Charisma, citing a Daily Mail write-up, highlights a paper by Luigi Zito in Aequitas Magazine that revisits an old claim: around A.D. 35, Emperor Tiberius may have asked the Roman Senate to recognize Jesus as divine, and the Senate said no.
Where this comes from
The main source is Tertullian’s Apology, written about 160 years later. Tertullian says Tiberius received reports from Palestine about Jesus, put a favorable proposal before the Senate, and when they refused, kept his own view and threatened to punish people who accused Christians. Zito treats that as possible legal evidence that talk of Jesus as God reached Rome within a few years of the crucifixion, and he even suggests the move may have been political, not personal faith.
Here’s the caution: this story has been debated for a long time. Other historians have argued Tertullian is doing apologetics, not handing us a senate record, and that later writers mostly repeat him. There’s no surviving official Roman document of the vote. Zito is making a case, not closing it.
My take
Garlic on “ancient evidence proves the emperor tried to make Jesus a god.” That’s an oversell. What we know for sure is still the New Testament: Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, in Tiberius’s reign (Luke 3:1), and the apostles were already preaching His resurrection in Jerusalem. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Whether or not the Senate ever took a vote, the gospel didn’t wait for Rome’s permission.
God Bless, and Needs Garlic!
