How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee (5 page)

Moreover, despite his reluctance, Octavian was hailed as the “Son of God” as early as 40
BCE
—years before he was emperor—and this title is found on coins as early as 38
BCE
. A decree from the Greek city of Cos hails Augustus as the god Sebastos (a Greek term equivalent to the Latin “Augustus”) and indicates that he has “by his benefactions to all people outdone even the Olympian gods.” That’s pretty stiff competition for a mere mortal, but for his reverential followers, he was far more than that. After his death Augustus was deified and called “divine,” or “one who has been made divine,” or “one who has been accounted among the gods.” When his body was cremated, according to Suetonius, a high-ranking Roman official claimed that he “saw Augustus’s image ascending to the sky.” He continued to be worshiped as a god by later Romans, including later Roman emperors.
⁹

For an ancient historian, the word
cult
does not have the kind of negative connotations it may have today—referring to a wild sectarian religion with bizarre beliefs and practices. It is simply a shortened version of the term
cultus deorum
, which means “care of the gods,” a close equivalent to what today we would call “religion” (just as “agri
cult
ure” means “care of the fields”). The Roman cult of the emperor started with Augustus and continued through the emperors who followed him, many of whom lacked his reticence in being considered a manifestation of the divine on earth.
¹⁰

In a speech by the famous Roman orator Quintilian (35–100
CE
), we are told how the gods are to be praised by speakers giving a public address: “Some [gods] . . . may be praised because they were born immortal, others because they won immortality by their valour, a theme which the piety of our sovereign [the emperor Domitian] has made the glory even of these present times” (
Institutes of Oratory
3.7.9).
¹¹
Quintilian tells us that some gods were born that way (such as the great gods of Greek and Roman mythology), but others have “won immortality by their valour”—that is, some humans have
become
divine because of their amazing deeds. And he refers to those for whom this has happened in “these present times.” Here, he is meaning the two previous emperors, Domitian’s father, the emperor Vespasian, and Domitian’s brother, the emperor Titus, both of whom were deified.

Normally, the emperor was officially declared a god at his death by a vote of the Roman Senate. This may seem a bit odd to us today, and it is perhaps best to think of the Senate
recognizing
a divine figure who had been in their midst rather than
making
someone divine. The recognition was based on the fact that the person was powerful and beneficent. And who could be more powerful and beneficent than the Roman emperor? So-called bad emperors (there were a number of them) did not receive divine honors at death, but the good ones did. As with Octavian, many were worshiped as divine even while alive. So we find an inscription (a text carved on stone) in the city of Pergamon that gives honor to “the God Augustus Caesar,” and another in the city of Miletus dedicated to Gaius, otherwise known to history as Caligula (later considered a very bad emperor—but this inscription was made during his lifetime), which read “Gaius Caesar Germanicus, Son of Germanicus, God Sebastos.” While he was alive, at least, Caligula was sometimes considered divine.

Over the years scholars have wrestled with the problem of how to understand the development of the emperor cult throughout the Roman empire—in particular with the idea that a living person was revered as a god. Couldn’t everyone see that the man was human like everyone else? He had to eat and drink; he had other bodily functions; he had personal weaknesses as well as strengths—he was altogether mortal. In what sense could he seriously be considered a god?

As a rule, older scholarship was skeptical on this point, arguing that in fact most people didn’t really think the emperor was a god and that the bestowal of divine honors was mostly a form of flattery.
¹²
This scholarly view was largely based on ancient writings that were produced by the literary elite, that is, the upper echelon of society. Moreover, from this perspective it looked as if the emperor cult was sponsored by the ruling authorities themselves as a kind of imperial propaganda, to make everyone in the Roman provinces understand and appreciate whom they were dealing with when they were dealing with the Roman authorities. Ultimately, they were dealing with a god. In this view, everyone knew that of course the emperor was just a mortal, as all his predecessors had been, but members of the empire participated in the imperial cult to remain on Rome’s good side.

So cities built temples dedicated not simply to one of the great gods or goddesses of Rome—Jupiter, his wife Juno, Mars, Venus, or even “Roma”—but also to the “god” emperor. And sacrifices were made to the image of the emperor, just as to the gods. Still, in this former view of things the emperor was a lower-class divinity, and the worship of these human divinities was restricted to those who had already been deified at their deaths.

This older scholarly view is no longer the consensus, however. More recent scholarship has been less interested in what the literary elite of the upper classes had to say about Roman religion and more interested in what we can learn about what most Romans—the vast majority of whom could not read, let alone write, great works of biography or history—may have thought and certainly did practice. In this newer scholarship, the category of “belief” has come to be recognized as rather complicated with regard to Roman religion. Unlike Christianity, Roman religions did not stress belief or the “intellectual content” of religion. Instead, religion was all about
action
—what one
did
in relation to the gods, rather than what one happened to think or believe about them. From this perspective, the emperors—both dead and living—were indeed treated in the ways gods were treated, sometimes in virtually identical ways.
¹³

More recent scholarship does not consider worship of the emperor as a top-down act of propaganda, promoted by Roman officials among the poor dupes who couldn’t know any better. It was instead a series of local movements usually initiated by city officials of the provinces as a way of revering the power of the empire. Moreover, this worship happened within Rome itself, not simply out in the boonies. Many people quite likely did believe that the emperor was a god. And whether they believed it or not, they certainly
treated
the emperor as a god. Not only did they perform sacrifices to the (other) gods on
behalf
of the emperor, they also performed sacrifices
to
the emperor, as a god—or at least to his genius, or to his “numen”—the power within him that made him who he was, a divine being.

I have already alluded to the reason a powerful ruler would be considered divine. He was capable of doing many things, but he also put his abilities to good use, by bestowing benefits on people under his rule. Throughout the Roman world we find this emphasis on “benefaction” in the inscriptions dedicated to rulers—chiefly, but not only, the emperors. An example from a realm outside of but obviously related to the emperor cult is an inscription dedicated to the Syrian ruler Antiochus III from the second century
BCE
. Antiochus had freed the town of Teas from the oppression of a foreign power. In response, the town set up cult statues of Antiochus and his wife Laodice and performed sacrifices at an official public ceremony. The two statues were dedicated beside the statue of Dionysus, who was the chief god in the city, within his temple and were accompanied by the following inscription honoring Antiochus and Laodice: “Having made the city and its territory sacred . . . and having freed us from tribute . . . they should receive honours from everyone to the greatest possible extent and, by sharing in the temple and other matters with Dionysus, should become the common saviors of our city and should give us benefits in common.”
¹⁴
The political benefactors are considered “religious” heroes. They have statues and a place in the temple, and sacrifices are made in their honor. In a very real sense they are the “saviors” and so are treated as such.

So too the emperors. Already we find with Augustus the province of Asia deciding to celebrate his birthday every year, as explained in an inscription in gratitude for his “benefaction of mankind” and for being “a savior who put an end to war and established all things.” Augustus had “surpassed the benefactors born before him,” so that “the birthday of the god marked for the world the beginning of good tidings through his coming.”
¹⁵

If all this sounds familiar to Christian readers, it should. This man—here, the emperor—is a god whose birthday is to be celebrated because it brought “good tidings” to the world; he is the greatest benefactor of humans, surpassing all others, and is to be considered a “savior.” Jesus was not the only “savior-God” known to the ancient world.

To this point, in exploring humans who were thought to have become divine, I have focused principally on powerful rulers. But other great humans also had this capacity. Of course, lots of people among us are reasonably powerful, wise, or virtuous. Others are remarkably powerful, wise, or virtuous. And others are
unbelievably
powerful, wise, or virtuous. If someone’s power, wisdom, or virtue is almost beyond belief, it may be because the person is not a lower life-form—a mortal like the rest of us. That person may be a god in human form. Or so it was widely believed in the Greek and Roman worlds.

One of the clearest ways to evaluate the common beliefs of a society is to consider the satires that arise within it. Satire makes fun of standard assumptions, perspectives, views, and beliefs. For satire to work, it has to be directed against something that is widely accepted. This is one reason that satire is such a perfect tool for unpacking the beliefs of other cultures. As it turns out, we have some brilliant satires from the Roman world.

One of the most entertaining satirists of ancient times was the second-century
CE
Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking wit who proved to be the gadfly of all pretension, especially philosophical and religious. Among Lucian’s many surviving works is a book called
The Passing of Peregrinus.
Peregrinus was a self-styled philosopher of the Cynic mode. In ancient philosophy being a Cynic did not mean simply being cynical; it was a style of philosophy. Cynic philosophers were adamant that you shouldn’t live for the “good things” in life. You shouldn’t care what you possess, what you wear, or what you eat. You shouldn’t care for anything, in fact, that is external to you, anything that is ultimately beyond your ability to control. If your house burns down, that’s outside your control, so you shouldn’t be personally invested in your house. If you get fired from your job, that’s outside your control, so you shouldn’t be personally invested in your job. If your spouse divorces you or your child unexpectedly dies, those things are outside your control, so you shouldn’t be personally invested in your family. What you
can
control are your attitudes about the things in your life. And so it is your inner self, your attitudes, that you should be concerned about.

People who hold such views are not going to be interested in having a nice, comfortable life (since it can be taken away), in how other people respond to them (no way to control that), or in social convention (why should anyone care?). Cynic philosophers who acted out their convictions had no possessions, no personal loves, and often no manners. They didn’t have permanent homes and performed bodily functions in public. That’s why they were called Cynics. The word
cynic
is from the Greek word for
dog
. These people lived like dogs.

Some people from outside the ranks of Cynics highly respected them. Some people thought they could be brilliant philosophers. And some people who wanted to be
thought of
as brilliant philosophers became Cynics. In a sense, it was easy enough to do. All you had to do was give up everything and declare such a choice to be a virtue.

Lucian thought the whole Cynic business was a sham, an attention-grabbing ploy with no serious substance behind it. And so he mocked Cynics and their ways. No one earned his opprobrium more than a Cynic named Peregrinus. In
The Passing of Peregrinus
(meaning, the death of Peregrinus) Lucian tells the real story behind this famous Cynic whom others in his time considered to be so deeply profound and philosophical that they suspected he was in fact a divine being—which is precisely what Peregrinus wanted, in Lucian’s view. Lucian gives a hilarious account of Peregrinus’s life, but here I’m interested in the events surrounding his death. In a sense, the entire book is looking forward to the death of this self-aggrandizing proponent of selfless debasement.

Peregrinus reportedly presented himself as being the god Proteus in the flesh. And he wanted to demonstrate his divine virtue by the way he died. As a Cynic he proclaimed—hypocritically, in Lucian’s view—the need to abstain from all the pleasure and joy of this life. He decided to prove his point by voluntarily undergoing a violent and painful death, so as to show how he thought that people should in fact live. He planned, and proclaimed, that he would immolate himself. According to Lucian, he did just that, before a large crowd that had gathered to observe the event.

After announcing his intentions and hyping the event at great length (itself a form of self-aggrandizement, as Lucian portrays it), at a set time, around midnight, and near the Olympic games (where crowds would be sure to gather), Peregrinus and his followers built an enormous pyre and lit it. According to Lucian, Peregrinus hoped to be stopped by those who could not bear to see him pass from human existence, but when it came to the moment, Peregrinus realized he had no choice but to go through with the deed. He cast himself into the raging fire and so ended his life.