>>12947884There's a whole book on the topic called Caesar's Messiah. The tl;dr is that a whole bunch of end-is-nigh apocalyptic/messianic Jewish sects were rebelling in Judea Province during the reign of the Flavian dynasty, so Titus Flavius worked with his family's Jewish historian Josephus to come up with a fake Messiah advocating Rome-friendly policies and peaceful submission. They made the whole New Testament an extended allegory for Titus's military campaign to pacify the Jewish rebellions and back dated it 40 years so all the "prophecies" were things that had already happened, notably including Revelations. The punchline is that Biblical by the standards set in the New Testament, Titus Flavius was the Second Coming, and Christianity is therefore a remnant Roman imperial cult.
