I pretty much stated that the person at the base of Christianity was one such con artist.
Oh, the apostle Paul? I'll grant that, although I don't think he would have necessarily known it. I mean, this staunch anti-Christian did have a vision of Jesus after falling of his horse and hitting his head on a rock.
Jesus himself, though, I see no indication of this being the case. He was most certainly a rebel, but considering there's so much debate about whether or not he ever said he was God, I'm inclined to think he wasn't in it solely for the glory. Certainly those forms of Christianity where Jesus was
not God, such as Arianism, used to be more widespread. Heck, it was Arian Christianity that the Goths and Vandals adopted. (Side note, just in case anyone reading this confuses the two, Arianism is
not related at all to Aryanism.)
In this case, I think it more likely that a fairly flawed but still solid set of teachings got corrupted later, rather than the other way around.
Maybe sadist love is advocated too, huh? Still a form of love, even if not mutual.
I'm not sure the BDSM community would take kindly to such a statement.
Likewise, having a corrupt core, as in this case, doesn't necessarily mean that everyone under its influence is corrupt.
People are corruptible, though. Take those that cut parts off a child sex organ, doubt they'd ever think to do that without some guidance.
I don't think we agree on what the core of Christianity is.
The core of Christianity is often stated to be summed up in the Golden Rule, but I think that the story of the Good Samaritan is by far the better summary. That story's context is all but lost on our ears, because our culture at that time was separated from the politics of this region by several thousand kilometers and nigh impassible mountains, all the way on the coast of the North Sea. The short version of this lost context is: the Samaritans were the generally accepted "bad guys" of Jesus's audience. A rough modern American equivalent might replace "Samaritan" with "Satanist".
Speaking as a non-Christian, I think that's a pretty solid core. And speaking as a polytheist, I'm very saddened that Christ wasn't able to mingle with our own Gods in the way the Buddha did with those of Central and East Asia.
And I think you underestimate the ability of people to organically develop customs that seem horrible to our ears, entirely on their own. According to Roman writers (so take its historicity with a grain of salt; it might not be true), "Germanic" tribes would do something that, IMO, is FAR worse than infant genital mutilation: taking newborns, still warm from the womb, and dunking them in ice-cold water. I'm not explaining why that's horrible; it should speak for itself. In the case of modern Western culture, we organically developed the
brilliant (*sarcasm) idea that children need to spend more time behind desks than in play, without needing some charismatic figure. (...by the way, anyone who circumcises infants is doing it wrong).
He lived in a time where magic was thought to be common place and everything happened because of God (according to many of those in the area).
I can only imagine how easy that was to take advantage of, all you would need is a slightly above average intelligence and the will of god.
Be careful not to graft our own culture's superstitions onto other cultures.
If magic were truly thought to be "common place" in contrast to now when it's implicitly not, then those oft-lauded 'miracles' would have been nothing special. However, my understanding is that back then, this region's degree of what we'd call "superstition" was actually quite comparable to modern Western culture's. On the other hand, consider that in our own culture, we do remember a time when practitioners of Dwimmercraft were so commonplace that we don't widely remember any of their names, except perhaps in the mythic character Merlin, who's name might have come from the historical Bard "Myrddin." (...note, this is a Welsh name, so the "dd" is pronounced with a voiced "th".)
Remember that people in West Asia lived in cities for thousands of years before we did, and consider that we, as individuals and cultures, have a nasty habit of projecting our own qualities, good and bad, onto other people.
Then we are in agreement, but that is not what I would call ethnic. Ethnicity is inherited and therefore accidental.
In the case of ethnicity being used as a synonym for race, then yes. My understanding of the term, however, has changed to "everything that encompasses and defines a cultural identity". Hence a "white Jew" is not necessarily of mixed race, but is both racially white, and ethnically Jewish.
