“Flavian Thesis” Examined.

The thesis that the canonical gospels are allegorical parallels of the Torah, and the writings of Flavius Josephus must be carefully examined. In the book “Caesar’s Messiah,” Joseph Atwill contends that the canonical gospels are typologic fiction formulated by the Flavian Dynasty (i.e. Roman Imperial family) to invalidate the Torah.

While the “Flavian thesis” proposed by Joseph Atwill is interesting, but certainly not convincing, I believe this hypothesis is a clever attempt by Mr. Atwill and his supporters to validate the authenticity of the Torah, and simultaneously invalidate the Canonical gospels. The current writer agrees that the Canonical gospels are typologic fiction, but so is the Torah.

My position, to be specific, is that even if it is true that the Canonical gospels are allegorical parallels of the Torah and the writings of Josephus; the Torah itself is an allegorical parallel of more ancient writings and mythoses (i.e. Homeric writings, Greek mythoses, Egyto-Cushite mythoses etc.). For example, just as the story of Christ in Matthew parallels the story of Moses in Exodus, the story of Moses in Exodus parallels the story of Akhenaton in ancient Egypt. And just as the Gospel of Mark and Luke parallels the supposed writings of Josephus; the story of Samson and Delilah in the Torah parallels the story of Hercules/Herakles in the Greek Mythos. In fact, many of the books in the Torah are named after Greek city states; so, the Hellenistic influence on the writer of the Torah is undeniable.

My research, unlike the “Flavian thesis,” revealed to me that both the Torah and the Canonical Gospels were formulated using a unique typologic method around 10th to 12th century A.D, but not in the 2nd century A.D as now implied in the “Flavian thesis.” What is a typologic method? A typologic method is a literary method whereby a contemporary story is superimposed on a more ancient story to make the contemporary story look ancient – ancient Greek scholars are well known for using typologic method in their writings, so it is plausible that the medieval-era Jewish writers were highly influenced by the literary method of the ancient Greek scholars.   

In fact, I would conjecture that Flavius Josephus was an incarnated personage, created perhaps in the middle ages or even later, whose supposed writings were back dated to defend Judaism as a classical religion and philosophy. It is very complicated to use hindsight to reconstruct ancient history; more specifically, the historical origin of the “Abrahamic Triad" due to the typologic method adopted by the scripture writers to code their writings. But when historians use competitive plausibility in the reconstruction of ancient history, they tend to eliminate what is less likely. In the present case, what is less likely is that the scriptures are true historical records, not some kind of typologic fiction.

/Ojo O Oyebisi/