Some things change.

The importance of Jesus has changed from his reality to his morality.

Now, the notion of Armageddon being real, is used to show literal readers that this mass murder would make Jesus look like a really evil god.

A good and moral Jesus would cure instead of kill, the way one of the Jesus archetypes says he came to do in scriptures.

Regards
DL

Ye olde stat. if you don't mind the abrupt interruption. what do you think about the raising of the old saints after the resurrection that is only mentioned in matthew? just a strange tid bit but you'd think the others would mention it if some saints came back to life and walked around.

Well it took that Andrew guy forever to ban me(I guess he wife is not expecting). See ya around SN Iggy. I will be ignoring all you posts from outshine the sun as I can no longer respond to them.

You unfortunately found an excerpt where Rodney Stark mentions what other historians estimated the Jewish population to be in the 1st century Roman Empire. In another section of "Cities of God", Rodney give his own estimate of 6 - 9 million. The other problem is that Ye Old Statistician said the Jewish population went from 10 million down to 1 million. I don't know if he was quoting Rodney or another source, but Mr. Stark says in the same book that the Jewish population went from approximately 10% of the total Roman Empire down to 1%, not 10 million to 1 million. Also, the the population decrease took place over a number of years from the 1st century to the 10th century AD. So, its certainly conceivable that if you start with a population of 6 - 9 million Jews and they continue to multiply, there could have been 10 million conversions or even more over that period. Quotes from his book below.........
"As the practice of inviting guests to worship makes clear, Jews in the Diaspora sought converts, and they seem to have been quite successful in doing so. The best estimate is that by the first century, Jews made up from 10 to 15 percent of the population of the Roman Empire, nearly 90 percent of them living in cities outside Palestine. This would have amounted to from six to nine million people."
and.....
"Population data lend further sup port to the assumption of a very large number of Jewish convert s. As noted, the Diasporan Jews constituted at least 10 percent of the total population of the empire, and perhaps as much as 15 percent. Medieval historians estimate that Jews made up only 1 percent of the population of Latin Europe in about the tenth century. Granted, some of that percentage decline was caused by the Islamic conquest of areas having substantial Jewish populations. Nevertheless, thefigures also suggest a considerable decline in the Diasporan population during that millennium, which is consistent with there having been a substantial rate of conversion"

According to the "Acts of the Apostles" and some of the early Church Fathers, many 1st and 2nd century Jews converted to Christianity because they were convinced that the Messianic Prophecies were fullfilled in the person of Jesus. So, one could make a reasonable argument that the Christian concept of the Messiah was largely (not completely) compatible with 1st century Judaism.

Rodney Stark writes:

It is important to keep in mind how greatly the Hellenized Jews of the diaspora outnumbered the Jews living in Palestine. Johnson (1976) suggests that there were a million in Palestine and four million outside, while Meeks (1983) places the population of the diaspora at five to six million. It is also worth noting that the Hellenized Jews were primarily urban—as were the early Christians outside Palestine (Meeks 1983). Finally, the Hellenized Jews were not an impoverished minority; they had been drawn out of Palestine over the centuries because of economic opportunities. By the first century, the large Jewish sections in major centers such as Alexandria were known for their wealth. As they built up wealthy and populous urban communities within the major centers of the empire, Jews had adjusted to life in the diaspora in ways that made them very marginal vis-à-vis the Judaism of Jerusalem. As early as the third century B.C.E their Hebrew had decayed to the point that the Torah had to be translated into Greek (Greenspoon 1989). In the process of translation not only Greek words, but Hellenic viewpoints, crept into the Septuagint.

4-6 is a lot less than 10 million. I don't see anything about the Jewish population being at one million by the end of late antiquity.

Rodney Stark would not attribute Chrisitianities rise to the idea that Jesus fit into their idea of what a Messiah would look like, which is the implication here. Stark believed that Christianity grew similar to Mormonism in America, and that there are sociological explanations (higher value placed on women, tight personal bonds among adherents, etc). Rodney Stark thought that the main source or early Christian converts were Hellenized Jews.

Times change. Hellenized Jews converting in the second century does not mean that the Christian conception of a Messiah fit particularly well into 1st century Judaism.

See Rodney Stark "Cities of God", Chapter 5. If you google his name and Jewish diaspora or conversion, you should find a quote from that Chapter. I seem to remember he is pretty widely quoted as an authority on this subject.

When the Portuguese arrived in India around the coast of Malabar, they discovered a Jewish community there who had been there quite awhile - judging from their language. Makes you wonder if they had been there as traders or as refugees from a by-gone era.

According to the unanimous internal evidence of all extant ancient Greek manuscripts (e.g., Papyrus 4, 64, 66, 75, Codex Sinaticius, Vaticanus, etc.) as well as the unanimous external evidence of ancient writers outside the Bible (e.g., Papias of Hierapolis, Irenaeus of Lyons, Muratorian Canon, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, etc.), two of the four gospels were authored by Matthew and John.

That's an intriguing interpretation of unanimity. Suppose I am addressing an audience of 100 scholars of English literature, and I say to them, "Please raise your hands if you believe that William Shakespeare, the man born in Stratford on Avon, was the actual author of the plays attributed to him," and 10 hands are raised. I then say, "Raise your hands if you believe somebody else wrote the plays," and no hands are raised. If I understand Pitre correctly, I am then justified in saying that my audience unanimously believes that Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him.

Scholars don't even agree if the "Beloved Disciple" of John is actually John or someone else. I think there are good reasons to suspect that the gospels weren't anonymous (see Martin Hengel's The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ), but I agree with your points more generally. Just because the early church was unanimous in affirming authorship does not mean that Matthew or John actually wrote it.

Adams had his charms but I have moved on to Hard Science Fiction these days. Unless there is no FTL, para-gravity, humanoid aliens, and the laws of Physics are obeyed I am only at best slightly interested. It was George Carlin who said and I paraphrase "Tis better to have ~romantic fantasies' for the girl next door than the Super model or Actress because you are thinking yes this could really happen." Such is the appeal of Hard Scifi.

Alatair Reynolds is a growing favorite of mine.

Cheers again.