I have taken the above snippet from another thread because I want to focus on the distinctive theme raised here.Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Fri Jan 07, 2022 12:49 pmAlternative: obscure people start rapidly evolving religions all the time. Given that Christianity developed out of Judaism, we can look at it, in my opinion, similarly to how various Christian denominations have evolved. Martin Luther, a random monk sitting in an abbey just stewing on problems with indulgences, managed to jumpstart an entire Reformation of the religion in his lifetime.
It seems rather natural and habitual that these events take place.
That "obscure people start ... religions all the time" is integral to a theory of religious origins set out by a leading anthropologist of religion Harvey Whitehouse. Whitehouse discusses two modes of religiosity, the doctrinal and the imagistic, and addresses the constant danger facing the former: that obscure members can rise up any time with their own revisionist doctrines and start a new religious body. In short, a religion founded upon doctrinal teachings is always going to be vulnerable to someone coming up with some sort of challenge to those teachings. Whitehouse notes the various techniques used by the would-be parent body to minimize this threat.
What I am interested in is a list of many names of such "obscure upstarts" in order to arrive at a sample that enables us to make serious comparisons with what we know of Christianity. To what extent will a close examination of these common anthropological breakaway events be consistent with the evidence we have for Christian origins? But to address that question I would like a list of sample candidates.
We have started with Martin Luther.
One quickly thinks of Joseph Smith.
Who else?
Added after original posting:
Maybe there are examples where "bodies" or "groups" break away to start anew -- not just individuals. This will open up, I expect, questions of myth-making to justify the break.