Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

Thank you J-D for these big questions. Sorry to be slow in response.

The cultural reaction among the great ancient civilizations of the near east to the growth of the Roman Empire has to be understood against the long gradual history of the rise of military power through the Holocene culminating in the empires of Babylon, Assyria, Greece and Rome.

The ancient world of the oikoumene had a loose network of spiritual people stretching from Greece and Egypt across to Babylon and India and beyond. These people held the memory of an earlier peaceful world before metal enabled national wars. One of their core views, which found its way into the Bible in Paul’s Letter to the Romans 6:14 and Galatians 5:4, was the distinction between the Edenic state of grace and the Roman state of corruption, between the spirit and the flesh.

Christianity arose among people with a deep faith that the pen is mightier than the sword. This Gnostic belief held that the rule of the spirit will eventually triumph over the rule of the flesh, through a return to lost earlier values of trust and community. This core belief in spiritual grace was in my view the key to the construction of the Christ Myth in the Gospels.

The slow rise of the corrupting power of the sword with the development of metal technology is reflected in the mythology of the fall from grace. The Vedic myth of successive worse ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron appears again in Daniel’s dream of the statue of the king with feet of clay and in Hesiod’s story of the lost golden age. This dream of successive ages is central to Christian eschatology, with its idea of an eventual consummation of history through the reign of Christ as word made flesh in a new golden age as described in the apocalypse.

My view is that the claim that early Christians expected a sudden arrival of the kingdom of God does not come from the original source. Instead, I suggest there was a deeper wisdom tradition, seen in the statement in Psalm 90 and the Epistle of Peter that a thousand years is as a day to God. By this tradition, the fall from grace culminating in the Roman conquest would not be miraculously ended, but rather a deep vision of cosmic reconciliation - a new heaven and new earth – would gradually grow until it reached a tipping point to replace military security as a basis of world peace.

In the Vedic Yuga framework, the cycle of time does not see a sudden shift from the Iron Age to the Golden Age, but rather a slow ascent through symbolic ages of Bronze and Silver.

In terms of visual cosmology, this cyclic understanding of time was available to the ancients through knowledge of the precession of the equinox as the clock of the ages. In terms of modern science, the myth of the cycle of ages between light and dark matches precisely to the orbital cycle of glaciation as the big structure of terrestrial time. The low point of the orbital cycle was in 1246 AD when the June solstice was farthest from the sun.

So the answer is that the original writers of the word of God were cosmic seers who had a deeply accurate intuition of history, and who established the Christ Myth in the expectation of the eventual victory of the word over the sword. The sword of Rome was able to capture and nearly destroy this sublime wisdom, such that its survival in the Bible today is only fragmentary, and can only be seen by a philosophical archaeology of the texts.A further part of the focus on the word was the idea that Christ is Lord. What this essentially means is that the Logos is the rational connection between history and the absolute, and this concept of Christ as cosmic reason or order is worshipped as the highest reality. This theology provides a faith framework of absolute certainty, against which Roman power can be seen as ephemeral and temporary. The recognition that Rome's reliance on the sword was evil led to an enlightened understanding that Roman imperial power lacked divine legitimacy.Originally, as I see it, the core ideas of Christianity were the Beatitudes and the Last Judgment, building on Isaiah’s messianic prophecy that the man of sorrows would be despised and rejected, and the teaching in Psalm 118 that the stone the builder refused would become the head of the corner. The idea is that eventually the meek will inherit the earth through the construction of a compelling understanding of the centrality of works of mercy and the moral failure of rule by the sword. As we now move into a globalised world, this prophecy is borne out by the decreasing relevance of military security and the growing need to find security in relationships of trust and interconnection. I think originally there was a reverence for the presence of the divine within nature, leading to a comprehension that the things that are of least importance to the powerful are actually most important in terms of any coherent vision of the sacred.

The rule of the word inverts the rule of the sword, placing the least as most important within an ethical vision of love and grace.

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

I do have sympathy with the idea that it was Seneca wot dun it! Nazarenus.

Originally Posted by dog-on

The question was what, not who, or even how... the what being things in the air at the time which I think we can identify...

Of course, you are correct in that if the question was actually who or how, as in "Who started Christianity?" or "How, exactly, did Christianity start?", then we may are probably up the proverbial river.

Originally Posted by J-D

It was not previously clear to me that you were putting forward what I would describe as a mystical view, one which I regard as rubbish unsupported by evidence, although mystics, in my experience, tend not to find this a problem.

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

The question I am raising is the importance of mystical cosmic beliefs among the originators of Christianity. There is a lot of evidence for the existence of such beliefs, which can be studied from a scientific perspective, which is what I am trying to do. Apologies if that was not clear.

For example, the four living creatures of the evangelists as described in Ezekiel and Revelation contain zodiac symbolism, and the Jewish high priest wore zodiac symbols on his breastplate. Whatever we may think of these ancient practices and beliefs today, we should not simply dismiss their influence on the worldview of the first Christians. As another example, the alpha and omega symbolism contains a plausible simple link to zodiac ages as explaining the Christian concept of ages. My view is that this cosmic belief factor is actually central to how the Christian worldview emerged, and helps to provide a coherent natural explanation for the texts as they evolved.

The epistemic status of mystical beliefs is a separate question from their importance to the ancients. I understand your argument that mysticism is rubbish. I do not accept that any of my statements are rubbish, as I am trying to describe a plausible hidden ancient view, not endorsing any claims about magical forces.

Originally Posted by aa5874

The Gospels are primarily and fundamentally anti-Jewish.

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

I disagree. Jesus said not a jot or tittle of the Jewish law would disappear, and is presented as the spiritual Son of the Jewish King David. The Jewish high priest Caiaphas says at John 11:48 "If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation."

The comparison between the Jews and the Romans here is like the relation between the Norwegian puppet Quisling and the German dictator Adolf Hitler. The Jews make a strategic calculation that it is expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish.

Suggesting the New Testament is primarily directed against the Jews is like saying the allied effort in WW2 was primarily against leaders of conquered nations who collaborated with the Nazis. Failure to see the Roman puppet master who is pulling the strings of the Jewish puppet.

Originally Posted by outhouse

It also fits the profile of a Galilean Zealot perfectly.

Originally Posted by TedM

I'm curious whether you consider this man to have been prone to violence generally, or mild mannered? I find it interesting that Paul refers to the 'meekness' of Christ. Your thoughts?

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

The question I am raising is the importance of mystical cosmic beliefs among the originators of Christianity. There is a lot of evidence for the existence of such beliefs, which can be studied from a scientific perspective, which is what I am trying to do. Apologies if that was not clear.

For example, the four living creatures of the evangelists as described in Ezekiel and Revelation contain zodiac symbolism, and the Jewish high priest wore zodiac symbols on his breastplate. Whatever we may think of these ancient practices and beliefs today, we should not simply dismiss their influence on the worldview of the first Christians. As another example, the alpha and omega symbolism contains a plausible simple link to zodiac ages as explaining the Christian concept of ages. My view is that this cosmic belief factor is actually central to how the Christian worldview emerged, and helps to provide a coherent natural explanation for the texts as they evolved.

The epistemic status of mystical beliefs is a separate question from their importance to the ancients. I understand your argument that mysticism is rubbish. I do not accept that any of my statements are rubbish, as I am trying to describe a plausible hidden ancient view, not endorsing any claims about magical forces.

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

...
The ancient world of the oikoumene had a loose network of spiritual people stretching from Greece and Egypt across to Babylon and India and beyond. These people held the memory of an earlier peaceful world before metal enabled national wars. ...
...
So the answer is that the original writers of the word of God were cosmic seers who had a deeply accurate intuition of history, and who established the Christ Myth in the expectation of the eventual victory of the word over the sword. The sword of Rome was able to capture and nearly destroy this sublime wisdom, such that its survival in the Bible today is only fragmentary, and can only be seen by a philosophical archaeology of the texts.
... The idea is that eventually the meek will inherit the earth through the construction of a compelling understanding of the centrality of works of mercy and the moral failure of rule by the sword. As we now move into a globalised world, this prophecy is borne out by the decreasing relevance of military security and the growing need to find security in relationships of trust and interconnection.

I think originally there was a reverence for the presence of the divine within nature, leading to a comprehension that the things that are of least importance to the powerful are actually most important in terms of any coherent vision of the sacred.
...