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Christ's period in some ways is evocative of our own. An ancient sky-god-worshipping ethnicity having their first attempt at integrating into a secular culture,

Christ's period in some ways is evocative of our own. An ancient sky-god-worshipping ethnicity having their first attempt at integrating into a secular culture, but then violently rejecting it, searching for God quite literally among the common straw. It sounds like the origin story for Flat Earth, or any of the other new faith movements we've been seeing lately, as the technocracy has spun out of democratic control. The amazing part isn't that someone thought a man was God; the amazing part is that we just remember the one guy, because EVERYONE was a potential messiah among the resentfully-semi-Hellenized Jews of the region. They felt ripped off, and rightly so, the only ones who had gained from the exchange were the ones who had stepped out of their Jewishness (or, in the case of Antipater, maybe weren't quite 100 percent Jewish to begin with . . or so the rumors went). Prophets were everywhere. Josephus memorably rode that prophet train to get into Vespasian's good graces, thus providing us with one of the most entertaining primary sources of all time. He is a lovable scoundrel. Josephus, Tacticus, and whatever else we can glean. Our secular archeology for the person of Jesus is pretty scant, but that's not all that surprising, you could say the same for Exodus, or, really, for any personal-scale events seen through the long lens of deep history. In the words of an anonymous German diarist stuck in the ruins of Berlin May 1945: "These are strange times," wrote the woman. "One experiences history in the making, things which one day will fill the history books. But while living through it, everything dissolves into petty worries and fears. History is very tiresome. Tomorrow I'm going to look for nettles and try to find some coal." What was her name? Where did she go? We don't know, and never will.

krapp 4y ago
>The amazing part isn't that someone thought a man was God; the amazing part is that we just remember the one guy, because EVERYONE was a potential messiah among the resentfully-semi-Hellenized Jews of the region. It's not that amazing. Christianity would likely have remained a local sect or died out altogether if Emperor Constantine hadn't converted, then put the political and cultural weight of the superpower of the day behind the religion, with imperialist power after imperialist power carrying the torch in Rome's name.
AlbertCory 4y ago
I think the story of Paul is the real story of Christianity. He was the one, with his partners, who went all over the ancient world and converted people to this idea. Your analysis seems to ignore all that completely. Jesus' brother James was in Jerusalem long after the crucifixion, and he and his followers thought Jesus' preaching was just for Jews. Paul had the radical idea of preaching to the Gentiles. They didn't like that, and called him back to Jerusalem to explain himself. He was undeterred.
- MilStdJunkie 4y ago
  Not considering Paul at the moment because it's not his historicity the article's about. But yes, Paul (or the Hellenized Jewish community) is the reason we remember Christianity at all, or even have the word "Christian" in our vocabulary. Without Paul it would have been some other messianic religion, maybe the Mithraism of the Roman soldiery, or some collision of Mithraism and Buddhism, or some other prophet(s) from the Empire's outlands. Who knows? But Paul's Hellenization, and just as importantly, that of the Jewish world at the time, is hugely influential, not just for Christianity but Judaism as well. The Book of Luke and Acts, taken together as a single authored unit (which it almost certainly was), as a single example, could be read as a sort of Odyssey, and it actually sort of reads that way even to godless contemporary such as myself. This is really interesting comparing it to the development of Gnosticism across Greek, Judaic, and Christian, how they passed along a philosophic school across faiths. Almost a sort of "meta-Pythagoreanism".

krapp 4y ago

>The amazing part isn't that someone thought a man was God; the amazing part is that we just remember the one guy, because EVERYONE was a potential messiah among the resentfully-semi-Hellenized Jews of the region. It's not that amazing. Christianity would likely have remained a local sect or died out altogether if Emperor Constantine hadn't converted, then put the political and cultural weight of the superpower of the day behind the religion, with imperialist power after imperialist power carrying the torch in Rome's name.

AlbertCory 4y ago

I think the story of Paul is the real story of Christianity. He was the one, with his partners, who went all over the ancient world and converted people to this idea. Your analysis seems to ignore all that completely. Jesus' brother James was in Jerusalem long after the crucifixion, and he and his followers thought Jesus' preaching was just for Jews. Paul had the radical idea of preaching to the Gentiles. They didn't like that, and called him back to Jerusalem to explain himself. He was undeterred.

MilStdJunkie 4y ago
Not considering Paul at the moment because it's not his historicity the article's about. But yes, Paul (or the Hellenized Jewish community) is the reason we remember Christianity at all, or even have the word "Christian" in our vocabulary. Without Paul it would have been some other messianic religion, maybe the Mithraism of the Roman soldiery, or some collision of Mithraism and Buddhism, or some other prophet(s) from the Empire's outlands. Who knows? But Paul's Hellenization, and just as importantly, that of the Jewish world at the time, is hugely influential, not just for Christianity but Judaism as well. The Book of Luke and Acts, taken together as a single authored unit (which it almost certainly was), as a single example, could be read as a sort of Odyssey, and it actually sort of reads that way even to godless contemporary such as myself. This is really interesting comparing it to the development of Gnosticism across Greek, Judaic, and Christian, how they passed along a philosophic school across faiths. Almost a sort of "meta-Pythagoreanism".