The Historicity of Jesus - The Spread of Christianity in the 1st Century

[The Mikado]

There's little doubt that Christianity had spread far and wide throughout the Hellenized eastern half of the Empire and had begun to build a small but visible presence in Rome itself by ~60 CE.  Absolutely.  Whether the early church is anything jmfcst would have recognized as Christian is a different matter.

As for Jesus' historicity, I've never really doubted it myself, but Jesus without the Resurrection is not a God.

[The Mikado]

Whether the early church is anything jmfcst would have recognized as Christian is a different matter.

actually, let's go ahead and deal with that here under the assumption you’re saying that the NT doesn’t reflect 1st Century Christianity (if you’re questioning whether my beliefs match the NT, then that is an entirely different topic and shouldn’t be discussed in this thread).

So, are you saying the NT doesn’t represent the beliefs of the early church?  If so, then what is the theory for its divergence?

I'm not disputing the influence of Paul.  However, it's worth pointing out just how much of Paul's epistles are devoted to correcting "errors" in churches that he and his people had set up throughout the Empire.  People had begun believing in wildly divergent themes within Christianity straight from its birth, and Gentile Christianity's primary early demographics (in Rome, at least) of slaves and women didn't contain a particularly large number of educated people.  Add to that Christianity's status as an Eastern "mystery faith" in the eyes of many, and it had an attraction to the 1st century equivalent of BRTD: joiners and mystics desperate for spiritual truths whether they were coming from Isis, Mithra, or Jesus.

In Greece, at least, Christianity had a nice established base to grow on in the Godfearers, or Greek Gentiles who believed in and worshipped the God of the Jews but did not want to go through the difficult process of converting to Judaism.  They tended to convert en masse to Christianity, especially after 70 CE when the Romans burned down Jerusalem and being associated with Judaism no longer seemed a good political decision.

Prior to 70 CE, you also have the huge community of Jewish Christians that Jmf would probably consider Judaizers, providing a big counterbalance to Gentile Christianity.  It's only after many of the Jewish Christians die alongside the Jews in the First Jewish-Roman War and the remaining ones are marginalized that Rome and Greece finally truly eclipse Jerusalem as the center of Christianity.

[The Mikado]

Mikado, I'm interested in learning more about the Godfearers; do you know of any good academic texts on them, in a historical or theological context?

Neither Jew Nor Greek: Constructing Early Christianity by Judith Lieu is pretty good.  That book takes a glance at an issue I hadn't seen discussed before: how well would Gentiles who believed in the Jewish God but weren't willing to convert to the Jewish faith fit into Christianity? 

Godfearers have been something of a controversial topic because there's some controversy about just how many of the traditional model of a Godfearer sitting at the edge of the synagogue, eager to learn but unwilling to go the mile with circumcision and Jewish dietary law there actually were.  That said, even if the revisionist position that there were far fewer of them than were traditionally believed is correct, there were a larger group of people relatively familiar with Judaism and its doctrines thanks to the widespread publication of the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) in the Roman Empire of the period, and quite a bit of public interest in this ancient, quirky faith.

[The Mikado]

What Christianity's official position was on a number of major doctrinal points wasn't really "settled" until the 6th century, either (it's only Christianity becoming the official faith of the Roman Empire in the 4th century that really begins the process of making those decisions, though certain heresies like Gnosticism were already in decline by that point).  My favorite example is always Origen, the third century theologian who was a strong proponent that even the obvious metaphorical language should be taken literally.  He saw the passage "There are eunuchs who became eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven" and...well...became a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

[The Mikado]

It's interesting to note that according to tradition (and in the case of James, possible corroboration by Josephus) the three most prominent Apostles/Church Fathers are all executed in the years immediately prior to the Revolt (Peter and Paul in Rome, James in Jerusalem by the Jewish authorities).  The traditional dates for all of their deaths are in a fairly narrow 60-62 AD range. 

jmf, what Nathan's getting at is that James' church in Jerusalem (pretty much all converted from Jews, and as the Book of Acts argues, a flock extremely susceptible to Judaising) died alongside the Jews of Jerusalem during the Roman sack of the city.  Again, it's not a coup so much as the wiping out of the Jerusalem Church ending their side of a dispute between Gentile and Jewish Christianity by causing the latter ceasing to exist, leading the latter to become preeminent by default.

[The Mikado]

I don't consider anything written by Paul to be scripture.  The contradictions between what he wrote concerning the Mosaic Law and what is in the received Pentateuch are so great, that the only logical alternative is to believe that major errors are in the received Pentateuch.  Problem is, once one does that, if one claims major errors in the Pentateuch, then one has thrown out everything certain about the Judeo-Christian tradition, so that all one is left with is a bunch of unrigorous nonsense.  (Which might be fine for a Universalist, but not for me.)

But...but...how does Christianity even work if you throw out Paul?

[The Mikado]

It's worth pointing out that (this is second-hand info from two of my friends who have learned Greek) while the Gospels are written at a very low reading level (the Gospels are apparently very beginner-friendly books in Greek due to rather simple structure), St. Paul used a considerably more advanced vocabulary and structure.  I've seen this repeated elsewhere and it makes a lot of sense if you accept St. Paul's background as a highly-educated member of the provincial elite as compared to a far more humble background for the Gospel writers. 

[The Mikado]

Take for exmaple the "Red Sea" was actually Sea of Reeds in Hebrew

This always seemed like a ridiculous cop out to me.  You could wade through the Sea of Reeds on a good day with no part at all.  If this was, in fact, the body of water, why even write it as a "miracle" in the first place?  There'd be no miracle in the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds: the miracle, if any, would be the Egyptians managing to drown in it.  (Same thing goes for the Israelites' later crossing of the River Jordan under Joshua, which is about waist-high, but which is parted anyway for no discernible reason).  How could the author of Exodus portray parting the Sea of Reeds as a miracle when it'd be manifestly unnecessary for passage out of Egypt without the original audience for which the text was intended laughing off the "miracle?"  At least the Red Sea is a formidable body of water.

In a way I have much more respect for someone like jmfcst that flat-out accepts the miracles in the Biblical narrative over someone that tries to explain them away and ends up with a text that loses all its punch.

[The Mikado]

What I'm saying is that if the Exodus never happened (which I agree is likely), why not go for broke in your story version and use the Red Sea?  The "realism" aspect of crossing the Sea of Reeds followed by "the Exodus didn't happen at all" doesn't make much sense because if it didn't happen at all the authors would have license to make up as extravagant a story as they'd want.

Also, your statement about the "young woman" vs. "virgin" line in Isaiah, I'm surprised that you didn't go for the obvious alternative: that Isaiah wasn't making a Messianic prophecy at all, but was referring either to the birth of Ahaz's son Hezekiah or the birth of Isaiah's own son in the following chapter (pretty much immediately after Isaiah declares that the young woman will conceive, he "went in unto the prophetess" and conceived his son Maher-Shalal-hashbaz).