The Beginnings of Christianity - Part One

It is fitting to discuss during the celebration of the birth of Christ the beginnings of the religion founded in his name. To understand the beginnings, we have to go to 19th century Germany where biblical scholarship began. Without biblical scholarship, what we know about Christianity's origins reads like a comic book or graphic novel.
In the 19th century, Prussia began the consolidation of Germany from a multitude of independent city-states and petty fiefdoms into a modern Central European state that dominated world politics in the first half of the 20th century.

The Prussian state, led by chancellor Otto Von Bismarck through much of the century, clashed with the Pope, who still had control over many of the southern German states and municipalities. The central issue relating to the Pope's power was the doctrine of apostolic succession. This doctrine stated that Jesus gave control of the Christian religion to Peter, who became the first Pope. Peter then handed this authority down to the next Bishop of Rome and that succession continued throughout the centuries.
Bismarck and other German politicians disputed this claim, and encouraged and funded research to this regard. In studying this claim of apostolic succession, the German theologians did indeed discover that the claim that Jesus gave control to a bishop of Rome was fabricated. Not surprisingly. That's what they were paid to do.
But what was surprising was what else they found out. What they discovered was that there was no link to the first three centuries at all. Christianity, as it was being practiced in Western Europe during the 19th century, had tenuous claims to the 4th century, but mainly derived from the 7th to 9th centuries.
To their horror, they discovered that Christian monks in the 7th to 9th centuries deliberately set out to destroy all knowledge that did not support their version of Christianity's origins. They BRAGGED about doing it. They bragged about changing and editing documents to make them fit. They bragged about destroying documents that couldn't be edited to make them fit.
Some of this attitude is captured in the book and film, The Name of the Rose, set in 1327 (starring Sean Connery and F. Murray Abraham).
The end result is that there isn't much information on the first three centuries of Christianity. Fortunately, in preserving the works of orthodox church fathers, who constantly railed against their many enemies, these monks also preserved several contrary opinions on Christian origins.
Recent discoveries like the Dead Sea scrolls and Nag Hammadi find in Egypt, shed further light on the origins. Even if the church had not set out to deliberately destroy knowledge, it would have been difficult to preserve documents from thousands of years ago.
We need to understand in all humility, that we just don't know that much and need to proceed with caution. Any one that says they know for sure what happened around the time of Jesus' birthday and later with the beginnings of Christianity is lying. Whether lying deliberately or out of ignorance, it is important to know they are not telling the truth.
What shocks a lot of seminary students in their first year is this knowledge that what we were told in Sunday school is a complete fabrication. It takes another two years for seminary students to figure out how to become ministers once they know this.
More conservative seminaries spare students this angst by not telling them at all. Seminary students that do discover this can either engage in denial (this can't be right, what I leaned in Sunday school IS true) or they decide they are more interested in helping people than they are the absolute correctness of their church in regard to historical realities.
Next, we'll look at historical Jesus research and how this fits into Christian origins.