(October 29, 2014 at 11:44 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: "Signs of God" are not that astonishing to a discerning mind. Mental hospitals are filled with them. So is every single religious text and the multitudes of followers they have inspired throughout history. The early Christians were already believers in supernatural deities, whether they were Palestinian or Roman. All it took was a new formula that spoke to the people's needs, and after the siege of Jerusalem, Christianity was in a good position to fill that role for the common folk.
By truncating the phrase, you've changed its meaning noticeably. The full phrase is “astonishing signs of God returning to Israel as He had promised”. These were not random occurrences done for effect, but occur within a specific context. The point is not 'Jesus can do great things', but 'The Kingdom of God looks like this, and its time is now'. The acts are not really there to create faith, but to signpost the fulfilment of God's promise.
Contrast for example the C2 infancy gospel of Thomas, where Jesus makes clay birds fly. A random 'miracle'.
This is all part of a coherent and indivisible message, accepted and lived to death by all the 'Twelve' (the NT pulls no punches where divisions are concerned; none of them breaks ranks post resurrection). The early church was Jewish primarily, and any C1 Jew would have taken some persuading that C1 Judaism was heading in the wrong direction in terms of what their ultimate goal meant- the Kingdom of God.
Now there are common features with other religious movements, but rather than hand wave with 'They're all the same', I would argue strongly it's worth looking at individual arguments because one may be real. Think Russian Roulette.
On the final point. After the fall of Jerusalem, rabbinic Judaism took over, with Christianity gaining no extra traction in Israel because of the war. The Pharisees morphed into what we know today as rabbis.