Spreading The Word..

[ck1]

So assuming the whole jesus thing didn't happen, somebody at some point would have come up with this elaborate story, told his mates, got them on board and they they start to pass the word around. How long did it take to get from the figment of somebody's imagination to being globally recognised as a common story?

[1ndex]

nano seconds on twitter

[Frank97]

Well the native Americans were blissfully ignorant of it for the best part of fifteen hundred years.

[ck1]

Or maybe they were familiar with the term 'urban myth' already!

[jim360]

It didn't take long for it to be regionally recognised -- the earliest epistles are usually dated around about 70 AD or so. That places the spread of Christianity (or Judaism as it was then) to the local region to have taken not much more than a few years, and certainly no more than thirty. To become globally recognised takes a whole lot longer. Indeed I'm sure there are probably one or two tribes even today as yet untouched by missionaries.

[naomi24]

Jesus wasn't a Christian - he was a Jew – and Christianity was never Judaism. St Paul was the man responsible for constructing Christianity – Constantine (a few hundred years later) for its wider acceptance.

[ck1]

naomi24, can you expand on that at all?

[mikey4444]

Its all a giant con trick, like all religions. The uneducated and gullible will always be fooled. That is as true today as it was 200 years ago, when 99% of people couldn't read or write.

[ck1]

I'm not sure you could consider every believer to be uneducated and gullible

[idiosyncrasy]

Naomi@
Yes, Jesus was a Jew, born into the Jewish nation. But the word Christian actually means, "footstep follower of Christ". The foundation of Christianity has nothing to do with Paul. He was just a follower of Christ.
Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. The word Christ actually means anointed. Jesus Christ is therefore the Anointed King of God's Kingdom.

[mikey4444]

You are right ck1...the use of uneducated was perhaps unwise, and I withdraw it ( what a lot of withdrawing I am doing today ! )

But I stand by gullible. Look at the basic tenets of any world religion and they are risible. For instance, how long would anybody have to study Scientology, before coming the conclusion that is all drivel ?

I have a friend who is a Hindu. He is a highly educated man, who works in high-end engineering. But he believes that the island of Ceylon, where his father was born. came about because a giant bird in mythological times flew over the Indian Ocean and did a huge poo, and the poo fell into the sea and formed Sri Lanka.

We have often talked, good-naturedly about this and other Hindu beliefs over the years and his explanation is that it is his religion, so therefore he must believe in it !

So, highly educated but still gullible. See my other posts about the this subject today, especially the one about the Creation Museum, in Kentucky

http://creationmuseum.org/

[ck1]

I wouldn't argue with the gullible comment - I didn't know that bit of history about Ceylon - my wife is sri Lankan so I think I will be mentioning that on a regular basis from now on!!

[mikey4444]

What other word other than gullible should I use for people who clearly cannot recognise pure drivel when they see it ?

According to the Creation Museum, the earth is only 6000 years old and dinosaurs existed side-bys-side with early man ! This is clearly drivel by any means of defining the word. So if these people are not gullible, what are they ?

[ck1]

I'm on your side there Mikey, gullible is definitely appropriate!!

[naomi24]

idiosyncrasy, in search of historical truth, I prefer to strip away all mention of the supernatural, one reason being that if dead men are alleged to have risen from their graves and roamed the streets of the city of Jerusalem – a truly monumental and unique event that, quite astonishingly, no one apart from the biblical authors bothered to record – then the rest of the extraordinary claims must be called into question. The term ‘Christian’ didn’t exist in Jesus’ lifetime – and Paul never met Jesus. Nevertheless, despite Jesus’ alleged instruction to his disciples to ‘keep the [Jewish] law’, in order to accommodate something more appealing to non-Jews that didn’t involve the unsavoury prospect of circumcision, or restrictive dietary laws, and at the same time offering them something quite exceptional – eternal life - Paul discarded that advice, thereby formulating the foundation of a new religion - Christianity. You are right in one respect – according to the bible Jesus was ‘anointed’, but not, I suspect, as the King of God’s Kingdom, but possibly as the rightful King of the Jews – hence his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem – and hence, in an extremely politically volatile area, the reason he was crucified just one week later by the Romans. He was seen by them as an insurgent and, as such, as a threat to their unpopular authority.

ck1, I trust the above answers part of your request. The emperor Constantine, some hundreds of years after the event, convened councils to deliberate upon canon law and the divinity of Jesus – hence the almost universal Christian acceptance of the concept of the Holy Trinity. St Paul created the foundation for Christianity – but Constantine cemented that foundation – and ancient manuscripts have been edited and added to very many times to suit the chosen agenda.

[mikey4444]

ck1...I'm so glad that I have one friend at least here on AB today !

[ck1]

Naomi, yes thankyou that was exactly what I was after

Mikey bff :-)

[naomi24]

ck1, you're welcome.

[mikey4444]

ck1...sorry but now sure what bff means ?

[chakka35]

Adding just a little to naomi's excellent answer - there is no trace at all of Jesus in those years when he was supposed to have lived. The first mention of him was by Paul in his epistles (AD55-60), where he tells us of a man who was the son of God, who came to earth as a redeemer, was crucified and rose from the dead. That is the start of Christianity.
If Jesus existed (and there is no evidence, no eyewitness accounts) then he was certainly a Jew, as naomi says, and would be mystified and probably angry at the way his name has been used to form a totally separate religion.
The Messiah was not a supernatural being but an ordinary mortal who would be chosen by God one day (The Anointed One, The Chosen One) to lead the Jews into a life where every one of God's laws would be obeyed. It is an entirely Jewish concept distorted later by Christians.