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Caesar's Messiah
CHAPTER 12
The Father and the Son of God
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and
no one fully knows the Son except the Father, nor does any
one fully know the Father except the Son and all to whom
the Son chooses to reveal Him.
Matt. 1 1 :27
Jesus' doomsday prophecies were directed against the "wicked gen-
eration" of Jews who rebelled against Rome. Therefore, his threat-
ened "second coming" was predicting the 70 C.E. destruction of
Jerusalem. This was the understanding of most Christian theolo-
gians until this century and is still the way the Preterit Christians
understand these prophecies. The 17th-century theologian Reland
saw the Roman assault on Jerusalem in this way: [The] "Son of God
came now to take vengeance on the sins of the Jewish nation." His
contemporary, William Whiston, was even more specific. He under-
stood that Jesus' words indicated "that he would come at the head
of the Roman army for their destruction." 162
I am in complete agreement with Reland and Whiston. All of
Jesus' ministry was about the coming war with Rome and was
designed to establish Jesus as Titus' forerunner. Therefore, the rela-
tionship between Jesus and "the Father" referred to throughout the
Gospels is a forerunner of the relationship between Titus and his
father, the emperor and god Vespasian.
All the dialogues that describe Jesus' relationship with the Father
use comic wordplay that actually describes Titus' relationship with
his real father, Vespasian. Supporting this premise is the fact that all
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The Father and the Son of God 25 1
of Jesus' descriptions of his relationship with his father mention that
father and son possess secret identities known only to the two of them.
But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John;
for the works which the Father has granted me to accom-
plish, these very works which I am doing, bear me witness
that the Father has sent me.
I bear witness to myself, and the Father who sent me
bears witness to me.
They said to him therefore, "Where is your Father?"
Jesus answered, "You know neither me nor my Father; if
you knew me, you would know my Father also."
John 8:19
In Matthew, Jesus also speaks of a secret identity known only to
him and his father.
At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, 0
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes.
Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.
All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no
man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any
man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son will reveal him.
Matt. 1 1 :27
In the Gospel of John, Jesus again discusses his relationship
with the Father. Again the discussion takes place within the context
of a concealed identity. In this instance, his questioners are trying to
determine whether Jesus is claiming to be the Messiah. Christian
theologians have made numerous efforts to explain Jesus' meaning
here. My explanation is that it is a revelation that Jesus was a "god"
and not "God."
"My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.
I and the Father are one."
252 Caesar's Messiah
The Jews took up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, "I have shown you many good
works from the Father; for which of these do you stone
me?"
The Jews answered him, "It is not for a good work that
we stone you but for blasphemy; because you, being a man,
make yourself God."
Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, 'I
said, you are gods?'
If he called them gods to whom the word of God came
(and scripture cannot be broken),
Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and
sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said,
'I am the Son of God?'
If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not
believe me;
But if I do them, even though you do not believe me,
believe the works, that you may know and understand that
the Father is in me and I am in the Father."
John 10:28-38
If Jesus' dialogue is, as I suggest, a comic way of describing Titus
and his father, the god Vespasian, then the passage above makes per-
fect sense.
It is of interest that Titus is the only person, other than Jesus,
who is referred to in the New Testament with the phrase "coming
of."
But He who comforts the depressed — even God — comforted
us by the coming of Titus, and not by his coming only . . . 163
A "Titus" is also described in the Pauline letters as the "true
child."
To Titus my own true child in our common faith.
Titus 1 :4.2
When Vespasian died in 79 C.E., Titus succeeded him as emperor.
Among his first orders of business was to have his father deified. It
was not a routine task — Vespasian was to be the first non-Julio-
The Father and the Son of God 253
Claudian emperor to be so honored. But it was important because
Vespasian's deification would break the chain of divine succession
held by the Julio-Claudian line since Julius Caesar and thereby help
secure an imperial future for the Flavian family.
In order for Vespasian to be made a diuus, the Roman senate had
to decree it upon him. It was a uniquely Roman custom that only the
senate could bestow the title of diuus upon him. Over the years, the
senate had turned down many applicants for the title. Therefore,
Titus needed to somehow demonstrate to the senate that Vespasian's
life had been that of a god. During this time, he would also have
been involved in creating of an empire-wide bureaucracy to admin-
ister the cult of Vespasian, once it was established.
In spite of the fact that Vespasian's consecrato would have been
of great importance to Titus, it did not occur until six months after
his death. This interval between the death of an emperor and his
consecrato was an unusually long time. It was during this time
that the New Testament was created. The length of the interval due
to the fact that during this period Titus created not one but two reli-
gions that worshiped his father as a god, as well as the New Testa-
ment's companion piece, War of the Jews.
As Jesus' prophecies came to pass during the Jewish war, they
proved that God had sanctioned the events he foresaw. This is exactly
what Titus would have been attempting to demonstrate to the Roman
senate — that the events of his father's life, certainly including his
conquest of Judea, proved that he was divine and that he deserved
to be decreed a diuus. Viewed from this perspective, the similarities
between Christianity and the cult of Vespasian are obvious.
When Titus arranged to have his father declared a god he "dei-
fied" the events of Vespasian's life. Thus, all of Jesus' prophecies
regarding God's coming wrath upon Judea flow without contradic-
tion into the cult of Vespasian. In fact, the Gospels could have been
presented to the Roman senate as "proof of the absurd premise that
Vespasian's life had been that of a god.
To see this more clearly, simply subtract Judaism and Judea from
the New Testament. What if Titus, in trying to convince the Roman
senate that certain events of his father's life proved that he was
divine, had claimed that a prophet had wandered about Italy in 30
254 Caesar's Messiah
C.E. predicting that two Roman gods, a father and a son, would one
day destroy a "wicked generation" of Jews who rebelled against Rome
and along with them the temple of Jerusalem? Every member of the
senate would have understood that the gods this Italian prophet had
"forseen" were Vespasian and Titus. Of course, no Roman senator
would have been so gullible as to believe the story. Locating the
prophet in Judea does not make such prophecies any more plausi-
ble, but Christianity was not created for a sophisticated audience.
The histories of Josephus, which prophesied that Vespasian
would be the world ruler foreseen by Judaism's messianic prophe-
cies, likewise provided support for Vespasian's deification. The New
Testament and War of the Jews both make the case that the destruc-
tion of Judea was an act of a god — the same absurd premise as that
made by the cult of Vespasian.
When we align the New Testament with War of the Jews a clear
picture emerges. Jesus predicted that a "Son of Man" would encircle
Jerusalem with a wall and destroy its temple and bring tribulation
onto the "wicked generation" that rebelled against Rome. In fact, one
man actually had these precise characteristics. A man who was a "son
of god" and whose followers "fished for men" at Gennesareth. A
man who encircled Jerusalem with a wall and destroyed the temple
of Jerusalem. A man who brought the tribulation that Jesus had fore-
seen unto the "wicked generation" and then ended his "ministry" by
condemning Simon and sparing John. The man was Titus Flavius.
Only one man at that point in history had the power to estab-
lish a religion. At the same time that the first real evidence of Chris-
tianity emerges, one man is known to have established a religion
that, like Christianity, held that the destruction of Jerusalem and its
temple was the work of a god. The man was Titus Flavius.
Bear in mind that no one had a stronger motivation than Titus
for finding a cost-effective method of containing militant Judaism,
which was so expensive for Rome to control.
Finally, only one family other than Jesus' is associated with the
origin of Christianity. It is the family of Titus Flavius. Even if one
discounts the tradition that regards Flavius Clemens as the first
pope, as well as all the other Flavian traditions connected with
Christianity's origins, the inscription naming Domitilla Flavian as
The Father and the Son of Cod 255
the founder of the oldest burial grounds for Christians in Rome still
exists today. If one ignores even this, the works of Flavins Josephus
would be sufficient to confirm the Flavian connection with the ori-
gins of Christianity. Josephus' works deliberately falsified history to
provide support for Christian dogma. And whoever or whatever he
was, Josephus was an adopted Flavian.
Concerning the question of who knew Judaism well enough to
create Christianity, this information was in abundant supply, even
within the small circle of Titus' known confidants. Titus' mistress
Bernice, though a Herodian, had Maccabean ancestors and claimed
to have been a Jew. Though the Jews of the messianic movement
would not have seen her religious perspective as Jewish, she would
clearly have known much about the Judaism of her day and would
have been able to contribute to the creation of the Gospels.
Tiberius Alexander was another individual within Titus' inner-
most circle who knew of Judaism well enough oversee the produc-
tion of the New Testament. Tiberius was the nephew of the famous
Jewish philosopher Philo, and Vespasian held him in such regard
that he made Tiberius chief of staff to Titus during the siege of
Jerusalem.
Though a Jew, Tiberius Alexander was a Roman knight who was
morally able to order the murder of thousands of his race to main-
tain the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. When the Jews of Alexan-
dria "made a disturbance," Tiberius ordered the Roman troops not
only to kill the rioters but to plunder and burn their ghetto as well.
Josephus records that "fifty thousand corpses piled up." Tiberius, in
his role as chief of staff to Titus during the siege of Jerusalem and
the subsequent slaughter and enslavement of the Jews there, showed
a slavish obedience to Rome. It would have been necessary for some-
one of Jewish descent who created a religion that was used to oppress
his own people. His religious perspective was Romanized to such an
extent that he was not even monotheistic. He often used the word
"gods." Josephus, who, it should be remembered, also claimed to be
a Jew, recorded Tiberius' close relationship to the Flavians.
... as also there came Tiberius Alexander, who was a friend
of his, most valuable, both for his good-will to him, and for
256 Caesar's Messiah
his prudence. He had formerly been governor of Alexandria,
but was now thought worthy to be general of the army [under
Titus]. The reason of this was, that he had been the first who
encouraged Vespasian very lately to accept this his new
dominion, and joined himself to him with great fidelity, when
things were uncertain, and fortune had not yet declared for
him. He also followed Titus as a counselor, very useful to
him in this war, both by his age and skill in such affairs. 165
To such individuals who were completely in thrall to the Flavians
and who saw militant messianic Judaism as a threat to their financial
interests, providing the information to construct a version of Judaism
that was in alignment with Rome would have been automatic.
One of the primary causes for the war between the Romans and
the Jews was the Jews' refusal to worship the Roman emperors as
gods. Though the rest of the empire did, the Jews would not call
Caesar "Lord." As I have pointed out, the cruelest joke of Christian-
ity is that by replacing the Jewish God and son of God with Roman
emperors, it tricked Jews into calling Caesar "Lord" without know-
ing it. Chrisitanity stole the identities of the God of Judaism and his
messiah Son, as well as those of John and Simon, the leaders of the
messianic rebellion. Their identities were given to Vespasian and Titus
and to the "Christian Apostles" John and Simon. These disguised
characters were combined with other symbols of Roman conquest,
the cross of the crucifixion and the "flesh of the Messiah," to create
a religion that both absorbed and ridiculed the messianic movement.
This was the ultimate triumph of the imperial family. This darkly
comic concept of switched identities is in play to such an extent that
the New Testament and the works of Josephus together are a puzzle
whose solution produces the true identities of their characters. Why
was it necessary to create this vast literary puzzle? Because it was the
only method by which Titus could both create a religion that solved
the problem of the Jews' refusal to accept the Roman emperor as a
god and also make it known to posterity that he was the one who
did it.
But what was most of all astonishing to the beholders was
the courage of the children; for not one of these children
was so far overcome by these torments, as to name Caesar
The Father and the Son of God 257
for their Lord. So far does the strength of the courage [of the
soul] prevail over the weakness of the body. 166
The authors of Christianity intended that their puzzles would
eventually be solved and Titus' complete triumph be thereby revealed,
a sorry task that has fallen to this author.
I suspect that Christianity, as the comic version of the imperial
cult, was first inserted into the areas surrounding Judea to serve as
a theological barrier to the spread of militaristic Judaism. Evidently
succeeding beyond its creators' original intent, it was eventually
decreed the state religion. The religion thus became a prophylactic for
all the potentially rebellious slave populations throughout the empire.
To make the cult as efficient as possible in promoting their
interests, its inventors had their parodic Messiah advocate both paci-
fism and stoicism, whereby Christians would learn to subdue their
rebelliousness and find holiness in subservience. This combination
of Christian theology and Roman imperial might was so effective
that it kept European civilization frozen in place for over 1000 years,
throughout the Dark Ages.
A Roman bureaucracy called the Commune Aside, an organiza-
tion that administered the imperial cult in Asia, would probably
have overseen the original implementation of Christianity. Notably,
all the seven "churches of Asia" mentioned in Revelation 1:11 were
known to have agencies of the Commune located within them. Five
of these seven cities were sites of the imperial cult's festival, which
was held once every five years. In these cities it would have been
possible to oversee two versions of the imperial cult, one for Roman
citizens and the other for the "slaves and scum" seen as susceptible
to the lure of the Messiah.
The puzzle of Decius Mundus described earlier indicates that
"wicked priests" accepted money to build congregations for the new
Judaism. Following the destruction of the temple, some of the 18,000
priests who had previously worked there were, presumably, still alive
and would have needed to seek new employment. The first Christ-
ian priests may have been hired from the remnants of the enormous
group that had once ministered to the now destroyed temple.
However these facts may be, the Roman version of Judaism was
introduced to the masses by some group of "wicked priests" who
258 Caesar's Messiah
had been employed by the Flavians to preach the "Gospels" — a word
that technically means "good news of military victory." The first
people to hear the story of Jesus would most likely have been slaves,
whose patrons simply ordered them to attend services. After a while
some began to believe, then many.
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