Whence Came Christianity?
Posted: 23 June 2017
Word Count: 107
Summary: I have always found myself in the perplexing position of having complete faith in something I don’t believe in. Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a fully Torah-observant Jew, and died a Jew, and yet as Christians, we believe in an idea that he would have found the ultimate blasphemy!
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From whence came Christianity –
this god who ‘died for you and me’?
Worship Christ for Heavens’ sake
but do not make the big mistake
of thinking Jesus had a hand
in what the Christian understands.
The gentile message sent by Paul
would not be understood at all
by this poor Jew from Palestine
who they revere in bread and wine.
His preachings were just meant to be
for fellow Jews in Galilee.
And he would surely be surprised
non-Jews and the uncircumcised,
ignorant of ancient scriptures
who don’t observe Mosaic strictures,
fall to their knees and clasp their hands
and call him 'God' in foreign lands.
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Comments by other Members
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 James Graham at 20:14 on 23 June 2017
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Hello Mike - I'll catch up with your new poem, but I did a comment on ' Slum Clearance' which I've posted in your archive. I didn't want to let this poem go by, as I like it a lot. If you want to reply I'll make a point of going back to it.
James.
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James Graham at 21:22 on 27 June 2017
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Just a preliminary comment. I’ll add more soon. This is very interesting. There’s a historical view – by which historian I wish I could remember – that the short-lived Church of Jerusalem established by some of the disciples soon after the crucifixion, would almost certainly have been the only one to have met with the approval of Christ himself. It was essentially not a new religion but a radical reform of Judaism. According to this view, Paul was responsible not only for the focal point of Christianity moving to Rome, but indirectly for the growth of a Church which became more and more authoritarian, and more and more an instrument of secular power. The Church of Rome was actually ‘heretical’, a breakaway church which Christ would not have endorsed. You put it very succinctly:
The gentile message sent by Paul
would not be understood at all
by this poor Jew from Palestine
I dare say it’s controversial – but persuasive.
Does the poem come mainly from your own experience and your own reflections on the subject, or is there a scholarly source too?
James.
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 Mickey at 12:20 on 28 June 2017
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James
Thank you for revisiting this. I am pleased with its brevity as I feel I have succeeded in expressing my beliefs succinctly. I was particularly pleased with the final two lines which I felt exactly encapsulates what the poem is trying to say without going on too long.
I would suggest from your comment that you are missing the crucial point however. Paul’s new philosophy which morphed into the Christianity based in Rome, had nothing whatsoever to do with the message of Jesus. As a Hellenised Jew and a citizen of Rome, Paul created an entirely new religion which hijacked the historical Jesus from a quarter of a century before.
I had always had a problem in placing Jesus into the belief system of Christianity. I claim to be a Christian, but I don’t believe in either the virgin birth or the resurrection, neither of which I find in the slightest bit necessary to an appreciation of Jesus’s message. Clearly however, if Paul wanted to establish a new religion to compete with the other dying-and-resurrecting god traditions common in his cosmopolitan world, the virgin birth narrative would be a necessary add-on along with the idea of Jesus, as god incarnate, rising from the dead.
As you rightly say, following the crucifixion, Jesus’s message was continued by the Jerusalem church under the leadership of Jesus’s biological brother, James the Just. Everything was going swimmingly until Paul (or Saul as he was then), allegedly had his vision whilst en-route to slaughter those early followers of Jesus/James and the Jerusalem church in Damascus. However, Saul himself didn’t just convert to the Jesus movement, but came up with a completely philosophically novel idea of faith in the divinity of the man rather than the humanity of his message. No longer did you need to do ‘good’, just believe – faith over deeds.
To get back to the historical Jesus, you also say that the original message was a radical form of Judaism. I wouldn’t call it radical (unless seen from the perspective of the Saducees) but rather ‘inclusive’. We must remember that to partake in Jehovah’s covenant with mankind, every Jew was required to be circumcised. Well, that effectively ruled out salvation for half the population – I don’t know of any reference to FGM in the Old Testament.
Also, the command to ‘Love thy neighbour’ in the Law handed down to Moses was limited to ‘neighbours’ who ticked the right boxes. You weren’t expected to love gentiles, foreigners, lepers, the sick and infirm, prostitutes, Roman collaborators, tax collectors, or probably even women!
This was where the message of Jesus was so attractive. With astonishing parallels to the attraction of Jeremy Corbyn - another ‘JC’ note – Jesus was calling for equality for all under the existing Law. He wasn’t trying to undermine the prevailing Judaism, he was merely promoting a kinder and more inclusive interpretation of the Torah.
Christianity is also keen to portray a ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’ but I don’t believe there is any real justification for this in the Gospels. Jesus is seen as a Gandhi-like pacifist accompanied by twelve decent but dim-witted disciples but, again like Jeremy Corbyn, he was surrounded by militant trouble-makers. Simon Peter, his right-hand man, was a thug who earned the nickname ‘the rock’, James and John, the ‘sons of thunder', were militant Zealots as was Simon Zelotes (specifically identified as such), and Judas was a member of the ultra-fanatical ‘dagger-men’, the Sicarii.
We should also remember that, far from being just thirteen ragged hippies preaching love, many of these guys were married with families who would be with them, along with general camp followers and groupies. Jesus arriving in town must have been akin to a convoy of Romanies setting up camp on the village green!
I’m sure that the disciples were all labouring under the mistaken idea that their charismatic leader was the Messiah who, by their understanding, would eventually rally the troops and mount an armed revolt against the hated Roman occupation.
So, where does this all lead to in my understanding of the historical Jesus? Well, he seems to be a triple-faceted character. On the one hand, he was clearly a very persuasive preacher who taught an inclusive re-interpretation of the ten commandments. On another, he was the leader of a band of dangerous insurgents who themselves were expecting an armed rebellion, but on the third level he is a philosophical idea invented by Paul which eventually became Christianity. It is important to note that Paul’s interpretation is simply a philosophical ‘idea’ which just happens to have used Jesus’s popularity to get it off the ground.
Personally, I prefer to believe and have faith in salvation through following the humanitarian ideal - love all thy neighbours - promoted by Jesus, rather than to believe in the divinity of the man himself. Paul’s Christian position removes all personal responsibility for doing good and simply relies on an absurd idea that our actions have already been paid for. It is not until we remove Jesus from the Christian myth and see him in his totally Jewish (non-Christian) context that we can appreciate the importance of his ideas and live by his teachings to the benefit of all.
‘Controversial – but persuasive’? There is always a danger in posting anything of a religious or political nature I suppose. Oh well, c’est la vie !!
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 Cliff Hanger at 13:57 on 30 June 2017
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Hi Mickey
I'm weighing in here from a position of total ignorance but didn't Jesus describe himself (reported not just in the NT) as the son of god and also the son of man? I get that you're trying to separate out the doctrine of the trinity from Jesus the person and that's made an interesting poem about the nature of established religions. Didn't Jesus himself make the choice not to be a political figure although his behaviours were revolutionary? Or is that a re-telling? This whole field is such a mish mash of narratives and unverifiable facts. If the point of your piece was to raise questions, then it's done its work. As for your comment re the dangers of posting about religion or politics, I feel that it's no bad thing for poetry to be dangerous at times. Yours is an enjoyable and interesting read.
Jane
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Mickey at 14:41 on 30 June 2017
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Hi Jane
Thank you for reading and commenting on this piece. I’m not separating the doctrine of the Trinity from the man because no such doctrine existed until the early 4th Century when it was decided by a majority – human - vote on the nature of Jesus. But, by this time, Paul had already used the poor man as a vehicle for his (Paul’s) own philosophical idea of salvation through belief in a dying and resurrecting god, and Paul’s version won the day.
Such an idea (ie ‘Christianity’) would have been a complete anathema and the ultimate blasphemy to Jesus the Jewish rabbi, all of his disciples, and each and every one of his followers. My point is that, whilst we may all believe and derive comfort from the totally implausible myth that became Christianity, we should be aware that it did not originate from Jesus at all, but from Paul.
Mike (I might put my thoughts on Brexit on next to really stir everyone up! – LOL)
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Cliff Hanger at 15:04 on 30 June 2017
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No argument with the implausible myth part from me. I'm on the back foot trying to respect and unpick notions I simply can't believe in.
Brexit. Hmm. I'd try to guess but I don't know you well enough.  
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James Graham at 15:23 on 30 June 2017
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Hello again Mike – I don’t think I need to tell you to revise this poem because it’s already well made and its message is clear. Yes, it is a controversial message, but I fully agree with Jane that ‘it's no bad thing for poetry to be dangerous at times’.
Maybe just correct the grammar. Apostrophe ‘s’ here:
Worship Christ for Heaven’s sake
unless you’re thinking in terms of plural Heavens. I suppose some sects believe that Heaven is only for them, so they would have to go to their own Heaven and all the other good people would go to theirs. One more correction:
whom they revere in bread and wine
Your comments on Paul’s Christianity are very interesting and you’ve obviously given this a great deal of thought. My own view of Jesus is that he was a man not a god, a man conceived and born in the natural way without divine intervention, and a man who was crucified by the Roman authorities but did not come back from the dead. He was a philosopher in the classical Greek tradition, especially that of the Cynics who did not write books but abandoned material possessions and travelled from place to place doing oral teaching. He was like the Cynics in his practice but not necessarily in the content of his teaching, which was highly original and very persuasive.
I agree with you that it’s ‘an absurd idea that our actions have already been paid for’ as they would be if Jesus were divine and had ‘died for us’ as the evangelicals say. But I must be clear about this: I’m a humanist and look at these things from a humanist perspective, so that for me the divinity of Jesus is merely a myth – as are his miracles, which were assigned to him by the Gospel writers. I can’t worship him, but I do respect him – in much the same way as I respect Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism.
I don’t think Jesus was potentially a leader of armed revolt against the Romans, though the Roman authorities clearly thought he was dangerous. The death penalty handed down to him was typical of the Roman empire, which survived as long as it did partly by ruthlessly suppressing any form of dissent. The governor would not have gone out on to the balcony and asked the Jewish crowd what he should do with Jesus; he would have heard brief ‘prosecution’ statements (there would be no defence) and then handed down his verdict.
If you wish to continue this discussion, I’m happy to do so. It’s not out of place in a WW thread; we’re discussing the content of the poem and its implications rather than poetic technique, but what a poem says is every bit as important as how it says it.
James.
P.S. I wrote this before Jane's follow-up comment appeared, so haven't taken it or your reply into account. If you want to put the absurdities of Brexit into a piece of satirical verse, please go ahead! Give us a really 'dangerous' poem, awash with sulphuric acid!
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Mickey at 16:21 on 30 June 2017
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Jane, ‘Trying to respect and unpick notions I simply can’t believe in’. That is more or less the position I described in my summary to this poem. The point that we seem unable to recognise is the fact that we are all hard-wired into the Christian myth almost from birth and therefore never question it. I remember worrying that I might be struck down dead by a thunderbolt for even having such thoughts when I was younger!
What is not often understood is that Paul’s letters were written long before the canonical gospels so, while we might read them assuming them to be a kind of clarification and extension to those biographies, their original recipients had no preconception of the man – indeed, no mention is made of Jesus the man at all in the epistles. They were written to followers of Paul and his esoteric notion of ‘being in Christ’. So, here we have a new philosophy which, to compete with the existing Jerusalem church, now under the leadership of one of Jesus’s biological brothers, James, needed to attach itself to the historical person of Jesus. The gospels weren’t even written until after Paul’s death, so should not be assumed to be from a common religious source or represent a single, or even similar, message.
James, you seem to have misunderstood my point about Jesus being potentially the leader of an armed revolt. I don’t think for one moment that was his intention. What I think is that he was seen as a messiah who the disciples themselves, through their Jewish understanding and expectations, thought would eventually lead a full-scale rebellion. I have no idea why his immediate entourage contained so many ultra-nationalistic Zealots, although their disappointment in that respect may well be why he was ultimately betrayed.
My real intrigue however is that, even as I try to explain my thoughts, I am aware that I am basing my arguments on what might be a completely false retrospective propaganda exercise that we call the Bible. Which takes me back full circle to Jane’s comment and my summary – I have complete faith in something I don’t believe in. Is that just hedging my bets?!!
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Mickey at 16:59 on 30 June 2017
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Hi James
Just to revert back to your technical comments on the actual poem. I think Heavens’ is correct in respect of what I was trying to say. I was referring to ‘the heavens’ generally rather than the Christian notion of end-of-the-line Heaven. I don’t like the use of ‘whom’ as it seems to me to be less specific than ‘who’ in this case. One revision I was considering though. As the ‘who they revere in bread and wine' line refers to the Christian of the last line of the first stanza, would it read better as ‘who we recall with bread and wine’. I’m not sure whether the writer should include himself in the epithet ‘the Christian’ (‘they’ or ‘we’). Also, of course the disciples were exhorted to do this in ‘remembrance’ of me, so ‘recall’ might be more appropriate?
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