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Did any of you watch the brilliant PBS documentary on Jesus and the early Christians? If you didn't, I strongly suggest that you catch it at some time. Simply put, there is an ocean of difference between Jesus and Christians.
Jesus was a Jew and he strongly believed in the Jewish faith. He had a problem with the bureaucracy of the religion. He rebelled against the Temple's hierarchy. He took his message to the poor and the rural people. He stayed away from the big cities and the wealthy class. In a sense, he was an early DUer. Even if you don't believe in God or that he was the son of God, you have to admit that he was a pretty cool dude, someone that we can all respect, especially DUers.
After Jesus' death, the early Christians considered themselves a part of the Jewish faith. They were a sect that became more and more distant from the mainstream Jewish religion. After the failure of the second Jewish insurgency against the Roman occupation in Israel (hmmm....insurgency against an occupying force, where have I heard that before....hmmm....anyway), Jews and Christians formally parted ways.
There's a lot more to the story than I can post here. What I think that people must know is that the Christian religion that grew up after Jesus' death would be unrecognizable to Jesus himself. The Christian religion was an amalgamation of various Jewish sects throughout the Mediterranean region, and it was the sect that got the endorsement of the Roman emperor, Constantine, which we now know as Christianity.
It's an extremely fascinating historical and spiritual subject.
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