I would like to restate and add to two main arguments that I have made earlier in this thread.
1. Christianity has a hidden cosmic sub-text that provides a high level of explanatory power for the documents and the history. The idea of Jesus Christ as the avatar of the Age of Pisces has a simple empirical foundation in the observation that the spring equinox precessed from the constellation of Aries into the constellation of Pisces at the time of Christ. Astrology was very widespread in the ancient Roman world, and provides the empirical and symbolic basis for the Christian Gnostic idea of the Aeon, or age, that pervades the New Testament. This empirical vision of Ages of the Zodiac has an elegant, simple, systematic and parsimonious match to the vision of Jesus Christ as the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. We do not need to buy into any astrological claims to see that this is the most persuasive scientific explanation of why the Bible writers thought as they did. If we start from this empirical cosmic framework we can start to see how an original Docetic faith in Christ as cosmic redeemer was corrupted into literal history by the church.
Docetism, the ancient heresy that Jesus is just a spirit, was systematically eliminated from view and from history by the power of the church, but provides a compelling explanation of the hidden cosmic foundations of Christian faith. Once the church had climbed to the top of the Docetic ladder they kicked it away as it no longer served their purpose.
2. Fraudulent revision of history is rife. I have referred to the classic novel Don Quixote by Cervantes and his mocking claim that the fictional romances of medieval chivalry, where knights in shining armour save damsels in distress, are just as true as holy scripture. The fictional method that was so wildly popular in the Middle Ages contained as a major element the claim that its stories were historically true, and had often been found in some dusty cupboard by the writer. This method did not come from nowhere, but builds upon the foundation of 'holy scripture', and the observation that the success of the Bible rested on its purported authenticity. If you admit you are making it up no one will listen, except as entertainment like science fiction. As Orwell says, 'who controls the present controls the past; who controls the past controls the future." The claim that fictional texts are historically accurate is an immensely powerful means of exercising social control. The decisive innovation in the New Testament was the realisation that a purely mythic or Docetic account of a saving Christ lacked popular traction as a basis for a new mass religion. By including as part of the myth that the story was historically factual, the church suddenly found a political power that an accurate account would have lacked. This is why Saint Paul's epistles, if read as the founding texts, are basically compatible with a Docetic spiritual reading of Christ, but readers of Paul, buying into the cosmic vision of
Colossians 1:16 ("For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth") saw that this cosmic Christ was impotent until he was historized. As a result they elaborated the entirely fictional accounts of Jesus Christ that we have in the Gospels.
These points illustrate the complexity of understanding and discussing this material. You could say that my account here is entirely atheistic, as it seeks to explain Christian origins in purely natural terms. However, that is too simplistic. I feel that many atheists have a big chip on their shoulder about Christian faith, an anger about themselves and others being deceived, leading to the popular atheist agenda of saying that Christianity is entirely wrong and baseless. I prefer to argue that the Bible allows us to see "
through a glass darkly", dimly groping towards an actual cosmic vision that has been forgotten and suppressed but in truth sits at the foundation and origin of Christian faith as the ultimate source of its power and truth.
