Joseph Atwill, author of ‘Caesar’s Messiah’, claims to have found ancient confessions from the Romans which states authorities created a ‘messiah’ to pacify Jews in Palestine. The American author says Jesus was not based on a historical figure, but the Romans drew inspiration from historical figures from the First Jewish-Roman War. Mr Atwill said: “Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century.

“When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system.

“That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome.

“The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar.”

Mr Atwill says he first discovered this revelation when noticing Jesus is “the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources”.