Pulling The Thread Podcast: Tracing Jesus Before Christianity Emerged, Jesus the Jew within Judaism! · Jeramiah Giehl

An Intriguing Exploration of Christian Origins: Judaism & The Enigma of Roman Influence - Critical Exploration of Paul, Jesus & Power Struggles - Part 1: Episode 19

·1 hr 13 min

The episode opens with a reunion of two people who both moved out of Christianity and toward Judaism. The host introduces author David LeBlanc and says the discussion will cover Christian origins, Judaism, and what he sees as theological errors in Christianity and Messianic Judaism. He starts with the Theodosian Code, treating it as a major Roman legal compilation under Christian emperors. In the host’s telling, it elevated Christianity, limited other religions, narrowed the rights of Jews, and treated apostasy, heresy, schism, Judaism, paganism, and related offenses as forms of sacrilege. David says he has not heard of it before, which gives the conversation a shared starting point. From there the discussion moves into Constantine and the kind of moral and civic order he admired. The host describes him as drawn to Stoic themes like service, obedience, and being a good citizen. That leads into Paul’s writings. The conversation leans into the idea that Paul’s letters reflect a pro-Roman posture. The host sums up his view by saying he does not think the story was simply a conspiracy to manufacture minds or doctrines. Instead, he argues that religious ideas accumulated through contact, borrowing, and reinterpretation. He brings in Rabbi Jonathan Sachs on Jewish Gnosticism and then moves to Zoroastrian influence on rabbinic thought. Heaven, hell, angels, and demons are described as later additions to ancient Judaism, not original features. The discussion then widens again. The host raises Buddhist activity in Judea before Jesus, and then points to parallels he sees between Jesus and figures such as Krishna, Buddha, Mithra, and the Isis cult. The tone stays exploratory and pointed rather than neat. The conversation keeps circling the same larger claim: Christianity, as they present it here, emerged through layers of cultural contact rather than from a sealed-off origin. Later, the focus tightens back onto Paul. The host says the Gnostics considered Paul a founder. He adds that even the early proto-Orthodox and the Ebionites saw Paul as a heretic. Marcion enters as the figure whose recovery of Paul’s letters helped change that reception. The host argues that the proto-Orthodox later rehabilitated Paul and further redacted the letters. The episode closes by noting that the conversation ran long and had to be split into two parts.

As heard by us

A wide-ranging, open-ended look at Christian origins, Judaism, Pauline letters, and Roman power.

This is a searching conversation about Christian origins, and it works best when it keeps the questions open. The move from the Theodosian Code to Judaism, Constantine, Pauline letters, and the politics of law gives it real range, while the refusal to flatten Judaism, Messianic…

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Why you'd press play

If you want Christian origins, Judaism, and Paul all tangled together, start here.

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