Posted: Oct 08, 2015 12:05 pm
Mike S wrote:MS2 wrote:
My opinion is:
The best (and therefore most likely) of the various possible explanations for the origin of Christianity is it began with one man gathering a group of followers who, after he died, morphed into various groupings that had various beliefs and 'memories'* about the guy it all began with, and some of those beliefs and 'memories' can be found in the ancient writings that still exist. A small portion of the beliefs and 'memories' are reasonably likely to have their origins in things he said and did. The majority though are better explained by what happened later.
I’ve always been more interested in how Christianity was (haphazardly?) created than in its central figure Jesus, but, here’s a thought, MS2 – what if Christianity didn’t start in one location with one man labeled Jesus at all?
What if we’re looking at different groups in different places, mainly in the east (with mystery religions galore), movements which to varying degrees espoused different teachings and traditions, but which all eventually contributed to, and formed part of early Christianity. It would certainly go a long way toward explaining the well nigh irreconcilably conflicting nature of much of the early writings.
This seems to best explain the evidence we have - a welter of mutually contradictory 'traditions' about saviors that seem to crop up everywhere except in Judea.
These are later 'harmonized' by adding to the texts, subtracting from the texts, and composing new ones like 'Acts' to fill in the gaping holes.