For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

I suppose the trouble would be that christianity is still "starting" and will likely continue to do so - if the past few k are any indicator. The question itself is a bit nebulous as the reader is left to assume what the writer means by it. What would we consider a starting point for christianity? The explicit mention of a christ figure and savior named jesus?

The generally accepted idea seems to be that there was an original Jewish sect and then Paul decided to do his own thing. So, for this exercise, think of Christianity as starting when Paul or somebody like him headed off to preach to Greek speaking Gentiles around 2,000 years ago. All kinds of things got added on later

Today, the uncensored versions are published by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, although he doesn't go back to the oldest text, but uses the ones just before the censoring, which makes for an interesting read to see how far the editors went.

What could people have been saying about him 2,000 years ago? He must have captured people's imaginations so they kept adding details but it would be interesting to know how the story developed.

A later story, many centuries later, do the who supernatural polemic with him flying into the sky and some other rabbi has to fly up and piss him down (gotta love those Spaniards and their bathroom humor). At the time, forced conversions were going on, so they fought back by lampooning the enemy. Interestingly enough, it may have helped the conversion cause more than hinder it.

Sorry, but I'm not familiar with this period of history. Who was being forced to convert to which religion?

So what do you think? Do you believe that Paul pointed to Trinitarianism and Marcion hoped no one would notice? Or a later victorious church inserted a few choice words into the Pauline epistles we have today?

If you're talking about Marcion Of Sinope, he didn't believe in the Trinity as such - there was the Heavenly Father, the Demiurge and Jesus who was a divine spirit.

According to Marcion, the god of the Old Testament, whom he called the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe, is a jealous tribal deity of the Jews, whose law represents legalistic reciprocal justice and who punishes mankind for its sins through suffering and death. Contrastingly, the god that Jesus professed is an altogether different being, a universal god of compassion and love who looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy.

Marcion is sometimes described as a Gnostic philosopher. In some essential respects, Marcion proposed ideas which would have aligned well with Gnostic thought. Like the Gnostics, he argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.[8]

If Paul really did talk about Jesus as a spiritual being it might have inspired Marcion to come up with the above idea although it got him branded as a heretic.

As for the Trinity -

Ignatius of Antioch is provides early support for the Trinity around 110,[17] exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit."[18]

Reference 18 is Eusebius. He keeps turning up everywhere.

Justin Martyr (AD 100–ca.165) also writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit." [19]

The thing is, though, that Paul or somebody like him must have told the Gentiles something.