In modern Christianity, people take phrases as "son of God" and "Savior of the World" to be Christian terms peculiar only to Christianity. These Christian terms and many others were lifted from the Divus cults of Ancient Rome. The Divus cults apotheosized the emperors. The Divus Iulius cult, for example, made a god of Julius Caesar. The Divus Augustus cult made a god of Augustus and so on. It is within this Divus cult that the term "son of God" and "World Savior" came into being. These Roman terms were applied to Jesus Christ. They were making him not a man who became a god but a god who became a man. In other words, they were making heavenly Jesus into a Roman emperor by apotheosizing him in the same manner that the Divus cultists did with their emperors.

Christianity is not a Jewish religion that arose in Palestine or Judea but was a Roman religion that arose in the Diaspora. This is nowhere better demonstrated than in the fact that the authors of the Gospels had a cringeworthy grasp of the geography of that area of the world and knew almost no Aramaic or Hebrew. Most Jews in the Diaspora did not speak Aramaic or Hebrew and few had ever been to that land. Most Diaspora Jews were Greek-speakers only.

The bottom line is that no religion flourishes in any region that does not have the approval of the leaders of that region. Anywhere it sets up where it is not welcome will be shut down and those responsible imprisoned, executed or exiled to send a message. Christianity found an easy home in Rome. Stories of big persecutions of Christians in Rome have been found to be exaggerations. Nero's persecution, for example, makes it sound like a massive move to round up and execute Christians, e.g. dowsing them in oil and setting them alight to serve as human lanterns, but there simply weren't that many Christians in Rome in Nero's time. Any persecution would have been necessarily small and very quick.

There is a school of thought that the Roman royals invented Christianity and peddled it off on the ignorant masses as writings from Palestine and the second century diaspora as traveled by Paul. I have read several books on this subject: "Caesar's Messiah" by Joseph Atwill, "Creating Christianity" by Henry Davis, "Creating Christ--How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity" by James S. Valliant and Warren Fahy, and "Piso Christ" by Roman Piso with Jay Gallus. In these books, the authors point out how the New Testament was written by the Roman royals, particularly the Flavian family and the Pisos in particular.

Within the verses can be found jokes and clues about who the real characters in these stories are and who the authors of the stories are. These jokes and clues cannot be found simply reading the words at face value. The authors--Roman royals--were highly educated people and they wrote the gospels to encode the true meanings underlying the words. In other words, there is a exoteric and an esoteric way to understand these stories.

Two things that stand out right away is the bizarre fact that the travails of Christ match those of Titus, son of Vespasian and the general who brought down Jerusalem, as set down by Josephus. Also the travels of Paul match those of Pliny the Younger who was a member of Flavian family as was his uncle, Pliny the Elder. Josephus is revealed to be a Roman royal named Arrius Calpurnius Piso and was never a captured Jew who was adopted into the Flavian family, Arrius also posed as Flavius Silva--the general who took Masada in 73 and ended the Sicarii revolt.

While perusing through an article written by a Jewish scholar some years back, I read where he noted how odd it was that when Josephus wrote his account of of the siege of Masada at the behest of the Flavian family, he interviewed a lot of people who were there EXCEPT Flavius Silva! The most important man in the whole account was never interviewed despite being in Rome when Josephus was working on his account. Josephus could have literally walked a couple of hundred feet at the most, knocked on Silva's door and interview him but he never did. Why? Well, if the Piso material is correct, it would be because Josephus WAS also Silva. That's about the only thing that really accounts for the discrepancy.

Clues and jokes were worked into Josephus's account of the same type as found in the New Testament. For example. Josephus writes about how the Jews at Masada worked out how they would kill each and rather than be captured by the Romans. The trouble is, where Josephus get that information? Since all the Jews died, there no way to account for exactly how the Jews killed themselves. The same thing happens in the gospels when Jesus prays at Gethsemane. His prayer is recorded for our convenience despite there being no one present who could have written it down.

An example is Luke 14:26 where Jesus is quoted as saying, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Yet, among his disciples were two sets of brothers—Andrew and Peter as well as John and James called the sons of Zebedee. How could these two sets of brothers be disciples of Jesus unless each hated his brother?

In his 2014 book, "Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing," author Arthur M. Melzer, professor of political science at Michigan State University, tells us that writers of the past centuries wrote in a code of esoteric meaning cloaked in exoteric phraseology. This is called esotericism. Its use was driven by the belief among the educated classes that things of a certain nature shall not be written of openly. That nature was philosophy. Philosophy was to be hidden in their writings whether they be histories, myths, poetry, letters, etc. Philosophy should be protected from the uninitiated, they said, in order to protect them. Without initiation, philosophy will hurt those who encounter it in raw form because they will react wrongly to it. So, philosophy must be hidden within the words and is discernible only by reading between the lines, as it were. Esotericism was especially appropriate for religious writings. The uninitiated shall only read the exoteric expressions and not perceive the true meaning behind them.
Melzer writes:

"Not only in Cicero, but in almost all classical thinkers the case for esotericism is clearest—indeed, almost impossible to deny—with respect to religion, for in the ancient, pagan world, the gulf between philosophy and the prevailing religion was obviously far greater than in the Christian world."

How far back does this go? Can it be shown that the Ancient Romans employed esotericism? Melzer asserts they did, that the entire Old World did. He writes:

"The single most striking thing about the testimonial evidence [concerning the use of esotericism] is in fact not its quantity but its universality: it just shows up everywhere. It is there in fifth-century Athens and first-century Rome, in fourth-century Hippo (Algeria), twelfth-century Cordoba, thirteenth-century Paris, sixteenth-century Florence, seventeenth-century Amsterdam, and eighteenth-century London; it is there among the pagans, the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims; it is found with the Platonists and the Aristotelians, the Stoics and the Epicureans, the nominalists and the realists, the mystics and the materialists. It is in fact difficult to name a single major philosopher from any time or place before 1800 who did not somewhere make open and approving reference to this practice, regarding either his own writings or those of others (or both)."

As an example, I quote Professor Melzer where he further reveals the presence of a beginner level where esotericism is largely unknown and an adept level where esotericism is second nature:

"Moving back to the medieval period, let us briefly survey the big four philosopher/theologians: Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides, Alfarabi, and Augustine. They, again, are very explicit. Aquinas recommends the use of esotericism, arguing (in 1258):

'Certain things can be explained to the wise in private which we should keep silent about in public. . . . Therefore, these matters should be concealed with obscure language, so that they will benefit the wise who understand them and be hidden from the uneducated who are unable to grasp them.'"

Similarly, Maimonides, writing in the twelfth century, declares:

"These matters [of theology] are only for a few solitary individuals of a very special sort, not for the multitude. For this reason, they should be hidden from the beginner, and he should be prevented from taking them up, just as a small baby is prevented from taking coarse foods and from lifting heavy weights.

"Therefore, he openly states in the Guide of the Perplexed that in discussing such matters he will not offer anything beyond what he calls “the chapter headings.” And, he continues:

'Even those are not set down in order or arranged in coherent fashion in this Treatise, but rather are scattered and entangled with other subjects. . . . For my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed.'

"The tenth-century Arabic philosopher Alfarabi states in his commentary on Plato’s Laws:

'The wise Plato did not feel free to reveal and uncover the sciences for all men. Therefore, he followed the practice of using symbols, riddles, obscurity, and difficulty, so that science would not fall into the hands of those who do not deserve it and be deformed, or into the hands of one who does not know its worth or who uses it improperly. In this he was right.'

"Finally Augustine, who speaks frequently of esotericism, asserts (in 386) that the pure stream of philosophy should be

'guided through shady and thorny thickets, for the possession of the few, rather than allowed to wander through open spaces where cattle [i.e., the 'common herd'] break through, and where it is impossible for it to be kept clear and pure. . . . I think that that method or art of concealing the truth is a useful invention.'"

Why did the intelligentsia of times past employ esotericism? There were myriad reasons but the main one was to thwart crackdowns on the dissemination of knowledge whether by sovereign or church. One could air controversial ideas without arousing ire. Only those in the know could decipher what they are reading. Indeed, the exoteric wording was often contradictory to throw off the uninitiated. Either the ignorant embrace the writings in the superficial, exoteric meaning contradictions and all or they realize the ideas presented therein make no sense and dismiss it. Over the centuries when political climates change, the need for the esotericism fades and no one remembers how to decipher the writings from that period or even realize those writings must be deciphered in order to truly understand them.

This identical method of esotericism painstakingly spelled out by Professor Melzer is found in Paul’s writings. In 1 Corinthians 1:1-2, we read:

"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able."

Here, Paul tells the recipients of his epistle that they have been given the exoteric teachings which he likens to milk for an infant. The esoteric doctrines Paul likens to meat. Just as with the philosophers Professor Melzer covers, Paul states that were the uninitiated to receive the “meat,” they would not be able to bear it.

In Hebrews 5:12 (believed by some to have been written by Paul), we read:

"For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat."

Here, the author states that the recipients of this epistle have not acted like full initiates ready to instruct and minister to the new members but become as the new members needing the exoteric teachings (milk) rather than the esotericism (meat) expected of the higher members. In other words, the author is accusing the recipients of backsliding and not applying themselves. These last two passages show us that Paul and the Christians were something of a secret society employing esotericism just as later philosophers of the West and the Middle East described in their testimonies.

In Mark 4:10-12, Jesus states his esotericist methods of teaching:

"And when he [Jesus] was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them."

So, once again, we read about how there are two levels of communication among the initiated—an exoteric and esoteric level. Jesus makes clear that he did not come to save all of humanity, a truly stunning admission for modern Christianity. He came only to save those that saw the truths behind the parables. The rest would be satisfied with only the exoteric reading of the parables otherwise they would be forgiven and Jesus states that he does not want that! We see esotericism being practiced here where the uninitiated are even kept out of heaven! The parables don’t help the uninitiated find heaven but rather keeps them out!

So, we need to ask how Jesus encountered the principles of esotericism. As Professor Melzer explains, it was something taught to the educated and wealthy classes so how did Jesus learn it? And why would he go so far as to claim that he is only on earth to rescue those who were initiated into his esoteric system while everyone could quite literally go to hell? Once again, jokes and clues hidden underneath. The royal who wrote Mark was casting himself as Jesus. And he is giving his audience, i.e. readers, the truth: this religion was created by the Roman royals.

So, why was the Roman royal family so bent on creating a new religion? Because the most troublesome aspect of the empire was the Palestine-Judea area. Not only were the Sicarii causing a lot of trouble there, Jews of the Diaspora were also resentful of the Romans who saw the actions of the Sicarii as inspirational to the Diaspora Jews and to other downtrodden subjects of the empire. But the Romans knew that defeating the Sicarii would not be the end of their troubles. The base problem was that Judaism and paganism were simply not compatible. Even with the Sicarii gone, their spirit would live on to inspire another group down the road.

The belief in a coming messiah who would avenge the wrongs done by the Romans was getting stronger. The Jews could no longer trust the Temple anymore. What was needed was a way to separate the Messianism from its Jewish roots. To soften it in favor of the Empire. So, they created Christ or Chrestus as they actually called him. Instead of an avenger, he was peaceful. He opposed the Zealots (later to become the Sicarii). He told the Jews to pay their taxes (because the Pisos were the tax-collectors of the Flavian royal family). What the Romans had not been successful in was getting the Jews to accept their myriad deities. Instead, the Jews insulted statues of Roman gods and of the emperor when the Romans wanted the Jews to apotheosize him. They refused and weren't afraid to war over it. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed in revolts but they kept revolting. Finally, the Pisos hit on the idea of a new religion pushing a peaceful, rather pro-Roman messiah or Christ. The name Chrestus means a good man.

Paul's epistles too were written by one of the Pisos. If Paul was real then who was he? He is not mentioned anywhere outside of Church literature. In his travels, Paul would likely have encountered well-known personalities as Seneca. But none of the great writers of that age mention Paul at all. When the 2nd century Christian historian, Justin Martyr, wrote a history of the spread of Christianity in the 1st century, he incredibly failed to mention Paul a single time! If the New Testament is to be believed, Justin's omission is staggering! Then consider the story of Paul's conversion. He was named Saul before his conversion and Paul afterward. Saul is Sol and Paul is Apollo. That is, Paul went from a monotheistic-Jewish sun god to a pagan-Hellenist sun god after his conversion. A bit too contrived to be a real history,

But a lot of things are wrong with Paul. He is described in Acts as a Jew (Pharisaic) from the city of Tarsus. Tarsus was not a Jewish city and certainly never had a Pharisaic school. The Pharisees were in Jerusalem where Paul had never been until he recounts a visit there in Galatians. How did he become a Pharisee?

While Acts tries to make Paul’s persecution of Christians seem like a big deal, it must have been very minor. Acts states that Paul entered the houses of Christians on a whim and carried people off indicating a virtual pogrom against the Christians but this seems unlikely because the Church in Jerusalem was open and operating throughout this persecution—the Apostles are there and functioning in their various offices. Then after Paul is converted, the persecution apparently ceases because it is never mentioned again. We are unable to even state how long this persecution lasted—a month? Six months? A year? Two years? We don't know when it started or ended. Paul was apparently a one-man anti-Christian persecution army but could not have entered Christian houses and carried off people by himself. He had to have some sort of army operating under him? Whose army? Under whose authority was this peripatetic tentmaker acting?

Nothing about Paul adds up. For example, Acts states that he was carrying letters from the "chief priests" authorizing him to go into Damascus and capture the Jews who had fled there. These chief priests were Sadducees not Pharisees. One sect had no authority over the other and were not friendly towards one another. The idea that Paul/Saul would have carried such letters is laughable not to mention that no one in Damascus would have cared one wit about his letters. Damascus was not run by Jews but was part of the kingdom of King Aretas who was not a Jew. None of that makes any sense. None of that could have happened. Someone just made that stuff up. But, remember, that somewhere under all those contradictions and falsehoods lies the truth if you know how to find it--if you're initiated.

To understand the clues the Romans put into the New Testament, one must understand that the NT is written at different levels: 1. The exoteric level, 2. The esoteric level, and 3. The numerological level. That last level is really a special case of the esoteric but distinct enough to merit its own discussion. The Flavians and Pisos were highly educated, intelligent and studied people. They spoke several languages and were well traveled. As far as numerology is concerned they knew gematria, isopsephia and similar forms. Gematria is a system where every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a corresponding number such that every word has numerical value which is determined by adding up the values of the letters in the word. Those words with the same value are considered to be identical concepts even if the words have opposite meanings. In other words, the words may be opposites on the exoteric level but are somehow united at the esoteric level. Words can be substituted for other words and letters for other letters to create yet new words with new numerological values that lead on to yet new meanings. Isopsephia is the Greek form of gematria and so on. Needless to say, ingenuity was required to construct these writings and a ragtag group of apostles or disciples could not have written this way.

An example would be Christ saying, “I am the alpha and the omega” in Revelation 1:18. Jesus did not speak Greek according to the scholars. Nor does Hebrew alphabet have as many letters as the Greek so it seems strange that someone would have translated Jesus’s sentence that way. The Hebrew words would have been translated to English as, “I am alef and tav.” Hebrew has no equivalent to omega. Greek does have tau which is the equivalent of tav. So, the translation into Greek should have been alpha and tau. In Greek, the phrase, “I am the alpha and the omega” reads as “Ego eimi to A kai to Ω.” That is, “Ego (I) eimi (am) to (the) A (Alpha) kai (and) to (the) Ω (Omega).” A stands for Arrius and O is the last letter in Piso. Kai means “and” but since upper case i and lower case L resemble one another, they substituted one for the other so that kai becomes kal. Now we can see the esoteric message: “I am A(rrius) kal(purnius) (Pis)o.” I am Arrius Calpurnius Piso.

In Revelation 1:14 we read: “The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.” This verse seems to be saying that the “son of man” is old as he has white hair. Was Jesus ever an old man? No, he died at age 30 supposedly. But Arrius Piso died an old man. He lived from 37-119 CE and so was about 82 when he died. Back in the first century, 82 years was an extraordinary amount of time for a man to live. So, is Arrius the “son of man” in this verse? The Greek word for wool is erion. So, this is also the name Apion (remember the Greek p is actually rho or the R letter) so Apion is really Arion or Arrion, Arrian or Arrius.

Regarding the name Apion causes us to recall Josephus’s work, Against Apion. In Whiston’s translation, the second note in the bibliography reads: “This first book has a wrong title. It is not written against Apion, as is the first part of the second book, but against those Greeks in general who would not believe Josephus's former accounts of the very ancient state of the Jewish nation, in his 20 books of Antiquities; and particularly against Agatharelddes, Manetho, Cheremon, and Lysimachus. It is one of the most learned, excellent, and useful books of all antiquity; and upon Jerome's perusal of this and the following book, he declares that it seems to him a miraculous thing ‘how one that was a Hebrew, who had been from his infancy instructed in sacred learning, should be able to pronounce such a number of testimonies out of profane authors, as if he had read over all the Grecian libraries…’” So, Jerome points out the problem of Josephus: if he was born a religious Jew in Judea, how did he know so much about the Grecian works? Because he is Arrius Calpurnius Piso and knowing the Grecian works was simply part of his education. He would have known them by heart but Josephus would not have and yet he did which is, as Whiston states, “miraculous.”

Without deflecting from the point about interesting hidden constructions, I would just mention that "Son of Man" is usually taken to be a reference to Daniel 7:13. After imperial "beasts" (this part of Daniel was written in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Hellenistic successor to one of Alexander's generals, whom the Maccabees successfully revolted against) of four types, Daniel perceives there will come one who is human, and whose reign is eternal.

This would have interesting implications for a use of the term to refer to Arrius Piso, even if this was meant to be cryptic. Either it is doubling him as a Messiah, or if not, then it is presumably appropriating the "anti-Emperor" reference implied by the Gospels when they label Jesus as Son of Man.

FWIW, Son of Man seems to be an Aramaic term. Oddly enough, the "book of" Daniel was written part in Aramaic (that is, Syrian, the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent in Hellenistic and Roman times) and part in Hebrew. The term is sometimes translated into English as "the Human One."

Son of Man does not refer to Jesus directly. It was someone Jesus was predicting would come. It refers to Titus. His father, Vespasian, was declared God by the Roman Senate and so Titus was the Son of God and that phrase even appears on his sacred arch. He wanted the Jews to regard him as son of God for this reason. The Romans were trying in vain to get the Jews to accept that the son of man predicted by Jesus was a Caesar. He did sort of fit the idea of a vengeful warrior as he was a general and he did sack Jerusalem. While the Jews never accepted Titus as the son of man, the original idea was that Titus was indeed the son of man that Jesus predicted.

When Jesus describes the Abomination of Desolation mentioned by Daniel, he is describing the fall of Jerusalem. In Matthew 16:28 Jesus is quoted as saying, "Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” Many skeptics read that and laughed triumphantly. They will say, it never came to pass. But Jesus wasn't predicting the end of the world; he was predicting the fall of Jerusalem to Titus and his army. This happened in 70 CE and Jesus's words were spoken around 30 CE. So, conceivably, there might be some who stood listening to Jesus who would indeed live long enough to see this destruction and the the son of man--Jesus himself--returned AS TITUS! Not a reincarnation or anything like that. But because Josephus modeled the gospelic Jesus on Titus and his exploits as recounted in The Jewish Wars.

For both men, their stories begin in the Sea of Galilee where Jesus gathers disciples by telling them that he will make them fishers of men. In The Jewish Wars, Titus was having a war with Jewish fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee. The superior Roman vessels outmaneuvered and upended the Jews' boats and spilled them into the sea. The Romans then went about casting nets to pull their Jewish prisoners out of the water. So Jesus teaches his disciples to fish for men figuratively and Titus teaches his soldiers to do the same literally. In these same passages, the gospels make comparisons between Jesus and Moses and scholars do not question that this is the case but they can't see the uncanny similarities between the start of Jesus's ministry and the start of Titus's military campaign.

Then Jesus goes to Capernaum and casts a demon out of a man but the demon recognizes him. In Josephus's works (Wars and The Life of Flavius Josephus), he mentions a John who was tyrannizing Capernaum and intimidating the people who thought him possessed by a demon and then he pronounced that Titus was the messiah.

Then Jesus goes into a town and casts out all the demons and he is recognized as a savior. In Wars, Book 3 Ch. 9, Titus is called a savior in the town of Tiberias and cast out of the demons from the town.

Next, Jesus asks, "Which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven or rise up and walk?" (Matt. 9:1-8, Mk 2:1-12, Lk 5:22-26)

In Wars, Titus says, "It is easier to say rise and walk than to forgive."

When Jesus drives the moneylenders from the temple, he calls them "liston" or robbers.

According to Josephus, just before Titus destroyed the Second Temple, he drove out the crowd in the front courtyard calling them "liston."

I'll stop listing the similarities here as they are too numerous to continue with. But I trust you see the uncanny similarities between Jesus and Titus. Jesus IS Titus. But you have to be initiated into Josephus's/Piso's esotericism to understand how and why. By disguising Titus as Jesus, the Roman royals FINALLY got the Jews to worship a Roman emperor as god. Not so much the Palestine Jews, they would just have to be defeated. Christianity was created to thwart the aims of the Diaspora Jews. They were spread throughout the empire and could cause a LOT of trouble if they rose up against the Romans and the Romans could not let that happen.

Son of man does also refer to Arrius because the name means "Second Adam." He likely called himself this because he saw himself as a modern Amenenhet I who founded the 12th Dynasty at Thebes. He is often believed to have started Judaism. Interestingly, he is also known as Adamenemhept I. The first four letters make him the First Adam, who founded Judaism, and Arrius is the Second Adam who founded a new Jewish religion based on Judaism. Knowledge about the Egyptians and their lore was taught to all the royals in Rome.

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Harry Marks wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 9:38 pm This would have interesting implications for a use of the term to refer to Arrius Piso, even if this was meant to be cryptic. Either it is doubling him as a Messiah, or if not, then it is presumably appropriating the "anti-Emperor" reference implied by the Gospels when they label Jesus as Son of Man.

Actually, it was doing both. For example, Piso writes of Jesus Christ as himself as well as Titus in the same works. The Son of Man is Piso but it is also Titus. Piso is the author--the one who appropriated Jesus Christ from the sicarii who was a spiritual replacement of the Second Temple and put words in his mouth--and Titus is the man who carried out the destruction that Piso's Christ promised in the gospels. Titus was a called son of god but was a man, a military general, who did what many Jews insisted could only be done by God--he destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple. So, he is both man and god in one and he is both son of god and son of man because the man is his father, Vespasian, who was also declared a god by the Senate.

If that's confusing--it was meant to be. The purpose of creating this new religion was not only to divide the messianists in Palestine from the Diaspora Jews but it was also meant to divide the Diaspora Jews against one another. There could be no unity among the Jews of the Empire or they might disrupt the Empire. We know the Jews clashed with one another over this very issue:

"There is a brief mention of Christ in the fifth volume of Suetonius’ Lives of the Twelve Caesars, written around 120 AD. Suetonius tells us the Roman Emperor Claudius [in 49 CE] expelled the Jews from Rome: “because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from the city” (Life of Claudius, 25). Another translation reads “because they were constantly rioting at the instigation of Chrestus” and another “since the Jews constantly made disturbance at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome”. --https://streetapologist.wordpress.com/2 ... 2C%2025%29.

So, we see that Chrestus--the usual name of Christ in Rome--was causing a tumult among the Jews. Some say that the Chrestus mentioned was someone currently living in Rome stirring the Jews up but such a Chrestus would merit a biography of his own but there is no mention of him by any other historian. In all likelihood, Suetonius (who was also related to the royals and remember that Claudius was a published historian before he was made emperor after the assassination of his nephew, Caligula) was referring to Christ. The Jews and Jewish Christians were at war over whether to accept this Christ or Chrestus. Not a big disturbance but Claudius booted them from the city before it got bigger.

Despite this, this new religion of the royals was having its desired effect--paralyzing Judaism within the Empire and setting them at war with one another. The problem is, the early Christians of Rome (who occupied ALL strata of Roman society and not just the poor and the prostitutes) were very useful politically. Senators and emperors courted them for support and then Constantine gave them tremendous power. Rome was then taken over by this religion of the royals and, within a couple of centuries, the empire looked the way the Jews did--scattered, broke and warring with neighbors.

So, when you hear that statement that Christian Nationalism is a bastardization of Christianity, laugh at it. Christian Nationalism is the truest form of Christianity doing what Christianity was created to do: sow division, hatred, disunity. It is still doing it and I can't think of a time when it wasn't doing that.