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I read Zealot by Reza Aslan and I thought it was a very interesting look into historical Jesus and early Christianity. I'm likewise not a Christian (I grew up as one, but became cynical at around 12 years old), but I do find fascination in the religion.
Historical Jesus is really interesting to me and stuff like how John The Baptist...baptized historical Jesus into something. So probably, Jesus was an acolyte of John The Baptist who went off and founded his own, similar movement. But then early Christians didn't like the implications of their main guy being a spinoff so these weird interpretations like John himself saying at the time 'I don't deserve to do this baptism, but I'm going to anyway for some reason and this other guy is the main guy and also in one gospel I'm Jesus' cousin.'
And also then Jesus' brother James the Just running the church after Jesus and there's a non-canonocal gospel (Thomas I think) that says 'James, for whom the Earth and Sky came into being' or something like that. And Jude calls himself Jude, brother of James. But James is the brother of Jesus so probably he is also the brother of Jesus, but that isn't the most relevant thing about Jude. So what an interesting alt-history you could write where Paul doesn't exist and James' church wins out and he's...also co-God? Or Jesus gets demoted and they're both just Mohammad-style brother prophets?
Oh boy. Here I go theorizin' again.
Yeah there's a lot to talk about. I think however that if Paul didn't exist, Christianity would have remained a Jewish cult.
Paul was the Don Draper of the 1st century. He effectively took an illiterate desert people's religion and molded it in such a way where it would be approachable to the gentile and educated Roman citizens.
He was a Greek Jew who understood the gentile world. And he made fantastic stories. Iirc in his earliest letter, which became one of the Bible books I don't remember which, there was nothing about immaculate conception or the 3 day resurrection, or the 3 wise men, etc
But adding all that stuff adds to the legend and mythology and it helped really spread the religion.
I think in a lot of ways, Paul is the founder of Christianity. Of course, Jesus is important. He must have been a fascinating figure in his time. Pontius killed thousands of Jews a year, but we really only talk about one.