interesting article. wonder what kind of rection this will get…
Yawn…
Certainly an intriguing possibility, particularly the irony that “if the Romans invented Jesus to ‘infect’ Jews with the idea, they ultimately became infected themselves.”
The part that doesn’t really hold together is when he says “When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare.”
But the Romans didn’t exhaust conventional means of quashing rebellion. The sack of Jerusalem and the renaming of Judea to Palestinia (after the Jews’ ancient enemies, the Philistines) was pretty much the quintessence of “conventional means of quashing rebellion.” This happened in 70 AD.
And if this was psychological warfare aimed at the Jews, then why create the story of Paul, who specifically decided that the Gospel was for non-Jews as well as Jews. You might argue that Paul was one of the first of those affected by the operations, but the timing does not work, since the psy-ops are supposedly started long after events of the Gospel were supposed to take place.
Still, it is an interesting idea to wrap one’s head around.
If Jesus was conceived as part of a covert psychological warfare campaign, it is interesting that there is a documented confession laying around for someone to find. Also, how do we know that the confession itself was not fabricated in order to spread doubt among Christians? It would be interesting to read about the actual findings and “proof”.
Edit: So, it seems like Atwill actually published a book on this theory in 2011.
Jesus does not exist only in Christianity. Jews and Muslims also believe Jesus existed, they just don’t believe he was the son of God. Not sure how the author believes the Romans convinced Muslims to believe in Jesus as well.
Interesting…but the evidence he has presented is not conclusive, based on logic. If he didn’t present it as conclusive he might be more persuasive to the general public.
I personally am very upset that I believed for a large part of my life that Jews were slaves in Egypt. Felt like I had to start questioning all historical things I took for granted as fact.