Nostradamus
The Force is Strong With This One
When you study the birth of Christianity in a wider context, integrating the codes of the Roman Empire, it is difficult not to perceive the close links between politics and religion, between Augustan imperialist propaganda and the foundations of Christian dogma. If, in addition to this, you include in your attempts at understanding the possibility of a very tight chronology (with the 460 years in excess), many obscure things become clearer.
When we study the religious quarrels between the Christian communities and try to penetrate the primitive Christian texts, we must admit that our modern mind struggles to penetrate the mentalities of the time. The concept of the "Trinity" - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - is at the heart of these theological debates, whose abstract and sophisticated character we do not understand and whose violence (a priori so disproportionate) rages between the different parties.
The ancient and modern scholars comment on the quarrels of the "Trinity" by referring to the mentalities of the time, i.e. the neoplatonic thought, even stoic, which prevails among the scholars and the philosophical schools in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. It is an incontestable fact that constitutes the primitive mold of the Christian Trinity. We could quote the philosopher Plotinus who wrote about the triad - the One, the Intellect and the Soul - but I do not want to dwell on this subject which you are certainly familiar with and which is well documented. The principle of divine unity and therefore of a monotheistic metaphysics is well established among intellectuals of Greek culture in the East; one only has to read, for example, the philosopher Damascius, the last Dacian to serve at the Academy of Athens before it was closed down by the Emperor Justinian (the closing down of the philosophical schools is obviously a very important political fact in the oriented development of Christianity).
The early Church Fathers therefore debate in the same way as the Greek philosophers. Since they do not refer to Jesus at any point, one can assume that the revisionist version of the Gospels is not yet sponsored by the Roman authorities.
But there is something more interesting behind this sophisticated and pompous verbiage, the relationship between the Father and the Son, and all the polemics that go with it, surprisingly echoes the propaganda set up by Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. The raging debate over whether the Son should be subordinate to the Father, and the same for several heretical communities, including Arrius' violently condemned one, indicates political control in connection with the imperial cult.
Given that Augustus built his politics as a worthy heir to Julius Caesar, and that Julius Caesar was considered during his lifetime and even more so after his death as a deity, could one hypothesize that the Father-Son theme reflects the political ideology intended by Augustus?
Octavian will set up a new model of governance which will be maintained until the last emperor Justinian with the double system of Augustus-Caesar which makes it possible to designate during his lifetime a future "adoptive" heir, a non-hereditary successor of the power to avoid a new civil war. On January 16, 27 B.C., at the beginning of his consulship, the Senate gives to Octavian the new titles of Augustus and Princeps. The title Augustus, which derives from the term augere, can be literally translated as "the most illustrious". Suetonius in his "Life of Augustus" tells us that he hesitated at first to call himself Romulus and that he finally opted for the nickname Augustus and Suetonius specifies that this title "characterized the holy places". Augustus thus builds the image of a new Romulus, with a religious dimension.
During his reign, he had the Forum of Augustus built, which was adjacent to the Forum of Caesar. The building shows a very marked dynastic triumphal character and celebrates the glory of Augustus. Note that in the center of the square, there is a quadriga dedicated to Augustus Pater Patriae. The temple hosts the statues of Mars, Venus and Caesar, which could also indicate another variation of the holy trinity including the Venus-Virgin Mary.
This architectural complex translates well the double policy of Augustus. On the one hand, he relies on his filiation with Julius Caesar to reinforce his political position and he insists on his status of son of a god ("Caesar divi filius"). The word Caesar, which had been used until now as a cognomen by the members of the gens Iulia, changes its nature and becomes a dynastic name used by the new family that Augustus will found. And on the other hand, he elaborates an imperial cult around his person as a new Romulus, which completes the picture of the divine couple Father-Son in a circular logic since Romulus descends from Aeneas and Venus, as Julius Caesar claimed.
One could therefore imagine that the patristic literature, the "Fathers" of the Church, are the members of a clergy who honor the cult of Julius Caesar and Augustus. Their writings may have been falsified later, but one can also imagine that they did not need to specify to whom they were referring, by the Father and the Son, because it was obvious to everyone at that time. You see that seen from this angle, it is not surprising that Christianity actually developed very quickly during the Roman Empire and it is even possible that this clergy had Popes or Pontifex maximus sitting in Rome very early on, which seems to me much more plausible than the hypothesis of a fraudulent invention of all the writings of the Roman Empire, in the West as well as in the East. The fraud must rather focus, in my opinion, on the appearance of Jesus under the Flavians with the help of Joseph, whose political vocation was to substitute the cult of Julius Caesar-Augustus and to create a new reading of Christian dogma.
The heresy of Arrius is a central point. Arrius and his followers disputed the divine character of the Son. Would the truth behind this violent quarrel actually mean that they denied Augustus' divine status? This might give another reading of the persecution of Christian heretics and martyrs more generally. But it could also be later, after the death of Augustus and the wars of succession. The divinization of the Flavians and the introduction of the cult of Jesus could also have been the object of an intense division of the Christian communities. In any case, the persecution of Christians is closely linked to a refusal to participate in the imperial cult, and not only the messianic Christians attached to the church of Jerusalem. They were in fact political dissidents who rejected the imperial power and its new religious cult, which explains the violent response of the Roman authority.
As I had indicated elsewhere on the forum, I was interested in the governance of the Roman Empire to try to reconstruct the chronological sequencing of the emperors. I had noted an interesting element with the honorific title of Pater patriæ. This title was used by Augustus in his imperial propaganda policy. Based on the prototype of the legendary founder of Rome, Romulus, 3 characters were given this title by the Senate before Augustus: the general Camillus, Cicero and Caesar. From Augustus onwards, 23 emperors will carry the title of "father of the country"; the last one being Constantine I. It is interesting to note that they are mainly worn by emperors belonging to the western part of the Roman Empire. Not all emperors attached to the eastern part, whose mother house was Byzantium-Constantinople, enjoyed this title. Not even Justinian.
At this stage of my reflection, there seem to be obvious correspondences between the crisis of power after the end of the Augustan dynasty (assassination of Nero) and the intense religious conflicts between the Christians and with the Roman authorities. Given that all the other emperors followed the same model of Octavian in deciding to be deified, and that they benefited more from a legitimate filiation through dynastic blood, after the death of Nero, the imperial cult became a political problem because it was contested. And it was necessary to rewrite the Christian dogma by erasing the memory of Julius Caesar and to invent a new messiah.
This hypothesis gives additional credit to the invention of the Anno Domini by the monk Denys Le Petit, which is the crucible of our current chronology, and which seems to be based on the ancient Latin formula still in use in the Julian (Julius Caesar) calendar: Ab Urbe condita, also known as Anno Urbis conditae, also known by the abbreviation AUC or AVC, which literally means "from the foundation of the City", traditionally fixed by the Romans on April 21, 753 BC. J.- C., by Romulus. Augustus, new Romulus, new era, new calendar...
Obviously, the links between the Roman imperial cult and Christianity have already been developed by several authors, without generally taking into account the life of Julius Caesar, like Joseph Atwill.
Thank you for your comments and objections in order to identify the flaws of this theory.
When we study the religious quarrels between the Christian communities and try to penetrate the primitive Christian texts, we must admit that our modern mind struggles to penetrate the mentalities of the time. The concept of the "Trinity" - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - is at the heart of these theological debates, whose abstract and sophisticated character we do not understand and whose violence (a priori so disproportionate) rages between the different parties.
The ancient and modern scholars comment on the quarrels of the "Trinity" by referring to the mentalities of the time, i.e. the neoplatonic thought, even stoic, which prevails among the scholars and the philosophical schools in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. It is an incontestable fact that constitutes the primitive mold of the Christian Trinity. We could quote the philosopher Plotinus who wrote about the triad - the One, the Intellect and the Soul - but I do not want to dwell on this subject which you are certainly familiar with and which is well documented. The principle of divine unity and therefore of a monotheistic metaphysics is well established among intellectuals of Greek culture in the East; one only has to read, for example, the philosopher Damascius, the last Dacian to serve at the Academy of Athens before it was closed down by the Emperor Justinian (the closing down of the philosophical schools is obviously a very important political fact in the oriented development of Christianity).
The early Church Fathers therefore debate in the same way as the Greek philosophers. Since they do not refer to Jesus at any point, one can assume that the revisionist version of the Gospels is not yet sponsored by the Roman authorities.
But there is something more interesting behind this sophisticated and pompous verbiage, the relationship between the Father and the Son, and all the polemics that go with it, surprisingly echoes the propaganda set up by Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. The raging debate over whether the Son should be subordinate to the Father, and the same for several heretical communities, including Arrius' violently condemned one, indicates political control in connection with the imperial cult.
Given that Augustus built his politics as a worthy heir to Julius Caesar, and that Julius Caesar was considered during his lifetime and even more so after his death as a deity, could one hypothesize that the Father-Son theme reflects the political ideology intended by Augustus?
Octavian will set up a new model of governance which will be maintained until the last emperor Justinian with the double system of Augustus-Caesar which makes it possible to designate during his lifetime a future "adoptive" heir, a non-hereditary successor of the power to avoid a new civil war. On January 16, 27 B.C., at the beginning of his consulship, the Senate gives to Octavian the new titles of Augustus and Princeps. The title Augustus, which derives from the term augere, can be literally translated as "the most illustrious". Suetonius in his "Life of Augustus" tells us that he hesitated at first to call himself Romulus and that he finally opted for the nickname Augustus and Suetonius specifies that this title "characterized the holy places". Augustus thus builds the image of a new Romulus, with a religious dimension.
During his reign, he had the Forum of Augustus built, which was adjacent to the Forum of Caesar. The building shows a very marked dynastic triumphal character and celebrates the glory of Augustus. Note that in the center of the square, there is a quadriga dedicated to Augustus Pater Patriae. The temple hosts the statues of Mars, Venus and Caesar, which could also indicate another variation of the holy trinity including the Venus-Virgin Mary.
This architectural complex translates well the double policy of Augustus. On the one hand, he relies on his filiation with Julius Caesar to reinforce his political position and he insists on his status of son of a god ("Caesar divi filius"). The word Caesar, which had been used until now as a cognomen by the members of the gens Iulia, changes its nature and becomes a dynastic name used by the new family that Augustus will found. And on the other hand, he elaborates an imperial cult around his person as a new Romulus, which completes the picture of the divine couple Father-Son in a circular logic since Romulus descends from Aeneas and Venus, as Julius Caesar claimed.
One could therefore imagine that the patristic literature, the "Fathers" of the Church, are the members of a clergy who honor the cult of Julius Caesar and Augustus. Their writings may have been falsified later, but one can also imagine that they did not need to specify to whom they were referring, by the Father and the Son, because it was obvious to everyone at that time. You see that seen from this angle, it is not surprising that Christianity actually developed very quickly during the Roman Empire and it is even possible that this clergy had Popes or Pontifex maximus sitting in Rome very early on, which seems to me much more plausible than the hypothesis of a fraudulent invention of all the writings of the Roman Empire, in the West as well as in the East. The fraud must rather focus, in my opinion, on the appearance of Jesus under the Flavians with the help of Joseph, whose political vocation was to substitute the cult of Julius Caesar-Augustus and to create a new reading of Christian dogma.
The heresy of Arrius is a central point. Arrius and his followers disputed the divine character of the Son. Would the truth behind this violent quarrel actually mean that they denied Augustus' divine status? This might give another reading of the persecution of Christian heretics and martyrs more generally. But it could also be later, after the death of Augustus and the wars of succession. The divinization of the Flavians and the introduction of the cult of Jesus could also have been the object of an intense division of the Christian communities. In any case, the persecution of Christians is closely linked to a refusal to participate in the imperial cult, and not only the messianic Christians attached to the church of Jerusalem. They were in fact political dissidents who rejected the imperial power and its new religious cult, which explains the violent response of the Roman authority.
As I had indicated elsewhere on the forum, I was interested in the governance of the Roman Empire to try to reconstruct the chronological sequencing of the emperors. I had noted an interesting element with the honorific title of Pater patriæ. This title was used by Augustus in his imperial propaganda policy. Based on the prototype of the legendary founder of Rome, Romulus, 3 characters were given this title by the Senate before Augustus: the general Camillus, Cicero and Caesar. From Augustus onwards, 23 emperors will carry the title of "father of the country"; the last one being Constantine I. It is interesting to note that they are mainly worn by emperors belonging to the western part of the Roman Empire. Not all emperors attached to the eastern part, whose mother house was Byzantium-Constantinople, enjoyed this title. Not even Justinian.
At this stage of my reflection, there seem to be obvious correspondences between the crisis of power after the end of the Augustan dynasty (assassination of Nero) and the intense religious conflicts between the Christians and with the Roman authorities. Given that all the other emperors followed the same model of Octavian in deciding to be deified, and that they benefited more from a legitimate filiation through dynastic blood, after the death of Nero, the imperial cult became a political problem because it was contested. And it was necessary to rewrite the Christian dogma by erasing the memory of Julius Caesar and to invent a new messiah.
This hypothesis gives additional credit to the invention of the Anno Domini by the monk Denys Le Petit, which is the crucible of our current chronology, and which seems to be based on the ancient Latin formula still in use in the Julian (Julius Caesar) calendar: Ab Urbe condita, also known as Anno Urbis conditae, also known by the abbreviation AUC or AVC, which literally means "from the foundation of the City", traditionally fixed by the Romans on April 21, 753 BC. J.- C., by Romulus. Augustus, new Romulus, new era, new calendar...
Obviously, the links between the Roman imperial cult and Christianity have already been developed by several authors, without generally taking into account the life of Julius Caesar, like Joseph Atwill.
Thank you for your comments and objections in order to identify the flaws of this theory.
