posted on Sep, 16 2010 @ 02:54 AM
I've spent the last 2-3 months doing homework on a little more detailed history of the early Jesus movement (I'm not a biblical scholar as such),
and from sources including 'christian' scripture, apocrypha, Nag Hammadi and non-religious historians a fascinating, but scary, story has unrolled.
Paulinism, the ideological basis of most western christianity, is the biggest (exoteric) conspiracy/scam in known history.
If the alleged Jesus really existed as a physical person isn't my main point, what's important is the person representing certain religious
doctrines in a revised NT, and I'll use this person as a base.
Jesus was a religious maverick, and as is usual in situations of discontent against the powers-that-be, a motley crowd gathered around him. Jews
wishing for some reforms in judaism, gnostics with a radical attitude against OT-based religion and what today would be called a feminist faction with
wiccan leanings. It's even very probable, that the Jesus movement was infiltrated by agents from an esoteric and very hierarchial branch of judaism,
wanting to keep an eye on him. Sad to say, but not surprisingly, the Jesus followers didn't get along too well all the time.
Paulus was quite late at the scene, actually never having met Jesus, but achieving his 'insight' on Jesus through 'visions' of his own. Paulus is
an interesting psychological type, these days he would be considered a sociopath, and from the beginning of his involvement with the Jesus movement,
he demonstrated the typical paranoia/megalomania syndrom of sociopaths. Violence, short temper and the typical lack of ethical backbone.
He hijacked the Jesus movement eventually, for reasons of his own, but it's clear, that he didn't play a straight game. There are signs of his
allegiance to different parties.
Paulinists have since day one gone to extremes of presenting their hijacked 'christianity' as the one and only 'Jesus option'. According to them
there has never been any serious dissention in 'christian' ranks, it's all been wine and roses and a common front.
Apart from committing genocide on opponents, a heavy censor-ship has taken place the last 1700 years, editing 'christian' scripture and destroying
all material opposed to Paulinism. Think of the Nazi holocaust, Stalinist purges or McCarthy'anism, and you'll have a good comparison.
Modern Paulinists will go to any lengths, or depths, to keep up this PR image, and it's likely that this will be demonstrated on this thread later,
when the fireworks and pie-throwing start.
(PS I'm not a 'christian' hater. I'm a hater of all kinds of fanatism, which tries to push into my life 'for my own good').