Oh, I thought you meant early church. You are now referring to a 4th century inscription. Not the earliest Christian inscription or church. The earliest is late 2nd century, and Valentinian, as I said. We have no sites for churches from the time of Marcion. If now you want to talk about late antiquity, I don’t see the relevance of that here.

Is the inscription of 318 a myth?
https://stellarhousepublishing.com/jesus-the-good-and-the-chrestians/

Matthew is a Jewish Christian, and is not on board with Paul’s view that Gentiles can become Christians without becoming Jews. Before Paul the original Jewish sect led by Peter was converting Gentiles by converting them to Judaism first. And this was the first main dispute in the church: which of those approaches is kosher (pun intended).

When comparing why Matthew added or deleted or kept or rewrote things in Mark, this is the lynchpin distinction to remember. Matthew is writing for observant Jews who are Christians. He does not accept Gentile Christians who didn’t convert to Judaism.

This attitude is more starkly evident in Revelation, a text from Matthew’s sect and likely influenced by Matthew or written by an author very similarly situated, where explicitly only Jewish Christians are saved, not Gentile Christians who didn’t convert.

But like Mark, Matthew is trying to fix a problem created by the war. That was an existential crisis that demanded a response and a way to leverage it “for clicks and subs” to borrow a modern idiom. I show (following Dale Allison) how this led to Matthew inventing the Sermon on the Mount, for example.

With that background in place:

Notice the Parable of the Wedding in Matthew has two stages: first, whether the ones originally invited came (the Old Covenant, hence non-Christian Jews, and especially the haughty elite vs. streetfolk), and then those who did or didn’t come properly dressed (the New Covenant, Christian Jews). So the king is not inviting Gentiles in who aren’t in proper attire: they get thrown on the fire heap. Only Jews, and Gentiles who became Jews, are considered, and only get saved if they dress for the occasion, i.e. become Christian Jews.

So while the parable references the Jewish War as “proof” the Parable is true it isn’t really about the war, but rather how to be saved. And Matthew’s take on that is: become a Jew, be baptized in Christ, and you’re in. It doesn’t matter how lowly or bad or alien you are. You heeded the invite, and both showed up and in proper attire. Everyone else gets burned (not necessarily meaning in hell; Matthew might be an annihilationist and speaking poetically).

If the basis for this is indeed material from Paul’s epistles, then I can’t understand why, in the parable from Matthew 22, the King invites the people (pagans) after the burning of the city

Perhaps the author of Matthew, being a Judeo-Christian, wanted to discredit Paul in this way.But doesn’t this harm his own propaganda, because the disciples of Christ began to convert pagans even before the destruction of the Temple?

You are incorrect.

The idea of a suffering and indeed ugly and debased messiah was already a Jewish idea before Christianity (and remained core to Judaism ever after—it’s still the standard in the Talmud). See my study roundup on that, which builds onto what I already documented and cited in my study (On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 4, esp. §2–9 and §16–19; cf. also Chapter 5, §23–31 and §43–48). Nearly forty scholars agree with this now.

The theological reasoning is found in Paul’s Philippian creed (2:5–10) which explains why the messiah had to be suffering and humiliated and debased, and had to become mortal so as to be that and die (abandoning all glory and power and beauty before being rewarded for that). This was fundamental to the entire Christian creed from day one and thus was an essential element of it. That’s why Isaiah 53 became a messianic text (just like Psalms 22–24 and Wisdom 2 and 5 and Daniel 9 and so on).

The question is where this happened. On historicity, it happened in Judea. On mythicism, like other similar cults of the time (e.g. Osiris cult as explained in Chapter 1 of Jesus from Outer Space and in Chapter 5, §34–42, of Historicity), it happened in the sky below the moon.

So the question is not whether Jesus put on a body of flesh to die in (or even whether it was Davidic flesh). My theory entirely agrees with all that. The question is where the original Christians thought this happened. I have a much more detailed discussion of the evidence that they thought it happened in the sky not on Earth in Chapter 7 of Obsolete Paradigm now because a lot of new evidence came to light. But I presented the original evidence in Historicity. That’s the whole basis of the debate.

You may find, for example, Obsolete Paradigm most useful in explaining why no one has refuted (and many scholars have since supported the evidence) that the Davidic flesh angle was supernatural and cosmic, and not terrestrial and ordinary. This was already argued in Historicity but ten years of trying to argue against it has only made the conclusion stronger, and you’ll see why there.

Note Paul has no knowledge of any “teachings of Christ” except through “revelation and scripture.” I fully demonstrate this with extensive evidence in chapter eleven of On the Historicity of Jesus.

In other words, every time Paul cites a teaching of Jesus, so far as we know he means in revelations after he died, not in ministry before he died; or by hidden messages already in scripture. So there isn’t any way to get to a historical Jesus that way. It’s only worse that the idea of abandoning kosher Paul explicitly admits was never a part of the preaching of Jesus until the ghost of Jesus appeared uniquely to Paul to teach it, so even if Jesus existed, Paul tells us he never taught that. Only the “imaginary” Jesus in Paul’s head did.

Romans 15:5

“Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus.”

You may be right. However, such quotes point to the teachings of Christ, who was of a certain unanimity. What seems most likely to me? I don’t think Jesus existed. It seems to me that Paul was expecting the apocalypse. The end of the world. And he read the idea of ​​Jesus in the Old Testament. In the Septuagint, as far as I know, Jesus Navin is written as Jesus Christ. He clearly took everything from the Jewish scriptures. Then the “apostles” concocted a story that would be understandable to the masses. But Paul was mistaken; Jesus didn’t come, and the end of the world didn’t happen.

Mark invented Jesus saying something only sort of like that to reify Paul’s teaching here, not the other way around.

Paul never quotes Jesus saying that. He makes an argument for it being a consequence of something else Jesus said to him, and he says, in a vision—so Jesus did not say any such thing before his death. Hence why only Paul got this information, and not his predecessor apostles, Peter, James, and John, who never heard of this idea of not having to eat kosher anymore. So even if Jesus existed this did not come from him. It came from Paul’s imagination.

Moreover, even in Paul’s imagination Jesus did not come to him in a dream or vision and say “nothing is unclean,” because if he did, Paul would quote him saying it (as “a saying of the Lord”). Instead he says it is something he trusts Jesus would agree with (he only has “confidence in the Lord,” i.e. he believes Jesus would agree with him, not, “Jesus said this”). That’s why he says he became “convinced” of this as a conclusion, not was “told” this as a premise. Paul outlines how he came to this conclusion in Galatians 3–4 (getting the premises from his post-mortem vision of Jesus and no human being, per Galatians 1–2).