CHRISTIANITY

After Alexander the Great conquered half the known earth in the late 4th century BCE, Greek
language and culture (called Hellenism) inundated the whole eastern Mediterranean world; 
even the Jews, who always resisted assimilation, were not immune to its influence. Alexander's 
empire soon fragmented into warring mini-empires and eventually Rome rolled east and imposed
its own absolute rule. 

It was a troubled, pessimistic time. Stoics, Epicureans, Platonists and others offered new moral
and intellectual ways of coping with life and the unpredictable world. Understanding the ultimate
Deity and establishing personal ethics were central concerns of all these movements.
Wandering philosophers became a kind of popular clergy, frequenting the marketplace and
people's homes. Healing gods, Oriental mysticism, a whole paraphernalia of magic and
astrology were added to the pot to cope with another dimension to the world's distress: the vast
panoply of unseen spirits and demons and forces of fate which were now believed to pervade
the very atmosphere men and women moved in, harassing and crippling their lives. The
buzzword was "salvation". And for the growing number who believed it could not be achieved in
the world, it became salvation from the world. Redeeming the individual grew into a Hellenistic
industry. 

Many looked upon the Jews as providing a high moral and monotheistic standard, and Gentiles
flocked to Judaism in varying degrees of conversion. But even here there were strong currents
of pessimism. For centuries the Jews as a nation had looked for salvation from a long
succession of conquerors, until many had become convinced that only violent divine intervention
would bring about the establishment of God's Kingdom and their own destined elevation to
dominion over the nations of the earth. Such views were held by a mosaic of sectarian groups,
each regarding itself as an elect, which flourished on the fringes of "mainstream" Judaism
(Temple and Pharisees). Christianity was one of these sects, driven by an intense apocalyptic
expectation of the coming end of the world. 

Among both Jew and pagan there was a slide away from rationalism and a turning to personal
revelation as the only source for knowledge about God and the ways to salvation. Mysticism,
visionary inspiration, marvellous spiritual practices, became the seedbed of new faiths and
sects. And no one possessed a richer hothouse for all this than the Jews, in their unparalleled
collection of sacred writings, from whose pages could be lifted newly-perceived truths about
God and ultimate realities. 

Onto such a stage in the middle decades of the first century, into what one scholar has called "a
seething mass of sects and salvation cults," stepped the apostles of a new movement. In
Galatians 1:16 Paul says: "God chose to reveal his Son in me, and through me to preach him to
the Gentiles." Paul claims he is the instrument of God's revelation. He preaches the Son, the
newly-disclosed means of salvation offered to Jew and Gentile alike. 

The existence of this divine Son was hitherto unknown; he has been a secret, a "mystery" 
hidden with God in heaven. Information about this Son has been imbedded in scripture. Only
in this final age has God himself (through his Spirit) inspired apostles like Paul to learn—from
scripture and visionary experiences—about his Son and what he had done for humanity's salvation.
And this Son was soon to arrive from heaven, at the imminent end of the world. 

Christianity was born in a thousand places, in the broad fertile soil of Hellenistic Judaism.
It sprang up in many independent communities and sects, expressing itself in a great variety 
of doctrines. We see this variety in everything from Paul to the writings of the so-called
community of John, from the unique Epistle to the Hebrews to non-canonical documents like
the Odes of Solomon and a profusion of Gnostic texts. It was all an expression of the new 
religious philosophy of the Son, and it generated an apostolic movement fueled by visionary
inspiration and a study of scripture, impelled by the conviction that God's Kingdom was at hand. 

We must realize that "Jesus" (Yeshua) is a Hebrew name meaning Saviour. At the beginning of
Christianity it refers not to the name of a human individual but (like the term Logos) to a concept:
a divine, spiritual figure who is the mediator of God's salvation. "Christ", the Greek translation of
the Hebrew "Messiah", is also a concept, meaning the Anointed One of God (though enriched
by much additional connotation). In Jewish sectarian circles across the Empire, which included
many Gentiles, these names would have enjoyed a broad range of usage. Belief in some form of
spiritual Anointed Saviour—Christ Jesus—was in the air. Paul and the Jerusalem brotherhood
were simply one strand of this widespread phenomenon, although an important and eventually
very influential one. Later, this group of missionaries would come to be regarded as the whole
movement's point of origin. 


Source: Earl Doherty