If so, why didn't a Christianity w/o a risen Jewish messiah arise? ....Have already pointed out the real unsung heros of the play were always the Jewish moderates, you have such tiny attention span. They all do get murdered in Jerusalem in the First war by primitive rebel fundmentalist fantatics. Why taking Jerusalem was so easy at the last for the Romans, these mucks were at war with themselves inside the city.
We find many Hellenized Jews input there all along & it does materialize with famous Hellene rabbi Hillel from Babylon, then various rabbis named Jesus (there were many) who's philosophical approach tried to break frozen molds. Jewish religious life was not all that sophisticated until just after Babylon and then arrival of the Hellenes, more a highly ritualized primitive animal sacrifice cult composed of tribal clans & tiny chief /kings before that, mostly illiterate.
Not until exposure to Babylon's ancient culture really do these primitive tribes start to join in the religious evolutionary party, seeing the many temples there, the wisdom literature that must have absolutely fascinated them. One notes its no small thing that most Jews even that far back choose to remain in Babylon, that always flys right over your head?
Monotheism is a natural extension of the evolution of human anthropomorphizing which comes into play with the introspection that comes with more developing writing/literature & human myth making. Also this was primitive group technologically that had to invent stories about having such skills, they hadn't even mastered metalurgy from being simple shepherders as opposed to the great civilizations around them.
One god was all they were able to handle, look at the Mosaic laws, so primitive one just goes 'meh'. The statues we find of the fertility goddesses in Jerusalem were only made of clay up to 600BC, they couldnt even carve stone.
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