>What makes you think "myth of Jesus the Christ turns out to be, say, a cipher of the re-execution of Alexandros I, the son of Herod the Great and Mariamne I" is at all likely?
It's not just Nicholas of Damascus that would reveal such information. Gaius Asinius Pollio, a multifaceted Roman figure known for his connections with literary giants like Virgil and Horace as well as Augustus himself, mentored Alexander, the son of Herod the Great. The Roman world in the first century was wide.
Anyway, as to why I think it's possible, I think it's the most simple explanation as to how it emerged. According to what we have (i.e. Josephus) Alexander had the support of the public but was disliked by Herod's loyalists due to his opposing qualities and lineage from the Hasmonean dynasty.
Herod the Great, notorious for his brutal tactics, killed off male members of the Hasmonean dynasty and married the last Hasmonean princess to solidify his rule. He exhibited suspicion towards his wife Mariamne who was also killed eventually, along with their son Alexander.
I posit that Alexander was not actually executed, being a popular favorite and the son of the tyrant who might regret his decision and punish accordingly. Instead, he laid low until Herod's death, aiming to rightfully claim the throne, but was instead executed to maintain Roman rule over Judea with the consent of the Sanhedrin.
After the First Roman-Jewish War, continued supporters of Alexander coded secret histories into what became the apocryphal and synoptic gospels. Episodes like the massacre of the innocents coming from the Hasmonean male purge, "Jesus" being found in His Father's temple coming from Alexander visiting the building site of the Second Temple erected by his father, Herod. There are plenty of other episodes that seem to neatly correspond to and dispel underlying "mysteries" in the synoptic gospels for anyone actually looking for them.
The survival of works by Asinius Pollio or Nicholas of Damascus in particular in the Herculaneum library could confirm or refute this theory. Their writings, likely popular in aristocratic households due to Nicholas and Gaius Asinius Pollio's favor with the Julians, would very much be pertinent to a Roman aristocrat in 79AD.
But I don't need to prove it via circumstantial and inferential evidence--that's why I'm excited. We could actually uncover period documentation by the actual participants rather than the heresay of the following generations living under the shadow of Roman retribution.
I'm not sure why you think an explanation involving a vast empire-spanning conspiracy supported with widespread propaganda and centuries of silence and suppression even from its enemies is more likely than the usual naturalistic explanation "Jesus was a real figure who did the non-supernatural things ascribed to him."
People love these conspiracy theories about religions but they're definitely not the simple or logical explanations.
I'm talking about widespread suppression of Jews, whether Christianized or not, that is documented before and in the aftermath of the first Jewish-Roman war, which occurred 68-74AD.
There's no empire-spanning conspiracy lasting centuries, but a continual massage of what came before to justify the current status quo, an extremely similar dynamic as what is recognized by biblical scholars when treating the Old Testament.
Christianized Jews and Jews generally were spread throughout and beyond the empire. The persecutions, even postwar, were terrible but relatively localized and there is no reason to believe it involved the mass redaction of all existing documents (not even possible!) and then-unwritten oral histories (which then everyone, antisemites, Christians, pagans, all alike decided to maintain silence about even though they would have been delighted to show their enemies up with this evidence) except that it makes people feel clever to think so.
Even more incredibly, plenty of heretical documents did survive! People were one hundred percent successful absolutely crushing any leaks of a vast conspiracy to “justify the status quo” (why do you even think it needed justifying?) even against powerful groups that would not have wanted to…but couldn’t stop eg the Gnostics.
Most scholars don’t think that about the Old Testament either, although I have been learning lately it is very much in vogue on certain corners of the Internet. But at least that is in some respects at certain times more plausible depending on the specific text and time period being talked about, if very early. The Christianity conspiracy theories really aren’t. There’s no evidence for them whatever and yours in particular boggles belief, and is really not remotely feasible. This is basically the zeitgeist nonsense with a different spin.
They're talking about what is required for your theory to work. You have no idea about it because you've never thought it out.
Your theory requires a massive conspiracy because otherwise the surviving documents we have that criticise early Christianity blow your theory out of the water.
It's not just Nicholas of Damascus that would reveal such information. Gaius Asinius Pollio, a multifaceted Roman figure known for his connections with literary giants like Virgil and Horace as well as Augustus himself, mentored Alexander, the son of Herod the Great. The Roman world in the first century was wide.
Anyway, as to why I think it's possible, I think it's the most simple explanation as to how it emerged. According to what we have (i.e. Josephus) Alexander had the support of the public but was disliked by Herod's loyalists due to his opposing qualities and lineage from the Hasmonean dynasty.
Herod the Great, notorious for his brutal tactics, killed off male members of the Hasmonean dynasty and married the last Hasmonean princess to solidify his rule. He exhibited suspicion towards his wife Mariamne who was also killed eventually, along with their son Alexander.
I posit that Alexander was not actually executed, being a popular favorite and the son of the tyrant who might regret his decision and punish accordingly. Instead, he laid low until Herod's death, aiming to rightfully claim the throne, but was instead executed to maintain Roman rule over Judea with the consent of the Sanhedrin.
After the First Roman-Jewish War, continued supporters of Alexander coded secret histories into what became the apocryphal and synoptic gospels. Episodes like the massacre of the innocents coming from the Hasmonean male purge, "Jesus" being found in His Father's temple coming from Alexander visiting the building site of the Second Temple erected by his father, Herod. There are plenty of other episodes that seem to neatly correspond to and dispel underlying "mysteries" in the synoptic gospels for anyone actually looking for them.
The survival of works by Asinius Pollio or Nicholas of Damascus in particular in the Herculaneum library could confirm or refute this theory. Their writings, likely popular in aristocratic households due to Nicholas and Gaius Asinius Pollio's favor with the Julians, would very much be pertinent to a Roman aristocrat in 79AD.
But I don't need to prove it via circumstantial and inferential evidence--that's why I'm excited. We could actually uncover period documentation by the actual participants rather than the heresay of the following generations living under the shadow of Roman retribution.