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Ruler Cult and Emperor Worship as Major Inputs to the Jesus Figure

 

Cover picture of "Was Jesus Caesar?"

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3442150515

http://216.239.39.104/translate_c?&langpair=de%7Cen&u=http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3442150515/ref%3Dpd_bxgy_text_2/028-4888904-7627729

Book search: "emperor worship" -- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/field-keywords=Emperor%20worship

Web search: "emperor worship" -- http://www.google.com/search?q=%22emperor+worship%22

Web search: "ruler cult" -- http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ruler+cult%22

 

 

See also Mystery Religions.

This subject is a potential growth area. In its day, the styling of Jesus as a divine being who yet was firmly rooted in the world was obviously comparable to the already long-familiar Ruler Cult, responding to and co-opting its theme of a practical savior, son of a god, arrived on earth in full presence, offering real and tangible help, benefits, and rescue.

It's not accurate to call the Jesus figure just a rebuttal to Ruler Cult, or just an ironic inversion of Ruler Cult, or just a co-optation of Ruler Cult -- such views set up false polarities like that between literal truth and lies, or between politics and religion. The Jesus figure was an expression of the mysticism-gnosis-philosophy-religion-socio-politics of the day, as was emperor worship.

There were elements of irony and inversion, rebuttal and co-optation, but it's a gross misreading of the cultural context and in-context meaning of both earliest Christianity and of Ruler Cult if one paints a simple-minded picture of first, imperial politics in religious dress (Ruler Cult), leading to a reactive response, of a religion wearing a socio-political styling (Christianity).

With visionary plant-based primary religious experiencing on tap unremarkably, all the modern assumptions about religion being hardly attainable, and therefore set far aside, collapse.

Because intense psychoactive religious experiencing was available as easily as ordering a cup of wine today, religion was not put away into a separate category, and due to the quickening nature of the readily available intense mystic altered state, all domains of life and thought were inspired and all fell together into a single conglomerate glued together, comprising poetry, arts, sport, war, politics, philosophy, government, religion, mysticism, gnosis, and sociology.

Ruler Cult is important and overlooked -- almost suspiciously so. It would be grossly reductionist to portray Ruler Cult as the only source for the Jesus figure; the books on the subject are great showcases of that reductionism: they discover one thread that fed into the cloth, and mistake it for the entirety, and lacking the view of the entirety, they even misread the one thread, not recognizing that the political was viewed in an integral divine light.

Modern scholars don't recognize the visionary plant-triggered intense mystic altered state as reflected in the Jesus figure -- that's another key thread; I propose that frozen-time vertical determinism is still another key thread.

Caesar's Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus

Joseph Atwill

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569754578

Feb. 2005

Condensed blurb:

>>The Christian Gospels were written under the direction of first-century Roman emperors. The purpose of these texts was to establish a peaceful Jewish sect to counterbalance the militaristic Jewish forces that had just been defeated by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A.D.  The key to this story is in the writings of Josephus, the first-century Roman historian.  Josephus's chronicle The War of the Jews parallels events recounted in the Gospels. 

>>The emperors used the Gospels to spark a new religious movement that would aid them in maintaining power and order.  By including hidden literary clues, they took the story of the Emperor Titus's glorious military victory, as recounted by Josephus, and embedded that story in the Gospels - a sly and satirical way of glorifying the emperors through the ages.

The Roman Origins of Christianity

Book by Joe Atwill

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0974092800

July 2003

Publisher: Joe Atwill

ISBN: 0974092800

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Roman+Origin+of+Christianity%22+atwill

 

http://www.joeatwill.com -- "...the Roman Emperor Titus Flavius created Christianity to replace the Jewish Messianic movement that waged war against the Empire with a pacifistic, pro-Roman religion. Titus also designed the story line of Jesus' ministry in the New Testament as a satire of his military campaign through Judea so that posterity would learn that he had invented Christianity and recognize his genius. Though the New Testament had always been seen as a religious document it is actually a monument to the vanity of a Caesar."

 

The Flavian Hypothesis: Radical New Proposals Concerning the Origins of Christianity

http://www.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au/sae/arts/flavians/flavians.htm

Was Jesus Caesar: On the Roman Origin of Christianity

Book by Francesco Carotta

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9059113969

Planned release Dec. 2003

Publisher: Intl Specialized Book Service Inc

Hardcover

400 pages

ISBN 90-5911-396-9

http://www.carotta.de/pindex.html#english

http://www.carotta.de

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Was+Jesus+Caesar%22+carotta

Et tu Judas? Then Fall Jesus!

Book by Gary Courtney

http://www.users.bigpond.com/pontificate/6.htm

ISBN 0 646 08733 9

would be

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0646087339

The Life and Death of Julius Caesar as Source for the Gospel of Christ

Gary Courtney

http://www.users.bigpond.com/pontificate/4.htm

Subject and Ruler: The Cult of the Ruling Power in Classical Antiquity

Alastair Small (ed.)

JRA Supplement 17. Ann Arbor, 1996. Pp. 264, 51 halftones, 30 figures. $89.50. ISBN 1-887829-17-2.

Review -- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1997/97.07.25.html

Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor

Book by S. R. F. Price

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/052131268X

sample pages online

 

The Caesar theory is related to the Flavius Josephus theory of New Testament authorship.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0930808029

True Authorship of the New Testament

Pamphlet by Abelard Reuchlin

Paperback, January 1979

ISBN: 0930808029

Format: Paperback

Not found at Amazon

Entering the title and author, 2 hits found at

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookSearch

Reuchlin, Abelard

True Authorship of the New Testament: Arius Calpurnius Piso; Pen Name Flavius

Josephus: A Roman

Reuchlin Foundation Pamphlet. copyright 1979 Pamphlet, 27 pages, 1986 2nd

printing near mint; never sold, but shelfwear; 1986 2nd printing; store stmp

perm.

Price: US$ 20.00 (Convert Currency)

Reuchlin, Abelard

Talmudic Responses to Piso: A Postscript Chapter to the True: Authorship of

the New Testament as Revised and Amplified

Privately Published by Abelard Reuchlin Pamphlet copyright 2000 Pamphlet, 53

pages, Original Ed/Printing 2000 mint, center stapled 8-1/2 x 11 pamphlet;

Poorly printed

Price: US$ 20.00

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22True+Authorship+of+the+New+Testament%22+Reuchlin

77 hits

http://members.tripod.com/~ReuchlinA

http://www.delphi.com/romanpiso

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/6048


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