the question of "who is the heretic" has shaped christianity from its beginnings as a messianic offshoot of pharasiac & essenic & zealot movmements within judaism (not the mention the not-so subtle disagreements between saul/paul's evangelizing to the "god-fearing" gentiles (who were non-jews who accepted the concept of monotheism as presented in synagogues (between 5 and 10 % of people living in the roman empire of that time may have been jewish !) but who had not yet committed to briss and kashrut (circumcision & dietary laws) required for full admission into a jewish congregation/community...
(these were paul's targets, heh...) VS the jewish messianic christian community that struggled and perhaps flourished (& being led by "james the just, brother of jesus...)
until the great diaspora & destruction of the temple (& the last stand at the masada fortress by a zealot/essene remnant...) & the scattering of the pharisees, sadducees, zealots, (the essenes were alread holed up at qumran) and the folk of the new covenant (most of whom fled the city before the romans burned it to the ground in like 67 c.e. (= a.d. hehheh...), & the family and followers of their annointed one, the crucified carpenter rabbi, their massiach (messiah = annointed = christ), yeshai, yashua, jesus of nazareth ("nazorim" means "the pure ones")...
and then gnostics & other movements, the establishment of trinitarinism as a basic tenet of christian orthodoxy (= "right-thinking"!) & "canonical" scriptures being selected around the time of constantine's rule in the east, the the churchwide councils at nicea, and the adoption of creedal statements of faith (apostles, nicean, athanasian) (& non-canonical scriptures being destroyed (or hidden, as in nag hammadi & qumran (well, qumran may have been destroyed as a potential messianic potential hotbed by the forces of the empire when judaism was no loger well-tolerated by rome (even afer the 67-71 struggles, there was another jewish uprising in like 130-ish) damascus, alexandria, & other places...
and the change from being targets of (roman empire) state-sponsored persecution to becoming not only "the" state religion (under constantine) to becoming mandatory for everybody except the jews (& persecuting the jews, off and on, for the next 1750 years  )...
and the elimination of old & established pagan religions, as well as other "mystery-cult" religions (e.g. attis, mithras, the kore/persephone grain/death/rebirth/psychedelic cult at eleusis, manes, apollonius, even old simon magus, heh...) and other more regional volk religions, like the nordic wotan/odin clut, and the celts, and the druids, and the women's ancient earth-mother/goddess cults going back to the time of the earliest migrations of homonids out of mother africa, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago  ...
and like markos said, ~hiya MtG  ~ --->the great schism between the orthodox (greek) catholics and the western (roman) catholics over the nature of the origin of the third person of the triune god, "ol' spooky" ooops... j/k ... i mean the holy spirit (auf deutsch, das (?) heilige gheist) and then the encounter with islam & the several crusades... and the discovery of the new world (& it's inhabitants, "los indios" (which could be read as "the children of god") and all the wonderful and horrible things that happened when the peoples of europe "discovered" the land and peoples of the americas (or, "turtle island" )...
and serious problems in western europe --- movements to put common language ("vernacular") copies of the christian scriptures into the hands of literate laity, the flourishing of many secret lodges & esoteric brotherhoods & mystical cabals, the re-introdution (after a thousand years of suppression by churchg authorities) of greek and roman "classical" authors into european philosphical thought & the first sparkings of humanism....
and growing criticism from members of the clergy & universities (jan hus, meister eckhart, martin luther, calvin, zwingli... which eventual exploded into the "protestant" reformation (& the roman-cahtolic counterreformation) and the missionary movement(s) which took the christian gospel to the ends of the earth...
and the many variations of christianity that have come out of the americas (especially the united states, but carribean & brazilian too ...)
and here we are today...
biblical scholarship (the search for the "historical jesus"), growing acceptance of science (some version of darwin for speciation/evolution, accepting the physicists' universe age of 10s of billions years, the geologists' fossil record for earth's age as billions of years (& old sol, too), & man as resident for 10s to 100s of thousnd years, & hominds around for a few million (kiss cousin chimps goodbye ummmm 3-5 m.y.a. ???), comparative mytholgy, growing interfaith dialog, more awareness of the jewishness of jesus...
~
not every person who is "christian" is "fundamentalist"...
~
and not everyone who is christian holds that it must be "literally & historically true" that jesus was the unique incarnation of the universal god out of a virgin jewess by the holy spirit, dying as atonement for humanity's sins, bodily returned from a criminal's death by crucifixion to comfort (& confront...) his followers & ascend to sit on a throne with his father...
but then again, some do...
and some say the words and try to grok their meaning...
and some say the words and don't bother trying to figure it out...
and some don't say the words (in the "creed") at all
and some have extra texts to study (catechisms, concordats, synodical statements, whatever)...
and some have extra "interpretations" or "scriptures" (swedenborg's stuff, mary baker eddy, joseph smith...
and some have no formal views (quakers) or mystical mix (unity) or open theology (unitarian/universalist) or practicing gnostic churches, essenic groups, (markos told me about a buddhist christian/essenic/manichean/magdalenian group ...)
~
sitting here with mark twain, i shoot this your way... the development of christianity as a religion is reminiscent of the development of twain's _the adventures of hucklebery finn_ as a novel
(---hehheh --- interesting character & p.o.v., strong tale-telling, profound moral question posed and addressed, mold-shattering to pre-existing forms, & potential greatness, but spoiled by unsatisfactory resolution...
j/k...
~
~
oh, and books/authors...
gosh, we've done this before, haven't we?
ummmm,
well...
hugh schonfield"s _the passover plot_ (& the jesus party & those incredible christians, & several more, all well-written, informative, enaging, and quite, ummm... plausible...
morton hunt's _jesus the magician_ puts jesus in the class of mediterranean wonderworkers such as simon magus, & apollonius, etc...)
sprong's books on how to read the scriptures, & elaine pagels' books on gnosticism & early christinaity, are well worth the read...
--------------------
old enough to know better
not old enough to care
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