A young man who grew up in Tarsus, the center of Mithraism, a Roman citizen and a Jew.
He had never been to Judea during his youth, but by the time he was a young man his youthful zeal led him to Judea where he gladly joined in the religious persecution of minority sects that Judaism had always required in the Old Testament.
Eventually his fascination with Fundamentalism began to wane when it didn't provide him with the answers he had sought and his exposure to Mithraic beliefs began to reassert itself.
He hijacked a local religious movement that he had persecuted in Judea and began to preach a hybrid religion based on their beliefs and Mithraic initiations, which placed him in the unique position of dictating the beliefs of a new religion.
Eventually, after his death and the following deaths of the original Jewish Christian church, his Greek converts from Paganism turned his Jesus into a Mediterranean Demigod, like so many other characters worshiped in the region.
2007-05-31
06:28:58
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15 answers
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asked by
Anonymous
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Religion & Spirituality