Acclaimed Catholic Writer Refutes Anti-Christ Thesis

Nov. 13, 2013 - PRLog -- Was Jesus Real?

Was Jesus Christ a myth invented by the Romans? A controversial new book asserts this view, while an acclaimed Catholic writer labels the hypothesis "pseudoscientific nonsense."

According to Joseph Atwill, author of "Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus," the entire New Testament was concocted by first-century Roman aristocrats who fabricated Jesus Christ. Furthermore, Atwill asserts, Christianity itself is nothing more than "a sophisticated government project: a propaganda exercise used to pacify the Roman Empire." He continues: "When the Romans exhausted conventional means of quashing Jewish rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. That's when the 'peaceful' Messiah story was invented." Was Jesus even a real person? "No," Atwill insists. In his view, Christ was nothing more than a "fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there's simply nothing left."

David Beckett, the award-winning author of Amazon.com's top-ranked historical thriller The Cana Mystery, disagrees. Unconvinced by Atwill's claims, Beckett declared: "I believe Jesus was a real Jewish man of flesh and blood, Mary's Son, as the Bible describes." Asked what documentation supports this view, Beckett replied, "Interested readers should peruse the evidence complied in O'Reilly and Dugard's recent best-seller Killing Jesus."

Atwill claims he reached his controversial, anti-Christian conclusion by studying scripture and unlocking a secret message contained therein. "Although the prophesies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about the First Jewish-Roman war... this is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern." Asked why no prior scholars or historians detected the deception, Atwill explained, "[M]any of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognized the literary game being played." Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is: 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"

"Not likely," replied Beckett, who expressed "colossal skepticism" about Atwill's thesis. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Friar Occam's razor tends to shred conspiracy theories of this type. The argument is based not on concrete fact but on a hidden 'pattern' Atwill sees in canonical writings. 'Apophenia' is the psychologists' term for our tendency to find patterns where none exist. Atwill is hardly the first to claim biblical texts contain a hidden code, accessible only to the most 'alert' readers. Too often, charlatans take advantage of our credulity, convincing unsophisticated audiences that patterns in the daily newspaper prove 9/11 was an inside job, or that images on dollar bills prove that the world's banks are controlled by Swiss goldbugs. In 19th Century America, the 'Anti-Masonic Party' rose to prominence on the wings of just such conspiratorial hysteria."

When asked if Atwill's radical hypothesis might possibly be correct, Beckett responded, "There's an ocean of difference between things that might be possible and the things we actually believe. Bacon's scientific method teaches us to keep an open mind, to keep questioning and searching. There's no more convincing exegesis than Newton's Principia, but Einstein, a huge admirer of Newton, kept investigating and eventually showed us that the universe follows different laws. We must never stop asking questions or considering possibilities, even remote possibilities. So, yes, the Egyptian pyramids might have been constructed by glowing, green space aliens, but no rational person calls such outlandish speculations "correct" until someone presents a truckload of scientific corroboration. Folks advocating these bizarre, revisionist claims often have mercenary, not scientific, motives. Little has changed since Harry Houdini began debunking spiritualist fraudsters: charismatic con-men who proffered outré hypotheses to loosen ladies' purse strings. It's the same brand of pseudoscientific nonsense."

Yet Atwill believes his research serves a critical social function, saying "what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East."

Beckett counters, "I see Jesus as a sacred messenger of peace, not war. I guess opinions might differ on that topic, but I'm certain Imperial Rome didn't need mind-control propaganda to defeat the rebels in Judea. Titus re-took Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by conventional means. An arch commemorating his victory stands even today. Brave Jewish zealots held out in Masada for three or four years, but their struggle was mainly symbolic. Rome controlled the province. And the Bar Kokhba Revolt was similarly crushed a few decades later. Furthermore, if Christianity was really a form of 'insidious mind control' invented by Roman aristocrats, it was a spectacularly unsuccessful invention. Not long after Atwell alleges Jesus was 'invented,' Christianity triumphed over the traditional Roman pantheon, becoming the Empire's state religion."

When pressed, Atwill admits that most credentialed historians and scholars consider his theory "outlandish," adding that even he feels "some ambivalence" about presenting the hypothesis. Nevertheless, in the long run, Atwill asserts, the ideas offered in his book will be "important for our culture." Beckett offered a contrary opinion, predicting Atwill's hypothesis "may attract momentary attention but it will be discarded, leaving no cultural legacy."