That's because it was not "one thing" until one group won out. This had nothing to do with any fucking god. It had to do with backing the right horse at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.
One of the great observations from antiquity is this, preserved by the xtian scholar Origen in an attempt to refute it.
That the intense bickering among jesus freaks was known even to a Neo-Platonist like Celsus speaks volumes of the amount of pious horseshit that was being thrown around.
Carrier's book is immensely important because he literally discusses all the evidence which jesus freaks routinely trot out for their nonsense and the result is most distressing to them. Even more, Carrier discusses the time period when all of this rejection of communal gods was going on in favor of the Hellenistic concept of personal salvation. Worth the read but don't get hung up in his Bayes Theorem stuff.
One of the great observations from antiquity is this, preserved by the xtian scholar Origen in an attempt to refute it.
Quote:"Christians, needless to say, utterly detest one another; they slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse, and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense...".
Celsus c 180 AD
That the intense bickering among jesus freaks was known even to a Neo-Platonist like Celsus speaks volumes of the amount of pious horseshit that was being thrown around.
Carrier's book is immensely important because he literally discusses all the evidence which jesus freaks routinely trot out for their nonsense and the result is most distressing to them. Even more, Carrier discusses the time period when all of this rejection of communal gods was going on in favor of the Hellenistic concept of personal salvation. Worth the read but don't get hung up in his Bayes Theorem stuff.
