Quote:
Originally posted by BobraFCD
I'd love to have a respectful conversation with you. But the Christian Church started with Christ; and Christian worship services started in the Book of Acts (not 367 AD-years after Christ). Archeologist William F. Albright and director of the British Museum, Sir Frederick Kenion both stated that the Gospels were written 5-30 years after the death of Jesus. This is important because there were eye-witnesses to Jesus' life still alive and no one disputed it (according to first century historian Josephus).
The first "Christians" were Jewish. Think about it--they were his disciples. The Christians went through well documented era of persecution for their beliefs. According to the history books, Roman Governor Constantine stopped the persecution of Christians. His "solution" was to forbid the Christians to stop practicing their Jewish festivals and combined them with pagan festivals. For example, Dec. 25 is the birthday of the Sun God Ra. Constantine combined the celebration of Ra with the celebration of birth of Christ. We know from the Bible that Jesus was likely born around what we know as September or October. Remember that the ancient Hebrew calendar is different from ours.
Likewise, the day of worship, the Sabbath was a Saturday and it was changed to Sunday (named again after pagan god Ra). It goes on an on...it's actually quite fascinating when you study history...
When you get time-shoot me a PM--I'd love to discuss with you my research, and I'd love to hear your perspective!
Fraternally,
BFCD
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Constantine worshiped the Roman god, Apollo, not the Egyptian god Ra. . . .and this was supposedly throughout his entire life. . . .
Christians could openly worship in 326AD - and Constantine was involved in the issuing of the Edict of Milan in 313 AD (which followed shortly behind the persecutions of Diocletian) making Christianity legal because he believed he saw a cross in the sun before attacking Rome and many of his troops were Christian.
The Gospels were written between 67AD and 102AD but until 367 each Christian community was using their own books and in 367AD the Bible was 'standardized' (for lack of a better word at 1am).
There were early debates about whether Gentiles first needed to become Jewish before becoming Christians - and the early Christians were actually preaching in the temples, but after 70AD the Jews were not too pleased with the Christians as they supposedly antagonized the Romans more than the Jews did, thus causing the burning of the Temple by Titus.
Sarah