Passion?

Answer

The early Christians were all Jewish - and it seems they had keen Jewish business minds. If you want to sell a product you have to market it to the widest audience possible. And if it doesn't appeal to a wide audience - change it!

Originally, Jesus was presented as the Jewish messiah coming to redeem the Jewish people. It didn't sell. Very few Jews believed a story about a messiah who was killed without changing the world. So they tried selling it to non-Jews. It worked. Here was an offer to buy into a belief that asked you just to have faith, and didn't demand much more. So the sales pitch shifted - you don't have to be Jewish, you just have to believe. Now they were getting customers.

As the business grew, it started attracting some big contracts. Entire tribes subscribed, kings with all their subjects signed up.

The board of directors held a meeting where they discussed strategies on how to expand even further. One manager said that he has an idea for the deal of a century.

- "Let's get the biggest company in the world on side - the Roman empire!"

- "Now that's a plan. If we can just get the Roman emperor to join, he'll force the entire empire to become members. We could even make him a senior partner."

- "But there's one little hitch. Wasn't it the Romans that executed Jesus? Won't that be a little bit of a sore point?"

- "You're right. Listen, business is business, and the customer comes first. It's all in the packaging. We can say the Jews pushed the Romans to do it. Hopefully they won't read the fine print in the New Testament."

And the deal was done.

To their credit, the descendants of the Romans in the Vatican have exposed this as a lie. But a two thousand year old lie doesn't go away so fast.

Let true Christians read their Bible, Jews read their Torah, and movie-goers read their movie-guides very carefully - a mix of religion and Hollywood is a lethal weapon.