I've been thinking a lot of about this election. That could be due to the fact that I'm getting older and crankier about the fact that this government is grossly misusing my money, or it could be due to the fact that the election has been going on for 2 freaking years and I've had no choice but to think about it. This election is being billed as "maybe the most important election in the history of our country." That may or may not be the case in some regards, but I'm going to tell you why it's an irrelevant thing to say anyway.
I'm reading (and by "reading" I mean picking through it at a snail's pace because a lot of it is pretty boring) a book called "Christ and the Caesars" by a dead German named Ethelbert Stauffer. It's fairly fascinating and fairly boring at the same time, if that is possible. In the book, he examines the history of Rome and the Caesars, and then he examines how these guys fit into the life and message of Jesus and the Early Church (the answer: a lot). One of the more fascinating chapters I have read thus far is the chapter dealing with Augustus Caesar and Jesus.
Jesus wasn't born into a vacuum, which is the idea you get from a lot of Christians. Jesus is born into the world in a particular place, during a particular time. This time and place are unique in history. His message is one of the here and now (unfortunately Christians have hijacked it and made it to be a message of the someday, faraway future) that was distinct in its relevance, not only to the people he encountered in his earthly life, but to the world two thousand years later. But before we get to that message, we must look at the world leader, and indeed the entire system of Caesars.
Almost every Caesar claimed to be the "son of God." This would ensure a couple of things. One, absolute authority; after all, who's going to argue with a policy put forth by the the son of God? Two, it would lend credence to any war you wanted to fight or any land you wanted to conquer. There are thousands upon thousands of Roman coins found from the late B.C.E. and early C.E. that are inscribed with the face of a particular Caesar with a phrase such as, "Caesar is Lord" or "The Divine Son of God." So you have a completely dominant world superpower who's leaders believe they are divine.
Another aspect of the Caesars is that they thought themselves to be the harbingers of peace to the world (is any of this sounding familiar?). This peace would be achieved by Roman military conquest, occupation, and a conversion to their way of doing government and society. Almost every Caesar was seen as the human leader (according to Stauffer the homo imperiosus or imperial man) who would bring about everlasting peace in the world. Just as an aside, this thought started with the Pharaohs around 3000 B.C.E., but the Caesars co-opted this thought with extreme vigor. So now you not only have a succession of leaders who believe themselves to be God, but a succession of leaders who claim (and apparently fail) to bring about eternal peace upon the earth. All of this culminated with Augustus who we'll look at more later.
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