“True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man; to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence on the future; not amuse ourselves with either hope or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is abundantly sufficient.” The Morals of Seneca: A Selection of his Prose, based on the transl. by Sir Roger L’Estrange, edit. Walter Clode (1888, London: Walter Scott, Ltd.) pp. 3-5. Notice how this relates to Jesus’s own love commandments, and the duties to both God and other men that he articulates in the Gospels, as well as the Christian conception of happiness as knowledge of God. And compare this to Paul’s message at Philippians 4:11-13: “For I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances may be. I know now how to live when things are difficult and I know how to live when things are prosperous. In general and in particular I have learned the secret of eating well or going hungry, of facing either plenty or poverty.”
The forged correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul is also very old, indeed, having been cited by both St. Jerome (de Viris Illustribus, 12) and St. Augustine (Epistle, 154.4).
The ancient Romans, like today’s Christians, believed in the existence of an immortal soul, its judgment following a person’s death, and resulting in eternal rewards or punishments.
59. Ephesians 6:6-9
60. Matthew 10:34. NOTE: Among the titles of Isaiah’s predicted Messiah is also the title, Prince of Peace, as we read: “And he will be called/Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God/Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace/Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.”
But this will be a sectarian peace for the Jews: “He will reign on David’s throne/and over his kingdom/establishing and upholding it/with justice and righteousness/from that time on and forever.”
This suggests such millennial peace will come only after the defeat of Israel’s enemies in battle, for the people will “rejoice before you/as people rejoice at the harvest,/as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder./For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,/you have shattered/the yoke that burdens them,/the bar across their shoulders,/the rod of their oppressor.” Isaiah 9:3-7.
It should be noted that the Medianites were slaughtered by the Hebrews. All the men, boys and women who had “slept with a man” were killed—only the virgins were spared. Numbers 31.
Jesus seems to bypass the part about Israel’s military victory and he advocates peaceful submission to the “rod” of the “oppressors.” For Jesus to be urging peace at a stage when that “rod” (of the Romans) was still hammering the Hebrews is also a problematic contradiction of this prophecy.
61. Luke 22;36-38
62. Matthew 26:50-54, cf. Mark 14:47, Luke 22:51 and John 18:10-11
63. Levick, ante, p. 170 and 204, and see, e.g., Boyle, A. J., “Introduction: Reading Flavian Rome,” in Boyle and Dominik, eds., Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, 2003, Brill, esp., pp. 23-25. Langlands, Rebecca, Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome, 2006, Cambridge University Press, pp. 359-360. NOTE: evidence exists from Pompeii that erotic scenes were overpainted in the men’s changing room at the public baths just three years before the eruption at Vesuvius, see Sex in the Ancient World (Pompeii), 2009, History Channel. In the course of turning messianic Judaism into Christianity, the Romans not only changed Judaism into something else, but, as with the other cultures that they absorbed, they changed themselves, as well.
The influence of Jewish religion and morality on Roman society would be dramatically felt, for example, in the area of sexual standards, especially after Christianity gained official status during the reign of Constantine the Great. It may be safely asserted that the monastic tradition among Christians has its roots in the radical Judaism of 2,000 years ago.
64. Suetonius, Domitian, 8. NOTE: According to Suetonius, Domitian took a “far more serious view” of the Vestals’ chastity vows and the traditional punishments for their violation than his father and brother did. Domitian’s special veneration of the deities Jupiter and Minerva (Suetonius, Domitian, 4, 5, and 15) may also signal a more traditional approach than his father and brother took by directly associating themselves with both Egyptian gods and the Jewish Messiah.
According to Suetonius, however, Domitian enjoyed it when the Roman populace shouted out to him and his wife, “Long live our Lord and Lady!” and during Domitian’s reign imperial agents referred to the emperor as “our Lord and God.” (Suetonius, Domitian, 13)
Moreover, Domitian seems to have continued his family’s association with Egyptian gods, since he rebuilt the Temple of Isis and Serapis in the city of Rome. It seems that it was specifically from his family’s Jewish connections that Domitian disassociated himself.
Domitian was particularly harsh in his collection of the new tax levied against all Jews in the wake of the Jewish War, and he may have even collected it against Pauline Christians or those who admitted any sympathy for Jewish ideas, even if they were not practicing adherents themselves. Our sources indicate that this ruler executed members of his own family who converted to some form of comparative atheism (monotheism) and adopted what were vaguely described as “Jewish ways.” The coinage struck by Domitian’s successor, Nerva, actually boasts of an easing of his tax:
It reads: “The calumny of the Jewish tax is removed by consent of the Senate.” This may have involved relieving Jewish apostates and Christians from the tax, and the harsh collection methods about which we also read, but not much more, as the tax seems to have been collected until the 4th Century.
Curiously, it was the non-Christian member from the family of Constantine the Great, Julian the Apostate, who may have finally ended the tax against the Jews. Among the harsh practices of this ongoing tax before that time we read that old men were physically inspected to see if they were circumcised. This would of course have exempted Gentile Christians of the Pauline variety.
65. 1 Corinthians 7:1-2, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18, Matthew 19:2-12.
66. Deuteronomy 24:1.
67. Levick, ante, p. 65; Suetonius, Titus, 1.
68. Levick, ante, pp. 204-205
69. NOTE: Unfortunately, there appear to have been some faked ancient coins using the dolphin-and-anchor motif. Though we know of at least one issue by Hadrian of the dolphin-and-anchor on an Alexandrian coin, here is an example of an obvious fake:
While this would appear to be a coin struck by the 2nd Century Emperor Hadrian, careful observers have noted that this emperor never achieved an eighth consulship, as this coin seems to celebrate, there are no known bronze equivalents, and the die appears to be from a known fake.
http://www.cointalk.com/threads/dolphin-and-anchor-type-on-a-hadrian-bronze.227771/
Jews and Christians at the Flavian Court
I. Jews—or Christians?
1. Tertullian, Prescription Against Heretics, 32, and Jerome, On Illustrious Men, 15.
2. Cassius, Dio, Roman History, trans. Herbert Foster, Loeb Classical Library, Book LXVII, 14
3. Suetonius, Domitian, 15