@OldGrumpy,
Quote:Again, EVERYTHING you find in the bible can be found ik much older pagan religions.
I do get some people don't want to 'get' that, because it is so extremely different from their belief system, but it is what it is.
Christianity is presented as Jesus Himself as the clarification and culmination (renewal back to perfection of everything and,everyone who believes in the entire universe) of the relationship between man and God threough the natural world. This clarification can be understood as the clarification and conclusion of all Pagan, and Jewish religions (and possibly all others as well). The Pagan religions are man's best interpretation of the ancient relationship between man and God through nature. This was clarified by the prophets in the first books of the bible (genesis) where the Pagan religions and the bible come from the same sources. Jesus was there as the Words in that information presented in both the oral stories and the information stored in the atoms of nature and developed by man as a logical understanding of natural law and the laws of nature.
Quote:I do get some people don't want to 'get' that, because it is so extremely different from their belief system, but it is what it is.
That ancient information (God's plan as vaguely understood by man through nature and man's relationship with God that is now weakened by sin) was then clarified by the Jewish prophets with the prediction that the Word of God would become flesh and clarify the message and initiate the completion of the renewal of the relationship between God, man, and the universe that was broken by man's sin.
So, I think Paganism should not be described as preceding Christianity, it is better described as the initial step in a man's relationship with God that developed in a process over thousands or millions of years that culminates in the Jewish religion that laid the groundwork (the genetic bloodline and the written explanation) for the physical and spiritual renewal of the relationship between God, mankind and each individual as a person through the person of Jesus Christ who is the Word made flesh.