New Testament as political satire
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Both the Revelation of St. John the Divine and the Gospels have often been taken (by radical literary critics) to be examples of concealed (covert) political satire. Objects of lampoon; caricature-figures for them While the Caesar dynasty (Augustus-Tiberius-Caligula-Claudius-Nero) was as yet in control of the empire, lampooning would be directed at them only by subterfuge : a praetense of adulation marked by extremely uncomplementary descriptions of their behaviour, with, however, substitute of caricature-figures (names and places changed, but recognizable to the astute reader of the satire). Our thesis is that the New Testament is a surviving instance of this. Christianity is sometimes regarded as a variety of Cynicism. Grounds for a satirist’s ire Arrogance by the rich ruling-class of hypocrites who maintain their grip on wealth by convincing the impoverished that they (the rich) are distinctly favored by omnipotent deities, and that the impoverished would suffer retribution from those deities if they (the impoverished) were ever to protest inaequities in distribution of wealth - such would be sufficient to stir a satirist’s indignation. Deities as alleged kinsfolk of the rich It was customary in antient Aiguptos, in official state-authorized propaganda, to repraesent the nobility (such as the royal family) as unique kinsfolk of the deities. When afterwards, with the reign of emperor Tiberius, Roman emperors began to be regarded as deities, this nomenclature (of nobility as unique kinsfolk of deities) became officially adopted throughout the Roman empire. Resistance by Cynic satirists Any resistance to this (thenceforth official) policy on the part of “radicals” (so-called on account of their ‘radish’-city Sinope in Paphlagonia) would have to adopt (in order to evade government-imposed censorship) undercover terminology : therefore for the name “Tiberius” would be substituted (on account of the name of the city in Galilaia, namely “Tiberias”, founded under orders from him) the term “Galilaian”, for which more specifically (on account of the Galilaian praedilection for the 4 high-priests all named “Iesous Khristos”, “Khristos” referring to the anointing of the high-priest, in Hierosolume) the name “Iesous Khristos” would naturally be used. Fabrication of the Christian myth In order to rebuke the official propaganda of nobility as unique kinsfolk of deities, the “radicals” invented a satirical tale (known thenceforth as Eu-aggelion, on account of its ‘good message’ that belief in any such absurdity as unique “Son of God” could only entail the worst of calamities, namely crucifixion, upon the arrogant claimant to such a title) involving being discredited, being repudiated, and being punished, upon the claimant. Fabrication of the myth of Paul In order to indicate that only a treacherous hireling-stooge of the plutocracy could ever even potentially promote such an impudent deception as unique kinship with deities, the “radicals” furthermore invented another satirical tale to the effect that the sole missionary-promoter of Christian dogma was one Paulos (= Pwyl, the Cymry mythic temporary ruler of Annwm, i.e. Tartaros, thus suggesting both the Hellishness of the doctrine of unique kinship with deities, and also the likely merely temporary vogue of such absurdity), a crafty hireling-officer in the Roman secret police, who would hoodwink gullible victims into believing such foolish doctrine, and then arrest them. Similarity of Cynic to Arian theology Much as Arianism is a particular development a doctrine of non-divinity (the adoptionist variety); in somewhat similar manner the “radical” original of the New Testament would have Iesous Khristos tricking Theos ho Pater into supposing that Iesous Khristos was his natural son, and Theos ho Pater putting to death Iesous Khristos after the deception was disclosed. This (scenario of trickery) could have been treated as satire, in regarding it as a figure of speech for how the Godhead will put to death the ruling plutocracy throughout the world whenever the Godhead will come to realize the immensity of the fraud (of the dogma of unique kinship) which hath been instrumental heretofore in excluding the commoners from any meaningful relationship with the divine world. True objective of Cynic anarchism Contrary to the arrogant political-state-promoted doctrine of plutocratic superiority over slaves (including wage-slaves) and its corollary the notion of unique kinship of titled nobility with deities; democratic anarchist “radicals” would be promoting a doctrine that all beings of good-will (i.e., to the exclusion merely of oppressive plutocratic slave-holders) participate in kinship with divine beings. Where the New Testament was composed In order for it to be employed as artificial setting for a fictitious satirical novel (the New Testament), Tarsos (putative location of fictional character Paul) in Kilikia would naturally be so chosen by writers (of whom a latter-day exemplar was Markion) situated across-country from it, namely in Paphlagonia. (/Paphla-gonia/ from */Bhabhla-jan-/ is, literally, ‘Bible’s origin’; /Biblia/ meaning, in this context, ‘New Testament’.) But a better reason for choosing Tarsos might be the fitting of its meaning ‘ankle’ into the meaning of the name of emperor Caligula ‘little boot’. Subsequent developments When, after the assassination of Caligula, his surviving Teutonic bodyguard appointed to the emperorship Claudius (so named because the canon of the New Testament was already ‘closed’), interests of satirists took a Teutonic shift, and the canon of the Edda began to be compiled. After the pumpkinification of Claudius, his successor Neron (Nero) became, through fatal condemnation to death of his own mother, the source of the name “Nornir” of the Norse fatal sistren-goddesses. The next enduring emperor was Vespasianus (‘of the wasp’), whose name is yet commemorated amongst W AS Ps. And so the emperorship perpetuated itself, afterward even in Trajanus (of demise-in-Tarsos fame), who is stated by Dante in the Divine Comedy to have risen from the dead (only once, though - Tiberius retaining the record among Roman emperors for number of times risen from the dead, namely thrice). Perversion of satire into worship Eventually, the purely satiric intent of the Eu-aggelion (i.e., its being a veiled denunciation of the Caesar dynasty) was lost track of; and in replacement of this understanding came the view of it as a promotion of the Caesar dynasty. This stage of development is repraesented by Joseph Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah, wherein the transmogrification of ridicule into worship is resultant in worshipping Iesous, an act tantamount to “worshipping the Roman Emperor 'in disguise'. The essence of Atwill's discovery is that the majority of the key events in the life of Jesus are in fact satirical”, but merely in the very weak sense of satirizing (much in the style of Iosephos’s Ioudaian War) the gullibility of the Ioudaioi themselves. Cause of the Jewish War Just as in our own time, where we witnessed the officers of the Bne Brit accepting bribes from the German extermination machine during World War II so as to consent to mislead their own people into voluntarily going to the “concentration camps”; so in like manner in antiquity did the antique counterparts same officers accept bribes from the Roman secret police to mislead their own people into approving a program (as disclosed in the Dead Sea Scrolls) intended to exterminate all non-circumcising nations in the world - this horrendous program was of course intended (by the Roman secret police, under clandestine direction from the imperial government) to cause the general population of the Roman empire to hail the imperial government as their gracious rescuer (from the universally murderous Ioudaioi), with renewed loyalty and eagerness to serve it. It was such banal bribe-taking which resulted in the war, and the well-nigh complete elimination of the Ioudaioi themselves. references
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