Luke's Pro-Soldier Gospel

 

See "Buy a Sword or Turn your Cheek? Marcion vs. Luke" on YouTube. 

In this video, Litwa shows how the non-violent pacifist Jesus tradition is modified in the Lucan gospel. He shows how in Luke's gospel, the passages where Jesus seems to promote self-defense and violence, are not found in Marcion's gospel. 

So you have a more consistent "turn the other cheek" and basically be meek and get beat up and don't fight back in the earlier Pauline tradition which is later modified by Luke. Reading John Dominic Crossan's book, Render Unto Caesar: The Struggle Over Christ and Culture in the New Testament of Luke, he makes a similar argument that Luke adds a pro-Roman or Indo-European flavor to the gospel. Adding to this the fact that the consensus of biblical scholarship, is that the author of Luke-Acts was probably a Gentile, and we can see that Christianity can very much be thought of as an Indo-European movement just as much as a Jewish one. Especially when the core elements of Christianity, like the Eucharist and Pneuma have more in common with Stoicism and Greek mystery religions than ancient Judaism.

The Ark Channel's emphasizes on Arthurian Christianity is thus substantiated. When you add to this the book on Revelation by Bart Ehrman, where he describes a more violent and Pagan type of God in Revelation, than the pacifistic concept of god, and you can see that the "nonviolent pacifistic, be a wimp and get bullied" version of Christianity, is only one version of Christianity. 

Litwa goes on to argue that a non-Christian had complained that Christians were not entering the military and becoming soldiers. So part of Luke's agenda was to create a pro-soldier gospel. This is very Indo-European.

List of Germanized Christian Scriptures of the Early Norse & Germanic Peoples (e.g. The Heliand: Saxon Gospel)

•  The Heliand ("The Saxon Gospel")

• The Dream of the Rood 

The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C. Russell (Excerpts from Preface & Introduction)

 Excerpts from The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell (1994 Edition):

I'm providing these experts from this scholarly book because the book shows the evidence for my view that most Christians today are not really "New Testament Christians" but are acting out a more Germanized (Pagan) version of Christianity. Also see the book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, for further evidence of this. Note: Words in bold are my own for emphasis.

From the PREFACE:

For at least the preceding millennium, from the coronation of the Saxon King Otto I as Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XII on February 2, 962, ... the religiocultural orientation of popular Roman Catholicism was predominantly European and largely Germanic.[2] ...

... Dulles comments: "Originally centred in the Mediterranean countries, Catholic Christianity later found its primary home in Europe. ... Christianity was in possession as the religion of Europeans, ...

... Primarily to advance the perception of its universality, the post-Vatican II Church has sought to shed its predominantly Western, European image. This modification may be witnessed in the Church's ecumenical relationships with representatives of non-European Christianity and non-Christian religions, in its appointment of more non-European prelates, in its canonization of more non-European saints, and in its virtual elimination of Germanic elements from liturgical rites.[4] The increased involvement of the Church in social-justice issues may also reflect an attempt to distance itself from the aristocratic character of a Germanized medieval Church and an attempt to recapture the religiocultural orientation of the early Church of the apostolic and patristic eras. One reason for this current direction may be that the present era, with its densely populated cosmopolitan areas that contain sizable, alienated underclasses, has a social environment somewhat more akin to the urbanized Roman Empire of late antiquity than to the rural agrarian-warrior societies of early medieval Germanic Europe. ...

PART I:

Toward a Model of Religious Transformation 

1. Transformations of Christianity 11 

2. Conversion, Christianization, and Germanization 26 ...

INTRODUCTION:

This inquiry applies ... to the pivotal religious transformation which occurred as a result of the encounter of the Germanic peoples with Christianity. ... It is proposed that Christianization efforts among the Germanic peoples resulted in a substantial Germanization of Christianity.

... the worldview of the Indo-European Greek, Roman, and Germanic religions was essentially folk-centered and "world-accepting," whereas the world-view of the East ern mystery religions and early Christianity was essentially soteriological and eschatological, hence "world-rejecting."

 

Equally significant, and related to this distinction, is the assertion that the social structure of the Germanic peoples at the time of their encounter with Christianity reflected a high level of group solidarity, while the urban social environment in which early Christianity flourished was one in which alienation and normlessness or anomie prevailed. ...

I highlighted the words in bold above because this aligns with my own research. For example, the true meaning of a christian or saint in the New Testament is basically a world-denying and body-despising "living sacrifice." Unlike the Germanic worldview that was more this-world-centered, with the Germanic Gods modeling a Life-affirming worldview, Pauline New Testament Christianity was all about imitating a suffering and dying Messiah, not strong virial Gods like Odin and Thor. In order to convince the German people to convert to Christianity it was modified and retold in more masculine ways. For example, the Gospels were rewritten to appeal to Germanic peoples through The Heliand ("The Saxon Gospel").

The introduction continues: 

... For Christianity to be accepted by the Germanic peoples, it was necessary that it be perceived as responsive to the heroic, religiopolitical, and magicoreligious orienta tion of the Germanic world-view. A religion which did not appear to be concerned with fundamental military, agricultural, and personal matters could not hope to gain acceptance among the Germanic peoples, since the pre-Christian Germanic religiosity already provided adequate responses to these matters. An unintended result of implementing a missionary policy which accommodated Germanic concerns was the Germanization of early medieval Christianity. Although this accommodation apparently was originally intended to have been merely a temporary and regional transition to a more thorough doctrinal and ethical acceptance of Christianity, three factors altered this expectation: an underestimation of the vitality of the pre-Christian Germanic world-view; an overestimation of available instructional resources; and the future religious influence of the Ottonian emperors (962-1002), Henry II (1002-1022), and Henry III (1039-1056) on the papacy and the Church in general. In his study of the Germanic influence on early medieval Christianity, Josef A. Jungmann has concluded that "from the 10th century onwards, the cultural heritage which had accumulated in the Carolingian North, streamed in ever increasing volume into Italy and became the cultural standard in Rome itself," and from there, eventually "became normative for all the West."[2]

In other words, by coming into contact with the Germanic people, Christianity began to culturally morph from the Pauline world-denying perspective -- with a celibate ideal and the emphasis of Christians acting as passive, bullied, suffering pacifist martyrs in imitation of a martyred pacifist Messiah -- into a more Germanic version of Christianity with an emphasis on procreation, folk, family, and the warrior mentality. As Russel writes on page 12, "pre-Christian Germanic religiosity differed fundamentally from early, pre-Constantinian Christianity, ..." In other words, Christianity before Germanic influence and Constantine's conversion was a completely different religion with a more egalitarian, docile, and pacifist view with celibacy and voluntary martyrdom as the norm.

Russel goes on to state:

Chapter 3 establishes the sociohistorical and religious Sitz im Leben [setting in life] of the Germanic encounter with Christianity within the larger context of the encounter of an lndo-European folk religiosity with a non-Indo-European, universalist, salvation religion. lndo-European religiosity is generally characterized herein as "folk religious" and "world-accepting," while Christianity and its Hellenistic and Judaic antecedents are generally characterized as "world-rejecting" religions of universal salvation. ... [compared to] the traditional world-accepting Greek and Roman Indo-European folk religiosity.

In other words, the body-despising worldview based in Platonism and Jewish apocalypticism, which was Pauline Christianity, was essentially replaced with the mentality of the conquering Indo-Europeans: who had a worldview of embracing this world and conquering and reproducing on earth here and now.

On page 14-15, Russel writes:

... Germanic influence also figured strongly in the development of local proprietary churches or Eigenkirchen, chivalry, feudalism, the Crusade ideology, and the cult of relics. ... Chapter 5 provides an evaluation of pre-Christian Germanic religiosity from an Indo-European perspective. After examining the social structure, law codes, and epic literature of the Germanic peoples, it is asserted that for Christianity to have been accepted by the Germanic peoples, it had to be reinterpreted in a primarily heroic and magicoreligious fashion that would appeal to military and agricultural concerns. A general perception of Christianity as primarily a cult dedicated to the most powerful god, however, tended to obscure the soteriological, ethical, and communal dimensions of Christianity which had been preeminent in early Christianity. The anomic socioreligious conditions prevalent in the declining Roman Empire are contrasted with the high level of internal group solidarity which existed among the Germanic peoples during their encounter with Christianity between 376 and 754. The maintenance of this intragroup solidarity through lengthy periods of migration appears primarily due to the operation of the comitatus institution and to strong interlocking kinship and community bonds, as well as to a religiosity that provided political reinforcement.

In other words, early first century Pauline Christianity, with its egalitarian, docile, and communitarian utopianism lacked the robust folk religion of the Indo-Europeans: with its hierarchical structure and heroic mythos. So that in order to survive and grow, Pauline Christianity needed to graft itself onto the Germanic Indo-European Spirit. 

As an example of Christian missionaries converting the Germanic people, not through pacifist love, exorcising demons, or dying martys (as the New Testament ethic dictates), but by proving to have more powerful magic and war power, Russel writes on page 15:

In perceiving the centrality of divine power in Germanic religiosity, the missionaries sought to prove that the power of Christ surpassed that of the local deities, as St. Boniface sought to demonstrate when he chopped down an oak tree dedicated to Thor at Geismar in Hesse. Such emphasis on the superior intercessory power of the Christian God in earthly affairs, and particularly military conflicts, appears to have contributed toward a perception of Christianity as a powerful magicoreligious cult, and thus advanced the Germanization of Christianity. Given the substantial inherent disparity between Germanic and Christian worldviews, a missionary policy that encouraged the temporary accommodation of Christianity to a heroic, religiopolitical, magicoreligious, world-accepting Germanic worldview appears to have been developed as a more effective approach than straightforward preaching or coercion. Although the accommodation of the Germanic world-view was originally intended to have been a temporary measure, the general lack of post-baptismal religious instruction, complemented by the vitality of Germanic religiosity, resulted in the Germanization of Christianity.

In other words, "New Testament  Christianity" did not survive actually, as its world-rejecting ideals of pacifist celibate martyrs awaiting the soon return of the Messiah, proved wrong as an expectation and an utter failure as a social structure based on egalitarian communal living based on belief in spirit-possession. Pauline Christianity quite frankly would have died out as just another doomsday apocalyptic cult, just like the modern suicide cult Heaven's Gate; but those who had converted to Christianity after 300 AD, evolved the religion culturally into a more Germanic religion; and then reinterpreted the original meaning of the life-denying martyr-centric Pauline scriptures, so that Christianity was a more life-affirming worldview; in order for it to survive and grow as an evolving socio-cultural mythos. 

Post-Scripture Christianity

 

What I mean by Post-Scripture Christianity is the fact is most of the New Testament contains ideas and practices that are completely foreign to Modern Christians themselves. In other words, even though Fundamentalist/Biblicist type Christians claim to be "New Testament Christians," they are actually just cherry-picking the New Testament to form their own post-scripture theology which is based more on Greco-Roman philosophy and the writings of later Indo-European Church Fathers writing after the New Testament was composed. Most modern Christians today have essentially created their own version of Christianity outside the New Testament. For example, the Greco-Roman philosophical concept of the Trinity is not found in the New Testament.  

See the book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, who is an Evangelical Christian himself. Viola is all about how most of the modern churches' practices and ideas are not based in the New Testament at all. Viola's solution to the paganized modern churches, is to abandon the church building and the Greco-Roman church practices; and go back to spontaneous, supernaturally led, leaderless groups of Christians: meeting in homes and claiming to be guided supernaturally by the will of Jesus (allegedly possessing them equally), without a hierarchy or organizational structure. The irony is that while Frank Viola promotes this in his books, a return to the original Pauline New Testament churches that functions like this, as people emailed him trying to find a good "home church" that practiced like the original Pauline churches; Viola ends up discouraging his readers from trying to find a Home Church. Viola ends up admitting that home churches lacking the Greco-Roman/Indo-European hierarchical structure, end up being too chaotic as the unstructured spontaneity in the "home church movement" ends up creating endless chaos, power grabs, and division. So that last I checked, Viola himself does not recommend somebody who reads his books to attempt to find a home church that functions like the New Testament churches. He flat out admits they are going to be disappointed because of the lack of organization and chaotic nature of such groups.

So what Frank Viola's Pagan Christianity book, ends up doing is actually showing that if it was not for the Indo-European Spirit of forming structure and organization, Christianity would not have survived. For Christianity needed that Greco-Roman Indo-European energy and structure to continue to survive and flourish. 

This is an example of how most Christians are really post-scripture Christians. For if they tried to really practice the New Testament Pauline model of church, they would do what Viola suggests in his books and try and find a home church where everyone acts like they are all literally possessed by the spirit of Christ equally; with the only Head (or Leader) of the Body of Believers being the omnipresent Christ. So that everyone speaks together as literally "one mind of Christ" and there is no leader, which as expected just ends up being chaotic eventually. 

So in reality, those who do take the New Testament seriously (like Viola's home churches) realize they can't organize themselves. What organized Christianity is was not the ideas in the Pauline churches in the seven authentic letters of Paul; what ended up organizing Christianity cohesively in the long term, was the Greco-Roman structure that developed in the pseudopigraphic letters of Paul; and the later Constantinian Roman Church that utilized Greco-Roman philosophy and governmental structure. 

So this idea that the New Testament is a manual for living today is completely absurd. Christians are not following the literal teachings of the New Testament. The reason why most Christians think they can utilize the New Testament as a manual for daily living, is because they really don't understand what they are reading in the New Testament. This is because most modern translations obscure and re-translate the original New Testament Greek and as Bart Ehrman explains, most of what pastors learn in the seminary is not taught to the layperson at church. 

So what happens is most people cherry pick from the New Testament, as they completely cherry pick out the scriptures they like and ignore all the rest. So for example, when Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 7 about the ideal of celibacy (which is reiterated by the Pauline-Christ in Matthew 19:12), most Christians ignore this ideal. For if one were to take the New Testament seriously and literally, they would ideally be celibate; but the majority of Christians ignore this Pauline ideal. Instead, they will point out passages in the Disputed Letters of Paul like in 1 Timothy 3:2, where it says Bishops should have one wife. And they will hammer that one verse from the Disputed Paul, cherry picking that out and ignoring 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19:12. 

Take the example of "take up your cross," which if one understands it was based on original martyrdom-centered Christianity, they would understand that this literally meant voluntarily seeking after one's death by the hands of Rome. This only made sense in the context of first to second century Roman courts where a Christian was asked to either declare Caesar as Lord or Jesus as Lord. Well today there are no Roman courts demanding you declare Caesar as Lord, and therefore Christians cannot literally "take up their cross" and confess Christ before a Caesarean court and risk being sentenced to death today. So what happened was, even by the time of Luke (who was likely a Indo-European Gentile), this was reframed as "take up your cross daily," so you already see this type of modification in the New Testament itself. 

Another example is the Book of Revelation, which is actually about Torah-observant Jewish Christians believing the Jewish Christ is going to destroy Rome. Instead, what happened is that Constantine converted to Christianity and Christianity moved from a primarily Jewish Christianity to a more Indo-European Romanized Christianity; so much so that later Christians wrote their own version of Revelation updating it to match the reality of Rome being the good guy in the end, as it was Rome that saved Christianity from extinction when the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity: turning Christianity into a global power rather than just some small obscure Jewish sect that would have died out like the Ebonites if it had stayed within the Torah-based Jewish tradition only.  

So a Post-scripture Christianity is the understanding that the New Testament is a library of different documents and even different religious writers that did not agree with each other; in fact, there are arguments and disputes going on between the Torah-observant Christians like James and Peter and the Pauline Christians who rejected Torah-observance and things like circumcision. Then you have the author of Luke-Acts disagreeing with much of the Pauline-Markan tradition. The New Testament is thus not a manual for living modern life but a historical representation of the infighting and disputes in the various Christianities emerging from the Pauline sect which morphed into Constantinian Christianity causing it to win in the social marketplace of ideas.

These are just a few examples of how Christians are not treating the New Testament as a manual for living today. 

A post-scripture Christianity is better treated today as Christianity as Fraternity, through understanding the difference between the Torah-observant Jewish Christianity of James the Just and Peter (which died out after 70 AD) and Indo-European Christianity that won out in the marketplace of ideas, which I will be covering in this blog series. 

Indo-European Christianity (Blog Series)

 

• Introduction to Indo-European Christianity 

• The Case for Appreciating an Indo-European Patriotic American Christianity

• List of Germanized Christian Scriptures of the Early Norse & Germanic Peoples (e.g. The Heliand: Saxon Gospel) 

• The Phases and Strategies of God

• Post-Scripture Christianity 

• Christianity as a Fraternity

• Christianity as a mystery cult (link to University article). Also the whole online document here that covers the Indo-Europeans and Christianity 

• The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C. Russell (Excerpts from Preface & Introduction)

• How the Gospels are Pro-Roman/Indo-European, Pro-Soldiers. Excerpts from Militant Christianity by A. Kehoe (Chapters 1-3)

• Luke's Pro-Soldier Gospel

How the Gospels are Pro-Roman/Indo-European, Pro-Soldiers & Excerpts from Militant Christianity by A. Kehoe (Chapters 1-3)

 

From Militant Christianity by A. Kehoe, Chapter 1:

... Thirty years of observing these fellow citizens has convinced me, a professor of anthropology, that the militant American Christian Right is a remarkable case of the persistence of cultural tradition, four thousand years and counting, of an ethos that continues to activate millions of our fellow citizens.

Page 8:

 A distinctive worldview is embedded in Indo-European languages. It appears historically four thousand years ago, in Near Eastern texts and in Eurasian archaeological sites. By the standards of 2,500 years ago, it is abundantly documented, the language and culture of the expanding Roman state in the west and among Sanskrit speakers in India in the east. Beyond state borders, artifacts mutely bespeak Indo-European cultures throughout much of Europe and western Asia. Two thousand years ago, a radical Jewish sect caught on with Indo-European-speaking residents in the Roman-dominated eastern Mediterranean. Intervention by a bishop of this sect, interpreting an apparition seen by the Roman emperor Constantine, led to the sect, Christianity, gaining legitimacy in Rome, 312 CE. The powerful Indo-European worldview fueling Rome’s military campaigns overwhelmed the sect prophet’s pacifist egalitarian principles. That worldview persists today, shared by millions throughout the globe. In the United States, adherents are major players in politics, education, and business. The actively militant segment legitimates its ideology by claiming it is Bible-based (i.e., a myth-based social charter). Its rite of passage is to be metaphorically, and often symbolically, “born again.” The “battle-ax culture” ethos glorifying war and competition finds expression in capitalist economics ...  

... American Christianity...its worldview and .... remarkable persistence of its IndoEuropean heart.

This was actually a breath of fresh air to hear, to know that my Indo-European ancestors have continued the memory of my people through Christianity. 

Chapter 2:

Page 10:

The sign [Constantine saw in the sky] could have well been a battle-ax and crossed spears. These were traditional weapons of Constantine’s forebears, not Roman but Germanic. ... That exaltation of militancy became part of institutionalized Christianity. Today, the militant Christian Right carries on that pre-Christian ideology ...

Page 12-13:

 It is noteworthy that [the Roman] Diocletian’s Tetrarchy, as the system of four rulers was called, was composed of men of Germanic origin from the Balkan frontier. Constantius and his household were headquartered in Trier on the Rhine, with visits to outposts elsewhere along the western frontier; Constantius died in York, England, in 306, with his eldest son Constantine in attendance. ...

... Constantine had announced himself a devotee of Apollo the sun god, called Sol Invictus (“Invincible Sun”). On the way to Rome in 310, Constantine said he saw in the afternoon sky a cross above the sun, and the words hoc signo victor eris (by this sign, you will be victorious). What he saw was likely a sun halo with sundogs, the result of ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. ... [A] bishop explained [it] was made up of the first two Greek letters, chi and rho, in the name Christos. Another Christian writer, a tutor to Constantine’s son before the march to Rome, described the sign as the letter X with a vertical line drawn through it and curved around at the top, X with a P through it. The sign came to be termed the labarum, a Celtic word. ...

Plausible as is the Christian clerics’ interpretation of a chi and a rho in monogram form, the sign does look like crossed spears with a battle ax.[3] Battle axes and crossed spears are pagan icons; archaeologists have labeled a third-millennium BCE culture in southern Scandinavia the Battle-Ax Culture, from the frequent inclusion of a stone battle-ax in male graves, and postulated it to represent an early incursion of Indo-European speakers out of the Russian steppes.

 

She then shows these images of Scandinavian cave art. She also shows this image of ancient warriors on horseback. She goes on to point out on page 15:

... Appearance of the sword-and-battle-ax pair associated with a chiefly class in Scandinavia at this time indicates contacts, perhaps by traveling Scandinavian aristocrats, with the Carpathian region north of the lower Danube and the Black Sea-Pontic steppes region that, in turn, traded with Mycenean Greece and the Aegean. By Constantine’s time, the Norse god Thor wielded the battle-ax and thunderbolts, and Odin/Wotan held the sword. ...

 

She then writes on page 16, "Theologian Daniel Maguire remarks, 'Constantine . . . sort of converted to Christianity. It is better said that Constantine converted Christianity to him.” She goes on to argue that Constantine was basically not really a Pauline Christian and adds, "after his 324 victory he promulgated a series of civil edicts, one of them was to make Sunday a day free of legal business, and the wording in the edict is Dies Solis, Day of the Sun ...." This is all positive in my view as Christianity became unified with my Indo-European ancestors.

She then asks:

Can anyone imagine this valiant man of arms [Constantine,] turning the other cheek to an insult? Did Constantine give away all his treasure? Live ascetically? Prefer the company of the poor, of the oppressed, of women, to that of men of power? Would Constantine have said to Peter, “Put up thy sword”?

(pg. 17)

 

She of course means this as a critique, as if living ascetically (i.e. celibately) and getting bullied is a virtue. From my perspective, as ancestrally Indo-European myself, I see Constantine's valiant frame as a compliment. For, in my view, if Constantine and his Indo-European frame of mind had not integrated Christianity with the Indo-European worldview and Roman structure, I don't think Christianity would have survived. By the author's own questioning, if thrown back at her, one could ask: "Would a truly Pauline Movement of pacifist wimpy celibates seeking poverty and voluntary martyrdom while repressing their masculine instincts, have caused Christianity to thrive?" Of course, not! It was Indo-European energy that caused early Christianity to survive and flourish. 

She fails to realize that much of the language of "turning the other cheek" and essentially becoming a pacifist was largely the New Testament author's seeking to quell Jewish Zealots from uprising against Indo-European Rome. As Doug Reed explains in Who Were the Zealots?:  

... The zealots favored armed rebellion against Rome. They believed that God would deliver Israel with the sword. ... There was not a unified movement against Rome in first century Palestine. Rebels rose up in many different forms, and at times they ended up fighting each other. ...

... We often hear Jesus words quoted, “… for all who take the sword will perish by the sword (Matt. 26:52).” Some say He was condemning all military action throughout time. If this was the case, Jesus words simply were not true. Everyone who has taken the sword in conflict has not died violently. I believe Jesus’ words were most likely a warning to His own people. He was saying if you try to bring the kingdom of God by violence, you will all die. He was right. Those who rebelled against Rome died often in a very cruel manner.

Also see this article on how Jesus opposed the Zealots.

The New Testament also does not condemn Roman soldiers but often applauds them throughout the New Testament. For example, when Roman soldiers ask for advice from John the Baptist he does not say throw down your swords and become pacifists, but says to basically continue to be soldiers and not be "bad cops" but "good cops" so to speak in Luke 3: 14. This aligns with Romas 13 where Paul is basically pro Roman Law & Order. Then there is the story of a Roman centurion (a high-ranking officer) who says he has authority to give orders and be obeyed, and thus has faith/trust in the new cosmic Emperor Jesus' orders which leads to his servant being healed in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10; furthermore, Acts 10 mentions Cornelius, another Roman centurion, who became a believer in Jesus. 

Some scholars also think that the author of Luke-Acts may have been a Gentile, so a large portion of the New Testament might have been written by a Gentile. New Testament scholar, John Crossan even argues that Luke-Acts presents Indo-European Rome favorbly. As one reviewer of Crossan's book Render Unto Ceasar says:

 Crossan’s reading, “love your enemies” was a resistance slogan that Jews would have understood as referring to the Roman enemy, while the “love” messages of turning the other cheek make clear Jesus’s nonviolent strategy against Roman violence. Those messages encoded resistance to Rome without openly making statements that the Romans would see as treason. "

In other words, the nonviolent message is directed at militant Jewish Zealots to stand down. According to Crossan, "“The good news, for Luke-Acts, is that the Holy Spirit moved headquarters from Jerusalem to Rome. ..."

What the New Testament does is present Romans like Pilate as innocent and Jesus basically tricks the Evil Powers into crucifying him through Rome’s mechanism of crucifixion; but Rome is not seen as the enemy in the Gospels but are unknowing pawns in a game where Jesus outwits the Dark Forces to break the curse of Death and Sin; so that Judaic Temple-based Religion could end and a new Indo-European "Sun God" mystery religion could emerge. 

Indo-European Spirituality

 

Indo-European Spirituality is and was about tribal belonging and paternal lineage in the context of a solar-pantheon which formed a relationship between Man and Nature through divine Powers (Gods) and heroic stories.


The German scholar Max Müller once wrote:

If asked what I consider the most important discovery made during the 19th century, with respect to the ancient history of mankind, I should answer by the following short line:


Sanskrit; Dyaus Pitr = Greek; Zeus Pater = Latin; Jupiter = Old Norse; Tyr. 

Think what this equation pimples! It implies not only that our own [Germanic] ancestors and the ancestors of Homer and Cicero (the Greeks and Romans) spoke the same language as the people of India -- this is a discovery, which however incredible it sounded at first, has long ceased to cause any surprise -- but it implies and proves that they all had once the same faith, and worshiped for a time the same supreme Deity under exactly the same name -- a name which meant Heavenly Father. 

Source: Max Muller. The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review. London. Volume 18, Issue 104. October 1885. Pages 626-650.

Based on my research Tyr was not likely considered a sky-god (heavenly father), but the idea being conveyed by Muller is still basically accurate: that all these peoples mentioned share a common ethnolinguistic and religious common ancestor. I discussed the linguistic evidence for this in my blog post on the Proto-Indo-Europeans. There is also evidence of this common ancestry through the study of comparative mythology. As covered in the article Who Were the Indo-Europeans and Why Does It Matter? by Daniel McCoy:

Speaking of the divine hierarchy, Proto-Indo-European society was divided into three distinct classes or “functions”: the first function, that of the priests and rulers; the second function, that of the warriors; and the third function, that of the farmers, herders, craftsmen, etc – the “common people.”[3] While this threefold division of society may, in and of itself, be found in societies outside of the Indo-European world, “it is the treatment of this structure as a special class of concepts requiring and receiving almost endless elaboration in all spheres of cultural ideology and behaviour that makes it truly unique to the Indo-Europeans.”[4]

So a basic outline in broad terms of this tripart function describing the structure of a functional Indo-European society, looked something like this as an example using Norse mythology:

Kingly/Ruler Function:
Odin (wisdom) -- Tyr (Law)

Warrior Function:
Thor (warriors)

Wealth & Love Function:
Frey (wealth/productivity) -- Freya (Love/growth)

Daniel McCy, in his article, explains how this this basic structure is carried out today in most Western countries in various ways and modifications.

I found this below online by a Ambika Vijay at quora.com on How similar were ancient European pagan religions to early Hinduism, given that they both had a linguistic and cultural heritage going back to the original Proto-Indo-European speakers? I decided to paste it here below because many websites go offline and content is lost:

European Pagan religions and early Vedic Hinduism were offshoots of Proto-Indo-European mythology.

So they are all very similar.

Rigveda the oldest Vedic scripture is dedicated to singing hymns for the Indo-European gods.

I am listing some here :

Divine Father :

Vedic: Dyaus Pitr, Greek: Zeus pater , Illyrian : Dei-pátrous, Roman : Jupiter (Djous patēr), Scythian :Papaios for Zeus, Palaic: Tiyas papaz

 

Photo courtesy: Google images

Divine Twins : They also worshipped divine twins symbolized by horses

Vedic : Divó nápātā (the Asvins)

Lithuanian: Dievo sūneliai (the Asveiniai)

Latvian : the Dieva dēli,

Greek : the Diós-kouroi (Castor and Pollux)

Celtic : the Dioskouroi

The Vedic Asvins and Lithuanian Asveiniai, even share the names.

Asva in both Sanskrit and Lithuanian mean horse.

Thunder god : Thunder god is the most significant god in these cultures, Rigveda dedicates 1/3rd of the hymns to him.

Indra/Parjanya (Vedic), Indra (Avestan), Thor (Germanic ) Tarḫunna( Hittite), Taranis( Celtic), Perun( Slavic), Perkunas ( Baltic )

The Thunder god vs Serpent myth can be found in all these cultures.

Photo courtesy: Google

 ... Sun god :

Vedic - Surya , Roman - Sol , Norse - Sol, Lithuanian- Saule are derived from the Proto Indo European Seh2ul- / *Sh2-en-

Goddess of Dawn : The name of Vedic Goddess of dawn Usas is a cognate with Eos and Eostre

Eostre later became Easter - the Easter festival was originally a pagan festival.

Uṣas (Vedic), Eos (Greek), Aurora (Roman), Aushrine (Baltic), Auseklis (Latvian)

Photo Credit : Google

God of Sky :
Varuṇa (Vedic),Ouranous/ Uranus (Greek), Odinn/Wodan (Germanic).

 

God of meeting, marriages, journeys, roads, and the feeding of cattle :
Pūṣan (Vedic), Pan (Greek), Faun(Roman ) Vanir (Germanic).

 

Goddess of River :
Danu (Vedic), Danu (Irish).
River Danube is named after her.
In Vedic mythology she is the mother of the serpent Vritra (who was slayed by Indra)

...

... Rituals and Preisthood :

Celtic Druid - are often equated with Vedic Brahmins.

The Druids are a class of high ranking priests in ancient Celtic culture. They practiced and trained for nearly twenty years and since most of their teachings are Oral, they didn’t survive.

... The Celtic high ceremony officiated by Druids closely resembles the Vedic yagnas officiated by Brahmins. ... Almost all Indo European ceremonies and rituals involve a “fire altar”

In response to the above, a Devala Rees responds: 

In my opinion as a Hindu, ancient European pagan religions were very similar. Almost everything about them is quite familiar to me. Their most visible defining feature to outsiders being offerings and sacrifices made to many Gods and Goddesses? Check; that’s just like Vedic religion. The Gods and other great spirits of ancient Europe sound very much like the Gods and other great spirits of ancient (and modern) India; different names and individual characteristics, but the same sorts of beings, right down to the initiatory, communal, intensely devotional systematic mystery cults centered around specific Gods who could provide a mystical awakening, worshiping them with incense and offerings to anthropomorphic statues and clockwise circumambulation around the temple. Some of the best preserved philosophical schools of ancient European paganism (Stoicism, Platonism, etc.) even include the view that a single Transcendent Deity manifests as all of these Gods and Goddesses. ...

... In summary, my impression as a Hindu is that the vast majority of what I read on ancient European pagan religions sounds very familiar to me from my own religious practices and worldview.

Indo-European Christianity?

Doing this research, I couldn't help but notice that all three Indo-European functions above are missing in Pauline "New Testament Christianity." In the earliest Pauline assemblies, Paul sought to remove leadership with a "pentecostal-like" speaking in tongues and prophesying dynamic where everyone was believed to be equally literally possessed by the leader-Christ (see 1 Corinthians 11:3–16: Spirit Possession and Authority in a Non-Pauline Interpolation by Christopher Mount). There was obvious no warrior class, as the ideal was pacifism and obviously no Frey or Freya function, as the Pauline ideal was celibacy and martyrdom given the imminent end-times expectation. Pauline "New Testament Christianity" would have thus died out like the Shakers of the 1700-1800s who modeled themselves after the New Testament and have nearly died out today. So what happened was Christianity was remodeled in the image of the Indo-European functional spiritual model. For a scholarly book on how this happened, see:
The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell.


Also see these articles available free online:

• Indo-European Christianity by Alice B. Kehoe

• The Trinity and the Indo-European Tripartite Worldview by Andrew P. Porter

What this means is that most versions of Christianity today have been Germanized and made into the image of the Indo-Europeans. Therefore, those who argue that "New Testament Christianity" itself changed Western civilization are not correct when one looks at the whole historical picture. For Christianity went through stages of development, and the final product ends up looking more Indo-European than first century Pauline. So that while some ideas in the New Testament can be said to have strongly moved modern culture in a certain direction, the overall version of Christianity today is a more Indo-European version of Christianity. This is why I support the spread of Modern Christianity because it is basically, today, an Indo-European/Pauline hybrid religion and most Christians ignore the original Pauline aspects: like the ideal of celibacy, pacifism, and voluntary martyrdom; when originally Pauline members of a congregation were speaking in tongues and prophesying while claiming to be possessed by the spirit of a messiah, etc. Today's Christianities are highly systematized functional and rational formations that mostly align with modern political models and modern science and the Indo-European spiritual model.