Didymus

In this book "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark points out that the rate of growth of Christianity was very slow in the first century. But at the end of the century, there was a sudden and dramatic upsurge in conversions. Stark attributes this shift mainly to the martyrs; potential converts would have thought that any religion that could foster such devotion must have a lot going for it.

But this upsurge in conversions also coincided with the wider dissemination of the gospels, which seem to have gotten into high gear ca 100 CE. For the first time, Jesus was seen depicted as a man/god who had actually lived and died as a real human being in recent history. If we take Paul's earlier "christology" as anything like thoroughgoing, something was clearly missing - time, place and circumstance. Paul and and his congregations seem to have had no idea as to when or where their savior had been crucified. The absence of that information must have been a source of great frustration to Christians, and a stumbling block for potential converts. Now, thanks to the gospels, Jesus took shape as a genuine human being. Finally, they could place him at a known time - 70 years prior - and at known places - Galilee, Jerusalem, Capernaum, etc.

And there's more. The gospels confirmed that the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ of the Pauline Christians was the same wandering Galilean named Jesus who was the subject of all those folktales and books of sayings. "Good News" indeed; that that must have been great news to Christians and particularly to Christian missionaries, who now had a much more complete "package" to sell. That new package included more than theology and soteriology; it presented a living, breathing earthly miracle worker who lived an exemplary life, preached an ethic of compassion and foregiveness, and who had the courage to challenge worldly authority.

I'm not suggesting that Mark and the other gospel writers invented the historical Jesus purely as a recruiting device. Mark and other Christians were almost certainly searching scripture to fill the gaps - "Who was Jesus?", "When did he live?", "Who crucified him?" Mark and the other gospel writers uncovered and offered plausible answers, and their answers were credible enough to capture the imagination of Pauline Christians and potential converts alike.

Didymus