James The Least

Even if it were provable that pre-70 Roman Christians were "Gnostics, worshipers of the cosmic Chrestus," it's still a Christ cult in Rome prior to 70.
It would be an amazing coincidence if a cosmic Christ cult arose in Rome independent of a later "terrestrial" Christ cult in Judea.

I wouldn't say that Christianity was purely Hellenistic, but by that time everybody was "Hellenized" anyway. I think they were a later generation of people whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had converted to the Judean religion in the previous century. Their forebears worshipped YHWH in temples in the diaspora, but they weren't ethnic Jews. Over time, rifts developed between the ethnically Jewish Kohenim and Hasidim and their Gentile converts, resulting in some Gentiles leaving and starting their own form of Judaism. This all happened long before the fall of the temple.

Davka

There is a series called Jewish Believers in Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk) which is the result of a long-term academic inquiry into this very subject. Christianity was demonstrably a Jewish cult at its inception.

spin

If that were the case, then why are the earliest converts to the Jesus religion, as indicated by Paul, people from Galatia, Philippi and Corinth?

Why did Apollos, who was preaching the religion of John and thus speaking, as christians believed, about Jesus truly, need to be taken aside and corrected? We can see a Johannine religion, which was a species of messianism. Paul admits, when he was still adherent to conservative Judaism, to having hassled messianists. But when he had his revelation concerning Jesus, he went to Jerusalem to speak with the Jewish messianists, who showed no apparent interest in his new theology. They parted amicably, but Paul later took the opportunity to repudiate Cephas for his lack of adherence to Jewish practices unless browbeaten by agents of James. These guys certainly didn't follow the teachings of Jesus, when he was made say he fulfilled the law and it wasn't necessary any more. Nobody apparently told the Jerusalem messianists. So Paul turned his back and proselytized in Anatolia and Greece.

We have no evidence for belief in Jesus prior to Paul, so what really makes anyone think that the earliest Jesus believers were Jewish??

outhouse

True and not true.

Certain Jewish sect were not as open to Hellenism as others. This was also a socioeconomic division with wealth favoring Hellenism.


Many of the poor Jewish peasants had less Hellenistic influence in their lives, and would have looked at this as a perversion of their religion. Like the Zealots, who had a zeal for tradition and law. Even the Pharisees were split on this.

Davka

Nonsense. First-century Diaspora Judaism was already heavily Hellenized, with all sorts of 'pagan' elements creeping into Judaism (as evidenced by Rabbinic writings of the time, generally referred to by the term Talmud, but including the Mishnah and Shulhan Arokh, among others). Gematria, Kabbalah, and any number of oral traditions had already gone way off the rails. The idea that Messiah would be born of YHWH was undeniably weird as hell, but no weirder than any number of other fringe ideas being embraced by various Jewish cults of the time.

That Messiah could be killed was an idea which pre-dates Christianity by at least a century, if not more. There are references to the "suffering servant" Messiah Ben Joseph concept in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as in the Talmud. One line of thought was that there would be two Messiahs, because the Messianic prophecies in the Tanakh are so varied and contradictory that it seems impossible for one person to fulfill them all.

As for the idea that the Jews killed their Messiah, this is a perfect explanation for why YHWH would allow the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple. Clearly, the Jews must have done something to annoy YHWH - and the OT makes it pretty clear that annoying YHWHJ always leads to ugly consequences for the Jews. It makes perfect sense that one group among the Diaspora Jews would have latched onto such an explanation.

It makes even more sense when you recognize that there was a widely-held belief that Messiah would come and overturn the Roman rule. In fact, the events which precipitated the destruction of the Temple were motivated at least in part by the belief that Messiah would arise to lead the Jews to victory. And since many OT prophecies place Messiah in the Temple, its destruction would mean that either A) Messiah could not come until the Temple was rebuilt, or B) Messiah had already come, but had not been recognized.

Since there was a proliferation of Messainic wannabes during the Roman occupation, there were any number of candidates available for those who thought Messiah might have already come. The Jesus stories might well be based on a compilation of many such wannabes.

aa5874

The authors of the Jesus story did not claim their Jesus was a real historical person.

The authors who wrote about the character called Jesus claimed he was born AFTER his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost or that he was God the Creator.

The Pauline writer claimed Jesus was made a Quickening Spirit.

It was already known in antiquity in Greek mythology that Perseus was born of a Virgin.

Justin's Dialogue with Trypho It was already know for 1800 years that the Jesus story was just like GREEK Mythology.

TedM

I'm not sure the answer, but I also don't consider it a very relevant question. As you note, legends grow. They grow in order to meet needs. IF the legend of the virgin birth is applied to a mythological Jesus or some other god-like figure, why would it be strange to apply that to the god-like figure who was originally just a regular human being?

TedM

I am under the impression that it is more than just the claims of numerous Church Fathers, including Papias, that support an early text of aramaic origin. The few quotations Jerome gave, I thought, are considered to support the claim to having Aramaic origins.

You sure about the claim of a later text? Heretical, yes, but later? I thought they rejected it because of its adherence to Mosiac law--something consistent with an early Jewish-Christian Nazarene sect.

Davka

They weren't. The first converts, according to the book in which we are first introduced to Paul (Acts), were Jewish pilgrims to Jerusalem, there for the Feast of Weeks.

This is a nonsensical statement. We don't know who wrote the so-called Pauline Epistles; we don't know who wrote the four canonical Gospels; we don't know when any of the writings included in the NT were penned; we know very little about the doctrinal struggles in early Christianity. We only know who won, and which writings were decreed to be 'genuine' some time in the 4th century.

TedM

They weren't the earliest. You know what Paul says in Galatians about the Jewish believers preceding his conversion.


We don't know what Apollos preached. You are making assumptions that may not be true. The passage, as we talked about the other day, may have been referring to his emphasis on water (John's) baptism, not knowing of the 'baptism of the Holy Spirt'. Anyway, an early Jewish cult of Christianity, with a hub in Judea, doesn't require that every Jew in the Roman empire, esp one from Alexandria, knows everything that the cult knew.


Paul says the 'messianists' had the same faith that Paul had. Surely that included the resurrection of Jesus, as Paul would never made such a statement. IF not, what do you think Paul was talking about in Gal 1:?

Surely these were the earliest Jewish Christians, no?