Now... with the evidence that the historical Jesus did, in fact, exist and was executed by Pilate (see above entry), the question for me is whether the church that arose thereafter was actually started by Jesus and whether its dogmae and teachings were Jesus' own.
On this question, there is to my view more than sufficient evidence to clearly show such not to be the case, at all.
While to provide all the evidences in support of such a view would fill a book, at least, I shall provide here what I view to be the key piece of evidence that, like the above entry, trumps all others.
As clearly stated in the New Testament, the Christianity that finally arose out of the hubris following the destruction of Jerusalem (ca 70 CE) and the Roman persecutions that continued until Constantine finally made Christianity the State religion in the early 4th Century CE, was largely the result of... one man. And that man was most assuredly NOT the historical Jesus.
The man truly responsible for Christianity and the Christian Church that followed was not Jesus but... Paul.
The apostles stayed in Jerusalem and its immediate environs while it was Paul, himself a Roman citizen, who traveled and proselytized with followers of his own choosing throughout the Roman-Greco world and taught a unique brand of what he called "Christianity" that in so many ways differed with and on several points was quite anti-thetical to that which Jesus taught. Paul's blatant misogyny and anti-marriage views are but two examples of the huge differences between Jesus' teachings and Paul's.
Additionally, as stated by Paul in his own book of Acts (written by Paul's scribe, another Roman named Lucas [Luke]), on two separate occasions, Paul was summoned to Jerusalem before the true apostles for teaching contrary to Jesus' own teachings! And yet, it was also Paul who repeatedly stated in his epistles to his followers that should anyone teach contrary to what he and his own followers taught "...let him be condemned to hell." (Galatians 1:8-9). Thus, even should the real apostles have arrived and taught anything differernt to such Pauline congregations, they would have been rejected.
Paul never once acknowledged before his own churches and congregations that he was in any way subordinate to the true apostles in Jerusalem. In fact, except in derision, Paul's epistles don't speak of the actual apostles at all. When reading any of his epistles (pretty much all the New Testament books following the four Gospels), he speaks almost entirely in the first person, declaring that everything he teaches... though claimed to be through Christ... comes only from himself, Paul.
Thus... in this manner and with the deaths of the other apostles, Paul succeeded in basically hijacking the entire Christian movment under himself, alone. Perhaps even more tellingly, history reveals that subsequent Roman persecutions succeeded in burning great numbers of original Christian documents. And yet, perhaps quite notably, almost the only books that survived those centuries of persecution and book burnings... were Paul's epistles. We have almost nothing remaining of the writings of any of the other apostles, and those few writings attributed to them have been revealed to have been written centuries after their deaths.
There is additionally the fact that prior to his claimed "conversion," Paul... as he, himself, admitted... had originally been employed by the Sadducean High Priests (Roman appointees and puppets, themselves) to deliberately arrest, imprison, interrogate and occasionally kill Christians. Thus, as a Roman citizen, himself, and thus obligated as such to support Roman authority, the additional question is raised as to whether he might have been ordered by his employers to "join them" rather than fight them further, and perhaps hijack the Christian movement (whatever it originally was) and turn it into a Rome-friendly institution to rival Judaism, itself... which is exactly what happened!
Given all of this, it certainly seems that what we know as Christianity today is but a shadow of what it was under the actual apostles.
Of course, this leaves entirely unaddressed the far greater question of whether the historical Jesus ever actually intended to start a new religion, at all! There are many evidences that he did not so intend given his frequent acknowledgments in the Gospels that, while sometimes corrupt and misguided, yet Judaism was the true religion and that the Temple was the true House of God.
So many fascinating topics for discussion in all of this, to be sure!
- Upir'
