So although I cannot give Judaism my carte blanche for veracity, it does at least have some historical background in its favour, its anybodys guess what to make of the rest which I suspect was probably greatly exaggerated if not outright invention on the part of holy men who probably meant well, at least for the most part.
Sauls bastard offspring of original Christianity didn't even attempt veracity, oh no, not when there were all these other pagans to sign up even including some of their beliefs and practices to help sell the product. Virgin births, sacrificial martyrs, cannibalism - what? Oh really what do you think communion is all about then? The body and blood of Christ - no thanks I'm a vegan.
The emperor Constantine was the one who really put the stamp of Roman approval on the new religion which, after all, had comforting Mithraic elements to keep the regular army happy and elements of Zoroastrianism for the weirdos from Mesopotamia and other Persian mercenaries.
Besides the Western Roman emperors like Nero and Caligula had given the kiss of death to beliefs in their being deities, so it was a belief free for all and the old gods weren't able to combat the new Christ whose message was tolerance and love instead of blood and human sacrifices in the arena.
Really Christianity could be seen as the first labour movement because it was the underdogs it really appealed to with its message, though some Roman aristocrats were open minded enough to see what it meant and offered to them. Its not a bad thing to be seen as in accord with the masses when rebellion is in the air!
Constantine was nobodys fool, he had a major battle to fight against poor odds, (a Muslim renaissance of which more anon) so he enlisted the Christ by telling everybody how he'd been given a vision of victory under the banner of the cross.
After that there was really no stopping the spread of the new religion aided by missionaries who took the word to Europe and England and Ireland as well as Scandinavia eventually though the Norsemen were a tough sell for a long time.
This is where the story really starts because Spain, France, Germany and Eastern Europe were under threat from the new upstart religion of Islam which was frankly yet another quasi Judaic sect invented for his own benefit by a scam artist named Mohammed a used camel salesman.
The Arabs a mixture of Semitic races, had been kept at bay by Rome when it was in the ascendant but they had long histories as traders and were just as smart as their other Semitic brethren the Jews whom they had happily assimilated to gain the benefit of their knowledge and skills combined with what the Arabs already had, like the beginning of sciences such as chemistry, astronomy, advanced mathematics and lets not forget the alphabet which was another Arab invention.
They had also benefitted from Alexandra's conquests in India gaining the knowledge of how to make high carbon steel thereafter known as Damascus steel, a scimitar of which was almost as sharp as a samurai sword.
Howling holy slogans they hurled their ranks at Constantinople which held them at bay for another two or three centuries. Undaunted they rode up into North West Africa crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and began the attempt to conquer Europe which fortunately got its act together in the nick of time with the aid of heroes like El Cid of Spain and Vlad of Romania called the 'Impaler' thanks to his habit of putting his invaders onto spikes to decorate the castle grounds and which led to the stories about vampirism like Dracula.
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