Roger Pearse

Very little, I think. Does anyone know much about the Hermetic corpus? (I am quite ignorant about it).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Phlox Pyros

Intersting. Probably so. Do you have any examples of the popular philosophies of their time which they applied to the gospels? (Side tangent...but I'm curious..)

Either way, I am looking for the earliest "branch" that I, personally, believe to be most likely to have come directly from the teachings of Jesus. Gnosticism does not seem like that branch to me. There are other "Christianities", such as the Ebionites.

What early "branch" of Christianity do you see as carrying the "most original" or "most unadulterated" teachings and stories of Jesus? Did early Christian Orthodoxy really "win" over other Christianities, or could it really have been the most true to the teachings and stories about Jesus?

Phlox Pyros

Why do you ask? Are the teachings also supposedly similar to the pagan and gnostic views?

I do not have it in front of me at the moment, but Ancient Texts For New Testament Studies: A Guide To The Background Literature (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Craig Evans has some information with a very useful bibliography. If I get the chance, I could post a little information if there's something specific you're interested in.

By the way, for those who are interested in ancient sources and background texts for the study of the New and Old Testaments, I highly recommend Craig's book and also Kenton Sparks Ancient Texts For The Study Of The Hebrew Bible: A Guide To The Background Literature (or via: amazon.co.uk)!

I just purchased these books and have been WOWed by the information in them. I will be using these book quite a lot in my studies. They give summaries of many, many ancient sources for comparison with the OT and NT and provide tons of top-notch bibliographies so you can locate the texts (even in the original languages) that you might be interested in. Check 'em out!

Chris Weimer

The way James was portrayed in Paul - Judaistic and conforming to the Torah. Jesus as the Messiah - the one to rebuild Israel.

Phlox Pyros

Do you mean that you believe that James and the Jerusalem church, the way Paul portrayed it is what you believe to have been the "most original"?

I must agree. It bothers me that so little seemed to have been output by the Jerusalem church. I have to wonder if this was due to the wars and their likely dispersion. Any other theories on why the Jerusalem church doesn't seem to have had teachings as prominent as those of Paul? Was Paul simply more powerful because of his status as a Roman citizen from Tarsus and because of having been a somewhat influential Pharisee?

Peter Kirby

Broadly speaking, Augustine is indebted to Plato, and Aquinas to Aristotle. The latter is most explicit.

I would say, whichever branch of Christians decided to fight alongside other Jews in their war of independence forty years after the death of Jesus. I don't know of any writings from them, however. They didn't do too well in the survival department. They certainly didn't write any extant Gospels.

In the realm of ideology, truth and success are largely orthogonal. Concerted methodological effort (i.e. science) is required to make them run parallel (and even then it's not perfect).

regards,
Peter Kirby

Chris Weimer

I would hazard that the earliest Christians were very eschatological - they thought the end of the world to be near. With such, there is a need to get out and convert people to the new Israel - who has time for new writings when everyone already used the standard Bible? But with the end of the world, missionary work around Israel wouldn't need many writings - it would almost be a waste of time. Paul, the earliest Christian author, wrote in Greek to foreign communities, and he preached a very different message, one that needed explanation - Jesus is the Savior. Different needs are fulfilled in different ways.

mikem

The original Jerusalem church confined their efforts to "converting" Jews. What they were doing was to present Jesus as the Messiah, and proclaiming that their sect was the next stage of Judaism. This had little appeal to most of their fellow Jews. Maybe because they could not connect the way that Jesus had died with any idea they had of how a Messiah would be. A crucified Messiah made no sense.

Paul preached to non-Jews, but he was in competition with (a) Jewish christians, who wanted converts to become Jews first, and (b) mainstream Judaism itself, which was quite successful in winning converts anyway, because of it's elevated moral code, and it's simple theology of one God, which appealed to jaded pagans looking for something more elevated.

With the destruction of Judaism and the temple in 70 AD, and the dispersion of Judaism, the Jewish Christans lost much of their impetus, especially as their idol, James had been brutally murdered. Paul's movement went from strength to strength, I think, capitalising on the decline of the Jewish church. His message was more suited to the Hellenistic mind too, which was familar with the kind of Platonising theology that Paul preached. (Was it Nietzsche who described Christianty as "Platonism for the masses"?)

So it was a combination of historical circumstance and ideology that led to the obscurity of the "original Christianity", and the rise of Paul's version. Paul began the gnostic trend, in my opinion.

Tholzel

Not necessarily so. First, Jesus may have been the equivalent of James Bond. Imagine a group of scholars in 4000 AD finding a huge trove of ancient books describing this super hero's exploits. The ink & paper would compute to the mid 20th Century; the names of the countries, the language would all seem true, as would his historically accurate colleagues. Even better, unlike the Gospels, many non-Bondian sources would exist who have commented on James Bond, often in terms of awe.

Secondly, the phrase "True Christianity" sets up a false retrospective supposition. We have a lot of data from Jesus' time, but very little information. For every factoid, there are a dozen interpretations. The whole current Christian legend is built 95% on extrapolation & suppostition. The hostory of Christianity shows more than eanything else that mankind seriously wants a mythical world to believe in, regardless of content (as long as their are good-guy superheroes, and as long as belonging had personal advantages).

Imnagine what would happen if a real 50 AD time capsule were found that accurately described Jesu's life, death and the period 15 years thereafter. What could such an explanation possible contain? That Jesus literally walked on water? Of course not. But perhaps that his convincing the disciples to calm down in the face of a storm was as "miraculous" as walking on water. That he actually turned water into wine? Of course not. But that he convinced a wealthy noble to open his cellar and resupply the thirsty crowd--possibly.

The problem is that whatever the "true" story of Jesus is, it can now not possibly satisfy the HUGE expectations of his "believers." Jesus can't have been the ten things at once the faithful have accumulated for hus history.

If he existed (which is not yet settled) then he was likely a Jewish mystic, and if you asked him, he would tell you what he expected to happen to him and the world, he would give you what we would today consider to be a slightly wacko answer. But a wacko answer that contained rare--even deep--spiritual slivers of insight.

These would be something along the order of:

A) A rich man can no more enter the kingdom of heaven than a rope can be threaded through a needle. Thus, that Jesus, who came from a wealthy family, [See James Tabor's "the Jesus Dynasty"] could dump all his position to join the ranks of the downtrodden is a remarkable lesson, long ago dumped in favor of a previledged priesthood.
B) "The Kingdom of Heaven" is to be found here on Earth as spiritual peace, and cannot be bought with money, or "faith." It can be bought ONLY by good works, by selflessness.
C) You cannot hate and be a Christian. You cannot take unfair advantage of others and enter the KoH.

There are a few more, but these are the main precepts. Now they don't seem nearly enough. They don't seem to build any great spiritual ediface; they don't "glorify God" enough. And they are not forceful enought in spreading "the word of God." So few sound-bites. They were tough enough for even the disciples to comprehend, much less temporally distant commentators. Thus, they made the best sense of them as they could. And thus began one of mankind's great intellectual sagas--the huge recasting of the Jesus story in its near infinite variations. Take your pick. The biggest fraud was St. Paul, who essentialy made up his Jesus story from whole cloth--and won the Christianity contest. A gold star for him. And a good thing for the masses. With billions of "Christians," how many would there be if Jesus' story had been maintained intact--or discovered in a 50 AD time capsule? Precious few who would give up the comfort of their hard-won wealth, the majesty of cathedrals, the security of a large nest egg and health plan.

Clivedurdle

And that tracks to modern differences on things like the priesthood of all believers and right back to 500 BCE with the different views of the Greeks and Persians on centralised priesthoods.

So maybe it is a psychological thing about where we find security and truth, in ourselves or in human external structures?