Was Julius Caesar the real Jesus Christ?

[Laura]

Well, sometimes even red herrings have some clues in them. Are you going to read it?

 

[Palinurus]

Yes I agree; but to be honest with you Laura I wasn't planning to read it myself and secretly I was hoping someone else would volunteer to have a look at it... ;)

Nevertheless, I'm willing to go for it as soon as I have finished the whole of Josephus's works, which is waiting to happen sooner rather than later. Just state that I ought to and I will do that, and report back afterwards whether there's anything in it worthwhile.

 

[Laura]

Yes I agree; but to be honest with you Laura I wasn't planning to read it myself and secretly I was hoping someone else would volunteer to have a look at it... ;)

Nevertheless, I'm willing to go for it as soon as I have finished the whole of Josephus's works, which is waiting to happen sooner rather than later. Just state that I ought to and I will do that, and report back afterwards whether there's anything in it worthwhile.

Well, I already did Josephus and Dio Cassius and Tacitus and a bunch of other stuff. Nevertheless, I do highly recommend reading them because it DOES help me to have others aware of the texts so that we can discuss them. I've put the above book on order so I'll prolly read it. Carry on with reading the ancient texts - it's always good to have them under the belt so that modern analysts can't twist and distort.

 

[Palinurus]

Okay Laura, understood. I apologize for shying away from it. :(

It's just that reading Josephus's works turned out to be much more demanding than I ever envisaged when I volunteered for it. Therefore I'm very reluctant to engage in other commitments while I'm still not done completely with my first assignment so to speak. And I have to go slowly because I need researching every detail that's not clearly explained by Josephus himself, otherwise I'm missing vital information which would hamper my full understanding. Not everyone has the broadness of view and the abundant background knowledge that you can bring to the table, nor are most of us able to speed read while still retaining the content swallowed and fully digest it as well.

 

[Palinurus]

My apologies beforehand about probably amassing your workload yet again Laura, but I seem to run into repetition. Apparently, everyone and their mothers are researching and writing about Jesus nowadays.

While searching around the king list of Manetho as rendered by Flavius Josephus in his Against Apion I encountered yet another writer named Riaan Booysen who recently (October 2014) published a book about Jesus entitled Barbelo: The Story Of Jesus Christ.

His website gives some previews of what it's all about which are also available as PDF downloads. They are named below and are five in total:

If Jesus Christ was indeed the good person the Bible proclaims him to be, why did so many legends survive accusing him and his disciples of shockingly terrible deeds?

Barbelo shows that the person millions of Christians think they know and love as Jesus may not, in actuality, have been the person the Good Book purported him to be. Instead, the man known in Western society as Jesus is argued to have been born in 28 BCE, from an illicit affair between Herod the Great’s second wife and his treasurer, Joseph. Standing at little more than four feet tall, with a deformed, tattoo-covered body and ugly face, Simon Magus – or Jesus, as he later came to be known – wreaked unimaginable havoc on the people of his time and created a violent, vicious legacy that history has tried to hide. But nonetheless, through testimonies of unsophisticated people, these tales have lived on and became the basis of the modern Christian faith.

To give potential readers an idea of what to expect, below are a couple of summarising articles from Barbelo:

Joseph, Herod’s Treasurer, and Mariamne I, the Parents of Jesus Christ
Jesus and Simon Magus
The Physical Appearances of Jesus and Paul
Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea, and Josephus
The Violent Messiah

From what I gathered by cursory reading, Booysen explores the hypothesis that Jesus and Simon Magus are one and the same. He's supposed to have been born in ca. 28 BCE as a (bastard) son of Mariamne I --second wife of Herod the Great-- and his treasurer Joseph, and would have been conceived while Herod was summoned to appear before Marc Anthony. His 'crucifixion' which he survived would have taken place in ca. 21 AD at the age of 49.

Booysen gives this info about himself:

Having been brought up in the Christian faith and having been a believer for much of my adult life, I came to know the Bible quite well, including the theosophical challenges Christianity has to face. Over the years, however, the questions behind not only the Christian faith but all others as well became overwhelming and in the end I could no longer adhere to Christian beliefs. In 1996 Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods introduced me to a new realm of possibilities, the realm of the ancient world. For many years Fingerprints remained in the back of my mind and it was only in August of 2000, when I purchased a copy of Josephus’ Works, that I actively began delving into the past. For several years I collected any book on ancient history that I could find, taking the information it presented at face value, with an open mind. Eventually my own theories began to form, culminating in what is presented here. I trust you will find this an interesting read and would like to invite you to comment or contribute freely in any manner you may wish to.

Professionally I am a practicing engineer that holds a PhD degree in Electromagnetics and have been awarded Senior Membership of the IEEE. The theories presented here were developed in my leisure time over many years and I decided to publish the essence of these theories on the Internet mostly for the sake of review by interested scholars and novices alike, but also due to the practical time constraints associated with writing a complete book. This I still plan to do, but I would like to eliminate any gross misconceptions I may have before completing the work, hence the request for comments.

You may find some aspects of these theories implausible, but I trust that you will nevertheless find it stimulating and I hope that it will create within you an interest in our fascinating ancient past.

He also wrote another book which was published in February 2013 entitled Thera and the Exodus: The Exodus Explained in Terms of Natural Phenomena and the Human Response to It.

All the caveats of my previous suggestion still apply for this one and before you even ask I'll tell you yet again that I'm not currently planning to read this myself now or in the near future. I really have to finish off Josephus first, I think. Sorry to be so bothersome...

 

[Laura]

Okay Laura, understood. I apologize for shying away from it. :(

It's just that reading Josephus's works turned out to be much more demanding than I ever envisaged when I volunteered for it. Therefore I'm very reluctant to engage in other commitments while I'm still not done completely with my first assignment so to speak. And I have to go slowly because I need researching every detail that's not clearly explained by Josephus himself, otherwise I'm missing vital information which would hamper my full understanding. Not everyone has the broadness of view and the abundant background knowledge that you can bring to the table, nor are most of us able to speed read while still retaining the content swallowed and fully digest it as well.

You can skip the OT re-write of Josephus and just start with the Maccabees.

 

[Alana]

If Jesus Christ was indeed the good person the Bible proclaims him to be, why did so many legends survive accusing him and his disciples of shockingly terrible deeds?

Barbelo shows that the person millions of Christians think they know and love as Jesus may not, in actuality, have been the person the Good Book purported him to be. Instead, the man known in Western society as Jesus is argued to have been born in 28 BCE, from an illicit affair between Herod the Great’s second wife and his treasurer, Joseph. Standing at little more than four feet tall, with a deformed, tattoo-covered body and ugly face, Simon Magus – or Jesus, as he later came to be known – wreaked unimaginable havoc on the people of his time and created a violent, vicious legacy that history has tried to hide. But nonetheless, through testimonies of unsophisticated people, these tales have lived on and became the basis of the modern Christian faith.

From what I gathered by cursory reading, Booysen explores the hypothesis that Jesus and Simon Magus are one and the same. He's supposed to have been born in ca. 28 BCE as a (bastard) son of Mariamne I --second wife of Herod the Great-- and his treasurer Joseph, and would have been conceived while Herod was summoned to appear before Marc Anthony. His 'crucifixion' which he survived would have taken place in ca. 21 AD at the age of 49.

I was reading about Simon the Magus the other day. I was catching up with the Marcion thread, and went to wiki to see who this Marcion was and what did he do, because I knew nothing about him. I was interested in knowing how he came up with his ideas, and in wiki it says:

According to anti-Marcionite sources, Marcion's teacher was the Simonian Cerdo. Irenaeus writes that "a certain Cerdo, originating from the Simonians, came to Rome under Hyginus ... and taught that the one who was proclaimed as God by the Law and the Prophets is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Against Heresies, 1, 27, 1).

So I clicked Cedro, to see who he was and what he stood for, which led me to this sentence among others:

Cerdo started out as a follower of Simon Magus.

And that's how I found him. If you read the wiki page on him, it is not clear to the researchers of today who this guy was

The different sources for information on Simon contain quite different pictures of him, so much so that it has been questioned whether they all refer to the same person.

but apparently he was contemporary of the apostles and he also did magic (which church fathers attribute to the assistance of the devils).

One of the stories by Justin the Martyr:

Justin Martyr (in his Apologies, and in a lost work against heresies, which Irenaeus used as his main source) and Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses) record that after being cast out by the Apostles, Simon Magus came to Rome where, having joined to himself a profligate woman of the name of Helen, he gave out that it was he who appeared among the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father and among other nations as the Holy Spirit. He performed such miracles by magic acts during the reign of Claudius that he was regarded as a god and honored with a statue on the island in the Tiber which the two bridges cross, with the inscription Simoni Deo Sancto, "To Simon the Holy God".

Of all the stories about him, this story about Helen stood out for me:

Myth of Simon and Helen

Justin and Irenaeus are the first to recount the myth of Simon and Helen, which became the center of Simonian doctrine. Epiphanius of Salamis also makes Simon speak in the first person in several places in his Panarion, and the inference is that he is quoting from a version of it, though perhaps not verbatim.

In the beginning God had his first thought, his Ennoia [=sense, meaning - see below also Sophia] , which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. The First Thought then descended into the lower regions and created the angels. But the angels rebelled against her out of jealousy and created the world as her prison, imprisoning her in a female body. Thereafter, she was reincarnated many times, each time being shamed. Her many reincarnations included Helen of Troy, among others, and she finally was reincarnated as Helen, a slave and prostitute in the Phoenician city of Tyre. God then descended in the form of Simon Magus, to rescue his Ennoia, and to confer salvation upon men through knowledge of himself.

"And on her account," he says, "did I come down; for this is that which is written in the Gospel 'the lost sheep'."[10]

For as the angels were mismanaging the world, owing to their individual lust for rule, he had come to set things straight, and had descended under a changed form, likening himself to the Principalities and Powers through whom he passed, so that among men he appeared as a man, though he was not a man, and was thought to have suffered in Judaea, though he had not suffered.

"But in each heaven I changed my form," says he, "in accordance with the form of those who were in each heaven, that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Thought, who is none other than her who is also called Prunikos and Holy Ghost, through whom I created the angels, while the angels created the world and men."[11]

But the prophets had delivered their prophecies under the inspiration of the world-creating angels: wherefore those who had their hope in him and in Helen minded them no more, and, as being free, did what they pleased; for men were saved according to his grace, but not according to just works. For works were not just by nature, but only by convention, in accordance with the enactments of the world-creating angels, who by precepts of this kind sought to bring men into slavery. Wherefore he promised that the world should be dissolved, and that those who were his should be freed from the dominion of the world-creators.

In this account of Simon there is a large portion common to almost all forms of Gnostic myths, together with something special to this form. They have in common the place in the work of creation assigned to the female principle, the conception of the Deity; the ignorance of the rulers of this lower world with regard to the Supreme Power; the descent of the female (Sophia) into the lower regions, and her inability to return. Special to the Simonian tale is the identification of Simon himself with the Supreme, and of his consort Helena with the female principle.

Now, in the Greek wiki, there's info that is not included in the English one, which is quite interesting in itself, but also the text, which reads:

Ο Σίμωνας ασκούσε το επάγγελμά του παρουσιάζοντας τα φανταστικά γεγονότα ως αληθινά με τη συνεργεία των δαιμόνων. Για παράδειγμα, στο απόκρυφο κείμενο "Πράξεις Πέτρου" (2ος αι. μ.Χ.), αναφέρεται μία νεκρανάσταση που έκανε ο Σίμων ο Μάγος, η οποία όμως ήταν ψευδο-θαύμα που οφειλόταν σε "μαγεία" και οφθαλμαπάτη των παρευρισκομένων. Το γεγονός αυτό παρουσιάζεται σε αντίθεση με όσα έπραξε ο Απόστολος Πέτρος, που με πραγματική δύναμη θεού ανάστησε τελικά τον νεκρό.

Για να εντυπωσιάσει το ακροατήριό του, έκανε ανδριάντες να περπατούν, έμπαινε στην πυρά χωρίς να καίγεται, πετούσε, μετέβαλλε τις πέτρες σε ψωμί, γινόταν φίδι, διπρόσωπος, μεταβαλλόταν σε χρυσό, άνοιγε κλειστές θύρες, διέλυε σιδερένια δεσμά, στα δείπνα ζωντάνευε τα είδωλα, έκανε τα σκεύη να κινούνται μόνα τους, δημιουργούσε σκιές που πήγαιναν μπροστά του, όταν βάδιζε. Σύμφωνα με την παράδοση, σε όσους δεν τον πίστευαν, προξενούσε ασθένειες καλώντας τους δαίμονες και βασανιστήρια με τη βοήθεια των πνευμάτων του Κακού.

Simon pursued his profession presenting fantastic events as true with the aid of demons. For example, the apocryphal text "Acts of Peter" (2nd cent. AD), naming a resurrection that Simon Magus performed, but it was pseudo-miracle due to "magic" and optical illusion. This is in contrast to what Apostle Peter did, who with true god power he resurrected the dead.

To impress his audience he [Simon] made statues to walk, entered the fire without burning, he could fly, turned stones into bread, turned himself into a snake, could duplicate himself, change himself into gold, opened closed doors, shattered iron fetters, during dinners he would give life to idols, made the dishes to move by themselves, create shadows that went before him when walking. According to tradition, to those who did not believe in him, he caused diseases by calling on the demons and caused torture with the help of the spirits of evil.

There's also a German Christian theologian from the 19th century, Ferdinand Christian Baur, who believes that Simon the magus was Paul:

Simon Magus and Paul

Ferdinand Christian Baur, the founder of the "Tübingen School" of New Testament criticism, rested his ideas about the New Testament on the Clementines, and his ideas about the Clementines on St. Epiphanius, who found the writings used by an Ebionite sect in the 4th century. This Judeo-Christian sect at that date rejected St. Paul as an apostate. It was assumed that this 4th century opinion represented the Christianity of the Twelve Apostles; Paulinism was originally a heresy, and a schism from the Jewish Christianity of James and Peter and the rest; Marcion was a leader of the Pauline sect in its survival in the 2nd century, using only the Pauline Gospel, St. Luke (in its original form), and the Epistles of St. Paul (without the Pastoral Epistles). The Clementine literature had its first origin in the Apostolic Age, and belonged to the original Jewish, Petrine, legal Church. It is directed wholly against St. Paul and his sect. Simon Magus never existed; it is a nickname for St. Paul. The Acts of the Apostles, compiled in the 2nd century, have borrowed their mention of Simon from the earliest form of the Clementines. Catholicism under the presidency of Rome was the result of the adjustment between the Petrine and Pauline sections of the Church in the second half of the 2nd century. The Fourth Gospel is a monument of this reconciliation, in which Rome took a leading part, having invented the fiction that both Peter and Paul were the founders of her Church, both having been martyred at Rome, and on the same day, in perfect union.

Throughout the middle of the 19th century this theory, in many forms, was dominant in Germany. The demonstration, mainly by English scholars, of the impossibility of the late dates ascribed to the New Testament documents (four Epistles of St. Paul and the Apocalypse were the only documents generally admitted as being of early date), and the proofs of the authenticity of the Apostolic Fathers and of the use of St. John's Gospel by Justin, Papias, and Ignatius gradually brought Baur's theories into discredit. Of the original school, Adolf Hilgenfeld may be considered the last survivor (died 1907). He was induced many years ago to admit that Simon Magus was a real personage, though he persists that in the Clementines he is meant for St. Paul.

More for links and stuff in original wiki pages. And the above is just wiki search, no deep research, just trying to get a clue who these characters were and what they were up to.

 

[Palinurus]

You can skip the OT re-write of Josephus and just start with the Maccabees.

Laura, with all due respect I've just finished the whole of Antiquities as was already mentioned in the database thread here. I'm now reading Against Apion to finish things off.

@Alana:
Thank you for compiling this info and sharing it with us.

I've read the Marcion topic as it was unfolding but had nothing to offer as of yet, but I agree: very interesting thoughts there to ponder on, for sure.

Simon Magus is one of those enigmatic figures about whom a lot of legendary stories do the rounds -- each of which mirrors the contemporary Zeitgeist through those who retold and often embellished them. Therefore, most of those legends reveal more about what people were want to believe rather than that they tell us anything useful about Simon Magus himself. Caveat lector! (Reader beware!).

 

[Deleted member 9511]

39a Jesus said: The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys to knowledge and have hidden them. they did not go in, and they did not permit those desiring to go in to enter.

39b You should be clever as snakes and as innocent as doves.

Sayings from The Gospel of Thomas translation by Steven Davies

Just thought to flip it open as it's been a touchstone for me for the last few weeks, and that's what popped out.

I have recently read "Caesar's Messiah" and part of "Jesus was Caesar". Stopped reading Carotta's work for no good reason other than I concluded that he had assembled quality information and the conclusion was sound. That's not to say it has to be believed, but sound nonetheless. Clearly their are connections to the institution of Christianity and Roman antiquity. It baffles me that so many otherwise smart people refuse to question such unsubstantiated beliefs, except it doesn't.

So I have my own belief, which is that the teachings, the so-called 30% that is valid to some extent per C's comments, actually came from some wise rabbi, sage, master, yogi, someone from the esoteric center. That someone, I believe, was a real person who taught capital-T Truth. For me, whoever was the basis of the Jesus myth is irrelevant. All the competing theories are like so many grains of sand on a beach. Why look over any of them, much less count them all if you are really interested in looking for gold? That it is a myth doesn't bother me, though it is a bit bothersome that folks "have taken the keys to knowledge and have hidden them." I don't want to know who hid them, though it can be fun to do so, I must admit. Rather, I just want to know where to find them and what they are. And if there was such a person once, likely there are and have always been such persons around who are still able to impart the Truth, as a living master, embodying that Truth, perhaps even a higher being than Jesus was supposed to be. I believe we have this personalized, yet individualized consciousness, soul fragment incarnate, that is part of the whole and necessarily not separate from the whole (in spite of the frustrating situation in which I find myself experiencing this mystery otherwise). Why wouldn't the same be true for personalized, yet not-individualized consciousness, un-fragmented soul incarnate? As above so below? As below so above - soul incarnate:jiva::Holy Spirit Incarnate:Atman.

Having written that, I open a book I am reading (re-reading really, read it once and now more studying it, looking for clues, so to speak), not quite randomly, but to a chapter I looked over this morning. I knew there was a reference in that chapter to propaganda and its role in creating and perpetuating collective karma, so I was looking for it. Instead, this sentence jumped off the page:

"The genuine seeker will eventually find the genuine teacher." from the chapter titled "Indra's Pearls" in the book "The Truth Will Set You Free" by Svami Purna

 

[Laura]

A couple of useful books for expanding the information field are Robert M. Price's "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" and "The Amazing Colossal Apostle" about Paul and which has a lot of side info about Simon Magus.

 

[Deleted member 9511]

All the competing theories are like so many grains of sand on a beach. Why look over any of them, much less count them all if you are really interested in looking for gold?

A pebble of truth is gold while a pile of lies is nothing but sand.

- Laura Knight-Jadczyk

 

[clerck de bonk]

All the competing theories are like so many grains of sand on a beach. Why look over any of them, much less count them all if you are really interested in looking for gold?

A pebble of truth is gold while a pile of lies is nothing but sand.

- Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Grains of Gold are usually hidden in sand ;)

 

[Lumiere_du_Code]

is the answer to this post
---

The thing is that I've never been a religious man - my "religion" was the mystery of Cosmos.
I have since the earliest childhood felt that the temple are only inside, that I do not need any special places and "God guides" for me to feel it. I just know that there is something infinite, the essence of everything, and I knew it as 'Cosmic Mind', the phenomenon of cosmic order (type). I was able to communicate with my soul and with some unknown force, internally I received answers to some of their deepest questions, it is something like "silent knowledge" by Castaneda, when you just KNOW something that does not need in any interpretations and transformation into words - it comes from the inside, an incredibly strong sense; and then over time I have found evidence of this in a variety of sources and in life situations, in many mystical Experiences, reading signs and symbols, which I have often watched, I just made sure that it was all true, those answers and thoughts that come to me, that I was thinking.

I always internally realized that was not the crucifixion, and there was no resurrection, and the story of Pontius Pilate seemed to me terrible in its description, it tore away me. although I do not read the Bible as a whole, I read in parts only to reflect over the read, comparing it with own inner feelings and responses. I knew all these Testaments and similar religious books as a very different world, not this one, it was like a fantasy invented a separate reality - so I perceived Christian literature. and the churches has always aroused in me disgust, especially the cult of relics / human remains of "saints" - I did not understand how a person in his right mind can take these things and do it too. Conversely, churches seemed to me as a havens for opposing force - the dark power that hangs over all present there, on those who "believe."

and to my 8-9 years, I finally saw what a terrible in its understanding the illusion of a separate sitting somewhere in heaven an old man who having fun viewing of the play "Humanity", which justified as "a loving Creator," while hundreds of phrases in the Bible describe it anger, that he a jealous God, and punishes anyone who in any way retreating from his dictations. it could not be the truth, and I finally threw from myself this religious nonsense. I clearly saw how people are brainwashed by these illusions, truly making them slaves, who are proud of their slavery and unquestioning obedience and acceptance of any action against them. on my birthday when I was 9, I realized this, and this understanding was like a sudden deafening thunder, everything went black and collapsed in an instant. (I repeat, I was a child, when I got this understanding.)

Nevertheless, I have always tried to act according to conscience - it was and still is my strongest feeling - in fact, according to the principles of Christianity about caring for others, good deeds, etc. I knew and was aware about "sides" - "good" and "evil", and I was determined to belong to the "light side", as I understand it (though I experiencing "dark", sometimes terrible things and feelings - but it's a separate issue). since kindergarten, I always was very interesting - what it's like to be other people, for example, why I am not my brother or my friend or casual passers-by, an old man on a bench in the courtyard - these thoughts fully occupied me, I tried to be transported into the consciousness of others, look through their eyes, to feel what they feel... I was very curious and insatiable hunger to receive information of interest to me. :)

several times I felt something like a full merger with everything, with every blade of grass, every insect, with the whole world and that was out of world - and this powerful sense of instantaneous illuminating understanding needs no explanations; only after decay of these sensations turned on the mind and tried to figure out what it was, how it could be called. and I figured it was like approximate sense of true "God", nirvana, state of omnipresence - when you are all that is.

Thus, Jesus of the Bible did not exist for me, I did not make any definitive conclusions about this character - I just accepted the fact that one way or another has definitely been a mystic, a person with extensive knowledge, and for me it was a code - Christ was encryption, containing in itself discoveries leading to the answers and attainment of knowledge - that's how I perceived this.

and now, when, after the sessions with Cas about "Christ", about Caesar, from which it followed that he was his prototype, and then figuring out what those answers about the "Christ" in the early sessions - I just wanted to make sure was there someone actually existed under the description that the Cassiopaeans gave in their answers, or is it too was messed up; and thus, "Christ" as a person does not exist - it was only a collective image. I just wanted to finally clarify this for myself, make the point.

forgive me if I'm somewhere made mistakes in translation of my thoughts from Russian into English :)

 

[Laura]

I just thought I'd try to give a little update on the research that I'll soon be writing about more extensively. When I start the serious writing process, obviously, things will become a bit more clear, but for the moment, these are the things that seem to be standing out.

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.

Moving along to the times after the Roman Civil war, it seems that there were a number of currents messianic hopes going around back in those days. One was from the Greco-Roman world, and another was Judaic. I'm not sure that you can call it Jewish precisely because what we know as Judaism pretty much congealed AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem.

Anyway, Philo of Alexandria had some familiarity with these trends which also tended to try to interpret the Septuagint in Platonic/Pythagorean terms. The purpose was obviously to show that the Jewish religion or history or whatever, was even more ancient that that of the Greeks and very ridiculous claims were made such as Moses being the teacher of Pythagoras. These types were very interested in exegesis, finding new meanings in OT scriptures, and one of the meanings some of them may have developed was the idea of a "new covenant" in spiritual (Platonic) realms that they could all become part of. I'll unpack those threads when I start writing. But mainly, I think you can see this development in the text of Hebrews. It was kind of a precursor of Docetism, only it posits a Jesus that never, ever was physical. He was a heavenly being who messed around in heavenly spheres (there were several of those "levels") and his actions there were effective on earth in the Platonic manner.

In Dio Cassius and Tacitus, there are instances of "resurrection hopes" being raised in a couple of weird incidents that seem to be part of the stew which I will also unpack. Interestingly, Josephus also writes about these sorts of things though the characters in his stories are different.

There are a number of very odd references in Tacitus and Dio Cassius to unusual or "foreign" religious rites/beliefs that may more truly represent a noticing of early "Christian" activities than any interpolated, blatant reference to Christians.

It's pretty certain that the reference to Pilate and Christ(ians) in Tacitus is interpolated as well as the reference to Nero blaming the fire of Rome on Christians. When the interpolation is removed, the text flows smoothly and follows that of Dio Cassius which excludes any mention of Christians. Though that doesn't mean that some of the early followers of "foreign superstitions" didn't get blamed.

The idea of being resurrected from the dead spiritually (not physically) appears to have been a known theme as early as late 1st century BC so it wasn't novel for the Jesus story.

There were several figures that came to make up the Jewish Jesus including a "Jesus" from the time of Alexander Jannaeus (104-76 BC) and Matthias who was executed in 4 BC after the "Golden Eagle Temple Cleansing" and later, Judas of Galilee. The evidence doesn't get us right NEXT to this, but everything surrounding it suggests that there was a group of rebels whose leader was executed and who began telling tales of having seen and communicated with him ethereally and this was spread amongst the rebels as a means of bolstering their courage and determination to overthrow the Romans. But they were strictly observant Jews (more strict than the ruling elite who they despised for having sold out to the Romans) and there is no whiff that they thought their reappearing leader was any kind of god or anything other than a prophetic spirit that was telling them that the true Messiah would come and lead the Jews to a very material victory over Rome.

Interestingly, Julian year 1 corresponds to Hebrew year 3762, placing the "birth of Jesus" around 90 BC. This is close to the actual birthdate of Caesar as we measure it, 100 BC. So, that's another oddity.

Marcion, according to Tertullian, said that Christ "came down" from heaven "in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius".

The pseudepigraphical letter of Pilate to Claudius says that Jesus was crucified in the reign of Claudius instead of Tiberius. This author disagrees with Irenaeus who thought that Jesus lived into his late 40s.

So, these things attest to different "messianic figures".

Paul was obviously exposed to not only the Qumran messianic themes, but also an early form of Docetic Christianity. He may even have been influenced by texts similar to Hebrews. Well, that text is attributed to him, but it's pretty certain that he didn't write it; the theology is different, the Christology is different; but the similarities are enough to make you go "Hmmm?!"

Paul was also obviously exposed to the Mystery Religions and may even have been present at a Mystery Play of a Caesar cult.

Well, there's more, but I can't sit any longer right now.

 

[cliftonedward]

There is something more that needs to be discovered about the C's comment regarding the mostly forgotten stoic philosopher. Is this Jesinavarah? Are some of the bible Jesus sayings attributed to him? Just how much of a role did this stoic philosopher play?