How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee Read Online Free PDF

Livy (59 CE –17 CE ), who in one place states the opinion that Romulus was a “god born of a god” ( History of Rome 1.16). The event that most interests us involves the end of Romulus’s life.
    There were, to be sure, rumors of divine involvement in Romulus’s conception. His mother was a Vestal Virgin, a sacred office that required—as the name indicates—a woman to abstain from sexual relations. But she became pregnant. Obviously, something went wrong with her vows. She claimed that the god Mars was responsible, and possibly some people believed her. If so, it simply shows again how a divine-human union could be taken to explain the appearance of remarkable humans on earth.
    But it was Romulus’s dis appearance from life that was even more astonishing. According to Livy, by the end of Romulus’s life Rome had been established, the Roman government had been formed with the Senate in place and Romulus as king, the army was fully functioning, and everything was well positioned for the beginnings of the greatest city in history. During the final episode of his life, Romulus had gathered with members of the Senate to review the military troops at the Campus Martius. Suddenly a huge thunderstorm arose. After major claps of thunder, Romulus was enveloped by fog. When the fog lifted, he was nowhere to be seen.
    As it turns out, two reports circulated about his death. One of them—the one that apparently Livy and presumably most other skeptical observers believed—indicated that the senators had taken the opportunity of the moment to get rid of a despot: they had torn Romulus to shreds and hidden his remains. The other report, which the masses believed, was one that the senators themselves propagated—that Romulus “had been caught up on high in the blast.” In other words, he had been taken up to heaven to live with the gods. The result was a sudden acclamation of Romulus’s divine status: “Then, when a few men had taken the initiative, they all with one accord hailed Romulus as a god and a god’s son, the king and Father of the Roman City, and with prayers besought his favor that he would graciously be pleased forever to protect his children” ( History of Rome 1.16). 7
    Here we have a view of divine humans in a nutshell: a human can be honored by the gods by being made one of them; this happens because of the person’s great merit; as a divinity, the person deserves worship; and in his role as a god, he can protect those who bring to him their supplications.
    It is interesting that Livy reports that the ascension of Romulus was later verified by a man named Proculus Julius, who declared to the assembly of the Roman people that Romulus had appeared to him alive after his death. He is recorded as saying that “the Father of this City, Romulus, descended suddenly from the sky at dawn this morning and appeared to me. Covered with confusion I stood reverently before him. . . . ‘Go,’ he said, ‘and declare to the capital of the world; so let them cherish the art of war, and let them know and teach their children that no human strength can resist Roman arms.’ So saying . . . Romulus departed on high” ( History of Rome 1.16).
    Romans heartily and enthusiastically embraced the divinity of the man Romulus. A trio of gods—Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus—lived at the heart of ancient Rome, on the ancient hill, the Capitoline. Originally, Quirinus may have been a god worshiped among one of the groups of people, the Sabines, who were incorporated into the Roman state early in its history. But by the time of Livy’s writing, Quirinus was understood to be the divinized Romulus, worshiped right up there with the great father of the gods himself.
Julius Caesar
    The traditional date for the founding of Rome is 753 BCE . If we move the calendar forward about seven centuries, we still find men who are proclaimed to have become gods. Few are better known than Julius Caesar, the self-declared dictator of Rome who was