If Jesus was from a common family, how would they know his genealogy? It was just invented to fulfil messianic expectation.
Why wouldn't they have records? Don't forget that Judaism as it originally existed in Israel was wiped out in the first centuries AD, when all Jews were expelled, Jerusalem descrated and destroyed, and Greek & Roman paganism established throughout Israel. Lack of modern evidence today isn't proof for inauthenticity of what went on in yesteryear.
Greek philosophy was an internal influence on Christianity. Israel was Hellenised long before Jesus came along.
Any Greek influence was there from day one.
Absolutely not. The Seleucids had been driven out by the Maccabees in 2nd century BC. The Maccabees reasserted the Jewish religion, partly by forced conversion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reduced the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism (per Wiki). So the Jews were left in possession of their own religion up until the time of Christ.
The Romans took the wisdom they had taken from the Greeks throughout Europe. That didn't stop much classical learning being lost during the Dark Ages.
The tribes that invaded Europe and which conquered Rome in the 4th century and beyond were not Greeks but Barbarians. May be they weren't much interested in Greek writers, or couldn't understand the lingo.
In the upheavals of conquest and war with the invading barbarians, including later war with Islam in Spain and France, esoteric teachings were not prioritized. Rome itself went into an intellectual decline for some centuries after it was conquered. The emphasis was on militaristic skills and endeavors. However I admit I'm not intimately acquainted with why the Greek authors got lost.
I thought when you said it that maybe you had something to hand.
God's plan of salvation is an endeavor for you to assess for yourself, if you're interested in it. The Old Testament is full of types of Christ and his salvation, from the temple to everything else. The whole Old testament testifies about Christ. It's not something I can dish up in a fews lines in a post. Everything pertaining to Israelite worship pointed to Christ.
Luk 24:27 "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself."
If you're going to make excuses for not investigating this for yourself, then you're not interested. However let's make a start with Moses himself (I cribbed this as I haven't got time to formulate in my own words):
- Jesus is, indeed, the Passover Lamb, as those who put their faith in His death and the blood He shed are rescued from the judgment that is to come. (John 3:16-18)
- Like the manna in the desert, Jesus is the Bread from Heaven (John 6:51) that satisfies our spiritual hunger and gives us life.
- Like the water that sprung from the rock, Jesus is the living water (John 7:37) that satisfies our spiritual thirst.
- Like the snake in the desert that was lifted up that those who were bitten by deadly snakes could look upon and be saved, Jesus was lifted up so that we who have been bitten by Satan in our sin can look upon Jesus and be saved from spiritual death. (John 3:14-15)
- Like the rock that was struck the first time, but should never be struck again, Jesus suffered once for all. (1 Peter 3:18)
- Jesus is the offspring of the woman spoken of in Genesis 3 that would crush the head of Satan (Genesis 3:15)
Jesus is the fulfillment of the life of Joseph, which foreshadows Him being the beloved Son, being envied by His own, begin rejected by His own, cast down into the pit, resurrected, sent to a distant country where He became lord of all, and who then provided salvation for His own.
- Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah: cf. Genesis 49:8ff as interpreted by Revelation 5:5
- Moses also said that God would raise up "a prophet like me" (Deuteronomy 18:15), and this is probably the clearest reference to the coming Messiah.
What sustained pagan gods was belief and continuity. Just like any other religion. There was no reason to stick with the pagan gods once Rome made it bad for their health to do so. I'm sure many kept their beliefs for many years in secret before they eventually succumbed.
No, it wasn't belief but superstition and delusion. Continuity was provided only by the poets and false and invented claims of continuity from older deities. Ultimately most pagan deities can be traced back to original Sumerian deities, even Ea / Enki, Anu and Enlil, individual city-state gods of a national Sumerian trinity that subsisted together as manifestations of a uni-spiritual divinity. However Sumer's quick re-descent into polytheism after the flood paved the way for polytheism throughout the whole world.
The nation of Israel was taken by the pagans because they had better armies. What makes the Jews a 'religious irrelevance' ?
There are so few Jews in the world, and they have no place or temple by which to practice Judaism as found in the OT and have had no such place for 2000 years.
If it's because you think they have been superseded then the Muslims would say the same about Christianity.
They may well say that, and I agree that in the lands where Trinitarianism originated, Islam won out politically, by the decree of God. So there was this judgement on Trinitarianism. Islam may well boast of its victory over the "Trinitarian heresy" of the ancient national state rulers as it appears today, but it was always indebted to the Papacy for allowing it its victories. Thus Constantinople only fell because Roman mercenaries had already devastated the city before hand.
There was a time in the era of Ghengis Khan and his successors where Islam was nearly wiped off the face of the earth, and only saved by the Papacy which refused to join in the then Mongolian war against Islam. So in fact Islam owes its predominance today partly to its tolerance by the Papacy, which is actually one of true Christianity's foremost opponents (not for nothing had it been called antichrist for hundreds of years).
Moreover it continues to be well nigh impossible for Islam to make coverts of real Christians, although the rabble that are found in nominally Christian countries may sometimes convert to Islam.
Islam has a very long way to go before it becames anything like a world majority religion, but even if it did, it wouldn't mean anything in terms of faith, where freedom of religion doesn't exist in many Islamic countries. Islam is as much a political ideology as a religion.