Don't the events of about 30 AD matter? or evidence? from written sources for the period?
I wonder if the title should really be The Roots of Christianity (plural), rather than Root (singular)....
If it's the singular "Root" that's the topic, how can this be anything other than the event which happened about 30 AD in the Galilee/Judea region, where a person showed up who is said to have done miracles and rose back to life after he was killed?
How can "The Root of Christianity" not be that event, whatever one believes actually happened? What it is that happened there, at that time and place, causing those claims to be made and then leading to the new Christ cult(s) and the writings they produced -- that happening has to be the "Root" of the later Christianity, does it not?
Is it possible to imagine that "Christianity" would have happened anyway, even if no such special event happened there at that time? What if the historical Jesus person, instead of doing whatever he did, had gotten detracted, or suppose he had an accident and got killed, or otherwise never showed up there, or anywhere else, to do whatever he did.
If he had gotten erased from history somehow, would Christianity have happened anyway, just the same, only with a few minor details changed? Would another Messiah narrative have emerged instead, in place of this one, with someone else thrust into the Messiah role to serve as the savior which was predetermined to pop up somewhere anyway? complete with miracles and Resurrection narrative essentially the same but with only a few differences in detail?
You pose very interesting questions for which I don't have answers. However I challenge the apparent claim about the historicity of the Resurrection. That "event" was key to the eventual rise of Christianity, but it probably wasn't historic at all, and . . .
Based on the ideological premise that such a thing cannot happen, because it would be superhuman, which must be ruled out
a priori. Understood. If you start with that ideological premise, a resurrection event is ruled out. But if you set that premise aside, allow whatever is shown by the evidence, or the facts we have from the time, then such an event has to be allowed as a possible explanation for the emergence of the new Christ cult(s) in the 1st century, from which the Christian "Church" finally evolved.
. . . wasn't historic at all, and seems not to have been key to the earliest christian (small-'c') church in Judaea.
How do you know what was "key" to the church(es) in Judaea? What written record from the time do you base that on? It's true there are modern sources which say things like that, but what 1st-century sources do they base this on?
One main 1st-century source for those church(es) in Judaea is Paul, writing his epistles around 50-55 AD (1 Corinthians and Galatians). He says those church leaders witnessed the resurrection of Jesus -- i.e., the 2 main leaders (Peter (Cephas) and James). He says this Resurrection event was important for all the early Christ believers. What 1st-century written record is there which says it was not important? Is there any 1st-century written record left by the "church in Judaea" which contradicts Paul?
Do you possibly mean the Epistles of James and Jude, which say nothing about anything Jesus did? These were teaching documents only, or instructional matter for the religious community probably sometime 30-60 years after Jesus was gone. They thought Jesus was important for some reason, because they identify him as "Lord" and themselves as his "slave" or servant. Paul says they had witnessed the resurrection of Jesus, which would explain why they took him as "Lord" and themselves as "slave" to him. What other explanation is there for them to relegate themselves to this inferior "slave" position?
Or, what other 1st-century written source is there showing what was "key" for the church(es) in Judaea? and saying the Resurrection was not important?
It was St. Paul the Evangelist — who never met the living Jesus and had little interest in his teachings — who founded the Christian (large-'C') religion.
There were other "Christians" who were not directly part of Paul's activity, probably even many who knew nothing of Paul.
For all of them there was the same interest in Jesus who had been arrested and crucified and buried and then risen back to life. Maybe you're right that Paul's main interest was not "in his teaching" but rather in his act of resurrecting, after being killed, and then "ascending" to a place of high power from which Paul says he offers eternal life.
However you explain it, Paul's "religion" is nothing without Christ as the center of it, having power and offering eternal life.
And the idea that Jesus was God wasn't agreed until the 4th-century Council of Nicaea, with Emperor Constantine the Great banishing those Bishops who disagreed.
No, this idea and others like it were agreed (and disagreed also) long before the 4th century. The Council confirmed some of these earlier ideas, based mostly on the 1st-century written sources.
The earliest writings about Jesus — the Gospel of Mark and the hypothetical Q source — barely mention any Resurrection.
No, all the earliest writings about what happened mention the Resurrection. The Mark reference is more brief than the others.
The hypothetical Q source has not been identified. If you define it as a "sayings"-only document, then you automatically exclude the Resurrection from it because this is an event rather than a saying. But you can't simply define something into non-importance -- i.e., by defining Q as sayings-only and then disqualifying the Resurrection because it's absent from Q. The Resurrection is included in every source which reports what happened.
There is no agreed listing of texts distinguishing all the Q text from the Markan text and the Luke-only text and the Matthew-only text. Different interpretations arrange these text sources differently, so there's no agreed standard for saying what Q includes and what it excludes, unless you just define it to exclude what you want to exclude from it.
"The earliest writings about Jesus" that are confirmed are the Paul epistles, which very prominently mention the Resurrection.
The post-Crucifixion appearances of Jesus in the final 12 verses of Mark are thought to be late additions. An empty tomb story got embellished with fictions.
There's probably embellishment. Any true event which has impact is likely to undergo embellishment, so that it becomes difficult to separate fact from fiction.
We can try to separate out everything but the bare essentials. E.g., Paul's statement could be condensed: "Christ died, . . . he was buried, . . . he was raised, . . . he appeared to Kephas, then to the Twelve, etc." (1 Cor. 15:3-5). All the accounts say this, though Mark only predicts the appearances to happen later. Then all include their different details, which partly harmonize and partly contradict the others. Which is normal with important historical events about which people have strong feelings.
That the story got changed in the details from one account to another does not change the basic fact of the crucifixion, death and resurrection, which is the starting point for them all.
This article in The Atlantic discusses the Q source, and therefore the earliest non-Pauline christian religion.
the authors of Q did not view Jesus as "the Christ" (that is, as "the anointed one," the promised Messiah), or as the redeemer who had atoned for their sins by his crucifixion, or as the son of God who rose from the dead.
The "authors" in question, assuming we can identify them in some way, probably had differing interpretations of all the above, and not ascribing rigidly to the above doctrines. But also not repudiating them, especially not the Resurrection, which all our sources say was part of the Jesus events.
Again, Paul says the Resurrection was witnessed by them (those earliest -- around 30 AD), or that they witnessed his death but then saw him alive afterwards. There's no written record, e.g., Q etc., saying they did not know of the Resurrection, i.e., denying Paul's claim that they did know of it or witnessed it. Any theory that they didn't know of it is based on modern conjecture only, not on any 1st-century written sources.
Instead, they say, Q's authors esteemed Jesus as simply a roving sage who preached a life of possessionless wandering and full acceptance of one's fellow human beings, no matter how disreputable or marginal.
This could be correct -- it's conjecture, maybe good conjecture. But nothing about it excludes the likelihood of the Resurrection also. There's nothing about Q that rules out the Resurrection or that contradicts Paul. All that rules out the Resurrection is the ideological premise that it could not have happened, and also that hopefully it did not happen, because such things should not happen. Other than this, there's no reason to exclude the Resurrection as an event as reported in the Gospel accounts and also in Paul, which are our only definite reports about what happened.
In that respect, they say, he was a Jesus for the America of the third millennium, a Jesus with little supernatural baggage but much respect for cultural diversity.
It's OK to modify one's interpretation of Jesus to fit modern worldviews. But none of that can change the hard facts of what happened in 30 AD. A reported event from the 1st century cannot simply be erased from history by modern feelings people have about what should have happened back then. It's more honest to simply take the reported events from the past, and then work the modern beliefs into the picture as best as they can fit, without pretending to correct the past record by changing it according to what someone today thinks ought to have happened instead of what did actually happen, based on the accounts from that time, including any new findings.
Of course this can include corrections, if mistakes or discrepancies in the sources are discovered. But the reported facts of what happened 2000 years ago cannot be based on modern philosophizing about what should have happened, or on a modern need to install certain wholesome thinking patterns into children, and thus erase facts from the historical record, like a Jesus who might have done something which today we're not supposed to believe even if it did happen.
More scientific, and healthy, is to acknowledge our uncertainty about some of the past history, and so we can think in terms of the probabilities, and do some guesswork about what happened, without dogmatically excluding possibilities for which there is evidence. I.e., there is evidence that the Jesus miracles did happen, but one can still disbelieve because of doubt, so that some believe because of the evidence and reasonable hope, while others disbelieve because of doubt and skepticism. And also it's reasonable to believe, from the evidence, while still having doubt.
