Knowing the biblical history associated with Jesus (I.e. Pontius Pilate crucifying him to appease the Jews), how did Roman Catholicism end up becoming the dominant religion in the Roman world? It seem like they’d want to distance themselves from that, sort of like how it would be kind of awkward for Jews to accept Jesus as the messiah, ya know?
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Emperor Constantine needed to unify the empire he’d just won by conquering. The best way to do that was to pick an obscure religion that hadn’t been popular by any of the major groups he’d fought and promote it by weaving tales of miracles and visions. Get everybody onboard with the new religion and build a new Empire.
Later it helped when one of the popes bribed Attila the Hun with gold to go away and spread more stories of miracles, thereby establishing one pope over the other rival candidates.
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