who created christianity

[DeistPaladin]

That is silly. The Trinity was concieved of becasue of the fervent belief that Jesus was God. Overtime people began to question who was the better God. From this arose the Trinity, which states that they are coeternal and coequal.

The Trinity is an attempt to answer the conundrum of how Jesus could be the intercessor deity to the same OT god that forbade any gods before him (see 1st commandment).

Christianity is not the fulfillment of Judaism as Christians like to claim. Reading the OT thoroughly reveals as much. The Jews had no concept of Hell (they believed in Sheol or "the grave" which was essentially oblivion) nor a need for an intercessor to Yahweh. Their god was a jealous god who interacted personally with his people and demanded constant undivided attention. He makes is clear in Is. 43:10-12 that he delegates the role of judge and savior to no one. The Messiah was neither a godling nor a lamb of God for all of humanity but a glorious-yet-mortal warlord who would conquer and lead Israel to victory.

The earliest book of the NT offers an idea of how the idea of Jesus-the-intercessor-deity came to be. Revelation was actually written before any of the other books in the NT. It features a Jesus who is born in Heaven and reigns on earth (as opposed to the Gospel Jesus were the reverse is true). He leads an army down to earth to defeat Israel's enemies, presumably the Romans at that time. The Jesus character here is far from the gentle-meek-and-mild lamb of God but closer to the warlord idea that the Jews traditionally had about their Messiah-to-be.

At the time that Revelation was being written (by John of Patmos, an island known for its hallucinogenic mushrooms, which might explain why the book reads like a bad LSD trip) the Jews were chaffing under Roman rule. This was no small theological crisis for the "chosen people" of Yahweh. What happened to the pact that Yahweh had made? What happened to the line of David which was to rule forever? Where was the kingdom they were promised?

The OT contains no concept of Hell or the need for an intercessor. Such ideas are introduced in the NT. So where did the Christians get their ideas. It just so happens that surrounding "pagan" religions, Egyptian, Greek and Persian, did have ideas about an afterlife, Hell, salvation from it and an intercessor to the divine as well as certain practices like the Eucharist and the dying-and-rising savior. Knowing this, a more compelling scenario to the Christian dreamscape is that a faction of Jews, wondering where their kingdom was, began looking for it in a higher realm.

The amalgamation of Judaism with Pagan ideas is evident not just in the sudden introduction of Hell and a dying-and-rising savior deity to replace the Jewish warlord-messiah. It's also apparent in the taking over of sacred pagan festivals like Easter and Christmas. Ever wonder what wreaths, mistletoe, bunny rabbits and colored eggs have to do with Jesus? Nothing. They're holdovers from the previous pagan celebrations of the winter solstice and spring equinox. This also explains why the sabbath was moved from Saturday to Sunday, in violation of the 4th commandment.

The dying-and-rising savior was familiar to and no doubt appealing to the pagan converts to Christianity but presented a problem for the strictly monotheistic Jewish traditions. What was Jesus exactly? Was he a human as the Ebionites believed? An angel as the Aryans believed? A higher god as the Marcionites believed? If he was not God, how could he forgive sins? And wasn't praying to him a violation of the 1st commandment? But if Jesus was God, as the Docetics believed, who was Jesus praying to? How could God die on a cross? And how could God be his own intercessor? "No man commeth unto the father but by me" becomes "no man commeth unto me but by me".

The earliest Gospels were the "Synoptic Gospels" or Matthew, Mark and Luke. Reading these Gospels by themselves, ignoring John for a moment, one gets the sense that Jesus is separate from and subordinate to Yahweh. Jesus prays to Yahweh. Yahweh introduces Jesus in the 3rd person and speaks to him in the 2nd person. Jesus proclaims "not my will but thy will be done" suggesting that he is separate from and subordinate to Yahweh. A Christian would be hard pressed to find anything in these three Gospels that even suggests the Trinity. This was an "advanced" theological concept that didn't come along until John was being penned.

The "solution" was the Trinity. When Jesus prays to Yahweh, that's when he's not Yahweh. When Jesus forgives sins, that's when he is Yahweh. He's God and yet also not God at the same time. Three separate persons but one "substance", whatever that's supposed to mean. Three gods and yet they're one. Jesus is the subordinate intercessor to and yet also equal to Yahweh.

Also, the Trinity serves a special function in Theology. It allows for a completely just and loving God. It also allows for a God which is both outside of time and inside of time.

WTF?

Further, the theology of the Trinity was very well articulated before Nicea, and is pretty well articulated in the Gospel of John, and it is sprinkled throughout the NT, and even in a way in the OT.

It's actually not well articulated in John. Even the Gospel of John contradicts the idea at points.

John 14:28 My father is greater than I.
John 20:17 I ascend unto my father and your father, to my God and your God.

The Epistles are also not entirely clear on this point either

1Cor 11:3 The head of Christ is God
1 Tim 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

I'm keen to know where in the OT you find the Trinity.

Most scholars agree that John thought Jesus was God.

Apparently John didn't always agree with these "scholars". See the citations above.

Well the fact is that these various groups were ultimately not that influential and died out.

By being persecuted out of existence. And their influence can still be felt in Christian theology. Christian sentiments that the material world is evil and the spiritual world is good likely come from Docetic ideas. Matthew is the most Ebionite of the Gospels (and a variant of it was used by them according to Bart Ehrman). That Christians tie Jewish laws like the Ten Commandments into their theology might be their influence. That Christians then feel free to ignore the OT when the like is very Marcionite. I think it's a bit much to rule out any influence by these alternate Christianities that lost at Nicaea.

Well, most scholars agree that He did exist.

The Bible does not. See 1John 4:1-3 and 2John 1:7. In two separate epistles, John rails against a faction of early Christians that didn't believe Jesus had existed as a flesh-and-blood being. Wasn't this recent history for those who would have known better? Why appeal to faith as he did and not dismiss them as crazy for ignoring an obvious reality?

If a real Jesus did exist and Christian mythology was built upon his story, good luck ever knowing what that story was. The only detailed accounts we have, indeed only accounts at all we have of his teachings, are contained only in Christian mythology. Separating fact from fiction will be impossible without some new archeological discovery. If such a man did exist, his story likely bares so little resemblance to the Gospel character that we might as well say that the Gospel character never existed.

Also, if Jesus really existed, it is evident from the dearth of any non-Christian testimony that he was so insignificant that no one ever noticed him (quite to the contrary of Gospel claims that his fame spread far and wide).

Once again there were not that many different interpretations of Jesus in the early days. Most of these were small and lost power quickly.

Centuries is not "quickly". And again, it was only persecution that ultimately drove them out of existence.