aa5874

Can you name some of those discernable elements of original and historically accurate material in the NT?

Sheshbazzar

and
The question so constrained as to eliminate what the actual text has to say, makes a query having no more sense than if you were posing the question, "Was the Easter Bunny ever an actual bunny rabbit?"

Remove all of the miracles, remove all of the wrested out of context "prophecies", remove all of the composed "artistic license" dramatic scenes, remove all of the sayings that were cribbed from other sources, and remove all of the fluff and filler that evolved in the pasting all of these "borrowed" elements into a semblance of a story.
Remove all of that, and there simply is no actual person left to be found.

In other words, if the "actual human" character had virtually nothing in common with that mythical character as portrayed by the books, didn't do the actual things the books portray, there could not be any "actual human" portrayed.
Hence the story, in not accurately applying to, nor describing the actual conduct or actions of any particular individual, any "human" figure alleged to be the genesis of, or "behind" the story would by definition be mythical because impossible.

ApostateAbe

I am not on the same page as you in saying that there is nothing left after you remove all of the mythical elements from the gospels. In a 40-year lapse between Jesus and the earliest extant gospel, we would expect at least some material to be original to Jesus. And I find it very likely that such material can be identified, based largely on what is neutral or what conflicts with the interests of the early Christians, such as the failed prophecy, or the teaching that you must obey the Jewish law to inherit eternal life.

Sheshbazzar

There was no "40 year lapse between Jesus and the earliest extant gospel", because there never was any "actual human" Jesus -to- write about.
It was very easy to compose a fiction about a mythical person that supposedly lived (and died) some four decades in the past, all the more so in an age when most people did not live past thirty years old.
So what you are positing is a book that was admittedly written at least 40+ years after the alleged "fact", by unknown author(s), who did not personally witness the alleged events, and did not personally hear the words that they put into their characters mouths, ought to be accepted and trusted as a suitable basis on which to conclude that the main protagonist was "someone that did something", but you don't actually know with any certainty, just who that someone might have been (outside of any details provided in the story) or what, of all the acts that he might have done, or of the words that he might have spoken, that he (and the other "story" characters) ever actually did do or spoke.
Really it just comes down to, that there is virtually nothing written within those fairy-tale "stories" that you, or anyone else, can positively identify as actually having ever been done or said by anyone named in the stories.
And you never will.
When you discredit, or dismiss, any part of the myth, the whole becomes discredited, and worthy of dismissal.
Either it IS Inspired and True, or it is not, and if it is not, then you only make an ass of yourself in trying to force fit some smidgens of authenticity into what is still at best a fiction, a deception, and a lie.
Damn right, we are not on the same page.

Solitary Man

So...because Vespasian was rumoured to heal the sick, that means that there was never a Roman empire?

Sheshbazzar

I was writing about ONE myth, "THE myth" being discussed, the one that has caused generations of untold suffering, bloodshed, and misery.
All because religionist's get up on their high horse in claiming it is the "truth".
Vespasian's cult followers are not out inciting wars and attempting to force-feed lies to our children, like the adherents of this profane cult have done, and yet still do.

ApostateAbe

Sheshbezzar, I would like for you to examine your values. Do you value reason and the truth more than anything? Or do you value unleashing a furious rage on the Christian religion in revenge? Maybe you are not as angry as that, but I am angry at the Christian religion, but only because it has corrupted the truth. I do not wish to correct the mistake of Christianity by advocating an extreme in an unreasonably contrary direction, because I value the truth. Myths are not an all-or-nothing thing. It is acceptable to believe the probable parts of myths while dismissing the unlikely parts. The Christian gospels contain elements that seriously conflict with the interests of the myth-tellers, leading me to believe that it can not be entirely myth. Does this make sense to you?

itsamysteryhuh

Will do. :thumbs:

itsamysteryhuh

Myths and religions don't cause suffering. People cause suffering. That which you refer to as "their high horse" is nothing more or less than vanity on their parts. When a religion says not to kill and a person (somehow) decides to kill, what can you do? Some people are just crazy (or irrational).

Sheshbazzar

It is easy to misapprehend another's ideas, beliefs, and positions. My anger is directed at corruption of truth by any religion that does so, (and I know of none that do not)
Yet, I can not in good conscience ignore the facts of how essentially stupid and erroneous religious beliefs, tenets, and convictions have caused millenia of conflict, and totally unnecessary human suffering.
I do understand what you are attempting to "sift out" from their overall mythology, and I'm sure that it is not your -intended- goal to lend legitimancy to the claims of the Christian religion.
But we really are on a "different page" as to how those "stories" originated, and of their "value" in proving or establishing the "truth" of any claims that are made in them.
I wouldn't attempt to employ "clues" found in an old Dick Tracy comic strip to discover the origins of the world, and to plan and regulate my life, Yet that is exactly the equivalent of what Christianity has attempted to foist off on me, and upon on all of us.