American scholar and author Joseph Atwill claims the story of Jesus is a fabricated belief that was created to appease and control the poor, the Independent reported.
Atwill, who wrote "Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus," is preparing to discuss his theory next week at the "Covert Messiah" conference in London.
He asserts that Christianity did not begin as a religious belief system and instead was an intricate government plot to ease the poor people of the Roman Empire. After analyzing the New Testament alongside "The War of the Jews" by Josephus, Atwill discovered a series of similarities between the two works.
"What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus," Atwill said.
"This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern," he continued. "The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar."
Because different sects of Judaism posed as a threat to the empire, officials resulted to the last resort by creating a new religion, Atwill said.
"They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system," Atwill told PRWeb.com.
"Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to 'give onto Caesar' and pay their taxes to Rome.
"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."
Much of Atwill's belief is based on the idea that there are no sources left to trace his existence or impact.
"In fact he [Jesus] may be the only 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," he said.
Richard Dawkins, an English biologist known for his anti-religious views, posted a link to a press release about the event Atwill is speaking at on Twitter. However, he later tweeted "RT doesn't imply endorsement. I'm not qualified to judge Atwill's thesis. Just thought it might be worth a look."
