Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Julius Caesar legends borrowed, in part, from life of Jesus Christ

by Damien F. Mackey “[Virgil] drew upon the saying of the Hebrew prophets concerning the coming Messiah and applied them to Augustus, the first emperor, to make him “scion of a god”.” C. McDowell In 2004 I wrote an article, “The Lost Cultural Foundations of Western Civilisation”, from which has developed this site: http://westerncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com.au Towards the end of this article I included a section titled, “Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar”, showing what I believed to be Roman plagiarisation of the New Testament – Greco-Roman appropriation of Hebrew-Israelite (Jewish) culture in its various forms being the subject matter of this article and of the aforementioned site. Here is that brief and not yet fully developed article: …. 2. Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar We read at the very beginning of this article that Virgil’s Aeneid “is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture.” But it too appears to have been inspired by the Hebrew Bible. According to C. McDowell [“The Egyptian Prince Moses”, Proc. Third Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, C and AH Press, CA, 1986), p. 2]: The Romans, with the advent of the creation of their empire, wanted to give great antiquity to their patriarchs. The first major effort along this line was put forth by Virgil in his Aeneid. This Roman “bible” portrays the imperial city as having been founded and enhanced according to a divine plan: Rome’s mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world. Cyrus Gordon has compared Virgil’s accounts of the royal house of Rome with the New Testament account of the Messianic office as expressed in Jesus of Nazareth. Both Roman and New Testament writers drew upon the Old Testament. Virgil used the Old Testament account of Israel’s national experience as a literary model to recount Rome’s history. But he went much further. He drew upon the saying of the Hebrew prophets concerning the coming Messiah and applied them to Augustus, the first emperor, to make him “scion of a god”. The divinely sired ruler who descended from an ancient line was to rule the world in a golden age. Thus the new theology of Rome was set forth. It was heavily infused with theology appropriated and adapted from the Old Testament of the Jews. This explanation by McDowell may, in part, help to account for the distinct parallels now to be discussed between history’s most famous J.C’s – Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar – both referred to as the greatest man the earth has ever produced [Grant, M., Julius Caesar, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1969, Foreword p. 15: “A hundred or even fifty years ago, Gaius Julius Caesar (J.C.) was variously described as the greatest man of action who ever lived, and even as ‘the entire and perfect man’.”]. Whilst in most aspects Jesus and Julius could not be any more different, there are nevertheless certain incredibly close likenesses, especially in regard to their violent deaths. Both Jesus and Julius were born into poor circumstances; but their ancestry was one of blue blood: Davidic in the case of Jesus, Patrician in the case of Caesar. Their births were notable, a miraculous Virgin birth for Jesus, Julius’ birth giving rise to the term ‘Caesarian’. Julius belonged to the populares, and Jesus was likewise for the common people. “The tax collectors”, said Cicero, “have never been loyal, and are now very friendly with Caesar” [as cited ibid., p. 161]. Likewise, the Pharisees were critical of Jesus for eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9:11). Trial and Death Both Jesus and Julius had spoken of an early death. Both had entered their capital city (Jerusalem, Rome) in triumph, on an ancient feast-day (Passover, Lupercalia), shortly before mid-March, and had been hailed as “king”. This had caused anger and had the plotters conspiring. But there was also an ambivalence about the kingship. Caesar, though a king in deed, had rejected the diadem thrice. And Pilate had tried to get to the bottom of Jesus’ kingship: ‘So you are a king, then?’ (John 18:37); eventually having written in three languages: “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” (19:19). The prime mover of Caesar’s fatal stabbing was the soldier, Gaius Cassius Longinus, the last name (Longinus) being the very name that tradition has associated with the Roman soldier who rent Christ’s side with a spear (19:34). The zealot amongst the conspirators was the intense young Brutus, in whom Dante at least had obviously discerned a similarity with Judas, having located “Brutus and Cassius with Judas Iscariot in Hell” [as cited by Grant, op. cit., p. 257]. Even Christ’s words to Judas in Gethsemane, ‘So you would betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’ (Luke 22:48), resemble what is alleged to have been Caesar’s anguished last cry: re-made by Shakespeare as ‘Et tu Brute?’. There is the premonitory dream warning by the woman (cf. Matthew 27:19). There may even be a confused reminiscence of Barabbas: “Caesar … staged an elaborate legal charade against an old man called Rabirius [Barabbas?] … [who] had been allegedly implicated in … murder … not interested in having the old Rabirius actually executed” [ibid., p. 51]. (Cf. Matthew 27:15-23). On the Ides of March Julius Caesar is supposed to have died, like Jesus, riddled with wounds. The ‘heretical’ question must now be asked: Did Julius Caesar really exist? Or was his ‘life’ merely a mixture of his supposed nephew Augustus, who also bore the name Julius Caesar, and aspects of the life of Jesus Christ according to Virgil’s biblical borrowings? And perhaps other composites as well? “Portrait busts are not a safe guide to [Julius Caesar’s] appearance, since they may or may not date from his life-time” [ibid., p. 245]. Do we thus have any primary evidence for Caesar, as apparently we do not for Socrates? Do we have anything for Jesus Christ for that matter? I think that we may have a most precious artifact of his in the enigmatic ‘Shroud of Turin’ [See outstanding article “The Mystery of the Shroud” in National Geographic, June 1980, pp. 730f. Ian Wilson has disputed the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud in The Blood and the Shroud (Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1998), and has traced the Shroud back historically to the early Christian centuries]. [End of article] Further concerning the Shroud, see e.g. my article: Resurrection and the Shroud: ‘a New Dimension’, ‘a New Science’. https://www.academia.edu/11838754/Resurrection_and_the_Shroud_a_New_Dimension_a_New_Science_ Regarding those “perhaps other composites as well” referred to above, from which the character of ‘Julius Caesar’ may have been borrowed, I can now add that one of these “composites” could well have been Alexander the Great. Consider the following compelling comparisons, taken from: http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t65.html Alexander and Caesar In Antiquity, a boy who wanted to play a role of some importance in his town, had to visit a rhetorical school, where he learned how to speak and behave in public. Often, a teacher would ask his pupils to make a speech on a historical theme, so that they could show their skills as a rhetor and their ability to deal with historical sources. A well-known theme was the comparison of Alexander the Great and the Roman commander Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44). The following text was written by the Greek historian Appian of Alexandria (c.95-c.165) and is a part of his History of the Civil wars (2.149-154). It is the end of his description of Caesar's career, and Appian, a Greek, gives the Roman the ultimate compliment: he was comparable to Alexander. The translation was made by John Carter. Thus Caesar died on the day they call the Ides of March, about the middle of Anthesterion, the day which the seer said he would not outlive. In the morning Caesar made fun of him, and said, 'The Ides have come.' Unabashed, the seer replied, 'But not gone', and Caesar, ignoring not only the predictions of this sort given him with such confidence by the seer, but also the other portents I mentioned earlier, left the house and met his death. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his life, a man who was extremely lucky in everything, gifted with a divine spark, disposed to great deeds, and fittingly compared with Alexander. They were both supremely ambitious, warlike, rapid in executing their decisions, careless of danger, unsparing of their bodies, and believers not so much in strategy as in daring and good luck. One of them made a long journey across the desert in the hot season [1] to the shrine of Ammon, and when the sea was pushed back crossed the Pamphylian gulf by divine power, for heaven held back the deep for him until he passed, and it rained for him while he was on the march. In India he ventured on an unsailed sea. He also led the way up a scaling-ladder, leapt unaccompanied on to the enemy wall, and suffered thirteen wounds. He was never defeated and brought all his campaigns to an end after one or at most two pitched battles. In Europe he conquered much foreign territory and subdued the Greeks, who are a people extremely difficult to govern and fond of their independence, and believe that they had never obeyed anyone before him except Philip, and that for only a short time on the pretext that he was their leader in a war. As for Asia, he overran virtually the whole of it. To sum up Alexander's luck and energy in a sentence, he conquered the lands that he saw, and died intent on tackling the rest. In Caesar's case, the Adriatic yielded by becoming calm and navigable in the middle of winter. He also crossed the western ocean in an unprecedented attempt to attack the Britons, and ordered his captains to wreck their ships by running them ashore on the British cliffs. He forced his way alone in a small boat at night against another stormy sea, when he ordered the captain to spread the sails and take courage not from the waves but from Caesar's good fortune. On many occasions he was the only man to spring forward from a terrified mass of others and attack the enemy. The Gauls alone he faced thirty times in battle, finally conquering 400 of their tribes, who the Romans felt to be so menacing that in one of their laws concerning immunity from military service for priests and older men there was a clause 'unless the Gauls invade' - in which case priests and older men were to serve. In the Alexandrian war, when he was trapped by himself on a bridge and his life was in danger, he threw off his purple cloak and jumped into the sea. The enemy hunted for him, but he swam a long way under water without being seen, drawing breath only at intervals, until he approached a friendly ship, when he stretched out his hands, revealed himself, and was rescued. When he became involved in these civil wars, whether from fear, as he himself used to say, or from a desire for power, he carne up against the best generals of his time and several great armies which were not composed of uncivilized peoples, as before, but of Romans at the peak of their success and fortune, and he too needed only one or two pitched battles in each case to detect them. Not that his troops were unbeaten like Alexander's, since they were humiliated by the Gauls in the great disaster which overtook them when Cotta and Titurius were in command, in Hispania Petreius and Afranius had them hemmed in under virtual siege, at Dyrrhachium and in Africa they were well and truly routed, and in Hispania they were terrified of the younger Pompey. But Caesar himself was impossible to terrify and was victorious at the end of every campaign. By the use of force and the conferment of favor, and much more surely than Sulla and with a much stronger hand, he overcame the might of the Roman state, which already lorded it over land and sea from the far west to the river Euphrates, and he made himself king against the wishes of the Romans, even if he did not receive that title. And he died, like Alexander, planning fresh campaigns. The pair of them had armies, too, which were equally enthusiastic and devoted to them and resembled wild beasts when it came to battle, but were frequently difficult to manage and made quarrelsome by the hardships they endured. When their leaders were dead, the soldiers mourned them, missed them, and granted them divine honors in a similar way. Both men were well formed in body and of fine appearance. Each traced his lineage back to Zeus, the one being a descendant of Aeacus and Heracles, the other of Anchises and Aphrodite. They were unusually ready to fight determined opponents, but very quick to offer settlement. They liked to pardon their captives, gave them help as well as pardon, and wanted nothing except simply to be supreme. To this extent they can be closely compared, but it was with unequal resources that they set out to seek power. Alexander possessed a kingdom that had been firmly established under Philip, while Caesar was a private individual, from a noble and celebrated family, but very short of money. Neither of them took any notice of omens which referred to them, nor showed any displeasure with the seers who prophesied their deaths. On more than one occasion the omens were similar and indicated a similar end for both. Twice each was confronted with a lobeless liver. The first time it indicated extreme danger. In Alexander's case this was among the Oxydracans, when after he had climbed on to the enemy's wall at the head of his Macedonian troops the scaling-ladder broke, and he was left isolated on top. He leapt audaciously inwards towards the enemy, where he was badly beaten around the chest and neck with a massive club and was about to collapse, when the Macedonians, who had broken down the gates in panic, just managed to rescue him. In Caesar's case it happened in Hispania, when his army was seized with terror when it was drawn up to face the younger Pompey and would not engage the enemy. Caesar ran out in front of everyone into the space between the two armies and took 200 throwing-spears on his shield, until he too was rescued by his army, which was swept forward by shame and apprehension. Thus the first lobeless victim brought both of them into mortal danger, but the second brought death itself, as follows. The seer Peithagoras told Apollodorus, who was afraid of Alexander and Hephaestion and was sacrificing, not to be afraid, because both of them would soon be out of the way. When Hephaestion promptly died, Apollodorus was nervous that there might be some conspiracy against the king, and revealed the prophecy to him. Alexander, smiling, asked Peithagoras himself what the omen meant, and when Peithagoras replied that it meant his life was over, he smiled again and still thanked Apollodorus for his concern and the seer for his frankness. When Caesar was about to enter the senate for the last time, as I described not many pages back, the same omens appeared. He scoffed at them, saying they had been the same in Hispania, and when the seer said that he had indeed been in danger on that occasion, and that the omen was now even more deadly, he made some concession to this forthrightness by repeating the sacrifice, until finally he became irritated by being delayed by the priests and went in to his death. And the same thing happened to Alexander, who was returning with his army from India to Babylon and was already approaching the city when the Chaldaeans begged him to postpone his entry for the moment. He quoted the line 'That prophet is the best, who guesses rightly' but the Chaldaeans begged him a second time not to enter with his army looking towards the setting sun, but to go round and take the city while facing the rising sun. Apparently he relented at this and began to make a circuit, but when he became annoyed with the marshes and swampy ground disregarded this second warning too and made his entrance facing west. Anyway, he entered Babylon, and sailed down the Euphrates as far as the river Pallacotta which takes the water of the Euphrates away into swamps and marshes and prevents the irrigation of the Assyrian country. They say that as he was considering the damming of this river, and taking a boat to look, he poked fun at the Chaldaeans because he had safely entered and safely sailed from Babylon. Yet he was destined to die as soon as he returned there. Caesar, too, indulged in mockery of alike sort. The seer had foretold the day of his death, saying that he would not survive the Ides of March. When the day came Caesar mocked the seer and said, 'The Ides have come', but he still died that day. In this way, then, they made similar fun of the omens which related to themselves, displayed no anger with the seers who announced these omens to them, and were none the less caught according to the letter of the prophecies. In the field of knowledge they were also enthusiastic lovers of wisdom, whether traditional, Greek or foreign. The Brahmans, who are considered to be the astrologers and wise men of the Indians like the Magians among the Persians, were questioned by Alexander on the subject of Indian learning, and Caesar investigated Egyptian lore when he was in Egypt establishing Cleopatra on the throne. As a result he improved much in the civilian sphere at Rome, and brought the year, which was still of variable length due to the occasional insertion of intercalary months which were calculated according to the lunar calendar, into harmony with the course of the sun, according to Egyptian observance. [End of quote] Carotta’s Extraordinary Claim Such apparent close similarities between Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar has a scholar named Francesco Carotta perceived that he has gone so far as to claim that: Jesus was Caesar. Whilst this is not my own view, which is rather that “Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar”, the similarities found by Carotta are indeed intriguing. Some of these I have already listed above. Carotta, not failing to notice the same sorts of stunning parallels between the two lives, has written a book which is the other way round to my article, that Julius Caesar was, in part, based on Jesus Christ. For Francesco Carotta, Jesus Christ was instead based on Julius Caesar. Whilst I believe that Carotta is wrong, I am intrigued that he, too, has attempted to fuse the two lives. Here is one review of Carotta’s fascinating book: http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/jesus-was-caesar-new-book-by-philosopher-and-linguist-francesco-carotta-claims-that-the-real-identity-of-jesus-christ-has-been-discovered-154575075.html – Carotta: ‘Everything of the Story of Jesus can be Found in the Biography of Caesar.’ The Italian-German linguist and philosopher Francesco Carotta proves in his book Jesus was Caesar that the story of Jesus Christ has its origin in Roman sources. In more than fifteen years of investigation Carotta has found the traces which lead to the Julian origin of Christianity. He concludes that the story of Jesus is based on the narrative of the life of Julius Caesar. …. Carotta’s new evidence leads to such an overwhelming amount of similarities between the biography of Caesar and the story of Jesus that coincidence can be ruled out. – Both Caesar and Jesus start their rising careers in neighboring states in the north: Gallia and Galilee. – Both have to cross a fateful river: the Rubicon and the Jordan. Once across the rivers, they both come across a patron/rival: Pompeius and John the Baptist, and their first followers: Antonius and Curio on the one hand and Peter and Andrew on the other. – Both are continually on the move, finally arriving at the capital, Rome and Jerusalem, where they at first triumph, yet subsequently undergo their passion. – Both have good relationships with women and have a special relationship with one particular woman, Caesar with Cleopatra and Jesus with Magdalene. – Both have encounters at night, Caesar with Nicomedes of Bithynia, Jesus with Nicodemus of Bethany. – Both have an affinity to ordinary people - and both run afoul of the highest authorities: Caesar with the Senate, Jesus with the Sanhedrin. – Both are contentious characters, but show praiseworthy clemency as well: the clementia Caesaris and Jesus’ Love-thy-enemy. – Both have a traitor: Brutus and Judas. And an assassin who at first gets away: the other Brutus and Barabbas. And one who washes his hands of it: Lepidus and Pilate. – Both are accused of making themselves kings: King of the Romans and King of the Jews. Both are dressed in red royal robes and wear a crown on their heads: a laurel wreath and a crown of thorns. – Both get killed: Caesar is stabbed with daggers, Jesus is crucified, but with a stab wound in his side. – Jesus as well as Caesar hang on a cross. For a reconstruction of the crucifixion of Caesar, see: http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html#images – Both die on the same respective dates of the year: Caesar on the Ides (15 th) of March, Jesus on the 15 th of Nisan. – Both are deified posthumously: as Divus Iulius and as Jesus Christ. – Caesar and Jesus also use the same words, e.g.: Caesar’s famous Latin ‘Veni, vidi, vici’-I came, I saw, I conquered-is in the Gospel transmitted into: ‘I came, washed and saw’, whereby Greek enipsa, ‘I washed’, replaces enikisa, ‘I conquered’. …. [End of quote] To which we find this rejoinder: “Good try, boys. But I think that our site provides copious evidence for the fact that the Greeks and the Romans tended to be the plagiarisers”. And I would fully agree with this last observation, having by now written many articles on what I consider to have been the Greco-Roman appropriation of Hebrew (Jewish) culture and civilisation at various levels. To give but a recent example of this: First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt (3) First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Hellenistic Influence A common theme of mine has been the constant Greco-Roman appropriations of various aspects of ancient Near Eastern culture and civilisation – most notably that of the Hebrews. The younger histories borrowing from the vastly older ones. But might not the younger Roman Republican ‘history’ have also absorbed, and appropriated, certain elements of the widespread Hellenistic empire? Biblically (I accept the Catholic canon), Rome emerges very late, but with glowing praise. I refer to 1 Maccabees 8, in which Judas Maccabeus makes a treaty with Rome. The conventional date for this is c. 160 BC, but I would imagine that this will need to be, through astute revisionism, significantly lowered. The Maccabean writer eulogises both Roman military might and Roman fair dealing (1-13): Judas had heard of the reputation of the Romans. They were valiant fighters and acted amiably to all who took their side. They established a friendly alliance with all who applied to them. He was also told of their battles and the brave deeds that they performed against the Gauls, conquering them and forcing them to pay tribute; and what they did in Spain to get possession of the silver and gold mines there. By planning and persistence they subjugated the whole region, although it was very remote from their own. They also subjugated the kings who had come against them from the far corners of the earth until they crushed them and inflicted on them severe defeat. The rest paid tribute to them every year. Philip and Perseus, king of the Macedonians, and the others who opposed them in battle they overwhelmed and subjugated. Antiochus the Great, king of Asia, who fought against them with a hundred and twenty elephants and with cavalry and chariots and a very great army, was defeated by them. They took him alive and obliged him and the kings who succeeded him to pay a heavy tribute, to give hostages and to cede Lycia, Mysia, and Lydia from among their best provinces. The Romans took these from him and gave them to King Eumenes. When the Greeks planned to come and destroy them, the Romans discovered it, and sent against the Greeks a single general who made war on them. Many were wounded and fell, and the Romans took their wives and children captive. They plundered them, took possession of their land, tore down their strongholds and reduced them to slavery even to this day. All the other kingdoms and islands that had ever opposed them they destroyed and enslaved; with their friends, however, and those who relied on them, they maintained friendship. They subjugated kings both near and far, and all who heard of their fame were afraid of them. Those whom they wish to help and to make kings, they make kings; and those whom they wish, they depose; and they were greatly exalted. This terrifying military strength and domination was, however, modified by wise government (vv. 14-16): Yet with all this, none of them put on a diadem or wore purple as a display of grandeur. But they made for themselves a senate chamber, and every day three hundred and twenty men took counsel, deliberating on all that concerned the people and their well-being. They entrust their government to one man every year, to rule over their entire land, and they all obey that one, and there is no envy or jealousy among them. Unfortunately, the Maccabean account of the journey to Rome for Treaty purposes by “Eupolemus, son of John, son of Accos, and Jason, son of Eleazar” (vv. 17-32) does not include any Roman names whatsoever. “Later, Simon sent Numenius to Rome with the gift of a large gold shield weighing half a ton, to confirm the Jews’ alliance with the Romans” (14:24). Judas Maccabeus was now dead and his brother Simon was High Priest. Conventionally, this second Jewish approach to Rome is dated about 20 years later (c. 140 BC) than the one at the time of Judas. Finally, this time, we are given a Roman name, “Lucius”, a consul, most generally thought to have been Lucius Calpurnius Piso. http://biblehub.com/topical/l/lucius.htm A Roman consul who is said (1 Maccabees 15:16;) to have written a letter to Ptolemy Euergetes securing to Simon the high priest and to the Jews the protection of Rome. As the praenomen only of the consul is given, there has been much discussion as to the person intended. The weight of probability has been assigned to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was one of the consuls in 139-138 B.C., the fact of his praenomen being Cneius and not Lucius being explained by an error in transcription and the fragmentary character of the documents. The authority of the Romans not being as yet thoroughly established in Asia, they were naturally anxious to form alliances with the kings of Egypt and with the Jews to keep Syria in check. The imperfections that are generally admitted in the transcription of the Roman letter are not such as in any serious degree to invalidate the authority of the narrative in 1 Maccabees. The Maccabean text reads as follows (15:5-24): Meanwhile, Numenius and those with him arrived in Jerusalem from Rome with the following letter addressed to various kings and countries: From Lucius, consul of the Romans, to King Ptolemy, greetings. A delegation from our friends and allies the Jews has come to us to renew the earlier treaty of friendship and alliance. They were sent by the High Priest Simon and the Jewish people, and they have brought as a gift a gold shield weighing half a ton. So we have decided to write to various kings and countries urging them not to harm the Jews, their towns, or their country in any way. They must not make war against the Jews or give support to those who attack them. We have decided to accept the shield and grant them protection. Therefore if any traitors escape from Judea and seek refuge in your land, hand them over to Simon the High Priest, so that he may punish them according to Jewish law. Lucius wrote the same letter to King Demetrius, to Attalus, Ariarathes, and Arsaces, and to all the following countries: Sampsames, Sparta, Delos, Myndos, Sicyon, Caria, Samos, Pamphylia, Lycia, Halicarnassus, Rhodes, Phaselis, Cos, Side, Aradus, Gortyna, Cnidus, Cyprus, and Cyrene. A copy of the letter was also sent to Simon the High Priest. The Divine Julius That the ‘Julius Caesar’ that has come down to us exhibits some marked Hellenistic aspects is apparent from the account of Caesar given by N. Fields in his Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008). Fields, writing in his section, “The Second Dictator”, finds himself confronted with those vexed questions regarding Caesar’s status and intentions (pp. 175-176): [Caesar’s] acceptance of the title dictator perpetuus demonstrates that Caesar did intend to retain power indefinitely, but this then raise two further extraordinary questions. First, was Caesar seeking a quasi-divine status, and second, was he going to convert the perpetual dictatorship into a hereditary monarchy? Even to this day both of these points are fiercely argued about by academics. Balsdon, for instance, coolly argues that the notion that Caesar hankered after divine status and kingship was the invention and elaboration of his assassins. On the other hand, others such as Taylor and Weinstock earnestly believe that Caesar was seeking divine status, that is to say, a Hellenistic-type monarch, despotic and absolute, worshipped with god-like honours …. N. Fields becomes more explicit in his section, “The ‘Divine King’”. Following the battle of Munda, Fields writes (pp. 176-177): … the Senate awarded Caesar another heap of honours in his absence. Again this included an ivory statue, which was inscribed ‘To the undefeated God’ and carried in procession with a statue of Victory at the opening of all games in the circus. The inscription itself had strong overtones of Alexander the Great and admittedly this is a difficult one to explain away, especially as the master of Rome did not over-rule the Senate this time. Post-Alexander But such excessive honour also smacked of the post-Alexander Ptolemies (p. 177): “Naturally Caesar was worshipped in the Greek east, where Hellenistic monarchs (and powerful Romans before Caesar) had been typically granted divine status while alive, the most celebrated being the Ptolemies of Egypt”. Without my having yet done any really thorough research on the matter, I would nonetheless anticipate that Hellenistic history - just like I have shown to be the case with Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian and Persian history - will require significant streamlining. How many of those many Ptolemies and Cleopatras are actually repetitions? And how much belongs to Greece, and how much to Rome? Contemporaneous with the famous Cicero (c. 106-43 BC), or “Chickpea”, for example, was a Ptolemaïc “Chickpea”, Ptolemy IX Lathyrus (= Chickpea). There is much sorting out to be done here. N. Fields’ account of the enigmatic Caesar is full of questions, often with Hellenistic answers. P. 178: Herein lies a possible solution to the question of Caesar’s so-called divine status. It is certainly true that the divine worship of Hellenistic monarchs became the model for the Roman emperors, and thus we could argue that Caesar, dictator for life, was the first example of this practice. …. King of Rome? But why did Caesar need the more glamorous but invidious title of rex, especially as he now held all the power he required by ruling Rome through the position of dictator perpetuus? Syme believes it is not necessary to accept that he sought to establish a Hellenistic-style monarchy, because the dictatorship was sufficient …. Did Julius Caesar really exist? Stay posted. Divine Augustus Finally, the ‘Julius Caesar’ that has come down to us is also found to have similarities remarkably akin to those of that historically verifiable Julius Caesar, Octavianus Augustus. The Lord of History and the Emperor of Rome Jesus Christ, whose birth occurred during the reign of emperor (Julius Caesar) Augustus, is the absolute Fulcrum of history. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Professor P. Kreeft, writing of Jesus as the philosopher par excellence, has reminded us that, owing to Jesus, history is now divided between what came before his birth and whatever is subsequent to it (The Philosophy of Jesus): Amazingly, no one ever seems to have looked at Jesus as a philosopher, or his teaching as philosophy. Yet no one in history has ever had a more radically new philosophy, or made more of a difference to philosophy, than Jesus. He divided all human history into two, into "B.C." and "A.D."; and the history of philosophy is crucial to human history, since philosophy is crucial to man; so how could He not also divide philosophy? http://www.staugustine.net/our-books/books/the-philosophy-of-jesus He, as Paul tells us (Philippians 2:6-7): Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance …. And He ‘found that human appearance’, as a helpless baby, during the reign of the aforesaid emperor Augustus (Luke 2:1-7. NIV): The Birth of Jesus In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. …. He, whose kingdom is Truth, came to correct every manner of human falsehood. Replying to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, Jesus proclaimed (John 18:37): ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me’. The Lord of the Cosmos and the Alpha and Omega of Creation, will even defer, in part, to the lord of empire and kingdoms (Mark 12:17): “Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. And they marvelled at him”. Yet this was He about whom: http://zimmerman.catholic.ac/ Paul instructs us that God made our existence take its origin in Christ Jesus as our Alpha; that God created all things in and through the First Born, the Incarnate Christ; through that same Christ who is now fully in charge of this universe; who, when He will finalize His work of submitting the Cosmos to Himself, will deliver it back to God: "When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will [also] be subjected to the One who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 14:28). Exploring Comparisons: ‘Julius Caesar’ and Octavianus Some of the ‘Julius Caesar’, ostensibly the ‘perfect man’, that has come down to us may have picked up elements from the Divine Jesus (Ecce Homo), the God-Man; and from the Hellenistic king worship; the undefeatable Alexander the Great, the military genius. But even if that were so, does it mean that there was not an actual Julius Caesar apart from all of this? In the case of my studies of the Prophet Mohammed, I eventually came to the firm conclusion that ‘he’, a composite biblical character, did not exist in reality as a C7th AD person, and that ‘his’ biography actually plays havoc with real history: Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History (3) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And that the ‘Mohammed’ that has come down to us was based largely - at least up until the time of ‘his’ marriage - upon Tobias (my Job), the son of Tobit. Is the same type of conclusion to be reached about ‘Julius Caesar’, that he was a non-real composite, from whose biography a significant piece of presumed Roman history may need to be rescued? Military Campaigns These took ‘Julius Caesar’ to the same places wherein Octavianus would campaign: namely, Gaul; Britain; Greece; Spain; Africa (Egypt), with a famous civil war also involved. Julius Caesar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_campaigns_of_Julius_Caesar The military campaigns of Julius Caesar constituted both the Gallic War (58 BC-51 BC) and Caesar's civil war (50 BC-45 BC). They followed Caesar's consulship (chief magistracy) in 59 BC, which had been highly controversial. The Gallic War mainly took place in what is now France. In 55 and 54 BC, he invaded Britain, although he made little headway. The Gallic War ended with complete Roman victory at the Battle of Alesia. This was followed by the civil war, during which time Caesar chased his rivals to Greece, decisively defeating them there. He then went to Egypt, where he defeated the Egyptian pharaoh and put Cleopatra on the throne. He then finished off his Roman opponents in Africa and Spain. Once his campaigns were over, he served as Roman Dictator until his assassination on March 15, 44 BC. These wars were critically important in the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars Julius Caesar elaborated plans for a campaign against Parthia, but his assassination averted the war. Octavianus http://applet-magic.com/caesaraugustus.htm • 46 BCE: Octavius accompanied Julius Caesar in the public precession celebrating the victory of Caesar over his opponents in Africa. • 45 BCE: Octavius accompanied Caesar on his military expedition to Spain to defeat and destroy the sons of Pompey, his defeated rival, who were trying to perpetuate their father's opposition to Caesar. • 44 BCE: …. The troops of Octavius joined with troops which the Senate has at its command. The combined forces drove Antony out of Italy into Gaul. In the battle with Anthony's forces the two elected Consuls of Rome were killed. Octavius's troops demanded that the Senate confer the title of Consul on Octavius. Octavius was officially recognized as the son of Julius Caesar. He then took the name Gaius Julius Caesar (Octavianus). He was more generally known as Octavian during this period. • 42 BCE: The Senate deemed Julius Caesar as having been a god. This enhanced Octavian's status still further. Antony and Octavian undertook a military expedition to the East to defeat Brutus and Cassius. In two battles at Philippi the troops of Brutus and Cassius were defeated and Brutus and Cassius killed themselves. The Triumvirate then divided up the Empire. Anthony got the East and Gaul. Lepidus got Africa and Octavian got the West except for Italy which was to be under common control of all three. • 31 BCE: Antony decided to bring his forces to the western side of Greece. Cleopatra accompanied him. Octavian sent a military expedition under the command of Agrippa to challenge Antony's control of Greece. Octavian later joined Agrippa and their fleet bottled up Antony and Cleopatra's fleet in the Gulf of Ambracia. A naval battle ensued at Actium in which Cleopatra, for fear of being captured, pulled her ships out of the battle and headed back to Egypt thus ensuring the defeat of Anthony's forces. Anthony and some of his ships escaped from the battle and followed Cleopatra. • 30 BCE: Octavian invaded Egypt; Anthony commits suicide and Cleopatra follows suit in a tragic sequence of events. ….Octavian annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire and put it under his direct control. • 20 BCE: The empires of Rome and Parthia reached a peace agreement in which Parthia accepted Armenia as being within the Roman sphere of influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Britain Augustus prepared invasions [of Britain] in 34 BC, 27 BC and 25 BC. The first and third were called off due to revolts elsewhere in the empire, the second because the Britons seemed ready to come to terms.[1] According to Augustus's Res Gestae, two British kings, Dubnovellaunus and Tincomarus, fled to Rome as supplicants during his reign,[2] and Strabo's Geography, written during this period, says that Britain paid more in customs and duties than could be raised by taxation if the island were conquered.[3] Crossing the Rubicon This is a defining moment in the ambitious progress of Julius Caesar. N. Fields tells of it in Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008, pp. 145-146): … on the night of 10 January Caesar crossed the Rubicon into Italy accompanied by a single legion, legio XIII, apparently repeating, in Greek, a proverb of the time, ‘let the die be cast’. …. On one side [of the Rubicon] Caesar still held imperium pro consule and had the right to command troops, on the other he was a mere privatus, a private citizen. It was frank initiation of a civil war. …. Moreover, just as Julius was then faced with the situation of “the fugitives Antonius and Cassius” (p. 146), so was Octavianus - as we shall shortly learn - when he crossed the Rubicon. In fact, he would cross it twice. N. Fields (p. 204): For the second time in ten months Octavianus set out to march on Rome. Crossing the Rubicon at the head of his eight legions, he then pushed on to Rome with the celerity of Caesar …. On 19 August Octavianus took over one of the vacant consulships. Cicero’s protégé, the ‘divine youth whom heaven had sent to save the state … was not quite 20 years old. …. Antonius entered Gallia Transalpina unopposed …. (P. 207): Their next chief task was to eliminate Brutus and Cassius …. Triumvirate Again an item common to Julius Caesar and Octavianus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate The First Triumvirate was a political alliance between three prominent Roman politicians (triumvirs) which included Gaius Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus. "Pompey and Caesar now formed a pact, jointly swearing to oppose all legislation of which any one of them might disapprove. It lasted from approximately 59 BCE to Crassus' defeat by the Parthians in 53 BCE.[1] The alliance was "not at heart a union of those with the same political ideals and ambitions", but one where "all [were] seeking personal advantage."[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Triumvirate The Second Triumvirate is the name historians have given to the official political alliance of Gaius Octavius (Octavian, Caesar Augustus), Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, formed on 26 November 43 BCE with the enactment of the Lex Titia, the adoption of which is viewed as marking the end of the Roman Republic. The Triumvirate existed for two five-year terms, covering the period 43 BCE to 33 BCE. Unlike the earlier First Triumvirate,[2][3] the Second Triumvirate was an official, legally established institution, whose overwhelming power in the Roman state was given full legal sanction and whose imperium maius outranked that of all other magistrates, including the consuls. Conclusion Whether or not Julius Caesar really existed as an entity distinct from, for example, Octavianus, by the time that all of the accretions that have been added to that presumed historical person have been removed from him, and from his history, the original model will have thinned out about as radically as Julius Caesar’s famous receding hairline. Julius Caesar did not invade Britain (First written on 13th August 2015) “… there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar”. Ben Hamilton King Alfred the Great may have been the culprit, according to Ben Hamilton: http://cphpost.dk/news/caesar-conquering-britain-a-9th-century-invention-by-alfred-the-great.html Caesar conquering Britain a 9th century invention by Alfred the Great Saxon king fabricated 54 BC invasion to replace Viking-friendly heir and protect England from the Danes August 16th, 2017 6:41 pm| by Ben Hamilton The Saxon king Alfred, a late ninth century ruler who unified several kingdoms of England and thwarted the Danish Vikings from taking over at every turn, is commonly referred to as ‘the Great’ by historians. But maybe ‘the Magnificent’ club of Suleiman, Lorenzo de’ Medici and co should make room for one more, contends Rebecca Huston, a former National Geographic Channel producer and American screenwriter who after ten years of original research and analysis believes the king single-handedly saved the country from being permanently absorbed into Scandinavia. Never mind a one-nation Brexit, this was a one-man Brepel! Caesar the non-conqueror This wasn’t through force. Alfred simply demonstrated that the pen is mightier than the sword. Over a thousand years before the exploits of Bletchley Park saw off one army of foreign invaders, he delved into old manuscripts to stop another. By doctoring a Latin version of one of the ancient world’s most famous writings, and altering several Old English manuscripts, he was able to convince his council of nobles that his son Edward was the rightful heir to his throne, not his nephew Æthelwold, a Saxon susceptible to alliances with the Danes. And the astonishing upshot of this discovery is that Julius Caesar neither invaded nor conquered Britain in 54 BC. Alfred the great storyteller Along with the collected letters of Cicero, the memoirs written by Caesar while he was conquering France and other areas of central Europe in the fifth decade of the first century BC is believed by many to be one of the few manuscripts to have survived the period. But there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar. But many do, and therefore they duly accept that he invaded Britain. Ancient writings only survived because they were painstakingly recopied by hand, and also translated, mostly by monks at monasteries when it was judged the current version was becoming a little worse for wear. This made them vulnerable to change. As an avid translator of Latin texts into Old English with all his kingdom’s manuscripts at his disposal, Alfred was ideally placed to meddle, and Huston claims she has found compelling evidence among 6,000 pages of ancient and medieval texts that Alfred fabricated Caesar’s two ‘invasions’ of Britain in 55 and 54 BC and added them to what would become BG. In reality, she says, the first ‘invasion’ did not take place, and the second was a passing visit. Many academics concur the king of Wessex, Kent, Essex, Sussex and the western part of Mercia also translated and revised five old English works – including translations of ‘Ecclesiastical History’, an eighth century work by the Venerable Bede, and ‘History Against the Pagans’, a fifth century work by Orosius. Significantly the old English versions of the pair’s works include details about Caesar’s invasions, but the Latin versions do not. Bede, for example, relied on the sixth century monk Gildas for all of his early British history, but Gildas never mentioned Caesar or his invasions, suggesting the inclusion is not Bede’s work. Tellingly, the earliest-known copy of BG dates back to the last quarter of the ninth century, coinciding with the latter years of Alfred’s life. Traces of the Englishman “Alfred was the anonymous author of ‘Bellum Gallicum’ because highly-specific details about Alfred’s own life appear in the text that could not have been written by Caesar nor be known prior to Alfred’s lifetime,” Huston told CPH POST. Huston points out that many scholars, including Germany’s Heinrich Meusel and Alfredus Klotz, have shared doubts over the authenticity of the passages – with Klotz suggesting that a “pseudo-Caesar” added false details, and Meusel questioning why Caesar wrote like an Englishman. Historians have for centuries been stumbling over the truth, but have either not noticed or ignored the evidence – in some cases, suggests Huston, because Alfred was believed to be the spiritual founder of Oxford University and it would have been highly controversial! For example, the early 20th century work ‘The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes’ acknowledges Alfred’s idiosyncratic style of drawing on his experience in describing the military exploits of others, while 19th century scholar Charles Plummer contends that the pious Alfred could not resist adding Christian elements, claiming that ‘History against the Pagans’ shows a “remarkable divergence from historical fact”. Additionally, as a champion of indirect discourse (when he wasn’t saying “Veni, Vidi, Vici”!), Caesar would have never lapsed into the first person, as is often the case in BG – such a writing style was abhorrent to him and he even included his dislike in a book on classical Latin grammar. Spun like Keyser Söze Huston’s groundbreaking analysis of BG has yielded 120 examples of Alfred’s idiosyncratic writing style (including word choice, verbose style and peculiar errors) along with 40 references to his own life and times. For example, BG records that Caesar arrived in 54 BC on clinker-built ships – a vessel never used by the Romans and not by anyone until the third century – which were familiar to Alfred as they featured heavily in his own West Saxon fleet. In addition, the description of the Britons in BG closely matches that of the Danes in the ninth century, while Caesar’s experience fighting them is similar to Alfred’s against the Vikings. The ancient Brits, according to BG, wore animal skins and did not eat grain – a claim contradicted by modern archaeologists. Throughout BG, Celtic and Old English terms frequently appear, geography is referenced that is six centuries premature and anachronistic errors are made regarding Roman weapons not yet invented nor used. For example, the Latin term ‘equites’ is used to mean knights, but in Caesar’s day it meant money-lenders, while the four kings of Kent who surrendered to Caesar were family members of Alfred’s, and one of the surrendering British tribes, the Ancalites, is named after a sixth century shield used by Alfred’s ancestors. “Similar to the mastermind character Keyser Söze in ‘The Usual Suspects’, Alfred adroitly spun the tale of Caesar’s British ‘invasions’ by fictionalising objects likely found in his immediate environment,” contended Huston. A lack of evidence No archaeological evidence has ever been found in southern England to confirm the Romans under Caesar fought the Britons as claimed in BG, with modern historian Richard Warner (in ‘British Archaeology’, 1995) asserting that the only reason people believe Caesar invaded Britain is because of his memoirs. Not one ancient writer prior to Alfred mentions the invasion – not even Suetonius, who as the first official Roman biographer of Caesar and head of the Imperial Archives in Rome, had access to Caesar’s personal papers, daily military diaries and reports to the Roman Senate. In 36 of Cicero’s letters from 54 BC, of which some were written directly to Caesar, not one mentions an invasion or fighting or transport problems despite many references to Britain. Cicero had good reason to be interested, as his brother took part in Caesar’s visit. There is no mention of Caesar conquering Britain in the work of three prominent first century AD writers: the Roman historian Tacitus, the Greek essayist Plutarch, and the Roman poet Lucan, who observed that “Caesar came looking for the British and then terrified, turned tail.” There is no evidence of the Roman camp which would have stood for three months and housed 25,000 soldiers, the battlesites – others have yielded countless finds – or the voyage over. According to BG, 800 ships were launched from Port Itius in France in 54 BC – a location that would struggle to see off more than a hundred, according to a French admiral serving in the Napoleonic Wars. A five-year mission launched in 2000, which was co-sponsored by the British Museum, tried to find the remains of 52 ships that supposedly sunk when Caesar ‘invaded’ Britain (12 in 55 and 40 in 54 BC), searching predominantly seven miles northeast of the cliffs of Dover – the area identified by BG. BG also details the loss of 120 Roman anchors, of which each one weighed 680 kg and measured 2.8 metres across. The mission used SONAR technology that can identify a teapot at a depth of 500 metres, but nothing was found. Ancient shipwrecks and anchors will deteriorate faster in warmer waters, but while dozens have been found in the Mediterranean, not one has been discovered in British waters. Mission accomplished Before his accession Alfred had promised his predecessor, his brother Æthelred I, that the dying king’s sons would take precedence over his own offspring and one of them, Æthelwold, was accordingly the senior heir. Under Saxon law the kingship was not Alfred’s gift to bestow. But he did his best to make his son Edward the most logical heir, leaving him the bulk of his lands and even having the bones of his predecessor moved from Steyning, an estate left to Æthelwold, to Winchester, his capital. Alfred’s citation from BG helped to strengthen his claim to the same rights and responsibilities as Caesar, the ‘conqueror’ of the five territories he ruled over, because of an additional lie that no records support: that he had been consecrated in Rome by Pope Leo IV during a pilgrimage he made aged four in 853. Accordingly, he claimed he had inherited the ancient right of a conqueror to name his successor, thus superseding his agreement with his brother. Furthermore, by claiming the ancient nobles of Britain accepted Caesar’s choice of ruler of the exact same kingdom Alfred presided over, he could argue Roman authority superseded that of the Saxons, and that the ancient right was inseparable from the land. “The anonymously-forged ‘memoirs’ were good enough to fool Alfred’s Latin-illiterate council of nobles,” contended Huston. Edward duly succeeded Alfred in 899, prompting Æthelwold to launch a rebellion backed by Scandinavian allies, which he died fighting in three years later. Edward’s grandson Edgar the Peaceful went on to unify the kingdoms of England in 957, although this was shortlived. While the Danes did eventually conquer the whole of England in 1013, their 29-year rule was not long enough to permanently absorb the country into a Nordic empire. Had Alfred not intervened, they could have ruled England for 143 years, or even longer.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Bartimaeus and Bartholomew

“Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him’. So they called to the blind man, ‘Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you’. Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him. The blind man said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see’. ‘Go’, said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you’. Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road”. Mark 10:46-52 Michael David Jay has well written: https://michaeldavidjay.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/mark-1046-52-bartimaeus-the-last-disciple/ Mark 10:46-52 Bartimaeus the last disciple Reading: Mark 10:46-52 The healing of Bartimaeus is unique; there is nothing else like it in the book of Mark. I know, it seems familiar; Mark has three stories of Jesus healing blind people, and there is a way that it strongly resembles when Jesus healed the man blind from birth in Jerusalem — but as far as Mark goes there is only one healing like it. I found three things unique in the gospel account: How the Blind man was introduced, how he addressed Jesus, and how he responded once he was healed. If you notice, Mark’s gospel tells us that Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus was sitting by the roadside. Now, you’ve likely noticed that when Jesus heals people in Mark, a very common description is: “And Jesus healed many who were sick.” Sometimes, there is a longer description of the healing — such as the paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof when Jesus had a chance to go home, but it is rare that we can identify who was healed from the passage. Even when Jesus healed Peter’s mother in law, or Jarius’ daughter, the healed person was left unnamed. Bartimaeus is the only person Jesus healed who was significant enough to be given a name. As you might know, name-dropping is generally something you do with names that are familiar to the group. When this story was originally told, it is fairly safe to assume that people hearing the story when Peter told it in person would know who Bartimaeus was; this lead me to an observation that I find curious; I have no idea who this man was outside of the Biblical text. Usually when I see a name in the New Testament, I can find what Christian tradition has to say about the person; but as far as I can tell, Christian tradition is silent on this man. While Peter named the blind man healed in Jerusalem, Luke apparently edited the name out. Bartimaeus was important enough to name when the apostles were still preaching the gospel, but the reason has been forgotten; then again, perhaps the other two unique things in this story may offer us a hint. The second unique feature of this story is when Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus, He cries out: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” When we see this, we see the blind beggar publicly saying something about Jesus that nobody else says; that he is the son, and perhaps the Heir of David. Peter might have recognized that Jesus was the Messiah privately, but this blind beggar publicly proclaimed who Jesus was while he was calling for mercy. He wanted to be healed, and he asked for healing — but he knew that Jesus was more than just a healer. The final feature of this story that is unique is how the blind man responded to the healing. I’m going to get back to this idea in a little bit, but first, I want us to consider what happened when Jesus healed people. Generally, when Jesus healed people, after they got what they needed they went home, and presumably went on with their lives. Perhaps the best example is Luke 17, where Jesus heals ten lepers — he tells the ten to go and show themselves to the priests (so they can be accepted back into society.) All ten of them are healed, but only one returns to Jesus to say “Thank you.” While Jesus asks where the other 9 are, if I look at all the stories of healing, I get the idea that coming back to say thank you was uncommon. Once people get what they want, they go away. Now, I know that this is much like the experience that we have in real life. If you talk with people who work with soup kitchens, or food pantries, or any number of aid charities, you will learn that you don’t get very many thank-you notes for your work. People know that you are there for those who need something, and they take what they need and go home. Whether we like it or not, this is the nature of things — the relationship is purely one of providing a service to someone who needs the service. Many of us also know somebody who only calls when he or she needs something, but who is never there for us. This was the relationship Jesus appears to have had with almost everybody that he healed. Bartimaeus was different; he got up from where he was begging and followed Jesus on the way. This is exactly what the disciples did — they left their familiar old life and followed Jesus. If I were to guess why Bartimaeus was named, I would guess it is because he was one of the disciples. After this, there are no more stories of those Jesus healed in Mark’s gospel. We are now in the last week of Jesus’ life; immediately after Bartimaeus follows Jesus, Mark moves on to the triumphal entry. Bartimaeus follows Jesus on the way, but at this point the cross is only a week away. Bartimaeus knows something about who Jesus is, he does what disciples do right at the time when it was hardest to be a disciple and even the 12 were scattered. His story is one that I wish were not forgotten. [End of quote] If the author is hinting here, when writing: “If I were to guess why Bartimaeus was named, I would guess it is because he was one of the disciples”, that Bartimaeus may have been the same as the Apostle Bartholomew, then he has concluded exactly as I have about him.

Jesus Christ most aptly described as a “Lamb”

“Paul states, “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Jesus' death on the cross was a passover from death to life for himself and for all of us. By his blood we are saved from death. Jesus made it possible for us to break out of the slavery of sin and death. He gave us the hope of reaching our promised land, heaven”. Loyola Press Jesus the Lamb of God At Loyola Press we read: https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/scripture-and-tradition/jesus-and-the-new-testament/who-do-you-say-that-i-am-names-for-jesus/jesus-the-lamb-of-god/ Have you ever had a lamb cake as part of your Easter celebration? Have you seen art that shows a lamb holding a triumphant banner? The lamb as a symbol for Christ has its roots in the Old Testament. For centuries people worshipped God by sacrificing animals. They killed them and offered them to God. For the Jews a lamb was the main animal of sacrifice. In the Temple a lamb was offered every day. The sacrifice of a lamb also played an important part in the Exodus. In the biblical story of the Exodus, God led the Israelites out of Egypt, where they were slaves, and into the promised land. On the night God's people were to depart, the firstborn in all the Egyptian families died. The firstborn of the Israelites were saved because God had instructed them to kill a lamb or goat and mark their doorposts with its blood. The angel of death then knew to pass over those houses. The Israelites ate the lamb in a meal before they left. The lamb was to have no blemish, and none of its bones were to be broken. To this day the Jews remember this night with the Feast of Passover. On this day they share a special meal called a Seder meal. The shank of a lamb is one item on the Seder plate. Jesus is called the lamb of God because he is the perfect sacrifice offered to God. In 1 Peter 1:18-19 we are told, “You were ransomed . . . not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb.” A prophecy about the Messiah states, “Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7). After Jesus' crucifixion, soldiers did not break his legs to kill him because he was already dead. Like the Passover lamb, his bones were unbroken. Paul states, “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Jesus' death on the cross was a passover from death to life for himself and for all of us. By his blood we are saved from death. Jesus made it possible for us to break out of the slavery of sin and death. He gave us the hope of reaching our promised land, heaven. The Gospel of John clearly compares Jesus to the Passover lamb by saying that Jesus was crucified the same day that the Passover lambs were being killed in the Temple (John 19:31). In the Gospel of John it was John the Baptist who gave Jesus the title Lamb of God (John 1:29). The Book of Revelation speaks of the Lamb at least 29 times. In a vision John sees a lamb. Four living creatures and 24 elders fall before the Lamb and sing praise because he purchased all people with his blood (Revelation 5:9). † Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us! † Response to a Jewish reader who wrote: “Jesus was never a lamb”.

Monday, October 21, 2024

Pope John Paul II may have been the “spark” from Poland spoken of by Jesus to Sister Faustina

“Write this for the many souls who are often worried to carry out an act of mercy. Yet spiritual mercy, which requires neither permission or storehouses, is much more meritorious and is within the grasp of every soul. If a soul does not exercise mercy somehow or other, it will not obtain My mercy on the day of judgment”. Jesus to Sister Faustina Kowalska Today (22nd October 2024) is the feast day of John Paul II ‘the Great’ The following is taken from: https://feastofmercy.net/blogs/prayers-devotions/saint-faustina-you-will-prepare-the-world-for-my-final-coming Saint Faustina, "you will prepare the world for My final coming" by Tim McAndrew Who is this Saint Faustina that Our Lord asks to prepare the world for His final coming? Sister Faustina Kowalska is known today as the Apostle of the Divine Mercy. She was the third of ten children born into a poor pious family in Glogowiec, Poland. When she was only seven, she already sensed in her soul the call to embrace the religious life. Sister Faustina tried hard to ignore this Divine call; however, by a vision of the suffering Christ and by the words of His approach, “How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting me off?” Sister Faustina was born August 25, 1905 and passed on to the Lord on October 5, 1938 in Krakow, Poland. At the age of 20 years she joined a convent in Warsaw, Poland, was later transferred to Płock, and then to Vilnius where she met her confessor Father Michał Sopoćko, who supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. Faustina and Sopoćko directed an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on Faustina's vision of Jesus. Sopoćko used the image in celebrating the first Mass on the first Sunday after Easter. Subsequently, Pope John Paul II established the Feast of Divine Mercy on that Sunday of each liturgical year. Her entire life was spent striving for an even fuller union with God and on self sacrificing in cooperation with Jesus in the work of saving souls. This simple uneducated but courageous woman, was consigned the great mission by Our Lord Jesus to proclaim His message of mercy, to the whole world and to prepare the world for His final coming. His message was recorded in a diary kept by Saint Faustina. Our Lord Speaks: “I am sending you with My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it, pressing it to My merciful heart.” (Diary 1588) “You are secretary of My mercy; I have chosen you for office in this and the next life.” (Diary 1605)... “To make known to souls the great mercy that I have for them, and to exhort them to trust in the bottomless depth of My mercy.” (Diary 1567) Our Lord words to Saint Faustina about Divine Mercy Sunday: “I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls; especially for poor sinners.” (Diary 699) “I am giving them the last hope of salvation. That is, recourse to My mercy. If they will not adore My mercy, they will perish for all eternity.” (Diary 965) Saint Faustina’s Vision of Hell Sister Faustina recorded in the diary a vision of Hell: “I, Sister Faustina Kowalska, by the order of God, have visited the abysses of Hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence. The devils were full of hatred for me, but they had to obey me at the command of God. What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But, I noticed one thing, that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a Hell. Today I was led by an angel to the chasms of Hell. It is a place of great tortures; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kind of tortures I saw: “The first torture that constitutes Hell is the loss of God. The second is perpetual remorse of conscience. The third is that one’s condition will never change. The fourth is the fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it. A terrible suffering since it is a purely spiritual fire, lit by God's anger. The fifth torture is a continual darkness and a terrible suffocation smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own. The sixth torture is horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies; indescribable sufferings. There are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable suffering related to the manner which it has sinned. "No one can say there is no Hell. Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity on those senses which he made use of to sin". (Diary 741) "You will prepare the world for My Final Coming" However much we’re wary of overly apocalyptical prophecy … there’s no doubting that one such prediction came from a recently canonized saint. That was St. Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Divine Mercy revelations, who was canonized in 2000. …. “Speak to the world about My mercy… it is a sign for the end times. After it will come the day of justice (Diary 848)…Souls perish in spite of My bitter passion…I am giving them the last hope of salvation; that is, the Feast of Mercy. If they will not adore My Mercy, they will perish for all eternity. Secretary of My mercy, write, tell souls about this great mercy of Mine, because the awful day, the day of My justice, is near” (Diary #965). Keep in mind that we’re not obligated to accept them these messages; while Faustina was canonized, her prophecies have not been officially sanctioned (such messages, even from a saint, rarely are). But they are certainly worth close scrutiny, and they indicate that God is serious about purification despite those who have tended to focus only on His mercy. Our Lord Speaks: “Write this for the many souls who are often worried to carry out an act of mercy. Yet spiritual mercy, which requires neither permission or storehouses, is much more meritorious and is within the grasp of every soul. If a soul does not exercise mercy somehow or other, it will not obtain My mercy on the day of judgment. Oh, if only souls knew how to gather eternal treasure for themselves, they would not be judged, for they would forestall My judgment with their mercy.” (#1317) Our Blessed Mothers words to Saint Faustina regarding her Son’s second coming: “Oh, how pleasing to God is the soul that follows faithfully, the inspirations of His grace! I gave the savior to the world; as for you, you have to speak to the world about His great mercy and prepare the world for His Second Coming of Him who will come, not as a merciful savior, but as a just Judge. Oh, how terrible is that day! Determined is the day of justice, the day of divine wrath. The angels tremble before it. Speak to souls about this great mercy while there is still time for granting mercy, if you keep silent now, you will be answering for a great number of souls on that terrible day. Fear nothing, be nothing, be faithful to the end. I sympathize with you.” (Diary # 635) In one entry Saint Faustina said, “‘As I was praying, I heart Jesus’ words: ‘I bear a special love for Poland, and if she will be obedient to My Will, I will exalt her in might and holiness. From her will come forth the spark that will prepare the world for My final coming.(Diary 1732)’ ”The land of death from the World War's" would become the birthplace of the modern Divine Mercy devotion. Was this a reference to John Paul II? We all know the Pope is from Poland, and he ended up having a pivotal role in the recognition of Divine Mercy — culminating with his canonization of Faustina. Even if the “spark” refers to the fall of Communism, which started in Poland, this too is inextricably linked to John Paul, who was a secret force behind Solidarity (the union that overthrew Communist rule).

No traces of Hadrianic temples in Jerusalem

“On Temple Mount, a Jupiter sanctuary is said to have been built over the ruins of the Herodian temple. The Umayyads supposedly demolished it to build the Dome of the Rock over it. Traces of this temple of Hadrian are missing as well”. Gunnar Heinsohn Taken from: https://www.scribd.com/document/655098736/Gunnar-060322-Jerusalem-First-Millennium-Ad-Heinsohn-September-2021-1 Professor Gunnar Heinsohn wrote (I, Damien Mackey, do not accept his dates): …. Jerusalem is obsessed with Hadrianic temples that are said to have been demolished to make way for other structures. On the Cardo Maximus this act is said to have been carried out in favor of Christianity, while on the Temple Mount it was done in favor of Islam. However, under the Jesus Compound on the Cardo, the foundations of an imperial temple of Venus have not been found. On Temple Mount, a Jupiter sanctuary is said to have been built over the ruins of the Herodian temple. The Umayyads supposedly demolished it to build the Dome of the Rock over it. Traces of this temple of Hadrian are missing as well. Nevertheless, the latest research on Roman Jerusalem claims, without hard evidence, the existence of such a structure: “A Temple to Jupiter on top of the temenos, as implied by Cassius Dio, cannot, in my opinion, be ruled out” (Weksler-Bdolah 2014, 58). Mackey’s comment: But, regarding the Ummayads, see my articles: Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate https://www.academia.edu/117122001/Oh_my_the_Umayyads_Deconstructing_the_Caliphate and: Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology (2) Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Professor Heinsohn continues: Cassius Dio (ca. 165-235 AD) lived nearly a century after Hadrian. He provides the only source: “At Jerusalem he [Hadrian] founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter” (Historia Romana, LXIX, 12:1). However, the original of this source is lost. The passage is a paraphrase by John Xiphilinus (late 11th c. AD), a Byzantine historian and the nephew of Patriarch John VIII of Constantinople. He may have tailored this paraphrase to present an imperial blasphemy as a convincing cause of war. He painted the customary act of establishing pagan shrines in a new Roman colonia “in the harsh colors of a religious confrontation by using a ‘loaded’ verb and referring to the temple by a name familiar to both Jewish and Christian readers” (Eliav 1997, 142). Of course, this must remain speculation. Perhaps the term Capitolina in the new city name also led to associations with Jupiter. In Rome stood the most important of all Jupiter temples in the entire empire, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on Mons Capitolinus (Capitoline Hill). There was also a contemporary of Hadrian, Appian of Alexandria (95-165 AD) [sic], with statements about Jerusalem. He did not know anything about Hadrian rebuilding a destroyed city and even putting a temple of Jupiter on its most holy site. Yet, he reminded his readers of Jerusalem’s destruction in the time of Vespasian and Titus to then add that “Hadrian did the same in our time” (Stern 1980; no. 143). This makes good sense if Hadrian’s war against the Bar Kokhba rebels (132-136 AD) resulted in damages to the city. Mackey’s comment: Since, however, the emperor Hadrian was the same monarch as the Seleucid king, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ (my view): Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: “… a mirror image” (2) Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: "… a mirror image" | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu (2) Antiochus 'Epiphanes' and Emperor Hadrian. Part Two: "Hadrian … a second Antiochus" | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu well before the destruction of the city of Jerusalem as wrought by “Vespasian and Titus”, then Appian of Alexandria, a presumed contemporary of Antiochus-Hadrian, “in our time”, must have lived on to see the total destruction of Jerusalem under “Vespasian and Titus”. However, it needs to be noted that, as in the case of the meagre Dio Cassius (above): “Little is known of the life of Appian of Alexandria. He wrote an autobiography that has been almost completely lost”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian) Professor Heinsohn continues: Stratigraphy confirms that Hadrian did not visit a destroyed Jerusalem, but one that had long since been restored. There are also no better candidates than Arab Nabataeans with their Umayyad culture for repairing the city after AD 70. And unlike the Jupiter Temple of John Xiphilinus, the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount is indisputable. Islamic traditions – general, local, and urban history – do not contain contemporary reports about the construction of the Dome of the Rock. No one reports the existence or demolition of a temple to Jupiter. Building descriptions and drawings for the octagon are also missing. Even the name of the original builder cannot be reconstructed with certainty. …. This article could also have been titled, Something’s Missing. Missing architecture is not only a Middle Eastern phenomenon. See also my article: Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples (3) Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And, for a more modern example: Henry VIII’s palaces missing (3) Henry VIII's palaces missing | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Not to mention this famous one:

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Antipas, a mysterious martyr in the Book of the Apocalypse

by Damien F. Mackey “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives”. A Revelation 2:12-13 Who was this “faithful witness” of Jesus Christ, Antipas? Nothing is known of Antipas except that he was an early Christian martyr associated with the city of Pergamum (Pergamon). Usually there will be a legend or two to help fill out an otherwise unknown person who had nevertheless been involved in something significant. But further reliable information about Antipas is about as scarce as hen’s teeth. https://antipas.net/about-us/who-is-antipas “While Antipas was martyred late in the lifetime of the Apostle John, precious little else is factually known about Antipas from respected historical sources”. Apparently we have to turn to late Orthodox Christian sources to get any further clues – which, however, may not necessarily be accurate (loc. cit.): However, traditions originating within the Eastern Orthodox Christian church, around and after CE 1,000, paint a fuller picture only if one can believe them as factual. The traditional (possibly fictional) Antipas was reputed to be the Bishop of the Christian church at Pergamos, and that he was martyred for his faith because of his consistent faithful witnessing in the face of all the satanic evil present there. When Antipas was advised: "Antipas, the whole world is against you!", Antipas reputedly replied: "Then I am against the whole world!" Antipas was supposedly roasted alive in a hollow life-size bull, which had a bonfire under its belly, because Antipas refused to renounce his faith in Christ Jesus. Antipas may have been the prophet Agabus The prophet Agabus of Acts 11:28 would be my selection for an alter ego of Antipas. Agabus, apparently from Jerusalem, ministered in the northern city of Antioch, as Antipas did in Pergamum, and he, likewise, was a contemporary of the Apostle John. Acts 11:27-30: During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. There is extra-biblical evidence for severe famine in the time of the emperor Claudius. See, for instance: The Universal Famine under Claudius Kenneth Sperber Gapp The Harvard Theological Review Vol. 28, No. 4 (Oct., 1935), pp. 258-265 (8 pages) “They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying …” (Revelation 11:6). In Acts 21 we meet the prophet Agabus again, now in Caesarea, forewarning Paul of his own captivity and martyrdom (vv. 10-14): After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles’.” When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, ‘Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus’. When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, ‘The Lord’s will be done’. Tradition may tell us a little more about Agabus – for instance, he was martyred, but, we are told, in Jerusalem: https://ucatholic.com/saints/agabus-the-prophet/ “Saint Agabus the Prophet, one of the seventy disciples, and martyr. The seventy disciples were chosen by the Lord to go before Him to preach the gospel. St. Agabus was with the twelve disciples in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. He received the gift of prophecy, as the Acts of the Apostles tells us, “And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us, he took Paul’s belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.'” (Acts 21:10-11) This prophecy was fulfilled. (Acts 21:17-36) He also prophesied about a famine on all the earth, and this was fulfilled during the time of Claudius Caesar, the Roman Emperor. (Acts 11:27-28) He preached the gospel together with the holy apostles. He went to many countries, teaching and converting many of the Jews and the Greeks to the knowledge of the Lord Christ. He sanctified them by the life-giving baptism. This moved the Jews of Jerusalem to arrest him, and they tortured him by beating him severely, and putting a rope around his neck, and they dragged him outside the city. They stoned him there until he gave up his pure spirit. At this moment, a light came down from heaven. Everyone saw it as a continuous column between his body and heaven. A Jewish woman saw it and said, “Truly this man was righteous.” She shouted in a loud voice, “I am a Christian and I believe in the God of this saint.” They stoned her also and she died and was buried with him in one tomb”. Regarding the unusual name, Abagus, we read this at: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Agabus.html It's not wholly clear where the name Agabus comes from but it's most probably Semitic. The term agabus/agabos does not exist in Latin or Greek. There are very few Latin words that start with gab- and none that start with agab-. Likewise, in Greek there are no common words that start with γαβ- (gab-) or αγαβ- (agab-). Fortunately, there are quite a few Hebrew constructions that would transliterate into Greek in forms that would closely resemble our name. Most obviously, our name Agabus (Αγαβος, Agabos) may be a Hellenized version of the familiar name Hagabah (Αγαβα, Agaba), which in turn stems from the common noun חגב (hagab), grasshopper: Could Agabus even be a variant form of the phonetically like Antipas?: A[NT]IPAS A[G] ABUS

Friday, October 18, 2024

More stylistic anomalies for emperor Diocletian

“Diocletian’s enigmatic “renaissance of Hellenistic forms” … of the late 1st c. BC – instead of developing appropriate weapons to match the most advanced enemies of the 3rd/4th c. AD – still causes insurmountable difficulties of interpretation”. Gunnar Heinsohn See also my (Damien Mackey’s) article: Diocletian, rhyming with, or repeating, Augustus? (3) Diocletian, rhyming with, or repeating, Augustus? | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Professor Gunnar Heinsohn wrote: https://www.scribd.com/document/655098736/Gunnar-060322-Jerusalem-First-Millennium-Ad-Heinsohn-September-2021-1 Modern scholars are amazed, and even rave, that “Diocletian’s bent was markedly conservative." They admire "Diocletian’s appeal to tradition”, his “distinctly old Roman concept” and his “insistent old Roman-ness” (all Williams 1985, 161 f.). They are convinced that Diocletian‘s “judicious blend of conservatism [...] was rooted in “Roman‘ moral values” of the Augustean period (Bowman 2005, 88). And yet, insanity is not excluded because Diocletian and his fellow rulers carried swords that had been out of fashion for more than 300 years. Their “bird head handles [...] appear on monuments of the Hellenistic period, such as the balustrade barriers (after 188 BC) of the Athena Shrine in Pergamon […] After that they are well represented at the beginning of the imperial era" of the late 1st century BC and the early 1st century AD“ (Miks 2007/I, 210). Assumed renaissance, after c. 300 years, of Late Hellenistic swords with bird head handles under DIOCLETIAN’S TETRARCHY in the late 3rd and early 4th c. AD [see already Heinsohn 2019 a]. 1st c. BC Greek/Eastern Roman sword with bird head handle (stele from Chalcedon [Louvre]) from the [Miks 2007/II, Table 291/A]. Eastern Roman swords with bird head handle from the porphyry tetrarch statue late 3rd/early 4th c. AD (originally Byzantium, today Venice) from the . [http://sword-site.com/thread/99/byzantine-swords?page=1] Diocletian even returned to the annual military draft of Roman citizens: “Conscription was again necessary” (Lo Cascio 2005, 173). Octavian’s original number of 25-33 legions (Pollard/Berry 2012, 213) was also reintroduced by the Tetrarchy. Diocletian’s enigmatic “renaissance of Hellenistic forms“ (Miks 2007/I, 211) of the late 1st c. BC – instead of developing appropriate weapons to match the most advanced enemies of the 3rd/4th c. AD – still causes insurmountable difficulties of interpretation. Perhaps, it is proposed, the repeated “promotion of traditional Italian-Greek design details [...] was meant to underline the eternal West-East (Greek-Persian) confrontation“ (Miks 2007/I, 463). Yet, no swords of Roman origin were found anywhere for 4th century common Roman soldiers (Miks 2007/I, 211). Archaeologists cannot tell from the excavated weapons whether they date from the 1st or the 4th c. AD. But if Diocletian, indeed, went into battle with outmoded weapons he must have been out of his mind. However, if he was, as many sources show, a concerned and even outstanding general, the aberrations could rather lie with us than with him. After all, Diocletian had no idea that he began a “Dominate” in the 3rd/4th c. AD after a “Principate’s” start in the 1st c. BC/1st c. AD. The term “Dominate” was created by Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903; Bleicken 1978). But wait, Jerusalem's archaeologists might interject, Diocletian was by no means insane but could perform miracles like no one else. For a large peristyle villa of his time in the City of David not only has the three-century outdated style of Late Hellenism but also stands stratigraphically directly, i.e. without layers for the 300 years in between, on a house of the Hasmonean period (140-37 BC). But why do they not date the villa to the 1st c. AD? Like most scholars, they believe that dating by coins is a scientific method. Moreover, this method of dating is ingeniously simple. All you have to do is open a coin catalog and write the date found there in your excavation report: “The scores of coins found buried under the collapse point to its actual date of destruction, early in the second half of the fourth century CE” (Ben-Ami/Tchekhanovets 2013). How these dates get into the catalogs, they do not have to care. That is the work of specialists who have been doing it for centuries. One can trust them blindly. And every educated person knows Diocletian's obsession with Late Hellenistic and early imperial fashion. With the emperor, his co-rulers and successors, i.e. the entire timespan from the 290s to 360 AD, had to be placed some 300 years earlier. It worked perfectly from the British Isles to Egypt and Israel. There have never been any complaints. All architects and craftsmen must have obeyed to the word. Through never ending miracles across thousands of kilometers they achieved perfect replications down to the chemical composition of paints and glass tesserae. The three-century ‘younger’ objects perfectly match unquestionable items from Late Hellenism. Anyone who does not immediately believe this is leaving the context of accepted science. ….