Sitsim: Julius Caesar’s funeral on the iPhone

Kudos to the developers of a really great iPhone app called Sitsim (short for “situated simulation”), which is being supervised by Gunnar Liestøl, professor at the University of Oslo (above, upper right). The app will deliver augmented reality on mobile devices at historically important sites all around the world. Embedded below is a demonstration video, which includes the funeral ceremony of Julius Caesar as part of the augmented reality on the Forum Romanum in Rome:

The global debt crisis. Solutions courtesy of Jesus and Caesar

You want to save the world? Avert the imminent global financial collapse predicted for the very near future by experts and snake oil salesmen alike? First you need to take a look at the original Lord’s Prayer. It doesn’t say “forgive us our sins” or “forgive us our trespasses”—it says: “…and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Gospel of Matthew). It is possible that these “debts” were not exclusively meant as financial debts, because the later evangelist Luke did in fact write about “sins”. But within the theory that the historical person behind the Biblical figure Jesus was Julius Caesar, the mention of “debts” and “debtors” is only logical, and therefore to a large extent meant financially, because a partial debt amnesty was a core concept of Caesar’s sweeping economic reforms (leges Iuliae) to solve the devastating financial crisis that had struck the oligarchically ruled and exploited Roman “republic”. Historical Caesarian sources close to the Christianized concept that debts be remitted are for example App. BC 2.13.47 sq., Dio HR 38.7.4, and Suet. Jul. 20.3.2: publicanos remissionem petentis tertia mercedum parte relevavit ac, ne in locatione novorum vectigalium inmoderatius licerentur, propalam monuit. At any rate, the prayer for a remission of debts is perfectly explicable in light of the demand by the Roman populares of Caesar to remit all debts (cf. also Badian 1972, passim, i.a. 102). But Caesar’s macroeconomic revolution went much further.

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”:

Liberalia and Easter: The breads of the Holy Week

There is a long tradition of bakery products for Easter all over continental Europe—and even beyond, as the popularity of the hot cross bun in the UK and former British colonies like the US and Australia shows. In the more traditional regions, especially those in the Mediterranean area, it is often a form of plain flatbread or wafers that are a prominent part of the tradition. In Spain a whole wafer industry has developed for the Semana Santa, and in rural areas with stronger and older traditions these wafers and especially more traditional flatbreads are sold or handed out to the people attending the ceremonies of the Holy Week, especially on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday. (Please note that these products are all distinct from the liturgical communion wafers.) In Greece there is for example a long tradition of women baking the so-called koulouria using outdoor ovens (see image below).

The death of Christ on Holy Wednesday

Bercianos de Aliste is a small and remote Spanish village near the Portugese border. Due to its century-long isolation the town’s parish has retained a very ancient and unadorned tradition of the Semana Santa, the Spanish Holy Week leading up to Easter. At first sight they seem to be following the standard rituals of the Holy Week: During the night before Holy Thursday a monumento is built for the host. From Wednesday to Good Friday women mourn for the enshrined body and watch over their Lord and Savior. Then the host is shared during the Holy Thursday liturgy. The Good Friday rituals begin in the morning, when the priest symbolizes the deceased Christ by lying on the floor.

Jesus and Caesar: Brief notes on Palm Sunday

We’ve read lots of interpretations of Jesus’ triumphant entry into the City. We’ve read for instance that it was modeled on Roman imperial triumphs. At first glance this would seem like a false notion because Jesus clearly does not enter the city on a chariot, although all other properties do fit the picture, for example the palm branches, the spread garments, the decorated mount, the procession, the triumphant cry, the praising of both the triumphator and the highest god, as well as the entry into the city and into the temple. But it’s a fact that in two of the gospels Jesus enters the city on a young and unbacked horse, a foal, a πωλοc, “whereon never man sat”. That’s right, not on a donkey. Mark and Luke are quite clear about that. Matthew had added his usual midrash and needed to align his Gospel with the LXX, and—so it would seem—he was forced to introduce a second equid for the Old Testament prophecy to make any sense, a donkey, but couldn’t lose the original foal, which results in Jesus riding into the City on two equids at the same time, a foal and a donkey: πωλοc and ονοc. (John revised it further, merged both properties and only speaks of a young donkey, an “ass colt”.) But is that really what the evangelists did? And where’s the connection to Julius Caesar, if the Gospel is really a diegetic transposition of the historical sources on Caesar’s Civil War?

Quest Historie 1/2010: Theologian Annette Merz has reached the second stage…

…and inadvertently touches the third.

Here’s a kind of Kübler-Ross model for new scientific truths:

1. disregard (theory is ignored)
2. combat (theory is fought fiercely and by all means including ridicule)
3. acceptance (theory is approved, admitted and accepted)

These three stages do not derive from a revolutionary new insight into the scholarly reception of spearhead science and paradigm shifts. In general they may be based on personal experience, and in this context they are specifically quoted from a 2003 review of Francesco Carotta’s book Jezus was Caesar that Dutch historian Thomas von der Dunk published together with this Schopenhauerist paraphrase in Spiegel Historiael,¹ an acclaimed and popular journal for history and archaeology. The Dutch magazine Quest however is a totally different kind of beast and belongs to the flashy form of yellow press that publishes popular science as infotainment—or “braintainment”, as the Dutch editors like to call it. On four extensively illustrated pages their offshoot Quest Historie covered Carotta’s theory that the historical Jesus was Julius Caesar, that Jesus Christ is Divus Iulius incognito, and that the Gospel is a diegetic transposition of the historical sources on Caesar’s Civil War.² And they did so quite well…