Is Mise,

Interesting point: there was a drought here lasting 38-39 years around the year 1200. That would have driven people across the entire continent into refuges (short-term survival: water but eventually no food) and to the coastal rivers if they were fortunate enough to inter-marry with people there. After a drought that long, it might have taken generations, perhaps centuries, to re-populate the emptied country, i.e. most of the continent.

So any earlier stories about sites etc. would have been forgotten, and new stories would have had to be devised, perhaps by populations whose ancestors had had nothing to do with those countries, or only the vaguest connections through distant marriage. Perhaps this re-population process - and re-culturalisation/identification process - was still going on in 1788 and beyond.

So any assertion of very long-term traditions being passed easily on may need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Joe

Flavius Josephus, original name Joseph Ben Matthias, (born AD 37/38, Jerusalem—died AD 100, in Rome) wrote in his record of History 63 AD The Antiquities of the Jews Chapter 3 "The sedition of the Jews against Pontius Pilate" - item 63 "Now there was about this time Jesus a wise man, if it was lawful to call him a wise man, for he was a doer of wonderful works - a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many men of the Jews and many Gentiles. He was the Christ [Messiah] and when Pilate at the suggestion of the principal men among us had condemned him to the cross those that loved him at first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day as our divine prophets had foretold, these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him, and the tribe of his followers are not extinct at this day".

Jose' The history of those times are a jigsaw puzzle, with many pieces missing. There will always be speculation as to truth, and the separation of fiction from fact being a most difficult undertaking. It is evident that there were competing forces with their own agendas in the early church, not the least being that of Paul and James, Rome and Jerusalem. At the end of the day it was the Roman Church which succeeded in establishing the foundation for the future of Christianity in the world. A new religion which uniquely was able to retain beliefs from ancient Judaism, whilst plotting a new path that established itself as the worlds pre-eminent religion of today.

Paul, I believe it was not till the 3rd century that conflict arose between the Jerusalem Church and the Roman Church, when the Nicene Creed was established, when Western Catholic views of God ostracized the Jerusalem believers. The Apostle John and James were from the Jewish Church and their writings amplify the same teachings as Jesus. They both see Jesus as Master teacher or Lord.