Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ?

There is actually another highly suggestive expression in 2Cor 2:14:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.

The Roman Triumphal procession was the main honor given to great heroes of the Empire.
The Roman triumph (triumphus) was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the success of a military commander who had led Roman forces to victory in the service of the state or, originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. Roman triumph - Wikipedia
That is quite cool. The fragrance part even matches with the incense and flowers mentioned in the Wikipedia article. You or someone mentioned earlier the connection of Paul with former Caesarean colonies but I didn't know that like with the Paul of Tarsus meme (also mentioned earlier), there were direct connections with Caesar and/or his allies/army.
 
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/threads/was-julius-caesar-the-real-jesus-christ.31732/post-825644 Laura said:
I've got a paper somewhere that I'll have to find, about the "Disappearance of the Caesar Cult". It discusses the fact that, in the beginning, Augustus encouraged the worship of his adopted father/uncle, because by that, he was able to be known as the "Son of God." But after a time, he decided that it was better to just sort of fade it out, give it less emphasis, and concentrate on his own position as "Son of God." But for many years, the Caesar cult persisted and there are archaeological finds attesting to this. There was a temple dedicated to Julius Caesar in Ephesus.


I thought I had read something about that previously and was able to find it but there's no mention of a title or writer's name:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/threads/was-julius-caesar-the-real-jesus-christ.31732/post-544070 Laura said:
It seems that the worship of Caesar began spontaneously at the time of his death and continued. However, after the civil war, when Augustus didn't need Caesar as much as he needed the old elite, (however many of them he hadn't proscribed and/or killed), Caesar was pushed into the background deliberately and, as a human, was an embarrassment. However, it appears that this only gave impetus to the private worship which appears to have taken on the characteristics of a Mystery Religion. Elements of Mithraism were incorporated though Mithraism itself stood alongside it, not part of it. It may even have been that Mithraism was the club aspect, kind of like Masons, Elks, Moose lodge, nowadays are clubs that are loosely based on Christianity or Christian themes/elements. You go to church on Sunday, and to your lodge meeting on Friday. I don't know if there was something like Eastern Star for women. There very well may have been because women seem to have been very important in these early doings. Anyway, these doings traveled around the empire with the retired soldiers from Caesar's army. There were several major colonies including North Africa, Corinth, Narbonne area and probably Spain. Interestingly, the Spanish used a Julian calendar that began in the equivalent of 38 BC and persisted in this until the Middle Ages. Could this reflect the death of Caesar as their "birth of Christ" which occurred, according to our calendar, in 44 BC, but with the vagaries of calendrical readjustments, could have matched long ago. 38 BC is darned close to 44 BC.


After that I continued to dig for some clues about Paul's life-changing vision and so far found two mentions of it:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/threads/was-julius-caesar-the-real-jesus-christ.31732/post-557844 Laura said:
But anyway, Paul’s vision: Did Paul have some sort of visionary experience in which all these elements came together? Did he become convinced that it was his mission to prevent what he clearly could see was coming if the Jews continued on their revolutionary path? Did he work out his theology, Christology, ecclesiology and anthropology, to service this agenda?

It is obvious from his letters that what Paul received in his visions was rather different from what was being promoted by the James Gang, the revolutionary clan of Judas and friends.

Paul’s preaching about the coming “end” was probably his desperate attempt to forestall the destruction he could see the Jews bringing on themselves. Part of his 2-part strategy was to engage the Gentiles in the worship of the Creator God of Judaism who, he naturally thought of as the only “real” higher god. The second part of the strategy was to persuade the Jews to give up their stand-offish “speshulness” and become part of the rest of humanity, i.e. peaceful members of the Greco-Roman world.

If this was what he was doing, it was brilliant, noble, and desperate.

Paul may also have been convinced, as a result of a Caesar cult experience, that Caesar, too, had actually become a son of God – the Jewish Creator God – and that this meant that God intended for all peoples to be united in one worship. He may have taught this directly as “Christ on the Cross”, the cross/trophaeum being the symbol both of death and victory at one and the same time. Paul may not have seen it as necessary to identify his Christ on the Cross as Caesar; on the other hand, he may not have needed to. In his preaching, he may have tapped into the network of the Caesar cults for his first converts. His letters may have been redacted to remove any such clues which would have been small, if present at all, due to the one-sided conversational nature of letters where a lot of things are understood by both parties that are not explicitly set out in the letter.

What seems to me to be important is that Paul apparently did have some deep and profound visionary experiences from which he distilled his theories of another world, semi-physical and other dimensional, which would be the new reality of the “saved” Christian. What seems clear is that this was partly based on the Roman Clientela system: if you have TRUST – align yourself with – Christ, then you will be saved AT THE END when he returns. On the other hand, the elements of his teaching can also be found among Greek and Jewish religious ideas laying close to hand.

Since Paul was so desperately seeking to counter revolutionary activities and engage the support of the gentiles for the Jews via their mutual worship of the same Creator god, it may be that he only used the idea of an eschatological parousia as both carrot and stick to achieve his ends. He may very well have understood the true nature of this other hyperdimensional reality – and he may have surely seen the “principalities” etc as energetic constructs of information – and that the Jews were almost certainly doomed if something wasn’t done, and quickly.

But he failed. The END did come for Jerusalem and more than a million Jews. After which, it seems to me, he wrote chapters 9-11 of Romans. Funny numbers considering the replay of the dynamic in the present day.


https://cassiopaea.org/forum/threads/was-julius-caesar-the-real-jesus-christ.31732/post-569215 Laura said:
27 AD - Counting backward 17 years from the meeting in Jerusalem and kerfuffle in Antioch, Paul's "conversion". Did he really have a vision? Possible. It happens. Or did he have an inner insight based on his constant study of texts, his pesher/midrash activities, that convinced him that something dreadful was going to happen if something wasn't changed? Did this lead to his "meeting Jesus" in the text and combining him with Caesar on the Tropheum that he had already met because of his Hellenizing tendencies?


This thread has become so vast and so rich in content that searching it to recap specific items sometimes serves well to rekindle my memory. :lol:
 
I just read a bit in Jonathan Z. Smith's book yesterday that made me sort of go "duuh!" He points out that in an edict, emperor Claudius denied the Alexandrians Roman citizenship. Apparently the reason was that being a Roman citizen meant you had to honor the Roman gods and emperors-as-gods which no Jew would do.

Obviously, that means that the claim in Acts that Paul was a Roman citizen has to be bogus.
 
Paul was originally known as Saul of Tarsus. That's what made him a Roman citizen. When he converted to the Christian Faith, he changed his name to Paul. Abraham was known as Abram until he was converted and then he became Abraham. There are a few other examples but I can't recall them off the top of my head.
 
Paul was originally known as Saul of Tarsus. That's what made him a Roman citizen. When he converted to the Christian Faith, he changed his name to Paul. Abraham was known as Abram until he was converted and then he became Abraham. There are a few other examples but I can't recall them off the top of my head.

But the "Saul of Tarsus" bit comes from Acts. And being "of Tarsus" would not make him a Roman citizen. What Paul says about himself is the following:

Rom 11:1 I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin.

Php 3:4b-6 If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Thus, by his own claims, Paul could not have been a Roman citizen.

The "Saul" bit was a creation of the author of Acts probably based on several stories in Josephus. Paul himself never indicates or suggests that his real name was Saul.

Please, do NOT make the big mistake of thinking that ANYthing in Acts is historically accurate without some outside verification. This text was written VERY late, probably by Polycarp of Smyrna, and the list of lies in it are about as long as the text itself.

The earliest mention of any background of Paul comes from Origen, quoted by Jerome, which says that Paul was originally from Galilee.
 
I just read a bit in Jonathan Z. Smith's book yesterday that made me sort of go "duuh!" He points out that in an edict, emperor Claudius denied the Alexandrians Roman citizenship. Apparently the reason was that being a Roman citizen meant you had to honor the Roman gods and emperors-as-gods which no Jew would do.

Obviously, that means that the claim in Acts that Paul was a Roman citizen has to be bogus.

I've just been reading a book to see if it had and information on the situation in Rome and surrounding areas around the time of Jesus. The book is a fascinating attempt to work back through time to try and find the original religion. His ability to envisage how languages and alphabets were formed by comparing the alphabets of the Druids of Scotland, Ireland, England back to India and Europe and Middle East is page turning. At the time of his writing c1830 lots of things were being found in India ,Egypt and elsewhere. which he acknowledged were, in his own time, being hidden or obscured by the Church ,surprise, surprise. But I imagine a lot of what he wrote about
will not be available to us today. He translates a lot of scripture and, according to him, corrects a lot of mistranslations. His exposition of the hidden religion for the select and the proclaimed to us rabble takes 900 pages. Trying to pick out relevant pieces is near to impossible as everything is a continual proving of the last sentence.
His disgust of Cardinals clergy, bishops, Luther Knox Calvin is palpable. All religion, without exception, is at the base the same. His discovery of Jews ( using the term loosely)in Cashmere, Afghanastan, North and South India Siam and Ceylon through language and place names, now all changed of course, and probably for a reason is really hard to deny. All religion is based on Astrology pure and simple involving cycles within cycles never ending.
The 600 yr cycle is particularly interesting, e.g. Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Romulus, Caesar, Jesus and Mohammed, not in that order of course . I'm a bit confused now with information overload and will need time to reread certain parts.
I have copied a few excerpts to give a feel but out of 900 pages what do you pick? His comments on St. Paul might be based on what Laura has found out, that words were put into his mouth. His classification of Jews, Christians and Gentiles seems to operate both before Christ and after him so I not really sure who he is calling the Christians or Chrestians. Some of the Greek words I cannot reprint. I think only Laura will be able to tell me if I'm barking up the wrong tree, even if his geography and knowledge of druids, their beliefs and buildings spread across the world is amazing. In no 3 and 4 below there are 3 Greek words that have not copied correctly and as he didn't give a translation of them I don't know how I may find their meaning.

1 I consider that the book of John contains clear and abundant proofs, that the original doctrine, though perhaps the secret doctrine of the Romish Church, was uncorrupted Gnosticism,—the Pandaean religion of the Golden age, when no icons were used, and when the Gods had no names. How they then were supposed to exist will be
clearly explained in a future book.

2 gods of the Romans or Janus, after whom St. Peter, Bar-Jona, with his barque and keys, is modelled. At the foot of the statue of Janus were placed twelve altars, dedicated to the twelve months. As Janus was the chief of the twelve lesser gods, Peter was the chief of the apostles •and, as I have said in Book X. Chap. IV., as Janus held the keys of heaven, so does Peter. The Valentinians supposed that Christ commenced his mission at thirty years of age
because it was the number of degrees in a sign of the Zodiac, and that he was crucified in the twelfth month ; so that his career had one year, like that of the sun in the Twelve Labours of Hercules. It is very evident that the Valentinians considered Jesus as a Ray or Emanation from the Sun, and that he formed a microcosm of the Solar orb, each being a microcosm of a superior being. The Romists evidently do the same in their annual scenic representation of the acts of the Saviour's life. It is said that Christ fixed the number of his apostles at twelve, because there were twelve months in the year ; and that John the Baptist fixed his at thirty, because the months have thirty days. 1 Clemens Alexandrinus, on the oriental doctrine, says, that the Valentinian Theodotus maintained that the twelve apostles held, in the church, the same place that the signs of the Zodiac held in nature ; because, as the twelve constellations govern the world of generation, the twelve apostles govern the world of regeneration. In Dupuis many other striking circumstances relating to the number twelve may be seen. Why did Jesus choose twelve apostles and seventy-two disciples ? Why did seventy-two men come from Medina to Mohamed ; and why did he retain with him twelve as his apostles ? Why does the college of Cardinals consist of seventy-two persons ? Why did Ptolemy take seventy two men to translate the Pentateuch ? All accident, as usual ?
The Persians had twelve angels who presided over the twelve months. He who presided over the first month was called the treasurer of Paradise. 2 Probably, like Peter and J anus, he carried the keys. The Gentiles had precisely the same astrological mythos as the Jews and Christians. The commanders of the Greeks against Troy, including Philoctetes, who, though absent, was one of them in the league—one of the confederates—were seventy-two. 3 Osiris was killed by seventy two conspirators. 4 According to Keating, the Irish divided the languages into seventy-two. Proofs, which cannot be impeached, of the astrological character of the temple and its sacred numbers, may be seen in Josephus. 5
The Greek mina or pound was raised by Solon, as we learn from Plutarch, 6 from seventy-two drachma? to a hundred. 7 The number seven is equally a sacred number in the Gentile religion as in the Christian. The number of the planets has been copied in the Christian religion in the seven sacraments, seven deadly sins, seven gifts of the holy spirit. 8 From the number of the days of the least of the cycles, seven, being identical with the number of the planetary bodies, it can never be known with a certainty when one is alluded to separately
from the other.


3. Faustus is made, by Augustin, to say, Christ is the wisdom of God. 1 Now this we might infer, from what we have before observed respecting Gnosticism and Manichaeism. (But the Christ ought to be the Chreest.) As the Xpjs(Wisdom) was the Logos, and the Logos was Wisdom, it follows that the Xp?j£ must be Wisdom. Here, in either case, we arrive at Rasit again, and thus Jesus, or the Logos, is the Creator. Here we have a key to much of the recondite and misunderstood doctrines of the Gnostic, that is, the initiated Christians—the initiated Christians, or Gnostici, against whom St. Paul preached, of which I shall say much more hereafter. rrence of the numbers connected intimately with the decans, dodecans, &c, 7, 12, 72, 360 not 365, 432, &c, into which the sphere was divided, sufficiently prove their intimate connexion. They are all closely bound together,


4 I now beg my reader to recall to his recollection what I have said respecting the Xp^g-oj, and I think he will have no difficulty in agreeing with me that originally the religion of Jesus was Xg^s-ianity, and that it was not, in fact, until the Paulites got possession of the Papal chair, by a compromise, that Paul's pernicious doctrines were admitted into it,—by which its whole character was changed, and it became Christianity, such as it was for a thousand years,—quarrelling, persecuting, and devil-driving : and very different indeed from the Chrestianity of the
first fathers, and from the secret doctrines of the temples of Eleusis and Jerusalem, of the Gentiles, and of Jesus of Nazareth, all of which were the same.


There was no man in the first two centuries of the Christian sera to be preferred to Clemens as an authority on this dry matter of fact, that there was a secret doctrine and of what nature that secret doctrine was. He was followed by Origen, who confirmed his assertion, and was the most learned of all the early Christians; and he and Clemens were at the very top—they were in fact the Patriarchs of the Christian community. Mosheim endeavours to disguise the doctrine, but the actual existence of the Tvaxrig is evident enough



Paul was really, as is evident from his letters, a well meaning but insane fanatic.

In the Chrestologia of St. Paul and Justin Martyr we have the esoteric religion of the Vatican, a refined Gnosticism for the cardinals, a more gross one for the people

I know not a single passage in our canon which can justify the construction, that twelve tongues of fire was this
person. The prophecy of another person to come connects the whole with the system of the cycles of India, of Virgil, and of Juvenal; it completes the system, and shows that the millenary cycles were an integral part of Gnosticism, and that Gnosticism uncorrupted was Christianity.
 
Hey Tuatha de Danaan, interesting suggestions maybe but in your enthusiasm you forgot to give us the title and the name of the writer of the book you mention. :huh: Having those would be helpful in identifying its worth.

As for the transliteration of Greek terms, there are two ways of doing that. Either you transpose each and every Greek letter with the Latin equivalent thereof; or you copy the Greek letters one-on-one making use of the special token set available in every Windows version. Of course both methods can also be combined to achieve more clarity for your readers.

The special token set can be found as follows: click Start > All programs > Bureau accessories > System work-set > Special tokens. Most of the available fonts there have a special subset with Greek letters, Russian letters, Turkish letters, and several others that I cannot recognize.
 
Hey Tuatha de Danaan, interesting suggestions maybe but in your enthusiasm you forgot to give us the title and the name of the writer of the book you mention. :huh: Having those would be helpful in identifying its worth.

As for the transliteration of Greek terms, there are two ways of doing that. Either you transpose each and every Greek letter with the Latin equivalent thereof; or you copy the Greek letters one-on-one making use of the special token set available in every Windows version. Of course both methods can also be combined to achieve more clarity for your readers.

The special token set can be found as follows: click Start > All programs > Bureau accessories > System work-set > Special tokens. Most of the available fonts there have a special subset with Greek letters, Russian letters, Turkish letters, and several others that I cannot recognize.
[/QUOTE

Well Palinurus,
I hang my head in shame and apologise . Totally overlooked such an important detail. Thanks for pointing it out. As I said I found the book mesmerising. His construction of the Irish Ogham alphabet and it's structure on the Irish names of trees, which I know from learning Irish as a child, and his tying it in with Hebrew all through the know world and his knowledge of discoveries made in India, Persia and Egypt at his time and inscriptions traced to that Ogham in India and across the Middle East are very convincing. Every page uncovers something new but all connected to buildings, religions, cultures, people and myths but especially religions. Anyway details of the book.

ANACALYPSIS.
an
attempt to draw the veil
of
The Saitic Isis.
or
an inquiry into the origin
of
Languages Nations and Religions
by
Godfrey Higgins.
There are 2 volumes evidently, but I've just read the 1st. I found the pdf @ https;//openlibrary.org/ and typing in the ANACALYPSIS . It won't find it under the authors name for some reason.

Thank you also for your instructions for foreign terms and letters. I will surely try to follow that up but I think I'll read Mr. Higgins He very much agrees with the 'C's that there was once a very pure and simple religion that time
and priests debased.
 
Thanks for the specifics, Tuatha de Danaan. I was able to download both volumes in PDF-format from the Internet Archive and will have a look what it's all about. Your enthusiasm is contagious... ;-)

Like me you'll probably want to jump straight into the book proper but his introduction is just as interesting. To our 21st century minds it starts very slow and polite as common for his age. Some or most of his footnotes are a treasure trove as well.

I could find traces hinting at what Mary Settegast was saying circa 6,000BC re change in religion and mass movement of peoples. Large religious wars in India which could be tied in with the movement of the sun from Taurus to Aries,. and the Sun being worshiped.

His placing of Genesis, which just can't be placed in the Holy Land, on this big continent is much more convincing.

I'll stop now.
 
From all I can tell, Ephesus was one of Paul's main hangouts.

It certainly looks like that, and there is a lot to this city - its size and population (at varying points) for one. There is a little brief here about it with a video of some of the archeology with mention of Paul at the end speaking to the inhabitants. However, the guys summary of this seems off, as he is equating Paul's line of force against the worship of the "great mother goddess" Artemis, and the business owners who shipped idols did not like it. Things are missing here in the timeline, osit.

Worth checking out the video to get a sense of what was there in the city if never seen.

 
Anacalypsis is a waste of time and energy.

Thanks for that Laura. It'll save me reading the second and it did use up a lot of energy.
Thanks for the specifics, Tuatha de Danaan. I was able to download both volumes in PDF-format from the Internet Archive and will have a look what it's all about. Your enthusiasm is contagious... ;-)

Hi Palinurus, Unfortunately , Laura says it's a waste of energy.:huh:
 
Hi Palinurus, Unfortunately , Laura says it's a waste of energy.:huh:
Yes, so I've noticed. I haven't started reading yet and will restrict myself to cursory glances to get an inkling.

From what you told about this work I got a strong hunch that it might be a precursor to Madame Blavatsky's approach of ancient religions.
 
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