Amaleq13

Agreed.

No question about it. Works for me!

GakuseiDon

I know you lean towards a HJ, but it is worth pointing out that there doesn't appear to be evidence that "man-like being who existed only on a spiritual plane" was ever part of the mythical landscape back then. Doherty has proposed that they thought that Attis castrated himself with a knife in a "spiritual plane", etc, but there simply isn't any evidence that they thought this AFAIK.

Daemons and spirits lived on earth and in the air. There was no separate "spiritual plane" where they carried out their myths, where Attis could wield a knife or Satan could put someone on a tree. I strongly suspect that this is a modern idea that was inspired by TV shows like "The Twilight Zone" and "Xena Warrior Princess", and that is why the concept appeals to many people nowadays. However, such a "spiritual plane" has no more substance than a "virgin born and crucified Mithras", but while most people know enough to question such claims when they appear, for some reason Doherty gets a free pass on this subject. I have no idea why.

That's not to say that Jesus was historical. As Malachi points out, Jesus could have been thought to have been on earth but still have been mythical (Wells proposes such a mythical Jesus, for example). But I do wish the "spiritual plane" idea would be questioned and not taken for granted so often.

Amaleq13

Given the apparently ongoing debate by folks certainly more knowledgeable than I, yes. (Though I think your point about Adam is a very good one.)

Adonael

Ahh, yes. The confidence of the amateur intellectual...

Solitary Man

Ah, the sarcasm of ignorant.

dog-on

What do you mean by (a) above?

Solo

...and, if we accept the Adam parallel (who really was not in "the form of" but in the "image of" God, but I am ok with it ) then

do you mean by (b) that the pre-existence of Christ can be dispensed with ? And if so, how is the kenosis of Phl 2:7 to be understood ? If Christ had no pre-x status, what was he emptying himself of in accepting incarnation and human form ?

Much obliged.

Jiri

jules?

What i think is emerging from my orignal question is that the orthodox view of the historical Jesus is percieved to be a better explaination not because the 'facts' are particularly supportive but because the explainations for a MJ are both wide ranging, prone to attract more colourful theories and less plausable. What would be needed to level the playing field is a kind of universal MJ hypothisis that was as simple [or rather straight forward, and hence a reason perhaps for the solar-god theories popularity] as the historical one.

mg01

Would that be RG Price or Robert M Price?

By chance can you provide a link for this article?

Thanks

jules?

this would be my current stand point albet put in a more eloquent way. however....
I was listerning to PBS radio to Clean, a documentry of washing habits that focused on the christian dislike of baths, was it because some strange man had given them one as a child and had then put them off for life? as one Arab writer once said. But the point was that Jesus the rebel had gone against all normal practise, touching the dead, issueing woman, and proclaiming that it was not what went in but what came out as important. ritual baths were rejected by jesus. So the rebel doesnt quite fit into my idea of the cosmic christ. Was Mark simply creating an anti hero? It is this that makes me wonder if the humanist revolutionary is the 'true' story that it was all based on. Perhaps there is a gospel HJ and the larger MJ that escaped from apocalyptic Judaism into the Greek world that combined and confuse everybody.