Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Julius Caesar legends borrowed, in part, from life of Jesus Christ

by Damien F. Mackey “[Virgil] drew upon the saying of the Hebrew prophets concerning the coming Messiah and applied them to Augustus, the first emperor, to make him “scion of a god”.” C. McDowell In 2004 I wrote an article, “The Lost Cultural Foundations of Western Civilisation”, from which has developed this site: http://westerncivilisationamaic.blogspot.com.au Towards the end of this article I included a section titled, “Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar”, showing what I believed to be Roman plagiarisation of the New Testament – Greco-Roman appropriation of Hebrew-Israelite (Jewish) culture in its various forms being the subject matter of this article and of this site. Here is that brief and not yet fully developed article: …. 2. Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar We read at the very beginning of this article that Virgil’s Aeneid “is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture.” But it too appears to have been inspired by the Hebrew Bible. According to C. McDowell [“The Egyptian Prince Moses”, Proc. Third Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, C and AH Press, CA, 1986), p. 2]: The Romans, with the advent of the creation of their empire, wanted to give great antiquity to their patriarchs. The first major effort along this line was put forth by Virgil in his Aeneid. This Roman “bible” portrays the imperial city as having been founded and enhanced according to a divine plan: Rome’s mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world. Cyrus Gordon has compared Virgil’s accounts of the royal house of Rome with the New Testament account of the Messianic office as expressed in Jesus of Nazareth. Both Roman and New Testament writers drew upon the Old Testament. Virgil used the Old Testament account of Israel’s national experience as a literary model to recount Rome’s history. But he went much further. He drew upon the saying of the Hebrew prophets concerning the coming Messiah and applied them to Augustus, the first emperor, to make him “scion of a god”. The divinely sired ruler who descended from an ancient line was to rule the world in a golden age. Thus the new theology of Rome was set forth. It was heavily infused with theology appropriated and adapted from the Old Testament of the Jews. This explanation by McDowell may, in part, help to account for the distinct parallels now to be discussed between history’s most famous J.C’s – Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar – both referred to as the greatest man the earth has ever produced [Grant, M., Julius Caesar, Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1969, Foreword p. 15: “A hundred or even fifty years ago, Gaius Julius Caesar (J.C.) was variously described as the greatest man of action who ever lived, and even as ‘the entire and perfect man’.”]. Whilst in most aspects Jesus and Julius could not be any more different, there are nevertheless certain incredibly close likenesses, especially in regard to their violent deaths. Both Jesus and Julius were born into poor circumstances; but their ancestry was one of blue blood: Davidic in the case of Jesus, Patrician in the case of Caesar. Their births were notable, a miraculous Virgin birth for Jesus, Julius’ birth giving rise to the term ‘Caesarian’. Julius belonged to the populares, and Jesus was likewise for the common people. “The tax collectors”, said Cicero, “have never been loyal, and are now very friendly with Caesar” [as cited ibid., p. 161]. Likewise, the Pharisees were critical of Jesus for eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9:11). Trial and Death Both Jesus and Julius had spoken of an early death. Both had entered their capital city (Jerusalem, Rome) in triumph, on an ancient feast-day (Passover, Lupercalia), shortly before mid-March, and had been hailed as “king”. This had caused anger and had the plotters conspiring. But there was also an ambivalence about the kingship. Caesar, though a king in deed, had rejected the diadem thrice. And Pilate had tried to get to the bottom of Jesus’ kingship: ‘So you are a king, then?’ (John 18:37); eventually having written in three languages: “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews” (19:19). The prime mover of Caesar’s fatal stabbing was the soldier, Gaius Cassius Longinus, the last name (Longinus) being the very name that tradition has associated with the Roman soldier who rent Christ’s side with a spear (19:34). The zealot amongst the conspirators was the intense young Brutus, in whom Dante at least had obviously discerned a similarity with Judas, having located “Brutus and Cassius with Judas Iscariot in Hell” [as cited by Grant, op. cit., p. 257]. Even Christ’s words to Judas in Gethsemane, ‘So you would betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’ (Luke 22:48), resemble what is alleged to be Caesar’s anguished last cry: re-made by Shakespeare as ‘Et tu Brute?’. There is the premonitory dream warning by the woman (cf. Matthew 27:19). There may even be a confused reminiscence of Barabbas: “Caesar … staged an elaborate legal charade against an old man called Rabirius [Barabbas?] … [who] had been allegedly implicated in … murder … not interested in having the old Rabirius actually executed” [ibid., p. 51]. (Cf. Matthew 27:15-23). On the Ides of March Julius Caesar is supposed to have died, like Jesus, riddled with wounds. The ‘heretical’ question must now be asked: Did Julius Caesar really exist? Or was his ‘life’ merely a mixture of his nephew Augustus, who also bore the name Julius Caesar, and aspects of the life of Jesus Christ according to Virgil’s biblical borrowings? And perhaps other composites as well? “Portrait busts are not a safe guide to [Julius Caesar’s] appearance, since they may or may not date from his life-time” [ibid., p. 245]. Do we thus have any primary evidence for Caesar, as apparently we do not for Socrates? Do we have anything for Jesus Christ for that matter? I think that we may have a most precious artifact of his in the enigmatic ‘Shroud of Turin’ [See outstanding article “The Mystery of the Shroud” in National Geographic, June 1980, pp. 730f. Ian Wilson has disputed the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud in The Blood and the Shroud (Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1998), and has traced the Shroud back historically to the early Christian centuries]. [End of article] Further concerning the Shroud, see e.g. my article: Resurrection and the Shroud: ‘a New Dimension’, ‘a New Science’. https://www.academia.edu/11838754/Resurrection_and_the_Shroud_a_New_Dimension_a_New_Science_ Regarding those “perhaps other composites as well” referred to above, from which the character of ‘Julius Caesar’ may have been borrowed, I can now add that one of these “composites” could well have been Alexander the Great. Consider the following compelling comparisons, taken from: http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t65.html Alexander and Caesar In Antiquity, a boy who wanted to play a role of some importance in his town, had to visit a rhetorical school, where he learned how to speak and behave in public. Often, a teacher would ask his pupils to make a speech on a historical theme, so that they could show their skills as a rhetor and their ability to deal with historical sources. A well-known theme was the comparison of Alexander the Great and the Roman commander Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44). The following text was written by the Greek historian Appian of Alexandria (c.95-c.165) and is a part of his History of the Civil wars (2.149-154). It is the end of his description of Caesar's career, and Appian, a Greek, gives the Roman the ultimate compliment: he was comparable to Alexander. The translation was made by John Carter. Thus Caesar died on the day they call the Ides of March, about the middle of Anthesterion, the day which the seer said he would not outlive. In the morning Caesar made fun of him, and said, 'The Ides have come.' Unabashed, the seer replied, 'But not gone', and Caesar, ignoring not only the predictions of this sort given him with such confidence by the seer, but also the other portents I mentioned earlier, left the house and met his death. He was in the fifty-sixth year of his life, a man who was extremely lucky in everything, gifted with a divine spark, disposed to great deeds, and fittingly compared with Alexander. They were both supremely ambitious, warlike, rapid in executing their decisions, careless of danger, unsparing of their bodies, and believers not so much in strategy as in daring and good luck. One of them made a long journey across the desert in the hot season [1] to the shrine of Ammon, and when the sea was pushed back crossed the Pamphylian gulf by divine power, for heaven held back the deep for him until he passed, and it rained for him while he was on the march. In India he ventured on an unsailed sea. He also led the way up a scaling-ladder, leapt unaccompanied on to the enemy wall, and suffered thirteen wounds. He was never defeated and brought all his campaigns to an end after one or at most two pitched battles. In Europe he conquered much foreign territory and subdued the Greeks, who are a people extremely difficult to govern and fond of their independence, and believe that they had never obeyed anyone before him except Philip, and that for only a short time on the pretext that he was their leader in a war. As for Asia, he overran virtually the whole of it. To sum up Alexander's luck and energy in a sentence, he conquered the lands that he saw, and died intent on tackling the rest. In Caesar's case, the Adriatic yielded by becoming calm and navigable in the middle of winter. He also crossed the western ocean in an unprecedented attempt to attack the Britons, and ordered his captains to wreck their ships by running them ashore on the British cliffs. He forced his way alone in a small boat at night against another stormy sea, when he ordered the captain to spread the sails and take courage not from the waves but from Caesar's good fortune. On many occasions he was the only man to spring forward from a terrified mass of others and attack the enemy. The Gauls alone he faced thirty times in battle, finally conquering 400 of their tribes, who the Romans felt to be so menacing that in one of their laws concerning immunity from military service for priests and older men there was a clause 'unless the Gauls invade' - in which case priests and older men were to serve. In the Alexandrian war, when he was trapped by himself on a bridge and his life was in danger, he threw off his purple cloak and jumped into the sea. The enemy hunted for him, but he swam a long way under water without being seen, drawing breath only at intervals, until he approached a friendly ship, when he stretched out his hands, revealed himself, and was rescued. When he became involved in these civil wars, whether from fear, as he himself used to say, or from a desire for power, he carne up against the best generals of his time and several great armies which were not composed of uncivilized peoples, as before, but of Romans at the peak of their success and fortune, and he too needed only one or two pitched battles in each case to detect them. Not that his troops were unbeaten like Alexander's, since they were humiliated by the Gauls in the great disaster which overtook them when Cotta and Titurius were in command, in Hispania Petreius and Afranius had them hemmed in under virtual siege, at Dyrrhachium and in Africa they were well and truly routed, and in Hispania they were terrified of the younger Pompey. But Caesar himself was impossible to terrify and was victorious at the end of every campaign. By the use of force and the conferment of favor, and much more surely than Sulla and with a much stronger hand, he overcame the might of the Roman state, which already lorded it over land and sea from the far west to the river Euphrates, and he made himself king against the wishes of the Romans, even if he did not receive that title. And he died, like Alexander, planning fresh campaigns. The pair of them had armies, too, which were equally enthusiastic and devoted to them and resembled wild beasts when it came to battle, but were frequently difficult to manage and made quarrelsome by the hardships they endured. When their leaders were dead, the soldiers mourned them, missed them, and granted them divine honors in a similar way. Both men were well formed in body and of fine appearance. Each traced his lineage back to Zeus, the one being a descendant of Aeacus and Heracles, the other of Anchises and Aphrodite. They were unusually ready to fight determined opponents, but very quick to offer settlement. They liked to pardon their captives, gave them help as well as pardon, and wanted nothing except simply to be supreme. To this extent they can be closely compared, but it was with unequal resources that they set out to seek power. Alexander possessed a kingdom that had been firmly established under Philip, while Caesar was a private individual, from a noble and celebrated family, but very short of money. Neither of them took any notice of omens which referred to them, nor showed any displeasure with the seers who prophesied their deaths. On more than one occasion the omens were similar and indicated a similar end for both. Twice each was confronted with a lobeless liver. The first time it indicated extreme danger. In Alexander's case this was among the Oxydracans, when after he had climbed on to the enemy's wall at the head of his Macedonian troops the scaling-ladder broke, and he was left isolated on top. He leapt audaciously inwards towards the enemy, where he was badly beaten around the chest and neck with a massive club and was about to collapse, when the Macedonians, who had broken down the gates in panic, just managed to rescue him. In Caesar's case it happened in Hispania, when his army was seized with terror when it was drawn up to face the younger Pompey and would not engage the enemy. Caesar ran out in front of everyone into the space between the two armies and took 200 throwing-spears on his shield, until he too was rescued by his army, which was swept forward by shame and apprehension. Thus the first lobeless victim brought both of them into mortal danger, but the second brought death itself, as follows. The seer Peithagoras told Apollodorus, who was afraid of Alexander and Hephaestion and was sacrificing, not to be afraid, because both of them would soon be out of the way. When Hephaestion promptly died, Apollodorus was nervous that there might be some conspiracy against the king, and revealed the prophecy to him. Alexander, smiling, asked Peithagoras himself what the omen meant, and when Peithagoras replied that it meant his life was over, he smiled again and still thanked Apollodorus for his concern and the seer for his frankness. When Caesar was about to enter the senate for the last time, as I described not many pages back, the same omens appeared. He scoffed at them, saying they had been the same in Hispania, and when the seer said that he had indeed been in danger on that occasion, and that the omen was now even more deadly, he made some concession to this forthrightness by repeating the sacrifice, until finally he became irritated by being delayed by the priests and went in to his death. And the same thing happened to Alexander, who was returning with his army from India to Babylon and was already approaching the city when the Chaldaeans begged him to postpone his entry for the moment. He quoted the line 'That prophet is the best, who guesses rightly' but the Chaldaeans begged him a second time not to enter with his army looking towards the setting sun, but to go round and take the city while facing the rising sun. Apparently he relented at this and began to make a circuit, but when he became annoyed with the marshes and swampy ground disregarded this second warning too and made his entrance facing west. Anyway, he entered Babylon, and sailed down the Euphrates as far as the river Pallacotta which takes the water of the Euphrates away into swamps and marshes and prevents the irrigation of the Assyrian country. They say that as he was considering the damming of this river, and taking a boat to look, he poked fun at the Chaldaeans because he had safely entered and safely sailed from Babylon. Yet he was destined to die as soon as he returned there. Caesar, too, indulged in mockery of alike sort. The seer had foretold the day of his death, saying that he would not survive the Ides of March. When the day came Caesar mocked the seer and said, 'The Ides have come', but he still died that day. In this way, then, they made similar fun of the omens which related to themselves, displayed no anger with the seers who announced these omens to them, and were none the less caught according to the letter of the prophecies. In the field of knowledge they were also enthusiastic lovers of wisdom, whether traditional, Greek or foreign. The Brahmans, who are considered to be the astrologers and wise men of the Indians like the Magians among the Persians, were questioned by Alexander on the subject of Indian learning, and Caesar investigated Egyptian lore when he was in Egypt establishing Cleopatra on the throne. As a result he improved much in the civilian sphere at Rome, and brought the year, which was still of variable length due to the occasional insertion of intercalary months which were calculated according to the lunar calendar, into harmony with the course of the sun, according to Egyptian observance. [End of quote] Carotta’s Extraordinary Claim Such apparent close similarities between Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar has a scholar named Francesco Carotta perceived that he has gone so far as to claim that: Jesus was Caesar. Whilst this is not my own view, which is rather that “Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar”, the similarities found by Carotta are indeed intriguing. Some of these I have already listed above. Carotta, not failing to notice the same sorts of stunning parallels between the two lives, has written a book which is the other way round to my article, that Julius Caesar was, in part, based on Jesus Christ. For Carotta, Jesus Christ was instead based on Julius Caesar. Whilst I believe that Carotta is wrong, I am intrigued that he, too, has attempted to fuse the two lives. Here is one review of Carotta’s fascinating book: http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/jesus-was-caesar-new-book-by-philosopher-and-linguist-francesco-carotta-claims-that-the-real-identity-of-jesus-christ-has-been-discovered-154575075.html – Carotta: ‘Everything of the Story of Jesus can be Found in the Biography of Caesar.’ The Italian-German linguist and philosopher Francesco Carotta proves in his book Jesus was Caesar that the story of Jesus Christ has its origin in Roman sources. In more than fifteen years of investigation Carotta has found the traces which lead to the Julian origin of Christianity. He concludes that the story of Jesus is based on the narrative of the life of Julius Caesar. …. Carotta’s new evidence leads to such an overwhelming amount of similarities between the biography of Caesar and the story of Jesus that coincidence can be ruled out. – Both Caesar and Jesus start their rising careers in neighboring states in the north: Gallia and Galilee. – Both have to cross a fateful river: the Rubicon and the Jordan. Once across the rivers, they both come across a patron/rival: Pompeius and John the Baptist, and their first followers: Antonius and Curio on the one hand and Peter and Andrew on the other. – Both are continually on the move, finally arriving at the capital, Rome and Jerusalem, where they at first triumph, yet subsequently undergo their passion. – Both have good relationships with women and have a special relationship with one particular woman, Caesar with Cleopatra and Jesus with Magdalene. – Both have encounters at night, Caesar with Nicomedes of Bithynia, Jesus with Nicodemus of Bethany. – Both have an affinity to ordinary people-and both run afoul of the highest authorities: Caesar with the Senate, Jesus with the Sanhedrin. – Both are contentious characters, but show praiseworthy clemency as well: the clementia Caesaris and Jesus’ Love-thy-enemy. – Both have a traitor: Brutus and Judas. And an assassin who at first gets away: the other Brutus and Barabbas. And one who washes his hands of it: Lepidus and Pilate. – Both are accused of making themselves kings: King of the Romans and King of the Jews. Both are dressed in red royal robes and wear a crown on their heads: a laurel wreath and a crown of thorns. – Both get killed: Caesar is stabbed with daggers, Jesus is crucified, but with a stab wound in his side. – Jesus as well as Caesar hang on a cross. For a reconstruction of the crucifixion of Caesar, see: http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html#images – Both die on the same respective dates of the year: Caesar on the Ides (15 th) of March, Jesus on the 15 th of Nisan. – Both are deified posthumously: as Divus Iulius and as Jesus Christ. – Caesar and Jesus also use the same words, e.g.: Caesar’s famous Latin ‘Veni, vidi, vici’-I came, I saw, I conquered-is in the Gospel transmitted into: ‘I came, washed and saw’, whereby Greek enipsa, ‘I washed’, replaces enikisa, ‘I conquered’. …. [End of quote] To which we find this rejoinder: “Good try, boys. But I think that our site provides copious evidence for the fact that the Greeks and the Romans tended to be the plagiarisers”. And I would fully agree with this last observation, having by now written many articles on what I consider to have been the Greco-Roman appropriation of Hebrew (Jewish) culture and civilisation at various levels. To give but a recent example of this: First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt (3) First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Hellenistic Influence A common theme of mine has been the constant Greco-Roman appropriations of various aspects of ancient Near Eastern culture and civilisation – most notably that of the Hebrews. The younger histories borrowing from the vastly older ones. But might not the younger Roman Republican ‘history’ have also absorbed, and appropriated, certain elements of the widespread Hellenistic empire? Biblically (I accept the Catholic canon), Rome emerges very late, but with glowing praise. I refer to 1 Maccabees 8, in which Judas Maccabeus makes a treaty with Rome. The conventional date for this is c. 160 BC, but I would imagine that this will need to be, through astute revisionism, significantly lowered. The Maccabean writer eulogises both Roman military might and Roman fair dealing (1-13): Judas had heard of the reputation of the Romans. They were valiant fighters and acted amiably to all who took their side. They established a friendly alliance with all who applied to them. He was also told of their battles and the brave deeds that they performed against the Gauls, conquering them and forcing them to pay tribute; and what they did in Spain to get possession of the silver and gold mines there. By planning and persistence they subjugated the whole region, although it was very remote from their own. They also subjugated the kings who had come against them from the far corners of the earth until they crushed them and inflicted on them severe defeat. The rest paid tribute to them every year. Philip and Perseus, king of the Macedonians, and the others who opposed them in battle they overwhelmed and subjugated. Antiochus the Great, king of Asia, who fought against them with a hundred and twenty elephants and with cavalry and chariots and a very great army, was defeated by them. They took him alive and obliged him and the kings who succeeded him to pay a heavy tribute, to give hostages and to cede Lycia, Mysia, and Lydia from among their best provinces. The Romans took these from him and gave them to King Eumenes. When the Greeks planned to come and destroy them, the Romans discovered it, and sent against the Greeks a single general who made war on them. Many were wounded and fell, and the Romans took their wives and children captive. They plundered them, took possession of their land, tore down their strongholds and reduced them to slavery even to this day. All the other kingdoms and islands that had ever opposed them they destroyed and enslaved; with their friends, however, and those who relied on them, they maintained friendship. They subjugated kings both near and far, and all who heard of their fame were afraid of them. Those whom they wish to help and to make kings, they make kings; and those whom they wish, they depose; and they were greatly exalted. This terrifying military strength and domination was, however, modified by wise government (vv. 14-16): Yet with all this, none of them put on a diadem or wore purple as a display of grandeur. But they made for themselves a senate chamber, and every day three hundred and twenty men took counsel, deliberating on all that concerned the people and their well-being. They entrust their government to one man every year, to rule over their entire land, and they all obey that one, and there is no envy or jealousy among them. Unfortunately, the Maccabean account of the journey to Rome for Treaty purposes by “Eupolemus, son of John, son of Accos, and Jason, son of Eleazar” (vv. 17-32) does not include any Roman names whatsoever. “Later, Simon sent Numenius to Rome with the gift of a large gold shield weighing half a ton, to confirm the Jews’ alliance with the Romans” (14:24). Judas Maccabeus was now dead and his brother Simon was High Priest. Conventionally, this second Jewish approach to Rome is dated about 20 years later (c. 140 BC) than the one at the time of Judas. Finally, this time, we are given a Roman name, “Lucius”, a consul, most generally thought to have been Lucius Calpurnius Piso. http://biblehub.com/topical/l/lucius.htm A Roman consul who is said (1 Maccabees 15:16;) to have written a letter to Ptolemy Euergetes securing to Simon the high priest and to the Jews the protection of Rome. As the praenomen only of the consul is given, there has been much discussion as to the person intended. The weight of probability has been assigned to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was one of the consuls in 139-138 B.C., the fact of his praenomen being Cneius and not Lucius being explained by an error in transcription and the fragmentary character of the documents. The authority of the Romans not being as yet thoroughly established in Asia, they were naturally anxious to form alliances with the kings of Egypt and with the Jews to keep Syria in check. The imperfections that are generally admitted in the transcription of the Roman letter are not such as in any serious degree to invalidate the authority of the narrative in 1 Maccabees. The Maccabean text reads as follows (15:5-24): Meanwhile, Numenius and those with him arrived in Jerusalem from Rome with the following letter addressed to various kings and countries: From Lucius, consul of the Romans, to King Ptolemy, greetings. A delegation from our friends and allies the Jews has come to us to renew the earlier treaty of friendship and alliance. They were sent by the High Priest Simon and the Jewish people, and they have brought as a gift a gold shield weighing half a ton. So we have decided to write to various kings and countries urging them not to harm the Jews, their towns, or their country in any way. They must not make war against the Jews or give support to those who attack them. We have decided to accept the shield and grant them protection. Therefore if any traitors escape from Judea and seek refuge in your land, hand them over to Simon the High Priest, so that he may punish them according to Jewish law. Lucius wrote the same letter to King Demetrius, to Attalus, Ariarathes, and Arsaces, and to all the following countries: Sampsames, Sparta, Delos, Myndos, Sicyon, Caria, Samos, Pamphylia, Lycia, Halicarnassus, Rhodes, Phaselis, Cos, Side, Aradus, Gortyna, Cnidus, Cyprus, and Cyrene. A copy of the letter was also sent to Simon the High Priest. The Divine Julius That the ‘Julius Caesar’ that has come down to us exhibits some marked Hellenistic aspects is apparent from the account of Caesar given by N. Fields in his Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008). Fields, writing in his section, “The Second Dictator”, finds himself confronted with those vexed questions regarding Caesar’s status and intentions (pp. 175-176): [Caesar’s] acceptance of the title dictator perpetuus demonstrates that Caesar did intend to retain power indefinitely, but this then raise two further extraordinary questions. First, was Caesar seeking a quasi-divine status, and second, was he going to convert the perpetual dictatorship into a hereditary monarchy? Even to this day both of these points are fiercely argued about by academics. Balsdon, for instance, coolly argues that the notion that Caesar hankered after divine status and kingship was the invention and elaboration of his assassins. On the other hand, others such as Taylor and Weinstock earnestly believe that Caesar was seeking divine status, that is to say, a Hellenistic-type monarch, despotic and absolute, worshipped with god-like honours …. Fields becomes more explicit in his section, “The ‘Divine King’”. Following the battle of Munda, Fields writes (pp. 176-177): … the Senate awarded Caesar another heap of honours in his absence. Again this included an ivory statue, which was inscribed ‘To the undefeated God’ and carried in procession with a statue of Victory at the opening of all games in the circus. The inscription itself had strong overtones of Alexander the Great and admittedly this is a difficult one to explain away, especially as the master of Rome did not over-rule the Senate this time. Post-Alexander But such excessive honour also smacked of the post-Alexander Ptolemies (p. 177): “Naturally Caesar was worshipped in the Greek east, where Hellenistic monarchs (and powerful Romans before Caesar) had been typically granted divine status while alive, the most celebrated being the Ptolemies of Egypt”. Without my having yet done any really thorough research on the matter, I would nonetheless anticipate that Hellenistic history - just like I have shown to be the case with Egyptian, Assyro-Babylonian and Persian history - will require significant streamlining. How many of those many Ptolemies and Cleopatras are actually repetitions? And how much belongs to Greece, and how much to Rome? Contemporaneous with the famous Cicero (c. 106-43 BC), or “Chickpea”, for example, was a Ptolemaïc “Chickpea”, Ptolemy IX Lathyrus (= Chickpea). There is much sorting out to be done here. Fields’ account of the enigmatic Caesar is full of questions, often with Hellenistic answers. P. 178: Herein lies a possible solution to the question of Caesar’s so-called divine status. It is certainly true that the divine worship of Hellenistic monarchs became the model for the Roman emperors, and thus we could argue that Caesar, dictator for life, was the first example of this practice. …. King of Rome? But why did Caesar need the more glamorous but invidious title of rex, especially as he now held all the power he required by ruling Rome through the position of dictator perpetuus? Syme believes it is not necessary to accept that he sought to establish a Hellenistic-style monarchy, because the dictatorship was sufficient …. Did Julius Caesar really exist? Stay posted. Divine Augustus Finally, the ‘Julius Caesar’ that has come down to us is also found to have similarities remarkably akin to those of that historically verifiable Julius Caesar, Octavianus Augustus. The Lord of History and the Emperor of Rome Jesus Christ, whose birth occurred during the reign of emperor (Julius Caesar) Augustus, is the absolute Fulcrum of history. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Professor P. Kreeft, writing of Jesus as the philosopher par excellence, has reminded us that, owing to Jesus, history is now divided between what came before his birth and whatever is subsequent to it (The Philosophy of Jesus): Amazingly, no one ever seems to have looked at Jesus as a philosopher, or his teaching as philosophy. Yet no one in history has ever had a more radically new philosophy, or made more of a difference to philosophy, than Jesus. He divided all human history into two, into "B.C." and "A.D."; and the history of philosophy is crucial to human history, since philosophy is crucial to man; so how could He not also divide philosophy? http://www.staugustine.net/our-books/books/the-philosophy-of-jesus He, as Paul tells us (Philippians 2:6-7): Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance …. And He ‘found that human appearance’, as a helpless baby, during the reign of the aforesaid emperor Augustus (Luke 2:1-7. NIV): The Birth of Jesus In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. …. He, whose kingdom is Truth, came to correct every manner of human falsehood. Replying to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, Jesus proclaimed (John 18:37): ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me’. The Lord of the Cosmos and the Alpha and Omega of Creation, will even defer, in part, to the lord of empire and kingdoms (Mark 12:17): “Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’. And they marvelled at him”. Yet this was He about whom (http://zimmerman.catholic.ac/): Paul instructs us that God made our existence take its origin in Christ Jesus as our Alpha; that God created all things in and through the First Born, the Incarnate Christ; through that same Christ who is now fully in charge of this universe; who, when He will finalize His work of submitting the Cosmos to Himself, will deliver it back to God: "When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will [also] be subjected to the One who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 14:28). Exploring Comparisons: ‘Julius Caesar’ and Octavianus Some of the ‘Julius Caesar’, ostensibly the ‘perfect man’, that has come down to us may have picked up elements from the Divine Jesus (Ecce Homo), the God-Man; and from the Hellenistic king worship; the undefeatable Alexander the Great, the military genius. But even if that were so, does it mean that there was not an actual Julius Caesar apart from all of this? In the case of my studies of the Prophet Mohammed, I eventually came to the firm conclusion that ‘he’, a composite biblical character, did not exist in reality as a C7th AD person, and that ‘his’ biography actually plays havoc with real history: Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History (4) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And that the ‘Mohammed’ that has come down to us was based largely - at least up until the time of ‘his’ marriage - upon Tobias (my Job), the son of Tobit. Is the same type of conclusion to be reached about ‘Julius Caesar’, that he was a non-real composite, from whose biography a significant piece of presumed Roman history may need to be rescued? Military Campaigns These took ‘Julius Caesar’ to the same places wherein Octavianus would campaign: namely, Gaul; Britain; Greece; Spain; Africa (Egypt), with a famous civil war also involved. Julius Caesar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_campaigns_of_Julius_Caesar The military campaigns of Julius Caesar constituted both the Gallic War (58 BC-51 BC) and Caesar's civil war (50 BC-45 BC). They followed Caesar's consulship (chief magistracy) in 59 BC, which had been highly controversial. The Gallic War mainly took place in what is now France. In 55 and 54 BC, he invaded Britain, although he made little headway. The Gallic War ended with complete Roman victory at the Battle of Alesia. This was followed by the civil war, during which time Caesar chased his rivals to Greece, decisively defeating them there. He then went to Egypt, where he defeated the Egyptian pharaoh and put Cleopatra on the throne. He then finished off his Roman opponents in Africa and Spain. Once his campaigns were over, he served as Roman Dictator until his assassination on March 15, 44 BC. These wars were critically important in the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman%E2%80%93Parthian_Wars Julius Caesar elaborated plans for a campaign against Parthia, but his assassination averted the war. Octavianus http://applet-magic.com/caesaraugustus.htm • 46 BCE: Octavius accompanied Julius Caesar in the public precession celebrating the victory of Caesar over his opponents in Africa. • 45 BCE: Octavius accompanied Caesar on his military expedition to Spain to defeat and destroy the sons of Pompey, his defeated rival, who were trying to perpetuate their father's opposition to Caesar. • 44 BCE: …. The troops of Octavius joined with troops which the Senate has at its command. The combined forces drove Antony out of Italy into Gaul. In the battle with Anthony's forces the two elected Consuls of Rome were killed. Octavius's troops demanded that the Senate confer the title of Consul on Octavius. Octavius was officially recognized as the son of Julius Caesar. He then took the name Gaius Julius Caesar (Octavianus). He was more generally known as Octavian during this period. • 42 BCE: The Senate deemed Julius Caesar as having been a god. This enhanced Octavian's status still further. Antony and Octavian undertook a military expedition to the East to defeat Brutus and Cassius. In two battles at Philippi the troops of Brutus and Cassius were defeated and Brutus and Cassius killed themselves. The Triumvirate then divided up the Empire. Anthony got the East and Gaul. Lepidus got Africa and Octavian got the West except for Italy which was to be under common control of all three. • 31 BCE: Antony decided to bring his forces to the western side of Greece. Cleopatra accompanied him. Octavian sent a military expedition under the command of Agrippa to challenge Antony's control of Greece. Octavian later joined Agrippa and their fleet bottled up Antony and Cleopatra's fleet in the Gulf of Ambracia. A naval battle ensued at Actium in which Cleopatra, for fear of being captured, pulled her ships out of the battle and headed back to Egypt thus ensuring the defeat of Anthony's forces. Anthony and some of his ships escaped from the battle and followed Cleopatra. • 30 BCE: Octavian invaded Egypt; Anthony commits suicide and Cleopatra follows suit in a tragic sequence of events. ….Octavian annexed Egypt into the Roman Empire and put it under his direct control. • 20 BCE: The empires of Rome and Parthia reached a peace agreement in which Parthia accepted Armenia as being within the Roman sphere of influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_conquest_of_Britain Augustus prepared invasions [of Britain] in 34 BC, 27 BC and 25 BC. The first and third were called off due to revolts elsewhere in the empire, the second because the Britons seemed ready to come to terms.[1] According to Augustus's Res Gestae, two British kings, Dubnovellaunus and Tincomarus, fled to Rome as supplicants during his reign,[2] and Strabo's Geography, written during this period, says that Britain paid more in customs and duties than could be raised by taxation if the island were conquered.[3] Crossing the Rubicon This is a defining moment in the ambitious progress of Julius Caesar. N. Fields tells of it in Warlords of Republican Rome. Caesar versus Pompey (2008, pp. 145-146): … on the night of 10 January Caesar crossed the Rubicon into Italy accompanied by a single legion, legio XIII, apparently repeating, in Greek, a proverb of the time, ‘let the die be cast’. …. On one side [of the Rubicon] Caesar still held imperium pro consule and had the right to command troops, on the other he was a mere privatus, a private citizen. It was frank initiation of a civil war. …. Moreover, just as Julius was then faced with the situation of “the fugitives Antonius and Cassius” (p. 146), so was Octavianus - as we shall shortly learn - when he crossed the Rubicon. In fact, he would cross it twice. Fields (p. 204): For the second time in ten months Octavianus set out to march on Rome. Crossing the Rubicon at the head of his eight legions, he then pushed on to Rome with the celerity of Caesar …. On 19 August Octavianus took over one of the vacant consulships. Cicero’s protégé, the ‘divine youth whom heaven had sent to save the state … was not quite 20 years old. …. Antonius entered Gallia Transalpina unopposed …. (P. 207): Their next chief task was to eliminate Brutus and Cassius …. Triumvirate Again an item common to Julius Caesar and Octavianus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate The First Triumvirate was a political alliance between three prominent Roman politicians (triumvirs) which included Gaius Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus. "Pompey and Caesar now formed a pact, jointly swearing to oppose all legislation of which any one of them might disapprove. It lasted from approximately 59 BCE to Crassus' defeat by the Parthians in 53 BCE.[1] The alliance was "not at heart a union of those with the same political ideals and ambitions", but one where "all [were] seeking personal advantage."[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Triumvirate The Second Triumvirate is the name historians have given to the official political alliance of Gaius Octavius (Octavian, Caesar Augustus), Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, formed on 26 November 43 BCE with the enactment of the Lex Titia, the adoption of which is viewed as marking the end of the Roman Republic. The Triumvirate existed for two five-year terms, covering the period 43 BCE to 33 BCE. Unlike the earlier First Triumvirate,[2][3] the Second Triumvirate was an official, legally established institution, whose overwhelming power in the Roman state was given full legal sanction and whose imperium maius outranked that of all other magistrates, including the consuls. Conclusion Whether or not Julius Caesar really existed as an entity distinct from, for example, Octavianus, by the time that all of the accretions that have been added to that presumed historical person have been removed from him, and from his history, the original model will have thinned out about as radically as Julius Caesar’s famous receding hairline. Julius Caesar did not invade Britain (First written on 13th August 2015) “… there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar”. Ben Hamilton King Alfred the Great may have been the culprit, according to Ben Hamilton: http://cphpost.dk/news/caesar-conquering-britain-a-9th-century-invention-by-alfred-the-great.html Caesar conquering Britain a 9th century invention by Alfred the Great Saxon king fabricated 54 BC invasion to replace Viking-friendly heir and protect England from the Danes The Saxon king Alfred, a late ninth century ruler who unified several kingdoms of England and thwarted the Danish Vikings from taking over at every turn, is commonly referred to as ‘the Great’ by historians. But maybe ‘the Magnificent’ club of Suleiman, Lorenzo de’ Medici and co should make room for one more, contends Rebecca Huston, a former National Geographic Channel producer and American screenwriter who after ten years of original research and analysis believes the king single-handedly saved the country from being permanently absorbed into Scandinavia. Never mind a one-nation Brexit, this was a one-man Brepel! Caesar the non-conqueror This wasn’t through force. Alfred simply demonstrated that the pen is mightier than the sword. Over a thousand years before the exploits of Bletchley Park saw off one army of foreign invaders, he delved into old manuscripts to stop another. By doctoring a Latin version of one of the ancient world’s most famous writings, and altering several Old English manuscripts, he was able to convince his council of nobles that his son Edward was the rightful heir to his throne, not his nephew Æthelwold, a Saxon susceptible to alliances with the Danes. And the astonishing upshot of this discovery is that Julius Caesar neither invaded nor conquered Britain in 54 BC. Alfred the great storyteller Along with the collected letters of Cicero, the memoirs written by Caesar while he was conquering France and other areas of central Europe in the fifth decade of the first century BC is believed by many to be one of the few manuscripts to have survived the period. But there is a very good chance that Caesar’s ‘Commentaries’ did not survive, and that ‘Bellum Gallicum’ (BG), the title it is known as today, was the work of other writers. Historians are wrong to treat it as gospel and to suppose this was the true voice of Caesar. But many do, and therefore they duly accept that he invaded Britain. Ancient writings only survived because they were painstakingly recopied by hand, and also translated, mostly by monks at monasteries when it was judged the current version was becoming a little worse for wear. This made them vulnerable to change. As an avid translator of Latin texts into Old English with all his kingdom’s manuscripts at his disposal, Alfred was ideally placed to meddle, and Huston claims she has found compelling evidence among 6,000 pages of ancient and medieval texts that Alfred fabricated Caesar’s two ‘invasions’ of Britain in 55 and 54 BC and added them to what would become BG. In reality, she says, the first ‘invasion’ did not take place, and the second was a passing visit. Many academics concur the king of Wessex, Kent, Essex, Sussex and the western part of Mercia also translated and revised five old English works – including translations of ‘Ecclesiastical History’, an eighth century work by the Venerable Bede, and ‘History Against the Pagans’, a fifth century work by Orosius. Significantly the old English versions of the pair’s works include details about Caesar’s invasions, but the Latin versions do not. Bede, for example, relied on the sixth century monk Gildas for all of his early British history, but Gildas never mentioned Caesar or his invasions, suggesting the inclusion is not Bede’s work. Tellingly, the earliest-known copy of BG dates back to the last quarter of the ninth century, coinciding with the latter years of Alfred’s life. Traces of the Englishman “Alfred was the anonymous author of ‘Bellum Gallicum’ because highly-specific details about Alfred’s own life appear in the text that could not have been written by Caesar nor be known prior to Alfred’s lifetime,” Huston told CPH POST. Huston points out that many scholars, including Germany’s Heinrich Meusel and Alfredus Klotz, have shared doubts over the authenticity of the passages – with Klotz suggesting that a “pseudo-Caesar” added false details, and Meusel questioning why Caesar wrote like an Englishman. Historians have for centuries been stumbling over the truth, but have either not noticed or ignored the evidence – in some cases, suggests Huston, because Alfred was believed to be the spiritual founder of Oxford University and it would have been highly controversial! For example, the early 20th century work ‘The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes’ acknowledges Alfred’s idiosyncratic style of drawing on his experience in describing the military exploits of others, while 19th century scholar Charles Plummer contends that the pious Alfred could not resist adding Christian elements, claiming that ‘History against the Pagans’ shows a “remarkable divergence from historical fact”. Additionally, as a champion of indirect discourse (when he wasn’t saying “Veni, Vidi, Vici”!), Caesar would have never lapsed into the first person, as is often the case in BG – such a writing style was abhorrent to him and he even included his dislike in a book on classical Latin grammar. Spun like Keyser Söze Huston’s groundbreaking analysis of BG has yielded 120 examples of Alfred’s idiosyncratic writing style (including word choice, verbose style and peculiar errors) along with 40 references to his own life and times. For example, BG records that Caesar arrived in 54 BC on clinker-built ships – a vessel never used by the Romans and not by anyone until the third century – which were familiar to Alfred as they featured heavily in his own West Saxon fleet. In addition, the description of the Britons in BG closely matches that of the Danes in the ninth century, while Caesar’s experience fighting them is similar to Alfred’s against the Vikings. The ancient Brits, according to BG, wore animal skins and did not eat grain – a claim contradicted by modern archaeologists. Throughout BG, Celtic and Old English terms frequently appear, geography is referenced that is six centuries premature and anachronistic errors are made regarding Roman weapons not yet invented nor used. For example, the Latin term ‘equites’ is used to mean knights, but in Caesar’s day it meant money-lenders, while the four kings of Kent who surrendered to Caesar were family members of Alfred’s, and one of the surrendering British tribes, the Ancalites, is named after a sixth century shield used by Alfred’s ancestors. “Similar to the mastermind character Keyser Söze in ‘The Usual Suspects’, Alfred adroitly spun the tale of Caesar’s British ‘invasions’ by fictionalising objects likely found in his immediate environment,” contended Huston. A lack of evidence No archaeological evidence has ever been found in southern England to confirm the Romans under Caesar fought the Britons as claimed in BG, with modern historian Richard Warner (in ‘British Archaeology’, 1995) asserting that the only reason people believe Caesar invaded Britain is because of his memoirs. Not one ancient writer prior to Alfred mentions the invasion – not even Suetonius, who as the first official Roman biographer of Caesar and head of the Imperial Archives in Rome, had access to Caesar’s personal papers, daily military diaries and reports to the Roman Senate. In 36 of Cicero’s letters from 54 BC, of which some were written directly to Caesar, not one mentions an invasion or fighting or transport problems despite many references to Britain. Cicero had good reason to be interested, as his brother took part in Caesar’s visit. There is no mention of Caesar conquering Britain in the work of three prominent first century AD writers: the Roman historian Tacitus, the Greek essayist Plutarch, and the Roman poet Lucan, who observed that “Caesar came looking for the British and then terrified, turned tail.” There is no evidence of the Roman camp which would have stood for three months and housed 25,000 soldiers, the battlesites – others have yielded countless finds – or the voyage over. According to BG, 800 ships were launched from Port Itius in France in 54 BC – a location that would struggle to see off more than a hundred, according to a French admiral serving in the Napoleonic Wars. A five-year mission launched in 2000, which was co-sponsored by the British Museum, tried to find the remains of 52 ships that supposedly sunk when Caesar ‘invaded’ Britain (12 in 55 and 40 in 54 BC), searching predominantly seven miles northeast of the cliffs of Dover – the area identified by BG. BG also details the loss of 120 Roman anchors, of which each one weighed 680 kg and measured 2.8 metres across. The mission used SONAR technology that can identify a teapot at a depth of 500 metres, but nothing was found. Ancient shipwrecks and anchors will deteriorate faster in warmer waters, but while dozens have been found in the Mediterranean, not one has been discovered in British waters. Mission accomplished Before his accession Alfred had promised his predecessor, his brother Æthelred I, that the dying king’s sons would take precedence over his own offspring and one of them, Æthelwold, was accordingly the senior heir. Under Saxon law the kingship was not Alfred’s gift to bestow. But he did his best to make his son Edward the most logical heir, leaving him the bulk of his lands and even having the bones of his predecessor moved from Steyning, an estate left to Æthelwold, to Winchester, his capital. Alfred’s citation from BG helped to strengthen his claim to the same rights and responsibilities as Caesar, the ‘conqueror’ of the five territories he ruled over, because of an additional lie that no records support: that he had been consecrated in Rome by Pope Leo IV during a pilgrimage he made aged four in 853. Accordingly, he claimed he had inherited the ancient right of a conqueror to name his successor, thus superseding his agreement with his brother. Furthermore, by claiming the ancient nobles of Britain accepted Caesar’s choice of ruler of the exact same kingdom Alfred presided over, he could argue Roman authority superseded that of the Saxons, and that the ancient right was inseparable from the land. “The anonymously-forged ‘memoirs’ were good enough to fool Alfred’s Latin-illiterate council of nobles,” contended Huston. Edward duly succeeded Alfred in 899, prompting Æthelwold to launch a rebellion backed by Scandinavian allies, which he died fighting in three years later. Edward’s grandson Edgar the Peaceful went on to unify the kingdoms of England in 957, although this was shortlived. While the Danes did eventually conquer the whole of England in 1013, their 29-year rule was not long enough to permanently absorb the country into a Nordic empire. Had Alfred not intervened, they could have ruled England for 143 years, or even longer.

First philosopher, Thales, likely a Greek borrowing from Joseph of Egypt

by Damien F. Mackey “The first philosopher on record is a man called Thales. Thales lived at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., at Miletus, a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor”. Tracing the Judaeo-Israelite Origins of Metaphysics The impact of the ancient Near East (particularly Israel) upon our western civilization has been enormously underestimated, with practically all the glory - except in religion - going to the Greeks and the Romans. It is typical for us to read in the context of our western upbringing and education, in favour of Greco-Roman philosophy, politics and literature, statements such as: "Our European civilization rests upon two pillars: Judeo Christian revelation, its religious pillar, and Greco-Roman thought, its philosophical and political pillar". "The Iliad is the first and the greatest literary achievement of Greek civilization - an epic poem without rival in the literature of the world, and the cornerstone of Western culture". "Virgil's Aeneid, inspired by Homer and inspiration for Dante and Milton, is an immortal poem at the heart of Western life and culture". Nor do we, even as followers of Jesus, tend to experience any discomfort in the face of the above claims. After all, Jesus only said ‘salvation is from the Jews’ (John 4:22); not philosophy, not literature, not politics. But is not "salvation" also wholly civilizing? Yes, it most certainly is. And it will be the purpose of this article and others to show that philosophy and other cultural benefits are also essentially from the Jews, and that the Greeks, Romans and others appropriated these Jewish-laid cornerstones of civilization, claiming them as their own, but generally corrupting them. Let us start with philosophy. Philosophy The typical textbook introductions to philosophy begin with an explanation of the meaning of the term, "philosophy", and introduce us to the first philosopher. These are all purely Greek based. The word "philosophy" first used by Pythagoras, thought to be an Ionian Greek from Samos, is a Greek word meaning "love of wisdom"; with sophia "wisdom", originally having a broad meaning and referring to the cultivation of learning in general. And the first philosopher? Well, he also is said to be Greek: "The first philosopher on record is a man called Thales. Thales lived at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., at Miletus, a Greek colony on the coast of Asia Minor". Unfortunately there is a complete "absence of primary sources" for Thales who "left no written documents". And this is where the problem lies. The real existence of Thales as an Ionian Greek of the C6th BC is wide open to doubt. To Thales is attributed a prediction in astronomy that was quite impossible for an Ionian Greek - or anyone else - to have estimated so precisely in the C6th BC. He is said to have predicted a solar eclipse that occurred on 28 May 585 BC during a battle between Cyaxares the Mede and Alyattes of Lydia. This supposed incident has an especial appeal to the modern rationalist mind because it - thought to have been achieved by a Greek, and 'marking the birthday of western science' - was therefore a triumph of the rational over the religious. According to Glouberman, for instance, it was "… a Hellenic Götterdämerung, the demise of an earlier mode of thought". Oh really? Well, it never actually happened. O. Neugebauer, astronomer and orientalist, has completely knocked on the head any idea that Thales could possibly have foretold such an eclipse. Other, lesser known Greek thinkers, include: (1) Anaximander (ca. 611-547 BC) and apparently known only from the writings of Diodorus (late 1st cent. BC). Anax. is said to have held the view that man derived from aquatic, fish-like mermen,; (2) Empedocles (ca. 490-430) according to Aristotle's writings (??), is said to have believed in the spontaneous generation of life, an idea also held by the Roman Lucretius (96?-55 BC). We see how far back such incredulous ideas reach. That is why the historian Herbert Butterfield said, that the science of the Middle Ages and Renaissance had as its basis the `knowledge' and ideas of the ancient Greeks who were steeped in superstitions. That is also why we discover that, if the Greeks did not mention a particular subject or discuss a specific problem, the Renaissance as a rule did not think about it. Going back to Thales, we need to reconsider who this Thales really was, presuming that he ever existed at all. (a) Thales as the Patriarch Joseph (c. C17th BC) Ironically, the clue to Thales' identity lies in Glouberman's own title "Jacob's Ladder …", and in his contrast of Thales' scientific method with Joseph's supposedly 'magical' one: "… Thales forecast the bumper crop by observing climatic regularities, not by interpreting dreams of lean kine and fat…". Here we have Thales, not in Ionia, but in Egypt, doing, in Egypt, what Joseph is said to have done there, predicting the rise of the Nile - at least that is what would have been necessary in Egypt for the exceptionally good crop that Joseph had predicted (Genesis 41:29). To one familiar with the ancient Egyptian language, the name Thales immediately calls to mind the Egyptian theophoric (god-name) Ptah. Thus, I think: • Thales is simply a Greek retrospection back more than a millennium to the patriarch Joseph of Israel, not Ionia. • The tiny little snippets of information that we have about Thales, vague Greek reminiscences of the biblical Joseph, can be matched with episodes in the life of Joseph. • Apart from the incidents pertaining to Egypt (see also below), there is the classical episode of the young Thales, as the archetypal absent-minded professor, falling into a well whilst observing the stars. • This is simply a corrupted account of the young Joseph whose brothers confined him in a well because of his annoying habit of dreaming, astronomically, to their humiliation - in this case dreaming that these brothers were "stars" bowing down in homage to him (Genesis 37:9,10). • The biblical original probably became corrupted firstly by the local Canaanites - examples of this sort of corruption of the Bible are prolific at the site of Ugarit, for example, on the Levantine coast - and were later shipped to the Greeks by the Levantines (including sea-faring Israelites), or picked up by Aegean sailors. One can see how the Greeks distorted Joseph in their character, Thales, though the original Genesis thread can still be picked up: thus, - a young man - a dreamer - in a well - stars, and: forecasting in Egypt - the Nile - bumper crops.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Did Hadrian or Herod build the Wailing Wall?

by Damien F. Mackey “When you compare the temple mount walls with other projects we know for certain [Herod] did build, we find some major differences. First, most of Herod's projects used stones much smaller than the temple wall and most did not have the pillow cut border around each stone. These projects include: Masada, Herodian, Cypros and Jericho, the stones are small, rough and have no cut frames”. Steve Rudd Following on from my recent article: King Herod could not have built the Wall (7) King Herod could not have built the Wall | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu the gist of which is that the Wall was constructed later than the time of King Herod: …. But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall — part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site — and that construction was not close to being complete when he died. …. I have come across this somewhat compatible piece on the subject by Steve Rudd (Biblical Archeologist): https://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-jerusalem-temple-mount-threshing-floor-walls-stones.htm The temple mount walls are more likely "Hadrian" then "Herodian": 1. While most people refer to the border cut around the stones (embossed frames) as "Herodian", many of Herod's projects did not cut the "pillow border" into the stones. When Herod did cut the border onto the stones, the work was much sloppier than we see on the temple mount walls. This style was not unique to Herod being used between 700 BC - 1100 AD by many different builders. 2. A simple glance at the outer walls of the temple mount show that there have been multiple constructions over a thousand years. The wall has been destroyed several time, repaired and endured many earth quakes. The foundation level stones at the bottom of the wall were set it place by either Herod in 25 BC or Hadrian in 135 AD. In addition to the fact that the current size of the temple mount area is twice as large as what Josephus recorded in 70 AD is one piece of evidence that Hadrian, not Herod built the wailing wall. Only a small central section of the outer wall is considered to be built before Herod. 3. When you compare the temple mount walls with other projects we know for certain he did build, we find some major differences. First, most of Herod's projects used stones much smaller than the temple wall and most did not have the pillow cut border around each stone. These projects include: Masada, Herodian, Cypros and Jericho, the stones are small, rough and have no cut frames. 4. Herod's projects where he used the "embossed frame" include: David's Tower, Caesaria and Shomron. But workmanship is noticeably different since the cuts are rough and the stones are smaller than the temple mount walls. 5. The stones that compose the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron are of similar size, quality as the temple mount walls, they are "pillow cut". However these is no evidence in any literary sources that Herod actually built the structure. 6. The Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek, Lebanon, has a complex history with no one single builder. Augustus was said to start the project and Hadrian is said to have worked on the temple at Baalbek. It does have the "pillow cut" stones in one portion of the temple. Below is a photo of a man sitting on one set of stones, then the huge "Trilithon" stones, then directly above these on the corner, you can see the "embossed frame" cut stones that are similar in size and design to the wall at the temple mount. (Link to detailed view of the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek) 7. Both the Cave of the Patriarchs and the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek are close matches in their stonework. More work needs to be done to determine exactly who built the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is almost universally ascribed to Herod. We know that Hadrian did not build Cave of the Patriarchs, so if not him or Herod then who? We need proof that it was Hadrian who laid the "pillow cut" stones in the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek. …. To complicate matters further, King Herod was, according to my revision, an actual contemporary, and sub-king, of/to the emperor Hadrian: Herod, the emperor’s signet right-hand man (7) Herod, the emperor's signet right-hand man | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Greco-Roman Glimmers of Jesus’s Death/Rising

Part One: Eponymous founder Romulus by Damien F. Mackey “The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now a propitious god”. Plutarch: Parallel Lives. Hugh J. Schonfield (d. 1988) is well known for his controversial book about Jesus, entitled The Passover Plot, which he wrote in 1965. According to the author, Jesus, desirous of saving his people, actually - and one must think, somewhat incredibly - orchestrated, as far as he could, his own manner of death, so as to accord with the ancient Messianic prophecies. “… the Crucifixion was part of a larger, conscious attempt by Jesus to fulfill the Messianic expectations rampant in his time, and that the plan went unexpectedly wrong”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_J._Schonfield I recently read Schonfield’s follow-up book to The Passover Plot, which, written in 1981, he had entitled After the Cross. On pp. 115-117 of this book the author introduced the Greek historian Plutarch’s piece about King Romulus, supposed first king of Rome, beginning with: Very few Christians would seem to be aware, however, of the strong similarity that exists between the image of the death and resurrection of Jesus and that of Romulus, the eponymous founder of Rome. The latter is set down in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Plutarch was born in the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) and was a contemporary of the authors of the Gospels. The relevant passage is quoted in full from an old English translation, which gives the flavor of the Authorized Version of the Bible. …. Before quoting this passage (and I shall be using instead John Dryden’s translation), I should like to preface it by recalling, once again, that Greco-Roman mythology and pseudo-history is replete with appropriations and distortions of the original Hebrew biblical tales. I have written articles on this subject, including the Greek appropriation of King Solomon as Solon. Solomon and Sheba http://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba And again, before becoming too absorbed with the conventional dating of Plutarch, one might like to pause to consider my article: Plutarch and Petrarch (3) Plutarch and Petrarch | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Anyway, here is the passage by Plutarch: http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/romulus.html … whereas Romulus, when he vanished, left neither the least part of his body, nor any remnant of his clothes to be seen. So that some fancied the senators, having fallen upon him in the temple of Vulcan, cut his body into pieces, and took each a part away in his bosom; others think his disappearance was neither in the temple of Vulcan, nor with the senators only by, but that it came to pass that, as he was haranguing the people without the city, near a place called the Goat's Marsh, [Comment: “… without the city” is appropriate, as is Goat. Recall the goat for sin offering] on a sudden strange and unaccountable disorders and alterations took place in the air; the face of the sun was darkened, and the day turned into night, and that, too, no quiet, peaceable night, but with terrible thunderings, and boisterous winds from all quarters; during which the common people dispersed and fled, but the senators [read Sanhedrin?] kept close together. The tempest being over and the light breaking out, when the people gathered again, they missed and inquired for their king; the senators suffered them not to search, or busy themselves about the matter, but commanded them to honour and worship Romulus as one taken up to the gods, and about to be to them, in the place of a good prince, now a propitious god. The multitude, hearing this, went away believing and rejoicing in hopes of good things from him; but there were some, who, canvassing the matter in a hostile temper, accused and aspersed the patricians, as men that persuaded the people to believe ridiculous tales, when they themselves were the murderers of the king. Things being in this disorder, one, they say, of the patricians, of noble family and approved good character, and a faithful and familiar friend of Romulus himself, having come with him from Alba, Julius Proculus [Comment: The wife of Pontius Pilate was Claudia Procula] by name, presented himself in the forum; and, taking a most sacred oath, protested before them all, that, as he was travelling on the road, he had seen Romulus coming to meet him, looking taller and comelier than ever, dressed in shining and flaming armour; and he, being affrighted at the apparition, said, "Why, O king, or for what purpose have you abandoned us to unjust and wicked surmises, and the whole city to bereavement and endless sorrow?" and that he made answer, "It pleased the gods, O Proculus, that we, who came from them, should remain so long a time amongst men as we did; and, having built a city to be the greatest in the world for empire and glory, should again return to heaven. But farewell; and tell the Romans, that, by the exercise of temperance and fortitude, they shall attain the height of human power; we will be to you the propitious god Quirinus." This seemed credible to the Romans, upon the honesty and oath of the relater, and indeed, too, there mingled with it a certain divine passion, some preternatural influence similar to possession by a divinity; nobody contradicted it, but, laying aside all jealousies and detractions, they prayed to Quirinus and saluted him as a god. Romulus, Remus and Old Testament “The modern [sic] connection of Romulus and Remus would be the story of Cain and Abel. Remus is like Cain because they are the jealous brothers, and Abel is like Romulus because they are the good brothers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed [Abel] because he was jealous that God favored Abel’s offering more than Cain’s. But with Romulus and Remus, Remus was jealous of Romulus’s wall around the hill, so they argued and Romulus killed Remus. Both stories have a sibling rivalry and in the end, both stories have one brother killing the other. Also in both stories, jealousy is involved, but both for different reasons”. Like so many of the Greco-Roman myths - even the so-called history of ancient philosophy - the well-known characters were distorted, garbled versions of originally Egyptian, Hebrew and Near Eastern persons. These being cultures and civilisations far older than those of the Greeks and the Romans. Thus, for instance, in typical Greek fashion, a Hebrew prophet will be re-presented as a philosopher. We read earlier in this article that the absolutely unique accounts in the Gospels of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ were picked up (albeit messily) in the writings of the approximately contemporary (as is thought) Greek biographer and essayist, Plutarch, and applied to the legendary first king of Rome, Romulus. ‘Socrates’, the renowned, so-called Greek philosopher, I have argued, had no actual historical reality qua Socrates, but, rather, was a biblical composite. To consider just one of his biblical ‘manifestations’, Socrates, who is so often likened to Jesus Christ, will be found in Plato’s Meno doing what Jesus in fact did: writing on the ground (John 8:6, 8). But what will Socrates write? Not something ethical. In typically Greek fashion he will draw geometric figures in the ground. The mythological Romulus and Remus, too, are biblical composites. They are commonly compared with Cain and Abel, and also with Moses. And one could no doubt find other biblical manifestations of them as well (see e.g. previous comparisons with Jesus Christ and Romulus). Like Cain and Abel Romulus and Remus were twin brothers and their mother was princess Rhea Silvia. So, apparently, were Eve’s sons, Cain and Abel, twins: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/articles_cainandabel.html Their Births It is a well-known fact that Jacob and Esau were twins, but what is not commonly known is that Cain and Abel were also twins. In the normal Hebraic accounting of multiple births the conception then birth of each child is mentioned such as we can see in Genesis 29:32-33 where it states that Leah conceived and bore a son, and then she conceived again and bore a son. Note that there are two conceptions and two births. But notice how it is worded in Genesis 4:1-2. Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain; And again, she bore his brother Abel. (RSV) Notice that there is only one conception, but two births. The Hebrew word for "again" is asaph, meaning to add something, in this case the birthing of Abel was added to the birthing of Cain. Cain and Abel were twins. And, further: https://sites.google.com/site/creationmythofromulsuandremus/ The modern [sic] connection of Romulus and Remus would be the story of Cain and Abel. Remus is like Cain because they are the jealous brothers, and Abel is like Romulus because they are the good brothers. In the story of Cain and Abel, Cain killed [Abel] because he was jealous that God favored Abel’s offering more than Cain’s. But with Romulus and Remus, Remus was jealous of Romulus’s wall around the hill, so they argued and Romulus killed Remus. Both stories have a sibling rivalry and in the end, both stories have one brother killing the other. Also in both stories, jealousy is involved, but both for different reasons. Both stories are involved with marks. Cain is marked so everyone knows he killed his brother, Abel. But in the Roman myth, Romulus marks Rome by naming it after himself. Similarly, at: http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/cain-and-abel-were-twins.html The tradition of twins as the progenitors of tribal units or city builders is very well documented in Semitic and Indo-European cultures. When birth order is specified, the younger twin always receives the blessing over the first born brother. In the account of the sons of Adam, the first born twin is envious of the second and commits fratricide. There are many variations on this theme in other twin genesis accounts. Jacob is fearful that Esau will kill him, Romulus killed Remus and Gwyn and Gwythurin in Celtic tradition duel every May. The Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, shared a mortal and an immortal existence. Castor was killed on a cattle raid but Pollux persuaded Zeus to allow the brothers to switch places periodically. The word Gemini comes from the PIE root *ym which means 'to pair'. This word is very similar to the Hebrew im mimation suffix but, of course, linguists say they are unrelated (sigh). …. Parallels to Moses Romulus and Remus, abandoned on the bank of the Tiber river, were famously suckled by a she-wolf. From whence did this pagan myth arise? We well know the Exodus (2:1-10) account of the birth of Moses and the forced abandonment of him due to the decree of the cruel Pharaoh – how the baby Moses was placed in a papyrus basket and set adrift on the river Nile (which the Romans inevitably replaced with their Tiber). Long before the Romans, I suggest, the ancient Egyptians had corrupted the legend of the baby Moses in the bulrushes so that now it became the goddess Isis who drew the baby Horus from the Nile and had him suckled by Hathor (the goddess in the form of a cow – the Egyptian personification of wisdom). In the original story, of course, baby Moses was drawn from the water by an Egyptian princess, not a goddess, and was weaned by Moses’s own mother (Exodus 2:5-9). The story evolved from the original Hebrew account, suckled by the mother, to the Egyptian version, suckled by the goddess in the form of a cow, to an entirely bestial suckler in the Roman account, a she-wolf. Part Two: Apollonius of Tyana “Presenting further evidence that Philostratus's biography of Apollonius is in many ways a replica of the life of Jesus, Cardinal Newman writes: The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of Aesculapius; his determination, in spite of danger to go up to Rome; the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him …”. The supposed C1st AD character, Apollonius of Tyana, is such a Jesus-like figure in many ways that some commentators would insist that the Gospels were based on the life of this Apollonius. Whereas, as I am arguing in this article, the precedence ought to be given to the Gospel version over the pagan one. And there are very good reasons, again, for claiming this to be correct, given the vagueness surrounding the author of the “Life of Apollonius”, the Greek sophist Philostratus, and that he wrote about Apollonius much later than the Gospels, in the C3rd AD. I favour Fr. Jean Carmignac’s compelling argument, as set out in his Birth of the Synoptics (1987), that the Synoptic Gospels were written by eyewitnesses at a very early date. Philostratus As I have often remarked, one of the most common phrases used by the conventional historians of ancient history is this one, “… little is known about …”. And that fully applies to Philostratus, who himself, I suspect, may not have been an actual historical character, but a ‘ghost’ based upon some previous person - perhaps upon one of the Evangelists. Thus we read of Philostratus: http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/p/philostratus.html Very little is known of his career. Even his name is doubtful. The Lives of the Sophists gives the praenomen Flavius, which, however, is found elsewhere only in Tzetzes. Eunapius and Synesius call him a Lemnian; Photius a Tyrian; his letters refer to him as an Athenian. It is probable that he was born in Lemnos, studied and taught at Athens, and then settled in Rome …. I rest my case. But furthermore: The Lives are not in the true sense biographical, but rather picturesque impressions of leading representatives of an attitude of mind full of curiosity, alert and versatile, but lacking scientific method, preferring the external excellence of style and manner to the solid achievements of serious writing. The philosopher, as he says, investigates truth; the sophist embellishes it, and takes it for granted. …. That appears to be a very shaky historical foundation, indeed, upon which to raise a life story of one who is considered by some to have been the exemplar for Jesus Christ himself. Apollonius of Tyana Most commentators simply presume the historicity of Philostratus when considering the Apollonius of Tyana of whom he wrote. Two such, who would regard Apollonius as being modelled upon Jesus Christ, were F. Bauer and Cardinal Newman: http://www.mountainman.com.au/Apollonius_the_Nazarene_3.htm Even as late as 1832, [F.] Bauer attempted to show that not only were there resemblances between the "Life of Apollonius of Tyana" and the Gospels, but that Philostratus deliberately modeled his hero on the type set forth by the Evangelists. He was followed in this view by Zeller, the celebrated Greek historian. Typical of latter nineteenth century views on the subject is that of Cardinal Newman, a Catholic apologist, who, admitting the identity of Apollonius and the Gospel messiah, considers the former an imitation of the latter, in spite of the fact that he preceded him by three centuries (For the Jesus of the Gospels was evidently born in the year 325 A.D., at the Council of Nicea, rather than when the star appeared over Bethlehem). To support his view, Newman mentions certain typical examples, such as Apollonius's bringing to life a dead girl in Rome, which he considers as "an attempt, and an elaborate, pretentious attempt, to outdo certain narratives in the Gospels (Mark v. 29, Luke vii. John xi: 41-43, Acts iii: 4-6). This incident, is described by Philostratus. Presenting further evidence that Philostratus's biography of Apollonius is in many ways a replica of the life of Jesus, Cardinal Newman writes: The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of Aesculapius; his determination, in spite of danger to go up to Rome; the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him; the charge brought against him of disaffection to Caesar; the Minister's acknowledging, on his private examination, that he was more than man; the ignominious treatment of him by Domitian on his second appearance at Rome; his imprisonment with criminals; his vanishing from Court and sudden reappearance to his mourning disciples at Puteoli--these, with other particulars of a similar cast, evidence a history modelled after the narrative of the Evangelists. Expressions, moreover, and descriptions occur, clearly imitated "from the sacred volume." Reville, another Catholic apologist, thinks as does Newman that "the biography of Apollonius is in great measure an imitation of the Gospel narrative.'* (*Reville bases his argument on the similarity of the characters of Apollonius and Pythagoras (which is natural in view of Apollonius following Pythagoras as his example); and he seeks to prove that Apollonius, rather than Jesus, is a fictitious creation, rather than an historical character. Reville writes: "It is hard to say whether the Pythagoras of the Alexandrians is not an Apollonius of an earlier date by some centuries, or whether the Apollonius of Julia Domna, besides his resemblance to Christ, is not a Pythagoras endowed with a second youth. The real truth of the matter will probably be found to lie between the two suggestions." [End of quotes] Philostratus’s account of the life of Apollonius of Tyana is thought to have been written as late as the 220’s/230’s AD, which is obviously later than the Gospels. Wikipedia gives these: Similarities shared by the stories about Apollonius and the life of Jesus …. • Birth miraculously announced by God • Religiously precocious as a child • Asserted to be a native speaker of Aramaic • Influenced by Plato/ reflected Platonism (Jesus) • [Renounced/ denounced (Jesus)] wealth • Followed abstinence and asceticism • Wore long hair and robes • Was unmarried and childless • Was anointed with oil • Went to Jerusalem • Spoke in [metaphors/ parables] (Jesus) • Saw and predicted the future • Performed miracles • Healed the sick • Cast out evil spirits/ Drove out demons (Jesus) • Raised the daughter of a [Roman official/ Jewish official (Jesus)] from the dead • Spoke as a "law-giver" • Was on a mission to bring [Greek culture/ Jewish culture (Jesus)] to [the "barbarians"/ the " nations" (Jesus)] • Believed to be "saviors" from heaven • Were accused of being a magician • Were accused of killing a boy • Condemned [by Roman emperor/ by Roman authorities (Jesus)] • Imprisoned [at Rome/ at Jerusalem (Jesus)] • Was assumed into heaven/ Ascended into heaven (Jesus) • Appeared posthumously to a detractor as a brilliant light • Had his image revered [in temples/ in churches (Jesus)] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana#Comparisons_with_Jesus

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Sparser Spartans

by Damien F. Mackey “Hugo Jones writes that the Spartans held in the highest regard a certain ancient law-giver, much like Moses the law-giver of Israel. The Spartans celebrated new moons (Rosh Chodesh), and unlike their Greek counterparts, even a seventh day of rest! Of course, the Spartans themselves were very different from other Greeks, particularly those in Athens, whom Sparta often battled”. Mayim Achronim According to King Arius of Sparta, his people shared a common ancestry with the Jews through Abraham. I Maccabees 12:19-23: This is a copy of the letter that they sent to Onias: ‘King Arius of the Spartans, to the high priest Onias, greetings. It has been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brothers and are of the family of Abraham. And now that we have learned this, please write us concerning your welfare; we on our part write to you that your livestock and your property belong to us, and ours belong to you. We therefore command that our envoys report to you accordingly’. Given that Abraham was, as according to the meaning of his new name: “The Father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5): “Your name will no longer be Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I will make you the father of many nations”, then the task of identifying a more specific relationship between the Jews and the Spartans is not an easy one. Legend tends to favour that the Spartans were descended from Abraham through his wife, Keturah. A seemingly semi-mythological example of this tradition is given at: https://www.mayimachronim.com/when-jews-and-greeks-were-brothers-the-untold-story-of-chanukah/ Greek Sons of Abraham Sometime in the 2nd century BCE lived a Greek historian and sage named Cleodemus, sometimes referred to as Cleodemus the Prophet. He also went by the name Malchus which, because of its Semitic origins, makes some scholars believe he could have been Jewish. Cleodemus wrote an entire history of the Jewish people in Greek. While this text appears to have been lost, it is cited by others, including Josephus (Antiquities, i. 15). Cleodemus commented on Abraham’s marriage to Keturah (typically identified with Hagar), and their children. This is recorded in Genesis 25, which begins: And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bore him Zimran, and Yokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuach. And Yokshan begot Sheva and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Ashurim, and Letushim, and Leumim. And the sons of Midian were Ephah, and Epher, and Chanokh, and Avidah, and Elda’ah. All these were the children of Keturah. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, while to the sons of the concubines that Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from Isaac, while he was still alive, to the east country. Abraham had six children with Keturah, from which came at least seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren which the Torah names explicitly. The Torah then makes it clear that Abraham gave everything that he had to Isaac—including the Covenant with God and the land of Israel—while the others received gifts and were sent away from the Holy Land. Cleodemus suggests that Epher (or another child named Yaphran), the great-grandson of Abraham, migrated to Africa—which is where the term “Africa” comes from! (This is particularly interesting because Epher was the son of Midian, and Tziporah the wife of Moses was a Midianite, and is described as a Cushite, or African/Ethiopian.) Cleodemus states that Epher, Yaphran, and Ashurim assisted the Greek hero Hercules in one of his battles. Following this, Hercules married one of their daughters—a great granddaughter of Abraham—and had a son with her. This son was Diodorus, one of the legendary founders of Sparta! …. [End of quote] Others, such as Steven M. Collins, narrow all of this down considerably more by identifying the Spartans as actual Jews (descendants of Abraham), even specifying that they were of the tribe of Simeon. And so we read at: https://stevenmcollins.com/the-spartan-israelites-who-halted-the-persian-empire/ THE SPARTAN ISRAELITES WHO HALTED THE PERSIAN EMPIRE by Steven M. Collins | Sep 17, 2018 | Ten Tribes - Ancient History Many readers have, no doubt, seen the movie, 300, starring Gerard Butler which was released a number of years ago. It tells the inspiring story of King Leonidas of Sparta, who led 300 of his Spartan warriors to the pass at Thermopylae circa 480 BC to block the path of the immense Persian army under Xerxes that was descending upon Greece. Their noble sacrifice in the battle of Thermopylae inspired all of Greece and bought time for the various city-states to organize a resistance to the Persian invasion. The aforementioned movie is drenched in graphic and bloody combat scenes and is outlandish at times (especially in its portrayal of Xerxes), but the self-sacrifice of the martial Spartan detachment inspires people still today. That movie also is laughably inaccurate in its portrayal of the Spartan warriors, who are presented as soldiers who went to war with appropriate armaments but dressed only in capes and leather loincloths. There was an earlier movie, The 300 Spartans, released in 1961 starring Richard Egan, which told the same story but it showed the Spartans dressed and armored in a much more realistic manner. However, it dated to a time when Hollywood presented war movies in a very sanitized way where the battle scenes were acted out with very little blood being shown. In both my books (available at the homepage of this website) and an article, I make the case that the Spartan warriors were Israelites from the Israelite tribe of Simeon, which, like the Spartans, was known for being warlike and ruthless. According to the book of First Maccabees, a Spartan king acknowledged in a letter to a Jewish High Priest that the Jews and Spartans were “kinsmen” and fellow descendants of Abraham. If so, where is the historic connection between the two groups of people? The Bible actually does offer us a solid historical context where the Spartans could have originated from a group of Israelites that branched off from the rest of the Israelite tribes. In the book of Numbers, there are two separate censuses taken of the Israelite tribes when they left Egypt. The first is in Numbers 1 and the second is in Numbers 26. The second census indicates that a majority of the tribe of Simeon left the Israelite encampment right after a chief Simeonite prince was executed by a Levite, Phineas, in Numbers 25. The context argues that Moses saw that so many people had left the Israelite encampment at that time that he decided to call for a second census to see how many had departed from the various tribes. If they had struck out on their own, one would expect the Simeonites to found a martial city or nation of their own…in other words, a city-state just like Sparta. History records that the Spartans had a different origin than the rest of the Greeks. The fact that the Spartan letter cited in I Maccabees records that the Spartans regarded themselves as kinsmen of the Jews and jointly descended from the patriarch, Abraham, is strong evidence that the Spartans had to be from a fellow Israelite tribe, but where had they originated? Since Numbers 25-26 confirms that most of the tribe of Simeon left the Israelite wilderness encampment circa 1410 BC, it makes sense that this warlike band of Simeonites would resurface later in history in a location other than the Promised Land. The origin of the city-state of Sparta is unknown, but it began to be noticed as an independent entity by at least the 11th or 10th century BC. Years ago, I wrote an article about the Spartan connection to the Israelite tribe of Simeon and I am including a link to that article. I urge all readers with an interest in history to read that article as it will enable you to see ancient Greek and Mediterranean history in an entirely new light. As a side-bar, I’d like to note that there was an earlier “Brave Three Hundred” warrior group which was mentioned in the Bible. It is the group of 300 warriors that accompanied the hero, Gideon, when he, like Leonidas and his 300, fought against an immense army of invaders who came from the east (circa 1150 BC). The story of Gideon and his brave 300 warriors is told in Judges 6-7. Unlike Leonidas and his 300, Gideon and his 300 emerged victorious over the eastern host albeit with God’s intervention to grant the victory. Gideon and his 300 warriors were also Israelites. Leonidas and his 300 did not emerge victorious although their noble sacrifice has been honored throughout time. I cannot help but wonder how the story of Leonidas and his 300 holding the narrow pass at Thermopylae would have ended if they had not been sabotaged by a traitor who revealed a secret pass around the Spartan position to the Persians. Perhaps they might actually have won if it had not been for that betrayal. At the very least, they would have delayed the Persian host for a much longer period of time. [End of quote] I may be able to add another element that could bridge the long chronological gap for the Spartans, as descendants of Abraham, to a connection with Moses. The Spartans looked back to a great Lawgiver called Lycurgus (Lykourgos), generally considered to be semi-mythical. Lycurgus is commonly compared with the Lawgiver supreme, Moses. Why? Because, as I think, Lycurgus was actually based on Moses. See e.g. my article: Moses and Lycurgus (11) Moses and Lycurgus | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Readers might pick up Moses likenesses also in the following by Ellen Lloyd (2023): https://www.ancientpages.com/2023/01/09/enigma-of-lycurgus-of-sparta-great-reformer-and-his-foundation-of-a-warlike-superior-state/ As we trace the ancient history of Sparta and Lycurgus, we learn he emerged during a deep crisis. According to Spartanophilic Xenophon, a disciple of Socrates and soldier who fought for Sparta against Athens, Lycurgus lived during the time of Heraclidae, around 1,000 B.C. Herodotus informs that Lycurgus “had brought the Spartans out of an era of extreme political disorder (kakonomotatoi) and into one of good order (eunomie), which in turn led to the city’s increased power. With the support of the Delphic oracle, Lycurgus changed “all the laws,” and created the gerousia, the ephorate, and the Spartan military organization (there is mention of the syssitia among the military institutions).” 3 Lycurgus “was able to persuade his fellow Spartans to introduce the comprehensive and compulsory educational cycle called the Agoge (agôgê, literally a ‘raising’, as of cattle). This system of education, training and socialisation turned boys into fighting men whose reputation for discipline, courage and skill was unsurpassed.” 4 Some scholars suggest the political reforms in Sparta introduced by Lycurgus were the earliest system of Greek citizen self-government. Many aspects Lycurgus system were strange to foreigners, and the Spartan rules and customs were radically different from the rest of the Hellenes. Perhaps this was also the goal because the Lycurgus altered decisively the psychological make-up of the citizens. The Spartans’ “own belief in their ideology was absolute. Throughout Spartan history there were very few defectors – or whingers.” 4 How Lycurgus came up with the laws is a mystery. Herodotus provides two entirely different versions of the Spartan lawgiver. One story tells Lycurgus received the laws directly from God Apollo. In another text, Herodotus ascribes the origins of Lycurgus’s laws to the Cretan constitution. Modern historians have long downplayed the role of Lycurgus in the history of Sparta. Still, in recent years scholars have argued the ancient lawgiver may have been of greater importance to the state than previously assumed. …. [Ends of quote] There is enough here to suggest, too, that the Spartans were foreigners in Greece. The first step, then, is to re-set Sparta in an Israelite direction by re-identifying the Lawgiver Lycurgus (c. 820 BC) as Moses (c. 1450 BC). The second step is to carry this re-orientation down into the Judges period, by seeing Leonidas and his 300 as a Greek appropriation of Gideon and his 300 (Judges 7). We read that Steven M. Collins had not missed this similarity (without making my connection): …. As a side-bar, I’d like to note that there was an earlier “Brave Three Hundred” warrior group which was mentioned in the Bible. It is the group of 300 warriors that accompanied the hero, Gideon, when he, like Leonidas and his 300, fought against an immense army of invaders who came from the east (circa 1150 BC). The story of Gideon and his brave 300 warriors is told in Judges 6-7. Unlike Leonidas and his 300, Gideon and his 300 emerged victorious over the eastern host albeit with God’s intervention to grant the victory. …. In e.g. my article: Not so ‘Hot Gates’ of Thermopylae (3) Not so ‘Hot Gates’ of Thermopylae | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu I suggested biblical antecedents for the so-called Battle of Thermopylae and the 300 Spartans. If Leonidas and his 300 are not taken from Gideon and his 300, wherein the name Gideon has become Grecised as Leonidas: [G]ID-EON = [L]EON-ID-AS then I’ll eat my hat. The third step is to recognise that: Admiral Lysander was probably an Egyptian (3) Admiral Lysander was probably an Egyptian | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Even The Iliad epic associated with the more obviously fictitious Sparta-ruling Menelaus has a biblical base: ‘Homeric’ borrowings from life of King Saul (4) 'Homeric' borrowings from life of King Saul | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu King Ahab and Agamemnon (4) King Ahab and Agamemnon | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Judith the Jewess and “Helen” the Hellene (4) Judith the Jewess and " Helen " the Hellene | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu