[Serious] The Trinity

[GrandizerII]

False. The Gospel According to John already had Jesus be some sort of divine figure, and even Paul saw Jesus as divine in some sense.

And I think it's misleading to imply the Trinity came about just like that a few centuries after Christianity first emerged. There was a gradual process occurring during first few centuries of Christianity in which Jesus was sort of vaguely divine and then became more prominently divine to the point of being God ultimately. Similar thing with the Holy Spirit: Spirit of God (so sort of the same thing as God) then becoming God in its own right.

It's right there at the beginning:

The Word Became Flesh

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Sort of hard to miss, I'd think.

Yep, exactly. And there are various passage in the Gospel of John where you see Jesus referring to himself as God. One example is in John 8, where Jesus clearly implies he is God in multiple verses and reaffirms this by telling the Jews he was conversing with that "before Abraham was born, I am" (John 8:58). The response of the Jews was to pick up stones to throw at him (because the implication is clear).

"John" appears to be equating Jesus to God himself, and so it seems that it isn't just that Jesus is a god or some divine figure, but the God. Whatever the correct interpretation may be (whether Jesus is God or a god), "John" gives a clear illustration of how some early Christians in the first couple centuries viewed Jesus. And it's hard to see (given this) how Jesus wasn't viewed by them as divine in some way, if not as God.

And for those looking for a scholar to back this up, here's a video lecture by Bart Ehrman on YouTube. Feel free to give it a watch, interesting stuff.