The History Of Christianity

Hmmmmm.....

OK, if no one steps forward to correct me:

The Catholic church has TWO distinct branches: the Roman Catholic Church, where the pope reigns supreme and is what we think of when we think of "Catholic" and the Eastern Orthodoxy (we have a big Greek community here, and they tend to be members of the Orthodox Catholic church).

As I understand it, the main differential (well, besides centuries of corruption in the papacy and many other levels) is that where the RCC believes that people are people, and due to original sin they may never become a "god", the Orthodox Church believes that man CAN overcome his birth and become like god, not merely bask in his presence.

Do I get an "A"?

The Eastern Orthodox is completely split from the Catholic Church. What we see in the states as Catholic is in fact Roman Catholic. There are all kinds of Easter Orthodox churches also and I do believe that they are networked similar to the Catholics, but not part of the catholic church. The ceremonial nature of both churches is very similar, and their beliefs are very close. I don't remember if it was this split or the Protestant split where one of the main sticking points was the demigod status of Mother Mary.

Now that split (Orthodox/Catholic) happened before the split of Protestants from Catholicism. And Church of England formed before that split also. They wanted a state-run church so that they didn't have to answer to the Pope. When Protestant faiths started to form, Church of England attached them selves the Protestant bandwagon. Catholicism had a stronger foot hold on Ireland an a significant amount of the Irish stayed catholic - Hence "Irish Catholic." The Irish Catholics are still of the Roman Catholic faith, despite the Moniker.

Joseph Smith, was/is the founder of the Mormon faith. And in a nutshell - I think they believe Jesus was not just in that one place (middle east), but here in North America too. Joseph was tasked by God to translate ancient scrolls or tablets or something. He was told where to find them (I think) and had divine help in the translation. The book of Mormon was born soon after.

Now, if my memory serves me right - before Christianity there were the Jews and the Muslims. These two faiths are believed - by historians - to have split from the same religion shortly after Abraham. The Torah (First part of the Old Testament) and the Koran are historical documents about civilization from two different points of view. I believe that Mohamed is the profit that helped make the split happen. And I believe he and the split are mentioned in both books, or at least strongly alluded to.

Please, if you know that I am wrong about something, tell me. I hate when I spread disinformation because of my brain deciding not to function.

I thought Chrisianity pre-dates Islam by a thousand years or so.

Judiasm is older than both though I believe. Have to do a little research. Be back later to edit or brag

Ok, this is the best I could find on short notice about the ages of relegions.
<a href="http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20011106.html" target="_blank">http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20011106.html</a>

and

<a href="http://plassmeyer.com/am_oldest_religion.htm" target="_blank">this </a> as well....

Not that it really has anyhting to do with the topic at hand.

By the way, I went to an old fashioned Southern Baptist church til I was 13.
My family then joined a non-denominational church.
I no longer really go to church regularly, but I am starting to think about starting back more. I want my kids to be exposed to some of the environment and fellowship a good, loving church can provide.

I found this site a while back, and it gives some really good, unbiased overviews of a ton of religions, large and small:

<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/toc.htm" target="_blank">www.religioustolerance.org/toc.htm</a>

The <a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_hisb.htm" target="_blank">Christianity</a> section makes special note of the fact that there were originally three main sects of Christianity during its first century of existence, and two were pretty much shut out when mainline Christianity (led by Saul, more or less) took dominance. These two sects were composed of Jewish Christians, who were believers in Christ, but practiced Jewish Orthodoxy (circumcision, no shellfish, etc.); and Gnostics, whose ideas about God are a lot more complex and probably blasphemous to some. Very interesting stuff.

More info on Gnostics here:
<a href="http://www.religioustolerance.org/gnostic.htm" target="_blank">http://www.religioustolerance.org/gnostic.htm</a>

BTW, a lot of Phillip K. Dick's later work (the Valis trilogy, particularly) explores Gnostic concepts.

Judaism started in approximately 2000-1800 B.C. Christianity started around 33 A.D. Islam founded approximately 600 A.D. Muslims consider Jews and Christians "people of the book," which makes them slightly more venerated than other non-Muslims. Mohammed, who legend has it was illiterate, obviously read or was read too the Christian Bible (containing both OT and NT).

Gnosticism is not a branch of Christianity, though there certainly were Gnostic Christians. Gnostic Jews date back at least to 200 B.C. The Dead Sea Scrolls were Gnostic papers and copies of Old Testament books. The Matrix has tons of Gnostic concepts in it, as well as all of the literary references.

"Catholic" is translated as universal. That means that all Christians belong to the universal church, not the Roman Catholic Church.

The father of Protestantism, Luther, did most of his deep thinking while on the toilet. He had very severe constipation. Sometimes, a little "me time" can produce great things!

Yeah, that's true, actually. Gnosticism, like Judaism, did predate Christianity. But, according to the site and other things I've read, when Christianity came about, the Gnostic Christians were a pretty major factor and influenced the way mainline Christianity eventually would go. The site does actually consider the Gnostic Christians and Jewish Christians to be as significant in early Christianity as what eventually became today's Christianity.

Naturally, the Gnostics were eventually persecuted by the mainline Christians. Go figure. Organize a religion and finally escape persecution only to begin persecuting others.

And the Gnostic refs in the Matrix don't surprise much, since there was a fair share of PKD concepts in there, and I'd bet the Wachowskis came by their Gnosis info via him (as I sort of did). What, specifically, did you catch?

This is from memory cause I haven't studied Gnosticism for awhile (some stuff for the benefit of people who aren't familiar with the subject):

Basically the Gnostics, like many other "mystery religions" at the time advanced Plato's concept of "If it can be imagined, it must exist in some form" to "perhaps the world is entirely imaginary, and if we could somehow pierce the veil of this world we would receive ultimate knowledge." Sort of a syncretistic philosophy between the grounded nature of Judaism and the "enlightened path" of many Eastern religions.

In The Matrix, the "world" is a dream that it is possible to wake up from and thus gain knowledge that is beyond the senses. The Gnostics believed that knowledge was power and that if you could see beyond the mists to the real world you would become a "god." That is exactly what happens to Neo. He awakes from the imaginary world, learns and understands what the real world is, and is now filled with power and might in the imaginary world. The Gnostics were also waiting for the Messiah, who they believed would be a super-man of sorts, a concept also applied to Neo, "the personal Jesus Christ."

I don't think the Gnostics thought human beings would be turned into batteries by aliens.

I thought you meant they made some direct refs to Gnostic scriptures. Would have been interesting if they had...

Yeah, I'd totally agree that the main ideas behind it are really Gnostic-influenced. On top of what you've brought up, one of the common ideas of the Gnostics is that the physical universe was created by a mad god or Demiurge(like the machines in the Matrix) - basically the ornery piss-n-vinegar God portrayed in the Old Testament. But a connection to the true god (less of an anthropomorphic type of god and more of an omnipresent force) could be achieved through sort of an inner knowledge rather than good deeds, belief in God, etc. Sort of like how Neo discovers the true universe.

I think, as with the early Christian Jews, some Gnostics believed that Christ was the messiah they had been waiting for (and some didn't), thus some Gnostics and Jews (from a practice standpoint) were also Christians, thus the three primary early branches of Christianity (Gnostics, Jews, and what became mainline Christians).

Plus, Gnostics were really into wire fu.

IMHO, the Gnostic Christians are played up way too much. There probably weren't too many of them at least early on. Gnostic Christianity became more widespread around 80-100 A. D. (though there were occasional Gnostic-related heresies as descried by Paul in a few of his letters); practically all the books of the NT had been written before that time period. The Gnostic "Gospel of Thomas" is dated between 125-150 A. D., by which time most churches probably had copies of all or almost all of the books we now consider the NT. A more interesting debate is the possible influence of the Gnostics on John's Gospel, which varies depending on what year the Gospel was originally written.

Forgot about the Demiurge.