The books of the New Testament appeared sometime between 0 AD and 100 AD. The books were were written in Greek. I suspect that they were written by people who had studied the Jewish Scriptures and Greek Philosophy. The Bible is more Platonic than Aristotelian.
Lets face it. Most scholars prefer the mystical approach to scholarship that sees mystical forms behind the universe to the dry empirical approach followed by Aristotle.
The New Testament tells the story of a spiritual entity that was one in being with the Creator that took on human form who was falsely charged and crucified.
The Greek term "Christ" is a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah.
Fifty days after the crucifixion an spiritual entity called The Holy Spirit descended on Christ's Apostles.
The doctrine of the Trinity holds that there is one God that exists as three coeternal, consubstantial persons. This which is not in but implied by the Bible fits well with disputations about multiplicity that had raged throughout Ancient Greece since Parmenides.
From the fact that the term "Bible" comes from Greek, the term "Christ" comes from Greek and that New Testament was written in Greek, I will make a bold claim that Christianity is a synthesis of the ideas that people were discussing when the New Testament was written.
The Bible has an interesting convention. Whenever, man is in in direct contact with God, free food appears. During the Exodus, Manna fell from Heaven. The people who attended the Sermon on the Mount got a free fish sandwich. Finally, when the Holy Spirit descended on Pentecost, the people shared and lived as one.
Many modern scholars take the description of the Pentecost to mean that early Christians lived in a Socialist or possibly Communist Utopia.
Unfortunately, documents about Early Christianity are sparse.
A few historians including Rodney Stark engaged in Demographic studies of the Ancient World. They found that in 0 AD there was a fairly large number of Romans, Greeks and a small population of Jews.
300 years later, there was a large number of Pagan Romans, a smaller number of Pagan Greeks along with a large number of Jewish people scattered about. So Christianity probably spread throughout the Greek world first.
This makes sense to me. The Roman Empire had turned the Greeks into second class class citizens. The Romans demanded that polytheists include Roman gods in their pantheons.
The monotheism of Christianity creates a God that is greater than the Roman Gods. It holds that Christ, not Caesar, as King. The crucifixion is said to have ushered in a state of grace which provided freedom from the bondage of sin.
The classical liberal interpretation of the Bible is that the Bible lays a foundation for liberty.
The archeological record of the Middle indicates that there was blossoming of culture from Israel to Persia during this period. It is interesting. Copies of Aristotle's work slowly disappeared in the West, but some copies moved East where they survived.
Arabic and Persian scholars even expanded on the philosophic and mathematical works of the ancients. They developed wonderful things like the Arabic Numerals that people still use today and they invested algebra.
But lets return to the Western world.
There were three early centers of Christianity. These were in Alexandria, Antioch and Rome.
Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. When he constructed Constantinople, the Bishopric of Antioch moved north to Constantinople.
Christianity and Political Power
I contend the there is a message of liberty in the Bible. There is great power in saying that there is one God and one Truth and this truth is beyond the mind of mankind.
Christianity holds that Christ is the true king of the world. However, Jesus was interested in the spiritual health of the people and didn't care a lick for political power or wealth.
Why would the God that created the universe really care about petty politics? Why would the creator of all gold care about a small piece of gold?
When given a coin from the Empire, Christ looked at it and saw the picture of Caesar, Christ stated "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
Christianity is inherently secular. The religion holds that things of the spiritual world are higher than the petty things like politics or financial financial finaglings.
NOTE: Modern secularists tend to hold that the concepts of government and political power are more important than the spiritual world.
One of the most interesting aspects of Christian secularism is that, while Emperor Constantine liked the ideals of Christianity, he thought that an emperor had to engage in Unchristian acts. So, he did not convert to Christianity until he was on his death bed.
Unfortunately, once Christians started gaining political power they started to engage in the petty squabbling that marred the rest of the world.
The Murder of Hypatia
Hypatia was a Neoplatonist scholar in Alexandria. She and her father worked to preserve the writings of Euclid. She also did original research concerning conic sections and arithmetics.
Hypatia had an astrolabe. An astrolabe is a mechanical computer that used the Ptolemaic observations of the solar system to calculate the position of the stars.
Portable astrolabes were wonderful devices that would help sailors determine the time and navigate at seas.
Hypatia was a Pagan. She may have engaged in some astrology along with astronomy.
There was an ongoing feud between Orestes who was appointed at the Roman prefect of Egypt and Cyril who was the bishop of Alexandria.
While this feud was raging a Lector named Peter incited a crowd which surrounded her carriage during Lent in 415 AD. They drug her into a church where they tortured her, gouged out her eyes, ripped her body apart, then took her body out and set it on fire.
She may of been accused of witchcraft because she could calculate the position of planets with an astrolabe.
Conclusion
While I agree that there are liberating aspects of Christianity, the brutal murder of Hypatia highlights the dark side of Monotheism as zealots are able to use the monotheism to claim that their ideas are somehow the true ideas.
Hypatia was one of the last great scholars associated with the Library of Alexandria. The Library had reached its zenith around 180 BC and was in decline in the last years of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Some say part of it burned when Julius Caesar invaded Alexandria in 45 BC.
The library declined in stature during Roman rule. It is likely that much of the material from the library was hauled off to other libraries. There is indication that some works made it to Constantinople and others to Baghdad. There are conflicting claims that Christians burned parts of the library. Specifically there are reports of people who wanted to destroy works associated with necromancy.
An Islamic Army captured Alexandria in 642. Caliph Omar led the final destruction of the library. He is quoted as saying: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."
One can find aspects of liberation and aspects of oppression in the concepts surrounding monotheism.
I will just take another picture from Wikicommons. It is an illustration by Louis Figuier made in 1866 titled: "Mort de la philosophe Hypatie"
