Titus coin with 10th Legion galley and Flavian/messianic star
Eight-pointed Ichthys wheel
The Flavian star is at least similar to the star (which is actually a comet) that was used on Roman coins to celebrate the deification of Julius Caesar:
Divine Julius Caesar coin with star (comet)
Though somewhat related to the comet-symbol of Julius Caesar, the specific star on the Flavian coins of Vespasian and Titus is obviously more like the Jewish messianic star, complete with the points in between. Such a star does not appear on any other Roman emperors’ coins.
Since the Flavians were the only Jewish messiahs to ever become Roman emperors and the only Roman emperors to become Jewish messiahs, this should not, perhaps, be surprising.
As we have seen, Jesus’s similarities to Serapis and Aesclepius, and his very nature as a man-god, were alien to Judaism in the same way that Roman emperor worship was alienating, indicating a profound influence of Hellenistic and Roman ideas on the Gospels.
While it is certainly true that radical Jewish sectarians like those in the Dead Sea Scrolls community believed in the righteousness of personal poverty—and the poor and disaffected were no doubt drawn to the rebel cause—scholars widely agree that Jesus’s advocacy of storing one’s “treasures” in the Kingdom of Heaven rather than on the perishable earth (48) is more readily founded in the Greek philosopher Plato. That ancient philosopher’s dualism had in the pagan mind already ideologically severed the universe into two opposed dimensions: the spiritual and material.
All of the transnational and transreligious elements in the New Testament suggest a transnational and transreligious agenda—i.e., an imperial one. The very phrase in the New Testament, “Kingdom of Heaven,” as properly translated from the Greek by the Jesus Seminar, should read: “God’s imperial rule.”
God’s earthly agent was the emperor. According to these Flavians’ own propaganda, both of these emperors were messiahs of Jewish prophecy. And according to Romans, the emperor—a man—can also be a god, or at least become one.
Religions before Rome (and, to some extent, before Alexander) were largely matters of one’s ethnicity and nationality in an age when the distinction between religion, politics and science was blurry and parochialism sharply defined. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, however, imperialistic motives began to inspire transnational religious syncretism like that we have seen in order to melt down regional and sectarian divisions into an enduring imperial alloy.
We have seen the remarkably blatant example of this kind of syncretism in the self-conscious creation of the god Serapis by Ptolemy I “the Savior.”
Seleucus, another of Alexander’s generals who referred to himself as “the Savior,” linked himself to Apollo by employing a dolphin-and-anchor symbol that he borrowed from the sun-god.
The Romans shared the same methods and motives of these first Hellenistic imperialists. Indeed, they were avid students of their methods. Over time, Romans developed this kind of statecraft into an elaborately sophisticated adjunct of warfare. They employed the Greeks’ own tactics against them when they conquered Greek territories, incorporating Greek religion and matching Greek gods to their own gods almost one-for-one. When it came to religion the Romans were creative, pragmatic and political.
Aesclepius, the Healer
With the political propaganda employed by the Emperor Vespasian, however, this universalizing syncretism for political purposes soared to new heights. We have already seen that his Jewish supporters acknowledged him as the Messiah of prophecy and how he performed healing miracles at the Serapeum in Alexandria in perhaps the most cynical show of political propaganda by any Roman emperor. Our ancient sources tell us that Vespasian also received portents by traditional Roman gods back in his Italian homeland, as well, even as his son Titus received favorable prophecies from the priests of the Greek goddess of Love, Aphrodite, on the island of Cyprus.
Titus and Venus, the goddess of love
It seems the deities of almost every ethnic group in the East were eager to endorse Vespasian and his family as the next dynasty of Rome while the dire uncertainty of imperial succession roiled the Year of Four Emperors.
Of course, the manufactured god Serapis, who had long outlived the Ptolemys for whom he was originally assembled, made his contribution to the propaganda of the Flavians, as well.
Titus and Serapis
Could it be that what the god Serapis had been for Ptolemy the Savior, Jesus was to be for the Flavian messiahs?
It was, after all, the Roman government that was striving, quite brutally, to unify all nations under one emperor—a mission that would, arguably, culminate in the official unification of the Empire under the Roman-friendly monotheism of Christianity by the 4th Century.
Jesus challenges the entire Mosaic purity code that helped ignite the conflict with Rome. (49) He obviates the need for strict Sabbath observance by letting his disciples work on the Sabbath. He rejects or transforms nearly everything distinctively Jewish in the Gospels, which were written while the Flavians ruled.
Unlike traditional Jewish messiahs (and yet very like pagan gods), Jesus performed healing miracles on the Sabbath, offending Jewish authorities even as he mimicked pagan deities with his healing, resurrecting, and other divine acts. (50)
While most Christians today retain some form of Sabbath observance, the Christian “Sabbath” is no longer even celebrated on the seventh day, as God commanded the Jews. Except for a small minority of Christians, their Sabbath is observed on the first day of the week: the day of the Sun (Sunday), in accordance with the worship of Sol Invictus, as decreed by Emperor Constantine, who was originally a devotee of Sol Invictus.
Jesus’s disciples also ignore the contemporary Jewish practice of fasting, or so we are told at Mark 2:18. And, as if following up on Jesus’s suggestion that a presumably uncircumcised centurion could exceed every Jew in his faith, St. Paul explicitly does away with the need for circumcision altogether, which is a Jewish practice dating back to Abraham himself and, as the symbol of the Covenant with God’s Chosen People, is one of God’s earliest commands. Unsurprisingly, circumcision was also one of the chief obstacles for eager Roman initiates wishing to adopt Jewish ways. (51)
It seems that “Gospel” Christians of the Pauline variety had no use for any of the traditional Jewish holy days, either, from Yom Kippur to Passover or any of the others. Christian holy days such as Christmas and Easter are not even calculated on a Hebrew calendar but on a Roman one. Even where the events that inspired them can be lined up with the Gospels’ narrative, as in the case of the Crucifixion and Resurrection that should properly coincide with Passover, the celebration of the Resurrection coincides with pagan spring fertility festivals, instead. And the birth of Jesus is celebrated at around the same time as the birth of pagan solar deities (and the Emperor Titus).
While it is true that over time Christianity would grow increasingly un-Jewish and even anti-Jewish, the Gospels themselves—even the earliest, along with the letters of St. Paul—embody a fierce ongoing argument with Jews. The “heavies” in the New Testament are invariably the Jews. It is impossible to deny that this is partially responsible for the last two millennia of anti-Semitism. The origins of this “blood libel” against Jews began in the text of the most printed book on Earth.