HOW CHRISTIANITY BEGAN
Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction
A. The question of how Christianity began cannot be separated
from the question of when Christianity began, but for neither of
these interrelated questions is there a simple undebatable answer.
B. Almost reflexively, one would say that Christianity had to
begin with Jesus Christ and his life. Scholars are now generally
agreed that sixth-century calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus got it
wrong when he was trying to make the first year of the Christian
calendar correspond to the first year of Jesus' life. More recent
study indicates that Jesus was probably born sometime between 6 and 4
BCE and probably died between 27 and 29 AD. Despite the myths about
the wise men and the shepherds and Jesus being born in Bethlehem, the
fact is that we know nothing for sure about the time or place of his
birth. It surely was not the 25th of December, a date not officially
adopted by the Church until the early part of the 6th century.
Furthermore, the birth of Jesus is hardly the same as the start of
Christianity.
C. The original question about how (and when) the religion of
Christianity began remains. It seems that the faith that there would
be a Messiah (or "Christ," which is just the Greek word for
"Messiah") who would restore Israel to the power it had under King
David existed long before Jesus was born (so in one sense
Christianity is older than Jesus) while the conviction that Jesus is
the Messiah seems to have been adopted by a very small group of
persons only shortly before his death.
D. But even a belief that Jesus is the Messiah does not
constitute a new religion. The first "believers" in Jesus as the
Messiah or Christ were a small group of Jews within the Jewish
community. They did not regard themselves as members of a new
religion but only as a sect within Judaism.
E. The traditional view of the Christian Church itself is that
the Church began on Pentecost, ("pentekoste" means "fiftieth day" in
Greek) fifty days after the supposed resurrection of Jesus, when it
was supposed that the Holy Spirit manifested itself in the feelings
and behavior of the early disciples. Pentecost as the beginning of
the Chuch is still celebrated in mainline churches on the seventh
Sunday after Easter.
F. If we focus our attention on the issue of when Christianity
became something other than just a sect within Judaism, when it
really became a new distinct religion, a religion for non-Jews as
well as Jews, we will come to the crucial role played by Paul. We
will need to look at the thinking and activity of that man whom
well-known twentieth-century Unitarian scholar and minister A. Powell
Davies significantly called "The First Christian." In fact that is
the title Davies used for his extremely significant book about this
originator of a new religion, a book from which I will be quoting
extensively this morning and which I urge you to read. A new reprint
of this 1957 book was published just two years ago.
G. As we shall see, many of the beliefs and practices that
became part of Christianity came from earlier pagan sources, so the
new religion incorporated not only Jewish ideas and practices but
also those of other religiions.

II. Let's turn our attention first to the role of Jesus and Judaism
in the development of Christianity.
A. Jesus was a Jew, and so also were all of his first disciples.
Consequently, many of the ideas of Judaism became a basic part of
Christianity.
B. Jesus was a man of his times and society and consequently was
influenced by the ideas of the Judaism of that day. This includes
the idea of God as a divine ruler personally concerned about fate of
the Jewish people (from whom obedience and devotion were expected in
return) as well as the idea of religion as requiring moral behavior
in accord with divine commands.
C. Even some specific ideas sometimes mistakenly regarded as
beginning with Jesus and Christianity such as Jesus' plea to "Give to
the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to
borrow from you" (Matt. 5:42) are paralleled by ideas in the Old
Testament such as the admonition "If there is a poor man among your
brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is
giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor
brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs"
(Deut. 15:8).
D. Our main source of information about Jesus are the four
Gospels found at the beginning of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. But it is a great mistake to regard these accounts
as anything like our modern scientific biographies and documentaries.
The Gospels are propagandistic writings composed to convert people to
Christianity. All of them in their present form were composed at
least 35 years after Jesus' death, and all of Paul's writings (nearly
half of the New Testament) were earlier than the Gospels even though
they are placed after the Gospels. If the books of the New Testament
were ordered according to date of composition, the first book would
be Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians written about 48 AD,
twenty years after the death of Jesus.
E. To emphasize my point about the propagandistic nature of the
Gospels, let me direct your attention to the well-known story of
"doubting Thomas" (John 20:24-29). We are told that Thomas did not
believe it when the other disciples said that they had seen the
resurrected Jesus. A week later Jesus again appears to the
disciples, and he says to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my
hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting
and believe." Then Thomas says, "My Lord and my God." Jesus
responds, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are
those who have not seen and yet believe." Did any incident like this
actually occur? I very much doubt it, especially since it is
recorded only in the Gospel of John and no mention of it occurs in
the other Gospels. At the same time, the story delivers a powerful
message to would-be skeptics. "Don't doubt the reality of the
resurrection as Thomas did. You should be a believer without
demanding firm evidence." After this story, the Gospel of John
continues, "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of
his disciples, which are not recoded in this book. But these are
written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John
20:30-31)." That is, what you are reading here is not an impartial
record of what happened in the life of Jesus.
F. Before I took some college courses in the Bible and how it
came to be written, I just assumed it was an objective recording of
events, "just dropped from the sky," so to speak. But then I learned
about how Biblical scholars critically examine the Biblical text.
They ask questions like, "Who wrote this? When did they write it?
Why did they write it? How did they acquire the information they are
reporting? I learned that in the case of the four Gospels, three of
them--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--are called the "synoptic" gospels
because they present the same viewpoint about Jesus. When you
carefully examine the first two Gospels, you can see that our present
Gospel of Matthew is dependent on the Gospel of Mark. In fact, the
Gospel of Matthew has an introduction and a conclusion between which
are five sections, each of which consist of some material from Mark
and then some sayings of Jesus, which come from another source,
sayings which are also usually found in the Gospel of Luke but in a
different order. The switch from the sayings to the material taken
from Mark is always marked by statements such as, "When Jesus had
finished these sayings" or "After Jesus had finished instructing his
twelve disciples" or "When Jesus had finished these parables"
(Matthew 7:28, 11:1, 13:53, 19:1, 26:1). This obvious borrowing from
the Gospel of Mark shows that the Gospel of Matthew in its present
form was undoubtedly not the work of an eye witness. Eye witnesses
do not need to depend on the accounts of others. On the other hand,
the disciple Matthew may have provided the original source of the
sayings of Jesus.
G. The Gospel of Luke also seems to rely on the Gospel of Mark
as well as some collection of the sayings of Jesus, but not in the
same highly structured way. On the other hand, in the Gospel of John
is quite different from the other Gospels both in its view of Jesus
(Jesus is an eternal divine being with a special closeness to God)
and in its record of events, such as exactly when the Last Supper
occurred.
H. Interestingly, in the Gospel of Mark there are no angels
(messengers sent from God) while in Matthew and Luke they are
abundant in the birth stories and in the resurrection story. In
other words, when you read about angels, you should become suspicious
about the reality of what is being said. There are also several
stories about the sightings of Jesus after his resurrection when the
disciples at first don't recognize him. This seems susicious to say
the least.
I. There are also other problems with the Gospel accounts. They
say that there are 12 disciples (necessary because the new church was
to replace Israel with its twelve tribes) but the names of some of
the disciples are different. The accounts of the resurrection of
Jesus give different names of those who find the empty tomb, and they
differ on the number of angels there. In one account of the
resurrection Jesus tells his disciples to meet him in Galilee while
in another it is to be in Jerusalem.
J. Sometimes it pays to ask yourself, How could the writer have
known about what is being reported? For example, in the book of
Genesis in the Old Testament, how could the writer possibly know what
was happening at the time of creation before there were any humans?
In the New Testament, in Luke 1:26-55, we have the story of Mary
being visited by the angel Gabriel and told that she is going to have
a child even though she is a virgin. She responds by praising God
for being so gracious to her. Now the question is, How could Luke
(who was a traveling companion to Paul in the 40s, 50s, and 60s) have
known about such an event? It seems that the only source could be
Mary herself, and under the circumstances it seems that it would have
been very much to Mary's advantage to stretch the truth a bit. Of
course, it is quite possible that Luke composed the story on his own
to support the idea of a virgin birth, so that Jesus would be on an
equal level with the other savior-gods of the time who had divine
fathers. In either case, it would seem to be wise to be skeptical of
the Biblical account of the incident.
K. One noticeable distortion in all the Gospel accounts of the
life of Jesus is the effort to blame the Jewish leadership for his
death. There was a rationale for this effort. The Jews were viewed
by the Romans as generally unruly subjects. By the last part of the
first century the Christians were trying to persuade the Romans that
they were different, that they would be loyal subjects. But in order
to make this point, the Christians had to conceal the fact that
Jesus had been put to death by the Romans as a threat to Roman rule.
As Pierre van Paasen notes in his book Why Jesus Died, crucifixion is
a Roman way of putting people to death while the Jews relied on
stoning to do this. Jesus had been crucified by the Romans because
they viewed him as leading an insurrection. The sign indicating the
charge against him said "The King of the Jews." But by the time the
Gospel accounts were being written in the last half of the first
century, Christians had already begun to view themselves as a
separate group and were trying to distance themselves from the Jews.
They intentionally distorted the events surrounding the death of
Jesus in order to make it look like the Jews rather than the Romans
were responsible for Jesus' death.
L. So Judaism was an important source of Christian ideas, but as
early as the last part of the first century when the Gospels were
being written, the Christians began thinking of themselves as a
movement distinct from Judaism.

III. Now let's turn our attention to Paul, a person even more
important than Jesus to the question of how the religion of
Christiantity began.
A. As already noted A. Powell Davies has written a book entilted
The First Christian: A Study of St. Paul and Christian Origins which
very astutely records the role of Paul in the origin of Christianity.
As we will see, it is not too far-fetched to say that Christianity as
a distinct separate religion was begun by Paul (in Greek "Paulos"),
who was also known among Jewish Aramaic speakers as Saul or Shaul.
B. Paul was a Jew of the Diaspora, a Pharisee, who grew up in
the city of Tarsus, a cultural center and inland port in the
southeastern part of what is today called Turkey. He worked
repairing canvas sails and tents, but he also decided to go to
Jerusalem to study to become a rabbi.
C. He was a Hellenistic Jew, that is, a Jew who used the Greek
language which was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean area as a
result of the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century
BCE. Paul seems to have acquired a good understanding of Greek
thought and religion as well as of the Greek language.
D. While in Jerusalem Paul participated in the persecution of
the small Jewish sect which claimed that Jesus was the Messiah. The
customary Jewish response to this claim was that the Messiah would
succeed in re-establishing a powerful Jewish state while Jesus had
obviously failed to do this. To counteract this view the early
Christians said that Jesus had been resurrected and would return very
soon to establish his new kingdom. Some passages in the Bible
indicate that they believed this return would occur before all the
disciples died.
E. An interesting example of this occurs at the end of our
present Gospel of John (John is often referred to as "the beloved
disciple"), in a passage that obviously tries to respond to a crisis
which occurs when John, the last remaining disciple, died in
contradiction to the widely held belief that Jesus would return
before the last disciple died. It seems to have been written in the
second century after John died and thus proves that John did not
write this whole Gospel in its present form. Here is what we find in
John 21:20-23. "Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus
loved was following them. . . . When Peter saw him, he asked, 'Lord,
what about him?'
"Jesus answered, 'If I want him to remain alive until I return,
what is that to you? You must follow me.' Because of this the rumor
spread among the brothers that this disciple would not die. But
Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, 'If I want him
to remian alive until I return, what is that to you?'"
The difficulty with this effort to explain the belief about John
not dying until Jesus returns is that we also have other accounts
where Jesus is reported to have said, "I tell you the truth, some who
are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man
coming in his kingdom" (Matt: 16:27, Mark 9:1, and Mark 13:30).
F. While in Jerusalem studying to become a rabbi Paul was active
in persecuting the early Christians, but shortly afterward he became
one of its most vigorous supporters. I believe that Paul's
conversion from persecutor of Chistians to their main champion marks
the beginning of Christianity as a separate religion. Exactly how
and why this happened is not easy to understand despite the fact that
the book of Acts (the history of the early church purportedly written
by Paul's physician friend Luke) contains no less than three accounts
of Paul's life-changing vision on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-16,
22:3-21, and 26:8-20) while Paul also mentions it in his letter to
the Galatians (1:13-23).
G. So what happened to Paul? Why did he change his view? I
think that a very critical event triggering Paul's conversion is also
recorded in the Book of Acts. It involves Stephen, another
Hellenstic Jew. He is described as "a man full of God's grace and
power [who] did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people"
(Acts 6:8). After Stephen gives a long speech arguing that a big
mistake was made when Jesus was crucified and that a new way of life
is replacing the Mosaic Law, he is attacked by the other Jews who
were friends of Paul. According to the Book of Acts (7:54-60 and
8:1), "When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their
teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to
heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand
of God. 'Look,' he said, 'I see heaven open and the Son of Man
standing at the right hand of God.'
"At this they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their
voices they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began
to stone him. Meanwhile the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet
of a young man named Saul.
"While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, 'Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit.' Then he fell on his knees and cried out, 'Lord, do not
hold this sin against them.' When he had said this, he fell asleep.
And Saul was there, giving approval to his death."
Now that is the kind of an experience that can weigh on you.
Furthermore, it probably was Paul who provided Luke with the
information about Stephen's death as recorded in the Book of Acts.
In the Book of Acts Paul's dramatic conversion on the road to
Damascus comes just one chapter later.
H. But one incident alone does not tell the whole story of what
was going on in Paul's mind. Let me quote the critical paragraph
from page 33 of The First Christian where Davies provides his
suggestive reconstruction of Paul's thoughts which could have led him
from being a persecutor of Christians to becoming an avid Christian
missionary: "Brooding and troubled, Paul was taking second thought,
Could it be possible that these fanatics were right? Could it be
that the Jewish Messiah, like the redeemers of the pagan religions
familiar in Tarsus., must die and rise again? Was this the Father's
purpose? Must it be by suffering that the Anointed One was
perfected? To die--like Attis and Osiris--then to rise again? But
as Israel's Messiah? Or would he be more than this? Was God doing
something new and wonderful? Was the old Jewish Law that condemned
sin but could not prevent it being somehow superseded? Was it faith,
not law, that saved men? Then faith in what--and whom?"
I. It seems that something along these lines contributed to
Paul's change of viewpoint which culminated in his conversion
experience on the road to Damascus. What the Christian community at
Damascus experienced was that this same Paul who had been vigorously
tracking them down and persecuting them was now on their side and was
ready to go out to convert Gentiles to his new-found faith. Let me
remind you that all this happens only a few years after the death of
Jesus. Davies suggests (p. 33) 34 A.D., about 5-6 years after Jesus'
death! As already noted, all of Paul's writings in the New Testament
are earlier than any of the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus.
They make up almost half of the New Testament. There is no one who
contributes more to the new religion.
J. At the same time, it is important to note that Paul never met
Jesus and never claimed that he had done so except in visions. He
had not even met the inner circle of Jesus' disciples until after his
conversion experience on the road to Damascus, and then he met with
them for only a few days. He was not motivated at all by what Jesus
said or did but by the idea of new kind of religion which merged the
moral ideas of Judaism with the notion of participating in the
redemptive suffering of the Christ and thereby overcoming death.
J. The central idea that set Paul apart from other early
Christians was his view that Jesus was not only the Messiah for the
Jews but also a redeemer-God for non-Jews as well, something like the
savior-God-man Attis (and before him, Osiris) who had been killed and
resurrected for the salvation of all his followers. In other words,
Paul seems to have grafted some of the ideas of the Greek mystery
religions about eternal redemption onto the Jewish notion of a
Messiah. Thus Jesus is not merely the Messiah or Christ of the Jews
but also the Redeemer or Savior who brings eternal life to all his
devotees, Gentile as well as Jew.
K. The clear implication of this view was that one could become
a Christian without following the Jewish law. Consequently, Paul
became a main missionary to the Gentiles while most other early
Christians focused on trying to convert Jews. He had a continuing
dispute with many of them on the issue of whether one could be a
Christian without first following the Jewish law, but in the end
Paul's view prevailed.
L. As Paul visited synagogues in Asia Minor and Greece, he found
many Gentile "God-fearers" who had become disillusioned with the
popular polytheism of Greek and Roman religion. Such "proselytes"
were attracted to the religious and moral ideas of Judaism, but they
were reluctant to become full-fledged Jews with a loyalty to the
Jewish nation and with the obligation to follow Jewish laws,
including circumcision. These visitors to the synagogues were
waiting for just the message Paul brought, that you could become
full-fledged Christians without following the Jewish law. It is not
at all surprising that Paul was able to start new Christian
congregations at a rapid rate simply by splitting off these
"God-fearers" from the rest of the congregation who refused to accept
the idea that a failed rebel like Jesus could be the Messiah.
Furthermore, Paul's message was attractive not only to the Gentiles
visiting to the synagogues but also to some liberal Hellenized Jews
of the Diaspora who no longer felt any special tie to Israel.

IV. So Christianity, as a separate religion and not just a sect of
Judaism, begins with Paul and his view of Jesus as the savior of all,
not only Jews.
A. But the development of Christianity as a separate religion
was not confined to the contributions of Paul. We should not forget
how ideas and practices from many different religions and
philosophies were brought into Christianity as it moved through the
first centuries of its existence. As Davies puts it (p. 93), "it
would scarcely overstate the matter were we to say that in every city
and village in the Roman Empire there were activities at this
time--customs, rituals, cultist practices--that would have an
eventual part in the molding of Christianity."
B. Of all the mystery religions, the one which most closely
paralleled Christianity and which until the fourth century contested
with Christianity for dominance in the Roman Empire was Mithraism.
It was very popular among the Roman soldiers and was found everywhere
in the Roman Empire from Britain to Persia. Quoting from Davies
again (pp. 137-38): "The ethical standards of Mithraism were
undoubtedly high and to its devotees it was evidently a deeply
satisfying religion. But it was a religion for men. The much larger
place accorded to women by Christianity would alone be enough to
account for its triumph over Mithraism; and it was a less austere
religion. Yet it was a triumph that yielded something to the
defeated. It is not without significance that the birthday of Jesus
had to be moved to the 25th of December, the birthday of Mithras, the
Invincible Sun; and in English (and German) the first day of the
week, the Lord's Day, is still called after Mithras, Sunday.
The full indebtedness of Christianity to Mithraism may never be
known; its indebtedness to the mystery religions as a whole is also
hard to measure. But certainly it was great."
C. In fact, the similarities between Mithraism and Christianity were
so great that Church Fathers such as Justin Martyr "could only
declare that the devil had established Mithraism for the sole purpose
of sowing confusion" [Larson, Religion of the Occident, p. 182]
Martin Larson in monumental work The Religion of the Occident [pp.
183-84] lists these many similarities:
"Both taught almost identical doctrines concerning heaven and hell,
the last judgment, and the immortality of the soul. Both practied
the the same sacra-ments, those of baptism and the communion of bread
and wine. Regeneration through the second birth was a basic doctrine
of both, and each had the same conception concerning the
inter-relationship of the members,---that all were mystical brethren.
Each believed that its founder was mediator between God and man, that
through him alone was salvation possible, and that he would be the
final judge of all. Both taught the doctine of primitive revelation.
Both emphasized the constant warfare between good and evil, required
abstinence and self-control, and accorded the highest honor to
celibacy."
D. We could add to this list that they both used the sign of the
cross as a symbol of their faith, that they were formed of
congregations which met in underground places or places designed to
simulate underground conditions, in both cases the ecclesiastical
head of the religion was known as the Pope (father), and in both
cases the savior supposedly was born in a lowly place with shepherds
as witnesses. On the other hand, Mithraism was an exclusivistic
religion which would accept only the dedicated who would consecrate
their lives to virtue and devotion and which was tolerant of other
creeds while Christianity became a state-supported religion which
tried to destroy all competitors.

V. So how did Christianity begin? In one sense, Christianity has
its origins in many different religious traditions and ideas which
predate Christianity itself. In another sense, Christianity begins
with Jesus and viewing him as the prophesied Messiah of the Jews.
But in the most ordinary sense of "beginning," the existence of
Christianity as a separate religion and not just a sect within
Judaism begins with Paul and his conversion on the road to Damascus
in about 34 AD.