The Secret Society of Moses, Part 1
Review of Flavio Barbiero, The Secret Society of Moses: The Mosaic Bloodline and a Conspiracy Spanning Three Millennia, Inner Traditions, 2010.
Flavio Barbiero is a biblical researcher with other works to his credit, including The Bible Without Secrets. In The Secret Society of Moses, Babbiero asks, what happened to the descendants of Moses? His answer is, they formed a secret society that first assumed the priesthood of Israel, then entered Rome and took over the empire.
This is a big, interesting theory. We looked for reviews of this book online, hoping to find some criticism or rebuttal to Barbiero’s theory. We couldn’t find any. Of course, being published by Inner Traditions, the book is easy for historical scholars to overlook. Barbiero provides a great deal of evidence in support of his theory, but certain key events are poorly documented. If there was a secret society of Moses, they haven’t left behind documents, and no one has come forward to reveal the secret. So we need to rely on other evidence. Some of it is very convincing. We hope you read the book and decide for yourself as we shall not present all the supporting evidence here.
Although biblical scholars agree that the Hebrew Bible is not an accurate record of the history of the Hebrews, Barbiero proceeds by assuming that the events and people described in the books of the Hebrew Bible that are of interest for his theory are accurate. However, he does criticize certain Hebrew writers for prejudice, suppression of facts, and censorship. Obviously these biblical stories are, at the least, one-sided interpretations designed to put certain factions of the Hebrews in a favorable light.
In the first section of the book, Barbiero makes the case that Moses’s son Gershom must have been appointed high priest in Moses’s religion. Barbiero believes that the Moses family was very unpopular, and Moses was known to have married a foreign (Midianite) women, so the bible describes the priesthood as descending from Aaron. Barbiero believes the Moses family and the Aaron family joined forces to form a hereditary priesthood 400 years later when they cooperated to rebuild the Temple.
But it was Moses who placed the priesthood over the existing elite (called the elef). Hebrew society consisted of elite, slaves, and priests. Moses intended the priesthood to govern. He gave to Joshua the task of conquering Canaan. The military subordinated itself to the priesthood, and there was no need for a king until a conquerer was named king in the time of Samuel and David. This idea that a priestly elite is sufficient for rule without a government now comes to prominence as it plays out later in Western history.
Following the death of Solomon, the Moses priestly family resided in Israel at Shiloh, whereas the Zadok line of priests appointed by Solomon resided at Jerusalem, in Judea. In the Book of Kings, written by a Judean, the Moses line of priests were called prophets because this author did not want to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Moses priestly line.
Upon the return from the Babylon Captivity, one of the first restorations occurred among the Samaritans. Because of this, the Samaritan branch of the Yahweh cult felt that it was primary over the others. Barbiero believes that this was a true line of the priesthood of Moses, and it continues to this day, though greatly diminished. Darius then put Samaria under the control of Jerusalem, and the northern Temple was destroyed, leaving Jerusalem as the sole Temple.
The Hasmonean dynasty under Simon Maccabaeus joined the rights of priesthood and kingship under one family until 63 BC, when Pompey the Great conquered Jerusalem. Julius Caesar later transferred power over Jerusalem to Antipater, ending Hasmonean rule.
Titus Flavius Josephus (Yosef ben Matityahu) was of the Hasmonean priestly and royal family. He fought against Vaspasian’s forces in Galilee in AD 67 but surrendered to Vaspasian. You might recall the story of Josephus hiding with other resisters in a cistern and making a suicide pact. With only two left alive, Josephus decided to surrender. Vaspasian made him his slave, but soon Josephus was granted citizenship in Rome. As advisor to Titus at the siege of Jerusalem, Josephus had fully converted to the Roman side. He later was adopted by Titus and given Titus’s estate.
Barbiero believes that Josephus had access to the copper scroll, listing all the places where the Temple treasure had been hidden, and made these treasures available to Titus. With Jewish gold Titus was able to bribe his way to emperor. Josephus’s betrayal explains why Titus was able to parade the Temple treasures in Rome, and why Josephus the Jew was given such unusual special privileges by the emperor.
Josephus wrote that at least 10 members of his royal priestly family went with him to Rome and were given amnesty. Josephus was also given the right to free about 190 other Jewish friends.
Josephus was a friend of Paul and was responsible for freeing Paul from prison. There is an absence of information about Peter, however, and there is a question as to whether he was ever in Rome. Barbiero believes that Josephus and Paul were responsible for organizing the Catholic church, making the bishop of Rome first among Christian bishops, and locating the flow of power and wealth of the church to the Vatican in imitation of the Jewish Temple system.
At this point we must entertain Barbiero’s conjecture about the mental state of the remaining Hasmoneans in Rome. Having just been defeated by the Romans, the Hasmonean elite must have been concerned about their survival and safety. Their god had just been defeated, and it was common in the ancient world for one tribe to convert to the victor’s god as their own had failed to protect them. Being experts in religious organization, the Hasmoneans must have considered three possibilities to ensure their family’s future fortune: Take over the existing pagan religions, start a new religion, or take over the budding religion of Christianity. Barbiero believes they did all three.
We find little evidence that the Hasmoneans took over the pagan religions of Rome, but this matters little as the pagan religions were outlawed in 395 during the reign of Theodosius and never recovered. Barbiero believes Josephus was instrumental in making the bishop of Rome the leading bishop of Christianity to establish a flow of tithes and offerings to the Hasmonean family in Rome. The first Catholic bishop of Rome, Clement, was a Jew. The early Catholic popes were sometimes Jews who “suddenly converted.”
Barbiero believes the Hasmonean elite families also took over Mithrasim and turned it into a kind of secret society. Most of the rituals and symbols of the Catholic church were first symbols and rituals of Mithra, and many churches were built over Mithra meeting places. When Catholicism was declared the official religion of Rome, the Sol Invictus Mithra cult was simply abandoned, and the members declared themselves Christian.
At the time of Constantine the Gens Flavia took over the offices of high priest and king and made Roman emperor and Catholic pope their family inheritance. However, infighting among this family led to instability, and the Gens Flavia was not able to preserve elite privileges for their line against various other families claiming emperorship.
Barbiero believes there was no fall of the Roman Empire. It was the plan of the elite families that the popes control Rome while the imperial power was located outside Rome to be less troublesome and less challenging to Flavian rule. Here again we see the model of religious control coming to the fore in Roman affairs as had been the case in Israel for most of its history.
The Flavian priestly elite took over the Praetorian Guard, the army, and the frontier regions of the empire, and they staffed the political and religious bureaucracies. Eventually they replaced the landowning senators with their family members. But the secret of their origin was probably kept only among a few elite families, who assigned favors and privileges according to bloodline status.
Judaism was never outlawed in Rome. Barbiero believes the elite priestly line cooperated with their Jewish friends to take over all the levers of power and wealth in the Roman Empire, using the Catholic church as their primary position of power.
Continued in Part 2
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