Download - Introit to the English edition of Jesus was Caesar

8/14/2019 Introit to the English edition of Jesus was Caesar

1/13

Jesus was Caesar Introit to the English edition

Francesco Carotta, Kirchzarten, Germany

2005, Uitgeverij Aspekt b.v., Soesterberg, The Nederlands

__________________________________

This is a research report. However, it is written so that it can be easilyunderstood by the interested layperson.

The impetus for this study was an article published in 1959 by R. Herbig, entitledNeue Studien zur Ikonographie des Gaius Iulius Caesar. It was apparent from thisarticle that the preserved images of Caesar did not correspond to the mental imagewe hold of him. The triggering factor for the book in hand was the sight ofCaesars portrait in the Torlonia Museum (cf. ill. 8, 10, 12, 17) and ErikaSimons comment that it might be the head of the statue that Antonius had placedon the Rostra after the assassination of Caesar. It bore the inscription Parentioptime meritoto the most meritorious parent, in order to awaken feelings of bothpity and revenge in the observer. In function and expression the Torlonia headresembled the sorrowful face of Christ in the Piet and since Pietrepresentations are typical for Jesus Christ but not for Julius Caesar, thequestion arose as to whether the later Jesus borrowed other elements from theearlier Caesar.

Asked about this, theologians said it was not surprising since even emperorVespasianus was reported to have healed the blind and crippled, exactly asdescribed in the stories about Jesus. Such things were simply expected from theemperors charisma. Curious because of this, the author started investigating.

As a linguist and computer scientist he felt himself addressed professionally.Because he soon noticed that both curricula vitae, that of Caesar and that ofJesus, ran parallel. He also found that the names of people and places hardlydifferentiate in either report: Gallia and Galilaea, Corfinium and Cafarnaum,Junius and Judas, Mria and Mara, Nicomedes of Bithynia and Nicodemus ofBethania, Pontifex Lepidus and Pontius Pilatus, etc. In addition, he noticed thatother names, dissimilar to each other, seemed to be translations: the Caecilii asthe blind, the Claudii as the lame, Metellus as mutilated, the man with a witheredhand. And those conquered by Caesar are found again, as those healed by Jesus. Andthose besieged by Caesar are possessed in the Jesus storywhereby it was noticedthat besieged and possessed are both obsessus in Latin. Even the respectivefigures close to them correspond with each other. For example, Caesars precursorand opponent, the great Pompeius, was beheaded and his head presented in a dish,and the very same thing happens to John the Baptist.

There are differences to be ascertained. Both were murdered; Caesar, however, wasstabbed while Jesus was crucifiedbut with a stab wound in his side. A CassiusLonginus gave Caesar the deadly stab with a dagger, while Jesus was stabbed with alance on the crossbut also by a Longinus! (This Longinus became a saint, and hisfeast day is on March 15the same date as the ides of March, on which Caesar wasmurdered by the homonymous Longinus). Caesars corpse was burned unlike Jesus,but it was shown to the people as a wax figure hanging on a cross-shaped tropaeum.And cremo in Latin means to cremate, but the similar sounding Greek word krem


2/13

means to hang, to crucify.

So, in the history of Caesar and Jesus, people and places have the same names. Buteven more important is the fact that these names appear in the same order. Andthis also applies to famous citations. Often verbatim:

Caesar: Who is not on any side, is on my side. Jesus: Who is not against us, heis for us.Caesar: I am not King, I am Caesar. About Jesus: We have no king but Caesar.Caesar: The best death is a sudden death. Jesus: What you will do (i. e. leadme to death) do quickly.Caesar: Oh, have I saved them, that they may destroy me? About Jesus: He savedothers, himself he cannot save.Sometimes with a small, discreet shift of meaning:Caesar: Alea iacta estoCast the die. Jesus: Cast out, fisher whereby theGreek word (h)aleeis, fisher, instead of the Latin word alea, die, is used.Caesar: Veni vidi viciI came, I saw, I conquered. And in the Jesus story theblind man, who has been healed, says: I came, washed and saw, whereby enipsa, Iwashed, replaces enikisa, I conquered.

In addition it turned out that contradictions in the Gospels became understandableif they were traced back to the Caesar sources. The Galilean Sea for example,which is made up of fresh water and is thus not a sea, is named correctlyhowever, because it is originally the Gallic Sea, a part of the Adriatic.

Finally, all the symbols of Christianity are anticipated in the cult of DivusIulius, the posthumously deified Caesar: the titles (God, Son of God, theAlmighty, the Merciful, the Savior or Redeemer, etc.); the Mother of God; thecross in all its variations; the crucified one; the face on the Piet; the crownof thorns; the long hair; the beard, the loincloth; the rod; the halo; the star ofBethlehem; the resurrection; the ascension, etc.

Thus, recognizing they were actually one and the same story became unavoidable. Toanticipate the result: Jesus proves to be Divus Iulius, the deified Caesar, passeddown in tradition.This discovery is not completely new. In the 50s the German theologian EthelbertStauffer noted that the Easter liturgy did not follow the Gospel narrative, butthe funeral ritual of Caesar. Unfortunately, only his early work Christ and theCaesars was translated into English, not his later Jerusalem and Rome whichstated things more clearly. What is new is the proof presented in this study thatthe entire Gospel is a mutated history of the Roman Civil War, from the Rubicon tothe assassination and burial of Caesar, i. e. from the Jordan to the capture andthe crucifixion of Jesus. The basis of the Marcan Gospel is to be looked for inthe Historiae of Asinius Pollio. His Historiae are lost to us, but were used byAppianus and Plutarchus, sometimes copied word for word, allowing for a comparisonwith the Gospel of Mark.

In our studywhich lasted more than ten years because the author was anentrepreneur in information systems and a publisher during that time, and couldconduct research only in his spare timewe have often taken direct routes,detours, and even wrong turns because of general assumptions that proved to bemisleading. For example, the communis opinio that Jesus never wrote anything andthat the Gospels were preached for a long time before anyone wrote them down. Thislatter assumption led to the idea that there was a grapevine form of communicationwhich proved to be incorrect. The mistakes and distortions in the passing downoccurred in the copying and translation process, in the written much more than theoral transmission. Some of these direct routes and detours can still be recognized


3/13

in the text of this book. That should not irritate readers, but allow them tofollow the study as it develops. While reading it should be taken intoconsideration that some hypotheses have been refined and reformulated during thecourse of the research.

In order to not reinvent the wheel, the results of others were drawn upon wherepossible and appropriate. Nave or bigoted readers who take interpolations ofclassical texts by ecclesiastical hand seriously, such as the so-calledTestimonium Flavianum or the supposed mention of Christ in Tacitus or Suetonius,and unwittinglyor against ones better judgementaccept them as pure fact, havecome to the wrong place: for we will not fight nor defend windmills. Butsupposedly progressive people who think that the Gospels are only fabricated fairytales will also learn otherwise. The Gospels, even if naively distorted anddisguised, are true history just as the Church has always maintained. We ask thereader to read with an open mind, or to simply not read it at all.

The results of this investigation are not a matter of debate anyway, and beingobjective facts cannot be argued away. Just as the earth does not stop rotating onits axis simply because the Church had such trouble getting along with Galileo orbecause we continue to speak romantically of sunsets, Jesus does not stop beingDivus Iulius simply because obscurantists today, once again, do not want it to betrue, or because believers continue to habitually name him so in prayer, as non-believers do in curses.

The reader might ask why the disclosure presented here has not spread likewildfire if it is valid, or why the whole world is not talking about it. This hasbeen and is discussed, among other places on our website(www.carotta.de/forum.html). Mainly two reasons have been supposed.

The first is that hardly anyone dares to stand up for a theory they do not feelcompetent in. Nowadays there is such specialization of knowledge that it isdifficult to find anyone who possesses equal knowledge of both Caesar and Jesus,and is at the same time familiar with all the historical, archeological, text-critical, philological, linguistic and methodological questions involved, and whois also trained in logic and well versed in Latin as well as Greek or Aramaic,etc. All honest scholars reach a point where they say: as far as my area ofexpertise is concerned the information is correct, but I cannot speak for theother areas involved. This, of course, allows the dishonest the opportunity toappear as if they know better and claim that everything rests on shakyfoundations, giving overly cautious decision makers on historical and religiousquestions in the media an excuse for not touching that hot potato themselves, butleaving it to others.

The second reason is that this discovery requires a paradigm shift: away fromgeocentricity towards heliocentricity, away from the supposed centrality of theso-called Holy Land, back to that which today is easily forgottenthe RomanEmpire. There are many things preventing this conversion. One would have toadmit that Christianity was already subject to deception early on, and that thehistory of the deceptions which were successively carried out ad maiorem Deigloriam, i. e. in the interest of each consecutive ruler, did not start with thefictitious Donation of Constantine, but much earlier, from the very beginning.Then it must be admitted that a successful antique dealer who understood supplyand demand palmed relics off on Helena, mother of Constantine; that the Crusadeswere undertaken to liberate a holy grave that was never in Jerusalem, while at thesame time the real grave in Rome was destroyed as a heathen relic; that Caesar ishonored incognito in churches, temples and mosques throughout the entire world,and that the controversial dictator shapes the residual religious-moral backboneof the Oikoumene, i. e. our global community. Thats a bit much! It is


4/13

understandable that some people hope that chalice passes them by, and there areagain priests, this time priests of the media, who refuse to look throughGalileos telescope.

A third reason could be given. The basic approach of this research is in thespirit of the Enlightenment. It is part of a long chain that goes from LaurentiusValla, (exposure of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery) via Voltaire, (IfGod created Man in His own image, Man has more than reciprocated), to Bruno Bauer,(the original Gospel writer is found in Roman Hellenism). But paradoxically itconcedes that the Church is right, which has always maintained that the Gospelsdescribe a true story. Moving the events from Rome to Jerusalem is less afalsification than if the whole story were fabricated. As a result this disclosurethreatens to alienate its natural allies who now say they have not foughtecclesiastical obscurantism for centuries in order to reap the emperor as God! Wehad almost succeeded in presenting Jesus as pure myth and now he returnshistorically real, yes, even as an actual person. Over our dead bodies! (By whichit is meant ours, not theirs!)

This research is in accordance with the Protestant demand for free inquiry andcritical examination of the Scriptures, a demand to which we owe, among otherthings, the search for the historical Jesus which admittedly failed, but at thesame time laid false or nave ideas to rest. In the final result, however, itdemonstrates that scripture is less reliable than tradition which has retainedmore of the Divus Iulius Cult and is therefore less adulterated. Even moredifficult to accept is the fact that Jesus, alias Divus Iulius, was pontifexmaximus i. e. during his lifetime he assumed the same office as the present Romanpope who is not recognized by Protestants. This might result in the loss of theother inner Church allies also. And it will help little to ask them to rememberthat Caesar, although a Roman himself, waged war against the old Rome expressly toestablish a new order.

That allies could instead arise on the other front is hardly probable, thoughtheoretically possible. The traditionalists are namely at their wits end and havelately started admitting it. Even Ratzinger, fierce defensor fidei at the Vatican,recently confessed that the greatest obstacle in spreading the faith today is thefact that the historical existence of Jesus can no longer be made credible. Thisis understandable, because if due to lack of a historical Jesus, the only concretething left is no longer the resurrection, but merely the belief of the earlyChristian community in the resurrection, what happens to Easter then? And how canan empty grave have any meaning when he who should lie there never existed? Thedeath and resurrection of God which took place in this world are reduced to sheersymbols and are in danger of being eliminated from the worldalong with theChurch. But now, with Jesus as Divus Iulius, as the deified Caesar, no one canclaim any longer that he did not historically exist, because no mortal or immortalhad a more real and tangible historical presence. Believers would finally have areason to rejoice, even to triumph. But, just as a man cannot make a horse drinkthe water he has led him to, we cannot force people to be happy with this. And theanxiety accompanying the exposure of this historical deception will be felt moredeeply by the most well-meaning, orthodox people. So from this camp too, theunexpected allies will be no multitude.

A fourth reason lies finally in the fact that like with every solution to amystery, this one also has a disappointing effect. The end of delusion also meansthe end of illusion. The charm of myth is gone, the fairy tale has been dreamt,waking up is soberingit would be nice to dream awhile longer. Dracula is nolonger intriguing when one knows that he really was Prince Vlad Tepes Draculea.The hieroglyphics were much more interesting before Champollion, when allegoricalmeanings could be attached to them in salons. Galileo is not as much fun as Von


5/13

Dniken. Thus, while the archeologist and devout Catholic Erika Simon did nothesitate to write the afterword to this book and to stand by it with her goodname, self-named protectors of the fabulating orthodoxy did not want to take thepeoples Jesus away from them (literally quoted from a statement by the religiondepartment of a television station that vetoed a documentary about this research)especially when they themselves thrive on it, sometimes fabulously. Yet this isthe most beautiful of all fairy tales that Caesar, removed from the world,posthumously and incognito could dwell in our religious dreams, a true incubo ofthe world.

***

Formulating the assertionJesus was Caesarmight seem strange. This has less to dowith the claim itself than with our images of Caesar and Jesus. These images, asthose of the most important personalities of the worlds Pantheon, were alwaysmore shaped by myth than reality and even today they depend more on the zeitgeistthan on objective knowledge. In our minds Caesar is a hardcore Roman commander(who would associate him with his proverbial clemency, his compassion for theenemy?) whereas Jesus is supposed to be a peaceful wandering preacherhis I didnot come to bring peace, but the sword is meanwhile more often falsely attributedto the prophet Mohammed.

Yearning for a peaceful world led to a polarized distortion of both images. Theybecame such self-evident truths that no one ever questions them.

One hardly knows Caesar from school, but from historical films and comics. He isapparently accused of being the father of all dictators. Since he cannot beclassified as a Hitler, or a Stalin, attempts are made to blank him out, atleast: A short history of antiquity recently published in Germany not only devotedno chapter to him, but not even a paragraph; he was mentioned only in passingbeside Cicero. No biography of Caesar published after WWII tells of his funeral:they all end with his assassination so that both author and reader can give in tothe unrestrained frenzy of the supposed tyrannicide and do not get in theembarrassing situation of having to mention or even more to explain the fact thatthe people revolted against his assassins and achieved his apotheosis. But whetheror not a persons funeral belongs with their life story would be a good question.So one leaves him unburied rather than contend with the demon of his resurrection.Caesar commander, Caesar dictator: yes; Caesar pontifex maximus, Caesar son ofVenus, Caesar himself God: no.

It is much the same with Jesus, and even so just the opposite. No one knows himanymore either. Who reads the Gospel nowadays? Yearnings for the original Churchand early Christianity only allow for idealized images of him, oleographs, pureand innocent, in opposition to the Christian one corrupted in history. Even moreso since textual criticism and the search for the historical Jesus has questionedhis existence for centuries, so that everyone can form their own unrestrainedimage of Jesus. If he never existed then he could have been anything, and evenmore so, can become anything. Exorcist, resistance fighter, labor activist,national hero, feminist, gay, black, Jewhe can and must be everything andanything. But just not a dictator and not a Roman! He cannot come from the empireof evil, much less have founded it! Although everyone knows that Christianityspread within the borders of the Roman Empire, under Romans, and that the head ofChristianity is today still seated in Rome.

Thus our own more or less unconscious images form the main hindrance toformulating the question: Was Jesus Caesar? We will see that targets and actualsdiffer considerably in this balance sheet also. Jesus and Caesar have moresimilarities than imaginable. It was not pure chance that both of them conquered


6/13

the world in sandals.

The second thing that must be known is that this is not a debate about questionsof religion, but merely of the history of religionmore precisely: about thearchaeology of religion. The discussion is not about belief in Jesus, but only whothe historical Jesus was.

Now the believing Christian as well as the unbelieving atheist might be of theopinion that it is obvious who Jesus was or was not, in whom they do / do notbelieve: the miracle worker, barefoot prophet from Galilee, who under PontiusPilate was put to death under uncertain circumstances in Jerusalem and whosefollowers believe he rose from the dead.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple, because while Christianity is a factor thatscreams for the historical existence of its auctor, it is also a fact that noclassical historian knew Jesus. He is only impeccably documented in the Gospels(the historical references given are too late and doubtful). That is why eventhe existence of Jesus became a subject of faith, not only his resurrection andteachings. That is the historical mystery, the true messianic secret of Jesus thatto date has found no rational solution.

We suggest a change of scene, and abandon the opposing ditches in which the twoenemy parties remain entrenched. We simply assume, as in mathematics, that theproblem is solved and so we examine under what conditions that is the case. Ifboth are correct, that Jesus Christ had to exist historically for Christianity tocome into being, but at the same time the thaumaturgic itinerant preacher fromGalilee could never have existed otherwise classical historians would have madetimely reports of it, then the only possibility is that Jesus existed somewhereelse and was later resettled in Galilee.

By a remarkable coincidence, 100 years before the supposed birth of Jesus anothergod-man was born, Gaius Julius Caesar, a righteous man, who was also murdered andelevated to the Gods after his death. Then a resettlement actually did take place,namely that of his veterans who were recruited in Gallia and resettled throughoutthe entire Empire, among other places in Galilaea, in the territory of KingHerodes who was allied with the Romans.

Since the life story of both of these god-men, Jesus and Divus Iulius, show suchamazing parallels (listing them is the purpose of this book), we are forced torecognize them as one and the same story, one that has been mutated anddelocalized in the process of tradition and translation. In the same way afaithful Brazilian today would say that Saint Francis was not born in Assisi(Umbria), but in Assis (Rio Grande do Sul) or that St. George killed the dragon inBahia, that he even came from that city, the liberator of Corfinium coming fromGallia became the exorcist of Cafarnaum coming from Galilee: Julius Caesar becameJesus Christ. Just as St. Francis wandered from Assisi to Assis as soon asEuropeans resettled in the Americas, Divus Iulius of Gallia wandered to Galilee asthe legionaries recruited in Gallia settled as veterans in Galilaea. Thelinguistic shift, here Italian and Portuguese (Assisi > Assis), there Latin andGreek (Gallia > Galilaia; Corfinium > Cafarnaum) helped to make the imported Godand/or saint a native. Stories wander and are revised to fit in, then and now: theChrist child in the manger in Brazil is in some places a small native and inothers a little black infant just as the Seven Samurai became cowboys in theAmerican remake of the film. Resettlement resets stories.

The third thing that should be known, which preoccupies the non-readers more thanthe readers, is where the journey goes: What are the consequences?


7/13

There is no reason to panic here either. The journey goes nowhere, there are noconsequencesfor now. The believer will continue to believe in his Jesus, and sayto himself that it does not matter to him who the historical Jesus was, even if itmust be Caesar, the main thing is, he did exist. The nonbeliever will be happythat there is proof that Jesus never existed and accept that he was Caesar, themain thing is, he never existed. Both will have to revise their image of Caesar,but that will pain them little, because one gets it almost exclusively fromHollywood or Asterix nowadays, (and that is plainly not the historical Caesar).The bomb under Christianity which is either feared or evoked will not igniteatleast not yet.

In the long term a change in consciousness will occur, however. Nothing is asbefore. One listens differently to Bachs St. Matthews Passion when one knows itis really played for the divine Caesar. Easter is experienced differently when oneknows that it is the death and resurrection of the historical Divus Iulius beingcelebrated. Caesars De Bello Civili is read differently when it is known thatthis book is the personally written Gospel of Jesus Christ. The four Gospels areread differently also, when we know that the first version came from God himself,who personally wrote history, but the second version was written by men who wrotehistory as they comprehended it, and the last version was written simply byjackasses who were faithful, but copied again and again according to theirunderstanding and misunderstanding. Under these conditions it is not possible torely solely on scripture or faith, neither sola fide nor sola scriptura helps. Butnow it is possible to distance ourselves from all those unspeakable conciliardisputes and schisms of belief which poisoned history and divided people when weknow that the disputes were among jackasses who long since did not know of whatand of whom they spoke and that in these quarrels blind orthodox believers sentone-eyed heretics, one after another, into the desert.

It will have a crucial effect to know again, and know definitely, that Jesus was aRoman and not a Jew as the Jews have generally always claimed. They did not knowand persistently denied this man, who supposedly came from their people. Thus thecharge that the Jews were the murderers of God is finally cleared out of the way,since Caesar was murdered by the Junii and not the Jews. At the same time theidea that Jesus descended from the Jewish people can also be dismissedwhich justmight desacralize the relationship with them and deliver them from the tragicsituation of eternal persecution and/or eternal claim for reparation.

Church fathers who have been stamped as heretics will be belatedly rehabilitated,such as Marcionwho said the God of the New Testament, the God of love andsalvation has nothing to do with the old one, the God of righteousness andrevenge, who maintained that the Gospels and the letters of Paul were forged byJudaistsor as Tatianus who testified that the genealogy of Jesus was fictitiouslyadded in order to make him a descendant of David. The cult of the emperor,recognized more and more as the forerunner of Christianity, must be studied withdifferent eyes. Above all we will understand those who say opposition between theOld and the New Covenants is an oriental metaphor for the old Rome of the Senateand the new Rome of Caesar; between the old order, righteous but exploiting, andthe new order, liberating and promoting brotherly love; or as poets have observed,between ROMA and its mirror image AMOR.

The relationship to religion will change. If one knows that religion is the formin which an empire survives its fall, can a religion still be regarded assomething private? If baptism represents, not only symbolically but alsohistorically, the recruiting of legionaries for Christi. e. in reality the pledgeof allegiance taken to the Julian emperorshould we be surprised byfundamentalism? What kind of tolerance might be expected then except the mercy ofthe victor? If one knows that the cult of Divus Iulius represents the origin of


8/13

Christianity, is the longed for early Christianity to be seen in it? If Islam orpossibly even Buddhism (see final chapter) are only other forms of the sameprimary cult, may we cherish the hope of returning to the historical unity of allbelievers once again? And if we know that Caesar, although Gods Son and even Godhimself (or maybe for that very reason), personally did not believe in life afterdeath, will it be possible that believers and non-believers meet in him?

***

This English edition, revised and with added material, appears in spring 2005,shortly after the third Dutch edition. The first Dutch edition appeared inNovember 2002, three years after the original German edition, thanks to theengagement of Tommie Hendriks, experimental psychologist who initiated thetranslation sua sponte and Jan van Friesland, television programming director whomade sure this research became known and thus led the way to having the bookpublished.

Like the Dutch translation, this English one also originates from the initiativeof readers who were of the opinion that this text absolutely should be availableto those who dont know German. I personally would have preferred a Latintranslation, however since English currently happens to be the most globallyunderstood language as our translators argued, I did not wish to resist further,and so complied with their desire after all and did my part to assist them.

Now some of them prefer British English, the others American English. Therefore amiddle course was sought to satisfy all, but it possibly leaves everyone unhappyin the end. And I dont know whether by doing this we have contributed to adesirable English koine or have done it a disservice. Hopefully the reader will bemesmerized by the content so much that he condones the style changing from chapterto chapter and even sometimes within a chapter, depending on the translating hand.

I thank Manfred Junghardt, a German surgeon living in the Caribbean, who took theinitiative and started the translation process together with Tommie Hendriks,experimental psychologist from Utrecht, at the same time translator of the Dutchedition. In the course of time others joined: Joseph Horvath, an American who grewup in Germany, psychologist; Ed Young in Hawaii, an American computer technicianand writer.

Each did their best to make this translation easy to read and at the same timetrue to the original. I thank them not least for the patience they had with apedantic author and incorrigible Latinist who would rather see the Englishlanguage maltreated than carry out adjustments.

The process of translation with six initially unpracticed persons (in addition tothe four named above there were two more who also took partwe express our thanksto thembut have opted out), and from them all hardly one was perfectly bilingual,proved to be extremely awkward and demanding, but also amusing and instructive. Toname but two examples: One of us mistook Pauls Cilicia for Sicilia; anotherAramaic for Armenian, by which we demonstrated that we, too, are perfectlycapable of making confusions and the delocalizations to accompany them. It was nodifferent for reviewers: One of them once rendered Scipio as Scorpio andHortensius as Horrensius. If we did not have modern e-mails fast correctionand control possibilities at our disposal, and if the erroneous texts had simplybeen copied manually and sent into the world like two thousand years ago, to evenbe used as the basis for further translations into other languages or for back-translations, we would then be in the same fine mess that we amazingly find wasthe case with the Evangelists.


9/13

And so, arriving at the end of the process we are all more experienced and thewiser, and we can smile about our situation and feel a little like Evangelistsourselves. At any rate, in translating and writing we, too, have tried to servethe truth and God.

May readers enjoy the book and may the reading of it be fruitful for all: donumbonae frugi.

But enough said: Let us rather let the translators have a word themselvesincluding the one who is working on a Spanish version.

Saturday, July 13, 2002 (Caesars birthday 2102nd)revised 2005.

[ Chapter I: Prima Vista]

Introit

__________________________________

to the German original edition

(not included in the printed English edition)

In the beginning was the joke. When it comes to the Madonna Germany is anunderdeveloped country. This was the depressing conclusion reached by a circle ofparishless, orthodox believers in the year of our Lord 1988 in response to thetriumphal procession of Wojtylas Madonnas from Czenstochau to Loreto, fromLourdes to Fatimaonly to mention a few. Determined to put things right, withoutfurther ado they did something always done in Germany when shortcomings aredetectedthey founded a society to promote apparitions of the Madonna. Indeed theysoon came to realize that the country is in fact a bastion for the adoration ofMary. One thinks of Alttting or Kevelaer, not to mention the Swiss Einsiedeln andthe Austrian Mariazell. And even their area of south Baden fairly teems withsaints and madonnas, particularly in the Dreisam basin in the Black Forest, intowhich the Gallo-Roman population retreated after the Alemannian invasion of theUpper Rhine Valley, and where even today they are loyal to Rome and, naturally,Catholic. There is a sanctuary to Mary on a hill called Giersberg, where a youngherdsman once heard a beautiful chant and a voice which proclaimed that the VirginMary was to be revered at that very place. The initial unbelief was overcome whenan image of the mother of God was discovered in the opening of a tree. That waslong agoaround 1700but even today many more people can be found making the trekalong the contemplative stations of the Cross up to the Giersberg-Chapel than canbe seen on the nearby jogging path or the mountain-bike trail. So there really wasno need for new apparitions.

Having been established, however, the society wanted to get busy and challengedisbelieving rationalists, who suspected the voice heard by the young herdsman was


10/13

that of a monk hiding behind the tree. They wanted more than just miraculousimages and holy cards, they wanted to provide authentic, indisputable andno halfmeasuresonly up-to-date, state-of-the-art and politically correct apparitions.Thus soon there appeared a red Madonnaquite progressive in form and more a Venusthan a Maryon an alleged belladonna tree (in fact a Japanese inedible sourcherry tree), in the old cemetery of the revolutionaries which nowadays is aplayground in the green Wiehre, that Jugendstil home to artists, environmentalistsand those who favor alternative lifestyles, in Freiburg. It did not take longbefore the parapsychological and paranormological attestation was obtained and itdeclared: It is precisely because the BellaMadonna Wiehremensis contradicts allthe well-known forms of apparitions, that it is an authentic one.

On the first of May of the following year a great function was celebrated before aconsiderable congregation with resounding success. Misled disrupters tried todrown out Gounods Ave Maria by blasting the strains of the leftist rock bandTon-Steine-Scherben from loudspeakers at full volume, but they were brought tosilence. The somewhat unusual liturgy, bordering between a heretical happening andserious May devotions, desecration and nostalgia, satire and yearning, wasperformed undisturbed under the gracious evening sun.

That was the beginning and the end of the society. The success, however, took asuprising turn. A feminist woman from Milan who had made an investigation into theheretics of the Holy Ghost came up with the idea that it might be possible to turnthe joke into a fairy-tale and stage it in Milan, where they had just occupied theDome. But the group from Freiburg would have preferred to go straight to Rome andplace, as it were, the explosive surprise directly under the chair of CardinalRatzinger.

In the end nothing came of it. But in the meantime, one of the society members hadsounded out local conditions and discovered that an ideal place for the apparitionof the BellaMadonna would be the ruins of the temple of Venus in the Forum Iulium.So he started to inform himself and discovered, surprised and amused, that it wasCaesar who had founded that temple and consecrated it to his ancestress VenusGenetrix, who, by dint of her deified Son becoming the universal God of the empireas Divus Iulius, became the Mother of God.This strange theology, which looked like a paradigm for the Christian genealogy ofGod, caused our Madonnaro to regard the images differently. He soon saw in themarble head conserved in the Torlonia Museum not only the suffering face of Caesarbut also the face of the suffering God; and in Cleopatra, whose statue was set upin the temple of Venus, that other beloved of God: Magdalene. He found it strangethat lglise de la Madeleine in Paris seemed to be an architectonic copy of thetemple of Venus in Rome.

Both figures of the Roman and the Christian God suddenly fused into onean imagethat was crystal clear and yet indefinable at the same time. To ward off anapproaching paralytic seizure, he tried to formulate a minimal hypothesis in orderto articulate all of this: Maybe something of the cult of Caesar had found its wayinto Christianity. In this way he could begin to verify and he soon feared hewould learn more than he was comfortable with.

At the same time he had to smile, because what so often happens was occurringagainthe sorcerers apprentice is overwhelmed by the forces he frees. They whohad set out to stage a fraudulent apparition had found their master: werent thegospels themselves a forged phenomenon, and indeed such a successful one as toresist every attempt to throw new light on them up until now? Had there been afirst, original fraud, one that made later ones such as the Donation ofConstantine look like a choir boys prank? When he told his friends in the society


11/13

about his suspicionthat Jesus might be Divus Iulius, distorted in the East/Westmirrorthe most friendly response he received was You know, youve told betterjokes before.

But he could not let it go. He asked specialists at universities and institutes,enlightened people with critical minds. Their answers were formally polite, theywere even helpful and forthcoming with advicethey suggested good reading materialand they found the hypothesis intriguing. But they could barely conceal their headshaking. They admitted that after 200 years of searching for the historical Jesusthere is still nothing known for sure about him other than a possible bareexistenceand even that is doubted. However they seemed to be resigned to it, andalmost to make a dogma out of it, that we can know nothing about Jesus. Or is itthat we ought to know nothing?

So he had no other choice but to start comparing the texts himselfon the one handthe Lives of Caesar, on the other the gospelsand to read them in a parallel mode.Because translations proved to be unusabletraduttore traditorehe resorted to theoriginal scriptures. And this was the point where he had an aha experience. As aman plagued by the personal computer and nerve-wracked by desktop publishing, hecould not avoid seeing the texts with OCR-trained eyes, detecting typicalmisreadings. The gospels looked as if they had been read by optical characterrecognition, then changed for the worse by a correction program gone awry, or, asthough they had been corrupted by translating them automatically by computer.Anyone who has tried using such programs knows what happens: if a German text isscanned in French, then a 1a is not interpreted as prima, first-class, butas the article la, the (feminine); brilliant spell-checkers may divideanalphabet into anal-phabetwhats a phabet, a patient stricken by ashameful disease?; By mistakenly selecting the wrong registere. g. gastronomyinstead of theologythe phrase the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weakmight be turned into the whisky is served, but the steak is rare. It is aquestion of routines, of the dictionary or the register. What else but thereading-glasses separates Caesars Gallia from Jesus Galilaia, or perhapsKaisara from Nazara? What separates Caesars Corfinium from JesusCafarnaum, or for instance Pontifex Lepidus from Pontius Pilatus but thethesaurus used? What is the criterion for deciding that evangelion can only meangood message and not message of victory, that the first word of the gospel,arch, should be rendered with the banal beginning and not with the classiccommand, or, what is the basis for deciding that the smeia, the signs areneither ensigns nor the omens, but only miracles/wonders, if not thelinguistic register selected by the translator? Those texts, which could only behanded down to us by the manual copying of the copy of the copy, with obscuretransitions of language, which passed through many anonymous, sometimes ignorantor even biased handsof preachers, evangelists, amanuenses, fathers, heretics,revisers, monks How often and to what extent have the applied routines,dictionaries and registers been mistaken?

This now clearly defined and thus verifiable suspicion, became the driving forcebehind the investigation. It was an exciting treasure hunt and a fascinatingpuzzle. The most difficult thing was to free oneself from traditional ideas, to beopen minded enough to see what really occurs in the text before ones eyes. As thesaying goes: One only sees what one knows. And one resists knowing what one sees.

At some point the picture had been reconstructed far enough that many at theuniversity, and even from the society, insisted, even demanded, that the authorpublish his work. Ten years later this has been done. So may everyone judge whatis in it.

In any event it would seem that, by placing the lives of Caesar and Jesus in


12/13

parallel juxtaposition with each other, the Rosetta stone has been found whichcould be the key to the long overdue deciphering of the gospels and possibly evenof the whole New Testamentwhether by chance or divine providence, as FlaviusJosephus would have put it. Or was it simply the case, to speak like Caesar, thatlittle things can have a great effect?

***

History is always written by the victorsand rewritten by the next winner.Consequently the ultimate winner is he who writes the last history. And this canbe someone other than the winner, especially if the winner, unwisely, orderssomeone else to write it for him.

The text on hand invites us to follow the thread, the spoor of exactly such a wayof writing history, rewriting and revising it. Mark well: it is an epochal one. Itconcerns the greatest falsification of world history, nothing less.

Fake? Truth? And Pilate said unto him: What is truth? Let us put it this way: weinvite the reader to follow a metamorphosis, or if you like, a transubstantiation.Is Jesus Caesars larva, his mask and ghost, wandering incognito within worldhistory? Is Divus Iulius the original and Jesus the copy? And if yes, was ithistorical development or hocus-pocus? How, where, when and through whom, underwhose orders and for what purpose did the biblification of the gospels take place?

We will follow the tracks of the veterans who settled in the Orient, withoutlosing sight of the rulers and their historians. With Cleopatra, Antonius,Octavianus and Asinius Pollio; with Herodes and Nicolaus Damascenus; withVespasianus, Titus and Flavius Josephus: all the way from Rome to Jerusalemandback! We will encounter Saulus/Paulus along the way.

We will be moved into a time in which theologians were not supposed to interpretor even quibble, but were simply to deliver the material. Theology was thetechnology of God and did not have to answer the question Who is God?, butrather the question of how to create a God. From it, power hungry rulers couldderive the fundamental principle of their politics, their technique: How do Ibecome God?

He who set up the right God was victorious. In order to keep up with the winner,the only thing the loser could do was to set God aright. We will see how thishappened with Divus Iulius and Jesus respectively.

A thriller sui generis: it is about Gods, people, and jackasses. It is abouthomicide, about deicide, it is about crucifixion and corpse-robbing; about theepiphany, and the concealement and disguising of our God. It is not fiction, it isan examination, an investigation.

It is better to lay aside all prejudices, and if possible, fear, right now. Andlet he who on the threshold does not want to make the sign of the cross, takesustenance from the old apotropaic formula:

Fas sit vidisseMay it please God, that I have seen what I have seen.

Kirchzarten 1999on the day of the solar eclipse.


13/13