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Then there's the more cynical look that the people writing the gospels where pushing their own agendas, which would lead to them deciding on bits to edit or dramatise. Wouldn't be all that surprising to find that the people starting the christian religion wanted to portray Jesus as risen from the dead.

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Who would push an agenda to get themselves and their followers persecuted, thrown in jail, beaten, killed and otherwise ridiculed and punished unless they truely believed what they were preaching? Even the suicide bombers of today believe that Allah is going to reward them. It makes no sense to make up a religion and get killed for it if you know (since you know your a liar) that you are going to hell once you die. They were either liars, lunatics or preaching what they honestly believed. Lunatics can't organize movements that grow for 2000 years. Right or wrong, inspired or errored, I think we can be pretty sure that Peter, Paul and the gang believed what they were preaching.

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Which cult leaders wouldn't?

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Here you help to enforce my point. The Cult leaders you talk about either believe what they are preaching, or they are lunatics. They don't just setup a mass suicide, in which they participate, to be a martyr for a political agenda. If you show me someone who does this, you will be presenting a lunatic.

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You are saying early christians didn't think they would go to heaven if they believed and were martyred?

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Actually, I'm saying that I think they did believe that they would go to heaven if they were martyred. That's my point. They believed what they were preaching!

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uh? So you think they would not believe in a god, and yet believe they go to hell?

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Well, if they didn't believe in God, and they were trying make the other Jews look stupid (or whatever their aledged agenda for preaching about a false messiah) then they certainly wouldn't be willing to die for it, would they? So wether the aledgedly falsifying apostles believed in hell, or just didn't believe in life after death, they probably wouldn't push an agenda that would get them killed. Unless you think the apostles were lunatics.

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Please note I was commenting (the bit you quoted) on the writers of the gospel, not the 1st generation of christains anyhow.

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The first generation of christians were the apostles and their followers. I don't know how much more "first generation" you get than being there and seeing it first hand. The apostles and/or their scribes and close followers wrote the Gospels and the letters that make up the New Testament.