cheese

Dear Primuspilus, reading Carotta won't help you in the least, but it's well worth reading for entertainment value. If you like to know more about the origins of Christianity: go to www.IIDB.org, where you can find everything anybody might want to know and many usefull links. And if you want a review of Carotta, mail me (brojan20@hotmail.com). Bernard

Whether or not there has been a historical Jesus is irrelevant for this case, Primuspilus. You should judge Carotta's theory for it's own merits. You write that the mith of Jesus was made up out of thousands of stories. You're right about that, although I would say thousands of story-elements. And most of these elements you can find back in the Old Testament. An ordinary bible gives you hundreds of direct text references (and that is even without all the more general, symbolic ones, like the twelph apostels referring to the twelph tribes etc. etc.). This is something everybody can easily check. Carotta, however, mentions only around 10 such references in his book. According to him everything in the life of Jesus finds its origin in the life of Caesar. Take Christ's saying

My idea; and have a good laugh. About Appianus: The drawing shows a thick wooden cross; not exactly a

It's not even that, it's plain goofy, but great fun when you like Von Daeniken, Illig, Hancock etc. Right now Peter/Joseph/Juliana is posting the "reconstruction"drawing of the Caesar crucifixion around, so in case he will do so here as well and somebody might ask where it comes from, here is already my answer to that: It was made for Carotta's own book and as goofy as the rest of it. This is the basic idea of Carotta's book: The story of Jesus is actually the story of Caesar rewritten (JC=JC). Therefore everything in the Gospels must originate from the life of Caesar. Caesar was cremated, so Jesus must have been cremated too. And see: Carotta, that great linguistic genius, finds out that the greek verb 'stauro' doesn't actually means to crucify, but to put up posts or slets, and from there onwards to set up the cremation pile. Also the throwing of the dice over the clothes actually means throwing the clothes on top of the pile. (That we can find the origin of the dicepart in psalm 22 is a minor detail Carotta is not interested in). etc. etc. etc. So that's almost the end of Jesus's crucifixion. But Christianity without a cross is even too much for Carotta, so after this brilliant tour de force he invents a Caesar crucifixion. To do this he combines different classical texts about Caesar's funeral in a ridiculous way. There was a lying wax figure of Caesar and there was a tropaeum, a construction to show his armour on. When you want to show such an armour you need a T-shaped construction and when you want to put a helmet on top, you have to give it a crossform; simple as that (In another forum a choose a modern cross shaped dressboy as my avatar, just to please Joseph, who calls himself Juliana in that one). But to Carotta this has a profound meaning. And since Jesus was hanging on a cross, the wax figure of Caesar also must have been hanging on that crossshaped tropaeum. (The obligatory similarities work in both directions, even if the results seem to exclude one another). And there you have the background of this astonishing reconstruction. So to recapitulate: First we take the Caesar story litteral and adjust the gospel. Then we take the gospel litteral and adjust the Caesar story. Piece of cake.