Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus

Was Jesus the invention of a Roman emperor? The author of this ground-breaking book believes he was. "Caesar’s Messiah" reveals the key to a new and revolutionary understanding of Christian origins.

Was Jesus the invention of a Roman emperor? The author of this ground-breaking book believes he was. "Caesar’s Messiah" reveals the key to a new and revolutionary understanding of Christian origins. The clues leading to its startling conclusions are found in the writings of the first-century historian Flavius Josephus, whose "Wars of the Jews" is one of the only historical chronicles of this period. Closely comparing the work of Josephus with the New Testament Gospels, "Caesar’s Messiah" demonstrates that the Romans directed the writing of both. Their purpose: to offer a vision of a “peaceful Messiah” who would serve as an alternative to the revolutionary leaders who were rocking first-century Israel and threatening Rome. Similarly, "Caesar’s Messiah" will rock our understanding of Christian history as it reveals that Jesus was a fictional character portrayed in four Gospels written not by Christians but Romans. This Flavian Signature edition adds Atwill’s latest discoveries of numerous parallel events in sequence which ultimately reveal the identity of the true authors of the Gospels.

Joseph Atwill began his religious studies as a youth in Japan at the only English-speaking school in the country, the Jesuit-run St. Mary's Military Academy. The majority of each of his school days was spent studying Greek, Latin, and the Bible, which he found fascinating, although he eventually drifted away from the faith. Having studied computer science in college, Atwill formed a series of successful companies with one of the most renowned programmers in the world, David Ferguson. Many years later, the sale of his interests in these companies allowed him to return to his earlier interest – the origins of Christianity. He spent over a decade studying hundreds of books, among them, the works of Robert Eisenman and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Together with Eisenman, Atwill wrote a paper on the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls. While studying the two most prominent works of the 1st century - Josephus’ "Wars of the Jews" and the Gospels - Atwill noticed a series of parallels occurring in sequence between the military campaign of the Roman Caesar Titus Flavius and the ministry of Jesus. His findings led him to a startling new conclusion about the origins of Christianity - that a Roman imperial family, the Flavians, had created Christianity to pacify the Jews’ rebellion against Rome, and even more incredibly, they had placed a literary satire within the Gospels and "Wars of the Jews" to inform posterity of this fact. The results of Atwill’s research are set out in his book "Caesar’s Messiah". The second edition of "Caesar’s Messiah", Ulysses Press 2006, became the best selling work of religious history in the US in 2007, and its German translation "Das Messias Ratsel", Ulstein 2008, achieved #1 Best Seller status. The Flavian Signature edition of "Caesar’s Messiah", CreateSpace 2011, adds the most detailed presentation of the parallels Atwill discovered between the works of Josephus and the Book of Luke. His upcoming book, "The Single Strand", is also slated to be published by Ulstein, and a documentary film based on "Caesar’s Messiah" is being released in 2011.