No time to "flesh" this out right now.
Suffice to say the whole Arian/Athanasian controversy revolved around whether or not Jesus was Divine substance. The "Divine Substance" crowd won the election, according to some exit polls by a landslide, and the losing "Mortal Substance" crowd was excommunicated.
Trouble is, the losing side didn't go away, and by the time Constantine was ready to be baptized, on his deathbed, it was by a Bishop from the losing "Mortal Substance" crowd. The two sides bickered back and forth excommunicating each other, vying for political supremacy for over a century after Nicea, before the "Divine Substance" crowd won out finally.
Point being, I have long thought it odd that a "Jewish Messiah" was executed in a Roman manner...but not by Romans. That almost 300 years after the fact a Roman political pariah was elevated to the status of G!dhood posthumously, in a manner quite similar to that used by and for Roman Emperors, under the reign of a Roman Emperor that wasn't really comfortable with the standard Roman "god" mantle commonly and traditionally bestowed on all Roman Emperors since Julius and Augustus some 400 plus years before. Thereby creating a storyline wherein this Messiah is executed but doesn't die, and in any case the "blame" for his execution is shifted away from Rome and onto the Jews.
While some ties are tenuous at best, it is difficult to deny the similarities with Mithraism (born of a virgin - in the "not having had sex yet" sense of the word; on December 25; "sprinkling" baptism for washing away sins - although it was the blood of a sacred bull that was used for this instead of the blood of "the Lamb of G!d").
No doubt Thomas will challenge a great deal of what I put forward, still he cannot seem to come to terms with British...specifically Welsh...Christians in the ranks of Constantine's army as he defeated his opponents to reconsolidate the Empire. Constantine's father Constantius was the Emperor over Britain, and it is documented that even at the height of the Diocletian purges, Constantius was quite liberal and generous in his toleration of Christians...in direct defiance of Diocletian and Galerius. Further, Constantine's Mother was not only acknowledged as a Christian in the various histories, the Catholic Church sainted her as Saint Helena. While Constantine engaged in his public life as a Pagan, worshipping the Sun god Sol, he did have an affinity for Christianity that allowed tolerance for that group that otherwise would not have been. And the Bishop of Glastonbury (Wales) was accorded special privilege by the Vatican for centuries by virtue of being the "oldest recognized Christian church" in existence until the reign of Henry VIII.
And nobody seems to question why Constantine was sainted as well...a pagan all of his life...and the insistent denial of any political involvement from the Church's perspective...yet somehow on his deathbed, baptized by an Aryan priest, Constantine managed to qualify for sainthood in the Athanasian Catholic Church.
It's a miracle!
