Antonio Piñero on Jesus was Caesar (22 October 2014)

Piñero and Carotta at the Escorial conference

Fulvius de Boer may be known to our readers: he wrote this awesome piece against the detractor Anton van Hooff a couple of years ago (English translation). Now Fulvius just recently came across this blog post by a semi-supporter, Antonio Piñero, a Complutense professor of Greek philology who specializes in early Christian literature (archive; English translation by Google). Fulvius told us that he tried to post a comment there, but his reply hasn’t been published yet. Maybe because it was written in English? Are they translating it? (On that note: is there a benevolent reader who wants to translate it into Spanish for us?) At any rate, we already like Fulvius’ comments in English, so while we wait, we will reproduce his original reply here:

We come to bury Caesar! — Begraben wollen wir Caesar!

We come to bury Caesar!

Printing a journal takes its time: almost a year of waiting after peer review… but now the article on the accurate historical date of Julius Caesar’s funeral has been published in the Revue des Études Anciennes… and the conclusions are shaking many foundations… a new image emerges… and after more than 2000 years we have finally buried Caesar. See below for the links to Liberalia tu accusas!.

Begraben wollen wir Caesar!

Eine Zeitschrift zu drucken dauert seine Zeit: fast ein Jahr des Wartens nach dem Peer-Review… aber nun ist der Artikel über das korrekte historische Datum von Julius Caesars Beisetzung in der Revue des Études Anciennes veröffentlicht worden… und die Ergebnisse rütteln an so einigen Fundamenten… ein neues Bild erscheint… und nach mehr als 2000 Jahren haben wir Caesar endlich bestattet. Hier sind die Links zu Liberalia tu accusas!.

Blog Watch: No Umpire for the Empire

Our redivivus is really a zealot, it seems. He can’t stop posting; see his newest blunder here (archived). We’re not getting tired of wanna-be savants (see our previous articles here and here), but it’s obvious to us that the man is a lost cause. So here are just a couple of quick final points.

Blog Watch: Antoninus Impius

Our redivivus has answered again (archived), and it doesn’t get any better. But first let’s make one thing clear: our previous article on A.P.’s blunder was not written to “discredit his blog”, as he alleges, but only to debunk his feeble arguments, and the style was chosen to counter A.P.’s use of derogatory language, with which he had occasionally spiced his original article. But at least A.P. seems to have noticed that some of our comments were tongue-in-cheek: “That’s rich! Divine Julius calling Antoninus Pius senile!” At least that he noticed, but it doesn’t let him off the hook.

Blog Watch: A Talking Dead

The Roman emperor Antoninus Pius died in 161 CE. Although he was deified as Divus Antoninus, he has apparently chosen to leave the septentriones and repossess his bones. He now walks among the living again and maintains a blog, where he has just recently posted a short review of Francesco Carotta’s book Jesus was Caesar: “Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar: same initials, same man?” (archived). It is commendable that this Antoninus redivivus mentions another ancient man and god, Divus Iulius, and Carotta’s theory on what eventually became of that god, but upon closer examination we can notice lots of errors, patterns of bias, and it is particularly annoying that the sources are not always quoted correctly. So how about a couple of rebuttals and corrections? That shouldn’t be too hard, so we’ll get right down to business, even if we are aware that it is near impossible to convince biased people. Here are some examples. (To avoid confusion we will refer to this Antoninus simply as A.P. hereafter.)