Did the Romans Invent Christmas?

[canetoad]

6. As to being made up

I would say 'poeticised' may be a more appropriate description. There are roughly 25-30 books or epistles that didn't make it into the offical NT. I doubt whether the inclusion of any of them would have had a significant effect on the path taken by the early church; to me, that seems to have been defined by the writings of Paul.

Now Paul is a fascinating character. No other single person had a greater influence on early church teachings but I find him rigid, misogynistic, homophobic, domineering and overbearing. His so called conversion happened at a time when the person known as James, brother of Jesus, was the ad hoc leader of the early jewish christians. Paul's miraculous vision and conversion quite whipped the ground away from under the feet of James as the group leader. Without his contribution the early christian group would quite possibly have faded away.

We can only assume how deeply tied to the messianic tradition the historical Jesus was; certainly the words attributed to Jesus have him denying several times that he is the messiah of Jewish tradition. Likewise, there are no writings that suggest his brother James considered Jesus to be the messiah. The whole Jesus as the messiah of Jewish tradition seems to have originated with Paul. While this obviously made Paul a target for the occupiers, it also provided him a degree of fame and adoration. My personal opinion is that Paul was the earliest recorded Master of Spin.