CREATING CHRIST - Official Documentary
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555,364 views Nov 23, 2023
https://creatingchristdoc.com/
The official and complete version of the Creating Christ documentary
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Based on the book "Creating Christ" by James S. Valliant & Warren Fahy
With Guest Scholars:
Dr. Robert Price
Prof. Robert Eisenman
Acharya Sanning / D.M. Murdock
00:00 - In the Beginning
10:51 - Imperial Cults
21:35 - Conflict
33:08 - Who Was Paul?
45:16 - The Myth of Persecution
50:43 - All-Out War
54:00 - Flavian Propaganda
1:02:47 - Jewish Leaders of the Flavian Court
1:07:35 - The First Christians and Their Symbols
1:17:59 - The Evolution of Christianity
1:38:16 - Conclusions
Created by Fritz Heede & Nijole Sparkis
Music by Fritz Heede
Produced by Nlightning artZ
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?...
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Transcript
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In the Beginning
- [James] Terrorists, religiously motivated terrorists from the Middle East have just struck a demoralizing blow
to the Capital of Western Civilization, the capital of Western decadence from their perspective.
The year is 66 AD, the religious sect are Jews, and the Capital that we're talking about is Rome.
Although this war occurred 20 centuries ago, it still reverberates throughout history
and is affecting your life to this very day. (soft music) (crowd chattering)
(water flowing)
- [Narrator] Around 2,000 years ago, the Western world went through its greatest philosophical shift ever,
a complete 180, and we've been living out this same worldview till today.
But now, we're standing at the brink of another huge philosophical shift,
so learning from this important period of history can help us make the critical choices we need today.
- The Creating Christ book is really very fascinating,
there's so many fascinating things about this.
- And it's quite a convincing presentation, I think.
- I think what you're bringing to the table dovetails beautifully with what's going on in the rest of the Mediterranean at the time.
- [Narrator] Let's begin by uncovering various clues history has left us, like pieces in a mosaic,
which ultimately help us arrive at the big picture.
- When I was reading the work of the first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, I was struck by something he said,
that the man he worked for, the Roman Emperor Vespasian, was in fact the Jewish Messiah of prophecy,
in effect, another Jesus of the first century. This went against everything that I'd been taught.
- [Narrator] Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus Flavius were the Roman generals who destroyed Jerusalem
and took down its Temple, ending the first Jewish War with the Romans.
How could a Jewish historian say that they were the Jewish Messiah?
- And this I think made me take it seriously more than any of the rest of this stuff, was that in Mark 13, they depict Jesus
as saying that when one generation is passed, which would be about 40 years,
they'll see the sign of the Son of Man in heaven and the Temple will be destroyed.
Watch out, it's gonna happen before this generation is over. Well, why would anybody have him make a false prophecy?
Why no second coming of Jesus? They must have known that hadn't happened,
Jesus didn't come back. Well, maybe that's not what they were saying.
Maybe the Son of Man wasn't Jesus, maybe a Son of Man, you know who we mean,
will come back and destroy the Temple. Is that the general Vespasian and his son Titus?
- In the New Testament we find supposed predictions of things that are supposed to happen in the future,
and it looks as if they have been fulfilled, and that Jesus is a great prophet,
he must have been omniscient. But in fact they were written after they'd already occurred.
(chuckles) So it really was no great feat of prophecy.
- Astonishingly, in Josephus' history of the Jewish War, he describes the destruction of the Temple
in almost identical terms to those used by Jesus in the Gospels.
And the fact that Josephus' histories and the Gospels were both written during the Flavian era,
was a coincidence that it was impossible to overlook.
- In all three of the first Gospels, Jesus insists that his glorious second coming would happen within the lifetimes
of people then listening to him. This of course would be a confirmation
of the claims of the Emperor Vespasian to being the glorious coming of the Jewish Messiah.
And it's that conjunction of events that struck me as most unusual, as if the Gospels themselves were written to demonstrate
the Flavian claim to being the true Jewish Messiahs.
- Well, that starts to look like something different was going on than we had expected,
and whoever wrote Mark 13 already believed it, that it was the destruction of the Temple by the Flavians,
that was the great Second Coming. In fact, Vespasian was considered a god
and that made Titus the Son of God. So was that lurking in the background?
I can't say it wasn't, that is beguilingly cogent.
'Cause otherwise, why would you write this? "Hey, let's have Jesus make a false prophecy!" You never do that!
(soft music)
- [Narrator] Though other scholars have spoken of these parallels, James and Warren found some actual physical archaeological evidence
that links these Flavian emperors to the very beginning of the Christian religion.
- Very early on, we began looking for archaeological evidence that the Romans
had some involvement with the development of Christianity. We started to look at architectural details,
and especially focused on coins, as the Roman Empire used them to spread
their governmental propaganda across the empire. And we imagined that there would be a coin
that would show the linkage between Christianity and the Roman Empire, if indeed our thesis was correct.
- Initially I was skeptical that we would find some concrete image that would actually connect the two.
But I was working myself on a monograph on Roman coinage and propaganda, and as I was working on that,
for years my co-author had been looking for this physical evidence and happened across the specific image that was used thousands of times
by the Emperor Titus on his own coinage. - [Narrator] This image was never used before
by a Roman emperor, and early Christians began using different versions of it
in the same era. - Finally while examining the first archaeological evidence
of Christianity in the world, which are the catacombs of St. Domitilla, she being the niece of the Emperor Titus
and the granddaughter of the Emperor Vespasian, the connection finally came into focus.
The symbol that is most famous from the catacombs of St. Domitilla, known as one of the earliest iconographic representations
of Christianity, is of an anchor flanked by two fish.
As it turns out, Titus' coinage has a symbol of an anchor wrapped around by a dolphin or a fish.
- [Narrator] According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, both of these images are part of a family of symbols
used by early Christians, which includes a dolphin on an anchor,
an anchor surrounded by fish, dolphins or fish with a trident,
and other variations. - This provided at last the first physical evidence
of a link between the Flavians and the earliest Church.
- I guess the big discovery they made was that, something very odd,
that on Flavian dynasty coins, there was kind of their house trademark
of an anchor with dolphins around it. And, what do you know?
Around the same period that image, which is kind of an odd one,
it becomes a widespread Christian symbol. Now if the Romans were hated enemies,
why would Christians appropriate this?
It's so strange, it's like "Hey, what do you say our synagogue
adopts the swastika as its symbol?" It'd never happen.
And so that's kind of their point. I mean, they do a, Valliant and Warren Fahy have done all kinds of complex work, it's not just that.
But that was a very surprising thing, almost a smoking gun, so I have to take that seriously.
- [Narrator] Why did Titus Flavius mint thousands of coins with a fish and anchor image on it?
And why did early Christians use this image in their earliest catacombs?
What does this symbol mean, and how could it have been used at the same time
in two such different contexts?
Imperial Cults
To answer these questions, let's look at the first historical mention
of the official visual symbols of Christianity. In the second century, St. Clement of Alexandria,
whose full name is Titus Flavius Clemens, suggested the following symbols be used by early Christians:
a dove, a fish, a ship,
a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship's anchor, which Seleucus used.
- We know that in the late second century, St. Clement of Alexandria in his inventory
of Christian symbols lists both the anchor and the dolphin, but does not list the cross.
- And among those symbols that he offers are symbols associated with ironically the pagan god Apollo.
This struck us as odd, as we've often been told that Christianity is anti-pagan
. More than that, Clement of Alexandria specifies the pagan origins of this symbol.
- [Narrator] He refers to Polycrates, who was a worshipper of Apollo, and Seleucus.
- Seleucus the First was a General who worked for Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great, in the fourth century BC,
conquered what we know of as the Middle East or the Near East today, and brought Greek culture,
Platonic philosophy to this entire region. So the era after Alexander the Great is widely known
by historians as the Hellenistic era, the era in which Greek philosophy and Greek ideas spread throughout the Middle East.
- [Narrator] And one of the conquered territories where Greek ideas were being spread was Palestine,
which included Galilee, Samaria, and Judea.
- The origin of course of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor goes all the way back to Apollo,
it was his symbol. It represents Apollo who had transformed himself into a dolphin.
- I myself visited the island of Delos, the legendary birthplace of the god Apollo. You can see many, many examples
that are centuries older than Christ, of this same dolphin and anchor image.
And it was Seleucus who first used an anchor with a dolphin wrapped around it. And he did so just as a symbolization, if you will,
of his own claim to being the son of the god Apollo. - [Narrator] Apollo was the Greek Sun God,
the Creator God, Source of Life and Healing, and arguably the most loved deity in the pantheon of gods.
So Seleucus used the symbol of Apollo to claim this divine lineage.
- Roman emperors looked to Alexander the Great, the very first Imperialist, as a model,
as a great template for how to conquer other territories.
So it is natural for the Romans to use the symbol of the dolphin and the anchor.
- [Narrator] Natural for the Flavians to associate themselves with Seleucus and Apollo,
but why would St. Clement of Alexandria recommend it as a Christian symbol?
Perhaps another clue is that the Romans also looked to the Alexandrian conquerors
for how they integrated Greek culture with the local cultures they conquered.
- And the kings that came in the wake of Alexander the Great, such as the Ptolemies in Egypt, were attempting an integration both of local culture,
the Egyptian culture, with Greek culture. And in the process of doing that, the Ptolemies created a new god, a synthetic god, Serapis.
- Ptolemy commissioned the creation of this god. Serapis is a hybrid, deliberately created
by the priests in order to unify the constantly warring factions within Alexandria,
which would be the Greeks and the Jews, but overtly it was the Greeks and the Egyptians.
- And the god Serapis is himself an interesting figure, melded together between Apollo, Asclepius, Zeus, and Hades,
the afterlife god, as well as the Egyptians' Osiris, the god who had himself been torn apart and resurrected,
makes it clear that Serapis was a resurrection god.
- The healing and the salvation part of Serapis were clearly glommed onto by Christianity.
And in fact, there was a statue of Serapis with long curly dark hair.
And his Greek counterpart was the god Asclepius. And Asclepius also was a healing god,
and he had the long curly hair. And the two of them were kind of a hybrid. Asclepius did wear the white robes
and pretty much the same figure, just re-worked, they took the face and the hair
and the overall impression of Serapis and Asclepius and then turned him into Jesus Christ basically.
- That's not so strange, because all the Middle Eastern empires for hundreds of years
had gone farther than that. The Persians were big on this, though others had done it.
And in the Bible itself we read that the Emperor of Persia sent Ezra,
who though Jewish was a court official in Persia, "You go back there to the community of the Jews
in Jerusalem with our authority," and he went back with the Torah in some form, the laws,
and they imposed this. Wow, it's interesting that from that point on in history,
Judaism looks a whole lot like Persian Zoroastrianism.
What these guys are suggesting with Rome in effect creating our Christianity
is not substantially different than what the Persians did with Judaism or earlier Middle Eastern empires,
it's not fantastic in the least.
- [Narrator] This is another piece of the mosaic that's important for seeing the whole picture
that it was quite common in this era for rulers to engage in religious experimentation
and improvisation for ruling their subjects.
- The first centuries of the Common Era were perhaps the most religiously dynamic period in the history of Western Civilization.
It saw the emergence of so many new and innovative religious ideas.
- [Acharya] There's unquestionably an effort to synthesize Judaism and Pagan religions.
- We have to remember that before the last two centuries, there was no separation between religion and politics.
Every political movement needed to have a religious justification. The Roman Empire, and before that the Roman Republic,
were all considered by Romans to be sanctioned by the gods and religiously significant,
sacred political institutions. The Jews themselves saw this era as important,
the fulfillment of their own messianic prophecies, the coming of a deliverer that would lead them to victory against Rome.
So both sides saw this era and this conflict in religious terms, and that is what created
such a religiously fertile moment in the first two centuries, creating entirely new ways of looking and synthesizing
these religious ideas that came to be known as Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.
- [Narrator] And since there was no separation between religion and state in those days,
the Roman State had its own religious organization, known as the Imperial Cult.
- One of the most striking syntheses between politics and religion in the Roman world
is that they actually deified their emperors after death,
they turned them into gods! This of course flew right in the face of Jewish religion and culture.
- It's very common for contemporary minds to think of the ancient Imperial Cult as sort of a political fraud, or at least very superficial,
or something put over by the Roman government on its people. But back in the era of the Roman Empire
it was sincere religion to most Romans. The very first Roman deified Julius Caesar
before any official temple had been built for him, the people themselves constructed a makeshift altar
at the place of his funeral, themselves worshiping it. Roman emperors who were deified were admitted
to the Pantheon of all the Roman gods, they had temples and priesthoods of their own,
that lasted for centuries.
And the language and the imagery used in the Imperial Cult is strangely echoed in Christianity itself.
The philosophy of the Imperial Cult is based upon the Greco-Roman philosophy known as Stoicism,
and it had an ideology that expected a Savior to come and rescue the Roman world from times of crisis.
And that is why deified emperors became seen as divine figures, saviors of the world,
bringers of peace, very much like Jesus in the Bible. The very first Roman emperor himself, Augustus,
in declaring that his adopted father, his great-uncle Julius was a god, would proclaim on his own coins that he was a Son of God.
So he was a savior, a son of God, a bringer of peace, a man-God,
the very innovation that Christianity brings to Judaism.
Conflict
(soft music)
- [Narrator] But all this religious innovation on the part of the Romans did not sit well
with the monotheistic Jewish people.
- The Romans were quite open to accepting culture and religions from all of their conquered territories.
In fact, many Romans were open to adopting the Jewish religion itself. The Jewish culture however was far more exclusive
and set up barriers for those wishing to adopt the Jewish religion. And this was a source of conflict in the Roman Empire
between the Romans and the Jews. What's interesting in the New Testament therefore,
is that all of these barriers seem to be eliminated
in the teachings of Jesus and Paul. - Basically that was one of the problems,
the religions of the Roman empire were allowed to exist so long as they paid tribute to the Caesar
as either the leader or the Divine on earth, but the most devout Jewish factions
would not do that of course. And so we know that this is a big problem.
- One of the astonishing things that you learn, and one of the things we found most remarkable, is that although we think of Jews and Christians
as definite believers in God, to a polytheistic world like the Romans, they were atheists.
They were so sectarian, they didn't respect anybody else's gods, and this created an ugly antisemitism in the Roman world.
And many Romans came to resent Jews themselves and Judaism itself as hostile to the Roman Empire
and its efforts to unify their Empire culturally.
- They were always a problem because they were so distinctive, and weren't playing the game
that other subject peoples of Rome did. - And this is the context in which the Gospels were written,
in Greek and possibly in Rome. - [Narrator] Not only did the Jewish people
have religious conflict with the Romans, but also political conflict.
And the more the Romans attempted to assimilate them into the greater Roman Empire,
the more extremist and rebellious certain factions became.
- Since the successful Jewish revolt of the second century BC against their Seleucid Greek rulers,
there had been a dynasty of genuinely authentic nationalist Jewish kings, the Hasmoneans, the descendants of the Maccabees
who'd led that second century revolt, that is still celebrated by Jews in the Hanukkah holiday.
- [Narrator] When Rome took over power in the area, they removed the authentic Hasmonean Jewish rulers
and put in place the Herodians, Herod the Great, who were not Jewish but converted to Judaism
in order to become legitimate rulers of the region. However, the Jewish people never accepted them
as authentic Jewish rulers and always regarded them as puppets of Rome.
- All other populations had to worship Roman state gods, sort of tip their hats to Roman state deities
to prove their loyalty to the empire. Jews, being monotheists and unable to worship idols
or anyone else as divine, couldn't do that. And so the Romans actually made exceptions, exempting Jewish people
from the worship of Roman state gods, but this was not sufficient. And they were certainly not happy
with the Herodian kings who'd been placed over them. And the Jewish rebels themselves thought that a continuation of the very militant nationalism
that had been so successful during the Hanukkah rebellion would also be successful in the first century.
- So they said that, "We should have no ruler but God. And so we're gonna throw off the yoke of Rome."
- [Narrator] The Jewish rebels were operating from a long-held Jewish prophecy
that a warrior Messiah would come to defeat the Romans and deliver them from occupation.
This Messianic prophecy was handed down from generation to generation through their Scriptures.
- The Romans saw the Jewish literature as being very subversive, and you know I mean, and it was, it's extremely xenophobic,
it's very full of global hegemony,
the Chosen People are supposed to take over the world, they're gonna suck the milk of the nations. I mean this is all, you know, in the Old Testament.
And probably they're thinking, "What the heck is instigating these people
to behave like this, what is their motivation? We gotta find out."
It became obvious, I'm sure, to the Romans that we don't have a single mythical figure to point to
or a god-figure to point to, so we gotta get our hands on the Scriptures, there must be something in those Scriptures." So you can see why they would try to get hold of them.
- [Narrator] In the 1940s, important ancient documents were accidentally discovered in caves
in the area that would have been Palestine, and some of these documents show the literature
of these Jewish Messianic prophecies. They're known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
- In the course of our studies, I began to pay attention to the Jewish documents that were discovered in the middle of the 20th century,
known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. - The group of scholars who originally
got the Dead Sea Scrolls we were familiar with, they mostly were connected to the Vatican.
And they controlled who had access to the documents that they were willing to release.
And I thought the only way that you could have a serious intellectual discussion about these things
would be that everyone would have access to all the materials and everything that exists,
and no one barred and no choice of materials. And therefore I felt it was absolutely essential
that we got all the Scrolls published, all of them.
- [Narrator] Ultimately, after a number of serious challenges and pitfalls, Professor Eisenman was successful in getting
all the Dead Sea Scrolls published. One Scroll in particular revealed
a warlike, revolutionary perspective.
- And the most important thing, which is in fairly good shape, not complete but fairly good,
is a document that has since been called the War Scroll, the war of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness.
This war involves, you know, some of the contemporary people,
so we're in a revolutionary movement, and it's gonna be led by the Messiah,
and the angels of heaven are going to be the battle carriers. In other words, they know that they're too small maybe,
they can't fight the whole might of the Roman Empire, but with the heavenly host and the Messiah,
the reason they have to be perfectly Righteous, so this is now a movement of Righteousness,
and they're called the Sons of Zadok, which is also a priestly movement, and the leader is often the Righteous Teacher
or the Teacher of Righteousness, so Righteousness permeates the whole idea of the movement.
But they really feel if they're perfectly righteous, the heavenly angels will join their camps.
- [Narrator] Professor Eisenman noticed that in the New Testament, the Book of Acts mentions that the disciple James
is often called the Teacher of Righteousness. Therefore he was able to make the connection that James,
also called the brother of Jesus in the Gospels, must have been the leader of this Righteousness movement
described in the Dead Sea Scrolls. If James was the leader of this rebellious movement
against Rome, is it possible his brother Jesus
could also have been a leader of this movement?
- People think, "Oh, the Scrolls are just an early version of Christianity." No they're not, because they're not peaceful.
They're not the least bit peaceful, anyone who sees them, it shows they're just like the Maccabbeans. No, they're not anti-Maccabbean, they're anti-Herodian,
and that's what people missed in the early interpretations because of their bad dating.
They hated the Roman Empire, they hated the priests appointed by the Roman Empire, they hated Herod who was appointed by the Roman Empire,
and they wanted to get rid of these people and institute their own priesthood, sons of Zadok, sons of Righteousness.
And they went out into the wilderness, John the Baptist was clearly probably associated with this group.
They went out into the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. And that's the group we have,
it's always been a revolutionary movement, the real revolutionary movement in Palestine.
- And whether these documents were written in the second century BC, the first century BC, or the first century AD,
as some scholars are now believing them to have been written, it's clear that the same ideology is infused from the Hanukkah rebellion
all the way up to the Jewish Wars of the first century. And in these documents, what we find is an odd reversal
of the language that we find in the New Testament. - [Narrator] The odd reversal being
that in the New Testament, we have a Jewish Messiah preaching peace and obedience to Rome,
whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls have the Jewish Messiah preaching war and revolution against Rome.
The Scrolls strikingly reveal the difference between the New Testament followers
of a peace-loving Messiah and the actual militant Jews of the era
who were following a warrior Messiah.
This faction of militant Jews was wreaking havoc across the Roman empire,
setting fire to various settlements, including possibly the Great Fire of Rome
which Nero blamed on Christians. It is during the rule of Nero
that the earliest Christian texts appear, in the form of the Letters or Epistles of St. Paul,
another piece of our mosaic. Let's take a closer look at this highly influential figure,
Who Was Paul?
who was Paul?
- The Apostle Paul originated as Saul of Tarsus and was a persecutor of early Christians, until,
famously on the road to Damascus, he had a revelation, the scales fell from his eyes,
and he became a missionary for Christ. - [Narrator] There are 13 books
of the New Testament attributed to Paul. - So when were the Pauline or Paulinist epistles written?
Well, if you go with conservatives, some of them could have been written in the 40s. But nobody really knows, it's hard to tell.
You only have copies of the Pauline epistles in the early third century, shortly after about 200.
And yet even these dates are in dispute, so could be from the 40s to a hundred years later.
- I was aware that the letters of Paul, or at least some of the letters ascribed to Paul
pre-date the Flavian rule and probably pre-date the Jewish War itself. And unlike other scholars who are interested
in the idea of Roman Provenance, we accept the standard dating for the documents of the New Testament.
- [Narrator] The standard consensus among most scholars is that the seven letters considered genuinely written
by Paul were written between 50 and 57 CE,
with the rest being written around 62 to 64 CE,
all before the Flavian era and the Jewish War. This is the dawn of Christianity,
and many scholars believe Paul is the one who actually founded Christianity.
- Christianity didn't exist, I don't think they had the word Christ, and Paul starts to use these words in his letters.
Paul creates this language. I don't think you'll find it in any other materials, you won't find it I think in the letter of James.
But the point of the matter is that's become the popular language associated with this movement but it never happened in Palestine.
- An argument that Paul is continuously making is we no longer need to adhere to kosher diet,
we no longer need to circumcise ourselves to distinguish ourselves as Jews from others,
all those sectarian requirements of the Jewish law are being relaxed by St. Paul.
Well in the letter ascribed to James, we have just the opposite philosophy being described, that none of the law should be gotten rid of.
Well that appears to be flying directly in the face of Paul's doctrine of salvation by faith, salvation by grace,
and no longer salvation by obedience to the Torah or the Jewish law. And in that, we sort of see encapsulated
the differences between Torah-orthodox Jewish Christians if you will, and the Torah-modifying,
Torah-critical Pauline Christians who wrote most of the New Testament.
- [Narrator] Authors Thijs Voskuilen and Colonel Rose Mary Sheldon, who is herself an Intelligence expert,
explore Paul's connections to Roman Intelligence in their book "Operation Messiah."
Could Paul have been an undercover intelligence agent for the emperor Nero,
who was dealing with Messianic rebels trying to burn down Rome?
- To me, the Gospel material is mostly all literary,
not necessarily historical. Now the Book of Acts for the first 15 chapters is ahistorical, but in Chapter 16
you get what's called the We Document, which is obviously based on someone's travel document.
And suddenly you're talking about, we did this, I did this. It starts with the so-called Jerusalem Conference
where James gives the instructions. The key is Acts 21:21,
when Paul comes up to Jerusalem and meets James. And there you see that James
is over Paul absolutely and completely. And he's called, James is called the leader
of the Jerusalem Community in Acts. And it's quoted then, "But you see, Paul,
we have heard of many disturbing things about what you're," this is in Acts! "About what you're doing in the overseas in the diaspora,
and the things you're teaching and telling people, etcetera. So to show people there's no truth in these things,"
i.e., that he's teaching against the Law, he's teaching against forbidden foods,
he says all kinds of things like this, and it's totally un-so-called Jewish
which is why it's Christianity. But the point is, these people in Jerusalem are Jewish still and they're following the Law.
So James says, "To show there's no truth, go into the Temple and pay for a Nazarite Oath."
Paul agrees, he's not gonna not agree because James is the leader.
It's in there, it's in the Christian literature but people never look at it, it's in the We Document, and this is authentic material.
And so he goes in and he's mobbed. So at that moment when he's about to be mobbed
in the Temple by an angry Jewish crowd, "This is the person teaching against the Temple, against our, all over Asia," they're shouting,
he pulls out his Roman citizenship or whatever. And the Roman guards have come down, seeing this huge,
they're up on the ramparts usually, seeing this huge disturbance beneath them. And the Roman guards rescue him
and force the crowd to listen to a speech by him. And you see what side he is on and who is supporting him,
and escort him from the people who want to kill him. They escort him down to Caesarea, the Roman headquarters,
where he has some interesting conversations with the Roman governor at that time. So the point is, they protect him
until they can get him overseas. And even Acts admits that once he gets to Rome,
no one bothers with him at all. - [Narrator] That certainly seems to indicate that Paul could have been an undercover Roman agent.
James seems to be the leader of the Torah-orthodox Jews. If James were one of the apostles of Jesus,
his followers would not be Torah-orthodox, because both Jesus and Paul were preaching
against the Torah, against Mosaic Law. - We have another letter of Paul's,
his letter to the Galatians, in which he describes his heated confrontation
with Jewish Christians, the apostles that came before him, naming specifically James
who was at least titled the Brother of Jesus, and Cephas, the Aramaic word for rock,
that must be Peter. So he's having arguments with the apostles, the disciples who came before him,
who are apparently Torah-orthodox. Paul does not cite Jesus from the Gospels in doing this either.
The Jesus of the Gospels is Torah-critical. And as I began to think about it, it became clear to me,
as it has become clear to many scholars, that the Gospels must post-date the letter to Galatians.
Had the Gospels existed, all Paul would have needed to do would be to cite Jesus.
Jesus point-blank criticizes kosher diet, for example. Paul never cites the words or the deeds of Jesus,
which are critical of Sabbath, or which are accommodating to foreigners.
- And Paul's words must pre-date the war, because after the war the Zealots had been defeated
and all of them had been executed or enslaved. So there's no way that kind of argument could have gone on after the war.
And it's probable that those kinds of conflicts and that argument might even have precipitated that war.
- If the Gospels were an accurate reflection of who Jesus was and what Jesus had said,
there would have been no argument. Even if the previous apostles had still been following Jewish practice,
they wouldn't have had an objection to Paul doing otherwise, would they? Paul would not have needed to argue
so strenuously with them. - He would have only needed to refer to Jesus' own words to settle the matter.
- [Narrator] We know Paul was born in Tarsus and had Roman citizenship,
what other clues do we have about Paul? - Oh, the Romans were certainly somewhat behind him,
since he was a Herodian family member. Paul isn't a Jew, he's an Herodian. He says, "Give my regards to my kinsman Herodion,"
at the end of Romans. Well who's his kinsman Herodion? It means the littlest Herod. And all the people he refers to at the end of Romans
in his greetings are Herodian family members. And the littlest Herod was drowned in Pompeii
for some reason, I forget how he drowned there, but he's a known person, that's his cousin.
Paul is from the Herodian family, the enemies of the Jewish people. - [Narrator] And in his letters,
Paul mentions other Roman connections that he has. - Fascinatingly, Paul himself refers to Nero's palace,
and says, "Say hello to my friends at Nero's palace." This is quite a remarkable thing
for a New Testament protagonist to be bragging about his relation with Caesar.
- [Narrator] Famously, in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 13, Paul preaches that everyone
must submit to the government or be punished.
- In the epistles in particular, the Pauline epistles, you have these authoritarian statements
that are so patently obvious coming from the authorities.
- Paul, in one of the oldest sections of the New Testament, specifically commands Christians
to obey the State as God's appointed agents on earth, specifically naming rebellion to be a sin,
specifically requiring Christians to pay their taxes, and elsewhere specifically to honor the Emperor himself.
And all of this struck me as, in this new light, as naked Roman propaganda.
- You must obey the Emperor, there's a good one, it's right in there, it says "Obey the Emperor".
There's all this, "Slaves, be submissive for the sake of Christ."
Now if you're the Savior and you're the Liberator and you're God on earth,
you're God coming down from the heavens, the All-Powerful, why not end slavery?
Why do you have your mouthpieces saying, "Slaves, just put up with your lot for my sake,
you know, just go along," it's obvious whose interests these remarks are in.
So, if you were trying to create a State religion
that you could control, and through your controlling it, control the masses, I mean they really had it down pat.
- Paul appears to be combining an anti-Torah message with a pro-peace, pro-Roman message,
and those two things are connected. So in criticizing Torah and arguing for peace,
there can be little doubt that what Paul is doing is having a combined political and theological message
geared and aimed at the Jewish rebels of the first century. Paul is changing messianic Judaism.
The Myth of Persecution
- [Narrator] One of the objections to the idea that the Romans created Christianity
is that Christian tradition tells us Christians were persecuted by the Romans.
But which of these groups of Messiah-followers were the ones being persecuted?
- Today we use the word Christian in a very sectarian sense. The sense of Christian that we use it in
was unknown in the first two centuries, of course. - Christianity didn't exist
till the second or third century, and I don't think they had the word Christ, it's not a Palestinian word, it's a Greek word.
- And to Romans who don't make fine distinctions between different forms of messianic Judaism,
they were all Christians. However today the idea of a Jewish Christianity
is almost entirely unknown. We exclusively think of Christianity in terms of the peaceful New Testament Christians
we read about in the Bible. The objection that we run across most frequently
is one that comes from Christian tradition, of being persecuted and martyred at the hands of Romans.
This is largely a myth. But it is a myth that's understandable when you realize
that there was an entirely different form of Christianity going on in the first century.
That tradition of martyrdom is almost certainly rooted in the true persecution of Jewish rebels, messianic rebels in the first two centuries,
who were tortured and crucified by the thousands by the Roman government. It's that tradition of persecution
that Christians have picked up on. And, if you think about it, why would the Romans actually persecute peaceful Christians,
our New Testament Christians, who are willing to render unto Caesar, pay their taxes, turn the other cheek, and be blessed peacemakers?
- [Warren] And use the Flavian symbols for their own?
- Curiously enough when we look at the actual hard evidence of history, we find Christians already in the Roman army
by the end of the second century, Christians who are able to cooperate with the Roman Empire
in a way that militant Jews had never been able to. The work of Professor Candida Moss, the British theologian,
has basically demonstrated that the Christian tradition of martyrdom altogether is a legendary one.
- Hello, I'm Candida Moss, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame.
Today Christians from all denominations remain deeply invested in the myth
that for the first three centuries of its existence, the Early Church was the victim of relentless persecution.
But contrary to traditional Church teaching and popular belief, Christians were not systematically tortured and killed
by the Romans merely because they refused to deny Christ. Rather, these stories were exaggerated,
revised and forged, often centuries later, and the history of the Church was reshaped
in order to combat heresy, to inspire and educate the faithful, and to fund churches.
- [Narrator] In her book, Professor Moss, who is a Christian theologian, states,
"Christians adapted their ideas about martyrdom and sometimes even the stories about the martyrs themselves
from both ancient Jewish and pagan Greek and Roman writers."
- Most of the Christian saints who were regarded as martyrs were themselves based either on pagan sources
or garbled accounts of people at the time. It's really a legendary mythology of Christian martyrdom
during the Roman Empire. And yes, Nero persecuted militant messianic Jewish Christians if you will,
and it is that very persecution and those very issues, for example, his predecessor the Emperor Claudius' expulsion
of the Jews from Rome because of militant disturbances, that the Romans need an ideological response to.
- So as we can see, there were pro-Roman Jews who were clients of the Romans,
at the same time that there were Jews who opposed Rome, Torah-orthodox Jews,
and were very much against integrating with the Roman Empire. Also we see that there were Christians
or messianic Jews who were very much opposed to Paul, and there were Christians of the Pauline variety
who were pro-Roman and would come into conflict with those other Christians.
This is the political context that would lead to all-out war between the Jews and the Romans.
- James was killed, the war broke out three and a half years after his death,
Daniel, a time, two times, and a half, if you look at the prophet Daniel, you'll see everything is contained in prophecy
that they're involved in. So their Righteous Teacher-type person is killed
under suspicious circumstances in 62, the war breaks out in 66,
and they don't have the holy angels joining their camps unfortunately.
All-Out War
- [Narrator] A large piece of our mosaic is this war, which the Jews began to wage
against their Roman occupiers in 66 CE.
It marks the Turning Point in all of Western History
and the result is still affecting our society today. It is in response to this war that Nero
calls upon his best generals, the Flavians, Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus Flavius.
(triumphant music)
- In 66, when the Jewish War broke out in Judea, Nero is the one who tapped Vespasian,
ironically in part because of his humble origins. He was going to entrust a major section
of the entire Roman army into the hands of this powerful general, in order to subdue the Jewish rebellion,
and so he had to be someone that Nero could trust, someone who wouldn't necessarily have his own political ambitions.
- [Narrator] If they wanted to remove the cause of the rebellion, the Romans would need to seize Jerusalem
and capture the Scriptures that were housed in the Jewish temple.
- As far as I know, there was a thrust that they really wanted to get their hands on the Hebrew texts that was egging on the terrorists,
the Jewish terrorists. You know, they would be considered to be rabid nationalists and so forth,
but the barbarism of these particular groups and factions we're talking about was almost like the Taliban.
It wasn't just "Oh, we don't like your cult so we're gonna destroy you," these guys were like vicious,
(soldiers yelling) constant raids and attacks and killing people
and taking hostages and all manner of things.
- And during the last two years of Nero's reign, Vespasian successfully prosecuted the war
in Galilee and wider Judea. And it was only when they were just getting ready for the siege of Jerusalem, that Nero himself was taken out.
It is one of the great moments of history when the general who was appointed by the Emperor, himself became Emperor, following the death of Nero.
There was a civil war that followed, a year of four emperors, and the victor there just happened to be the general
who had defeated the Jews. He had a major chunk of the Roman army,
and so was in a unique position to launch his bid for Empire which was successful.
And so when he became Emperor, he left his son Titus in charge of the final sack
of Jerusalem, which would fulfill Jesus' prophecy, as he returned to Rome to take up world rule,
and to proclaim himself a new Bringer of Peace, a new Prince of Peace.
Flavian Propaganda
- [Narrator] This was a huge sea change in Rome. Not only was it the death of an emperor,
Nero, but he was the last ruler in the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
The Julio-Claudians created the Roman Empire and ruled it for nearly a hundred years.
With the end of that long-ruling dynasty, the Flavians, now with the Hebrew Scriptures in their possession,
began an extensive propaganda campaign to prove their legitimate right to the throne.
- Because of their humble origins, it was important for the Flavians to gather as many endorsements from religions around the empire
to justify their claim to the throne of Rome. These would include the cult of Serapis, the cult of Venus,
and of course the religion of the Jews.
- When you investigate the historians of the time, such as Suetonius and Tacitus,
you find that they quite openly claim that Vespasian and Titus were the Jewish Messiahs of prophecy.
- [Narrator] The claim was that because the Flavians brought peace to Palestine,
ascending from the East to become world rulers, they fulfilled the Messianic prophecies
and were the true Messiah the Jews had been waiting for.
- Curiously enough, the Jewish militants and the rebel leaders had each in effect proposed themselves
as the true Jewish Messiah, and the Jewish rebel leaders had a better claim to it,
for contemporary Jews expected an earthly, political, and military leader to come lead their country, Israel,
to victory over the Romans. And so both pagan and Jewish historians in the wake of that war re-evaluated those claims,
and identified the Roman emperors who had conquered Judea as the true Bringers of World Rule from Judea.
- Even the most prominent rabbi at the time openly claimed that Vespasian and Titus were the Jewish Messiahs.
People today don't realize how widely recognized the Flavians were as Jewish Messiahs in their time.
- For other writers such as the Jewish writer Josephus, he appears to have been actively working as a propagandist
for these same Flavian emperors. It's important to remember that these Flavian emperors were not working in isolation,
but appear to be working with Jewish scholars at the time in order to establish their claim to being
the true Jewish Messiah. In other words, they were convincing the world that the rebels had got it all wrong.
Or as Josephus himself said, "The Jewish god has now gone over to the Roman side."
- All of that effort that they made shows that that was a goal was to have this Caesar recognized as a divinity on earth,
as had predecessors been. - In fact, there was a coin issued by Vespasian,
with Vespasian on one side and the Messianic star of the Jews on the other side of the coin.
This is the only time that the Messianic star was used on Roman coins.
It is different from the stars that you would usually see on a Roman coin, and it is identical to the Messianic star
used on Jewish coins. - In Jewish symbolism the star was the main image used
to represent the Messiah, because in Hebrew prophecy it was said that a star would come out of the House of Israel,
a reference to the Messiah. - [Narrator] And at about this same time,
the Gospels were being written. Could they also have been a work
commissioned by the Flavians?
- Well on the Roman side, to avoid the same kind of ruckus, the theory is that the Flavian dynasty,
they said, "Suppose we come up with a version
of their messianism, not only their Judaism, but their messianism, like the idea of the Messiah coming.
Let's come up with a way of pacifying them, saying, "Oh yeh, yeh, you should believe this."
I mean, Rome never really objected to anybody's religion unless it created trouble.
- In order to avert a religious war, the Romans would launch a propaganda campaign
to convert their enemy's religion into a religion of peace.
- [Warren] Being a new dynasty of emperors, who came upon the throne sort of through a civil war,
they had to demonstrate themselves to be Saviors of the entire world, projected themselves in their propaganda
as Bringers of Peace. And they actually built a Temple to Peace, the first Temple to Peace built in Rome,
and saw themselves as Bringers of Peace. And even on their coinage, they advertised the construction of the Temple of Peace.
We can find on their coinage such things as Pax or Pacis Orbis Terrerum, Peace on Earth,
which is of course the very same language that is reflected in the beautiful story of Luke's nativity scene,
when the angels herald Jesus' birth as bringing Peace on Earth and Good Will toward Men.
Even the Good Will toward Men can be found on Roman coinage, minted at the same time Luke was being written.
- People often believe that the Roman values and virtues were opposite to those reflected in Christianity.
However we see on Roman coins that that isn't the case. Coins that are minted to Concordia for instance,
which equals Harmony; or Spes which equals Hope; Salus or Salvation;
and also things like Clementia which is Mercy; Equitas which is Fairness;
or Felicitas which is Joy, all values that we see throughout the New Testament
are actually Roman values throughout the Empire.
- In using the symbol associated with Apollo, with the salvation if you will of an anchor,
the Flavians were asserting themselves to be the Salvation of mankind.
The anchor became a symbol of the Flavians as Saviors of the world.
- [Narrator] So the Flavians were not just connecting themselves with the Hebrew religion
in using the symbol of the Greek Sun God Apollo, the Flavians were connecting themselves
to the religion of the Greeks. And they were also connecting themselves
to the religion of the Egyptians. - We also know from Suetonius and Tacitus
that Vespasian had gone to Egypt, and he goes into the Temple of Serapis.
He comes out with a miraculous capacity to heal the blind with spit.
And then we hear the same story in the New Testament, which by all evidence was not in existence at all,
even you know Conservative Biblical scholars will claim that the New Testament wasn't in existence
when Vespasian was doing this miracle.
There's no record of anyone saying, "Hey, there was a guy 40 years ago in Judea
who did the same miracle." In fact, it was probably a stock miracle
that had been around for centuries by that time. - Note what the Flavians are doing,
we've already observed that Serapis, an Egyptian god was being used on Flavian era coins,
and there you can see an Egyptian god being identified with Roman emperors. More than that, we have both pagan and Jewish sources
identifying these Flavians as the true Jewish Messiah. So again we have Roman propaganda coordinating
various religious and cultural elements throughout the empire, Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish.
- You could see the dynamics of why Christianity had to be created then. It wasn't like some divine revelation,
it was purely contrived by the political forces that were extremely wealthy, for a specific purpose of rolling
all these religions into one. - [Narrator] All of these propaganda efforts after the War
Jewish Leaders of the Flavian Court
with the Jews resulted in the rise of Christianity. We can see the foundation of Christianity is Judaism.
But it differs by a reversal of some key components of Mosaic law,
the very practices that prevented Jews from assimilating into the Roman world.
And Christianity also incorporates new pagan ideas
which Judaism would never have allowed. Who would be the people the Gospels were written for?
Who would most benefit from this new form of Judaism?
(soft music)
- We were astonished to find how many important Jewish leaders and thinkers at the time
were closely associated with the Flavians. The Emperor Titus for example it is said
was engaged to the Jewish princess Berenice, who came from both Herodian and Hasmonean background.
Unfortunately, negative propaganda against the Jews made that politically difficult for Titus in Rome.
But he himself was closely associated not only with Berenice, but with her brother Herod Agrippa II
Josephus the historian, Epaphroditus, a leading courtier of emperors in the late first century
who was likely to be a Jew himself and a patron of Josephus. And even nephews and relatives
of the Jewish philosopher Philo were close associates of the Flavians.
- And these particular people, majorly powerful, incredibly wealthy group of people
who could quite handily influence history in any direction they wanted, really.
The people who were working with Titus and Vespasian, at least this family, this Alexanders,
these were Jewish people. They're in charge of Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.
So, this is not some, you know, mere footnote. And anybody who steps in their way, they just slaughter,
in fact, they destroy an entire city in order to remove a power base.
And also I think that that destruction was a clearing of a way,
if they were going to anchor this mythical archetypal human sacrifice son of God mythos
into history where better to put it than some place that has been destroyed and there's like no evidence left.
Nobody can attest that it didn't happen! - [Narrator] Many of these prominent Jewish leaders
were already associated with the Flavians in the court of the emperor Nero,
and they're actually shown giving assistance to Paul in the New Testament.
- Jewish leaders are positively featured in the Book of Acts. Berenice, her brother Herod Agrippa II
are both positively featured as helping Paul in the course of his mission. The Roman governors that he appears in front of,
one of them, a man by the name of Felix who is governor of Judea, he was a brother-in-law of Berenice.
And people don't really realize all the connections between well-educated high-ranking Jewish officials
who were pro- Roman and their positive efforts to help the mission of Paul, which is explained in some detail in the Book of Acts.
- [Narrator] And after the death of Nero, these same pro-Roman Jewish leaders turned their support
to the new emperor, Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus.
- And so there was a cadre, a group of well-educated, wealthy Jews
who surrounded and populated the court of the Flavians. The New Testament wasn't simply a Roman thing.
- The Jews in the court of the Flavians would have every reason to believe in the New Testament.
It gave them full license to be loyal to the Emperor of Rome, while at the same time be good practicing Jews.
So the New Testament actually relieves them of their Mosaic duties and allows them to be in the court
of the Emperor of Rome with no problem whatsoever. - [Narrator] It's astonishing that the New Testament
would show actual Jewish leaders in history in a positive light.
The First Christians and Their Symbols
And what about the earliest Christians, what do we know about them from history,
apart from the New Testament? (soft music)
- The characters described in the New Testament are very difficult to identify as historical figures
in many cases. When we come to figures who we can be sure are actually Christians in history,
they appear to be, and some of the very earliest, relatives of the Imperial Flavian family itself.
We mentioned the granddaughter of Vespasian, Domitilla, her burial site, the Catacombs of St. Domitilla,
are the oldest physical evidence of Christianity that exists.
Her husband was actually a cousin of Titus and a great-nephew of Vespasian,
and Titus Flavius Clemens was his name. Catholic tradition has assigned him as St. Clement of Rome,
who left us perhaps some of the earliest Christian literature found outside of the New Testament,
the Epistle of St. Clement of Rome. Curiously enough, he, Catholic tradition assigns,
as one of the earliest popes. And this of course forms another important piece
of that mosaic, that tile puzzle that's now coming into focus.
- [Narrator] Perhaps this explains why the fish and anchor, a symbol used by the Flavians,
was also the symbol used by Christians for the first three centuries.
- And artifacts found from the first three centuries throughout the Roman empire would show the dolphin
and anchor and trident symbols so frequently. And today it is so common a reference to Christianity
that archaeologists use those symbols to identify them as Christian.
- Christian tradition has misled us about the nature of the catacombs. Under the illusion that Christians
were being systematically persecuted by the Roman Empire, they're often thought of as places where Christians
could secretly go and engage in their forbidden rituals. But modern archaeology has come to the firm conclusion
that they were in fact burial places with Christian symbols openly displayed on them,
with access to the public. So that they weren't in fact secrets at all, nor were they places of hiding.
- [Narrator] The cross that we now associate with Christianity was almost never used
in the first three centuries. - In terms of relative numbers, we have at least 70 examples of the anchor and fish image
in just one of the catacombs, the Catacombs of St. Priscilla, whereas we have fewer than a dozen examples
in all the catacombs of a cross symbol during the whole first four centuries.
- Catholic scholars explain the absence of the cross as a function of their persecution by the Romans.
The fact that they used instead, and far more often, anchor and fish symbols is said to be a disguise
of their Christian nature. But as we now know, the Christians were not hiding the fact
that they were Christians at this time, it's simply that the anchor and fish were the common original symbols of Christianity
that were used for the first two to three centuries. - And it would take the exact same inside knowledge by a pagan,
to know whether a cross or an anchor is a Christian symbol or not. - Especially since the cross was used far more seldom,
it would be far more common for people to associate the fish and anchor symbol with Christianity
than it would be the cross, so it's hardly a disguise. - [Narrator] And of course, before Christians
started using these symbols, they were used by the Flavians and their court.
- During the age of the Flavians, we find cameos for the wealthy of the dolphin and anchor symbol,
we find other intaglios, for instance, that were used to stamp wax and seal documents,
that were also, have, bore the Flavian symbol of the dolphin and anchor.
- The fact that they were on seals or intaglio indicate that they might have been used by very wealthy
and perhaps politically connected Romans, people perhaps officials in the Roman State, who were using them for official purposes
in the late first century. - [Narrator] And different variations of the fish
and anchor symbol were also used by early Christians.
- Using a dolphin and anchor symbolism ties into themes we see in the New Testament itself,
Jesus says, "I will make you fishers of men". And the anchor is like a hook that a fisherman might use,
and the fish of course wrapped around the hook is like the bait. And this symbol seems to point to the act of evangelism
far more vividly than the symbol of the cross itself.
- The fish wrapped around an anchor might be seen as a symbol of Jesus,
whereas fish approaching the anchor would be seen as the converts, the fish whom the hook is catching if you will.
- And of course in the Flavian era, that dolphin was symbolic of Titus himself on his own coins.
- Another discovery that we were truly astonished to make, was that the earliest Christian symbols
frequently used a family of other symbols that could only be seen as pagan symbols,
such as the trident with fish, which were associated with no less than the Coliseum
in Rome, the Flavian Amphitheater. And you can see fish with a trident in the architectural detail of the Coliseum itself,
which the Flavians built. And those symbols as well were adopted in the second century by early Christians.
- And it's amazing that you would see such symbols in both the Coliseum and in the Christian catacombs
only a few miles away. - Dolphin and anchor pendants are still sold today,
and you can find them in Catholic stores and are used to symbolize Christianity. There are also symbols of Christ on an anchor.
And so these symbols have survived and are completely related to Christianity,
and their Flavian connection has been forgotten. - Anchor symbols can be seen
all over Christian churches all over Europe. The dolphin wrapped around an anchor
was used as an image by Titus himself in his deification, associated with his divinity,
and it was the earliest symbol used by Christians to represent Jesus on the cross.
- [Narrator] It's interesting that the dolphin wrapped around an anchor could represent both Titus Flavius and Jesus in the same era.
One of the most impressive uses of the fish or converts swimming towards the anchor,
which represented the Hope or Salvation offered by the Flavian emperors,
was found by Warren and James in a dramatic floor mosaic that was displayed in Herculaneum.
- The most irresistible archaeological sites for finding connections between the Flavians
and the Christians, would be Pompeii and Herculaneum,
which were buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD,
exactly two months after Titus became the Emperor of Rome.
Herculaneum and Pompeii are time capsules that perfectly capture what was going on
during the Flavian era. This is where we discovered the bottom of a pool
that depicts an anchor surrounded by two dolphins, and two people swimming towards the anchor.
The symbols that so perfectly match symbols we would see in catacombs for the next three centuries are here.
- This connection between fish as a symbol and humans being the fish, if you will, being caught,
is distinct to the Gospels. The missionary work of Christians is being declared by Jesus himself to be a form of fishing.
Of course, anchors are a symbol of safety, a symbol of security. And so people being compared to fish seeking
the religious salvation of the anchor would be very commonly understood in that context as a Christian symbol.
But that Christian symbol came at or after this moment when in a purely pagan context
the Flavian emperors themselves are using the anchor, fish, fish compared to people as a religious symbol.
- This discovery is so important because what it does is establish beyond any doubt
that these symbols pre-date all uses by the Christians in their catacombs by decades.
Like a legend of all the symbols we have been discussing, this site ties in the coins with the catacombs,
with the other Flavian architectural details that we have seenm all in one original archaeological site.
For all practical purposes, it might as well have been a symbol in a Christian catacomb, they're that identical.
- It's hard to know if that mosaic at the bottom of that pool is a symbol of Titus, a symbol of Apollo, a symbol of Serapis,
or a Christian symbol. - [Narrator] Or perhaps a symbol that started
as a pagan symbol and slowly evolved through different variations
into finally becoming a Christian symbol?
The Evolution of Christianity
After the death of Flavius Vespasian, his son Titus Flavius ruled for two years
until his untimely death, when his brother Flavius Domitian
took over the imperial throne.
- The anchor and dolphin image on Flavian coinage, which was minted in the, literally in the thousands
during the short two-year reign of the Emperor Titus, was soon discontinued by his brother
who succeeded him on the imperial throne. It's interesting to note that Domitian began
what can only be described as a persecution of the Christian and Jewish elements within the Imperial family.
He himself executed his cousin, Clement of Rome,
and banished his wife St. Domitilla.
He's also responsible for executing Epaphroditus, who was a patron of Josephus' work and appears
to have been an associate of St. Paul's decades earlier. The actual reason for Domitian persecuting his relatives
may have been that they were a political threat, having adopted the mantle of Jewish leadership at this point.
- Domitian could not claim to be the Jewish Messiah as both his brother and his father could,
since he had no part to play in the War with the Jews. - And it's well known by historians that Domitian returned
to more traditional forms of religion. It should be remembered of course that becoming deified
by the Roman Senate as deities, official Roman deities, both Vespasian and Titus had a temple, and priesthood,
priests who would continue rituals. And this must have occurred for at least a century
or more following their deaths. And part, as we've heard, of their official propaganda
is that they were Jewish messiahs. Part of that may have been indeed an important aspect of the Imperial Cult of the Flavians
that existed in the century or two following the Flavians.
- [Narrator] The Flavians were dearly loved by the people of the Roman Empire, and it's no surprise that Vespasian
and Titus continued to be worshiped as gods and Jewish Messiahs for centuries
after their deaths through their Imperial Cults, with their own temples, priests, bishops, and rituals.
Especially since Vespasian was known as a healer who performed the same miracles
that Jesus did in the Gospels. And what became of Christianity
after the end of the Flavian dynasty?
- The very earliest reference by any pagan writer at all about Christianity,
is a letter written by Pliny the Younger to the Emperor, who was then Trajan, in the decades just following
the fall of the Flavian dynasty. Pliny the Younger writes to the Emperor,
"What is our proper policy about Christians?" We hear that Christianity had apparently enjoyed
a popular vogue a couple of decades earlier, precisely during the height of the Flavian dynasty,
and that somehow in recent years it had fallen out of favor.
Pliny the Younger also tells us that Christianity by his time was affecting all classes of Roman society,
not just Jews, but upper class pagan Romans. And perhaps most fascinating
is the response of the Emperor Trajan, who specifically tells his governor not to hunt out,
not to seek out, not to persecute Christians.
- The fact that the Emperor Trajan would give such deference to these new Christians expresses some kind of
an Imperial sympathy for them, which could of course suggest their Flavian origin.
- [Narrator] The Emperor Trajan ruled for almost 20 years until his natural death,
when his adopted son Hadrian took over the throne, only to face another conflict with the Jewish people.
- What's interesting about the symbol of the dolphin and anchor being used by the Flavians,
is that it wasn't picked up again, and only used afterwards by the Emperor Hadrian.
Now what was going on in Hadrian's time was the second Jewish War.
So the fact that he would resuscitate this symbol at that time is very significant.
It no longer symbolized the Flavians in Hadrian's time, at that point it was an openly used symbol by Christians.
This is a significant evolution of the symbol, going from an obviously Flavian symbol,
to then being used as a Christian symbol in Christian catacombs, and then being used as a Roman emperor again,
as he fights the second Jewish War, this time as a Christian symbol.
- It's just curious that those were the only two emperors to really use this symbol, and both of them were associated with each
of the two Jewish wars. To indicate the importance of those wars,
the first war was the war responsible for finally destroying the Jewish Temple and reducing it to the Wailing Wall that it is today.
Some 60 years later a second Jewish revolt broke out, also a messianic revolt led by a messianic leader,
Son of the Star Bar Kokhba, and at the end of that war, all the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem.
And it was in fact the final nail in the diaspora that would keep Jews out of the Holy Land
until the creation of Zionism, the return of so many Jews to the Holy Land, and the creation of Israel in the twentieth century.
- [Narrator] Although it seems Christianity had fallen out of vogue after the Flavian Dynasty,
with the second Jewish rebellion, Hadrian had a reason to bring it back again.
- Okay, well, what I think what happened is, there's still this unruly segment of Roman society,
it was basically the Jewish segment, not only in Judea which effectively was taken care of
by the destruction of, first of Jerusalem, that diaspora, and then there was a second massive destruction
of more of Judea, you know, around 135 AD/CE.
And that dispelled many more Jews, and so now they're all over the place.
The ones who aren't Hellenized are bringing with them this fanaticism, that is begging for a new priestly creation.
And this has been done in the past, they already tried it with Serapis. I'm sure there was a concerted effort
to synthesize paganism and Judaism in the second century. - Of course Hadrian himself had reasons to use Christianity,
if not a Flavian Christianity, perhaps some of the Christian literature as a means of pacifying the second Jewish rebellion.
- Some have even suggested that Hadrian ejected the Jews from Jerusalem, and imported Christians to take their place.
- Eusebius, the early Christian historian tells us point-blank that the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem, and that a Christian bishop
was appointed by Hadrian over Jerusalem. - In the earlier parts of the second century,
we've got Egyptians, we've got Syrians, we've got Greek efforts, we've got Jewish efforts and so forth going on here,
everybody's jockeying for position. By the end of the second century, you've got the Romans that are in charge,
it's the Roman Catholic Church now. You know, it becomes the Holy Roman Empire, it's no longer the Roman Empire,
it eventually becomes the Holy Roman Empire.
- [Narrator] So it seems that Christianity began to really take hold, and that Trajan, Hadrian and other Roman rulers
were in favor of it. And the dolphin and anchor symbol no longer needed
to be associated with the Flavians, it now stood for Christianity.
How ironic that a symbol which began as the symbol for the Sun God Apollo ended up being the symbol
for the religion centered around Jesus Christ, who was perhaps a more universal Sun God
to appeal to the diverse Roman Empire. After all, the meaning of the word Catholic is Universal.
- As time went on, any connection to the Flavians was unnecessary for the Romans, even though Christianity still served
important propagandistic purposes in pacifying and assimilating rebellious or messianic Jews.
- It certainly changed a whole slew of what we would call Jews into Christians.
We have really basically the Pharisees surviving, the Samaritans and the Saducees disappear, and where?
I know where they disappeared into, they became Christians essentially! - So once cut, if you will,
from the anchor of the Flavian origins, it was still a ship that served important purposes,
and would be continued to be promoted by many Romans. - And now set adrift from that Flavian origin,
Christianity was free to form different sects and spread out into a rather unorganized variation of Christian themes.
- One of the fascinating developments of the second century are the variety and differences
between the different forms of Christianity that emerged, of pagan-influenced, only semi-Jewish forms of Christianity
that have lost their basic connection to orthodox Judaism in any way, and appear to be much more Hellenistic
in their philosophical orientation. - You know, we have this Gnostic effort going on where they're dealing with the Syrians and the Jews
and even Indian stuff is making its way in there.
The Gnostics don't believe that Jesus Christ appeared in the flesh.
In fact, that was contrary to their belief system that the Divine could ever take on earthly flesh
because it was corrupting.
- And this has become all the clearer in light of the 1945 discovery
of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic manuscripts, this revealed an amazing array of types of Christianity!
There were Jewish Gnostic groups like the Sethians who thought that Jesus was Melchizedek reincarnated.
There were Zoroastrian Christians, and they thought that Jesus was a new manifestation
of the Heavenly Light like Zoroaster had been. And loads of different types that were eventually
kind of stamped out or just died on the vine. Like Jewish Christianity,
and there were several types of that, that the Church Fathers tell us about. Jewish Christians were too Jewish for Gentile converts
and too Christian for other Jews. So it took a couple of centuries
but that pretty much just died out. And some of the others were persecuted to death.
And this radical diversity lasted for at least a couple more centuries.
What was the original Christianity? You can't really tell. You've got a garden of different flowers
and despite attempts to stamp all but one out,
they thrived for a long time. Today's denominationalism is nothing compared
to the different types of early Christianity, some of which are being revived here and there.
Some people are using these Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts as their Bible, and I say let a hundred flowers bloom!
That's easy for me to say, I don't really have a dog, or should I say a God, in the race anymore.
- A sort of Renaissance in Christian literature occurred in the second and third centuries. And by the time we get to Constantine,
when it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire, a single orthodox version of it has to be laid down,
and that was the principal function of the Council of Nicea in the early fourth century.
- They finally converted one of the Roman military commanders, Constantine, at some point, but he wasn't really a Christian.
He never did a Christian thing in his life. But he felt that he could get some help in his military struggles.
So he said that fine, okay, he has a vision or whatever,
he'll take Christ, you know. But he gets the added troops that help him secure victory.
And so, then it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine,
and once that happens, you're going to get a huge amount of people coming in. And that's what happened.
- Christianity gained more and more popularity. And Roman leaders themselves would vie
over different attempts at making a dominant cult, the cult of Sol Invictus would be at odds with Christianity,
or the cult of Mithras would be at odds with Christianity. Well this was resolved with the military success
of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century. It was he who began to legalize Christianity,
and it was his family that made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. - And after so many centuries at this point
of using the fish and dolphin and trident symbols, it was Constantine who during a famous battle
saw an image of a cross in the sky, which then would signal a change of the tides of fortune in his favor.
And from that point forward, he would replace the otherwise common symbols of Christianity with the cross.
And his own mother even went to the Holy Land to discover the original cross and bring it back.
- Of course the cross that Constantine saw in his vision was sort of the chi-rho cross,
but it's still a form of the cross. - From that point forward, it would not have done Constantine any good
to continue using these Flavian symbols. He wants to associate Christianity with his reign,
and he doesn't want it to be a Flavian cult, a Flavian Imperial cult, he wants it to be his cult,
finally cutting the tether between the Christians and the Flavians. - [Narrator] However, the Flavians remained widely loved
by Romans and Christians alike, and many emperors used their name.
In fact, starting with Constantius, the father of Constantine,
a total of 56 out of 70 subsequent Roman emperors,
that's 80%, used the name Flavius.
- According to the Flavian propaganda, they had so many virtues, deeds and other parallels
in common with Jesus, that the Flavians themselves were respected and venerated
by Christian Romans centuries later. Even in Christian Medieval times, the Flavians were looked at as positive emperors,
even though they were pagans. Christian writers during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance praised the Flavians
in the highest terms possible. - [Narrator] After Constantine made Christianity
the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire, the rulers who came after him also found it useful
for their purposes. - We've gone over Romans 13
and its command that people obey the State as God's appointed agent on earth.
- After Constantine, subsequent rulers throughout Europe would use Romans 13 to justify the divine right
of their rule, known as the divine right of kings. - This is the textual origin for the religious authority
given to Christian Kings for the last 2,000 years, and even dictatorships unto our own time.
- The truth is, the New Testament is Roman propaganda written for a very specific period of time.
It has long since outlived its purpose, and has been used ever since
by other rulers for their own purposes. What's fascinating about that is that this particular passage also justifies Pagan rulers,
who were not Christians but were still recognized as God's agents on earth.
Therefore, the subjects of these rulers were expected to be Christian but not their rulers.
These pagan rulers could continue their hedonistic lifestyles, worshiping pagan gods,
and yet still, their subjects were expected to be Christians. Christianity therefore is for the ruled
and not for the rulers. - [Narrator] How could this religion,
which emerged over 2,000 years ago, still be strong and thriving today?
- It's very attractive, it was made to be attractive. The Scrolls aren't attractive,
we're not trying to convert people, this is what the people writing the Scripture are doing.
That doesn't mean the character is a real character as such. They're trying to live within the Roman Empire
and the power of the State, and produce this sympathetic person who the people are always being bad to,
but he's always accepting and you know being meek, this is not what's happening in Palestine, I'm sorry.
This is not Palestinian.
- One of the ways in which Christianity has thrived and succeeded is its ability to adapt and change
to changing circumstances politically and culturally. - [Warren] Everything from Mormons
to Episcopalians to Lutherans, the wide range of different types of Christianity
for different contexts is one of its most adaptable and surviving qualities.
- Consider the radical changes made by Hollywood. Filmmakers such as Cecil B. DeMille for example,
or other filmmakers who tell "The Greatest Story Ever Told" or "The Story of Jesus," have turned the Romans into the heavies,
and precisely the opposite intention of the Gospels. And so in effect the message of the Gospels in the 20th century became turned on its head
by Hollywood filmmakers. - [Warren] Post Holocaust, of course, it was very important
for Hollywood to not depict the Jews in the same way that the Bible itself shows them. And so that is where we start to see the flip
of the Romans becoming the heavies of the story, and the Jews as the victims.
- [Narrator] And people have been drawn to the philosophy of Christianity, which contains the spiritual wisdom of the Platonists,
the Stoics and others, providing a moral compass and inspiration to many.
Conclusions
Is the Creating Christ theory saying that Jesus as a person didn't exist?
- In Creating Christ, we do not take a stand on whether or not there was a historical Jesus. To many scholars in the area,
it is the most important and burning question. But of course, the important Jesus
is the Jesus of the New Testament. That's the Jesus that affected history. That's the Jesus that Christians believe in.
- We cannot know for sure if a Jesus ever existed, but we do know that everything we know about Jesus
has been borrowed from historical or pagan or other sources,
stories of other men or other gods, and there does not need to be an actual Jesus
to create the Jesus that we see in the Gospels and in the New Testament.
- On the other hand, if there was a Jesus who was crucified in the early first century, he is not likely to have been crucified
because he advocated paying your taxes, or peace with Rome. He might have been stoned by the Jewish authorities,
who would have stoned him, but he certainly wouldn't have been crucified by the Romans. So we believe with many scholars, if there was a Jesus,
a historical Jesus, he was likely to have been a Torah-orthodox, militant nationalist Jewish rebel,
crucified for those reasons. - How could there be a Christianity
if there wasn't a Jesus to start it? Paul Tillich said that it must have started with somebody.
Maybe not, because Christianity is heavily indebted to contemporary religions like the mystery religions,
which just means the initiation religions, and there were plenty of them. The idea was that you could pass
into a higher spiritual condition, there is a myth of the Divine Savior,
often including his death and resurrection, and the ritual Baptism, the Eucharist, Lord's Supper.
They had various things like that in them, like the Osiris religion. There was a sacred meal where you would eat bread
because it was the body of Osiris who was the Grain God, and you would drink wine or beer
because that was the blood of the Grain God.
When you look at the Last Supper in the Gospels, it's supposed to have something to do
with Passover but it doesn't really. Whereas when Jesus says, "This bread is my body, this wine is my blood,"
you think, "This doesn't sound like Judaism to me." This is one of the reasons I say I think the burden of proof
is on the person that would say there was a historical founder, could have been, too late to tell now,
but you don't really need that as a factor in starting it.
- This is what is, something else rationally we must keep in mind as well, that we have mythology in other cultures
that is clearly taken as mythology. The Greek gods, very few people today believe that they ever existed,
or they were living on planet earth, and that they were real people, and that any of their adventures were real.
But with the Jewish stories, there's a special pleading that,
well you know, all these supernatural events actually occurred, the Red Sea was parted, Elijah was taken up in the chariot,
we have to accept that or we're gonna be punished with eternal hell.
- [Narrator] We have seen how Christianity developed and evolved over the centuries,
and how it was shaped by rulers to suit their purposes, which is one reason it has survived so strongly to this day.
The important 20th century discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hamadi texts
may perhaps be the very reason that Christianity began to be scrutinized and looked at more from a historical
rather than a theological perspective in the past few decades.
These ancient texts have revealed a history surrounding this religion
that stands at odds with Christian tradition, and our scholars feel the true history
is important for people to understand precisely because we're still being affected today
by a war that took place nearly 2,000 years ago.
- One can really only understand the theory of Roman provenance by assembling all the pieces of the mosaic,
and only when you put each piece in its appropriate place can you pan back and then accurately see the entire picture.
- Throughout the course of the last 30 years in which we have been researching and writing this book,
we had hoped to uncover the truth about the history of one of the most important world religions.
At the crossroads of Western history was a conflict between world views that were exclusive on one side
and universal on the other. That they would come into conflict was inevitable, and this is when the New Testament was written.
- [Narrator] Today, we are still in conflict with each other because of seemingly opposing world views.
What can we learn from this ancient period of history to come to the best solution for our modern world?
Is the answer some form of synthesis or integration of these seemingly opposite perspectives?
- Nothing we have discovered and demonstrated here challenges a belief in God or indeed the important need for morality.
- In my teaching, I am not trying to make disciples of Price.
There would be no point to that, in fact, I don't care if anybody holds my opinions,
I'm just interested in it as a fascinating intellectual pursuit.
What am I trying to do in teaching? I'm just trying to give people access to information
and perspectives they may not already know of. And I assume they're gonna make use
of what they think is worthwhile in creating their own synthesis. I mean, that's all I'm doing,
and that's all I want to help people, more Socratically than dogmatically.
- If Christianity had not been foisted upon millions of people, we quite likely would not be facing
this almost apocalyptic development
of destruction of the planet. I mean, for one example before the technological age,
a major example was that in certain parts in the so-called pagan world,
it was a capital punishment to cut down forests. This is one of the reasons that I am motivated
is because I looked at the destruction that occurred to my culture, northern European,
and it was so defamatory and so vile, it put the fire in my belly.
In the natural religions, you're connected to the earth, you're free, you don't have this domineering monotheistic character
controlling you like a puppetmaster. It's not there, it's very empowering,
it's earth-based. You got your feet planted. You're drawing wisdom into yourself
from your own observation. And they had to sever that in order to get this power coming from the top down.
- All this is concocted by people overseas, in order to establish a pro-Roman literature
for these apocalyptic groups, and they succeeded. This pro-Roman literature that we have,
which is why the Church is in Rome today, this has survived for almost 2,000 years
and it was extremely successful, probably one of the most successful literary efforts ever undertaken and produced.
- Today we're still governed by moral precepts from documents that are almost 2,000 years old,
ideas that were developed in a cultural and political context not our own.
By the 21st century and the dawn of the third millenia, it is time to re-evaluate these dusty doctrines
that no longer serve our context, but were devised for a context long since forgotten.
Over the last few centuries, beautiful art, beautiful poetry,
beautiful architecture has been constructed on the imagery and the ideas of Christianity,
and that in itself gives Christianity an authority and a beauty that no one would want to get rid of.
But it is time for us to re-evaluate doctrines that were developed for a political context
that is 2,000 years old and may no longer be applicable to our own times.
- [Narrator] Our scholars have certainly provided us with a variety of interesting perspectives
on the history of Christianity. And now it's our turn,
in view of all that was presented here, how will we evolve our philosophical ideas
to best create the meaning of our own lives? In the words of the great Transcendentalist writer,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Make your own Bible."
(soft uptempo music)
