Following Philo: From Ba'al and Asherah to Jesus and Mary Magdalene

The Vestal Virgins baked sacred wafers of mola salsa as a bloodless sacrifice to Vesta, the Romans’ virgin-goddess of hearth, home, and family. While destroying non-Christian temples during the 390s CE the Christian Emperor Theodosius also extinguished the Vestal’s sacred fire and built the massive structure pictured above to hide the heretical Baker’s Tomb and the Porta Maggiore. They remained buried until the 19th century. The Baker motif first appears in Genesis when Pharaoh makes Joseph the Nazar the de facto ruler over Egypt. Gott and Licht offer compelling evidence that the Baker was Joseph’s mother Rachel, buried in Bethlehem. Micah pairs the Bethlehem Prophesy with the return of the Daughter Jerusalem - Watchtower of the Flock. In first century annual festivals, Daughter Jerusalem was portrayed by Antonia Caenis, a former slave and Emperor Vespasian’s alleged mistress. Nazarenes knew her also as Mary the Magdalene and her husband as Jesus the Nazarene.