J-D

Even the restricted category of stories based on religions don't have a habit of starting new religions.

spin

I was trying to clarify what Toto said, yet it would seem you still haven't actually taken in what was said. Toto was not talking about a founder, but about the conversion process. I guess that you are asking about how it all started, which was not Toto's intent, so I can't clarify that.

I'll try to respond with a functional possibility that seems to explain the little evidence there is for me.

What we face is a tradition that existed before the gospels were written. They tell a roughly similar story. How that story relates to reality is not adduceable from the texts. That would simply be accepting stories at face value and there are no external supports for the story, which would suggest that we cannot reclaim any satisfying account of what reality lies behind the gospels.

I personally have pointed to the possibility that the christian religion may have started with Paul. Working from a tentative reading of Paul's literature, especially Galatians, that Paul did not get his knowledge of the Jesus messiah from other people, claiming his gospel came from revelation. If we take him at his word, it would mean that there is no reason to believe that there was a messianic tradition specifically regarding Jesus, though there were messianic traditions in existence at the time, including a somewhat developed Johannine tradition that seems to be behind the story of Apollos and perhaps behind other non-christian baptist movements. Even the gospels indicate that the followers of John didn't just shrivel up after his death.

If we work with Paul providing us our earliest information about the religion, we find that he had been a conservative Jew hassling messianic groups until he had his revelation concerning his savior. He then contacts the Jewish messianists in Jerusalem (James, Cephas & John) to present them with his revelation, but they didn't seem interested enough for Paul. Paul split with them, though kept in contact with Cephas and ridiculed him for not adhering to his Jewish practices (Gal 2:11-14). From Paul we see that the Jerusalem messianists had no knowledge of Jesus having brought a new dispensation, putting aside circumcision and Jewish torah observance.

The Jesus religion that became christianity though definitely present with Paul isn't seen in those before him. If we start with Paul and his christ crucified, we may have the beginning of christianity.

However, people so frequently want to know more about what they are dealing with, as you are trying to understand more of the views you are dealing with here. Once a tradition exists, be it one based on a real person or not, if it is active, it will be expanded upon in the telling of the stories. We have stories for Alexander and for Arthur, the former was definitely real, the second who knows, but the round table was not part of the earliest surviving traditions. Where did Little John, Will Scarlett and Friar Tuck come from, when we look at the earliest indications of Robin Hood? Where did the Talmud get the five diciples of Yeshu ha-Notzri? Traditions develop with the telling. It doesn't matter if somewhere in there was a seed of real events or not. As long as a tradition is maintained through the telling it will evolve.

mountainman

The Greek new testament was designed to be a continuation from the Greek LXX (not as a continuation of the Hebrew Bible) and shares a "nomina sacra" codification in the earliest Greek mss. It would be logical that a continuation of the LXX claimed to have been authored before Masada deals in Hebrew motifs (rendered to Greek). Everyone knew Masada as a boundary event in the 1st century.

Looking back from the 2nd, 3rd or 4th century, the authors of the Greek NT knew they did not have to contend with the lack of living eyewitnesses. The codex technology demanded a story of god in a codex associated with antiquity.

The Hebrew sages were greater than the Greek philosophers and their knowledge had greater antiquity, according to the Christian experts. Plato essentially learnt everything he knew from Moses. It's a bullshit claim, but many people still think its valid.






εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

dog-on

The answer to your question could simply be that someone/s began to study the Hebrew texts (seemingly in Greek translation) and came to believe that they had discovered a hidden meaning/message within said texts.

Robert Tulip

Thank you Ted for posing such a good question. My opinion is that the main reasons are found in politics and cosmology.

Christianity emerged among the Jews as a means of subverting Roman imperialism, in the wake of the catastrophic destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. In the construction of a Common Era, the Pax Romana provided a military rule grounded in the suppression of cultural diversity, despite Rome’s specious claims to allow freedom of worship. The Jews sought means to destroy the moral legitimacy of Rome in ways that would not bring a repeat of the wrath of the legions. A group of Jews found a way to assert their cultural dignity in alliance with Hellenistic religious groups with the construction of the myth of Jesus Christ, the one for all who represented the suffering of the entire Jewish people under the Roman conquest, making peace by the blood of his cross.

In asserting that Christ was Lord, Christians rejected the temporal Lordship of Caesar, but in such a way as to maintain an impression of loyalty, through texts such as ‘render unto Caesar’ and ‘be subject to the governing authorities’. This imperial loyalty was initially a veneer, concealing a cold spiritual fury at Roman moral degeneracy, violence, stupidity and desecration of the holy places.

The construction of the Christ story drew from several wells. Firstly, midrash took the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament as the template. Within this Jewish frame of historic prophecy of Jesse’s branch, old saviour ideas from other cultures were incorporated, such as from Horus, Krishna and Dionysus, with the ancient archetype of resurrection of the saviour from the dead symbolising the annual cycle of spring replacing winter. The context for this construction of the Christ Myth was the high wisdom of the secret societies of mystery worship, notably the Jewish Nazarenes and the Jewish-Buddhist Therapeuts, articulated through Platonic idealism from Greece.

The timing of the Christ story was determined on the basis of a core religious mystery heuristic, that God’s will should be done on earth as it is in heaven, in the line from the Lord’s Prayer drawn from the Emerald Tablets of Thoth, ‘as above so below’. This timing of the appearance of Christ in the heavens was determined by a simple scientific observation from ancient astronomy, that the sun’s position at the beginning of spring precessed from its traditional place in Aries into Pisces, from first to last, in 21 AD, during the rule of Pilate. Cosmology drove the imagination of history.

Hence we see the cosmic basis for core Christian ideas including the alpha and omega, the word made flesh, the eternal logos or cosmic reason, and numerous other Biblical tropes including the loaves and fishes, the covenant of grace replacing law, the holy city, the tree of life, the moon at the woman’s feet, the dragon in heaven, and the 7000 year eschatology. All these ideas are purely natural scientific cosmic symbols, requiring no miraculous or supernatural explanation.

The cosmic basis for the Christ myth was so successfully suppressed, ignored, forgotten and denied by the triumphant later orthodox Roman supernatural co-option that we have almost lost all memory of the real natural origins, apart from the abundant fugitive traces in ancient texts and symbols. Reconstructing these forensic fragments requires a defiance of the unrepentant evil alienated psychology of anti-heresy, so we can recognise that the story of Jesus Christ remains central to human politics as the explanation of our fall from grace and our potential for redemption, divinising nature in the building of a new heaven on earth.

TedM

Nothing sinister. I have a hard time seeing how it could have started and taken hold among Jews if it wasn't based on some real events about one real Jewish person, but I am interested to know what those who don't agree have to say.

Chili

Correct, fire is needed to start a new religion. Ask Billy Graham, he knows, while his own son let it all go to the dogs.

aa5874

You will now immediately exhibit most blatant double standards by accepting the Pauline writings at face value, and even the very Gospels, while simultaneously ridiculing others for accepting the stories of Jesus as earlier than the Pauline Corpus.

We cannot start with Paul even if we take him at face value because Paul claim he PERSECUTED the Church of Christ in the very same Galatians.

1. Galatians 1:13 KJV2. Galatians 1:23 KJV3. 1 Corinthians 15:9 KJV4.1 Tessalonoians 2.15-15 KJV5. Romans 16:7 KJV6. [u]1 Cor.15.3-4 KJV[u]7. 1 Cor.15.8 KJV
The PAULINE writer was LAST if "take him at his word".

The Pauline writer did NOT start the Jesus cult of Christians.

Galatians 1.20-21 KJV If the Pauline writer did NOT lie the Churches in Christ in Judea were started without him and he persecuted them.

We cannot start with the Pauline writer--Paul was the LAST to be seen of the resurrected Jesus.

The Jesus cult and story was well developed before Pauline letters were composed and BEFORE the Pauline writer preached the Faith that he once destroyed.

jdboy

Your argument makes no sense. Paul persecuted the church of God and the churches in Christ not the followers of the Jesus cult

aa5874

Your statement is probably the most absurd that I have seen. Please, first read the Pauline Corpus.

You seem to have no idea that the Churches of Christ in the Pauline letters refer to the Churches of the Jesus cult.

Are you not aware that Jesus is Christ in the Pauline writings and that Jesus Christ is named over 100 times in the Pauline Corpus??

Again, if we take Paul at his word, as suggested by spin, then Paul did NOT start the Jesus cult.

The Galatians writer claimed he even knew the Lord's brother.

Jesus Christ is called the Lord Jesus Christ in the Pauline Corpus.

If Jesus did exist and was Christ in Judea then it would be far more likely that Christ himself started the Churches in Christ in Judea--NOT Paul.

Paul PERSECUTED the Churches in Christ of Judea.

Paul could NOT have been both a Persecutor and the originator of the Churches in Christ of Judea.