Afterword to ‘Jesus was Caesar’

The territory in which the new Christian religion spread two thousand years ago
can be defined as the Imperium Romanum. This process met with success because
after three centuries the late Roman emperor Constantine the Great made
Christianity the official cult of the state. Historical research has always
emphasized the tight interconnection between this religion and the Roman world
empire. The book at hand ties in with this fact but goes further and reveals new
connections which have never been seen that way.
The author draws parallels between the founder of religion Jesus and Julius
Caesar, the Roman, whose name was given to all succeeding emperors. Although
Caesar who was assassinated in 44 B.C. was one hundred years older than Jesus,
Carotta detects amazing accordances in the reports which circulated about the one
and the other in antiquity. The metamorphosis of names in vernacular language –
e.g. Gallia could become Galilee – plays an important role in it. Strict
etymologists may shake their heads here, but their objections are astray: the
circles in which Christianity spread, of course had not studied the subject of
linguistics which emerged in the 19th century. The circumstance that the author
himself grew up in a milieu with several languages helped him in his analyses.
Contrary to Jesus, Caesar was an army commander but the early propagation of
Christian religion occurred to a considerable extent amongst Roman soldiers. Think
of the many holy legionaries in the orthodox as well as the catholic church:
Theodoros, Mauritius, Valentine and so on. A different question is whether the
similarities demonstrated here between Caesar and Jesus can be used to deny the
historicity of the latter – something Carotta actually does not do, because he
thinks Jesus did exist, just elsewhere and dressed in different clothes than one
usually imagines. The problem touches the ‘cancellation’ of allegedly unhistorical
saints like e. g. the Knight George by the catholic church. As if the veneration
of a Saint which was practiced over a length of time were not part of history!
Moreover, to remain with the Roman church: Although the donation of Constantine
turned out to be a forgery, the Papal State based on it has been historical
reality through many centuries.
Religion is something deeply historical as well as human. Fundamentalism can only
cause damage there. May the book of Francesco Carotta contribute that we remain
open to questions concerning early Christianity.

Erika Simon