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At all the turning points [in Jewish history], it is the more ethnocentric elements — one might term them the radicals — who have determined the direction of the Jewish community and eventually won the day. As recounted in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Jews who returned to Israel after the Babylonian captivity energetically rid the community of those who had intermarried with the racially impure remnant left behind. (more…)
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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
While basing itself on consensus scholarship, the hypothesis of Creating Christ has some interesting local effects on mainstream scholarship. For one thing, the dating of the “later” so-called “pastoral” epistles: the elaborate bureaucratic system of deacons, bishops, orders of consecrated virgins, and so on seems to indicate a later stage of the cult; but if Christianity was a top-top movement imposed by the Romans, the Romanesque bureaucracy could have been nearly original, as with the Mafia. (more…)
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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
James S. Valliant & Warren Fahy
Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity
Crossroad Press, 2018
“Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (more…)