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We've seen the facts. Christianity is full of old ancient Pagan ideas. We've reviewed the possible explanations of those facts.You know all you need to know to make up your own mind about where Christianity came from. Go nuts.

I don't want you to care what I think, but I did promise to let on what I imagine happened away back at the beginning of our religion. This is the place.

Stuff I don't know
The day by day history of Christian origins is gone. Lost. Lots of stuff can not be known.

I don't know who the first Christians were. I know they were not the merry band of gospel legend. They could have been an Essene splinter sect. Or one of many other Jewish messianic cults. Or the Jewish family of Jesus. Or a Hellenistic mystery cult. Or the Jesus People of current academic imagination. Or, well, who knows. Anyone who tells you differet, even a very smart very nice person you respect, is guessing. The evidence is gone. The history is lost.

I don't know whether Jesus was a real person or not. The mythicists' argument is convincing, until you think about the non-mythicist argument. And vice versa. Not enough raw evidence survives to say for sure.

I don't think it matters. Our Christianity doesn't come from Jesus and a big bang, it comes from the accumulation of legends and theologies by people who believed in Jesus. The origin of those legends and theologies wasn't Jesus. The origin was the myths, legends, philosophies, prejudices, literature, superstitions, and primitive cosmology of ancient western culture. Christianity was a product of its time and place.

The way to explain and understand Christian origins isn't to slop around four layers deep in Q. The way to explain and understand Christianity is to understand its connections to the rest of ancient culture.

Exactly how it happened
No one can trace the path of cultural conventions like slavery or prayer from exactly one place into Christianity, or Mithrasism, or Dionysusism, or Osirisism, etc. The ideas were everywhere. Part of the culture. They got into Christianity the same way they got into Mithrasism, and Dionysusism, and Osirisism—from the culture.

When Paul and Mark, Matthew, Luke and John sat down to write about Jesus, did they have the Revised Standard Version of The Gospel of the Pagan Gods open on the table? The answer is No. Of course not. Don't be silly. What Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John had wasn't on their tables, it was in their heads. What they had were the same ideas about the properties of a God that everyone back then had. Miracles. Magic births. Prophesies. We've been through the list over and over.

Paul and Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and all the other first Christians understood exactly what a God was, and they thought Jesus was one. So their stories about Him naturally included His God properties. It happened in that order. First they thought he was a God, then they told stories about his God properties.

In their world, Gods had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Gods' superhuman power let them make prophecies and fulfill them. Gods' power let them heal the sick, walk on water, raise the dead, command storms.

Gods were immortal. Whatever happened to the godmans' earthly body, Godmen ascended to heaven, or ruled the underworld, or returned next spring.

Gods taught wisdom that confounded the wicked and blessed the righteous. Some Gods—not all, but some—shared their divine insight with their followers, and the divine wisdom they revealed gave the people who accepted it a better deal in the eternal life after death that ancient people generally believed in.

Gods lived up-there, somewhere in the sky. If you found divinity on Earth, you figured it had to have physically moved from up there to down here—God coming down on a cloud, say, or Zeus having sex with a mortal woman (the point not the rowdiness of the God but the transmission of His divinity), or a divine lightning bolt, with Apis in it, zapping a cow and making it, when you read Herodotus [3.27], Fully God and Fully Cow. Silly myth, till you see it's also our myth.

So, how exactly did Christianity borrow from Paganism?
Paul and Mark, Matthew, Luke and John all believed Jesus was a God-—as their ancient minds understood Gods. So wheb they sat down to write about His life (none of them had ever met Jesus), they naturally wrote it as they understood it. Jesus was a God who came to Earth—an ancient cultural idea, laid out by ancient people in ancient cultural terms. Gods fulfilled property. Jesus fulfilled prophesy. Gods came down from the sky through mortal women. Jesus came down from the sky through a mortal women. Gods had the power to do miracles. Jesus had the power to do miracles—He even did the same miracles as the other Gods. Gods taught wisdom. Jesus taught wisdom. Gods saved. Jesus saves. Gods died on Earth and went back to they sky.. Jesus died on Earth and rode a cloud back up to His God-place in the sky.

Christianity didn't borrow from Pagan religion, Christianity is Pagan religion.

Hey wait, Jesus was Jewish. Yup, He was. Christianity began as a Jewish splinter group. So Paul and Mark and the other early Christians, awash in a world of Pagan ideas, imagined Jesus as a Jewish godman.

Messiah-ness is a good example of how that worked. The Messiah is a Jewish idea—a king sent by the racist tribal god Yahweh to restore Israelite tribal supremacy. But until Christianity, everyone understood the messiah would be a human-person. In fact Theudas, Judas the Galilean, the Egyptian, and the other first-century messiahs were human-people, regular men.The idea of a godman messiah, that was a Christian invention, a mixing of Judaism and Hellenism.

That's how it happened. The first Christians tried to—did—graft Hellenistic Pagan ideas to their Jewish Pagan roots. Jesus is a Jewish Pagan godman. Christianity is a Jewish Pagan mystery religion. Christianity is a Jewish splinter group because most Jews thought that was silly.