BR--Creating Christ. How Roman Emperors invented Christianity Flashcards
Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors invented Christianity .. James S. Valliant and Warren Fahy Both local and Roman deities were venerated together. Inscriptions record their side by side worship. At this time religion and politics were one, and the Romans’ policy of religious tolerance proved to be a political advantage that helped their empire endure for centuries. Then came the strict monotheism of Judaism and this presented Roman policy with its greatest challenge.[MN: So in ancient Rome, all Gods were worshiped together and everyone was happy, until the monotheistic Jewish religion. This called for a final solution, and the syncretism of all Gods into one. Namely Jesus. The Roman government made Jesus into the expected Jewish Messiah and the Romans dictated the gospels that were written so that Jesus had all the popular miracles and attributes of the most popular Pagan Gods and also that Jesus was a strong supporter of the Roman government. Notice in all gospels, Jesus never ever bad mouths the Roman government, but does bad mouth the Jews and Jewish leaders. These third person gospels were engineered by Roman Flavian Dynasty for three generations of Emperors who wrote the gospels to heavily favor the Romans and despise the Jews. Especially during WWII, with the Roman Catholic golden boy, Adolf Hitler who murdered 6 million Jews.
The New Testament was written in the years just before and in between the two great Jewish Revolts, from the middle decades of the first century through the early decades of the second century. As Gods flourished across the Empire at this time, the Romans came to seek a single unifying political force in religion for themselves. In this book, we will see how, by the 4th century, Christians began modifying the actual text of previous writers in order to make those older texts more consistent with their current views. Loc. 122: For both the Roman state and the early Christians, this was a period of religious invention in which practicing outright religious fraud was a matter of routine.
It has only been legally possible in the last three centuries for anyone to publicly question Christiany’s origins without incurring a charge of heresy and an death penalty.
WHY CHRISTIANITY WAS INVENTED AS POLITICAL PROPAGANDA AND ENDURED INTO MODERN TIMES AS A MAJOR RELIGION.
Did Jesus come back? This book says it is possible he came back as Vespasian and Titus. This fulfills both Jewish and Christian prophecies by bringing a new era of peace to the war torn world. [Koine is pronounced “Coin A”
Christians who refused to worship Roman state deities could be subject to criminal prosecution and even execution. Loc: 475. Jews were exempt to bow to Roman Gods, but Christians were given this test and punished if they refused to bow down to a Roman God. So why the assertion that Christians were hunted down and slaughtered by Romans as early as the 1st. century?
We ust remember that by the year 64 CE, when the great fire decimated the city of Rome, the Gospels themselves had not yet been written. They would not be written until the Flavian era that followed Nero. Therefore there were no Roman Friendly Christians at this time.
By the first century CE, about 10% of the Roman population was Jewish, perhaps 7 million. The evidence suggests that it was these messianic rebels and not Christians who were martyred and persecuted by Romans during the first two centuries of the Common Era. They were crucified by the thousands. It is certain that they would refuse to acknowledge any Roman emperor as divine or in any way their master. LOC: 659. Paul emphasizes that Christ’s death and resurrection liberated Christians from the constraints of Mosaic Law, thus eliminating the need for such practices as Kosher diet and circumcision. In short, he proclaimed that Christians were now “Free in Christ” [MN: So it appears Christianity was manipulated to produce harmony between heathen, Jew and gentile. I can see a conspiracy by Roman government to promote the invented religion of Christianity. The Book’s argument is to make the Roman government where all men are treated equal in religious terms and to stop the rebels, wars and civil disobedience.] So it is a political propaganda to stop unrest. And today people think there was a savior named Jesus, who is God, and who died for our sins and we all go to heaven. But in reality, it was just a ploy to stop rebellion. For centuries later, other powers that be threw in pearly gates, streets of gold, live forever and there is hell to pay if you are not saved and live the Christian life. It is a lot more plausible than eternal life in a fairy tale heaven.
[MN: Here is evidence from 2BCE that the cross is a symbol of Apollo. Notice the famous circle crown. So cross was a symbol of Apollo centuries before it was used for crucifixions. The Apollo crown added to symbolize Jesus’s crown of thorns. Foreign coins depicting pagan deities could not even be used to purchase animals for sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem. [MN: This explains why there were money changers at the temple where Jesus overturned the tables.] Roman emperors were worshiped as gods while they were still alive. Loc. 1045.. A year is measured by the movements of the sun, and the sun may be said to reach “maturity” at the Summer Solstice only to be reborn during the Winter Solstice. [MN: Where “Born Again” came from.]The Colosseum was originally called the Flavian Amphitheater. The Amphitheater was built from the general’s spoils of the Jewish war. Loc. 1096. The placing of halos around the heads of saints in Christian art probably originates from the light rays artistically depicted around the heads of solar deities like Apollo, Helios and Sol Invictus.
[MN: Why do I not go to church? You can ask any preacher or priest in America the question, “Why were there money changers in the temple that Jesus overturned the tables? Why would you need a money changer? The preacher/priest would not have any idea, because they do not at all understand early church history.]
In the space of a year and a half, Rome went through four successive new emperors. Loc. 1204.
Syncretism. Loc 1235.
Many gods in the ancient world were said to have suffered on earth, to have been martyred and then resurrected, prior to Jesus. Loc. 1317
The Roman Emperor Vespasian performed the exact same healing miracles that Jesus did in the Gospels.
Jewish prophecies of a coming messiah were a fundamental motivation behind the Jewish revolt. Vespasian and his son Titus fulfilled the prophecy of the “Christ” predicted by Hebrew scripture according to both Roman and Jewish sources. Even the Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai declared that Vespasian was the messiah of Hebrew prophecy, according to the Talmud. Loc. 1383
The emperors of Rome, in bringing peace on earth were saviors not just of Rome, but of all nations, and the whole world.
Card #4: Anyone who believes in Jesus is an atheist because he doesn’t accept the million of other human gods. This should be my official stand!]
[MN: Interesting. This Pagan death bird builds a nest of frankincense and myrrh. The very same ingredients the magi bring to baby Jesus. Loc. 2535. Many kings and princes, in times of pestilence, when they had been instructed by an oracle, have given themselved up to death, in order that by their own BLOOD they might deliver their fellow citizens from destruction. [MN: The blood of salvation. Here you can plainly see, it was a ritual of royality to sacrifice yourself to save the pagan kingdom. This ritual was written into the story of Jesus! HERE IT IS. The story of Chrisitianities leader following Pagan tradition!
WHAT MORE PROOF DO YOU NEED? Jesus is a made up story of Midrash and toplogy tradition of pagan kings and royality!.
It seems they never do anything original. They alway go with what worked before!] The prophecies of Jesus in the Gospels readily lend themselves to establishing Titus as the Jewish Messiah. Herod the Great killed not only strangers but members of his own family, as well, including three of his own sons.
We have seen that imperial politics sometimes inspired religious syncretism. In the case of Philo, we see an example of that kind of syncretism naturally occurring among Jews as they assimilated into Hellenistic and Roman culture.
[MN: The Jews were engaged in several horrible wars with the Roman Empire and absolutely hated their guts! There was no way the Jewish people would acquiesce to the empire that ruined their temples and cities. Good point here. Gospels were all written well after the facts.These gospels were the Roman vetted versions while a hundred other gospels that told the real historical facts and events were destroyed by the early Catholic Church in the dark ages.
The bonifide Jewish messiah was to be a human warrior to save the Jewish nation. In the four chosen and heavily vetted gospels we have today, Jesus is a pacifist and Roman regime sympathizer. Not at all the great warrior the Old Testament was forecasting.** **[MN: Further explains why Jesus never came back, because Flavin Titus became the return of Jesus as a different person, Flavin Titus.The book is saying the whole purpose of the surviviing gospels was to make Flavin Titus the long anticipated Jewish Messiah. The big surprise was that Titus was not Jewish.! Loc. 4260. The first dynasty of Roman emperors thus blatanlty used foreign religon to establish the legitimacy of their rule over their newly conquered subjects. This is how the Romans conducted war.
“Conclusion”This same family of Roman emperors produced a 1st Century “Pope”. Most of the New Testament was composed during their reign. Their family tomb became the first Christian catacomb. Their family symbol was Christianity’s first icon: The anchor.
The founder of the Flavian dynasty, Vespasian, presented himself as “the New Serapis” and performed healing miracles identical to Christ’s, syncretizing pagan elements of a mystery religion with his own status as the Jewish Messiah.
Both Vespasian and his son, Titus, were worshiped as savior gods in the East
After winning the war with the Jews, a conflict that may have taken more than a million lives, The Romans found themselves the owners of tens of thousands of Jewish slaves. Many if not most of these slaves were messianic Jews. Titus took thousands of his own Jewish slaves to Rome to build his triumphanl arch and the Colosseum, where so many of their countrymen would later be sacrificed for entertainment.
This new form of Judaism repeatedly commands slaves to obey their masters–even cruel and harsh masters. Romans were ruthless and pragmatic conquerors. They absorbed elements of their culture and adapting it to their own practical purposes in service of the Empire. IT WAS THEIR INSTINCT AND CUSTOM TO SYNCRETIZE THE RELIGIOUS SOURCE OF CONFLICT INTO A CULTURAL JUSTIFICATION. The Romans did it before with the Greeks–even as Alexander the Great’s generals had done it before them with conquered Egyptian and Persian nations.
Dolphins were the symbol for some time to come, including the building of Constantinople. By the 4th Century, it became necessary to replace the old Flavian symbols entirely. [MN: It was very common the the day to synchronize religions right after a conquest to make the masses “Buy into” a new savior. This pacified the conquered with unity, and quieted civil disobedience.]
Religions have endured for millennia by adapting over time to accommodate different eras and cultures.
