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Authors: Joseph Atwill
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can become fishers of men, have a number of other parallels.
Like Jesus, Titus had been sent by his father.
So he sent away his son Titus to Casarea, that he might bring the army that lay there to Scythopolis. 45
While it is hardly unusual to follow a leader into battle or to have been sent by one’s father, Titus, again like Jesus at Gennesareth, is in a sense beginning his ministry there. He states that the battle is to be his “onset.”
“Do not you therefore desert me, but persuade yourselves that God will be assisting to my onset.” 46
The Greek word that Josephus uses here, horme, means “onset” in English -- that is, either an assault or a starting point. From Titus’ perspective the moment can be seen as a starting point because it is his first battle in Galilee entirely under his command.
To summarize, though there were thousands of other possible locations, both Jesus and Titus can be said to have had the onset of their narratives at Gennesareth, and in a manner that involved fishing for men—parallels that are unusual enough to at least permit questioning whether they were the product of coincidence. Further, the parallels are of the same nature as the typological relationship shown above between Jesus and Moses. The connections between Jesus and Titus are made up of parallel concepts, locations, and sequences.
Moreover, these parallels must be viewed in conjunction with the historical parallels between Jesus and Titus. Jesus predicted that a Son of Man would come to Judea before the generation that would crucify him had passed away, encircle Jerusalem with a wall, and then destroy the temple, not leaving one stone atop another. Titus was the only individual in history that could be said to have fulfilled Jesus’ prophecies concerning the Son of Man. He came to Jerusalem before the generation that crucified Christ had passed away, encircled Jerusalem with a wall, and had the temple demolished.
The overlaps between Jesus’ prophecies and Titus’ accomplishments make the “fishers of men” parallel more difficult to accept as random. And this is just the beginning of the uncanny parallels between the two men who called themselves the “son of God” and whose “ministries” began in Galilee and end in Jerusalem.
CHAPTER 3
The Myth for the World
To understand the parallels between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign it was necessary to make a series of discoveries, with each new insight providing the capacity to make the next. This process began when I came across the following passage in Josephus’ Wars of the Jews and concluded that the parallels between the “son of Mary” described in it and the “son of Mary” in the Gospels were too precise to have been the product of circumstance.
While readers can judge this claim for themselves, it should be noted that Josephus wrote during an age in which allegory was regarded as a science. Educated readers were expected to be able to understand another meaning within religious and historical literature. The Apostle Paul, for example, stated that passages from the Hebrew Scriptures were allegories that looked forward to Christ’s birth. I believe that in the following passage Josephus is using allegory to reveal something else about Jesus.
The passage begins with Josephus telling his readers that he is about to describe an exceptionally grisly event caused by the famine that occurred during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. Notice that he believes that his tale is “portentous to posterity”.
But why do I describe the shameless impudence that the famine brought on men in their eating inanimate things, while I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates? It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard.
I had indeed willingly omitted this calamity of ours, that I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity, but that I have innumerable
Like Jesus, Titus had been sent by his father.
So he sent away his son Titus to Casarea, that he might bring the army that lay there to Scythopolis. 45
While it is hardly unusual to follow a leader into battle or to have been sent by one’s father, Titus, again like Jesus at Gennesareth, is in a sense beginning his ministry there. He states that the battle is to be his “onset.”
“Do not you therefore desert me, but persuade yourselves that God will be assisting to my onset.” 46
The Greek word that Josephus uses here, horme, means “onset” in English -- that is, either an assault or a starting point. From Titus’ perspective the moment can be seen as a starting point because it is his first battle in Galilee entirely under his command.
To summarize, though there were thousands of other possible locations, both Jesus and Titus can be said to have had the onset of their narratives at Gennesareth, and in a manner that involved fishing for men—parallels that are unusual enough to at least permit questioning whether they were the product of coincidence. Further, the parallels are of the same nature as the typological relationship shown above between Jesus and Moses. The connections between Jesus and Titus are made up of parallel concepts, locations, and sequences.
Moreover, these parallels must be viewed in conjunction with the historical parallels between Jesus and Titus. Jesus predicted that a Son of Man would come to Judea before the generation that would crucify him had passed away, encircle Jerusalem with a wall, and then destroy the temple, not leaving one stone atop another. Titus was the only individual in history that could be said to have fulfilled Jesus’ prophecies concerning the Son of Man. He came to Jerusalem before the generation that crucified Christ had passed away, encircled Jerusalem with a wall, and had the temple demolished.
The overlaps between Jesus’ prophecies and Titus’ accomplishments make the “fishers of men” parallel more difficult to accept as random. And this is just the beginning of the uncanny parallels between the two men who called themselves the “son of God” and whose “ministries” began in Galilee and end in Jerusalem.
CHAPTER 3
The Myth for the World
To understand the parallels between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign it was necessary to make a series of discoveries, with each new insight providing the capacity to make the next. This process began when I came across the following passage in Josephus’ Wars of the Jews and concluded that the parallels between the “son of Mary” described in it and the “son of Mary” in the Gospels were too precise to have been the product of circumstance.
While readers can judge this claim for themselves, it should be noted that Josephus wrote during an age in which allegory was regarded as a science. Educated readers were expected to be able to understand another meaning within religious and historical literature. The Apostle Paul, for example, stated that passages from the Hebrew Scriptures were allegories that looked forward to Christ’s birth. I believe that in the following passage Josephus is using allegory to reveal something else about Jesus.
The passage begins with Josephus telling his readers that he is about to describe an exceptionally grisly event caused by the famine that occurred during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. Notice that he believes that his tale is “portentous to posterity”.
But why do I describe the shameless impudence that the famine brought on men in their eating inanimate things, while I am going to relate a matter of fact, the like to which no history relates? It is horrible to speak of it, and incredible when heard.
I had indeed willingly omitted this calamity of ours, that I might not seem to deliver what is so portentous to posterity, but that I have innumerable
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