Face Palm did you just say that christianity was one of the first document religions?
Someone educate this fool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religions
Start there and when you've realized your ignorance, don't bother admitting I'm right, I already know.
Stop quoting Zeitgist. It was chock-full of historical inaccuracies, especially concerning Egyptian mythology.
Peter claimed he would never desert the Lord, but he was the first to turn tail and run when Jesus was captured by the Romans. He couldn't believe his hero- the man who was to overthrow the yolk of Roman oppression, could possibly allow himself to be abjectly humiliated on the cross. And yet this man- who took off like a yellow-bellied coward- saw something that had such a powerful impact on him 3 days later, that he was willing to be crucified upside down for his faith.
What idiot would allow himself to be killed horrifically for something he knew to be a lie? What purpose would it serve? He had already escaped with his life, and would have happily hid in the crevices if he thought it was all a sham- as he did at first, when Jesus was crucified.
That argument doesn't make sense.
I wasn't quoting zietgiest but it is a great documentary... Allow me to share since you brought it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHeg77LF4Y
As for the beliefs of peter, ignorance of the manipulated can go a long way. Just ask the followers of cult leader Jim Jones... Oh wait, you can't because they all died from drinking cyanide laced coolaid.
This is actually a classic example of cult leader programming. To
isolate others from everything else in their lives and dedicate themselves to the thing the cult leader says they should. Believe it or not, many believe jesus to be a narcissit as most cult leaders tend to be.
Jesus had nothing to gain, though. He knew that everyone- even his lcosest disciples- had misinterpreted his ministry, and that he would have to die on the cross. When Peter objected after he told them so, plainly, Jesus told him: "get behind me, Satan!"
What kind of narcissistic supply is granted to a person who knows he will have to disappoint all his followers by getting strung up like a laughingstock, to be jeered at and mocked before all of Israel?
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."
C. S. Lewis
Riiiight. So Jesus pretended to die, climbed down from the cross- which was being constantly monitored by the Roman authorities- and hid out somewhere only to appear to Peter three days later, and scare them all by walking through doors and shit. Sure.
What of all the water and blood that he spilled? He was dead! And what of the inexplicable negative afterimage on the Shroud of Turin?
Don't tell me it's a fraud: look at the latest data, the local pollens discovered, the stains now confirmed to be blood. And don't tell me Jesus never existed: he is mentioned in several extra-canonical sources, and every scholar worth his salt is forced to acknowledge that this man truly walked on earth. If they could so easily dismiss and deny him, they certainly would, in a heartbeat.