Reply #29: That's probably true. Still, THIS rumor didn't... [View All]

[Deep13]

...because a few people thought the Jesus story was such a dramatic break from the uncaring Olympian gods that it was worth spreading the news. Of course those were not contemporaneous with the supposed events. The rapid spread of Christianity is part of what makes me think that some part of that belief system was in place before the turn of the millennium. The life story of JC itself is highly derivative. (It was such a memorable story that many of those hearing it for the first time must have remembered parts of it even then.) There were Jewish, Platonic and Zoroastrian mystical traditions which Christianity plagiarizes on the one hand and borrows from the other two. Plus, the Christian god was different from the Olympians in another way too. If there is a foundational writing for the Greco-Roman pagan religion, it is the Iliad. In the Iliad the gods care about kings and great warriors and great civilizations. Christianity as it existed in its pre-Nicean form was for commoners and especially to common women. You see, its advocacy of chastity for religious reasons was the closest a women could get in the pre-contraceptive, patriarchal society to controlling her own reproduction. Of course the male-dominated priesthood later rejected that idea.

This of course may help explain why the new theology was so attractive. It says nothing about the veracity of its claims.