By: Paulo of Tarso
Translated by: Caio Vidutsjo, University of Taromenjo Press
About the Translator
Caio Vidutsjo was born in the beautiful town of Napolis. His parents ran a multi-generation long family popina,[1] well known locally for its delicious panis focacio.[2] As much as Caio loves focacio, he declined to take over the family business. He had become enamored with ancient history from an early age after his school’s field trip to Roma. It was love at first sight. He began slipping into the city’s impressive Museum Antiquatis[3] during the summers and was a regular at the local biblioteca. Caio often boasts about expanding the ancient history collection, as the librarians began ordering books just for himself. Eventually enrolling in the prestigious Universitas Roma for a degree in history, he continued his studies at the University of Dàphne[4] to pursue a degree in Ancient Near East studies. He has written numerous works on the ancient near east, and is the author of the best-selling books, In The Footsteps of Giants: A Traveller’s Guide Through the Ancient Near East, and City of the Muses: The Allure of Alexandria, in addition to several modern Latin translations of ancient texts. He can often be found on history episodes on the Schola Sonoro Romana,[5] or lecturing to students at the University of Taromenjo. He has a beautiful wife, Lucretia, and two wonderful children, Lucio and Ariminjo.
Preface To The Modern Latin Translation
Centuries have passed since Paulo of Tarso (known also as Saul of Tarso; 750s-827 AVC) wrote his biography of Jesus Volosjo, popularly known today as the emperor Jesus. Like the man he wrote about, Paul remains a controversial figure, both within and without the Jewish diaspora. Born sometime in the 750s AVC to a family of tentmakers in the city of Tarso along the southeastern Anatolian coast, Paulo was born both a Jewish and Roman citizen.At a young age, Paulo's family sent him to Jerusalem where he was educated by the Rabban Gamaliel, the contemporary Pharisaic head of the Sanhedrin. Gamaliel was by then already considered one of the greatest religious authorities and teachers within Judaism.* Gamaliel was a Pharisee, one of the two main sects that characterized Jewish religious politics of the period (the other being the Sadducees). Popular characterization of the Pharisees has them more in touch with the common people, as opposed to the aristocratic Sadducee elite. Reality is certainly more complicated, and most of the common folk identified as neither Pharisee nor Sadducee (nor, for that matter, many of the other, smaller sects).
Paulo himself came from a family of Pharisees, and at one point referred to himself as a part, “of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee.” While Paulo certainly knew how to read, write, and speak in Hebrew, his native tongue was Greek, and it was in this language that he preferred to communicate with. Shortly before the start of the Great Jewish Rebellion (also known as the Judas Iscariot Revolt), Paul seems to have had a falling out with the Pharisaic leadership, and soon left the sect, before being forced out of Judea altogether.
Paulo's reasons for dissociating himself from the Pharisees is hotly debated, made more puzzling due to Paulo's vagueness on the event himself. Thus, historians have been forced to piece together a generally acceptable narrative from his writings. A common theory stems from Pharisaic opposition to Hellenization and the influences of Greek philosophy. Under this interpretation, Paulo's affinity for his Roman citizenship and Greco-Roman culture clashed with his Pharisaic education. As is often pointed out, he became quite fond of stoic philosophy, which would provide fodder for more disputes with the Pharisees.
Following his expulsion from Jerusalem, Pauloexperienced what appears to be a crisis in faith. He meandered from city to city until finding himself in the company of Jesus, then preparing to take command of an expeditionary army to suppress the revolt in Judea. It is around this time that Paul appears to solidify around his stoic worldview, and began to question Jewish orthodoxy, drifting steadily towards a more syncretic religious belief system, mixing traditional Greco-Roman religion and philosophy with Jewish religious traditions.
Paul eventually became as critical of traditional Jewish orthodoxy as he was of any of his other pet issues (such as sexual promiscuity). Along with Jesus, he has become loathed by orthodox Jews today, as well as many syncretic Jews and non-Jews who see him as complicit in what they claim was a cultural genocide of traditional Judaism. During his brief tenure as pro-curator of Judea, Paulo was responsible for implementing Jesus’s post-war agenda for the region, and thus bares significant blame (or, in some cases, praise) for the policies established.
More recently there has been a tendency among scholars to treat the reign of Jesus and the life of Paulo in a more positive light. This is part of a wider trend re-evaluating what is seen as the over-correction in previous historical scholarship for the heavily imperialistic, racist analysis of earlier scholars. In this school of history, Jesus and others should be judged by their times, considering their intentions and weighing the good alongside the bad. Certainly Jesus’s policy in Judea was not similar to that of Alexander The Great’s treatment of captured cities, many of which such as Thebes were raze to the ground, their inhabitants executed or sold into slavery.
It is often pointed out by these scholars that Jesus had good intentions, and largely succeeded in those intentions. It is argued that he wished to better integrate Judaism and Jews within Roman society, shielding them from Roman cultural prejudice and retaliation. Critics contend that this analysis reeks of the justifications used by imperial societies to justify their imperialism across millennia, and they are not altogether incorrect in this assertion.
Certainly Jesus’s reign remains heavily controversial, even spilling over into popular culture with appearance the award winning (and heavily criticized) movie The Peasant Imperator last fall stirring much public debate over not only how Jesus should be remembered by history, but also over the darker sides of Romania’s past.
Yet this controversy that has surrounded his imperator is not a development of the emergence of modern historical scholarship, but rather has existed since the days of Jesus himself. Rome’s senatorial and equestrian elite never really completely trusted him, seeing him as a somewhat barbarian outsider, and he was never able to shirk the liabilities of his origins, despite having been adopted into a prestigious Roman family, to which he owed his entire military and political career. Even at the time of his death, he was not particularly well liked among this class of Romans, and Paulo’s biography of Jesus was largely an attempt to counteract what he perceived as the slanderous histories being written by other contemporaries.
It is much to Paulo’s relief then that he has emerged as our most reliable complete source on this period. The part of Tacitus’s annals dealing with the vast majority of Jesus’s reign have unfortunately been lost to history, and many of the other writings that Paulo was concerned about have either not come down to us, or have only appeared in fragments. Thus Paulo, much maligned as he may be, can smile in his grave knowing that it is his story of Jesus that is the one that gets told.
~Caio Vidutsjo
[1] Roughly translates to restaurant
[2] I am no language expert, and the Roman panis focacius, and is not technically pizza (and rather is probably more like modern focaccia, which dates back to the Etruscans). The origins of pizza are kind of complicated, and language even moreso, so pretend panis focacius evolved to mean something roughly similar to modern day pizza. I’m also not sure how pluralization would work, since pizza doesn’t follow Italian pluralization rules IOTL.
[3] Again, my Latin sucks, so apologies if I’m wrong on the translations. Archaeology Museum.
[4] Modern Harbiye, a suburb of Antakya (Antioch). It was a Seleucid resort town.
[5] Shoutout to Circonflexe for the translation. It's the Roman equivalent of the BBC.
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*More recently, he was controversially cited in a bill attempting to provide more gender equality with regards to divorce
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As a rule, any numbered citations (i.e. [1] ) are by me, whereas any symbol citations are by the in universe translator.
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