(July 19, 2012 at 8:39 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: I have no doubt that these other faiths did influence early Christians, or else where did these non-Jewish ideas come from?
And so we have a compelling scenario where a sect of Judaism, influenced heavily by pagan ideas, gave up on this world seeing both their promised kingdom and messiah existing in a higher place. Jesus might have gotten his start as a vision of prophets like Paul and was later "brought down to earth" in what might have been intended as parables, parables later taken to be "true stories" and elaborated upon, from Mark to Matt to John.
A sect of Greek speaking Judaism who were so naïve as to have the entire Christian literature written in Greek.
A sect of only-Greek-speaking-scholars who never imagined that to write the story of their imaginative Hebrew hero in a foreign language would eventually amount to an enormous blunder!
What evidence do you have that Paul or any other of the founders of Christianity did speak Hebrew?
I suggest that you read Bauer. To me the Jews had nothing to do with the funny story of Jesus.
"Culture is memory"
Yuri Lotman
Yuri Lotman