5 Insane Facts That Will Change How You View Christianity
#2. The New Testament Was Conceived By A Heretic Who Thought God Was Also The Devil
Marcion of Sinope was a pseudo-Gnostic rabble-rouser and a general thorn in the mainstream Christian butt in the first century after Jesus' death. Even if you're unfamiliar with the guy, you might have heard about his most widely accepted claim to fame:
Dude invented the Bible as you know it.
via Wiki Commons
He gets royalties for all adaptations, including every Star Wars flick.
Before Marcion, the Christian Bible as we know it did not exist. There was no known segregation between the "Old" (Jewish) and "New" (Christian) Testaments before him. It was just hundreds of different stories in free circulation: multiple books of revelation, too many gospels to count, and more coming in every week. So Marcion decided to go Brothers Grimm on that shit.
He wasn't in it just for the heavenly street cred, mind you: He had an ulterior motive for wanting to create two separate "volumes" of the Bible. Marcion was a member of a fringe sect and sought to channel his opinions into an official-looking book with two separate testaments. Why two? Because Marcion believed that the deity of what would eventually be Old Testament texts was a completely different and more malevolent creator-god than the savior-god the New Testament introduced us to -- in fact, according to him, the Old Testament god was basically the devil.
Dang, with a twist like that, somebody should call Shyamalan and -- no, no, let's let his career rest in peace.
Fra Angelico
Know who didn't get to rest in peace? Jesus.
Marcion's initial Bible was a premeditated attempt to eliminate all trace of pre-Jesus Jewish thought out of his new Bible. His creation was extremely minimalistic; all but 10 of the Letters are absent, as are the Acts and the Book of Revelation, and the only Gospel present is that of Luke. Even Marcion's detractors recognized that he was onto something with his neatly Testamented format. They set out to repurpose it to squash Marcion's influence, releasing a rival New Testament that intentionally countered Marcion's position (though retaining his general structure) in their own Bible, which gradually evolved to the one we thump today.
#1. Jesus Was A Shapeshifter?
When Constantine recognized Christianity as a bona fide religion, he failed to notice that in the three centuries after Jesus died, the religion had become a clusterfuck of competing sects and ideas. The true nature of Jesus was the source of some particularly heated debate, and because people are kinda jerks, things shifted to overdrive in a hurry. Invisibility, levitation, miracle healing, indestructibility, and various other X-Men superpowers were seen as necessary attributes to emphasize that Jesus could have escaped a date with a crucifix if he wanted to but was destined to die instead, redeem mankind, and be reborn. As such, tomes like Pseudo-Cyril Of Jerusalem On The Life And The Passion Of Christ implied Jesus was an actual shapeshifter who could change his appearance at will because he possessed a superpowered energy body that only looked like a human one.
Michelangelo
It's no coincidence he's got the abs of a Marvel superhero.
To make things even more intriguing, one early Gnostic sect called the Carpocratians depicted Jesus Christ as not only a sexual being but a full-on libertine who indulged in flamboyantly gay and bisexual antics with his followers. That's right, the Gnostic JC was AC/DC.
Ludwig Krug
One way to interpret "hung on a cross."
Sadly, Jesus' experimental phase didn't last. Although the concept of the Holy Trinity was still a work in progress, and every region or local congregation put a colorful spin on the Jesus story, only a few powerful bishops held any real power. In 325 BC, they convened at Nicea at the behest of the emperor to determine the "official" doctrine Christianity would run with. The proto-versions of the views we know today were committee-punched into the Nicene Creed, and the Church happily started persecuting the hell out of anybody that disagreed with them. Luckily that was just a one-time thing, and they never, ever did it again.
By the time we're finished with you, you'll be the most kickass Biblical scholar on your street. Continue on with The 6 Raunchiest, Most Depraved Sex Acts (From The Bible) and 5 Real Deleted Bible Scenes In Which Jesus Kicks Some Ass.
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