Was the story of Jesus inspired by the emperor Augustus? A clever trick used by early Christians to convert ancient Rome

Dramatic birth stories, promises of salvation and announcements of "good news" surrounded the first Roman emperor. The classic Whitmarsh team believes that early Christians adapted elements of this imperial language to explain the importance of Jesus.

This is an ancient story of a child destined to become king. But when those in power learn of his arrival, they try to orchestrate his death. The child escapes, his future greatness apparently beyond the reach of those who would rather see him dead.

This is a narrative arc that of course refers to Herod's attempt to kill the baby Jesus. But it's also the origin story of Rome's first—and arguably greatest—emperor: Augustus.

For classicist Tim Whitmarsh, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, the similarity is so resonant it could be considered intentional. If early Christians could identify Jesus as a figure comparable to Augustus, would that help them explain why the religious figure was worth replacing the old Roman gods? This is a debate specifically about how Jesus is described and understood, not a biographical comparison of the lives of these two men.

"Augustus and Jesus are clearly very different figures in terms of background and the message they present," he says. “But I think the way Jesus was, if you will, 'packaged' in the first century was designed to put elements of Roman propaganda around the character of Augustus.

Augustus was born in Rome in 63 BC, almost six decades before Jesus. Originally named Gaius Octavius, he rose to power during the civil wars that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. In 27 BC, he received the title of Augustus, marking the conventional beginning of his reign as the first Roman emperor. He ruled until 14 AD.

Within the traditions and norms of the Roman Republic, this was a move that required public relations. The Romans associated monarchy with tyranny, and their republic traditionally divided power between the magistrates and the senate. Augustus concentrated power in his own hands while presenting himself as a restorer of established institutions.

Whitmarsh explains: "Augustus creates this paradoxical relationship with the past, whereby the Roman Republic is both realized in the figure of Augustus returning to the Republic, but also, in a sense, completely transformed by it."

So you have the sense that you are simultaneously rooting the Roman Empire in tradition and also transforming it.

The Christian claim about Jesus had a similar structure. His followers understood him through the Bible and Jewish expectations, while proclaiming that his life, death, and resurrection brought something new: an expansion into the past, while still seeking to take credit for it. Both the Roman Empire and the new Christian religion were rooted in a revolutionary individual who, in some ways, sought legitimacy from an older, more respectable past.

This narrative work begins with birth stories. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written in the first century AD, describe the beginning of Jesus through divine announcements and the prophetic fulfillment of his future significance.

"There are surprisingly similar stories about Augustus," says Whitmarsh.

Suetonius, the Roman biographer, in the life of Augustus, announces that a kingdom will be born for the Roman people. The alarmed senate decreed that no male child born that year should be allowed to live. However, senators with pregnant wives prevented the decree from being officially registered: each hoped that the intended ruler might be his own son.

Now think about the stories in the Bible. In Matthew's account, Herod, the Roman client king of Judea, discovers that a child has been born who is described as the King of the Jews. He orders the killing of boys two years old and under in and around Bethlehem. Jesus survives because Joseph, warned in a dream, takes him and Mary to Egypt.

[The story of Augustus's birth] is so eerily close to Matthew's story of the Slaughter of the Innocents that it seems unlikely that the Slaughter of the Innocents is not, in a sense, a reflection of it."

Another link between the narratives of these two characters is an inscription that links the birth of Augustus to the beginning of the year.

In 9 BC, the Roman governor of Asia, Paulus Fabius Maximus, proposed a calendar reform that was adopted by the Greek cities of the province. Asia here means the Roman province in the west of present-day Turkey.

According to this arrangement, the year begins on September 23, the birthday of Augustus. Copies of the relevant texts survive from several locations, the most famous of which is Perrin. They show how provincialism brought loyalty to the Roman emperor into the organization of everyday life as a symbol and method of sacrifice.

Accompanying praise presented Augustus as the savior who had ended the war and restored order. His birth was the beginning of benefits to the world expressed through the Greek word euangelia: "good news."

This Evangelia is taken by Christians to represent the Gospel.

Mark begins his account by announcing the "good news" of Jesus Christ. This language is also used in Paul's previous letters.

Jewish culture also plays an integral role here. In the Jewish Bible, Isaiah describes the announcement of the good news about God's salvation of his people. The Greek versions of those scriptures gave the early Christians a vocabulary through which to express their hopes.

Early Christians seem to have drawn on the Jewish roots of their religion while also referencing the history of the Roman Empire. These dual origins should not be surprising—Christianity clearly emerged from Jewish life in the Roman imperial world.

For Whitmarsh, then, the evidence suggests that early Christians consciously adapted the Jesus story to align with familiar archetypes of authority, even if the details of their claims differed profoundly from those of Augustus.

"They don't tell us that Jesus is Augustus, but they use the same language and the same inferences, if you will, to present Jesus as a completely new figure. It roots us in the past," he says.

Tim Whitmarsh was speaking with Spencer Mizen on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.