Nancy Williams58 said:Look, you basically just argued against yourself. You can't claim Christianity kicked off when Jesus was born and then turn around and say it started later when they finally split from Judaism. It’s one or the other. If we go by your first logic, someone could just as easily argue that Christianity started the moment the universe was created.
Well, sure, if you're looking at Christianity as an organized religion. That's why I'm saying there weren't actually "Christians" walking around during Jesus's birth or even while he was alive. You could argue the whole concept of being a Christian didn't really take shape until after his death, once they officially branched out from Judaism. That's all I was getting at.
Drew Reed6 said:If you look in almost any book or encyclopedia, you'll find the data stating that Christianity begins with Jesus.
But if we look at this strictly, the Gospels probably shouldn't even start with the birth, because that isn't actually the crucial part regarding the Messiah. To me, the only moment that truly matters is the baptism by John the Baptist. The birth is significant for Christ, sure, but it's entirely possible that those specific texts were added later on.
The split from Judaism is also a huge factor, but I don't think we should interpret all of this in such a bureaucratic way. It's not like anyone issued an official decree or wrote down a specific date for when Christianity officially kicked off.
I'm just laying out my thoughts on certain details regarding how Christianity came to be.
In the beginning, Jesus was seen as the Messiah of Israel. Then he was crucified. After that, the belief emerged regarding a Messiah who had risen and would return. Around the year 55 AD, during the time of Paul, there existed both a Jerusalem-based Christianity and a Gentile or Pauline version of Christianity. But I don't think Paul was actually separated from Jerusalem; rather, there were just these intense disputes over things like circumcision and Moses' laws. Later on, writers composed the texts, and according to those writings, Christianity starts from the birth of Jesus, portraying a world where there were no conflicts among the Christians in Jerusalem between Peter, James, and Paul.
The foundational texts are the Gospels, the Acts, and the Pauline epistles. Acts serves as a biography of Paul, and the epistles made Paul the most prolific writer in the New Testament. As for James, Peter, and the rest of the apostles, we don't have any preserved documents from them, aside from some texts that don't happen to contradict Pauline theology.
It seems to me that one side of the conflict ended up being the ones who wrote the texts. And it looks like those texts were edited in such a way that they only present one single truth. There aren't really any explanations provided for how Christianity actually formed or what happened to those Christians in Jerusalem who were insisting on circumcision.
It seems to me that the roots of Christianity actually stretch back much further than the actual birth and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. If we look at it from that perspective, the concept of the Son of Yahweh hadn't been incarnated yet, which means His death and resurrection couldn't have served as the foundation for our salvation or resurrection quite the same way they do now. In those early stages, followers weren't even called Christians because of the incarnate Christ; rather, they were identified by their anointing with Holy Oil—much like how Theophilus of Antioch explains it—or they simply hadn't adopted that specific label at all.
If you look at the foundational arguments of early Christian apologetics from the second century, you’ll find fascinating examples in the works of thinkers like Athenagoras and Theophilus of Antioch. They essentially built upon the intellectual traditions passed down from the Alexandrian school and the philosophical frameworks established by Jewish scholars like Philo of Alexandria. What’s particularly interesting from a theological standpoint is that during the early stages of this era, their theology hadn't yet fully centered on the incarnation of the Son of God (the Logos). Instead, they viewed the divine Logos as something that descends whenever God deems it necessary—manifesting in whatever spiritual form He chooses to facilitate communication with figures like Adam, Moses, or the various prophets. It’s a subtle but significant distinction in how they understood the divine presence before the doctrine of the incarnation was fully codified.
Since the very beginning of time and the creation of the universe, His presence—that divine Word, that Logos—has been descending upon us. Even now, He continues to descend, guiding our steps through His teachings and breathing inspiration into our souls. It is through Him alone that we find true salvation and the promise of eternal life, which will be realized at His final judgment.
If that son of Satan were to withdraw from this world for even a fleeting moment, everything would vanish instantly, much like a soul departing from its body.
It seems like this will all eventually be taught by Christians, much like the early followers such as Justin Martyr. They’ll likely go so far as to insist that the Yahwistic Logos incarnated into an eternal virgin during the Second Coming. If that happens, we can look forward to being handed a mysterious, redeeming death on top of everything else, along with the inevitable persecution of anyone who dares to hold a different view regarding the Yahwistic Logos.
If you simply swap out the name of Yahweh for Zeus, you end up with the whole framework of the Zeusian Logos—Platonism and those ancient mysteries of Zeus's son that thinkers used to seek enlightenment and salvation. It was a path through which people reached higher understanding from Athens all the way to Alexandria, centuries before the common era.