The main discrepancy lies in the fact that Caesar was stabbed and Jesus crucified. At this point the parallels seem to come to an end.

So let us have a closer look at this essential difference.

Firstly, to get our bearings, we will recall the structure of their respective passion narratives.

The structure of the passion

Concerning Caesar we have (a) the conspiracy, (b) the assassination, (c) the posthumous trial, (d) the cremation, (e) the conflict about his heritage, (f) the succession.

Concerning Jesus we have (a) the conspiracy, (b) the capture, (c) the trial, (d) the crucifixion, (e) the burial, (f) the resurrection.

A structural correspondence is plain to see. The main discrepancy is that Caesar was murdered at the attack, whereas Jesus was merely captured. All the other differences are the result of this: regarding their trials, the only difference is that one is already dead whilst the other one is still alive. Whether we are dealing with funeral or crucifixion depends on whether Jesus was still alive or not at the time. Conflict about the inheritance on the one hand and the burial of Jesus’ body on the other only seem to be different: in both cases it is about the corpus. Succession or resurrection, it is about the Empire—whether on earth or in heaven.

A posthumous trial?

The first question we have to deal with is whether Jesus was still alive at his trial.
It is striking that Jesus says nothing more after his capture.
‘But he held his peace, and answered nothing.’[105]

And when he does finally speak, what does he say?

‘Thou sayest it.’[106]

Which again means nothing: the other one says it, not he himself.

It is not necessary to take Jesus’ last words into consideration: they are an invention in some phase or other of the tradition. This is something all scholars agree on. Namely, that it was a common literary topos in antiquity to put last words into the mouth of anyone famous who was dying. Indeed, Mark, and after him Matthew, have the famous ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’; Luke has instead: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’; John, showing little respect, has him settle his last Will and Testament—‘Woman, behold thy son! … Behold thy mother’—then toast to it—‘I thirst’—and to set the seal on it—‘It is finished’. Everybody has put something different into his mouth: this proves that he said nothing, otherwise there would only be one version.[107]

The same can be applied to his conversation with those who were crucified along with him. Mark merely reports that they reviled him and offers no further elaboration. The conversation only starts with the later Evangelists.

Conclusion: Jesus is silent after his capture. He, the fearless individualist, acting alone against everybody from the beginning—he who had come not to bring peace but the sword—should suddenly become speechless? Here, the gifted orator with whom the word was from the beginning, and who had something eloquent and incisive to say on every occasion, whether it were Sermons on the Mount or parables, is now dead silent at his trial, the crucial moment when he finally has a stage? We immediately think of the apology of Socrates, the other famous orator who was unjustly condemned. This silence of Jesus is inexplicable—that is why there is such an extensive literature about it.

Was his trial conducted posthumously? Was he already dead?

The following sentence of Mark is also quite strange:

‘…and they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull.’[108]

Here Mark says pherousin, ‘they carried him’, and not, as one would expect, ‘they led him’. We hesitate because, here, where according to the traditional story Jesus should still be alive, he is ‘carried’ to the place of a skull. Was he not capable of going by himself? We note that just before this, Simon the Cyrenian had been forced to take Jesus’ cross and carry it. So he must have been unable to do it himself. Of course this debility is usually attributed to the earlier flagellation that he had endured. But the fact is, if Mark is to be taken literally, he not only did not carry his cross, he even had to be carried himself.

If we take an objective look at the corpse of Jesus, we have to observe that it bears a very unusual feature for someone who was crucified, namely a stab-wound in the side, and one so open and fresh that blood ran out of it. Very peculiar indeed, so much so that John, who quotes this detail, feels himself obliged to provide us with an explanation for the inexplicable:

‘But when they came to Jesus ... one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.’[109]

And because it was apparently unheard of, John fiercely swears that it is true:

‘And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.’[110]

And because still no one believes him John explains why he should be believed:

‘For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled… (Zach. 12:10): “They shall look on him whom they pierced.”’[111]

Critical biblical critics smirk here and say that the passage obviously has been invented to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled: and they are right, but only partly.

Here we are dealing with a so-called midrash, a very formalized method for interpreting something inexplicable. The idea is that everything must already be present in the biblia iudaica; if an unusual event takes place and one has to justify it, then at least one passage has to be found in the Jewish books that can serve as a vaticinium ex eventu, a prophecy after the event. Some Gospel critics even deem the events in the Gospel text eventus ex vaticiniis, which would mean they are entirely invented on the basis of the prophecies. They thus misjudge intention and mechanism of the midrash. For, one sees immediately that the unexplainable must already be present so that the corresponding passage can be sought, otherwise simply any passage could be sought to justify anything. But the Gospels do not contain just anything but something definite, and very precisely defined at that.

Thus we conclude that the passage in John is probably interpolated—the other Evangelists know nothing about it—however the reason to search for a corresponding passage was pre-existent: they had stabbed him. That we may regard as a certainty.

An indirect proof that John is speaking the truth here is brought to us by an apocryphon, which means a scripture not accepted into the canon, the so-called Gospel of Nicodemus, also known as the Acts of Pilate. There it is said that the soldier who perforated his side with a lance was named Longinus.[112]

Theologians speculate here that the name Longinus may have been invented: because lance in Greek is lonchê, the soldier was consequently named Longinus: in this they break the rules of the art. For ‘Longinus’ is a proper name, ‘lance’ a common term; the one rare and personal, the other one universally known. Experts speak of a lectio difficilior and a lectio facilior—by this they mean that in the process of tradition the easier word can replace the more difficult one: never the other way round. Thus Longinus is certain, and the pointed weapon was associated with his name and so became a lance. But the pointed weapon could have been of a different kind.

From where did John take the stab in the chest of Jesus? It can only have happened at his capture, where there was a violent engagement and the naked sword was drawn:

‘…and kissed him. And they laid their hands on him, and took him. And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear.’[113]

We are accustomed to hearing sword used here and not dagger, because in the King James Version it was translated this way. But Mark does not say sword, but machaira, which primarily means knife, then dagger, or at most a short sword—like, for example, the Roman gladius.

That murderers were involved in the so-called arrest of Jesus is revealed by Mark’s choice of words in the next verse:

‘And Jesus answered and said unto them, Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me?’[114]

Luther translates: ‘…as against a murderer’. We can be confident that a gang went wild with daggers and other weapons, and indeed so wild that they wounded each other in the face. The arrest of Jesus seems to have been more murderous than it looks at first glance. Due to the fact that Jesus does not speak a word after the arrest and is later depicted with an open chest-wound, untypical for a crucified one, it is reasonable to assume that he was murdered at this point and that his so-called arrest was actually his capture, his entrapment, and—as Mark’s choice of words indicates—his assassination.

John could have easily borrowed the stab in the side of Jesus from here and have made use of it at the descent from the cross.

So while we are at it, let us have a quick look at the parallel passage in the assassination of Caesar. The supposition that the Caesar source could have been used as a model for Mark is substantiated by the following detail, mentioned by Appianus:

‘Many of the attackers wounded each other, whilst they stabbed with the daggers.’[115]

If we leave the servant in Mark’s account of the capture of Jesus out of consideration for a moment[116] and understand that the High Priest himself was the target of the stabbing, then Mark’s report superbly summarizes the attack on Caesar, pontifex maximus, High Priest.

And who stabbed him?—Longinus—C. Cassius Longinus:

‘Cassius stabbed into the face…’[117]

—says Appianus; and Suetonius:

‘Of all the many stab wounds, according the judgement of Antistius, his personal physician, only one was mortal, namely the second, which he took in his chest.’[118]

A posthumous crucifixion?

Well, the logical conclusion of this would be that the crucifixion of Jesus was actually his funeral, and therefore, either the crucifixion did not take place at all, or if it did, it too was posthumous.
But it is written that he was crucified, that Simon of Cyrene carried his cross and that there was a sign hanging over this cross. So we will have to investigate how the Evangelists, the writers of the Gospels, depict the crucifixion, the cross and the sign. Let us start with this last one.

The sign

Mark writes: ‘And the superscription of his accusation was written over, THE KING OF THE JEWS’; Luke: ‘And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS’; Matthew: ‘And set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS’; John: ‘And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZAREHT THE KING OF THE JEWS’.[119]

Here we have cited the four Gospels in the supposed order of their genesis: the oldest is thought to be Mark (the so-called Protoevangelium); then follow Luke and Matthew, which show a lot of conformity to Mark (that is why they are called Synoptics), but in contrast to Mark they present in places some ‘unpublished material’ (the famous source Q and the Sondergut, special material); John is supposed to be the latest of them all, but he belongs to a tradition different from the other three.

It is striking that the further away in time the Evangelist is from the events being reported, the more he has to say when it should be the other way around. Let us follow the thread from the other direction.

John has added the epithet Nazoraean (meaning from Nazareth), the cross and Pilate; Luke has added (in some manuscripts) that it was written in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew; Matthew for his part has added the name Jesus and that the sign was positioned above his head. And what was it that Mark added to his exemplar? After the word ‘king’, should he not have appended the words ‘of the Jews’? So we have to conclude that originally there was only the accusation of being king, which had been written (wherever).

But the case is no different with Caesar.[120] It is well-known that he was murdered because it was assumed he was striving for regality.[121]

The inscription over Jesus’ head in Mark was: (h)o basileus tôn Ioudaiôn, ‘the King of the Jews’.

But Iulius is written in Greek IOULIOS—Ioulios, in the accusative IOULION—Ioulion, (the temple) of Iulius is named IOULIEION (HRWON)—Ioulieion (hêrôon)—which both visually resemble IOUDAIWN—Ioudaiôn—because of the resemblance of D and L (D like L) in the graphic. Basileus did not always mean king, in Greek it could frequently indicate the Latin imperator, as also basileia could indicate imperium.[122]

‘King of the Jews’ and ‘Imperator Iulius’, or ‘Imperator (from the house) of the Iulians’ are confusable in Greek.

The cross

Was the inscription on the cross at all? Where did the cross stand?

It is only explicitly mentioned as being in the hands of Simon of Cyrene:

‘And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.’[123]

The King James Version lingers in our ears: ‘…to bear his cross.’ But Mark says arêi: ‘…to take up his cross, lift it.’[124]

This is strange. According to Mark, Simon did not bear the cross in Jesus’ place but rather lifted it up, erected it. Did Jesus ever come in contact with that cross?

Crucified?

Let us look at the development of the sentence that tells us Jesus was crucified:
Mark: ‘And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them,…’

Matthew: ‘And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots…’

Luke: ‘…there they crucified him…’

John: ‘Where they crucified him…’[125]

It is striking that John and Luke first emphasize that he was crucified; Matthew and Mark speak of the parted garments and about the casting of lots. We learn that he was crucified because it happened just at the moment that they were parting the garments and casting the lots: incidentally, as it were.

The crucifixion seems to have graduated from a side issue to the central issue. And even after this metamorphosis, the speech is only about the act of the crucifixion itself, not about a cross: a verb rather than a substantive.

If we have a closer look at this verb, it turns out that staurô does not mean crucify, but to put up posts or slats or a palisade, or more precisely to fence in. Namely, the origin of the verb is stauros, which means stake, post, slat, and especially in the plural: palisade. First the Christians used the verb in the sense of ‘to put up a post’, then the post was interpreted as a stake and later on as a torture stake—a cross. So, ‘put up stakes or posts’ became ‘lift to the cross’, whereby in the mind, due to the iconography, the image of ‘nailed to the cross’ developed.[126]

Above we have utilized the ‘Christian’ translation of Mark’s sentence:

‘And when they had crucified him, they parted his garments, casting lots upon them…’

But a Greek of the first century would not have understood the sentence in this way, either not at all, or if so, rather in this sense:

‘…and when they were putting up stakes, posts or slats or a palisade around him, they parted the garments, and cast valuable pieces on it…’

—because the Greek word for lot—klêros—originally means all that is received as an allotment, especially an inheritance, an heirloom.

A strange sentence. It rather seems to describe the erection of a funeral pyre and the ritual casting of gifts for the dead on it than the erection of a cross.

The preceding sentence of Mark is even stranger:

‘And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not.’[127]

This sentence does not say anything. We are informed that Jesus has not taken anything: a piece of non-news. It is inexplicable why this sentence should be here at all. Obviously, the other Evangelists could not interpret it either and started, each after his own manner, to make a ‘reasonable’ reorganization of the existing requisites.

Matthew, who likes to search through the Jewish scriptures, found the psalm (69:21): ‘They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.’ And he promptly rewrote it:

‘They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.’[128]

Some of the manuscripts refer to wine instead of vinegar. But it is assumed that the original word was vinegar and not wine, as otherwise Matthew would not have found it in the psalm. And because he found vinegar, the gall replaced the myrrh. Probably, Mark often used the word wine instead of vinegar—through the intermediate word oxys oinos ‘sour, vinegary wine’—because of the resemblance of the words and because myrrh was added to the wine, not to vinegar. But for the others, vinegar held its position. Therefore the myrrh had to fade out, only to pop up again in another place.

In fact, Luke simply left out the myrrh: the soldiers only offer vinegar to Jesus.

‘And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar…’[129]

He does not tell us if Jesus took it or not.

He makes the women bring the myrrh to the grave, interestingly enough not in the form of myrrh—myrrha, MURRA—but instead as ointment—myra, MURA:

‘…and [they] beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments;’[130]

At this point in Mark’s account he only speaks of ‘aromatics’, arômata. It looks as though Luke combined it because of the resemblance of the names arômata and myra.[131]

John lets this sentence disappear completely from this particular place where it explains nothing—because myrrh was not ingested but used externally, resulting in Mark and Matthew being forced to say: ‘…he would not drink’—and moves it backwards to places where it makes more sense. He separates the vinegar from the myrrh: he has vinegar being offered to Jesus, together with hyssop, and he takes it:

‘…and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar…’[132]

John has the myrrh being brought, not by the women, but by Nicodemus when Jesus’ corpse is collected: ‘…and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.’ Why the aloes are suddenly added to the myrrh is explained as follows: ‘…with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.’[133]

After we have reviewed the four canonical Gospels, it is certain that the original requisites are the following: MURRA or MURA—myrrha or myra, ‘myrrh’ or ‘ointment’, OXU(V)—oxy(s), ‘sour’ (vine) and OUK respectively OUN ELABEN—ouk/oun elaben, ‘did not take’ respectively ‘did take’.

Now, if we wanted to decide between these alternatives, we would have to give the first requisite myra priority over myrrha, because Mark does not say myrrh, but esmyrnismenon, i. e. actually ‘anointed’, but in Mark it still has the sense of ‘myrrhed, with a little bit of myrrh’.[134]

In the second and third requisite there is a resemblance in the lettering between oxy ‘sour’ and ouk/oun ‘not/but’. Because Mark does not have ‘oxy’ anymore, his ‘ouk’ would appear to be the residuum of it. And as ‘ouk’ is unstable—it is not by chance that John replaces it with ‘oun’—only ‘oxy’ and ‘elaben’ can be regarded as valid.

This means that we are only left with the requisites: MUR(A) / OXU / ELABEN—myr(a) / oxy / elaben.

Thus we arrive at the following conclusion: Abstracting from the popular translations and taking them literally, the two verses in which Mark tells us that Jesus was crucified only attest:

‘myr(a) / oxy / elaben. And when they were putting up stakes, posts or slats or a palisade around him, they parted the garments, casting valuable pieces on it…’

Above we have noticed that the second verse of Mark seems to describe the erection of a funeral pyre and the ritual deposit of gifts for the dead.

If now the words of the first verse are read from the same viewpoint as in the second, it is conspicuous that MURA—myra—is nearly identical in lettering to PURA—pyra—meaning ‘pyre’, and that MUR—myr—can be confused with PUR—pyr—‘fire’ (think of e.g . ‘pyre’, pile to be burned, ‘pyromaniac’, incendiary, ‘pyrotechnic’, fireworks, or ‘pyrite’, firestone). OXU—oxy—also means ‘sour’, but originally ‘sharp’—and together with verbs of movement or action it takes on the meaning of ‘quickly’. Now, if we combine oxy and elaben, it takes on the sense of: ‘was promptly’, ‘took quickly’, ‘grasped the opportunity’.

Both verses of Mark can now produce a coherent meaning:

‘…and while the pyre caught fire, they quickly assembled stakes, posts, slats and palisades, placed them around it, tore up their garments and threw valuable pieces on it…’

It would be sufficient, if a copyist had confused PURA = MUR(R)A, pyra and myrrha, encouraged by the fact that in a Jewish funeral myrrh is used but no fire, to finally render ‘pyre’ as ‘myrrh’. Then follows the confusion of the one oxy, ‘quickly/sharp’, with the other meaning ‘sour’—and already we are attending a completely different funeral: instead of stake, pyre and cremation we have crucifixion and inhumation.

And since we find ourselves already there, let us take a closer look at Caesar’s funeral using three versions. The first is Appianus:

‘There they collected together pieces of wood and benches, of which there were many in the Forum, and anything else they could find of that sort, for a funeral pyre, throwing upon it the adornments of the procession, some of which were very costly. Some of them cast their own wreaths upon it and many military awards.’[135]

Plutarchus:

‘…and they hauled benches, barriers and tables from the place and heaped them around the corpse…’[136]

Suetonius:

‘…and immediately the throng of bystanders heaped on it dry branches and the judges’ chairs with the court benches and whatever else came to hand and could serve as an offering. Then the flute players and actors pulled off their robes which they had taken from the equipment of his triumphs and put on for the occasion, tore them apart and flung them into the flames, likewise the veterans of the legions threw the arms with which they had adorned themselves for the funeral. Many of the matrons similarly offered up the jewels which they wore together with their children’s lockets and purple-fringed tunics.’[137]

It is easy to detect that the passage from Mark is an abridgment of Caesar’s funeral. The same requisites are present in both. The defining difference only exists in our minds. It is we who know that Caesar was burned and Jesus was crucified. But in the cited sentences and the original text, the required details are the same. The difference in interpretation is brought and applied by us.

In the same way, if in the next sentence the Caesar sources say that the pile was set alight, it is necessary to know beforehand that the corpse was burned. Because, as it often happens, so here too the Greek word may have totally different meanings. Which one is right depends on the context. Appianus:

‘Then they set it and all the people waited by the funeral pile throughout the night.’[138]

The translators add after ‘they set it’ ‘afire’, because they know what it is about, so in order that we—not being used to Greek mental gymnastics and acrobatics—do not loose the thread. The Greek does not add anything at all, he relies on the understanding and the knowledge of the reader: after all, he is a Greek like himself. But what happens if the reader a hundred years later has a different knowledge and a different understanding, lives in another country where Greek is a foreign language, finds himself in another political context wherein the text is possibly used for other purposes and where the listeners have different interests? Here we find ourselves wandering along the edge of a precipice: one can sense the abyss. But back to the text again.

The primary meaning of the word exêpsan is not even ‘set afire’, but actually ‘set on’. Plutarchus chose the version hyphêpsan: ‘to set on from underneath’. We can see what can become of it. There is something set on (from underneath). If this something is a fire, it burns; if it is a sign, then it is nailed on; or if it is even a man, then he is hanging on the cross.[139]

From this examination we can conclude that while Jesus’ crucifixion is not necessarily a crucifixion at all, it actually replicates the cremation of Caesar.

Coincidence or system?

Of course, all of this is still speculation and circumstantial evidence. But now the text itself gives us the opportunity to ascertain whether the parallels between Caesar and Jesus are coincidental or systematic. We merely have to check if, for example, the following or preceding sentences contain the same requisites in both sources. If this can be shown to be the case, then one cannot speak of coincidence anymore.

The preceding sentence in Appianus:

‘…but the people returned to Caesar’s bier and they bore him to the Capitol…’[140]

And in Mark:

‘…And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, being interpreted, The place of a skull.’[141]

It is striking that both sources in the Greek language use the same verb pherô: ‘bear’, ‘carry’, ‘bring’. In Jesus’ case we would have expected the word ‘led’, for he still was alive. This expectation is so strong that it has been correspondingly corrected in some manuscripts.[142]

Even more striking is that the place has the same name: Capitol. In Mark, of course, it is translated: the place of a skull. The Romans derived Capitolium from caput. The tale is that an Etruscan king, Olus (i. e. Aulus Vulcentanus) was killed and buried there, and that the Capitoline temple and hill received its name after his skull was later found: ‘the head of Olus’—caput Oli—Capitolium.[143]

That Golgotha is the translation of place of skull and not vice versa is evident in Luke, who only has ‘the place of skull’ and says that the place was ‘called’ this way (and not translated), as well as in John, who says explicitly that the place was ‘said’ the ‘place of a skull’, which ‘means’ Golgotha in Hebrew.[144]

The wording ‘place of skull’ used by Mark—Kraniou Topos—seems a little stiff in the Greek, and Luke has replaced it by the more graceful ton topon tôn Kraniôn. Therefore the more original version of Mark—Kraniou Topos—was not an appellation, but the name itself. Strangely enough it represents not only the translation of Capitolium, but also its alteration: Capi > Kraniou; tolium > Topos—with the same first letter and confusable lettering of the second part, especially in the accusative: TOLIVM > TOLION > TOPON (the erroneous separation of Capitolium is inevitable because, unlike Latin, no Greek word can end with a ‘t’.)