Josephus of OZ: Following The Yellow Brick Road To Find The Author of the New Testament

By Andrew R. Joppa

This groundbreaking work offers a new paradigm for L. Frank Baum’s first Oz book, and for the New Testament and the author of its source document, Flavius Josephus. It has no counterpart within any other analysis. As such, I initially expect to gain few allies. In time, for those willing to look deeper, the bold hypothesis I offer will gain justification.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9780986288012

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Author’s Preface

Josephus of Oz

Setting the Stage

The explanation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz I offer will intrude on your awareness and may challenge some of your most deeply held ideas and values. I reacted the same way when I first became exposed to the unusual considerations now presented to you. The word unusual should not be misconstrued as meaning anything other than the divulging of a different reality; one that has not been considered before. Concepts will be suggested that were woven together in an unusual manner; a manner you may not have experienced previously. This is the substance of allegory.

The information that follows results from an amazing coming together of people, exposures, and experiences. The sequence and timing of the events that led to development of this manuscript are so extraordinary, so seemingly coincidental, as to defy logic. Here is the background for the development of the thesis in Josephus of Oz.

I am a retired college professor who lived in Peekskill, New York for 30 years. Peekskill is a beautiful town on the Hudson River, just south of West Point. One of the oldest establishments in Peekskill, now gone, was the Peekskill Military Academy, founded in 1833. Over the years, graduates of the Academy went on to do many meaningful things.

One of those cadets was L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In 1868, 12-year-old Baum was sent away to this Peekskill military school. The road that led uphill from the waterfront to the school was named West Street, and it was made of stone blocks with a definite lemony hue. As the story goes, after arriving by steamboat, young Baum asked the way to the academy and was told to follow the Yellow Brick Road. He eventually boarded at The Standard House, a fine old Italianate brick building built in 1855. The Standard House still dominates the waterfront near the train station and some of the yellow brick road exists to this day behind it.

In the nineteenth century, west-central New York was a hotbed of social, political, and religious innovation. During the fall of each year, I would make the long drive from Peekskill to the central part of New York State, going through Ithaca, Watkins Glen, Seneca Falls and Syracuse. I always created time for side trips as so many fascinating and remarkable people had lived in what has been called the Free Thought Trail.

Most sites dedicated to historic people of that area were to those whose names I had at least some passing acquaintance with: Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain … and L. Frank Baum. There was one name I did not know, but have come to recognize as belonging to one of the most powerful women of the nineteenth century, Matilda Joslyn Gage. Gage lived her life with extraordinary command and dignity. Her book, Woman, Church and State, was a powerful early statement in development of the women’s movement that unfolded in the twentieth century. Gage called religion, particularly Christianity, the enemy of women. During her later years she rejected institutional Christianity because she felt it had abandoned her as a woman. I also became aware that Gage was the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum. This relationship became more and more intriguing as time went on.

A comment in one of her books has always remained with me. At the time I wondered whether she had given it further fulfillment, and what I discovered had a powerful impact on me and on this book. From Gage’s book, Woman, Church and State:

Woman will gain nothing by a compromising attitude toward the church, by attempting to excuse its great wrong toward her sex, or by palliation of its motives. On the contrary, a stern reference to facts, keeping the face of the world turned toward its past teachings, its present attitude, is her duty. Wrongs of omission equal in magnitude those of commission.

My mother, Aimee Dorothy Gomez-Joppa, lived in Yonkers, where I was born, until her death in 2002. She was a Cajun from Marrero, Louisiana. I know that sons may say dramatic things about their mothers, so I will try to be measured as I describe her attributes. She was a genius. Okay, that doesn’t sound very measured, but it probably understates how she should be understood and categorized. My mother had an unmistakable type of genius that allowed her to analyze what she read and immediately relate new ideas to what she had read before. In this way, she was able to create new and valid premises; ones that had not been realized before. Not bound by previous academic rigidity, she felt no need to begin her assessments on a playing field created by others within their own bias. It was her genius that eventually deciphered the allegory of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Aimee read extensively. She read and reread the Bible to the point where she nearly had it memorized. As many others have, she saw both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible as replete with contradictions and seemingly unnecessary details. Seeking explanations for those anomalies she became an expert in Biblical history, particularly the history of the first century A.D. In this pursuit, she found and developed a deep and abiding admiration for Flavius Josephus. She always felt there was more to Josephus than met the eye. As with the Bible, she was thoroughly familiar with the extensive works of this great first-century Jewish historian. Josephus, originally named Joseph ben Mathias, is considered by many to be the primary historian of the first century A.D.

Aimee also developed a finely tuned awareness that it is within the unnecessary details of a literary work where the truth of an allegory can emerge. She immersed herself in her growing awareness of the extensive use of allegory within ancient Judaism and the use of astrological symbolism within both the Old and the New Testament. Explorations of the history of the first century eventually led Aimee to the interesting Biblical character, Joseph of Arimathea. It was Joseph of Arimathea who, as legend would have it, took the body of Christ down from the cross and carried the Holy Grail to Glastonbury, in what is now England. My brother and I took my mother to Glastonbury in 1995. While there, she explored the legendary sites of the Holy Grail and King Arthur. It was during this trip that she and I were able to create and bring together all the pieces necessary to allow me to write Josephus of Oz.

Aimee Gomez-Joppa, preparing to do battle, fired her first shot across the bow of religious orthodoxy in 1994, when she published a guest commentary in the Gannett Westchester newspaper. The article was titled New Testament Is An Allegory. Here are the opening paragraphs of that article:

Believing the New Testament statement that the truth would make me free and having the good fortune to be born in a time and place that guarantees the right to freedom of inquiry, I set out more than 30 years ago on a quest through history and literature to try to find the meaning and identity of Jesus. That quest has led me from believing the traditionally accepted interpretation of the story of Jesus to the certainty that the culled-over writing to which we give the collective name the New Testament, is an allegorical construction.

That allegory is concerned with the life and works of one man, Flavius Josephus; prolific writer, contentious debater, linguist, master historian, Jewish general, prince and priest, born into the Hasmonean family (Maccabees) as the Jew, Joseph Matthias (37 A.D.). Evidence shows that the life of Josephus corresponds to the life of Jesus, actually and symbolically, in at least 18 different ways….

As you go forward remember these variables: L Frank Baum, the Yellow Brick Road, Matilda Joslyn Gage, women’s rights, Theosophy, the Bible, allegory, Joseph Ben Mathias (Flavius Josephus), and Aimee Dorothy Gomez-Joppa. All will be discussed in greater detail and I believe you will find the conclusions arrived at to be irresistible in their implications.

Chapter 2 provides an outline of the detailed annotation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This outline will provoke many questions. You will find the complete, detailed annotation in Chapter 8, along with a deeper commentary on all the parts that went into this interpretation.

Introduction

The Allegory of Oz

Probably no American, indeed few in the world, would be unfamiliar with The Wizard of Oz. The story has fascinated millions over the years since its first publication, and it continues to do so, maintaining its hold on the imaginations of people around the world. Josephus of Oz will continue this fascination by delivering the truth about Oz. As is often the case with truth, it lies hidden in plain view. This book presents the truth as seen and allegorized by the author(s) of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; and now, for the first time, accurately and completely interpreted and presented to the world at large. Use of the plural authors is explained in Chapter 3, which addresses Matilda Gage and her intimate involvement with the creation of Oz.

Other theorists have suggested that Oz was an allegory; that it consists of allegorical forms is easily determined. Previous interpretations, however, provided only broad-brush overviews, lacking in detail, substance and continuity. All were provably wrong. They failed primarily because of their inability to provide substantive background information on Baum or Gage that would suggest their interpretations were logical, based on the personal realities of the authors. These previous interpretations dealt solely with the world around Baum, ignoring completely the world created by the choices made by Gage, and then by Baum himself. Josephus of Oz is the only work that totally annotates The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in a comprehensive manner and supplies logical background elements of the author(s) lives to establish their motivations and fervor.

This book does not attempt to prove that Baum’s allegory of Oz is accurate in a full historic sense. This is critical to remember as it is assessed. The only valid criterion that should be used is whether Josephus of Oz proves Baum’s intentions, and that will be demonstrated. The work itself can be clearly understood as representing the specific thematic that drove and formed the intentions of Baum and Gage.

Based on research of Baum’s own writings, it is evident that he came to the conclusion that the Christian Testament is an allegory. Again, Josephus of Oz does not attempt to confirm that Baum was correct in any of his suppositions. After 1500 years of Christian religious and political domination of the West, the traditional Jesus narrative is nearly impervious to penetration. Many have succeeded in dismantling the founding stories of Christianity only to find their dedicated writings gathering dust in obscure bookstores. Rather,