Die sechste Stunde — Sommer 2015 / Summer 2015

Veröffentlichung im Sommer 2015 (unverb.: 15. August)
Coming in summer 2015 (tentative: 15 August)
German language only (for the moment)

ARNE EICKENBERG

Die sechste Stunde
Synopsen zum historischen Ursprung der Wunder und Naturkatastrophen in der Passion Christi

VERLAG LUDWIG
ISBN 978-3-86935-193-3

208 + XIII Seiten, 13 S/W-Abbildungen, 1 Tabelle

€24,90
Erhältlich in jedem Buchgeschäft sowie online.
Available in every online and real-world bookstore.

Image copyright: © 2015 Arne Eickenberg

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:

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.)

The arsonist Apostles in the Gospel of Peter

In the Gospel of Peter there is a peculiar remark by the apocryphal evangelist who uses the Apostle Peter as his proxy (GPet 7:26):

ἐγὼ δὲ μετὰ τῶν ἑταίρων μου ἐλυπούμην, καὶ τετρωμένοι κατὰ διάνοιαν ἐκρυβόμεθα· ἐζητούμεθα γὰρ ὑπ᾿ αὐτῶν ὡς κακοῦργοι καὶ ὡς τὸν ναὸν θέλοντες ἐμπρῆσαι.

But I with the companions was sorrowful; and having been wounded in spirit, we were in hiding, for we were sought after by them as wrongdoers and as wishing to set fire to the sanctuary.

In the canonical gospels there is no mention of the fact or of the belief that after the death of Jesus his followers wished to “set fire” to the “temple”, the “sanctuary” or “dwelling” of the god. But within the new theory of the Gospel as a Julio-Caesarian hypertext we can easily establish that we are yet again dealing with a diegetic transposition from the sources about Julius Caesar’s death and resurrection as god in March 44 BCE. Two possibilities arise:

The Ascensions of Christ and Caesar

A picture is worth a thousand words, so today we will rather look at the iconography…

A famous depiction of Christ’s Ascension is the Christus Helios, a late third century Roman ceiling mosaic, which is said to show Jesus as the sun god Helios (Sol or Sol Invictus) riding to heaven in his chariot. Since the historical Jesus was Julius Caesar, we find the iconographical predecessor in the first century BCE, a relief depicting the apotheosis and ascension of Caesar as Divus Iulius (“God Julius”), riding to heaven in his chariot. The main characteristics are exactly the same: god, chariot, wheel, horses with raised forelegs, plants, and the general theme of ascension. Here are the images:

Revista de Arqueología republishes “Orpheos Bakkikos”

Caesar’s funeral: wax effigy on tropaeum (left) | “Orpheos Bakkikos” artifact (right)

The Spanish journal for ancient archaeology Revista de Arqueología has reprinted an abridged version of the article “Orfeo Báquico – La Cruz Desaparecida”, originally published in 2009 in the theological journal Isidorianum 18 (35): 179–217. Here’s the abstract taken from the English version “Orpheos Bakkikos — The Missing Cross”: