Synopsis "Jesus In Rome"
Was Jesus Christ In Rome? "Last night I had a peculiar dream. This is what the secret is. The missing link of Christianity. The lost information I have sought. The Roman information. Jesus was in Rome. He spent much time here, long before he was murdered, not by his own people the Jews, but by Roman authorities. Jesus was never poor, and he was highly educated. His beliefs in equality, in helping people, in goodness, in the triumph of light over darkness, in healing, in teaching, in philosophy---made him an enemy of the Roman state. Jesus was murdered by the Romans because he was considered a political enemy of the state." ---Cardinal Philip Guerin (in the novel, Jesus in Rome) "Rome executed Jesus. Why? He had to be a threat to the Empire in some way. I believe the man Tiberius left in charge of the Empire for many years, Sejanus, who hated Jews, may have concocted a plot to have Jesus assassinated . . . . We know that there were Christians in Rome before Jesus was crucified in Judea. How could that be the case if Jesus were never in Rome?" ---Bishop Joseph Gryphon (in the novel, Jesus in Rome) 2 Who Crucified Jesus? "Our task has been to make clear that neither Pharisees, nor Sadducees, nor the Jewish people as a whole, could be held responsible, even morally, for the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus was crucified by the Romans for a political offense as the King of the Jews." ---Solomon Zeitlin, Who Crucified Jesus, New York & London: Harper & Bros., 1942, pp. 210-211. Many Jews and Gentiles Followed Jesus from the Start "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. For he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first ceased not, for he appeared to them thereafter again the third day, as the divine prophets foretold these and ten thousand wonderful things about him. And even now the tribe of Christians so named for him is not extinct." ---Josephus, Antiquities, XVIII, 3.3. Excerpt from p.75: "Oh, but that is where you are wrong, my dear Captain. It does matter. If Jesus was in Rome, among the Jews, it seems far more likely that he never started a new religion at all but rather formed a Jewish sect here. If some of the Jews let him teach in their synagogues, recognized him as the Messiah they awaited, witnessed his miracles, and saw him as the peaceful prophet-priest-king of the Hebrew Bible, they assuredly played absolutely no role in his murder in Judea. . . . Guerin continued to lecture the young captain. "Imagine the surprise of the Roman Emperor Augustus and his people when Jews and pagans in Rome began to follow a mysterious Jewish figure who was teaching peacefully in the house synagogues in Rome but also walking among the people of the city preaching a way of life of equality, peace, and no war. No doubt he was also healing people like he did later in Judea. It started with this man, Jesus, his mother Mary, who bore him miraculously as a virgin, his stepfather Joseph, his mother's uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, and a strange group of mostly female apostles of Jewish and/or pagan wealth, following him about and funding his ministry here in Rome. The man Jesus suddenly became a major political threat when he went back to Judea where he recruited more disciples and began to preach to huge crowds. The Romans feared he would cause a rebellion against them."
