Jesus intended his movement to be for Jews, as a Jewish reformation of their own faith. Paul was the one that changed it and made it for gentiles.
Jesus seemingly believed himself to be a prophet. He titles himself “son of man” which God called the prophet Jeremiah, and he says “a prophet is not welcome in his hometown” when he went home and no one took him seriously. He was mislabeled, and only the gospel written over a hundred years after (John) made him out to be literally God. Nowhere in the first and oldest (Mark) does he ever make any claims of the sort.
Paul was likely a Roman plant (he was Herodian, and converted suspiciously quickly while simultaneously preaching contradictory messages compared to Jesus.) So his attempts to keep the movement alive were focused primarily on outsiders, since it was clear that the Jewish people weren’t convinced and converting to “the way” in significant numbers.
Funny that, the people who are literally from the place where it happened don’t consider it to be true but a metric fuck ton of people who got second or third hand accounts do. Hmmm… If that was anything but Christianity, Christians would be able to see the flaw in that a mile away.
Nothing, they hoped Paul would (and if you compare his teachings with the gospels, he was successful) subvert the movement from the anti-organized religion countercultural message of Jesus into something that would either die out or become a tool for them to weaponize.
Jesus intended his movement to be for Jews, as a Jewish reformation of their own faith. Paul was the one that changed it and made it for gentiles.
Jesus seemingly believed himself to be a prophet. He titles himself “son of man” which God called the prophet Jeremiah, and he says “a prophet is not welcome in his hometown” when he went home and no one took him seriously. He was mislabeled, and only the gospel written over a hundred years after (John) made him out to be literally God. Nowhere in the first and oldest (Mark) does he ever make any claims of the sort.
Paul was likely a Roman plant (he was Herodian, and converted suspiciously quickly while simultaneously preaching contradictory messages compared to Jesus.) So his attempts to keep the movement alive were focused primarily on outsiders, since it was clear that the Jewish people weren’t convinced and converting to “the way” in significant numbers.
Funny that, the people who are literally from the place where it happened don’t consider it to be true but a metric fuck ton of people who got second or third hand accounts do. Hmmm… If that was anything but Christianity, Christians would be able to see the flaw in that a mile away.
What would the Romans have hoped to gain by letting someone proselytize that notoriously incompatible-with-the-pantheon religion to the layfolk?
Nothing, they hoped Paul would (and if you compare his teachings with the gospels, he was successful) subvert the movement from the anti-organized religion countercultural message of Jesus into something that would either die out or become a tool for them to weaponize.