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The past week was in the sign of the Easter story. Was the Passion of Christ
really the passion of god’s son? Was Jesus perhaps the same as Julius Caesar?
Francesco Carotta makes it all believable.
There are a number of hot topics concerning antiquity about which historians and
enthusiastic lay people have been squabbling for years: The Troy of Homer, the
location of Ithaca, the Linear A script of Crete, the existence of Atlantis, and
the origins of the Etruscans. And: The historicity of Jesus Christ. When it
concerns these topics scholars have barricaded themselves “everyone for themselves
mode” in their own trenches from where no real intellectual contact with other
positions is possible. In the heat of the battle, by defending certain views
[opinions, conceptions] entire academic reputations are subject to ruin.
Was Jesus Caesar? Was Jesus Christ actually no other than Julius Caesar? Hidden
behind this fascinating and provocative title is a thoroughly researched and
richly documented study by the Italian philosopher and linguist Francesco Carotta.
If the book contains only a kernel of truth then it will ignite a bomb under the
2000 year history of Christianity.
If we leave out the true believers, who regard the word of the four evangelists as
absolute, then what remains is enough discussion material for serious classical
philologists, historians and theologians to fundamentally disagree with each other
as they have ever since Ernest Renan doubted the divinity of Christ in his Vie de
Jesus, “Life of Jesus” in 1862. If an outsider turns up with an even wilder
sounding theory then – how human! – all the academics who never considered this
idea themselves, frantically close ranks. If this theory is true, then decades of
studies are destined to end up in the wastepaper basket.
Was Jesus Christ Julius Caesar? JC=JC? Was, to formulate Carotta’s exposition more
precisely as the title of his book does, Christianity nothing other than an
unkempt form, a sloppy copy based on misunderstandings of the cult which formed to
honor Divus Julius after his death? Is the Passion of Christ based on a wrongly
understood version of the Vita Caesaris about the last days of this dictator and
pontifex maximus (high priest) of Rome who was also known for his mildness and
celebrated as a benefactor of the people? That sounds absolutely crazy! Carotta
however presents numerous proofs for this theory. Even if they are not all
convincing and many of his assertions raise more questions he knows how to make it
plausible. It all might have been so and could have taken place like that. It is
not possible to go any further at this stage. A revolutionary theory first needs
thorough study with careful investigation.
On top of everything else things were written without any punctuation and only in
capital letters, in various alphabets, without any separation between words, full
of abbreviations, without accents, and orthograpy and reading direction varied.
Endless possibilities for confusion. Because of all of this it could happen that
Roman proper names, which also conveyed characteristics, were only interpreted as
characteristics as soon as the historical figure they referred to disappeared from
memory. Take for example a sentence in a modern day Dutch newspaper: “een blik in
de politieke keuken van premier Kok op het Catshuis,” “a glance in the political
kitchen of Premier Kok in Catshuis.” A century from now a foreigner with faulty
knowledge of English and Dutch might understand this sentence as “a glance at the
refined art of cooking demonstrated by the head cook of Catshuis” by replacing
“politique” (political) with “politeness” (manners, decency). (Perhaps this will
really be a form of relaxation by then.)
The important fact is that the life of Caesar has been handed down in great detail
with absolutely no miracles. Just the reverse is true with Christ. For Carotta
that is reason enough to assume that we are dealing with two mirror image halves
of a single biography. Jesus was never mention in any historical source before the
evangelists. The oldest gospel, that of Mark, is generally dated shortly after the
year 70 AD. The canonized version was written in Greek, however many Latinisms
hint that this text was translated from Latin. Chance?
It has also been well established that the cult of divine Julius became very
popular in the eastern part of the Roman Empire thanks to his soldiers and their
descendants. Starting in the third quarter of the first century reports of this
cult disappear. Such a disappearance would have been recorded by historians of the
time. At exactly the same time a new sect abruptly appears in the sources. In the
beginning it was not referred to as christiani but (as Tacitus says) as
chrestiani, named Christos, which in Greek means “the anointed one”, Chrêstos for
“the good”, an attribute officially given to divine Caesar and inscribed on the
pedestal of his cult figure. Chance? A mistake in writing or a symbiosis is
quickly made later in Palestine as other ideas of a Messiah, originating in
Judaism blend in with the Julius-religion imported from Rome.
Both the Romans and the Jews wrote on scrolls from time immemorial. Caesar
introduced the ideologically tinged technological innovation, more practical,
bound Codex made of papyrus. The traditional use of scrolls, however, remained for
a long time afterwards. It is known that the gospels in spite of persistent Jewish
tradition were written directly in book form. The book quickly became a symbol for
Christianity: the same ideological choice or was it chance?
Carotta nearly falls directly in the house with the door: the crucifixion was not
a crucifixion. That literally cannot be found anywhere in Mark which follows a
careful study of the reliable Greek text. The author correctly comments that we
tend to see what we know and not to know what we see. That means: The familiar
idea of certain events unconsciously causes us to recognize them automatically in
other descriptions and read more into them then is actually there. Concretely
said: According to Carotta the Greek work stauroô which in Mark was translated
‘crucify’ means quite literally something completely different: the installation
of posts and slats. This can be interpreted as a paraphrasing of crucify within
certain traditions burden with prejudice and of course with a lot of good will,
but it does not have to be. In view of the situation the Greek word used seems
much more to mean the piling up of wood around the dead, in order to build a pyre.
Before anyone thinks that Carotta burns Jesus alive: according to the author Jesus
was already long dead. What is very noticeable in Mark is that Jesus never says
another word after he was taken prisoner on the 15th of the month Nisan in
Gethsemane. In John there are entire monologues up until the cross. But this is
not so in the oldest evangelist. When standing before the Jewish scribes the
otherwise so talkative Jesus “In the beginning was the word” leaves all questions
unanswered except for a meaningless, “You say it.” Carotta‘s daring assumption is:
Jesus was no longer alive, he died when he was taken prisoner. The scene in
Gethsemane with the necessary rattling of weapons corresponds to the murder of
Caesar on the 15th of March in 44 B.C. What follows in the gospels is a confused
account of Caesar’s posthumous trial (!) and the ceremony which follows for the
cremation of his body as it is described in detail in Appian, Sueton and Cassius.
The scribes are the senators, the patres conscripti in Latin. The source of later
misinterpretation? In Mark after Gethsemane Jesus is never mentioned as “going”
himself, instead he is “brought”, “lead away”, and finally “carried” to Golgotha.
That can also be regarded as part of a definite ceremony with a body.
There are other remarkable things in this connection: Caesar’s body was taken to
the “Capitol.” Capitolium, in classical Latin, means: place of skulls the same as
Golgotha. It is know that the most obvious element of Caesar’s public funeral and
cremation was a large cross (tropaeum) placed at the head of the bier with a wax
figure of divine Caesar on it. According to proper Roman custom an actor, wearing
a mask of the dead person repeated some meaningful quotes of the person who had
died. There we find the precursor of the last words of Jesus on the cross.
How can a story about Rome be so easily moved to Palestine? That is simply because
in the Roman description of the end of Caesar’s life places and people are
expressed in generalities: Not Rome, but ‘the city’, not Caesar, but ‘the savior’,
the ‘high priest’, ‘He’ or ‘the son of god’. ‘Synedrion’, as the staff of the
scribes was called, was an often used term for the senate. And Romans were
everywhere.
The only ones to be named by name where the Jews: They were also there in Rome,
but in a somewhat different role from that described in the New Testament. Paul,
who is recognized for actually giving Christianity its form, is to thank for the
negative coloring. According to Carotta another historical figure is hidden behind
Paul and his detailed theory is no less sensational than what we have described
here. Anyone who wants to know who Paul really is has to read Carotta’s study.
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