Tiberius and Jesus (SallyF)

[Willum]

It is almost a secret that Rome, even in the ages of its Kings used religion as a weapon of subjugation of its conquered peoples. Though it isn't surprising, a race as accomplished at physical, should be expected to have been just as sophisticated at psychological warfare.

Proof of this tactic is found in hybrid deities, Sulis-Minerva. When they conquered, the Romans told the losers: Our gods are your gods, Thor is the same a Heracles, Sulis is Minerva, Zeus is Jupiter, and so on.
Oh, and by the way, the gods say we rule, that is why they let us conquer you...

One needs to ask if this technique suddenly stopped when Rome rolled over Jerusalem?
Did they see the light in 63 BCE, and recognize the wonder of Yahweh?
No.
They continued their old tricks, improving them in much the same way they improved other tactics. I personally believe that they did too good a job, perfected religion to the point where it fooled most of the people most of the time, and those who were unaware it was a ruse, started converting people.

Another thing to note about the Caesars, is that after Augustus, they were divine (even Caesar Julius was a demi-god).

So the stage is set.
Now we need to move on to some assumptions.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. They have been dated to some time before 70 CE. If we believe they were written AFTER Jesus, instead of containing magic prophesies, then we can start making cool and logical assumptions.

The coolest is that the Prophecies of Isaiah about the savior of the Jews describe Caesar Augustus and Tiberius with perfect accuracy.

viewtopic.php?t=30410

Now why would they do that?
If Rome intended to use religion to continue to usurp a rebelling Judea...

I suspect Tiberius himself had a hand in this... or his flatterers/defamers.
1. Both Tiberius and Jesus are demi-gods. Spirit brothers if you will.
2. Jesus received the same things Tiberius loved as his nativity presents - gold, frankincense and myrrh - aphrodisiacs.
3. Jesus supported his spirit brother in his most important activities... collecting taxes, maintaining government and quelling popular uprising.
Incidentally, the coins Caesar wanted to collect, were graven images of foreign gods,proclaiming his divinity... blasphemous even to touch, but well, Jesus said pay them... paradoxically.

Matthew 22:21 "Render to [the god] Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's [which was nothing]."

1 Peter 2:13-14"Be willing to serve the people who have authority[a] in this world. Do this for the Lord. Obey the king, the highest authority. 14 And obey the leaders who are sent by the king. They are sent to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do good."

and

Matthew 7:12 English Standard Version 12 So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

Quite a coincidence, no? That the only practical applications of Jesus' works favored a pagan Rome, and all the spiritual advice, can't be proven!!

We also have some interesting word games that support the theory...
Yahweh, is derived from Yahu, allegedly. It doesn't make much sense, but YHVH could be pronounced that way.
But let's look at Jove. In Latin IOVE, pronounced according to Latin rules Ye ho vah, or Ee o way. How does that happen?
Word-games, I often point out, can't prove a god, but they certainly do prove word-games.

Let's look at Jesus, allegedly derived from Joshua, or Iosua. It should be Latinized Iosueous, right? Yet it comes up Jesus...
Well what does Jesus mean in Latin, and even Greek? The sounds now, not the etymology. Well Jesus --> Iosus, or Io Zeus. Which means, "Hail Zeus."

Why would they pick of all the Canaan gods, Yahu, easily conflated with Jove, and Jesus, so easily (mis?)construed as Hail Zeus.

There are jokes and lies in the Bible as well. God showed Moses his rear end. That's right God mooned Moses, in one of the most solemn moments in the OT. Oh sure there is a great deal of Biblical austerity there in the , but let yourself be a sarcastic Greek for a moment...

Then there is the history of the victorious Hebrew... yeah, that didn't happen. So there was a joke between the historically-educated and the Biblically educated. It carries on today...
Many really, the entire Flood story was a Greek comedy, one that fundamentalist are still somehow able to treat as a miraculous holy story... instead of a bedtime fable. Imagine the conversation - Greeks telling jokes about this funny play they'd seen with all the animals getting onto an ark, and the Hebrew just NOT seeing the joke.

As a final point, Jesus WOULD have been the savior of Judea if they had done what he told them: Payed their taxes, obeyed Roman law and kept the peace. As it is, they rebelled and were decimated.

So, this approach has strengths and weaknesses, but keeping in mind that if the Bible is false, it all must be... can anyone add or detract from this attachment of what may be disparate facts?

[SallyF]

Thank you for a most informative set of debate topics !

We may ask, when precisely did humans make the mythological Jove-Ah the exclusive deity of Judea ?

Jove-Ah is thought to be an Edomite/Idumean deity, and not Jewish at all.

Herod the Great was an Edomite.

Herod the Great was installed by the Romans as King of the Jews.

Herod the Great built a great temple to Jove-Ah.

The Old Testament propaganda/scriptures have it that Herod the Great's ancestor Esau/Edom was the true heir to the Promised Land.

The "scriptures" and "God" that Jews and Christians worship today, may simply be sophisticated tools of Roman control that adapted and syncretised indigenous culture.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 2 by SallyF]

When did Jove-ah come to power? Tricky question. For that Biblical answer, dont you know he was the one true god, with no others existing since the Garden of Eden. In history, there are two versions, you can check Wiki for one, and the other is he was the Canaan god, Yahu, (YHVH). To derive the rest, just read about the Seleucid Empire.
When did they both become Jove? That would be coincidentally after Rome invaded.

It is noteworthy that, Herod was considered a pretender, even though he made great efforts in the name of his native peoples.
I dont think they were fooled... but if only what he did to fool them survived in history books.

[Difflugia]

[Replying to post 1 by Willum]
I find this idea fascinating and I have a few observations.

First, there's a Wikipedia page describing which Dead Sea Scrolls have been carbon dated and what the results were. 1QIsaiah and 4Q53Samuel date to the third century BCE. According to The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, 1QIsaiah included verses 9:6-7 in substantially the same form as we have it now. Both Old Testament books also contain the tetragrammaton. Since this predates Tiberius by a few centuries, I think the Yahweh/Jove thing is a coincidence.

I mentioned this in another thread, but your idea may have happened a few centuries earlier with Persians inventing (at least portions of) Judaism instead of Romans. One of the factoids about the Bible that I find intriguing is that the only two people correctly referenced by name in "prophecy" are King Josiah (the last independent king of Judah) and King Cyrus of the Persians. If you have the opportunity/inclination, I recommend The Mythic Past by Thomas L. Thompson.

Both you and SallyF mentioned hidden jokes throughout both the Old and New Testaments. I'd like to point out Ruth 3 is a sexual double entendre. The "uncover his feet" thing as a euphemism for genitals is well known and discussed often, but there's more to the chapter in the Hebrew. A large number of words and phrases are either sexual euphemisms or allude to stories in other books of the Bible that involve sexual activity.

Here's Ruth 3 from the ASV with the sexy stuff in red and my notes in blue:

And Naomi her mother-in-law said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee? And now is not Boaz our kinsman, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing-floor (Hosea 9:1-2, the threshing floor is a place of prostitution). Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the threshing-floor, but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking. And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark ("mark" here or "observe" in some translations is a form of the verb "know") the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in (Gen. 16:4), and uncover his feet the Hebrew here is intentionally ambiguous; it could also mean "go to his feet and uncover [yourself], and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do. And she said unto her, All that thou sayest I will do.

And she went down unto the threshing-floor, and did according to all that her mother-in-law bade her. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain: and she came ("went in," Gen. 19:33) softly, and uncovered his feet (or, "uncovered [herself] at his feet", and laid her down. And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself; and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thy handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thy handmaid (this is a reference to Ezekiel 16 which is a disturbing allusion to a marriage via rape); for thou art a near kinsman.

Then in the morning Boaz drops a bunch of seed in her lap.

I don't think the overuse of the words that can be sexual euphemisms can be a coincidence. If the biblical references actually refer to what I think they do, that also means that Ruth was written after the minor prophets, most of which were written during the exile.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 4 by Difflugia]

First, there's a Wikipedia page describing which Dead Sea Scrolls have been carbon dated...

Ah the question there is what was discovered, and when it was dated.
The OT is an agglomeration of other OLDER peoples fables, integrated into a what was sold as a "Holy Book."
Some things discovered there were indeed older, but were they Hebrew in origin?
You'll find upon investigation that the expectations of what were found do not align to the details of what was found. Is a Armenian myth incorporated into a Palestinian book, a Holy story?
And indeed, more recent carbon dating than 1957 places some of it before 70 AD.
Good bit of research, dig deeper, though.

As for it predating Tiberius, you forget that Rome had control of Jerusalem, and, because the Sadducee (Seleucid) Theocracy ruled by keeping the lay people ignorant, it was easy for Pompeii to install the Pharisee, who were had the roots of Christianity, paving the way for Tiberius to introduce a "real saviour," and edit text any way he wanted, and within the timeframe of many of the DSS creation.
But I ask plainly: Do you believe, if there is a 1% chance that the DSS were written in 70CE and contained false prophesy about 6 CE, or that there is a 99% chance that the DSS were written in 400 BCE and contained a real prophecy (that was not fulfilled in Jesus, but better by Caesar), that the latter case is more likely?
No, a 1% chance of the possible is infinitely more likely than a 99% chance of the impossible.

... may have happened a few centuries earlier with Persians inventing (at least portions of) Judaism instead of Romans.

It certainly did. Many ways with many variations.
I've recently read of how the word Yahweh was developed from Yahu was developed from the generic for god, and ultimately EL or IL, from just this kind of manipulation and adaptation.

RE: Boaz, yes, absolutely.

It is a pity the people who usually read the Bible are such prudes.

Best regards

[JehovahsWitness]

Then in the morning Boaz drops a bunch of seed in her lap

Which she takes home and gives the man's seed to her mother-in-law. Nuff said

In fact doesn't chapter 2 say Ruth was in the field all day glean that same "barley" with the young men!

And at some point didn't she get thirsty and got a drink of... ... water which the boys drew from the..well

Surely Titus 1:15 is the key to this particular interpretation.



JW

[Difflugia]

I meant it when I said this intrigues me, so I'm not looking for an argument at the moment, but trying to figure out exactly you mean.

Ah the question there is what was discovered, and when it was dated.
The OT is an agglomeration of other OLDER peoples fables, integrated into a what was sold as a "Holy Book."

I'm with you here. My current understanding of the Old Testament is that much of the source material is Babylonian in origin and was composed during the exile, even if there bits of older Canaanite material. It's plausible to me, though, that there could be later layers that I can't yet recognize.

Some things discovered there were indeed older, but were they Hebrew in origin?
You'll find upon investigation that the expectations of what were found do not align to the details of what was found. Is a Armenian myth incorporated into a Palestinian book, a Holy story?

I'm with you again. While I currently think it developed during the exile rather than during the Roman period, it's clear to me that the whole good/evil duality of first century Judaism and Christianity (and that doesn't exist in, say, the Books of Judges or Job) is based on the Zoroastrian Ahuramazda and Ahriman myth structure. That's what you mean, right?

And indeed, more recent carbon dating than 1957 places some of it before 70 AD.
Good bit of research, dig deeper, though.

There's a range from about the third century BCE to the second century CE. I'm not sure what you're getting at.

As for it predating Tiberius, you forget that Rome had control of Jerusalem, and, because the Sadducee (Seleucid) Theocracy ruled by keeping the lay people ignorant, it was easy for Pompeii to install the Pharisee, who were had the roots of Christianity, paving the way for Tiberius to introduce a "real saviour," and edit text any way he wanted, and within the timeframe of many of the DSS creation.

Again, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I thought one of your claims was that the government of Tiberius created both the religion of Yahweh and inserted a prophecy into Isaiah. I'm saying that a copy of Isaiah that physically dates to the third century BCE includes references to Yahweh and the prophecy that (I think) you claim was inserted during the reign of Tiberius. There are ways that could happen (new writing on old media, for example), but I'm inclined to assume that the scroll was written near in time to when the scroll itself was created.

But I ask plainly: Do you believe, if there is a 1% chance that the DSS were written in 70CE and contained false prophesy about 6 CE, or that there is a 99% chance that the DSS were written in 400 BCE and contained a real prophecy (that was not fulfilled in Jesus, but better by Caesar), that the latter case is more likely?
No, a 1% chance of the possible is infinitely more likely than a 99% chance of the impossible.

While some of the scrolls were written that late and later, but I don't think there's even a 1% chance that a first century CE forger used 300-400 year old papyrus. I think that Isaiah 9 was either written with the intention of applying to Hezekiah or Cyrus (depending on when it was really written) and the wording is ambiguous enough to coincidentally apply to others (like Caesar). I think the odds of this are much greater overall than a text that was inscribed shortly before 70 CE, but dates to 200-300 BCE.

I've recently read of how the word Yahweh was developed from Yahu was developed from the generic for god, and ultimately EL or IL, from just this kind of manipulation and adaptation.

Would you mind sharing the source?

Another book that I recently read that might have bearing on this is Richard Elliott Friedman's The Exodus. I think he reaches too far in trying to justify his central thesis (that the Exodus was, in some sense, real), but I also think he points out too many Egyptian parallels with Judaism for them all to be coincidence.

[JehovahsWitness]

I meant it when I said this intrigues me, so I'm not looking for an argument at the moment, but trying to figure out exactly you mean.

I'm not surprised, in my experience this kind of reasoning does tend to intrege people like you*. As the bible says "From the hearts abundance the mouth speaks". There's probably an entire cours on this kind of interpretation at some higher school of theological study.

Enjoy!


JW





* intelligent people that participate in forums

[Willum]

[Replying to post 7 by Difflugia]

Yes, no worries:
Carbon dating the DSS:
https://www.history.com/news/6-things-y ... ea-scrolls

And a lengthy read, for Yahu to EL/IL.

Prep about 1/2 hour, or nothing...
Book link

I am not sure I am on board with his premises yet, but he certainly seems to have done his homework...

[Difflugia]

I'm not surprised

I also find JW theology intriguing and occasionally attend meetings with a publisher friend.

In case anyone else is interested, the offline Watchtower Library can now be downloaded as a CD image from jw.org. I used to have to convince a Witness to get me a new CD every year.