eedipus wrote:
... the origin of Christianity was probably a result of the destruction of the 2nd. Temple ... by the Romans in the year 70AD.
True, but do you think the "crisis point in their identity with their monotheistic God ... facing the end of their Jewish faith in their God" came then of after the put down of the Bar Kokhba revolt and the then absolute sacking of Jerusalem with no chance of rebuilding the Temple.
eedipus wrote:
The Roman-Jewish Wars between 66 and136AD were a catastrophe for the Jewish people,
and in terms of religious significance I see the sack of Jerusalem and in particular the destruction
of the Temple in 70AD as the watershed between the beginning of Christianity and Rabbinic
Judaism.
The possibility of a large exodus of Jews from Palestine would have galvanized the Jewish intellectual elite to produce an answer that evolved through the centuries to what we have today.
The Bar Kokhba revolt from 132 to 135AD was certainly another crisis point but in making a choice
I would choose the destruction of the Temple in 70AD that produced the crisis in their faith and initiated the origins of Christianity.
Dennis Sutherland.
Where was the promised Messiah?
The answer to the problem was the opposite to what they had previously thought. The Messiah was not yet to come, He had already been but he had not been recognized for who he was.
It was probably a Hellenic Jew who fashioned the story of Jesus of Nazareth. He intuitively understood the real meaning of the Greek mystery cults, the Elusinian Mysteries, and wrote the story of Jesus as an allegory for how we should view life and death but, tragically,
it was altered and interpreted literally. It is not that the Jesus story is untrue, but it was really intended to point to a greater truth.[/quote]
An interesting proposition.[/quote]