The Gentile Factor
Remember that after 70CE (AD) the leadership within the “Christian” movement
became dominated by Gentiles, who had formerly worshiped other gods.
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (vol.6 / Christianity)
The Beginnings of the Church
An important source of the alienation of Christianity from its Jewish roots
was the change in the membership of the church that took place by the end of
the 2nd century (just when, and how, is uncertain). At some point,
Christians with Gentile backgrounds began to outnumber Jewish Christians.
The Gentile or Greek culture was centered around philosophy and mythology.
Their entire perspective was that of having multiple gods. To them the most
natural assumption was that messiah was a god.
This, however, was NOT
the perspective that the first century JEWISH population had (which included
ALL of Yeshua's disciples).
But what about all of the passages like John 1 that also say Jesus is God?
Remember, that much of our interpretation of scripture is from the
perspective of those early “church fathers” who by the 2nd century were
comprised of mostly Gentiles well educated in Greek philosophy.
In A History of God,
Karen Armstrong writes:
Like the divine Wisdom, the “Word” symbolized God’s original plan for
creation. When Paul and John spoke about Jesus as though he had some kind of
preexistent life, they were not suggesting that he was a second divine
“person” in the later Trinitarian sense. They were indicating that Jesus had
transcended temporal and individual modes of existence. Because the