Jesus is Caesar deified

[neilgodfrey]

Here is a comment I just received. I am sharing it because it helpfully brings out some of the background ideas behind the Christ Caesar identity hypothesis.

Must you ALWAYS be so quick to judge the minds and motives of others? I don't know steve43 from a bar of soap but I immediately presumed he had some methodological grounds for not accepting much later literature as evidence for earlier times. Trust someone somewhere to jump to the obnoxious conclusion that antisemitism was at the core of this!

Maybe it was, but we don't know -- you are only once again gratuitously mind-reading. I do wish you'd stop it -- not only towards me but to everyone you seem to find disagreement with.

I must confess, yes I did read the statement "Anyone citing the Talmud on ANYTHING gets my deaf ear and an automatic fail" as a rather vicious and direct piece of anti-Semitism at a level I rarely see. I am sorry for anyone who fails to see why "deaf ear and automatic fail to the entire Talmud" might be construed as anti-Semitic. After all, the Talmud only contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of Jewish rabbis on law, ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics. And discussion of it was introduced rather gratuitously into this thread, with no reason or context, except to say we should ignore it (presumably because it is inconvenient for the Caesar idea?).

But I do get why someone who thought maybe Jesus was Caesar would be sympathetic to saying citation of the Talmud deserves a deaf ear. You probably do need to be quite anti-Semitic to entirely dismiss the whole body of Jewish lore in the way that is required for the Caesar idea.

Hmmm. Is it really "obnoxious" to ask if "turn a deaf ear to the Talmud" is anti-Semitic? That looks cut and dried to me.

You do seem to have difficulty seeing a range of alternative explanations, whether it's explaining Christian origins or people's motives. If it's not X it has to be Y, with you. You do exclude a lot of middles in both areas.

[Ulan]

Hmmm. Is it really "obnoxious" to ask if "turn a deaf ear to the Talmud" is anti-Semitic? That looks cut and dried to me.

I read this more as that the author thought that the Talmud doesn't really add anything to a historical discussion, as the historicity of most of its explanations is questionable. I could think of a few other interpretations, but antisemitism did not cross my mind.

It doesn't really matter that much, as nobody used the Talmud to explain anything.

[Jay]

It doesn't really matter that much, as nobody used the Talmud to explain anything.

But we can. For example, the Talmud does mention Christ, and it says that he's the son of a Roman. The Talmud can also tell us that certain passages in the Gospel (or their interpretations by Christians) are correct or false, e.g. when Christ talks about the cock crowing in the passion narrative. That's not a reference to a real animal, because chicken were not allowed in the city area, so the Talmud (i.e. the Mishnah) tells us. Therefore it would be Christ using the Roman terminology for the night watches (gallicinium, secundum gallicinium etc.), even though the Jews had their own terminology, which we know from the Jewish bible. In that same vein: the Mishnah tells us that there were three night watches in Jewish culture, but Christ uses the Roman division by four, in a private ritual context nonetheless.

So to some extent the Jewish sources can be important, not only for Biblical criticism in general, but as well for the Caesar theory. The Septuagint is important to see which Jewish passages the editorial teams of the NT used to anchor the Roman histories in their new Palestinian context, which is a rather small amount in Mk anyway. But those are just flavors, it's editorial stuff, it has nothing to do with the original transposition of the story. For that original diegetic transposition, you don't need the Septuagint, the Mishnah etc., you only need the Christian sources and the Caesar sources.

[Jay]

Here is a comment I just received. I am sharing it because it helpfully brings out some of the background ideas behind the Christ Caesar identity hypothesis.

Must you ALWAYS be so quick to judge the minds and motives of others? I don't know steve43 from a bar of soap but I immediately presumed he had some methodological grounds for not accepting much later literature as evidence for earlier times. Trust someone somewhere to jump to the obnoxious conclusion that antisemitism was at the core of this!

Maybe it was, but we don't know -- you are only once again gratuitously mind-reading. I do wish you'd stop it -- not only towards me but to everyone you seem to find disagreement with.

I must confess, yes I did read the statement "Anyone citing the Talmud on ANYTHING gets my deaf ear and an automatic fail" as a rather vicious and direct piece of anti-Semitism at a level I rarely see. I am sorry for anyone who fails to see why "deaf ear and automatic fail to the entire Talmud" might be construed as anti-Semitic. After all, the Talmud only contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of Jewish rabbis on law, ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics. And discussion of it was introduced rather gratuitously into this thread, with no reason or context, except to say we should ignore it (presumably because it is inconvenient for the Caesar idea?).

But I do get why someone who thought maybe Jesus was Caesar would be sympathetic to saying citation of the Talmud deserves a deaf ear. You probably do need to be quite anti-Semitic to entirely dismiss the whole body of Jewish lore in the way that is required for the Caesar idea.

Hmmm. Is it really "obnoxious" to ask if "turn a deaf ear to the Talmud" is anti-Semitic? That looks cut and dried to me.

You do seem to have difficulty seeing a range of alternative explanations, whether it's explaining Christian origins or people's motives. If it's not X it has to be Y, with you. You do exclude a lot of middles in both areas.

But I can understand Robert to a certain extent. I have asked myself similar questions: what will people think (think of me), when I tell them what Christian-origins-theory I propose/support? Apart from the fact that they hear me saying "the historical Jesus was Julius Caesar", and most of them will think I'm batsh*t crazy , some might actually wonder, whether there is some anti-semitic motivation. I guess it's not the usual reaction, but an understandable one, depending on a person's individual approach to the NT. There are a lot of people who are deeply rooted in this modern Judaeo-Christian approach. I'm not saying you are, Robert, but people with this vantage point are probably more inclined to suspect anti-semitism. But here's a small counter-argument: when literary scholars say that the original figure behind Leopold Bloom is not a Jewish doctor in Dublin, but an ancient Greek hero called Odysseus, who was clearly not a Jew, does it then mean that these scholars are driven by anti-semitism?

[steve43]

The Talmud was first compiled at least three hundred years after the beginnings of Christianity and we do not know the authors and what they were really referring to.

To be called "anti-Semetic" is an expected ad homenim by someone who is trying to spin the ancient history in the direction they desire.

On the other hand, I am a huge fan of Josephus. Does that make me a "pro-Semite?" It should.

Attempting to discredit oeven question Josephus based on the Talmud is sheer intellectual dishonesty and smacks of agenda-ism.

[Jay]

The beginning of the Mishnah is in the later part of the second century, derived from the oral traditions of the Judaeans. That's early enough.

[Ulan]

It doesn't really matter that much, as nobody used the Talmud to explain anything.

But we can. For example, the Talmud does mention Christ, and it says that he's the son of a Roman. The Talmud can also tell us that certain passages in the Gospel (or their interpretations by Christians) are correct or false, e.g. when Christ talks about the cock crowing in the passion narrative. That's not a reference to a real animal, because chicken were not allowed in the city area, so the Talmud (i.e. the Mishnah) tells us. Therefore it would be Christ using the Roman terminology for the night watches (gallicinium, secundum gallicinium etc.), even though the Jews had their own terminology, which we know from the Jewish bible. In that same vein: the Mishnah tells us that there were three night watches in Jewish culture, but Christ uses the Roman division by four, in a private ritual context nonetheless.

Even if this is an interesting detail, it doesn't mean that much. Most biblical scholars don't assume that the author of this gospel was living in Jerusalem or ever visited the city in his life, given the sparse detail. Much of the text doesn't betray great knowledge of Jewish customs, either. Even the standard catholic origin story does not assume this. However, the author could be any diaspora Jew or gentile convert, living somewhere in the Roman Empire, while writing in Greek and having a good knowledge of the Septuaginta. That's why I have to chuckle when the "Jesus said..." card is drawn, as this has a fundamentalist ring to it (I don't mean you as fundamentalist, just the way this argument goes).

As I said, what I find missing from this whole Jesus as Cesar business is the motivation. I have no idea why and for what purpose anyone would want to do this, especially in times where the connection to Jews wasn't exactly seen favorably. I have much less problems with the later stuff, like the issue with Longinus, when Christian legend building met other traditions and wove those into their own stories. Which by the way is my own issue with the Talmud as source, as it's late and was written when Judaism defined itself in a new way. We tend to forget that, during the rise of Christianity, Judaism had a similar problem with having to re-invent itself, which means that many texts in the Talmud may be understood from their battle with Christianity. Smearing the opponent was par for the course at that time.

[Jay]

I agree for the most part. For the record: when I say "Christ said" etc., I'm referring to the character in the gospel narrative. I don't mean that as biographical/historical.

If the author of the gospel (in fact there were surely lots of authors & editors over the generations) had been a diaspora Jew, it would be very hard to explain why he would diegetically transpose Caesar's history as the story of Christ. But to be balanced, Caesar had lots of Jewish followers, and some even fought for him in the civil war, they probably even projected their passover rituals onto him at his funeral, so maybe there were some Jews among the first gospel editors, i.e. among the veteran cultists (see below). But to support the hypothesis of a Jewish origin, we would have to find a lot more septuagintisms in the texts, whereas in reality the gospels (especially the earliest Gospel of Mark) are surprisingly "un-Jewish", ignorant of Jewish customs and laws, even of the Palestinian topology etc. Only in later gospels (Mt, Lk) the septuagintisms receive more weight, which has led scholars to postulate a de-judaization (i.e. hellenization/paganization) of the Ur-Mk, which then got lost completely, without even some traces in other later Christian sources, without any testimonies, then followed by a re-judaization in the later synoptics. Occam's Razor would clearly suggest that there was no paganization, but that the original already was a pagan source.

As to the motivation, I don't really find that's a necessary question. Intention may be more relevant, if at all. You had Caesar's soldiers who fought for him (and Antonius and Octavian) in the civil wars, the veterans settling down after their tours of duty, not only in Italy, but especially in the eastern part of the empire, and they followed the cult of the deified Caesar in their new settlements, which (by the way) wasn't the official imperial cult version at first. (This came later, starting in 42 BC, I believe.) They needed the histories, of course, or rather a digest version, maybe a shortened compendium for the liturgy etc. So they copy-edited the original, i.e. Roman/Latin sources, and as time progressed, they also needed to translate it into Greek, because their descendants weren't soldiers anymore, so they knew mostly Greek, and only little Latin. But the original translators' knowledge of Latin and Greek wasn't too good to begin with, them being simple soldiers, veterans from Gaul, Germany and all over the place, so lots of errors happened in the transposition process. More editing and copying over the generations led not only to more mistakes, but also to a gradual relocation of the story from Rome to Palestine. The important aspect would be the need to adapt the story in terms of geography, culture and era, and to turn the center character into one of their own, to make the story of their god and commander relatable and understandable for the common man in the eastern colonies. The result could be called a mutated theopolitical founding myth of the Julio-Claudians, as seen through the veterans' eyes, reflected in the eastern mirror. When the Flavians entered the scene, the Jewish aspects naturally became more important, because the Flavians had laid the foundations of their imperial reign in Palestine, in the Jewish War, with recruitments from Caesarian veteran colonies as well. The new Flavian realities then surely influenced the final Gospel redactions, e.g. the judaization of the story in the later synoptics etc. (But we have to keep in mind that these "judaizations" are quite superficial, not relevant to the story or the characters, just a local color; but it's still something you need when you diegetically transpose a story.)

[Ulan]

But to support the hypothesis of a Jewish origin, we would have to find a lot more septuagintisms in the texts, whereas in reality the gospels (especially the earliest Gospel of Mark) are surprisingly "un-Jewish", ignorant of Jewish customs and laws, even of the Palestinian topology etc. Only in later gospels (Mt, Lk) the septuagintisms receive more weight, which has led scholars to postulate a de-judaization (i.e. hellenization/paganization) of the Ur-Mk, which then got lost completely, without even some traces in other later Christian sources, without any testimonies, then followed by a re-judaization in the later synoptics. Occam's Razor would clearly suggest that there was no paganization, but that the original already was a pagan source.

I don't think this is correct. Quite the opposite actually. Mark follows most closely the language of the Septuagint from all gospels. I don't remember the quote, but I think he only uses 50 words or so that are not in the Septuagint, whereas all other gospels show more signs of literary independence. We also have to keep in mind that most Jews of that time were hellenized. At one point, Alexandria had Jews as about a third of its population. Most Jews did not live in Palestine, and most Christian movements didn't originate there. The "official" Paul is a diaspora Jew, and the one the scholars recognize probably didn't know any Hebrew. Regarding use of the Septuagint, most of the quotes in gMark are not overt. They just form parts of the verses.

But we have to keep in mind that these "judaizations" are quite superficial, not relevant to the story or the characters, just a local color; but it's still something you need when you diegetically transpose a story.)

I already said that I don't see this. Mark uses the Septuagint much more closely and more correctly than the other gospel authors. Also, while we don't see the idea of the dying messiah as a Jewish one, this just shows our limitation to the views of certain Jewish sects. If I understood it correctly, the Essenes seemed to be fine with such a notion, and in principle, gMark is a typical Jewish apocalypse.

All this discussion doesn't mean that it cannot have happened the way you described it in the part I cut out of the quote, I just don't see any hints that this has happened. We have some similarities in words and dates, all of which don't mean much by themselves. Is there anything tangible available to support such a concept, except simple similarities in spelling patterns and burial rites?

[andrewcriddle]

But we can. For example, the Talmud does mention Christ, and it says that he's the son of a Roman. The Talmud can also tell us that certain passages in the Gospel (or their interpretations by Christians) are correct or false, e.g. when Christ talks about the cock crowing in the passion narrative. That's not a reference to a real animal, because chicken were not allowed in the city area, so the Talmud (i.e. the Mishnah) tells us. Therefore it would be Christ using the Roman terminology for the night watches (gallicinium, secundum gallicinium etc.), even though the Jews had their own terminology, which we know from the Jewish bible. In that same vein: the Mishnah tells us that there were three night watches in Jewish culture, but Christ uses the Roman division by four, in a private ritual context nonetheless.

In order for the position of the Mishnah on chickens in Jerusalem to conflict with the Gospels, it is necessary not only that a group of pre-70 CE Jews held this position, but that all pre-70 CE Jews held this position (or at the very least those who held this position forced the others to comply.)

In theory pre-70 CE Pharisees might have strongly disapproved of the high priest keeping a flock of chickens. without being able to do anything about it.

(It has been argued that archaeology supports the presence of chickens in Jerusalem at the relevant period see stone and dung )

Andrew Criddle