Abstract
The lecture dealt with the personalities of Jesus of Nazareth, the apostle Paul and Cicero, their ethics, their relationship to the body and violent death because they all died a painful death and became legends thanks to their work or performance. Jesus of Nazareth came out with a reform of Judaism that had a strong social content, and his death by crucifixion became, in the context of the subsequent interpretation, a vicarious death, which is a strong ethical motive.
The Apostle Paul, as the interpreter of Jesus' death and resurrection, created an ethical system for Gentile Christians in which he allowed them to participate in the periphery of Judaism without keeping the Torah and circumcision, which was possible due to the exceptional situation of the messianic time. Paul did not expand the ranks of the "God-fearing," but he replaced the Jewish concept of justice to a large extent with Stoic ethics.
However, he also adds eschatological emphases that lead to a certain behaviour and perception of one's neighbour. His efforts ended with his beheading during the reign of Emperor Nero.
Cicero, as an extraordinary personality of the Roman rhetorician, jurist and administrator of the Roman territories, presented Stoic ethics in his works and sought to reform Roman society, specifically the upper social class, and as a result, has a number of ethical goals identical to the apostle Paul. Antony's assassins killed Cicero, his corpse was dragged around Rome, and his head and right hand were cut off for display on the Forum.
Jesus was mythologized, Paul was legendary, and Cicero entered the consciousness as a historical figure with a very large body of work and a place in classical literature. The ethos of all personalities was connected to their behaviour in the context of the time, and they all came across as official representatives of the Roman Empire.
While Jesus was close to the Cynics, both the apostle Paul and Cicero, as scholars of their time, are associated with rhetoric, the ethical profile of the orator, and the Stoic virtues.