era when the regulation of religion was so important that the emperor himself was involved with it.
    Titus is known to have reviewed Wars of the Jews . As noted above, Josephus wrote that Titus so wished that “the knowledge of these affairs should be taken from these books alone, that he affixed his own signature to them.” Thus, Titus certainly had read the passage describing the Mary who ate her son and, considering the traditions connecting his family to Christianity, could well have understood its ironic parallels with the mother of Jesus. Again, though Jesus seems to be speaking symbolically when he speaks of having his flesh eaten as a Passover sacrifice, in Josephus’ history we see a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words, which renders them blackly comic.
    If the passage was a satire of Jesus then a number of statements Josephus makes within it can be seen as double entendres. The reader need only read these statements from the perspective that the Flavians had invented Christianity, and their satirical meaning will become obvious.  Some of these are found in Josephus’ narration:
     
It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard …
While I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates …
I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity …
I have innumerable witnesses to it in my own age
     
    But the most important play on words is found within Mary’s address to her “miserable child,” wherein she states:
     
“… be thou a fury to these seditious varlets and a myth to the world, which is all that is now wanting to complete the calamities of us Jews.”
     
    As I have suggested above, this quote seems to have been invented by Josephus. Not only were there no witnesses to hear them, but they are, on their face, dubious. Would a mother who has eaten her son really wish him to become a myth to the world? Further, taken literally, Mary’s words seem incoherent. Why would her child become a “fury” to the “varlets”—that is, the Jewish rebels against Rome—by being cannibalized? And why would this “complete the calamities of us Jews”?
    Within the context of a lampoon of Jesus, the meaning of the phrase becomes clear. The