Archaeologist, William Dever, has written a dandy little book called "Did God Have a Wife" which explores the evolution of yahweh from junior member of the Canaanite pantheon through his various promotions to Creator of the Fucking Universe among other things. One constant theme of the book is the existence of "folk religion" along with the state cult for want of a better word. Again, if anyone wants it, I have an electronic version. Just PM an email address.
Folk religion - the religion of the common people as distinguished from the court and the priests of the state cult - lacks any sort of hierarchy or scripture. Dever detects it through artifacts like thousands of fertility figurines and a couple of inscriptions. He also detects it through the various denouncements of it in the OT itself. Christianity - or more likely Chrestianity - may have been one of those "fly beneath the radar" cults which existed among the commons.
We have a tantalizing find along these lines in the Gabriel Revelation Stone which indicates a belief in a resurrection after 3 days but at the time of the revolts which Quinctilius Varus suppressed in the wake of the death of Herod the Great, or roughly 35 years before later xtians set their jesus bullshit story. When Josephus recounts the existing philosophies in Judaea before the outbreak of the Great Revolt he has nothing to say about this one although he does go on at length about those revolts. As a member of the nobility he could be expected to treat with disdain the superstitions of the commoners. There may well have been an infrastructure of belief in a Chrestos which was later co-opted by what Bart Ehrman calls, the proto-orthodox.
Remember that when Pliny describes the so-called xtians he ran into in Asia Minor in 110 BC all he says of them is:
If some well-meaning scribe changed "Chrestos" to Christos" because he thought it a spelling error it still does not change the fact that the story as told by Pliny has nothing to do with the story which xtians were putting out.
Folk religion - the religion of the common people as distinguished from the court and the priests of the state cult - lacks any sort of hierarchy or scripture. Dever detects it through artifacts like thousands of fertility figurines and a couple of inscriptions. He also detects it through the various denouncements of it in the OT itself. Christianity - or more likely Chrestianity - may have been one of those "fly beneath the radar" cults which existed among the commons.
We have a tantalizing find along these lines in the Gabriel Revelation Stone which indicates a belief in a resurrection after 3 days but at the time of the revolts which Quinctilius Varus suppressed in the wake of the death of Herod the Great, or roughly 35 years before later xtians set their jesus bullshit story. When Josephus recounts the existing philosophies in Judaea before the outbreak of the Great Revolt he has nothing to say about this one although he does go on at length about those revolts. As a member of the nobility he could be expected to treat with disdain the superstitions of the commoners. There may well have been an infrastructure of belief in a Chrestos which was later co-opted by what Bart Ehrman calls, the proto-orthodox.
Remember that when Pliny describes the so-called xtians he ran into in Asia Minor in 110 BC all he says of them is:
Quote:They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
If some well-meaning scribe changed "Chrestos" to Christos" because he thought it a spelling error it still does not change the fact that the story as told by Pliny has nothing to do with the story which xtians were putting out.
