guess who Jesus really was, you certainly have heard of him!
According to the Italian scholar Francesco Carotta the historical Jesus was
Caesar!
Carotta: "The Gospel proves to be the history of the Roman Civil war, a
'mis-telling' of the life of Caesar-from the Rubicon to his
assassination-mutated into the narrative of Jesus, from the Jordan to his
crucifixion. Jesus is a true historical figure, he lived as Gaius Julius
Caesar, and resurrected as Divus Julius."
"This report is of the same order of importance as the scientific
discoveries of Darwin and Galileo."
- Paul Cliteur, Ph. D., University of Leiden, The Netherlands
The article is about a book:
'Jesus was Caesar'New book by Philosopher and Linguist Francesco Carotta Claims That the real identity of Jesus Christ has Been Discovered
I think if this guy could fictionalize his theory... maybe turn it into a book titled the 'Julius Caesar Code'... have the main character be a semantics professor who gets involved in murder mysteries, and make the plot about a centuries-old plot to cover-up the true identity of Jesus, he could make millions of dollars off this.
I bet it would hit the best seller list in no time if he did make it fiction.
LaMa
in Europe Member
Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 | 12:00 AM
Hi Alex,
Sounds like you might want to read Paul Maier's "The Rama Document". That's a bit along those lines altough Ceasar's not involved.
X Member
Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 | 07:35 AM
I'm going to get started writing a book my own theories. Seems every thing can get twisted and distorted, and then published nowadays. Alex is a perfect example....J/K Alex. Why is this the first time I have heard of this Caesar and Jesus connection. Why am I allways the last one to know. "They" are allways hiding something from me.
"We" are always hiding something from you because "We" want to control you.
"The Council" has spoken.
X Member
Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 | 08:50 AM
Noooooo, it is "THEY" that wan't to control me. But one day, I shall get the upper hand. By the way, I seen thay "Saw" movie last night. It sucked. Just thought I'd say that.
I've been mulling over this weird theory for some time, and there is a lot to it. At first it seems WACKY!... But it fits with the facts!
Isn't it strange that we, if we are to be 'Christians', must have faith, not only in "Jesus died for our sins" BUT ALSO just in the 'fact' that he ever existed at all! (You know: "Do you believe in Jesus?" as in "Do you believe that he existed?")
There isn't any evidence that there was a Jesus as described in the Bible. Really, there isn't any.
But he was so amazing, supposedly, that hundreds of people followed him around, all over Palestine. He was renouned throughout for his amazing miracles, etc...
But NO mentions of him, even by Josephus. (Yeah, I know: there IS a 'mention', but it is spurious. It is an interpolation and only Christian apologists deny it is. But anyone can look it up, and see that the Josephus 'mention' is so fake it is ridiculous. )
....
mary jane
Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 | 08:22 AM
I'm with yossie on this one. At first I also thought this to be a weird joke. But now, I've read the book a couple of times, including some of the 1° and 2° material the author uses. Sometimes the authors of Mark (and other evangelists) copied passages, sentences, words, names of people and places from the original Caesarian sources almost word for word! And, believe it or not: Caesar was CRUCIFIED!! A wax effigy of the dictator was presented to the people at his funeral, hanging from a CROSS-SHAPED victory monument, first covered by his blood-stained toga! (cf. Christian Easter liturgy) There is some really amazing information in his book. Carotta doesn't produce any errors except the ones stated on his website...well, at least none that I could come up with. Everything fits together neatly. The only problem one could have is that the nature and arrangement of his findings render his discovery and subsequent theories unfalsifiable. Independent on the way we may see his book - it still seems to be pretty far out at first glance - this thing could actually turn out MAJOR...but it's fun to read anyway. Very fascinating stuff.
spirit
in am
Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 | 01:32 PM
Mark 12:17
mary jane
Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2005 | 06:21 PM
Mark 12:17 !! Exactly...but only one piece of the puzzle.
Maegan
in Tampa, FL - USA Member
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 | 06:22 AM
I don't get what that verse has to do with this...
Mark 12:17: And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.
The verses just prior are a parable, and then the people are asking Jesus if they should pay tribute to Caesar. He asks whose face is on a coin - and when they tell Him it is Caeser, verse 17 is his reply.
So - are you saying that THIS verse helps prove Jesus is Caesar?? I don't quite understand.
mary jane
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 | 11:30 AM
Well, let's have Carotta answer the question:
"The credit business had come to a standstill since Caesar had gone to war against Pompeius. The hope of a general remission of debt induced the debtors not to pay back their debts and the creditors to seek compensation by buying on credit themselves.
Caesar rejected the general remission of debt by pointing out that he had the most debts of all - he was even loaned money by his soldiers at the beginning of the civil war - and he wanted to take the responsibility for that: after all, he planned further loans. His financial needs were critical: He needed money to pay the soldiers whom he needed to get at the money - as he superbly described the cycle to the Senate. So in Solomon-like fashion he decided that all interest payments made during the interim period were to go toward paying off the principle, and on the other hand that the value of the goods before the onset of the civil war should be the basis for all further calculations. He established special commissions to make the assessments. With these measures he lowered the debt by a quarter and managed to set business back on track again. [SUET. Jul. 42; DIO CASS. HR 42.50.4 & 42.51.1-3]
Mark confuses this assessment of debts with an assessment of tax and makes a question of taxation out of it:
'And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words. And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it. And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? And the said unto him, Caesar's. And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they marvelled at him.' [Mk. 12: 13-17]"
[continued]
mary jane
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2005 | 11:31 AM
[continued]
"Apparently Mark was misled by the loan-word kênsos (< census), which means 'assessment' in Latin, but in Greek took on the meaning 'tax'. So for him, the question of a general remission of debt or of participation in Caesar's state loan becomes the always present - and for those living on the very edge of the Empire the highly explosive - question of 'Should one pay taxes to Caesar or not?' The name 'Caesar' (qua emperor) is not covered-up this time. The decision that the value to be paid would be fixed by Caesar's commissions - in Mark's language: So give the creditor what Caesar decrees - becomes: 'render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's'.
The addition of 'and to God the things that are God's' could be accounted for by the fact that in Mark's exemplar, after all these measures that concerned the credit business and the people, others were cited which aimed to regulate the influence of the aristocracy: on the one hand measures to dissolve all secret societies, which dominated and poisoned political life and preferred to hide behind religious facades and rites of initiation, and on the other hand such measures to increase the significance of the traditional 'collegia' of priests and augurs and of the guilds of artists and craftsmen as well. [DIO CASS. HR 42.51.4-5; SUET. Jul. 42] Strangely enough, the full sentence 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's', still has the structure of Caesar's doctrine of 'the soldiers are needed for money and the money is needed for the soldiers', even if the chiasmus is lost.
The addressing of Caesar as 'master' is correct: at this time Caesar was again 'dictator' [SUET. Jul. 76; DIO CASS. HR 42.55.4], for which the address, as we saw, was 'magister', based on the old name for 'dictator': 'magister populi'. Though Mark will have here read 'dictator' as 'didaskale', 'master' in the sense of 'school master', i.e. of 'dictator' as 'one who dictates a dictation'. It is as if Mark had stuck to the basic meaning: 'dictator' coming from 'dicere', 'to say', as does the derived German word for poet, 'Dichter', the 'sayer'.
Caesar's portrait on the coin is quite topical. Caesar's likeness appears on coins only after the campaign in Africa. But his name was already stamped into the first coin after the outbreak of the civil war, as we saw. The name of the coin, 'dênarion', is also correct, for Caesar had minted mostly silver 'denarii'.
At the beginning of the pericope the Pharisees and the Herodians are mentioned. The Pharisees are mostly the Pompeians. In the sources, in Dio for example, it is said that the credit business had been brought to a standstill from when Caesar marched against the Pompeius. In this case, by the Pharisees and the Herodians we have to imagine the Pompeians and the Caesareans, who also had different opinions about the question of the repayments of the debts, for the Pompeians belonged mostly to the creditors and the Caesareans to the debtors.
Thus Caesar is also made Herodes here, instead of as usual Jesus only, which is not without an element of humor: Jesus and Herodes as one person. But we already had this representation once before: the head of John was presented to Herodes like that of Pompeius to Caesar." [Carotta: JwC 267-269]
In addition, Herodes had been a Julian-Caesarean hardliner, so Mark stays true to the characters' political / religious orientations, once they have been established.
