On the Claim That
the Romans Invented Jesus
So now we face the latest
pseudo-scholarly attempt to discredit Christianity. It has happened before. In 2007, for example, the Canadian
pseudo-archaeologist Simcha Jacobivici, working with James Cameron of Titanic fame of all people, released a
film titled “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” In
that film Jacobivici claimed to have discovered an ossuary, that is, a bone
box, that he claimed did, or at least might have, contained the bones of
Jesus. His evidence supported no such
conclusion, and his moment of fame with his unsupported theory quickly
passed. Claims of historical discoveries
that somehow contradict the foundational stories of the Christian faith aren’t
all that uncommon.
The latest is a claim by Joseph
Atwill that the Flavians, the imperial dynasty that ruled Rome from 69 CE and
96 CE, invented Jesus Christ as a way to pacify the restless and rebellious
Jews of the Roman Empire. Atwill’s web
site, caesarsmessiah.com/blog/about, tells of nothing in Atwill’s background
that qualifies him as an historian of the origins of Christianity other than
his interest in the subject and his supposedly having read “hundreds of books”
on the subject. If he is a scholar at
all, he is an entirely self-made one.
That in itself says nothing about his theory. You don’t have to be an academically trained
scholar to discover new historical truths.
Still, Atwill’s lack of credentials is at least a cause for caution in
accepting his conclusions. A closer
review of his claims shows that much more than caution is needed in approaching
them. I readily acknowledge that I have
not read Atwill’s publications on the subject.
Still, some very good people I know are very upset by his claims, so I
write this review based on media reports of his work only. If someone who has read Atwill’s work can
show that something here is wrong, I’m willing to listen; but I doubt that it
will happen.
Atwill claims that Christianity
began not as a religion but as a propaganda campaign by the Roman
government. He notes, correctly, that
many of the Jews of the Roman Empire were waiting for the appearance of a
Messiah, most commonly understood to be a king in the lineage of King David. This royal Messiah, they thought, would come
and defeat the Romans in battle, then usher in the Kingdom of God. The Jews were indeed a constant bother to the
Romans. They rebelled against Rome
repeatedly, most notably in 66 CE, when the rebels gained control of
Jerusalem. It took the Romans four years
to defeat them. In 70 CE the Romans
retook the city, razed it, destroyed the Temple, and dispersed the occupants of
the city. Note that 66 CE is three years
before the Flavians, who Atwill says invented Jesus, came to power and that
they came to power one year before the destruction of Jerusalem. The Jews rebelled again in 132 CE under the
leadership of a man known as Bar Kochba.
The Romans certainly had reason to want to pacify the Jews. They did it, however, not through propaganda
tricks but in the usual Roman way, through the massive application of military
force.
Atwill apparently contends that
the Romans at some point exhausted their conventional means of controlling the
populace. I take him to mean that they
concluded that their violence wasn’t working and that they needed another
tactic. I am aware of no evidence that
Rome ever gave up violence as the primary means of controlling their empire, so
I find the contention that they concluded that they had exhausted their traditional
means against the Jews to be unfounded on its face. They sure didn’t withhold violence in dealing
with the Bar Kochba rebellion in the second century CE. Still, Atwill contends that the Romans
invented the story of what he sees as a peaceful Messiah to counter the Jewish
belief in a coming violent Messiah. One
news report refers to Atwill’s belief that Jesus was a turn-the-other-cheek
pacifist who encouraged people to give unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s,
meaning that they should pay their taxes to Rome. I’ll return to those contentions
shortly. They both mischaracterize Jesus
quite badly.
Atwill bases his conclusions
largely on what he sees as parallels between the accounts of the military
campaign against the rebellion of 66 CE in a work called War of the Jews by the Jewish/Roman author Josephus and the story
of Jesus in the New Testament. Josephus
is indeed a major source for the history of the Jews in the first century
CE. Scholars have used Josephus as a
source for centuries. War of the Jews was completed in 78 CE,
so if the Flavians relied on it their work has to date from 78 CE or
later. The account I have of Atwill’s
work doesn’t detail these parallels. It
is true, however, that scholars have long recognized patterns in the way the
Gospels tell the story of Jesus that are almost certainly not historical. One school of thought, for example, teaches
that the Gospel of Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, is structured according to
the liturgical year of Jewish religious observation. My source on Atwill quotes him as saying
“What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and
locations of Jesus (sic) ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of
events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] (sic) Titus Flavius
as described by Josephus.” Atwill
concludes, according to this report, that “This is clear evidence of a
deliberately constructed pattern. The
biography of Jesus is actually constructed, top to stern, on prior stories, but
especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar.”
Acknowledging once more that I
haven’t read Atwill’s work, let’s look at that contention. The Roman army that conquered Jerusalem in 70
CE advanced on Jerusalem from the north.
The Greco-Roman city of Sepphoris in Galilee, a short distance from the
tiny village of Nazareth, was one of their bases of operation. As Mark tells the story, Jesus ministry began
in the north, in and around Nazareth and on the western shore of the Sea of
Galilee. He then undertook a journey
south to Jerusalem. His movement was
from north to south, as was the movement of the conquering Roman army in 70
CE. Does that prove that Mark’s story of
Jesus is based on the movement of the Roman army? Hardly.
There simply is no other way to get from Galilee to Jerusalem than north
to south. Yes, the Gospel of Mark was
written after the year 70 CE. That
hardly proves that it was based on Josephus’ account of the war of 70 CE. Indeed, it is unlikely that Mark was written
as late as 78 CE when The Jewish War
was completed, a fact that in itself casts considerable doubt on Atwill’s
theory.
That’s about as much as I know
about Atwill’s contentions, but I think it is enough for me to make some more
meaningful critiques of those contentions.
First of all, to believe Atwill we must disregard a couple of centuries
of work by highly trained biblical scholars.
It is well established in the scholarly literature that the oldest
Christian works that we have are the authentic letters of Paul, beginning with
First Corinthians and ending chronologically with Romans. There is a broad scholarly consensus that
those letters date from the 50s of the first century CE into the early 60s of
that century. In other words, they all
date from before the Jewish rebellion of 66 CE (although after some earlier rebellions,
including one in 4 BCE), and they date well before the publication of The Jewish War. If some later Roman wrote them he sure did an
amazing job of convincing later scholars the letters are older than that
Roman. I don’t know if Atwill ever addresses
these oldest Christian documents or if he only works with the Gospels. If he ignores Paul’s authentic letters that
is a major weakness of his scholarship.
Here’s another fact worth
considering. Probably the oldest and most
authentic reference that we have to Christianity outside the New Testament is a
statement by the Roman historian Tacitus.
Speaking of Nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the burning of
Rome in 64 CE Tacitus said:
Nero fastened the guilt…on a class
hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin,
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of
…Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the
moment, broke out again not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but
even in Rome…..
This reference to the Christian movement having spread
even to Rome itself refers to an event from 64 CE. That’s two years before the outbreak of the
Jewish rebellion of 66 CE. It’s fourteen
years before the publication of The
Jewish Wars. There’s no way the
Flavians created that reference. Clearly
Christianity was a known movement in Rome well before Atwill says the Flavians
invented it.
To move to another point: To support his contention that the Roman
government invented Christianity to counter the rebelliousness of the Jews
Atwill presents a picture of Jesus as not only nonviolent but as passive. He reads Jesus as having told people simply
to accept Roman occupation and domination.
In adopting this view of Jesus Atwill is of course in good company. That is the picture of Jesus the Christian
church has propounded for a very long time.
It is, however, a rank distortion of the historical Jesus as we have him
in those Gospels the Flavians supposedly made up. In the report of Atwill that I have there is
a reference to two sayings of Jesus from the Gospels. The first is the one we usually know in its
King James version: “Render therefore unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”
The line is found in all three Synoptic Gospels. See Mark 12:13-17; Matthew 22:17-21; and Luke
20:22-25. I’ll look at the oldest of
those references, the one from Mark. The
entire pericope reads:
Then they sent to him some
Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we
know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard
people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or
not? Should we pay them, or should we
should we not?’ But knowing their
hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius [the common Roman coin of
the day] and let me see it.’ And they
brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose
head is this, and whose title?’ They
answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Jesus said to
them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the
things that are God’s.’ And they were
utterly amazed at him.
There are several things about this
story, some of them obvious and some of them perhaps hidden, that suggest that
it is far from simple and that we are not to take it simply. The Jewish leaders, both religious (the
Pharisees) and political (the Herodians) come to “trap” Jesus in something he
would say. Jesus knows it’s a trap, for
Mark tells us that he knew his interrogators’ “hypocrisy” and asks why they are
putting him to the test. Jesus knows
that the question he is asked is far more dangerous than it probably appears to
us to be. He is caught between two very
difficult realities. Whether or not it
was lawful to pay taxes to Rome was one of the hot issues in the Judaism of Jesus’
day. It put faithful Jews in an
impossible position. If they didn’t pay
Rome’s taxes they were breaking Roman law.
Rome was never loathe to apply force to get its taxes. Refusing to pay was dangerous. Yet many Jews believed that it violated the
law of Moses, that is, the Jewish religious law, for people to pay the Roman taxes. Rome was a pagan invader. It’s coins, with which the tax had to be
paid, were idolatrous, for they called the Emperor a son of God. Not paying the tax violated Roman law. Paying it violated Jewish law. Jesus knew that if he gave a straightforward
answer to the question he had been asked he would be in trouble either with the
Romans or with the Jewish religious authorities, and at this point of his story
he wasn’t ready to be in trouble with either of them.
So he essentially wiggles his
way out of his predicament. He shows
that the Roman coin belongs to the Emperor.
The Emperor authorized it. His
image and title are on it. So give it
back to him, Jesus says. The clear
implication is that there is nothing idolatrous in using the Roman coin for
that purpose despite the coin’s patent idolatry because what the coin says
about the Emperor, that he is in some sense divine, is meaningless. Jesus never condoned idolatry, and he wasn’t
condoning it here. He is saying the
idolatry of the coin is nothing. Caesar
is not divine. He may not know that, but
we do; so go ahead and give him back his coin.
With that understanding you break neither Roman law and risk punishment nor
Jewish law and risk committing sin. That
Jesus’ Jewish questioners understood his answer in this way is shown by what
Mark says their response was: “And they
were utterly amazed at him.” Why were
they amazed? Because they knew that his
answer was a lot more complex than simply go ahead and pay the Romans their
taxes. They thought they had him trapped
between the devil and the deep blue sea, and somehow he had gotten out of their
trap. So let’s not take Jesus’ statement
here as simply complying with Roman demands.
It both does and it doesn’t. It
does externally: Pay the tax. It doesn’t internally: Understand that Caesar is nothing. Atwill reads Jesus’ saying here as advocating
nothing but compliance with Rome. He’s
wrong.
Then there’s the notion that
Atwill accepts that Jesus is a pacifist.
Apparently he relies on the famous line “turn the other cheek.” Again he’s in good company. The Christian church has taught a kind of
worldly passivity using that line for a very long time. Again however that teaching gets Jesus all
wrong. Jesus is nonviolent, but he isn’t
passive. Jesus actually taught active,
assertive, creative resistance to evil, including evil coming from Rome. The late, great theologian Walter Wink taught
us that truth about Jesus in his exegesis of the passage from which the line
“turn the other cheek” comes from. I’ll
give a brief recap of that exegesis here.
The line “turn the other cheek”
comes from Matthew 5:38-44, part of the Sermon on the Mount. Those lines read in relevant part:
‘You have heard that it was said,
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give
your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second
mile….
‘You have heard that it was said,
‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you.
These lines surely sound like they’re counseling
passivity, but they aren’t. First of
all, the Greek word translated here as “resist” doesn’t mean don’t resist at
all. It means do not resist with
military force. It means do not resist
with violence. Next, turn the other
cheek isn’t passive either. Jesus says
“if anyone strikes you on the right
cheek.” The use of the right cheek here
isn’t coincidental. It is essential to
the passage’s meaning. In Jesus’s world
no one used the left hand for anything.
It was considered unclean. The
image Jesus uses is of someone being struck on the right cheek by the
assailant’s right hand, which means the blow had to be with the back of the
hand. Try it, without actually hitting
anyone of course, if you need a demonstration.
Striking with the back of the hand wasn’t just a physical blow, it was a
putdown. It was how a master disciplined
a servant or a slave. The image is of
one in a superior social position assaulting someone below him in social
standing. When the person who is struck
turns the other, that is, the left, cheek, now the assailant has an impossible
choice. Either he can break off the attack,
or he can acknowledge his victim as his social equal by striking him forehand. The subordinate person who has been attacked has
turned the tables on the assailant, and he or she has done it nonviolently. There is similar exegesis of “give your cloak
as well” and “go also the second mile” that show that these two are examples of
an oppressed person creatively but nonviolently turning the tables on an
oppressor.[1]
Jesus says do not resist an evildoer
violently, then he gives three examples of creative nonviolent resistance. He doesn’t say don’t resist. He never says don’t resist. Atwill is echoing a great deal of Christian
misunderstanding of Jesus, but that doesn’t make him right. He’s wrong.
Any Jew in first century Palestine would have understood his
meaning. We don’t because we have lost
the Greek original of the sayings along with the context in which they were
originally said. There really is no
doubt that the Jesus movement in its origins was radically anti-imperial. John Dominic Crossan and others have done
great work in developing the anti-imperial nature of the teachings and lives of
both Jesus and Paul. If some Roman set
out to invent a Messiah who wasn’t a threat to Rome he never would have
invented the Jesus we have in the Gospels.
Then there’s the question of
just which Jesus the Flavians are supposed to have invented. The New Testament hardly gives us one,
consistent picture of Jesus, especially of Jesus as the Christ. Did the Flavians invent Paul’s crucified and
risen Lord, even though Paul wrote before the Flavians ever ascended to power
in Rome? Did they invent Mark’s
suffering Messiah? Or Matthew’s new
Moses? Or Luke’s Good News for the
poor? Or John’s Word of God
Incarnate? Did they invent James’
emphasis on works or Paul’s emphasis on grace?
Did they invent the Letter to the Hebrews’ picture of Jesus as the great
high priest who both is and performs the ultimate sacrifice for the forgiveness
of human sin? Did they write Paul’s “In
Christ there is no longer male and female,” or did they write the misogynist
passages of the Pastoral Epistles? Did
they write a story of Paul constantly arrested and in prison for his
anti-imperial rhetoric or did they write the comply-with-the-government passage
of Romans 13:1-7? Did they write John’s
Jesus saying God did not send God’s Son into the world to condemn the world, or
did they write the profoundly anti-Roman book Revelation with which the New
Testament ends and that so roundly and violently condemns the world? The New Testament is so complex, so diverse,
even so contradictory within itself that it is truly impossible to believe that
one group of people made it all up. That
statement and that conclusion remain true even if we limit our analysis to the Gospels.
Now let’s shift to a deeper
level of analysis. Whatever the origins
of the Christian faith were, indeed even in the seemingly impossible case that
Atwill is right, one thing Atwill cannot deny is that the Christian movement
spread broadly and rather rapidly through the Roman Empire. Of course, it spread mostly through the
Gentiles not through the Jews, who according to Atwill were the Flavians’
audience for their fabrication, but never mind.
Whatever the historical truth about Jesus is, the undeniable fact is
that by the fourth century CE Christianity had become such a force in the Roman
Empire that the Emperor Constantine had first to legalize it, then favor
it. Eventually it became the official
state religion of the Empire. More than that,
Christianity survived the fall of Rome and went on to become the largest
religious tradition in the history of the world. Yes, that spread of the faith was due in part
to the imperial policies of empires that came after Rome; but it is still true
that Christianity functions as true faith in God for an enormous number of
people, and it has functioned that way for a very long time.
To use the language I developed
in my book Liberating Christianity
and that many others developed before me, Christianity has functioned as a
system of true symbols and myths for more people than any other faith in the
history of the world. Whatever its
origins, Christianity is true for me and countless other people because it
functions to connect us to God. It
functions deep in our souls. It’s
stories and symbols touch us, move us, transform us. Even if it were originally invented for a
Roman political purpose as Atwill contends, which it wasn’t, the fact remains
that people across the centuries have found their connection with God in
it. They have found salvation in it,
however they have understood salvation.
All that remains true quite regardless of the truth or falsity of
Atwill’s speculative conclusions.
And here’s the thing about
symbols and myths, that is, about religious systems: You can’t make them up. Or I suppose you can. People have; but what someone makes up
doesn’t become a popular faith of any consequence unless it functions the way
religious symbols and myths are supposed to function, namely, to connect people
with God and God with people. Christianity
does that. It does that because its
symbols and stories touch us deep in our souls.
It has touched people deep in their souls from the very beginning. It still does today. I am convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a
real human being and that the movement that became Christianity goes all the
way back to him and his first followers, but Christianity is true even if that
belief isn’t. I know that Christianity
is true because I have felt its power in my life. I have seen its power in the lives of other
people. Christianity is true, and Atwill
can’t make it untrue.
As a matter of history Atwill’s
thesis doesn’t hold up. More
importantly, as a matter of spiritual truth Atwill’s thesis doesn’t
matter. Atwill will prove to be another
rather odd flash in the pan. About that
I have no doubt. Our great faith has
survived challenges much more serious than Atwill’s. He may crusade against it. He will have converts, people so fed up with
the abuses to which Christianity has been subjected by its own adherents that
they will accept his thesis not because it holds up to critical analysis but
because they like its conclusions. So be
it. He wrong. He’s wrong on many levels. So pay attention to him if you want. Then move on.
He isn’t worth more than that.
[1] For a discussion of Wink’s
exegesis see my Liberating
Christianity: Overcoming Obstacles to
Faith in the New Millennium, Wipf and Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 2008, pp.
160-165.
