Is Christianity basically the application of Greek and Roman philosophy to Jewish mythology?
Why don't you find out instead of pursuing the opinion of atheists?
>>18630311John was Roman subversive asset
>>18630311J tried to reform Judaism after being influenced by Greek and Roman culture. Christianity is the invention of Paul.
>>18630311No. >>18630639Where is the injeel and torah that are the ones the ones the quran says Christians and jews should judge Mohammad's words by?
No but I was shocked at how much overlap there is. Reading the Aeneid book VI (I think, the one in Hades) was really interresting.Also some Plato
>>18630311It's not.Christianity isn't even particularly spiritual. It has some basic ethical arguements but most of the NT is divine/divinely inspired pronouncements, visions etc., not philosophical thought.As for how Greek it is: the group that was closest to the early Christians in teachings and practice was the Pharisees. They also emphasized moral behavior while living within mainstream society (as in: not forming monastic communes like the Essenes), and were opposed to the heavily hellenized Jewish religious authorities. Paul started converting Greeks but his background was in a proto-Kabbalah mystical tradition, which is a little bit hellenized. But really, the most hellenic thing in Christianity is body-soul dualism (which some of the NT denies anyways).The groups that really applied Greek philosophy (mostly Plato-inspired weird esoteric stuff) were the Gnostics who were quickly bullied out of Christianity, mostly because they were too syncretic, obviously bringing in stuff from other traditions that Jesus likely never heard about.>>18630639>J tried to reform Judaism after being influenced by Greek and Roman culture.It is probably more accurate to see Jesus as a Jewish fundamentalist, trying to bring back what was thought to be an original tradition+apocalyptic messianism. There were Jewish thinkers strongly influenced by Greco-Roman culture, like Philo, but Jesus and co. were on the opposite end of a spectrum.
>>18630311>>18630319>>18630639Christianity was Jesus trying to impose his fathers Massylii beliefs (actual Messiah lineage) into the movement of John the Baptist, whom had been appointed along with his father Zechariah as the rightful high priests of Israel.Jesus' father Juba II could do, and wanted to do this because he married Glaphyra politically to protect her (the "angel"/messenger that visited Mary, plus delivered Jesus), he was a Praetor, was a Massylii kingly heir belonging religiously to Siwa Amunism and Hathorism/Suncow worship (Basically senior male of Osirian faith at that point), was the husband of Cleopatra Selene II - thus finally the senior male able to have a say regarding historic Egyptian-Israelite legal affairs - which under Roman law had been integrated into the Roman law-structure following Actium. A battle that Juba II also participated in aged 18, functionally as Augustus' taboo adoptive brother.
>>18630311Kind of. The religion was created by Greek speaking Roman citizens who took the Jesus folk-stories and the Hebrew bible and then gave it all a Greco-Roman paint job. They weren't necessarily philosophers though, so the greco-roman concepts are all rather shallow. At least in the beginning. Most notably the Christian concept of god is very different to the jewish one. The idea of the prime mover who is unseen, omnipotent and omniscient comes from the greco-roman world. The jews were still regularly sacrificing animals to their national deity Yahweh at that point, who spent a lot of time living in a tent called tabernacle during the old testament.The story of the Rich man and Lazarus in Luke shows how Paul and his contemporaries imagined the afterlife: Straight up the greco-roman underworld, where everyone would be stuck together in one realm until judgement day (with better seats for believers). Of course, that concept of the afterlife woudl be the societal norm when you were surrounded by people who subscribed to the Roman pantheon. Besides the mostly gentile Christian churches in places like Antioch and Rome, there was also a jewish-christian movement in Jerusalem. But this jewish branch lost more and more in importance due to having to flee from the Roman invasion in 70CE and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 CE. After that point the leadership of Christianity was pretty much entirely gentile.Paul also made it his mission to allow gentiles easy access to Christianity. Some jewish-christians argued that Christians should have to follow the Mosaic laws, just as Jesus did. But in the Council of Jerusalem (c. AD 48–50) Paul managed to establish that gentile Christians don't have to follow those laws.
>>18630311Yes.But not even Jewish. It's older than that.
>>18631658Sorry, I haven't read the Silmarillion yet, so this doesn't make much sense to me.
>>18631611>But really, the most hellenic thing in Christianity is body-soul dualismWhere does the idea that this was an especially non-Jewish addition to Christianity come from? Josephus seems to say in picrel that both the Pharisees and the Essenes believed in disembodied souls, and, while the Saducees didn't, they didn't believe in resurrection either. Meanwhile the Hebrew Bible itself seems to present a mixture of views, in places seeming to reject body soul dualism, but in other places seeming to affirm it or to express uncertainty about it, which is likely why by Jesus' time there were two out of three sects affirming it and one rejecting it.>(which some of the NT denies anyways)Where?
Acts 23:8, "The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection or angel or spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge all three."
>>18631829>Where does the idea that this was an especially non-Jewish addition to Christianity come from?On second thought, I think I remember hearing it from Bart Ehrman before, so he might be the one responsible for popularizing it lately. I was persuaded by it when I first came across it because there's an intuitive appeal to resurrection as a materialist afterlife alternative to belief in disembodied souls, and stacking resurrection on top of disembodied souls seems comparatively superfluous. But, from what I've been able to find in writing, that doesn't seem to be how the beliefs were distributed by Jesus' time in practice. The divide seems to have been more between people who broadly rejected the supernatural (both disembodied souls and resurrection) and people who broadly accepted the supernatural (both disembodied souls and resurrection).
