Tartantyco

-Didn't he get himself killed ? Ah, my level of argumentation is simply astonishing...

mountainman

Read The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, first published
in the Greek c.220 CE by the author Philostratus, and miraculously
saved from the monumental destruction of literature attributable to
the despotic regimes of christian emperors of the fourth century.

It may be one of the pieces you are seeking. Certainly needs
to be digested if one is serious about the issue of the relative
historicity of various Messiahs in the first century of
the Egypto/Graeco/Roman empire.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

capnkirk

To begin with, there were only two probable outcomes...either one candidate would succeed, or none would. Let us consider the consider the former.

Within a field of relatively equal candidates, the winner would not necessarily stand out as the obviously best candidate, so looking for reasons would not promise any great revelations. Perhaps it was only because he had better preachers (AKA apostles).

On the other hand, perhaps the Christ at the center of Xtianity was never a single historical person. What if he was a composite of several of the candidates with a retrofitted historical biography built from a combination of prophecy to be fulfilled, stories/sayings of local holy men, and the personal savior/sacrificed diety motif that Paul and others preached. In which case, none of the historical characters actually turned out to be the Christ.

andrewcriddle

Thanks for an interesting post.

I think there may be two issues here.

The financial disabilities suffered by lay Pagans compared to lay Christians from say 400 onwards probably encouraged conversion to Christianity among the entrenched political families rather than the replacement of committed pagans by a new Christian secular elite.

On the other hand the increased resources and status of the church did allow Christian clergy from outside the establishment to achieve positions of social power and influence as bishops abbots etc.

Andrew Criddle

Malachi151

That was certainly not what I was saying, in fact I just got through writing an article/book showing that the Gospel of Mark is based on the Pauline letters:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...ospel_mark.htm

But if that step had not taken place, if a STORY about Jesus had never been written, then Christianity wouldn't exist today.

To use an example that has already been used, its like talking about James Bond.

James Bond began as a series of novels. If no James Bond movies had ever been made, James Bond would have still been a popular and well known figure in the 1950s, but its almost certain that James Bond wouldn't be the household name that it is today without the movies.

Without the movies the James Bond character would be one more of the thousands of largely unknown literary protagonists that are known mostly by a small number of paperback readers.

The movies, however, took James Bond to a whole new level.

Same with "Jesus".

The Gospels are what launched "Jesus" to widespread fame and what "immortalized" him.

Without the Gospels, Paul's movement would have just been one of thousands of other similar ones in the region and would have never become widely popular, and surely wouldn't be known today.

douglas

I think we are agreeing with each other. All I'm saying is...

No Paul = No Gospels = No Christianity.

or to use your example....

No Ian Fleming = No James Bond = No JB Movies (or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!) = No JB popularity

Rich Oliver

Seriously though. Jesus on the cross in his loin cloth. No one's gonna persusde me that's not a homoerotic fantasy.

Minimalist

Christians backed the right horse in the Civil War that Constantine won. He rewarded them. It had nothing to do with "Jesus."

Give someone the power to torture and kill people and he could have millions of them worshipping a toaster in a few years.

youngalexander

According to Peter Lampe From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries p148-50
In the 3rd & 4th C most Christian aristocrats were women and the majority of Christians were still lower class.

For the third century one can identify at most 32 individuals of senatorial rank as Christians; 22 of them are female ...
Roman aristocratic families were still in the post-Constantine period the last bastion of paganism.

At the end of the 4th C he cites the "old noble Roman family of the Ceionnii" whose male members held high posts, married Christian women but remained pagan. The daughters & granddaughters were raised Christian, married Christians, but the sons remained pagan.

The Christian mothers, sisters, and neices could not change the pagan spirit of the family, which held the male members of the family together.

Lampe also calls attention to the (not Ceionnii) private family catacomb on the Via Latina which has Christian frescoes in immediate proximity to pagan mythological scenes - see Jas Elsner Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire AD 100-450 p218, fig. 144.

The pagan spirit held on tenaciously well into the 6th C.

youngalexander

14 and claims to be an athiest. I remember 14 - that Bright awareness.
I think that he deserves better answers than we have thus far provided.

That is a good question. I have always wondered that myself. I still do.

The answer clearly lies within the psyche of humanity. Yet consider this, if not Jesus, then necessarily someone else.

Not so. Jesus differs in comparison to his contemporaries in two significant aspects.
First, since he is a product of Jewish messianism, his proponents may lay claim to an ancient theological lineage with a written history.
Secondly, he himself is claimed to be historic.

Competing savior gods did not enjoy the combination of these advantages.

There are a raft of sociological and historic factors which follow but Christianity was clearly an idea whose time had come by the 2nd C.