Christian Texts and History • Re: Did Mark borrow the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ from the beginning of the gospel of Augustus Caesar?

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A “kingdom without end” (imperium sine fine [31] ) – spatially and temporally – is just one of many symmetries between Augustan and Markan myth-making. Another pregnant term is the very word “gospel” (euangelion) itself. The noun occurs just three times in the entire LXX, [33] but it is found in a number of inscriptions from the early imperial period, of which the Priene calendar (9 BCE) is only the most famous. It celebrates the blessings which have come to the world through the god Augustus, whom providence has sent as the great savior and bringer of universal peace. [34] Even so the Nazarene.

Not only does he herald “good news”, he also sports a set of royal titles to make any Roman emperor envious, and perhaps just a little anxious:

• Lord (= dominus),

• Son of God (= divi filius), and

• King (= imperator), as well as

• Anointed One,

• Son of Man, and

• Son of David. [35]

[31] Virg., Aen. 1.278f, 283: “For these [Romans], I [Jupiter] set neither boundaries nor temporal limits; empire without end have I bestowed. […] Thus it is decreed”; cf. 6.792–805; and see further D. Dueck, “The Augustan Concept of ‘An Empire without Limits’”, Göttinger Beiträge zur Asienforschung 2–3 (2003) 211–227. On Agrippa’s attempt to articulate Augustan “geography” in Rome, whether through a map and/or an inscription, see C. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1991) 98–114, but such visual expressions could be found on monuments throughout the empire.



p.344,
Ghostlier demarcations: the “gospels” of Augustus and Mark;
A. J. Droge

https://www.academia.edu/43301637/_Ghos ... _Augustus_