Newton's Cat

What I perceive is that there was someone about in the 1st/2nd century ad who started what eventually became Christianity - I'm trying to discern what he/she did to start it. I'm looking for an event that started Christianity.

An event in time and place and a person from which its primary influence came. An event that preceeded the introduction of the fictitious character Jesus Christ onto the scene.

Haran

Jesus called Christ

Read the New Testament. Duh.

Family Man

Sure, if you want a slanted version that leaves out a great deal in order to present an inaccurate picture that glorifies their great founder. The New Testament gives important clues, but it is hardly the whole picture.

The fact of the matter is that we don't know exactly how it started. What is certain is that a very small number of people came to believe that someone named Jesus was the Christ, sacrificed himself to himself, and that the world would be coming to an end soon. Because the religion had some attractive aspects (such as eternal life and communal support) it managed to grow slowly (ignoring the failed prediction) until it become the dominant European religion in the 4th century.

Of course, I'm leaving out a lot -- you can't trace the beginnings of a religion like Christianity in a post like this -- but that's the gist of it.

Doug Shaver

So are thousands of other researchers. You have a lot of work ahead of you.

The majority view is divided between the Christian party line (i.e. it started with Jesus, like the New Testament says) and the belief that it was started by the followers of a charismatic rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth, on whose ministry the gospel stories are more or less loosely based. (Some would say very loosely indeed.)

A few of us believe there was no clearly defined beginning. Instead, what we now think of as Christianity evolved during the second and third centuries from a sort of coalescence of several religious sects that existed during the first century and had been around for nobody knows how long.

Clivedurdle

I also think there was no big bang, but many iterations and interactions of thinking about being religious, the end of the world, the meaning of life, myth, alchemy, magic and drama, with politics and philosophy.

Jesus - a classic god man - was used to hang all this together on.

A historical jesus was invented in the enlightenment!

We cannot even be certain about the role of Paul - part of the problem is a matter of scale and timing. We may be talking about a teacher of righteousness in 100BCE bringing together messianic thinking, these ideas slowly cooking in Egypt, and things only getting formalised around the 150's.

There probably is a move from a Christ as fish idea to a christ on a cross model. It is a pagan religion that for various reasons has pretended not to be.

It became poltically very useful with Constantine.

Magus55

Why are you so sure Jesus was fictitious?

redhen

Saul of Tarsus - Greatest PR Man, ever.

mountainman

Apollonius of Tyana
http://www.mountainman.com.au/apollonius_of_tyana.htm

With effect from the Council of Nicaea (325 CE)
we have an ADD and a DELETE.

The NEW and STRANGE religion described by Eusebius is ADDED.
Extant manuscripts, letters, biographies of Apollonius is DELETED.



Pete Brown
www/mountainman.com.au

Mythra

Apocalyptic expectations and looking for the messiah did not begin with a small group of jesusites. In looking at the book of Enoch and the Qumran materials, it appears to be a pervasive thought in Palestine well before the first century C.E.

I agree with Doug. Christianity began as a melange of varied ideas, sayings, personal revelations, and creative writings. After several hundred years of cultivating the ideas that agreed with the most influential christians and weeding out all the rest, we end up with orthodox christianity.

Mythra

Because Philo, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, and Justus of Tiberias told me so.