Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus:Flavian Signature Edition (36 page)

Pedanius Dioscorides, the chief physician and botanist accompanying Vespasian and Titus into Judea, was familiar with both of these scientific principles. They are key elements in the “root and branch” satire.

Pedanius was justly famous for pioneering the first documented use of anesthesia and the first medical use of electric shock therapy (using electric eels to generate the current). He also wrote a textbook on botany that became the basis for modern herbalism and identified hundreds of medicinal plant roots—“many very serviceable roots,” as he put it—that had not previously been known to medical science. As one of Rome’s leading scientists, Pedanius would certainly have advised Titus on what Josephus calls the “useful science”
¹²²
of expelling demons from apparently insane people.

One of the elements of the root and branch satire is the strange plant that Josephus calls rue; it has a root by the name of “baaras.” This root, baaras, has the power to dispel demons, defined by Josephus as the “spirit of the wicked.”

That Josephus mentions a plant named rue is significant, since rue is one of the plants that Pedanius studied and wrote about. In his textbook
On Herbalism,
he explains the dangers of the wild, or mountain rue, and the benefits of the domesticated, or garden rue, which grew near fig trees and could be safely used in tinctures and infusions.

Pedanius’ gardening technique is, essentially, the core of the Roman pacification strategy documented in the root and branch satire: the Romans attempted to “domesticate” the Jews by pruning the root of their demonic wickedness, the Messiah Eleazar, and then grafting in the root that is Jesus, which has the power to dispel demons.

A quote from Titus recorded by the fourth-century Christian writer Sulpcius Severus mentions his understanding of the importance of the “root” to the Jews and Christians.

Titus is said to have first summoned a council and deliberated whether or not he should destroy such a mighty temple … Titus himself said that the destruction of the temple was a prime necessity in order to wipe out more completely the religions of the Jews and Christians for they urged that these religions, though hostile to each other, nevertheless sprang from the same sources; the Christians had grown out of the Jews; if the root were destroyed, the stock would easily perish (Christianos ex Iudaeis exitisse radice sublata stirpem facile perituram).

To begin the analysis, I would first note the elements from the New Testament that are used in the root and branch satire. These concepts stem from the “root of Jesse” and “branch of David” messianic prophecies in the Old Testament and Dead Sea Scrolls.

Root and branch elements in the New Testament:

•  The messianic lineage is described as being “pruned”

•  There is a prediction that the messianic lineage will be grafted onto

•  Jesus’ capture occurs on the Mount of Olives

•  Three are crucified but one survives

•  Joseph of Arimathea takes survivor down from the cross

The analysis continues by presenting each of the component passages that make up the satire in turn.

The following passage takes place at the fortress Herodian. It occurs before the siege of Jerusalem and tells the story of an Eleazar who, like his namesake at Masada, commits suicide.

For clarification, I present the following list of concepts in the passage that are elements in the larger satire:

LOCATION:  Thecoe and Herodian

1. Eleazar

2. Pitched camp at Thecoe

3. Refusal to surrender

4. Suicide

Nor was it long ere Simon came violently again upon their country; when he pitched his camp at a certain village called Thecoe, and sent Eleazar, one of his companions, to those that kept garrison at Herodian, and in order to persuade them to surrender that fortress to him.

The garrison received this man readily, while they knew nothing of what he came about; but as soon as he talked of the surrender of the place, they fell upon him with their drawn swords, till he found that he had no place for flight, when he threw himself down from the wall into the valley beneath;

so he died immediately …

Wars of the Jews
, 4, 9, 518-520

The following passage is also part of the satire. The reader should recognize it as the passage I analyzed in Chapter 6, which led me to understand that the name of the Messiah captured on the Mount of Olives was Eleazar. One of the elements that makes the root and branch satire so difficult to comprehend is that it uses the solutions to other puzzles as components. In other words, a reader must first solve the puzzle, that reveals that the “certain young man” captured on the Mount of Olives was named Eleazar, to be able to move forward and see the even larger story that the captured Eleazar is a part of.

For clarification, I present the following list of the elements in the story that are part of the satire:

LOCATION:  Mount of Olives
 

1. Eleazar

2. Pedanius (physician)

3. Pedanius hangs Eleazar down from his hand as he “carries him away”

4. Capture occurs on the Mount of Olives

5. The fact that Eleazar is ordered to be “pruned”

Many of the seditious were so pressed by the famine … that they got together, and made an attack on those Roman guards that were upon the Mount of Olives …

But the Romans were apprised of their coming to attack them beforehand …

and one whose name was Pedanius spurred his horse on their flank with great vehemence, and caught up a certain young man belonging to the enemy by his ankle, as he was running away;

the man was, however, of a robust body, and in his armor; so low did Pedanius bend himself downward from his horse, even as he was galloping away, and so great was the strength of his right hand, and of the rest of his body, as also such skill had he in horsemanship.

So this man seized upon that his prey, as upon a precious treasure, and carried him as his captive to Caesar …
whereupon Titus admired the man that had seized the other for his great strength, and ordered the man that was caught to be pruned for his attempt against the Roman wall …
¹²³

The following passage is one of the most important in the works of Josephus, because in it he records his parallel to the crucifixion of Jesus in the New Testament. It occurs after the siege of Jerusalem but before the passage describing Eleazar’s capture and release at Macherus. Its temporal orientation relative to the other events in the root and branch satire is crucial, and to make this more difficult to see, the event is recorded in Josephus’ autobiography and not in
Wars of the Jews
. However, Josephus did provide—for the alert reader—a path to understanding, when his crucifixion scene occurred relative to the other events in the satire. He did so with the statement “Moreover, when the city Jerusalem was taken by force, I was sent by Titus,” which indicates that the event occurred after the capture of the “certain young man” on the Mount of Olives by Pedanius but before the siege of Macherus, which occurred after Titus had left Judea.

This relative placement is also crucially important for the overall parallel sequence between Jesus’ ministry and Titus’ campaign. In other words, as in the New Testament, the “three are crucified, one survives” episode occurs after the Mount of Olives capture but before the condemnation of Simon and the sparing of John, which Titus learned of by letter after he had left Jerusalem.
¹²⁴

The following list contains the elements that are used in the root and branch satire from the passage below, describing three Jews who are crucified and one who survives at Thecoa.

LOCATION:  Thecoa

1. Three are crucified but one survives

2. Joseph bar Matthias takes survivor down from the cross

3. Pitched camp at Thecoa

4. Physician

Moreover, when the city Jerusalem was taken by force …

I was sent by Titus Caesar … to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp; as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them;

so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.

Life of Flavius Josephus
, 75, 417, 420-421

Following Titus’ return to Rome, Josephus describes a valley next to the fortress Macherus in which a “magic root” that could dispel demons grew. The following list contains the elements in that passage that are used in the satire.

LOCATION:  Baaras

1. A root that can dispel demons

2. The fact that this root must be hung down from the hand of its captor as he “carries it away”

Now within this place there grew a sort of rue that deserves our wonder on account of its largeness, for it was no way inferior to any fig tree whatsoever, either in height or in thickness;

and the report is, that it had lasted ever since the times of Herod, and would probably have lasted much longer, had it not been cut down by those Jews who took possession of the place afterward.

But still in that valley which encompasses the city on the north side there is a certain place called Baaras, which produces a root of the same name with itself.

Its color is like to that of flame, and towards the evenings it sends out a certain ray like lightning. It is not easily taken by such as would do it, but recedes from their hands, nor will yield itself to be taken quietly, until either the urine of a woman, or her menstrual blood, be poured upon it;

nay, even then it is certain death to those that touch it, unless any one take and hang the root itself down from his hand, and so carry it away.

It may also be taken another way, without danger, which is this: they dig a trench quite round about it, till the hidden part of the root be very small,

they then tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as if it were instead of the man that would take the plant away; nor after this need any one be afraid of taking it into their hands.

Yet, after all this pains in getting, it is only valuable on account of one virtue it hath, that if it be only brought to sick persons, it quickly drives away those called demons, which are no other than the spirits of the wicked, that enter into men that are alive and kill them, unless they can obtain some help against them.
¹²⁵

Immediately following the description of the magic root, Josephus describes another incident involving an Eleazar at one of the Herodian fortresses, Macherus.

The following elements from the passage are part of the satire:

LOCATION:  Macherus

1. Herodian fort

2. Eleazar

3. The fact that Eleazar is carried away in his armor

4. The fact that Eleazar survives his crucifixion

Now a certain person belonging to the Roman camp, whose name was Rufus, by birth an Egyptian, ran upon him suddenly, when nobody expected such a thing, and carried him off, with his armor itself; while, in the mean time, those that saw it from the wall were under such an amazement, that Rufus prevented their assistance, and carried Eleazar to the Roman camp.

So the general of the Romans ordered that he should be taken up naked, set before the city to be seen, and sorely whipped before their eyes. Upon this sad accident that befell the young man, the Jews were terribly confounded, and the city, with one voice, sorely lamented him, and the mourning proved greater than could well be supposed upon the calamity of a single person.

When Bassus perceived that, he began to think of using a stratagem against the enemy, and was desirous to aggravate their grief, in order to prevail with them to surrender the city for the preservation of that man. Nor did he fail of his hope;

for he commanded them to set up a cross, as if he were just going to hang Eleazar upon it immediately; the sight of this occasioned a sore grief among those that were in the citadel, and they groaned vehemently, and cried out that they could not bear to see him thus destroyed.