Tells us what you found out about the "back story"?
Not what I found really, just what anyone might find. Start with mythology:
Some folks picked the god behind door #1, some got door #3, but the OP chooses door #2. That’s how religion goes. A Forrest Gump bowl-of-cherries twist of fate, based on when and where you are born. But the
story is universal. And these are just a few of the dozens of myths the early Christians had to choose from. By the way, that’s Osiris with Horus on the left, and Lord Krishna and his virgin mother on the right.
East of Palestine, in the land of the Magi, there was the myth about the mangod Mithra, which morphed in Rome just as the first Christians were beginning to dip their toes in holy water: Mithra the son of God, born of a virgin, had 12 disciples, had a last supper with them, was crucified, rose from the dead on the third day, atoned for the sins of mankind, and returned to heaven. They even had a ritual meal, like the mass of which Justin Martyr complained:
Wherefore also the evil demons in mimicry have handed down that the same thing should be done in the Mysteries of Mithras. For that bread and a cup of water are in these mysteries set before the initiate with certain speeches you either know or can learn.
The Jesus story arises during the crisis of Jewish rebellion against their Roman overlords. John the Baptist is the legend of an Essene, the desert dwellers who left the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were the folks who probably started the idea of baptism. They had exiled themselves in the desert for religious perfection, sort of like David Koresh, except without the guns and ammo.
Flavius Josephus speaks of their ritual bathing in the bathhouses they made at quarries:
...and when they have clothed themselves in white veils, they then bathe their bodies in cold water
The Jews were in crisis. Remember the Emperors were becoming gods. The Romans were putting statues of their leaders in the Temple, the worst insult imaginable. The Jews rebelled and there were bloody reprisals. Remember also, the Jews were supposed to enjoy Divine protection after faithfully restoring the Temple, but God wasn’t carrying his end of the bargain, leaving them to the brutality of tyrants like Nero.
Imagine organizing against Rome. This is like Luke Skywalker organizing against the Empire. The resistance were folks called Zealots. Jesus probably begins as a legend of a Zealot, cast as a wise teacher who could guide the Jews to their freedom from Roman oppression. But of course, real freedom was impossible. The best recourse was some philosophical rendering of a virtual freedom, and eventually the Jesus story grew into that of a magician who not only summoned the powers of God, but even became the Son of God. It smirks of borrowed lore, straight from the same elements that cast the legend of Mithra--just as the Bible story moves the film set from the ancient stomping grounds of Palestine to the contemporary headquarters--in Rome, where Christianity and its legacy began to take shape, and the Roman convolution of Mithraism emerged.
These are just a few random facts in a nutshell. But it gives you an idea of what I meant about my reason for learning the backstory instead of just regurgitating the myth itself. Better this than to be left handing out Bible citations like parking tickets.
