If you haven't already read part 1 of this mini-series, I strongly urge you to do so before reading this chapter in the story.
Consider many of the great men of history such as Aristotle, Pythagoras, Alexander the great, Julius Caesar amongst many others. In each of these cases there is a great deal of information about these men in the historical record. Not simply mythologies but literal historical references that tell us precise things about them. Such as date of birth, time of birth, place of birth, name of parents and siblings, name of birthplace, schools attended, date of marriage, name of spouse, etc. This is true almost without exception for each of the great men who made their mark in history. Yet, in the case of Jesus, a man who presumably had a greater effect upon human history than any other, there is virtually nothing in the historical record that would even suggest that he existed as something other than a mythology. How is this possible?
Flavius Josephus was a contemporary of Jesus. He wrote a number of massive tomes called "History of the Jews", and "War of the Jews". They were both monumental undertakings that detail the history of the Jewish people dating all the way back to the time of Adam. It is impossible to read Josephus' works without wondering how he could have had such intricate knowledge of the history that he was writing about. His works are breathtaking in scope. Yet, despite the fact that he lived in Judea at the time that Jesus was alive, in his entire work there is but one single paragraph that mentions Jesus of Nazareth by name. That one single paragraph is an obvious forgery, as it is written in a completely different style than Josephus used during the rest of the book. Someone almost certainly inserted that paragraph at a later date simply as a pretext and proof that Jesus actually existed.
So how is it possible that Josephus could have lived at the same time as a man supposedly performing miracles throughout Judea, healing people, feeding thousands, and yet despite detailing Jewish history with such a fine comb as to be meticulous, was unable to include a single chapter, or even a single page, to his main contemporary in Judea who single-handedly changed world history? Really? Why not? Was it because Jesus simply didn't exist? Was Jesus simply a myth? Or did Josephus make the conscious decision to omit any reference to Jesus? And if he made a conscious decision to omit any reference to Jesus, what possible reason might he have had for doing so? Think about this carefully. The answer to this question has huge implications.
Let's look at this puzzle a little bit deeper. Jesus is not the only historical person of that era that Josephus completely ignored. St. Paul (formerly known as 'Saul') was arguably one of the most prolific writers of the era. He was journeying up and down the Roman Empire, being greeted and entertained by common people and supported by royalty for decades. He was hands-down the most influential man in the development of what has become known as Christianity. He was invited into the home of Roman Caesars. Nero's wife was a close friend (maybe his mistress). Yet, there is not a single sentence in all of Josephus's works that mention St. Paul by name. Not a single historian of the era mentions him! How is this possible? Was St. Paul also just a myth? That seems impossible to believe. Saul, who changed his name to Paul, must have existed. Most of the New Testament was penned by him.
Maybe we are looking in the wrong place, or maybe we are looking for a man who went by a different name 2000 years ago. That would explain this conundrum. So let's look for another person, one who we can find in the historical record whose life and adventures closely parallel the life that we associate with Paul. In fact, there is a man whose name is well-known to this very day who lived at that time, whose life and adventures are remarkably similar to the adventures we associate with Paul. Let's look at just a few of the similarities between these two men's lives:
Saul was a Jew raised in Jerusalem but he was a Roman citizen. | Other man: was a Jew raised in Jerusalem but was a Roman citizen. |
Saul was educated as a Pharisee and became a rabbi. | Other man: was educated as a Pharisee and became a rabbi. |
Saul acted against the early Christians persecuting them, acting in some sort of official capacity. | Other man: was appointed general in the province of Galilee and was charged with inducing the 'hotheads' to lay down their arms. |
Saul had a vision telling him the error of his ways which led him to side with the rebels. | Other man: had a vision telling him the error of his ways which led him to side with Rome. |
Saul spoke both Greek and Aramaic but Greek was his native language. | Other man: spoke both Greek and Aramaic but Greek was his native language. |
Saul was sailing to Rome in a ship that was wrecked off of Malta. He had to swim for his life. He was rescued by another ship which then brought him safely to Puteoli in Italy. | Other man: was also sailing to Rome, was shipwrecked and had to swim all night before being saved by another ship, where he was taken to Puteoli in Italy. |
There are other similarities but this is more than enough to make the point. It would be almost impossible to imagine two separate and distinct men having such life similarities as these two. Particularly it would be difficult to imagine two men both being shipwrecked while sailing to Rome and being saved by a ship and brought to Puteoli. It is much more likely that in fact these two men are one and the same. So who is this other man?
This other man is actually Flavius Josephus himself. The renowned jewish historian. Based upon this evidence it would appear that Flavius Josephus and the man we know as Paul were the same man. This would explain why Josephus never once mentions Paul despite his exhaustive work detailing the peoples of the time which he lived in. This was because he knew very well that Paul did not actually exist. Well, the man Christians know as Paul did exist, but his real name was Flavius Josephus.
Flavius was a jewish general in the Roman army that sacked Jerusalem. The turncoat was rewarded for betraying his countrymen after the war with great wealth. Amongst other things he was given the Judaic rabbinical school in Rabneh where dozens of scribes spent many years editing every text written by anyone connected to Jesus/Manu. (They likely also assisted in writing most of Flavius' books.) They also put the pharisaic 'oral tradition' into writing. This work is known today as the Talmud.
Since Flavius was actually Paul, then of course Flavius was intimately familiar with Jesus and all the disciples. Paul/Flavius labored hard to be accepted as one of the disciples himself. But he was never able to accomplish this. One of the chief reasons was likely that the disciples could not trust him. They knew that Flavius, a.k.a. Paul, had persecuted, imprisoned and tortured many members of their sect in the recent past. It would be very hard to forget that. As a result, Flavius was never fully trusted by the church of Jesus and James. Paul/Flavius began to resent the fact that he was not embraced as he had expected. He was very bright, very talented and had a huge ego. Frustrated by the lack of support he was receiving from the disciples in Jerusalem, Flavius essentially began his own religion, 'Judaism lite', which we know today as Christianity.
Unlike Jesus and James' jewish sect, which had fairly strict requirements, Flavius' religion had almost no requirements. Anyone could join, there was no need to embrace any of the Judaic commandments. He created a religion that was far different from the religion that Jesus and his brother James practiced and preached. He even did away with the requirement of circumcision, which was exceptionally difficult for religious Jews to accept. In all likelihood, Jesus himself did not recognize whatever it was that Paul/Flavius was creating. In any case, the religion that we associate with Christianity was actually a religion created almost entirely by Paul/Flavius.
Understanding finally that Saul and Flavius were the same person explains many things. For instance, Paul was a VERY prolific writer. He penned "Acts of the apostles", which starts with the crucifixion and ends at the start of the Roman war. It is inconceivable that Paul would have no interest in writing about the terrible and tragic events of the Roman war. Yet, we can now understand that Paul did in fact write about that war, in great detail. But he did so under the name of Flavius Josephus.
Why then did Flavius go to such trouble to delete or hide Jesus/Manu from his monumental works? The 'Cliff Notes' answer to that question is that his religion, 'Judaism lite", 'Christianity', which was spreading quickly throughout the Roman Empire was based on the story of a poor man from a poor family, who taught that we should turn the other cheek, love our enemies, pay our taxes, etc. If it was exposed that this imagery was completely untrue, that Jesus was quite wealthy, a King who was a leading figure in the war against Rome, his new religion would die on the vine.
Further, his chief sponsors were the Caesars/authorities who were quite pleased that their citizens were being taught to pay their taxes and not resist authority. The last thing the Caesars wanted the common people to know was that their Messiah, Jesus/Manu, was actively fighting Rome, sword in hand.
Perhaps one of the more compelling reasons for Paul/Flavius had to erase Jesus/Manu from history was to conceal his own betrayal. Saul/Paul/Flavius had been a Roman general charged with arresting Jesus' followers, then became Jesus' (unappreciated) disciple, and finally transformed once again to a Roman general who actively fought Jesus and his followers during the Roman war. Indeed, Flavius was present when Jesus was being tortured on the cross at the close of the Roman war. (There is reason to believe he was also present at the murder of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr.) He was quite possibly the man who most single-handedly thwarted the realization of the dreams that Jesus/Manu had harbored since his childhood. I can understand why he would want to hide all this from history.
So now we can see why there is no historical record of the man named Saul/Paul that exists anywhere outside of the New Testament. Because Saul/Paul did not exist. However the historical record includes the life of Flavius Josephus in great detail. We just needed to connect the dots.
In similar fashion. as we will we discover in due time, the life and time of Jesus himself is also in the historical record in great detail. We can even see statues of many people in his family tree. We can see murals and frescoes which contain the face of Jesus himself. These people and artifacts have always existed in the historical record. We simply did not know where to look and we did not know the names to look under. Once we know where to look, under what names, the Truth will finally be seen.
The next and final chapter in this series will take a harder and closer look at Flavius' major books, and see that Jesus/Manu is in there, but Paul/Flavius went to great lengths to hide his identity. He also went to absurd lengths to try to make it appear that Jesus died 40 years before the war, when in fact Jesus survived the war, after having been crucified for his role as one of the leaders of the uprising.
Jesus' family tree
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