Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
Actually the early Christians ignored the Old Testament until they began to realize that being part of a new religion caused them problems with the Romans, such as being drafted into armies and special taxes, etc. So they began to present themselves as having forked from Judaism, which made them seem to be an old religion, at least to the Romans, who didn't know much about either at that time. To make this believable they began to adopt the Old Testament. As I recall from my reading most early Christians weren't even aware of the Old Testament before they did this. This all took place in the first 100 or so years of Christianity.
Barry
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I'm not sure where you read this theory. Certainly, the founding figures of Christianity were well aware of that it was a Jewish offshoot, though it's quite possible many of the adherents were not. The early Christian church was more of a loose collection of individual churches with many individual writings and beliefs. The early history of the church is an interesting and fairly controversial subject.