Jesus Christ and Caesar Augustus

[minichibi]

I actually quoted this inscription at my second post, if you’ll notice.

The imperial cult is really a tricky issue. I think you should really read through the Wiki article about it and then (again) tell me what you think.

Again I think that the answer you need here is not so much whether the Christian usage of certain titles for Jesus is set against the Roman imperial cultus. A lot of people think that yes, there is certainly that element of ‘Jesus versus Caesar’ and ‘the Kingdom of God versus the kingdoms of this world’ at play here, but from a Christian viewpoint, Jesus is different because He is the only one, out of all the people who claimed and were accorded these titles, who is being 100% honest. He is the genuine article. I think the issue here is thus of faith: do you really believe that Jesus is who He says He is, and is who Christians have said He is?

My question itself isn’t if the titles are borrowed or not. But if the IDEA behind it itself wasn’t borrowed as a means of protest against Rome. I think you are all right in one point. I think I rushed up into my conclusions given the overwhelming alien material because that hypothesis makes sense at first glance. But I still can’t decide who is right and who is wrong, for it being a matter of faith, I need stronger evidence to conclude that Matthew and Luke didn’t “make it up”, and Jesus is indeed born of a Virgin, Son of God (I’m not saying that the title itself was “borrowed”, but the ideas). Why didn’t the pauline letters state openly that Jesus is the Son of God Himself as the real article? Im not talking about the letters that are attributed to him, but the letters we are absolutely sure that they were written by Paul himself. In this case both hypothesis seem to be a “matter of faith”, depending on which “boundary conditions”, or to say “Hypothesis” you pick up to reconstruct your story!
Alexander, Augustus, lots of them were claimed to be son of “a” god. But none of them directly claimed to be so, people did. Jesus indeed never claimed to be the son of God, just like the previous people. I still see no strong, really strong evidence here that points to Jesus being the real one as for “what’s in him that makes him different from the others”, apart from being a poor jew, that opressed ones could have easily used as a protest against Caesar?

 

[minichibi]

The whole “borrowing titles”, “borrowing words”, is a tricky matter, because it uses the word “borrowing”. The word “Borrowing” here, leads some incautious one to believe in the idea of plagiarism or misusage for their own purposes.
If you write a book in English, you use words from the English vocabulary, of course, because that’s the language you use. If you are a doctor, you use medical terms, if you are an engineer you will use engineering terms, all from your vocabulary, from your language, and you never say you “borrowed” your terms from somewhere, from your own inner circle. You are using the terms from common knowledge.
Is it different with Jesus? NO! I have no problem with “borrowing” titles here. I believe terms like “borrowed”, “stole”, are being maliciously used to mislead incautious people into a trap.

 

[steve53]

The Jesus Seminarians wrap it all up very nicely.

The world turned from worshiping Augustus to worshiping Jesus.

Simple, isn’t it?

 

[wiggbuggie]

in my NAB luke 2 commentary it talks about how luke relates the birth of Jesus to the time of augustus because he is showing that Jesus is the true son of god and peacebringer (augustus made the Pax Romana) . That Augustus was only an agent God used like king cyrus of persia who in OT refer to him as a messiah. The gospel of Luke his audiance is different as well geared towards a more universal audiance and non jews.

 

[trickster]

Still… isn’t it suspicious that all Pagan religions and rites are “original”, and just Judaism and Christianity specifically “borrow everything from them”? Don’t you find it suspicious at all when someone says that?

Your right, it wasn’t all unilineal…however, and I am wondering which of these traditions are older…certainly Christianity is not the oldest kid on the block either…thoughts?

Bruce
Trickster