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Category: Ancient Rome

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Ancient Rome Film

Caligula, 6

If, as the sticky post implies, the aim of this site (remember: he who controls the past controls the future) is to find the Weirwood to see the past as it happened, we will understand why historical revisionism is vital to save the white race.

In this instalment of the series on Roldán’s book, I would just like to comment on the thought that came to me when I came across the phrase on page 244 of his book: ‘Gauls disguised as Germans, whose hair he [Caligula] dyed blond’ to transport them to Rome.

What Ridley Scott’s blockbuster film Gladiator shows us in its opening scene, epic by the way, was Romans under Marcus Aurelius fighting dark-haired Germans (in that subsequent century of Caligula’s reign the Germans were still blond): an inversion of the facts for propaganda purposes. Typical Hollywood.

Scott is a gentile, but it reminds me of what the Jewish producers of the film Ben-Hur, to which I referred in yesterday’s post, did. This 1959 film, awarded as many Oscars as possible, dared to reverse everything. It cast Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince from Jerusalem, as the handsome, Nordish-looking Charlton Heston, and the Roman Messala (Stephen Boyd) not only with dark hair. In real life, Stephen Boyd had blue eyes.

To film Ben-Hur, the Aryan Boyd was forced to wear dark contact lens so that his eyes would not compete with the light eyes of the Jew interpreted by Heston! This is revealed by the producers themselves on the DVDs that now accompany the film with commentary.

This inversion is typical of the way the story has been told to us, including Aryan depictions of Jesus and his holy family in Christian iconography, especially from the Renaissance onwards. 1st century Palestinian Jews looked like sandniggers: the opposite to Heston. No wonder that, if the collective white unconscious has been programmed in this way, they have taken the New Testament as the founding scripture of their race, when in fact it is a rabbis’ scripture for gentile consumption (again, read our latest PDF). And the 1959 film aggravates the matter by casting the Jews of first-century Palestine as white Europeans, including Jesus’ carefully coiffed straight brown hair that is only seen from behind.

Much of the psychological healing of the Aryan consists precisely in finding the Weirwood to see the real past, not the toxic myth our enemies have been telling us for two millennia.

Returning to Roldán’s phrase, could we imagine an epic scene with blond Germans fighting the Roman mudbloods of a couple of centuries after Caligula’s reign? What effect would a film shot by someone who has already touched the Weirwood have on an audience of white-skinned, blue-eyed, light-haired people?

Categories
Ancient Rome

Caligula, 5

Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, A.D. 37–41.

Ordinary people, moulded by Hollywood, have a lofty idea of the Roman Empire (as a child, for example, I was impressed by the scene in which Ben-Hur arrives in the triumphal chariot with Quintus Arrius, first consul of Rome, before the emperor Tiberius) and no idea of the Roman Republic, betrayed by Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula. As we have seen, the subtitle of Roldán’s Calígula is ‘The Immature Autocrat.’ In the chapter ‘The First Crisis’ the author speaks of the tyrannical behaviour of the emperor and how, unlike in the times of the Roman Republic, in imperial times senators had to behave in the most crawling manner on pain of death. On page 222 we read:

A collective such as the senatorial one, torn by envy, jealousy, resentment and ambition, could only react with vileness to the challenge of imperial tyranny. Meeting the next day, now without Gaius [i.e., Caligula who was in his twenties], they found no other way out than to humiliate themselves lowly, pretending to regard him as a sincere and loyal prince, who had condescended to spare their lives and who, for that, deserved thanks expressed in the granting of new honours. Accordingly, they voted to offer annual sacrifices [of animals] in honour of his clementia, on the anniversary of the day on which he had addressed them, and, to celebrate it, a golden image of the emperor was carried in procession from the Palatine to the Capitol, accompanied by a choir of children from the noblest families, who sang commemorative hymns. [my translation]

Since the Principate was a de facto monarchy the senators could not counteract but react with creeping flattery. Then Roldán adds that Augustus and Tiberius had done the same, but with more hypocrisy: not as blatantly as Caligula did. Since Julius Caesar the Senate had been reduced to the role of a mere coryphaeus willing to endure the worst humiliations, although this situation only became obvious with Caligula’s so-called Principate. On page 131 we read:

The condemned, whose names Gaius took care that they should be publicly exposed, ended up either in prison or hurled down the rock of Tarpeia unless they tried to escape public shame by committing suicide. There were no guarantees even for those sent into exile, who could die en route or during the time of exile. Of the few known cases, one senator, Titius Rufus, was prosecuted for denigrating the Senate as an institution by accusing the House of thinking one way and acting another. Such statements were permitted only to the emperor. For the rest of the mortals it meant death, which Titius anticipated by committing suicide. [my translation]

Imperial Rome was a joke. From Julius Caesar onwards there were problems with Jewish empowerment, as William Pierce tells us. If we recall Eduardo Velasco’s masterful essay in The Fair Race on Judea’s surreptitious war against Rome, one Aulus Avilius Flaccus was appointed governor of Roman Egypt from 33 c.e. until the reign of Caligula (Flaccus grew up with the sons of Augustus’ daughters and was a friend of Tiberius). His rule coincided with the riots against the Jewish population of Alexandria and in Velasco’s essay he is portrayed as a hero. Although Caligula undertook anti-Semitic measures because of the tremendous problems caused by the Alexandrian Jewry, he finally consented to the killing of Flaccus. The Jew Philo portrays the execution this way (page 242 of the Roldán’s book):

The officers therefore pursued him without stopping to take breath and arrested him; and then immediately some of them dug a ditch, and the others dragged him on by force in spite of all his resistance and crying out and struggling, by which means his whole body was wounded like that of beasts that are despatched with a number of wounds; for he, turning round them and clinging to his executioners, who were hindered in their aims which they took at him with their swords, and who thus struck him with oblique blows, was the cause of his own sufferings being more severe; for he was in consequence mutilated and cut about the hands, and feet, and head, and breast, and sides, so that he was mangled like a victim, and thus he fell, justice righteously inflicting on his own body wounds equal in number to the murders of the Jews whom he had unlawfully put to death.

And the whole place flowed with blood which was shed from his numerous veins, which were cut in every part of his body, and which poured forth blood as from a fountain. And when the corpse was dragged into the trench which had been dug, the greater part of the limbs separated from the body, the sinews by which the whole of the body is kept together being all cut through.

Can you see why I say that the paradigm is Hitler’s Third Reich and not Rome? It was only until the 20th century that the Aryans became authentically Jew-wise, at least for a brief historical moment.

Categories
Ancient Rome Monarchy

Caligula, 4

Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, A.D. 37–41.

On page 90 of Calígula, José Manuel Roldán speaks of Livia, ‘the richest woman in Rome and also the most influential’. According to the legislation enacted by Augustus, she enjoyed full freedom to administer her property without the need for male guardianship. On the same page the author mentions Alexander Lysimachus, a Jewish potentate, brother of Philo of Alexandria. If we remember that, centuries later, wealthy women and Jews would play a central role in the empowerment of Judeo-Christianity, it is clear that I am repulsed by Imperial Rome insofar as in Republican Rome women had no such power and neither did Jews (see this tough article from the book On Beth’s Cute Tits). Studying the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire sheds light on the Western world today, which reminds me of Hegel’s phrase ‘History only teaches us that man learns nothing from history.’

But we must still try to tell the story as it happened. On a footnote on page 211 Roldán tells us that there is no historical basis for ‘the revolting scene in I, Claudius, the novel by R. Graves—and, subsequently, in the television series based on it—that presents Caligula as the murderer of his sister in a fatal game in which, disguised as Jupiter, he opens Drusilla’s womb to eat the child inside her.’

It is most unfortunate that, in today’s prolefeed for the proles, the Roman era is presented through Hollywood as exclusively that of the Caesars, concealing centuries of Republican Rome. Now we complain about the culture of cancellation, but such a culture was started by Augustus.

On pages 153-154 of Calígula Roldán tells us that from Augustus onwards the burning of books began as a result of new censorship laws, and that this policy of repression was reinforced by Tiberius. Naturally, Roman intellectuals complained. Aulus Cremutius Cordus wrote a History of the Civil Wars of Rome which was burned by senatorial order because it praised Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius. (Those who have read William Pierce’s Who We Are will guess that those who killed Caesar to defend the Republic were the good guys and Julius Caesar, the perpetrator of a veritable holocaust of nordish Gauls, the bad guy.) A few centuries later, Constantine and subsequent Christian emperors took advantage of the culture of cancellation, initiated by the early Caesars, to burn all criticism of Judeo-Christianity: which is why the triumph of the imperial church was so overwhelming.

In my posts on Friday last week and Monday this week, I linked to videotaped interviews with Richard Miller, a New Testament scholar. Since in the foreword to Neo-Christianity I mentioned Miller in an important paragraph, I felt compelled to order his super-scholarly book, which I hope to read as soon as it arrives. But even in the linked videos we can see that Miller, along with other NT scholars, has been trying to understand these early Christian writings from the point of view of the 1st century Gentile world (as opposed to the studies of the fundamentalist schools which approach the NT solely from the POV of 1st century Judaism). Miller studied the deifications in the classical world. A passage from Roldán’s book about one of the deifications contextualises the deification that the evangelists would make a few decades later (but this time deifying a Jew).

The inordinate and gratuitous honours that Caligula decreed in memorial of Drusilla not only represented to public opinion—and, especially, to the senatorial order—the devotion bordering on the madness of a bereaved brother. Divinisation, whether it was a matter of innocent comedy or was indeed felt in all its theological dimension, had hitherto been an extraordinarily restrictive honour, only granted to two personages, Caesar and Augustus, whom, moreover, the popular imagination had already endowed with superhuman traits. [my translation]

Let us remember that by this time the Romans were no longer as purely Aryan as they had once been. This imperial devotion to the monarch (monarchy was forbidden in the Roman Republic) would also be suffered by the Russians in later centuries, who, historically, have been able to tolerate tyrants. I find it incredible that, in the beautiful streets of St. Petersburg, small busts with effigies of Lenin and Stalin are still sold to tourists! Like the Romans of imperial times, since the Mongol invasions* Russians haven’t been as genetically pure as they were before the Asian invasions.

________

(*) Bear in mind that Mongol terror ruled Russians for a quarter of a millennium, enough to spoil their Aryan blood due to interbreeding (see The Fair Race, pages 268ff).

Categories
Ancient Greece Ancient Rome Psychohistory

Caligula, 3

Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, A.D. 37–41.

The West’s Darkest Hour isn’t a news site. But it is still difficult not to say at least a word about what has happened in the last few hours regarding Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny in Russia. Media misinformation is such that it is as difficult to know exactly what is happening this very day as it is to make a reliable biography of Caligula: both sources, some from the 1st century and some from the 21st century, are compromised by propaganda.

But back to our topic these days. José Manuel Roldán received his doctorate in 1968 and a few years later obtained the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Granada, and later that of Salamanca. His work has focused on the history of Rome. Despite his credentials, the Spanish historian is a normie. Unlike what William Pierce wrote in Who We Are, much of what we read in Calígula isn’t useful to us. Nevertheless, the book allows me to explain some very important issues.

If the conquest of Germania up to the Elbe was regarded by Caligula as an un-renounceable family legacy (his father wanted to avenge Rome for the defeat of Hermann), the positive image I had of him, after reading that sentence by Eduardo Velasco quoted in the first instalment of this series, immediately collapses. I confess that on this site I stopped quoting Gore Vidal’s novel Julian when I came across the pages in which Julian the Apostate fought against the Germans. (If we recall Who We Are, as quoted in The Fair Race, the pure Aryans were the Germans, not the 4th-century Romans.)

Calígula is reminding me of what Tom Holland said in Dominion: that, although he was an absolute fan of the Greco-Roman world, when he began to study it he noticed some barbaric customs. Pages 40-41 of Calígula for example describe the essential triumphal ceremony in Rome, where white bulls whose horns were gilded and entwined with garlands were then immolated. Caligula himself, at the age of five, went to one of these ceremonies in the triumphal chariot when his father Germanicus was honoured in Rome. But even as emperor the number of animal victims sacrificed during the first three months of his reign has been calculated at one hundred and sixty thousand (page 139 of Calígula).

Regarding humans, an anecdote collected by Tacitus alarmed me. When Tiberius punished the remaining sons of the traitor Sejanus, an innocent daughter of Sejanus repeatedly asked for what crime she was being dragged off for. Historians of the time say that being a virgin she couldn’t suffer capital punishment, so the executioner raped her and then he could legally strangle her! Furthermore, influenced by the histories of William Pierce and Arthur Kemp, I have always sided with Republican Rome and against Imperial Rome. But on pages 178-179 of Calígula we are informed that gladiatorial combats, of Etruscan origin, had been introduced in the middle of the 3rd century b.c.e. And by the end of the 2nd century b.c.e. they had become so popular that the Senate found it necessary to admit them among the public spectacles!

This is not to say that I am, like Holland, making concessions to Christian morality insofar as what we, in Day of Wrath, have called psychogenic emergence is a development of empathy that evolved without the need for Semitic religions. But it’s clear that both Eduardo Velasco, who blogged in his webzine Evropa Soberana, and William Pierce, were wrong to believe that Sparta was the model for the Aryan man when the obvious choice was none other than Hitler’s Third Reich. See what I wrote on pages 481-482 of The Fair Race about the Vikings and the extreme Yang exemplified in Sparta (exactly the same could be said about the ancient Romans).

This prompted me this day to publish a new page, ‘The Sacred Words’ which can be read in red letters at the very top of this site, as well as changing the subtitle once again to The West’s Darkest Hour (the site of the priest of the sacred words).

Precisely because I am a priest of those words, Roldán’s Calígula is having a very different impact on me than I imagined when I bought it (funnily enough, it was the last copy they had at Amazon Books, so I had no choice but to buy it). If anyone has already assimilated my version of Psychohistory in Day of Wrath, he will understand my repudiation of much of classical culture in favour of Hitler’s Third Reich. It is obvious that recent advances in psychogenesis have determined me, and this reminds me of the seminal essay ‘The Red Giant’ (collected in my anthology On Exterminationism), in which a Swede said that some values had to be transvalued to Greco-Roman values and other values to more recent times (say, to Jane Austen’s world).

Like Tom Holland, familiarity with the dark side of the classical world makes me see things about it that I find disturbing and unacceptable. But unlike Holland, I reiterate, I do so not because of Christian morality but because of what we in Day of Wrath call psychogenesis.

Categories
Ancient Rome

Caligula, 2

Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, A.D. 37–41.

 

Foreword: Caligula, A Historical Enigma

by José Manuel Roldán

Thirty stab wounds ended the life of Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus on 24 January 41, barely four years after he succeeded Tiberius, Augustus’ heir to the imperial throne. He had not yet reached the age of thirty, which was, however, more than enough time for his memory to be stigmatised forever as a paradigm of cruelty, under the nickname that his father’s soldiers had given him in his childhood: Little boot.

The life and reign of Caligula have been a topic of unresolved debate and controversy since antiquity, although it seems impossible to banish from the popular imagination the gloomy and disturbing image that his name alone arouses. And yet, this image of an inept, bloodthirsty, unpredictable and monstrous tyrant that tradition has handed down to us seems more like a melodramatic and simplifying label, invented not so much to define the character as to avoid a coherent explanation of the apparent contradictions in his behaviour: a simplification that has pontificated with the diagnosis of madness the many nooks and crannies of a complex personality.

This diagnosis has served to ‘explain’ the dozens of anecdotes with which the ancient literary tradition has traced the outline of the emperor, converted into as many examples of erratic and perverse behaviour, as support for a trivial stereotype: the bloodthirsty monster, capable of any outrage, about whom there has been no scruple in inventing even imaginary crimes to give greater consistency and morbidity to the character, already condemned from the beginning to play this role. Examples are the descriptions offered by Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, later plastically recreated in a well-known BBC television series; the image of the emperor in a 1953 film, The Robe; Albert Camus’ drama Caligula; Pepe Cibrián’s Argentine musical Calígula; or the shameful monstrosity of Tinto Brass in a pornographic film produced for Penthouse. Titles and titles of so-called ‘historical’ novels have piled up with Caligula as the protagonist. Thus, Calígula, una novela sobre el perverso emperador romano, by P.J. Franceschini and P. Lundel; Calígula, el dios cruel, by S. Obermeier, or Calígula, by M.G. Silato, to offer only examples published in Spanish.

The label, on the other hand, was quite simple. It was hard enough to follow faithfully the outlines drawn by the Roman literature of the imperial period itself, which was unanimous in its vilification of Gaius. But are these sources reliable? A preliminary step, therefore, in approaching the life of Gaius would be to take this tradition into account and look into it objectively. Only two authors knew Caligula during his lifetime: the writer Seneca and Philo, a Jewish philosopher from Alexandria. The former, an intriguing and quarrelsome courtier, was nearly condemned to death by Gaius; the latter went to Rome as spokesman for a delegation of Alexandrian Jews to the emperor and left his impressions in the pamphlet Embassy to Gaius. The rest wrote their works after Caligula was dead: Flavius Josephus, a Pharisee Jew of the Flavian period, included in his Antiquities of the Jews, published in 93, numerous facts about the reign, though in connection with problems of his people; the Annals of the great historian Cornelius Tacitus, a few years later, can only be used to illustrate the youth of Gaius, because the books on his reign—VII and following—have been lost; the Life of Gaius, by Suetonius, secretary for a time to the emperor Hadrian, is the only complete biography of Caligula, but its tendency to sensationalism forces many of its facts to be called into question; finally, Dion Cassius, the Anatolian writer, between the 2nd and 3rd centuries, in his Roman History, while providing a good deal of information about Caligula’s rule, is too far removed from the events and therefore influenced by the sources he used in his account.

But in the analysis of these sources one decisive point must be borne in mind: by whom they were written and for what audience. Except for the two Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, whose interlocutors were their fellow countrymen in Alexandria and Jerusalem respectively, the rest wrote mainly for the Roman social elites and, more specifically, for their most influential representatives, the members of the Senate, to which they all belonged, except Suetonius, otherwise closely linked to the circle of a conspicuous senator of the Trajanic period, Pliny the Younger. In the case of a clearly anti-senatorial figure like Caligula, this finding is highly significant. The audiences of these writers would not have entirely accepted a representation of Gaius that portrayed him in a positive light. A sentence from Tacitus’ Annals is illuminating in this respect: ‘The deeds of Tiberius and Gaius, as well as those of Claudius and Nero, were falsified out of fear while they were alive; and written, after their death, with hatred still fresh’.

But at the same time, regardless of the true intentions of their authors, these sources are an invaluable source of evidence for understanding the emperor’s views. Views, as we shall see, marked by the aspiration to move away from the elaborate, but also mistaken, political construction devised by Augustus—an autocracy disguised in republican garb in favour of open monarchical domination. All the emperors who tried to advance in the logical deployment of the powers implicit in the Principate were stigmatised, as opposed to those who prudently maintained the fiction of separation, however illusory, of powers between the prince and the Senate. Thus was born the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emperors, which, overcoming the barriers of antiquity, still continues to influence our own judgement.

Caligula undoubtedly occupies a prominent place in the second group, not so much for his governmental action as for his manifest hostility towards the senatorial collective, which took revenge, after his death, by heaping rubbish on his memory and denying him the essential element that distinguishes the human being: reason. Caligula was treated as a madman for persecuting the aristocracy. But his successor, Claudius, who tried to respect the aristocracy, was considered an imbecile.

Nevertheless, and as a predictable reaction, since the beginning of the 20th century historical research, aware of the partiality of the documentary sources, has tried to correct this negative image. A long article by H. Willrich, published in 1903, first drew attention to the positive aspects of Caligula’s work and his motivations, over and above the simplistic label of madness. Subsequent studies have taken up this point of view, with new or more substantiated arguments, to become, on occasions, veritable apologies, as far removed from the historical truth as the very sources they seek to correct. Thus, it is not surprising that there is also no shortage of works which, while accepting Gaius’ madness without further ado attempt to explain it using psychoanalysis or clinical points of view, thereby indirectly recognising the reliability of the ancient sources.

These sources are certainly full of inconsistencies and difficulties in their correct interpretation, but it is also true that it is not possible to do without them as a guiding thread. It is the task of the historian to winnow out the fictional elements they contain, to separate them from the consistent data with which a plausible picture can be reconstructed. Plausible, but not authentic. And that is precisely the greatness and the misery of the historian.

Potsdam

______ 卐 ______

 

Editor’s note: Emphasis is mine. It perfectly portrays what I meant in the last paragraph of my previous post on Caligula.

Categories
Ancient Rome Tacitus

Caligula, 1

Marble portrait bust of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula, A.D. 37–41.

Because the book Neo-Christianity is finally available (even if only in PDF for the moment), I have changed both the sticky post and the featured post. In both I used the symbol from George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novels about the Weirwood tree (a tree that, if a greenseer touches it, he can paranormally see into the past of Westeros). I would like to exemplify what I meant in the sticky and the featured posts with a new series on the figure of Emperor Caligula. As can be read on pages 16-17 of Neo-Christianity:

The Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, who governed Palestine from 26 to 36 AD, was known for his aggressive treatment of the Jews. But things grew even worse for them after his removal from power and the ascension of Emperor Caligula in Rome. Hayim Ben-Sasson writes, “The reign of Caligula (37-41 AD) witnessed the first open break between the Jews and the Empire… Relations deteriorated seriously during this time.”

Years later, Emperor Claudius issued his third edict, Letter to the Alexandrians, in which he accused those Jews of “fomenting a general plague which infests the whole world.” This is a striking passage; it suggests that Jews all over the Middle East had succeeded in stirring up dangerous agitation toward the empire. It also marks the first occurrence in history of a “biological” epithet used against them. By the year 49, Claudius had to undertake yet another expulsion of Jews from Rome.

All this set the stage for the first major Jewish revolt, in the year 66. Also called the First Jewish-Roman War (there were three), this event was a major turning point in history.

This reminds us of what Eduardo Velasco wrote in the essay on Judea vs. Rome, which we translated for The Fair Race, book #2 on the list of thirteen books in the new featured post:

In 41, Caligula, who already promised to be an anti-Jewish emperor, was assassinated in Rome, which unleashed the violence of his German bodyguards who had not been able to prevent his death and who, because of their peculiar sense of fidelity, tried to avenge him by killing many conspirators, senators and even innocent bystanders who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Claudius, the uncle of Caligula, would become the master of the situation and, after being appointed emperor by the Praetorian Guard, ordered the execution of the assassins of his nephew, many of whom were political magistrates who wanted to reinstate the Republic.

This is the probable cause of the unprecedented historical defamation of this emperor: the texts of Roman history would eventually fall into the hands of the Christians, who were mostly of Jewish origin and viscerally detested the emperors. Since, according to Orwell, ‘he who controls the past controls the present’ the Christians adulterated Roman historiography, turning the emperors who had opposed them and their Jewish ancestors into disturbed monsters.

Thus, we do not have a single Roman emperor who has participated in harsh Jewish reprisals who has not been defamed by accusations of homosexuality, cruelty or perversion. The Spanish historian José Manuel Roldán has dismantled many of the false accusations against the historical figure of Caligula.

Well, two months ago I received the book in Spanish by José Manuel Roldán Hervás, PhD in classical philology. Already in the prologue of Calígula, el Autócrata Inmaduro (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2012), Roldán quotes a sentence from Tacitus’ Annals: ‘The deeds of Tiberius and Gaius [Caligula], as well as those of Claudius and Nero, were falsified, out of fear, while they lived; and written, after their deaths, with hatred still fresh’.

In the next entry I will translate the whole prologue to Roldán’s book. For the moment I would just like, as I said, to illustrate what I alluded to in the sticky and featured posts: that the System demoralises the white man through historical lies.

For example, I recently interrupted the Netflix series on Caligula when I saw that they cast him, even before he was emperor, as the poisoner of Tiberius, the previous Roman emperor. One cannot contrast more that tale ‘with hatred still fresh’ with what we read in Roldán’s biography.

If we recall what Catherine Nixey wrote about the burning of entire libraries of the classical world by Christians, it cannot be more unfortunate that of Tacitus’ Annals, originally sixteen books on the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, the entire reign of Caligula has been lost. Unlike the writers who wrote with hatred, Tacitus is known to have been more objective.

Now back to our metaphor. Unlike Martin’s fiction about the oldest religion of Westeros, its Weirwood trees and the gifted greenseers who saw the past when they touched them, in the real world we have no such window to know, with absolute precision, what happened in the time of those emperors of the first century c.e. But if I still use the metaphor it’s because books like Roldán’s are the closest we have to a truer history of what might have happened.

Categories
Ancient Rome Catholic Church Josephus Judaism Judea v. Rome Nero New Testament

How Yahweh conquered Rome, 4

by Laurent Guyénot

 

The foundation of the Roman church under the Flavian dynasty

In 70, newly proclaimed emperor Vespasian and his son Titus brought to Rome about 97,000 Jewish captives (Josephus, Jewish War vi, 9), as well as members of the Jewish nobility rewarded for their support in the war in Judea—Josephus being the most famous of them.

Soon after, as Josephus started working on his Antiquities of the Jews in 20 volumes, we are told that the Gospels were written.[11]

In the same period, according to standard Church history, we already have in Rome a Christian church, headed by a certain Clement of Rome (88-99). Clement must have been an educated Jew like Josephus, because his only genuine epistle is characterized by numerous Hebraisms, abundant references to the Old Testament, and a Levitical mindset. An ancient and credible tradition makes him a freedman of consul Titus Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the Flavian emperors. We learn from Cassius Dio that Flavius Clemens was executed by Domitian, brother and successor of Titus, for ‘atheism’ and ‘deviation toward Judaic customs.’ His wife Flavia Domitilla was banished to the island of Pandateria (Ventotene). Over time, Flavius Clemens came to be regarded as a Christian martyr, and this gave rise to the idea of Domitian’s persecution of Christians. But historians now dismiss this notion (there is no clearly attested persecution of Christians prior to the middle of the third century),[12] and assume that Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla were simply accused of Judaizing, and the former perhaps of circumcising himself.[13] One of Domitian’s assassins in 96 was a steward of Domitilla named Stephanus, which may suggests a Jewish vengeance.

The attitude of the Flavians towards the Jews was apparently twofold. On the one hand, they seemed determined to do away with the Jewish religion, which they saw, correctly, as the source of Jewish separatism. Not content with having destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, Vespasian also ordered the destruction of the one in Leontopolis, Egypt. In general, the Romans used to integrate the vanquished gods with a ceremony of evocatio deorum, by which the god was granted a sanctuary in Rome. But the god Yahweh was considered inassimilable, which is why his objects of worship were treated as mere booty, according to Emily Schmidt: ‘The treatment of the Jewish god can be seen as an inversion of the typical Roman treatment of or attitude towards foreign gods, perhaps as an anti-evocatio.’[14]

On the other hand, Josephus’ biography shows that Vespasian and Titus were not just merciful, but even grateful to the Jews who had rallied to them in Judea. There is no contradiction between those two aspects of the Flavians’ Jewish policy: they repressed Jewish separatism and forbade Jewish proselytizing but encouraged Jewish assimilation. Assimilationist Jews abandoned circumcision and had no objection to the syncretic assimilation of Yahweh with Zeus or Jupiter. The same basic twofold policy was followed by the Flavians’ successors Trajan (98-117) and Hadrian (117-138).[15]

From these basic facts, and keeping in mind the pattern set by Ezra’s priestly circle in Babylon, it is not difficult to imagine what was going on in Rome in the first century. The theory I’m going to discuss now goes like this. The cornerstone of the Roman Catholic Church was first laid by a secret brotherhood of priestly Jews, who had been brought to Rome by Vespasian and Titus in the aftermath of the Jewish War that destroyed their Temple in 70 AD. Some had gained Vespasian’s favor and protection by handing him the fabulous Temple treasure that made possible his ascension to the imperial throne. Flavius Josephus, who had defected to the Romans in Galilee and was rewarded beyond measure by Vespasian, may have been an influential member of that Jewish circle. Those powerful, wealthy and self-conscious Jews, using assimilation for dissimulation, had the motive, the means and the opportunity to fabricate the syncretic religion that could serve as their Trojan horse.

I borrow this theory from Flavio Barbiero’s book The Secret Society of Moses: The Mosaic Bloodline and a Conspiracy Spanning Three Millennia (2010). The author is not a trained historian, but a scientist with a sharp inquisitive and logical mind combined with a great imagination and a taste for sweeping theories. There is a great deal of speculation in the grand story he unfolds, from Moses to modern times, but it is insightful and consistent. At least it is a good starting point for trying to answer the question of how the Jews created Christianity.

According to that thesis, these priestly Jews brought to Rome by Vespasian and Titus had come to terms with the ruin of their nation and Temple, but they had not given up on their biblical program of Jewish supremacy; they simply reinterpreted it from their new vantage point inside the Empire’s capital. Still jealous of their birth and strictly endogamous, they retained and passed on to their progeny a sense of mission to pave for Israel a new road towards its destiny. Can we not even assume that, under their apparent loyalty to the Emperor, they shared the same hatred of Rome that inspired first-century Jewish texts like the Apocalypses of Ezra and of Baruch?

In Ezra, the roar of the Lion of Judah makes the Roman eagle bursts into flame, and a reunited and free Israel is gathered in Palestine. In Baruch, the Messiah routs and destroys the Roman armies, then brings the Roman emperor in chains to Mount Zion and puts him to death.[16] The same hatred of Rome permeates the Book of Revelation, where Rome, under the thin veil of Babylon, is called the Great Harlot, whose flesh will be consumed by God’s wrath, to make way for a brand new Jerusalem.
 

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: Already from Nietzsche’s texts it was clear that the author of the Book of Revelation was a Jew who hated Rome in a hellish way. If there is one overtly anti-Roman text in the New Testament it is the one attributed to the Jew John of Patmos (not to be confused with John the Evangelist, let alone the fictional figure of John the Apostle).

It was a book written after the destruction of Jerusalem. No wonder the Jew John of Patmos dreamed of a ‘New Jerusalem’ in the final book of the Bible!

______ 卐 ______

 
Let us consider, as a working hypothesis, that these Jewish priests had a plan. They adopted the network strategy that had allowed their distant ancestors to infiltrate the Persian court and thereby regain their lost power under the patronage of Ezra. Their goal, according to Flavio Barbiero, was ‘taking possession of the newborn Christian religion and transforming it into a solid power basis for the priestly family’ (p. 146). There existed already a cult of Christ, attested by Paul’s epistles written in the 50s, but the Gospels gave it a completely different orientation in the decades following the destruction of the Temple. The Law-abiding Peter, presented as the head of the Jerusalem Church by the Gospel of Matthew, was made the founder of the Roman papacy in the literature attributed to Clement of Rome, thus establishing a spiritual bond between Rome and Jerusalem.

To get a better understanding of the Jewish community that elaborated these traditions, we must take a closer look at the first Jewish war. In 67, emperor Nero sent his army commander Vespasian to crush the rebellion of the priestly Sadducees who had defied Roman power by banning from the Temple the daily sacrifices offered in the name and at the expense of the Emperor. When, after Nero’s death, Vespasian was declared emperor in December 69, his son Titus was left in Judea to finish putting down the rebellion.

In Book vi of Josephus’ Jewish War we learn that, from the early stage of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem, many Jews went over to the Romans, including ‘heads of the priestly families.’ Titus ‘not only received these men very kindly in other respects, but […] told them, that when he was gotten clear of this war, he would restore each of them to their possessions again.’ Until the last days of the siege, Josephus informs us, some priests obtained safe conduct under the condition that they handed to Titus some of the Temple’s wealth.

One, named Jesus, delivered ‘two candlesticks similar to those that were deposited in the Temple, some tables, some drinking chalices and cups, all of solid gold. He also handed over the curtains [those that were torn as Jesus expired according to Matthew 27:51], the robes of the high priest, with the precious stones and many other objects used for sacrifices.’ Another, named Phineas, introduced by Josephus as ‘the guardian of the Temple treasure,’ handed over ‘the priests’ tunics and belts, a large quantity of purple and scarlet cloth […] and a large quantity of the sacred ornaments, thanks to which, even if he was a prisoner of war, he obtained the amnesty reserved for deserters.’

Those priests obviously bargained their lives and their freedom with parts of the Temple treasure. The Temple was not just a religious sanctuary, it was, in a real sense, a central bank and a giant vault, harboring enormous quantities of gold, silver, and precious artifacts financed by tithes from around the world. One of the purposes of the Temple, we could say, was to satisfy Yahweh’s greed: ‘I shall fill this Temple with glory, says Yahweh Sabaoth. Mine is the silver, mine the gold!’ (Haggai 2:7).[17] According to the Copper Scroll found near the Dead Sea in 1952, the Temple treasure, amounting to tons of gold, silver, and precious items, had been hidden during the siege in 64 locations.[18] So it is logical to assume, as Barbiero does, that Titus and Vespasian were only able to get their hands on it with the help of high-ranking priests.

This huge booty, of which the symbolic centerpiece was the enormous menorah depicted on the Arch of Titus (opening picture), certainly helped Vespasian to earn the acclamation of his troops as emperor, and then to convince the Senate. The construction of the Coliseum, between 70 and 80, was entirely financed by this booty.

______________

[11] The earliest gospel, the Gospel of Mark, is commonly dated in the late 60s, but that date is much too early, especially since it mentions the destruction of the Temple.

[12] Tacitus wrote in the Annals (xv, 44) that Nero accused Christians of starting the great fire of Rome in 64, and had many of them ‘thrown to the beasts, crucified, and burned alive.’ But this is the only attestation of that story, and some modern scholars have cast doubt on its credibility. Richard Carrier sees it as a later Christian interpolation, and Brent Shaw argues that Nero’s persecution is a myth. There is one other mention of persecution against Christians before the third century, in a letter written to Trajan by Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia (north of Asia Minor). But this letter is of dubious authenticity as well, belonging to a book of 121 letters found in the 16th century, copied, and lost again.

[13] Paul Mattei, Le Christianisme antique: De Jésus à Constantin, Armand Colin, 2011, p. 119.

[14] Emily A. Schmidt, ‘The Flavian Triumph and the Arch of Titus: The Jewish God in Flavian Rome,’ UC Santa Barbara: Ancient Borderlands Research Focus Group, 2010.

[15] Trajan is said to have had a pro-Jewish wife, Pompeia Plotina, and he once sentenced to death a Greek dignitary named Hermaiskos for having complained that the emperor’s entourage was ‘full of impious Jews.’ (Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt – From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 193-196). But Hadrian is credited for having banned circumcision, and, when faced in 132 with a new anti-Roman Jewish uprising in Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, he destroyed Jerusalem once more, converted it into a Greek city named Aelia Capitolina, and forbade Jews to enter it.

[16] Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, Essential Books, 1957, p. 4.

[17] According to 1Kings 10:14, the amount of gold hoarded each year into Salomon’s temple was ‘666 talents of gold’ (1 talent = 30kg). Salomon’s treasure may be legendary, but it illustrates what the Jerusalem Temple still meant for the priests of the first century AD.

[18] Because the Copper Scroll is part of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been wrongly assigned an Essenian origin for decades, its content was long considered fictional. The revision of this misguided theory, pioneered by Norman Golb in Who wrote the Dead Sea scrolls?: The search for the secret of Qumran, Scribner, 1995, has corrected that bias.

Categories
Ancient Rome Judaism Judea v. Rome

How Yahweh conquered Rome, 1

Editor’s note: With the subtitle ‘Christianity and the Big Lie’, this 12,400-word essay by Laurent Guyénot was published in The Unz Review at Christmas 2020. It will be republished here, excerpted, in five parts.
 

______ 卐 ______

 
The People of the Lie

Primo Levi, Italian author of If this is a man (1947)—‘a pillar of Holocaust literature’ according to Wikipedia—, wrote a short fictional story titled Un testamento, consisting of the last recommendation of a member of the guild of the ‘tooth-pullers’ to his son. Its ends with these words:

From all that you have just read you can deduce that lying is a sin for others, and for us a virtue. Lying is one with our job: we should lie by words, by eyes, by smile, by clothing. Not only to deceive patients; as you know, our purpose is higher, and the lie, not the twist of hand, makes our real strength. With the lie, patiently learned and piously exercised, if God helps us we will come to dominate this country and perhaps the world: but this can only be done on the condition of having been able to lie better and longer than our enemies. I will not see that day, but you will see it: it will be a new golden age, when only the last resorts will force us to pluck out teeth again, while it will be enough for us to govern the State and administer public affairs, to lavish the pious lies that we have learned to bring to perfection. If we prove ourselves capable of this, the empire of the tooth-pullers will extend from East to West until the most distant islands, and it will have no end.[1]

There is no literary value in this prose. Its only interest is the question it begs: Who does Levi mean by this society of professional liars, whose trade is passed on from father to son, and whose plan is to conquer the world? Of whom are they the metaphor? And perhaps this other question: What is this ‘testament’ of theirs?

Even if we didn’t know what gang of professional liars Levi belonged to, their ‘God’ would give them away: there is only one god who trained his people to lie and promised them world domination, and that is the god of Israel. ‘Israel,’ remember, is the name Yahweh gave to Jacob, after Jacob lied to his aging father Isaac, by words and by clothing: ‘I am Esau your first-born,’ he said, dressed up in ‘Esau’s best clothes,’ in order to cheat Esau out of his birthright (Genesis 27:15-19). This is, in the literal—and literary—sense, the founding story of Israel. As long as Christians fail to see the malice of it, and its correlation with Jewish behavior, they will continue to play the part of Esau.

What is the biggest Jewish lie in history? Without contest, it is the claim that Jews, of all the nations inhabiting this earth, were once ‘chosen’ by the almighty Creator of the Universe to enlighten and rule over mankind—while all their enemies were cursed by the same Creator. What is truly bewildering is not the enormity of the lie: many individuals may feel chosen by God, and even nations have done so. But only the Jews have managed to convince billions of non-Jews (Christians and Muslims) of their chosenness. How did they do it? ‘Almost by accident,’ wrote Jewish author Marcus Eli Ravage in his must-read 1928 article ‘A real case against the Jews.’ I think the accidental factor was rather minor. [Editor’s note: Remember the article by Marcus Eli Ravage published in The Fair Race: the only article by a Jew to appear in that anthology. Even the Nazis translated it for the Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung.]

The Christians’ theory that, after choosing the Jews, God cursed them for their rejection of Christ doesn’t contradict, but rather validates the Jews’ claim that they are the only ethnic group that God chose, loved exclusively and guided personally through his prophets for thousands of years.

I have argued in ‘The Holy Hook’ that this has given the Jews an ambivalent but decisive spiritual authority over Gentiles. In fact, even the Jews’ ‘cursedness’ that goes with their chosenness in the Christian view has been beneficial to them, because Jewishness cannot survive without hostility to and from the Gentile world; that’s part of its biblical DNA. Jesus saved the Jews in the sense that their hatred of Christianity preserved their identity, which might otherwise have perished without the Temple. According to Jacob Neusner ‘Judaism as we know it was born in the encounter with triumphant Christianity.’[2] Christian Judeophobia had an advantage over Pagan Judeophobia: with Christianity, the Jews were not just hated as atavistically antisocial (i.e., Tacitus’ Histories v, 3-5), but as God’s once chosen people, and their Torah became the world bestseller. [Editor’s note: Compare this with Kevin MacDonald’s ‘adaptive Christianity’: a supposedly good Christianity. In our view, all Christianity was bad for Aryan DNA. Tom Sunic in Homo Americanus blames American Christianity for the crime they committed against the Germans in the last century.]

Chosenness is an unbeatable trump card in the game of nations. If you doubt its power, just ask yourself: would the Jews have gotten Palestine in 1948 without that card? The Holocaust joker alone would not have done it!

As I have become increasingly aware of the resonance between the spiritual and the genetic, as well as of the Jewish war against White identity, I have come to wonder if the revealed notion of Jewish divine preference and predestination has not been a slow debilitating poison injected into our collective soul. Jewish chosenness means a metaphysical superiority that makes us, non-Jews, God’s second choice at best.

Sure, this is not an explicit dogma of Christianity—the Credo doesn’t include ‘I believe that God chose the Jews’—, but only an underlying postulate of Christology. Does that make it less, or more efficient against our rational immune system? It is hard to tell. I believe that Jews have carried their chosenness by the Jealous One as a kind of spooky aura not unlike the mark of Cain that says, ‘Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance’ (Genesis 4:15). (It is appropriate to mention here that Cain is the eponymous ancestor of the Kenites, a Midianite tribe allied to the Israelites during the conquest of Canaan, and that according to the scholarly ‘Kenite hypothesis,’ the Yahwist cult is of Kenite origin.)[3]

How did they do it? How did the Jews manage to smuggle their Big Lie into the exclusive religion of European nations? That is a legitimate and important question, isn’t it? From a purely historical perspective, it remains one of the greatest puzzles; one that secular historians prefer to leave to Church historians, who are comfortable with Constantine hearing voices near the Milvius Bridge. [Editor’s Note: The exception is David Skrbina. See the excerpts we recently published from his book The Jesus Hoax.]

The question is, very simply: How is it that Rome ended up adopting as its spiritual foundation a doctrine and a book claiming that God chose the Jews, at a period of widespread Roman Judeophobia? And how is it possible, that, less than two centuries after turning Jerusalem into a Greek city named Aelia Capitolina, where Jews were forbidden to enter, Rome adopted officially a religion that announced the fall of Rome and a new Jerusalem?

One part of the answer is that uniting the Empire under a common religion has been a major concern of Roman emperors from the very beginning. Before Christianity, it was not a question of eliminating local religions, but of creating a common cult to give a divine legitimacy and a religious bond to the Empire. When they searched for religious inspiration, the Romans generally turned to Egypt. The cults of Osiris (or Serapis, as he came to be called from the third century BC), of his sister-spouse Isis, and of their son Horus (or Harpocrates, Horus the Child) were extremely popular all around the Mediterranean, and provided the Romans with the closest thing to an international religion.

Hadrian (117-138) gave Osiris the features of Antinous, to whom he also dedicated a new city, new games, and a constellation. The origin of Antinous is unclear. The Augustan History tells us that he was the gay lover (eromenos) of Emperor Hadrian, and many historians still reproduce that story, even though the Augustan History has been exposed as the work of an impostor. In all likelihood this story is a Christian propaganda against a competing religion.

Antinous, whose name is formed of anti, ‘like’, and nous, ‘spirit’, is supposed to have drowned in the Nile on a 24th of October, just like Osiris, and his death was interpreted as a sacrifice. As a divinity, Antinous was assimilated to Osiris, and by extension to Hermes, Dionysos and Bacchus, all divinities of the Afterworld. On a monolithic obelisque found in Rome but built in Antinopolis, Antinous is designated as Osiris Antinous. His cult must therefore be seen as a new expression of the cult of Osiris sponsored by the Empire. Antinous’ face and body, sculpted in thousands of copies, were a self-celebration of the White race that then dominated the world, from Anatolia to Spain, and from Great Britain to Egypt.[4] [Color emphasis by Editor.]

(Left, Antinous as Bacchus, colossal sculpture presumed to have been from Hadrian’s villa in Palestrina.) What a contrast with its competitor, the cult of the Crucified! The question, then, becomes: Why did Christ ultimately supplant Osiris, even absorbing the cult of Isis? How is it that the glorious and self-confident Roman Empire converted to the cult of a Jewish healer tortured and executed by Roman authorities for sedition? This is the Jewish question that few people want to ask. Assuming that Christianity is a human creation—and that’s my premise—, it is obviously a Jewish creation to a large extent. How did Jews manage to create a religion for Gentiles that would ultimately eradicate all other religions in the Empire—beginning with the imperial cult?

A full understanding of this question will probably never be reached, but with what we have learned about Jewish ways in the last hundred years, we can try to formulate some reasonable scenario, one that doesn’t involve God talking to emperors, but another talking device—money—as well as political leverage by a Jewish transgenerational network determined to seize control of the religious policy of the Empire. We, today, know that such Jewish transgenerational networks, capable of driving their host Empires or nations to their ruin, do exist. We also know that they are good at fabricating and promoting their Judeocentric macabre religion for the Goyim.

____________

[1] Translated from the French: Primo Levi, Lilith et autres nouvelles, Le Livre de Poche, 1989.

[2] Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: History, Messiah, Israel, and the Initial Confrontation, University of Chicago Press, 1987 , pp. ix-xi.

[3] Read Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, Harvard UP, 2015, pp. 137-138, or Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner, Thames & Hudson, 1982, pp. 13-51. I broached on this topic in my book ‘Our God Is Your God Too, But He Has Chosen Us’: Essays on Jewish Power, AFNIL, 2020, pp. 42-45.

[4] Royston Lambert, Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous, Phoenix Giant, 1984; Christopher Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity, op. cit., pp. 75-83.

Categories
Ancient Rome New Testament St Paul

The Jesus Hoax, 6

CHAPTER 6: TAKING STOCK, LOOKING AHEAD

Let’s take stock at this point by briefly recapping the central facts.

The oldest existing Bible dates from the year 350; as we move backward in time from there, our confidence in the actual text diminishes significantly—some parts being much more uncertain than others. Expert consensus is that the four Gospels date to the years 70 to 95 AD, and Paul’s letters to 50 to 70 AD. Paul, the Gospel authors, Jesus, Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and all twelve apostles were Jews. Many Jews had been in active and passive resistance to Rome from virtually the beginning of the takeover in 63 BC. Between the years zero and 93 AD we have absolutely no independent, corroborating evidence for such things as the Bethlehem star, any of Jesus’ 36 miracles, any of the apostles’ miracles, or any of the Christian-specific events depicted in the New Testament.
 

Critiquing antagonism

My thesis addresses the question of motive, something that’s utterly lacking in the other skeptics. I have shown how the Jews had a deep hatred for the Gentile masses and the Romans in particular, and thus how individuals would have done anything—including lie, and including placing themselves at mortal risk—to benefit the Jewish people. The mythicists and other skeptics have no good account of a motive… The Antagonism Thesis is by far the most credible analysis. It best accounts for all the known facts, and identifies an actual and fact-based motive for the whole construction. All signs point to a Jesus Hoax.

So, what’s the counter reply to the Antagonism Thesis? The basic elements of it have been around for over a century. Obviously it had been considered before and apparently rejected, since none of the recent Jesus skeptics defend it. What would they say in reply, to challenge that thesis?

In fact I have raised this question with a number of experts, precisely so that I could gauge the strength of the thesis. Let me mention their comments and then offer my responses.

“It’s not clear that all the Gospel authors, apart from Matthew, were Jews. John certainly was not.”

As I’ve replied earlier, the Gospel of Mark was written for a Gentile audience and thus takes on the superficial appearance of a Gentile work. There is a strong consensus that Mark himself was Jewish. The extensive OT references in all four Gospels argue strongly for Jewish authorship. There is no real evidence that Luke was a Gentile save his name, but as we know from Paul, it was not unheard of for Jews to change to Gentile names. The scattered anti-Jewish statements in all the Gospels—especially John—more reflect an internal Jewish battle over ideology than an external, Gentile attack. Paul is clearly and obviously Jewish.

“You are making sweeping generalizations. Not all Jews opposed Rome, and not all NT writers and characters are necessarily Jewish.”

On the first point, of course, as I stated, many Jews acquiesced to Roman rule. Probably a large majority accepted it, even if begrudgingly. But the elite Jews were sure incensed, and there was certainly a substantial minority of Zealots and others violently opposed. My thesis doesn’t require that all or even most Jews opposed Rome, only that a small band—Paul and friends—did so, and acted on that basis. Regarding the NT writers, that’s addressed above. Regarding the characters in the story—Jesus, Mary, Joseph, et al—we can only go by the words written down, and the text is conclusive: all were Jews.

One knowledgeable colleague listed a number of specific problems for any such hoax theory:

  • Needs a motive. Discussed above. The motive was revenge against Rome, and an attempt to undermine its support by confusing and corrupting the masses.
  • The depiction of Jesus as Messiah conflicts with Jewish expectations of the time. Certainly, and that’s why the majority of the Pharisees opposed Paul’s gang. Paul didn’t concoct his hoax for the Jews; it was strictly for the ‘benefit’ of the gullible Gentiles [1] …

There is no reason that the militant Jews would have given up; rather, they changed direction. [S.G.W.] Brandon’s best defense is that the last Gospel, John, does indeed drop most all talk of revolution, as I noted previously. But that is better attributed to John’s new, more intellectual audience than to any utter resignation on the part of the cabal.

The main point, though, is that the apologists never quite get around to explaining how exactly the Zealot thesis has been “discredited.” And they can’t. They can point to Jesus saying “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek,” but that’s about it.

Let me take a moment to respond to a number of questions that may arise at this point—some of which I’ve covered already, and some not.

Question: “Okay, as a Christian I’ve read and absorbed your whole shocking message. What am I supposed to do about all this?”

Answer: First, try to confirm as much of the evidence cited here as possible [Editor’s note: This image doesn’t appear in Skrbina’s text. He is wise, but an amateur New Testament scholar. I suggest that the reader begin studying a professional NT scholar, for the reasons given in my book Daybreak. Skrbina continues—his italics:] You have been swindled. Tell them you want your money back. And your time. And your life—everything that you’ve invested, and lost, in the most famous hoax in history.

Question: “What about all those pro-Roman, anti-war passages?: ‘Render unto Caesar’ (Mark 12:17), ‘let every person be subject to the governing authorities’ (Rom 13:1), ‘pay your taxes’, ‘perish by the sword’ (Mt 26:52), ‘turn the other cheek’ (Mt 5:39)—not to mention, ‘love thy neighbor’! Don’t these undermine your thesis?”

Answer: This is the “peaceable Jesus” reply. We all know those famous lines, and they get repeated ad nauseum. My general reply is (a) the Jewish cabal was compelled to insert such lines for cover; too much explicit talk of rebellion was dangerous. Also (b) these relatively few lines are outnumbered by far more that imply rebellion and war—see my discussion in chapter five. And in any case, “rendering to Caesar” says nothing about not also working for his downfall. And sure, you may perish by the sword, but that’s what happens in war. I particularly appreciate “love thy neighbor”: Who, after all, was “the neighbor” if not the Jew?

Question: “The Jews come off looking pretty bad here. Isn’t all this terribly anti-Semitic?”

Answer: People are overly sensitive these days, particularly about Jews, probably because we hear so much about them and anti-Semitism in the media… I see no good reason why Jews should continue to merit special sensitivity, especially in light of Israeli crimes in the middle East. (Editor’s note: The last ten words appear in the printed book, not in the online version available on the internet. Skrbina probably made some last-minute changes.)

Question: “How could so many people be fooled for so long? It doesn’t seem possible.”

Answer: Actually there have been several famous examples in history when many people, even many smart people, have been fooled for a very long time. The Donation of Constantine was a fraudulent document in which Emperor Constantine allegedly gave his empire to the Catholic Church in 315 AD. In fact it was forged in the 700s and not exposed until 1440 by Lorenzo Valla.

Witches have been condemned and burned since at least 300 BC, and during the peak period in Europe—from 1450 to 1750—some 500,000 were killed. In all these cases, millions of people were fooled, deceived, or otherwise attached to false beliefs for centuries. It’s no surprise that millions could still be wrong.
 

Media, Government, Hollywood

All the Abrahamic religions worship the Jewish God; Muslims simply changed his name.

Governments everywhere want compliant populations. They want citizens who will respect authority without question, follow the laws, accept its power, and not be too inquisitive. They like people who simply have faith in government, and who more or less blindly trust them…

Colleges and universities are somewhat better, often having panels or speakers who challenge the Christian view. But the Antagonism Thesis is particularly difficult to discuss since it casts blame on Jews, and any negative talk about them risks ostracism or worse, even in our “liberal” and “free speech” universities.

What about our irreverent media and Hollywood filmmakers—those who are so willing to commit sacrilege against any social norm or moral standard? I suspect this has something to do with the extensive role played by Jewish Americans. It’s uncontroversial that Hollywood has been dominated by Jews for decades; a relatively recent article in the LA Times cites Jewish heads of nearly every major Hollywood studio.[2] And it’s not just the movie business. All the major media conglomerates have a heavy Jewish presence in top management. If they should decide that Jewish malevolence at the heart of the Christian story “looks bad,” then they obviously won’t bring it up at all—not in the news, not on TV, not in books…

“It is also difficult to imagine why Christian writers would invent such a thoroughly Jewish savior in a time and place where there was strong suspicion of Judaism.” Actually, not difficult at all: the “Christian” writers were Jews who were trying to build an anti-Roman church based on a Jewish God and a Jewish savior. They just had to make sure that the enemy was “the devil” and not “Rome.”
 

Whither Christianity?

I rest my case. By all accounts, and despite protests to the contrary, Christianity indeed seems to be a “cleverly devised myth” (2 Pet 1:16)—a lie, a hoax—foisted upon the innocent and gullible masses simply for the benefit of Israel and the Jews.

It’s in the Gospel of John that we read one of the bluntest statements of truth, wherein Jesus says, “You [Gentiles] worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). We know what we are doing, say the Jews. You Gentile Christians don’t even know what you’re worshipping—which in fact is us and our God. But that’s okay. Just leave everything to us; “salvation is of the Jews.”

But it’s Paul who’s really the star of this show. Paul comes across as a masterly and artful liar—one of the all-time greats in world history, a man who can lie with impunity about the soul, the afterlife, God, everything. This unprincipled scoundrel, who admits to being “all things to all men,” would do anything or say anything to win his “kingdom of God” here on Earth. His mournful cries of “I do not lie!” are revealed as nothing other than an inveterate liar caught in the act.

With his fabricated “Jesus” and his fabricated “afterlife,” Paul drained all value from this world, the real world. It turned believers into weak and subservient sheep, ones whose lives are oriented around the manufactured sayings of a marginal rabbi and of prayer to Jehovah, the invisible God of the Jews.

It took a few hundred years, but when enough people fell for the hoax, it helped to bring down the Roman Empire. And when people—lots of people—still believe it after two thousand years, it cannot but degrade society, weighing us down, blocking us from attaining that which we are capable of, that which was only hinted at in the greatness of Athens and Rome. And all for the salvation of the Jews.

___________

[1] Paul famously declared himself to be “Apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:13, Gal 1:16).

[2] “How Jewish is Hollywood?”, by Joel Stein (Dec 19, 2008).

Categories
Ancient Rome Antiochus IV Epiphanes Final solution Hadrian Horace Jerusalem Judaism Old Testament

The Jesus Hoax, 4

 
CHAPTER 4: ONE AGAINST ALL

If the Jews are chosen by God, then everyone else is, of necessity, not chosen. If Jews are first class humans in the eyes of God, everyone else is second-class at best. And indeed, Jews do view themselves as distinct, special, and superior to others. As Exodus states, “We are distinct from all other people that are upon the face of the earth” (33:16). Similarly, the Hebrew tribe is “a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

Moses adds that “you shall rule over many nations” (15:6)… you shall eat the wealth of the nations” (61:5-6).

Clearly, when other people began to encounter these ideas and the attitudes that derived from them, one would expect a backlash. And there was. Hence we find a consistent thread of opinions from non-Jewish observers, for centuries, who are repelled by such arrogance…

The earliest direct references come from Aristotle’s star pupil Theophrastus. He had a concern about one of their customs: “the Syrians, of whom the Jews (Ioudaioi) constitute a part, also now sacrifice live victims… They were the first to institute sacrifices both of other living beings and of themselves”. The Greeks, he added, would have “recoiled from the entire business.” The victims—animal and human —were not eaten, but burnt as “whole offerings” to their God, and were “quickly destroyed.” The philosopher was clearly repelled by this Jewish tradition.

Egyptian high priest Manetho (ca. 250 BC) tells of a group of “lepers and other polluted persons,” 80,000 in number, who were exiled from Egypt and found residence in Judea… When in power they treated the natives “impiously and savagely,” “setting towns and villages on fire, pillaging the temples and mutilating images of the gods without restraint,” and roasting the animals held sacred by the locals. This is a very different version than we read in the Jewish Bible…

The decline of the Seleucids coincided with Roman ascent. Rome was still technically a republic in the second century BC, but its power and influence were rapidly growing. Jews were attracted to the seat of power, and travelled to Rome in significant numbers. As before, they grew to be hated. By 139 BC, the Roman praetor Hispalus found it necessary to expel them from the city: “The same Hispalus banished the Jews from Rome, who were attempting to hand over their own rites to the Romans, and he cast down their private alters from public places”. In even this short passage, one senses a Roman Jewry who were disproportionately prominent, obtrusive, even ‘pushy.’

Perhaps in part because of this incident, and in light of the Maccabean revolt some 30 years earlier, the Seleucid king Antiochus VII Sidetes was advised in 134 BC to exterminate the Jews… Apollonius Molon wrote the first book to explicitly confront the Hebrew tribe, Against the Jews.

The rhetoric is clearly heating up. In 63 BC, as we know, Roman general Pompey took Palestine. In the year 59 BC Cicero gave a speech, now titled Pro Flacco. The Jewish religion is “at variance with the glory of our empire, the dignity of our name, the customs of our ancestors.” That the gods stand opposed to this tribe “is shown by the fact that it has been conquered, let out for taxes, made a slave.”

Ten years later Diodorus Siculus wrote his Historical Library. Among other things, it again recounts the Exodus: “The refugees had occupied the territory round about Jerusalem, and having organized the nation of Jews had made their hatred of mankind into a tradition” (34, 1).

Here, though, it is Antiochus Epiphanes, not his successor Sidetes, that was urged “to wipe out completely the race of Jews, since they alone of all nations avoided dealings with any other people and looked upon all men as their enemies”.

The great lyric poet Horace wrote his Satires in 35 BC, exploring Epicurean philosophy and the meaning of happiness. At one point, though, he makes a passing comment on the apparently notorious proselytizing ability of the Roman Jews—in particular their tenaciousness in winning over others. Horace is in the midst of attempting to persuade the reader of his point of view: “and if you do not wish to yield, then a great band of poets will come to my aid, and, just like the Jews, we will compel you to concede to our crowd” (I.4.143). Their power must have been legendary, or he would not have made such an allusion.

The last commentator of the pre-Christian era was Lysimachus. Writing circa 20 BC, he offers another variation on the Exodus story. The exiled ones, led by Moses, were instructed to “show goodwill to no man,” to offer “the worst advice” to others, and to overthrow any temples or sanctuaries they might come upon. Arriving in Judea, “they maltreated the population, and plundered and set fire to the local temples.” They then built a town called Hierosolyma (Jerusalem), and referred to themselves as Hierosolymites.

The charge of misanthropy, or hatred of mankind, is significant and merits further discussion, especially in light of the Christian story.

 

Romans of the Christian Era

Emperor Tiberius expelled them in the year 19 AD. The expulsion did not succeed. Eleven years later, as we recall from chapter two, Sejanus found reason to oppose them again.

Anti-Jewish actions continued. In 49, Claudius once again had to expel them. In a fascinating line from Suetonius circa the year 120, we find mention of one ‘Chrestus’ (Latin: Chresto) as the leader of the rabble; this would be perhaps the fourth non-Jewish references to Jesus. “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome”. This is an important observation that, even at that late date, the Romans still identified Christianity with the Jews.

Despite all this, the beleaguered tribe still earned no sympathy. The great philosopher Seneca commented on them in his work On Superstition, circa 60. He was appalled not only by their ‘superstitious’ religious beliefs, but more pragmatically with their astonishing influence in Rome and around the known world, despite repeated pogroms and banishments. Seneca adds: “The customs of this accursed race (sceleratissima gens) have gained such influence that they are now received throughout all the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors.”

Seneca is clearly indignant at their reach. Then came the historic Jewish revolt in Judea, during the years 66 to 70. The Romans were surely gratified; to their mind, the Jews received their just deserts.

In besieging Jerusalem, and consequently the mighty Jewish temple, Titus had the Jews trapped. There was thought of sparing the temple, but Titus opposed this option. For him, “the destruction of this temple was a prime necessity in order to wipe out more completely the religion of the Jews and the Christians.” These two religions, “although hostile to each other, nevertheless sprang from the same sources; the Christians had grown out of the Jews: if the root were destroyed, the stock would easily perish”. The passage closes by noting that 600,000 Jews were killed in the war.

The third and final Jewish uprising occurred just a few years later, in 132. The reasons for this were many, but two stand out: the construction of a Roman city on the ruins of Jerusalem, and Emperor Hadrian’s banning of circumcision: “At this time the Jews began war, because they were forbidden to practice genital mutilation (mutilare genitalia)”. Dio describes the conflict in detail. “Jews everywhere were showing signs of hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly overt acts”. They were able to bribe others to join in the uprising: “many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter.” For those today who argue that Jews were perennially the cause of wars, this would provide some early evidence. Hadrian sent one of his best generals, Severus, to put down the insurgency. Through a slow war of attrition, “he was able to crush, exhaust, and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived.”

Finally we have Celsus, a Greek philosopher who composed a text, The True Word, sometime around 178. The piece is striking as an extended and scathing critique of the increasingly prominent Christian sect.

 

Conclusions

So what can we conclude from this brief overview of some 600 years of the ancient world? To say that the Jews were disliked is an understatement. The critiques come from all around the Mediterranean region, and from a wide variety of cultural perspectives. And they are uniformly negative. I note here that it’s not a case of ‘cherry-picking’ the worst comments and ignoring the good ones. The remarks are all negative; there simply are no positive opinions on the Jews or early Christians. A reasonable conclusion is that there is something about the Jewish culture that inspires disgust and hatred.

In any case, it’s clear that the Jews had few if any friends in the ancient world. Their religion instructed them to despise others (Gentiles), and others in turn despised them. But the originating source was the Jews themselves: their religion, their worldview, their values. They were willing to use and exploit non-Jews for their own ends. They were willing to kill, and to die.

This situation feeds directly into the circumstances of the Roman occupation and Paul’s reaction. The preceding analysis suggests that Paul was interested in nothing other than saving ‘Israel,’ the Jewish people. We have seen a few textual clues indicating that he was willing even to commit murder in order to further his ends. Surely he hated the Romans with a vengeance, and yet he also could see the futility of confronting them directly.