Underseer

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspo...r-existed.html

Honestly, I tend to fall on the side of historicists on this issue: the character in the New Testament was probably based (however loosely) on a real person.

However, if I am to accept this argument, then I would have to also accept that Popeye and Sherlock Holmes were real because they were also based loosely on real people, which is of course absurd.

show_no_mercy

There are two separate questions regarding the historicist/mythicist positions:

1. The New Testament describes a mythological character

2. Christianity began with a mythological character

I think most people would agree with number one. The Sherlock Holmes/Popeye analogy also describes number one. What the mythicists have to prove (and what the historicists have to debunk) is number two. I don't think there's any way to answer number two.

ziffel

I believe there was a real, historical Jesus. However, since virtually nothing was written about him from a non-cult member, at least 20 years removed, and nothing by eyewitnesses, we'll never know who he was or what he was really like.

The Jesus in the NT is obvious myth. He has mythological traits, and many of the events attributed to him were done well before him, almost identically, by other god-men. The likenesses between Jesus and Osiris are so close, that Jesus appears to be almost plagiarized.

Godmen of his type were common amongst the pagans, and Jesus was just a Jewish interpretation of those myths.

Riding in on a donkey
water into wine (even at a marriage ceremony)
dying for the sins of the world
son of a god
rising from the dead
having 12 disciples
descending into hell after death
rising to heaven after resurrection
hung on a tree/stake/cross
grave visited by female followers
promising to return to earth
bridging a gap between god & man

All of these were done by other pagan god-men before Christ. So blatant were the xian copies, that early church father Justin Martyr was prompted to say that the prior pagan events were the act of Satan "pre-copying" the xian ones.

Davka

This does appear to me to be the most rational explanation. The "made up out of whole cloth" position has always come across as wishful thinking. Mythic historic figures tend to be based on real people more often than not. There was probably a king named David, and a warrior-priest named Samson, too.

ziffel

I think another interesting question is: which came first, the Gnostics, or the literalists?

Another thought: Christianity was a relatively sparse, struggling cult for what, about 200 years? I don't think a true God-event as described in the NT would only result in a struggling cult. I think an event as incredible as the resurrection, and the subsequent appearances of a dead man to many people, as well as the zombie resurrection, would have spawned damn-near a revolution.

It wasn't till about 380 CE that Christianity began to take off, after Constantine adopted it, and organized it.

Also note that there were hundreds of Jesus stories, gospels, letters, testaments, etc, written at the same time as the 27 we know of were written. The 27 were hand-picked by men hundreds of years after the events. I think this is a critical point, that almost all believers overlook or don't know. Who's to say which were actually true, if any?

show_no_mercy

Yeah... it's interesting to note that no matter how far down the myth trickles down, you can always insert a person there and claim it's the historical Jesus. In this respect, the historical Jesus becomes unfalsifiable. It's like an onion with infinite layers. Peel off one more myth and you can still claim that the next lower layer is the "historical core".

No one knows. Which is why I think Jesus-agnosticism is more reasonable considering the nature of the evidence:


Not only this, but what was hand-picked by the so-called orthodoxy was edited to conform to orthodoxy. Matt, Luke, and John are all just reactions to people ("heretics") who used Mark to argue that the Christ spirit was different from Jesus. Almost half of Paul's letters are argued to have not been written by Paul... and what is in the seven "authentic" still has orthodox touching up to refute other heretics who used Paul.

ziffel

Further, the letters/gospels that were hand-picked, were not agreed upon. Wasn't Revelation first determined to not be inspired, then later they changed their mind?

And different groups vying for control of canon selection were wanting different books canonized. This should tell people something.

The bible and the stories therein, were selected for people by those who won out the authority war. I read a pretty good quote recently, that if people's memories of all religious affairs were erased, and we had a fresh start at relearning them all - the Jesus story would become just another dusty tome in the library in the myth section. It is culture and indoctrination that pushes these religions forward, not evidence.

Red_Geranium

Excellent points. You guys (gals?) beat me to the punch....and saved me lots of typing.

You're absolutely right about lots of garden-variety believers not knowing much at all about the history of the Bible or the early Church. I know I didn't learn anything about it until I started asking questions and digging into it on my own. I was really surprised to learn how much orthodoxy was determined by power and politics...and that there were so many competing ideas about Jesus and Christianity.

Underseer

That one is easy to answer since Biblical literalism is a fairly modern phenomenon.

ziffel

That's not the literalism I'm referring to. The Gnostics believed Jesus wasn't a literal person. From wiki: [to the Gnostic] "scripture has a deep, hidden meaning whose true message could only be understood through “secret wisdom”; and Jesus was a spirit that “seemed” to be human. Whereas other early Christians believed the stories being passed around were true and about an actual person.