Posted: Jul 14, 2012 4:18 pm
chairman bill wrote:I think it worth distinguishing between the myth of Jesus as derived from Jewish tradition & the messianic beliefs of the time, and the later Romanisation of those myths in order to convince a largely Roman audience. The latter may well have introduced aspects drawn from pre-existing pagan cults. That's certainly something that the church did quite blatently over time.
Yes, the Jesus story was constantly changing - not to mention there were apparently many mutually exclusive stories in competition with one another. The syncretic nature of the early christianities makes it difficult to define exactly what one means when referring to Jesus or other christian beliefs. Neither was judaism of that period a monolithic systematized structure - the hellenizing influences since the time of Alexander's conquest makes things much more complex than is sometimes imagined.