There are uncountable layers of dramatic irony to the (hi)story of Christian origins, the evolution from Thomas to Chrestianity but most certainly the forced change of Chrestians into Christians.
Like Markus Vinzent in his latest 'Resetting the Originas of Christianity', allow me to traverse backwards through time
Turning Chrestianity into Christianity was initated for the greater good of Jews in general, and society on a whole: decades, and over a century of anti-Judaism had caused great civil unrest and many tens of thousands of lives: it was a war that raged within society and couldn't be contained, controlled or fixed.
1a. What was the situation? Continued, relentless rejection of, resistance against, and attacks on Jews throughout the Roman empire.
1b. Cause? A vehemently fierce anti-Judaism.
1c. Attempts to mitigate? Judaic habits were restricted, prohibited, and even Jews themselves had been banned from cities and entire provinces - all to no avail.
Why were these so unfair measures taken, directed against the victims instead of the perpetrators? Because the latter were invisible, unrecognisable, wheres the former stood out like a fly on the wall: this was a typical guerilla warfare, and it took place right in the middle of society.
So the story got rewritten, owned, and appropriated: this took many centuries and also involved changing the denomination of Chrestians into Christians. Every trace of its true origins that could be eliminated had to be eradicated, erased from history - and it took a millennium and The Inquisition to finally settle the matter
Where did that anti-Judaism come from? It came from Chrestianity, a movement that becomes apparent when we observe the centuries of Patristic writings aimed at their objectification of that, "Marcion": like Trypho in Justin Martyr, "Marcion" merely was a sock puppet created by the Patristics in order to handle the entire movement that lay behind it.
1a. What was the situation? The Chrestian movement had a Chrestian story similar to the NT, yet devoid of a birth narrative, baptism of Jesus, and most importantly resurrection. While devoid of any and all Judaic roots, it was largely directed against Judaism, and Judeans: ⲓⲟⲩⲇⲁⲓⲟⲥ.
b. Cause? The story came from John but later got expanded with the source to John, namely Thomas - and both John's text and the later "evangellion" existed next to each other
1c. The story in itself? IS is a spiritual being who focuses on the inside for salvation, the psyche: we all are responsible for finding our own solution. The text reacts and rages against Judaism and Judeans who engage in mostly outside manifestations of behaviour while slavishly following their leaders, something which was fiercely rejected by the movement: it was anarchistic in nature, very loosely organised, and most certainly nothing like an organised religion. Baptism was its core ritual of initiation, indicating the spiritual rebirth by and in the holy Spirit
Where did that story come from? It had a single source text from which it evolved, namely Thomas. Thomas is a deeply psychological text about salvation from the Ego and Self, putting an end to suffering, and it starts with attacking our mental illusions and projections: the World and our 'house'. It is full of slave (servant) and slaveowner (lord/master) and the goal of that exactly is to point out our slavery, to emphasise it, so we can become aware of it. Slavery to religious leaders, to religion, Judaism especially, but also slavery to our World view, our mental models that which we inhabitate. We all created this ourselves, shortly after birth, when we "came into being" and split, separated, into duality. We simply grew up, I-dentified, and we departed from the father. It is us who created the children of the father, the two: we made the two, Ego and Self, Slaveowner and Slave - and we are neither. We are the children of the father, and that most certainly is nothing to be envied: it is a grave problem that needs to be solved, it is a sickness to be cured
The larger and more elaborate exposition of the Thomas-Christianity evolution can be found in
https://www.academia.edu/76105160/The_i ... ristianity
For the deeper story of Thomas, there is
https://www.academia.edu/46974146/Compl ... Commentary
This all may seem like a complicated, perhaps even convoluted story - but it isn't, and all it requires are just two small steps: John ff needs to perceive only the superficial story of Thomas (and there are very few besides him who ever has done anything else), and the Roman rulers need to be desperate enough to undertake rewriting the story.
But the steps are too large! Yes and no, John was version 1.0 of the Chrestian story and *Ev was v2.0, and the combination of both greatly successful. Likewise Mark served as a v1.0 of Christianity, and LukeMatthew as a v2.0 completed it
Judaic origins to Christianity? Completely fake and false, and forced onto Chrestianity in order to undo the anti-Judaism. Mark and Paul followed the exact same strategy, one with the living IS and the other with its dead "sequel" XS:
1. Heal the wounds between Judaism and Chrestianity by ending the divide via bringing the opponents together;
2. Permanently align Chrestianity and Judaism by forging an unbreakable bond between the two via making one dependent on the other and vice versa.
IS reluctantly and very subtly gets turned into a "Jew" by Mark, the anti-Judaism gets redirected to the Pharisees, and IS conjured into the Judaic Messiah via all kinds of "prophecies". Naturally, none of that fits fine, let alone that it applies - but Mark does a great job really, if you understand where he comes from.
Paul does the same and Romans is the best demonstration: he addresses a Judaic audience and tries to sell the gentile religion to them, convincing them that its anti-Judaic habits are completely logical, and that the fact of it being gentile and not Judaic actually is the fulfillment of YHWH's promise to Judaism. And where Mark dresses up IS as a Jew, Paul dresses up himself as one
Anyone in search of the true beauty that is present in the NT at times, in the cryptic sayings of "Jesus": read Thomas, my Translation or that of Koepke, and understand that he intended to set us all onto the path of enlightenment, that which he displays in logion 2.
Do very closely watch the work of Milan Vukomanovic in that space. His
https://www.academia.edu/41989582/Ekstr ... evandjelja especially is a must read, and if you need an English translation please don't hesitate to drop me a note
