Quote:
Originally Posted by john76  |
My site goes far beyond positing pagan origins for Christianity. That is, as you say, old news. If that's all I had to say I wouldn't have bothered. My site does more than that ... it posits multiple points of origin for Christianity.
There are many people who acknowledge linkages with paganism but still posit that there was a Jesus person from whom Christianity sprang. It may not have been the canonical-gospel Jesus of current Christian legend, but it was a sole origin nonetheless. One example of this kind of thinking, that I could cite, is Dominic Crossan; his tome
The Birth of Christianity outlines his scenario. Crossan shows that Jesus was a Hellenic sage of the Cynical school (tough of Jewish ethnicity).
Crossan is not the only one; many scholars have similar ideas -- Burton Mack, Marcus Borg, many more. They all freely admit the pagan/Hellenic content in Christianity, yet still posit a single source.
My view goes a step further, positing that even if there was a Jesus person at the heart of Christianity, he could have been only one of several sources. Over time, later Christians revised their own history so as to make it appear that he was the source of all Christianity; but this is not actually how it happened.
That is where I differ from many. That is why I took the time to develop my site.