THE HOUSE OF THE MESSIAH

Controversial Revelations on the Historical Jesus

Pub. HarperCollins 1992

The House of the Messiah is a dramatic reinterpretation of biblical and Ancient Egyptian history which offers a fresh assessment as to the identity of the historical Jesus. Based on evidence from archaeology, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Koran, the Talmud and biblical sources, the author contends that the real Jesus lived several centuries before the standard versions of history attribute his existence.

There is no contemporary evidence for Jesus living in the first century from either Roman or Jewish historians, and the Gospel-writers were of a later generation. The author demonstrates how the Old Testament confuses two King Davids - one a mighty warrior king who ruled from the Nile to the Euphrates, the other a local tribal chief operating in the traditional Promised Land. He identifies the ancestor ofJesus ('son of David') as the Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, and thence proceeds to a complete re-evaluation of the chronology and genealogy of the ancient world.

His startling conclusion is that Jesus was one and the same person as the Old Testament figure of Joshua (killed by the Wicked Priest, Phineas, a contemporary of Moses) and the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, who ruled Egypt between 1361 nnd 1352 BC and was the spiritual son of God. The coming of the Messiah 'prophesied' in the Book of Isaiah had already occurred; but there were strong political and religious reasons why the death of Jesus had to be covered up.

With brilliant originality, Ahmed Osman explains how the secret ofJesus' death was preserved for centuries - until John the Baptist (who was preparing the way for the Second Coming) and subsequent Roman persecution, aided by the priests ofJerusalem, forced Christians to come out of hiding in their closed communities and to tell their story, adapting it to their own age.

With its new light on ideas of spiritual salvation, the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, and belief in an afterlife, The House ofthe Messiah offers a radical challenge to orthodox thinking and is sure to stimulate a keen debate.