Malachi151
January 14, 2005, 03:05 PM
For those not familiar, I run the following website:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles.htm
The next article I have on my agenda to write will be one about religion, mostly Christianity. This will probably be about a 10 page article. Since I gave up scholarly study of religion years ago, I'm a bit out of the loop on some of the best, and most verifiable and unbiased, current historical info on the Christian religion.
Therefore, any help in this matter will be appreciated.
Before helping though, here is what my positions are, and the type of info I am looking for, and what I'm not looking for.
This is going to be a mostly theoretical and politcal article, I am not going to get into the details of every little controversy surrounding Christinaity.
My thesis will be along the lines of the Christian movement around the time of the setting of the Jesus story was a political anti-Roman, anti-imperialist, anti-exploiter movement.
The Jesus character was a Lenin of his day, a revolutionary promoting the interests of the working class and poor.
The Roman Empire was the largest expansion of civilization in human history at the time and brought many different people together for the first time.
This led to the embracing of the concept of a god for all people, a universal god.
The Jesus character may or may not describe a real single person, but it does capture the nature of the political movmenet against Roman imperialism that was present in Jewish society at the time.
After a bit of time, Paul and other spread this revolutionary ideology throught the Roman Empire.
As the Roman Empire grew and became economically imperailist, the Roman Army became filled with underclass people and foreigners. These people identified with the Christian Religion. At the time, after the triump of Ceasar of course, the army was the key to poitcal power in Rome. The Roman Army became largely Christianized and was becomeing revolutionary, as Roman Armies tended to do in those days anyway.
In order to avoid overthrow by the army, Constantine declared Rome Christian to pacify the army.
This split Roman society and led towards the decline of the Roman Empire.
In the mean time, the Roman State then began to create what we now call the Christian Religion.
The Christian Religion that we know today is primarily a creating of the Roman State, and represents a paganizing of the traditional Hebrew religion. In the hands of the Romans Christianity became a tool of the State and has remained such ever since.
The Jesus figure is really a political revolutionary of his day, similar to the Communsits of the 20th century.
The cult of personality that we see saw in Communist society in the 2th century is the expression of the same types of social phenomena that is embodied in the Christian religion and has been a part of the Christian movment.
What separates Christianity from Judaism and Islam is that Christinaity worships a human being as a god. Neither Judaism or Islam worship a man as a god, and this si a major reason why these religions view Christianity as so heretical.
Christianity is based on a cult of personalty that was embraced by the Roman State machine for political purposes.
Anyone with suggestions for book, or links with info that can be used as refereces for this would be apprecieted. Also good links to early Christian images are a help also.
Thanks
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles.htm
The next article I have on my agenda to write will be one about religion, mostly Christianity. This will probably be about a 10 page article. Since I gave up scholarly study of religion years ago, I'm a bit out of the loop on some of the best, and most verifiable and unbiased, current historical info on the Christian religion.
Therefore, any help in this matter will be appreciated.
Before helping though, here is what my positions are, and the type of info I am looking for, and what I'm not looking for.
This is going to be a mostly theoretical and politcal article, I am not going to get into the details of every little controversy surrounding Christinaity.
My thesis will be along the lines of the Christian movement around the time of the setting of the Jesus story was a political anti-Roman, anti-imperialist, anti-exploiter movement.
The Jesus character was a Lenin of his day, a revolutionary promoting the interests of the working class and poor.
The Roman Empire was the largest expansion of civilization in human history at the time and brought many different people together for the first time.
This led to the embracing of the concept of a god for all people, a universal god.
The Jesus character may or may not describe a real single person, but it does capture the nature of the political movmenet against Roman imperialism that was present in Jewish society at the time.
After a bit of time, Paul and other spread this revolutionary ideology throught the Roman Empire.
As the Roman Empire grew and became economically imperailist, the Roman Army became filled with underclass people and foreigners. These people identified with the Christian Religion. At the time, after the triump of Ceasar of course, the army was the key to poitcal power in Rome. The Roman Army became largely Christianized and was becomeing revolutionary, as Roman Armies tended to do in those days anyway.
In order to avoid overthrow by the army, Constantine declared Rome Christian to pacify the army.
This split Roman society and led towards the decline of the Roman Empire.
In the mean time, the Roman State then began to create what we now call the Christian Religion.
The Christian Religion that we know today is primarily a creating of the Roman State, and represents a paganizing of the traditional Hebrew religion. In the hands of the Romans Christianity became a tool of the State and has remained such ever since.
The Jesus figure is really a political revolutionary of his day, similar to the Communsits of the 20th century.
The cult of personality that we see saw in Communist society in the 2th century is the expression of the same types of social phenomena that is embodied in the Christian religion and has been a part of the Christian movment.
What separates Christianity from Judaism and Islam is that Christinaity worships a human being as a god. Neither Judaism or Islam worship a man as a god, and this si a major reason why these religions view Christianity as so heretical.
Christianity is based on a cult of personalty that was embraced by the Roman State machine for political purposes.
Anyone with suggestions for book, or links with info that can be used as refereces for this would be apprecieted. Also good links to early Christian images are a help also.
Thanks