mountainman

You fail to understand my distinction

Quite demonstrably fictions are not myths.
Walt Disney freely created fiction, no?

Emperor Julian stated that he considered that the NT
was a fiction of men composed by wickedness.
He uses the word "fiction" very specifically.
He uses the word "myth" numerably elsewhere.
He distinguishes clearly your lack of logic.

NONE OF THE ABOVE.
That is my vote.
Entirely voluntary.

Next year, get serious and add another option, that of FICTION.
Or will this stuff up your statistical mean distributions?




Pete Brown

Jobar

Purely from curiosity. I know that not everyone here is an expert Biblical scholar, but there are a good number who are. And everyone here is at least an interested and usually well-read student of the subject, like me.

While I know that opinions are like assholes, I think the ones found on this forum stink rather less than most. Truth isn't decided by majority vote, but the opinions of savvy people may help direct interested amateurs in the right direction.

Ditto. As I said in that '04 thread, when I read Wells' books it was like a great light dawning. At last, the NT made sense to me!

Jobar

But I do. Your theory is that Jesus, the NT, and Christianity are intentional fictions, contrived with malice aforethought by Constantine as a tool of political power. And although I wouldn't put such skulldudgery past those who are mad for power in any day or age, IM (admittedly non-expert) O the available facts don't support you.

SaguaroJen

I voted mythical. I think the stories of Jesus were inspired by tall tales about a variety of religious leaders over a great number of years. There may have been one named Jesus but that's purely coincidental. It's possible that some of these leaders made a large positive impact in their societies - by giving people who needed motivation a reason to behave themselves.

JMHO. I'm certainly not a Biblical scholar.

voodoomage

I did not vote in 2004, but I voted mythical. I contemplated voting "...in some degree historical" but did not based upon what the 2004 poll apparently said, which was "entirely/mostly historical".

Like Saguaro, I think that the myth of Jesus was built over the years from a variety of legends and folklore. I think that so little of the Jesus story can be connected to any one individual to warrant voting historical. It is relatively easy to take one already embellished legend, tack on some extra doctrinal fluff, and swap (or "correct") the name of the individual in the legend.

OripahsTrebor

and

I largely agree that the Christianity is based off of a series of embellished legends. However, I do agree that Jesus was a real person who was crucified, but like Tupac Shakur, he's dead.

mountainman

There is no pre-Nicaean archeological evidence for christianity,
unless you are going to cite evidence not previously mentioned on
this forum. What available IYO "facts" did you have in mind,
or better yet, what are you classifying as "facts" against the
theory. It is only a theory, and thus emminently refuteable,
either in whole or in part, upon the presentation of such
"available facts".

Polls need to cater for reality.
You admit such skullduggery exists.
What's really changed in the world?
Expand your poll to include all possibilities.
It is decidedly useless to be exclusive.

Nevertheless, best wishes,



Pete Brown

Jobar

Pete, are you aware of anyone else who shares your opinion on this? I don't recall seeing any other posters here agreeing with you, but again I don't read even 1% of the posts in this forum so I may just not know about them.

My point is that I thought I did include an option suitable for you: #10.

I'm certain I have no evidence you haven't seen, but it so happens that on my other thread in BC&H, on the earliest images of Jesus, is a link to the Alexamanos graffito, which I had never seen before. It's dated about 200 CE, and seems to me to prove that a religion with a crucified saviour was known well enough to be parodied by that date.

Chris Weimer

Jobar - don't bother. Any evidence he is presented is dismissed or cited as a later forgery. You cannot win with him. Resistance is futile.

Jobar

I've read a few of his threads, and I sorta got that impression.

I was thinking about the MJ/HJ dispute while I was working today, and a question occurred to me which I'm pretty sure has been asked in this forum before- but *I* haven't seen it, so I'll ask it. Is there any other personage in all of humanity's writings whose historicity is accepted by the majority of historians, whose provenance is as questionable as is that of Jesus? That is, a person who is generally thought to have actually lived, yet who never wrote a word; was not written of in his lifetime, or by someone who claimed to know him personally; and whose extant records contain so many internal and external contradictions.

I thought of Socrates, but he doesn't fit well because we know who Aristotle was, and AFAIK all our existing testimony concerning him is quite consistent. I also thought of Gilgamesh- isn't it accepted that he was a very early Accaddian monarch? (Not sure of that.)

While of course this would not constitute proof of ahistoricity even if Jesus were the sole example in all our records, I'd say it would at least indicate that Jesus could well have been mythical.

I won't be surprised if the experts tell me I've just reinvented the wheel...