John A. Broussard

That hadn't occurred to me, but you may well be right. What extant manuscripts we have come almost entirely from Constantine's day or later. The Jesus myth had to be firmly established to give the then Church legitimacy, so the legends proliferated.

I'll accept that. With Shakespeare, there was no need for a legend. Makes sense.

In passing I should mention there is still a thriving trade in writing about who really wrote the Shakespeare plays and sonnets. I'm willing to concede a historical drama writing Shakespeare. I'm less convinced about a historical divine being named Jesus.

Chili

I would say that Shakespeare was equal to the author of the Revelation and has a gospel of his own to tell. Or did he?

andrewcriddle

We have a number of reasonably substantial pre-Constantinian manuscripts
of the NT p45 p46 p47 p66 p72 p75 (all from the third century CE) p45 p66 and p75 being Gospels. (P72 contains along with some Epistles an early version of the Protevangelium of James which is based on the Virgin Birth narratives of Matthew and Luke).

There are also a number of fragments some from the 2nd century CE.

Andrew Criddle

RED DAVE

Check these out for openers. A hell of a lot more than about Jesus.

Documents Pertaining to Shakespeare's Life

RED DAVE

advancedatheist

These documents don't prove that the Stratford guy wrote the poems and plays attributed to him, however, because of the lack of manuscript evidence and the fact that he didn't list any of his books published during his lifetime as part of his estate. Many aspects of Christopher Columbus' life are similarly mysterious, but at least we have a number of letters and ship's logs written in his own hand, and nobody disputes that he led an important expedition to the New World.

RED DAVE

From advancedatheist:
If you really want to debate the Shakespeare author shit, I'm willing, but I think it's dumb. I posted the documents to show the difference between the documentation of Shakespeare's life and that of Jesus. The former is extremely well documented.

As to the plays, I have never seen the slightest piece of worthy evidence that would lead anyone to doubt who wrote them. I think the whole thing comes from snob appeal: how could a non-university graduate write all that stuff? The Shakespeare author thing usually comes down to some kind of a right-wing conspiracy theory about suppression of the real author.

Like I said: start a thread in media if you want to thrash it out.

RED DAVE

Farrell Till

The Jesus/Shakespeare comparison seems ill-conceived. One could just as well ask why we know so much about King Arthur or Robin Hood but so little about Shakespeare. Legendary or mythical characters seem to attract biographers eager to add to the folklore about them, but an actual historical character doesn't attract nearly as much attention.