Why I Approach the Problem of the Origins of Christianity Differently Than Everyone Else Does

I have no time for books by Bart Ehrman or ninety nine percent of other authors on the subject of Christian origins. I am only singling Ehrman out because he is the best, most famous at what all other scholars do which is focus on the minutiae and avoid thinking about the 'big questions' like - 'what IS Christianity?'

My interest was always focussed on one thing and one thing alone - that is THE TRANSITION from the Judaism of the Second Commonwealth period to that 'unknown form' of the Palestinian religion in the period AFTER the destruction of the temple and before the time of Antoninus Pius.

The fact that there is this great unknown - an unknowable but absolutely critical period which no one before me has ever plausibly explained - drew me towards me towards it like a beautiful, seductive woman.

All that most scholars do is project back in time what was declared 'orthodox' at the end of the second century by Irenaeus and the circle who happened to sit at the court of Commodus alongside Marcia, his Christian concubine.

This is stupid and it is stupid because the fact that Irenaeus has to go on a 'fox hunt' to slaughter all older forms of 'heresy' (read the closing chapter to Book One of Against the Heresies) tells me at least that there were some people out there with very plausible arguments AGAINST the Catholic paradigm.

You don't have to go to the extraordinary lengths of killing people who disagree with you just promoting silly, implausible ideas. You only kill people who promote silly, implausible ideas if they happen to have to power to challenge your own claims of authority regarding 'the immaculate truth of the fourfold canon.'

As such I encourage people to push Irenaeus and all the Church Fathers who bought into his claims off the table for a moment and try to make sense of how Christianity developed from earlier Palestinian religious traditions.

What is Christianity? This is a difficult question to answer in a short post but I can do a better job of telling you what the gospel is. It is a literary text which originally argued that the events surrounding the Passion of Christ so resembled pre-existing liturgical applications of the Book of Exodus that the author believed that they were established by God himself to supplant the original pattern of worship of 'the old tradition.'

Let's see people put that in their pipes and smoke that for a whole ...

The point is that it doesn't really matter WHAT HAPPENED TO JESUS. This is an unknowable commodity. All that we can hope to understand is what the original gospel writer - Mark - thought those historical events 'meant.' In other words, his attempt to develop a narrative where Jesus' crucifixion and Christ's resurrection 'fit into the existing liturgical understanding of the Exodus narrative.

What 'existing liturgical understanding' am I talking about here? Of course, it is the Samaritan one. This is the reason why I am spending so much time typing out page after page of the only available English translation.

The fact that the Samaritan orthodoxy was established around the same period as the Christian orthodoxy AND - if you accept the Alexandrian claims on the subject - the persons ascribed with the task of 'interpreting this already one thousand year old original historical event - i.e. the 'redemption' of Israel - are both named 'Mark' is intriguing enough (how many Jewish 'Marcuses' could there have been in the age?).

Yet even more amazing is the parallel that somehow ALL BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT MARK - whether in 'Samaritan' or 'Alexandrian' sources - HAVE BEEN UTTERLY EXPUNGED.

Don't you think that it would have been important for the Alexandrians to actually know a few things about their 'St. Mark'? Or the Samaritan's their 'Marqe'? The idea that both 'decided' to wipe the slate clean can only be thought to have been prompted by external forces.

Let's not forget that BOTH communities of Mark suffered IN THE EXACT SAME WAY, IN THE EXACT SAME PERIOD (i.e. late second to early fourth centuries).

Maybe the Roman Emperor's just didn't like communities associated with people named Mark ...