Interesting, yes, but nothing new in there and it was specifically 'sociology of religion', not 'phenomenology of religon'.
All religions have a simple outer devotional form that the mass can conform to (or deviate from) as only a few have the ability to understand the inner meanings of a religion, which are always about enlightenment, waking up.
The branch of Christianity that prospered after the first diaspora after the fall of Jerusalem was Pauline and he makes it clear in his writings that he didn't ask any of the disciples of Jesus what it was all about, in fact, apart from a very short visit to see two disciples he didn't see any of them for 14 years - he brags that all his teachings come from within ...
so all his theology he made up - which is why it is a direct copy and melange of Mystical Judaism, Mithraism and the Dionysian religion.
However, there has always been access to the inner mystical Christianity but this is never revealed in programmes (and books) such as these as the people who construct them haven't the faintest idea that there is more than one level of attainment.
Such programmes are created by men living at the explanatory level of awereness and those born as women of course, whose brains work in a different way - so different that Gautama (the Buddha) said it was pointless having Buddhist nuns as they couldn't attain enlightenment, and after decades of resistance he eventually allowed the formation of convents only on the explicit instructions that the oldest, most long-serving nun or Abbess was always to be inferior in status to a monk even if he was a child and had just been inducted. His point being that one is reborn as a woman because one has specific duties for that lifetime, and they do not include enlightenment (there are no substantive males or females of course, only male or female bodies to temporarily inhabit).
Then we have Pure Land being introduced later along the Buddhist time-line specifically for the illiterate, the stupid, and women, as it needs only to be followed and practised without deep thought or attainment - there are strong paralells with modern evangelical Christianity. They both serve a great purpose.
But back to Christianity - humans construct religions in the same way that they construct anything else - so McDonalds, for instance, is constructed in the same way as, say, the Church of England. Each has mainly identical buildings, each has a seminary where priests/managers are taught the specific way, each have a bible/manual - an identical copy is kept in each building, each have specific clothing to wear at specific times, each have food offerings, each have ritual sayings "the Lord be with you" " Do you want large fries with that" ....
so at the lower devotional level it isn't what is said it is that it is said - as humans construct things in the same way .... so a major religion such as Christianity takes over (though it took 500 years!) from the main Roman & Greek mystery religions of the period by incorporating their gods and dates and rituals - christmas, virgin mother, miraculous birth, massacre of the innocents, easter, miracle healings, pithy sayings, man-god murdered and brought back to life, the hidden saviour of the world who will return, ritual meals of bread and wine - all of them taken from already existing religions .. but this, all of this, is what humans and societies do - to make one side legitimate and one side illegal, to separate the law-abiding from the criminal, to give structure and prominence to the concept of honesty and morality and ethics and law making.
And this, surely, is a good thing? Yes, it occasionally gets taken over by insane men who wreak havoc, but on the whole the virtues are a good thing for safe societies? Good people living with meaning? Well nurtured and happy children? And five times less likely to have mental/psychological problems if a member of a religion such as Christianit rather than being secular.
But all of this, and the programme mentioned, always misses the point about Jesus. He was a Jew of his time, yes, but he wasn't just a Jew of his time - he was an enlightened being, at the same level as Gautama the Buddha - so when he is speaking of the Kingdom of God being within he is talking about enlightenment and the path to it - hence "leave the dead to bury the dead" and this is why he is so caustic and attacking when he comes up against the smug and those wrapped in their dead rituals and beliefs.
So - there are two levels from which to understand the world around us (actually there are four but these two will suffice here), the explanatory and the experiental. The programme is from the viewpoint of the lower and common explanatory level of awareness - works well on naming objects and making drugs to heal us and building buildings - the mechanical world, we couldn't do without it - and people at this level, if 'religious' have to have faith, have to believe, have to fit half-understood sayings into a world that they don't fit into ..... but there is another level of awareness, the experiental, where one has 'experienced' and therefore knows - so there is no 'faith' or 'belief' there is only knowledge.
Consider - if you were given instructions on how to get from A to B, a journey of 50 miles, you would have to have 'faith' that the route was correct and would get you to your destination, you would have to 'believe', to trust completely what you were told - but if you actually made the journey concepts such as faith and belief would disappear as you would know the route and know that it gets you to your destination and you would then trust that person who gave you the route again.
The two levels of awareness are similar to this - and trying to talk from the experiental level to someone at the explanatory level is like an adult trying to talk to a child about sex - doesn't work as only one knows, which is why Jesus spoke in parables so often ... stories to lead people to a sudden awareness that would take them to the next level, and why he was so often exasperated at their mulish stupidity (he wasn't meek and mild, that is an invention). And, his teachings were completely misunderstood by that good hearted but self-opinionated and stupid Paul.
So, yes, the programme was a pleasant simplistic history at the lower level that also made great leaps of faith by taking possibilities and making them truths (such as stating that Jesus lived in Nazareth all his life until his ministry - where their is no evidence for this at all - in fact we have no idea where he was from 3 to 12 and 12 to 33 years old) and it explained fairly well the beginnings of the modern explanatory type of Christianity but completely missed the true Christianity, the inner Christianity that saints and similar know.
As Francis of Assisi said "What you are looking for is what is looking."
:wink:
