rlogan

I appreciate comments and don't wish to treat anything too lightly so I will take time to think carefully, beyond this initial response.

I cannot comment with any kind of confidence about other religions in the time period except to say that expiation through sacrifice was a general feature of religions at the time. Not necessarly universal, but sufficiently general to make the elimination of economically significant sacrificial obligations a strong attraction for early Christianity.

That is a strong economic incentive across a wide recruiting base, which alone affords excellent explanation for rapid Christian growth. The logical breakthrough of Christ Crucified combined with the sensible justice - the right the fruits of your own labor, the honesty and faithfulness in all your civil committments: this would in combination with the economic incentive explain Pliny's observations on its meteoroic growth.

By way of information, Pliny indicates that amongst those he has interrogated, the practice of Christianity goes back amongst them twenty years for the longest.

This places Christianity at least back to 92 CE insofar as the earliest extrabiblical evidence I can find. We know that Josephus, other than the absurd Christian forgery, makes no mention of them, especially not in his extensive treatment of "sects of the Jews".

That could mean that when Josephus is writing in the 90's CE that Christianity is either not a sect of the Jews or just insignificant as any meaningful social movement in general.

Insofar as Pliny's correspondence with Trajan being a forgery - well a crime needs motive, opportunity, means, and of course the suspects themselves. This is apart from the textual evidence which I see no reason to doubt.

For example, in the obscene Testimonmium Flavianum we see no mention of it until Eusebius, who as author of official Christian History at the time Constantine is calling the great Council of Nicea (and then later similar conferences) to get Christians to agree on their canon and therefore its history (gospel accounts).

The motive, means, and opportunity are all there along with the strongest possible suspect himself: Eusebius. Or maybe Constantine if you prefer, through his agent Eusebius. The motive of course is control of the Christian Church and the means is by pretense of direct descent from Jesus through Peter and thereby the Church of Rome via the phony succession of Popes going back to Peter. This is how you defeat all other contestants: by fabricating a direct linear descent from Jesus himself.

In the Flavianum even a rank amateur like myself can detect how out-of-place it is and how ridiculous the fawning 10,000 miracles of Jesus are in that rancid abomination shoe-horned into Josephus' work.

The same to a lesser extent can be said for the Tacitus forgery, and if you have not read Spin's blog entry on that I urge you do. There is an excellent treatment of the textual evidence. Here again the motive is the same: Christians needing to fabricate a false heritage to buttress their case and not leave this lone glaring forgery in Josephus as their only evidence.

In this example though we see another important purpose, and it is the establishment of the martyrdom of the early Christians. This religion has for two millenia been heavy on the guilt-tripping since it was commandeered by the central authority: look what Jesus did for you, look what the early Christians did for you. Now cough up those donations. Furthermore the fabricated Christian story must be true since nobody would die for a lie.

None of that nonsense was necessary to the earliest Christianity. It was a logical breakthrough that cut the chains of obligatory sacrifice of your labor to people that were richer than you in the first place and in the second place did not deserve it. It was a system of honesty and faithfulness in your affairs that was attractive on the face of it. No guilt-tripping or multitudes of burned bodies were necessary to "prove" it's truthfulness.

When you tell people that they have a right to their first fruits themselves, not to the temple, and that people should be fair to one another then you are going to be mighty popular in contrast to the others whipping you with both figurative and literal lashes.

Yes, this empowered the individual in other ways too: it removed from the high priests the power of divinity psychologically too. Look how the central theme of the Gospel of Thomas was removed from Christianity. In my opinion it represents a more nascant Christianity because it is a sayings gospel - wise words - and a message that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It is all around you. Justice is now, not when you are dead. Righteousness is now, not after a life of getting screwed by the man.

You don't need a gospel of miracles to prove divinity. The message itself (the word) is divine. It speaks for itself. Justice is self-evident.

That is why it is only much later in Christianity that gospels of an earthly Jesus appear. A message that sells itself needs no miraculous "proofs" to assuage the doubtful parts of your message.

I'll look over the Mises work on inflation in the Roman Empire. Anything Mises does despite being excellent is as dry as cardboard with lumbering, plodding development. I've read his Human Action tome, his money and banking history and other shorter works. It's a bit of purgatory to assign me this, but probably worthwhile.


Warmly, and with best wishes for the new year.

Chili

I fully agree with you and will add that there never will be a third party messiah but that the second person is called Christ in Christendom who is potentially in each one of us after metamorphosis . . . and this being the case is the reason why people are willing to listen to the bullshit that is handed down from others and from the pulpit at large . . . with curious eyes and ears to be sure (Rev.13:13).

Now the reason why early [so called] Christianity spread like wildfire is that for some reason Galilee became a very popular place (read 'state of mind'), and that was because some very charismatic preachers came around -- such as Marcion, no doubt -- that got the fire going that continued to spread like a wildfire until Eusebius put a stop to that, and forcefully perhaps but surely for sure set the stage for the prosperity and bloom of the Western civlization until the next reformation killed it again. But that is the way it has to be for civilizations to rise and fall, and so now then you also know why N. America is in trouble today while still boasting about the greatest evangelist it ever had.

The above is just food for thought and please be reminded that this all happened in broad daylight and with full force.

Oh right, I can give you the mechanincs that keeps this fire alive and Gutenberg has a lot to do with that . . . because after all, you must agree that the fire is real or America would not spend its richess to prepare for the coming of the real messiah.