revising the history and problems with the Jesus narratives

Problems with the Jesus narratives:

Assuming the traditional timeline, why, when the Temple was destroyed, did early Christians not make shrines to their hero?  We know that that kind of veneration was a phenomenon of the era (Apollonius, Antinous, etc indicates that).

The answer that the hero died like a convict doesn’t really make sense. 

Aside from a sole reference to “judaizers,” (Gal 2:14) there’s no indication that there was any tension between Judeans and “Christians.”

Likelihood:  Greco-romans who got hold of Judean text evolved their own idea of their hero.  Judeans did not accept those Greco-Romans, but didn’t reject them.

The bar Cochba revolt occurred.  Judeans were expelled from Jerusalem.  Judeans started writing “gospel” narratives to incorporate the revolt into the Judean canon, creating a figure who was a combination of Joshua/Moses/Elijah, the complete Judean hero.

Greco-Romans got hold of those narratives, too, and decided they were biographies of their hero.

Paul, having been among the exiles, decided to repopulate Judea by “converting” Greco-Romans to be acceptable to Judean temple praxis, and took up collections for Temple tax to reassure them that they would be accepted.  Greco-romans found out the temple was destroyed, rebuilt and rededicated, and kicked him out.

Greco-Romans who he had “converted” retained some of his letters and redacted them to give their new “philosophy” authenticity, as having been given to them by a “real Jew.”  Lacking knowledge of Judean culture and literary customs, they did things no Judean would do: use Navi’im as oracles, mis-quote text, construct allegories to support their evolving “philosophy,” and had “Paul” identify himself by referring to himself in terms that all predated Moses’ receipt of the Torah at Sinai.

The Greek and Hebrew texts were translated into Latin by Jerome, who, in the process, smoothed out all of the difficulties of syntax, coordinated all of the contradicting statements and generally made the text align with the theological decisions that had been arrived at by the various councils up until his time.

That was the text transmitted to the “faithful.”  When, in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of Wittemberg cathedral, one of the complaints was that the text was the preserve of the priesthood, and the laity were unable to read it for themselves (an inaccurate charge since a copy of the text, in vernacular, was found among the possessions of Richard III, who died at Bosworth Field in 1485).  The “reformation” included translating the text into the various vernaculars.  The problem was (and is) that the text itself is not translated.  What is translated is the version that has been received and accepted via Jerome’s latin.  This means that if and when you study “koine” greek, for the purpose of reading the text, you are not taught Greek, you are taught how to make the Greek sentences in the text align with the determinations made by  Jerome concerning what the text should be saying in order for the church to have arrived at the theology it arrived at.

That is not the same thing.