The esoteric philosophical background of Jesus and early Christianity is obscure, but it’s not that complicated. Let me share a quick take—which might be interesting to people on this thread.

To start, as with esoteric Judaism, Islam and Platonism, God is conceived as an ineffable oneness. Not a person in the sky, but a divine perfect ”One god” or principle. Hard to talk about, but many books have been written on the topic. The diversity in the cosmos comes from the emanation of the One; this emanation is known as the logos. The logos is typically translated (very poorly, IMO) as “the word.” The logos, as eternal emanation of the one, is therefore metaphorically conceived as “the son of the father.” Jesus is the logos, or in some interpretations, he is the incarnation of the logos (ie, “the word” made flesh).

What’s important to realize here is that this belief in the one (god the father) and the emanation from the one (the logos) is completely orthodox across Catholicism, eastern orthodox and most Protestant interpretations. I think most Christians and nonChristians would find that surprising.

In Acts 18:24, Paul says that Apollos of Alexandria was able to preach this philosophy without even knowing about Jesus. That’s likely because of the massive influence of Philo of Alexandria (b. 25bce) who wrote extensively about the logos as “the son of god.”

Philo also wrote prolifically about the early preChristian communities around Alexandria, the Therapeutae, which Jesus likely encountered as a child—he also wrote about the Essene sect that most resembles the Judaism of Jesus. I’ve assembled and highlighted some of those texts here. At the end, there is also a text from Pope Benedict that formalizes the connection between Jesus and the Essenes.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JATMRSh4b6wlFlYWw8t1FdrG...

I hope some people enjoy this rabbithole. Happy to provide more refs.

I'm hoping that more pre Christian Jewish texts will be found. The dead sea scrolls and similar finds did so much to enrich our knowledge of second temple Judaism, helping to support or undermine existing conjectures.

I read recently an excellent discussion on the Samaritan penteteuch, a masters thesis from 2008 - the first direct to English translation ever done from Samaritan oral language. There are clearly an evolving set pre-masoretic texts in pre Christian antiquity and we can see some of the not-quite MT types being used in the vulgate and others.

I suspect, like how the dead sea scrolls illuminated some factional rivalries in second temple Judaism- if we can find more texts from this period it'll better flesh out when, how, and to what extent Greek philosophy influenced the various sets. there is an old idea that the synthesis of Logos and Judaism occurred in John's gospel but this seems undermined already...

Amen. The story continues to evolve. Did you hear about the discovery last year of THC/cannabis residues on an 8th century Jewish temple? It just about guarantees that the billowing smoke from the Mosaic tabernacle was psychoactive. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1...

When I get more time, I want to invest in reading the Mandaen literature. They worshipped John the Baptist —and their religion still exists!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism

This is such a good point.

'The Passion of Christ' is a great example of something that can be truly emotive for some, but not for others. I found it barely interesting and frankly not sure how much it has to do with Christianity, or rather in a pedantic way. It was nice production design, neat to see 'what it would have looked like' and I'm actually sympathetic to why 'it's good in a way' ... but to me it's all kinds of besides the point.

Populism is perhaps more real in Faith than it is in politics, there are various lowest common denominators that can appeal to broad audiences and suck a lot of wind out of the situation.

I remember being 5 or 6, many years before I became Christian, seeing a depiction of Jesus hanging on the cross. It was grotesque, and fascinating in the “I don’t want to look, but I kind of do” way that is especially appealing to kids. I was shocked and dumbfounded that it was anything someone would have on their house.

Though the Crucifixion is part of Christ’s sacrifice, I continue to find it an odd thing to focus on, especially in the context of the resurrection.

It was interesting to me as someone who's been adjacent to, and by necessity somewhat versed in Christianity, for 20 years, but the need to make the audience sit through all 40 lashes, that felt very hardcore "if the Mass isn't in Latin, it doesn't count" Catholic to me.

I was mainly there for the Aramaic.

As a Protestant, none of it made any sense to me at all on the level of Religion or Faith. It seemed like one of those big budget 'History Channel' re-enactments of an important moment, with a big focus on the violence, for what I can gather are reasons of ratings, and that's it. Without offending anyone who liked it, it seemed to almost offensive to me.

It had an obvious focus on the suffering of the Christ, then the victory. It's obviously Catholic derived.

If you've not had the experience, I strongly recommend attending a Stations of the Cross in a Catholic cathedral on a Good Friday if possible. You'll see what the movie is derived from far better, and the Catholics know how to put on a good show.

Well I guess that's a show worth seeing then ...

I reckon so. It was interesting and well done. I suppose they've had a thousand plus years to practice though.

I mean considering the extreme amount of creative liberties in the source material which started as an example of the genre of bios which is both biography and propaganda written decades if not centuries after the death of their subject, was then heavily edited (Origen already complained about that in the third century), before being carefully handpicked and arranged by the Roman church as a political tool, a bit more creative liberties would not change much things.

Most critical scholars dont really think the gospels are centuries after the fact anymore, that's a 20th century position that's largely lost support. Atheists love it tho!

The general consensus is that Mark was written fifty years after the fact, Matthew and Luke à century after mostly based on Mark and John at least a century after with some thinking even later from who knows what source but with a clear political goal. We are clearly in the decades if not centuries range.

Being a catholic doesn’t excuse everything.

Most scholars date Mark to c. 66–74 AD, either shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD

This is essentially a few decades after the fact.

It's very challenging to really try to push Mathews gospel much further than 80s AD - and even that date has some serious problems.

You seem to have cherry picked certain (older) views... it was certainly popular in the last century to try try push the dates well into the second century but this approach is very fraught and can't be well supported at present.

> This is essentially a few decades after the fact.

That’s literally 75 years after the fact. Scholar put Mathew between 80 and 110 years after the fact so a century as I correctly pointed.

I understand you don’t like being faced with the fact that the gospels were written with a clear political agenda long after what they depict and that the canon is mostly an exercise in late Roman politics. The fact remains.

One of us must be using a different form of math - I take 66 AD, subtract 33 AD and get a mere 33 years

You can try to push out mathew to 110 but it gets kinda tough....if there is that much of a gap between mark and mathew why do we have lots of mathean quotes in the early church and virtually none from mark? Kinda stretches credulity, for me at least.

I feel that if Mark really did enjoy a lengthy period as the of extant gospel it should have acquired a sort of prominence.

33AD?! You can substract zero. No one believes that the event of the gospel happens in 33AD apart from Colin Humphreys and his arguments are completely bogus.

Can you elaborate on this? I had no idea that a date of roughly 33AD was controversial, and Wikipedia seems to say that the consensus is that 30AD or 33AD are when the later events of the gospels occurred.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Chronolog...

When I google Colin Humphreys, he seems to be a physicist who dabbles in bible studies. According to Wikipedia, his argument was that the Last Supper occurred on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday, not that he disagreed with anyone about the year.