{"id":5615,"date":"2012-01-07T17:14:45","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T22:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=5615"},"modified":"2012-01-07T17:14:45","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T22:14:45","slug":"as-bad-as-mythicism-jesus-as-caesar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/01\/as-bad-as-mythicism-jesus-as-caesar.html","title":{"rendered":"As Bad as Mythicism: Jesus as Caesar"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/9059113969\/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=9059113969\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0px initial initial\" src=\"http:\/\/ws.assoc-amazon.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&amp;Format=_SL110_&amp;ASIN=9059113969&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;WS=1&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"73\" height=\"110\"><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=9059113969\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/antoninuspius.blogspot.com\/2012\/01\/jesus-christ-and-julius-caesar-same.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Mythicism is just one of several categories of implausible claims that one will encounter in connection with Jesus. The Life of Antoninus Pius has a blog post about another one, that proposed by\u00a0Francesco Carotta, who claims that Jesus was Caesar. Click through to read about it, and why no one ought to find it persuasive<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Carotta\u2019s argument (found in his book <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/9059113969\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=9059113969\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jesus Was Caesar: On the Julian Origin of Christianity: An Investigative Report<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important;margin: 0px !important\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jamefmcgrshom-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=9059113969\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/em>) has many similarities of approach to that of Earl Doherty and other mythicists, showing the same disregard for counterevidence, the same willingness to allow one dubious interpretation of a detail to override evidence that is much clearer, and the same willingness to treat texts which make sense as narrations of legends and stories about a historical figure, as instead elaborate codes that mean something completely other than they appear to.<\/p>\n<p>They differ in the details, but share a lot of things which fringe theories of this sort tend to have in common.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mythicism is just one of several categories of implausible claims that one will encounter in connection with Jesus. The Life of Antoninus Pius has a blog post about another one, that proposed by\u00a0Francesco Carotta, who claims that Jesus was Caesar. Click through to read about it, and why no one ought to find it persuasive. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,39,64],"tags":[332,1456,1497,2532,2921,3569,4646,4660,5677,7853],"class_list":["post-5615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-historical-jesus","category-mythicism","tag-acharya-s","tag-bunk","tag-caesar","tag-debunked","tag-earl-doherty","tag-francesco-carotta","tag-historical","tag-history","tag-jesus","tag-mythicism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>As Bad as Mythicism: Jesus as Caesar<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mythicism is just one of several categories of implausible claims that one will encounter in connection with Jesus. 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