For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[DeistPaladin]

The question of how Christianity got started without anybody at all behind the myths and legends. The reason why I posted this topic is for people to tackle the practicalities concerning how Christianity came into existence when it did if there wasn't a real man somewhere.

With all due respect, this is a classic argument from ignorance mixed with a dash of argument from incredulity.

Paraphrased slightly, this is "we don't know how this religion got started, we can't imagine how it got started without a Jesus, so we're going to assume one existed and the skeptic has to prove otherwise." Even putting aside my entire post explaining how Christianity evolved from earlier religions, this is not valid reasoning.

Did the pagan elements get added after the teachings of a Jewish sect were taken to the Gentiles or was there a bizarre Jewish sect in Judea which followed a mixture of Judaism and pagan beliefs?

Pagan elements got sprinkled into Judaism all along. Again, religion, like art, picks up from its neighbors constantly. Consider how the Jewish faith believes in "Sheol" as the afterlife. This term means "the grave". Various passages in the OT suggest there is no afterlife and yet we have the story of King Saul who raises the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel from the underworld, suggesting they'd incorporated some ideas of Hades from the Greeks or perhaps some afterlife ideas from the Egyptians.

Can you come up with any ideas concerning what this original Jewish sect was about? Was there an original Jewish sect?

As I've posted before, likely Jews chaffing under foreign rule wondering WTF happened to their covenant with Yahweh and why isn't the "seed of David" sitting on the throne. Some decided their messiah lived in a higher world and so Revelation was written.

Notice how Paul also mentions that Jesus is of the "seed of David". Jesus, in Revelation at least, was born in Heaven and sits on a celestial throne and he will come to earth to vanquish Israel's enemies.

Again, read the NT in the order in which the books were written and you have Christian sources themselves telling us how the faith in Christ evolved over time.

If not, why did a religion about a divine being who was supposed to be the real Jewish Messiah come into existence outside Judea?

Because Judea was under Roman rule and so an earthly Messiah seemed unlikely to some. Some of them looked to a higher realm for their salvation.

...The Problem Of Paul...

There are MANY problems with Paul. Here are a few:

Paul denies that Jesus had lived within his lifetime:

1Cor 15:8 And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

Paul was an outsider to the Jewish faith who was strangely brought in as their chief prosecutor and then he suddenly changes sides and nobody in the Jewish community had one comment on that betrayal.

Paul promotes the idea of a Jesus who was born of a woman and of the seed of David. But it was Marcion who first discovered and promoted the letters of Paul as the scripture of the Marcionite Christians. Yet, the Marcionites believed that Jesus was a higher god who came to earth as a fully formed adult. How could he be born of a woman of the seed of a man of history? One must conclude that either:

1. Marcion never actually read what Paul wrote
   
2. Marcion promoted Paul hoping no one else would read what Paul wrote
   
3. What we have of Paul isn't what was originally written by Paul assuming there even was a Paul
   

I think the first two scenarios are pretty unlikely. The third is consistent with the problems of pseudo-epigraphy and interpolation, which abounds with holy scriptures of the time.