Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity: An Investigative Report [Paperback]

Francesco Carotta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2005

The question is: Is Jesus Divus Julius? (Is Jesus the historical figure of Divus Julius, the god to which Julius Caesar was elevated?). The iconography of Caesar do not fit our idea of him. In our minds Caesar is a field marshall and a dictator. However, authentic images portray the idea of the clementia Caesaris, a clement Caesar. Jesus' life is congruent to the life of Caesar. Both Julius Caesar and Jesus began their careers in northern countries: Caesar in Gaul, Jesus in Galilee; both cross a fatal river: the Rubicon and the Jordan; both then enter cities; Corfinium and Cafarnaum; Caesar finds Corfinium occupied by a man of Pompey and besieges him, while Jesus finds a man possessed by an impure spirit. There is similarity in structure as well as in place names. People in the stories of Caesar and of Jesus are structurally the same people, even by name and location. Caesar's most famous quotations are found in the gospels in structurally significant places.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The territory in which the new Christian religion spread two thousand years ago can be defined as the Imperium Romanum. This process met with success because after three centuries the late Roman emperor Constantine the Great made Christianity the official cult of the state. Historical research has always emphasized the tight interconnection between this religion and the Roman world empire. The book at hand ties in with this fact but goes further and reveals new connections which have never been seen that way." -- Erika Simon PhD, Professor emeritus of Archaeology, Wurzburg.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Aspekt B V Uitgeverij (January 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9059113969
• ISBN-13: 978-9059113961
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,504,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very unique and challenging ideas in this book, March 20, 2005

By 

Ed Burke "Ed Burke" (N America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity: An Investigative Report (Paperback)

I have read this book several times, and must recommend it. The author has discovered a definite link between historical accounts of Julius Caesar and the Gospel of Mark. Yes, it sounds incredible, but there are simply too many parallels to be found to attribute them to mere chance or coincidence...

It might be easy to misunderstand some instances of 'parallels' and think they are a 'bit of a stretch', perhaps. But the way I read it, the author wants to list as many possibilities and variations as he can, and he must list several guesses or theories to explain how some mutations of the text occurred. In spite of this, the astounding number and nature of what he has convincingly found is truly impressive. Also, the author openly admits that this book only begins the investigation into what I strongly believe will become a very exciting new area of study.

There was obviously a lot of research done for this book, and those who scoff at it so quickly, or who nitpick at some of the details, will prove to be wrong, wrong, wrong. The 'big picture' that Carotta paints is undeniable.

I strongly recommend this book, and think that it has a monumental importance.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth shall make you free, March 17, 2005

By 

Dorothy (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity: An Investigative Report (Paperback)

There may be hard times ahead for tele-evangelists.

A centuries old mystery has been solved, the real identity of Jesus Christ has been revealed. Euhemeros of Messene got it right when he wrote about 300 BC that the gods were once famous kings and queens who began to be worshipped after their deaths because they had been benefactors. In his outstanding work "Jesus was Caesar" Francesco Carotta proves that the historical Jesus was none other than Gaius Julius Caesar, the Roman commander and high-priest who was famous for his clemency (the proverbial Clementia Caesaris) and after his assassination was elevated to the gods becoming the highest God of the Empire: Divus Iulius.

This book is a feast of scholarship presented with Latin clarity and a wit reminiscent of Voltaire though always respectful towards its subject matter. The reader witnesses, in detail, the most amazing metamorphosis ever heard of. In a multigenerational process Divus Iulius, the descendant of Venus and himself God of the entire Roman Empire, mutated into the supposed Jesus of Nazareth presented in the Gospels. This mutation and delocalization came about by a long process of copying, mistranslation and misinterpretation resulting in an enormously corrupted text, the Gospels. The original one had been Asinius Pollio's "Historiae", his report about the civil wars. When finally Vespasianus' reason of the state sanctioned this "conversion" Jesus, the Christ, was born.

"Jesus was Caesar" is an epoch-making work. This long overdue decipherment of the Gospels will eventually be ranked among the most important books ever written, on par with works like Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" and Copernicus' "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium".

Once Christians have overcome the initial shock, caused by this fresh wind which blows away the mist of myth enshrouding the biblical Jesus and reveals the real, historical one, they have reason to rejoice since the original Easter, (one of) the most important event(s) in human history, has been discovered.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A few insightful needles in a large haystack of a book, February 15, 2009

By 

Tom Dykstra (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity: An Investigative Report (Paperback)

Carotta believes that Flavius Josephus created the cult of Jesus based on the cult of Julius Caesar. Josephus took on the pseudonym Paul and wrote the Pauline epistles of the New Testament, and his disciples wrote the gospels. The source for their literary creations was primarily the now-lost Historiae of Asinius Pollio. Carotta's book points out some interesting parallels between the gospels and various Roman histories about Caesar. Some of them may well suggest literary dependence of some sort, but the reader is forced to wade through an incredible amount of bombast and just plain silliness to find isolated nuggets of information worthy of serious consideration.

Throughout, the author displays the quasi-religious fervor of a true-believer who has absolute knowledge of absolute truth and despises anyone else who cannot see it. For example:

"The results of this investigation are not a matter of debate anyway, and being objective facts cannot be argued away. Just as the earth does not stop rotating on its axis simply because the Church had such trouble getting along with Galileo or because we continue to speak romantically of sunsets, Jesus does not stop being Divus Iulius simply because obscurantists today, once again, do not want it to be true ... " (p.14)

I know of no reputable historian who would make statements like this. History is always a matter of interpretation and probabilities, and the minute one assumes absolute knowledge of "the truth" one becomes blind to evidence that might point in other directions. One finds only what one wants and expects to find.

Carotta assumes that if the early Christian authors did any copying of Roman literature they must have exclusively copied and transformed Roman literature. Once again, reality is not quite that black and white. If some of the parallels seem convincing, that only indicates the likelihood that Christian writers used some Roman literature as models. They also used other literary models, such as the Hebrew Bible. Crafting a fictional story about someone's life does not mean the person himself must be fictional, any more than the fictional story about chopping down a cherry tree means George Washington himself was fictional or a literary mirror image of, say, King George.

While some of the parallels Carotta points out are striking, most of them are contrived at best. A fairly typical example of his methodology:

"Since _metanoias_, `of repentance,' looks very similar to _Metellus_ [the name of Pompei's father-in-law], and _baptisma_ is near _postulatio_, `demand,' as well as _kerysson_, `preaching,' is not far from _Caesar_, then _kai kerysson baptisma metanoias eis aphesin (h)amartion_ would stand for _a Caesare postulabat Metellus dimissionem armorum._ In English, `and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins' would simply stand for `Metellus demanded from Caesar the dismissal of his army.'" (p.178)

Using this kind of methodology I could probably prove that Paul cribbed most of Dr. Seuss's book _Green Eggs and Ham_ while writing his epistle to the Romans.

The author has read little of modern historical and scriptural scholarship. For example, I know of no current biblical scholars who would date Mark to "40-60 AD" or who would argue that it was translated from Latin. He cites no source for the former and cites works from 1893 and 1926 for the latter. He does not know Hebrew (see p.53) and so misses many obvious cases where words came from Hebrew rather than by means of some torturous transformation and metathesis from Latin.

Nevertheless, there are a few insightful needles hidden in this haystack of a book. For example, Carotta proposes that Joseph of Arimathea is a stand-in for Josephus himself, pointing out that Josephus' original name (before he took the Roman name Flavius) was "bar Matthias" (son of Matthias). No place named Arimathea is attested anywhere else in ancient literature, and there is indeed a remarkable resemblance to "bar Matthias." Even without citing this similarity in names, another biblical scholar already proposed a similar interpretation: see Paul Tarazi, New Testament: An Introduction: Luke and Acts (New Testament Introduction), p.178-179. For Tarazi, however, Joseph of Arimathea is a negative figure in the gospel story, in effect a put-down of Josephus; while for Carotta, Joseph of Arimathea and Josephus are supremely positive figures because Josephus is ultimately the very author of the story.