aa5874

Zeus is not Jesus. Achilles is not Hercules. Spiderman is not Superman. All of them have their own 'life' to live.

Amaleq13

Since that wasn't spin's argument, you need to discard your mistaken interpretation of his position.

Anybody who accurately understood spin's original claim can see that Matthew 22:15-18 is irrelevant to it.

Amaleq13

My question (which you have entirely avoided) was whether you genuinely do not understand that, contrary to your assertion, this single fact fails to eliminate all of the possibilities you listed. Ignoring the question suggests the answer is "no".

To assist you in improving your comprehension of the flaw in your assertion, please explain how this single fact eliminates possibility 3:

aa5874

Luke 1:34, 'Then said Mary unto the ANGEL, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man.

How can Jesus be?

Ben C Smith

Amaleq13

We've already identified this Gospel claim as mythical so why belabor the point? It does nothing to help you correct your error.

aa5874

Ok, thanks, I didn't realise that you had already identified the mythical birth of Jesus according to Luke. I won't belabour the point that the historicity of Jesus the Christ is baseless.

I guess I won't have to go into the mythical pre-existence, the mythical baptism, the mythical temptation, the mythical miracles, the mythical transfiguration, the mythical resurrection and mythical ascension of the myth, Jesus the Christ.

Amaleq13

I don't see how you couldn't. I thought "identifying this single claim as false" was pretty clear.

That does not follow from a recognition that the nativity stories are myths but your failure to recognize that fact has been my point all along but I really don't expect any epiphanies on your end.

I would ask if you understand that even assuming all of these to be mythological fails to eliminate all of the possibilities you acknowledged earlier but I think it is clear that you do not.

Your simplistic thinking betrays you on a fairly regular basis, amigo.

You can't explain how to eliminate possibility 3, can you?

Toto

What you need to address, if you want to be relevant, is whether there was a real man behind the mythological Jesus the Christ. This man could have been a wandering preacher from Galilee who was crucified, and whose friends founded a new religion about him. Can you derive the existence of such a person from the collection of myths and bits of early history? Or, if you can't, how do you explain the rise of early Christianity?

But the only people who think that gospel Jesus was real are true believers, and most of the people here who think there was a historical Jesus are not true believers, or at least not that sort of true believer.

aa5874

There are no real men behind mythological figures, as the word myth implies.
Can you tell when this real man was born, or anything at all? Which century do I look for this real man?
If the chronology of the NT is not true, or cannot be trusted, where do I begin?

How does one explain all the mythical gods of the Greeks, how does one explain the Egyptian gods, how does one explain the Hindu Gods, how does one explain the Gods of Shintoism and how does one explain Mormonism?

To explain all of them, you read their Bibles, religious doctrines or scriptures, contemporary relevant extra-biblical writings, archaelogical findings, and other material and you make an assesment whether or not in your opinion the Gods described are mythical or not.

It is amazing that it is so easy to see mythology in other religions, yet, even though the Christian Bible is filled with myth, and confirmed to be, some still look for an unborn unknown figure, which the unknown mother cannot explain.

How many times do I have to show, with excerpts from the NT, that Jesus the Christ pre-existence as the Word is fictional, that his birth is fictional, his baptism is fictional, his temptation is fictional, his miraculous acts are fictional, his transfiguration is fictional, his resurrection is fictional and his ascension is fictional?

My assesment of Jesus the Christ was not done by taking into account those who are true believers or non-believers, if so, no investigation would be neccesary.

And so far no HJer, believer or non-believer, has been able to show that a character called Jesus the Christ ever lived as a real person in the first century or any century, who was crucified, buried in a sealed tomb under guard, and then vanished when visited by his followers.