The TV two hour program presented in April of 1998 "From Jesus to Christ," while not bluntly
proclaiming the whole truth about the origins of Christianity, did portray the prominence of
James the brother of Jesus, who is well documented as a vegetarian, and did focus on Pliny the Younger's often anthologized letter to Trajan, in which Pliny gives Trajan a progress report on his invasion of Bithynia, a place where Peter had preached (see the first verse of Peter's first letter in the New Testament).  There Pliny and the Roman military tortured and killed the
Christians who had persuaded the local population not to eat the flesh of sacrificed, i.e.,
slaughtered, animals, and had therefore destroyed the local meat industry.  Pliny's military
campaign was successful, for once again animals were being sold in the temple to be
sacrificed.

    "From Jesus to Christ" also quoted Jesus as denouncing the scribes and Pharisees for being
whitened sepulchers full of dead bones, meaning dead animals' bones, not dead men's bones.
This interpretation is easily seen to be true, for in adjacent scriptures Jesus describes the hypocrites as "unseen graves," an apt literal description of their eating habits. In other words, the carnivorous Pharisees were described as the walking graves of other other creatures.  In his The Origins of Christianity, Conybeare translates or deciphers those scriptures in the
same manner, removing the adjectival "men's" before bones.
 

   Jesus' description of the hypocritical Pharisees as "hidden graves" and "whitened sepulchers full of dead (animal) bones" is totally consistent with the description by Epiphanius in the Panarion of Jesus and his disciples as portrayed in the Ebionite Gospel, which is acknowledged to be the first lengthy written account of the teachings and actions of Jesus and his associates. In that work Jesus and his associates are seen as vegetarians who denounce the Pentateuch, wherein it is taught that animal sacrifices are sanctioned by God, as false scriptures.