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Many ideas of Christianity appear to come from Greek culture. Many of the Jews that were spread around the empire adopted Greek culture and some of their relition. They were known as Hellenistic Jews (Hellenistic Judaism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Acts refers to the Hellenistic Jews (Blue Letter Bible - Search Results for NASB)Greek philosophy was antithetical to Christian belief.
Cynic philosophy (Cynicism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) is very close to many of the teachings of Christ. Communion rituals and myths of a dying savior god were common among the greeks.
An incarnate God growing up as a child from a human mother was also inconceivable in Jewish culture. However, if "Jesus" began as a tradition of a spiritual god or Logos, that is very consistant with Greek culture.An incarnate God and a bodily resurrection were inconceivable concepts for classical culture
Exactly. They had hope of a Messiah, but Jerusalem had recently been sacked, and the Jews were spread into foreign lands.The Jews already had that hope. Their Messiah would bring about a return to Edenic conditions, restore Israel's autonomy in their land, and have their temple in Jerusalem as the centre of worship for all of humanity. That would have been Mark's and the other disciples expectation. The delay in Jesus' accomplishing that took a major mind shift. Plus, no temple (we are that temple now), no land (Jesus is the fulfilment of all the covenental promises) and a people consisting of all nations without special favour (one family in Christ) contradicted all Jewish messianic hopes.
Mark was an interesting story that a miracle working Messiah had already appeared, and though he was crucified, his grave was found empty, and he said he was coming back to set things straight. Even if the story wasn't true, I can understand how many would have loved it and at least wanted to pretend it was true.
Yes, Mark and many of the New Testament books modeled their story after Isaiah, but Greek influences such as Homer can also be found. See Review by Richard Carrier of Dennis MacDonald's 'The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark' .Mark appears modelled on Isaiah according to some recent exegetes. Homer was worlds apart from Jewish thinking.
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