Origins of Christianity

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We all know the first Christians were living in and around Judea, then moved to places like Antioch and eventually made it to the city of Rome since it's the time of the Roman Empire.

My question is, how much of the New Testament reflects Roman culture and values? People like to talk about Jewish roots but for centuries, Christians portrayed the Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate as the one who tried to save Jesus while the Jews of Jerusalem condemned attempting to make the Jews look like persecutors of Jesus.

Another question I have concerns the myth of Jesus's birth. Just how factual is it, or has it been embellished by the followers to weave it into previous books of the Torah so they can claim Christ is a messiah?

Christianity has roots in astrotheological sun worshiping cults.
The story of Jesus has many commonalities with Horus & Krishna also, to name just a couple.
There are many esoteric things hidden within the texts.

Maybe that's because some of these universal myths found their way into Jewish lore only the names were changed? Jesus's birth myth was recorded as such to match previous prophecy so he could claim to be messiah who will deliver his people from the oppressive hands of the Romans.

To make it very short:
Christianity is a Jewish sect which allows gentiles (non-jews) to convert to this particular type of Judaism, without the circumsition and the food restrictions.
This is mainly due to Paul the Aposle (Paul of Tarsus or Saul of Tarsus, his original name) who made an agreement with other jews, and was done to enroll gentiles into the Jewish resistance against the
Roman occupation of Judea.

Later, the Romans proclaimed it a new religion and made the New Testament into being, from old scriptures and stories, which they wrote into the Bible, to fit the prophecies in the Old Testament.
Then you get a coherent story, and a complete book called the Bible.



Actually, there is a theory which has good evidence for its truth, that says that Jesus' mother Mary was raped in Sepphoris (a town not so far from Nazareth) by a Roman soldier named Tiberius Abdes Pantera.
(Source: A TV-documentary, "The Nativity Decoded", by Robert Beckford, can be found on Youtube. Also another source here:
http://robinhl.com/2011/11/06/jesus-son-of-pantera/).

The evidence for the truth of this story is the fact that Jesus was know by this Roman name "Pantera" (as in Jesus of Pantera, Jesus, son of Pantera) in non-biblical sources.

Last edited by thinkinginpictures on 11 Dec 2013, 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The first followers of Jesus were Jews who believed he was the Messiah.

Later on Paul started recruiting Gentiles.

ruveyn

I'm thinking the real reason they let the gentiles become Christians was due to so many of them being attracted to the cult. Maybe they were the main demographic, especially Greeks.

And I understand all this. What I am interested in discussing is the origins of Jesus himself and how much we really know about his birth. What if he was just some guy who came out of nowhere and everything that has been written about his birth is completely false? It's possible.

The "facts of his birth"?

There are none.

He left no birth certficate.

Indeed his entire life left virtually no paper trail.

There are either NO extra biblical sources, or ALMOST NO, extrabiblical sources that mention him.

He was like most common nonaristocrats of his time- little is there to reconstruct his life.

About: how much of christianity/new testament is roman, and how much is not. Thats a big complicated question.

Long story short: Rome conquered the more ancient civilizations of the east. But in late roman times Rome began to succumb to oriental ideas about religion. In late Roman times monotheistic cults sprang up in the east and spread west. In the end three cults won out: Judaism, christianity, and Islam.

With all three heavily influenced by Persian Zorastrianism (which still thrived in Iran before the Arabs overran the place a little while later).

So christianity's rise was part of the east-west cultural blending that was happening as Greco-Roman humanistic culture declined even as Rome continued to rule.

Possible, yes. but given what many [secular] experts see in the NT and other texts at the time, it's likely he was just one of many preachers at the time claiming to be the Messiah. However, fortunately, for him he was made way more famous (long after his death) than any of the others thanks to his later Apostles.

Some "fact" about Jesus is that he was never really born in Bethlehem (very possible it was Nazareth all along).

That's what I think. He's just some normal man who might have been the first born "rabbi" son. He had a knack for public speaking and wanted to change things. His family could have gone to participate in the census but I doubt he was born during the trip. Who knows, though, he could have been, and if he was, I doubt he got any more attention than the usual birth. I do wonder if King Harrod slaughtered the innocents. Is that documented elsewhere?

No, Matthew is the only book that mentions this event, and it looks like it was put there for theological purposes.

It seems so weird to make up such a far fetched lie just for the sake of appearing to be the messiah.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7jClyinERY[/youtube]

Paul was making converts among the Gentiles. Peter did not approve.

ruveyn

No. If anything you have a lot of Greek thought in the New Testament but it's still a reflection of the Old Testament, the Old Testament is a fusion of Egyptian and Babylonian Mysteries, Greece (particularly Pythagoras and diaspora) were largely started on Egyptian framework, especially in the number theology, but it took on a distinctively Greek flavor. The culture of the time and region was Greco-Judaic and Greco-Egyptian and the Romans we're really avid borrowers of Greek thought themselves and kept to Greek as the mode of communication in the region. Christ was a clarification and edification of the regional beliefs.

Peter actually came around later.

The Old Testament has a little bit of everything but is mostly about Jews and their history, their belief in one God instead of several. Belief in many was the norm at the time, so the Jews stood out.

The reason Peter changed his opinion, I wonder, is most who were attracted to Christianity were Greek gentiles so if he wanted his church to have a future, he had to accept them or it would have just faded away in Judaism. Imagine if he had never accepted them? The west would have been so different.


I applaud Jesus for reaching out to those society pretty much hated, despised, spat on, completely banished and ignored. His acceptance of such misery and willing to attempt alleviating their suffering is why he will always hold a special place in my heart even though I do not agree with everything he says, particularly his views on marriage, nor how his followers behave, which I do not always agree.