Michael, you've made some bold claims in your new book. Are you claiming proof that Jesus Christ didn't exist?

No. I'm claiming the first published proof that the Roman Government under Vespasian and Titus - i.e. 69-81 AD - was responsible for the creation of Jesus' Gospel story - not the idea of Jesus Christ per se. 

My view is that the Pauline literature probably already existed, so the idea of Jesus Christ was already known, but only at an outline level. The Pauline literature doesn't say what country or century Jesus lived in, and doesn't mention him doing miracles, or saying parables or anything about his life, other than that he died on a cross and what some of his doctrines were.

So do you think a leader called Jesus might have existed, in some decade, somewhere?

There were multiple noteworthy people over the previous century or so named Jesus. My book simply details the first proof that the Flavian Roman government was responsible for the creation of the story of Jesus Christ's life, as described in the synoptic Gospels, primarily Luke.

You emphasize that you can prove the origin of Jesus' 'story' in Luke, rather than the document - Gospel of Luke - itself. Why?

Well, there's a fairly popular idea that all the synoptic gospels were based on an earlier version of which no copy has survived. I don't have proof that the Flavian Roman Government wrote Luke in it's exact surviving form, so I don't claim it. 

But the main reason I emphasise that I can show the origin of the story, is that the surviving version of Jewish War states that it is the second version, and we don't have a copy of the original. It's mainly because of this that I have to be clear that I can show the stories in these documents were written together.   

In short, I can prove that the story of Jesus as set out in Luke must have been written as a joint literary project in conjunction with the story set out in 'Jewish War', which self-evidently originates from the Flavian Roman Government.  

So your proof depends on the assumption that Jewish War was the Flavian Emperor's official record of the war?

If you like. You'd have to be pretty crazy to suggest otherwise though.

It is universally acknowledged as one of the most important documents surviving from the 1st Century AD, and nobody is suggesting that it isn't the official roman account of their war, produced under the authority or patronage of the Flavian Roman Rulers, Vespasian and Titus. It even opens with a statement explaining that this is the case. A sizable portion of its narrative is about how the named author came to switch his allegiance to the Flavian Emperor's before writing it.

At every paragraph it's apparent that it is pushing the Flavian government propaganda narratives - repeatedly portraying Jews as responsible for their own downfall, and for example Titus as having wanted to spare Jerusalem, yet at pains to remind Rome's enemies of the roman tendency for merciless, brutal warfare, and and their unassailable and efficient military prowess.

It matters little whether you prefer to describe it as a 'government' document from the Flavian Emperor's reign, or an official record of the war produced under the patronage or authority of the Flavian Emperor (Vespasian and/or Titus). Either way, it's the Flavian Emperors' official record of their victories over Judea.

And why do you say you offer the 'first' proof? Are there others?

Well, technically my book contains two separate proofs that the story in Luke was co-written with the story in Jewish War. It strikes me that if I have been able to discover two proofs, then more may follow.

It seems extraordinary to claim proof in the first place. How could you have two of them?

The authors of the Gospel story clearly wanted to leave evidence enabling them to show at a later date that they were responsible for Jesus' story. They wanted to convince people that Titus was Jesus' second coming, and once they had people hooked on worshipping the Emperor, they wanted to be able to remove faith in Jesus to leave them as *pure* Emperor worshippers. That explains why evidence exists that proves they created Jesus' story, and in turn that's why it's not so surprising to find a second set of evidence that provides a second way to prove it.

What would you consider to be the first proof that Luke and Jewish War were written together?

The easiest one to explain, begins by showing the evidence I collated, showing that Luke covertly parodies the story set out in the second half of Jewish War, and Jewish War parodies Luke. 

The two parodies are immensely detailed and span the entirety of the two stories, and involve each story parodying the core narrative of the other. And it stands to reason that this could only have been done by someone who had editorial control over both stories. 

That's not obvious - you'll have to explain why.

Well, imagine you wanted to parody some existing story. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, written in 1818 for example, or indeed some story that someone wrote last year. It would be easy. You just write a long story that is a parody of it, and you publish it. But of course you can't go back in time and make that existing story - Frankenstein for example - be a detailed parody of your story. You'd have to make do with creating your own version of it to achieve that. Or you'd just choose a story you happened to be writing anyway. Either way, the only way to make it be a parody of your own story, is by editing it yourself to make it do so.

In short, you can only make two long stories be intensely detailed parodies of each other's entire narratives, if you have the ability to edit them both, in order to make each of them do so. 

So if you find two long stories that contain well hidden yet incredibly detailed parodies of each other's entire core narratives, the only reasonable conclusion is that they were both edited with that goal in mind. And that's what I discovered carefully hidden within the text of Luke and Jewish War.

There aren't many reasons someone would do such a thing, and the main reason would be if the author wanted to be able to publish one  of the stories anonymously, yet be able to prove at some later date that they were its author.  

And are you sure they are parodies, rather than parallel stories?

There is very clear directionality, in that one can be readily seen to be 'covertly' hiding jokey and disjointed metaphors that mirror the other's overt, plain and coherent narrative, so it is not just a case of two parallel stories or the two stories both parodying some other earlier story. But this is best established by reading them, which you can do if you buy the book, or if you review my 4th published article. 

A parody generally also has to involve some element of humor, so if you don't find them humorous - or more accurately if you don't think the author viewed them as humorous - then you might prefer to call them 'parables'. But the principle is the same, in each case one is intently mirroring the other rather than both simply being parallel or both mirroring some earlier text.  

OK, so is that your first proof?

It's not the whole proof. If this was presented in isolation, a critic might say 'oh it must be coincidences' or perhaps just outright refuse to see that the parodies are there at all, or perhaps refuse to concede that they are both directional in the manner I describe. 

I think that's why the authors went further. They arranged all the relevant parallel bits of text, so that if you plot their locations on a chart - the location in Luke and the location in Jewish War that is - the resulting dots are arranged in a remarkable and clearly intentional pattern. 

These parallels are arranged in lines spelling out the letters of the Latin word 'APTVS'. Over 250 of them. We can get into what that word was supposed to mean, but the point is that by arranging the parallels in such a well defined pattern, it helps rule out the possibility that these parallels are coincidences, or that the pattern could have been achieved without editorial control over both stories.

So that's your first proof?

I don't think I can just stop right there and declare proof. Instead I show in my book that the pattern is too detailed to be coincidences, and it is also too detailed for it to be a case of finding patterns in noise. I demonstrate this in several ways, for example by calculating how many coincidental parallels there would need to be before you could start to pick out such a detailed structure from them to fake such a pattern. It turns out there would need to be so many that Luke isn't long enough for them to fit within it, by a factor of four.

Put all of that together - the two opposed but carefully hidden parodies, the APTVS pattern their parallels form, and the mathematics I present to show it must be genuine, and this rules out every other possible scenario, other than that the two stories were written together. And I should add that the only plausible reason this would have been done, is if the author had a strong need to ensure they could later prove that the roman government created Jesus' gospel story.

Can you really claim proof though? Surely there is no objective standard for proof?

You can prove something is true by demonstrating that the observed (and independently verifiably) facts make it unarguable that no alternative is possible. And that's what I have done. All of the evidence is in my book. A fair proportion of it, along with an early version of my thesis is also in my published paper which is available for free.

And you claim two ways of proving it? What's the second one?

It's all explained in my book!

OK, so the paper is a teaser for the book?

Not entirely, and that wasn't the original intention. 

My paper was an honest attempt to set out some of the extraordinary evidence I had discovered. I improved my paper a few times, but then I made some further leaps, refining my thesis in two key ways, and greatly improving on my effort to show that the pattern cannot be coincidence. 

So I wrote the book, with the more developed thesis, the improved evidence, and made it more readable than the paper too. I think more people will be willing to read a book than a paper, but I've left the paper available to be read for free anyway, so that people can still find most of my evidence and read it for themselves.

You were once accused of offering a rehash of the evidence published by Joe Atwill. Is that fair?

It's happened a few times, but always by people who haven't read my work. I've identified three huge sequences of parallels between Luke and Jewish War and it's absolutely true that one of them was discovered and mostly published by Joe Atwill. I also offer an explanation of how John and Acts were created which is very heavily based on Joe's work, so I fully acknowledge and credit him for his extraordinary work. 

But the key difference is that Atwill's evidence was only strong enough to point at a Flavian government origin of Jesus' Gospel story, and it didn't enable him to conclusively say why the Gospels were created, or why such evidence was there to be found. My evidence proves the Flavian government origin, and explains why the Gospels were created, and my thesis explains why such evidence is there to be found.

You also draw on a theory that the person behind the gospels was a member of the royal Piso family, yet you don't  entirely agree with those who argue that this person was a cousin of Titus - why is that?

During my research I discovered further evidence contributing to the view that the key person behind the Gospels was called Arrius Piso, or as I prefer 'Ares Piso'. As a theory it's been subject to constant attack for decades, and one key reason is there is no documented person called Arrius Piso, let alone one who was a shadowy power behind Vespasian's throne - not even in Jewish War. Additionally I could not identify any evidence confirming the idea that this person might be Titus' cousin. 

One thing that helped me, was seeing that the APTVS is an image of a name (also known as a Logos) which is short for Ares Piso Titvs. Another was identifying the way Acts contains a parallel where Saul describes an altar of an 'unknown god' on "Ares" hill, and this turns out to be part of a very intricate parallel with Jewish war describing among other things an arrival at Saul's hill in the form of Emperor Titus. Among other things, these enabled me to realize that the narrative probably isn't aimed at a cousin of Titus called Arrius Piso, but rather it was Titus himself who had planned to be worshipped by the name Ares Piso Titvs (which - for the benefit of fans of the Sator Square - may also have been abbreviated to "Arepo"). 

There's always been a bit of a disagreement between that group, led by the scholar known as Roman Piso (and previously Abelard Reuchlin), and the fans of Joe Atwill, however I think both of them can claim to have been right all along. The Atwill camp were right that the key person was the royal known as Emperor Titus, and the Roman/Abelard camp were right that the key person was a royal secretly known as 'Arrius Piso' - it's just a different name for the same person.

What are you most proud of about your research? Discovering the APTVS pattern?

Discovering the APTVS pattern was essentially the result of looking in the right place, in the right way and for long enough. It was like a 5000 piece puzzle and was a matter of perseverance maintained by curiosity. 

If I had to pick something it would be the thesis that is the basis of my book, and which explains the existence of the APTVS pattern. It was a more intellectual accomplishment, and explains so many aspects of early Christianity and history that I conclude my book by listing them under twenty headings. I feel like that's significant enough that it would merit attention even if I hadn't found proof.

Why no e-book?

The format doesn't suit an e-book. I use a lot of color to highlight matching concepts in parallel texts - much more so than in my paper. This makes life easier for the reader, and I arrange much of the key text in tables using A4 page size, which doesn't suit the typical size and resolution of e-books either. 

What reaction has your work received?

It's brings out very polarized reactions. I get a lot of attacks from people who haven't read it. Most critics assume I haven't proven my case. Generally they show in their opening remarks that they haven't read my book, or even my paper! These commentators haven't taken the time to discover what evidence I'm offering or understand my thesis. 

However the feedback I've received from those who have actually read the whole thing is absolutely incredible, and that's been really heartening. It helps reassure me that what I've discovered should indeed be of benefit to the world.