Montgomery Scott

Christianity was an offshoot of Jewish faith.

I believe that a real person named Jesus Christ was on Earth 2000 years ago. He became a minister, and had a following. The man became famous, but at the same time pissing off the heirarchy, who conspired to have him executed, which in the end, happened. Several years later, another guy named Saul of Tarsus became a convert and started converting others in a big way. He went all the way to Rome, Athens, Asia Minor and into the Roman Empire. We know the story. Now if all the magical stuff happened, can't say. I will say that all the people in the Bible were real people who lived on this Earth at that time.

The Christians had a big opening in the empire, in that the Roman religion was on the wane, especially after the 2nd Century A.D. Christianity took over the vaccum. Probably much the same with Islam and the Arabic/Oriental peoples of the Middle Eastern religion several hundred years later.

Christianity couldn't really push far into Asia at the time because most people had their own religions. Then there was the problem of speaking a strange language. With the Roman Empire, there were many languages floating around Palestine at that time, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, whatever the hell the Arabs spoke. Missionaries who could speak those languages spread the word, until someone can speak Persian can talk to the Persians, or someone who spoke a Turkic language can go east. This took time. It took 600-700 years for the religion to go from Palestine to Finland for example. No internet in those days.


Christianity spread into Roman Empire because the Jews operated freely with prejudice, and Jewish Christians could spread out quickly to Italy, Spain, France, and even England during the Pax Romana. The old pagan Zues religion was on the wane, especially after the Third Century. The Christian religion made up for a lot of that vaccum.

Another thing too, was that it was not so much dropping one religion and accepting a new one, rather than the new one is co-opting things from the old. Christmas and Easter were pagan festivals. A lot of Islam came about the ancient worship of the Moon God (which is why the moon is so important in Islam, even though it was a symbol of the pagan peoples) Those funny, pointed hats that the Pope and the Bishops wear comes from pagan religion. The Catholic Church is more or less a continuation of Roman paganism, substituting Zues for Jesus and turning the Vestil Virgins into nuns.

The center of religious power in the West has always been Rome. For over a billion people on Earth, Rome (Vatican City) is their religious capital. People tend to have more loyalty to their religion, which is the personification of their God, than to their nation and flag.

Of course, there were divisions of the faith even during before the reformation, and now Christianity has thousands of Christian denominations, every one of them different because their is some minor doctrinal difference in theology, which is caused by the confusing way the Bible was put together in the first place. Last thing to remember is that the Bible was assembled for several hundred years after the start of the religion, and then it took about a thousand years for most common people to have a copy of their own to read. This is what gave the Mother Church so much power. As soon as the printing press came into being, then there were serious cracks and rebellion against Catholicism which resulted in all these crazy churches you see on every freaking street corner.

andrewcriddle

People often underestimate the relatively early spread of Christianity into the East and Far East

See for example Church_of_the_East_in_China

Andrew Criddle

dogsgod

An unknown author writes a story about a Son of man, a saviour of mankind, crucified at the time of Pilate, and people believe this really happened, and at the time of Pilate because that's what it says, even though there is nothing to corroborate the story. In fact, we can see how much was borrowed from the OT, and we can see that the authors of Matthew and Luke are reliant on Mark, they copied Mark almost word for word. We can also read the epistles that were written before the gospels and see that the epistle writers paint a very different picture, one that does not include a Jesus of Nazareth nor a crucifixion from a recent past of theirs. The epistle writers predate the gospel writers, they are obsessed with a resurrected Christ figure, but none claim witness by anyone to a crucifixion. Yet people accept the gospels as real and actual events and not the mythology that it is from start to finish. Religion, gottaluvit.

aa5874

The epistles are not about a resurrected Christ but about a specific Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.

There is a massive difference between thinking that the EXPECTED Messiah was heavenly and that JESUS was the Messiah who was raised from the dead after he was crucified.

The epistles are fictitious in nature they are not philosophical. These authors of the epistles are attempting to histocise the Jesus story.

The philosophical heavenly Messiah had no name. This heavenly Messiah was never on earth.

Once there was no actual Jesus then the epistles with the name Jesus most likely were written after Jesus was invented. as one who was a Messiah, was the Son of God, was crucified and raised from the dead.

The epistles on their own would provide no infornation about the very Jesus that is found in the writings. Some other source must have been before the epistles for Jesus Christ to make any sense.

It was either Jesus did actually live or that his history was invented for the epistles to make sense.

It was not the former. The epistles are after the Jesus story.

mountainman

The two extant carbon fourteen datings are the only sure and firm evidence for dating that I know of. I do not know too many people who are going to argue against the C14. I do not view paleography as "sure". The C14 dates are very late, and as an ahistoricist I will cite these as evidence for the very late appearance of the new testament literature.

aa5874

What you believe about Jesus has no real historical value unless you are prepared to produce credible historical sources to support your belief.

The NT and Church writings do NOT support your belief that Jesus was just a man. They support the belief that was the son of a God, who was equal to God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the offspring of the Holy Ghost.

From where did you get your belief? You probably imagined Jesus was just a man.

Even the Church writers contradict you. People used to laugh at Jesus believers and called them atheists and cannibals in the 2nd century. Christians and Jesus believers appear to be operating in secret.

Once you read the writings of Justin Martyr, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Origen and Minucius Felix you would realise that Christians and Jesus believers were being persecuted.

The history of Jesus believers as presented by the Church is bogus. Acts of the Apostles appears to be non-historical. Examine the conversion of Paul, it is fiction.

Based on Justin Martyr, writing in the middle of the 2nd century, there appear not be any large numbers of Jesus believers or established churches. Justin Martyr had barely heard anything about Jesus except when he met an old man by accident.

Again, Justin Martyr, Philo, and Josephus contradict you. There is really no credible historical source that can show that Jews would have worshiped a man as a God.

Up to around 135 CE, the Jews expected an earthly Messiah, not the son of God.

There is just no credible historical source of antiquity that can show there were Jews who worshiped Jesus as a God in the third century.

You seem to be confusing the word "Christians" and those who believed in Jesus of the NT.

In antiquity, the history of "Christians" and the history of "Jesus believers" are two completely different things. There would have been Christians in antiquity even if no-one invented Jesus.

mountainman

And which -- in the later 4th century, before the falling of Rome --- categorised Hellenism, Platonism, Pythagoreanism, etc, etc as a punishable heresies.

Do you understand that Constantine was the son of a son of a Germanic goatherder? Do you understand that Constantine dismissed the Praetorian guard, and replaced them with very very large Germanic chieftans with very large sharp swords who surrounded him on prctically all occassions, and that this change in the structure of the "Roman" army may have been enacted well before he took Rome.

aa5874

Dating the the four gospels must have some contribution to the storyline. It is precisely because the Gospels were initially dated erroneously why the content were believed to have been prophetic and believed to contain the words of the son of a God.

If it can be ascertained that all four Gospels were written well after the Fall of the Temple, then all the so-called predictions by the son of God that the Temple would have fallen would "magically" take on a very different meaning.

Contrary to what you believe, the dating and the storyline are inseparable.

maryhelena

Since the gospel Jesus is not a historical figure and the gospel storyline not a historical record of early Christianity - there is no way to ascertain who, among the early Christians, made any predictions regarding the Temple prior to its fall in 70 ce. Maybe there were real live Christian prophets, or prophetesses - but since no one seems to have put their name to any prophecy regarding the fall of the Temple - the whole issue re prophecy and the early Christians is left rather open-ended....The gospel story is just that - a storyline - an origin storyline not a historical record of the beginnings of Christianity.

aa5874

You must admit that the dating and chronology is critically important to find out when people started to believe the non-historical Jesus story.

Once you admit that the Jesus story itself is not history then it is the belief and the time when the belief in the non-historical Jesus story occurred that is of primary importance.

Without an historical Jesus, without an actual birth of a Jesus character, then it is the "birth" of the non-historical story that is most significant in determining the beginning of Jesus believers.

The Mormon Bible itself contains non-historical events but Mormonism began in ernest after Joseph Smith supposedly copied the words of a God from "Golden Plates".

The date of the copying of the words of a God from the "Golden Plates" signal the beginning of Mormonism, so too, the date of writing of the first Jesus story, which supposedly contains the words of a God, signals the beginning of Jesus believers.

After the Fall of the Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem, or after 70 CE, seems to fit the Canon perfectly.