We don’t want to be unkind but we want to be factual. We don’t want to cause hurt feelings, but we want to be academically correct in what we understand and know to be true. Christianity is just not based on truth. We find that Christianity was in fact nothing more than a Roman story developed politically. Jordan Maxwell
And usually it’s Christians who haven’t got the faintest idea in the world what’s going on. Christians are the most ill-informed ignorant people on the face of the Earth. Jordan Maxwell, interview Keith Thompson
The Christian Church is a disgrace. Everything that comes out of the Christian Church in America is a disgrace. It’s filled with lies, deception, innuendos; it is a money-making corporation. Jordan Maxwell, Project Camelot Conference September 2009
Christianity is sun worship based on astrology. ibid.
Christianity must also be overthrown because it is based on Jewish sources; the rule of Christ must come to an end, because only the rule of force is right. In the world order of the Axis powers, the individual has no rights; he has no freedom in so far as he serves the state. Alice Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy
The teachers, even of Christianity, are, in general, the most ignorant of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is no book of which so little is known as the Bible. To most who read it, it is as incomprehensible as the Sohar. Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma
During the Second World War international communism must become strong enough in order to control Christianity. Albert Pike
We shall unleash the Nihilists and Atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will be from that moment without compass, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view, a manifestation which will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time. Albert Pike
It is useless and vain for the Protestants to exclaim against the Roman Catholics for their Mariolatry, based on the ancient cult of lunar goddesses, when they themselves worship Jehovah, prominently a lunar god, and when both Churches have accepted in their theologies the ‘Sun’ – Christ of the lunar trinity. Madame H P Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I
Some of the divisions in early Christianity were far more basic, fundamental and radical than the divisions we have today. John Dominic Crossan, author God & Empire
There are profound distinctions between various groups of Christians. Not minor little things about the dates of something, but major issues. John Dominic Crossan
Everything would be a Roman church. And that’s the story Luke wants to tell. John Dominic Crossan
The Acts account of early Christianity presents a very cogent, coherent image of earliest Christianity. When in fact the more we find out about early Christianity the more wildly variegated a phenomenon it appears to be. Holland L Hendrix, Union Theological Seminary
When we look back at this earlier time there was no golden age of Jesus. There was no day or decade or century in which everyone agreed in the Church. And that’s very much like today in which we have different sects. Professor Kirsti Copeland, Stanford University
The early Christian movement had a lot of different viewpoints and many of them were censored. One version got branded as orthodox. Professor Kirsti Copeland
Christianity starts as a dissident movement within Judaism – so already there’s tension between Judaism and the Jesus movement as it take place. Certainly also, preaching about a kingdom is going to make the Romans nervous. They have a kingdom that they’re happy with. So we have a charismatic leader with a message that challenges both religious and secular authorities. Eugene Gallagher, Connecticut University
The Jewish sect then is a group which sees itself as Jews, recognises that there are other Jews out there but claims that those other Jews out there have it all wrong. Professor Shaye J D Cohen
The 2nd century is an age of Christian self-definition. Shaye J D Cohen
And they marched from the prison to the amphitheatre joyfully as if they were going to Heaven. Perpetua, diary entry
I interrogated whether they were Christians. If they confessed it, I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment. If they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed. Pliny the Younger
Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome.
Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ – none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do – these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
… Hence it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is afforded. Pliny the Younger to Trajan
Christians are an unknown commodity. So even when he’s [Plinney] executing them he doesn’t know what to make of them. Professor Michael White
But the early Church did not tolerate diversity. The Gnostics were just one of the early Christian sects that were suppressed, persecuted and eventually all but wiped out. Banned From the Bible: Secrets of the Apostles, History 2012
Christianity was constantly redesigning its own dogma. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Disbelief I: Shadows of Doubt ***** BBC 2004
The Christian imagination was more or less surrounded by an impenetrable cyclorama of sacred imagery. Dr Jonathan Miller: A Rough History of Disbelief II: Noughts and Crosses
Increased worldwide travel ... [and] various forms of Greco-Roman pagan scepticism and materialism. A sort of Artesian Well. ibid.
Having closed down the philosophical schools in Athens, the newly converted Christian and Roman Empire made strenuous efforts to Christianise some of the earlier pagan philosophies. ibid.
The advent of new science and technology in the Renaissance would also have a role to play. ibid.
Christianity starts to come apart. ibid.
The deists were a largely upper class group, and as the name suggests they certainly did believe in a deity. But they were dissatisfied with the state of Christianity. ibid.
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. G K Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World, 1914
Why would Christians want to portray Jesus as violent, as someone who killed people, who withered people? And I’m not sure that there’s a good answer to it. Professor Bart Ehrman, University of Northern California
What scholars have recognised since the early twentieth century is that that model is probably not right. That actually early Christianity was far more diverse than that. That in fact there were lots of different groups in Christendom that taught a lot of different things. And all of these groups were competing for converts. Bart D Ehrman, author The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot
It was a much more complicated picture than this traditional view allows us to believe. We may think that early Christianity was just one thing. But we now know that it wasn’t that simple. That we have people who taught all sorts of things in different times, and they all had traditions that go back to the Apostles that supports their points of view. They all had books that supported their points of view. Bart D Ehrman
The early Christian Church fathers who became orthodox, who represented the point of view that became dominant within Christianity, saw Gnostics as very dangerous, and they wrote a number of books against them, presumably because they were very popular. Bart D Ehrman