(ORDO NEWS) — Who was Jesus Christ? There is less agreement on this point than one might expect.
There are three main camps on this issue. The biggest one is those who, without hesitation, believe that two thousand years ago there was a certain Jewish rabbi, by the name of Jesus, by the name of Christ, who roamed the Middle East, preaching peace and love, thereby irritating local religious and political authorities. until they solved the problem with crucifixion.
This camp believes that all these stories about turning water into wine and walking on water are later embellishments, tales that grew in tales from one gullible illiterate peasant to another until they were eventually written down and framed by more literate, but no less superstitious priests.
However, they believe that the main points of the story are more or less accurate, and in any case, the moral lessons that are embedded in it are usually pretty good, so who cares?
This camp includes the majority of atheists and agnostics, as well as a surprising number of nominal Christians, as a rule, of the Easter-Christmas-wedding-funeral sense.
If you’re in that camp, then you probably don’t think you’ll be interested in the rest of this essay. I encourage you to keep reading.
The next camp, also quite numerous, are the literalists of Scripture. They insist that everything in the Bible is true, being the inspired Word of God, and this certainly includes everything written in the New Testament Gospels.
For them, Jesus Christ was a real historical person whose life was exactly as the apostles imagined it: he was literally born from a virgin mother impregnated by God himself, he really cast out demons and healed by touch, he really danced on the water, caused storms with a wave of his hand was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again.
If you belong to this camp, then this essay will probably make you very angry. I especially encourage you to keep reading.
The smallest camp are those who ask what if anything in the Gospels (or the rest of the Bible, for that matter) is true. That miracles are mythological they accept as a basic assumption, but this raises the question of whether there is any historical basis for Jesus Christ himself, or whether his character is entirely a literary creation.
This camp will point out that outside of the gospels themselves, which cannot be taken as historical documents given the incredible events they describe, there is no credible historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ.
There are, of course, a couple of paragraphs in Josephus and Tacitus, but these are obvious inventions, since they are inserted without rhyme or reason in the middle of a sequential narrative and are written in a completely different style than those of the alleged authors.
In fact, at some point in the past, some monk or someone else was reading the old historical records and said, oh shit, there’s nothing about Jesus here, people might take that as a reason to doubt! And then he took out a pen and began to adjust the data to the desired picture.
The third camp has been conducting careful literary and textual analysis of the New Testament for several centuries, comparing it with the available archaeological data and independent historical documents, and they have not come to any firm conclusions, except that the New Testament is unreliable.
Some more or less fall into the first camp. Others project their own ideologies into the void opened up by this question, arguing that Jesus was some sort of Iron Age hippie guru, or perhaps a revolutionary Zealot guerrilla leader.
Others still conclude that Jesus was an entirely mythical being, a product of the messianic literature that flourished in Judea during the century or two leading up to his supposed birth.
The third camp is mostly atheists. Many studies aimed at studying the question of the historical Jesus Christ were made by people who wanted to destroy the basis of faith in the teachings of the Church.
Others started out as believing Christians, but in the course of “simple asking questions” eventually came to the conclusion that it was all a lie.
My position is somewhat different. I believe that Jesus was almost certainly not real. However, I am not an atheist. I believe that Christ is very real. If you are interested in how this works, read on.
First, if Jesus did not really exist, we have another problem: Where did Christianity come from in the first place? Or more than that, how did it become the dominant religion, first in the Mediterranean basin ruled by the Roman Empire, and then in Europe?
This was not the first time a cult had been founded around a mythological figure, but such cults don’t tend to spread as fast.
Of course, one can point to the conversion of Constantine, which made Christianity the official imperial faith; but it was a politically opportunistic move, rather a pragmatic recognition that Christianity was already dominant.
You can also point to proselytism, but other religions do this too – in our time, for example, Mormons knock on people’s doors, Hare Krishnas get in the way in the street with their infernal dances, Scientologists create recruitment centers, and all kinds of Christian sects spread their special view on The good news is that although it brings a few converts, none of them are capable of dominating society for the simple reason that most people find them unpleasant. By all indications, their contemporaries in the first and second centuries treated the early Christians in much the same way.
The comparison with other successful world religions is instructive here. Islam spread by direct conquest: convert or die. Their founder was a military leader, and there is no real mystery about how Islam got so big so quickly.
Buddhism has spread simply because its nihilistic doctrine is able to adapt to almost any culture, and also because it is better seen as a set of fairly effective meditation techniques than as an Abrahamic doctrine.
Buddhists don’t require anyone to believe in anything or follow certain practices; Buddhist monks are perfectly happy to live in their monasteries and mind their own business, leaving everyone else to live their lives. Therefore, Buddhists exist alongside Hindus, Taoists, Shintoists, etc., and no one really cares.
Other major religions – Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism – do not try to spread; they are, in fact, collections of ethnically specific, organically formed traditional spiritual practices, and they are not interested in converting people. European paganism shared this absolute disinterest in attracting people, since it was also an organic, indigenous religion.
- So did Jesus exist, and if not, where did he and Christianity come from?
And here comes the Italian linguist Francesco Carotta and his very strange and strangely convincing hypothesis that Julius Caesar served as a model for Jesus Christ.
It sounds crazy at first. Everyone I’ve told this to has looked at me like I have two heads, so you’re not the first to raise a skeptical eyebrow like you’re doing now. However, be patient. I promise it will be interesting.
Guy Julius Caesar is not exactly how most people imagine the prince of the world, it’s true. According to the popular notion of Caesar, he was a self-righteous, vicious tyrant who single-handedly destroyed the Roman Republic in order to be able to stand on top of Rome and its dominions as emperor.
Most people would agree that he was a capable general, conquering Gaul and then winning the civil war in Rome (a total of about 15 years of continuous campaigning), but his untimely death at the hands of the conspirators did not seem like a tragedy – quite the contrary, sic semper tyrannus as Brutus said.
- The average Roman saw things differently.
You see, that image of Caesar as a sworn enemy of democracy was created by people who despised him, most notably the vile worm Cicero – a cowardly, unscrupulous slum slicker whose entire career consisted of peddling influence and writing tedious epistles in which he tried to expose himself. some sophisticated intellectual, not the self-satisfied dolt he really was.
Cicero was representative of the ruling patrician class in a number of ways. These were people who pretended to be examples of republican virtue, but with absolutely no problem depriving ordinary Romans of their lands in order to replenish their already huge latifundia – huge plantations on which slaves worked.
They sent men to war to fight in the legions for years, plunder conquered cities and bring home more latifundia slaves, and when they return, the veterans find their wives and children driven from the land that their families have owned for generations, heavily in debt thanks to compound interest and surviving in the overcrowded, filthy slums of the city.
If this sounds familiar, then it should. Cicero and his ilk were the ancient equivalent of our Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Jerry Nadler, George W. Bush, Dick Cheyne, and Joe Biden: politicians who played well in public, but in private only cared about their own sorry skins.
They led the social system, which tirelessly drove its ordinary members into poverty.
This became a serious problem not only because of the injustice inherent in such a system and the resulting instability, but also because of the internal contradiction between a military organization that demanded a large number of healthy, strong, strong men, and an economy in which such men every year it got harder to find.
Cicero and others hated Caesar not because he was an enemy of democracy.
They hated him not because he was a smug tyrant.
They hated him because he personified and represented all that they were not. His very existence made them look pitiful and insignificant compared to him.
You see, the people loved Caesar because Caesar was their tireless protector. From the very beginning of his career he was a class traitor: despite his noble birth, he took the side of the popular masses against the patrician optimates, first taking legal action against corrupt governors, and then, after being elected consul, persistently pushing for land reforms that would bring benefits prolam at the expense of the patricians.
Caesar was also an avid troll. As a consul, he so humiliated his co-consular colleague, the optimate Bibulus6, that he hid from shame until the end (and most of) of his term, issuing impotent proclamations that were simply ignored.
Bibulus tried to block Caesar’s land reforms with some religious nonsense, to which Caesar responded by beating Bibulus’ people and pouring a bucket of shit on his head.
During the Catiline conspiracy, Cato accused Caesar of receiving letters from the conspirators; since the latter had been convicted of treason and sentenced to death, this meant that Caesar (who advocated mercy passionately) was involved in their plot; Cato had Caesar read the letter in front of the senate, and it turned out to be a rather frank love letter written by Cato’s half-sister.
By the way, the whole trick of Cato was that that he was a Stoic Stoic: he wore a black toga, the traditional mourning dress, to emphasize how little he cared about worldly things and how stern and cruel he was. All this did not prevent him from taking part in the usurious madness of the patrician class of the late Republic.
In any case, given Cato’s public image as Mr. Virtue and Discipline, one can understand how Caesar, saying that I fucked your sister-brother and she is begging me for more in front of everyone, would blow the veins in his head.
Over the past few years, we’ve all seen these types of people enjoy being trolled. There is nothing they hate more. Plus ca change.
Although Caesar, the political radical he was, may well have been involved in the Catiline conspiracy, Caesar’s plea for mercy to the conspirators was not isolated. Caesar was known for his mercy: clementia Caesaris, Caesar’s mercy, was a household word.
Caesar’s constant policy was to forgive his enemies. This did not mean that he did not fight with them: if the war was necessary, he brought pain. But after the dust settled, he extended the hand of friendship, offering complete and unconditional forgiveness to the defeated enemy.
He turned the other cheek, so to speak. To say that this was uncharacteristic of Roman generals, and indeed of any military leaders of that era or before, would be an understatement.
The accepted practice after defeating the enemy was to destroy his city to the ground, kill men, women and children, take them into slavery, and if the enemy leaders survived, then killing them is painful, humiliating and public. They did not show mercy to the enemies: they were destroyed.
Only Caesar did not. He made friends with them.
His mercy went so far. As a rule, he gave his enemies only one chance to redeem himself. If they renounced their friendship and renewed their enmity, Caesar would simply fall back on the time-tested Roman custom and destroy them completely. “Well, we tried the easy way.”
On the whole, however, this policy served Caesar well. Many of his closest allies started out as bitter enemies; by showing mercy, Caesar was able to draw them into a coalition that only grew over time.
Everyone knows that Caesar spent ten long years conquering Gaul; few people know that during the civil war, Caesar’s legions were supported by a significant number of Gallic cavalry, who seemed to love this guy very much.
Caesar was also a polymath – a genius in several fields. Cicero himself was forced to admit that Caesar was the most eminent rhetorician of his time. Reading his Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars demonstrates this mastery of the language.
Caesar communicated in precise, clear, persuasive speech, using no more words than was necessary to get his point across to the main audience – the mostly illiterate common people in Rome, to whom he directed his comments as a means to tell his story directly to them (some some of them could read and read them aloud to their friends) rather than let their enemies in the senate dominate the narrative with their poison7.
This is not the language of a narcissistic, grandiose megalomaniac, but the simple, direct words of a man who only wants to get the truth across as clearly as possible.
The content of the comments also speaks of his genius. His victories on the battlefield were nothing short of miraculous, incorporating displays of tactical and engineering prowess that enabled him to consistently defeat armies far superior to his legions.
And there is also a book. You know, it’s a bundle of bound sheets of inscriptions that allows you to extract information much faster than unrolling a scroll. Caesar invented them, more precisely, the code. Yes indeed 8.
In addition, Caesar carried out reforms after the final victory in the civil war and elevation to the rank of eternal dictator. The most famous of these was his calendar reform, which established the Julian calendar, which is used to a greater or lesser extent to this day.
Caesar did not develop the calendar himself – he relied on the best mathematicians and astronomers of the time – but caring about mathematics and astronomy, even recognizing that this problem needs a solution and is worth spending political capital on, is not a sign of a cruel military leader.
These were not the only reforms of Caesar. He also relied on laws prohibiting adultery and encouraging monogamous marriage, realizing that the stability of society is best achieved with strong families.
In addition, he seemed to understand the fractal nature of society, that family structure influences political structure; desiring a more harmonious existence, he urged fathers to use reason to raise their children, rather than brute force.
Seeing that the upper classes were using usury to appropriate the riches of the poor, he introduced a debt jubilee: a quarter of the debts were canceled, interest was canceled, and tenants were given a year without paying rent so that they could raise their heads above water.
He also embarked on a large series of public works aimed at modernizing and improving Rome so that the wealth created by the empire benefited everyone, not just the patricians.
Finally, he began to open up citizenship to non-Romans, even introducing Gauls into the Senate: if Rome was to become an empire spanning the known world, then it had to be an ecumene working for everyone, not a wealth machine dooming its inhabitants to poverty .
“Okay, okay,” I hear you say, “So Caesar was a pretty great guy, he cared about the interests of the people, and I agree that mercy vaguely resembles Christ, but to be honest, it’s a pretty weak beer, brother “.
And yes, yes, it would. If that were all.
When we look at the events of Caesar’s biography, it really catches the eye. We will look at this in the next chapter.
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