Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
If you are trying to make a point about "Christianity being invented because the apocalypse didn't come soon enough" then I missed it.
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It does seem that this thread went off topic a while back as we were swept away by the theme of human sacrifice. I suppose we can tie it to the OP question by asking whether the crucifixion was legitimately interpreted as a human sacrifice for the remission of sins or not.
If Jesus didn't sacrifice himself for something it seems like his crucifixion would have been in vain or, in other words, meaningless.Even though the gospel accounts say that Jesus informed his disciples that he would be killed and rise again Mark 8:31, they were amazed and astonished when it happened. The needed some rationale in order to understand it. Some scholars think that Jesus expected to be an earthly messianic king and therefore did not anticipate his crucifixion and therefore wouldn't have taught the disciples about it in advance.
The idea of substitutionary sacrifice was alive and well in 1st century Judaic Temple practice. So it isn't a stretch to suppose his followers sought meaning in Jesus's crucifixion by viewing it as analogous to sacrifices that gave them access to God.
The elaboration the theme of divine sacrifice by Paul in the epistles would have been a further development of a theme that was near the beginning of the post crucifixion understanding of Jesus by his followers. If we consider that any doctrinal development outside of Jesus's own explicit teachings can be part of the original faith, then the theme of sacrifice could be. On that basis, sacrifice as a theme escapes the category of a deviant version of Christianity even if Jesus didn't teach about it himself.