The TV two hour program presented in April of 1998 "From Jesus to Christ," while not dramatically emphasizing the truth did portray the prominence of James the brother of Jesus, who is rather thoroughly documented as a vegetarian in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, and did focus on Pliny the Younger's often anthologized, yet seldom thoroughly analyzed, 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 letter of Peter 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, Pliny writes Trajan, animals were being sold in the temple to be sacrificed.

   Diane Bowder in her Constantine and Justinian well understood that the vegetarian Christians were known during the time of the Emperor Decius for interrupting things in the marketplace, which means they were no doubt informing the carnivorous people that their food came from brutally slaughtered beasts and was unhealthy as well, information which a number of animal liberation and vegetarian groups are dispensing today, not to prove they're right, but to improve the lot of all creation by respecting all animal life, and to improve the lot of humanity with optimally healthy vegetarian nutrition.

   Bowder aptly describes these Christians as attacking not only the moral but the corporate, that is the economic, basis of the meat industry, that was sanctioned by orthodox scriptures in the Tanakh, that was profited from by orthodox Jewish cattlemen, and that was taxed by Rome.
 

  "From Jesus to Christ" also quoted Jesus as denouncing the scribes and Pharisees for being whitened sepulchers "full of dead bones." Notice that this quotation is not the usual "dead men's bones."  In the same episode with the Pharisees, Jesus describes the hypocrites as "unseen graves," an apt literal description of their eating habits.  The quotation, "full of dead bones" is echoed by Conybeare, who in his The Origins of Christianity also quotes the passage without inserting the word men's.
 
  Conybeare also insists that the Ebionites, described as vegetarian, are in fact the first followers of Jesus' true teachings. There was excitement in their movement because there was healing, which is inevitable if one follows a strict vegetarian diet, and their way of life was egalitarian. The masses of the world, then, as now, longed for freedom from their governors, their slave masters. "You cannot serve both God and Mammon" was a battle cry against all authorities but God. And "love your neighbor as yourself" was not only a command to share equally with your neighbor, but it was also an implicit  battle cry against the rich, who, by definition, do not love their neighbors as themselves. So Jesus and his earliest affinity groups very deliberately called themselves the poor, Ebionites, in order to let all those who suffered under the rich, the poor, that they were on their side.
 

  The earliest followers of Jesus shared all things in common as did the Essenes and Nazarenes in an optimal setting. That was their law. If you wanted to be rich, you didn't associate with the Essenes, Ebionites, Rechabites, Sabeans or the other vegetarian and egalitarian groups. In the statement "You cannot serve both God and Mammon, Mammon refers to wealth, to those who have wealth (and are not in the process of distributing or sharing it), and to those who seek wealth in stead of God. Mammon referred especially to the Roman State, the colonizer of Palestine perennially controlled by the rich. However, orthodox Jews practicing slavery, usury, as we see by the actions of the zealots, were also included as Mammon. This true teachings were subverted by the writings of Paul, and most of all, by the extremely shrewd policies of Constantine which were subverted very successfully by  the teachings of Paul, who was not only rescued by the Romans from angry followers of the original Jesus, but who also taught Roman values as Christians, such as slavery, sexism, bigotry towards homosexuals, and carnivorism.

   Though orthodox Christians insist that Pauline theology, in which we are taught to honor and respect the emperor and the state, is the true interpretation of Jesus' teachings, there have been revolutionary Christians throughout the ages who have understood that Jesus and his followers were absolutely uncompromising. The zealots, among whom were Simon Zelotes (Peter) and Judas Iscariot, killed Roman and Jewish slaveholders and burned down the Temple of Records in Jerusalem where the debts owed by the poor to the rich were kept. They were true to Jesus' teachings: that he came to free the captive, and that one was to obey no authority but God, and that one was not to obey Mammon, or wealth,
which in all ages has been controlled by the wealthy, who rule the state as well control industries. 

   What is coming through in programs like the first episode (not the second) of "From Jesus to Christ," is a historical Jesus who, like Buddha and the Hindu teachers, is creation-oriented, not simply human-oriented as is the fabricated image of Jesus in the New Testament.