Originally posted by Sigismundus
Kapyong--
You seem to think, not without some reasons, that Saul of Tarsus (the Roman Greek speaking capital of Cilicia - present-day Turkey) did not think that his ‘Lord Iesous’ had an earthly physical incarnation at all – but an argument could be made that he DELIBERATELY chose NOT to focus on the historical Palestinian based (‘ebionite’) underpinnings to the movement – being contrary to his ‘gentile-friendly agenda.

Originally posted by Sigismundus
Tarsus was moreover the EXACT place where Mithraism ( one of 30 ‘Mystery Religions’ of the Roman Empire) was first introduced into Rome via Cilician Pirates c. 79 BCE (if you believe Pompey) via soldiers – having come (like Pharaseeism) from Persia (PARAS), being a Romanised mixture of the Persian sun god MITRA and the Greco-Roman SOL INVICTUS—& Saul of Tarsus (c. 14 CE to c. 64 CE) having been brought up there would have been influenced by the Tarsian Mithraic Mysteries – hence so much of his Weltanschauung was guided by Mystery Religion Thinking in general (as opposed to Historical Thinking) –

Originally posted by Sigismundus
Early Church ‘fathers’ used to speak of ‘our Mysteries of Christ’ as if it existed side by side the other Pagan Mystery Religions – they ALL focused on non-historical ‘heavenly’ models, rather than earthly persons with a biography,
e.g. the Mysteries of Mithras, of Eleuseius (i.e. Demeter & Persephone) of Attis & Kubaba-Cybele, of Isis, of Zagraeus, of Dionysius, of Orpheus, of Wusir-Hapi (i.e. ‘Osiris-Apis’ aka ‘Serapis’) & ccountless others --

Originally posted by Sigismundus
BUT---if we examine the actual wording of the weird Last Supper Blood Drinking Episode in Paul (1 Corinthians 11:23) we CAN DETECT A SLIGHT TRACE of a LIVE HISTORICAL PERSON being referenced:

For I have received from (ho Kurios) the Lord, the same tradition which I imparted to you, viz. that the Lord JESUS ON THE SAME EVENING AS HE WAS BETRAYED TOOK BREAD & WHEN HE GAVE THANKS, BROKE IT SAYING, TAKE AND EAT: THIS IS MY BODY WHICH [SHALL BE] BROKEN FOR YOU etc.
Nobody can be sure that this was not a pious scribe placing words into Paul’s pen, but we do have SOME REFERENCE to an HISTORICAL EVENT (‘on the night of his arrest…’)

Originally posted by Sigismundus
To Sum up: Making any mention of the historical ‘Iesous;’ would have been out of Paul’s own realm of experience (he wasn’t an eyewitness disciple of his Lord & he knew it – he didn't get to see the ‘historical things’ that the Ebionim his enemies DID see – many were blood-related to ‘Iesous’)

Originally posted by Sigismundus
Making any kind of mention of the historical ‘Iesous’ would have weakened his position as an ‘apostle’ of ‘ho Christos Iesous’ since his ‘apostleship’ was hotly contested by the family of Iesous (the Ebionim) & relied SOLEY on hisREVELATION (‘in the Last Days, your young men shall dream dreams…and see visions…’)

Originally posted by ViewFromTheStars
I don't mean to derail or hijack the thread but one thing that helps me in my search is Bible prophesy. For example, Micah 5:2


"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."


I don't know about you but I find this rather amazing.. why? because it was written about 700 BC. It also predicted WHERE Jesus would be born.


So the 'conspiracy' started WAY before Jesus came into this world!

There are many more prophesies that precursor Jesus and you are going to have to dispell those to even start from the later time you want to start from.. I hope this makes sense.


Anyhows, out of respect for the OP, I'm going to try and focus more on the question but it is a difficult one, especially considering the fact that I don't consider Christianity a conspiracy at all. Was there a conspiracy to derail, distort, cover up, use Christianity for evil ends/desires or just plain all out destroy Christianity period? Of course.

''out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel''

- this isn't talking about Jesus. Jesus was never ruler over Israel.
It is Jewish tradition to say a persons place of birth after their name. Imo Jesus of NAZARETH was called such because he was born in Nazareth and not Bethlehem. It would be easy for a scribe to assign his birth to Bethlehem to make it fit with a verse from the O.T that could be misconstrued as a prophesy of the Messiah.
In addition if Jesus lived he certainly DIDN'T have disciples called Mark or Luke - the bible clearly names the people Jesus chose and Mark and Luke are not mentioned. Mark only talks about Jesus as a man aged 30-33. Luke adds the nativity story we are all familiar with, even though it is completely different fron the nativity story found in Matthew. There are so many contradictions in the bible it is hard not to think that alot of if must be fiction. I mean which autobiographer was following Jesus as a baby? What about when he went to egypt (to learn from mystery schools??). Who was keeping the notes that must have been lost covering his life from 13yrs old to 30yrs and what did he do in those years?? Did he go to Tibet and learn Buddist philosophy ''do unto others that which you would have them do to you'' etc?? Or maybe he went to America or England. The theories will never end because as others have said - Faith is belief in something that cannot be proven otherwise it would be called FACT.







[edit on 30-4-2010 by ViewFromTheStars]

Originally posted by jagdflieger
We have the following skeptic contentions:

...

1. Where was the "Christian conspiracy" started.
2. When was the "Christian conspiracy" initiated and who were the imitators (note the dates can be approximations).
3. How was it spread throughout the Roman Empire and by whom.
4. Some statements on how it evolved; i. e., the evolution of savior god belief systems (Dionysos, Mithras, Attis, Isis, Osiris) into a flesh and blood man as presented in the Gospel of Mark.