The Real Origins of Christianity

[Joshpantera]

 

 

I'm leaving a link to Carrier's blog page: https://www.richardcarrier.info/

 

 

[Joshpantera]

Bonus sections. The Gospel According to Richard Carrier: 

 

 

 

 

[Geezer]

Carrier's theory of the origins of Christianity is the most plausible scenario I've heard. 

[Blood]

One thing is for sure, the "origins" as described by Acts and the Gospels are completely fictitious.

 

The reality of Christian origins involved Greek-speaking people encountering nascent Judaism and the translations of the scriptures into Greek. We tend to understate the fact that Judaism was a proselytizing religion at this point, because the Judeans later realized this was a bad idea and became completely insular. Plus, many Jews also spoke or wrote in Greek so this helped facilitate cross-cultural communication. 

 

In my opinion, some of these Greek converts eventually broke away, took a copy of the Greek translation of the scriptures with them, and began forming new religious sects based around the idea that the "Christ" was an actual figure of worship himself, not simply a honorable title given to someone (e.g., Cyrus the Great described as a "Christ" in the OT). From this, they evolved a theology that this Christ figure's purpose was to bring salvation to the Gentiles (Greeks initially). After the First Judeo-Roman war and the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, they felt emboldened enough to begin writing their own scriptures, set in recent historic time, about how the angel-spirit-god Christ came to earth, temporarily assumed the body of a man (Jesus - meaning savior), and was crucified by "the Jews" in order to fulfill his mission of bringing salvation only to the Gentiles. These events only happened in their imagination. 

 

This new religion took off because it wasn't perceived as a new religion. Although the Greek converts were new, they pretended that they were part of a religion that went back to the beginning of time, and that their interpretations of the scriptures were the only correct ones. The old Greek religions had lost their appeal after the Romans had taken over.