Had the Christ to be Jewish?

[Giuseppe]

The bitter pill goes down more easily once you learn that not only did Josephus declare Titus’ father Vespasian (who conducted the Jewish War until he handed it over to Titus to complete) as the prophesied Jewish Messiah, but that so did Rabbi Johanon ben Zakkai! And Romans Tacitus and Suetonius did, too! As scripture had said, the Messiah had come out of the East to rule the nations. Never said he was Jewish. (Similarly, seventh-century Jews were willing to ally themselves with proto-Islamic (“Hagarite”) Arabs to follow Umar al-Faruq as the Messiah, though he was an Arab, not a Jew.) Titus inherited his father’s Messianic status, so both were deemed fulfillments of Messianic prophecy.
Again, this scenario may seem completely outlandish, but it is not. Alexander the Great, having conquered Egypt, tried to make himself palatable to his new subjects by claiming he was the son of Zeus-Amun

https://www.creatingchrist.com/post/rob ... ing-christ

While I don't believe a word of a Roman ingerence of the Atwillian kind, I believe that a quasi identical operation was made by "Mark": he started from the assumption that the Christ had to be unknown, not really Jewish, not even really of this world. Even when Mark wanted to give him a face and an entire life on earth. It was Josephus who introduced the trend, first, by calling "Messiah" the Roman emperor. Is a strange propaganda, to exalt the Emperor as Christ and, in the same time, to debase the Christ as a foreign and alien figure. The foreigness of the Christ was not a Markan invention. Mark inherited it from Josephian propaganda.

[Giuseppe]

True, the Son had to enter in incognito in the archontic territory, for Paul. But being unknown is not the same thing as being at all alien. The Messianic Secret in Mark doesn't allow to conclude merely that Jesus was unknown. But it raises also a doubt if he was alien (=not Jewish) or not.

[Giuseppe]

I don't think that Christ was alien (and not merely only unknown) in proto-Mark because he was Titus or Hadrian or another.

But I think that, being Jerusalem populated by aliens when it became Aelia Capitolina, then accordingly Christ had to be alien in proto-Mark.

It is very a too much common trend that when a colony or a conquest is founded, the human conqueror enters in the mythology of the conquered, from the beginning.

After the battle of Canne, Hannibal was represented by the his propaganda (mere collateral effect of the his victory) as the new Hercules winning Cacus. Greek mythological names for an alien.