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There's a slight problem IMO with the first post in that it assumes a certain insularity of religion--that religion A is different from religion B is different from religion C.

Into the midst of these fully separate religions a new religion pops up, which is also separate. This religion starts out small and then over time either dies or grows and becomes well-established.


However, I would argue that this is a particularly Christian/late-monotheistic viewpoint which does not accurately account for a majority of religions and cults throughout history. Because most people have historically been illiterate and ill-educated, religion varied greatly from place to place, having more to do with local character and beliefs than the over-arching dogmas or tenets of the overall framework. "Christianity" had spread by the Middle Ages from Iceland to Mongolia, from Finland to Africa. But Christianity as it was actually practiced in Ethiopia had far more to do with the beliefs of other people in Ethiopia than it had to do with the beliefs of people off in Ireland or Mongolia, even though those other Ethiopians weren't necessarily Christian.

What we see, then, isn't a set of solid, well-defined beliefs with people falling squarely into this religion or that religion, but nebulous clouds of belief, changing and flowing into each other. And when we discuss the pagan beliefs of ancient Greece or Rome or even the beliefs of modern India and Nepal and China, we see that belief and religion are very fluid ideas.


Therefore I think it would be more accurate to characterize a cult as a small religious group with a charismatic leader which is somehow offset from the religions around it, but still springs from them. Early Christianity came from Judaism. Islam is clearly a mix of Judaism and Christianity + some other stuff. Sufism has strong elements of what look like Hinduism to me. The Assassins were Muslim. The Mormons (even the break-away fundamentalist Mormons) insist that they are Christian. So are snake-handling churches. Ancient cults dedicated to deities like Apollo or Bacchus or Isis or Hecate or whomever did not claim to follow a different religion from the rest of the pagans, but merely to focus on a specific teaching of a specific god.

Actually...

Jesus wasn't trying to start his own religion (if he existed at all.) He was just one of dozens of messianic Jewish preachers going around at the time. He believed that his teachings were fully in accordance with the Jewish scriptures and that he was fulfilling them. Not that he was starting a new religion.

It wasn't until the time of Paul and the growth of the Christian church that the church leaders decided to preach to non-Christians and allow them into Christianity without first requiring them to become Jews. This is why Christianity does not require circumcision, ban the eating of pork, etc.

Christianity probably began as a messianic/Maccabean Jewish cult, yes. But early church leaders found it more profitable to get their converts from the non-Christians than from among the Jews, so Christianity quickly lost its Jewish flavor and became a separate religion.

The "Bible" was not written at any one time in history. In fact, there is not one Bible, so we cannot even speak of the completion of the Bible. The earliest biblical texts are believed to date from between 900 and 700 BC and were written by Jews, while the modern Christian Bible was basically created in the 4th century AD with the publication of the Latin Vulgate. However, the Catholic Bible was not truly standardized until the Council of Trent from 1545-1563.

Many Protestant churches, however, have removed certain books from their Bibles, creating still more changes to the text at later dates.

Lets ignore the Early dating of the Synoptic Gospels and the Letters of Paul....>> stare

It's Called Sarcasm, I was pointing out the Flaws in your post.


Statement is False, We certainly can speak on the First version so the Compiled Bible and texts that were and were not included.


Statement Refers to the Old Testament, and is a Half Truth

Another half truth, the Bible was compiled sometime after the year 325AD..but the texts were Written between the years 23AD and 110AD

Your Equivocation is Intellectually Dishonest. It was to Be understood from the Context of the conversation....that Bible Stands for "The Christian Bible"