(June 17, 2021 at 8:57 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:(June 8, 2021 at 3:52 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I think that what the story tells Us, some 2,000 years later, is that all four Gospels were written post-70 AD, after the future emperor Titus had laid waste to the city of Jerusalem, and the fledgling Christian community wanted to frame its new religion as being friendly to the Romans, the victors, and hostile to the losers, the Jews.
I suspect a lot of stuff in the Gospels were put there because of the challenges the Christians faced at the time the Gospels were written. Which we all know is decades after the supposed death of Christ. Assuming Christ actually existed, it is likely that he had no issues with the scribes or Pharisees. It's more likely that Christians well after Christ's death were butting heads with these particular groups, and so added Christ's spats with these groups to their mythos.
The main trend was gentiles wanting to join, specifically Roman gentiles. So the message was adapted to best take advantage of this trend. Not many Romans wanted the penis surgery as a requirement to join the religion. So, lo and behold... it is revealed... circumcision is not necessary for salvation. The book of Acts is a huge work of revisionism meant to accommodate Roman converts.
When you say "Christians" that is also misleading. If Christians want to claim "Jesus was a Jew", then one can only rightfully claim that there was a Jew who simply started a new splinter sect of Hebrews which eventually became Christianity.
The more I think about all the world's religions, regardless of labels, the more I study them, I always find overlap in claims and motifs to surrounding and prior religions.
Why is it both Buddhism, and Hinduism share motifs of Dharma, and reincarnation? For the same reason Christians attach the NT to the OT.
Religion is no different than Coke vs Pepsi, Ford Vs Chevy.
Even the Rasta religion can be traced back to African/Catholic/Jewish traditions.
And as far as the Polytheistic transformation in Rome to Christian monotheism, that was not a divine cause. It was merely political expediency. Any Christian today that wants to argue Jesus was the hero for Rome and Europe because Roman polytheism fell and was replaced by Roman Catholicism, fail to realize that Rome's polytheistic brutality to dissent, was simply replaced by Catholic brutality after polytheism fell. Even today, I find it ironic that the Vatican still uses the Obelisk Caligula stole from Egypt as its symbol of peace in St Peter's Square.
