Mythology 101

[watchamadoodle]

I have only read the reviews on this book. The author is a scholar, but his views don't seem to be accepted yet. He claims that pre-Rabbinical Judaism was actually very diverse and there was a proto-Christian branch awaiting a figure like Jesus. So Christianity didn't evolve after Jesus; it evolved before Jesus. The author's claim makes a lot of sense to me, but apparently it isn't widely accepted yet.

In short, every idea in early Christianity is to be found in the variety of Judiasms of the first century. There were Jewish groups who built their Judaism on Daniel, on Isaiah, and the ideas of Qumran. The Pseudepigrapha was not just a funky alternative to our midrashic narratives, rather they were people’s lived version of Torah
...
There was widespread bi-theism or binitarianism within Judaism where Jews perceived God as an unknown God and a lower logos of God. The ideas of a complex godhead (a God with two or three persons) have their origins in the Judaism of Jesus’ time and before him. Many, perhaps most, Jews were expecting a Redeemer who was an anthropomorphic divine being, known as the Son of Man.

https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2012/03/0...sh-gospel/