Is Warhammer 40k’s Emperor of Mankind actually Jesus? In a sci-fi setting packed with utterly bizarre bits of deep lore, this might be one of the very weirdest – but there is, in fact, a tiny hint that it could be true.
We’ll emphasise that, to the best of our knowledge, no Warhammer 40k Codexes, rulebooks, or tie in novels ever suggest that the Emperor of Mankind is connected to the Christian messiah. There is no Abrahamic creator god in the Warhammer 40k universe. We have a separate lore guide about Warhammer 40k’s equivalent of Christmas which explains the massive gulf between Christian doctrine and the state religion of the Imperium of Mankind.
The Emperor does have some qualities like the biblical Christ. He is capable of defeating daemons; he is a Perpetual, and therefore capable of rising from death; he has miraculous powers of healing; he is a profoundly compelling leader of men; he sacrifices himself on behalf of the human race to save the souls of mankind; he is worshipped as a god. But his bellicose nature, and utter denunciation of religion, are at odds with the biblical Jesus.
The Emperor as historical figure(s)
The Horus Heresy books are absolutely packed with nods and winks connecting some of its immortal characters back to real world historical figures, and to mythical events that may have had historical roots. In particular, the Emperor is tied quite explicitly to a famous historical leader, and to a famous mythical event.
In The End and the Death Volume 1, Part 1, Chapter 1.iii, Horus Lupercal says that the Emperor was once known as “Alysaundr, or Sikander III ho Makedôn”, and recounts how he “he came to the River Hyphasis and crossed it, and wept, for, as he put it, ‘there were no new worlds to conquer’”. This is a reference to the Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great.
Horus’ testimony here is extremely unreliable. This section of text is presented as an excerpt from an interview, but it later emerges that Horus is delusional, overwhelmed by the power of Chaos, and speaking to a woman who is dead. He even calls question into the veracity of the Emperor’s words, by saying “He told me that, so it must be true”. But there are other clues: notably, Big E’s flagship Bucephalus is named after Alexander’s horse.
More concrete, if far less historical, is a dream vision from the memories of the perpetual Oll Persson, found in the Siege of Terra novel Mortis. This takes place on bronze age earth, and sees Persson and the Emperor slaying the sorcerers who inhabit the Tower of Babel. It’s a larger excerpt from a more reliable narrator, though it discusses a far more mythical event.
In short: there’s reason to believe that in the Warhammer 40k timeline, historical figures may have been the Emperor earlier in his life, while some earth myths were inspired by his actions.
As well as the biblical Christ, Jesus was also very likely a historical person. Yeshua of Nazzareth was a Jewish religious leader in the first century AD, accounts of whose life formed the basis of the four Gospels at the root of Christian canon.
The actual details of the historical Jesus’ life are contested by scholars, and contemporary sources are as scant as one would expect for a person who lived 1,000 years ago. But by virtue of being the subject of a dominant world religion he is probably the best known-about (if not the best-known) historical figure in the Western world.
And although the Warhammer 40k universe has no Christian god, it did once have Christianity. By the time of the 31st millennium, this is known as the “Catheric faith”, and it is all but extinct. This faith would have been inspired by the Warhammer 40k version of the historical Jesus: is there any evidence that this man was the Emperor? Yes – but it’s very slender.
The evidence for the Emperor as Jesus
Much of final novel in the Siege of Terra series, The End and The Death is told from the perspective of Malcador the Sigilite, the Emperor’s most trusted friend, a fellow immortal Perpetual, and the second most powerful human psychic ever to exist. We receive his thoughts on the Emperor, which includes some biographical detail, and some ruminations on his nature and his ability to change appearances.
In The End and The Death Volume 1, Part One, Chapter 1.v, Malcador states that – among many other identities, the Emperor “has appeared as male or female, or neither, as child or elder, peasant or king, magician or fool… He has been terrible when terror was the only recourse, and sometimes meek in order to inherit the earth”.
This is a reference to a passage from Jesus’ Sermon of the Mount, as recorded in the fifth verse of the fifth chapter in the Christian Gospel of Matthew. The King James bible renders this as “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”.
Malcador’s statement could be nothing more than a literary allusion to the gospel. He’s thousands of years old and has access to lore forbidden to almost everyone else in the Imperium, so could have read the bible, or learned about it from the Emperor.
But there is just enough in Malcador’s statement to spark the imagination, create a connection between the Emperor and a famous bible verse, and suggest that perhaps, a few centuries after the Emperor conquered the known world as Alexander the Great, he intervened in human religion and became one of earth’s best known martyrs.
This suggestions is as close to a definitive answer as we’re likely to get – probably not, but maybe, just maybe.
There is no truth about the Emperor
The Warhammer 40k universe thrives on allusions which imply a lot but have no definitive content: for example, the Necron C’tan began as a throwaway reference that Rick Priestley wrote into the second edition 40k rulebook, which a later author developed into something new. Dan Abnett also went wild with explicit references to literary works in The End and the Death, including work from poets John Keats, T.S. Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and many other bible verses.
As a literary device, the Emperor is not really a character, he’s a force and a concept out of which other stories can arise. Many of the stories about him were first sketched out as myths told in the 41st millennium, and then fleshed in later when the authors came to write about the Horus Heresy. Our lore article answering the question “Is the Emperor an idiot?” has more detail about why that makes the Emperor’s narrative so uneven and his motivations incomprehensible.
What do you think – did Big E throw over the tables of the money lenders in the temple at Jerusalem? Are there any other historical figures you think would make entertaining incarnations of the Emperor? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the official Wargamer Discord server!
Source: Wargamer
