The ''browning'' of Jesus is already a thing,no need to wait for it.Obviously spurred more by politics than any real desire for truth or accuracy the swarthy desert nomad is less about the savior of mankind and more about getting revenge on their conservative dad.
On the Caesar topic,you may be right but I don't know enough to say one way or the other having only read Franchesco's work and watched a documentary some years back.For me it seems plausible and until I have more information it remains a useful theory to fill in the gaps.
As for restarting the Ceasar cult the ''current year'' crowd is hardly who you want to appeal to, though I concede that convincing the church going masses is going to basically be impossible.But so is reaching them with any kind of historical revisionism or metaphysics or real mysticism.We're in a spiritually dead age and you're gonna be hard pressed to even find people with potential for real spiritual development let alone turning around a population hellbent on ensuring it's own slavery.The new spiritually alive and applicable Christianity won't come from the normies anyway,but from the Hydra of rando posters trying to figure out a way to live that doesn't degrade the soul.
Great post, Rolo. For those looking for some more Paul's influence on Mark (and Mark as a rewriting of Paul as Christ), these are the main works making those connections:
-Paul Tarazi's The New Testament: An Introduction: Paul and Mark (1999)
-Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (2012)
-David Oliver Smith's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels (2015)
-David Oliver Smith's Unlocking the Puzzle: The Keys to the Christology and Structure of the Original Gospel of Mark (2017)
-Laura Knight-Jadczyk's From Paul to Mark: PaleoChristianity (2021)
My 11th grade American Lit teacher was also gay. Don't remember him trying to insinuate sodomy into the Scarlet Letter, but did notice him staring at our studly football star as if in some erotic trance.
I'm on board the Gnostic Express, tho not the Fallen World bypass. Check out sunrises and sunsets and see if they square better w/ Archontic mimicry or Gaian aesthetics. We are living in a techno Matrix, but the red pill does not awaken one to a barren, desolated landscape like the desert Semites were confined to.
Agree that the Caesar template is a distraction. Wasn't it a Jewish writer who started that meme, just like w/ the Clash of Civilizations idea and then a gentile, Huntington, took it mainstream? I think the same guy wrote that the real Shakespeare was a Jewish woman! Yeah, bet on that.
I find your commentary on the Peter-Paul split novel and fascinating. My limited understanding informs me that Paul was a pharisee (lawyer) opposed to the saducees (priests). I had never considered Paul as a Gnostic., tho a Hellenized Jew certainly.
There's another esoteric Christian heresy: "Jesus Was a Scythian". Came across it at a right wing Hungarian website. It's a fairly elaborated theory that claims Jesus was a gentile from an aristocratic family of the Parthian Empire doing some kind of outreach preaching in Judea. He lived in Galilee which was an area reviled by Jews as barbarian. It may be so much wishful thinking, but I found it tremendously provocative before I discovered Gnosticism.
Yeah Galilee translates as land of the gentiles. Jesus of Galilee.
>I'm on board the Gnostic Express, tho not the Fallen World bypass
I don't really want to copy all of gnosticism. I think it's a more anti-Judaic version of Christianity and a religion that doesn't frown on actual spiritual practice as opposed to mainstream Churchianity that views meditation as a sin for Chrissakes.
While I have enjoyed all of your writing, this piece and its predecessor have been truly educational for me, a lapsed (not ex-, just lapsed!) Catholic. You're talking about characters with whom I thought I was familiar, and the backstories are utterly new to me.
“Churchianity” is such a brilliantly descriptive word; perfect. Clearly, this could be a dark "DC-or-Marvel" graphic genre: "... a book about the murderous rampage of a psychotic tribe of desert people through the ancient world."
Well it is always good to read fantasy. So many new versions of old stories. Might as well add your own. In the end truth prevails and only the fool says there is no God.
Your account of the matter is not studious. It's crass abuse of historical literature rooted in chronological snobbery.
Both Mark and Mathew mention bad things about the disciples. Both Mark and Mathew mention good things about the disciples. But since Mark does not mention as many good things about them you take liberty to interpret it that Mark actually hates the Jew-version of christianity and agrees with Paul on the pro-gentile version of Christianity. And that in spite of their major falling out (if you would read Acts)? That's not scholarship. This is molestation.
There are things which Peter said about Paul. There are things which Paul said about Peter. There are things which Paul and Peter did together and agreed upon. Those who actually read NT would find too many examples to contradict your narrative.
What of Peter's epistles where he speaks laudably of Paul? What of Paul's epistles where he clearly mentions that God worked in Peter as an apostles to the circumcised?
Go through the NT as a devil's advocate to your own theory. At the end of that exercise I don't think you'll be able to maintain your stance as dogmatically. There is simply no record of strife between Paul and other apostles. There's conflict (to the point of him moving his base to Antioch) but never strife.
What of all that stuff I wrote about the Old Testament and Yahweh?
I'd like to hear you engage with what constitutes 80% of my argument.
>What of Paul's epistles where he clearly mentions that God worked in Peter as an apostles to the circumcised?
Lol, why did you cherrypic Galatians 2:8? Why didn't you read literally the very next verses or the ones that came before? Here, allow me to provide the full story from Galations for you because you seem to struggle to understand the concept of "context".
How can you read this and conclude that Paul liked Peter? It boggles the mind the way you twist and manipulate reality to suit your dogma.:
And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) 7 Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. 8 For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
9 In fact, James, Peter,[c] and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
What i'm reading in your position is that Paul (and Mark) were offering a contrary vision of Christianity than Peter (and other apostles). If this was not your argument then please clearly qualify the nature of their disagreement.
The reason I pointed out vs. 7 is to show that Paul still identified Peter's work as God's working to the Jews. I am aware of tensions between Paul and Peter in Acts and Galatians. But to propose that those tensions were irreconcilable would be to go beyond what is found in the text. (Even in the context you provided, Paul accuses Peter of hypocrisy -- not wrong theology -- since Peter had no problem with communing with Gentiles until the Jews showed up).
>>>What of all that stuff I wrote about the Old Testament and Yahweh?<<<
the current installment did not mention much of Old Testament and Yahweh (or Yahovah... whichever). Did Nicene Christianity include OT because of all the neat prophesies of Jesus? No. They included OT because the Gospels referenced OT to drive the narrative of this Christ. Simply put, the Gospels make no sense w/ out expectation setup in the OT. Jews were waiting for the messaiah. Why? Because of OT. Jesus arrives and says, I am he.
He called himself David's Lord. Who's David?
He called himself the Son of Man. Which is a reference to Daniel where "one like the Son of Man comes to the Throne of God to receive power and dominion.
He calls himself as the rock which the builders rejected. That's Psalm 118.
He said before Abraham was, I am. Who's Abraham?
He said, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather you as a chicken gathers her chicks." When did that happen?
When Jesus says that Elijah was to come before him and he did come (in reference to John the Baptist), what was He talking about?
When in Luke on road to Emaus he starts from Moses and goes all the way through the prophets talking about himself, who is this Moses and the prophets he's talking about?
When Paul says, "all of scriptures is profitable... so that man of god can be well equipped for every good work. What Scriptures is Paul talking about? There was no NT at that point.
NT makes no sense w/ out the narratives of OT. That's why Church Fathers included it.
Where you referring to some other discourse of OT and Yahve (perhaps in previous article)?
Why? If you want to understand The Declaration of Independence, a good teacher will start you off all the way in Plato's Republic, Nicene Creed, Magna Carta, Calvin's Institutes, Lock, and Montesquieu, and only then he will start on The Declaration of Independence.
Fortissimo is only the end of the Crescendo and the former comes by the means of the later. Old Testament is basically reliable as such historically we have no reason to displace it especially given that it perfectly compliments the NT.
God dispersed the people. God chose one nation through whom he would call the people back to Himself. In NT that promise is being fulfilled -- God now calls the dispersed people back into communion with Himself having fulfilled the promise given to Abraham -- in you all the nations (which I have cursed) will be blessed (again).
NT complimenting OT explains why the ethnic boundaries are no longer important distinctive of the covenant people. Now, God's people are no longer identified by their ethnicity but by their ideology (the very hallmark of Western Civilization)
Hello Rolo, thank you for this essay on reforming christianity.
First a minor point. Almost everyone accepts that the Matthew Gospel is posterior to the Mark Gospel. What predates the Mark Gospel is an Aramaic or Hebrew compilation of teachings and stories about Jesus, ascribed to Matthew because the early tradition said so and because Matthew was the most learned amongst the apostles and would have been the natural person to do the compilation. When I say "predates", it is to be understood as this is the claim made by the scholars who cling to the anteriority of the Matthew Gospel.
Second the Mark Gospel is a brief story of the life of Jesus with his most important teachings in the context that he made them. It was written in everyday Greek and intended for the common man. Its literary form was entirely novel. It must have had a huge success because its form was retained for the subsequent canonical gospel and beyond. On the other side the Matthew Gospel is like a series of treaties stitched together by a narrative of the life of Jesus. They treaties are divorced from actual context because they are intended to be of general validity. It is written in pompous Greek. I surmise that the success of the Mark Gospel prompted Matthew to reformat his collection of treaties in the style of Mark in order for them to gain audience. It is widely recognised that the Matthew Gospel is intended to expand on and correct the Mark Gospel.
Third point. You find discrepancies in the NT between Paul and Mark versus Peter and Matthew. They are no surprise. Many Jews followed Jesus as the Messiah because his teachings were a good way out of the chains of the law as forged by the doctors of the law, the forefathers of the talmudists. It is reckoned that 75% of the original Jews from Palestine converted over 250 years. These Jews sought a better law to follow, not the degraded jurisprudence wrought upon the original law of Moses. Do not forget that the Talmud purports to be the oral Torah, equivalent in standing to the written Torah, what Jesus calls the tradition of the Pharisees. So in year 1 AD, the Jews had an old written law like many other peoples and an oral law like the primitives before the invention of writing; plus an oral jurisprudence elaborating on both. True paradise for crooks. The Talmud is the oral law and the oral jurisprudence. Despite its massive size, it is not even a complete rendering of the oral stuff. Jesus did save the common Jews on earth before opening the gates of heaven for everyone.
The Greek converts were fed up with the worship of gods in rivers, mountains, statues, etc. That worship seemed fake or plain wrong. They sought the real God and thought they found him in Yahweh, Christ or the Trinity. His teaching for life on earth were deemed excellent, his way to the Kingdom of God was consistent with their mystical experience. Greeks joined in droves.
These two populations had very different aspirations, very different mental worlds, and very different intellectual and spiritual abilities. The early councils tried to balance the religion to suit everyone; that includes internal power. Hence the dual aspect of Christianity as both law for a good life on earth, more or less strict; and revelation of the Kingdom of God.
>First a minor point. Almost everyone accepts that the Matthew Gospel is posterior to the Mark Gospel.
Yeah, not in Orthodoxy.
>The Greek converts were fed up with the worship of gods in rivers, mountains, statues, etc. That worship seemed fake or plain wrong. They sought the real God and thought they found him in Yahweh, Christ or the Trinity.
Partially agree. The Greeks weren't big fans of the cosmological gods at some point. They saw them as capricious tyrants. Like in the Odyssey. Also, the pre-Socratics had already theorized about a higher, unknown god. Xenophanes. It's unthinkable that they ever would have accepted Yahweh if they had known that this was who they were supposed to be worshipping. The priests kept their cards close to their chest and jealously guarded the Old Testament from the masses, most of whom couldn't read anyways.
>Greeks joined in droves
Yep, but they joined Marcionism, which was intensely popular.
Mu spirituality has been more experiential than scholarly.
I started with the KJV, but between the "Old English" & microscopic type size, gave up & looked for something more accessible.
The only New Testament that I've read end to end is the "Passion" translation, which includes translations of key passages from Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew & the Septuagint. I don't remember seeing some of what you are saying is there, so will need to go back, re-read.
You can also just google around and find some scholarly work about the Paul and gnosticism connection. Some good stuff about Marcionism has come out recently from Jason Beduhn.
Or you can watch some videos of Professor Bob and read what he recommends.
Robert Price is a minimialist like Gmirkin and a mythicist. His videos are fascinating on their own, but they also are a good launching point for further inquiry. He believes that Paul and Simon Magus are the same character. Also believes Paul was a gnostic.
The ''browning'' of Jesus is already a thing,no need to wait for it.Obviously spurred more by politics than any real desire for truth or accuracy the swarthy desert nomad is less about the savior of mankind and more about getting revenge on their conservative dad.
On the Caesar topic,you may be right but I don't know enough to say one way or the other having only read Franchesco's work and watched a documentary some years back.For me it seems plausible and until I have more information it remains a useful theory to fill in the gaps.
As for restarting the Ceasar cult the ''current year'' crowd is hardly who you want to appeal to, though I concede that convincing the church going masses is going to basically be impossible.But so is reaching them with any kind of historical revisionism or metaphysics or real mysticism.We're in a spiritually dead age and you're gonna be hard pressed to even find people with potential for real spiritual development let alone turning around a population hellbent on ensuring it's own slavery.The new spiritually alive and applicable Christianity won't come from the normies anyway,but from the Hydra of rando posters trying to figure out a way to live that doesn't degrade the soul.
"but from the Hydra of rando posters trying to figure out a way to live that doesn't degrade the soul" LOVE THIS!
Great post, Rolo. For those looking for some more Paul's influence on Mark (and Mark as a rewriting of Paul as Christ), these are the main works making those connections:
-Paul Tarazi's The New Testament: An Introduction: Paul and Mark (1999)
-Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (2012)
-David Oliver Smith's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels (2015)
-David Oliver Smith's Unlocking the Puzzle: The Keys to the Christology and Structure of the Original Gospel of Mark (2017)
-Laura Knight-Jadczyk's From Paul to Mark: PaleoChristianity (2021)
also the Gnostic Paul, by Elaine Pagels
Thank you! Book recommendations are very appreciated!
No problem!
My 11th grade American Lit teacher was also gay. Don't remember him trying to insinuate sodomy into the Scarlet Letter, but did notice him staring at our studly football star as if in some erotic trance.
I'm on board the Gnostic Express, tho not the Fallen World bypass. Check out sunrises and sunsets and see if they square better w/ Archontic mimicry or Gaian aesthetics. We are living in a techno Matrix, but the red pill does not awaken one to a barren, desolated landscape like the desert Semites were confined to.
Agree that the Caesar template is a distraction. Wasn't it a Jewish writer who started that meme, just like w/ the Clash of Civilizations idea and then a gentile, Huntington, took it mainstream? I think the same guy wrote that the real Shakespeare was a Jewish woman! Yeah, bet on that.
I find your commentary on the Peter-Paul split novel and fascinating. My limited understanding informs me that Paul was a pharisee (lawyer) opposed to the saducees (priests). I had never considered Paul as a Gnostic., tho a Hellenized Jew certainly.
There's another esoteric Christian heresy: "Jesus Was a Scythian". Came across it at a right wing Hungarian website. It's a fairly elaborated theory that claims Jesus was a gentile from an aristocratic family of the Parthian Empire doing some kind of outreach preaching in Judea. He lived in Galilee which was an area reviled by Jews as barbarian. It may be so much wishful thinking, but I found it tremendously provocative before I discovered Gnosticism.
Yeah Galilee translates as land of the gentiles. Jesus of Galilee.
>I'm on board the Gnostic Express, tho not the Fallen World bypass
I don't really want to copy all of gnosticism. I think it's a more anti-Judaic version of Christianity and a religion that doesn't frown on actual spiritual practice as opposed to mainstream Churchianity that views meditation as a sin for Chrissakes.
While I have enjoyed all of your writing, this piece and its predecessor have been truly educational for me, a lapsed (not ex-, just lapsed!) Catholic. You're talking about characters with whom I thought I was familiar, and the backstories are utterly new to me.
I look forward to your next installment.
“Churchianity” is such a brilliantly descriptive word; perfect. Clearly, this could be a dark "DC-or-Marvel" graphic genre: "... a book about the murderous rampage of a psychotic tribe of desert people through the ancient world."
Well it is always good to read fantasy. So many new versions of old stories. Might as well add your own. In the end truth prevails and only the fool says there is no God.
Who said there were no gods?
Your account of the matter is not studious. It's crass abuse of historical literature rooted in chronological snobbery.
Both Mark and Mathew mention bad things about the disciples. Both Mark and Mathew mention good things about the disciples. But since Mark does not mention as many good things about them you take liberty to interpret it that Mark actually hates the Jew-version of christianity and agrees with Paul on the pro-gentile version of Christianity. And that in spite of their major falling out (if you would read Acts)? That's not scholarship. This is molestation.
There are things which Peter said about Paul. There are things which Paul said about Peter. There are things which Paul and Peter did together and agreed upon. Those who actually read NT would find too many examples to contradict your narrative.
>Those who actually read NT would find too many examples to contradict your narrative.
They'd find them all in Luke-Acts, a later work.
What you deride as chronological snobbery is what serious people call historical primacy.
What of Peter's epistles where he speaks laudably of Paul? What of Paul's epistles where he clearly mentions that God worked in Peter as an apostles to the circumcised?
Go through the NT as a devil's advocate to your own theory. At the end of that exercise I don't think you'll be able to maintain your stance as dogmatically. There is simply no record of strife between Paul and other apostles. There's conflict (to the point of him moving his base to Antioch) but never strife.
What of all that stuff I wrote about the Old Testament and Yahweh?
I'd like to hear you engage with what constitutes 80% of my argument.
>What of Paul's epistles where he clearly mentions that God worked in Peter as an apostles to the circumcised?
Lol, why did you cherrypic Galatians 2:8? Why didn't you read literally the very next verses or the ones that came before? Here, allow me to provide the full story from Galations for you because you seem to struggle to understand the concept of "context".
How can you read this and conclude that Paul liked Peter? It boggles the mind the way you twist and manipulate reality to suit your dogma.:
And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) 7 Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews. 8 For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
9 In fact, James, Peter,[c] and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews. 10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?
What i'm reading in your position is that Paul (and Mark) were offering a contrary vision of Christianity than Peter (and other apostles). If this was not your argument then please clearly qualify the nature of their disagreement.
The reason I pointed out vs. 7 is to show that Paul still identified Peter's work as God's working to the Jews. I am aware of tensions between Paul and Peter in Acts and Galatians. But to propose that those tensions were irreconcilable would be to go beyond what is found in the text. (Even in the context you provided, Paul accuses Peter of hypocrisy -- not wrong theology -- since Peter had no problem with communing with Gentiles until the Jews showed up).
>>>What of all that stuff I wrote about the Old Testament and Yahweh?<<<
the current installment did not mention much of Old Testament and Yahweh (or Yahovah... whichever). Did Nicene Christianity include OT because of all the neat prophesies of Jesus? No. They included OT because the Gospels referenced OT to drive the narrative of this Christ. Simply put, the Gospels make no sense w/ out expectation setup in the OT. Jews were waiting for the messaiah. Why? Because of OT. Jesus arrives and says, I am he.
He called himself David's Lord. Who's David?
He called himself the Son of Man. Which is a reference to Daniel where "one like the Son of Man comes to the Throne of God to receive power and dominion.
He calls himself as the rock which the builders rejected. That's Psalm 118.
He said before Abraham was, I am. Who's Abraham?
He said, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather you as a chicken gathers her chicks." When did that happen?
When Jesus says that Elijah was to come before him and he did come (in reference to John the Baptist), what was He talking about?
When in Luke on road to Emaus he starts from Moses and goes all the way through the prophets talking about himself, who is this Moses and the prophets he's talking about?
When Paul says, "all of scriptures is profitable... so that man of god can be well equipped for every good work. What Scriptures is Paul talking about? There was no NT at that point.
NT makes no sense w/ out the narratives of OT. That's why Church Fathers included it.
Where you referring to some other discourse of OT and Yahve (perhaps in previous article)?
>NT makes no sense w/ out the narratives of OT. That's why Church Fathers included it.
Sure parts of the NT reference the OT. I don't think that's a good enough explanation for making 90% of your holy scripture Jewish fairytales.
Would you open to making it like 50/50?
Why? If you want to understand The Declaration of Independence, a good teacher will start you off all the way in Plato's Republic, Nicene Creed, Magna Carta, Calvin's Institutes, Lock, and Montesquieu, and only then he will start on The Declaration of Independence.
Fortissimo is only the end of the Crescendo and the former comes by the means of the later. Old Testament is basically reliable as such historically we have no reason to displace it especially given that it perfectly compliments the NT.
God dispersed the people. God chose one nation through whom he would call the people back to Himself. In NT that promise is being fulfilled -- God now calls the dispersed people back into communion with Himself having fulfilled the promise given to Abraham -- in you all the nations (which I have cursed) will be blessed (again).
NT complimenting OT explains why the ethnic boundaries are no longer important distinctive of the covenant people. Now, God's people are no longer identified by their ethnicity but by their ideology (the very hallmark of Western Civilization)
Hello Rolo, thank you for this essay on reforming christianity.
First a minor point. Almost everyone accepts that the Matthew Gospel is posterior to the Mark Gospel. What predates the Mark Gospel is an Aramaic or Hebrew compilation of teachings and stories about Jesus, ascribed to Matthew because the early tradition said so and because Matthew was the most learned amongst the apostles and would have been the natural person to do the compilation. When I say "predates", it is to be understood as this is the claim made by the scholars who cling to the anteriority of the Matthew Gospel.
Second the Mark Gospel is a brief story of the life of Jesus with his most important teachings in the context that he made them. It was written in everyday Greek and intended for the common man. Its literary form was entirely novel. It must have had a huge success because its form was retained for the subsequent canonical gospel and beyond. On the other side the Matthew Gospel is like a series of treaties stitched together by a narrative of the life of Jesus. They treaties are divorced from actual context because they are intended to be of general validity. It is written in pompous Greek. I surmise that the success of the Mark Gospel prompted Matthew to reformat his collection of treaties in the style of Mark in order for them to gain audience. It is widely recognised that the Matthew Gospel is intended to expand on and correct the Mark Gospel.
Third point. You find discrepancies in the NT between Paul and Mark versus Peter and Matthew. They are no surprise. Many Jews followed Jesus as the Messiah because his teachings were a good way out of the chains of the law as forged by the doctors of the law, the forefathers of the talmudists. It is reckoned that 75% of the original Jews from Palestine converted over 250 years. These Jews sought a better law to follow, not the degraded jurisprudence wrought upon the original law of Moses. Do not forget that the Talmud purports to be the oral Torah, equivalent in standing to the written Torah, what Jesus calls the tradition of the Pharisees. So in year 1 AD, the Jews had an old written law like many other peoples and an oral law like the primitives before the invention of writing; plus an oral jurisprudence elaborating on both. True paradise for crooks. The Talmud is the oral law and the oral jurisprudence. Despite its massive size, it is not even a complete rendering of the oral stuff. Jesus did save the common Jews on earth before opening the gates of heaven for everyone.
The Greek converts were fed up with the worship of gods in rivers, mountains, statues, etc. That worship seemed fake or plain wrong. They sought the real God and thought they found him in Yahweh, Christ or the Trinity. His teaching for life on earth were deemed excellent, his way to the Kingdom of God was consistent with their mystical experience. Greeks joined in droves.
These two populations had very different aspirations, very different mental worlds, and very different intellectual and spiritual abilities. The early councils tried to balance the religion to suit everyone; that includes internal power. Hence the dual aspect of Christianity as both law for a good life on earth, more or less strict; and revelation of the Kingdom of God.
>First a minor point. Almost everyone accepts that the Matthew Gospel is posterior to the Mark Gospel.
Yeah, not in Orthodoxy.
>The Greek converts were fed up with the worship of gods in rivers, mountains, statues, etc. That worship seemed fake or plain wrong. They sought the real God and thought they found him in Yahweh, Christ or the Trinity.
Partially agree. The Greeks weren't big fans of the cosmological gods at some point. They saw them as capricious tyrants. Like in the Odyssey. Also, the pre-Socratics had already theorized about a higher, unknown god. Xenophanes. It's unthinkable that they ever would have accepted Yahweh if they had known that this was who they were supposed to be worshipping. The priests kept their cards close to their chest and jealously guarded the Old Testament from the masses, most of whom couldn't read anyways.
>Greeks joined in droves
Yep, but they joined Marcionism, which was intensely popular.
Your map makes great sense to me. Thank you, Rolo.
Mu spirituality has been more experiential than scholarly.
I started with the KJV, but between the "Old English" & microscopic type size, gave up & looked for something more accessible.
The only New Testament that I've read end to end is the "Passion" translation, which includes translations of key passages from Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew & the Septuagint. I don't remember seeing some of what you are saying is there, so will need to go back, re-read.
You can also just google around and find some scholarly work about the Paul and gnosticism connection. Some good stuff about Marcionism has come out recently from Jason Beduhn.
Or you can watch some videos of Professor Bob and read what he recommends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8pbdRExpj8
Robert Price is a minimialist like Gmirkin and a mythicist. His videos are fascinating on their own, but they also are a good launching point for further inquiry. He believes that Paul and Simon Magus are the same character. Also believes Paul was a gnostic.