Clivedurdle

I was referencing Paul's conversion - quite a similar story....

Toto

But we know, because Rodney Stark went through the numbers, that Christianity did not spread any more rapidly that modern new religions. And the stories about 12 disciples martyred for their faith cannot be verified, and have no particular value in any case (look at all the Islamic suicide bombers - do you ask why they would die for a lie?)

So you are saying that these Christians are delusional.

I think this overestimates the size of "humanity as a group" that believed in the Jesus story before Constantine changed the parameters.

And the bigfoot crowd may be small, but there are some widespread delusions. Look at all the people who believe in astrology.

aa5874

Please, I was responding to post #102 where spin suggested that" if we take Paul at his word" and start with Paul we may have the beginning of Christianity.

Examine excerpts of post #102.

" If we take Paul at his word", AS SPIN SUGGESTED, then PAUL was a Persecutor of the Churches of Christ of Judea. See Galatians

The Churches of Christ were either started by Christ or those who followed Christ BEFORE Paul PERSECUTED THEM.

It must be that PAUL could not have started the Jesus Christ cult" if we take Paul at his word".

Chili

To me it is very much the same in the difference between the Jesus cult as per Matthew and Mark with the Great Commision mandate and the Jesus of Luke and John who himself bore the stigmata before he had anything to say as post resurrection preacher to others.

Please notice the difference here, while showing his wounds, he said: "As the father has send me, so I am sending you." This means that unless you are censored by me, you have nothing to say, and that means 'shut up.'

Davka

I just skimmed the thread, so I apologize if this has already been posted.

In 70 AD, the Second Temple was destroyed (along with much of Jerusalem), and the vast majority of the Jews were driven from Israel. Suddenly there was a vacuum of sorts in Judaism - without the Temple, how could the Jews follow the Law, which requires regular Temple sacrifices? With no Temple, what did YHWH require of them now - and why would he allow the Temple to be destroyed?

There were a number of attempts to answer this question. The two that survived are these: Messiah already came and sacrificed himself on our behalf, thus bringing an end to the need for Temple sacrifices (Christianity), or - alternately - YHWH has decreed that the Jews shall sacrifice metaphorically, by devoting themselves to study of the Torah and to doing good deeds (Judaism). Since these two surviving branches of OT Judaism were at odds with each-other, they engaged in a theological struggle.

Jewish Christianity was seriously diverging from OT Judaism by saying that YHWH had put an end to Temple sacrifice via a single human sacrifice. This idea is anathema to any OT adherent. Add to this the fact that Jewish Christians decided to allow Gentiles into their cult, and it was inevitable that Christianity would cease to be a Jewish religion at all within a very short time.

aa5874

I can't help but wonder why Greeks or Roman would invent a story about Jesus Christ and claimed he was born AFTER his mother became pregnant by a Ghost. See Matthew 1.18 and Luke 1.35.

If they wanted to make people believe Jesus was human why did they claim his father was a Holy Ghost?

It is clear that the Jesus story started without a human Jesus. Virtually every Jesus cult writer who mentioned the birth of Jesus admitted he was the Product of a Ghost.

It is clear that AFTER the supposed Words of the Lord in the Prophets was believed to have been fulfilled--the Fall of the Temple and the desolation of the Holy City that stories were fabricated claiming the Messiah had already come and was Pierced by the Jews.

Chili

But Toto, a Book of Martyrs is nothing to brag about, except that it is not very smart to die here now for the empty promise of better days ahead after you die.

The reason why the big-foot crowd won out about 1700 years ago now is because Constantine had the fire stamped out, i.e. the Jesus cult, and there is nothing big-foot about that because the fire is burning within without end.

Chili

Yes but "Christian experts" is already a contradition in terms in that there is not super in the divine. So they may claim to be experts but Christians (tm) they are not.

And Moses himself was another such experts by parting the water instead of walking on top of this water to get into the promised land . . . where water will be no longer (Rev.21:1) because intuition will there be as solid as rock.

James The Least

Jews were not among the early Christians. This is a common misconception. It was conceived and grew as a non-Jewish religion for non-Jews, or Judaism for Gentiles.

Why then did it have as its figurehead a "Jewish" savior figure? That doesn't make sense, does it?

Christianity is a non-Jewish religion that has had a "Jewish" savior figure as its figurehead since 100 CE. Nobody sees anything extraordinary about this.
It's uncontroversial. Yet, if you suggest that Christianity was a non-Jewish religion in the first half of the first century, in say 40 CE, then that's considered blasphemy historically impossible. The reason for this, of course, is that people mistakenly believe the gospels to be eyewitness accounts of the historic ministry of the historic Jesus.

Greeks, Romans, and Syrians converted to the Judean religion. Some of these converts actually called themselves "Judeans." It was both an ethnic marker and a religious affiliation, but you could be "Judean" and not ethnically Jewish. Bible scholars seem to have a hard time acknowledging this. They only want there to be "Jews" on one side and "Christians" on the other, with no gray areas.

These are the people who eventually formed Christianity. They had adopted the LXX to their own use long before the New Testament was conceived. They put particular emphasis on the innumerable passages that say Israel had sinned and forgotten YHWH, and tried to counter that with equal emphasis on the passages that said good things about the Gentiles. The kerygma developed that, in fact, in their eyes Gentiles were the Chosen People of "the Father," not Jews.

The Jesus mythology represents a later stage of this movement. It only came along generations after the first "Judeans" converted from their Greco-Roman religions to Judaism. The point of the Jesus mythology was to provide a good excuse for their use of the Bible. Though good liars, they were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

James The Least

Yes, I think you're right. But the God-fearers initially did consider themselves Judeans -- followers of the YHWH religion and the prophets.