The Romans created the Roman Catholic religion. The first "Christians" were Jews who recognised Yeshua as the Messiah. It didn't take long for opportunists to start jumping on the bandwagon though, and heretical teachers started reinterpreting scripture to suit their own ideas, and as a result, the message preached by Yeshua and His apostles became subtly transformed. This transformation was well under way even in the days of the apostles, when Shaul denounced those who were teaching "another Yeshua" and "a different gospel" (2 Corinthians 11:3-4).

This abandonment of the gospel's central message was greatly abetted by events occurring in the Roman Empire at the close of the first and the beginning of the second centuries of the Christian era. During the early part of the first century the Jewish religion was accorded remarkable deference by the Roman government. And, for a short time, Roman officials even regarded Christians as merely another sect of the Jews, meaning Christians received the same deference accorded to those of the Jewish faith.

But in the latter half of the first century a major change occurred. It was inevitable that Roman paganism and idolatry (which had come to include emperor worship) would come into conflict with the strict faithfulness of the Jews and Christians to the true G-d. It wasn't long before both Christians and Jews fell out of favour with the Romans. In A.D. 66 many of the Jews living in Judea rebelled against Roman rule, and in AD70 the Roman legions captured Jerusalem, razed the Temple and salted the ground where it had stood.

For many decades after this event the very word Jew became a racial and religious epithet among Roman citizens. *aside: hm. sounds familiar.* A second Jewish revolt from AD132 to 135 made matters even worse; Jerusalem was destroyed and no Jew was allowed to set foot there on pain of death.

As these events unfolded and anti-Jewish sentiment spread throughout the empire (resulting in the deaths of the disciples Kefa, Shaul and many of the original Christians), many who professed to be Christians began distancing themselves from anything that even appeared to be Jewish. Since the beliefs and practices of the original Church had been built around the Jews, this rejection of everything Jewish also led to major alterations in, and abandonment of, major aspects of the original teachings of Yeshua and His apostles.

What followed was a proliferation of groups and teachers calling themselves "Christian", but whose traditions and teachings did not originate with Yeshua and His apostles. Some chose to retain many of the pagan traditions they had formerly practiced and began blending those beliefs and practices with their newly acquired belief that eternal life was accessible through the Messiah. Some simply fell prey to a growing deception that involved "pseudo-emissaries: they tell lies about their work and masquerade as emissaries of the Messiah" (2 Corinthians 11:1.

Gradually, as the apostles died out, these "false brothers" (2 Corinthians 11:26) either abandoned or altered biblical teachings and traditions that they feared would associate them with the Jewish religion. In the process they also gutted critical aspects of the message and way of life taught by Yeshua and His apostles.

The Roman Catholics gave the world Christmas, Easter and Sunday worship, oh, and the inquisition. They didn't give the world Christianity.