Unconventional Religion

[DeistPaladin]

Interesting theory. If it's true, however, Christ served a poor resolution to the theological crisis in the eyes of the Jews. The hundred or so that became his followers stood in the face of tens of thousands of adherent Jews, who eagerly accepted the many other claimants to the title "Messiah" who came after Christ's death. A product like Jesus tailored to attract attention would have been more popular with the Jewish nation, particularly heading for the powerful and drawing on their authority to gain a much larger following. It would seem like a much more plausible marketing scheme.
Not to mention Christianity's large number of Gentile adherents. Wouldn't a man championing the poor have incited them against the rich?

Where you seem to me to be tripping up in your attempt to understand Christianity's origins is you seem to be under the impression that the only alternative to Christianity having a divine origin is a bunch of people meeting in a back room in some secret conspiracy to carefully craft and devise this religion as a means to a planned end. Now it is true that some religions are born this way but this is not the only alternative.

It reminds me of the "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" trilemma so famous in apologetics. You start with your desired conclusion, insist that there's only one or two possible alternatives and then straw-man the alternatives by way of reducto ad absurdum. In this case, it seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that you insist that Christianity either has a divine origin or it was a carefully crafted backroom conspiracy.

My theory is that Christianity was not intelligently designed but rather is the product of theological evolution. Ideas were cobbled together from other pagan religions, merged with Judaism and the strongest of the different Christianities eventually won out while the others died out.

The Marcionites lost because the Romans would not accept a "new" religion. The question that eventually killed Marcion's brand was "If your religion is true, how come nobody heard about it until now? Why was God simply sitting back and letting everyone get it wrong for so long?" The Romans needed to have their new religion have some appeal to antiquity. Given Islamic and Mormon success, it seems people have stopped asking questions like this.

The Ebionites lost because they were too insular. Like the Jews, they had no desire to convert anyone outside their faith. Their evolutionary weakness was their meme's inability to spread.

As barking mad as Trinitarian theology is, it was the strongest and most viral. It succeeded where the others failed.

Revelation was addressed to Gentile Christians, and the author is talking about their persecution under Rome. There is no reason for the author to purposely attract Jewish appeal.

That doesn't change the fact that early ideas about Jesus seemed to be closer to Jewish concepts of the Messiah.

The early evangelists believed that the world would end during their lifetimes. They were more concerned with Christ's moral message than the details of his life.
The writer of many of the Epistles, Paul, also had not witnessed Christ's ministry.

Or that story of his life had not yet been written.

...more later.