Regularly involved in bible study, the study of history, and archaeology -- we have long-been involved in an ongoing investigation into the origins of Christianity -- given how often others exploit the faith of others in order to self-serve their narcissism -- while claiming to be Christians -- and yet rejecting and violating the altruistic teachings of Jesus, like wolves in sheep's clothing.
Extremely important to understanding the origins of Christianity from a historical and not cosmological nor faith-based perspective, is understanding the interplay between the life of Caesar Augustus, the life of Jesus Christ, the Roman Imperial Cult, Judaism, narcissism, other dark triad personality types, and/or cults of personality.
Here of course we don't seek to challenge or threaten the faith of others, while exploring historical, social, psychological, biological, and archaeological evidence regarding the history of Christianity, because you either have faith or you don't, often regardless of any evidence for or against. Furthermore, surely the altruistic teachings of Jesus regarding charity and love towards others and forgiveness are among the simplest and most powerful teachings uniting humanity and common good across all human history, but for the constant violations of the same by those who profess to be Christian while embracing anti-Christian values of hate, hoarding, exploitation, and revenge, those wolves in sheep's clothing -- deceivers who weaponize the faith of others by mimicry to infiltrate and exploit the faith of others to exploit others thereafter, and/or who use the same as a type of cloak from which to impose their evil conduct onto others under the guise of being "good Christians".
Paradoxically, the Pope has called out these fake Christians, cult leaders, and/or toxic people out, and even ousted them from the church.
The poetry of Horace, a Roman poet, sheds enormous light on the origins of the attributes of Jesus as the savior, son of God, sent to wash away sins, and the like, because Horace did in fact attribute the attributes of Jesus to Augustus and Julius Caesar -- BEFORE Jesus was born -- and in the context that Augustus forced those he "lorded" over to believe that Julius Caesar was God (this was actually a law passed in the Roman Senate), and that Augustus Caesar was the "son of God" as the adoptive son of Caesar (a nephew of Caesar), and also in the context that Jesus was born and raised in the Roman Imperial Cult, which specified that good deeds or good citizens, made a person more and more divine.
"“The most divine Caesar…we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things…for when everything was falling into disorder and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave the whole world a new aspect; Caesar…the common good Fortune of all…The Beginning of life and vitality…All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the new beginning of the year…Whereas the Providence which has regulated our whole existence…has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us the emperor Augustus…who being sent to us and our descendants as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and whereas, having become God manifest, Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times…the birthday of the God Augustus has been for the whole world the beginning of good news concerning him.” (The Priene Inscription, written 9 BCE)
“Thine age, O Caesar, has brought back fertile crops to the fields,…has wiped away our sins and revived the ancient virtues,…and the fame and majesty of our empire were spread from the sun’s bed in the west to the east. As long as Caesar is the guardian of the state, neither civil dissension nor violence shall banish peace.” (Horace, Odes 4.15, published 13 BCE)
Luke 2:1-20 (New Revised Standard Version)
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
“As Ernst Barker pointed out… the Roman empire was a religious as well as a political reality. Just as a city-state entailed a civic religion, ‘an Empire-State entailed an empire-worship; and an empire-worship in turn … entailed the worship of an emperor.’ And, in connection with the nativity narrative in Luke 2, the important point is to realize that the key symbols of the sacral imperial politics were that Caesar (Augustus and his successors) was the divine savior who had brought peace to the world.” – Richard Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas, pg. 28"
https://kairoscenter.org/good-tidings-caesar-jesus/
Per Dionysius Exiguus in 524 AD, Jesus is alleged to have been born in 4 BCE.
"Enter the monk Dionysius Exiguus, who lived in what is today Romania and Bulgaria. In the year 525, Dionysius started a movement to define time as “before Christ” and “after Christ” rather than number the years based on when a Roman emperor ruled. It didn’t hurt that the emperor who the years were named after in the time of Dionysius, Diocletian, persecuted early Christians. Dionysius’s annō Dominī set the standard for “the year of our lord” rather than the year of the emperor.
Dionysius never recorded how he decided on the date of Jesus Christ’s birth. Some scholars think he used astrological signs, while others believe he based his assertion on the Bible. The gospels don’t necessarily agree on that date, though, with the Gospel of Matthew noting that Jesus was born when Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE, was in power, while the Gospel of Luke notes the birth was when Quirinius was governor of Syria around 6 CE. What we do know, however, is that Dionysius was successful in promoting his timeline, and it became the standard used to this day.
The years before what Dionysius set as Jesus’s birthday weren’t universally named for another couple hundred years. An English monk named Bede came up with the idea of BC, or “Before Christ,” in 731. Suddenly, there was a systematic way to label the years that happened after the year that Dionysius declared Jesus was born, and it counted backward rather than forward.
Of note: zero never made it into the equation. The concept of zero didn’t make it to Europeans until the 1100s."
https://www.dictionary.com/e/should-we-use-bce-instead-of-bc/
Accordingly, prior to the birth of Jesus, both Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar were each provided the attributes of Jesus (son of God) and God, and in the context that Jesus and God are accepted to be one in the same along with the Holy Spirit, and where this three way characteristic attributed to Christianity's version of God is seemingly an artifact of the Egyptian Imperial Cult, which allowed for individual gods to combine to form other Gods.
"The gods' complex characteristics were expressed in myths and in intricate relationships between deities: family ties, loose groups and hierarchies, and combinations of separate gods into one. Deities' diverse appearances in art—as animals, humans, objects, and combinations of different forms—also alluded, through symbolism, to their essential features."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_deities
The Jews and Greeks who inherited this culture from the Egyptians before and/or after Alexander the Great from Greece became one of the first, if not the first, Greek Pharaoh of Egypt, also believed that their Gods could turn into different types of Gods, creatures, and/or objects, for example Zeus/God could be a human, a lightning bolt, a bull, and/or a burning bush.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_deities
Imperial cults as the endgame to malignant narcissists and other dark triad personality types
Summarizing our previous reporting, Christianity was born during the historical period of the Roman Imperial Cult of Augustus Caesar, born Gaius Octavius.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_imperial_cult
The Roman Imperial Cult was born out of Alexander "the Great's" Greek Imperial Cult and the Greek Heroons (hero worship), after Alexander invaded Egypt, whose thousands of years of culture subscribed to an Egyptian imperial cult pharaoh leadership style, also known as a cult of personality -- the endgame for all narcissists -- to be worshiped like a God, and to lord over all others to force them to do the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%C3%B6n
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great
The Roman Imperial Cult provided three pathways for those they "lorded" over to worship Caesar and Augustus as God and the son of God, respectively.
The first pathway to Jesus being born in an environment where people who did good deeds could become divine, the son of God, and/or actually God, is that Augustus and/or the Senate is who made Caesar God as a matter of law, again well before Jesus was born.
The second pathway to Jesus being born in an environment where people who did good deeds could become divine, the son of God, and/or actually God, was by way of forced acceptance of the Roman Imperial Cult belief system by those Augustus "lorded" over.
The third pathway to Jesus being born in an environment where people who did good deeds could become divine, the son of God, and/or actually God, was by way of hybrid acceptance of the Roman Imperial Cult belief system by those Augustus "lorded" over, whereby other religions were allowed to keep on believing what they wanted to believe, but where they were required to add a statute of Julius Caesar or God (related to the word good) and the like into their places of worship for Caesars to be co-worshiped.
Historical research has elucidated that Christianity was really born out of hybrid of Judaism and the Roman Imperial Cult, perfectly explaining how and why Jesus was raised to believe that if he did great deeds, that he too could ascend, be saved, have his sins wiped away, and/or be granted divinity by the Roman Imperial Cult, which is what the Roman Imperial Cult did.
In fact, "good deeds" were a path to "God's deeds", and to divinity, in the Roman Imperial Cult, which allowed others to become divine (for example sainthood was born out of the Roman Imperial Cult) by performing good deeds (following the law, in the context that the imperial cult rulers, the emperors, were the ones who could wipe away the sins of man per Horace, or provide them immunity for violating the law, which would make the illegitimately-appointed GOP SCOTUS majority de facto emperors of the American imperial cult of the crime syndicate of Jeffrey Epstein and Russia, now led by Donald Trump and his family "lording" over the GOP), which were defined by Roman laws, and later memorialized in The Epistle to the Romans, or more commonly known as "Romans", which specified that Christians needed to follow the law and rules of their rulers, the Roman Imperial Cult, and where modern day Christianity was largely defined by the Roman Imperial Cult, for example but not limited to Constantine, and where the Roman Imperial Cult families and their top military officials often became the emperors, kings, queens, nobility, and/or popes of Europe, who then "lorded" over their people and taught them the imperial cult teachings that all rulers ruled by divine right. Three centuries after Jesus was murdered by the Roman Imperial Cult, Roman Imperial Cult temples existed during the time of Christianity's Constantine, calling into question Constantine's "faith" passed onto the kings, queens, nobles, and popes of Europe, who had roughly equal power over the decentralization of the Roman Empire felled by Germanic/Frankish tribes, resulting in Charlemagne and many of the other acknowledged first kings and queens of Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Romans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great
Narcissism, sadism, sociopathy, Machiavellianism, cults of personality, and imperial cult personality types are in part caused by scarcity mentality and responses in the hypothalamus
Per our previous reporting -- narcissism, sociopathy, Machiavellianism, and/or sadism -- which are collectively known as the dark triad personality types of imperial cult leaders and/or cult of personality leaders -- can at least in part be attributed to scarcity mentality and responses in the hypothalamus as follows.
Focusing on the diagram on the right, we see that the "satiety center" of the brain, which is the part of the brain responsible for wants, needs, impulses, and cravings for food, water, friendship, a mate, love, sex, offspring, status/power, self-actualization, drugs, gambling, religion, justice, the cravings for self-worship (narcissists), the cravings for worship by others (narcissists), the cravings for selfishness (sociopathy), the craving for harm to others (sadism), and/or the cravings for deception to self-serve (Machiavellianism) originate in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus as a perceived deficit.
And so both the desire, wants, needs, and/or cravings of some humans to want to lord over others and to want to be lorded over by others, originate in the same area of the hypothalamus as a perceived deficit.
Further explaining the nature of imperial cult leaders and/or cult of personality leaders and those they oppress into worshiping them, the paraventricular nucleus and dorsal and lateral hypothalamic areas release feel good molecules created in the hypothalamus and stored in the body, for example oxytocin or the "love molecule", and so when a person perceives a deficit in food, water, friendship, a mate, love, sex, offspring, status/power, self-actualization, drugs, gambling, religion, justice, the cravings for self-worship (narcissists), the cravings for worship by others (narcissists), the cravings for selfishness (sociopathy), and/or the cravings for deception to self-serve (Machiavellianism), they are actually craving feel good molecules generated by the hypothalamus, which serves as the drug dealer to the brains of every person and animal.
And so as long as a minimum threshold of feel good molecules keep on being produced by the likes of the the paraventricular nucleus and dorsal and lateral hypothalamic areas, but not limited to the same as contributors to the relaxed parasympathetic (anterior hyppthalamic area) nervous system controls, then the ventromedial nucleus remains satiated or satisfied, and the body remains relaxed, or unmotivated to engage in conduct to achieve more feel good molecules, and a person or animal is "happy".
Here, having perceived access to and/or meeting the needs for food, water, friendship, a mate, love, sex, offspring, status/power, self-actualization, drugs, gambling, religion, justice, the cravings for self-worship (narcissists), the cravings for worship by others (narcissists), the cravings for selfishness (sociopathy), the craving for harm to others (sadism), and/or the cravings for deception to self-serve (Machiavellianism) is/are met, this results in less motivation to seek out and obtain the same, because the brain and body are flooded with happy or feel good molecules.
The same is identical to, and in fact in part responsible for, all addictions, where when the addiction is met, then the immediate motivation to get more is low, but fleeting, as other molecules in the body work to clear the body of old molecules with new molecules.
However, when the perceived access to and/or meeting the needs for food, water, friendship, a mate, love, sex, offspring, status/power, self-actualization, drugs, gambling, religion, justice, the cravings for self-worship (narcissists), the cravings for worship by others (narcissists), the cravings for selfishness (sociopathy), the craving for harm to others (sadism), and/or the cravings for deception to self-serve (Machiavellianism) is/are not met, this results in more motivation and/or specific conduct to seek out and obtain the same, corresponding to Maslow's hierarchy, classification, and/or obfuscation of (motivational) needs to survive, feel safe, feel wanted, feel superior, feel self-actualized, and/or feel spiritually-connected to the universe and/or changes therein, for example conduct that results in more food, water, friendship, mates, love, sex, offspring, status/power, self-actualization, drugs, gambling, prayer/religion/spirituality, justice, et cetera.
Failing to meet perceived needs, wants, cravings, and/or desires, and/or perceiving a threat to the continued access to the same results in a triggering of the sympathetic nervous system's lymbic system's fight-or-flight mechanism, triggering fear and anger responses in the posterior hypothalamic area, closely-associated amygdala (fear to fearlessness control part of the brain), which can result in emotional hijacking in people and other animals, where much more blood flows to the fight-or-flight brain processes to ready the body to flee or to fight in order to meet the perceived scarcity, thus motivating the person or animal to create, acquire, or defeat the conditions resulting in the perceived scarcity affecting the person's and/or animal's ability to survive, feel safe, feel wanted, feel superior, feel self-actualized, and/or feel spiritually-connected to the universe and/or changes therein.
And so those who crave power over others, and who want to be worshiped as Gods, and who "lord" over others, and force others to accept them as God(s) generation after generation, based on their hypothalamic needs, create a culture and population of people who are taught to "crave" worshiping people as Gods, people whose faith is weaponize to defend the people-Gods or King-Gods or imperial cult leaders or cult of personality leaders with their lives -- with the promise of divinity and/or Egyptian imperial cult afterlife as a reward for their ambiguous and relative "good" deeds, which our previous reporting has since elucidated came from funerary, funeral, burial, and/or death cult behaviors found in Neanderthals, and before that found in Homo naledi, and where our research also found language or symbols used outside the burial chambers of fire users, Homo naledi, which were also found across history on modern humans burial sites, specifically an inverted hashtag and/or number symbol, "#".
Dominance behavior among primates and other animals proposes that hierarchies are older than humans
Per our previous reporting, humans are primates like apes, chimpanzees, and bonobos, who have both hierarchy and flat organizational troop structures, often determined by the existence of absence of a toxic alpha male, who "lords" over those he oppressed usually by constantly making a lot of noise, causing a lot of fuss, regularly threatening others into loyalty, and/or inciting others to engage in violence against anyone threatening their dominance, and usually involving hypothalamic bribes like fruit, meat, and/or forced petting, which almost reads like the resume of some toxic former U.S. presidents, for example but not limited to Donald Trump, but with good reason, there is not much DNA different between these primates and human primates, and so why would their behavior or group behavior be that different?
Accordingly, there is a continuum of "alpha dominance" and hypothalamic structures, and not just in primates, but other vertebrates, and so having our own "lord" over us as our Gods, is a social animal characteristic that is much older in animals than the human species, as is ritual burial, the use of tools, and the use of fire, per Homo naledi and Neanderthal research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy