OK, so we've looked at briefs (sorry you had to see my briefs,
, nyuk nyuk nyuk) regarding the Romans, and various sects of the Jews in and around Palestine, and got a feel for the secular and religious world in the region about the time of Jesus and shortly after. We have the Bible, which we are trying to validate, and we have Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other texts (such as Nag Hamadi or the Gospel of Thomas) don't really shed any further light in the direction we are looking.
Outside of Palestine, the world was ruled by the Romans and heavily overlain with Greek philosophical thought. Roman religion, besides being Pagan tended towards the superstitious. Roman philosophy tended to borrow heavily from the Greek.
Inside of Palestine, the governmental rule was Roman, with a strong undercurrent of Judeo-religous law. A hyper-patriotic segment of the population desired to throw off the Roman governorship and return to rule not unlike that of the Hasmonean dynasty. The ultra-extremists among these were trained and willing to assassinate.
Those Jews willing to live with the Roman rulership tended towards the status quo, presumably in an attempt to try to preserve what remained of the Temple tradition. This created something of a rift between the two rivalling factions of the Jewish people. The existence of the Septuigint Greek translation of the Old Testament hints to the influence of Greek thought in Palestine for about two hundred years prior to Jesus.
A third branch of the Jews went out into the desert ostensibly to "get away from it all" and try to establish an ascetic compound from which to wait it all out...a tactic which proved to backfire on them. An alternate possibility is that this ascetic commune might have been fostering and encouraging the seditious undertow among the disenfranchised, which might explain why the Romans obliterated them quite quickly and thoroughly once the war that destroyed the Temple began in earnest. But the war was still future when Jesus walked the earth.
The various Pagan subjects of the Roman world held a number of myths that venerated hero-gods who by differing means transcended human form into that of a god-being. Some of these wrought miracles, vanquished evil, healed the sick, raised the dead and even ascended into heaven. Some even had a "queen of heaven" goddess for a mother.
No doubt these beliefs served functionally to teach moral lessons. It does raise questions as to how we today can readily dismiss as superstition in Paganism what is clinged to and cherished in Christianity. A number of arguments have been but forth by Christians, all of which do not address the facts of the matter and only play to the emotional desire to hold and elevate the man we know as Jesus to the status of a god. Historically, when all else fails, burn any who raise such questions at the stake for daring to seek the truth of the matter.
Jesus was a Jew. He was born to observant Jewish parents, in a Jewish household, raised in the Jewish Temple religion through the Jewish Bible (Old Testament *only*), in turn he taught his followers from the Jewish Bible (Old Testament *only*). For some reason he was Tortured and executed in a Roman manner, ostensibly for some gross insult to the Jewish Temple priests. These things can reasonably be ascertained from what can be gathered.
The rest seems to me questionable at best, and this does strain credibility. What is known historically is that there were competing views of what and who Jesus really was, and what it was he taught. Besides the fact that the tolerance extended to Christianity was variable and dependent on the whims of the Roman Emperor. Because of such insecurity, Christians developed a secretive way about them at times that only further fuelled suspicions. After about 250 years of this, their Pagan benefactor Constantine legalized the Christian faith, and a subsequent Emperor some 50 years or so later outlawed Paganism in the Empire. "Overnight" historically speaking, Christianity usurped the throne Paganism held for over a thousand years before. Constantine early on called for an assembly to consolidate and unite the various factions of Christianity, an effort that was only marginally successful, echoes of the disagreements are with us still well over 1500 years later. But it did establish the political primacy of two main churches (that had started as one church), and the political weight has been thrown around through the years in an effort to dismiss any challengers. The attitude seems to be that "might equals right." If we can't convert 'em, we'll just bulldoze 'em. And they did, all the way up until the Protestant Reformation, the only serious challenge they were unable to overcome was that of their Eastern sister.
It is impossible with the evidence at hand to say exactly what the earliest Christians were taught by Jesus to believe. It would have logically been an extension of Judaism in some form. It was the Apostle Paul who was instrumental in carrying the new interpretation of Judaism to the Gentile converts, effectively opening the door to the world. It was by his efforts that one no longer needed to be a Jew first in order to be a Christian. This creates its own backlash, in that we have no valid way I am aware of to distinguish between the Jewish origins that had to comprise the fledgling Christianity, and the Pagan trappings that became intermingled with Christianity. Some are plainly evident: the adoption of Roman and Pagan holidays in lieu of Jewish Holy Days, substitution of Sunday for the Jewish Sabbath, and the rewriting of the Ten Commandments. The evidence of Pagan influence on Christianity is encompassing and thorough, so much so as to make it very difficult to distinguish just what is, and what isn't "genuine" Christianity as taught by Jesus and his closest disciples.
