RE: The Reasons why "Just Following Jesus" Doesn't work
June 8, 2015 at 8:11 am
(This post was last modified: June 8, 2015 at 8:25 am by The Grand Nudger.)
What else would the first christians be? "Paul" if you'll recall......was the apostle to the gentiles. They went out of house because the inhouse crowd wasn't buying their bullshit Lek. They continue to await the messiah. The answer to your question "who else would the first christians have been?"-is, in truth, just about anybody -except- jews. The early christing business wasn't picky, the jews were. Judaism isn;t really all that well represented in christianity. That it's a jewish offshoot sect is more a convention of the literary lineage of god claims, than of the origins of their contents or the geneology of it's early adherents.
The question can be framed further back, of course....who were the first jews? As it so happens there is a similarity between the first jews and the first christians. A similarity of situation, not faith, mind you. We find that they were not a monolith(and still aren't) in precisely the same way as we find that christians were not a monolith at their "coming out"(....and still aren't). I don;t know why we would expect to find anything else in an area coming to, but not yet steeped in, a revelatory religion. There will always have been some point in time where the demographics are fractured, that point before the varying sects homogenize and their dissimilar creeds are calcified as doctrine.
I think that you're going to have to give up the story that your faith -has told you- about it;s formation and come back to reality, before you can call the comments of others crazy, before you can impugn the character of their conclusions or facts.
The question can be framed further back, of course....who were the first jews? As it so happens there is a similarity between the first jews and the first christians. A similarity of situation, not faith, mind you. We find that they were not a monolith(and still aren't) in precisely the same way as we find that christians were not a monolith at their "coming out"(....and still aren't). I don;t know why we would expect to find anything else in an area coming to, but not yet steeped in, a revelatory religion. There will always have been some point in time where the demographics are fractured, that point before the varying sects homogenize and their dissimilar creeds are calcified as doctrine.
I think that you're going to have to give up the story that your faith -has told you- about it;s formation and come back to reality, before you can call the comments of others crazy, before you can impugn the character of their conclusions or facts.
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