I understand where the host is coming from with Christianity being a Roman psyop, but I think it's giving way too much time over to Josephus. Josephus was the Rachel Maddow of the 1st century. He was supposed to appeal to monied, Hellenistic Jews who might start bending toward messianic nationalist zealotry, and, heaven forbid fund their cause, in much the same way Maddow can call the likes of Jimmy Dore, Russian bots and keep "good lefties" in the fold - i.e. a sheep herder.
In terms of defining/creating Christianity, the real psyop is Saul/Paul - both at the time of the first Church, and then later when Rome was trying to coopt the troublesome Christians into the NWO. I see Saul/Paul as the 1st century L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard was in the cultic centre of the belly of the beast, was connected to the O.T.O., had Deep State associates, and embedded in LA popular culture. Saul/Paul was a Roman Citizen, from Tarsus – the centre of the Mithraic Cult – who was also a Pharisee. Saul/Paul was the original psyop within the early Christian Church. This guy who never even met Jesus - just had a whacky story about a vision - ingratiates himself into the Church, self-styles himself as the Apostle to the Gentiles and then immediately starts causing trouble for James in Jerusalem, eventually even stealing Peter away to what is essentially his new cult. This cult immediately distances itself from Judaic law and starts seducing rich bored Roman wives and widows. Well, it’s a successful business model, and as Hubbard apocryphally said, the fastest way to make a million is to start your own religion.
I urge you to read the Pauline letters carefully. Paul created the resurrection/new Adam narrative/theology that was obviously influenced by what Paul had heard (maybe witnessed?) of the Mithraic cult. Judaism does not have a tradition of a martyred Messiah - Saul/Paul made that shit up and the Church had to do multiple linguistic contortions to make the prophets fit that narrative. Now look at his background as a Pharisee – much like Martin Luther, it is very obvious, reading between the lines that Paul was sick of the idiotic constrictions of his religious laws, and wanted to write his own rules. This also parallels Hubbard in his attitude to psychology, which he studied, derided, yet heavily used it's techniques in his own cult (yes I do think academic Psychology is a cult, that has precious little science - show me the Id or the Oedipal complex under a microscope please.) Additionally much like Hubbard, I have no doubt that Saul/Paul had deep state connections who encouraged him deliberately to cause strife with the Jerusalem Church, which he did successfully. Job done. 200 years later Rome would resurrect Paul as the most important character in the Church after Jesus – not bad for a persecutor of Christians who never even met the Messiah.
Paul’s cult probably did not really take off at the time, I think Acts is largely fictional, I think it was the North African Gnostics that adopted Christianity and made it successful, but much later Saul/Paul’s letters are deliberately taken up once more in the new orthodox Roman Church and made canon. Think about Scientology today – a fringe cult that continues to survive, largely by political shenanigans, but also appealing to a lot of hopeless fragile people. Now imagine in the future, maybe 50 years or 200 years - a religion that kinda has a sciency ring to it may seem perfect for the new imperial religion of Transhumanism and "alien" overlords. Just sayin. History rhymes. I'm not saying these beliefs, be they Christianity, Scientology, whatever, were designed by some all knowing powers-that-be, who could see centuries ahead. The powers-that be just opportunistically use the best available resources for the best available use, and can remold them accordingly in their own image. That's what they did, using the writings of their old asset Paul, for Christianity.
What appealed/appeals to the Romans about Judaism? Well, for one thing it wasn’t “Judaism” at all, it was a sect of Judaism known as the Pharisees. Academics don’t really know what Judaism was in the 1st Century. They get everything through the Roman lens, so it can’t be trusted. My conclusion is that the remnant of the Jews that survived the “diaspora” were the Pharisees that were already dispersed in the Empire (like Saul/Paul himself.) The remaining Phoenician Jews, who practiced the religion of Solomon’s First Temple Judaism in Jerusalem and the Levant, dwindled through wars and imperialism and eventually were forced into Islam in the 6th century.
The Pharisees were a perfect model for "spreading the word" - small units dispersed widely, using the usual array of evangelical tactics to convert people to their cause – much like Al Qaeda has in the past half century. If you could pitch a tent, you had a Temple. No ordained priests from sacred bloodlines, no altars, or paraphernalia required - just scripts and teachers (rabbis.) This was the way the Pharisees became serious political players in first century Palestine, and the Romans recognized their utility, in much the same way they did the Druids for Europe. In some communities they were used for social control (eg Saul's persecution of Christians) in some they just mingled to get the pulse of the locality and provide intelligence. It was the Pharisees who would re/write the Tanakh, and create what we think of as Judaism today, and continued their message throughout Europe, always keeping their ties to “Rome,” for their own survival if nothing else. Jews, like myself are always acutely aware that we are the scapegoats, the whipping boys for the powerful, and that no matter how wealthy or influential one may become, in choosing to accommodate the powerful, the Jews will always be expendable. That is why the Pfizer chief can call Israel the biggest vaccine lab on the planet, and no one blinks, and as usual, the Jews fall for it. Why wouldn't the Romans love us. We love our victimization.
The early Christians also used this stealth/cell model to attempt to spread their message, but the Romans didn’t need them – they had the Jews, so Christians were heavily persecuted... at first. But the Christians had a message of personal Liberation (actually at the heart of Judaism) and this obviously resonated with slaves and women, but was no longer in the diaspora Jewish messaging. This kept Christians going and growing around the Mediterranean, particularly in former strongholds of Carthage and Phoenicia. They were well established, if heavily factionalized, by the time of Constantine, which is what they was ultimately able to exploit, Romans being Romans, bringing “order” to “chaos”.
I do believe that there is some truth to the myth of Constantine’s mother converting – there's alway a grain of truth to every myth. But I think it more likely that she was a savvy political operative herself and recognized the potential utility of converting the Empire to Christianity in the 4th Century – and she was right. Most of the tribes in Europe were converted to the Roman Church through stealth; by getting into small communities and eventually to the wives of chiefains and kings, and once they converted, the nobles and riffraff either had to convert or be put to the sword. The locals did all of the dirty work for the new Roman Empire, at a fraction of the cost. Think about it – the Romans were never successful conquering the Irish or Scots by invasion… until Christianity came along.
But at the end of the day Christianity is still all about Saul/Paul. His messaging was remarkable, and of course it obviously reflected the Mithraic cult. It’s right there in the epistles. Yes it was part psyop, but like all psyops it involved living breathing people vying for power and notoriety, which ultimately made it a "real" religion. Anyone who thinks that those epistles are fiction, and the whole Jesus narrative was woven from whole cloth are as crazy as fundamentalists. Read the epistles – there is so much there that doesn’t need to be, so why would you make that stuff up? It would just be too weird and unnecessarily complex to think it was all fiction. Saul/Paul was real and a major player in Chrisianity then and now. Most Christians I’ve talked to (I studied theology at University many years ago) don’t even realise he was a Jew or a Roman, and have no idea where Tarsus was, let alone why that would be a strategically important relationship. Why? They’re not supposed to. Just listen to the Xmas story and be happy, a carpenter was the son of god.
I strongly believe that in history, you learn most from what is not there, e.g., the Phoenicians – the peoples that gave us our alphabet, but never left any writing, no math, no drama, no science – give me a break. It’s what has been obviously, intentionally disappeared that tells us the most about our history and the victors themselves. In Christianity, where is James? Where are the documents of the Jerusalem Church? They went the way of the Phoenicians, 200 years before - and don’t think that isn’t a related topic. Jesus was a real person, James was a real person, "Mary" was a real person – what they really stood for and espoused, we only see a glimpse. But *why* did the Romans have to disrupt the Jesus narrative in the first place?? That is the question. Maybe he was much more than we were led to believe (I'm talking about as a person, not a god). Perhaps the truth really is in "the root of Jesse" - Jesus really was of the bloodline - an actual king, but far more dangerously, one in the mold of Ashoka? And maybe we're not just talking about the Levant, maybe we're talking about Saba, Kush and Punt and beyond. I’ll end it there.