[lynguist]

We say now “some sect”, but today’s mainstream Trinitarians were also considered “just some sect” in Early Christianity.

It has turned out to become the mainstream view, but really trinitarianism and antitrinitarianism are both valid views of Christianity and Islam stems from the “back to the basics” antitrinitarian view.

While we’re at it, Judaism was also developed contemporarily with Christianity and not before (as is the mainstream view), because Judaism includes the teachings of the Rabbis.

The root is Middle Eastern monotheism.

[Zancarius]

Trinitarianism isn't necessarily a strictly Christian construct—or rather the idea of a godhead comprising multiple parts. "Two Powers" theology (a transcendent, unseeable Yahweh; and Yahweh-as-man) was accepted by Jewish thinkers until about the First Century AD, largely due to Christian influences. It's visible in passages like Genesis 19:24 (two Yahwehs) and most "angel of the Lord" language (e.g. Judges 6:11ff).

Alan Segal's Two Powers in Heaven delves into this in great detail.

[andsoitis]

From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.h...:

Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn’t prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97).

Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583).

[Zancarius]

I think I tend to agree with the conclusion—namely that it was predominantly a Jewish influence on Christology. Part of my opinion is shaped by changes in and around the First Century in Judaism which, ultimately, culminated in the Masoretic Text evicting certain parts of the text that could remotely suggest anything akin to polytheism. Deuteronomy 32 is particularly one of the most affected chapters, but curiously "two powers" theology was largely left intact.

This is a particularly interesting period in Christianity, because you had numerous influences (including what would later become gnosticism around the same time), the term "trinity" wouldn't appear in extant works until sometime in the Second Century, then the Council of Nicaea in or around the latter half of the Fourth Century establishing it as doctrine.

So, I think the evidence of a decidedly Jewish influence is quite strong and would date at least to the Babylonian captivity.

I believe Dr. Robert Alter leans toward an evolution from polytheism -> monotheism in Jewish thinking (I highly recommend his The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary); but I think the evidence for a sort of henotheism is a bit stronger and more sensible, which would better fit the sources you shared here, alongside the biblical texts.

[djur]

"Sect" isn't a pejorative term, at least not in this context.

[kragen]

in english the pejorative term is 'cult', which often trips up second-language speakers from languages where it's the other way around

[autoexec]

To help avoid future misunderstandings, which modern languages use "cult" without the usual negative implications?

[tsimionescu]

I believe English is actually one of the only ones where cult has a negative connotation, and where sect does not. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Russian - all of these use "cult" to mean any religious group, even in official language ("the Catholic cult"), and all use "sect" to mean "a fringe, possibly dangerous, religious or quasi-religious group" ("the members of that sect that poisoned themselves").

[kragen]

holy shit you speak a lot of languages

respect

[tsimionescu]

Oh, not even close. I speak Romanian, English, and French. For all of the others I looked up Google translations of the phrase "I think he joined a cult" - in all of them, the translation replaced "cult" with some equivalent of "sect".

Also, I noticed that for more obscure languages (including Romanian), it didn't, so that confirmed to me it's not some fully hardocded conversion - for languages where it has enough examples it understands the "proper" translation, for those where it doesn't it does the simpler thing.

[OrderlyTiamat]

The other comment mentions dutch- As a dutchie I'm not entirely sure they're correct that "kult" is less negatively charged than "sekte". They both take on negative connotations depending on context- "sekte" is definitely religious, while "kult" isn't necessarily, based on the van Dale dictionary. I'd say "cult" isn't always negative in english either, the term "cult classic" comes to mind.

For that matter, would you use "sect" in english and be confident it would not be seen as pejorative term? I feel it's all context dependent.

I also don't think looking through google translate with a single phrase is the right method to figure this out- for one thing I've heard the european languages are usually heavily based on legislature (eu legislature is published in all eu languages, so an excellent source of translations). In my experience google translate can be stilted and formal, so which implications and connotations a phrase or term has in different languages can definitely be literally "lost in translation".

[kragen]

the ones i'm thinking of are spanish, french, and portuguese, but i suspect it holds for most languages with a cognate of 'cult' and/or 'sect'

they used to be the other way around in english too

https://www.etymonline.com/word/sect

https://www.etymonline.com/word/cult

[cyberax]

Russian and Ukrainian are a couple of examples. "Sect" is pejorative, the polite version is derived from the Latin word "confession".