The First Century Void

[Secular Elf]

Great thread here, thanks for opening it Min.  I studied some Early Christian history on my own, read some stuff based on more recent scholarship.   Man I wish I had my notebook with me, I wrote a full article on this stuff.  Some of the details may a be bit fuzzy to me right now, but I will try my best to explain.

I have not read Carrier but I have read about Early Christianity online.  From my point of view, if Yeshua ben-Yusef actually existed, he was only one of many Yeshua's walking around Palestine during the late 1st Century BCE and early 1st Century CE, and he may have just been a rabbi that was a thorn in the side of the Pharisees and Sanhedrin.  Romans did not usually like to get involved in local politics and culture unless said local politics and culture becomes a threat to Roman control and power.

It is my understanding that the First Christians were nothing more than Jews.  Makes sense: they still revered the Torah and continued on with Judaic religious rituals and beliefs.  The only thing that marked these particular Jews as another Judaic sect was their reverence for a particular rabbi named Yeshua (Jesus, as he was called in Latin).

From the very beginning Christianity was diverse, more diverse in the mid to late 1st Century and early 2nd Century CE than even today.  The Jewish Christians had three different flavors depending how Jesus was viewed: Ebionites, Nazarenes, and another group that I can't think of right now.  Anyway, the thing they had in common they revered Jesus, but they revered him through three different lenses: one thought Jesus was their Messiah, one thought Jesus was a son of Yahweh, and the other thought Jesus had a metaphysical presence.  It is a little bit fuzzy here for me....damn my memory!

As time goes on, some Christians were gnostic in their theology.  Then there is the Essene influence on the sect.  Then you had the Judeo-Roman Wars (there were three of them) from around 50 CE to 150 CE.  By 150 CE you had a split, Judaism went its way and the Jesus Jews went their separate way as more and more Gentiles came into  the Religion.  Theology on beliefs concerning who Jesus was and which rituals to observe were all over  the place.  Then there is Paulline Christianity, which eventually won out and became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 300's CE.  Then you had Gnostic Christians, Roman Civil War, the Donatist controversy, the Decian Persecution, Traditores, Novationism, the Council of Nicaea, etc. etc.  Then there is all the theological differences: Adoptionism, Arianism, Docetism, Valentinianism, Marcionism.  Early Christianity in  the context of the Roman world is a bit complex, to say the least.

That would be Early Christianity (the Apostolic Age and the Ante-Nicene Period) in a nutshell.

---

One thing about Carrier that annoys me is that he does not get into the likelihood of the paul story.  There is a simple reason for this.  "Paul" as written does not harm Carrier's argument for mythicism at all, so why bother?  There is precious little in paul which indicates that jesus was anything other than another cosmic figure who resided in the heavens except for a few obvious interpolations stuck in by later xtian editors to make it sound better.

Also Carrier treats as "authentic" letters which he himself admits (along with other scholars) that were merely combinations of multiple letters crammed together by editors.  I always considered paul as incoherent drivel and that explains why.  I keep wondering where the "authentic" part comes in.

The mythicism that exists within Christianity can be traced to several sources: Greco-Roman religion for beliefs in heaven and hell (the Jews had only the concept of Sheol, which is cognate with the Assyro-Bablyonian and Sumerian Netherworld called Irkalla, and it was their belief that all who died went there, regardless of what their behavior on earth was), and the ancient Egyptian religion for groupings of deities in threes, the paradise of the Field of Reeds, the resurrection theme. The Church of Alexandria had a significant influence on Early Christian and later Medieval theology.

There were were so many religious texts being written and being used by different groups, with some overlap of literature used. It was not until Marcion that Christian literature was being selected and rejected in lists of what was considered to be acceptable Christian literature. There was no canon until after Marcion, and it was further developed at the Council of Nicaea.

---

Some of my cousins have started their own sect, claiming Jesus was real but the ENTIRE BIBLE is faked. They keep trying to get me to listen to this shit. I explain that they are trying to commit suicide if they keep trying.

And perhaps they're less wrong then people who think that Gospels in the Bible describe "real" Jesus. Like I noted Paul was furious that people are worshiping wrong Jesuses and wrong Gospels and when you look the Jesus' teachings that Paul preached you can see they were from different Jesus then the one in the surviving Gospels of the Bible, like here are few examples:

In Matthew 10:5 and 15:24 Jesus proclaims that he is strictly here just for the Jews and not for the Gentiles (whom he even sometimes refers as dogs) like "Salvation is of the Jews" (John 4:22); but Paul's Jesus is total contradiction because he says "The Lord has commanded us, saying, I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth" (Acts 13:47), "Henceforth, I [Paul] will go unto the Gentiles" (Acts 18:6), and "I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles" (Romans 15:16)

Or one of the most famous Jesus proclamations in Matthew 5:17-19 that he has come to fulfill the law of the prophets, I mean he is clearly for it; but Paul on the other hand again speaks about some different Jesus because in Romans 7:4 he says, "My brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ" and in Galatians 3:13 he says, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law."
I mean these are without doubt as different Jesuses as you can get.

In Acts 20:35 Paul says, "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Nowhere in Gospels does this Bible's Jesus make this statement. And on and on...

So from Paul's perspective Gospels in the Bible do indeed look like the one that he describes as "wrong ones" which also means "works of Satan" as well. So if there was some sort of Son of God preaching on Earth we have no surviving scriptures of his teaching. I guess that also tells of feeble power god has.

Paul 2 Corinthians 11:4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

2 Corinthians 11:13-15 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

I think what you are referring to Fake Messiah is the fact that during the late 1st Century to the early 2nd Century CE there were all these different conceptions of who Jesus was. There were like close to a hundred or so sects and cults and sub-sects. Some were Gnostic in flavor(salvation through secret knowledge) and others Adoptionists (Jesus adopted by god at his baptism), while some were Arians (Jesus was not divine), Docetists (Jesus physical body and crucifixion was an illusion), the Marcionists were dualistic in their theology (the Old Testament Yahweh is the evil god, the god of the New Testament is love), and then there were the Montanists (Christianity expressed in prophetic, ascetic, and celibacy terms). Bart Ehrman argued that the Roman Christians developed what he called a "proto-orthodox" Christianity which was represented by Pauline theology. It was the proto-Orthodox Pauline Christianity that eventually won as the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, and Marcion's work Antithesis which started the development of the Christian canon that developed into the Bible.