Aquila Pacis (a.k.a.

Maria Janna), Adversus Vorkosiganum – Criticism

and Rebuttal of Michael Turton’s “Was J. Caesar really J. Christ?”,
2006/2008, in defense of Francesco Carotta, Jesus was Caesar – On the
Julian Origin of Christianity. Kirchzarten, 1988-1999 / München, 1999 /
Soesterberg, 2005)

Michael Turton is an English teacher and what appears to be an atheist

hobby Bible researcher leaning toward the myther theories (apparently
focusing on the Old Testament) without any noteworthy publications
except those on his blog and website, but who nevertheless seems to have
become something of a ‘top dog’ with respect to religious sciences on the
internet, primarily through his initial involvement at the “Internet
Infidels Discussion Board” (IIDB) as ‘Vorkosigan’. When I ran across
him, he displayed the habit of regularly obscuring his lack of expertise
and knowledge by a polemical and aggressive debating style, and from
my early discussions with him and others about Carotta's book at
iidb.org (link: see the end of this document), I noticed that he had a
biased, negative and often hostile attitude toward the topic from the very
beginning. Interestingly, when I presented solid arguments that refuted
about all of his arguments and criticisms, he didn't try to continue the
debate, but mostly resorted to unscientific polemics. I stumbled across
his blog later, and what follows is my review of Turton’s/Vorkosigan’s
article on Carotta’s book Jesus was Caesar (2005).

Note (Maria Janna): this article was originally part of a lost private
correspondence; retrieved from a non-authorized re-posting by a third-
party at the IMDb; republished with edits.

Michael Turton wrote: But this correspondence between Jesus’ titles and
the titles of Roman power is well known to NT scholars. It does not
establish a connection, but rather, a common vocabulary of concepts
that early Christians drew on when depicting Jesus, and Romans drew
on when describing their Divine emperors.
Aquila Pacis writes: Yes, it is well known. Some of the Christ’s later
titles are even Caesar, Christus Imperator and so on. Without the
framework of the gospels as a diegetic transposition from Roman/
Caesarian sources, Turton’s argument is of course valid—although it’s not
really an argument at all—, and this first paragraph already sheds a
bright light on his general style of argumentation: He often says that the
things Carotta mentions have been known and accepted by scholars for a
long time. This would be hard for anyone to dismiss, simply because
we’re dealing with pragmatic observations in iconography, numismatics
and archaeology as well as with quotations of Biblical and Patristic
sources. What he fails to mention is that none of the scholars has until
now been able to explain these similarities between Christ and the
Roman emperor, the only argument so far being that of some vague kind
of (antithetical) mimicry. Turton himself says later in his critiques that
Christianity and Jesus stemmed from a completely Jewish context—
although Jewish scholars, especially those from the orthodox school, have
long objected this interpretation—, and it is hard to imagine that the Jews
or fundamental Jewish sectarians calling themselves ‘Christians’ would
not only mimic the detested Romans, but also include one of the most
important of the imperial titles, the anarthrous UøIOS Q‹U‰ (ὑιός θεοῦ), the
Greek translation of Divi filius as “Son of God” in the gospels. The most
important term and title denoting the Christ as divine and/or of divine
ancestry comes from Roman imperial propaganda? In any case, Turton
only says that these parallels and similarities have been known for a long
time, but doesn’t explain them, doesn’t explain why. In Carotta’s
framework of a diegetic transposition from Rome to Palestine they make
perfect sense.

MT: Further down, Carotta notes that there is a correspondence between

Roman imperial depictions and Christian depictions of Jesus, seeing how
Caesar’s bust with an olive wreath looks just like a bust of Jesus’ head
with a crown of thorns.
AP: Bad scholarship. It’s not an olive wreath. It’s not even an oak wreath,
the so-called corona civica. But in any case the corona civica is of
importance, because Caesar had one, and there is also (at least) one
depiction on an early Christian sacrophagus, where Christ is fitted with a
Roman corona civica, by the way not as a form of mockery.
The crown of thorns actually goes back to the Roman corona
obsidionalis, which has a thorny, bushy appearance, and for Caesar it
was the most important one, because it was directly connected to his
military victories.

MT: Of course, there is a reason for this, as T. E. Schmidt pointed out in
a 1995 article in New Testament Studies, the whole scene of mockery,
flogging, purple robe, and crown in the Gospel of Mark represents Mark’s
depiction of Jesus’ walk to Golgotha as a Roman triumph. In other
words, Caesar with wreath resembles Jesus with thorns because the
writer of Mark deliberately chose that image to illuminate Jesus’ last
steps.
AP: The mockery is also present with Caesar: He was openly accused and
attacked for wanting to become king etc.. A “crown” was also involved:
the diadem. The “flogging” stems from a mistranslation of the original
Latin sources (cf. Carotta, 2005).

MT: Now Carotta would probably reply that this is because the writer
was depicting Julius Caesar. But there is no need to go that extra step.
AP: Now, that’s a typical Turton. He doesn’t realize that it’s all about
taking that “extra step”, otherwise we wouldn’t be saying anything new.
And as long as the scholarly received connections, similarities and
parallels hold up in the new framework, it’s completely legitimate to
take that extra step. Turton doesn’t tell us why taking the “extra step” is
supposed to be a no-no, except maybe because “it’s crap”, as one of his
‘scientific’ co-infidels at the IIDB put it.

MT: The alert reader will note that Carotta has not specified any rules
by which we can evolved CHRISTOS from the longer term. This means
we are just free associating.
AP: If he read the book at all, Turton didn’t read it thoroughly. The rules
concerning the contraction of archiereus megistos, the Greek translation
of Caesar’s title pontifex maximus, are stated, but should be known to
anyone dealing with linguistics and/or philology: (1) The prefix ar- in
archiereus is considered a weak syllable, due to the lack of emphasis.
Therefore the root for contraction is chiereus. Coupled with megistos, the
contraction of chiereusmegistos follows the most fundamental rules of
contraction, namely using the first part of the first word and the last
part of the second word: The result is chieristos. In spoken language, a
weak element like the -ie- is subject to further condensation, especially
scuffing etc.: The result is christos. These are basic rules of contraction,
and much more complex rules have been noted for other words. But not
in this case.
Anyway: Christos might as well stem from an itacized chrêstos, which is a
valid Greek translation of Caesar's epithet optimus meritus on one of his
statues in Rome. Furthermore Caesar was chrêstos, since it was a
common term for deceased honorable persons. And Tertullian clearly
states that the earliest Christians were spelled Chrestiani… and even
pronounced that way!

MT: Take the concluding sentence as an example: “P and M: MP

respectively XP confuses Latin and Greek: the PM is in Latin, the XP in
Greek.” Why should we be able to match these two? Because Carotta says
so?
AP: Because (a) it was one empire, with Roman coins—e.g. those reading
PM for pontifex maximus—being in everyday distribution, also in the
hellenized East. Very easy: one empire, two languages, one coinage. One
official language, one lingua franca, one of the elite, the other one of the
soldiers, workers, slaves and farmers, but both of them co-existing.
And (b) because a theory like Christos coming from the Greek term for
pontifex maximus needs to be supported. That’s why Carotta must
compare PM and CR‰. Turton doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea what
a scientific modus operandi is. (By the way: The nomen sacrum CR‰ can as
well have stemmed from a misreading of KR‰, i.e. KAISAR—Caesar.)

MT: If you have no rules and two languages, you can find any
relationship you like. It’s like saying that because a local Taiwanese
slang abbreviation, ‘LKK’, is close to ‘KKK’ in English, the two must be
related.
AP: Apart from this being another standard Turton polemic, comparable
to JFK-versus-Abraham-Lincoln nonsense, he is putting the cart before
the horse. Carotta is (a) defining the rules of transmission and
contraction, and he is (b) showing—like Couchoud—a dependency of
Mark on a Latin source, so he proposes a relation in other fields as well.
In addition the above-stated argument also applies here, namely that it’s
not about distant languages like Taiwanese versus English, but Latin and
Greek, two languages co-existing in one imperial culture, being heavily
dependent on each other, with graecisms in Latin and latinisms in Greek
being abundant.

MT: This is basically a false dichotomy. It need not indicate dependence

for there to be a relationship. For example, it could be that such
depictions of divine power were a common idiom in the Mediterranean
in antiquity. Even if it indicates dependence such dependence could take
many forms. Early Christians may have heard how Caesars were
depicted and wished to present their powerful figures in such a manner,
for instance.
AP: The general Turton way of argumentation (v.s.). Until now
scholarship has not been able to convincingly explain the relationships
and similarities between Christianity and the imperial cults, apart from
a vague cultural (antithetical) mimicry. So naturally what we hear is
exactly this blahblah: “need not”, “could be”, “if”, “may have”, “for
instance”. And furthermore it’s not a “false dichotomy”—v.s.: There isn’t
even a dichotomy at all, only heavy and tight dependencies between
Latin and Greek cultures, and therefore between their languages. And
the earliest Christians did not “maybe” hear how the Caesars were
depicted. No, apart from the fact that it’s impossible to “hear a
depiction”, Mr. Turton, the early Christians (like the Jews) experienced
the imperial cults every single day, in the economic centers of Palestine,
in the colonies and cities like Caesarea Maritima, where they witnessed
(and participated in) the liturgies of the emperor, which also means the
cult of the first Divus, Divus Iulius. The Caesareum, the temple or altar
of the divine Caesar was the center of the new colonies, the center of
everyday life. A Roman imperial god like the Divus Iulius was in
addition a sunnaos theos in the Jewish temple complex of Jerusalem and
most other foreign temples on Roman soil. That was the price that
needed to be paid for Roman religious laissez-faire and liberalism. (This
was possible because the Jerusalem temple was in essence a Roman
temple, built by King Herod the Great, who himself was a Iulius, because
he had been adopted by Julius Caesar.)

MT: This misrepresents the Bible tales in several ways.

AP: Turton quotes from a reduced and condensed list as a general
overview before the main and thorough analysis in Carotta’s book. He
takes the introduction (called Prima Vista—“First View”!) and uses it as a
basis to denigrate the rest of the book. Very poor, very bad attitude.

MT: In Mark, the earliest gospel, for example, Jesus is not said to cross
the Jordan at this point in the Gospel. Jesus does not run into Peter after
crossing the Jordan, but back in Galilee. It is in the Gospel of John that
Peter follows on the heels of Jesus’ baptism in time and space. How does
Carotta know where which story to accept? We don’t know.
AP: Perfect example! Turton didn’t read the book. (1) “Jesus is not said to
cross the Jordan at this point in the Gospel”. Correct, but in the Gospel
the name “Jordan” isn’t even mentioned at first. It’s the same in the
Caesar sources: It’s only a fateful crossing of a border (we know from
other sources that it’s a river, the Rubicon), but the name “Rubicon” (like
“Jordan” in the Gospel) is at first not named. This has a reason: The
decisive crossing in the civil war, namely the river/border, which was in
closer vicinity to Roman heartlands, was not the Rubicon, but the
Aternus, which only came later! The Rubicon functions as the unnamed
legendary geographic hypoplace in this diegetic tranposition, and the
Aternus is the philologically viable source for the Iordanes.
(2) “Jesus does not run into Peter after crossing the Jordan, but back in
Galilee.” Correct, but it’s not “back” in Galilee. It has to be noted (which
Turton obviously missed or ignored) that Galilaea is the transposition of
Gallia. But Gallia was not restricted to modern-day France. Gallia did
not end at the Rubicon. Gallia reached beyond the “fateful river”/
”border”, further to the south, all the way to the Via Flaminia. (That’s
why the adjacent sea was called Mare Galliae, which became Mare
Galilaeae in the Gospel.) But in the geography of Palestine, Galilee is
only in the North, so the common interpretation is that Jesus “must
have” gone back to Galilee in order to meet Peter. But since we’re dealing
with a diegetic transposition, we can see that in reality He didn't “go
back” to Galilaea (i.e. Gallia), because Galilaea is only a hyperplace. The
original hyporegion further south was still called the same as the
northern parts of the region.

MT: Jesus has no special relationship with Mary in the canonical

gospels, only in the extracanonical gospels.
AP: So “extracanonical” = “apocryphal” is bad? Is Turton, the atheist,
skeptic and Old Testamentarian myther suddenly following the arbitrary
Church canon? In any case Turton keeps quiet about the countless
secondary publications on Jesus and his “special relationships” with
women… and also with Maria Magdala. Jesus’ special relationship with
women definitely show in the canonical sources. Or does Turton think
that decades of Biblical research are worthless? (I wonder what the
scholars of feminist theology would think about this?!)

MT: In Mark, the earliest gospel, she appears only at the end, and Jesus
never speaks to her.
AP: This is logical, because at the end of Caesar’s life, it was not
Cleopatra, the “woman from the tower” (the Pharos ; i.e. Maria magdala
= “from the tower”), who was important according to the sources
(although she was in Rome at that time), but (historically) Fulvia and
(with regard to propaganda and emphasis) Calpurnia, Caesar’s wife.
Cleopatra is mentioned only in passing. Even in Rome (like in the
Gospel) the women watched silently without any active participation
from the distance, as Caesar’s wax effigy was presented to the people on
a cross-shaped tropaeum, and following the funeral they came to the
place of his cremation (lat.: cremo = “cremate”; gr.: krêmo = “hang”,
“crucify”; cp. also St. Augustine, Quaest. in Num. C. 19), but lo and
behold: His grave was empty! Caesar’s servants had already collected the
remains. But no, Turton willfully ignores all the important parallels.

MT: Raise your hand if you know someone who has never had an
“encounter at night.” What? No hands are up?
AP: Turton completely ignores that it’s not only about the encounter, but
that the main argument is that Nicodemus of Bethania is the direct
diegetic mirror and hypercharacter of Nicomedes of Bithynia. Coupled
with their nightly encounters with Jesus and Caesar respectively, this
creates a huge amount of plausibility. Furthermore, what did the Anti-
Caesarians say about Caesar and Nicomedes? They mocked him, saying
he had a homosexual affair with Nicomedes. Is the modern polemic Anti-
Christian mockery of Jesus concerning his alleged homosexuality (an
affair with Nicodemus?) based on Caesar’s mockery? Or is it just
coincidence?

MT: Caesar can hardly be described as a self-made man, coming from

an illustrious family and backed by powerful Roman citizens.
AP: The Julians were an old Roman family, not the wealthiest, and not
very powerful and influential anymore. Caesar himself was anything but
powerful at first: He was constantly abused and humiliated in his early
life, e.g. by the dictator Sulla—cp. the episode where Caesar was destined
to become flamen Dialis, highpriest of Jupiter. He had to flee from
Rome, losing all access to power. But he changed everything after his
return. And after initial help from Pompeius Magnus (like Jesus who was
supported by John the Baptist) he was in the position to change
everything all by himself. When he returned from the Gallic War, he was
in fact a self-made man, with lots of riches and troops from the war,
ready to take to political power in Rome. Turton’s lack of historical
knowledge is disturbing.

MT: Mark can be read to deny that Jesus was a descendent of David.
Only Paul states that unequivocally.
AP: “Can be read”? How about something concrete, Mr. Turton? The
genealogies of Jesus, his descent from David, are not in Mark, but in
Matthew and Luke. Carotta deals with this issue. But apparently Turton
hasn’t read the book. In any case, the genealogies are worthless, because
they don’t correspond. The only important thing is that Jesus (like
Caesar) descended at the same time from the divine and the royal
spheres. (Caesar descended from Venus, via Aeneas, Iulus and the Iulii,
and on the other hand from the old Roman kings, the ancestral line of
the Marcii.)

MT: Another problem is that Carotta ignores the extent to which the
Jesus story depends on the Old Testament for its framework and details.
AP: On the contrary. He displays the Old-Testamentarian parallels in
accordance with most modern scholars as midrashim, which makes
perfect sense in the framework of a diegetic transposition. A midrash is
part of the Jewish culture, and if a Roman story is transposed into a new
cultural context, in this case a Jewish context, one tool to rewrite and
adapt the text to the new surroundings would be to apply common
scriptural and exegetical methods known from Jewish writings, styles
and genres. The existence of midrashim in the gospels is an absolute
necessity, because it supports the theory of diegetic transposition.
Carotta would have a problem, if there were no midrashim.

MT: The story of the entrance into Jerusalem parallels 1Sam 9 and
2Sam 10. The event draws also on Zech 9:9.
AP: This doesn’t change the fact that the parallels are superficial, far
inferior to the direct parallels to the Roman sources. But it’s very
probable that the Evangelists knew the segments in the Biblia Iudaica,
and acknowledged this by applying septuagintisms here and there. But
they still remain superficial, which by the way is communis opinio,
whether we include Caesar into the equation or not. In addition it has
been noted that according to the majority scholarly opinion Jesus does
not ride into the city on a donkey, but a young horse (polos). So the Old-
Testamentarian midrashim is very superficial at this point of Scripture.
MT: But the resonance between the two is also due to the fact that there
was a common tradition among all these cultures of the King’s Entrance
into the city being an epiphany story about a God. Duff (1992) points out
that the procession surrounding the entrance of the warrior-king into
the city was originally modeled on Greek epiphany processions, in
which the deity enters the city. Frequently the entering King is either
greeted as a god, or performs sacrifices that “function as an act of
appropriation”.
AP: All this has been noted for Caesar’s epiphanies and adventi. So it’s
logical that the gospels don’t differ in this respect. Criticism would need
to be applied, if Carotta’s “extra step” did not accord to common
scholarly opinion. But it does!

MT: The scene may also represent a common convention of Greek

drama, the hyporcheme, as proposed by Bilezekian.
AP: Turton and his ‘Gospel-as-mimesis’ schtick, so it seems: Many people
have written that the Gospel is not based on true history, but is
cherrypicked from older and external legends, anything from Homer to
the Old Testament. I perfectly know that this mimetic approach is
currently very fashionable among many scholars and ‘scholars’, but how
can the Gospel be without a coherent historical core? That’s absolutely
impossible and unthinkable! If the Gospel were a willfully conceived
mimetic rip-off by ancient copycats, we would never have received such a
huge amount of diversity in early Christian writings.

MT: In other words, as the saying goes, any similarity to real

individuals and events is purely coincidental.
AP: There’s the cart before the horse again. It would be very strange if we
did not find these elements in the Gospel, as they are all found with
Caesar. The only (but important) difference is that we are able to present
a framework that perfectly explains every single one of these
“coincidences”.

MT: Such “praiseworthy clemency” was a staple of both cultures’ ethical

systems and naturally decent men will have it. Again we see the pattern:
similarities are due to commonalities between the various cultures
involved—both of which had a heavy Hellenistic overlay.
AP: This is not true, because Jesus’ clemency has been a very special one,
transcending normal deeds, i.e. the standard clementia of antiquity. It’s
the same with Caesar: His clementia, the Clementia Caesaris, a
personified goddess in her own right, was an outright scandal for the
Optimates. People were confused (e.g. Marcus Brutus), in awe (e.g.
Cicero) and committed suicide (e.g. Cato) because of his clemency!
That’s how revolutionary and transcending it was. It was much more
than the status quo of the contemporary “ethical system”. But Carotta
isn’t the first to notice the similarities here. It has been noted before, e.g.
by Ethelbert Stauffer.

MT: But Caesar had more than one traitor… more on the traitor stuff in
a moment...
AP: No. Caesar only had one traitor. More on the traitor stuff in a
moment.

MT: Detail alert. In Mark the robe is purple, in Matthew, it is red.

AP: Distortion alert! The robe in Matthew is scarlet. And with Caesar we
can explain this discrepancy, because both colors are present in the
Caesar sources: The purple as part of the toga praetexta, which was the
official garment for deceased in the shrine, and the red (scarlet) toga,
Caesar’s triumphal garment, the red robe of the ancient kings,
omnipresent during his funeral on the 17th of March 44 BC.1 The
explanation is in all probability very simple: Matthew used a different
source, from which he took the second color. It’s been accepted for ages
that Matthew (and Luke) also draw from Sondergut, the Q. Nobody
knows what the Q actually was, but our theory is that the Q is based on
Livy’s Roman History (among other sources). Alternatively the source for
Matthew was under imperial Augustan influence (see also below), and
therefore the imperial and royal red was more prominent.

MT: The mockery scene resembles Caesar because it is supposed to.

AP: Yes, it’s not only “supposed to resemble” Caesar, it always did! It’s a

1. On the funeral dating cf. Francesco Carotta, War Jesus Caesar? Eine Suche nach dem
römischen Ursprung des Christentums, Ludwig, Kiel, 2008, not yet published; arguing similarly
and reaching the same conclusion: Tommie Hendriks, Rouw en Razernij om Caesar – De
wraak van het volk voor een politieke moord zonder weerga, Uitgeverij Aspekt, Utrecht/
Soesterberg, 2008.
direct diegetic transposition, and in this framework it can only stem
from Caesar.

MT: Both draw on a common well of motifs for having a triumph,

Caesar in seriousness, Mark in irony.
AP: There is no irony in Mark. If one doesn’t accept a transposition from
Caesar, the “irony” is pure speculation and interpretation. However, if
one accepts the transposition, one will find plausibility, evidence and
facts.

MT: Here is an example of where there is a clear relationship, it is not

one of dependency, but a drawing on common ideas.
AP: The usual Turton again: Everything is commonplace. But nothing in
the Gospels is a drawing on “common ideas”. It’s all very specific and
very special. If there are similarities to Graeco-Roman culture, it’s
because they were already existent in the Caesar sources.

MT: But the stab wound is a well-known Johannine addition to the tale.
Carotta counts anything as a parallel, with no attempt to sift the
information for origin and derivation.
AP: Now, that’s a good one, too. Before, Turton mentioned canonical and
extra-canonical as opposed complexes. Now he also proposes an
arbitrary dividing line inside the canonical sphere. But John is not an
“addition”, but a distinct and autonomous tradition. Everyone knows
that. He used different sources than the synoptics, which almost every
scholar agrees on. But that doesn’t make the “stab wound of Jesus”
wrong, untrue or “derived” (see also below: murder versus arrest).

MT: That is a fascinating coincidence… Nisan/March was the first

month of the year. And yet, the same problem. Jesus dies on this day
because it was Passover.
AP: “Because” it was Passover? That’s infantile. Turton doesn’t explain
why it had to have been Passover for Jesus to die. Jesus (i.e. Caesar) died,
and by coincidence it was Passover. (By the way: Jewish Passover under
the Roman calendar in Western Rome was on March 15th, the day of
Caesar’s death. Passover lasts for several days, and Suetonius explicitly
mentions the Jews mourning at Caesar’s cremation site according to
their customs.)

MT: Again, this all depends which gospel you read—you could well read
John as saying he was deified in his own lifetime. Carotta seems to pick
and choose whatever supports his cause.
AP: Once again we see Turton’s frightening lack of historical knowledge.
Caesar was worshipped like a divine being and received divine honors
during his lifetime, but was officially deified according to the new
Roman customs after his death, although the Senate decision for the
deification had been made early in 44 BC. So again: We have different
gospels, i.e. different sources, but both viewpoints (in-life vs. posthumous
deification) are also found in the Caesar texts.

MT: Peter is never identified as a priest in any of the earlier writings of

the New Testament. That is a later legend developed by the Church as a
legitimation strategy in its struggle with the other forms of Jesus-belief.
AP: This is correct and incorrect at the same time. It’s correct that Peter
is not identified as a priest in earliest writings. This corresponds to
Marcus Antonius, who was designatus for flamen Divi Iulii, the
highpriest of Divus Iulius, but he never inaugurated at first. The reason
was that he had lots of political (and bellicose) conflicts with ‘Octavian’,
who called himself “Son of God” (Divi filius). Mark Antony wanted to
achieve political power for himself, but by inaugurating he would have
made the cult of Divus Iulius official and by doing so would have
accepted Octavian as legitimate heir and son of Divus Iulius, ergo: He
would have given him more political power than he would ever be able to
achieve himself. He finally inaugurated, but in the West his term was
shortlived, because the civil wars broke out again, and he basically
retreated to the East, where his theopolitical rulership lasted a bit longer
than in the West. Therefore the earliest Gospel tradition does not know
Peter as a priest, but the later Gospel tradition does. But it’s not a later
legend developed by the Church. It’s deeply rooted in history, and it’s
part of the later Augustan propaganda, because the inauguration of a
highpriest sealed Octavians heirship and political power.

MT: Again, a bit of Johannine legendizing that few scholars would take
for an early part of the tradition. [N.B.: Jesus adopts His beloved
disciple John (= Octavian) on the cross—“Woman, behold thy son.”]
AP: Again, this is not legendizing, but a different tradition than the
synoptics, which means that there are different sources. And these
sources that John used were formed after Octavian’s victory over Mark
Antony and Cleopatra, during and after his final rise to all-encompassing
and universal (catholicus) power in the empire. Therefore the sources (e.
g. Nikolaus Damascenus) were “Augustan”, i.e. they were partially
propaganda for the cause of Octavian. Therefore a formal “adoption” in
the sources was a key element. (Cp. also above: Octavian as Divi filius vs.
the Antonian view.)

MT: The earliest rendition of the Judas story is in Mark (it does not
occur in Paul, where Jesus simply is “handed over”). Note that the term
“betray” is never used in Mark, just “handed over” as in Paul. Elsewhere
in the NT it appears only in Luke 6:16. Modern readers are conditioned
by two thousand years of legend to see Judas as the “betrayer”. Yet
exegetes have found it extremely difficult to pin down exactly what
Judas “betrayed”. The word used to describe Judas’ action more correctly
means “handed over” and carries this meaning in the Old Testament as
well. In other words, the idea of “betrayal” is a later addition to the
tradition.
AP: Absolutely correct. It’s a later addition to parts of the tradition, but
perfectly explicable, when looking at the Roman sources. The source for
the Gospel of Mark, the Historiae, were written by Gaius Asinius Pollio,
on the one hand Caesar’s legate, but at the same time a man who is
known by historians for his frequent neutrality and moderate,
diplomatic behavior. (He was one of the people responsible for the
success of the conference of Bononia, where the Second Triumvirate was
formed.) Pollio even heavily criticized Caesar’s propagandistic and
revisionist approach in Caesar’s own Commentarii de bello civili. The
Historiae by Pollio were well-balanced historical accounts, treating all
sides without hardened propaganda, including the assassins. Caesar’s
assassins (and especially his traitor Decimus Brutus) never saw
themselves as traitors of Rome, but as liberators. Pollio was a Caesarian
and later an Antonian, which is why he supported Mark Antony’s
amnesty, but also joined him in the war against the assassins. Still, the
pursuit of fair balance in his writings is still observable in Appian’s Bella
Civilia, which is in many parts heavily dependent on Pollio’s Historiae.
Pollio’s Historiae were written in a time, where the fate of Rome and the
empire’s new leader was not decided. After the defeat of Caesar’s
assassins, the camps of Octavian and Antony developed propaganda
against each other, but many (including Pollio) stayed neutral. So it’s
absolutely logical that Judas in the first Gospel (Mark) is not depicted as
a full-fledged traitor. But the later Gospels used the Sondergut, i.e.
Roman sources that were written after Octavian had once and for all
defeated all enemy forces (from the assassins at first to Mark Antony
later). After Octavian had full power, sources were written which
contained “Augustan propaganda”, which basically means that the
assassins of the Ides of March were now officially and once and for all
declared traitors, enemies, parricides and evil old-school Republican
Optimates who should burn in hell for all eternity. Some of these sources
could have been the basis for the Sondergut, which some Christian
writers and interpreters after Mark used. So it’s absolutely plausible that
Judas becomes a traitor only in later tradition! And by the way: Decimus
Brutus actually did “hand over” Caesar. He picked him up at his
residence, talked him into attending the Senate session and ‘dropped him
off’ at the Curia, the Senate house, where the assassins had gathered. The
sources imply that he went back outside before the killing started (see
also below). But even if he did remain inside, the one applicable source is
still absolutely clear on the “handing-over”, because he led him inside by
the hand ! The assault on Caesar was even announced with a kiss, like in
the Gospel!

MT: There is no indication that Judas died in Mark, nor that he has
been expelled from the list of Jesus' apostles. In other words, when we see
Judas’ death we are looking at an additional layer added to the
original tale by later writers.
AP: Equally correct, and equally explicable, when looking at the Roman
sources. The moderate sources do not mention Brutus’ death, obviously
for reasons of decency (because it was quite gruesome and nasty; v.i.),
but some of the sources influenced by Augustan propaganda do. One
side-note: The Roman sources also explain why Judas dies two different
deaths in the New Testament. In Matthew we have death by hanging, in
Acts we have Judas bowels gushing out.
(1) The hanging. This is mentioned by two Roman sources, but it’s
actually a decapitation. The head, i.e. the neck is in both the Roman
sources and the Gospel of Matthew, but as a parallel it is much too weak
and therefore inadmissable. But this is what happened: Brutus, posing as
druid and fleeing from Gaul, was captured in Southern Germany and
executed by a local chief called Capenus. However, the chief’s name was
transposed in the later Appian source to Kamilos, which was either a
transpositional error or (in Appian’s view) the Greek rendition of his
name in those times. But kamilos actually means “rope”. Therefore a
rather non-erudite writer/reader (like the Evangelist “Matthew”) would
have read Brutus’ fate as “killed by rope”, i.e. a hanging. This literal
interpretation of the Roman sources, where e.g. names become
properties, is found all over the Gospels, e.g. Asinius Pollio becoming
“ass colt”: Asinius > asinus > “ass”/“donkey” and Pollio > polos > “colt”/
“young horse”. (The interesting thing is that whenever the Roman
sources only mention Asinius, there’s only a “donkey” found in the
Biblical text. When the sources say only Pollio, the Gospel passage
presents us with a “young horse”.)
(2) The bowels gushing out. One source, influenced by Augustan
propaganda, added a few details to Brutus’ death in order to mock and
denigrate him in the eyes of the Romans. (I think it was the historical
source by Velleius Paterculus.) Here the captured Brutus is told of the
decision to decapitate him, and he starts to cry in despair and fright,
retreats to a corner of the room and empties his bowels, i.e. a massive
amount of defecation. This version of the story was remembered in Acts
and the Pauline tradition, which has an omnipresent “imperial” (i.e.
Augustan) undertone. So it’s absolutely explicable why Christian
tradition knows two versions of Judas’ death.

MT: A further problem with this parallel is that Judas did not kill Jesus,
but Brutus did kill Caesar. In other words, Judas is neither traitor nor
killer; Brutus is both. There is no parallel here.
AP: This is a grotesque lack of historical knowledge on Turton’s part!
There were two Bruti.
(1) One was Decimus Iunius Brutus Albinus, who was a close friend of
Caesar’s and substitute heir [!], the one who “handed him over” (v.s.). He
is the one who was later labeled a ‘traitor’ in some Augustan traditions.
He apparently didn’t take part in the actual assassination, and since all
the sources don’t mention him at all at this point—the account of
Nicolaus Damascenus being based on a writing error, since Decimus
Brutus was employed in the text instead of Marcus Brutus—, it is
commonly assumed that he went back outside to wait with his armed
gladiators, who had been hired to keep the situation under control, in
case it went out of hand. So this “handing-over” (v.s.) of Caesar was the
important thing in Decimus’ part of the story, because he had already
picked up Caesar at his residence, had continuously tried to talk him
into attending the Senate session and had led him inside by the hand.
For Nicolaus Damascenus he was very important, so he put his name on
top of the list of the conspirators, because (a) he is counted as one of the
leaders of the conspiracy, but also because (b) in the eyes of the Romans
his betrayal of his friend and father-in-heirship Caesar outweighed the
actual murder, which had been committed by the others.
(2) The other Brutus was Marcus Iunius Brutus. He counted as the
primary conspirator and assassin (next to Cassius Longinus = the
centurio [Cassius] Longinus in Christian tradition). Our preliminary
research on the Christian saints e.g. has to take into account that there
seem to have been differing views on the traitor Decimus Iunius Brutus
(see also above : liberation versus parricide). And since later tradition
made Decimus Brutus an evil man, his otherwise positive and ‘pro-
Caesar’ life needed to be conserved in Christian tradition, ergo: Saint
Judas. The same goes for the assassin Cassius Longinus, who became
Saint Longinus (called Cassius before his conversion in some old
traditions!), whose feast day is on March 15th, the day of Caesar’s
murder! In the observed logic of this diegetic transpostion, the most
probable alternative however would be that Saint Judas is based on
Marcus Iunius Brutus, transposed in unison with the other saint, the
other assassin Cassius Longinus.

MT: The second parallel, ascension to heaven, is a common one for gods
and heroes in Hellenistic tradition and need not be seen as a distinct
parallel. In this case, again, common tradition explains why the two
stories share similarities.
AP: Again the usual platitude, the “common-place” argument by Turton.
The “commonplace deification” in Rome was often only flattery or a
local phenomenon, as we can find it with Scipio or Marius Gratidianus,
which is also known from the Greek world. The apotheosis of Caesar as
Divus Iulius (including ascension) was something completely new, and it
happened on the largest scale imaginable. For the common people
Caesar had even resurrected. Divus Iulius effectively replaced Jupiter as
the sole highest god of Rome. His name Divus Iulius was chosen for a
reason: divus is close to Dieus, the ancient name of Jupiter. And right
from the beginning, the new cult served to support the state and the
Augustan empire, i.e. it was catholic, universal and all over the place. It
was part of the propaganda, iconography, legend-building, part of every-
day prayers and liturgy, with the veterans serving as the earliest
followers, including so-called “evangelical festivals”, where Caesar’s
victories were celebrated as divine miracles etc. pp.. But this remark by
Turton is expectable, because even many historians, who specialize in
Roman antiquity, don’t know much about the early imperial cult and the
cult of Divus Iulius. But they at least deliberate on matters with
colleagues, who know better. Turton does not: He doesn’t have a µ of
knowledge in this area, but doesn’t seem to care. A clear case of
pseudoscientificity.

MT: The story frame for the capture of Jesus is 2Sam 15-16 and the
drawn sword and wound are taken from that tale. In other words,
Carotta is arguing that the Gospel writers invented something from the
OT… to cover something from the OT.
AP: No. Carotta only says it’s a midrash. Nothing more, nothing less.

MT: The reality is that the invention of the stab wound in John is
unrelated to the sword drawn in the Arrest scene, and both are drawn
from the Old Testament. Carotta’s lack of research into the scholarly
literature shines brightly here.
AP: Oh, we’ve read a lot of this scholarly literature. Some of it is worth a
read (e.g. Roman Garrison’s The Graeco-Roman Context of Early
Christian Literature and others), but most of it is useless for our
investigation. We go for the primary sources and stay with them instead
of trying to force the results of our research into the scholarly framework
established by modern secondary publications that contain nothing but
textual-critical conjecture, hermeneutical interpretations, conservative
Christian apologetics or Anti-Christian bias.
What we see is that the stab wound in John and the sword drawn in the
assault and their connections to the Biblia Iudaica are only superficial
midrashim, if they are midrashim at all. Chances are they are not, and
any similarities to the Old Testament must remain superficial, although
these similarities may have been welcome by the evangelists. Fact is that
we have both the stab wound and the drawn swords in the Caesar sources.
We even have the stab wound during ‘Caesar’s crucifixion’, i.e. during his
funeral, where his bloodied wax effigy was presented to the people,
hanging on a tropaeum, a Roman victory cross. All the wounds were
displayed, including the fatal stab wound in his side. The reason why the
stab wound moved from the assault/arrest on/of Jesus to the crucifixion
in John is simple: The murder of Caesar became the arrest of Jesus,
which actually corresponds to the Roman view, namely that Caesar’s
death was consciously faded out of the picture. (One source even
transfigures his murder into the analogy of a small bird killing a bird of
prey in the Senate house.) After all, he had been deified, he was now their
highest god, and gods don’t die. They simply are, eternal, backward and
forward. This Roman view was enforced and strengthened by the
evangelists, who adopted and rewrote the vita of Caesar into the
hagiography of Jesus. Since the murder was no more and was now the
arrest, the stab wound had to be relocated, which is a standard
mechanism in a diegetic transposition. What is especially notable is that
the evangelists do not lose any properties. It was a holy story, and it had
to be handled with greatest care. Therefore nothing was lost, everything
is still there, even if the level of transformation is rather advanced.

MT: Carotta goes on to say that “We can be confident that a gang went
wild with daggers and other weapons, and indeed so wild that they
wounded each other in the face.” This, however, is rank nonsense. In
1899 E. A. Abbott identified the fact that there is a missing verse in 14:47,
one in which Jesus orders the would-be hacker to put up his weapon. This
verse is found in all three other gospels, though Luke got the order
wrong, and thought Jesus wanted ear restored, not the sword. In any
case, in all four synoptic gospels, violence at the arrest scene is
specifically ordered to a halt by Jesus. Hence, Carotta’s attempt to draw
a parallel with the scene of Caesar’s death, where things got out of hand
and the assailants cut each other in their desire to get at Caesar, fails
utterly, because the scene as crafted specifically denies that there is any
violence. Carotta ignores both the scene as written, and the framework
that shaped it (neither of which offers a scene of uncontrolled violence)
to claim that there is a parallel. There is none.
AP: This has more or less already been answered directly above, the
assault/murder becoming the assault/capture. Two things should
however be noted:
(1) The fact that a verse from Matthew, Luke and John is not in Mark
doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “missing” and has been omitted. Mark
is generally a very short gospel and often reads like an abridged version
of the narrative. The reason is simple: The earliest Christians, who used
Mark for their liturgy, still knew the story from oral, liturgical and
festive traditions, so they didn’t need to be as explicit in writing. Later
evangelists dealt with communes, who knew less with every new
generation, so they had to add events from the Q. So it’s improbable that
certain verses were once contained in Mark, but were subsequently
erased. However, it doesn’t mean that those allegedly “missing” passages
are wrong, which brings us to point 2.
(2) It should be noted that in the sources on Caesar’s assassination, which
mirror the capture of Jesus, also Caesar called for a halt, defended
himself at first, but then gave in to his fate. So Caesar’s assassination
didn’t get out of hand. At first it was wild, but from the moment he gave
in, he was ‘neatly marshaled’ into death—a ‘nice and peaceful’
assassination, if one wants to call it that way. In addition, in the Gospel
of Luke Jesus explicitly speaks bewildered that the soldiers are coming
for him as if he were a “murderous robber”.2 And Turton’s fanciful
rambling cannot obscure the fact that actually weapons were drawn and
that it became quite bloody and violent at first. The same with Caesar: At
the beginning, when he was still fighting back, the assassins even hurt
themselves.

MT: Carotta then offers another bit of word game to turn “Julius” into
“King of the Jews”. The conversion involves noting that in Greek capitals
there is a superficial similarity between the two words. It is true they
could be confused, just as one might, at a glance, confuse the word
“Chance” with “Chicago”.
AP: Ignoring the usual vorkosigantic polemics (“Chance” vs. “Chicago”),
Turton intentionally distorts the fact that Carotta does not turn “Julius”
into “King of the Jews”. Turton ignores the fact that the cross inscription
is in the genitive plural—IOUDAION—and is perfectly confusable with
the accusative of “Iulius”—IOYΛION. Turton also suppresses that Carotta
treats the “king” as a separate element. In no instance does Carotta
propagate that “King of the Jews” on the titulus crucis stems from
“Julius”. Furthermore, the word basileus in the cross inscription did not
only mean “king” in the hellenized East, but was also the Greek
translation of the Roman term imperator. That’s all Carotta is saying.

CONCLUSION
So none of what Turton writes in his blog is even close to correct or

2. In Luke 22:52 the term λῃστής is used, which means a robber, who applies force, violence
and murder. In John 18:40 Barabbas is called a λῃστής, and from Mark 15:7 and Luke 23:19 it is
clear that he had been arrested not only for insurrection, but also for murder. Furthermore, in
the diegetic transposition Barabbas is the direct hypercharacter of Marcus Iunius Brutus, who
was the actual insurgent and murderer in the Caesar sources. So for John λῃστεία was
connected especially to murder.
applicable. Neither does he thoroughly deal with the object of his
criticism, as every honest scholar would. He is part of the blogosphere,
the world of internet boards, where it’s not so important to be accurate,
where sometimes it’s even okay to lie, where it’s more important to fight
opposing views than debating and respecting them. But it’s not only the
polemics and occasional hostilities, which he interlards his text with. He
is also crooked, because in a later blog he accuses Carotta of quoting
sources from the late 19th and early 20th century—of which there are
only very few in the book, by the way—, but he himself (in the blog article
rebutted here) quotes from Edwin A. Abbott (publication date: 1899). All
this, coupled with the fact that he gets almost everything wrong—and if
he does get something right, it’s usually for the wrong reasons—, is
enough to show me that Michael Turton is chiefly unscientific and not
worth dealing with anymore. His follow-up blog posts on Carotta did not
get any better. But why be upset? To expect more from an English
teacher, who does Biblical research as a hobby, e.g. quality and
excellence, would be fatuous.

Turton’s original article: 2005, online, Acupuncture Coyote

http://michaelturton2.blogspot.com/2005/04/was-j-caesar-really-j-christ.html

Link to an older IIDB discussion on this topic incl. comments by Aquila

Pacis (Maria Janna) and Vorkosigan (Michael Turton):
http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=109654&pp=25&page=9