Caesar's Messiah is a book by Joseph Atwill that argues that the New Testament Gospels were written by a group of individuals connected to the Flavian family of Roman emperors: Vespasian , Titus and Domitian. Christianity, a pacifist and pro-Roman-authority religion, was their solution. Atwill's Jesus mythicist theory contradicts the mainstream scholarly view [ 3 ] that while the Gospels include many mythical or legendary elements, these are religious elaborations added to the biography of a historical Jesus who did live in the 1st-century Roman province of Judea , [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
There is evidence that the Flavian family was involved with early Christianity. It is claimed that the Roman theology of Victory fueled the family's goal to destroy Jerusalem and their imperial ambition.
Assuming that at least some of this information linking the Flavian family to early Christianity is correct, Atwill points out that these early connections are very difficult to explain if Christianity was a struggling grassroots movement originating in Judea.
In addition, the sacraments of the early Christian church , its College of Bishops , and the title of its leader the Pontiff were all based in Rome, and on Roman, rather than Judaic traditions. Echoes of Old Testament stories are often found in the New Testament , in a relationship in which the Old Testament model is called the "type" and the New Testament reprise is called the "antitype".
The study of these types and antitypes is called typology. Atwill claims that similar typological relationships knit together the Gospels and the works of Flavius Josephus. Atwill notes that according to the Preterist school of biblical interpretation, the prophecies of Jesus and Daniel were fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
