Caballo de Troya
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Caballo de Troya (Spanish for Trojan Horse) is a novel (the first of a series of seven) written in 1984 by Spanish journalist and ufologist J.J. Benítez, which became famous in Spanish-speaking countries and in Brazil, so far without an English translation.
It deals with a supposed successful attempt by US military in 1973 to send time travellers back to Israel during the time of Jesus Christ, to witness his days of ministry by the year 30, and to a certain degree even interact with him and other people.
Benitez, born September 7, 1946, in Pamplona, Navarre, northern Spain - got a journalism degree in 1965 and joined newspaper La Verdad of Murcia in January 1966. Over the next few years, he became interested in the UFO phenomenon, then sweeping headlines and bookshelves all along the western world, and he eventually left journalism altogether in the late 1970s. He wrote in his website that he first became interested in the "real" life of Jesus around that time, when a team of researchers said that the Shroud of Turin (which supposedly wrapped Jesus' body before his resurrection) showed traces of Jesus' actual body. These claims have later been proved false, but the fact has not stopped the flow of new Caballo de Troya's books.
The author has claimed the time-travel part of Caballo de Troya is fiction, but that altogether it contains "more truth than people think" suggesting, given he purports to be "a UFO researcher", that he might be claiming alien contact. Here lies the main objection against this and most of J.J.Benítez other writings: if these had no further ambitions other than to belong to (and remain confined within) the realm of pure fiction, perhaps they would stand alone by whatever literary or imaginative merits they might have; but the author stubbornly and frequently insists that most (if not all) events in his novels are real. Such pretension is ridiculous from the standpoint of Hard Science and of established disciplines such as History, Anthropology, Archeology, Sociology, and Religion, and reveals a deceitful strategy, a sales gimmick, presumably used to attract the attention of the reading public. Apparently, such strategy has succeeded so far.
Plot summary
The book is narrated as if it was a true report of how the author was approached by an unnamed retired US Army man, referred to as "The Major" in the book, who in an elaborated indirect way tells the author how to find classified documents telling the story of the Trojan Horse Operation, in which The Major took part as a time traveller sent to witness the last weeks of Jesus' life through a time-travelling device sent back in time by the US military in an Israel base in 1973.A lengthy, detailed "technical" description of the time travel process ("inversion of quantum swivels") is provided. The time-traveller and the time-travelling vehicle are said to have been wrapped by an artificial skin to avoid biological contamination. The Major, who becomes the narrator of the story, is called "Jason" during the mission, and learns some Aramaic and Greek.
It is "revealed" that many of the amazing stories of eclipses, earthquakes after Jesus' death in the Gospel and his transfiguration were linked to extraterrestrial influences. Jesus' physical appearance is described as almost Nordic, with blue-eyes and very tall (he is sometimes called "The Giant", physically and metaphorically in the book).
The first Caballo de Troya is an intriguing science-fiction story, written with some style and containing attractive plot twists, but both style and plot deteriorate in the sequels, as suspension of disbelief becomes harder to sustain. Even as the 1970s UFO mania has lost traction and the issue has all but vanished from Spain's popular press and media, Benitez has retained solid sales and certain celebrity on the basis of this book series.
The following 6 sequels expand on the issued and "reveal" more detail. Caballo de Troya 7, Nahum was published in Spain in 2005. Benitez has promised that the series will end after two more books.
External Links
J.J. Benítez Official Website: http://www.planetabenitez.com/ (in Spanish only)
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