While parts of this...uh...documentary, I think...were good and informative on some level, overall it just seemed to me to regurgitate some old ideas and repackage...or, "market" them in an updated way.
What really stood out to me, and really got me skeptical about this title, was presenting the idea that Paul was some sort of marketing genius who came around simply to convince Gentiles to believe in Jesus. Throughout both the Old Testament and New, there is the sense that while God is working His plan of redemption out through the Hebrew people (of which the Jews were part), it was not for their redemption/salvation alone, but that of the whole world. Jesus Himself in the gospel of Luke that He had not seen greater faith demonstrated in all of Israel than by a Roman centurion requesting his servant be healed. And Paul was not the first Apostle to the Gentiles recorded in scripture, but Peter was, having gone to the house of Cornelius.
Furthermore, speaking of Paul, he never went to an area without first visiting the local synagogue to talk with the Jewish population. And then, if the ideas of a human being divine, dying, and coming back to life was such a ready made concept in the Greco-Roman world, then why was Paul rejected by anyone on Mars Hill in Athens?
To me this isn't any real serious look at the history of Christianity. It just exists to add to the noise.
What really stood out to me, and really got me skeptical about this title, was presenting the idea that Paul was some sort of marketing genius who came around simply to convince Gentiles to believe in Jesus. Throughout both the Old Testament and New, there is the sense that while God is working His plan of redemption out through the Hebrew people (of which the Jews were part), it was not for their redemption/salvation alone, but that of the whole world. Jesus Himself in the gospel of Luke that He had not seen greater faith demonstrated in all of Israel than by a Roman centurion requesting his servant be healed. And Paul was not the first Apostle to the Gentiles recorded in scripture, but Peter was, having gone to the house of Cornelius.
Furthermore, speaking of Paul, he never went to an area without first visiting the local synagogue to talk with the Jewish population. And then, if the ideas of a human being divine, dying, and coming back to life was such a ready made concept in the Greco-Roman world, then why was Paul rejected by anyone on Mars Hill in Athens?
To me this isn't any real serious look at the history of Christianity. It just exists to add to the noise.