spamandham

Back to the OP, I'm wondering if Asclepius might pass muster. From "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (or via: amazon.co.uk)", 2003, Prometheus Books, Robert Price, pp 136-137...

(in regards to Asclepius)
"He had walked the earth in mortal form, son of Apollo and the mortal maid Coronis, healing the sick. Once he raised a dead person, wherupon Zeus decided he had blasphemously usurped the prerogative of true gods and killed him. But then Father Zeus raised him from the dead to dwell among the Olympians. Asclepius (called "the Savior") continued to manifest himself on earth, however, in fact for centuries, as sick suppliants would flock to his shrines, making reservations to partake of the spa waters and to sleep in a nocturnal chamber in which the form of the god would appear in ones' dreams and suggest an appropriate cure or penance. Many of these miraculous visitations have been recorded as testimonials by satisfied pilgrims."

(based on Gerd Theissan, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition, (or via: amazon.co.uk) trans. Francis McDonagh, Fortress Press, 1983, pp. 283-284)

gurugeorge

This "rule" isn't applied in a vaccum: as I said above, it's applied in the context of their being good evidence - independent from the encomiums and exaggerations proclaiming their godhood, evidence including archaeological evidence, coins, etc. - that they were real characters.

Plus nobody seriously believes they were gods, it's clearly just politico-religious twaddle; whereas there's always the possibility that a God-man did in fact walk the Earth in Palestine 2,000 years ago. It can't be ruled out.

Some Christian stuff reads like visionary experience, some doesn't; Paul's epistles and things like Hebrews do, the gospels don't (they're more like literary/moral/philosophical products).

So ,since the earlier stuff is pretty visionary, already mythical (God-man) but without much historical detail, it's reasonable to believe that the religion probably started off like that - i.e. as a revision of the Messiah concept to be something that was done and dusted in the past, rather than something to come - and was later again re-revised (in more apocalyptic times for the Jews) to retain something of the old Messiah concept (that He's to come again in the future to judge the living and the dead). I think you can see a trace of this in the early original insistence on "Christ crucified": it's a shorthand for "Gaah, you dolts, remember, the very originality of our version of the Messiah depends on him having done his salvific work in the past, he's not a coming thing, that was the old idea!"

Yeah. I would say there's only a small chance that he's historical, and it's more likely he was originally a revision of the Messiah concept under Hellenistic influence (the dying/rising saviour concept, not any particular one, but as a general idea that might have influenced the founders of Christianity), but because there was a sort of gap for curiosity ("well if he was in the past, can we actually find him anywhere in history?") that gap was filled with an invented living person, and that invented living person was later taken advantage of by certain bishops by means of their invention of the idea of Apostolic Succession, and a sort of "hardening" of the historical idea - and the rest is history. (Sorry, going a bit beyond the strict bounds of our argument and giving you a brain dump for the sake of clarifying my own thoughts, but that's a general outline of the bigger picture as I see it - please feel free to pick holes!)

IOW it seems to me that the community of people Paul talks about, initially persecuted, and whose message he eventually came round to, came up with a stunning inversion as a result of visionary experience: the Messiah is not one to come, his work is already done and dusted, YOU ARE ALREADY SAVED. That seems to me to be a kind of mythic "good news" worthy of the name for Hellenistic Jews of the time, especially with its echoes of the Mysteries and "soter" gods.

It also fits in with Paul's emphasis on the foolishness of the idea: since the Messiah was supposed to be one to bring military and political victory, the idea that the Messiah is someone who'd already "failed" in the most ignominious way in an earthly sense, is kind of foolish, but it makes sense when you look at his subsequent resurrection as the true Messiah-like victory (and Paul's extension of this victory as a victory for all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, then makes even more sense, is quite logical, and actually a piece of religious genius).

Now of course this could all possibly refer to someone historical, but given the notorious reticence of Paul (admitted by orthodox scholars, who feel under an obligation to explain it away within their paradigm) with regard to the historical details about "Jesus" we all know and love, why should it?

IOW, again, putting it in a nutshell: why can't Paul's (initially the "Pillars"') Messiah be as mythical as the normal Jewish Messiah idea, just inverted and projected into the past instead of projected into the more usual future? That's how it reads to me.

aa5874

No, you are wrong. There is no credible non-Christian or extra-biblical writings about Jesus or any tradition with regards to his followers or his teachings in the 1st century.

There is no description of Jesus, where he lived, his genealogy, the synagogues where he preached, the crowds he taught, the high priests that he converted, nothing at all by any known historian writer of antiquity, unlike figures of antiquity, like Alexander the Great, or The Caesars.

The Greek gods, although regarded as myths today, are found in the writings of historians and writers in the 1st century, which shows indelibly that these gods were worshipped and were part of the Greek tradition at that time, but there is nothing for Jesus.

Jesus is presented in the NT as a god primarily, he had no earthly father, his so-called mother had no sexual contact with any man, she was a virgin. Jesus was the son of the Holy Ghost. No known historian wrote about this ghost.