There is a vast historical difference between the "warm-and-fuzzy Hollywood and Sunday School" version of the history of Christianity and the cold hard truth.

Those solemn and starry-eyed converts we see in those old movies don't correspond to the cruel and violent zealots that burned libraries and temples and slaughtered thousands of pagans in the first few centuries alone.

Even the evolution of the Bible and how it got progressively longer as the stories evolved is interesting too.

The only real difference between the three major monotheistic religions is more to do with marketing than from quoting selective examples of content and all share the same Egyptian origins.

Jayb knowqing why you started the thread I agree it can be an interesting one.
But in isolation from its reason for becoming a thread, no longer truly related to its birth.
Suseonline, yes indeed, more should read about Christianity's birth.
It and the Islamic faith came after the Jewish faith, and from it.
But all three can be chased back to more ancient Gods.
No secretes there, just not used these days.
I think, Humanity needed .maybe still does a God.
And that it is a shame WE SPLIT ONE IN TO THREE faiths.
Not referring to the Christian Trinity, that too has its detractors.
But much of the racism is in fact not that, it is the difference in GODS that fuels separation.
Any one truly interested in jayb,s subject can learn much by open minded research.

I went to St Greg's...it was football....

Religions are called “faiths” because they cannot make things defy physics. They talk about things that defy physics, but their practitioners can't seem to demonstrate things that defy physics.

All religions at their base give a set of social directions for the community and rely on the human attributes of a “free will” and a “consciousness” to determine your worthiness for a life after life. They all define the free will that man has, and let us know that we choose our actions, and the wrong choices can bring anything from eternal pain to eternal void. An arbitrator we cannot deceive….pretty scary.

Religions probably began as a means to placate something that negatively affected us but later it was conceived as a social restraint tool. Religion immediately lifted the social stature of those who organized and ran the ceremonies and it gave the plebs more to fear than flesh and blood. This practical form of social organization probably morphed from the awe that humanity had for natural phenomenon, terra and astrological. We chose a deity or deities that controlled one thing or all things and we built a credo and a social structure around it.
TBC

Most religions inherited bits and pieces from demised cultures and their religions. There is a congruency that runs through all the major religions, Asian and Eastern, as if someone sat down and laid out a set of guidelines. The Ten Commandments are echoed in all the major faiths, possibly because they are principles towards successful social cohabitation.

Religions have always been used by power factions to control and motivate their plebs. Jesus said “the meek shall inherit the earth” and this teaching of being compliant and subservient has aided those who have physically controlled us over the millennia, put up with it now, because your gift is coming after you die….not bad eh, particularly if those same powerbrokers control the church. Joseph Stalin shipped all the Russian Orthodox priests off to Siberia by the early 1930’s. He shipped back what was left of them in 1941 to buoy the plebs in their struggle against Germany. Religions have always been manipulated by the people who have power and wealth.

When you discuss the roots of Christianity or any other religion that has spanned civilization you are looking at a meld. Many Christian holy days have an equivalent in the old Babylonian religion including Xmas and Easter. The Jews adopted a load from the Canaanite’s.

There is no “qualifying” of the roots of any religion to a singularity, none of the majors started from scratch, they are patchworks of the same theme from civilization to civilization, generation to generation, interpretation after interpretation

Humanity’s attempts to understand Nature (only relatively recently called science) have also been “patchworks of the same theme from civilization to civilization, generation to generation, interpretation after interpretation”, one of the very recent attempts being the various interpretations of the seemingly self-contradictory findings of quantum physics.

SOG mate of mine came here from Scotland as a kid, very young;.
For some reason his whole family did not.
He middle aged took his wife to have a look.
Came home disgusted, he, like me, never knew the Scots hate each other.
Catholic vs COE, my mob.
Now last night,I watched becoming human.
History of us.
Few would not know it is truth.
But we hate based on a fairy tale?
We are indeed a weird mob, not just Aussie but all of us.