For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

I'm going to quote something from the end of your post first because I think it's important where this discussion is concerned.

I highly recommend Bart Ehrman's "Lost Christianities" for some background on this point. PM me an email address if you'd like an electronic version. [/b]

Why are you suggesting a book by Bart Ehrman when he believes that Jesus really existed? His books about Christian forgeries etc. are useful to show how orthodox Christianity obscured what he regards as a real man but we're not talking about a real man in this topic.

Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth

In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts these questions, vigorously defends the historicity of Jesus, and provides a compelling portrait of the man from Nazareth. The Jesus you discover here may not be the Jesus you had hoped to meet—but he did exist, whether we like it or not.

Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

In Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium , Bart Ehrman offers an exciting and accessible study of the historical Jesus. He canvasses a wide range of ancient texts and modern interpretations as he orients his reader both in the distant world of late Second Temple Judaism and the current swirl of scholarly opinion. With verve, warm humor and exemplary clarity, Ehrman's Jesus provides the nonspecialist reader with an excellent introduction to this often elusive figure, the Jesus of history." --Paula Fredriksen, Boston University

You are missing the point of the passage. Modern xtian apologists are using it to "prove" that jesus existed but as noted in the discussion the church was pushing the idea that NERO began the persecution of xtians.
As noted in Moss' book, there was no official persecution of xtians until the mid-3d century and even then it was sporadic.

So Pliny and Trajan never wrote those letters talking about Christians?

Pliny the Younger (61/62-113 CE): Selected Letters, c 100 CE

See letters numbered XCVII2 and XCVIII. It wasn't an all out persecution where every Christian had to die, though.

It is not possible to lay down any general rule for all such cases. Do not go out of your way to look for them. If indeed they should be brought before you, and the crime is proved, they must be punished;1 with the restriction, however, that where the party denies he is a Christian, and shall make it evident that he is not, by invoking our gods, let him (notwithstanding any former suspicion) be pardoned upon his repentance. Anonymous informations ought not to be received in any sort of prosecution. It is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and is quite foreign to the spirit of our age.

As to your questions you have to lose the idea that this was some sort of unified religion that began at a specific point in time.

I don't have to lose any idea. I just asked you to come up with suggestions for how the original idea behind Christianity got started when there wasn't an historical Jesus. I'm not talking about a unified religion either because the Nag Hammadi texts show that it wasn't unified in the early days.

Nag Hammadi Library Alphabetical Index

From the Introduction

About the dating of the manuscripts themselves there is little debate. Examination of the datable papyrus used to thicken the leather bindings, and of the Coptic script, place them c. A.D. 350-400. But scholars sharply disagree about the dating of the original texts. Some of them can hardly be later than c . A.D. 120-150, since Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons, writing C. 180, declares that heretics "boast that they possess more gospels than there really are,'' and complains that in his time such writings already have won wide circulation--from Gaul through Rome, Greece, and Asia Minor.

1: When did Christianity start? Xtianity as we know it now seems to flow from the mid 2d century AD although it has continued to undergo doctrinal changes ever since. .

I'm not talking about Christianity as we know it. I think it's common knowledge that there were dying/resurrected gods in mythology long before the time when Jesus was supposed to have existed. The question is how and why did the fictional character of Jesus get invented so all these myths could be pinned on him?

2: Where did it start? Unknown but anywhere from Egypt to Asia Minor seems plausible.

Why did people in Egypt or somewhere in Asia Minor decide to worship a fictional character who was supposed to be the real Jewish Messiah and set most of the action in Galilee and Jerusalem?

3: How does any religion start?

List Of New Religious Movements

This is incomplete because new religious movements are starting up all the time. Every movement in the list has a founder and a date when it was founded. It indicates that it's possible somebody could have come up with the idea that Jesus was the real Jewish Messiah. After all, somebody had to give this fictional character a name.

They sure as shit did not get that idea from the "Jews" [b]for whom the messiah was supposed to be a successful military leader - not some schmuck who got his ass nailed to a board after attaining none of the goals which the messiah was supposed to do. [

This is why Judaism doesn't recognise Jesus as the Messiah. The basic idea of a Messiah in Judea had to be inspired by Jewish beliefs, though.

There were so many gnostic groups that no one can really sort out how one came to dominate the others and then re-write history to make themselves the "one true faith."

I'm not talking about what came to be regarded as the one true faith. If you take a quick look through some of the Nag Hammadi texts you'll see that many of them are about Jesus or the characters known as the Apostles. Why were the early Christians writing about all these fictional characters?