Christianity and the historical Jesus (excerpt from a 'conversation' in - The Nonduality Salon email list) As the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas hints, doctrinal, institutional Christianity has relatively little to do with the life and work of the young, radical Jewish reformer whom the Greeks called "Jesus." For all their extensive, near-frantic alterations and abridgements, several centuries of early church leaders couldn't completely expunge the non-dual essence from the canonical Gospels either. Essentially, most of modern-day Christianity is the work of Paul and his evangelical successors, and I have little doubt that a surviving Jesus would have had nothing to do with it. The two doctrines that dominate the thinking of many (perhaps most) believing Christians are vicarious atonement and physical resurrection. Both are based either on profound misunderstandings or on borrowed Greek and/or Egyptian "mystery cult" ideas adopted by Paul to appeal to non-Jewish converts in the Roman-ruled, culturally Hellenistic world of the first century. Paul did not know Jesus personally and was strongly opposed by Peter and James (the so-called "Jerusalem Church") who knew him best of all. Paul eventually won and the non-dual Jewish sect led by a brilliant, charismatic rabbi withered away (helped along by the Roman sacking of Jerusalem in 70) and was replaced by a new religion, designed to appeal to non-Jews and pretty much invented by Paul, which depicted that rabbi as a martyred and risen "Lord and Saviour." The rest is history, much of it tragic. I have little interest in this mythological "Jesus Christ." I do find what I've been able of glean of the historical Jesus, the lifelong Jew of the authentic non-dual revelation(s), eminently respectable and very interesting, a worthy member of the pantheon of Famous Dead Guys[tm] and a valuable meeting place for discussing non-duality with Christians just as The Ten Commandments are for discussing non-duality with Jews (and with more mosiacally-oriented Christians and Muslims). Christianity is imho a problematic, dualistic belief system; Jesus was a profound non-dual pointer -- whoduhthunkit, eh? :-)