Introduction:
Whether or not Jesus actually existed, the beliefs about Jesus have changed over time. From gnostics, to literalists, and finally to fundamentalism, this page examines the growing difference between early and present Christianity, and gives an overview of Christian belief in general.
“A very common belief, accepted (in part if not in full) by Christian liberals is that someone who claimed to be a prophet and messiah (there were many such people appearing amongst the Jews) is the historical Jesus. His life story has been intermingled with older pagan myths, and it is very hard for us to see his true life or message to the extent that we have little or no information about him, he is effectively without historical basis because the real figure is obscured by the mythical one.”
As a version of the Roman Mystery religions combined with Jewish beliefs, Christianity started out as a gnostic movement that did not believe in a literal Jesus. Paul's genuine letters are gnostic, the later forgeries were literalist. All the ancient centres of Christianity were gnostic. Literalist Christianity (i.e., what we have today) triumphed politically over gnostic Christianity, with the support of the Roman Empire, and Christianity then gained some further Mithraistic elements, hence why the Vatican was built on the site of a Mithraist (a Roman mystery religion) temple. This explains why so many Pagan god-man elements are part of Christianity and also explains why none of the scholars of the time mention Jesus or the miracles around his life, because even the Christians themselves knew that they were symbolic stories, not actual events.
Whether or not Jesus existed as an actual person, it soon transpired that the generations after his supposed existence came to believe in him has an actual literal person. From here on, Christianity has become increasingly literalist, and fundamentalist, over time. Before looking at literalism and fundamentalism in turn, the next section is about the actual historical progression of beliefs into what we now call Christianity.
We know from history that religions do not appear out of nowhere, they follow on from previous cultures and previous religions, and develop over time as do all trains of thought. However, due to the burning of books and historical documents by literalist Christians2 much of the history of that era was erased, in particular of those beliefs and religions that competed with the surviving more literal version of Christianity.
Elements that were common in previous Pagan mystery religions include much of the religious content of Christianity. All elements of Jesus' life such as the events around his birth, death and ministry were already parts of the myths surrounding other god-men of the time. Peripheral elements such as there being twelve disciples were similarly present in other more ancient religions and sometimes with an astonishing amount of duplication. First century critics of Christianity voiced accusations that Christianity was nothing but another copy of common religions.
All the actual sayings and teachings of Jesus were also not new, and much of the time speeches attributed to Jesus are more like collections of Jewish and Pagan sayings. Even distinctive texts like the Sermon on the Mount are not unique. If we remove all the content that Jesus could not have heard and repeated himself, there is nothing else left. If we remove the supernatural elements of Christianity that are copies of already existing thought and religion, there is nothing left which is unique! Even much of the sayings of subsequent Christians is not unique; Jesus appears to not have taught anyone anything that was not already present in the common culture of the time. This shows us that not only did Christianity follow on, as expected, from previous thought in history but that we do not even need to believe in God or supernatural events in order to account for the history of Christianity. Stephen Hodge very usefully lists many of the similarities found in the Dead Sea Scrolls to the teachings and organisation of Jewish Christianity. He also concludes that these Jewish documents make the teachings and appearance of Jewish Christianity less revolutionary.
“... the collection is really an invaluable cross-section of religious material that reveals for the first time just how rich and varied Jewish spiritual life was at that time. The scrolls offer an intellectual and devotional landscape into which Jesus and his movement can be placed. No longer does Jewish Christianity seem an inexplicable, isolated occurrence. [...]
Dead Sea ScrollsIn other words, the true value of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they help provide a genuine context for what was to become Christianity. For example, they tell us just how widespread was the expectation and longing for a saving Messiah among Jews at that time, and that there were a number of competing theories about the expected role of this Messiah in the world of Judaism. The scrolls also reveal that the expectation found in the Gospels that the end of the world was imminent was a dominant belief in many quarters in Judaea.”
“All biblical scholars agree that, apart from their intrinsic value, the sectarian scrolls are of tremendous importance as background information to the social and religious conditions in Judaea that led to the rise of Christianity. [...]
[There are] subtle implications that can be derived from the Qumran texts, for they not only provide interesting parallels to Christian concepts and practice but tend to reduce the uniqueness of the Yeshua movement. It is reasonable to assume that there was perhaps not that much direct contact between most members of each community, but that there was a pool of religious language and beliefs shared by many other Jewish groups which have long since disappeared.”
"The Dead Sea Scrolls" by Stephen Hodge [More info/quotes] (2001)1
The fact that many pagan religions had many of the same dates, beliefs and practices as Christians led later Christians to denounce them as 'satanic imitations'. Theologians made the famous argument that the Devil had created these pagan religions so that people would think that Christianity was just a developed copy of them. The Cardinal Newman argued that (be it God or Satan's fiat) these pagan religions merely prepared people to accept Christianity. In other words, god made pagan religions in order to teach people Christianity, before revealing actual Christianity.
“To Newman, 'Pagan literature, philosophy and mythology were but a preparation for the Gospel.' His Protestant counterpart, Bishop Westcott of Durham, praised Greek thought for representing several stages in the unfolding of divine purpose. Gladstone determined 'to prove the intimate connection between the Hebrew and Olympian revelations', and told the House of Commons that Greek mythology had prepared minds for some of Christ's teachings. Kingsley agreed that it contained essential lessons in the human relationship with the divine.”
"The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft" by Prof. R. Hutton (1999)6
Unfortunately, it seems that all such arguments are only half-truths. If there is a progression of human belief, then it implies that Christianity is itself not the final truth. Islam, for example, claims to be host to the teachings of the prophet that followed on from Jesus. If this progressive march continues, then Christianity itself may well just be a stepping-stone for another religion.
The gnostics, who interpreted scripture and the Jesus story purely symbolically, were the first Christians, and include St Paul. Christianity was geared more towards the uneducated and towards the Jews (being a synthesis of Jewish thought and roman Mystery religion & gnosticism), and the outer mysteries of the Jesus mythos was then interpreted literally by the uninitiated and more simplistic masses. Literalism came to dominate, seven non-Gnostic epistles were forged under the name of St Paul, and gnostic groups were persecuted, imprisoned, killed and their books burnt. The formation of the canon is an example of the increased literalism of that time.
“Paul's epistles make up 7 of the Books of the Bible. Also, six more were written in Paul's name at later dates (in some cases some believe the text was written over 80 years after Paul's death). There are 13 epistles (epistles) which were canonized into the Bible under the name of Paul. The authentic writings are gnostic, whereas the later pseudonymous texts are more literalist and misogynistic.”"Paul of Tarsus" by Vexen Crabtree (1999)
“The history of Christianity - from the death on the cross onwards - is the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism.”
Canonisation
As a stage of increasing literalism in the wake of the deaths of the original charismatic leaders of the growing Christian communities, the formation of official bodies of text was inevitable. This centralisation, reducing personal choice in what books various churches accepted as gospel, and producing a legalistic final and authoritive collection of books, signalled the end of gnostic and mystical Christianity. Prophets were no longer welcome; the dogma was becoming set in stone and official literalism ruled over personal revelation.
Culls and Genocide
It is a feature unique to Christianity that "heretics" and anyone who did not assent to the official line were persecuted, murdered, imprisoned and otherwise silenced. Despite suffering the same oppression against themselves, the literalist Christians gained the upper hand as they gained the armies and swords of the roman empire, as Constantine converted to literalist Christianity. Gnostics, Jewish Christians and many of the other forms of Christianity were wiped out. Literalist Christianity became the only existing form of Christianity, not by force of truth or by spiritual virtue, but they reigned victorious through the materialistic and Earthly adoption of politics, Roman power, murder and oppression.
Literalist Christianity in this form lasted one thousand and three hundred years until the end of the Dark Ages, where it was replaced by another form literalist Christianity; liberal Christianity. Finally under this new relaxed form of Christianity, Western science was free to overtake Arab and Eastern science. Liberal Christianity could be termed tolerant Christianity. The intolerant Christianity that existed for the previous ages, however, is making a comeback under an even more forceful, fearful and, yet again, intolerant and even more inhumane legalism: Fundamentalism.
From its roots Christianity progressed quickly to literalism upon the death of its original charismatic leaders. Max Weber and other sociologists corroborate that after the death of the original leadership, the surviving religion always become more legalistic, "institutionalizing" their leaders' teachings, even if such teachings were that you have to save yourself, etc. Fundamentalism is not compatible with early Christianity:
Literalism is the taking of gnostic Christian symbolism literally (such as hell, Jesus, etc), which emerged as the dominant, later, version of Christianity under Roman influence in the early centuries. Fundamentalism takes these stories not only as literal, but as absolute, inerrant, the precise Word of God, not the work of Human thinking. Such beliefs have changed Christianity again, and fundamentalist Christianity is gradually rising to be the dominant type of Christianity, as liberal and normal Christian churches are shrinking across the Western world..
“Since the late 1970s, the term 'fundamentalism' has most commonly been used of politically active religious groups who are often militant in their message and sometimes also in their actions.”
H. Harris in "Encyclopedia of New Religions" (2004)5
Fundamentalist Christian self-identity is very new, arising in the twentieth century. A magazine produced in Chicago between 1909 and 1915 called The Fundamentals preceeded Curtis Lee Laws coining of the actual term 'fundamentalism' in 1920. He did so to create distance from conservatism, but, before long fundamentalism came to exemplify an extreme form of conservatism.
"The Gnostics called those who identified with their body 'Hylics', because they were so utterly dead to spiritual things that they were like unconscious matter, or hyle. Those who identified with their personality, or psyche, were known as 'Psychics'. Those who identified with their Spirit were known as 'Pneumatics', which means 'Spirituals'.""Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [more info], p156
As the fundamentalist Christian sects continue to grow, in the face of the decline of the rest of Christianity, it may one day be that Christianity is as fundamentalist and legalistic as Islam is now. With the shocking intolerance of fundamentalist Christianity to homosexuality, women's ordination, etc, it wouldn't surprise me that the Christianity of the future will be just as brutal and oppressive and some Islamic states, and as brutal as the murderous Christians were during both the Dark Ages and the second/third/fourth century cullings of "deviant" Christians within the Roman Empire. Christianity, because of the rise of fundamentalism, may well be heading for a new dark ages, and I think the hope of the world is that Christianity as a whole dies out more rapidly so that it will have less power in the future, and hopefully we wont get newer and more extreme copies of President Bush, leading the Western world to religious war once again.
'Christianity' as a single religion is not 2,000 years old. A series of varied different religions, flowing on from one another, have all called themselves "Christian". Rightly so. But the beliefs and form has changed so much from time to time that it is best to consider Christianity a series of religions and the word "Christianity" to be an umbrella term for multiple faiths all of which have the same name but different beliefs. They do obviously, like all Abrahamic religions, have things in common between them but nonetheless, "Christianity" is not a set of beliefs that can be claimed by any particular denomination or historical movement because it is an umbrella term. I expand on this when I set out to explain why there are so many Christians:
"One major aspect of Christianity can be said to be the cause of its success: That there is a lot of widespread difference in belief across Christian denominations. As perhaps the most fragmented and violent religion in history, Christianity has become broken into countless different Churches all of which call themselves Christian. Many denominations are intolerant of each others' beliefs. It can be said that as all these denominations cover such a wide range of beliefs that it is obvious that many people can call themselves a Christian. But, merely knowing that they call themselves a Christian gives us very little actual information about their beliefs, as Christianity is such a diverse religion. [...] In this way all major religions that exist for long period of time (thousands of years) come to be more of an umbrella term for a vast array of beliefs and practices.""The numbers of religious adherents of established religions" by Vexen Crabtree 2001 Jul 21
Historians of Christianity have obviously came across the same phenomenon. Bart Ehrman opens his book "Lost Christianities" with the statement that "It may be difficult to image a religious phenomenon more diverse than modern-day Christianity.". He continues to tell us that, actually, there is something more diverse than modern-day Christianity: "Christianity in the ancient world":
"During the first three Christian centuries, the practices and beliefs found among people who called themselves Christian were so varied that that the differences between Roman Catholics, Primitive Baptists, and Seventh-Day Adventists pale by comparison. Most of these ancient forms of Christianity are unknown to people in the world today.""Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman, p1-2
Then:
Then:
Pages on Religious Fundamentalism by Vexen Crabtree
Pages on Christianity by Vexen Crabtree
Ehrman, Bart
"Lost Christianities" (2003 hardback). Oxford University Press, New York, USA.
Freke, Timothy & Gandy, Peter
"The Jesus Mysteries" (1999). Text taken from 2000 paperback edition. Published by Thorsons, London. [Book Review]
Hodge, Stephen
"Dead Sea Scrolls" (2001). Published by Piatkus books, London UK. Paperback first edition. [Book Review]
Hutton, Ronald
"The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft" (1999). Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Paperback edition 2001.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900)
"The AntiChrist" (1888). Quotes from Prometheus Books publication, 2000, translation by Anthony M. Ludovici. [Book Review]
Partridge, Christopher (Ed.)
"Encyclopedia of New Religions" (2004 Hardback). Published by Lion Publishing, Oxford, UK.
By Vexen Crabtree 2003 May 11
