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emtyeye
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26 Feb 2011, 10:00 pm

Long did I wonder why the Pope and his friends dress like Roman emperors and live at approximatly the same address. Now there is a discovery that explains it:
Judea was a big problem for Rome in the first century. Slaves and others were converting to Judism for several reasons. Jews were against slavery, at least for their own people and went to great lengths to free their enslaved members. Jews refused to work on the Shabath, slaves worked every day. The Jews would not worship Ceasar, who was considered to BE "god" by Rome. And Judea was a fierce, militaristic state that openly revolted against Rome, providing inspiration to others who had been conquered. The general Vespasian went to war with them, but was called back to Rome by Nero and left his son Titus to clean up. Once in Rome, Nero was killed and Vespasian became emperor. He then was deified becoming "god" , thus Titus was literally "the son of god". Titus' campaign to destroy Jerusalem, as detailed by historian of the day, Josephus, follows the exact path of Jesus, starting at the sea of Gallilee, next to Gadara then Jerusalem. Jesus prophesises the destruction of Jerusalem and Titus actually accomplished it. The gospels were written by the three Flavian emperors, Vespasian, Titus and Dometion (the father, son and "holy ghost") as a form of war propaganda to subvert the Jewish religion and undermine it's militarism by replacing it with a pacifistic messiah who would "give unto Ceasar". The discovery is that the passages in Josephus' work "The War of the Jews" (circa 80 AD) that describe Titus' campaign against Jerusalem are a literary parallel to the campaign of Jesus in the New Testament. There are at least a dozen parallels and they occur in the exact same sequence in both texts. Both texts were written in the same part of the world and in the same time period. Jesus was Titus Flavius in disguise. Those who took up the new, invented religion would then wind up worshiping the Emperor without even realizing. Apparently, it's still going on.



Awesomelyglorious
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26 Feb 2011, 10:20 pm

No it isn't. This is insane. Why would the Romans have written a cult that they would have then later had reason to push for the extermination of it? If they wanted to create their own messiah, then why not actually create a messiah that was open to polytheism and thus ACTUALLY ACCEPTABLE to their society? Even further, why does the connection of three roman names to the trinity really matter if this is all a hoax? Going further again, why on earth would they expect a fake Roman cult planted into that society to be so acceptable that they'd actually write this stuff out themselves to implant it into the society?

I am sorry, but this is a conspiracy theory and is utterly ridiculous.



emtyeye
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26 Feb 2011, 10:33 pm

The "christians" Rome was persecuting were actually messianic jews.
Judism was/is monotheistic, so they created a religion that followed that tradition since they were after it's converts. They wove in their idenities so that the elite and posterity could know what they did. Judism was very attractive to many, especially slaves, and they were trying to move that trend into a direction that would lead back to Roman control and power.



MCalavera
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26 Feb 2011, 10:35 pm

emtyeye wrote:
The "christians" Rome was persecuting were actually messianic jews.
Judism was/is monotheistic, so they created a religion that followed that tradition since they were after it's converts. They wove in their idenities so that the elite and posterity could know what they did. Judism was very attractive to many, especially slaves, and they were trying to move that trend into a direction that would lead back to Roman control and power.


It was the Messianic Jews who wrote the NT Scriptures, thus invalidating your argument.



Philologos
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26 Feb 2011, 11:00 pm

Wasn't three of these enough?



Tollorin
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26 Feb 2011, 11:54 pm

No. The reason the Pope live like a roman emperor is because christianity had defined itself under the roman culture. Christianity also ended up be greatly influed by geco-roman philosophy by the way.


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iamnotaparakeet
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27 Feb 2011, 3:26 am

Christianity was merely tolerated within the Roman Empire in the beginning, and in the second half of the first century AD it was actively persecuted. From the mid first century AD until 330 AD Christianity was persecuted on and off - depending primarily upon who the emperor was at the time. But for nearly 280 years Christianity was attempted to be stamped out by some emperors and Christians were actively hunted, placed in arenas to be eaten by lions, burnt to death, required to walk upon shells and broken glass until they bled to death, cut to pieces, ripped apart, and otherwise considered criminals upon the basis of their beliefs and rejection of the pagan gods of Rome. So, no. Rome did not try to invent Christianity whatsoever, but rather it tried to kill it and failed.



leejosepho
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27 Feb 2011, 4:29 am

I was once shocked when a friend had suggested the Roman Catholic church had been the *first* church, and that Peter or someone/anyone from a much earlier day had been its first pope! Whew. I wonder whether he or someone/anyone else had ever been asked about that! But anyway, Roman churches got started long after first-century "followers of the way" had been slurred into being called "Christians", and nothing about its theatrical stage ever come from the heavenly throne room. But did Rome "invent Christianity"? I would be more inclined to say Rome merely invented Christendom.


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ruveyn
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27 Feb 2011, 10:39 am

Rome co-opted Christianity after attempting to oppose it and wipe it out. The result was the Roman Catholic Church.

ruveyn



naturalplastic
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27 Feb 2011, 11:11 am

The Empire came first, then came the religion.
The empire persecuted the faith, but then became comandeered by that same faith - a creed which then took advantage of the infrastructure of the Roman Emprie to spread itsself. Thus the capital of the Pagan Empire became the seat of the church.

A certain Arab merchant from a city just outside the Christianized Roman world seems to have learned from this.

Mohammed acted as both Ceasar and as Messiah, and founded both a new faith AND a new Empire in one stroke. The result was a speeded up version of the History of Rome- and a speeded up version of the spread of Christianity.
First a peninsula was united- then the empire spread to more than one continent ( stretching from the Pyranees to Pakistan). All within a centurey. The new relgion came along with the empire and didnt have to go through an underground persecution phase. Pretty smart.



leejosepho
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27 Feb 2011, 12:10 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
The Empire came first, then came the religion.
The empire persecuted the faith, but then became commandeered by that same faith - a creed which then took advantage of the infrastructure of the Roman Empire to spread itself. Thus the capital of the Pagan Empire became the seat of the church ...

Yes ... and thus divided and conquered.


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Philologos
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27 Feb 2011, 4:26 pm

DARE I remind anybody of the Christian bodies that had little or no influence from Rome, in some cases largely being out of reach even of the Eastern Empire?

Acceptance by the Empire did, yes, noticeably affect some surface features [the use of the basilica blueprints comes to mind], and some of the less consequential areas of theology.

But to say the empire invented, or even reinvented a religion it tried hard to suppress, and that then outlasted it .... well.



JakobVirgil
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27 Feb 2011, 5:10 pm

Philologos wrote:
DARE I remind anybody of the Christian bodies that had little or no influence from Rome, in some cases largely being out of reach even of the Eastern Empire?

Acceptance by the Empire did, yes, noticeably affect some surface features [the use of the basilica blueprints comes to mind], and some of the less consequential areas of theology.

But to say the empire invented, or even reinvented a religion it tried hard to suppress, and that then outlasted it .... well.


I see the effect of Rome on the jesus movement one of pruning rather than invention.
the parts of the movement that were Jewish or anti-rome did not survive.
-Jake



leejosepho
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27 Feb 2011, 5:22 pm

Yes ... and then that whatever-it-is infected the remainder of the globe.


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donnie_darko
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27 Feb 2011, 6:29 pm

No, but they did invent Roman Catholicism, which is the ancestor of almost all modern Christian beliefs.



MCalavera
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27 Feb 2011, 6:52 pm

leejosepho wrote:
I was once shocked when a friend had suggested the Roman Catholic church had been the *first* church, and that Peter or someone/anyone from a much earlier day had been its first pope!


Why were you shocked? What did you expect from Roman Catholics? Rationality?