Where Did Christianity Come From? A Short Explanation



There are various ways to explain how and why Christianity became so successful. The most common explanation of nonbelievers is the Roman Dictator, Constantine, converted and that's why there is Christianity. Believers, however, say "Paul" traveled around starting churches and the faith spread from that. The "Paul" story was claimed to have happened shortly after the alleged death of Jesus. That is, it started about 50 CE.  

Writing and doubts about "Paul" were present in the 1800's when Dutch scholars of that time did not believe a "Paul" wrote any part of the Bible. It is obvious, scholars wrote, the writing was not that of actual letters and it was written between the years 150 CE and 200 CE, not 100+ years earlier. The writing was done, the Dutch concluded, by trained writers who used the letter genre to market the faith. The "letters" were a technique popular around the year 200 CE used by many to persuade the public to adopt certain ideas. Those reading the essays knew they were not actual letters mailed to those named. 

The new book by Professor Nina E. Livesey, The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context, critiques the conventional wisdom the Christianity was spread by someone named Paul going from city to city preaching. Instead, Christianity remained alive in the early CE years with a few literate people reading aloud a variety of material. 

Around the year 200 CE two developments converged. One was ideas about the faith. It became accepted that Jesus had recovered from being dead and circumcision was not required. The other was that very wealthy people were running their own schools teaching students how to write persuasive stories and write them in ways that could be read easily out loud. One was named Marcion and there were others. Teaching materials have survived explaining how to develop characters in a story and how to write so the reading aloud had cadence. The TV news today is written in that way. Both those who owned these schools and the students were among the wealthiest of that time. 

Professor Livesey makes a powerful case that the Biblical author known as "Paul" was a fictious figure made up by those who started these schools and the students who went on to become influential writers. All of this started around the year 200 CE, some generations after the fictional "Paul" walked about starting churches. There is no independent source verifying there was ever either a "Paul" nor any of the churches named in the Bible. 

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