Caballo de Troya (Spanish for Trojan Horse) is a novel (the first of a series of nine so far) written in 1984 by Spanish journalist, writer and ufologist Juan José Benítez. It has reached considerable success in most Spanish-speaking countries as well as in Brazil. To this date, however, it has not been translated into English even though translations into Portuguese, French and Italian already exist.
The plot of the book unveils the last period in the life of Jesus Christ as revealed through the first-hand experience of two pilots (or rather "timenauts"), members of a US Air Force top-secret military experimental project on time travel codenamed "Operation Trojan Horse", who in 1973 supposedly succeeded in travelling back in time to the land of Palestine in the year 30 A.d.
Contents |
The book is narrated as if it is a true report of how the author was approached by an unnamed retired US Air Force pilot, referred to as "The Major" throughout the book (Jasón in later books), who in an elaborated indirect way tells the author how to find classified documents telling the story of the Operation Trojan Horse, in which The Major took part as a time traveller sent to witness the last weeks of Jesus's 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 codenamed "Jasón" during the mission, and has to learn fluent Aramaic and Greek as a necessary skill to interact with people of this era and place during the mission, as well as other extensive training.
It is "revealed" that many of the amazing stories of eclipses, earthquakes after Jesus's death and his transfiguration were linked to extraterrestrial influences. Jesus's physical appearance is described as almost Nordic, with hazel eyes and very tall (he is sometimes called "The Giant", physically and metaphorically in the book).
Even as the 1970s UFO mania has lost traction in Spanish-speaking countries, Benítez has retained solid sales and certain celebrity on the basis of his book series.
The following 8 sequels expand on the issued and reveal more detail. Caballo de Troya 9, Caná was published in Spain recently.
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 showed traces of Jesus' body. These claims have later come under scrutiny, but the fact has not stopped the flow of new Caballo de Troya books.
The author has claimed the time-travel part of Caballo de Troya is fiction, but that it contains "more truth than people think" suggesting, given he purports to be "a UFO researcher", that he might be claiming alien contact. If Benítez had no further ambitions other than to 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 insists that most, if not all, events in his novels are real.