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How Jesus Became a God

Just like Jesus, Julius Caesar was seen by many people as being a god when he was alive, and by even more people after he died.
 
After he dies in 44 BC, Julius Caesar is also deified as a God by the Roman Senate. And the people had heavenly proof  of the validity of this, which combined the 8 days of light celebrated in Hanukkah  with the star of Bethlehem that hung in the sky like the crown jewel of Christmas. 

At the the first games - which were given on the anniversary of the deification of Julius by his heir Augustus - a comet shown, appearing around the 11th hour for 7 days in succession, and it was believed that this comet was the soul of Caesar which had ascended into heaven. 

Such a "divine" heavenly sign proved that if there is only "one God," then what the vast majority of Romans referred to as Julius Caesar, a heretical sect of Judaism referred to as "Jesus Christ," with the latter having ascended into the heavenly realm less than a generation after the former was widely accepted to have done so.

When Julius's son Octavian becomes Caesar Augustus, he actually encourages this belief, because it means that he - Augustus - is therefore the "son of god."

Hence, with Caesar Augustus, we have the beginning of an "emperor cult," and the practice of worshiping emperors, both dead and living, as gods. 

Thus, Jesus is being called "god" by his followers a single generation after Julius Caesar and his son Augustus are being worshiped as god and the "son of God," by Romans overall.

The New Testament is then written portraying Jesus in this very same light, only 126 years later, around the time of the destruction  of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Scholars believe that the gospels of the New Testament were written between 65 and 95 AD.  So what was going on in Rome during this time?

Well, by 79 AD, Vespasian is being worshiped as a god, and by 81 AD, Vespasian's son -  who became the first Roman emperor to come to the throne after his own biological father -  is also being worshiped as a god. 

The Roman Senate would vote to deify these men as gods, in the very same way the Catholic Church relies on commissions and congregations to canonize its own heroes as its saints.

And in the same way the Hebrew God - which the Hebrews had always understood to be only one of countless other gods - would become first a "more powerful god" than all the others, and then "the only god," so Jesus would be seen as a "god" in a culture that deified all of its heroes and rulers as gods, and eventually become "the only god."

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